On Parental Sacrifices and Growing Older

Last Thursday night found me sitting in our car in a Walgreen's parking lot on the south side of Chicago for two and a half hours. While I ate lukewarm beans and rice, mushy carrots, and week-old sheet cake with chocolate icing, Dylan and Zachary were living the good life in a White Sox box suite replete with ribs, wings, sandwiches, salad, sodas, beer (which they reported they had none of), ice cream, cheese cake, and a baller view of home plate. While I read a dissertation from the 1930s on Fresh Air exchange programs, the boys cheered the Sox on to a rousing ninth-inning victory over the team from Cleveland (I refuse to use their racist name). And while I flipped my way through a cheesey novel written in the 1980s that also featured Fresh Air children, Dylan and Zachary were already plotting how to get back to another game in a catered box suite. By the time I picked them up around 9:45, they were both high from caffeine, sugar, and a glimpse at how the wealthy live. Of course, given that I'm not only a sacrificial parent but also an aging sacrificial one, they were able to drop off into immediate slumber the minute they flopped into their lofts whereas I was awake for another hour. I finally went to sleep pondering how a history of the Fresh Air children and the White Sox could bring me tenure.

Speaking of aging, I had another reminder that I am growing older on Saturday this week. Cheryl and I had attended the graduation of one of our pastors, Cyneatha Millsaps, from Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana. On our way home we stopped to fill up the car with relatively inexpensive Indiana diesel ($4.59/gallon as opposed to $5.05/gallon here in Evanston). I pulled out my wallet to give the cashier my credit card and she happened to glance at Cheryl's and my graduation photo. "Is that you?" she asked incredulously as she looked back and forth between my mid-1980s head of hair and my late 2000's lack thereof. I nodded, closed my wallet and signed the receipt. "At least you still have the picture," she added as if to say - can you believe that anyone has any artifact from those bygone days?

I think she wasn't even thought of when our picture was taken of, let alone conceived.

So I walked back to the car, told Cheryl of my encounter, and just felt grateful to have enough of my wits about me that I was able to drive the rest of the way home safely. I think the cashier would have been surprised to discover that I can still wrestle both my sons to the ground. As long as that still happens, I'm not yet ready for the retirement home.