Music + Chaldeans + Guns = Fun

With seven kids, it's important to keep them occupied. So we try to make sure that they have something positive to do. For the girls, Teresa and Gabby, it has been easy. They both really like music, so we got them started at the Flint Institute of Music, where they both play violin. Teresa has been playing for 10 years, and Gabby for five. They are both in an orchestra, and they both also play in quartets.

For Matt it wasn't so easy. He has no musical talent whatsoever. We tried karate, but he didn't like that. But he does like the youth group at church. We attend Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Catholic church. They are Catholic, but most of our parishioners are of Lebanese or Chaldean (Iraqi) descent. We are not Middle Eastern at all, but we love the people and the food! Even though Matt is the only white boy in the group, he fits in with the other kids. He has been especially adopted by the Chaldean families.

The little boys are too young to get involved in much without us, although we are letting Mikey and Mark try music at the FIM this summer in their Summer Fun with Strings program where they let kids try violins, violas, and cellos every day for two weeks, and it costs only $50. (That's how our girls got started.)

One thing we all enjoy is shooting. We have bales of straw in the backyard for BB guns. Lisa and the older kids and I like to go out to Williams Gunsight and shoot the real thing. We always stress safety, and they don't get to shoot real guns until they demonstrate consistent safe practices with a BB gun. If they fool around, they immediately lose privileges, and they don't want to do that.

The trick here is not to let the kids get bored. Bored kids are dangerous!

Funny meeting you here

So I have been spending every day down at Genesys Hospital, tending to my dad. We still don't know how things are going to go. We keep praying. But the unusual thing is how my dad's situation has brought some people into my life that I haven't thought of in years.

I graduated from Powers High School, the class of 1982. I don't know about you, but I have hardly kept in contact with anybody from high school. Life happens. Then my mom tells me that Jeannie is one of my dad's nurses. Jeannie is Lori's sister, an old friend from high school, and she also happens to work at Genesys. So the next day I see Lori again after almost 30 years. And guess what. She is married with six kids! (Lori also mentioned a few other Powers graduates from the class of '82 with big families. Paishann has six, while Jim and his wife have five.) Anyway, when this is all over with my dad, Lori and her husband and their brood are going to get together with us and ours.

It's hard for us to get together with other families. We can be overwhelming, and it's not really fair to split the cost of hamburgers or pizza when it's seven versus two. So we tend to socialize with other large families. It's not unusual for us to have four adults while 12 or 13 kids are making lots of noise. (That's why we always have wine with dinner.) Our friends with large families like to come over because they know our house is child-proofed and that we don't have breakables on display.

The only couple we know who like to come over even though they don't have kids is my best friend Rob and his wife Julie. They can't have kids of their own, so they come over to our house for a dose of activity. (Of course, they can always leave.) It also helps that they are godparents to two of our sons. This makes them family.

Anyway, it's funny how life has a way of separating people and bringing them together again.

Amazing Lisa

Little did my wife Lisa realize what her life would be like when I walked into it. We met 25 years ago this September in an anthropology class here at UM Flint. (The class was so pathetic, she was thinking of dropping it.) Anyway, I saw her at the first class session and thought she was cute. So I made up my mind to sit next to her for the next class and talk to her. We got to know each other in class for a couple of weeks, and then we went out on our first date. After dating for four years and being engaged for a year, we married in December of 1990.

Oddly enough, our first baby didn't come along for over two years. (Not for lack of trying.) She used to wonder why she wasn't getting pregnant. (She doesn't wonder about that now.) Ever since our first in 1993, they have kept on coming. She has been pregnant for 63 months of her life; that's over five years! (For the record, she has never experienced morning sickness even once!)

Having the babies is one thing; taking care of them is quite another. I couldn't begin to hazard a guess at how many diapers she has changed, loads of laundry she has washed and dried, or how many meals she has prepared. (Yes, I change diapers. No, I don't do laundry. I can cook if I have to.) On top of everything, she has always home schooled our kids. She didn't have to do all this. She earned a college degree in computers. She chose this life.

I asked Lisa once if she regretted her choices in life. After all, I don't think she foresaw all this. Would she have liked a career? Would she like to do smoothing else after the kids are grown? But she said that she is content with her life and that she can't think of anything else she would rather do. Now that's love.

I am glad she didn't drop the anthropology class.

What I learned about God from my kids

I was born and raised Catholic. I have always gone to Mass every Sunday. From fourth grade through twelfth I went to Catholic schools. I do all those Catholic things that shock or mystify non-Catholics like go to confession and pray the Rosary and have statues of saints. But despite my thorough Catholic upbringing, there were some things I didn't learn about God until I became a dad. Every once in a while, I will say something to my kids and realize that God, as a father, says the same things to us, His children.

For example, I often say, "If you had done (or avoided) what I told you, you wouldn't have this trouble now." Along with that, I might say something like, "I'm not trying to keep you from having a good time; I'm trying to help you." I think about God's commandments and how people think He doesn't want us to be free to enjoy our lives, but how many people in this world would be better off today if they had followed "the rules" a little more closely?

My younger daughter is 10 and always thinks she knows better than her parents. If I ask her to do something, she will do it her own way or do something different which she thinks is better. Then I have to say to her, "That's not what I asked for." We deal with God that way sometimes. We think that we know better than He does, when we would be much better off if we would not try to control every aspect of our lives. Like any parent, God wants us to give Him the benefit of the doubt, based on age and experience, even if He doesn't explain his plans at the time.

Another thing I have to say to my kids a lot is no. Just because a child wants something, it doesn't mean it's good for him or her. My little sons often want things that are harmful, and as a good dad, I have to say no. Of course, they don't like this, but that's the way it has to be. So it is with God. There's an old line that goes like this: God answers every prayer, but sometimes the answer is no. Even if my kids don't understand at the time why I say no, it is for the best, and I hope they will understand in time. We have to give God the same courtesy.

I have also realized how patient we parents must be. When our kids do something bad or wrong, we expect them to change right away and never do it again. Yet we sin, ask for forgiveness, and fall into the same patterns as before. If we want God to be patient with us, we have to be patient with our kids.

Jesus told us (Matthew 18:3) that to get into Heaven we had to become like little children. Maybe this is what He meant. We have to trust God that He knows what He is doing, and whether He commands or forbids us, it is all out of love and that we, as His children, must accept it. And why not? We expect the same from our children.

Do large families beget large families?

Yesterday at church I saw George and his wife Kelly. We don't see them too often because they live in Clarkston, but they come up to Flint on occasion because his dad attends our church. George and Kelly have six children: four boys, a girl, and then another boy. The oldest is 16 and the youngest is two. After Mass, George and I got to talking (because we have a little something in common), and he told me something that really surprised me. He said that when he and Kelly had first gotten married, they hadn't wanted any children at all! But then his wife decided that if they were going to have any, they should get started and have them early. Once they started coming, they actually enjoyed it. He did admit that he would be happy to have had just five, while Kelly would have gladly had eight.

This got me thinking about the children of large families. Will they go on to have large families of their own? George is one of six, and he had six, but I think his brothers and sisters have three or four each. I am one of four, and my wife is one of two. We began this journey with no particular number in mind. My older sister is married to a man who is one of 17 children. (Yes, seventeen.) None of the seventeen rival their parents, but a few have 10 or 12. I'd say the average runs about seven or eight per family.

Of course, we are all practicing Catholics. That does not mean that we have to reproduce like rabbits. If there are serious reasons to space children, like joblessness or health issues, we can practice Natural Family Planning (NFP). It actually does work, (when we follow the rules. We just throw caution to wind sometimes.). Other than that, we are simply open to the possibility of creating a new life. It is our belief that this is the most complete form of the giving of oneself to another.

But I was wondering about our own children. Do I hope that my kids will have large families? My main hope is that they will be open to however many God chooses to send them, whether it is one or a dozen. I think that some people can be just as militant about having kids and s
ome are about not having them. I think a child is a gift and a responsibility, not a right.

I think that some young people who come from large families are put off by having a large family of their own because they saw how much hassle and hard work went into it. Oftentimes it seems that only-children or people from small families are the ones who want a brood. My wife and I can influence our children's attitudes about family by letting them see in the everyday things that we do that we are glad they are in our lives and that this is what life is truly about.

For the record, I'd like a big bunch of grandchildren!

A true teacher

My dad’s name is Bruce. He was a teacher in the Flint schools for over 30 years . Way back when, before he became a teacher, he worked in the shop for a summer. He hated this job because he said all the other guys could talk about was sports, cars, and women, so he ran out of things to talk about after an hour. For a while, he worked as a milkman, which was a job he liked, but still he wanted to teach. Besides, no one uses milkmen anymore. Back in the 60s he spent a couple of summers as a ranger in Glacier National Park in Montana. He loved that, but there again, he was taking people on hikes and teaching them things. He has always loved learning new things and sharing them with others.



At home, my dad would always teach us kids something. Remember those big roll-down maps teachers have in their classrooms? We had a set of those, and Dad liked pulling those maps down and talking to us about some place we had just seen on TV or read about. I couldn’t say how many books he recommended to us. We used to like reading hard words out of the dictionary to try to stump Dad, but he seemed to know them all. Most of all, my dad loved trees. We would go for walks, and he would explain how to identify and differentiate trees by their leaves.


Since Dad’s retirement 20 years ago or so, he has spent a lot of his time teaching us about the Bible. He has stressed the importance of regular reading of the Word of God and how to try to live it. On more than one occasion, he has told us that it is absolutely essential for us to read the Bible. (I read it every day now.) And not just us. Dad is always willing to talk about the Bible and Jesus wherever he goes, (especially at the YMCA when he used to go down to exercise). He says that we should never be ashamed to share God with others.

My dad has been on a ventilator for about a week now. He’s almost 82 years old and has pneumonia. We are not sure if he will live or not, but we are praying and trying to remain hopeful. Because he has these uncomfortable tubes down his throat, he has to be sedated heavily. So he can’t talk to us. We talk to him, and I think, through the fog, he knows we are there. But even though he can’t talk to us, I think he is still teaching us something.

Dad’s illness and possible death are, to me, like the summary of a lesson. By thinking about his current situation, it makes us examine what is important: faith, family, living a life of service to others. These are the things that matter. And his teaching will go on. We are passing on these lessons to our own children. How many of us in our 30s and 40s catch ourselves saying and doing the things our parents did? In my dad’s case, that’s a good thing.

Whenever he goes, he will leave behind a good wife and mother, two sons and two daughters, 15 grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.



(He has told me countless times how blessed he is to have so many grandchildren.) He leaves a legacy of having taught thousands of other children, not his own, and some of whom still contact him by phone or letter to say that they still remember him and how to identify a tree or the names of the bones. I think even the young people at the Y will miss him. Dad is truly a teacher.

Boys or girls: which are easier?

Parents magazine asks whether it is easier to raise boys or girls. We have two girls, Teresa and Gabrielle, and five boys – Matt, Michael, Mark, Tim, and Stephen. But I have wondered what it would be like if we had the opposite, five girls and two boys. What if we had Terrence, Maddy, Gabriel, Michelle, Marcella, Tina, and Stephanie instead? How would our lives be any better or worse?

Boys seem to require more maintenance early on. For example, it is our experience that boys are harder to potty train than girls, and girls seem less prone to wetting the bed. That means that girls smell better than the boys, too. Girls would also save us money on diapers and pull-ups and the time we spend washing bed linens and stinky boys.

Life would be quieter without all these boys. Our sons seem to have two volume levels: loud and full-blast. That makes their choice of conversation topics sometimes unfortunate. Little boys find words like poop and pee and toilets hilarious. If we had more girls, these would hardly be regular topics of conversation and the cause of raucous laughter.

Our house would be neater and fewer things would be broken if we had more girls than boys. We have to remind our sons all the time that they are not to have light saber fights in the house. We also have to remind them to pick up all their toys. Currently we are having a problem with army men scattered throughout the kitchen and dining room.

On the other hand, I think it would be more difficult to have more girls than boys as they got older. Eventually, I would have four teenage girls. In such a case, our two bathrooms would not be adequate. I would likely have to resign myself to brushing my teeth out in the yard, holding a cup of water.

Girls would be more expensive. They need more healthcare and beauty products than boys do. For example, my older daughter has two bottles of shampoo and two bottles of conditioner for some reason. She also has a variety of soaps and washes. Conversely, my oldest son uses some product which acts as shampoo, conditioner, and moisturizing body wash all in one.

Girls seem to need more clothes and the accessories that go with them. It seems that just about every month my wife has to take Teresa out clothes shopping because she doesn’t have one of this or that item. My younger boys have worn or will wear almost all the clothes that their older brother has worn. My girls, because they have different builds, will wear almost nothing the same.

So what are we going to do? My wife and I have come up with a plan we think will work. We will see if there are any families who want to trade our boys for their girls for the next few years. When they hit the teenage years, we’ll take our boys back.