Canadas at Home: Family in 2000

Like Mother, Like Father, Like Daughter

January: Does any job carry more stress than parenthood? Even police officers and air-traffic controllers get to punch out once in a while. Moms and Dads, on the other hand, get to worry around the clock. We worry about sins of commission--about tripping and dropping the baby down a mineshaft, for instance. We worry, too, about sins of omission; if we turn our heads or fall asleep, we fear, the toddler will decide to take the car for a spin or redecorate the kitchen in periwinkle and burnt umber. The other night, I fell asleep on the sofa in the living room, and Lisa nodded off on the futon in the playroom. The only one awake in the house, it turned out, was Essie, whom I found sitting in front the TV watching Matlock. I guess things could have been worse.

On top of all these worries is the concern is that we will scar our children by setting poor examples. I forget how much Essie notices until I catch her imitating one of us. Months ago, while she was still only a year and a half or so, we noticed her dipping her tortilla chips in salsa. The other day, I had been playing bullfighter with her--waving a placemat and encouraging her to run past me; later, we saw her holding the same placemat and calling "Toro!" I am happy to report that the bulk of this imitative behavior has been innocuous, but we confess that we have been the source of a couple of bad habits. Thanks to Mommy, for example, Essie is already a java junkie--though she fortunately is content with decaf. From Daddy, she has learned to tip up her bowl and drink her soup. As her weakness for Matlock, no one in the house is claiming responsibility.

A Whole New World

May: Early this morning we heard a bleat. Essie, who was still adjusting to sleeping in her little youth bed, had woken up again. As she often does, she came into our room and stood next to our bed. Meanwhile, I went into her room, got down next to her bed, and called for her. Several times that night already, Lisa had done the same, trying to help her go back to sleep. This time, though, I heard little footsteps and went back into our room. Essie had taken my place in our bed. Through the darkness, I could make out a smile on her face.

For all the talk about dirty diapers and late-night feedings, no one ever told us about these moments, the thousand little joys that make you keep falling more deeply in love with a child. No one prepared me for being in the other room and hearing Essie sing along with "A Whole New World" from Aladdin, usually coming in on the last word of each line: ". . . world . . . view . . . star." No one told Lisa how she would feel when Essie, seeing a vest on a hanger, started saying "nay-buh, nay-buh," and then paraded happily along with her mom to the tune of "Mr. Roger's Neighborhood": "Won't you be my nay-buh?" Neither of us was ready for her favorite interjection--"Oh my goodness!"--or her various little quirks, including her habit of shaking a sipper cup to make sure it contains enough juice or milk to make it worth her effort.

For a long time, it seemed that everyone--friend and stranger alike--who saw us with Essie would confide, "They grow up so fast." It hasn't seemed that way for me. Despite this warning--or perhaps because of it--I have enjoyed our new life with Essie frame by frame, savoring each moment as it comes.

Mark Named Outstanding Teacher

May: Thanks to two people who nominated me, as well as a host of others I have acknowledged below, the University of North Carolina at Pembroke has presented me with one of its five Outstanding Teacher Awards this year. Such an honor would be welcome at any time, of course, but it felt especially satisfying this year because, as I wrote in the teaching portfolio I submitted to the Awards Committee, I entered a lot of new territory and ultimately, I hope, took my teaching to another level. For starters, I taught a number of courses for the first time: ENG 343: The American Novel, ENG 346: Aspects of the English Language, ENG 455: Directed Study, and two online sections of ENG 203: Introduction to Literature. I also revised my composition courses so that the students now research, write, and design projects for publication on All American, a site I publish on the World Wide Web. Later this month, I will lead my first student travel experience, a weeklong trip I call "Philadelphia in the Life of America." Finally, I have adjusted my overall approach to teaching to include much more one-on-one interaction in the form of conferences, individual progress reports, and portfolio presentations. The greatest thing a person can ask of a job, perhaps, is the opportunity to fulfill a calling. This year, more than any other, I have felt that opportunity and tried to seize it. To be honored for that effort is the icing on the cake.

Unlike the Grammies and Academy Awards shows, the UNCP Faculty Banquet does not provide time for acceptance speeches. Thus, unless something pans out with this project that Clint Black has asked me to work on, I never will have a public opportunity to thank all the people who have supported me. Nevertheless, if you are reading this, there is a good chance that I owe you thanks. Mom, Dad, and Lisa, you continually make me feel as if I can do anything, and you have always put your money--and time and energy--where your mouths are. Other family and friends, especially Lisa's family, you have helped make my life a joy. Esprit, thanks for giving me the time to work on my teaching portfolio. Colleagues--especially those in the Department of English, Theatre, and Languages, I cannot express how deeply I appreciate the atmosphere you create at UNCP. There may not be a more supportive, congenial, and upbeat faculty, as well as administration, anywhere in America. It is no wonder that this university tops the UNC system in students' evaluations of teaching. Finally, students, you make my teaching work. Because my teaching philosophy emphasizes student involvement, my success depends on you. You have risen to this challenge, as well as the scores of more tangible ones I pose to you every week, and have succeeded beautifully.

Follow the Leader

July: Keeping an eye--and a handle--on Essie is not always easy. While she generally has a positive attitude, she also usually has her own plans, which often do not coincide with mine. Take our recent trip to the North Carolina Museum of Art, for example. In my mind, it was a great idea. Lisa needed to go to Raleigh anyway to shop, and I thought I would take the opportunity to see a traveling Rodin exhibit that was in town. To make things easier on Lisa, I offered to take Essie to the museum with me. After all, she's a good girl, and maybe she would absorb a little culture. The cultural experience, however, did not go as planned--at least not as I had planned. For starters, about a minute after we walked inside, I discovered that she had soiled her last disposable diaper. Later, after I had returned to the van and put a cloth one on her, we entered the intimate hall of prized sculpture, or, as Essie would have it, an exotic playground filled with objects to run around and climb. Instead of soaking up the beauty of Rodin's figures, I had to worry that Essie would revise them, turning them into modern-day Venus de Milos. I found out later that Rodin was famous for his fragmentary sculptures; some people, I suppose, think he created them deliberately, but I suspect he had a two-year-old collaborator. Anyway, the excursion turned out to be a disaster--but for a few glimpses of the sculptor's brilliance and one gleaming moment: Shortly after we arrived, I showed Essie Rodin's most famous sculpture and told her it was called The Thinker. She promptly held the backs of her fingers to her chin and said, "I'm thinking!"

Today, however, was different. Today was special. While I was at work, I had been thinking of her and looking forward to spending time with her, as I often do in the afternoon. When I got home from work, we ran some errands together and then went to St. Andrews College, where I thought we might go for a swim. When I found out the pool was closed, I decided we would go for a walk around the campus. Having no pressing responsibilities, I was ready to let go. In fact, instead of trying to guide her to this place or that, I let her be the leader. For close to an hour, she got to go where she wanted to go, do what she wanted to do, and generally control her own fate, while I got to give up control over my regimented life and float behind her like a kite on a string. We went up steps, down ramps, and through tunnels. We jumped off stoops, visited geese and ducks, took a close look at a bug, played a game of chase, and walked what must have been a mile or more. I was in heaven, and, though she is still too young to say so, I could tell that she was enjoying herself, too; I read her joy in her beautiful little face, especially when she was standing on a stoop, waiting for me to join her and saying, "Jump togedder." Later, though, as we were walking away from that stoop, she found a way to put the experience--and her feelings about it--into words. "Daddy," she said, "I love you." Feeling an even deeper bliss, I told her that I loved her, too, then knelt down and hugged her, holding her and the moment close to me. Then, strangest of all for a child who usually wants mainly to wrestle and play with her dad, she asked for another hug. As I held her, longer this time, she never climbed or squirmed, but merely remained there in my arms, as if she was feeling what I was feeling: a moment when the two of us were as close as we've ever been.

The Dizzy, Busy Days of Summer

Summer: Going into this summer, I knew it would be a busy one. It also was a fun one. For starters, the three of us got to indulge in one of our favorite hobbies, traveling. The first week after school ended, we joined 23 college students for Philadelphia in the Life of America, a trip that Lisa and I planned and coordinated for the North Carolina Teaching Fellows Program. Only a few days after we returned to North Carolina, we were off again, this time to Indiana to visit our families. We spent a week or so in Indianapolis, where my parents reveled in seeing Essie for the first time since Easter, and Lisa and reveled a bit in spending some time by ourselves. We then headed up to Fort Wayne to see Lisa's family, but I had to leave early to be back home in time for summer school. On the way home, I stopped in Indianapolis again to spend another day or two with my parents, who took me to the new Civil War Museum on Monument Circle downtown.

Lisa and Essie actually wound up coming home early, as well, so that Lisa could tend to her flourishing catering business. Over the next two months, she catered several large and small events, including an anniversary party for 100 people. Meanwhile, I taught three classes and got to work on a book that a colleague and I are editing on service-learning in higher education. We also made some more improvements to our house. In one of the biggest projects yet, Lisa single-handedly refinished the floors in the foyer, living room, and dining room. She also redecorated the guest room, and I installed several things, including two closet organizers, new closet doors, and some new cabinets in the carport to store Lisa's catering supplies. We farmed out two jobs: the repainting of the exterior trim and installation of new carpet in the bedrooms.

In August, we were on the road again, first heading up to Malone, New York, for the wedding of our friends Pete Amstutz and Bridget Fitzpatrick. On the way there and back, we stopped in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, as well as Hyde Park, New York. A week or so after we returned home, we took a weekend trip to Atlanta, Georgia, where we saw two more friends--Mark Murphy and Sarah Beth Lassiter--get married and had the chance to see several longtime friends, including Chris and Angie Prince, Steve and Deb Lawrence, and Chris and Jenni Lorsung. We got back home only a few days before my fall semester began.

Celebrations

Fall 2000: With our wonderful family, jobs, home, and other blessings, we always have occasion to celebrate. Over the past few months, though, we have enjoyed some special celebrations. For starters, Lisa and I celebrated our 11th anniversary on September 23. We marked the occasion by spending a couple of days in our favorite city, Charleston, South Carolina. Thanks to our friends Howard and Jessica Corcimigilia, who watched Essie for those days, we even got to go for leisurely walks, eat at nice restaurants, and have meaningful conversations without having to look out for cars, pick up macaroni off restaurant floors, or rack our brains for answers to that dogging question, "Why?" Actually, it was a little weird. We had a good time, though. Just as we were approaching the city, the sky cleared, and we headed straight for Isle of Palms, where we spent a sunny, cool, and generally glorious afternoon on the beach. Later, we had dinner at Magnolia Grill and spent the night at the Meeting Street Inn. The next morning, which was also pretty, we went--as we always do in Charleston--on a long walk among the beautiful old houses and quiet little streets, finishing up with brunch at Poogan's Porch.

Lisa and I weren't the only ones celebrating. Early in October, Essie's little buddy Heydon Ward celebrated his third birthday, and the entire gang gathered at the Wards' home for a blowout, complete with cake, ice cream, even a moon walk. Essie was so moved by the experience that she proposed to her parents that we have a birthday party for her. While we certainly were amenable to the idea, we felt compelled to explain that a more appropriate time for such a celebration would be, well, her birthday, which was not due to arrive until January 18. Apparently we were not sufficiently persuasive. For days or weeks, she talked incessantly about her birthday and, hearing that her grandparents were on their way from Indiana, decided that they were coming for--what else?--her birthday. One day, when Lisa went to pick up Essie at her preschool, one of the teachers asked her if we were planning a party. Essie evidently had been extending invitations to her classmates. Since Halloween was just a few days away, we finally resolved to have a small Halloween party and postpone the birthday celebration. Lisa made a butterfly costume and baked a chocolate cake, Granny and Papa supplied the presents and party favors, and I captured the festivities on videotape. Essie, of course, had a great time, and we followed up the party a few days later with a night of trick-or-treating. Already a veteran of Halloweens, having masqueraded as Madeline and a penguin in years past, Essie marched right up to the various front doors, said the magic words, thanked her benefactors, and left with the goods. The only hitch came at a house where the boy delivering the treats was wearing a scary mask. Essie marched up to the door, as usual, but when she saw the boy, she literally staggered. I reached behind her to keep her from falling backward off the step. She didn't scream or cry though, and after the boy removed the mask she recovered rather nicely.

Thoughts on the Election

November 2000: Why would anyone want to be president? Give the candidates the chance, and odds are they will talk of serving--their country, the American people, everyone and everything but themselves. And to some extent, at least we hope, they are right; they do believe in America, and they believe they can serve it by leading it. Still, they are ambitious people--these presidential candidates--and they know there is no surer way to make a mark on history than by becoming president of the United States. Only 42 men have achieved such stature, and every one--simply by virtue of getting himself elected or, in a few cases, appointed--has assured himself an assortment of perks: a portrait in the National Portrait Gallery, at least a passing mention in every subsequent encyclopedia and almanac published in America, perhaps even a monument. Even William Henry Harrison attracted more fame by spending 31 days in the position than millions of Americans have earned by saving lives on operating tables or storming the beaches of Normandy. Presidential legacies may be rare, but lasting fame comes with the job.

The opportunity to achieve such fame surely stands behind Al Gore's and George W. Bush's tireless efforts first to win the presidency and now to keep it from slipping away. Each stands perhaps only a few votes--maybe a few mutilated or forgotten ballots--away from becoming the next most famous person in the world. But an even greater prize waits, apparently ignored by both men. Only 42 men have accepted the presidency of the United States, but even fewer--zero, to be exact--have turned it down. A century from now, historians and diligent elementary school students will know who became president in 2001. How many more would remember the man who did not. In passing up the presidency, George W. Bush or Al Gore could do what only a few have done: brilliantly trump the apparent winner, achieve a poetic victory through submission. In writing his concession speech, he might borrow a phrase from America's most famous non-president, Henry Clay. Told that his position on an issue might keep him out of the White House, Clay declared: "I had rather be right than be president." Looking political death squarely in the eye, he might even rightfully quote from Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities--"It is a far greater thing that I do than I have ever done; it is a far greater rest I go to than I have ever known"--or from Lou Gehrig's farewell speech: "Fans, you might have heard over the last two weeks that I have been given a bad break. But today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth." Such sentiments border on the melodramatic, but by next year only one man in American history will know how such a narrow miss feels. Rather than curse this moment, Al Gore and George W. Bush might embrace it. If either does, he will see in it a choice. He can relentlessly and contentiously seek to win the presidency--and chance losing it--or he can certainly, gracefully, heroically give it away.

A White Christmas

December: I had it all worked out. Just before Essie came down the stairs at Grandma and Grandpa's house on Christmas morning, I started the camera, first focusing on a ceramic village on the mantle, then shooting a little bit of the snowy neighborhood outside, and panning past the Christmas tree and the giant dollhouse that Saint Nicholas had brought. Just then, Essie and Lisa were descending the stairs, and I turned to capture the special moment. According to my script, Essie would zero in on the dollhouse and then head straight toward it. Meanwhile, master director Mark Canada would get the whole thing on celluloid, or at least magnetic tape. As every director knows, though, stars sometimes have minds of their own. Essie spotted the dollhouse, and I captured her expression. Then she disappeared from the viewfinder--she was not running to the dollhouse, but toward something else! I fumbled to put her back into camera view, but I couldn't keep up. The next thing I knew, she was at my feet, hugging me around the legs. My unpredictable prima donna had ruined a perfectly good script--and turned it into a scene far greater, far more memorable than anything I could have written.

Before and after that climax of the Christmas season, the Canadas enjoyed a number of other special moments. The stage was Indiana, where Lisa and I both grew up. For weeks before the trip, Essie had been making plans: we were going to build not one, but two snowmen: "a big one and a little one." For perhaps the first time in my life since I was a kid, I was actually hoping for snow. We got it--some 12 inches of it, along with below-zero temperatures, biting winds, and even some ice on the van windows, just for old time's sake. Although my enthusiasm for snow has dropped since approximately the time I learned to drive, this time it was worth every flake to see the look on Essie's face as she played in it around my parents' home in Indianapolis. It was, as any Midwesterner can tell you, the wrong kind of snow--at least for making snowballs and snowmen--because it would not hold together. Essie didn't care or even notice. Even while the snowballs crumbled in her little hands, she just glowed. We managed only the second of her requests, the "little" snowman--only about a foot high, in fact, and embarassingly misshapen--but she got to throw snow at Granny, ride in a sled behind my dad and me, and run around in snow up to her knees. She even made several snow angels. "Like Little Bear!" she said, remembering a video where she had learned how to make such things. Later in the day, Granny and Papa took her downtown to the Indiana State Museum, where she rode a little train through an imitation winter landscape and saw many of the mechanical figures that had adorned windows in the downtown stores for years during the Christmas shopping season. Over the next few days, we also spent some time back at Granny and Papa's house, where Essie, now a veteran of three Christmases--quickly took charge of the gift exchange, nearly as content to deliver presents to the adults as to open the ones addressed to her. She scored big in the event, collecting among other things a Fisher-Price van and a miniature supermarket checkout complete with cash register, scale, and conveyor belt.

Early on Christmas Eve, we headed up to Fort Wayne to visit Lisa's family. A sucker for high ceilings and high church, I decided to join Lisa's dad for midnight Mass at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. The idea had looked much better in my mind than it looked when we ventured out that night in the frigid air. When we arrived, however, I caught a glimpse of the towering cathedral through the falling snow--a spectacular gift wrapped inside the chilling night. Inside, I gazed up at incredible wood carvings and an enormous stained-glass window. Music from both brass and strings, as well as choir--"What Child Is This?" and "Coventry Carol"--cascaded down from the balcony. Incense drifted through the congregation as the bishop and a dozen or so attendants marched up the center aisle and took their place around the altar. Hundreds of other people and I brought in Christmas morning with "O Come All Ye Faithful" and, an hour or so later, ended the service with "Joy to the World." The experience was a stirring one for me and one of the highlights of my stay in Fort Wayne. The next morning, we celebrated Christmas Day at the home of Lisa's parents. Essie reveled in her dollhouse, which she just kept calling "beautiful," and we all enjoyed a brunch that Lisa made as a gift for her parents. After an afternoon of exchanging gifts and visiting with family, we stayed up until midnight playing a board game. Over the next several days, Lisa rested a bit while Essie and I took trips to some Fort Wayne attractions, including the Lincoln Museum, the Historical Society, and Science Central. One night, Lisa's dad and I ventured out again, this time to take in Plymouth Church's 26th annual Boar's Head and Yule Log Festival. Modeled after an English Christmas celebration at least 650 years old, the festival was more than I could have anticipated--in a word, spectacular. More than 100 actors in brilliant costumes, along with a choir and a small orchestra, collaborated on an amazing display, that included music, dancing, drama, even wassailers traveling through the audience.

Although I enjoyed all of this holiday activity, perhaps my favorite experience of the entire vacation was a quiet afternoon I spent with Lisa. While Lisa's sister Jessica and Jessica's friend Melanie took Essie for an afternoon of sledding and other excitement, Lisa and I drive out to Fox Island Nature Preserve and went cross-country skiing for the first time. The next hour was not spectacular or exciting or even particularly stirring, at least not in the way that "O Come All Ye Faithful" sends chills up my spine. It was, instead, the kind of quiet, peaceful, and strangely magical experience that comes only so often and lasts forever. Maybe there's something in the nature of such experiences that explains why they can't be explained, but perhaps the feeling we experienced came from the combination of learning a new skill, of immersing ourselves in nature, of experiencing the calm of a snowy wilderness, or simply of being together in a new and beautiful environment. Whatever the reason, the experience had a strange and wonderful feel--the feel of living nostalgia.