Tag Archives: family life

We Just Keep Growing Older Together

The path always looks to disappear when further away, but what a beautiful path it is.

Years ago, I began this blog with a thought towards gaining wisdom by being able to look back on years of memories in the somewhat vain hope of seeing a thread worthy of the blog’s title, The Life Well Lived. Now as my oldest is nearing the end of her junior year of high school, I think what I have learned most is how much I have benefited from the help of all those around me. 

I always knew I married well.  19 years later, I know I was lucky enough to win the hand of a wonderful cook, nurse and mother for our kids.  She shows through her daily actions what it is to put others’ needs and wants before her own.  I can only hope our children learn those values.  It was her vision that enchanted and inspired my devotion to the idea of raising medically fragile children. 

Then I look at each of my four children, and they each have taught me in their own ways what resilience means.  After I look at what each of them has gone through, how can I complain too much about the pain in my head, or the annoying lapses of memory? Moreover, they still teach me the need to lean into each other when we need it.  I will remember for years watching my oldest overcome her own fears of speaking in public to rush on stage to help her youngest sister through a song.

I hope my lack of concern about how others may judge me will fortify our youngest who has identified as trans since she was 2 when she mentioned wanting to just cut off her penis because she is a girl.  I have been asked, “What will you do if R still wants to wear dresses as a teen or an adult?”  My answer remains, “I hope I will be able to make sure she has clothes she likes whether they are dresses or pants.”  As somebody who wore loud Hawaiian shirts every Friday for years regardless of style in homage to my dad who wore them every day to teach school, I hope she learns the people who matter will judge her on far more than her clothes.  They will judge her on more than the sex she identifies herself as. Sadly, it seems there are many who will not live their way to truth to which she has lead me.

That leads me into what may be the biggest truth I have learned on this journey.  More and more I am coming to believe that for me the life well lived is one lived with the purpose of allowing others to live their lives more honestly and fully.  That starts with honesty to true selves, regardless of societal pressures.  Maybe that is even enough… maybe… and what a great gift my kids have given me if I can live that truth.

Lord only knows MS will rob us of much of what society says we should use to define ourselves.  Many of us will lose our jobs, our abilities, and maybe our ability to think and remember obvious things.  The question is: how much of that defines us?  

I hope I am more than those things.  I may be all of those things, but I am also more than the job I do, the chores I do or forget to do, the shirts I can’t button, etc… I hope I am also the guy who loves his wife and kids, the one who loves to run, and to foster animals. I hope I am always the Abbey boy willing to try, willing to learn something new.

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Snow Globes and Turning 45 in 2020

Rainbows are supposed to be God’s way of saying tomorrow will be better, right? After 2020, is there a big enough rainbow?

It’s easy to think 2020 has been a disaster of a year.  I mean it started with forest fires ravaging Australia, and it never seemed to get any better.  In February, I started warning my work we needed a plan for when COVID 19 made it to America.  By March, we heard from my sister-in-law in WA that we needed to be taking more care because when it got to us, it would be bad.  By the end of March, my work offered people as much work from home time as they wanted.  Two weeks later, we were 100% telework.

With the stress of the election three weeks away and turning 45 today, it got me thinking about this year of isolationism from the rest of the world our house has endured.  It is a time I will remember for many things, and not all of them are as bad as I would think for the year.  Here are some of my favorites because I want to be able to look back years from now and remember how we got through the pandemic year 1.

I loved the night we all dressed up in our fine attire to eat as a family because we needed something different and fun to do. 

I love thinking about our little kids in the baby pools in our backyard, even if I am bitter about the reason.  We don’t have a real pool because a dishonest contractor took our money and ran. 

I love all the dinners we ate together on our screened in porch.

Blindfolded twister was a big hit with blindfolds and textured circles.

I loved some of the games we played, like blind twister.  My oldest son is a master of that one as his body control and balance is incredible. 

Then there were all the nights my wife and two youngest kids did feats of strength and balance.

There are times where looking at a book isnt the best way to teach letters. You need a strength and balance test.

I love my two oldest kids going back to school at desks used by their grandfather and great grandmother.  I just imagine them sitting there bored thinking their grandparents must have been bored at that very same desk at one point.  Then I think of them learning the same things because the most important things taught in school haven’t changed in the last hundred years.

O’s computer sitting on his great-grandmother’s desk.
A sitting at a desk made by her grandpa when he was in 6th grade.

I also love my wife and I doing the same daily on-line exercise routines.  She would do them early in the day, and I would do them at night.  Between those, cutting down on my soda’s and not eating out much at all, I dropped 40 lbs. and hit my 4-5-6 goal.  Lilly Sabri and Chloe Ting have been my favorites thus far, but that is just because I am a glutton for punishment. Still, I am moderately proud of meeting my goal, not to bad for a 45 year old man who has had Multiple Sclerosis for the past 15 years.

My favorite memories of the past year have been all of our family walks.  Every day from March through September we walked as a family come sun or rain.  As school starts again, we have not been able to do them every day, and I think I will miss those walks the most.  Just walking around our neighborhood and the surrounding areas, we got to see a fair amount of nature and spend a lot of time together.  Granted, I spend a lot of time on those walks prodding our youngest to keep up and not get distracted, but I enjoy our walks. They calm me.

Every anniversary, I write to me wife, “Stay with me. Walk with me. The best is yet to be. This I believe.”

So, I think it is more than fitting that on my 45th birthday, we would go for a walk at a park my parents used to take me for walks 35 years ago.  I didn’t remember that until my mom told me it was one we used to visit frequently.  I only remembered the racquetball courts and pool.  Still, it is one more thing this year with ties to the past, and ending the night thinking about all those ties seems fitting.  The best of life today is built upon so many past efforts and memories.

One of our many delays on today’s walk was when R deciding to climb rather than walk.

Maybe that is what I will take from this year of 2020.  We have so much to be thankful and enjoy even when we feel like our lives have been turned upside down and shaken like a snow globe.  Maybe we all need to harness our inner snow globe in an effort to enjoy the beautiful sights of our shaken-up world.     

Snow globe of a boy raying for a rainbow or just an end to 2020?
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