Words of Wisdom from Alice's Side

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 Mom: 

One of mom’s gifts is recognizing a person’s strengths and passions  and  celebrating them. If you’ve spent any time with her, she knows your strengths too. As a child, she would help me identify and hone my  skills, and as an adult she continually lifts me up and celebrates my  successes. Nothing seems to make her happier than to watch others succeed and thrive at something they love. Though in many ways she’s the intellectual antithesis of the stereotype, she is truly a cheerleader at heart. 

Dad:

Dad  (the quiet one) taught me (the quieter one) from an early age to stand up for myself, defend myself, and self-advocate for what I needed. For example, in eighth grade, he modeled how you approach a teacher about a  possibly unfair grade, and demonstrated how to politely ask how one  might improve the grade. This little lesson was the reason I squeezed an  A out of my college industrial tech professor, thus keeping my GPA  where I wanted it. He is also a non-judgmental listener, so that even  when there are no good answers, you will leave the conversation feeling  better and validated.

Mom and Dad:

One  of the best things about growing up was that my parents always invited  my friends over to the house. What started as innumerable elementary  children running through the yard with sticks, grew to enormous high  school cast parties, New Year’s parties where confetti fell from the  ceiling at midnight, and a college chorus tour bus parked in the  driveway - complete with snacks for about 40 singers. I was known as the  kid with the “mom who always smiled” (as far as they knew at least) and  the Dad who never ran out of food to grill. The food alone must have  cost a fortune for (not to mention the inflatable moonwalk), but Mom and  Dad were always happy to make the sacrifice. We loved to party - and  still do.   

 Mom:  

Mom always wanted me to explore new things and figure out what I liked and figure out where I excelled. As a pre-schooler she even took me to a weekly “Opportunity Day” at the church. (It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized the “Opportunity” had been for her to have time away from the kids!) She hauled me to an endless string of sports practices, events and play dates, fully embracing the invention of the mini-van.  Mom always got the history and language arts homework questions and was even known to wake up early when I was in high school to read and edit a paper that I hadn’t finished until the wee hours after everyone else had gone to bed.

One of Mom’s greatest parenting achievements was helping me to find a college and major to pursue and convincing me that I had come up with the idea on my own. I’m still working to figure out what other decisions I shouldn’t really be taking credit for. (The decision to end that previous sentence with a preposition is one I can solely own, as her inner grammarian is cringing.) One of my greatest joys in adulthood has been naming our second daughter after my mother and the unanticipated pleasure of smiling every time I hear her called by both her first and middle names when she’s in trouble. “Lydia Alice…” ;)

Dad:

My Dad was the only parent I knew who’d rather throw a frisbee in the yard than toss a baseball. Rather than submit a normal cake to the cub scout cake auction, we made the most ridiculous, gummy shark covered cake imaginable. Instead of settling for a normal boat at the rain gutter regatta, we engineered the boring balsa wood hull into a competition destroying catamaran.  Dad has always been delightfully different. He got the math and science homework questions and offered more patience during calculus sessions than I deserved. (We were both thrilled when that class finished.) Dad is always ready to listen to any problem and I’m not sure I’ve truly thrown him yet, and if I have he hasn’t shown it. He approaches challenges, big and small, with a measured strategy and a genuine concern for the ones he loves. He showed me that being soft hearted isn’t a strike against my masculinity and taught me that sometimes the best way to get a kid to eat something they may otherwise not like is to name it after them. (Dijon glaze on pork chops will forever be known as “Scott Sauce” in my book.)

Mom & Dad:

I understand that my parents used to be two completely separate people, meeting in college (Thanks Lucy).  But I simply can’t picture one without the other. It’s not that they’re incapable of surviving on their own, but that they complement each other in nearly every way. Our house was one full of love, adventure, music, grilled food, art projects and people. They’ve been throwing parties since long before I was born and I don’t see them stopping any time soon. 

Julie and I were very blessed to have close relationships with our grandparents growing up and watched Mom and Dad lovingly take care of their aging parents with an extraordinary level of patience. We are blessed to still be attending their parties, eating experiments cooked on the grill and taking adventures with Mom and Dad. Our girls light up at the mention of visiting Grandma Alice and Grandpa Bob and we look forward to celebrating many anniversaries to come.