Father Hanley was a priest who taught me in high school, and I hadn't seen him in a long time. In fact, I hadn't even thought of him in years, although when I got the email invitation to his memorial Mass, a flood of memories came back to me.
High school for me was awhile ago, and I'm reminded of that when I run into my classmates at reunions. They have gray hair and they talk about the 1950s and 60s with a great deal of familiarity. We all have vivid memories of JFK's assassination, the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show, miniskirts, Woodstock, the moon landing, etc.
I share all those memories with my classmates, but I also have something most of them don't have, even the ones on their second marriages -- a 13 year old daughter. I got married late and had children even later, so while some of my classmates have grandchildren, I still have teenagers.
At my last reunion a couple of guys mentioned they were already retired and had moved to South Carolina. I said, "I have a kid who's not even in high school yet. That retirement place on the beach is a long way off for me."
When Father Hanley died I realized that he was probably the last surviving teacher I had in high school. The little Catholic high school where I went has a cemetery in a field out back, and most of the priests who taught me are buried there. About ten years ago, on a visit to the school, I took a walk through the cemetery and read the headstones. When I saw the birth dates I realized that most of them were only in their 30s and 40s when they taught me, and now I’m older than that.
I wanted to go to Father Hanley's Mass, and I marked it on my calendar. I envisioned myself going back to the little chapel where I attended Mass in high school, seeing some of my classmates, perhaps walking through that cemetery again. I would revel in the memories, thinking back to the good and bad of high school.
The tough guy poses we struck, the machismo that was as thin as a haze of cigarette smoke. Talking about girls. Playing basketball in a gym that throbbed with teenage hormones. Thinking about girls. Wondering how my life was going to turn out. The cutting humor that teenage boys have, where everything was unprintable but so funny it made your sides hurt from laughing. Thinking about girls. Talking about life, morals, religion, sports, and a million other things with the priests during and after class, with blazing honesty.
I went to a Catholic grade school and was taught by nuns. Eight years of stern-faced women in black habits made me feel like a prisoner by the time I was 13. When I got to the all-boys high school it was a relief to have male teachers. They didn't mince words, they didn't wheedle or scold you the way the nuns did. Some of them had served in World War II or the Korean War, and they had the grit of life on them. They told it to you straight, and we boys were grateful for that. They didn't take any nonsense, but at the same time they had a kindness you could sense under the gruff exterior. They cared about us, and we knew it.
Father Hanley taught a religion class. I don't remember the specifics of what he taught me, but I do remember a lot of passionate discussions in class. I remember talking about real world situations, challenges we faced every day, and how to handle them. It wasn't a pie-in-the-sky philosophy, or the rote memorization we had in grade school with the nuns, but a nuts and bolts discussion about real life morals.
There was a lot going on in the world. The Civil Rights movement. The Vietnam War. The hippie movement. Old values were being questioned, and people were anxious for change. Father Hanley and his peers didn’t shy away from those tough questions, and they taught us how to look at them honestly and try to find the moral path amid all that turmoil.
I realized the night before Father Hanley's Mass that I couldn't go. My wife was out of town visiting our son in college, and I had two teenagers to look after, with a full schedule of activities the next day. It was impossible to do it all and still drive 25 miles to get to my high school in time for the Mass.
So, I had to say a silent prayer for Father Hanley, and hope that he's in Heaven now. I wish I had gotten to see him at some point in the last 40 years and thanked him for what he did for me. I'm sure he didn't get nearly enough thanks from the thousands of students he taught in a long teaching career. He was one of many priests who taught me, men who gave up the comforts of family life to teach other people’s children, who lived in a community and had no salary, no house or car to call their own.
People like him, who don't have children of their own, have to live on in the lives of the people they taught. I know that he influenced me in profound ways, and he did that with thousands of other men. All those discussions about what's important in life sunk deep into us, and helped to mold our later lives. I would not be the person I am today without the Father Hanleys of the world.
Many thanks, Father. May you rest in peace.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Does Birth Order Matter?
By John McDonnell
I never believed that birth order plays a role in a person's life, until I became a parent. As much as parents try to deny it, we do treat each child differently. Sometimes that’s because they have different personalities, but it also has something to do with birth order.
Parents change over time, and that’s the main reason birth order is important. You just don’t raise your youngest child the way you did your oldest, especially if there’s a big gap between them. I’m not saying that the oldest children get the best parenting, or that the youngest do. It’s just different, and here’s why.
. The first time is a charm. The first time you experience anything as a parent is always a small miracle. Hearing your baby cry for the first time. Watching them take their first steps, say their first words. It doesn't matter how inane or stupid, the first time your kid does something it’s the most amazing event in the universe. This is not to say that it's less amazing when your other children have the same experiences. A miracle is still a miracle the second time, but it just doesn’t have that same slap-in-the-face freshness to it.
. You take more pictures in the beginning. There is no clearer way to analyze the birth order question than to add up how many pictures and videos parents have of each of their kids. In most families, the number of images is inversely proportional to the birth order. When my mother cleaned out her house before moving into a retirement home, she presented each of her children with envelopes full of childhood photographs. For me, the oldest of six, there were several manila envelopes bulging with photos, some that were glossy studio portraits. My youngest sibling got one letter-size envelope with a handful of Polaroids in it, and no studio shots.
. You start out with more energy. I used to wonder why my Dad only played catch in the backyard with me as a little boy, and didn't do it with any of my brothers. Now I know. When my oldest daughter and son were young I'd often play basketball with them in the driveway. Now, I look at the basketball net wistfully, and remember the days before back pain. If I ever went out in the driveway and challenged my youngest daughter to a game of hoops she'd probably tell me to put the ball down before I gave myself a heart attack.
. You relax your grip over time. Here is where things get better for the baby of the family. With your first child you are involved in every aspect of their life. This makes for some ugly scenes during the teen years. With each additional child you relax your grip a little until with the last one you basically give them the car keys when they're 16 and tell them just to stay out of jail.
. You stop trying to be a puppet master. With their first child parents often mistake themselves for God Almighty. They feel they can mold the child like clay, starting when the child is still a toddler. "Look at the way he throws his peas from that high chair," you say. "He's got a great arm. That's a future baseball star there." You have a template you want them to follow, and you fully expect that they'll become an all-star athlete, a millionaire before they're 30, and President of the United States (making sure to tell the whole world in their inauguration speech that you’re the real reason behind their success).
With time comes disappointment, however, and the scaling back of your grand plans. By the time the youngest child comes along you just want them to stay off welfare and not do anything to embarrass the family. A humble job and the ability to meet their mortgage payments are quite enough.
Children are the greatest timepieces ever invented. They grow up so fast that parents find themselves butting up against the reality of Time’s rapid pace. The other day my youngest child, who is now a teenager, found our wedding album in a closet. "Dad, you were actually handsome," she said. "And you had hair."
I looked at the photos from so long ago and once again asked myself where the time has gone. I realized that the father she has is not the same one that her oldest sibling had, in so many ways. But where there's a lack of hair and energy, I think there's a lot more wisdom, so that even though I don't play basketball in the driveway with her, I also don't make the same stupid mistakes I made with my older kids.
She's growing up with a saner, wiser Dad, one who hopefully will guide her through the next few years with enough grace and dignity to make up for a few less basketball games.
THE END
I never believed that birth order plays a role in a person's life, until I became a parent. As much as parents try to deny it, we do treat each child differently. Sometimes that’s because they have different personalities, but it also has something to do with birth order.
Parents change over time, and that’s the main reason birth order is important. You just don’t raise your youngest child the way you did your oldest, especially if there’s a big gap between them. I’m not saying that the oldest children get the best parenting, or that the youngest do. It’s just different, and here’s why.
. The first time is a charm. The first time you experience anything as a parent is always a small miracle. Hearing your baby cry for the first time. Watching them take their first steps, say their first words. It doesn't matter how inane or stupid, the first time your kid does something it’s the most amazing event in the universe. This is not to say that it's less amazing when your other children have the same experiences. A miracle is still a miracle the second time, but it just doesn’t have that same slap-in-the-face freshness to it.
. You take more pictures in the beginning. There is no clearer way to analyze the birth order question than to add up how many pictures and videos parents have of each of their kids. In most families, the number of images is inversely proportional to the birth order. When my mother cleaned out her house before moving into a retirement home, she presented each of her children with envelopes full of childhood photographs. For me, the oldest of six, there were several manila envelopes bulging with photos, some that were glossy studio portraits. My youngest sibling got one letter-size envelope with a handful of Polaroids in it, and no studio shots.
. You start out with more energy. I used to wonder why my Dad only played catch in the backyard with me as a little boy, and didn't do it with any of my brothers. Now I know. When my oldest daughter and son were young I'd often play basketball with them in the driveway. Now, I look at the basketball net wistfully, and remember the days before back pain. If I ever went out in the driveway and challenged my youngest daughter to a game of hoops she'd probably tell me to put the ball down before I gave myself a heart attack.
. You relax your grip over time. Here is where things get better for the baby of the family. With your first child you are involved in every aspect of their life. This makes for some ugly scenes during the teen years. With each additional child you relax your grip a little until with the last one you basically give them the car keys when they're 16 and tell them just to stay out of jail.
. You stop trying to be a puppet master. With their first child parents often mistake themselves for God Almighty. They feel they can mold the child like clay, starting when the child is still a toddler. "Look at the way he throws his peas from that high chair," you say. "He's got a great arm. That's a future baseball star there." You have a template you want them to follow, and you fully expect that they'll become an all-star athlete, a millionaire before they're 30, and President of the United States (making sure to tell the whole world in their inauguration speech that you’re the real reason behind their success).
With time comes disappointment, however, and the scaling back of your grand plans. By the time the youngest child comes along you just want them to stay off welfare and not do anything to embarrass the family. A humble job and the ability to meet their mortgage payments are quite enough.
Children are the greatest timepieces ever invented. They grow up so fast that parents find themselves butting up against the reality of Time’s rapid pace. The other day my youngest child, who is now a teenager, found our wedding album in a closet. "Dad, you were actually handsome," she said. "And you had hair."
I looked at the photos from so long ago and once again asked myself where the time has gone. I realized that the father she has is not the same one that her oldest sibling had, in so many ways. But where there's a lack of hair and energy, I think there's a lot more wisdom, so that even though I don't play basketball in the driveway with her, I also don't make the same stupid mistakes I made with my older kids.
She's growing up with a saner, wiser Dad, one who hopefully will guide her through the next few years with enough grace and dignity to make up for a few less basketball games.
THE END
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