This is Life!: Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis

The Fatherhood Chronicles XCV

Sofie's "Our Father"

So, it's Saturday evening and we decide to eat supper while watching the Olympics. The TV is off, and we grab hands to say the prayer. Sofie begins, "Our Father, how are you today?"

Which . . .

If you think about it . . .

Does sound an awful lot like "hallowed be thy name."

I somehow kept it together to say a brief prayer. But once that was done, I couldn't hold back the chuckles.

I like Sofie's version of the "Our Father" quite a bit.

The Fatherhood Chronicles XCIV

The Faith of a Little Child

But Jesus called them to Himself and said, "Let alone the little children to come to Me, and cease hindering them; for of such is the kingdom of God. (Luke 18:16)

I continue to be amazed at the evidences of my daughter Sofie's faith.

Saturday night, I was sitting at the computer and Anna was folding some laundry. Sofie was moving about playing and imagining all sorts of characters and stories. (She has a vivid imagination. Just this morning she pointed out to me, in our living room, no less, an apple tree with George the Monkey, aka Curious George, in it.) Anna and I were talking about daily stuff and hadn't noticed that Sofie had walked over, stood in front of the icons, and began singing and making the sign of the Cross over herself, and then bowing.

It sounded a bit like: "Jeeeeesus Cry [cross, bow] . . . Jeeeesus Cry [cross, bow]" and there were some "All-looo-yah's" and "Hoooooly's" (for the Trisagion) thrown in as well. She did this for something like five minutes as Anna and I watched. She was wholly absorbed in her prayers and singing, completely oblivious to Anna and me as we watched with ever-expanding grins. After a bit, she noticed the silence and our attention and turned to us and grinned self-consciously.

I told her how pretty that was and how proud we were of her saying prayers to Jesus.

I turned to my wife and said, "She knows how to praise Jesus. Yep. She's ready to be baptized."

I am amazed by all this, not because I have any skepticism (now) about Sofie and her ability to exercise faith according to her age and development, but because I come from a Restoration Movement background that equated faith with intellectual understanding. Such a view of faith is perfectly understandable if one starts with Enlightenment presuppositions. But then, those presuppositions are not exactly Gospel presuppositions. No, when it comes to faith, the example set by our Lord is that of a child.

Sofie, God's Wisdom to us, is revealing to me day by day why that is the case.

The Fatherhood Chronicles XCIII

The Awakening to Salvation

It's late (getting close to midnight) and I should be going to bed, but I'm up feeling overwhelmed to the point of tears by God's goodness to me in my wife and daughters. I've been saved three times over, and thrice more every day.

Words fail me to speak of the mystery of God's love in the love of my wife. It was just a bit more than a dozen years ago when I, a single young man new out of college, feeling his singleness and loneliness, knelt in a church to pray. It was silent all around me as I expressed briefly and simply my need to God. In his mercy he brought me to the Lord's prayer, "Nevertheless . . ." and I yielded whatever was left of my dreams for my own family and home to him with whom they could only be safe. I could not have known, nor did I, that a week later I would quite by chance, and certainly in the face of human efforts aimed at another end, meet my wife.

Thirteen years ago, I did not know that I had met the one God would use to work my salvation. And truth be known, even now, in the heat of quarrel or the exhaustion of the night, I too often fail to remember. But the quarrels pass, and the anger, the stress of shaping a home abates for a moment, and my memory is renewed, and, too, the love in this heart.

And could it have been already more than two years ago that Sofie was sent to us? If the mystery of Anna's love is great, great too is the mystery of the love of my daughter. We had grown accustomed to looking elsewhere when news of her impending arrival first reached us. And that news brought a rush of confusing feelings. But, too, it brought ever more to our attention the great mystery of prayer, the intercessions of the Mother of God, and the life and witness of the Church. A month and a half before we learned of Sofie's advent, which news came to us in the Advent of the year, I had knelt and prayed in a monastery chapel, before a statue of the Virgin, and relinquished again my hopes and aspirations for the future. I wanted only one thing: ever greater union with my wife in God and in his Church.

And then Sofie arrived, bringing with her greater wisdom than I had yet known, opening my eyes to the reality of love, that it grows ever larger the more that it is given wholly away. I learned that the giving of love to a daughter only increases the love for one's wife and the mother of that daugther. I learned that parenting is an askesis, a plowing of the soul, in which God churns up furrows in one's chest, painfully loosening up the soil of a heart grown hard, readying it for irrigation and planting. I marvelled at the faith in God that lives in the heart of a child of Christian parents, and I thrilled at tiny fingers clumsily making the sign of the Cross.

And then, yes, and then love increased yet more. Delaina was born, and I held her, still damp and wrinkled, in my arms. What can I tell of the joy of becoming a father twice over? Who could ever deserve one daughter, let alone two? But it is not that I deserve such love, rather it is that I need it if I am ever going to be saved. I arrive home from work and am greeted by the joyous cry of "Daddy!" and the impact of a two-foot toddler throwing herself against me, wrapping her arms around one leg and saying, with emphasis, "My daddy!" Then I look over at my wife, and there is our six-month-old, held aright in my wife's lap, bouncing up and down and holding her arms out to me. Me! My daughters want me, their daddy.

What kind of man could I be and this would not melt the stone of my heart? And yet there are moments my stony heart fails to remember the soft kisses of my wife, does not call to mind the ferocious hugs of a girl named Wisdom, and for a moment does not recollect the light of a daughter's eyes which are just like mine. It is horrible that this happens, and when I come to myself I know the shame and regret. But those moments of amnesia, brought on by a wife's exhausted rebuke, by one daughter's tantrum or by another daughter's inarticulate upset, is remedied precisely by these very occasions themselves, and it is in the midst of these moments that the salvation for which I long can be found. I must dive foursquare into the seeming darkness if I would know the light of love.

It is easy, too easy, to fail to remember these things.

But in moments like this, when it is quiet in the home, when I am tired from the day, but cannot yet unwind, I am given a chance to reflect while she sleeps, and my daughters rest too, watched over by unseen essences of fire who do His bidding. And in these moments, I am graced to see more clearly than before, but not yet as clearly as I will one day see it, that in the love of these three, my God loves me and saves me.

The Fatherhood Chronicles XCII

First there was this.

Sofie at about four months, Christmas 2003.

Now there're these.

Delaina at about five months, Christmas 2005

The Fatherhood Chronicles XCI

My Li'l Beauties

The Fatherhood Chronicles XC

Fatherhood is True Manhood: The Exceptions

Having established the reality of the norm of fatherhood for men, and for all humankind, it is now time to consider the exceptions. But, really, what sort of exceptions are there? There are, in fact, only two. The rest are not, actually, exceptions.

If a couple is infertile, then clearly, a man will not be able to procreate. (We reject as immoral and unChristian such things as IVF and surrogacy.) This, surely, is an exception to the norm. And yet not even this exception prohibits a man from becoming a father, for he may surely adopt a plurality of children and become father to them, and in so doing he will find himself accomplishing that end for which he is a man.

The other exception we may consider as such is the scenario in which the wife and potential mother will risk significant debilitation or even death from the pregnancy. By risk, of course, I mean more than the normal risks entailed by all mothers, for in our fallen world, no pregnancy is without some risk. Rather, I mean that it is known--because the wife and potential mother has a particular condition or set of conditions--that the risk of significant debilitation and death are much higher and more certain than what is normal. It would be cruel and unmanly for a husband to insist on biological fatherhood in such a scenario. But once again, this does not irrevocably bar him from fatherhood, for adoption can once again remedy that which a fallen world has marred for him.

So, what have we seen? We have seen that the two very real and very painful conditions in which biological fatherhood is denied to a husband, do not, actually provide the sort of exceptionalism which would free him from the obligation and blessing of fatherhood.

But, one is quick to ask, what about the celibate? What about the monastics? What about those who wish to focus on the eschaton and the coming of the Kingdom and renounce marriage for prayer and discipline in community?

First, let us note some things. Most men normally seek marriage and fatherhood. Of those who do not seek fatherhood, many seek marriage. And of those who seek neither fatherhood nor marriage, most seek sexual intercourse. In other words, those men who refuse fatherhood but seek the enjoyment of the marital act are engaging in two active perversions: the perversion of the sexual act away from one of its essential ends in procreation, and the perversion of manhood away from its essential end in fatherhood. They have reduced sexual intercourse to genital stimulation, and manhood to copulation. (I will return to these thoughts and the objections they raise in a moment.) But in all these men here noted, none of them seek monasticism.

Secondly, let us note that monasticism is a special form of renunciation. It is a renunciation of marital and familial ties, it is a renunciation of social and political ties, it is a living death to self in an intensified way. Nor is it simply a renunciation, but it is also an embrace; a tenacious grasping of the eschatological aspects of present Christian existence, the living out of the fully realized Kingdom when none will marry nor be given in marriage, and in which, we are instructed by the fathers, sexual intercourse and procreation will cease. Thus the monastic is not renouncing fatherhood, per se, but this present age. He is not embracing childlessness, per se, but the future Kingdom which is both now and not yet. And further, let us note, monasticism is a charism of grace, a spiritual gift that the Holy Spirit allocates to whom he will. So the invocation of the monastics as childless men does not, in fact, prove an exception to the norm of fatherhood completing true manhood, but reinforces the norm in the most radical of ways, by pointing to its eschatological fulfillment in the Kingdom.

We have noted that Jesus is no exception to the norm of human fatherhood precisely because of his perichoretic union with the Father of all. He is not the Father, but is one with the Father, and in that unity, the Fatherhood of God completes and fulfills his manhood.

No, what I am addressing is that perversion of Christian manhood that our culture promotes, which is primarily that sexually active males can escape the end of their manhood in fatherhood. For a man to enjoy all the benefits of marriage, but to renounce procreation, is a perversion. Let us note that procreation is not the only end of marriage and sexual intercourse. The sanctified pleasure, recreation and love a couple gives and receives in conjugal union is God-honoring. The spiritual and emotional union experienced in the marital act is purposefully designed by the Creator for the stability and permanence of the marital bond and the home built around it. But procreation is not just an incidental consequence of sex. It is as wholly an end, a purpose of sex as is God-honoring pleasure and spiritual and emotional union. The "one flesh" the couple becomes is, in part, the flesh of their child. In all their sexual intercourse, then, the couple must be open to procreation, even if, in one specific moment the other ends of the marital act are sought with more focus and intentionality. Men are meant to be fathers. Women are meant to be mothers. This is the fundamental fact of the Christian understanding of manhood.

But what, it may be asked, about those men who want children but think it wiser to wait for them? What about economic stability in the home and familial provision, the maturity of the marriage, overpopulation, and so forth? All of these share, if I may risk a categorical judgment, a tendency toward salvation by works and a failure, however small, of faith. Do we mistake who it is that really provides for us? Do we really forget that it is not by the provision of our own hands, but by the grace of God's shining love that all our needs are met? Do we think that the successful parenting of our children really rests on our own ability to be perfect parents? And if we are not ready to parent a child, are we ready for marriage? And do we really think the issue of overpopulation is really anything else but the Pelagian notion that we can do anything about the productivity of the planet (or, conversely, its destruction) through our own efforts? Does He not sustain all things by His Word? Is it not in Him, that all things hold together? And would not the raising of children committed to the Lordship of Christ make permanent changes in the just and equitable allocation of the planet's resources?

No, again and again we come back to the norm of fatherhood for men, and that it is always already God who sustains us as fatherly men, and completes us as men by making us fathers.

The Fatherhood Chronicles LXXXIX

Fatherhood is True Manhood

I'm going to say it bluntly and without equivocation: If one wants to become a real man, one will only do so through being married for life to one woman and by fathering with her a plurality of children.

Let us leave aside the little niceties of the only real exception which is our culture's first defense against this axiom, namely that of the infertile couple. Let us also lay aside as a first defense the twaddle that the childless couple exists as a special class of missionary service to Christ. I am being blunt here. I am not attempting to massage feelings, for this is necessary surgery in our death-loving culture, and, well, feelings be damned.

All the objective elements one can bring to bear on the matter (natural, religious, cultural, historical, and so forth) lead to one and only one inescapable conclusion: humans are so ordered in their existence that marriage, procreation and childrearing are the norms to which all humanity must be ordered. No exceptions. All--all--humanity, married or not, procreative or not, must be ordered toward the establishment of the primacy of the marital, procreative, multi-generational household over all other sociocultural and national-political structures and institutions, for on this household all--all--these other extraneous institutions depend.

I offer no other proof for the previous two paragraphs than the obvious and empirical facts of history and biology, with the correlative emphases of nearly all major world religions. If one cannot see the truths of the previous two paragraphs in these lights, then one is morally and spiritually blind.

But it is a testament to the pervasity and perversity of moral and spiritual blindness in our culture that my statements will be experienced as a most brutal slap in the face. Not just among the secularist and secularized among those reading these words, but even more certainly, and sadly, among those who claim the name of Christ.

Think about it. When reading the "offensive" words, what was your first, primary and most immediate reaction? May I suggest it was to offer exceptions? Even the most generous among my readers, those who accept the fundamental truths expressed above, will likely have said, "Amenbut . . ." and gone on to think of infertile couples, couples who chose to not procreate for "missional" purposes, and so forth. That is to say, we think of the exceptions as part of the norm. But they are not. They are, in fact, exceptions. They are not normal. This is why the infertile couple experiences such pain at their plight. They intuit, indeed know, that infertility is abnormal. That is why the "missionally childless" couple starts first with texts like 1 Corinthians 7 and not with Genesis 1, or, more tellingly, with Luke 1.

And so, when I say that apart from marriage to one woman for life and the fathering of children a man cannot become a man in the fullest sense, I mean it. A voluntarily childless husband is a contradiction. For the telos, the end or purpose of a single man is marriage, and the telos, the end of being a husband is fatherhood. To stop the process of becoming a man at marriage leaves the male incomplete, not fully formed. There is more yet to become. The pronouncement of the good of creation did not stop with the creation of animalkind and humankind. The "very good" of humanity was not merely marriage. Rather, there was more contained in that "very good"; namely, fruitfulness and multiplication.

We need not be distracted by the rather senseless debate on whether the Lord's "Be fruitful and multiply" is a blessing or a command. Such false dichotomies, thankfully, are put to rest in the reality God himself shapes and forms. If it is a command, it is simultaneously a blessing. If it is a blessing, then there is an obligation to be shaped by it, for no one can safely resist that which God himself wants to give. If we are commanded to honor our father and mother, then we are also blessed in the doing of it. And it is no small detail to note that the first command with a blessing is also the one so intimately and inextricably linked with the blessing-command to be fruitful and multiply.

But the greatest proof that only in fatherhood is a male made complete is that we do not have merely a God in heaven. We have a Father. God is not analogous to us fathers, we are analagous to him. The reality of God's fatherhood is not dimly reflected in us human fathers, but rather the dim reality of us human fathers shines fully in the face of Him whom the Spirit gives it us to call "Father." If fatherhood were not essential, indeed, absolutely essential, to true manhood, then we could dispense with calling God "Father." Or, rather, that is backward. If Jesus had not come to reveal God to us, and to reveal him as Father, then fatherhood would be not only absolutely nonessential to manhood, it would be meaningless. For man was created in the image of God. And Jesus, in perfecting and fully realizing that image of God in man, is united as Second Person of the Trinity with Him Who is the Father of all. Jesus' humanity, in union with his divinity, itself also is one with the Father, and in that union, realizes fatherhood for us men in a way that transcends us. We will never be united to God in nature as Christ is, but we will be united to his Fatherhood in Christ, and for us men, our own fatherhood will thus be purified and perfected.

So fatherhood is not just essential to manhood, it is essential to all of mankind. All humankind, even and especially mothers, find their fulfillment and completion in the Fatherhood of God. For the image of God in whom humankind was fashioned, is fundamentally that of Father. The loss of fatherhood anywhere degenerates and diminshes all human beings, mothers especially, everywhere. The loss of God as Father is heresy, from which flows surrogates of salvation that are sterile and ultimately damning. And the loss of human fatherhood eliminates that metaphorical and metaphysical connection to the only God who can save.

The Fatherhood Chronicles LXXXVIII

The Simple Joys Parenthood Offers on Days Off

For probably another ten or fifteen years the singular joy of sleeping in on days off, vacations and holidays is gone. 'Course Anna insists that if I get up at 4:30 or 5:00 on weekday/workday mornings and 6:00 or 6:30 on days off/vacation/holiday mornings then technically I have slept in.

I beg to differ. (And in any case, this is from the one who does sleep in till nine or ten when I'm home in the mornings! Oh well, she's a tired momma and needs the rest.)

So, a daddy learns that sanity requires taking pleasure in other things that being home in the morning affords.

Here, then, is my greatest days-off indulgence: Staying in my jammies till noon and sippin' coffee all morning.

(So, um, if you come by our house unannounced on such a morning, you've been forewarned.)

The Fatherhood Chronicles LXXXVII

Breakfast Time is Daddy-Daughters Time!

I've always loved breakfast. To the best of my knowledge, as a kid I never missed one. At our home, breakfast was good stuff. None of that sugary, chocolate-covered, rainbow-flavored crap. We're talkin' real, honest to goodness breakfast, just like God ordained in creation. Mom or Dad, depending upon Dad's shift schedule, would make us the day's menu: Oatmeal--often with raisins and cinamon; eggs (sometimes scrambled with cheddar cheese) and bacon; pancakes; Malt-O-Meal; cracked wheat--man, it just don't get better'n that. Yes, we also had boxed cereal, but once again, this was the good stuff: Wheaties, cornflakes, Grape-Nuts . . . you get the picture.

Then there was the whole cereal-box-reading ritual of breakfast. My sisters and I, when we ate boxed cereal, would each have our own boxes, usually, but not always, the box out of which our respective cereals had come. Occasionally, we were a box or two short, so the box(es) would have to be passed around the table. Sometimes minor disputes arose over who got to read what box, or read what box first. But given the o-dark-early nature of these repasts, there was not a lot of energy devoted to such conflicts.

Well, now I'm a daddy. And I must confess, I love making breakfast for my daughters. Yes, that's daughters, plural. Delaina has reached the rice-cereal milestone. So, what's on the menu? What do you think? Oatmeal and raisins for Sofie and me. Gerber rice cereal for Delaina.

There's no box reading yet, but occasionally I will read the Scriptures for the day. We always pray before the meals: O Lord Jesus Christ, bless the food and drink of Thy servants, for Thou art holy, now and ever and unto ages of ages. It's a short prayer, and Sofie now reminds us to hold hands and say "Our Father" (which is her term for praying, even when we don't pray the "Our Father" specifically). In fact, one morning I had prepared Sofie's breakfast, we prayed and then I busied myself fixing my lunch, and then my own breakfast. When I sat down, Sofie reached out her hand for me to hold it and said, "Daddy? Our Father?" So we prayed again.

Delaina, for her part prays by simply smiling and cooing.

I still love breakfast time.

The Fatherhood Chronicles LXXXVI

. . . And This Is Why I'm Pretty Much a Pushover as a Dad!

Sofie is the elder, in white, Delaina the bald one in pink. Ain't they just precious? (You know they are!)

[Note: If pics don't show up, it means my free pic-storage is getting hit too much this hour. Check back in a bit.]

The Fatherhood Chronicles LXXXV

What a morning. I woke--wide-eyed, mind-racing awake, mind you--at three a.m. My normal start is five a.m., but I needed to get up at four today to do some school work. So after laying awake for a bit, I realized it wasn't going to do me any good to try to roll over and sleep for only another forty-five minutes, so I shrugged (mentally) and got up anyway. Yep, I'm suffering for it now. Just like I did on the over-hot bus this morning--I almost missed my stop from dozing!

But what a glorious, wonderful morning. It used to be great having daddy-daughter times in the mornings with Sofie. But on days like today, I get the double-dose. Glory.

It started with Delaina waking up about four. She was wide-awake, but wanted to be held. So I held her, said morning prayers, and she fell asleep in my arms. I wasn't as attentive in my prayers as I try to be, but I think this once God understood and accepted my "inattention" as another form of prayer. So, I took Delaina back to bed, and then did some more work.

Then Sofie got up. She is a "get up and cuddle till I wake up" sort of girl, which I have to confess, Daddy enjoys. So she shuffled out of her bedroom about a quarter of six, hair scattered like Thing 2 (she calls the Dr. Seuss stuffed toy "Monkey") which she held in one hand. She was all toasty warm from bed and in her fleece jammies. She lay her head on my shoulder with a "Lubby Daddy" and I melted, as I always do.

Yep. Who needs coffee when you've got daughters!

The Fatherhood Chronicles LXXXIV

Changes and Sameness

With the onset of the autumnal weather, out came the fall decorations (including some Halloween items like the string of pumpkin lights currently adorning the railing of our front porch). Also with this seasonal change in schematic decor came a little bit of my wife's OCD with regard to "minimalizing" in our home. Unfortunately, such an impulse was frustrated by two large factors: we're a books home and the books ain't going anywhere anytime soon; and we're a toys home, and not even Anna can bring herself to part with some of the girls' toys. But she did manage to rearrange some of the furniture and to get rid of two end tables. That means, for me, that "my chair" (in which I do much of my reading, grading papers, and falling asleep) has moved across the room from the northwest corner to the northeast corner and the wall whereon are our icons and the faux mantle on which sits other icons, the vigil lamp, prayer ropes and other devotional detritus.

It certainly feels different to sit there with the icons quite literally looming down on you. Brings you to attention in a way you might not otherwise be brought. But such attentiveness is a good thing. Oh, and my view of the television is now blocked--and that is another good thing for those times when one of us has a desire for entertainment or football and the other has a desire for (always relative) "silence."

But in the midst of this difference was a bit of the sameness. This morning, after praying morning prayers and reading the Scriptures and the Rule, I was doing some reading on the Fathers, and Anna brought Delaina out to me. I sat there holding her for probably half an hour before I looked at the clock and realized I needed to start getting ready for the day. There in the morning silence, with the lamp down low and the vigil lamp burning, I smiled at her and she smiled back. It reminded me of the same sorts of mornings with Sofie when she was only three months old. I signed the cross on her and thanked God for his goodness to me.

And after many months, Sofie has decided that I can again be the sole parent responsible for putting her to bed. For the past three months, with the upheaval surrounding Delaina's birth, hosting family, and travel, Sofie's bedtime routine has been much more irregular than regular, though we fight to maintain the bedtime liturgy. We read stories just like we used to (though now we often do two books instead of just one, and they revolve around Click, Clack, Moo: Cows that Type, We're Going on a Bear Hunt, Kitten's First Full Moon, or Knuffle Bunny, in that order of preference). We pray just like we used to. And Sofie, most of the time, kisses the icons just like we used to. But now we play classical music instead of Daddy singing Church hymns. And now I sit by her bedside for a few minutes while Bach plays, instead of rocking her and putting her in her crib.

Except for last night. Last night Sofie wanted to be rocked. It had been so long, I'd forgotten how big she'd gotten. She no longer fits comfortably cradled in my arms across my lap. She's getting too tall. But we rocked while the music played and she eventually just melted into sleep. I put her to bed, in her "big girl bed" (a toddler bed we've borrowed from a family at church), signed the cross over her and walked quietly out of the room.

Just like we used to do.

The Fatherhood Chronicles LXXXIII

On Monasticism

The late M. Scott Peck, who died of cancer this past weekend, said about marriage that it is a monastery of two. If one has read the Rule of St. Benedict, one immediately can agree.

Our parish, well before it became Orthodox, once had a vowed community of celibate brothers. And given that we are largely a convert parish comprised of many former evangelical Protestants, it is probably not too remarkable that one often hears some of the men pining after monasticism. In fact, it has been but a few weeks ago that during coffee hour one parish member and myself asserted that if (or perhaps when) our life circumstances were to change and we found ourselves widowed and without children to raise and care for we would hi ourselves to a monastery and seek admittance.

Speaking for myself, such comments are temptations to sheer hubristic delusions, however sincere the longing. Fatherhood itself is its own rule, and marriage a most holy askesis. What St. Benedict says to his brothers is equally applicable to my own "little monastery":

This, then, is the good zeal which monks must foster with fervent love: They should each try to be first to show respect to the other (Rom 12:10), supporting with the greatest patience one another's weaknesses of body or behavior, and earnestly competing in obedience to one another. No one is to pursue what he judges better for himself, but instead what he judges better for someone else. . . . Let them prefer nothing whatever to Christ, and may he bring us all together to everlasting life. (Rule 72:1-7, 11-12)

No, it does no good to long for something imaginary when the reality is right here and right now. Behold, now is the day of salvation, now is the time of repentance.

[T]he Lord waits for us daily to translate into actions, as we should, his holy teachings. Therefore our life span has been lengthened by way of a truce that we may amend our misdeeds. (Rule Prologue 35-36)

And each day there is much I have to amend. It is a most daunting task, an unbearably great and weighty calling to be made both a husband and a father. In the one I am called to image the incarnate God, to offer my life as a sacrifice so as to present my wife and daughters to the Lord, holy and blameless. In the other I am called to image Him Who is the fount of divinity and of all Life. It is an ineffably fearsome thing and an unbearable joy. I can not do it. But he can energize such a reality in me.

We must, then, prepare our hearts and bodies for the battle of holy obedience to his instructions. What is not possible to us by nature, lest us ask the Lord to supply by the help of his grace. (Rule Prologue 40-41)

The Fatherhood Chronicles LXXXII

Being Saved by My Wife and Daughters

I can't believe it's been a bit over two months since I last devoted any blog-attention to fatherhood--though appropriately the last Fatherhood Chronicle was a posting of some pictures of Delaina's birth.

It has been clear to me again, recently--regrettably, I lose sight of this too often--that my salvation is going to happen through my marriage to Anna and my being father to Sofie and Delaina. Not in spite of it. It's not as though there is my salvation, to which is appended these other relationships and roles. But rather in these very relationships and roles themselves is where I will find salvation. Christ saves me in them not out of them.

This is hard to remember when my helplessness gives rise to anger. I went through this with Sofie when she was but a couple or three months old. I'm going through it again. Delaina is not comforted by me. It is the feel, the smell, the sound of Anna that Delaina needs when she is fussy or distressed, and in which she finds comfort. Like Sofie, Delaina is having a tough time learning how to fall asleep (though unlike Sofie she is a better night sleeper). This means that on Monday nights, when Anna is out at her exercise class and I'm home with the girls, when Delaina hits bed time I'm dealing with a crying, and eventually angry, infant. That crying went on for forty-five minutes last week and half an hour this week.

It is an incredibly helpless feeling for a father, especially when he knows that momma would make all the difference in the world, but momma just ain't home right now. In me, that helplessness nearly always creates anger. I find myself snapping short-temperedly at Sofie, who herself is distressed because her sister is crying. Last week we all ended up sitting in the rocker, Sofie on one knee giving her daddy "lubbies" (hugs), her head resting on my shoulder and my arm around her hugging her, and Delaina crooked in one arm. Sofie eventually fell asleep, as did Delaina in gently subsiding waves of crying. And even ol' dad soon dozed, head back.

The entire scenario was one in which I had to consciously take hold of myself and resist the anger, battling against it. And in the subsequent calm of tired rest I was once again taught that vital and essential lesson: here in my arms is my salvation.

The Fatherhood Chronicles LXXXI

More Delaina Pics

[Note: If pics fail to load it's because downloads where the pics are stored has been exceeded for the hour. Check back later.]

Here's the first pictures of the newly expanded family, on Delaina's first day.

Note the blurred image of Sofie. That girl can't sit still fer a minute!

Delaina with her grandma Micki (my mom).

Sofie: Mother hen and Momma imitator.

The Healy's on Delaina's first outing.

[All photos courtesy of my mom.]

The Fatherhood Chronicles LXXX

Delaina Pics

Some pics of her first day of life.

Me with Delaina after Divine Liturgy.

And here is her going home day pics.

Gotta love the hat, tho!

[All photos courtesy of my mom.]

The Fatherhood Chronicles LXXIX

The Birth

When Anna determined to birth Delaina through the care of a midwife, I was less than thrilled. Not that I had anything against midwifery, mind you. But when it comes to the health of my family, I want all the marvels of modern medicine at our immediate disposal. The whole midwife thing just smacked of new-agey hippie-ness. Not fer me, thank yew very much.

But for those readers who know my wife, Anna is not easily dissuaded once her mind has fixed on a goal. And her goal was simple and clear: a water birth with a midwife. And by golly, that's just what she got. She wanted that with Sofie, but her employer switched insurance providers just before her last trimester and she wasn't able to make the switch.

Sofie's birth was marvelous, of course. I was a weepy, gooey mess. (Tripp can authenticate this claim, by the way.) But Anna's ob-gyn had already determined that if Anna went a week over her due date, he would induce her labor. And that, in fact, was what happened. Although Anna paid attention to her body's labor, since it was chemically induced, and her first delivery, there was more a feeling of not being in control, of things just happening to her and Sofie. And I was pretty much useless. As Sofie was being born, I stood at Anna's shoulder while all the medical personnel north of the Mason-Dixon line worked around my wife. I briefly saw Sofie crowning, and the rest of the time I could only see Sofie as she had emerged from the womb. It was still a marvelous sight, but so very much filtered. I was an observer. They could have put me on the other side of a glass wall.

After Sofie had been born, while she was on the warming table and getting checked out, I could touch her and kiss her. But those first initial moments are lost behind that barrier.

Delaina's birth was gloriously and completely different for us both. First of all, and most importantly, Anna's body, not some doctor, dictated when Delaina would be born. Anna could listen to her body and had a good sense of what was going on and how imminent was the birth. In fact, we all went to Vespers just a few hours before Delaina was born--while Anna's contractions were five minutes apart. After Vespers, we drove my mom and Sofie home and headed to the hospital. We got there between ten and ten-thirty and Delaina was born about three hours later.

When we got to the birthing suite, the midwife filled up the tub, while Anna worked through the stronger and more regular contrations. She could walk freely and sit up. I could apply pressure to her lower back and otherwise help her. The midwife was there to encourage us and chart all the stuff that was happening naturally. With about twenty-minutes to go (though we did not know it then), Anna got into the tub and let the last minutes of her active labor happen. It was, by Anna's account, a much easier birth. No drugs. The pain was mitigated somewhat by the warm water. And no intrusion of a SWAT team of medical personnel. It was Anna, one of her friends, the midwife and me. (Though for insurance/legal reasons, a couple of nurses popped in and out from time to time.) And only at the end, when Anna needed some help repositioning so that Delaina's shoulder could make it out of the birth canal did the midwife really insert herself into Anna's labor.

Delaina was born quickly and placed on Anna's chest, where she let out her first cries. Anna then laid Delaina on her upraised knees, balancing her in the water. We were able to feel the last pulsations of the umbilical cord as blood and nutrients flowed for the last time to Delaina. I got to cut the cord. And after they took Delaina to the warming table for measurements, I was able to give her my paternal blessing in the presence of the icons of the Theotokos and the Christ, and the vials of oil from the vigil lamps of the tombs of St. John of San Francisco and Blessed Hieromonk Seraphim of Platina.

But best of all, I got to nap for a couple of hours with Anna and Delaina before I headed home to get my mom and Sofie and give thanks in the Divine Liturgy.

The Fatherhood Chronicles LXXVIII

Transitions

It should go without saying that changing from a married household to a family household was a big transition. I still remember those early weeks when Anna struggled with the effects of the hormonal changes and lack of sleep. There were many tears and feelings of helplessness, even hopelessness. She received appropriate care for post-partum depression, and got the sort of additional support from friends here in Chicago that often came just in time. (This was before we started attending All Saints regularly as a whole family.)

Distracted as I was able to be with school and work, my own struggles revolved around my impatience with myself at my obvious inadequacies as a parent. I was learning how to be a dad at the same time Anna was learning to be a mom, and Sofie to be a daughter. These things sorted themselves out in time. I learned that my salvation will come precisely in and through my successes and failures as a parent, that Sofie has a guardian angel--and more importantly a heavenly Father who loves and cares for her in ways utterly ineffable. I learned that the darker days were earliest on, as my body ached for sleep and my emotions fell in line with that lack. Most of all, I learned that parental sorrow is almost never without its greater and deeper joys. I have been completely overwhelmed by these graces. May I also be made worthy of them.

But now we are in a whole new time of transition: from that of a household with a child, to a household with children. As unutterable were the feelings of helplessness then, so are they as unspeakable now. The old impatience is there still, and the lack of sleep, already anticipated, still hits as hard. Having gone through nearly two years of raising Sofie, we find ourselves with the skills we did not once have. We do not panic now when Delaina cries inexplicably. We know that sometimes newborns just do that. We are better able to gauge Delaina's needs than we ever were with Sofie.

Now, however, when we could otherwise enjoy our parental skill set earned over the last couple of years, we find ourselves having to learn new skills: parenting two children. One would not think this so hard, at least in theory. Just do what was done with the first child--minus the mistakes--and double it. How far from the truth! The "No" imperatives that flow from our mouths to Sofie surely overwhelm her as they do us. Whereas we were already in the midst of the limit-setting of the "terrible two's" now we have a whole new list relative to Delaina. We also have a whole new reservoir of impatience when Sofie does not meet our demands.

This, of course, furthers her own acting out, and this simply perpetuates the cycle of "No's" and offering either/or alternatives. She is overwhelmed as are we. So much so that last night at dinner, after a long acting-out episode, she climbed into Anna's lap and fell asleep. The tender trust and exhaustion Sofie exhibited pierced us deeply. Anna hugged her and her maternal tears fell down on Sofie's slumbering head. I prayed silently for the Lord to have mercy on us all, through the prayers of his all-holy Mother.

I know these days will give way to joy and laughter, for they are already filled with these things. But the hard moments remain. Please God that they continue to be the means of our salvation.

The Fatherhood Chronicles LXXVII

Sofie, Big Sister Extraordinaire

Sofie has begun fulfilling her big sisterly duties quite handily. She wasted no time in holding her baby sister. In fact, now, whenever Daddy or Momma are holding Delaina, Sofie claps her hands together twice, spreads her arms wide and opens and closes her fists in a gesture indicating we should hand over her little sister forthwith. This gesture is accompanied by either "Lubby" or "Lubby baby."

Sofie has also already taken it upon herself to teach Delaina--or, as Sofie calls her, "Deleema"--the important things little sisters need to know, like the song "Winkle, winkle, winkle winkle" (sung to the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star"), with the accompanying "winkling" motions with one's hands over one's head. She has also acquainted Delaina with the names of various body parts: toe, eyebrow, mow (mouth), no (nose), ear, and chin.

Unfortunately, Sofie has yet to grasp the concept of "gentle." One of the first things she did when we took her to the hospital to meet her little sister for the first time was put Delaina in a headlock. I thought the poor child was going to turn blue had not Momma stepped in.

Indeed, we worried that we would have to deal with jealousy issues from the get go. Those may indeed come later. And it is true that, although Anna can hold Delaina as often and as long as she wants without Sofie interfering, the moment I hold Delaina, Sofie is crawling into my lap, with either a "Lubby Daddy" or a "Huh (hug)," No, instead ours has been the opposite problem: how to teach Sofie that she doesn't need to hold the baby every moment that she's awake.

But the thing that makes this twice-graced daddy proud as can be is a particular lesson that Sofie has tried to teach Delaina three times now. It's the most important one in Sofie's paedagogy. Sofie puts her little fingers together, attempts to make the sign of the cross over Delaina and says, "Our Father, Amen."

It is absolutely amazing what Sofie absorbs and then puts into practice just out of the blue.

The Fatherhood Chronicles LXXVI

I'm at home right now with "the girls" (what an amazing, wonderful, delicious phrase!). Anna is out running errands. Sofie is watching a video about numbers and counting--and practicing, though she keeps leaving out "four." "One-two-three-five!" Delaina is nestled in my neck sucking her fist. I'm typing one-handed.

This is heaven on earth!

The Fatherhood Chronicles LXXV

She's a Girl!!!

Delaina Rose Healy was born at 1:45 a.m., today 3 July, the second Sunday after Pentecost and the feast of the holy martyr Hyacinthos. She weighed 8 lbs. 3 oz., and was a long 19 1/2 inches. She looks just like her big sister Sofie! Today would have been the 34th birthday of Anna's brother, Delane (may his memory be eternal).

Momma (Anna) and Delaina are doing fine.

Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised!

The Fatherhood Chronicles LXXIV

No New News on the Pregnancy Front--er, Sort Of

There are developments, of course, but as I try to keep this PG-rated and below (and I doubt my wife wants all the particulars blogged!--you can read about those things here), for all practical purposes things are the same as last evening. Contractions are intermittent, sometimes regular at about 20 minutes apart, but until they are regularly 5 minutes apart, we're not going to the birthing center.

I did go in to work (I'm getting ready to leave for lunch here in a moment). Gotta save that special and rare paid time off. And I anticipate being here all day.

In addition to my mom flying in Thursday night, Anna's mom, Mary, her sister, Jessi, and Jessi's son, Tyler, are driving up today from Oklahoma, and we expect them in sometime this evening.

Thanks for the prayers, and keep 'em coming.

The Fatherhood Chronicles LXXIII

Update (6:00pm): Well, Anna's on her way back from the midwife. She's dilated 2-3cm and 60% effaced. By the midwife's calculations, this baby could arrive in the next day or two, as the Lord allows. (Now, do I take off work tomorrow, or take my chance and go in for one more day?)

Is Something Happening?

Anna called just a little bit ago. She says she's feeling "crampy," which she remembers feeling before going into early (middle? I forget) labor with Sofie. She said she felt that way last night, but that she figures it was a result of all the walking she'd done yesterday. (This weekend she's spent a bit of time downtown at the American Library Association Summer Conference, visiting with one of her classmates from library school--and my favorite of her library school friends--Amy. What's not to like in a friend of your wife who can go toe-to-toe with you quoting movie lines from Austin Powers and The Big Lebowski?! Of course, Ardis is also a favorite of my wife's friends.)

Anywho . . . As Providence would have it, Anna rescheduled her midwife appointment (so she could spend time with Amy) from this morning to this evening about five. We'll see what the midwife says.

We're . . . I'm . . . remaining calm--but getting excited!

Keep us in your prayers, please.

The Fatherhood Chronicles LXXII

So, starting with tomorrow, here are the feast days of the possible birthdates of our newest and yet-to-be-born baby (who's due date is tomorrow):

• 28 June: Forefeast of the Apostles; and Sts. Sergius and Herman, founders of Valaam Monastery
• 29 June: Sts. Peter and Paul
• 30 June: Synaxis of the 12 Apostles
• 1 July: Wonderworking Unmercenary Physicians Cosmas and Damian of Rome; Sts. Processus and Martinian of Rome
• 2 July: St. John of San Francisco, Wonderworker; and the Placing of the Tunic of the Mother of God in Blachernae
• 3 July: Martyr Hyacinthus
• 4 July: St. Andrew of Crete
• 5 July: St. Athanasios of Mt. Athos and the Uncovering of the Relics of St. Sergius of Radonezh
• 6 July: St. Sisoes the Great; Martyr Lucia and those with her
• 7 July: Great Martyr Kyriaka
• 8 July: Great Martyr Procopius of Caesarea
• 9 July: Hieromartyr Pancratius of Taormina
• 10 July: St. Anthony of the Kievan Caves, Founder of Monasticism in Russia; and the Holy 45 Martyrs at Nicopolis in Armenia
• 11 July: Great Martyr Euphemia; and St. Ogla, Isapostolos and Princess of Russia

(And let's hope Anna doesn't go the full two weeks over her due date!)

What a great lineup with a bunch of martyrs and monastics!

If I have my druthers, I'd love for the baby to be born tomorrow evening. But 2 July ain't a bad date either! A combination of a Marian feast and the feast of our patron. Oh, and mom will be here, too!

The Fatherhood Chronicles LXXI

Of your charity, I ask your prayers concerning the following:

• For my mother, Miriam, who flies in from Wichita on Thursday evening: for safety and convenience of travel, and for a good time here with us and her granddaughter and (potentially born) new grandbaby
• For Anna and our unborn baby: that the Lord would grant perfect health and wholeness to mother and child and that both would see a happy and safe birth; the baby's due date is tomorrow, and it would be wonderful if the baby could be born while my mom is here
• For Sofie as she becomes the older sibling and all the matters known and unknown that accompany that life-affecting change
• For Anna and I as we strive to raise our children in the faith once for all delivered to the saints; and that our children would soon be brought to "the laver of regeneration" (and Anna and I to chrismation)

The Fatherhood Chronicles LXX

Just What I Needed

Our mornings together are much, much shorter, now that Sofie is going to bed later in the evening and getting up after 6:30 in the mornings. Morning time is, of necessity, quality time instead of quantity time. This morning Sofie didn't get up till 6:45. I leave the house about 7:15, which didn't leave much daddy-daughter time. So we got up, I fixed her some breakfast and we ate breakfast together. (Her cute insistence that momma "Sih" with us at the table couldn't overcome very-pregnant-ready-to-deliver Anna's desire/need for more snoozing.)

After fixing my own lunch, and getting my gear ready to leave for work, and after she'd finished her cereal, Sofie wanted to go watch a "feevie" (video + movie), which we let her do in the mornings as I'm leaving. The twenty-three minute Baby Einstein "feevies" give Anna a few more minutes of blanket-time. I was holding Sofie in my arms as I put the DVD in the player and turned the TV on. But as I made ready to set her down on the couch, she gave me a big hug and said:

"I lubby."

The first time she has said that to me. *Sniff* (Damn. Still gets me.)

I'm still working off that high.

The Fatherhood Chronicles LXIX

My Best Father's Day Ever

Well, of course, there's been only two of them, but, hey: quality over quantity! Was there a day of absolute quiet and ample time for reading and quiet contemplation? No. Was there a significant chunk allotted so that I could finish my thesis? No. Any special dinners out or cards with money in them? No. Any power tools? Regrettably, no.

No, you see, my wife is just over a week away from her due date, so let's just say her attention is not (nor should it be) on making my Father's Day some sort of extravaganza. Furthermore, we are in the summer of poverty, wherein my classes to teach have dried up, and with them the extra income that makes life not just bearable but doable from an economic standpoint. Yep. Summer always brings out the financial ingenuity and haggling we've come to depend on in the Healy household.

So, no, this was no Father's Day Live Aid phenonemon.

But it was pretty cool for all that. You see, Anna took out some new books she had set aside and we took them to Borders for an exchange. When she does that it's usually so we can get Sofie some neat books, educational items, or book-character-related toys. But this Father's Day, all the exchange money was mine. And we had plenty. Anna got a frozen drink thingy and we got a book for Sofie. And I, oh, my dear readers, I was most wonderfully pleased. I picked up my favorite form of caffeinated-bean elixir: cafe au lait. My sure and certain eye picked out the Loeb edition of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics and the Topica. Oh, and yes, I would have retired to our humble abode a most happy young man, with but these two things, coffee and Aristotle. But, no, greater things awaited, for the piece de resistance was an eleven-dollar copy of a This is Spinal Tap DVD sweetly singing my name from the bargain bin. An impulse buy? But of course!

All this, yes, and we had a few bucks left over.

And though the nesting instinct is hard upon my beloved wife at the moment, I only had one honey-do list item to accomplish--vacuuming the interior of the 4Runner--which we did as a family. Well, there was also the getting the double-stroller in the car . . . as well as the infant car seat. Oh, and loading and unloading the dishwasher--but Anna and I did that together. Yes, and I had to take out the trash. Oh, and there was a load of laundry to hike down and back up our three flights of stairs. But really, no other honey-do items.

Yes, that, my readers and friends, is a most wonderful Father's Day.

The Fatherhood Chronicles LXVIII

T-Minus 12 Days (or Thereabouts) and Counting

Anna's due date is in less than two weeks. All along we've sort of thought she might go early since this is the second baby. The midwife is acting pretty much like she'll go late since she did with Sofie. Oy. On the one hand, if the baby is late, it might be born on Delane's (Anna's late brother who died last 17 December) birthday, 3 July. That would be nice. And my mom would sure like that since she's flying up to see us over an extended Fourth of July trip and would be tickled to be here when the baby's born. On the other hand, even being born past the due date, Sofie was born on the eve of the Feast of the Dormition, and this baby's "scheduled to be born" on the eve of the Feast of the Apostles. It'd kinda be nice to keep the symmetry.

I remember this time two years ago, as I anticipated Sofie's birth. There was the knotty stomach that couldn't handle eating lunch. Frustrations with the well-meaning and the too-personal. And just overall flustered nervousness and anxiety.

Somewhat regretfully, this time around I've been so doggone busy writing papers that I lose touch with the stomach-flipping reality: I'm about to be a father . . . again. Of course, I won't be fighting all the same battles as I did before (though I have been fighting all the worrisome thoughts of things-gone-wrong). Because of that, and due to my experience of nearly two years of fatherhood, I recognize how incompetent I am to be a father, and how undeserving. There is so much more awe and tear-filled gratitude these days when I dwell on these things. I am such a screw-up, yet God is gracing me with yet another child. I'm as still captivated by the biological processes of the growing child in utero as ever, but ever more stricken silent at the wonder-filled gift and unutterable responsibility of it all.

If anyone were ever tempted to the heresy of Pelagianism, surely fatherhood and its graces and obligations would cure one of such a contagion. The whole birthing thing is out of my hands. No matter my support and love it would all happen apart from me anyway. These thirty-odd weeks I could only watch at this unfolding of the work of God. Still--can you believe this?!--despite my uselessness, God stoops down to join my fumbling about with his most graceful acts.

This surely must be the essence and mystery of human fatherhood, and it undoes me every time I think of it.

The Fatherhood Chronicles LXVII

Pre-birth Family Snaps

Anna wanted to have some pictures taken while she was still pregnant, so here we are!

I don't care who you are, ya gotta love this one:

And these are pretty dang cute, too, if I do say so myself!

The Fatherhood Chronicles LXVI

Baby Healy Number 2 Update

Well, Anna saw the midwife last Friday. Things are looking great so far. We've got about five weeks to go and the baby is already in position. Head down low, back toward Anna's right. It's kinda freaky to be able to feel around Anna's tummy and recognize, "Oh, that's his back. And there's his shoulders. And there's his head."

Now, I've used the English generic "his" here. My readers should not assume that we know the sex of the baby. We don't. I may have my husbandly man's intuition. And there may be some proverbial indications (the way the wind blows my wife's hair at the quarter-moon on a Tuesday, for instance). But we'll have it confirmed for us when the baby's born. It's just I'm lazy and don't want to keep typing "his/her" and I just have an aversion to "its."

The thing though is, we only have five weeks to go. I've been thinking, "Five weeks, heck that's plenty of time." But truth to tell, with the baby in position like he is (remember: generic "he"), the birth could happen any day. In fact, last week Anna was really feeling some pressure, though that has since subsided somewhat. But if the baby comes early, I'd really like it if he (generic) could wait till I've finished my last Loyola paper and turned in the first draft of my thesis. Let's say: after 1 June. Hey, the baby's not due till 28 June, so I don't think that's asking too much.

Still and all . . . wow. I'm about to be a father all over again. Wow.

Please pray for us--Anna, Sofie and me--and the baby. For health and safety of Anna and the baby. For me as a father and husband. This is the way God is saving me. May he make me worthy of these great and precious gifts.

Wow.

The Fatherhood Chronicles LXV

Thank You, a Million Times, Thank You

Lord Jesus, who am I and what is my house that you would have such regard for me? I am nothing without you. My life is bookended by grace. You brought me into existence, you knit me together in my mother's womb. How could one who once did not exist do anything to deserve this gift of life? Yet you added to even this immeasurable grace, a home. What a wonder. A home. Love. Warmth. The embrace of my father. The gentle mercy of my mother. The sisters who love such an undeserving one as myself.

This storehouse of undeserved grace would have been enough, for it was given and received without merit. But many waters cannot quench your love, and so you called to me on my bed, just before sleep, when I was but a child. And through the loving family you gave to me, and the grace of my grandfather's ministry, you made me to partake of your Triune life. Even my child's sins would have been reason enough to take from me the life you had given. But your justice was clothed with mercy and you poured out on me grace upon grace.

Still, even as a child I learned to love sin, and having been showered with your love twice over, I turned from you. Yet through the long years your love for me did not dim. You called to me once more, and awakened again that love that I had let grow cold. Once again, it was through the prayers I made on my bed before sleep that we met, and your love fanned into flame my own. I knew then the bitterness of my love for sin, and your love strengthened my repentance.

I was but a teenager. What did I know of repentance? Yet you met me in that moment of choice, and in all such moments since, and strengthened that which I had not the strength on my own, double minded as I am, to do. I gave to you my will, and you joined it to your own. And oh, what grace that has been, for you have kept me ever close.

This, all this, would have been far too much, far too overwhelming. But you surely wanted to completely undo me in amazement at your grace. For you brought to me that woman you have ordained for my salvation, my wife, the mother of my children. If you had given her to me as my helpmeet, that would have been enough. But instead you gave me such a mercy that I cannot even speak of it. I am struck dumb in wonder. You showed me clearly what it is you do when you save a soul. From violation and cruelty you have drawn such a picture of beauty and grace in her life that I cannot but weep for the awe of it. It is a mystery too great, a wonder too stark, a grace so deep that it would be like grasping white hot fire to my bosom.

But dare I go on? The tears rise to my eyes. Once more, how can I say this, yet again, you showered your grace on me when I least expected it. You brought wisdom into my life . . . wisdom for such a fool as me! You made me a father. What is this grace? I do not understand it. I see my blue-eyed daughter dancing, turning circles, singing, kissing your cross, and embracing the icon of your mother . . . I see and I am struck dumb with the mercy of it all. I speak to her in the morning of your Gospel, “Good morning,” I say, “God loves you.” But what paltry speech that is for such a grace. And how it pales in comparison to the full-orbed symphony of the Gospel she preaches to me each day. I kiss her, I embrace her, and I know, just as I know from what you have done in her mother, “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!”

And, oh, what more can I tell? My life is adorned with a million graces, and yet you add one more. For in the womb of that mystery play of grace which you have given me, and give me each day, as a wife, dances another child. I am a father twice over when I never deserved it in the first place.

What fool would I be to tell you to stop, that I will be completely undone by any more grace? And yet what have I now but these tears? These liquid prayers rise like thank offerings, salted with the very being you gave me decades ago. So, here is my offering, pitiful in comparison to the wealth of your rich love. I have only a tear-filled heart full of thanks. You may have it. It is yours anyway.

The Fatherhood Chronicles LXIV

Mismade Match Gone Right

Here's how it all began.

My cousin, Jennifer, was sharing an apartment in Joplin with three other young women, Barbara (who was dating Richard), Denise and Anna, who were both single. I was sharing an apartment in Lawrence with a high school classmate. My cousin knew I wasn't dating anyone at the time, but knew I was open to a serious relationship with the right person, so she contrived to have me come down to Joplin for the weekend in October 1992 to meet "her roommate." I knew of her two single roommates, but had never met either of them, and my cousin coyly arranged the proposed meeting as a blind date. She didn't tell me who it was she had in mind for me to meet.

As it turned out, Jennifer and Denise had together thought up the idea of having me come down to meet Denise, do some informal hanging out and maybe do dinner and a movie together. As Jennifer was dating my best friend from college at the time, Mike, I stayed with him, so it was a win-win all the way around for me. Spend time with my best friend and my cousin, meet this (to me) yet-to-be-known girl, and maybe hit it off with her.

Now this is important: I had no idea who it was that Jennifer had arranged for me to meet. And Anna had no idea that Jennifer was attempting to play matchmaker. And neither of us knew that Denise knew. Got it?

I arrived in Joplin in the late afternoon on a Friday and drove up to my cousin's apartment. The first person I met, going up to the door, was Anna who was on her way somewhere else. It will sound like a fabrication, I'm sure, but I swear to you, the very first thing I noticed about Anna was her blue eyes. Of course, being a normal young male, I was not long to notice and appreciate the rest of her. I introduced myself and in the ensuing few moments of conversation learned that this was one of Jenn's roommates, Anna, and, yes, Jenn was waiting on me.

As it turns out, Denise ended up having to work almost the entire weekend. Anna, however, didn't. So my cousin, Anna and I spent quite a bit of time together at the apartment. In fact, when my best friend had to work Saturday evening, it was Jenn, Anna, and another college friend, Michael, and I who went to see Steven Seagal's Under Siege. Through the whole weekend, from that first moment of attraction, I grew more and more smitten with Anna. So that by the time I left on Sunday to head back to Lawrence, I knew I wanted to get to know that beautiful, blue-eyed girl better.

It wasn't until two months later, after Anna and I had begun dating exclusively, that we found out the original setup had been for me to meet Denise. In fact, shortly after that first meeting, Anna had gone to Denise to ask her advice about dating me. Needless to say, there were some hurt feelings. But a testament to Denise's own maturity and godliness was her willingness to forgive the unintended slight that had been done. She graciously accepted Anna's invitation to be part of our wedding, and herself made sure Anna and I were invited to her own wedding shortly after ours.

The rest, as they say, is history.

The Fatherhood Chronicles LXIII

For the First Time, Sofie Makes Peepee in the Potty

No, really, that title should be followed by fifteen exclamation points! As her full-time working Daddy, I've missed many of Sofie's "firsts." I missed her first time to roll over on her own. I missed her first time standing up without any help. I even missed her very first step (accomplished, I hasten to add, on the highly appropriate occasion of a story time at the Skokie Public Library). Now I was there when Sofie found her voice. That was pretty cool.

But you can't imagine how thrilled, happy, ecstatic and all those other adjectives I am that I got to be there the first time Sofie used her potty.

Now, understand, we've been in no real rush to potty train Sofie. We would like to have it accomplished by the time our next baby is born at the end of June. Sofie will be 23 months, or thereabouts, which would be about right. But we've been taking the gradual, just see what happens approach. We got the potty a couple of months ago, and just left it in the bathroom. From time to time we told Sofie, "This is where you make peepee, just like Mommy and Daddy do on the big people's potty." But it wasn't everyday. And soon Sofie got used to the idea that you sat on the potty.

Of course, the first few times she sat on it, she didn't like it. It didn't after all, have a flat seat, but this big hole that was a little uncomfortable to sit on. Then she was fascinated with taking the peepee-and-poopy-catching part out of the potty. Of course, once she found out the peepee-and-poopy-catching part fit her head nicely as a hat, she had to wear it as a hat. (All it had in it was dust bunnies and a stray hair fallen from Mommy or Daddy's head, so no biggie.) But then she took note that Mommy and Daddy sat on the big people's potty, so she started imitating us. Occasionally, when Daddy had important business to attend to, she would attend with him and bring her "baby" or one of her books in with her and sit (fully clothed) on the potty. Never for very long, but she was sort of getting the idea.

A few weeks ago we decided we would occasionally sit Sofie on her potty right before we put her in the bathtub for her bath. It seems without fail as soon as those little piggies touched the warm water, she would pee. So we thought, well, if she has to pee before bathtime, we might try sitting her on the potty and seeing if she'd go. We've not been very consistent with it, though since I usually give her her bath, I've tried to do it more often than not. Anytime we've sat her on the potty, we tell her that it's the place to make peepee. But we've never tried to get her to stay on the potty longer than she wants. Completely no pressure, no fighting, nothing negative.

So, tonight when I sat her on the potty, I figured she would sit there a few moments, like she normally does, then would want to get up into the tub, where she would likely pee when her feet got wet. But still I sat her on the potty and told her that his was where she made peepee. And then, what do you know, but sure 'nough, Sofie made peepee!

I cheered and clapped--in non-booming, non-scary supportive Daddy voice (hard to restrain myself, let me tell you)--and Sofie smiled and cheered and clapped, too. Momma came running with a bag of M&Ms; and gave Sofie a couple. We all clapped and cheered and Mommy and Daddy hugged Sofie some more. We told her how proud we were of her, and what a big girl she was. We then showed her what we did with the peepee: we put it in the big people's potty and flushed it, and then cleaned out her potty with water and a disinfectant cloth.

Mommy and Daddy are under no illusions that Sofie is potty-trained or even necessarily soon-to-be-so. But what an amazing first step! We are thrilled and happy. We know there will be advances and retreats, but Sofie's a smart little girl, and I think she'll soon put two-and-two together. And if we can teach her to pee before bathtime, hopefully the rest will come fairly quickly, even amidst the ups and downs.

The Fatherhood Chronicles LXII

Holiday Pics

The Fatherhood Chronicles LXI

St. Valentine's Day and This Married Life

Our Valentine's Day celebrations began last night. Anna has been hankering after some seafood for some days, and so after she and Sofie had a lengthy Sunday afternoon nap, the three of us headed to Red Lobster. When we got there, I just knew we were headed for certain disaster: The wait time was sixty minutes. Sofie is normally pretty good in restaurants, but I could only imagine what she would do with sixty minutes to kill and no toys, no snacks, and a thousand and one non-baby-proof distractions. But Anna cautioned patience, and so we began to wait.

As it turns out, the lobster tank kept Sofie occupied, and though she moved about restlessly a handful of times, we were able by just calling her name to keep her within the reach of a quick lunge and grab. In the end, we only waited for forty minutes. To add to the thus-far good atmosphere, we ended up with a corner booth.

Although we had to wait several minutes before one of the waitstaff brought some drinks and biscuits, Sofie did really well. And indeed she did great for the whole dinner. She exhibited typical 18-month-old restlessness, but otherwise ate pretty well and didn't get too obstinate when we told her to quit climbing over the back of the booth to try to pat the man's head behind us.

The wife and I were able to enjoy a nice, peaceful meal with our daughter.

And to top it off, when we got home, she went right to sleep. Oh, joy of joys! No fighting, no crying, just some prayers, some hymns and then some baby heavy breathing!

This morning, before work, I gave Anna and Sofie their cards. Anna also got a box of chocolates and some pregnancy-related magazines.

I love my women!

And to give evidence of that, I offer here, despite potential public humiliation at my extremely poor attempt at "songwriting," the following ditty I stuck in Anna's card:

This Married Life

(Some lyrics in search of some music. I'm thinking a little bit country in the key of Tim McGraw.)

From the first time that I saw you
I think my heart had a clue
A blue-eyed beauty framed in sunlight
I couldn't take my eyes off you
And what started as a mistake
A mismade match gone right
Has made this man's heart a real home
In this married life

Refrain
So every time at night when I pray
And shut off the bedroom light
When I crawl in bed beside you
And feel your heart beat next to mine
I say a silent, heartfelt prayer
With grateful tears in these eyes
And I humbly thank the Lord
For this married life

Those early years we spent together
Were much harder than we thought
There were days and nights we wondered
If it all was lost
But we stuck it out together
Cried some tears and gave our love
Looking back I can't help thinking
Angels helped us from above

Refrain

For ten years it was the two of us
Holding tight and staying strong
Then heaven took us by surprise
And wisdom sang a brand new song
I had said I wanted two kids
You said, "How 'bout four?"
And looking at our blue-eyed darling
I know this heart can't wait for more

Refrain

[Clifton D. Healy, 1-9 February 2005, Chicago]

The Fatherhood Chronicles LX

Sofe and the Dance of Miriam

This morning, as I was getting ready for work--and after having fed Sofie her breakfast, changed her diaper (a poopy, ugh!), and we "read" a couple of board books--she proceeded to grab two of her wooden puzzle pieces (a circle and a square) that each have a large knob on them. These pieces are about a half-inch think, and roughly about three or four inches wide. And they make great, I mean great wooden cymbals.

Sofie decided it was time to sing and dance before the Lord (I'd already given her her blessing). So there she was moving her feet (her happy dance), stomping, turning in circles, and singing at the top of her lungs, all the while clapping her "cymbals" together. It wasn't just for a couple of minutes. It wasn't just in one room of the house. She followed me back to the bedroom--dancing, stomping, turning, clapping her cymbals and singing--where I gave Anna a kiss goodbye, and right there danced mightily before us and the Lord (and the icon of the ancestors of God, Joachim and Anna).

Since I'm her doting father, I couldn't help but thinking her jibber-jabber sing-song was simply a translation of Miriam's song:

Then Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women went out after her with tambourines and dancing.

And Miriam sang to them: "Sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea."

The Lord has triumphed gloriously, baby girl. And our God ordains praise from the mouths of infants and children.

The Fatherhood Chronicles LIX

Sherpa Sofie

From my sister, Kim, via email, a picture of Sofie over the holidays getting ready to go downstairs at Kim and Paul's to watch videos.

The Fatherhood Chronicles LVIII

A Sofie Glossary

For those who will be coming to our house in the coming months, I present here a list of Sofie-ese. Each entry in the Sofie glossary is spelled phonetically. [Note and Update: On playing with my daughter last evening (1/19), it became clear to me that the phonetic spellings of some of the terms below were wrong; these have been corrected. Also, the glossary has been augmented with additions I forgot about. I'll continue to make additions as needed. Check back often.]

ay(ng)-oo: "thank you;" though she used to say this a lot, it's much more rare, and almost always only when prompted
baba: "papa;" me (Clifton)
baybee: "any human being younger than two;" also her "doll"
bi: "bite"; sounds a lot like "bye" but is short and not as drawn out as "bye"
bye: "goodbye;" also, when holding an object, "I'm finished with this, please take it"
deehn: "drink" more often "geehn" see below
dow: "put me down"; also, "pick me up"
eye luh luh: "I love you"
eyepay: "airplane"
gangkee: "blankie," "blanket"
geehn: "drink"
gih: "get"; what one says to a "puppee"
gingkee: "binkie," "pacifier"
guh: see "kuh" below
heh: "head;" usually only in combination with motions to "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes"
kakaw: "cracker"
kee: "Kix" sometimes pronounced "kih"
kih: see "kee" above
kuhkee: "cookie"
kuh: me (Clifton), see also "baba"
mama: "mama;" Anna
no: "no"
puppee: any "dog;" also most animals
sheezh: "cheese" (either a slice of cheese or string cheese)
uh: "pick me up"; usually only said when prompted as we correct her when she says "dow" but means "uh"

If you need any translation help, just see Anna or myself. Good luck, and have fun as you learn to speak Sofie.

The Fatherhood Chronicles LVII

Baby Number Two

What?! Two Fatherhood Chronicles in one day? What gives?

Well, Anna has been very sick in the last couple of weeks, and without going into details, after relating some of her experiences with her doctor, he rescheduled her first sonogram for today, to make sure everything was okay.

As it turns out everything is okay. We have a very healthy baby (sex to remain unknown till birth), who kicked and wriggled "his"* way all over the place. We could see the heart beating, the spine, and umbilical cord. And it even looked as though "he" tried to suck "his" thumb. (Do they do that this young? I can't remember.)

We also found out we were two weeks off in calculating Anna's last cycle. The baby is eleven weeks along, not eight or nine. So instead of 8 July, our new due date is 28 June. (Justin and Mae breathe a sigh of relief!)

Praise God!

I also found out this fatherhood thing doesn't get any more bland or stale the second time around. Watching our baby on the monitor, I got all sniffly and gooey. I'm such a marshmallow.

But I'm ecstatic. I'd taken the rest of the day off, in case it was going to be bad news, but instead I get to celebrate by playing hard with my daughter and giving Anna a chance to take an undisturbed nap.

*Again, we don't know the sex of the baby, and do not choose to know until the baby is born. But I really want a boy, and Anna has an intuition that the baby is a boy, even though all her "symptoms" are the same as when she was pregnant with Sofie. But she had an intuition Sofie was a girl, and she was definitely right about that. We'll see. God knows. And whoever the baby turns out to be, she or he is already welcome and being prayed for.

The Fatherhood Chronicles LVI

More on Sofie's Faith

Another post on Douglas' blog, set me to thinking about Sofie and our raising her in the Faith, and what the differences would be between where I was in my faith a few years ago and now.

Previously, as a Restoration Movement Christian, my faith revolved around two things: right belief and right behavior. (It was the same for me during the relatively short time I was an Episcopalian, though that may have been a reflection more of my Restoration Movement background than the Episcopal Church.) I believed that it was God who saved me, not I, myself, through my own efforts. But I believed that salvation was synergistic: God worked and I cooperated with him. It was important, then, that I believe rightly and live rightly. God would take care of the rest.

What was missing out of all that, however, was the heart.

By that I do not mean the emotions. Nor do I merely mean the will. Though both the emotions and the will are certainly part of it. Rather, I mean the biblical and patristic center of human personhood. And that missing element, the heart, left me divided. I found the more correct were my beliefs, the more I knew my behavior was wrong in so many ways. The more correct I tried to be in my behavior, I found myself subtly shifting into legalism, and thus false belief. If I failed to focus rightly on my behavior, I found my beliefs shifting as well. Clearly the two were interlinked, but I could not discern how.

How would I have then raised Sofie--and our soon-to-come child--in the Faith? Especially now as an almost-sixteen month old? I could speak to her of proper Christian dogma, indeed, I must, but that would not be something she could even begin to grasp for many years. I could teach her proper behavior, but how to communicate the content of that behavior (i.e., love of Jesus)? Discipline is certainly an essential aspect of Christian catechesis, but how to transmit the essential content of the catechesis, the heartfelt devotion to the Lord?

I would have had a daughter who may well have believed the right things, and even done the right things. And she may well still go to hell, if these two essential components are not united by faith in the center of her being: her heart.

Here is where a growing realization has come upon me as a parent. And it is Sofie who has taught me this. Belief and Faith are not necessarily the same things. James says that even the demons believe in God, but they do not have faith. Paul says not all our righteous acts can do a thing to save us. What we need is faith. And faith is a unique property of the heart.

Faith encompasses belief and behavior. But ultimately it is a stance of trust. A recognition that God is who he is. That we are incapable on our own merits of abolishing the curse of mortality, or healing ourselves of the passions with which we have chosen to be infected, of acquitting ourselves of the guilt of our sins and saving ourselves from their consequences. I know this sort of trust, because I see it everyday in the upraised arms of my daughter, as she stretches out her entire body, standing on tiptoe, communicating with every cell of her being that she wants me to hold her, and trusts me to hold her safely. It is the trust she expresses as she lays back in my arms when we sing hymns as I put her to bed. It is the trust she communicates when she takes my hand and we walk to where I want to lead her.

Sofie has no right belief yet, because she has no intellectual or analytical content to her thoughts. Sofie is only now learning right behavior. And this is a very challenging thing to teach with the right balance and direction.

But Sofie has faith. And right now she lives by her heart. As I remarked to Anna several weeks ago, Sofie doesn't really know what she's doing when she tries to cross herself. She couldn't tell you what it means for her to kiss the icons or the prayerbook. When she grabs the blessing cross for me to bless her with, she's pretty much doing it because it's what we do. She is imitating us, for the most part. And this is precisely why the Church does not, and should not, baptize children who are not being brought up in Christian homes.

It may not be theologically correct to say that faith comes naturally to Sofie. But because faith is of the heart, I think it safe to suppose that faith comes readily to her, since we, her parents, are trying to guide her in the Faith of the Church. Sofie loves and lives by her heart. And so Sofie has faith. As our priest said of her a few weeks ago: "Now there's a little girl who loves Jesus."

If I were still under the belief-behavior paradigm, as a parent, my daughter would still be living and loving with her heart. The trouble is, I would be steering her away from that. And that would be catastrophic.

Our Lord himself said that we should not hinder the little children to come to him. If we cause one of these little children to stumble, it were better for us to be cast into the sea with a millstone around our neck. Indeed, we all must become as little children if we want to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. We only do that through the faith which lives and acts in the heart.

God grant me to be a father who unifies belief and behavior in the heart by faith. God grant me to be as my daughter Sofie, that I may enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

The Fatherhood Chronicles LV

Daddy's Heart Gets Broken

So, today, I'm doing all the things I've done on pretty much every other weekday morning. I kiss Anna good-bye and affirm my love. I ask Sofie for a good-bye kiss, which she gives. We go to the icon corner, I grab the blessing cross and I bless her with it. She kisses it and continues playing. I don my jacket and grab my gear. As I head out the door, I say to Sofie, "Good-bye, Sweetie! I'll see you when I get home." Normally, at this point, Sofie waves to me and says, "Bye."

Today, her face screwed up into a grimace, her bottom lip pushed forward, and she began to cry.

I assured her I would be back soon. She cried all the more. Momma gathered her up in her arms, and I waved good-bye one more time.

This morning is cloudy and grey. And so am I.

The Fatherhood Chronicles LIV

Sofie Imitates

As has been evident in my recent Fatherhood Chronicles, Sofie is learning about her world through imitation.

When in Baton Rouge, last week, she saw the blessing cross on the hotel nightstand, and the diptych of Mary and Jesus. I was brushing my teeth or combing my hair or otherwise getting dressed, and when I turned around, there was Sofie, cross in hand, crossing herself and then handing me the cross. Just like we do almost every morning. I grab the blessing cross, sign her with it, and she kisses the icon of Jesus on it. The difference is, at home, the cross is on the (faux) fireplace mantle out of her line of sight. The hotel nightstand was chest-high on her.

But probably the most funny instance of imitation happened a couple of weeks ago. Anna is suffering through morning (aka, all day) sickness, and so was lying on the futon, munching on soda crackers and sipping Gatorade. So what did Sofie do? She climbed up on the futon, lay down next to Momma and Sofie put her (Sofie's) hand on her own tummy, just like Momma was doing. When Momma ate a cracker, so did Sofie. When Momma sipped Gatorade, so did Sofie. When Momma high-tailed it to the bathroom to throwup, Sofie followed along. And when they both retreated to the futon again--this time with wastebasket nearby--Sofie hovered over the waste basket making coughing noises just like Momma had done.

Talk about your "sympathetic pregnancy" symptoms! It's not just dads who get them, it seems.

Sometimes, folks, this stuff just writes itself.

The Fatherhood Chronicles LIII

Sofie and the Potty

To really understand what I'm about to relate, you must have a grasp, however minimal, of the sacred relationship between a man and his "throne." That is to say, aside from, perhaps, that mother-son relationship, there is probably nothing more primal than the relationship between a man and his bathroom. It is here that man is purged and renewed. Here man thinks his great thoughts. After all, it is said that Martin Luther's moment of insight, conversion, gnosis, whatever you want to call it, happened on the commode. Here man stays in touch with world events, societal opinion, and the funny papers. Some, indeed, perhaps all, of the fairer sex may well wonder at this mystery of mysteries. Jibes and jabs are tossed our way while incommunicado: "Shall I send in search and rescue teams?" or the ever-popular "Did you fall in?" But laugh they well may, they cannot do away with the offal truth: A man's bathroom is his sacred refuge.

So, it is something of a tectonic shift to allow this sacrosanct sanctuary to be invaded. It helps if the invader is a brown-haired, blue-eyed fifteen month old infected with a case of terminal cuteness. Oh, and who has her own potty.

Yep, we're taking the gradual approach to potty-training, hoping for success by the arrival of our next child in July. Since Sofie is heavily into imitation, we decided to get a potty and--gasp--allow her to join us when nature calls.

So there I sit in the sanctum sanctorum with my little daughter singing her morning jibber-jabber carols and hymns. She climbs on her potty, because, of course that's what a potty is for. She takes the "bucket" part out of the potty and tries to hand it to daddy. "No, thank you, sweetheart. That goes in your potty." The potty, of course, must also be scooted across the bathroom floor. Especially must it be scooted right into daddy's feet. And then: "No, Sofie. It's not time to sit on daddy's lap. Daddy's busy right now."

Sigh. Bathroom time is not what it used to be.

The Fatherhood Chronicles LII

A brief moment of unmitigated, unpasteurized, unhomogenized fatherly pride happened last night at Vespers. Well, actually a couple of moments.

First, during one of the prayer litanies, Sofie got a little restless, so we let her down. She walked around a bit, but finally came up to me on my left side, and pointed at my prayerbook. I had her sit on the floor, and then I let her hold my book. As she grabbed it, she attempted to make the sign of the cross: pinched her little fingers together and made the vertical. I helped her with the rest of it, then she opened the book and turned some pages and tried to make the sign of the cross a couple more times during the prayers. She sang with the choir a couple of times.

It was glorious. She was there all good-smelling from her bath and dressed in her footy pajamas worshipping her little heart out with the rest of us.

But the best part of all happened after the service was over.

Anna was talking to one of the parishioners, so I took Sofie up to the iconostasis. I helped her make the sign of the cross in front of the icon of the Theotokos, then held her up so she could kiss it. We did the same in front the icon of Jesus the Pantokrator.

As we finished, Father Patrick was closing the Royal Doors and said, "Now there's a little girl that loves Jesus."

I smiled in response . . . and glowed the rest of the night.

I'm still a bit luminescent.

Glory be to God.

So, Now It Can Be Told: Ahem . . . Your Attention, Please!

Well, it's official. And since parents, grandparents and siblings--and our priest--have been informed, this announcement now goes out to the blogosphere.

Healy Baby Number Two is on the way. (The Mrs. gave the official approval to blog this, by the way. For background as to why this approval is important, see here and here.)

Glory to God.

As I said when Sofie was on the way, I am happy to welcome any child God sends our way. Being a dad, however, has grown in me the desire to have a son. Yes, I really hope we'll have a boy. If we have another girl, great, wonderful. But it's that guy thing: father-son hikes, sports, someone to carry on the Healy name (though my uncle has four boys, so little danger there), but also to carry on the "firstborn son" name of Clifton--and, quite frankly, the need for more male representation in the Healy home!

But as I told a friend this weekend, it occurred to me that it's already too late to pray that this child will be a boy! (All the hosts of heaven roll their collective eyes.) So, thanks be to God, this child will be welcome no matter what!

Pray for us, Anna, Sofie and me, and our new soon-to-be-born child.

Most Holy Theotokos, Holy Priest-martyr Eleutherius, and all the saints, pray for our baby soon to be born.

The Fatherhood Chronicles LI

My chance to be publicly and unashamedly proud:

Instructional Eucharist

Today's Eucahrist service was, for me, extremely instructional. I learned absolutely nothing about the liturgy, nothing about the lessons or the Gospel, nothing about ecclesiology. In fact, I learned nothing at all about anything that had to do with the church.

I learned about babies.

So, Clifton and his wife apparently have Susie babysit their daughter Sofie from time to time. Well, I noticed Susie with an absolutely adorable child in the hall outside the chapel today and since I knew she didn't have any kids I asked whose it was and she told me. I started playing with Sofie, running around with her, and letting her try to pull my face off via my beard. Well then Susie says, "I have to cant (chant) today. Can you take her?" "Of course!" said I, grinning wildly. I love playing with babies. Then I realized I'd be sitting with this 14 month old for over an hour and I have no idea what to do with a child for that long, especially when they can't run around or be loud. Luckily, I sit next to Jane in chapel, a veteran mom. Susie then came over with a HUGE baby bag and handed it to me. I looked at Jane and said, "Do you know how to use this thing?" Natually, she did, and everything in it too. So, Jane actually took Sofie for the Liturgy of the Word, during which Sofie dissected Jane's prayer book and hymnal, and I took her for the Liturgy of the Table. More truthfully, she just crawled into my lap. Now, during the service, I learned how to keep a kid quiet when she wants to yell: pretzels. I learned how to keep a kid from squirming in your arms: hymnals with ribbons. And I learned how to not pay attention to a dry sermon and get away with it: play with a kid. Now, this child has obviously been paying attention to her Daddy a lot, because she actually crossed herself when she saw others cross themselves, she grabbed at my cross necklace and kissed it repeatedly, and she kissed the prayer books and hymnals like you would an icon (her father is Orthodox). I was amazed. Simply astonished. Then, she started singing during the sermon. I wanted to join in as I already mentioned that the sermon was boring. After she crawled into my lap, she fooled around a bit more and then wanted to be picked up. I picked her up and held her for a short time before there was a small thud on my shoulder, followed by a quiet snore. The cutie had worn herself out and was asleep before she hit the shoulder. So, I had a sleeping baby in my arms and it was awesome. She slept for the rest of the service, through the singing, through communion, through the dismissal and exit. She even slept through being handed back to Susie. My shoulder hurts still. Kudos to parents who lug kids around all day; you're way more powerful than I am. I found myself grinning most of the rest of the day amid answering questions that it was not, in fact, my child. No, no, not quite ready for that yet; I still like to be able to give them back! All in all, it was a great service, though I was only vaguely aware it was going on, and a special day.

From Ryan's Everday Faith.

[Note: I should clarify. I have not yet been chrismated in the Orthodox Church. I'm merely an Orthodox wannabe at this point.]

The Fatherhood Chronicles L

Catechizing Sofie

As a new father (only fourteen months under my belt), I am learning things I never knew before. There's the Third Law of Wet Wipes which states that the actual number of wet wipes needed to clean a bottom after a poopy diaper will be in proportionately inverse ratio to the actual number of wet wipes on hand. Along with this is Sofie's corollary which notes that when attempting to retrieve said wet wipe for said cleaning mission that said wet wipe will have either fallen back into the wet wipe dispenser and is no longer retrievable or will be impossible to retrieve from said dispenser because it has firmly lodged in the dispensing hole leaving the bottom cleaning person (usually daddy) to no other recourse than to swing the wet wipe and dispenser wildly about one's head as one attempts to dislodge the wet wipe while also ensuring that the poop-bespattered bottom does not make contact with items of clothing, the changing table pad, or the baby's other clean body parts.

But this is not about poopy diapers. Rather, there's something else I've learned, something so awesome and mysterious, so humbling, that one can't help but say it in a whisper: Children are naturally religious.

Don't mistake me. I did not say that children are naturally Christian. Christians can be, and the best of us are, very religious. But being religious does not make one a Christian. What being religious does, however, is provide a natural pathway and conduit toward the channeling of these energies and needs toward the Christian Faith and Christ's Body the Church.

And I have been absolutely amazed and flabbergasted at how remarkably easy, in some respects, it has been to teach Sofie the Christian Faith. More to the point, I have been blessed and filled with wonder at how easily Sofie mimics and takes on as her own the actions of Christian worship.

Just this morning, Sofie was playing with some toys, and began walking back to the back of the apartment to where Anna was. I had just lit the vigil lamp, so I said to Sofie, "Sofie. Come here and receive your blessing." Sofie stopped in her tracks, turned around and walked right toward me. She stood quietly as I signed her with the blessing cross and prayed the blessing over her. And all I needed to do was hold the cross in front of her for her to venerate it. She needed no coaching or encouragement on my part. She knew what to do. In fact, she stood expectantly as I placed the cross back on the mantle which functions as our icon "corner." I immediately recognized that she wanted to venerate the icons as well. So I took down our diptych of the Theotokos and Pantakrator and held it for her to kiss. She kissed the Blessed Virgin and Our Savior, and then her left hand made the motions as though she were crossing herself. I put the diptych back on the mantle and then helped her, with her right hand, to make the sign of the cross: forehead, breastbone, right shoulder, left. A few moments later, to my utter amazement, completely on her own, Sofie signed herself with the cross--in the proper traditional form. (Okay, admittedly, it was a little bit sloppy, but it was clearly recognizable.)

Now some I understand, especially my colleagues and family from my heritage churches, may well take issue with these practices. Kissing icons? Kissing crosses? Rituals? There are learned responses to each of these to show that they are fully in keeping with the evangelical and New Testament Faith and worship of the Apostles. But I'll not take the time to go into them here. Rather, I will simply ask one question: How else is a fourteen month old daughter of Christians going to worship the Lord and express her faith in Him?

I do not catechize Sofie in intellectual terms right now. She has no ability yet for the sort of conceptual comprehension necessary to understand things like Jesus dying for our sins, Jesus' death and resurrection and ascension into heaven. She will not likely have this ability for a handful more years yet. She will soon be able to recite by rote these things we teach her. But understand them? Heck I wonder if I understand them now!

But to return to my point. If I must wait till Sofie has the ability to communicate with us and both memorize by rote the basic Gospel teaching as well as to have a basic understanding of them, then there are going to be many years in between in which presumably I can do nothing. Sofie can do little more than tag along while mommy and daddy do their religious things. But to participate . . . well if she has to understand it, even rudimentarily, then she cannot participate.

But the Church has always recognized that Satan and the demonic are always at work. And even from Sofie's first days, the prince of the powers of the air was utilizing his medium to infiltrate Sofie's heart. The noises and words and music all around her were potential means for infusing Sofie with the devouring worm. I was most struck by this the first outing Sofie and I had on the el as I headed to school. Perfect strangers swore vile profanites and blasphemies in her presence. The name of God was taken in vain. Short of putting cotton in her ears, there was little I could do to restrain these evil influences. And even if I could stop her ears, she had eyes to see. Only a few months old and she is already being bombarded with the idea that women can only be related to and can only relate to others by sexual objectification. Daddy and mommy watch the news program and she is confronted with blood and violence. I pray regularly each day that through the intercessions of the Theotokos Sofie's heart and her innocence will be guarded and protected.

In short, from before my daughter was born, we have been engaged in a war for her soul.

I said above that Sofie was naturally religious. This is true. I said that being religious provides important natural pathways for teaching her the faith. This is true as well. But it is also true that this religiosity is also being exploited by our enemy to turn Sofie away from the Faith. And it is precisely because of this battle that I dare not wait to catechize her in the Faith.

So it is a matter of eternal life and death that I now teach Sofie the sign of the cross, to venerate the icons, and to pray the Our Father and sing the Church hymns, and that our family is often and regularly at Liturgy whenever it is served. It is vital that we pray together and often in our home, and that Sofie be included and can pray in the only ways she can know right now: crossing herself and kissing the icons, the blessing cross, the Scriptures.

My hope and prayer is that soon Anna and I may be chrismated, and Sofie baptized, in the Orthodox Church. Pray for me a sinner.

The Fatherhood Chronicles XLIX

The following are some photos from our trip a week and a half ago to Goebbert's Pumpkin Farms.

Here's momma and Sofie looking at the chickens. Sofie was particularly enamoured of the lightning-quick chicks.

Me and Sofie with llamas. Sofie liked the llamas best of all. She likes big dogs--Jeff and Catherine's Sydney, Mitch and Denise's Zack--so I wonder if she thought they were unusually large dogs.

Yep. That's Sofie grabbing a teat. A fake one, to be sure. But we have another picture (not as good quality) that shows her squatted down both hands grabbing rubber teats and trying to milk. You go little farmgirl!

Sofie in the midst of a bunch of pumpkins.

This one makes me tear up especially. Sofie's getting independent, which means she's going to spend the next several years walking away from me. Sigh. It's necessary, I know, so that she can walk right back. But the walking away still doesn't feel all that good.

The Fatherhood Chronicles XLVIII

Playing Mr. Mom

I scheduled a vacation day today last week. I felt it would be good to have a whole day to spend grading final exams and final papers. But then reality stepped in.

Sofie got sick. She has a mild cold, which has her feeling poorly, but hasn't diminished her energy and enthusiasm too much. Pretty much the only difference is the snot faucet attached to her face, and the extra hugs and kisses she gives--she knows she's feeling bad and wants bunches of lovin' from momma and daddy.

I did get the final exams graded, but still have the papers to do. But those probably won't be touched till tonight. You see, it's a Mr. Mom day. Anna has seized the day with my being home and has left for a lunch date with a fellow children's author. I'm solo till she gets home.

It ain't too bad. I blessed Sofie with the cross today, and a little later she pointed to the icons and made kissing sounds. So we venerated the Theotokos and Jesus. She's learning to make the sign of the cross, though it's usually either the vertical motion or the horizontal. But she's starting to put it together. She puts her fingers together just like daddy and the other people at Church. That just amazes me: that she would notice such a detail as that.

Lunch went okay, though she is now proceeding to take all my books off the shelves--for the third time this morning. And all the toys are coming out of the toy box, off the shelves and out from other places. Once these get cleaned up this will be the fourth time. But she's dressed in her purple jogging suit. She's so dang cute there ain't no way I can get angry at her.

How do mommas handle these sorts of things? I don't know if I'm a typical dad or not, but I'm looking for order and discipline. From a fourteen-month old. Yep. I'm in a fantasy world.

Today ain't too bad, but I do have to say this: There's a song on the radio with a chorus that runs:

Well
Pampers melt in a Maytag dryer
Crayons go up one drawer higher
Rewind Barney for the fifteenth time
Breakfast six, naps at nine
There's bubble gum in the baby's hair
Sweet potatoes in my lazy chair
Been crazy all day long and it's only Monday
Mr. Mom

Today, I am sympathetic to those words. But it's the final bridge out that really expresses what I feel today:

Balancin' checkbooks, juggling bills
Thought there was nothing to it
Baby, now I know how you feel
What I don't know is how you do it

The full song:

Lost my job, came home mad
Got a hug and kiss and "That's too bad"
She said I can go to work until you find another job
I thought I like the sound of that
Watch TV and take long naps
Go from a hard-working dad to being Mr. Mom

Well
Pampers melt in a Maytag dryer
Crayons go up one drawer higher
Rewind Barney for the fifteenth time
Breakfast six, naps at nine
There's bubble gum in the baby's hair
Sweet potatoes in my lazy chair
Been crazy all day long and it's only Monday
Mr. Mom

Football, soccer and ballet
Squeeze in Scouts and PTA
And there's that shopping list she left
That's seven pages long
How much smoke can one stove make
The kids won't eat my charcoal cake
It's more than any man can take
Being Mr. Mom

Well
Pampers melt in a Maytag dryer
Crayons go up one drawer higher
Rewind Barney for the sixteenth time
Breakfast six, naps at nine
There's bubble gum in the baby's hair
Sweet potatoes in my lazy chair
Been crazy all day long and it's only Monday
Mr. Mom

Before I fall in bed tonight
If the dog didn't eat the classifieds
I'm gonna look just one more time

'Cause
Pampers melt in a Maytag dryer
Crayons go up one drawer higher
Rewind Barney for the eighteenth time
Breakfast six, naps at nine
There's bubble gum in the baby's hair
Sweet potatoes in my lazy chair
Been crazy all day long
Oh been crazy all day long and it's only Monday
Mr. Mom

Balancin' checkbooks, juggling bills
Thought there was nothing to it
Baby, now I know how you feel
What I don't know is how you do it

Lonestar, "Mr. Mom" (Note: The song plays when the link opens.)

The Fatherhood Chronicles XLVII

Sofie Sings

Sofie has been singing for some weeks now. I think it was a couple of months ago, she was sitting in her high chair as I was getting her breakfast ready, and just siiiiinging away. There's nothing more beautiful than listening to your infant daughter sing her first songs.

She gets this, I'm fairly certain from two main sources: her parents and her church. Several months ago, Anna began humming to Sofie when trying to get her down for her naps during the day. It calmed her, and soon Sofie sort of made some efforts to hum, too. Anna still hums, and Sofie still joins in when she does.

I started singing to Sofie at bedtime many months ago, as well, but was not very consistent with it. I mainly used it when Sofie was unusually fussy. More recently, I began to make it a consistent and essential part of bedtime.

And since the only church Sofie has ever known is her Orthodox parish, and since every liturgy is chanted, she's frequently surrounded by singing.

So, this past Saturday night, Anna and I were awakened about 3:00 a.m. (okay, that makes it Sunday morning, but anywho . . .) by Sofie fussing. As we always do, we waited to see if she would go back to sleep, or whether she would wake herself up. She normally goes on back to sleep. But this weekend was different. Sofie would start fussing, but before she quieted down again, she would pass over into singing. It was very obvious that though she started fussing, she was singing herself back to sleep. She did this a handful of times over the space of about ten minutes. Anna and I lay in bed listening to the monitor and just grinning and chuckling. I can't tell you how cute that was.

Then this morning for the first time that I can remember since Sofie was born, she woke up without crying. She fussed once or twice at four a.m. and again at five a.m., then once more just before six. But as I was moving about the apartment getting ready for the day, I paused. Yep. I distinctly heard singing from behind the closed door of the nursery. When I went into the nursery, there was Sofie sitting up in her crib jibber jabbering to her stuffed animals and singing.

As her father, I am just about ready to bust with joy. (And yes, that's a bit of moisture hanging out in the corner of my eye.) What a blessed, blessed gift from God.

The Fatherhood Chronicles XLVI

Sofie and the Daddy-Shower-Time Follies

Sometimes Sofie's independence can be, well, inconvenient.

First, I get up with Sofie so Anna can sleep till about the time I leave for work (sometimes as much as another two and a half hours). But I also need to take a shower in the morning. So today I turn on the shower a little before I'm ready so that by the time I'm ready, the water will be warm. (We live on the third floor, so the warm water has something like a mile to travel before it gets to us.) While I'm getting ready today, Sofie opens the drawers containing her play toys and washcloths. She likes bathtime, so any time water is running in the tub, she wants to get her playtoys in the tub and ready. This morning, she throws in a yellow bag to see it get wet. Then she decides she wants to get the bag. She leans way over the edge of the tub, then tumbles in. A too-surprised-to-cry Sofie looks up at me, getting drenched. I chuckle and pick her up. We change her pajamas so she's dry.

I'm about to climb in the shower, when I hear something hit the floor in the nursery and Sofie starts crying. I head back to the nursery. Sofie has grabbed her "Baby's First Bible," a board book we read at bedtime. It has a plastic latch which keeps it closed. She couldn't get it open and tripped and fell with the book in her hands. No harm done, and the tears were mostly from frustration. I open the latch, leave the book in her hands, and head back to the bathroom to jump in the shower.

By the way, we don't have a shower door, we have a shower curtain. This will will be important when I describe the next phase of the Daddy-Shower-Time Follies.

So, Sofie, as I expected, wanders into the bathroom while I'm in the shower. I can see her through the curtain, so I talk to her and encourage her to read her book. She does. So far, so good. I lather up the shampoo and the soap.

You shouldn't try to open your eyes after having scrubbed your face with Irish Spring.

I hear Sofie approach the shower and I open my eyes to see what she's doing.

"No, Sofie! Don't put the book in the tub! No!" Then: "Ow!"

The water from the showerhead has expertly placed the maximum amount of soap in my eyes to achieve the precise amount of stinging blindness.

"Arrrgh! Sofie! No! No book in tub!"

I blink through the tears and soap. Sofie is pushing back the shower curtain with baby Bible in hand. "No, Sofie!"

I blindly reach forward, eyes stinging, and grab Sofie's arm. "Sit down, sweetie! And read your book." I gently push her to a sitting position and open the book in her lap. She dutifully complies.

I have just bought myself a few minutes. I rinse off and finish. Breathing a sigh of relief, I turn off the water.

Next time I'll put the gate in front of the bathroom door. Sofie might fuss at not being able to get in. But who knows how many books will be saved.

The Fatherhood Chronicles XLV

Sofie has begun to be a bit more independent. Right now, this is a good thing.

A couple of examples. On Tuesday, Sofie took a long mid-day nap. Once she woke up, she spent most of the aternoon sitting on the futon next to Anna flipping through one of Anna's magazines and her own board books. They sat there together for most of the rest of the afternoon. Anna got up and did some odds and ends from time to time. Sofie stayed on the futon "reading." This would normally be considered unusual. In the recent past, when Anna's out of sight, Sofie is anxious--if she even let's Anna get out of sight.

This morning, Sofie got up at her normal time (five-o-dark-hundred). I knew she would be up till I left for work. I had hoped to pray the morning office, but was sure Sofie would demand my focused attention. Then I remembered Anna's recounting of Tuesday afternoon. So I thought I would try an experiment.

I sat Sofie on the futon with the "book of the morning"--the one she was attentive to today. I then lit the vigil lamp and invoked the Trinity. I crossed myself with the blessing cross and venerated it. Then it occurred to me: I need to include Sofie. So I walked over to the futon, signed her with the blessing cross and offered it to her to kiss, which she did. I then continued with the rest of my prayers.

Sofie didn't stay on the futon, but she did stay occupied, moving here and there playing with this and that. A couple of times she came up to me, wanting me to pick her up. While I continued to pray, I stroked her hair and signed the cross on her forehead. That seemed to satisfy her and she continued to play. Sofie played noisily, I don't hesitate to say. And with the need to keep half-an-eye on her to make sure she wasn't going to climb on or grab something that would result in her being hurt, I also don't hesitate to say that it wasn't an instance of the most focused attention I've ever given to my prayers. But maybe other parents out there will sympathize with me when I say that since Sofie was born, I don't often have the luxury of the sort of focused attention in worship that I once did.

Our prayers wound down. Sofie would sing in her own way when I sang the Gloria or other refrains and hymns. When it was over, I venerated our diptych of the Theotokos and the Pantokrator. I brought them over to Sofie where she was playing, and she kissed them, too.

Yes, this sort of independence is good. Call me in a decade and the sort of independence that will be on its way may not feel quite so good.

Thank God for everything.

The Fatherhood Chronicles XLIV

I going to have to break this speech out soon:

I understand that you little guys start out with your woobies and you think they're great... and they are, they are terrific. But pretty soon, a woobie isn't enough. You're out on the street trying to score an electric blanket, or maybe a quilt. And the next thing you know, you're strung out on bedspreads Ken. That's serious.

Micheal Keaton in Mr. Mom (1983)

Yes, Sofie has a "woobie." Well, that's not what we call it. But she has developed an attachment to a blanket. It's a thin little blanket Anna's aunt, Verna, had made for her older daughter, Anna's cousin. It got passed down to the younger daughter, then found its way to Anna, when she was a baby. Anna's mom kept it. And now, Anna's blanket is Sofie's.

So many things go better with Sofie's blanket. Oh, say, bedtime, for instance. No blanket? Restless Sofie (even with bippy). Blanket? Sofie's out in minutes. Need to take Sofie away from Anna after nursing in the morning to play? If the blanket's in hand, nary a whimper. (In fact, this morning, Sofie held on to the blanket the whole time she was up--only a short forty-five minutes before she went back to bed.)

Sofie's already got a certain technique for holding the blanket. One corner bunched up in her left fist (though she does most things right-handed now), if she's sitting on a lap or sleeping. If she's on the floor, it's one corner in one hand, the corner on the opposite diagonal in the other, wrapped around her shoulders like a shawl. (How she figures these things out, I have no idea.)

This blanket attachment is a new and very sudden thing. One night Anna lay it over Sofie when she put her to bed. Next thing you know, Sofie's hooked on woobie. I try to tell myself, it's only a recreational thing. She's not dealing or anything. But I know better. Nine times out of ten, woobie is only a gateway: the bigger stuff is on its way.

Maybe they'll give her some colorful key chains in woobie rehab.

The Fatherhood Chronicles XLIII

Kissing is such a wonderful thing. (Thank you, Captian Obvious.) I thoroughly enjoy kissing my wife. I love kissing my daughter. And in the last four years since I discovered Orthodoxy, I have found kissing icons, crosses and the Gospel (among other holy things) to be a worthy and natural way to worship God.

I was always a bit circumspect to venerate the icons at home whenever Anna was able to observe me saying my prayers. God certainly knew that I worshipped him through the honor I gave his saints. Anna may well have been pretty weirded out by it. But then she started going to worship with me. I couldn't not venerate the icons at Liturgy. So I did. And I guess she just got used to it. (She did ask me about it once. I assume my answer satisfied her.)

Well, in the last few weeks, Sofie has learned to kiss (including blowing kisses, which I always find joyous!). I just took it as natural that we should teach Sofie to kiss the icons. So, while we were waiting in line during Communion to receive Father's blessing, Sofie and I were near the icons. I bent down and kissed the icon of Christ. I looked at Sofie and said, "Kiss?" I then held her so that she could kiss the icon. She was a bit hesitant, not knowing for sure what she was to do. I kissed the icon again, and said, again, "Kiss?" She placed her hands on either side of Christ's face, and lowered herself to kiss the icon with a resounding smack.

Now, I didn't really discuss this with Anna. It's just something we do at Church. So it was neat this past Sunday to see Anna taking Sofie up to the icons, to bend down and kiss them herself, and say to Sofie, "Kiss?" Upon which, Sofie being now practiced, our little girl did.

Yep. This is how we learn the Faith.

God make us worthy parents. May Sofie soon come to the laver of regeneration.

The Fatherhood Chronicles XLII

When I got home Tuesday night from teaching class, Anna and Sofie were soon pulling up in the car from their day-long adventures up north and then over west to the burbs to see my cousin and her new baby, who were in the area for a visit. It had been a long day, for me, for them. I was hot and sweaty from the humidity we've had. (Though nothing compared to when we were in Baton Rouge.) I haven't been getting a lot of important things done, being at work all day, then at class in the evening. I've been short on sleep and sick these past two weekends. I'm a wimp. I was feeling pretty sorry for myself.

But when I finished bringing the stuff up from the car, Anna and Sofie were sitting in the chair in the front room. And when I said "Howdy" to my little girl, her bright blue eyes lit up, a smile went across her whole body (because when babies smile, they use their whole bodies), and she giggled. She pointed at me in her quirky, thumb-and-forefinger, hand-at-the-tilt way she has. She startled telling me about her day in the babble-tongue that is her language. She paused, waiting for me to answer. I said, "Is that right?" And she babbled some more.

Yep. This is the good stuff.

The Fatherhood Chronicles XLI

Anna was there for Sofie's first step. Appropriately enough, it was at the Skokie Public Library, where Anna used to work before her new career as a mom, during the baby storytime. Since then Sofie has taken one or two more steps, the most recent being Wednesday afternoon while at the beach.

As Anna recounted to me Sofie's first steps, I have to confess, I got a bit teary-eyed. I had so wanted to be there for her first step. But just like the first time Sofie rolled over on her own, I missed her first step because I was at work. I was, am, so very disappointed. I missed a very big event.

But Sofie must have heard me in her sleep while Anna told me about the steps on the beach and I voiced my sadness at missing them, because yesterday my daughter gave me a great gift.

I had rushed home to collect my books for my evening class--and, truthfully, to see Anna and Sofie at least for a few minutes during my long day. They were playing out in the yard behind our apartment. (Yes, I know. A yard. In Chicago. Behind an apartment.)

Anna tried to get Sofie to stand up and take a step for me. And after a few unsuccessful tries . . . it finally happened! My daughter took a step for me. I was thrilled. It was amazing. Can you believe it? My daughter is really starting to walk!

But that was not the end of it. Anna and Sofie tried again. And would you believe it? Sofie followed her step . . . with another one! Two in a row.

I still am trying to get my mind around this! My daughter is going to walk. I had dreams last night of Sofie walking. Wonderful! Amazing! Extraordinary!

Also, Sofie is learning to feed herself. For some time she has used her chubby (and grubby) little hands to shove crackers, pretzels, fruit, and so on, into her mouth. But lately, feeding her has become a battle. We couldn't figure out why--till we put a spoon in her hand. Case in point: this morning's breakfast. Sofie fought me from the first bite. She didn't want to have anything to do with my feeding her. We had oatmeal everywhere. Then I gave her her special spoon. She dug into the bowl, got (by chance) some oatmeal on her spoon, and got it to her mouth. I shoveled in between her attempts, and we had a very nice, and full, breakfast. If a bit messy.

And in light of such momentous events, I've culled the rest of the blog entries here on the main page to get rid of the fluff (which is what politics is) and keep the things that really matter.

The Fatherhood Chronicles XL

Sofie's First Major Injury

Since yesterday's brief "teaser" we've spoken to legal counsel. And I find myself much more somber (we thought we were over the worst), though equally as concerned, about Sofie's current health, at least until more tests are run.

Monday evening, we were at a hotel near the conference center where we were attending the American Library Association's annual meeting. The hotel has a tradition in which, in the morning, they lead a small handful of ducks down from their habitat somewhere in the hotel to the central fountain in the guest lobby near the entrance, and in the evening they lead them back. A voice-over announcement--of the quality of a major sporting event--directs one's attention to the fountain, to one side of which has been placed some red-carpeted stairs, themselves placed in front of a red carpet leading to the hotel elevator. A red-jacketed attendent helps ensure the ducks get from the pool to the elevator (or the reverse in the morning). And everyone takes pictures.

I should say that on Monday evening, that's what we had come to see. As it turns out, we missed the entire production.

Just before the ritual was to begin, we took some seats around a glass-top table near the fountain, which had just been vacated by some other patrons. Sofie played at Anna's feet, to one side of the table, a colleague of Anna's took one of the other chairs, and I took the third.

After a few minutes, a waitress came to clear the glasses and napkins of the previous guests. As she did so a heavy-bottomed glass either slipped from her hand or tumbled off her tray (I didn't see, I was watching Sofie at Anna's feet), and landed in the middle of the glass table top. The table top shattered and a thick, heavy shard of it struck Sofie in the forehead, making two cuts just along and below her hairline. (That it missed her eyes, is a minor miracle. And with the weight of the glass, she is also fortunate a piece of it did not sever a finger or toe.)

Sofie was startled silent for a moment, then began screaming and crying. Anna immediately picked her up and got her away from the broken glass. Sofie's cuts were bleeding profusely. As we took Sofie away from the broken glass, Anna ordered someone to call an ambulance.

After a few minutes the fire department EMTs came, followed a few minutes after that by the ambulance. While we waited one person whom I assumed to be part of hotel security spoke to me, but only to get our names and the hotel and room number to where we were staying and a brief description of what had happened.

Shortly after that, we got to the hospital, where, thankfully, we didn't have long to wait for Sofie's care to begin. Part of her care included seven stitches on her forehead.

After a couple of hours at the hospital, I called the hotel to call us transportation back to the hotel--where our personal belongings had been stored--but since we didn't have the car seat with us, we had to have a taxi with a car seat. Well, after three calls to the hotel, more than an hour of waiting, and no taxi immediately forthcoming, we hiked to a nearby busstop to see if we could find out how to get back to the hotel. Eventually we flagged down a sheriff's deputy who helped us out. We got our stuff, and headed to the trolley to go back to our hotel room, which was a few miles from the hotel where Sofie had had her accident.

At eleven, we finally got in and headed to bed.

Sofie continues under medical care (she has an appointment shortly). We would appreciate your prayers for her (and for us, for wisdom and discernment). The more we learn, the more we understand the potential dangers there are for her health.

The Fatherhood Chronicles XXXIX

If it's true that when it comes to prayer, there are no coincidences, then last night was very much an answer to prayer.

We experienced the first night in which neither Anna nor myself went to check on Sofie. We can't say for sure that Sofie slept through the night--though it seems like she did--but she never once woke enough to spend more than just a few moments crying.

When Sofie was first born, the adjustment to daytime wakefulness and nighttime sleeping was, for us firsttime parents, a brutal experience. I didn't know you could be so sleep-deprived and not lose your mind. But once Sofie's sleep rhythms resembled less a vampiric one and more a human one, the nighttime wakings and feedings were almost as regular as clockwork.

Then came the Christmas holidays. And while she stayed on her sleep cycle for most of our two weeks with family, by the time we returned home, things had begun to get out of sync. We were home five days, and then we went to San Diego for about a week. Then once we got home from San Diego, the very next day Anna and Sofie flew home to see Anna's brother, Delane. Then it was three weeks all day at the babysitter's, and so it went.

Needless to say, by February, Sofie had lost pretty much all semblance of a regular sleep pattern. Gone the eleven-one-three-thirty-five wakings, with naps at seven-thirty, ten, and one. When Sofie went to sleep, other than the six-thirty to eight-thirty window in the evening, was anybody's guess.

So we were getting pretty desparate. Neither of us could stomach the "let her cry it out" method, so Anna read up on a lot of stuff on childhood sleep. That of course, made us feel more guilty. Sofie was overtired, which only exacerbated the problem and slowed down cognitive development.

And with all the reading came umpteen methods of teaching Sofie to fall asleep. Everything from the Ferber (sp?) method to the "let her cry it out" method. And we tried all of them. None of them seemed to work. So we sort of morphed the "let her cry it out" method into the "let her cry it out whenever you can stand it and it doesn't feel like someone is pushing a large sword through your heart and the rest of the time do what your instincts tell you" method.

With that last method, we finally began to see some regular patterns, and some progress. We've gotten almost completely away from all nighttime feedings, and Sofie is only waking about twice during the night. Sometime around one, and then again somewhere in the window of three-thirty to five-thirty. And her naps were much more regular. A morning nap sometime about an hour and a half to two hours after she wakes. A mid-day nap. And a nap near three in the afternoon.

So we come to last night.

Sofie was on a tear. She hadn't slept very well the previous night, and her daytime naps were almost non-existent. Her last semblance of a nap had been at two. When we tried to feed her supper at her normal time, she fought me every step of the way. Temper tantrums came in steady outbursts. So we threw in the towel. Foregone was the nighttime bath, the rubdown with lotion, the story, even the Lord's Prayer. It was: change the diaper, get a onesie on her, and put her down.

But while I was changing her diaper, I said to Anna, "Honey, bring me the holy water from the icon shelf. I'm going to anoint Sofie with it." Anna did so, and I poured a bit on Sofie's head. My prayers were something of a combination of ad hoc liturgy and extemporaneous arrow prayers. "By Thy baptism in the Jordan, O Lord, Thou didst sanctify the waters of the earth. I anoint Sofie with this water, for her wholeness of body and soul. Grant her peaceful rest this night, and heal her of her infirmities." And: "O Lord, I commend to You the body and soul of Sofie, do Thou bless her, have mercy on her and grant her life eternal." With: "Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for my daughter Sofie so that she will get the rest and sleep she needs this night." I then lay Sofie on her back (on the changing table where I had been changing her) so I could close the bottle of holy water. I signed the cross on her forehead and prayed, "The Lord bless you and keep you, make His face shine upon you and grant you peace."

Okay, so a liturgist I'm not, and my memory of the Church's prayers is a bit sketchy at best. But if the key to effective prayer is a cry from the heart, then I had a ringful of them. We really needed Sofie to sleep!

Well, Anna nursed her and put her down. And she cried for half-an-hour. It was heart-wrenching, of course, as it always is. Just when you think you've begun to get a bit hardened to the cries and the hiccoughing, your little daughter starts to babble. And add words like "Babaa bo yie ma dee" to some crying, or to hear sobbing that comes out "Yie ya yee ya ya"--well, that's the red-hot sword through the heart bit. I tear up even now recalling that.

But after a half hour Sofie went to sleep. I was awake till midnight, and heard her cry twice, but neither time for more than a few seconds.

Anna went to bed early, about seven-thirty. She was one exhausted momma! But as you can guess, since Anna didn't hear anything from the nursery, she was awake just about every hour on the hour, listening. And then, at five-thirty, when she hadn't heard Sofie wake at her normal time, she went back to check on her . . . and woke her up.

But as I type this, Sofie has been cheerfully babbling and playing. She's clearly rested.

And we are grateful to God and the Theotokos for answers to prayers.

The Fatherhood Chronicles XXXVIII

It occurred to me this week that our daughter Sofie has only been to one parish in all her life (she did go to my step-grandfather's funeral at his Southern Baptist Church, but that wasn't a typical Baptist worship service). The only church she has known is the Orthodox Church (specifically All Saints in Chicago). She is being raised in a faith that has remained stable and unchanged for 2000 years.

Each week the saints depicted in the icons ringing her in from all four walls look down on her as she worships by crawling, standing, clapping, fussing, nursing, and sleeping. Each week she opens her arms wide as Fr. Patrick censes her--as though she readily accepts the prayers of the Church that rise as incense. Each week she is twice blessed: once when the chalice is placed over her head and Father asks that the Lord remember her in His Kingdom, always, now and ever, and unto ages of ages; and again during the Holy Communion when the Church pronounces that the handmaiden of God, Sofie, receives the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Each week she is greeted by the parishioners with the peace of Christ. Each week she hears--though she doesn't yet understand--the 2000-year-old faith summarized and confessed in the Nicene Creed. Each week she sits and stands and crawls in a place where heaven and earth meet, and sleeps with all the hosts of heaven watching over her.

She is nine months old. This is all she knows.

Her father is not so lucky. His life has been the accumulation and discarding of various contradictions, fads, and gnostic secrets that serve only to make the faith that was delivered to the saints once for all a thing of confusion and murkiness. He lacks the simplicity of heart to take it all in whole, arms wide open, in ready acceptance. For him it is the constant wrestling of thought and feeling and desire, the struggle to quell all that which rises up in opposition to God. It is a task made all the more difficult for his sojourn in several church bodies, and amidst a Christian world torn by heresies and schisms.

I envy my daughter her faith. But I am more grateful than I can express that God has seen fit to allow me the time for repentance, and the grace to know the Truth and His Church. Mine is an imperfect example, a headship much too unworthy of emulation. But for all that it is an effort at faithful discipleship, God being my helper.

May Sofie's path be direct and sure. May she soon be brought to the laver of regeneration, and our whole household be saved on that Day.

The Fatherhood Chronicles XXXVII

This week, I found myself grabbing up my laughing daughter, Sofie, in a joyful embrace, and saying to her, "Aww, I love you so much, I could just eat you up!" For good measure, I gave her some whisker-scratchy daddy kisses.

It occurred to me on break at work today that this is a wholly Christian thing to say.

I long deeply for the day when I will be able to approach the Chalice and say those very words to God. And to be rent and remade.

The Fatherhood Chronicles XXXVI

We live each of these days under the shadow of mortality. This is a damnable thing, a thing to be hated.

Yesterday, after work, I walked to the bookstore and there met my wife and daughter. Sofie, in Anna's arms, saw me as I came up to them. She smiled and raised her arms in greeting. And she laughed. My breath almost stopped for joy at this precious gift: a daughter's gleeful anticipation of her father's embrace.

This morning, I awoke and as I always do, took Sofie in my arms, wishing her good morning, and announcing to her God's love. Our time together this morning was cut short as I had an early meeting at the APA downtown to get to. Anna lay next to her in the bed, and Sofie kept pulling herself up to a standing position. She would then let go, balancing on her own two feet for an eternity of seconds. Then down she would go, plopping--as only young eight month old daughters can plop--bouncily on her diapered bottom. Her infant giggles were infectious and I could not help but burst out laughing. I grabbed her up in my arms. After some hugs and kisses, I made to put her down. She clung to me, refusing to break the embrace. I said, "I have waited eight months for this"--this daughter who knows her papa, and in her own way cherishes his affection.

My joy was so intense as to be painful. I kissed her almost weeping, and kissed her mother, too. Telling Anna I loved her, I signed the cross on Sofie's forehead. As I was stepping through the front door, I tossed back over my shoulder, "Bye-bye, beautiful Healy women."

My father's heart was created for this, this child's faith. This is a sign for us. A sign of the garden. A foretaste of the final consummation. It is God's "This is my beloved Son" given us by adoption. It is the fellowship of the cool of the day, the fellowship before the question, "Where art thou?"

But this joy is pierced by a sword. I do not have the mother's heart in which these things are pondered. Rather, mine is the fitful sleep, the dreaming vision. I must be told, the reality made clear for me. And these are the words: it is given unto men once to die and after that to face the judgment.

For there is another garden this signifies. Here in the cool of the night fall drops of blood. Here there is the "Nevertheless" and the bitter cup. This joy, this daughter's laugh, and my father's heart will one day be stilled. Over us will the earth be piled, until we, too, become once again earth. My daughter, my wife, I, myself, have only these numbered days, these finite hours in which to live and to love. All around us the forces of the enemy stand arrayed, seeking our destruction. It is for us to defy them, to claim our inheritance, and to fling this morning laughter, these kisses and hugs, and most of all the purity of our love sanctified by the cross, back in their faces.

It is this mortality which infects this father's joy with pain, laces the laughter with tears. It is this mortality I curse as these father-daughter moments seem so difficult to cultivate, these moments which seem to require being stolen from other obligations. But it is this joy, this laughing communion which is also my salvation. God has given me Anna, and that crucifixion of myself brought me to a certain redemption. God, Anna and the Theotokos have given me Sofie, and this second crucifixion has deepened that other redemption.

These things with which I have been filled overflow me. They are difficult to articulate. They are a Lenten joyful sorrow. They presage the final Pascha. I laugh. I weep. And I hope.

The Fatherhood Chronicles XXXV

I had not intended to do any blogging till after 5pm today (when my grades are due), but Sofie didn't synchronize her sleep schedule with my grading today. She's up. I really can't focus on grading. She's in her bouncy saucer next to me at the computer, and seems content for a few minutes. So here goes.

There have been a couple of occasions over the last month which have really highlighted something for me. My language is more G-rated. And I'm not as funny as I used to be. And it's all Sofie's fault.

When I was graduating from Bible college, I had gone through a couple of years questioning some of the major tenets and social mores of my conservative evangelical upbringing. I had discovered and developed an appreciation for great classical human achievements in the arts and music and philosophy and literature (this was a good thing). I had also come to realize that consuming wine and other alcoholic beverages was not the ultimate sin--though one must of course not be drunk on wine but filled with the Holy Spirit. Though smoking is not to be encouraged, I also developed an appreciation for smoking a pipe--though it takes me about a year and a half to work through two ounces of tobacco. Neither of these things are bad in themselves, though potentially destructive. Then there was the "liberalization" of my tongue. I came to a rather casuistrical understanding that swearing, far from being a huge sin, was, gosh, a rhetorical tool.

Then Sofie came. Arts, music, literature and philosophy: still good things. Wine, beer, Scotch: adiaphora. Smoking a pipe: caution is to be observed. Swearing: CLEAN UP YOUR ACT, BUSTER!!

I could see Sofie appreciating arts, music, literature, and philosophy. I could see her enjoying and responsibly using wine. Smoking? Um, rethinking that one. Swearing: Yeah, right. I want to see my daughter rip off "Shut the f*** up you g****** m******F*****!!" (Shudders. Wipes brow.) No. She'll hear it soon enough from the world. She needs to know it's not appropriate. She can only learn that it is inappropriate from me (and her momma).

I'm also not finding the humor in things I once did. Take for example the religion articles in The Onion. I have on a couple of occasions started to post a couple of stories at which I chuckled. Then I thought better of it. What is Sofie going to think when at church we worship Christ the Harrower of Hell (depicted in our wall-sized icon in the sanctuary), but at home Daddy laughs his head off at: "Christ Converts to Islam"?

Don't get me wrong. I understand there's a place for satire. And if one can't mock one's own failures and hypocrisies (which satire attacks), then one has a real problem.

But Sofie is too young to know the difference. And won't know the difference for some time.

No, I'm raising a daughter now. I am at this very moment teaching her the Faith . . . or disavowing it through my words and behavior. She needs to know that a mouth that praises God cannot speak in ways that dishonor God. She needs to know that God gave us humor, but not everything is to be laughed at.

Did I say it was Sofie's fault? No. It's not her fault. Rather, I have been given the grace to see myself through her eyes. I didn't like what I saw. Time to change.

The Fatherhood Chronicles XXXIV

We interrupt this blogging silence to bring you our little Easter girl (her seven month pics).

(Come on. You didn't expect me to sit on these till after Pascha, did you?)

The Fatherhood Chronicles XXXIII

I submit evidence of our trip to San Diego at the beginning of January. Here are pictures of the Healy family on the shores of the Pacific Ocean (the first is back of the Hotel Del Coronado, and the second is on the beach near the hotel).

Here's my two lovely women on the beach near the Hotel Del Coronado.

Here's Daddy and Sofie on the whale watching boat. (Note the father-daughter baja's.)

And here's sleeping Sofie, ex officio member of the 2004 Newbery Medal Award Committee, surrounded by the Newbery Medal Award book (Kate DiCamillo's The Tale of Desperaux [center]) and the two honor books (Jim Murphy's The American Plague [left] and Kevin Henkes' Olive's Ocean [right]).

The Fatherhood Chronicles XXXII

Here's one of my valentine girls:

The Fatherhood Chronicles XXXI

Two sorts of things I never dreamed I would one day actually say.

1. "You know, a breastfed baby's poopy diaper smells amazingly a lot like hot buttered popcorn."

2. [A made-up ditty sung in an approximate falsetto, to my daughter Sofie, dressed in her Peter Rabbit sleeper with bunny faces and ears on the feet, at about 5:00 a.m.] "Are you a fluffy bunny?/Are you a fluffy bunny?/Are you a fluffy bunny?/Sofie honey/The bunny girl!"

The Fatherhood Chronicles XXX

My daughter has been fighting a cold now for just more than a week. Whereas we thought she was getting better, today, she clearly felt worse. She didn't just fuss, which she does when she's tired or hungry, she cried. She also was very upset whenever she was separated from Anna. Just now I held her for a bit, but though I was mere inches from Anna, she began to express some disquiet and reached for her mom.

She may be getting some more teeth in. When Anna applied the teething gel and gave her some Tylenol, she instantly acted better, as though that had done the trick. But she isn't sleeping very well, nonetheless, and still has that (to her father) disquieting rattle in her chest.

The poor dear. She's not running a fever. She just plain doesn't feel good, and very little that momma and daddy can do is making her feel like her old self again.

I never knew how true it was that a sick and suffering child, especially one's own, is a reality that can undo the manliest of men. But I'm getting a better idea than I want.

Holy Theotokos, intercede with Christ our God for our daughter, Sofie.

The Fatherhood Chronicles XXIX

Well, it's happened. Sofie has gotten her first illness. It's at least a cold, but we're going in to the doctor this morning to make sure that's all it is.

I'm heartbroken.

Seriously. Monday night, Sofie woke herself up with a dry, raspy cough. She cried because she didn't feel good. She coughed because she was crying (and congested). And so it went. What was worse was that her crying wasn't her normal, full-bodied, both-lungs-to-capacity crying. It was more a whimper. (I'm tearing up again as I write this.) As a dad I felt just one-hundred-percent useless and helpless.

My little girl was suffering, and I couldn't help her.

I did the only thing I could think of. Grabbing her up out of her co-sleeper, I carried her to our icon corner (newly-ignited vigil lamp still burning quietly), and prayed to the Holy Trinity. I also asked the intercessions of the Theotokos and my patron saints: "Heal my little girl." Then I dipped my finger in the oil from the vigil lamp and signed the cross on her forehead.

We called the pediatrician on-call--which calmed me down somewhat--and were "reassured" that there was pretty much nothing we could do. Run the humidifier. Watch that her symptoms didn't get worse. And bear her suffering with her.

Actually, he didn't say that last part. But if I read my job responsibilities from Ephesians 5:21ff correctly, that is what I am to do.

Sofie, for her part, continues to amaze us with her sweetness. Bad as she feels, she always has a smile for mommy and daddy. She plays like she normally does. No extra fussiness to speak of. Thankfully, her nap-times are longer and deeper. God is taking care of her. Her angel watches over her.

To think, this is only her first illness, and, apparently, little more than the common cold. This dad has some toughening up to undergo, that's for sure. In the meantime, pass me another hanky.

Stepping Out in Faith; or, Life Gets Scary

Today, my wife, Anna, gave her two weeks' notice at the public library where she works as a children's librarian. On 7 February she will change from being at work forty or more hours a week, to being at home full-time to care for our daughter.

It went well, though her boss sent out a terse, one-sentence announcement to the library staff. No, "We wish Anna well." No, "We'll miss Anna." Just, "Anna has given her notice that her last day at SPL will be Saturday, February 7th." That was a bit disappointing, but, sadly, not surprising. Her boss has been absolutely inflexible with Anna's schedule; so, in effect, Anna's resignation is her boss' own doing.

Well, sort of. Anna and I both committed to one another when we were still dating that when we got married and had children, if Anna wanted to stay home and care for the little ones, we'd find a way to make it work. Our convictions have only grown in the ensuing decade of our marriage, as we've seen the ravages of our mobile, sex-with-no-consequences, abortion-on-demand, easy-divorce society on these the most defenseless members of our community, the innocent children. We wanted a better world for our own children. A world in which the faith is taught and lived each day. A world in which each day more time was spent with their parents than was spent with the "daycare specialist," the television, or the computer. A world in which children are not sexualized, objectified and turned in to tramps and pimps. A world in which each day their joyous voices could loudly and confidently proclaim:

This is my Father's world,
and to my listening ears
all nature sings, and round me rings
the music of the spheres.
This is my Father's world:
I rest me in the thought
of rocks and trees, of skies and seas;
his hand the wonders wrought.

This is my Father's world,
the birds their carols raise,
the morning light, the lily white,
declare their maker's praise.
This is my Father's world:
he shines in all that's fair;
in the rustling grass I hear him pass;
he speaks to me everywhere.

This is my Father's world.
O let me ne'er forget
that though the wrong seems oft so strong,
God is the ruler yet.
This is my Father's world:
why should my heart be sad?
The Lord is King; let the heavens ring!
God reigns; let the earth be glad!

It will be more challenging than we now know. But we are convinced that it will be more than worth it.

The Fatherhood Chronicles XXVIII

Is this not the essence of incarnate Christmas joy?! Our little girl, Sofie, at four months, for her holiday photos.

What's in your stocking?

Elegance and class at such a young age! (Sigh.)

The Fatherhood Chronicles XXVII

A note of warning before I begin: If you are a feminist who happens to be of the persuasion that not only are men and women equal but interchangeable, then this post will most definitely piss you off. If, however, you are of the more rational feminist stripe and merely assume the equality of men and women, I don't see how this entry will raise your blood pressure at all. And if you are a male (feminist or not), deep down you know that what I'm about to say is one hundred percent true. Admit it.

That being said, I'll pick up at the point this past week (Wednesday evening) when Anna and Sofie turned right around and left by big ol' jet airliner to go be with Anna's sister, Teresa, who is (still) on the verge of giving birth. (She didn't so Anna and Sofie had no choice but to return last night. Keep Teresa and the baby in your prayers.)

So here we were: We'd just gotten in from San Diego the night before. I got up and went to work and taught my two classes. I come home and Anna and Sofie are packed for Texas (via Oklahoma). I had about an hour or so with them, then it was drop them off at the airport and return home. The next four days were spent in somthing like a dysfunctional fog. I went to work. I taught my classes. I arranged the next week's child care. The rest was empty space filled by a bit of reading, some checkbook tabulation, and a lot of movie watching (X2, the three LOTR movies). Though I had picked up a severe cold by the weekend, and was so wiped out on Sunday that I missed the Divine Liturgy, nonetheless, the prospect of picking up my wife and daughter from the airport lent the day some purpose. I rolled out of bed at 8:30 (about three hours late for me), and thought "Twelve hours and the Healy women return to me."

Here's my thesis and main point: We men need women. We need them not so much for propagating the race (though this is a true and enjoyable fact). We need them because they give to our masculine lives the domesticity that is our salvation.

Don't misunderstand. I don't mean to imply that celibate monastics or laymen who just happen never to get married are somehow lesser men or incomplete. Our fulfillment is found ultimately in the Trinity in whose image we have been made.

Nor do I mean that without women, the living quarters of men would be chaotic large-scale petri dishes in which new life forms would be devised. My dad, for one, is an almost obsessive neat freak. (Me? Not so much.)

Nor do I mean that women provide the order to men's lives that they otherwise would lack. No, all-male militia have an established order and discipline that is a wonder to behold. And many type-A men are so regimented that it takes a catastrophe to upend the schedule in their Daytimer.

Rather, I am speaking about domesticity. Domesticity is about fulfillment; the two become one flesh. Domesticity is about neatness and cleanliness (though these are, you understand relative terms). And domesticity is most certainly about order. But it is also so much more than these things.

Domesticity is found, quintessentially, in Ephesians 5:21ff:

[Be filled with the Holy Spirit] submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband." (Ephesians 5:21-33 ESV)

What is important to note here, is that for us men, that is to say, for us Christian men, domesticity is a kenotic paradigm. But it is not mere sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice. Rather it is an emptying whose purpose is the sanctification of the women with whom we have been made one flesh, and in and through them, the children that God grants us. Indeed, our paradigm is little less than to be an icon of the relationship of Christ to his Church. When the watching world looks at our marriages, our parenting, do they see christological ecclesiology? Do they think, "Oh, so that's what salvation and the Church is all about?"

I am hardly a model of this paradigm. But through the absence of my little girl and my wife this weekend, it became clear to me that the fulfillment of my manhood is in giving of myself for their holiness. When they were gone, I had, in a sense, lost my vocation. Oh, don't get me wrong. There was that within that thought, "Freedom!" I had lists of books, items for writing, movies to see--and the unfettered time to indulge myself. Instead, there was space and silence. And a reminder. I need my women. Without them, salvation is so much harder to work out.

I rather suppose, mine is not an unusual experience. But the implications are quite clear: the male and female of the species are not interchangeable (you'd flunk biology 101 if you really thought so), and there's a deep design here in these differences. A design cosmic in scope and utterly particular in realization.

What Home Does to You

The trip home to see our families has had a profound impact on me, or so it seems as the days following our return to Chicago have unfolded. Perhaps it's the time of transition already underway with a new year, a new semester, Anna's soon-to-be-realized embrace of her God-given vocation. Or all of it together.

I just find myself interested in and focused on different things.

My following of the Anglican schism has effectively postponed the reality of my having left ECUSA long ago. And, frankly, has been a waste of time.

I'm not even interested in current events like I normally am. The presidential politics and upcoming primaries are something I'm usually a junkie about. Yawn. While I usually enjoy faithful Christian reflection on and critique of present-day culture, now I'm just tired of the distraction. Blah.

I could go on.

Being home these past couple of weeks got me in touch with the bedrock realities that sustain life and faith: parents, siblings, extended family, day-in/day-out earning a living, some prayer, some faithful living, new babies to keep the particular embodiment of all our lives going. I miss my family terribly. Does it really matter, my getting my PhD? Not when you compare it to holding on to my nephew, Jacob, or cuddling my niece, Reagan, or teasing my other nieces, Cassidy and Baileigh. Does it really matter that some self-proclaimed Anglican "inclusivist" expertly uses doublespeak to exclude those hated traditionalists? Not when a new mommy and daddy each and every night hold and caress their infant daughter while praying the Lord's Prayer. Not when this daughter will grow up in the Faith once for all delivered to the saints, and will know the smarmy church politico for what he is.

All my current life activities and interests could go hang, so long as there were family there to sit and sip a soda with and catch up on the gossip. So long as there were toddlers and infants exploding with new life and energy. So long as a young family could look out across windswept Kansas plains, or up at a clear Oklahoma sky, and rejoice in the God who had made these things and bridged the gap between us and him with flesh and bone and blood.

Sometimes the contemplation of these things is so sweet it leaves an ineffable disturbance in the soul, a joyful sorrow, a graceful melancholy. For the blessedness that you can taste in the slobbery kisses of your infant daughter is only a foretaste. . . just a foretaste, and not yet the full reality.

No wonder creation groans and waits. And so do I. So do I.

The Fatherhood Chronicles XXVI

I had just started into the litany of intercessions for morning prayers (along about "Be mindful, O Lord, of all civil authorities . . ."), when I heard Sofie cry out and Anna sleepily mumbled for me to come and get her. So, I headed back to the bedroom, continuing the prayers (". . . that in their tranquility we may lead calm and peaceful lives in all godliness and sanctity"), and grabbed Sofie up out of the co-sleeper, and said, "Let's go finish our morning prayers."

Holding my daughter in my arms, I continued the Church's prayers, praying for family members and friends, travellers, the captives and the needy poor, for myself, and for the dead. Between the litany of intercessions and the concluding prayers, I interject several intercessory prayers both formal and extemporaneous, and troparia and kontakia for several saints, including my patrons.

In my prayers, I call upon the Mother of God to intercede for my wife and daughter. As I invoked the intercessions of the Theotokos this morning, I held in my arms the very daughter for whom I prayed.

And that got me to thinking again about something that's been on my mind for some time. You see, this isn't a reflection on fatherhood, per se, nor a resume of my prayer practices.

Rather, I want to reflect on the vocation of motherhood.

The vocation of motherhood is tranformative. Just a few years ago, my wife had several career goals she wanted to meet: children's librarian, member of the Newbery Award committe, published author, etc. And in three short years she has met these goals. She also wanted to be a mother, and in the past three years, we have had moments of greater and lesser longing for children. But motherhood was something more distant, after we both finished school.

God had other plans. From one perspective, Sofie was unplanned. On the other hand, I'd been praying certain prayers for which Sofie was the answer. So Sofie's presence with us now had been ordained.

And that mix of half-felt longing and "accident" unleashed a new vocation. Anna is now a mother. And seeing the transformation it has made is something to behold.

I have been a front row witness to the holiness of the vocation of motherhood. Motherhood is not a sacrament, per se, nor a Eucharistic ministry. But it is not the less sacred for all that. Indeed, at this time of year, I am reminded that the most holy of women undertook this most holy of vocations; the Mother of God gave birth to our Savior and raised Him in the faith of God's people.

One of the great failures of the modern feminist movement is this severing of women from their holiest and most transformative of callings. Seeing my wife and daughter, I have to seriously ask, why would any woman so disparage this greatest of holy gifts to run around trying to be like us men? And for those who do not disparage the gift yet who still sever the woman from her vocation, my question is, how can what we men do and accomplish in this fallen world ever compare to this miracle of life-bearing?

Yes, I am well aware, at least so much as a man can be, that there is no wealth of human glory given to motherhood. And though we are newly-minted parents, I can better understand each day the toil and potential heartache of motherhood. That it is its own reward on some days must surely not seem enough.

But it seems to me that this is to fail to see the vocation of motherhood through the eyes and in the full-treasured heart of the Blessed Virgin. That Mary's motherhood is unique and not-to-be-repeated does not make it any less a touchstone for our more ordinary birthing and living and dying. Indeed, because of its uniqueness, it is all the more relevant to our daily struggles.

I am in awe of my wife and her vocation, this holiest of human ministries. I pray I may be worthy to provide her the protection and support necessary for her to accomplish her salvation through life-bearing.

The Fatherhood Chronicles XXV: The Liturgy of Bedtime

We are not unique among parents. It is my suspicion that the Liturgy of Bedtime has been enacted since first Adam and Eve laid Cain down for the night. It spans cultures, geographies and histories. More than routine, it is a ritual which binds, bonds and bears the souls of mothers and fathers and their sons and daughters.

The Liturgy of Bedtime assumes various shapes, I'm sure. In our home it's relatively short and simple. We begin with a few minutes of massage. Head to toe, we envelope Sofie in the gentle scented glistening of oil and touch. She has come to expect this. Certain markers of the night and of our actions alert her to this fact: She will be held and caressed. From the first, then, Sofie has learned in a most tangible way, something about the Mystery of Our Lord's Incarnation. In the very first movements of our Liturgy, we have asserted a Christocentric shape.

After assuring her of our love and tenderness, she's given clean, new clothes: a dry and clean diaper; a soft footed sleeper or sleep dress and socks. She fusses a bit on getting dressed. I guess all babies like being naked.

Once she's dressed, she nurses. Not only is she assured of our love and tenderness, we have promised her, as we do each time we feed her, that she will have all her needs met. This, too, is an affirmation of Christ. It is the quintessential vanquishing of the Enemy in the desert.

While she feeds, her dad reads her a story. The tales and pictures speak of cinder-eyed cats, and colorful dinosaurs. We say goodnight to the moon and the socks in the corner. We guess how much we love one another. Sofie isn't too attentive to the stories. She's feeding after all. But we envelope her with words she does not yet understand. This, too, is a promise. For in invisible, not-yet-seen ways, these words will etch themselves in the grooves in her brain. She will, one day, as if by a miracle, for no one can really say how it happens, begin to say back to us all the thousands of words we have poured forth into her hearing.

And it is here, at this point, that in our home this Liturgy of the Bedtime asserts an ever more obvious Christocentric shape. For it is through these very words with which we speak to Sofie of cinder-eyed cats, of love as big as the moon, in these words she will come to know of the Word. God made flesh. Her Savior.

For the stories end, as they always do in our home, with prayer. Since it is Advent, we have begun to pray the anticipatory prayers of the promised Messiah, the hymns of Incarnate Love. We invoke the intercessions of our co-laborers in the faith, the Theotokos and all the Saints. In our Liturgy of the Bedtime, those in attendence are not merely us three, but there with us are three angels who watch over us and guard us, and with them all the heavenly host. There is St Benedict, and St Seraphim of Platina. There, of course, is Our Lady, the Ever-Virgin Mother of God. But most of all, there is the All-Holy and Life-giving Trinity.

And we know this through faith and the tangible blessing of the water in which our Savior was baptized, the water which gives us life and is our life. This water was that in which Sofie was enveloped for nine months. It is the water which suffuses the very core of her cells. And it is the water from which she will be reborn. Christ's baptism sanctifies all the waters of the world. And this water, too, is blessed, overtly, publicly, in the Theophanic Eucharist. This water is signed like a Cross on Sofie's forehead. And all the hosts of spiritual darkness are vanquished.

The Liturgy of Bedtime has concluded. An apocalyptic battle has been fought and won. And all because a little girl must be given the peace and time to rest and grow. So that one day, she, too, will come to know the Savior who gives her life, and whose myriad minions watch over her in sleep.

Heaven in the bedroom. The Liturgy of Bedtime.

The Fatherhood Chronicles XXIV: Sofie and Mortality

Sofie's development is progressing at the speed of light, it feels like. From finding her voice on Sunday, to blowing raspberries at Daddy on Thursday, to attempts to sit up on Saturday (we call them "Sofie Crunches"), to being more aware of her toys, grasping rattles, interacting with lights and sounds, to noticing other babies. . . the list is getting longer. Just when I was getting used to one cute stage, it begins to disappear into the next.

Which got me to thinking. There's a tragedy here. Sofie is mortal. She will die.

Here's the kicker: Sofie got her mortality from her mother and I. The moment we, through the gracious work of God, gave her life, we simultaneously signed her death warrant. She is now covered, through our prayers, love and protection, with wonderful innocence. But we have written over her her doom: she will sin. Not because she must. But because we have already infected her with the taint of mortality, and her defenses against the Enemy are weakened. She will sin, though not because she must, because her mother and I are sinners, and it will be an example seen (though hopefully ever more rare as Anna and I struggle for salvation) long before she can cognize that when she sees her Daddy swear in anger, when she sees her Momma snap at another driver in impatience, calling him a fool, that these things are sins.

She will die because she inherits from us the contagion of death. She will die because one day, God forbid, she will follow the example of her parents and sin. Her punishment will have been sealed by her own act.

This is monstrous. This is not a happy thought for a new dad and his beautiful and gloriously innocent little girl. This is a hellish outrage. But it is a fact.

Still the Gospel brings to me, the Good News.

Yesterday's Gospel reading was of Jesus' raising Jairus' daughter from death. It's very clear from the text: the father's faith saved the daughter. This is the principle of the Christian home. Think of the Philippian jailer. Think of Lydia. Think of 1 Corinthians 7. But when Father preached on these words, and said, "The father's faith saved the daughter," my heart nearly leapt out of my chest. What a combined feeling of the utter weight of such responsibility and the hope at what Jesus could accomplish!

There is a way that my giving death to Sofie, by her conception and by my own miserable example, can be undone. Not through my own efforts, except by way of testimony, of witness, of martyrdom. But by the compassionate and undeserved work of Christ. The evil that I do, by his grace, may be countered by the daily, moment-by-moment labor of carrying my cross. My little girl will see me sin. But the greater testimony can be that my own struggles, the co-labors of the Saints who are our intercessors, but most of all the glorious inbreaking of God that makes all these struggles possible and efficacious--all of this can be the means for her own salvation.

Through my faith and prayers, Sofie will indeed hear the words of our Savior, "I say to you, daughter, arise." And glory of glories, she will!

The Fatherhood Chronicles XXIII: The Day After Daddy Goes It Solo with the Sofie-nator

Okay. It could have been paradise, but it wasn't hell. Maybe a wee bit o' purgatory.

Got home from my office hours on campus to Anna feeding Sofie--a serene and lovely picture. (Dads out there, am I right?) Within the half-hour Anna had left for work. There you go. Four-thirty till nine-fifteen, just Sofie and me.

The first two hours were about what I expected. Sofie started to go to sleep after her feeding, but just sort of dozed for a bit. I held her and just sort of talked to her a little. Then she got more wakeful, so we went over to the Baby Einstein^TM play mat. She had some fun grabbing the ladybug hanging down from the arch. She really grabs onto that thing and cranks it. The setup is set to play a couple of tunes everytime the arches move enough. She pretty much wore the batteries down. All the while she "talked" to her Dad. In fact, she's gone from finding her voice to giving her Dad raspberries. (Keeps one humble, that's for sure. "Hey there, sweetie!" "Glrglmn-thpbt-thpbt-thpbt!")

After she got a little restless, I held her some more. Then she got fussy, so it was pull-out-the-bottle and feed. That went well. In fact, she got even more sleepy (she'd been awake for four hours straight), so when she was suitably snoring, I laid her down.

That lasted ten minutes. From there, the next two hours were pretty tough.

She stayed fussy. I knew it was mainly from being tired. We did diaper changes. We tried the swing. We tried walking around. Nothing worked. She got fussier. Finally, she got pretty worked up. This was about eight o'clock. I didn't know what else to do. So I laid her on a pillow on the futon and said, "I'm sorry, sweetie, but you need to go to sleep. You'll just have to cry for a few minutes."

Don't know what it was, but something did the trick. She quieted down, and within five minutes was snoring soundly.

She did wake up about fifteen minutes before Anna came home, and since it had been a couple of hours, I fed her again. Ultimately, Momma coming home was what she apparently needed. We went through her bedtime routine (massage, read a story, say a prayer and anoint her with holy water, then hold her till she goes to sleep).

On the one hand, it was great to have one long uninterrupted stretch of time with just me and Sofie. I love holding my daugher and interacting with her. On the other hand, I'm not Momma. And Sofie gets that. So I can't quite comfort her the way Momma does (feeding aside). But maybe as more of these Thursday nights pile up, there will be that about Daddy that Sofie understands she needs and will welcome as well.

In any case, I'd rather have a million Thursday nights like last night than the best of, well, almost anything else.

The Fatherhood Chronicles XXII: Sofie Finds Her Voice and Daddy Goes It Solo

Sunday, All Souls Day in the Western Church, was a momentous day in the Healy household. On that day, Sofie found her voice.

Now, it's true that Sofie has emitted occasional giggles. Once, while on the way to eat at the Olive Garden, she let out a long, drawn out, um, well, something like a monotonic laugh/yell. Momma and I disintegrated in joy and laughter.

But Sunday was a whole new step. She essentially engaged in a long monologue. (She's so like her dad!) This went on long enough for Anna to call her mom, then her sister, and for me to call my mom and my dad and stepmom, all of whom got to hear Sofie soundoff live. I 'bout cried folks. I was so thrilled.

She's doing more "talking" now. We had a good conversation before I left for work this morning. And she's giggling more. Cute as all get out!

But tonight is the big test. Momma goes back to work on a more consistent basis. So Daddy goes solo with Sofie tonight. Momma will leave plenty of food. And I know how to change diapers like nobody's business. But Sofie is very much still Momma's girl. I'm pretty much a goofy-looking plaything she enjoys when she wants.

I'll give the update and analysis tomorrow.

The Fatherhood Chronicles XXI: Here's Why

If I ever need to know the answers to "Why _____?" Here they are:

And who said being a ladybug for Halloween ain't hard work?

Do I love my women or what?

The Fatherhood Chronicles XX: The Physicality of Being a Dad

I may not be an overly demonstrative guy when it comes to my "love language." Growing up we just didn't physically demonstrate our love with hugs and kisses all over the place. Add to that an introverted personality, and sex in the form of a handshake might well have been good enough if it were possible.

Okay, a bit of an exaggeration. But you get the point.

But now I'm a dad. And our little girl, Sofie, is just about the most beautiful thing I've ever known or seen.

And the one thing that has so forcefully struck me as to always bring wonderment whenever I think of it is that I have something like a physical need to hold and cuddle my daugher. I call it my "Sofie fix." If Anna brings her to meet me between work and my night classes, it's all I can do to tear myself away and go on to class.

If I am not there or am otherwise busy and don't get to help my wife bathe and dress her, to read to her while holding her in my lap, to embrace her while giving her her bottle, and the other thousand and one ways, large and small, in which touch incarnates love, then it's like there's a big, huge something missing.

To go from distance and reserve to goofy, giddy, slobbery hugs and kisses is a change. That's for sure.

But I like it.

The Fatherhood Chronicles XIX: Some Firsts

The last few weeks have been amazing for this new father.

Sofie has begun to smile. At first it was just spontaneous smiling with some cooing and proto-giggles. But then . . . she smiled back at her daddy! So in the mornings (between 6:00 and 9:00) when she is more alert and awake, her dad puts her on the changing table, and talks to her, grinning as big as he can. And that little looker just grins right back, her face scrunching up in an all-over body smile. Sometimes she'll even sort of giggle. (Sniff.)

Then, a week ago this past Saturday, daddy gave Sofie her first bottle. He has been looking forward to this since she was born. You should rightly assume that he had very high hopes and expectations how this first time would go. Wrapped like a burrito in her pink blanket, he grabbed the bottle--chock full of good stuff from momma--and took a deep breath. She took it right off. No fuss (though plenty of mess--she's a vigorous eater!). That was just dang cool enough. But then . . . she looked me dead in the eye and locked on. (Sniffles.)

Then today, Anna called my cell phone during the class I was teaching. I answered, because I thought it might be my sister, Stephanie, who is due to give birth in the next 24 hours. Instead, Anna gave me the news: Sofie, during her "tummy time" on her Baby Einstein play mat, rolled over! And not just once, but five or six times. I missed it. But I'll get to see other times.

I tell you what, folks. When this little girl laughs with me in the morning, or looks me in the eye while feeding her (somtimes giving a mischievous grin), this new daddy's heart just goes bang!

So, in celebration, I'm posting these recent studio proofs of Sofie at four weeks.

The Fatherhood Chronicles XVIII

These needed to be posted. (I'm not blogging. Really.)

Here's Anna and Sofie on a recent visit to the library. (Library. She's such a Healy.)

Same Sofie. Same lap. Same visit.

Not sure what's going on here. But, dang she's cute!

The Fatherhood Chronicles XVI

Well, thanks to, I guess, exhaustion, and a Fisher Price Aquarium Wonders automatic baby swing, Daddy and Sofie got five straight hours of sleep out in our living room this morning. I can't tell you . . .

It brought to mind, this morning, the BTO song much-adapted:

Any sleep is good sleep
So I took what I could get
Yes I took what I could get

Of course, that leaves the (adapted) lines which follow:

And she looked at me with those big blue eyes and said:
"You ain't seen nothin' yet
D-d-d-daddy you just ain't seen nothin' yet"

And I'm going to stop now, because even with the change in lyrics and meaning, this brings up disturbing father-thoughts I shouldn't have to wrestle with for another sixteen years. Heck, twenty years.

But lack of sleep is only one of those things which can waylay you out of nowhere. There are other little experiences one is never quite prepared for. Take the ubiquitous diaper change. Of course, although I now know that changing poopy diapers is job one, I wasn't prepared for a little episode a few days ago. I mean, I knew that if we had a little boy, we'd have had to have been careful of the "Fire Hydrant Surprise" during diaper changes. But, well, we'll call this "Sofie and the Projectile Pooping Adventure."

So here I am, doing my fatherly duty, I've got the old diaper off, and immediately scooted the new diaper underneath. I was using the baby wipes to healthy and cleanly effect. When with no warning--I mean, no heads swiveling on necks, no passing gas--wham! This brownish yellow stream comes forth from the nether regions of my daughter, up over the strategically placed diaper and splats all over the front of the plastic baby wipes container. I was in shock. What just happened? I clean up as best I can (new diaper under tush first, clean baby wipe dispenser exterior, lay down burp rags over mess), and dang if it wasn't like "Ol' Faithful" once again. This time I had the presence of mind to cover her up with the diaper. When it was all said and done, a record four diapers had been used (including the final clean one).

I just couldn't believe my eyes. I mean, what sort of psi was locked up in my little girl that would send out this forceful poopy stream? I mean, if I had just squeezed her a little bit I really think she could have taken out the nursery room window. Convert that all to torque and my baby would have quite literally been turbo-charged.

Anyway, when I left to teach this morning (I'm at work now), my little Princess and her momma the Queen, were sleeping. (Me, I'm the Court Jester.) And I sure felt better. (Thanks go to Robert, Tripp, and Christopher for yesterday's encouragement.)

The Fatherhood Chronicles XV

Sofie (and her parents) had a particularly difficult night last night. Take away four fingers off one hand, and the remainder on that hand will give you an idea how much sleep we got. Three a.m. and I had tried every possible thing I could to encourage Sofie to go to sleep. Finally, five came and Sofie, worn out, nursed and went to sleep.

I'm now at work. I leave here to go and teach. Then I head home to give Anna a break till I head to my evening class. Home by nine to give Anna some more break time, if I can.

Does it get better? If so, when?

And the thing of it is, Sofie had a great (relative to her first ten days) weekend. More alert during the day; more sleeping during the night. Then last night . . . wow.

I love this girl--and her momma--but boy she is wearing me out.

The Fatherhood Chronicles XIV

Sofie's first two nights home were fairly difficult for us new parents. All of us were getting used to one another. We needed to learn the difference between Sofie's "My diaper is wet and/or messy, and I HATE THAT!" cry, her "I have air in my tummy, and I HATE THAT!" cry, and her "FOOD! NOW!!" cry. All were heart-rending, but the last has a distinct urgency. The two or three nights following were a bit better. But last night was the absolute worst. Everything we had learned still worked, but Sofie slept for shorter periods. It seemed as though just as she'd been burped, changed, and laid down, she was restless and fussy again. Momma is exhausted. Daddy feels pretty useless.

It's probably a good thing, then, that my dad and stepmom are coming up today. Grandma Frances (my stepmom) is a stereotypical grandmother and just loves babies. And having been one of twelve siblings, raised five kids of her own, and regularly babysits her grandbabies, she's got some wisdom we'd like to take in.

Today is the last day of my vacation (not counting the weekend). On Monday my autumn begins with a bang: I'm taking three grad classes, teaching two undergraduate classes, and working half-time. I'm not ready. And I hate the thought of not being home all day with my wife and little girl. How do people do this?

The Fatherhood Chronicles XIII

We got some pictures developed yesterday, and I wanted to share them with everyone.

This is Sofie just as she's ready to go home from the hospital. A day and a half old.

Here's the happy Healy family ready to head home.

Father Patrick blesses Sofie and Anna.

Father Patrick blesses Sofie.

Daddy and his beautiful new daughter, less than a day old.

Momma and Sofie headed home.

I am a blessed, blessed man.

The Fatherhood Chronicles XII: Fathers, "Poopy Diapers Are Job One" and Other Recently Learned Tidbits

Anna and Sofie are sleeping just now. Whew. It's been a rough first two nights at home. Well, not rough in terms of how Sofie's doing, but rough in that we are now of the tribe of the sleep-deprived. Due to one of Anna's medications, Sofie has been pretty gassy. Poor thing. So Daddy takes her and walks all up and down the apartment trying to get that air out of that little tummy. With numerous trial and error, I have discovered she prefers me balancing her with her chest on my hand, her butt about level with my sternum, and facing out. From "Wah" to "Coo" in five seconds. Who knew?

Sofie is her momma's girl, that's for sure. Day 3 of life (and first 24 hours out of the hospital), and Anna insisted we all go up to the Carter's outlet for their summer tent sale. "Honey . . ." I began to object. But the womenfolk ganged up on me, so it was haul Graeco Metro stroller, Kelty Kids baby "backpack," and Eric Carle "Very Hungry Caterpillar" diaper bag down to car, buckle in and head to Kenosha. Surprisingly, though, Sofie did quite well. We did have to stop at Gurnee for a feeding, but Sofie slept until after we returned home. Sofie: three-day old power shopper! (Egad.)

I have also discovered, and mind you this has been borne out by expert testimony, that fathers have a job, perhaps not the only job, but certainly the primary job. We do poopy diapers. We are fathers. This is what we do.

Sofie's first poopy diaper was changed by yours truly. And a right black tarry mess it was. Who knew that much gunk could come out of such a little body? And who knew that getting said mess out of otherwise cute little baby creases was tantamount to removing barnacles from a ship? But this new father perservered, and a clean pink bottom, ready for the new diaper was the glorious result. Sofie's next few poopy diapers were even more of this "baby asphalt." I mean, I was forewarned about this, but whew! Where did she hide it all?

I have also discovered that a new personage has emerged from my inner self. Alongside the contemplative theologian, pugnacious philosopher, and all around Scotch-drinking, pipe-smoking good ol' Kansas boy, has emerged Conan the Barbarian. Well, okay, or Thundarr or someone like that. I have reverted to primitive hunting man status. Grunt. These are my women. Grunt. Hurt them at your peril. Grimace. Glower. Grunt. I have to consciously resist the urge to stand outside our front door, broadsword in hand and challenge the UPS guy who dares to invade the sanctity of our home with something called a "parcel delivery." Crom! Demon dogs!

Along with these twin discoveries is another: I am absolutely and intensely interested in every bodily function of our little girl. I discuss the color and consistency of her bowel movements. I count the number of belches and farts--yes, my daintly little girl farts (I'm sooo proud!)--forecasting and calculating as though I'm discovering the existence of a new galaxy. The relationship between divine knowing and human knowing in Aristotle is blase compared to wondering if Sofie is crying because she is: a) hungry, b) gassy, c) call the pediatrician.

I could go on. But, I'll have to end here. Sofie is stirring, and I'm sure I've got a poopy diaper to take care of. And by golly, that better not be the UPS truck stopping in front of our apartment . . . Where's my warhammer?

The Fatherhood Chronicles XI

One thing I know: I am not worthy of this little girl

Sofie was, quite literally, the answer to the prayers of the Theotokos for Anna and me. I suppose that's why when I first started praying for our baby I almost immediately began using the feminine when remembering her to the Lord. This whole pregnancy has been for me "a marvelous work and a wonder," to borrow and sanctify a well-known title. It has brought out of me thoughts, feelings and actions I would never have dreamed, yet had always knew were in some way required. Women and baby girls make of us pliable men the best of gentlemen.

What I am now about to write, I don't know I have the words for. To start at the beginning, Sofie was born with the cord around her neck. This, as I am learning, is not entirely uncommon. Unfortunately, because Sofie at the last came more quickly than Anna's doctor could arrive, we had a resident ob-gyn, who, in an effort to untangle the cord from around Sofie, inadvertently drew it tighter. Quick as thought, one of the assisting nurses shoved forward and immediately drew Sofie free. But the very brief episode was enough to shock our little girl.

Although the birth plan called for me to cut the cord, and the ob-gyn resident asked if the father (me) was to cut the cord, the quick-thinking nurse said no. The cord was cut, and they took Sofie to the warming table. This is when my nightmare began.

Sofie was not responding, and was greyish. The nurses worked with her, but as the hours-long seconds ticked by this was having no discernible effect. I could see one nurse pushing on Sofie's chest. Another nurse, grim-faced, got on the phone. She spoke so softly that I could not hear. Within moments, a doctor, who I was to learn was from the neonatal ICU, came. Four medical personnel engulfed our baby, working with life-and-death intensity.

My heart was in my throat. Though I could not know for sure what was going on, I could tell it was dark and not yet joyful. Sofie was not crying, and the nurse kept pushing on her chest. I learned shortly after, her initial alertness scores were almost as low as they could be.

I thought only one thing: We are not leaving this hospital with a dead baby.

I cannot tell you, even as now I still tear up writing this, what thousands of deaths I died. I had only one wish: If this is the way it has to be, let it be me, not her. I will bear this for her. Let it be me.

I cannot recall these moments still without deep gasping tears. I woke this morning again to these images. Again, came the tears as though it was just happening. How can it be that a tiny little girl, whom I had known for only moments, I could love as though I'd loved her for a hundred lifetimes? Who could ever be so worthy of this?

These thoughts, of course, come precisely because we know how the story went. Sofie, it turns out, is like her father, quiet and contemplative. So her initial stillness was somewhat more of who she is than the great black fears her father had in those first moments. These were indeed, mere moments, and not the eternity they felt, and soon she was scoring a perfect test for alertness, breathing, color, and just pure godly vitality. A silent vitality, but brimming full of life nonetheless.

She has now passed her first day and a half, and if I may say so, is the most beautiful girl in the world. She sneezes and I am undone. She cries, and I am turning the world inside out to ease her distress. She looks at me, with those knit brows and semi-focused dark blue eyes, and I fall down endless depths of soul, swallowed whole and consumed. I am madly, passionately in love.

I was shocked to find that, learning Anna was pregnant with Sofie, I could unearth a new depth of love for Sofie's mom such as I'd never known. I did not know that those early years of marriage, with our yearning passion, could have been replaced by a love of such depths it could not be described. And here, forty-one weeks later, I am shocked yet again to discover that this sinner's heart can not only love her mother with a new-found love, but here, added to that, entwined and ever enlarging, is yet another love. Who could know this man's heart could contain so much love?

This sinner is far too unworthy of this. Five lifetimes could never discharge such a debt. But this one I've been given is a good place to start.

The Fatherhood Chronicles X

She's a Girl!!!

Sofie Ruth Healy was born at 6:40 p.m., yesterday 14 August, the forefeast of the Dormition. She weighed 7 lbs. 12.2 oz., and was a long 20 1/2 inches. She's the most beautiful baby in the world, dadgummit!

Momma (Anna) and Sofie are doing fine.

Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised!

The Fatherhood Chronicles IX

I have not--no kiddin'--been this nervous since my last football game . . . which happened to have been the state regional championships . . . and we lost in regulation by one point.

I just wolfed down a slice of really greasy pizza. This was a very bad choice. Despite that it tasted wonderful!

Work is slow today. I continually find myself tapping my foot.

My wife sent out an email earlier today. It was a "broadcast" email to dozens of friends. But when it hit my mail box here at work, I only saw the subject line: "Baby is Coming." Here's my reply:

[Cliff resumes regular breathing. Heart is still beating 140 per min.]

Oh. My. Gosh. Honey, I saw the email heading and about fainted. Please, remember my ability to jump to wrong conclusions in sending out emails with that kind of heading!

Oh, and when I replied, it went to everyone.

And yes, I did think my wife was communicating to me via email. And yes, of course, I lost my mind.

I'm a wreck. I won't be sleeping tonight. At least I have a copy of the (abbreviated) Hours of the Church. How I'll negotiate praying the midnight office with five house guests, I don't know. Maybe a flashlight on the front porch will do the trick.

This kid must have my procrastination genes. C'mon, little one. Whacha waitin' fer?

The Fatherhood Chronicles VIII

T-Minus 48 Hours till Launch Sequence

Not ready for this. In the next forty-eight hours, or less, Anna will be in labor, and we'll be smack-dab in the start of parenthood. Houston, I repeat: not ready for this.

I mean, c'mon. There's no instruction manual. It's pretty much weather-forecasting by moistened finger held aloft. And everyone, so far, it seems, has conflicting opinions on what to do about various situations.

Some folks really make me wonder why they're parents. These are the "Bad News Hendersons." They so very much want to emphasize how little sleep we'll get, how bad sex will be afterwards (please no public responses on that!), how much more stress over money there will be. Geez! Remind me to call you folks just as I'm ready to jump!

Then there's the "Know-It-All Andersons." You're life is going to change. Yeah, I know. No, you don't know. Well, I mean I know but I don't know, you know? No, you don't know; you don't know at all. Oh, sure, I hear you: I can't know by way of experience, yet, but I think I have an idea. Nope, you have no idea; you have no clue. And so it goes. What's in it for these folks, anyway? Okay. So I'm a cretin. I couldn't find my backside with both hands, if I didn't get a little help. Sheesh.

And there's no warranty. I checked. If anything goes wrong, we fix it. Period. Kid doesn't want to go to sleep till midnight? Got a paper to write? Sorry, buddy, you're going to be up for a loooooong time. Oh, and the baby will wake again at two for a feeding. Babysitter cancel on you? Didn't find a sub to teach your class? Little Johnny (or Janey) will be catching his (or her) first Aristotle lecture safely ensconced in the carrier. Oh, and he'll (she'll) decide that just about the time you're really getting into the distinctions between voluntary, involuntary, and nonvoluntary actions it's time for a feeding. Can you hold a baby, feed him (or her), lecture and write on the chalkboard? Aiyaiyai!

Oh, and by the way, I have never been more of an audience to conversations on the bodily details involved with pregnancy and labor. Imagine if you will (true story here) that you're on the phone with your sister-in-law. Keep in mind that you've known this person since she was eleven. She's now a mom and has called (for the bazillionth time that day) to see if Anna's gone into labor yet. You tell her no, she's napping just now. The sister-in-law wants to know how Anna's doing. Just fine you say, remaining pleasantly, civilly vague. Oh, the sister-in-law says, I heard she's dilated another centimeter. Why, yes, that's true, you reply, not wanting to sound as though you'd really like to get off the phone right now. Sister-in-law sez: She told me--and here we enter the TMI zone--that she's feeling more pressure on her rectum. Um, yes, you reply, wishing you'd already gotten off the phone. Well, that probably means she's dilating more. That's what happened to me, man, the more pressure I felt on my rectum, the more dilated I was getting. At which point, having lost all hope of leaving the TMI zone, you are reduced to wimpering jelly.

*Sigh*

Well, the countdown has begun. I know by Thursday, I'll be a dad. Anna might go sooner; there's been a little progress. But it's more likely she'll be induced early Thursday morning. Oh, and we'll finally know if it's a boy or girl.

The Fatherhood Chronicles VII

Okay, two days to go till 3D-day (that's Delivery Due Date) and all my night fears are coming out into conscious daylight. What if the baby has something wrong with him/her that we haven't been able to detect yet? What if Anna has problems in the delivery? What if . . . ? And I won't even go into the darkest of these day-mares.

So I probably shouldn't be reading this glorious Gospel narrative of a husband's love for his wife and their hope in Christ in the face of her last days and her struggle against cancer.

Tripp counsels me to meditate on Luke 1-2. Hmmm. I've been here before.

I'm reluctant to share my fears with Anna. Goodness knows she has enough of her own. So prayer and meditation are in order.

Still, I skipped lunch today. My stomach just can't take it. It's in knots.

The Fatherhood Chronicles VI

So . . . now we wait.

Anna had her last baby shower today. God has been so good to us. First, Anna's sisters followed through on their word to hold a shower, back in May. (The following through is sometimes not to be counted on). Then Anna's co-workers got together and held a shower for her in June. And today, one of Anna's good friends pulled out all the stops (read: chocolate) and held a shower for her. Not being extremely wealthy, and not knowing what the distance from our families might mean as far as their involvement, and in the midst of a busy summer with our friends, we didn't know what, if any, showers would be held. And, except for some of Anna's co-workers, no one we know really has any money. So, what a surprise this summer has been. From one of them fancy, all-in-one, submarine, rocket, DVD player, with mini-wetbar strollers/car seat combo, to baby monitors, to scads of clothes. Our family and friends have really helped us out.

God has also been good in providing me teaching work. I was a bit miffed that I was scheduled late in the summer. I thought early summer would be better, leaving me more time and flexibility to look for full-time work at the end of the summer. But as it turns out, full-time work is hard to come by at the moment, and the teaching paychecks are a timely means to purchase a crib, changing table, and a futon (so family won't have to sleep on the floor).

Oh, and I was able to get the car detailed today!

God's timing is impeccable. We have proven his faithfulness. Even during the darkest moments of our marriage (which I wrote about earlier this week), God has provided food, clothing, shelter, honorable (if not always enjoyable) work.

We found out this week, that two of Anna's sisters, and perhaps her mom also, will be able to come up for the birth. My sisters, both being pregnant, are on travel restrictions, so can't come up. And my mom may not be able to get off work and/or afford the trip. But my dad and stepmom are going to come later this month, the weekend before I start school and teaching for the fall. So, we'll have family around us. Thank God. (Really. Thank you, God.)

Anna has had some moments in the last couple of days in which she thought a slight, quick pain she was feeling might be hints of the onset of early labor (which, we learned, can last several days). And the baby isn't quite as active as previously. But then again, there's eleven more days till her due date. So, we don't know if she'll go into labor soon or not. I've got my cell phone, and thirty dollars in cash for a cab in my wallet (just in case). We've got our bags packed, and in the morning I'll set up the car seat.

So now we wait. And pray. Forecast tonight is for rain. "Mercy drops round us are falling, but for the showers we plead."

The Fatherhood Chronicles V

Well, about a month or so ago, Anna and I went on our first major baby-stuff buying outing. She got the crib set she wanted, clothes, and so forth. Heck, we even bought a diaper pail on the way home from Divine Liturgy on Mother's Day! Today was yet another installment of "There-goes-Clifton's-book-budget-money II (or III?): Carter's Outlet Revisited."

But lest you think I'm too terribly resistant to all this baby-product buying, I must make a public confession. As soon as I saw the Eric Carle "Hungry Caterpillar" diaper bag, I said to my wife (excitedly no less!): "There it is, hon!" and hustled over to the display rack. *Sigh* I'm a sucker fer kids' stuff now. My youthful days of carefree living are now behind me. Fatherhood descends.

I tell you what, it's a doggone good thing I got the complete works of Plato and Aristotle's four major works (Physics, Metaphysics, De Anima, and Nichomachean Ethics; as well as a few others) in Greek. Not to mention my trusty LSJ lexicon (the Big Daddy), and several of the ancient commentators on Aristotle. Doesn't look like I'm going to be spending much on books here in less than two months. Dang! And I'd had my eye on the W D Ross Metaphysics two-volume text and commentary!

The Fatherhood Chronicles IV

Last night was class two (of four) of our childbirth instruction. I swear by all that's good: if I see another video of a live birth, I'm going to quit. I mean it.

The first night was pretty much learning about the three stages of labor: early, middle and active. In husband terms: panic, confusion, and dear-God-don't-let-her-hit-me-again! We saw some video of live births. I winced and chewed my gum furiously.

Last night was more videos (How many women have let themselves be filmed while giving birth, anyway?! Sheesh!), but in addition to the "squeezing-a-watermelon-through-your-left-nostril"-cam shots of live births, we also got to learn about medications and medical procedures. My wife gets her choice of narcotics and a near-spinal-tap, and . . . you may have to cut where if the baby is slow in coming out?!!!

I swear to you, if I'd seen these videos in my junior high sex ed class, I would have been "scared celibate." Monastic vocation, here I come.

But I think the videos are softening me up. The more babies I saw laid on their mother's chest right after birth, the more I had to keep flicking away that darn dust speck that kept getting in my eyes. Yep, I'll either pass out or be a blubbering idiot. My poor wife.

The Fatherhood Chronicles III

While Anna and I were out shopping, we went to Target and I discovered one of the important facts of first-time fatherhood: NEW TOYS! I kid you not. This is going to be great. And all we did was look at the strollers.

I should say, all we did was look at these magnificent specimens of modern engineering ingenuity! Yessir! These things are amazing. First off, it's not just a stroller. Nosirree, Bob. It's a combination stroller, car seat, cupholder, rocket launcher, convertible submarine, with preset bottle dispenser, and baby carrying case--all wrapped up in one. Some of these things even have tires that--get this--you can air up! How cool is that?!

The best thing, of course, really, is the price. That's what sells these babies (no pun intended.) I mean you get all this for $13,999. (It sounds better if you say it this way: "thirteen-nine-ninety-nine.") And with no money down, no payments and no interest till 2004, this is a deal that really can't be beat.

Of course, it's way too soon to buy any of this stuff. But, oh, baby, the day's a-comin'! And great timing, too! 'Cuz I was sure getting bored with all the toys I currently have.

The Fatherhood Chronicles II

Okay. This in no way compares to any of Anna's experiences present or future, but I had a moment of "freaking" yesterday about 4:00 in the afternoon. There I was, blithely working on academic stuff, when I got to thinking: Wow. A baby.

You know how people talk about their lives flashing before their eyes at crisis moments? Well, my future flashed before mine. Before I knew what was going on, I was thinking health insurance, Social Security cards, college fund, Christian catechesis, and . . . A quick phone call to a competent pastor helped me come down from the mental ledge. (Still, this morning while I was in the shower I was thinking again about college funds.)

The reality is sinking in. Adopting out our pets. Selling/Donating many of my books. I mean, one must make room for the baby!

But I am glad--oh, so glad!--that we got the news during this season of the year. Talk about a Christmas experience! "And who for us and for our salvation was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary." Amy Grant's "Breath of Heaven" is terribly poignant for us this year.

The Fatherhood Chronicles I

Of course, I could actually title this blog, "The Bonehead Chronicles" or "The Honey-I-Bungled-Again Chronicles." (Now is "bungle" transitive or intransitive? Is it "bungle" or "bungle it"? But I digress.) Yes, within the first 36 hours of (known) fatherhood, I've bungled (it).

It seems that men and women, more particularly, mothers and fathers, live in two completely different existential, if not ontological, planes. I get the news Anna's pregnant, and the "happy, happy, joy, joy" reflex kicks in. I say to myself, "Self, first inform your family. Then tell the whole-wide-freakin' world!" So that's pretty much what I did. Anna, on the other hand, is--how shall I describe?--"joyously anxious." The joy's there. No doubt about it. But the anxious is a strong part of it. Heck. Now that I think about it--ah, yes, there's the missing ingredient from yesterday!--I would be, too. This whole thing will all be external to me. Vicarious, as it were. For her . . . well, this is some radically transformative stuff. Physical, emotional, spiritual, it all gets wrapped up in one big ball of "what is going on?". So, there I go, goofy with giddiness, and tell a few dozen friends.

Now I would be willing to bet that most of, if not all, the women reading this are thinking: "What?! Didn't he talk to her about sending an email to tell people about it?" (Men, I know we're slow catching up, but now you're asking that question, too.) Of course, not only do mothers and fathers exist on two different ontological planes, they also inhabit two different epistemological spheres. So, Anna asked me, "Why didn't you talk to me about this?" See, in new-father reality (or maybe just male reality), I thought that I had talked to her. I had said something along the lines of "Now that I have told family, I can send out an email to friends." In fact, I said pretty much this same thing to my sister, when I talked with her, which Anna overheard. (Or, more accurately, which Anna could have overheard since she was in the same room at the same time sitting a few feet away, but may not have, indeed apparently did not.) But anyway, as became clear, this was not talking about it.

So, before two days had passed, I was in the doghouse. Now it's true, I should have been more thoughtful about this. I should have considered Anna's anxiousness in the midst of joy. I should have thought about when and how she wanted folks to know. But, having no experience in this sort of thing, I just acted. Now to Anna, sending out an email link to a blog to announce this to our few thousand friends or so . . . well, no pun intended, but this didn't compute. Why would I do such a thing? (Which, I think translates into male speech as "How cold and impersonal! An email? A blog? What were you thinking?") Since we've already established that I wasn't thinking, when Anna asked me why I would do such a thing, the thought that came to mind was: "'Cuz, I'm a geek giddy with giggly good news?" Thankfully, my unconscious ban on thinking was at that moment lifted, and I then--before speaking, mind you--thought, "Though this is a true and trustworthy saying, methinks it would be rude to say it now." So I just shrugged. (We males and new-fathers-to-be, I think, are good at communicating through shrugging.)

At this point, I had come off my delirious high. I had realized: a) I had not thought carefully about how Anna was experiencing this, b) I had not understood that email and blogging are considered by many to be impersonal and not a good conduit of broadcasting personal joy, and 3) man, oh man, oh man, I have so much to learn.

Just when I was at the point of despair, however, our two friends, Tripp and Trish came to our rescue and arranged to have dinner with us. This took the tension off, and made us feel so much less alone in the big city with a baby on the way. Thanks guys.

(Sigh) Maybe I'll get better with practice.

"Excuse me, I didn't . . . Huh? . . . You . . . Pardon? . . . Me? . . . You--What?!!": Or, An Example of Clifton's Cognitive Dissonance

Well, I suppose I should begin at the beginning. Which is to say, at the culmination.

You should understand that Anna has been feeling unwell for a bit more than a week. She was growing increasingly concerned as her various symptoms were not disappearing and she was feeling worse. So on Monday, she scheduled a visit to the doctor. Although I had called her on my cell just prior to going to my class, she was still at the doctor's office, and said she would fill me in when I got home.

So, a few hours later I headed home from my Marx class. I had presented a paper on Herbert Marcuse's notion of technological rationality within consumer capitalist society (from his book One-Dimensional Man), and normally after class my mind is still in class, mulling over the ideas and discussions that have been presented. This night was a little different. I was braving a Chicago snowfall and the messiness of the congested streets, and thinking about family. You know: you project into the future and daydream a bit about what you and your spouse and your children will be doing, what your life will be like. Well, that was me. (I'll be teaching my kids Greek and Latin, Plato, Aristotle, the Cappadocians, and the Philokalia, just so you know.)

In any case, after a twenty-minute hike from the el stop, I climbed the three flights of stairs to our apartment, walked in and started to doff the coat, boots, gloves and scarf. Anna was home, and we did the usual small-talk. How was your day? I did thus and so, and talked to X about Y and Z. All that sort of stuff.

She said to me, "I got a couple of cards for your Dad." I murmured something along the lines of, "Oh," and continued stowing my books. We'd been decking our apartment in Christmas, and Anna had been filling out Christmas cards for mailing. I was about to ask her how it went at the doctor's, but she handed me one of the cards and asked me to take a look at it. It was one of those cute ones with a polar bear and cub on the front. Inside, the text read: "'A baby is God's opinion that life should go on.'--Carl Sandburg. Congratulations on your new little one." Underneath she signed: "Dad! Love, Anna."

Reading this, of course, you know what the situation was (and thus now know what the cryptic messages have been about). Me? I was trying to wrap my mind around my Dad having a new kid. I knew that wasn't happening. So I thought, well, maybe it's for my stepbrother and his wife, and the baby they adopted from China. But hadn't they already been there and back? You'd think, being a philosophy graduate student I'd be a little quicker on the uptake. But there was this little tiny voice in the back of my head saying, "You silly dolt! The card is for you!" Of course, I logically jumped back from that idea. Are Dad and Frances going to adopt a kid? No. That was impossible. Meanwhile, Anna was looking at the evidence of this mental tennis match as it played itself out in my "little-bear-brain-thinking-one-hand-clapping" sort of conundrum. Finally, her expectant look and the back-of-my-head voice combined in the glorious dawn of the truth: You, my academic friend, are a father.

So, Anna and I are attempting to get used to this notion that she's pregnant. When the doctor informed her of the news after the results of the blood test were in, Anna was "Are you sure?! Maybe you should do that test again?" We still think that when she goes back on Thursday that we'll wake up and it will all have been a dream. But the doctor told Anna that the results were as certain as they could humanly be.

This is certainly a surprise. Unplanned as they say. But a scary and welcome joy nonetheless. If you happen to see us in the next few days, we're the ones with the glazed over look.

Anna's doing fine. You can share any congratulations with here at her email address: here. You can also feel free to post any thoughts via the "comment" link below.

Me? I'm a gooey mess. (And with final papers to write, no less!) I got to the part in my morning prayers yesterday morning where I pray for Anna, my mom, dad, sisters and so forth. I prayed, of course, for Anna, and proceeded to pray for our new baby. I have to tell you, I just lost it.