Sonomaisms

ON HEAVEN

NOMA: I wish I could go to heaven now.

MOM: We’d miss you, though.

NOMA: I wouldn’t stay.  I just want to say “hi.”

 

ON PERSEVERANCE

NOMA: Can we listen to Veggie Tales?
ME: No, I’m tired of listening to it.
NOMA: Well I get tired too, but I don’t give up.

 

FROM THE WICKED CD

“You can’t call me cute. You have to call me popular.”

 

ON FAMILY

“The person who’s giving me a headache is my family!”

 

ON BOREDOM

I tuck her into bed for a nap, then tuck her brother into bed. When I come downstairs, she is sitting on the couch looking at a book
ME: What are you doing down here?
NOMA: There was nothing going on in my room.

AT THE DINNER TABLE
NOMA: I want cow milk.
ME: That is cow milk.
NOMA: It tastes like sheep.

IN SUNDAY SCHOOL
NOMA: I’d better eat all of my chocolate chip cookie or else my Papa might want some.

ON SHAVING OFF MY GOATEE
NOMA: I liked it better the other way. It was tickly, and I like tickly.

ON HUMILITY
SONOMA (looking at a picture of herself): I look so cute.
ME: You shouldn’t compliment yourself. You should let other people compliment you.
SONOMA: We could take turns.
ME: No, you should say nice things about other people and let them say nice things about you.

SONOMA (a minute later): I look so…I mean, I like you, Papa.

 

ON HIKING
SONOMA: Carry me, I’m tired.
MOM: Hiking is hard when you’re little, huh?
SONOMA: Yeah. It’s also boring when you’re little.
MOM (later, in the car, to me): I like adventuring with you.
SONOMA (back seat): But I don’t because it’s boring.

Experiments in Common Decency

 So I’m looking across the counter at her, and it’s my turn to talk, but I’m clearly not talking.  I’ve just given her $22 for a $12 purchase and I have apparently just rocked her world of simply changing twenties.  The look in her eyes is like a ob-gyn who just delivered a hermaphrodite and who is looking at the father who wants to know how his baby is.  And then it dawns on me.  I am not a nice person.

            In my head is a motherboard overload of responses, none of which would get a star next to my name in Sunday school.  I’m tempted to let loose on this woman like John McEnroe on a referee.  So I’m going to experiment in a way that no self-respecting Gen X, Boomer-hating, unsentimental, non-cheesy, sitting-in-the-corner-and-castigating cynic ever would.  I’m going to be nice.  I’m going to be Hallmark nice.  I’m going to be Miracle on 34th St. nice.  Not just once a day.  In every five minute conversation I’m going to go out of my way to compliment the person I’m talking to.  I’m going cold turkey.  Or nice turkey.

            What will be entertaining is not just the reaction to the unusual.  It will be the reaction to me doing it, which would be like the Statler and Waldorf shouting compliments at Fozzie Bear.

            I tried it with my wife today.  She was talking about…I’m not sure, I wasn’t listening, because I was concentrating so hard on something nice to say.  I remembered that I never notice when she gets her hair cut, and I looked hard at her hair, and it looked shorter than the last time I took a good hard look at it.  So when she was done with whatever it was, I said, “Hey, I like your new haircut.” And she said, “I haven’t gotten it cut in six months.  Nice new shirt, Slick.” My shirt has mustard stains on it.  From college.  So she sat there with her uncut hair, and I with my dirty shirt.  All who give and receive such compliments are the wisest.  Everywhere they are wisest.  They are the magi.

Child-like Faith

I’m teaching my four year old daughter the more complex virtues, the ones that come after the virtue of not eating Oreos off the floor and using the potty. We’re now working on humility. The other day she is staring at a picture of herself and she says to me, “I’m so cute.” She’s four, so don’t hate her for being beautiful.

I tell her, “Honey, you shouldn’t say nice things about yourself. You should let other people say nice things about you.”

She says, “We could take turns.”

“No,” I say. “You should say nice things about other people and let
them say nice things about you.”

She stares at the picture for a while longer, and then says, “I’m so…I mean, I like you, Papa.” These are complex things. They take time.

I’m on the phone a few weeks ago with a nice customer service representative who has nicely messed up my order three times, and I’m gritting my teeth and being nice. When the phone is hung up, and the room is quiet, and there is no more representative to hear me say it, I whisper, “Idiot.” And my daughter, with perfect intonation, parrots, “Idiot.” I’m a bad father. I’m a bad person. Where did I get the right to parent? These are complex things. They take time.

I’m teaching her how to draw. I wrap my hand around her hand that’s wrapped around the crayon. We make strokes and scribbles together. I think about the shaping of her hand, and how it was carved out somewhere on a genome that I half wrote.

“I’ll do it myself,” she says, and pulls away. My own genetic matter arguing with me.

The whole of my spiritual experience comes from the feeling that when I father, whether I screw it up or stay in the lines, there is a Papa somewhere else who is wrapping his hand around mine.

“I’ll do it myself,” I tell him, and someone sighs.

S.M.

Financial Crisis

I think C.S. Lewis said something like, “You might as well leave your money in God’s hands, because it’s there whether you leave it or not.” The difficulty of addressing the financial crisis is that naming the spirituality of suffering sounds insensitive.  But are we more likely to see God when we’re rich or when we’re poor?  It always strikes me as odd that we print “In God We Trust” on the back of his leading competitor.  Anyway, glad I’m not this guy.