Having faith that things will work out
My husband Brian gets a raw deal in this column, as his comments are offstage, kind of like Charlie Townsend in “Charlie’s Angels,” or Stan Walker, or Mrs. Columbo or Lars Lindstrom. Brian, however, is not a sit-com character but rather a successful dancer, having pirouetted and boogied for 35 years, and is currently in Seattle as part of a 20-city tour with Sean Dorsey.
Some readers don’t believe that Brian exists, but he is as real as the cow on John’s roof. Which gets me to the subject of faith. My working philosophies come from black-and-white movies, in this case, Fred Gailey in “The Miracle on 34th Street”: “Faith is believing in things when common sense tells you not to.”
And although Brother Not X thinks of me as a Christian of Convenience, the better answer is that I am more of an a la carte Catholic than I am a prix fixe. I like Advent, but no so much Lent or plenary indulgences. I like the music and the incense, but not the sin and lesser-roles-for-women part.
The virgin birth confuses me, and I don’t know whether there is a heaven. What I do know is that when I finally find out, it will be too late to change the outcome. So I choose to make the little bedlam bungalow in the outer, outer, outer, outer Excelsior my paradise “so instead of getting to Heaven, at last — I’m going all along.” And yet, we Fisher-Paulsons make it into purgatory, and some days, just plain hell.
What parents do is pass on faith. We ask our children to believe in things without proof. Eat your vegetables. This is a big argument in our family, as neither of my boys can see or hear beta keratin yet Papa and I insist that life cannot continue without fiber. Brian does not believe me when I tell him that chocolate is a vegetable, despite my proving that it comes from the Theobroma cacoa tree (which means “food of the gods”).
We tell the boys that we believe they need to study to get a liberal education and a good job when they grow up, and yet Aidan makes no connection with knowing how the ancient Egyptians produced papyrus will result in him working for Animal Care and Control (he likes the uniform).
Faith is my way of organizing my crises. Take the past week: Brian had no sooner left for the airport, than I got a call from Aidan’s principal and Zane’s teacher. Aidan’s catastrophe involved sticking his head in a bowl full of glitter. Zane, however, had the very first migraine of his life. And even though Aidan suffers from the grippe every other Tuesday, Zane has never missed a day of school for medical reasons. I drove over and picked him up. This was one of those sweet afternoons that I don’t get anymore, where I put him to bed with hot cocoa, two aspirin, an ice pack and a dog. (Bandit is the best of the pack at sleeping in place.) He wakes up all warm and fuzzy and life is much better. For an hour or two. But then he left school on Wednesday, and he played hooky again on Thursday.
In 17 years of formal education, I had only ducked out of one class, that being differential calculus. My motivation was to walk down Queens Boulevard to try Baskin-Robbins’ new licorice flavor. Both the ice cream and the cutting class were bad ideas, and so I never did either again.
But as we have discussed, I was a nerd. And Zane is, well, a playa. When I got back home that afternoon, I found him on the sofa, having found the iPad I had hidden, the web address to sites better left to adults and beverages he ought not to be drinking.
I choose to believe that these behaviors are more a part of being 14 than they are any of the diagnoses that have been hung around his neck. I choose to believe that we will make it through this dirt road called teenager years.
Brian believes that I can handle this week’s calamity. And I have faith that he will come back next week, and I will cook spaghetti, and all four of us will sit at the dining room table, Bandit and Buddy begging for meatballs, and we will hold hands and say grace, and toast “the best boys in the world” because, bottom line, we all have faith in family.
I like Advent, but no so much Lent or plenary indulgences. I like the music and the incense, but not the sin and lesser-roles-for-women.