The Night Before Christmas

“Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.”

– Anne Frank

Children don’t come with a manual.  They come, instead, with a perfect mind.  A mind that doesn’t know hatred or prejudice of any kind.  They know only love and a desire to bond with those around them.  They are unable to delineate ethnic races, or sexual orientation.  They know nothing of the controversial subjects circling the Internet and entertainment and news media.  We teach them those things with our words, our attitudes, and our deeds.

As parents, we try very hard to teach them right from wrong and to be respectful of others.  To maintain the dignity of others and to treat others as we, ourselves, want to be treated.  In many cases we succeed but we also sometimes fail, and in the process of trying, we never really know the answer to the question “How’d I do?”

I’m no different.  I raised three children and was estranged from two of them for a time, and by that count, I perhaps failed at fatherhood.  That, however, is not for me to say.  My children will be the ultimate judges of my parenting as they live out their adult lives and raise children of their own.

I was estranged from my youngest daughter when I lost my temper with her mother one evening.  I had filed for divorce about a year earlier and Ashley was coming to spend the weekend with me.  Although my ex-wife tried to warn me, I was unprepared for what was about to confront me.  I answered the knock on the door and I didn’t recognize the girl standing in front of me next to my ex-sister-in-law.

The girl I saw had short blue hair, horn-rimmed spectacles, and piercings in her face.  The little girl I knew had brown hair, cut just above her shoulders, and a smile.  Speechless, I greeted her, invited her in, and bid her aunt goodbye.

We sat next to each other on the couch, an act in which my estrangement with Ashley began.  Stunned by her appearance, I searched for words, but came up empty.  After a moment, she made her way to the guest room “to read.”  What happened next is in my top five life-long regrets.  I picked up the phone, called my ex-wife, and within earshot of my daughter began to dress her mother down.  We then proceeded to say very unkind things to each other very loudly, and in keeping with my anger, I punctuated my last sentence to her by slamming the handset into the cradle.  My daughter immediately showed up and gave me a tongue lashing that I retrospectively believe I deserved.  She abandoned our weekend plans and left with her aunt without speaking another word to me.

I could have apologized.  I didn’t.  I could have asked her to stay.  I refrained.  I simply allowed her to walk out of my apartment in silence, unsure of what to do.  The curse of stubbornness and my own sense of the importance of proper attire and presentation spawned the wedge then coming between us.  Over the next few months we kept in touch by instant message, and my kindness was met with anger—but her anger was my fault.

I refused to apologize.  I clung stubbornly to my conservative sense of propriety.  She, on the other hand, demanded an apology clinging just as stubbornly to her sense of self and the statement she was making about herself.  It was a declaration of independence I didn’t recognize and couldn’t understand.

At one point she stopped talking to me altogether, an arrangement that lasted about two years.

And then, one day, a miracle.

I was standing on the shores of the Brazos River just outside Mineral Wells, Texas, on a hot summer day, wearing black with sweat dripping from my forehead and my shirt drenched.  I looked on as there in the river, waist deep, Ashley and her sister, Rachel, were preparing to be baptized by my minister father.  I watched as he gently took each of them and guided them under the water and raised them again.

They embraced each other and their grandfather for what seemed like hours and a sense of hope and optimism began to take hold deep inside me.  I continued looking on as they retreated to the shore.  Then Ashley began to run.

After a moment I realized she was running to me.  As she approached I braced myself for the moment I could see in my mind’s eye even before it happened.  Gracefully, she leapt into my arms, threw her arms around my neck, and wrapped her legs around my waist.  Through choking tears she said the words every parent longs to hear.

“I love you, daddy.  I really do.”

I kissed her cheek and simply said “I love you too, sweetheart.”

A cherished memory I will take to my grave.

Then there is the matter of my son, Tim.  He is my oldest and was the most troubled.  As a teenager and young adult, he was insistent to live life his way, and his way unfortunately included drugs, then crime, and eventually prison.

I watched in anger and sadness and frustration as he made wrong choices.  We both made valiant efforts to remain in each other’s lives but the effort was too often simply not enough and we were estranged several times over the course of about 12 years.  Always there was the effort on both our parts to reconnect, and always the connection ultimately failed.

We exchanged letters when he was in prison, but not as many as I intended or would have liked.  The thought of him being subjected to prison life was heart-breaking to me, and it haunted me every time I would pen another letter to him.  I’m ashamed to admit it, but it must be said that I gave up hope he would ever be able to live a fulfilling life.  His history was so checkered, and the rate of recidivism is so high for people like my son, I found very little reason to be hopeful.

And then, one day, a miracle.

He was released early on probation, and we began exchanging phone calls and facebook messages.  I watched as he began to take ownership of the choices he made.  I read the posts of general encouragement to others on his wall.  More than anything else, though, I saw a gratitude I never witnessed in him before.  Hope was resurrected.

He was doing all the right things it seemed, from my vantage point.  Full-time school and work took the place of drugs and drinking.  He and his girlfriend were attentive to each other in what seemed to be a lasting, loving relationship.

I looked on and smiled, believing that he would come through this station of life prepared to go out into the world and begin life anew.

I was hosting a party at my house on a Saturday night in early November of this year, when I received a phone call from my ex-wife.  The phone call no parent ever wants to receive.  I heard the words no parent wants to hear.  Tim and his girlfriend, who had since become his fiancée, died in a senseless, one-car accident earlier that afternoon.  Something that could have happened to any one of us.

For the second time in my life I was reminded that, at any time, anyone can be plucked out of your life for no reason whatsoever.

And in this circumstance, we try in vain to make sense of it all.  We ask questions with no answers.  “Why?”  “Why now?”  “Why didn’t you intervene this time God?”  The answer we receive begins with what sounds like an empty, restless wind blowing past us with no discernible substance.

Ultimately, however, the answer we receive is the love and support of a spouse, family members who pull together, and the comfort of friends who will do anything to make it just a little bit easier.

This is the answer we receive: that we have each other.

Tomorrow is the night before Christmas, and my son is redeemed.

Guy-o