Lost Moments (Dec 2007)

December 7th, 2007

I just returned from Vancouver (BC) Sunday evening and it was an interesting experience. I attended a funeral of an old family friend. I was awash with many thoughts and feelings – being in my home town and seeing long lost family and friends. Many people I didn’t even know – but they knew my father and mother and me as a baby no older than Wyatt. It was a surreal experience – and once again in my life, the world has become a little smaller.

At any rate, I was sorting out some of my older emails and saw a note to me a while back (in September) regarding “lost moments”. I have often thought about that email and have been meaning to process my thoughts.

I spend a lot of time weighing my feelings and actions against that very notion (lost moments). It seems to me that balance is the key; and while nature tends to do a good job of balancing itself – balance seems to be a very unnatural aspect of human nature.

I’ve had an opportunity to meet with some interesting folks in the course of my entrepreneurial career. Each of them are (at least to me) an interesting study. Some of these people I’ve become quite close to are literally worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and while they’re seen as professional successes, I believe they’re relative family failures. In some respects they wasted away their most vital years chasing professional accolades and the honors of men and left their spouses to raise their children by themselves – living out their younger years as married widows. Some of these men admittedly didn’t even change a single diaper while their children were young. And many of these “worldly successful” men are in their second or third marriage. That broken reality seems to carry a conversation of its own.

A few years ago one of my business advisors said something interesting about his son-in-law. He told me how they were ending a 5 day Christmas reunion and he asked his son-in-law when he was heading back to work to which he replied “Oh, I think I’ll stay another week”. At which point Barry (my advisor) said he nearly knocked this young man’s feet off the couch and said “Do you have any idea how much its going to cost to support a family for the next 60 to 70 years? Now get to work!” I thought that was an interesting and sobering perspective.

Yet on the other end of the spectrum I see one of my employees who is 57 years old, who placed an inordinately high premium on attending every baseball game, school play, parent teacher conference, and birthday party . . . . to the extent it compromised his ability to function professionally and thereby support his family. To this day, he still speaks with a nearly romantic sense of nostalgia about “being there”. But as a result of his lifetime of leisurely indulgences he’s in real financial trouble today. After having spent most of his married life living in apartments or house-tending while others were on missions, he just purchased his first home 4 years ago, has virtually nothing in savings and is quite stressed about his future. He’s told me on occasion that he wakes up in a sweat some nights in horror over his current financial situation wondering if he’ll ever be able to retire. This is no place to be, either.

The truth, or nirvana, or whatever you call it is somewhere in between, I believe.

Yet the constant question I ask myself is how my involvement or lack of involvement (in various aspects of their lives) will make a difference in my children’s lives. It seems to me that children generally mirror the basic goodness or badness of their parents. To those men who opted out of active role in parenting but were otherwise good men (Stake Presidents, etc) – their children seem to be quite alright. And to those who gave their all to their children – their children seem to be not much different. For the most part, it seems that if you’re a good parent; by that I mean if you listen to, appropriately discipline, support, love, teach, empathize, and care for them – children will turn out alright. And they are who they are – and no matter who we are (as parents) they are agents unto themselves . . . we can only do what Joseph Smith so wisely taught “teach correct principles and let them govern themselves” (but only after they’re 18 :)).

In the beginning of my first business, I agonized over the morality of producing LDS products and attempting to make money from it. I worried about inadvertently practicing some form of priestcraft and struggled with this so much so that it created significant inner turmoil. That distorted perception soon melted away and I realized how amiss I was. In like manner, I’ve had internal struggles with managing my professional trajectory and raising a family . . . always trying to measure where I spend my time and the true “cost” of my attention. The trouble is that our work ethic and ability to support families are inextricably connected. And interestingly, there exists an almost a “damned if you do work hard and damned if you don’t” paradox.

I had a Stake President who once said in a Priesthood meeting something to the effect; “don’t ever apologize for taking your kids on vacation or purchasing something you can afford, there’s nothing wrong with that. Purchase things with money. But whatever you do, don’t purchase things with time.” I think there was great wisdom in that . . . that the proverbial boats people work so hard to pay for have the potential to cost much more than money. And all too often that is what happens . . . people pay too high a price with the one currency that cannot be traded, borrowed, or exchanged: time. And time is the soy of life. There is so much we can do with it – if only we’re wise.

Oh, how I love my wife! She is so wonderful and is truly my best friend. We have so much in common – yet we have plenty of differences to keep things interesting. But in the things that matter, we’re quite similar – so our differences only serve to provide variety to what would otherwise be plain old homogony.

We both adore our children. They are so wonderful and whenever I’m away on business my heart yearns to be with them again, to feel their soft faces against mine and to kiss their cute lips!

A few months ago I was in Knoxville, TN, on business. The kids were so worried about me – for some reason they knew that I was leaving on September 11th and they were aware of what happened 6 years ago. Evidently each of their prayers at night and during the day was for my safety. It warmed the cockles of my heart to think of these little people so worried about their dad. And in a way, a new perspective on fatherhood was borne. On the flight back all I could think about was what their faces would look like when I came in the door. And true to form, they all came running to me and hugged my legs and were excited to see me. Oh how I love my children!

Recently Ethan was having a difficult night sleeping. I remember asking him, “Ethan, why is it that your brothers and sisters can go to sleep and you can’t?” He replied scratching his head filled with tiger tales, “Because they don’t think what I think.” I reached down and embraced him and told him how wonderful he is and that his mommy and daddy were always there for him. He seemed to find whatever security he needed in that and went straight to bed. Ethan is over half my height. That’s unnerving. He used to be a little tyke. Before long he’ll be as tall as me. And soon after, he could be a father of his own sweet children.

Laura-Ashley is growing up so fast. Just today I looked at her riding her little scooter and I was stunned at how beautiful she was. She seemed to have teenage features . . . as if there were a maturity in her disposition that was far beyond her age. She is a very smart girl. She generally scores quite high (90-100%) in all of her assignments and her ability to retain and apply new knowledge is solid. It seems that her real academic challenge will be to slow down and take tests seriously. Often when she makes mistakes its because she knows she has the answer and speeds through tests – not realizing that she’s making lazy mistakes that she would have otherwise caught had she been more circumspect. She is remarkably perceptive, too. With her especially we need to remember the saying: “Oh what a tangled web do parents weave when they think their children are naive.”

I bear my testimony that Wyatt is seriously one of the cutest babies ever born into the plan of salvation. He is the most incredible little baby – so smart, so strong, so sweet.

Mitchell is quite a sophisticated little thinker. We’ve become so accustom to his limited-use vocabulary that when he recently became verbally articulate, we’ve been surprised at the nature and sophistication of his thoughts. He is a real thinker.

Just today Mitch and I were playing in the living room. And as he was running toward me his leg gave out and he collapsed and hit the floor quite hard. It was an immediately depressing moment (because I knew what was beginning to happen to him) but I quickly brushed it off and focused his attention on something else. But it occurred to me, as it often does, that he has a hell of a challenge ahead of him. So we try to live each moment as though it were our last. And in many ways, each moment is our last . . . as his disease and physical strength slips through the medical systems fingers and ours, we will only have now – for tomorrow will be different, it will be less. Certainly less of something and more of another . . . but it will be less, nonetheless.
I think of the burden of his adversity as a series of concentric circles. He stands alone in the center. He will always be alone there – faced to grapple with his increasing limitations. Standing right beside him are Natalie and myself. And it is this sacred inner circle where things will be hardest – both physically, emotionally, spiritually, financially, etc. Everyone else in our world are simply spectators, or cheerleaders, occasional help-meets, or critics, or something else. Besides Mitch, who faces an implacable terminal enemy, this is a sacred space that only Natalie and I will know. Others think they know – and while they may feel a portion of our pain – they will never know what we as his parents will come to know. And yet again, none of us will come to know what Mitchell will know. We’ve tasted some of the bitterness associated with this reality. I often shrug and am disappointed when people compare what we face with our son to much lesser challenges – like family feuds, non-terminal medical ailments, or other things. The truth is, not all challenges are equal. Not by a long shot. The point isn’t that we compare each others pain – but to have appropriate respect for one another’s burdens and never violate that.
Recently we produced a documentary for Hyrum Smith (Franklin Covey) – who lost a daughter and grand daughter in a single car accident about 10 years ago. It was a tender thing to hear his children and himself ruminate on the loss of a loved one. Hyrum scoffed at the notion that someone can ever have “closure”. He said “You don’t ever get to have closure with the death of a child, how could you? You just put it on the shelf and leave it there. And sometimes it comes back and you have to deal with it . . . and it’s difficult. But life is difficult.” So, life teaches us (or at least ought to teach us) to suck it up and take it like a man (or a woman), or a lion or a bear . . . but in the privacy of our bedroom or the quite of our minds, there is an often unspoken dimension to us . . . a part of us that buckles and weeps at what is before us . . . all the while our public face seems strong and stoic.

Now I come full circle . . . back my trip to Vancouver. It was a soulful time. I visited with my friend about the loss of his father, and we both wept . . . and I wanted so badly to take his pain away from him. I often yearn to do this whenever I talk with someone who hurts. I wish I could invent some kind of ointment for the soul – that could num the pain and sorrow of loss or heartache. But a manmade ointment is both illusory and nowhere to be found (at least by earthly means). And if we approach our challenges with divine help, there can be spiritual discoveries found in one’s sorrow. And perhaps those are the “moments” that matter most.

Family is an amazing phenomenon. There is the saying: “Making the decision to have a child - it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart walking around outside your body.” It is so strange to think that 12 years ago there were 4 less people on the earth . . . and I was quite content without them. But now that I have them, I can’t imagine a day without them – not even a minute. They are my everything. And to have children (as you well know) is to witness another miracle: the multiplication of love. I have come to see that when you have children, you don’t divide your love among them – but your capacity to love increases - exponentially.

I love the way Natalie picks up our children and caresses them. Sometimes she does that to me (everything but the picking me up part) . . . and in a way, I can sense what they must feel as young children . . . the peace and security they feel in having someone (in their case a mother) who loves them deeply. There is no blanket that can replace the warmth that comes from a mothers embrace. And my little chillies are quite warm. Natalie is awesome.