This week dragged by. I’ve done some writing, but not on the book. I’ve picked up the kids’ journals again. The last entry in their journals dates back to 2009, so I’m well overdue on an update.

When my kids were young, I decided that in order to keep it all straight, in order to remember who did what and who said what, I had to keep track. There are four of them. So I started personal journals for each of them.

The pages are filled with memories of first days of school, trips to the dentist, fist fights and first dates. While writing those journal pages, knowing I would give these journals to them the day they left home, I wrote about them–about who they were in that moment, and how I felt about who they were. I can’t read any of those entries now without being brought back to a time when the house was filled with baby bottles and backpacks, and the sweet chaos that was my life.

So, I’m back to the journaling. I have two boys left at home whose lives have changed drastically since that last entry.

“I’m so proud of the man you’ve become,” I write in one journal. “You’re taller than anyone in the family now and you say you want to be a doctor…” I being the other. And it feels good to catch up. To put their young life down on paper. To share my personal thoughts (and I do write the good, the bad, and the ugly) about them in this stage of their life. There have been times I’ve turned to those journals for evidence!

When I started the first journal, I didn’t realize how fast the time would fly. I knew that I wanted to capture those memories, but never dreamed the years would pass as quickly as they have. Now, with just 4 or 5 more years of journaling left, I’m taking it up a notch. My kids have grown and changed from page one of their journals, but so have I.

When I read passages, I’m reminded of the stages of my own life and maybe that’s what makes these journals even more interesting to read for me, now. Through the career changes and house moves, the one constant thread woven through the pages of all four of the kids’ journals — spanning more than 20 years — is the writing.

The progression from the dream to the reality is a journey shared on those pages, when you line them up end to end. It’s as much my life as it is theirs. I’m glad I’ve found my way back to their journals. Time is running out!

photo credit: Bob Aubuchon

I read something today that was the truth. It was a truth I myself already felt but never knew how to put into words. Phyllis Theroux, author of the book I’m reading and loving, The Journal Keeper, she found a way to write that truth, and I haven’t stop thinking about it since I read it.

She writes: “I miss my children, each for reasons the other two cannot supply, which is as it should be. This stage of parenthood is imposible to imagine until you’re in it.

“When I think about why people have children, I realize how little it should have to do with the future. If, before any children are conceived, we knew that our reward for raising them would be perhaps several phone calls a month, a very occasional visit, and the sense of having once been important in their lives, we might not do it. But if we realize that the rewards are given during the raising, we will calculate the cost differently. My children have taught me more than I have taught them, given me more joy than I have given them, and their not being present or even much aware of me now does not alter this.”

So much in that short piece of writing speaks to where I am in my life. And no, you can’t know what it’s like until you’re in it. That’s for sure. When we’re raising our kids, wiping noses and kissing boo-boos better, we’re so in the moment. I know I never thought about what the future state of our relationship would be. I never thought for a moment that I would only hear from my son a dozen times a year, and see him less often than that. I never envisioned being at a football game, looking through binoculars at my son and his wife (who were given far better seats!) and thinking “Wow, what a handsome man he is.” Almost as though I’d forgotten what he looked like. He looked grown. Completed. And there was this realization, in that moment, through the “looking glass,” that I was truly done.

Raising kids has so very little to do with the future. I love this “…if we realize that the rewards are given during the raising, we will calculate the cost differently.” Wow. I really wish I had read this 25 years ago. It’s so true. There are so many memories that I treasure. Moments that I would never ever take back, and today, as I watch yet another of my four children embrace his independence, I’ll try to remember that I’ve had my rewards– plenty of them.

I’ve always said “we’re not raising children, we’re raising adults,” so I guess, in a small way, I already knew, in some shape or form, that this is the way it was going to be–the way it was supposed to be, assuming we succeeded as parents. And I think we did, so that’s what we get for that. We get independent children who are busy with their own lives, building their future. And today, I can just sit on the sidelines and watch it unfold, chapter by chapter. There really are rewards-they’re just different now.

photo credit: labutle

In the past few days I’ve spent a lot of time running here and there–shopping in various stores, eating in various restaurants, and visiting various family members. And throughout all of my recent escapades here in the Great White North, I’ve tried to LISTEN.

“I think you should write this trip off as research,” my sister says after leaving our father’s new apartment. My dad is a colorful guy, to say the least. He’s lived alone for many years and has never been one to care about the decor in his apartment. He’s a “live and let live,” kind of guy. You don’t bother me and I won’t bother you. He’s an intelligent man who reads all the time. Sometimes 5 books a week, I’m told. It keeps his mind sharp, I’m sure.

As I’m the writer/reader in the family, I’ve always been the one to ship him books for his birthday or drop off a big bag of used paperbacks whenever I’m in town. So, yesterday I strolled the musty aisles of Value Village, dropping book after book into the basket –and listening. Listening to the Amish family who were choosing non-fiction books for their young daughter to read; listening to the older man and his son complain about being bumped into the next checkout line; listening to the sounds of life.

If you want to write, you have to leave the house. In order to create fictional characters, you have to watch and listen to real people in action. Watch how they interact with their children, with the sales clerk who gave them the wrong change. What are they wearing? What are they saying? Take notes.

So, back to Dad. Well, I dropped off the books and he shuffles through them and pulls out a book by Stephen Coonts. “I don’t like this guy. He writes all that Sci-Fi shit,” he says, pushing the book toward me.

“It’s not sci-fi, Dad. It’s some kind of army intelligence story or something. That’s why I bought it,” I tell him.

He pulls it back and flips it over, gives the back cover a quick scan. Then, without even saying “Sorry…this is good. Thanks so much for picking up these books for me,” he puts it on the top of the pile in front of him (next to the sandwich bag filled with home-rolled cigarettes.). My sister and I smile at each other.

Dad’s groaning and moving a little slow, so my sister says, “What’s up with your back?”

“Ah, shit, my back’s always been f#@&ed up,” he says.

“You should go sit in the pool. Might make it feel better,” she says.

“Nah. I don’t like water. I don’t even like to shower,” he says.

And so the conversation goes. We talk about the photos he’s put on the walls, and how he doesn’t want to put one on the wall behind the couch because he wouldn’t be looking at it anyway (since it would be behind him)…and so on. He’s a character, for sure. You can’t write this stuff!

So, today I did research. No writing, but plenty of research. My favorite tidbit was provided to me by my sister on our way home from a shopping excursion. She was telling me about a woman who she met who “services” men. She calls herself a “male esthetician,” she tells me. Pure gold, I think. That is pure gold. And now I have a job title for the woman that Tess’s father is sleeping with! You just never know where you will find inspiration.