Tag: childhood

Stop and See the Eggs

~ Lisa Ancona-Roach ~ 7 Comments

Today is my son’s 10th birthday. As a parent, there are so many life lessons I want to share with him…from why morning breath isn’t “cool” to the importance of kindness. And I always hope that the good parts of what I say stick, and the less than ideal ones fall away.

But some lessons I aim to share with him are ones that I need to hear myself. Over and over again.

Though I’m told it’s typical behavior for a boy his age to need to be told everything at least three times, I really want him to be better connected to the world around him. For instance, after taking a trip dozens of times, the other day he asked, “Are we going the right way?” illustrating that he hadn’t been paying any attention. This is just a tiny example of how he is in his own little bubble that I would like to pop. Many times we have had “conversations” (read: nag-a-thons) of how he needs to pay attention to what’s going on around him.

But what about me?

Though I may know the route I’ve taken dozens of times, how connected am I to the actual moment I’m in? We who struggle with the juggle of life also struggle with the clichéd stopping and smelling of the roses.

Our little nest.
Our little nest.

Recently my husband discovered a robin’s nest in the pine tree right outside our kitchen window. After we all enjoyed seeing the beautiful blue eggs, the mama robin nestled in. She had expertly camouflaged the nest, and when she covered the eggs with her body, there was no way any of us would have known what miracles lurked beneath. I realized that it was the exact right perspective at the exact right time that clued us in to this exciting little world. My husband’s height gave him the angle to see, and the fact that the mom was out stretching her wings gave him the opportunity to discover. It came together in one ideal moment. Now we all know where to look and are enjoying watching our new little neighbors grow.

But what do I miss because I am not looking at the right angle at the right moment? I wonder.

Too often I have my “busy-busy blinders” on…on one mission after another, I power through and forge ahead. My bubble may move faster than my kid’s, but it’s still a bubble.

Thankfully, there are times of self-awareness where I simply make myself stop. Stop the swirl. And in those moments, inevitably I find something worth looking at…truly seeing. Maybe it’s enjoying my favorite goldfinches dart and weave after getting a nibble at our feeder…or maybe it’s seeing my son practice his piano with his bare feet (growing bigger by the day) keeping time while his tongue peeks out from his pink lips and tries to help him along.

The older he gets, the more I am trying to savor those moments. It was only yesterday, it seems, that he let go of my leg and walked his first steps. Only yesterday that he waved goodbye to us on his very first day of school. Only yesterday that he would pummel me with questions like, “Mom, does the sky end? Does the grass end? Do our days ever end?” Only yesterday.

boy and tree
As Gretchen Rubin says, “the days are long, but the years are short.” If I can get my little man to understand this sooner rather than later, then I will have helped him in a big way. I know I need to be a better model to help him see this truth more clearly. I better get my act together.

My stubborn self knows this is a life lesson I need to teach myself over and again. I guess the silver lining is that we learn best what we teach, so maybe there‘s hope for me yet.

Happy birthday to our beautiful, not-so-little-anymore boy who is loved tons and tons forever and always by his crazy mom and dad. You make the world a better place to be.

The Lessons We Leave Behind

~ Lisa Ancona-Roach ~ 11 Comments

Dad and meWith the recent experience of my mom’s health challenges, I can’t help but reflect on my dad. Though he died when I had just turned 21, I find him with me in one way or another on most days. He left behind many lessons for me. Some were life-shaping and some merely enriching in a smaller way.

Many of his life-shaping lessons were work-oriented. As a product of the Depression, he knew how important education was—he worked hard and cut every corner he could (like eating “butter sandwiches”) to put himself through college—and he would put his kids through, too. I always knew I was going to be able to go to college. What a blessing. Interesting that I was a teacher for several years and my sister teaches, too. Go figure.

He wanted his kids to work hard but be happy with their choices, so he made sure from an early age we knew that we should love what we do. The way he saw it, you were guaranteed to be working for at least a third of your life, so it would follow that you should strive to find something you enjoy doing. I am grateful for being taught that the world was wide open to me–I know many people don’t have that same kind of encouragement.

And he instilled in us that all work was honorable. Whatever your choice, be the best at it. One of his phrases was, “If you’re going to be a ditch digger, be the best damn ditch digger you can be.” Anyone who worked hard had his respect. Slackers, losers, and users did not.

Beyond the work ethic he instilled in me, though, he also had lots of other, lighter lessons to impart merely by example. For instance, he taught me that it’s perfectly normal to sing at the top of my lungs when I’m in the car. Alone or not. There were several times that my mom, sister, and I would be traveling in our car running an errand and we would pass my dad’s car on his way home. He didn’t see us, but we would see him—mouth wide open, head moving around as he belted out a number.

Understand: the man was not one to carry a strong tune. It didn’t matter. Though the line “dance like no one is watching” is popular today, my dad was ahead of his time with the embracing of “sing like no one is watching (or listening).” There have been many times I’ve been singing and bopping around at a stoplight to turn and see someone looking at me like I’m nuts. I just smile and keep on keeping on…I feel bad for what they are missing out on!

He also loved to laugh—big, hardy laughter—the kind where he would typically end up coughing because he was laughing so hard. I so miss the sound of that laugh, but I think my sister and I are doing an amicable job at carrying the torch on this one.

Of course, he wasn’t perfect, as no one is. One painful lesson I learned from him was the very specific “don’t wear shorts to play in a softball game.” (This was before it was common for girls to have shorts as uniforms and apparently be taught how to slide without ripping up their legs…still don’t get that one. Back then, we played in our jeans. Yeah. We’ve come a long way, baby.) One 100 degree day when I was 12, I begged him to let me wear shorts to my game. He explained the risks, and I said, “Don’t worry—I won’t slide,” and he told me that if I did get hurt, he didn’t want to hear about it. Well, as my life would have it, I hit a lovely triple that night that I greedily wanted to stretch into a homerun. Not only was I tagged out on the slide, but I had to pick tiny pieces of gravel out of my shredded thigh. It was freakin’ AWesome. He was so mad at me (and himself for not holding to his rule, I think) that he didn’t talk to me for three days. Lesson learned.

One of his universal lessons was “when you play, you gotta pay.” This worked for so many things…goofing off on homework, staying out late, drinking…whatever the case may be, he didn’t want to hear any whining if I was suffering from a choice I made like that. I now hear myself uttering these very words to my kid for various reasons.

It makes me wonder what lessons I will leave behind for my son. Will he, too, have memories that he realizes were lessons on how to make the most out of life? Or will he be at a loss if someone asks him, “What is one important lesson you learned from your mom?”

I know I can’t simply wake up and think, “Today is the day I will teach my son to understand the value of (insert lesson).” If that were the case, the poor kid would be facing a curriculum every day of things I deem worth knowing.

No, I think it is much more a matter of living life by example and purpose and praying that some of the good sticks (and that the bad doesn’t stick but still teaches something). I know a lot did with me and my dad. I hope my son feels the same way someday.

Sitcom Solutions

~ Lisa Ancona-Roach ~ 7 Comments

wristwatchtv2When I was about four years old, I told my parents that in the future, there would be wristwatch TVs. “She has such an imagination!…Maybe someday…after all, anything is possible!” Needless to say, I was a psychic genius. Well, maybe just psychic, because I didn’t actually invent it. Well, maybe not even psychic, but just a good guesser. Okay, lay off of me—maybe I did just have a good imagination.

I get a kick out of telling my son about how there used to be only a half dozen TV channels and they all went off the air by midnight. Compared to today’s media saturation, that seems like Flintstone times (oh, how I loved the Flintstones!) And, of course, when I hear him whine that there is nothing on…when there are 2,093,457 channels as well as On Demand programming, it is an affirmation that more is not necessarily better.

Though I was only seven when the Brady Bunch series ended, I watched enough reruns to have every ounce of Brady seared deep into my brain. Yes, the show was a saccharine sweet, corny, simplistic look at life, but…it left its mark…even in today’s pop culture. In fact, when I was in high school, I jokingly came up with the Brady Bunch Philosophy—I could solve any life problem with a BB episode. Need to get out of a date? Best not to tell someone “something suddenly came up.” Feeling a little too cocky? Be careful you don’t end up doing the Cindy Brady Freeze on live television.Cindy Brady Freeze

Need some extra cash? Gather your siblings together to form a music group. This is an option you can choose more than once. Really. Just ask the Silver Platters.

If you need a “relevant” example of absolute power corrupting absolutely, watch Bobby abuse his power as class safety monitor. It takes his rescuing a cat from an abandoned building for him to see that sometimes it’s okay to bend the rules. Also, one cup of detergent should do the trick.

Need a believable disguise? One word: mustache.

And anyone my age knows you shouldn’t play ball in the house.

And if you’re ever looking for a legitimate wager to bet, put it all on the line that you will shine the other person’s boots for a month. This is like gold.

If you ever get lost in the Grand Canyon, keep an eye out for Chief Eagle Cloud’s (aka Tonto!) grandson. He’ll help you out. Then you can fill your flashlight with baked beans to repay the kindness. And you’ll get a cool tribal name, too.

Those darn Bradys knew how to pour on the Schmaltz, didn’t they? But underneath all the corniness, we did get positive messages time and again. Tell the truth. Be yourself. Support one another. And don’t let yourself be used just because you fit the suit, Johnny Bravo. It’s a far cry from iCarly’s Sam using the butter sock to settle things, isn’t it?

I guess, when it’s time to change, then it’s time to change…Unless that means bringing in Cousin Oliver. Then it’s time to stick a fork in your eye because Mini-John Denver has come to pour maple syrup over the saccharine that we have previously tolerated but can now no longer stand.

Other than that, it’s a Sunshine Day.

Is This the Party to Whom I Am Speaking?

~ Lisa Ancona-Roach ~ 11 Comments
Stop callin', stop callin'...
Stop callin’, stop callin’…

One thing I lament for “today’s youth” is that the beauty of the simple prank phone call is no more. Now, I know there are ways around it, and that there’s plenty of mayhem occurring in today’s Caller ID world, but it’s not the same. While you can block your number from appearing on Caller ID…do you answer those calls? Yeah, me neither. So the opportunity for calling a neighbor to have a few innocent yet mischievous giggles just isn’t the same as it was when I was a kid.

My best friend Jen was my main partner in crime. Like most pranksters, we aimed low at the beginning but quickly graduated from the level of “Is your refrigerator running?” (yawn) and “Do you have Prince Albert in a can?” (we weren’t even sure who this Prince Albert was, so we didn’t find it all that funny) to more clever—at least to us—calls.

Since we had our own “radio show” (i.e. we had a sketch comedy show that we recorded on cassette tape…man, we were cutting edge), we liked to think that we had a wide array of voices and characters at our disposal. I’m not sure how we, as 11-year-old girls, pulled off convincing men’s voices, but based on the success of our pranks, we must have been somewhat believable.

[Side note/disclaimer: if anything in these stories can be found to be illegal, then these stories are absolutely not true. Completely fictitious. If not, then never mind this disclaimer.]

One bit that we loved doing was acting as though we were from the fire department. During sleepovers, we would be up at 2am and just call someone we knew and say, “Mrs. So-and-So (that’s not really her name—because that would be an awesome last name to have, but it’s not—it’s just because Jen and I still need to maintain our cloak of anonymity even after all these years. I’d hate to have to relocate.) Anyway, we would say, “Mrs. So-and-So, this is the Mayberry (no, not really Mayberry…come on) Fire Department. Forgive me for waking you up, but fires can strike a house at 2am, and if one did, would you have an escape route planned?” Of course, Mrs. So-and-So wouldn’t know which end was up. On the one hand, she’d just been awoken by a call, but on the other hand…that call was trying to save her life. How could you get mad at that? Remarkably, she could. After a few minutes of back and forth conversation, where the “fire department” was expressing concern for her home safety plan, Mrs. So-and-So finally told me to go to hell. Jen’s convulsive giggling in the background probably wasn’t keeping a tight lid on our ruse, but…that was what it was all about.

Another fire department call that we had fun making was when our neighbors were having a big party. We called the partying neighbors and told them I was the fire chief and that we had heard they were having a big party. Did they have a permit for that party?? Jen and I almost wet ourselves laughing as we could hear the man switch phones to go to a quieter room where he could better answer “the chief’s” questions, as he worriedly told his wife. “Mr. So-and-So (no, he was not married to Mrs. So-and-So…please, quit being so literal), can you please tell me the number of people in attendance at your party?” Again, Jen and I had all we could do to keep it together while we overheard him count off bunches of people and then finally come in with a guess of “around 40.” “Well, based on the size of your house, you are just under the number where a permit would be required. Carry on.” And the very relieved man thanked me and went back to his party.

We also loved calling up people and freaking them out just a teensy bit. We had a neighborhood phone book that listed the names of the children and their ages as a way for neighbors to get to know one another (my, how times have changed in that regard, no?) We would call up strangers and act like we were related to them. “Uncle John? This is your niece Susie. How ARE you??” To which John would reply, “Uh, I don’t have a niece named Susie, you must have the wrong number…” And I would jump in with, “But Uncle John, I can’t believe you don’t remember me! Can you put Aunt Linda on the phone? Or how about one of my cousins? Alan must be around, what? 11?…” to which John would, well…freak out a bit. “Listen, I don’t know who the hell this is, but…” and then he would rage on and threaten us…you know, fun stuff.

Okay, maybe it’s better that there is Caller ID. Nah, I take that back—it was a lot of fun that was mostly harmless. Well, now that I’m all grown up (technically), I wouldn’t want my kid doing it, but, as a memory it’s harmless. And who knows, maybe Mrs. So-and-So decided to create an escape route in her house after all? Maybe these calls of ours were actually helpful. In fact, I’d like to think they made the world a slightly better place.

P.S. Bonus points if you get the reference in the title.

Fra GEE lay

~ Lisa Ancona-Roach ~ 6 Comments

Thanks to A Christmas Story, I can never see the word “fragile” without pronouncing it fraGEElay in my head. And on this Christmas Eve, things can indeed be fragile…huge ToDo lists…family gatherings…full schedules…exhausted parents trying to provide the “perfect”  Christmas for their kids…It can get messy and broken pretty quickly. So as you would with fragile things, be gentle. Continue reading “Fra GEE lay” →

Ask Dad. He Knows.

~ Lisa Ancona-Roach ~ 7 Comments
Two cents' worth of shoelaces?
Two cents’ worth of shoelaces?

I fell in love with the movie It’s a Wonderful Life when I was just a little girl. Back then, they showed it numerous times during the holiday season, and it’s a safe estimate to say I’ve seen it close to 100 times…so I’m a tad familiar with it. I think most people are familiar with it, too, as well as the main themes of the movie. The ideas of “Each man’s life touches so many other lives” and “No man is a failure who has friends” are the one-two punches of the movie and still so relevant today.

But there’s lots more to be learned in this lovely movie, too—like don’t ride your shovel onto thin ice…a turntable can make one helluva rotisserie…whispering into someone’s deaf ear is a great way to admit your love without having them know it…it’s best to periodically check the floor when dancing…and the valuable tip from Uncle Billy that has served me so well in life: when drunk and in doubt, choose the middle hat.

Think you might be on your way to deliver poison? Best ask Dad.
Think you might be on your way to deliver poison? Best ask Dad.

Indeed, the film is loaded with life lessons, but there’s one in particular that I want to take a moment with, and the title of this post probably already clued you in. Ask Dad. He knows. When George is presented with the problem of delivering what he knows to be deadly “medicine,” he barges into a meeting and attempts to ask his dad what to do. Of course, later in the film you can connect the dots to know that the dad he really needs to ask about his big problems is The Dad of All, but his earthly one is pretty damned important, too. In fact, when George’s dad dies, it ends up shaping the rest of his life.

When I began my love affair with IAWL as a child, I had no idea the parallels that George Bailey and I would have, with a key one being that my dad died just about the same time of life as Peter Bailey left George. His chances to ask his dad disappeared, as did mine.

And, oh, the things I would have loved to ask my dad…Of course, plenty of serious life issues, but lots of others, too. Like how was “Oh, I trust you, it’s just your date that I don’t trust…” supposed to ever even appear fair? And why didn’t you wear shorts except for swimming? And couldn’t you have used another comparison instead of “poodle” when I got that one perm in junior high?

For the years lived without him, lots of questions from my 20s would have begun, “Dad, why do guys…?” and there’d be the specific one that asked, “What do you think of this guy?” In my 30s, I know one question would have been, “How do you like your new grandson?” And now in my 40s, I still find myself wondering, “what would Dad have thought?” about any variety of things.

But all of these questions are no longer possible to ask. So, my friends, I want to encourage you: if you still can, ask Dad—and ask Mom, too. From the silly to the serious, if you don’t ask…you’ll never know. Don’t let them take too many answers with them. After all, it IS a wonderful life, and the more we learn about and love one another, the better.