Cooked Goose

Ed – “He’s beautiful.”
HI – “Yeah, he’s awful damn good. I think I got the best one.”
“I bet they were all beautiful. All babies are beautiful.”
“This one’s awful damn good.”
“Don’t you cuss around him.”
“He’s fine, he is. I think it’s Nathan Jr.”

A small sampling from one of many memorable scenes from Raising Arizona. Love Raising Arizona. I’ve probably seen it a dozen times. It still kills me. Granted, it’s not for everyone – definitely strange. You either love it or hate it. If you haven’t, give it a watch. See on which side you fall.

In the scene, Ed (Short for Edweena. Turn to the right!) declares, “All babies are beautiful.” Well, you and I know not all babies are beautiful; I’ve seen my share of less than attractive babies. So, is Ed wrong? Is she being overly exuberant? I wonder. Maybe, Ed here’s got a point. Maybe the beauty she speaks of is a different kind of beauty.

H.I. her parolee husband is confused. He’s fixed on the more traditional beauty. Outward beauty. The kind that goes straight to comparison. “I think I got the best one” or the most beautiful. Measures and judgments are required. “This one’s awful damn good.”

I want to see as Ed sees. Think with me for a minute. Think about very little children. Let’s take for instance how trusting they are. Even though they hardly know you, they’ll give you their hand and expect you to help them. They will without hesitation ask. And tell you without the fear of judgment their weaknesses: “I’m scared”, “I can’t do that.” They will believe what you tell them. Santa? Sure. Tooth Fairy? Yeah, why not? If Dad says so. Isn’t trust a beautiful thing. And consider, these are but a few examples from the one category of trust. What about their honesty? Or how quick they are to forgive? And have you noticed how free they are of judgment? And on, and on.

In my last post I suggested that we as fathers need to search and discover our children’s greatness. We need to do this so that we can call them in truth into who they are. I think the search begins with little children. With them we get a clue as to who they were meant to be. And it is these little ones who inform us where true greatness lies – what real beauty is.

I agree with Ed. All babies are indeed beautiful.

Al Franken is a Senator. He is currently serving as a Junior Senator representing the State of Minnesota. It is a crowning achievement – one to which only a select few even dream of aspiring. And who knows what more? A prestigious appointment – a seat in the Senate’s Appropriations Committee? Who knows. But look, regardless of what he does in his legislative career, nothing will touch Daily Affirmations with Stuart Smalley. Nothing.

As far as I’m concerned, this is how Al Franken will be remembered. Should be remembered. And nothing he says will have the breath of recognition as the closing line of every Daily Affirmations sketch on SNL, delivered as he turned to himself in a mirror, in his desperate longing, tenderness: “I’m good enough. I’m smart enough. And dog-gone it, people like me.”

Brilliant. Stuart Smalley pointed a satiric finger at the growing school of baseless, “feel-good” therapy. Every Saturday night, he enacted for all of us the absurdity of building self-esteem by what is tantamount to lying to oneself. No amount of repetition is able to make the truly unbelievable, believable.

As fathers, we play an important role in establishing our children’s identity – their name, their call. Amidst the uncertainty of a forming identity, being Stuart Smalley to your child is useless. As they “sway and buckle in the wind,” to try to post them up with words you yourself do not believe will do more harm than good. They will look into your eyes and know that you are being untrue.

Don’t be like Stuart. We have to be interested enough to make a search, to discover the greatness of our children. As we tell them who they are, they have to be able to look into our eyes and think, “He really believes it.”

We’ve all heard it said: “The ego is a fragile thing.” True. I think deep inside, we all wonder: Am I good? Worthwhile? Do I measure up? And I think whatever is deep in there – your soul, ego, whatever you want to call it – is incredibly astute. Nothing gets by it. And with what it sees, it is brutally honest. So, though it longs to be full, it will not budge on the emptiness it sees. All of us.

I’m no psychologist. Not a licensed therapist. Just a dad “groping in the dark” to give words to my experience. And my experience confirms the validity of the term, a fragile ego. It is this fragility that makes it important for us as fathers to call our children by a good name.

Here are some things I’ve tried to keep in mind:
• Be very careful with my words. Period. They are very difficult to take back.
• My role is to imprint (part of naming) on them who they are. Calling them and reminding them. My goal is to establish and fortify an identity resistant to the many forces that contribute to its fragility. Important categories to establish are: Value/worth, Character, Innate – Gender and Ethnicity, Beauty (not just physical, and not just feminine), Skill/Gift.
• No negative identifying names: Dumb, ugly, liar, mean, lazy, worthless … and the list goes on.

Here’s an example:
One of our kids went through a period of telling lies. This child we discovered was gifted at it … they, the lies just rolled off the tongue. It was so tempting to call the child a liar. Instead we said, “You are meant to be true. To be honest. You almost always tell the truth. This lying is unlike you. It’s wrong.” Take the time to be careful with your words. Remind them who they are. And do not negatively name them – in this case a liar.

Fathers have the awesome role of naming a child. Give them a good name. And keep on naming them. Call to remembrance who they are until they believe you. When they do, you will have strengthened them to remain true to who they are amidst the torrents of life that will surely come upon them.

The last few posts have been about naming your child. It is the first thing you will give your daughter, your son. I am of the opinion that giving a child a name is not some recreational activity for us, the parents. It’s not a canvas for some sort of self-expression. It’s not an opportunity to pay tribute to something we think noteworthy. And not something we give our child so that everyone will think, “Wow, your name must mean that your parents are cool.” I’m not saying every name needs to be steeped in meaning. For each of our kids, their names were chosen at least in part for the way they sounded. We liked the name.

With these latest posts along the theme of Naming, I’ve wanted to set the stage from which I might suggest to you, fathers, that our role in giving a name goes beyond bestowing on our children a good name. There seems to be an era, and perhaps a region that have long passed and/or shrinking in which a common question for us was posed in an uncommon way: “What are you called?” The setting in my mind has cowboy hats, horses, open plains, and a banjo plucking in the background. None of this is familiar to me (As an aside, nothing looks more comical than a Asian man in a cowboy hat), so I admit I cannot speak with any authority on matters this far country. I think it’s a safe bet, however, that where or whenever this question was commonly posed it was heard as the equivalent of our, “What’s your name?”

Regardless of what I suspect as the intent, the outdated wording highlights for me an interesting distinction. Allow me to further highlight the distinction by posing yet another question: “I know that’s your name, but what are you called?” You see, a person can have a name but be called something else. An alias. Nickname. All the way to what a person believes him/herself to be: Great, True, Beautiful, Brave, Smart, Dumb, Ugly, Liar, Useless.

To you fathers, I propose that your job of naming does not end with bestowing on your child a good name. You are an important, dare I say primary voice in determining what they will be called.