From Trauma to Triumph on the Track

When Nick was in second grade, some of his close friends were running track with the CYO and he decided to give it a try. It’s a program that is open to kids age five through grade eight. They compete against teams from all around the area, and track meets are a big deal, often lasting 3 hours or more. Nick has faithfully attended practices and done his part for the fall cross-country and winter/spring track meets over the past two years. His name is on the banner with the rest of the boys’ team from last year as first place winners for the season.

Justin had been tagging along with Nick to track practice, and when he turned five in December, he said he wanted to join, too. This made him the youngest person on the team, and it was a struggle. Sometimes he was into it and sometimes he wasn't. No one knew how he would handle an actual race. 

At Justin’s first track meet he ran a 50-yard dash. Even within his peewee age-group, he was the smallest one. He was so anxious and distraught about running that I thought he was going to back out. It didn’t help that his race was the very last one of the day so he had hours to get himself all worked up. But when the time came, he did it! He ran his little heart out, finished third out of four for his heat and proudly wore his medal. His parents and I breathed a sigh of relief; it looked like he was going to be okay.

The next track meet didn’t go as well. Justin started the race, saw the other kids running past him and stopped running, in tears. The meet after that, he finished the race, but with tears streaming down his cheeks. What happened between his first meet and the second one? No one knows, but now it had become a thing. And when something becomes a thing for a five-year-old, the chance of recovery is slim to none. 

This week they had the last meet of the season. Justin wasn’t happy when he got there and learned that he would be running in a relay. He started freaking out. His teammates and Nick did everything they could to convince him he could do it, but he wasn’t having it. Nick came to the stands where his parents and I were sitting and said that the coach asked for one of Justin’s parents to come and talk to him. So Jon went to him, and Justin had a melt down. Clearly, it wasn’t going to happen.

The coach was understanding. She found another boy to fill in on Justin’s leg of the relay and Justin would run in the 100-yard dash at the end of the meet. No other peewees were running in that race. (They were all in the relay.) Justin was a leftover and they put him in a race with an older age-group so he could run. He was up against five boys who were three to four years older than him. So there was Justin at the starting line, waiting for the pistol to go off, standing next to boys who were a foot or two taller than him. This wasn’t going to go well. His competitors were going to leave him in the dust, and God knows how he was going to handle it. We were holding our breath.

Now, it just so happens that one of his competitors in that race ended up being his almost nine-year-old brother Nick. As soon as the race started, Justin fell behind, just as I expected he would. But what I hadn’t expected was how Nick would run. Forgetting about the other competitors in his race, Nick fell back to run beside Justin and stayed with him all the way to the finish line, both of them smiling and laughing all the way.

This time, the tears weren’t coming from Justin, but from his mom, his dad and me. We all lost it. And I have to say that no matter what Nick may go on to accomplish in his lifetime, I will never be prouder of him than I was in that moment.

Justin was over-the-moon happy as he announced to me, “Nick and I tied!”

Confession of an Extremely White Woman

I was a freckly kid. When a neighbor boy poked fun at me because I had a “dirty face”, my mom explained to me that I had fair skin. She said it in such a way that it was like she was letting me in on a secret, and our stupid neighbor boy had no idea that I came from royalty.

As I grew into a teenager, I realized having fair skin mainly meant that if I wanted to get even the slightest color on my ghastly, ghostly whiteness, I would have to endure a sunburn first. So every summer, I baked in the sun until I resembled a lobster and screamed in pain from the touch of the clothes on my back. After a couple of weeks, the burn turned into a tan. It was ever so slight. Unless I pulled my clothing back to where the sun never shone, you wouldn’t realize the tan existed.

This was a never ending process for me. I would lay out in the backyard until I was so hot you might as well have thrown me onto a charcoal grill. It was grueling. But I was determined.

During the spring of my senior year, I was looking forward to prom. My mom sewed my dress--a pale pink, dotted Swiss, empire-waisted dress with puff sleeves. It had a scoop neckline edged in a white ruffle. I loved the dress but knew exactly what I had to do if I didn’t want to look like Casper’s sister.

About a month before prom I started working on it. I baked in the sun to get good and burnt. And I did. I was so burnt that it made me physically sick. It took a while to recover, but that was a small price to pay for how I was going to look in my pale pink prom dress with the white ruffle around the neckline. 

Once the pain from my sunburn subsided, my skin peeled, mostly on my chest—right where the white ruffle was to show off my tan. When the skin peel came off, so did my tan! 

It was only a week until prom and I was undeterred in my quest to look fabulous. So I laid out again to burn again. And this time everywhere I peeled, I blistered. It was a mess.

Now, days before prom, I obsessed about drying up the blisters. But then, as the ooze was disappearing, a scabbiness took over, and I had a chest of crackling pork rinds framed with a white ruffle. I tried to mask it with make-up, which only made it worse. And that’s the way I went to my senior prom.

I’m thinking about this incident today, not because it’s prom time, but because this morning I went for my six-month exam with the dermatologist. About five years ago I had a melanoma removed and, since then, little chunks have been harvested from my flesh on a regular basis. So many places on my skin worry me that, before I go to the doctor, I circle them all with a pen to make sure none are missed. Invariably, the ones that concern the doctor are the ones I completely ignore; I have no idea what I’m looking for. 

If I could do a “Back to the Future” trip to visit my teenage self, I would warn her. I’d tell her to wear sunblock, cover herself, and avoid U-V rays, even if it means living like a vampire. I’d tell her that fair skin is better than skin with chunks removed, and it’s a helluva a lot better than cancer. Of course, there are many other things I’d like to tell her, too. Things that would have changed the course of her life. But that only works for Marty McFly. The rest of us are victims of our own ignorance. It’s too late to change some of our choices. That's why it’s so important that we learn to do better with the choices we make moving forward. These days, sunblock is my friend.

O God, give us the serenity to accept what cannot be changed, the courage to change what can be changed, and the wisdom to know the one from the other.

 

 

When Parents Are Human

As another Mother’s Day passes, I have been thinking a lot about the reality of parenthood. Not the stuff of Hallmark cards or unconditional love that is glorified and projected onto mere mortals. I’m talking about the reality that parents are human; there is no such thing as a perfect parent.

When we're kids, we tend to idolize our parents. They are the superheroes of our lives. It’s not until we're becoming adults that we begin to see their shortcomings. While they may have done their best at raising us from day-to-day, they also were people who had their own issues to work through. They couldn’t wait until their deepest wounds were healed before they became parents. (If that were the case, humans would have become extinct long ago.)

I know that some parents are absolute monsters to their children. But even parents who devote themselves to creating a loving environment for their kids to thrive mess up from time to time. Sometimes it’s so obvious that they may ask for forgiveness as soon as they realize what they’ve done. “I’m so sorry I yelled at you. I shouldn’t have done that. I love you.”

Those times when our parents have no awareness of how they have chipped away at our souls may be the most difficult to forgive: a word spoken in anger, treating our pleas for attention as an annoyance, a harsh punishment. What is long forgotten as a parent may remain seared on the brain of a child for a lifetime. Our parents may never see the ways they have passed their own brokenness onto us.

We can blame our parents for the ways they have harmed us and remain children, or we can forgive them for being human and grow up. Accepting this has been one of the most difficult tasks of my life and I’m thankful that I’ve been able to work my way through it.

Now, in the later part of my life, I’m experiencing a variation on this theme. I can’t stop thinking about my own parenting while my kids were young. I have so many regrets, so many things I wish I had done differently. I know I was not a monster, but I made enough mistakes that I’m sure my two adult children have plenty to discuss with a therapist.

I struggle a lot with my negative bias when I look back on my life. It’s much easier for me to focus on the ugly parts of my past than it is the beautiful ones. I need to give myself the same grace I grew to extend to my own parents. While I was figuring out how to be a parent, I never stopped being a human being, and I had more than a few issues to work through. I can beat myself up over the mistakes I made, or I can forgive myself for being human. Of course, that's easier said that done. But I’m working on it. This growing up stuff never ends, does it?

Bad Decisions and Alligators

I’ve been thinking a lot about the 4-foot-long alligator they found in Brooklyn this week. Most likely, it was someone’s pet and the owner decided to rehome it in the wild. (If you can consider Prospect Park wild.) Whoever the pet owner might have been, I’m reserving judgment. 

When I was growing up, we took all kinds of strange animals into our small, urban home in addition to the usual cats, dogs and fish. I don’t know what our mother was thinking. She either had a soft spot for animals or a soft spot for my sister and me, but if we wanted an animal, it was ours. (As long as we could afford it. No pony ever materialized, despite our pleas.)

Often at Easter time, in particular, we ended up with animals we had no business taking into our home. A few times, we had baby rabbits. Another year, baby ducks. And then there were the cute little peeps that were dyed pink. I can’t recall exactly how they came to live with us, but they did. 

Of course, the problem came after Easter had passed and the cute little babies grew into adults. We built a hutch for the rabbits, and a pen for the chickens. I recall the ducks swimming in our one and only bathtub. I think about all of this now and it seems bizarre to me, but at the time, it felt perfectly normal. 

At the end of the summer, the ducks were rehomed at a private pond. I have no idea what ever became of the chickens. But my point is, what may have seemed like a sweet gesture at the time always led to the difficult decision about what to do with these animals when they became adults. I remember crying each time they had to leave us. 

My mom isn’t around for me to find out how she dealt with this. I would love to ask, Mom, what were you thinking? How could you have done this again and again? Did it bother you when the animals grew up and you had to figure out how to move them out?

And then there was the alligator. I was in third grade and my sister Lorena took me to Florida with her. I had $5 for souvenirs. After spending $2 on a shell decoration with a lightbulb inside as a gift to my mom, with the remaining $3 I bought a baby alligator. I thought it was the cutest little thing, and I couldn’t resist. (Now, I think, EEK!) It was about 6 inches long and harmless. In true Kraft fashion, I didn’t think through the repercussions of this decision. I also didn’t tell my mom about it; I wanted to surprise her.

On the drive back to Ohio, I kept “Allie” by my feet in the backseat in a cardboard box  that was poked with lots of breath holes and lined with wet newspaper. I threw in a little ball of raw hamburger for him to nibble on. (How did I know it was a he? I must confess that it never occurred to me that such a hideous creature might possibly be female.)

Allie died before we made it through Georgia. I don’t recall being terribly upset over it; we hadn’t bonded. But I do remember some serious buyer’s remorse. I had spent most of my money on an animal that didn’t even make it home so I could show my mom. What a waste!

I still wonder how Mom would have reacted to my purchase. After all the other animals we had taken into our home -- turtles, salamanders, frogs, horned toads, hamsters, about a million prolific guinea pigs – I couldn’t imagine that she would have a problem with an alligator. But perhaps that would have been where she drew the line. It certainly SHOULD have been where she drew the line. It never got that far, so I never knew how she would have received the little beast into our home. Thankfully, we also never had to deal with an alligator that outgrew our ability to care for it. It wouldn’t have been pretty. 

So when I hear about the gator in Prospect Park, I don’t wonder so much about how anyone could take such an animal as a pet. And it’s hard for me to condemn them for dumping it at a public park. Bad decisions and alligators are a part of my story, too.   

La Cucaracha

I never planned to create a new game with my grandsons, Nick (8) and Justin (5). It just sort of happened. One day I had a folded paper bag and I smacked Nick on the butt with it. He laughed. Then, Justin wanted me to smack him on the butt with it, too. (Let me assure you that it doesn’t hurt at all to be smacked with a brown paper bag.) They loved it.

I started chasing them with the bag and smacking them whenever I got close enough. And for some reason, I thought of swatting cockroaches. “I don’t like cockroaches!” I shouted as I smacked them with the bag. And the game evolved from there.

It mainly consists of me hiding and then chasing after them when they find me, all the while trying to smack them with the folded-up bag and calling them cockroaches. This mostly happens in my apartment, which is in the lower level of the house. I hide in different places each time, around corners, behind furniture, etc. Sometimes I turn the lights off, and they have to find me with a flashlight. Every time I go after them, their eyes radiate excitement as they scramble to get away from me while they scream and laugh. I intermittently add a little singing of “La Cucaracha” to get them going, and I’ve made it a bit creepier by drawing a smiley face on the bag. Often, the bag appears before I do, and they shriek.  They always know the game is winding down when I start to come after them with the bag over my head humming “La Cucaracha.”

I can’t believe how much they love this game. I thought it was a one-time, spontaneous activity, but they would play it 24-7. Every day Justin asks, “Can we play La Cucaracha?” So now it’s become a thing. Ay Caramba!

There’s something unnatural about growing up without grandparents. My grandparents were not a part of my life. Grandparents weren’t a part of my kids’ lives either because they died before the time my daughter and son were old enough to remember much about them.  

When I became a grandparent, I was ecstatic, but really bothered by the geography.  Like so many other distant grandparents, I did as well as I could through video calls on the phone and frequent trips via car, train, plane… But I always ached for more. My secret wish every year, when I blew out my birthday candles, was for something that neither I nor my children ever had. I wanted my grandsons to get to know me well enough that they would remember me when they got older.

I was counting the years, months and days until I could retire and move closer to Nick and Justin. Conversations with my daughter and son-in-law brought us to the place where they were planning to purchase their first home, which would include space for me—someplace with my own kitchen, bath and entrance so that I would have my own life, but be able to spend time with them, too. During the pandemic I became even more desperate to be near them and felt like it was nothing more than an elusive dream.

In August, it actually happened. I moved to NYC, and I’m living the dream. I see Justin and Nick every day. I’m able to help out with getting them to school, staying home with them when they’re sick, serving with the PTA at their school. I pinch myself every morning and am beyond grateful for the opportunity to be a part of their lives.

I don’t know how much time I will be able to spend with them. I would love to  be around long enough to watch them finish school and enter adulthood. Or perhaps I won’t. However it goes, I’m satisfied because they will know me. And they will have memories of me that will become a part of who they are. Like playing La Cucaracha and screaming their little heads off while I call them cockroaches and smack them with a smiley-faced paper bag. It doesn’t get any better than that. 

 

Can You Hear God Laughing?

As I looked forward to my eventual retirement through the years, I emphatically said, repeatedly, that when I’m done, I’m done. No interims for me. I wanted to find a local congregation and worship in the pews like everyone else, or if it I darn well pleased, sleep in on a Sunday morning. After 43+ years in the parish, I had earned that! And, quite frankly, after the past few years, I was so exhausted that I didn’t think I had it in me to do much more.

During my last year, I was keenly aware that everything I did was for the last time. The last time I would look into the candlelit faces of the people in my congregation as we sang “Silent Night.” The last time I would pour baptismal water onto a forehead. The last time I would announce, “Christ is risen!” and the congregation would shout back, “He is risen indeed!” Everything I did was with a sense of relief mingled with melancholy.

I gave away all my books, enough to fill a barge. I passed on vestments, artwork, preaching props, and all kinds of other things that I was certain I would never use again, and a younger pastor might find helpful. I was leaving it all behind, and passing it on, and it felt good. There had been so many times in my past when I came close to walking away from parish ministry, but for some reason, God wouldn’t let me go. And now, it was finally time to move on.

And then, before I even retired, Mother Gladys, an Assistant to the Bishop of my new synod contacted me about serving as an interim pastor. To say I was less than receptive is an understatement. But I’ve lived long enough to know that I can never slam the door on the Holy Spirit without spending time in discernment. So we decided to have another conversation once I was closer to retirement.

I learned that I’m an anomaly in the Metro New York Synod. When pastors retire, they normally move away from the city; they don’t move into the city. I also learned that the synod is in dire need of interim pastors these days. And as much as I kept telling myself, “That’s not my problem. I did my time,” the love part of my love/hate relationship with the Church was tugging at my heart. I told Mother Gladys, “Well, it would have to be very, very part time, and it would have to be very, very close to where I live.” Did I really just say that? I couldn’t believe those words were coming from my mouth.

She ran a couple possibilities past me. One involved a greater time commitment and considerable driving. Nope. And then the other was a small congregation that would be closer to where I imagined I’d end up living. Gretchen and Jon were still looking at houses at the time, but they soon landed on the place where we’re now living, in Glendale (Queens). The congregation in question was a mile from our house. And they only needed someone to preach on Sundays, meet with the Council, and provide coverage during emergencies.

It was difficult for me to say yes to this. When I initially met with the Council, they were as reticent about the whole arrangement as I was, although for different reasons. Like so many other congregations right now, their numbers shrank during the pandemic, and they really couldn’t continue going in that direction. So they were approaching the possibility with caution. I was something of a gamble to them. (They had no clue about my own misgivings.)

We decided to give it a try, and after a month, I agreed to serve with them for 12 months. Now I’m struggling a bit to understand how I can help them move forward, given the limited time I am with them. (I’ve never been one to leave well enough alone.) So, we’re figuring it out together.

And here’s the big surprise in all of this, for me. The more time I spend with the people of Trinity-St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church in Maspeth, the more I’m enjoying it. It’s been a long time since I was part of a small congregation, and I am remembering how much I love small congregations. The caring within community is a beautiful thing to be a part of. And Trinity-St. Andrew’s does it so well. In such a short period of time, they have already captured this pastor’s heart.

So here I am, once again doing something I swore I’d never do. And I can hear God laughing.

My greatest fear living in NYC

Before I moved to New York, I tried to imagine all the fears I would be forced to face: riding the subway alone, getting lost, rats… But I never suspected what has come to scare me the most. Parallel parking.

When I was 16, my driver’s training instructor taught me how to pass the test to get my license. I practiced parking between poles, and he had little tricks about where I would see the poles in my windows. It was fool proof. The test wasn’t a problem. But like other times in my life when I studied for the sole purpose of passing a test, once I got my license, I never used what I learned again. For one thing, it only worked in the car I learned in, which was also the car I used for my test at the DMV. This was not a car I ever drove after that.

For more than fifty years I managed to avoid parallel parking. There was always plenty of room on the street, or there were parking lots. But with my move to Queens, those days are gone. So here I am, living in constant fear of being forced to squeeze into a tight space between two cars.

One night last week, I had to go to Home Depot. The good news was that they have a parking lot. The bad news, that it was dark and misty out, which is always a challenge for my aging eyes. (I actually only have vision out of one eye so have no depth perception, even in daylight hours.) When I came home, I pulled into our driveway to drop off my purchases and then move my car to the street. (It’s a shared driveway and so narrow that I can only pull in as far as the driveway between the houses actually begins to drop things off.)

We live up the block from a fitness center, which gets so busy at night that there’s absolutely nowhere to park. I drove around a bit and found a space that looked like a definite maybe. When I pulled in, I turned too far and no amount of going back and forth was going to get me into the space. Meanwhile, three cars were waiting to go around me. With sweat dripping down my face and heart racing, I panicked and vacated the spot. Then I found another one, not too far up the street, and it looked a little bigger. This time I went up over the curb, and again, cars were waiting to go around me, and I gave up. I drove around the block and found nothing doable for me with my limited skills—that is, nothing either at least the length of two of my cars or on the end of the block. So, I drove around another block, and another one after that. Finally, I found a place about a quarter of a mile away. As I emerged from the car, tears of frustration were streaming down my face. I felt completely defeated.

Gretchen and Jon had helped me unload and couldn't figure out why it was taking me so long to park my car. Then they saw how frazzled I was when I walked in the front door. "Why didn’t you call us so we could park the car for you?" they asked. Well, I thought of that, but I didn’t have my phone with me because… I was just going to park my car! And although they might have rescued me that night, that didn’t really solve my problem. Could I be any more pathetic? How was I ever going to survive in NYC if I couldn’t park my damn car?!

The next morning, I woke up determined to conquer my problem. For several hours I watched YouTube videos about parallel parking. I took notes and quickly noticed that every single video offered different advice. It seems that there is no easy step-by-step method for parallel parking the way I learned it in driver’s training as a kid. It all depends on the size of your car, the size of the other cars, the height of the driver, so many variables… Ugh.

I keep working on it and trust that by practicing through trial-and-error and enduring repeated humiliation, eventually I'll get there. Right now, my theme song is, “If I can park it here, I'll park it anywhere. It’s up to you, New York, New York!” I’m hoping I’ll be able to stop singing it in time for Christmas Carols.