Published: September 18, 2008 04:38 pm            

Back Porch: Children find that mom, dad grow wiser as time goes on

Originally published in the Sept. 19, 2008, print edition.

My summer has been plagued with tire troubles. I had a flat in the driveway (the same morning daughter Stephanie had a flat on the way to work), one on the way to town to shop for a new washing machine (an already expensive trip), and one when Mike and I volunteered to work in a booth at the Renville County Fair. The last time that I called Mike’s cell phone with a 911, I’ve-got-a-flat-tire call, he thought I was kidding.

Because Mike usually comes to my rescue when tires go flat, the Renville County Fair experience proved a bit challenging. With Mike there with me, the only way we were going to get this thing home was to use the spare, something we had never done in all the years that we owned this vehicle.

As people walked the sidewalk to the fair entrance we received pitiable looks as we popped the back door of the van to find the spare. Looking in the space where we anticipated that the spare might be stored; the only thing we found was a jack. Mike put the jack to work and I went on a spare tire hunt – heading directly to the operator’s manual.

I pulled the manual out of the glove compartment, opened it to the correct page, and walked to the back left side of the vehicle where Mike was removing the tire.

Mike saw me holding the operator’s manual and was horrified. “What are you doing? Get that thing in the car right now. People are going to think we’re stupid!”

“But we are stupid!” I wanted to say, but I wisely made the choice to keep still, quickly placing the manual in the van’s trunk. After all it doesn’t look stupid at all to have two grown adults leaning into the back of a van to read a manual, when it would be a whole lot more comfortable to stand up.

Once the spare was on and the fairgoers were out of sight I said, “Mike, just for the record, we were stupid. Neither one of us knew where the spare was.” In his revulsion to instruction manuals, he hadn’t even realized what he had said, although we both find it comical now.

We’re also sharing smiles that as time progresses our children’s perception of our wisdom is gaining ground. Seems we aren’t quite as ignorant as our kids originally thought.

Elizabeth and her new hubby, Mark, are at college renting a small place just off campus. Throughout the summer she’d come in our home after work and comment about how hot it was in the house. “Why don’t you turn up the air conditioner?” was a daily question in the heat of July.

During one of our recent phone conversations, we talked about the cooler fall temperatures we were experiencing. “I’m so glad,” Elizabeth said. “Now we can open the windows and it’s finally comfortable in our house.” I questioned her on this because I thought they had an air conditioner. Seems they weren’t using what could so easily be turned up at our house to save some dollars in theirs. Where did they get such a grand idea?

Three weekends ago we dropped Stephanie off for her freshman year of college. Throughout that weekend she repeatedly begged us to take her back home again. When Mike and I made a run to the local Wal-Mart to get an extension cord for her dorm room, we questioned ourselves. Leaving her here is the thing to do, right? If she’s going to follow the dream that she desires for her life, this is the place to be. Right?

We never told Stephanie about that conversation and when it was time to say goodbye there were tears, and lots of words of encouragement and confidence that we believed this is exactly where God wants her to be right now.

A week and half later we received a note in the mail from Stephanie. She apologized for putting us on a guilt trip about taking her back home again and delivered the good news that she’s adjusting to college life and enjoying her time there. She’s finding us wiser than we were feeling on that difficult weekend.

In her book “Experiencing God Around the Kitchen Table,” Marilynn Blackaby writes, “We will never have a more important job in life than raising the children God has entrusted to us.” I couldn’t agree with her more and I think a kitchen table is one of the best places to gain wisdom to do life well. For it’s around the kitchen table that families do more than eat. It’s the place where togetherness happens as they pray and play, laugh and share, talk and communicate thoughts. And in time, parents smile, when those simple thoughts transform into wisdom as their kids move out of the house and realize maybe their parents weren’t so ignorant after all.

        

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