My Son, His Child

I was a coward today.

My son Nate, whose birthday is today, anticipated a Thanksgiving of joy, warmth and light — a holiday reflective of his own personality.

It was almost 8 years ago, with winter waiting just around the corner, that we brought a newborn Nate home from Meriter Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin. Nate had come into the world about 11 days earlier than expected. This meant that my wife Ima and I had overlapped the scheduling of Thanksgiving festivities (and subsequent family members arriving) with the chaos that ensues post-baby, as another human soul disrupts the tried-and-true routines of a once relatively stable family unit. Born in the same hospital as his mom (herself a 4th year medical student at the time) I vividly remember carrying Nate into the warmth of a holiday gathering a mere two days after his arrival. With 3 families packed into a 2-bedroom townhome, Thanksgiving of 2012 was tight. While I do not remember many of the details of that Thanksgiving weekend — I remember that despite the fact that for a few days we’d all be living on top of each other, there was no place I would rather be than my little West Madison home. I wanted to rush away from the hospital call lights, leave the attentive (but sleep intrusive) nurses, and bring my only son home to a bassinet near our bed.

Since that first Thanksgiving with Nate — his birthday has often coincided with the celebration of my favorite holiday. In the 8 years we’ve celebrated since — while the location of the holiday has varied (from Turkey Trots on the frozen concrete of Pewaukee, WI to the green hills of Moraga, CA and Family Football from Carlsbad, CA to Frisco, TX) — three characteristics of the holiday have remained the same: It’s warm, it’s a little bit tight, and it finds a way to celebrate Nate.

2020 is not going to be that Thanksgiving.

Ima and I did our best. We planned it all out. Hosting, we set out to create a party to renew optimism and spirits — to infuse a home with food, smells, and laughter. This would be a time where my extended family would come together and remember all that we had isolated ourselves for.

Time. Time to be together. Time to laugh and tease. Time to play lion on the floor with the grandkids, time to throw a baseball outside with your brothers, time to dare your cousins to jump from the hot tub to the cold pool, time to turn off your phone and exchange a knowing glance across the table with your spouse, time to watch football and Christmas movies with unbuttoned pants, time to pray, sing and maybe even cry together, time to celebrate that little, beautiful, joyful, kind, effusive, happy, charming, loving baby boy who came into all of our lives 8 short years ago.

So, I was a coward today.

I couldn’t bring myself to tell him. In the last week, I had already told him so many times.

I’d told him his cousins weren’t coming — that they wanted to — but they couldn’t leave California because of COVID.

I hadn’t told him that I’d received an email from my brother earlier that morning and couldn’t finish it because my heart had already broken halfway through. My brother had the friends who meant the most to Nate in his children — and he held them back — worried that a visit to our home would quarantine them. The thing about those broken hearts — is the wounds can fester — and the disappointment of the email quickly led to thoughts of my own relationship with my brother, and who I was to him, and why we hadn’t talked as much as we used to, and why a relationship that had once seemed like it blossomed — now felt more transactional than I knew either of us wanted.

I’d told him that His Grandparents weren’t coming — that they wanted to — but they couldn’t leave their house because they were more vulnerable, because of COVID.

I hadn’t told him that I was worried for my parents — and that my worry often meant I avoided their calls. I didn’t tell him that 30 years ago my relationship with him had almost exactly resembled my relationship with my own Dad — and how that over the years — it had changed. That since a distracted teenage girl had hit my Dad with 2,000 lbs. of metal on the side of a highway — that my Dad had changed. Sure — he was the same — but a traumatic brain injury had caused varying degrees of emotional shifts — and now my Dad battled depression and loneliness. I didn’t tell him that I’d feel guilty for sending my Dad into voicemail when he called while I was at work — or that I often feared that someday I would have a son that treated me like I had treated my aging father….and I only had the one son.

But I couldn’t tell him his favorite uncle wasn’t coming.

The uncle that played with him at his level — who could beat him at Smash Brothers and helped him find that missing Lego piece — I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Not after he kept praying to God in his nightly prayers that his uncle David would come. Not after he kept reassuring his own mom that it was okay that his other grandparents and cousins and uncles and aunts weren’t coming — because “David is still coming.” I couldn’t tell him that his uncle’s work had threatened his job if he traveled over Thanksgiving — because of COVID.

So… I chickened out. Hoping to avoid the unpleasantness, the tears, and the broken heart — I let cowardice rue the day. Finally, when Nate asked Ima directly, “Is David still coming?” she told him the truth. No one is born to deliver hard news — but people can be trained for it. My wife, now 8 years removed from medical school, had developed the courage that delivering bad news requires: say it directly, give the facts, and ready yourself with compassion and empathy as you anticipate the blowback.

Part of parenthood is learning to deal with unwarranted, unearned, and unjustified suffering. Nobody tells you that when they wrap up the bundle of joy, make sure the car seat is secure, and send you on your way — but that’s what any parent signs up for.

As a parent, you’re the one who has to hold your son as he realizes, not once, not twice, but three times that his birthday is going to be sacrificed at the altar of public health — as a little boy cries and wonders how he contributed to no one coming to his birthday — even though he’s diligently worn a mask whenever asked.

You’re the one who worries that your child will have to tone down their “joie de vivre,” — as the world will likely disappoint them anyway. You’re the one whose heart sinks when a doctor comes back into the room and asks to speak with you in the hallway about the need to take some more tests.

You’re the one who winces at the Instagram feed of a teenage daughter, only 13 and ever anxious because of an entire system designed by tech savants. Did they know that “moving fast and breaking things,” would bring an entire generation to its collective knees as they created a community designed to illicit every burgeoning emotion in the developing human psyche — a perfect cacophony of likes, comments, angst, praise, connection, desperation and spite? I curse myself again as I know that ultimately her stress lies directly at my feet — because as the adult in the room I’m the idiot who gave her the damn phone.

And then a thought takes hold –

As I meander in my mind away from this disaster of a year, this botching of my favorite holiday, this crushing of my son’s spirit — I think of what’s next, saying to myself, “Maybe Christmas will be different.”

In a moment that word “Christmas,” synapses a jolt to my brain that both stops and catalyzes my spirit.

Because I remember Him.

I remember Him who had no sin, whose life crescendoed into the epitome of unjustified suffering.

I think of Him….and then I think of His Father. My God and your God. And I think about how the God of the Universe, this Man of Holiness, our Heavenly Father — let the suffering occur. The suffering had to happen. The infinite, eternal, unfathomable, unconscionable, price had to be paid. It had to be paid…so that Nate could feel better when he woke up in the morning and had his birthday breakfast.

It had to be paid, so that my sister wouldn’t have to feel alone.

It had to be paid, so that my brother would have someone to answer him back as he called out in anxiety and worry.

It had to be paid, so that my daughter could have the capacity to forgive me for losing my temper.

It had to be paid, so that my wife could feel valued in every sacrifice she had made, every wrong she had ever forgiven.

It had to be paid, so that my Dad and I could find the relationship we’d had 30 years ago — one that wouldn’t be so hard to find as I recognized it with my own son.

We are all somebody’s son or daughter. No human exists without a parent. No parent exists without witnessing unwarranted, unearned, or unjustified suffering on behalf of their child.

As Thanksgiving turns to Christmas and COVID, our politics, and life’s battles evolve and change — may we be kinder to each other. May we allow the thought that whoever stands before us — came from someone who loves and has sacrificed for them. In short, may our actions, words, and deeds mirror The Child who sought to end all suffering and uplift the broken hearted for each of His Father’s sons and daughters.