What I learned from my Dad: human geography and a few other things

I took this photo in the fall of 2012. My Mom would
point out that the picture would be better had my Dad
posed on driver's side of the truck
but at the moment at hand,
the sun favored the passenger side vantage point. 

My Dad is 71 years old and he still criss-crosses the country in his 2001 Freightliner Classic on a regular basis, most recently from Washington to Florida and back. His 18-wheel semi has a 550 Caterpillar engine and 1850 pounds of torque and over a million miles on the odometer. (Over his lifetime, my dad has logged over four million miles. Safely.)

“If you can eat it, live in it, wear it, drive it, I have hauled it," said my dad, when I asked for a few examples of his cargo. In the last couple of years its been mostly windows, watermelons, cardboard, and dried potatoes.

He’s been a truck driver since 1956, starting when he was 14 years old. My mom says he looked like Elvis when they got married in their late teens but these days he wears denim jeans, western shirts, and cowboy boots. In recent years he’s taken to hand crafting bolo-ties with interesting stones and colorful gems, giving an extra flair to his cowboy style which he can pull off better than anyone east of the Mississippi and west of Graceland.

 Even now, as a rugged septatarian, my dad is on the road for three or four weeks at a time. That’s pretty much how I remember it from childhood. When I was a kid my mother got me a toy map, a wooden puzzle cut out in the shape of the United States, each state a puzzle piece. Evidently I must have played with that puzzle a lot because I memorized U.S. geography backwards and forwards. At age five or six my mother used to quiz me orally with such questions as, “Which states surround Kentucky.” (Or Delaware or Wyoming or New Mexico.) I took those questions very seriously and always knew the exact answers, carefully thinking and deliberately listing off each adjacent state without even looking at the puzzle, at least according to my memory. It’s probably a tribute to the value of experiential learning, but I also wonder if it was rooted in the notion that all those places were in a way an extension of my home, or perhaps a connection to my Dad. Every time he called back to the house from the road, over some crackly telephone line (of course there were no cell phones, email, skype, or text), he announced a new state from where he based. I could easily associate his location with a specific puzzle piece which I’m sure was my mother’s plan all along.

This was my idea of fun as a kid: a map puzzle.

As a result, those wooden game pieces seem to have translated to my interest in maps and globes and continents and oceans. I’m curious about people and places and cultures. A self-proclaimed National Geographic nerd, I’m always amazed at those pull out maps focusing on a desert, a mountain range, or a political region. It’s like I can feel the people who live there just by looking at the birds-eye rendering of their locale. I imagine the food they eat, the songs they sing, the friendships they form.

My mother prides the fact that my Dad has managed to be home on each Christmas and for each date my three brothers and I were born. Independent truck drivers generally do not have paid vacation or family leave, plus a commute home is often 1000 miles long and entails finding a paying load to cover expenses. It’s no small task to wrap a rigorous and wildly unpredictable payload schedule around, say, the birth of a baby. But he did four times.

About five years ago my husband, Bob, experienced acute liver failure. I was the one who became distant because my coping mechanism was to turn reclusive as Bob teeter-tottered between life and death, back and forth, in our living room. His illness brought much immediate suffering and I was wholly exhausted from attempting to alleviate Bob’s severe itching, anorexia, and depression. Many people tried to help but I didn’t answer the telephone or the front door, incapacitated by the trauma of it all. I was 45 years old and it was the first time I had received a hand written card from my dad. My adult conversations with him had tended to focus on my car’s oil change frequency or present mileage. The front of the card depicted a steam engine train forging through the mountains in the night, guided by a single strong headlight. The uneven, large cursive words proved to me that my dad wrote the note himself; my mom didn’t do it on his behalf. I had never before imagined my Dad as one to quote from the Bible yet this is what he wrote with a blue pen on the inside of the blank card: 

Though you have made me see troubles, many and bitter;

You will restore my life again; from the depths of the earth you will again bring me up.
Psalm 71:20 And so he will. Dad

This year Father’s Day feels like a two-fer. I give thanks to my dad for teaching me human geography, for showing me what hard work looks like, for writing, and for the awesome collection of bolo ties he has shared with me. And I give thanks to my mom for buying me the simple little puzzle that helped me make sense of distance, time travel, and the world. 

Four million miles and still trucking!

Happy Father’s Day to all, where ever you are, whoever you love.

With love from yours truly,
Natural Born Bleeding Heart

I'm very honored that a portion of this post will appear this weekend on the Father's Day edition of Living Lutheran, with posts from amazing colleague writers. Please check it out! 

It's strange, what unifies us

This photo is from the Des Moines Pride Parade in 2011
We are marching again on Sunday, June 9, 2013.
Let me know if you'd like to join us. 

If it were not for the “God hates fags” signs or the “Fags burn in hell” signs, my kids and I would probably have very different reasons for marching in the annual Des Moines Pride Parade with our church.  But strangely, those hateful signs have been unifying.

The original reason why I marched is because I thought was fun and cool. There weren't many churches marching in pride parade, and we were one of them. 

The original reason why my teenage kids marched is because I bribed them with burgers and fries. 

My church, St. John’s Lutheran Church in Des Moines Iowa, will be marching in the annual Pride Parade in downtown Des Moines on Sunday, June 9, 2013. It will be the Xth time my church (sorry, I don’t know the number) has marched, the third time my kids and I have joined them.

I’m not trying to pass myself off as some kind of a supermom. I’m about as flawed as they get.

I’m also not trying to pass myself off as a badass mom. I’m about as middle class white collar boring as they get.

I am a pastor’s wife, but even that doesn’t make me so distinctive because I know many pastors spouses who believe like I do. In fact I know many pastors who believe like I do. And I know many parishioners who believe like I do. I’m not that unique, in terms of church-lady-marching-in-pride-parade.  

But it was something that happened in the last pride parade that unified my kids and me. No longer was it about being a cool church-goer, appeasing mother, or scoring a burger plate. It was something more.

It was a hot sunny day last year when at the Des Moines Pride Parade. Hot and sunny like 100 degrees hot with high humidity. We were all dripping wet with sweat. As far as parade positioning goes, the beer people were in front of us and the bar people were behind us. They had vehicles and Clydesdale horses, but we were just plain old ragtag people on foot. Everyone was sweating wet as we walked through the East Village of Des Moines, streets lined with people partying and cheering. This is Iowa but our Pride Parades can do g-strings and fish net tights as good as anywhere. There were about 20 people in my church who marched but we mostly wore T-shirts and shorts (darn bland Lutherans we are). My pastor boldly wore her white clergy collar. (The other pastor, the one I’m married to, was out with a pending knee replacement. No parades for him.) We marched with a long banner that bore the name of our church: St. John’s Lutheran Church in rainbow colors.

It was fun and festive and I felt like somehow I was doing something right as a mother, even if my kids were only there for the burgers that would follow. We passed candy out to the children who lined the streets. I happily accepted jello shots that were being offered (not by my church). It was all the hoopla of the parade.

But last year it was different. The crowds cheered for our church group as we processed through. As if walking down a street was something special. A big deal. To be honest, it kind of put a lump in my throat. They saw our banner and they cheered. I heard a couple people from the crowd pointedly yell out, “Thank you.” I thought of a dear friend who wrote a story about the time her mother told her she was going to hell because she was gay. Her mother told her this when she was a child. HER MOTHER.  I wished somehow that my marching would make that better.

When we saw the little group of haters (definitely the minority in that joyful crowd) with the placards that read “God Hates Fags” and “Fags burn in hell.” It felt like a jolt. It was the Westborough Baptist faction of the Pride Parade. My first instinct was to shelter my kids. I hoped they wouldn’t notice the vile words printed on the poster boards. I wanted to shield them from this kind of hate, or at least from that awful language.

You see, we are your average all-American family. Mom, dad, daughter, son, white, suburban, Christian, three cars, two cats, etc, etc. My children haven’t been exposed to overt bigotry (that I know of). My kids are cute, sociable, funny, and have friends. I’d like for them to skate through life unscathed by the smallness of others. I thought the pride parade would be a fun church function, a way to spent a sunny afternoon together. I didn’t envision us walking through signs declaring who’s going to hell, and by implication, who isn’t. 

But those signs provided a clarifying moment. I realized how important it was for my children to see them and to know that such hatred is real. The signs were a reminder of the reason we were marching  and why I was bribing them to participate. Ever the mother who wants to teach a lesson, in a split second I decided they absolutely needed to see those placards. I made sure they noticed them. “That’s why we’re here,” I said, as we passed by the people with the hateful slogans.

That was last year.

When the parade came up this year, I reminded both my kids of the event and the burgers that would come after it. My son is 13-years-old now. He’s a skater boy and I suggested he bring his wheeled board to the parade, trying to keep the tone light and fun. I told my son that the people with the hateful signs would be there and that’s why we needed to go.

“Let’s punch them out,” replied my 13-year-old son, now confident in his third year of marching. I explained that we wouldn’t be punching anyone out, but that marching in the parade is stronger than punching them out. Especially marching as a church group. It’s such a huge opportunity to proclaim love. But I felt gratified that my son had some sense of how horrible those messages were.

If I had a grave stone it would read, “She had many regrets.” I’m not saying that I’ve always known how to stand up for other people, or that I’ve always been on the right side of morality, or that I’ve always know n how to express my faith. I’m not, I haven’t been, I don’t. Maybe I’m trying to make up for previous bad behavior. Maybe I’m trying to be a good person. Most people I know who are G or B or L or T or Q will likely not be marching, for many reasons all unique to each. I don’t blame them. But my daughter and I will be. And we’ll have burgers and fries afterwards. (Have since realized that boy and husband are headed to camp that afternoon.)

And I’ll be glad for this one little opportunity that is more powerful than a hundred confession booths. More fun than a thousand parties. More important than a million anti-bullying lessons.

You are more than welcome to join us.

Thanks so much for coming over to my blog.

With love from yours truly,

Natural Born Bleeding Heart