Tag: Luke

The Benevolent Monarch Reigns

On By Peter WatkinsIn 2011Leave a comment

Dear Will:

With Independence Day fast approaching, I find myself pondering the significance of personal freedom. A couple of hundred years ago, self-determination was an idea worth committing treason for—worth fighting and dying for—and you and I and millions of others are now the beneficiaries of that fight, citizens of history’s most influential republic.

Of course, my children are filled with consternation over the fact that our home is less republic than benevolent dictatorship (their noun) or monarchy (my noun). They get frustrated by the fact that they are not always free to choose because their parents sometimes impose choice upon them. As we speak, my 12-year-old Seth is upset that his mother has filled his summer with productive, worthwhile activities rather than leaving him to his own devices. Given the choice, he would spend the next two months watching TV and playing computer games. Having had the choice made for him, however, he looks over the next eight or nine weeks to discover his days cluttered with basketball camp, art classes, tennis and golf lessons, and something or other to do with horses. (Outrageous, I know.) “My summer is ruined,” he declares. “You haven’t left me any time for fun!”

I know as well as you do that the central issue here is not whether basketball camp will be fun but rather that he is being forced to attend. Sometimes we do that as parents, constraining our kids to do things “for their own good.” It is part of our divine responsibility, in fact, to nurture and teach our children and, yes, from time to time compel them to stretch. The Church has declared: “Parents have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for their physical and spiritual needs, to teach them to love and serve one another, to observe the commandments of God and to be law-abiding citizens wherever they live. Husbands and wives—mothers and fathers—will be held accountable before God for the discharge of these obligations.” I realize that it doesn’t say anything in there about tennis lessons, but it does give me some assurance that I am duty-bound to teach my kids to do things they might not otherwise do.

It gets a little trickier as our children get older though, doesn’t it? My eldest child is now 21, which pretty much means that his choices are his and his alone. Inasmuch as he’s still getting some financial support as he finishes college, he is still not completely independent, but I can assure you that these days he makes plenty of choices with which I wholeheartedly disagree. It is painful, I confess, to stand by and watch him make mistakes, but mistakes are part of the Divine Plan too.

Central to that Plan is the idea of individual choice. The scripture tell us: “Men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil” (2 Nephi 2:27). Freedom to choose for our­selves allows us the privilege to do as we please with the time we are given in mortality. Metaphori­cally speaking, God will not impose basketball camp on any of us; rather we’re free to spend our time watching all of the sitcoms and playing all of the video games we can stomach. But when the great summer of life comes to an end, we will be held accountable for the choices we have made. Whether our lives lead to liberty and eternal life or something significantly worse is pretty much up to us.

You probably guessed without my telling you that Seth is quick to cite this same scripture in a futile attempt to rescue his summer from his mother and father, but we are unyielding. At this point in life, our choice trumps his. The day of his complete independence will come soon enough. Until then, the Benevolent Monarch will continue to reign.

PW

Let’s Start with the Obvious

On By Peter WatkinsIn 2008Leave a comment

Dear Will:

So the ol’ 401(k) statement arrives in the mail and I think to myself: “Don’t do it.” I hold it there, knowing that what lies within is the grimmest of grim news, a financial plunge of historic proportions in what has generously been called our “portfolio.”

Knowing better,  I open it anyway . . . and it’s horrifying. Stupefyingly so. But as is so often the case, stupefaction leads to a moment of clarity and self-awareness not seen since I acknowledged in the 10th grade that I would always be a lousy golfer. In this golden moment, it occurs to me that I never  had enough in the 401(k) plan to retire anyway. Not even close. Wouldn’t have survived the first winter without begging lumps of coal from the local soup kitchen. So what if that super secure Lehman Brothers bond hadn’t exactly paid off? In times like these, there is comfort in incompetence.

Which sort of begs a question (for our present purposes, anyway): What other “blessings” do we have to be grateful for? Let’s start with the obvious:

Dana took Bryn to see Twilight—while Seth and Peter stayed home and watched the ballgame. If that’s not a blessing, what is?

Luke moved into the dorms at UCLA. He gets to sleep in every day, treat every meal like a buffet, come and go as he pleases, all without the daily scrutiny of his overbearing parents. What could be better?

Luke moved into the dorms at UCLA. More time to focus our daily scrutiny and overbearing parental instincts on making Bryn and Seth miserable instead! What could be better?

What could be better? How about family vacations?

Who doesn’t love a scraped-up minivan with a busted air conditioner?  Well, we don’t, for example. But when you have to make twice daily round-trips to the ballet studio, a buck eighty-seven for gas is pretty nice. You know, considering.

Rat traps. (Don’t ask.)

Almost forgot: Luke moved into the dorms at UCLA. Now Seth doesn’t have to share a room and instead can devote precious real estate to the 140-or-so stuffed animals with which he shares his bed. Which doesn’t explain why he continues to squeeze his scrawny nine-year-old frame into the narrow patch not covered by his velveteen menagerie, but at least he now has options.

Then there’s the President-elect. Seems like we ought to say something about him since he got Dana to work the phones and Bryn to wear his shirts and even Seth to stick stuff on his bedroom wall. Luke even worked the polls this year (twice, though he hastens to point out that it was a non-partisan endeavor). Now if we could just get that annoying bumper sticker off of the scraped-up minivan, Peter would be happy too.

There’s other stuff as well. Like a job, for instance. In this environment, that’s a pretty great thing. Food on the table, even if it isn’t served buffet-style as in the dorms. Oh, and Jason Mraz (Bryn wants him in here too). Teachers. Coaches. Friends. Microwave ovens (when you get home from ballet every night at nine, that’s pretty important). Yoga. Belts. Laptops. iPods (unless you put them through the washer). Chocolate (dark especially). Books. Rain (yeah, right). Sports. The Maple Conservatory of Dance. And of course family. Dysfunctional though it may be, it’s the most precious thing of all. You know, considering.

PW

I Can’t Find My Egg

On By Peter WatkinsIn 2008Leave a comment

Dear Will:

It’s done.

On Saturday I drove my firstborn up to UCLA and deposited him in the dorms. I suspect that he had that day marked on his calendar for a couple of years, so anxious was he to get out from under the oppressive rule of his dictatorial parents. We stood there awkwardly near the 4th floor stairwell of Hedrick Hall, the dad wanting to give the boy a hug, the boy hoping desperately that the dad wouldn’t give into the temptation. The dad walked away unsatisfied.

When evening rolled around I was already feeling left out and disconnected. I was hoping he would call and tell me all about it—even though I knew there couldn’t possibly be anything to tell. What does one do in the first few hours of dorm life? You haggle with your roommates over storage space. You wander around and get the lay of the land. You eat your first meal in the dorm cafeteria. What’s to tell?

Still, I wanted desperately to know. When he failed to call the next day I was really feeling it. Why doesn’t he call? I texted him a couple of times, giving him the electronic equivalent of a poke in the ribs. Nothing. I coaxed his sister into giving him a call. He didn’t pick up. I knew very well that he was making the conscious choice not to call home right away—and I understood that choice—but for selfish reasons I still wanted to hear from him. In a similar position, who wouldn’t?

My wife, for one. She had also marked that day on her calendar way back when. She has known for some time that Luke and she would both be better off once he moved out of the home. There is no doubt that he has outgrown the nest, and mama bird was eager for him to go root around for his own worms. She will miss him, I’m sure—but not yet.

And certainly not like I do. I think that feeling of loss is exacerbated by the fact that Luke is going to UCLA, just like his old man. He’s living in Hedrick Hall, just like his old man. I spent six of the happiest years of my life on that campus, earning two degrees along the way. That place isn’t merely home to me. It’s the Motherland. I am connected to UCLA on such a deep level that if I were a penguin I’d probably travel to Westwood every year to lay my egg.

Maybe what I’m saying is that I’m a different sort of bird than my wife. At any rate, these last few days I’ve felt very much like a penguin: waddling around, flapping my flightless wings, cold. And worse: I can’t find my egg anywhere.

When Luke finally called home, it was only because his kid sister implored him via text message: “Dad is freaking out. Please call so we don’t have to put up with him anymore.” (Or something like that.) His report was brief, devoid of meaningful depth or detail, just like his reports have always been. It was unsatisfying, to be sure, but it was a start. Or at any rate, it was a sign that he hadn’t just dropped us altogether. Nevertheless, the dropping has begun—of that I have no doubt.

There may be lessons in all of this. Malachi certainly taught of the cross-generational ties that should bind us (“the hearts of the fathers will turn to the children, and the hearts of the children will turn to the fathers”).  But I take no comfort from such prophecies. Instead I keep hearing the words of the apostle Paul: “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things” (1 Corinthians 13:11). Paul was writing to the Corinthians about spiritual maturity, of course, but I still take it personally.

Luke has begun putting away his childish things. And it turns out I’m one of them.

PW