Parenting's Gamble

Last June, I started using an online social networking engine. In less than a year, I've connected with over one hundred people I'd love to chat with at a reunion but for whom I would otherwise not have gone out of my way to contact. The list includes peers from college, high school, overnight camp, middle school and elementary school. I've even connected with three women with whom I once shared an adolescent romance: My first kiss, my Senior Prom date, and one more: Lori. And before any of you get worried ... both Amelia and I are comfortable with such connections in the tame, non-invasive world of online social networking.

I have found a strong basis of friendship is shared experience. With most of the people with whom I connect online from my distant past, I share both a formative window of life from years ago, as well as the current experience of being a parent. Of course, parenting experiences vary widely. With Lori, her parenting experience has proven to be very, very different from mine. Like me, she's happily married to a spouse who adores her and she has two lovely children. However, both of my children are in near perfect health, whereas Lori's younger daughter Gretchen has the worst childhood illness I have ever learned about.

Since connecting with Lori online this past summer, I have been able to do a lot of reading about Gretchen's illness. It hasn't just been the descriptions on medical information websites. Lori journals online about Gretchen's ups and downs. The journaling keeps Lori's social network wide and well informed, and I am sure it also serves Lori as an outlet of relief to simply write. During the summer of 2008, I skimmed through roughly one thousand journal entries written over a five year span. It was like drinking from a fire hose. It was nearly impossible to conceive of Lori's day-to-day or month-to-month life.

Since then, I've been reading each of Lori's newly posted journal entries in near real time and the picture of Lori's life with a medically-fragile child has become more clear. But it is one of those situations in which the more I know, the more I realize I do not know. Lori's online peers want to give encouragement, but we don't always know how. Many people post short, kind notes as comments to Lori's journal entries to tell her they are praying or thinking kind thoughts. I send a medium-sized note about once every five or six weeks with the hopes I can deliver something unique enough to add value on top of what she is already receiving.

My 9-year-old daughter Chloe has developed an interest in Gretchen and her circumstances. Chloe looks over my shoulder when I read Lori's journal entries and asks me what is going on with Gretchen's health. Recently Gretchen's health took a difficult downward turn from which she is fortunately now recovering. But on the day of the first and second journal entry to report the downturn. things looked particularly stark. The following morning I woke up an hour before the alarm went off and wondered about Gretchen. I checked for a journal entry online and it woke Chloe. "Daddy, may I have a morning snuggle?" Chloe asked through her blurry mask of blond bed-head.

She quietly joined me in the "big bed" without waking Amelia. Chloe used my shoulder as a pillow, pressed her spine firmly against my side and held my wrist in both arms like it was a stuffed animal. Soon she was breathing as only a comfortably sleeping child breathes. Chloe's health was undeniable. I could smell it, feel it, hear it and see it. I rested there in the bed and wondered what it would be like for it to be my daughter whose life was hanging in the balance. Could Amelia and I endure as Lori and her spouse do day after day and month after month? There’s no way to know for certain, of course. But I believe the answer would be yes.

I continued lying there listening to Chloe’s sleepy breaths and chose to savor the moments. Who can know what the next day will bring? A new, breakthrough treatment could suddenly provide a huge improvement in Gretchen’s life. Likewise, a latent gene or some kind of accident could suddenly afflict Chloe or Philip. That is parenting’s gamble. And we all willingly take that gamble.

I briefly remembered back to a time long ago when it was Lori’s head resting peacefully on my shoulder, and thought about how completely unaware we were of what the future would hold. I silently wished the best for Lori and her Gretchen. Chloe stirred and turned to face me, draping her arm across my chest. “I love you, Daddy,” she said quietly as the sunlight working its way through our shades indicated the alarm would soon go off.

“I love you too, Chloe.” And I made sure I savored every last bit of the morning snuggle.

Nicknames and a Big Cheer

Winter break is over and basketball season has officially begun. This season I am coaching my third grade daughter Chloe's team, MONSOON. I picked up the girls' uniform tee-shirts at the Hermes Recreation Office and took them over with me to the first official practice of the year. Each girl wanted to be the first to pick her number—limited of course to the correct-sized tee-shirts. I used one of the practice drills as a contest to determine what order the girls would get to pick their numbers.

The first two selected their tee-shirts quickly: 11 and 7. As I worked to get the tee-shirts to the rest of the team, the first two began chattering feverishly within my hearing, but not my attention. Suddenly number 11 spoke up. "Coach! Coach! I'm HOT DOG and she's BIG GULP! Get it? Seven-Eleven!"

Immediately the energy level and enthusiasm spiked to a new level. The remaining players all wanted a team nickname to match HOT DOG and BIG GULP. Chloe quickly claimed STARBURST and the whole team agreed by cheering her on by that name. So I gathered them up and gave them three simple rules for nicknames.
Rule #1: The player must want the nickname enthusiastically.
Rule #2: Her teammates must likewise enthusiastically accept her having that nickname.
Rule #3: I, the coach, must approve the nickname.

Throughout the rest of that day's practice nicknames were all the girls could talk about. I vetoed SHOOTER because it sounded too much like labeling one player as the star of the team. A talented but rather melancholic third grader requested CRANKY. I reluctantly approved only after her mother told me that it was the nickname her daughter had embraced in the previous soccer season. The rest struggled and I promised to help them all pick nicknames at the next practice.

I'd also promised we'd have a Team Cheer and many of the girls were ready with ideas. One girl presented some lines with a hip-hop beat. Another suggested making a howling wind sound while saying "Mooooooo-onsoon!" Others asked for references to their nicknames. Chloe wanted the cheer to end with "Let's go!" It was a little overwhelming to get all their ideas, but I promised to compile them and have a draft of the cheer ready for the next practice.

That was my homework the following evening. I compiled a list of pre-approved nicknames to help the girls who hadn't settled. The cheer was a little tougher to arrange. I went to bed still thinking about the cheer and woke up with it in an orderly enough state to put it in writing before the rest of the family was awake. On the same sheet of paper, I put the roster and the game schedule and printed seven copies for the afternoon's practice.

Practice was mainly about getting them ready for their first game, but I made certain to deal with the nicknames and cheer effectively. JAGUAR, ROCKET and PINTO were what the remaining players wanted for themselves from my list of recommendations and their teammates rapidly approved. I had to fend off several unwanted nicknames directed toward me, including HUBBA-BUBBA and DIESEL. In the end, AQUAMAN is what stuck. Finally, the cheer came together with a hip-hop beat to the full satisfaction of these third and fourth grade girls.

One, two, three!
We got names; we got names; we got names that strut our games!
We're loud; we're proud, like a storm from the Swelling Blue Deep!
We play, every day, and here's what we have to say!
Mooooooo-onsoon! Let's go!

Years from now HOT DOG, BIG GULP, STARBURST, CRANKY, JAGUAR, ROCKET and PINTO probably won't remember many details from their games and even less from their practices. But they'll almost certainly remember their nicknames and the MONSOON Team Cheer for the rest of their lives. I know AQUAMAN will.

Kids and Their Parents' Finances

I was roughly the age Philip is today. I was home from school when my mother came home early from work. “There’s something I need to tell you,” she said. “I’ve lost my job.”

We were a single parent family: Just me and my mother. We lived in a small apartment in an upscale East Coast town. The recession at the beginning of the Reagan administration had begun and the economic fallout had forced my mother’s employer to cut staff. We had fixed financial support from my father and his family, but our income had just been cut in half. Savings? Yeah, right. And with the market being down, things looked grim.

I’m certain my mother felt all kinds of pressure in that down economy. Who wouldn’t? But somehow I never felt it. As a child and as an adolescent, my happiness did not depend upon how big the paycheck was. When I speak with peers who had bad experiences as a result of their parents' finances, it was never about the lack of money. The bad experiences were the anger and rage and/or the withdrawal and depression.

Today there is a new recession looming. I'm giving myself a fifty percent chance I'll be among the unemployed before the week is out. With that, our family will take a 75% hit to our income. And we're still recovering financially from the post 9-11 recession. We're hardly alone. The parents of Chloe's friend Samantha were over the other evening. We'd always considered them wealthier than us, given their vehicles and their clothes. But all of it was at least four years old. We learned Samantha's father's business had earned close to nothing these past four years. Their savings were completely drained. Their recent move from an upscale development in Hermes was not to a bigger home, but instead to the home of an elderly relative where they are now renting space. Samantha's father was particularly demoralized that evening. And her mom was feeling the weight too. We told them about our looming situation — which truly doesn't come close to theirs. We talked about our concern for the kids. And that is when Samantha's mom and dad set us straight.

Samantha and her siblings have been fine. It is just the parents who are suffering. They are suffering quietly. When they left the upscale home for shared space in an older, smaller home away from neighbors with whom the kids could play, all the kids could say was, "Mom! This house has a tire swing!" When the elderly relative got sick, their high-school-age daughter spent several hours a week taking care of him. Not only did that save the family the cost of a home health aid, but it also allowed the teenage daughter more quality time with the elderly man than the rest of her life beforehand. The kids — Samantha's parents report — are just as happy as they were before the finances collapsed. Their grades in school are just as good as they had been. And they enjoy their friends just as much as ever.

At the time of this writing, I do not know what this week will bring. But Samantha's parents have helped me to be ready for the worst. Back during Reagan's presidency, my mother quickly found a better job. And admittedly, there is one company with which I have already been interviewing that may have a better job for me. But nothing is certain. I could find myself employed at the end of the week, or I could be among the unemployed. The company with the better job might extend me an offer. Or it might not. This recession could prove uneventful for us. Or it could be a long difficult road. Like Samantha's family, we have options. Houses don't sell in this recession, but they do rent. We could rent out our spare room. Or we could rent out our whole house and move into a small apartment. My wife could increase her hours at her part time job, and I've had some success before getting short term consulting assignments while between jobs.

I'm choosing to be optimistic. It keeps me at my best with the kids. And as long as I stay that way, the kids will never care whether or not I'm gainfully employed. Either way, I plan to spend a lot more time with Samantha's dad. Some day his business will recover. And some day (hopefully for the rest of 2009 or at least most of it) I’ll be gainfully employed.

As for the kids, my goal is they won’t need to recover from anything. I didn’t when I was that age.