These pages grew out of an awareness that there were many things I should have talked about with my children
while they were still children, you know, that magic time between about eight years old and the teenage years.
That is the time when they are old enough to understand values and ideals, but before your complete ignorance sets
in when they become teenagers.
I first recognized this when I overheard Christopher, my son, and Jennifer, my daughter, discussing my religious beliefs.
Now before you close this story, it is neither a story for or against anybody’s religious beliefs.
For background, I was raised in the Baptist church in rural North Carolina, but had long-since rejected the dogma I had found there.
I had instead found my own personal religion, as my Father had, outside the walls of any church.
In my children’s discussions, they both had very different – and wrong – perceptions about my beliefs.
Chris thought I was an atheist, and Jen thought I was a back-sliding Baptist who would someday see the error of his ways!
But I’m getting ahead of myself, because that is one of the talks later. Having missed something that obvious and important,
what else had I missed!?
Why had I thought that just trying to live my values would convey them to my children?
Yes, it is important to not give mixed messages by saying one thing and doing another,
but nobody can fully convey their values, dreams and ideals through their actions.
How many other parents have missed the same boat? Maybe I am in the minority,
but ask yourself if you have fully imparted your beliefs to your children, your grandchildren,
or children for whom you are a mentor.
If so, good for you, but I missed miserably. So this page is an apology – an apology for being many years late.
So Christopher and Jennifer, these are the words I would have said.
They are not necessarily the words you will say to your children because they may not reflect your values.
Maybe most of the topics will be the same. My kids seemed to have about a five minute attention span,
so I’m going to set this up so each can be read in that much time or less.
Some of the talks will have some recommended reading, if you want more detail.
The times I felt like I connected with the kids were on car trips where we were off to some new adventure,
like fishing trips.
I felt their attention span was measured in milliseconds if I tried to convey any messages when I was disciplining them.
Here’s the first of the talks I would have had with my kids.....
“I don’t know exactly how it works, but I know it all works together.”
Mr. Dula was my seventh grade teacher. He stood straight and tall before us every day and seemed to be an aristocratic combination of teacher, minister, mentor, and friend.
We worked hard for him simply because we did not want him to be disappointed in us. Further, we learned things and enjoyed learning.
Mr. Dula was one of those gifted, wonderful teachers that all the kids loved. He took an hour after lunch every day to read to us.
He picked out books that were funny or exciting or that taught us a lesson, and he read them in a way that captivated us.
We could do quiet activities during that time, like draw pictures. He even let the boys whittle in the back of the room as long as
we swept up the shavings. Imagine, boys in school with knives! And we didn’t stab each other.
We viewed Mr. Dula as the very wise “answer person” and brought him all kinds of queries.
My guess is that his area of study had been some sort of liberal arts, but he had enough knowledge to usually answer our
rudimentary questions about almost everything.
I knew little of the ocean then, in fact I had never even seen an ocean. But I heard that the moon affected the tides
of the oceans and it had something to do with the moon.
I have since seen all but one ocean and with a working knowledge of astronautical control, understand the gravitational
relationships between the Earth, the sun and the moon.
But it was beyond my seventh grade mind to understand what the moon had to do with the tides.
I had barely come to grips with the fact that we were in an orbit around the sun, with the moon in orbit around the Earth.
So I brought a question to Mr. Dula: “What does the moon have to do with the tides?”
Mr. Dula was clearly out of his field of expertise. That was clear even to me. I felt his answer was not an answer at all.
I tried to resolve my perception that here was a wise man who had just given me a trite answer, even a non-answer.
Maybe he was joking with me. But he was not.
I am glad that I have remembered his answer for all these years:
“I don’t know exactly how it works, but I know it all works together.”
It was not only the answer to that question, but an answer to many questions I have had since that time.
It is true about orbital mechanics, physics, how the seed knows it is Spring, love, politics, and yes, even in your being on this Earth.
That it all works together will bring you understanding of many things, and an acceptance of things beyond your understanding.
Just as there is no piece of information that stands alone, unrelated to the rest of the body of knowledge,
there is no occurrence that is not somehow intricately tied to all other events in the universe.
We may not understand the details, but the links are there. It is no accident that Mr. Dula’s rule is the first talk we are having.
By the time we have finished more of our talks, I hope I will have shed some light on my belief that Mr. Dula was right.
