Fun and funny is underrated. It’s interesting—laughter has a way of drowning out lesser memories; it pulls through as the lead story. We certainly had dark seasons and sorrows and missteps, like that time you slapped me across the face for just telling my truth, Mom, but those didn’t leave the most lasting impression. They didn’t become the headline. They were subplots beneath the primary storyline of love and security.
This gives me hope as I am still neck deep in family minutia here; time hasn’t minimized the failures or monotony or the daily crapshoot of supervising five kids. It’s all still a bit too precious, and I regularly worry the latest misfire will be the thing they’ll remember most. So acknowledging the staying power of general tone over particulars is such a comfort; hopefully they’ll remember the laughter more than that time I threw all their dirty laundry in the backyard.
Second, thanks for being super into us. We grew up with fans. I’d be remiss not to single you out here, Dad, because your particular brand of enthusiasm is, as we all know, legendary. All four of us sincerely believed we were special children, that the universe blessed us with talent and charm, intelligence and wit. We bought all your hype. You believed in us irrationally, which made us accidentally confident. We were solidly in our twenties before discovering we were just sort of medium, but by that point, it was too late; we missed the window of insecurity and entered adulthood like, Here we are! (And the world was like, So? Which did not deter us in the slightest.)
Heaven have mercy on the authorities that didn’t recognize our specialness or, dare I recall, oppressed us: teachers, coaches, principals, neighbors, bosses, academic deans, other parents, arresting officers—they faced many a losing battle, those poor souls. And sure, Dad, you mainly led this brigade, but Mom occasionally went Red Rage, too, like that time my media teacher gave me the only C in the class, a class with no real grades, because he didn’t like me. (It is no wonder he retired the next year.) To this day, Dad, you offer to censure social media haters with a swift word, but since I am a forty-two-year-old grown adult person, having my dad defend me on Facebook is probably unnecessary.
Another childhood staple that permanently affected my trajectory was your liberal and generous commitment to your friends. Your friends (and consequently their kids) were such a constant presence in our life, we grew up assuming genuine community was a given. We spent as much time at your friends’ houses as our own, and I can hardly remember a vacation or trip or Sunday night barbecue without another family or two with us. We watched you and your friends laugh and cry and group parent us together, and it set a vitally important bar for my life: healthy adult friends are a priority and life is better alongside them.
I never knew otherwise, so I pursued wholehearted, wholly devoted friendships as an adult. My friends are so deeply embedded in our life that I honestly cannot picture my story without them. I grew up learning transparency and vulnerability, commitment and solidarity. I never had to read a book on “developing natural community,” because childhood was my classroom and you were my teachers. I learned the secret sauce by experience: time together and lots of it, laughter, truth telling, grace, authenticity, God. It became as natural as the air I breathe: friends matter.
In a very rare moment of transparency, another pastor’s wife once confided that despite her easy breezy lively persona, she actually had no real friends, because the vulnerability was too risky. She “gave women just enough to feel connected to her” but nothing real. She and her husband were locked away on their own island, friendly with many but committed to none, and not one person actually knew her. It was maybe the saddest thing I’d ever heard. Thank you for teaching me to love and be loved by friends fully, entirely, recklessly, because my life is immensely richer for it.
I am in what one of my favorite writers, Kelly Corrigan, calls “The Middle Place” (which you obviously know because I made us all read her book since her father, Greenie, is Dad’s personality twin). That wonderful sweet spot as an active mom but still very much someone’s daughter. If I could, I would freeze time to preserve these treasured years with all my kids at home while having vibrant, healthy parents. It is so comforting that even while spinning all the plates of career, ministry, marriage, and parenthood, at your house I am still just your oldest kid who may or may not help with the dishes. I still crave your approval and want to make you proud. I still want you to tell me what to do sometimes. My car still heads straight to your house in moments of crisis. When we suffered a bit of collapse last year, I told Brandon at the onset: “I just need to call my mom.”
As you know, we are starting to launch our kids out into the world, and my greatest hope is to begin adult relationships with them that look something like ours. On days when grief overtakes me and I feel profound loss at their departure, I remember that just last Sunday, twenty-four years after I moved to college, I ate pot roast at your house after church and took a nap on your couch. This is not an ending but a new beginning. If we have been to our kids anything at all like the parents you were to us, I can look forward to grown sons and daughters sauntering back through my door constantly, still very much into their parents and perfectly happy to eat my food and nap in my bed, maybe all living within forty-five minutes of each other.
The best dividend of a happy childhood is healthy adult relationships later. We didn’t need to run from you or overcome you or heal from you. We never had to fix what you broke in us or untangle from what you said to us. You didn’t saddle us with your baggage or set an impossible course in front of us. I don’t have any daddy issues except trying to keep you from verbally assaulting trolls on Facebook. As evidenced by our concentrated geography, we don’t want to put a thousand miles between us now or screen your calls (except when Dad is talking about hay at the ranch; I can only devote around four minutes to alfalfa). Healthy parents and a healthy childhood was a real and rare gift, and I didn’t even know to be grateful until it was over.