A View From the Font

Defining ‘Home’

Due to some organizational changes and opportunities I have recently relocated my family away from what has been ‘home’ for the past 6 years.

Six years is a good amount of time to get rooted in friends, schools, familiarities, etc.  My family is lucky (for lack of a better term) in the sense my kids are young and their roots aren’t that deep yet.  My oldest is 7 and has one year of school (minus kindergarten) under her belt.  My youngest can adapt to anything (I think/hope).  It was hard to decide to do this move on several levels, but mostly for us – mom and dad – leaving everything we know to be comfortable.

Moving sucks.

We’ve been in our new place for almost a month now and in the third week my daughter had a bit of a breakdown.  This wasn’t spawned by random emotion but rather from her mother telling her we probably weren’t going to have friends over today to play (as she has for the past 3 weeks daily) and that the house needed some cleaning attention.  My daughter was not happy about this and it spawned her to claim that this was the boringest day in the world and the meltdown started.  Apparently she started to get angry about not seeing her other friends and then perhaps realized the sense that she wouldn’t be seeing them regularly anymore.

The next day my daughter reminded me of her episode and told me: Daddy, I got homesick yesterday. Which was a good opportunity for me to have a brief but serious conversation with her.  I asked her what happened, what she missed and a few other questions.  Her bottom line was this: I miss our home.  I have to admit that I’ve been missing our friends as well a lot.  But her comment struck an emotion in me and I quickly responded with this:

Zoe, as long as you have mom, dad and your brother, you are home.  Home is wherever we are a family.  When we are together, we are home.

I’m not sure if she understood or not, but it really made me think if I believed myself even.  I’ve contemplated it a bit and I think I do. 

For me, as long as I have my family, I’m home.

Eight is Great!

A new era of my family history is about to begin.  I’m the convert for the Heuer family name in my tree.  I’m the only baptized member in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Last night my family attended an ‘Eight is Great’ presentation by the primary presidency.  It was a short program (meant more for parents I think) to talk about the various aspects of turning the age of 8 in the Church.

Our daughter turns 8 this year and was reluctant to go to this program.  I think she thought we were going to drop her off or something.  To be honest, I was reluctant to go as well because I had to put a suit on…sigh…I hate suits.  The program was about preparing for the actual day of baptism (i.e., get your crap in order) as well as what it means for girls (activity days) and boys (scouts).  I think our daughter half paid attention.

As I was listening to this though and seeing the baptismal day in my head, it dawned on me, that she’ll be the second Heuer in the Church for my family.  This is my spiritual legacy beginning.  I felt odd and pressured a bit.  I’m not weirdly emotional about it, but perhaps when the day comes I’ll find it more inspirational.  I’m looking forward to it and trying to be a good example to my daughter so that she can start paying attention better to the foundations of the Church and the gospel.

Weird though.  1995 I was baptized.  2010 will bring another in my tree into the gospel.

A humble reminder

A month ago I wrote about three words that simply made my day.  Today, after 2 pretty long days with my kids while the wife was out with friends, I had lost a lot of patience.  My daughter fell asleep in our bedroom as she does sometimes, and I was preparing to bring her into her room.  I usually go into her room first and get it all ready so that I can quietly just pick her up from ours and put her in her bed.

Tonight as I did this routine, I pulled the sheets back and discovered something poking out beneath her pillow.  This is what I pulled out:

This was unsolicited.  Something she probably was drawing today while keeping herself busy.  A HUGE smile came across my face and my eyes teared up.  I am so humbled to have been rewarded in my life with such a wonderful spirit in my daughter and son.

I love my family too, Zoe.

‘I love you dad’

Last Saturday, despite being the day of our annual holiday Festivus party, it started as a pretty rough day.  People disagreeing, arguments ensue, etc.  Hey, these things happen.  Hopefully we all have it within us to try to temper our emotions (some of us better than others—and I’m NOT speaking of myself).  That Saturday wasn’t one of those moments.  Before our party, my kids were going to be picked up to stay at Grandma’s for the night so that we could party ‘til the wee hours of the morning (yeah right).

As my stress level was at the highest and my emotions boiling over, my daughter stops on her dash to the car picking her up, turns around and drops her backpack and runs back.  She ran up to me gave me a great big hug and simply said ‘I love you dad.’

My heart had never been so full as it did in that moment.  I didn’t let her go.  And she didn’t mind that either which made the moment even more precious to me.  It was the absolute best moment I’ve ever experienced as a parent so far.  The moment felt like hours but I’m sure it was only a few seconds.  My eyes were definitely watery (I’m an emotional sap anyway) and all I remember is whispering to her “thanks Zoe, I really needed that.”  I let her go and she was off.  She probably has no idea how important that moment was for me and for our relationship as father-daughter.  I’ve written it in my journal and hopefully one day she can appreciate it.

It reminded me of the awesome responsibility of parenthood.  And not ‘awesome’ as in the ‘far our cool’ sense, but the weight of us as parents.  I think that every decision in my life now has a third pivot of analysis – how does it affect my children.  This is as simple as going out to dinner with friends to job changes that might affect moving, etc.  We, as parents, don’t decide for ourselves anymore, but rather decide for those we preside over in our family.  How can I think it is okay to decide about a great job opportunity if it involves taking my children away from an environment that they love so much?  Sure, they are young and it is likely they can make new friends, adapt to new schools, etc. – but to simply discount those as trivial seems irresponsible.  I haven’t yet had to hit these types of walls yet, but I know that I eventually will.

I’m comforted though that my experience in my faith helps me through these times as a parent and helps guide me to what is right in life.  I’m hopeful that as time passes that I can continue to be strong with my children and teach them what I believe and why…to help them discern for themselves the spirit that they feel when thinking about such matters of faith.  I guess that only time will tell.

But thank you Zoe for that moment…and I love you too – more than you can even imagine.