Category: Lifestyle

It’s my life.

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Twenty touches

Each night my children and I spend anywhere between fifteen minutes and two hours together. Most of that time is spent reading before bedtime, but that time is also used to reconnect.

Many years ago, my wife and I attended a Gary Smalley seminar where he briefly mentioned the importance of touch. It’s something we all need to live. So I thought to myself that if I don’t supply my children with enough positive words and touches each day then there may come a time in their teen years that they look for that need elsewhere and end up experimenting with touch in ways that isn’t allowed outside of marriage.

So I asked my kids, “Do you get enough loving touches throughout the day: pats on the head, pats on the back, hugs, kisses… stuff like that?” They all answered “no”. So I wondered – how much do they need? Then came the question. “How many times do you feel you would need to know you are loved?” The eldest child only thought briefly before saying her answer: “Twenty times!”.

That’s quite a bit of touching to take place over the two to three hours I have available for them during the week days. With the size of my family, if everyone got 20 touches a day that would add up to 100 touches a day – not including our dog.

If that were spread throughout a three-hour-twenty-minute period it comes out to touching someone every 2 minutes.

I only remember getting a meaningful touch about once every other week growing up, which was still more than most of the kids I knew. I’ll bet our society has even pulled back to the point that children are only given a meaningful touch once a month, and that’s reserved for when the child initiates the hug.

One last thought – giving my children that access to my personal space makes me a tangible figure for them. I become more real and more accessible in ways beyond the physical. Hopefully they’ll learn that and come to their real accessible Dad during the more trying years ahead.

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Two photos and something learned

Last week I had the honor to join with my company headquarters in D.C. for business and pleasure. They usually give me one free day to wander around the Nation’s Capitol. During this trip, I ventured into the Arlington National Cemetery.

I had expected a few things about the cemetery, all which were disproved while there. First, it’s not just soldiers that are buried there. Wives, infants and civilians are there, too. Some famous but there are plenty obscure and unknown. Second, as you move closer to the present there are fewer tombstones marked “unknown”.

I had expected there to be no “unknown” tombstones and just one “Tomb of the Unknown Soldier” monument. Instead I found many tombstones marked “unknown soldier” – a whole field of them – and two tombs of unknown soldiers. One is the more famous with paths marked to get there. It’s huge with a single, large, uncomfortable marble chair on a stage facing rows of marble pews below. The other is a tomb marking the remains of 2111 unknown Civil War soldiers.

There are no unknown tombs in the Viet Nam plots and only a few in the Korean or World War II plots. World War I has more and Civil War has an entire field of unknown soldiers that were given little more than a number to their name. I suppose there was an absence of dog-tags then. But thought it was worth asking into. The woman at the center desk in the visitors center shed some light into this.

She said that at one time there were a few unknown soldiers in the Viet Nam plots, but that they had since been identified through DNA tests. All soldiers that die this point forward will not be unknown because of that biological technology. If I heard correctly, there are rare cases where bodies are exhumed for this purpose, which is how the last unknowns in the Viet Nam plot were identified.

It’s macabre, but comforting that we are able to identify the dead, but really – what is our identity? It’s certainly more than a chisel mark on a tombstone or a series of amino acids along a protein chain. Our souls are here on earth for a purpose, and like a green leaf on a tree or a single line of code, we’re here to play a small part in something much bigger than any one of us. And though we get lost in the billions of others that have come before us, live around us, and will come after us we are each significant… even if we’re “unknown”.

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Stepping Into Autumn

Nothing brings a skip to my heart with the anticipation of fun and excitement like Autumn. As God’s carefully orchestrated song of color, odor and sounds fill the cool fall breeze, the hot angry days of summer come to a close and the cold bitter days of winter are still distant enough to forget them. The senses fall upon me as the wind that carries them flits in my hair; it causes me to remember my youth – any good of it – and the regrets of not taking more advantage of the good when I had it.

My parents, for example, made so many sacrifices for me but I didn’t learn as a child to appreciate them. How do you teach a child to appreciate? They don’t know the effort involved. Sometimes parents don’t either.

My children are all so unique. Sometimes I have to seek out what they appreciate. For example, running across a series of straw bales doesn’t look exciting to me, but to one of my daughters it’s a thrill! Her face lights up as she realizes that her Daddy endorses a little frolicking on the large golden bricks.

As Summer turns to Autumn, and leaves change in the cooling breeze I’m reminded of the importance of change. It reminds us of that which is constant. How when we fall apart, our loving God and caring parents are there to piece us back together.

And while nothing gold can stay, perhaps these golden memories I have with my children now will stick around long enough for them to have their own families and share their fond memories of them to their children.