Synthesis (Or, 4:30am; Revision; Shaving)

When I taught Freshmen Composition at Northern Arizona University, I loved the Synthesis Essay. Teaching the Synthesis Essay was like letting my hands sit under a waterfall of endlessly flowing, gentle, warm, slightly-sudsy, lavender-smelling water.

Consider: synthesis is all about taking one thing and adding it to another and then saying, huh, check out what happened when we did that. But synthesis doesn't stop there. Synthesis--like a true champion--goes the extra round, It says, let's add a third thing and see what that does to the combination of the first two.

Synthesis then amazes even itself by saying (sometimes) let's add a fourth thing. Or a fifth. Or--gasp--a sixth. And in the process of adding all these new entities, the property we began with changes entirely, takes on new meaning, new symbolism, new smell.

Now that Tyler is in the midst of a nap, after waking at 4:30 this morning, and I have a large mug of strong fair-trade Sidamo beside me, I'm in the mood for Synthesis. I turn to Synthesis like you might turn to a good friend and put your arm around his shoulders, then stick your index finger inside of his inner ear, wiggle it around. When he turns to you and says, Dude! I asked you not to do that, like, seven times already! You respond, with that knowing smile, Ah! Yes! But those other seven times, I was using a different finger, so I have not used any of those other fingers in this most recent inner-ear wiggling. It's a new finger!

So: sleep-deprived and ready for the great nature of our friend Synthesis, let's begin.

Synthesis: Thanks for that introduction, Luke.

Me: You are welcome, Synthesis. It's nice to have you here in our kitchen. Would you like a cup of coffee?

Synthesis: Don't mock me. You know I have no throat. Or intestines.

Me: (Nodding gravely and with respect.)

Synthesis: So. You asked me here to do some work for you. What are we using me for today?

Me: Three events. Small events, really. First, waking up at 4:30 am. Second, the nature and act of revision. Third, Shaving.

Synthesis: Okay. Just three?

Me: Yes.

Synthesis: Okay. Easy as making a Jell-O mold with no artificial flavoring and adding some finely chopped, then ground, walnuts to the top in the shape of very tiny hearts. Then, applying a thin layer of peanuts--also finely chopped and ground--on top of those walnuts--just to say, hey, Walnuts, it's not always about you. Learn to play the FOUNDATIONAL role too, not just the role of glory. Haven't you ever heard that moving line from "Eye of the Tiger": you trade your passion for glory? Walnuts, you are seriously in danger of doing so.

Walnuts: Hey, I wasn't bothering anybody. I don't want to be a part of this whole Synthesis thing. Just let me go back to sleep.

Me: If I can't sleep, nobody gets to sleep.

Walnuts: Tyler is sleeping.

Me: I meant, nobody in this kitchen gets to sleep.

Walnuts: (Nods knowingly, respecting the authority of the master-of-the-kitchen-at-this-moment.)

Synthesis: Okay, here we go. Waking up at 4:30 is hard. I'm not going to lie, Luke. It's tough stuff. Your body craves more sleep. You count the four hours of rest you've gotten, and your mind rightly declares: No. No, I will not move forward in this state. And if that were all there was to it, your mind would win the day. Game over. But to your mind's declaration, you add Revision. You add the powerful truths so beautifully expressed here, in this blog by children's author Pat Zietlow Miller.

And you realize that the actual waking up at 4:30 am this morning isn't the whole story. It's only one piece of the story. One chapter. The cool thing is, you get to revise it. Even as the day goes on, you get to revise why you woke at 4:30. You get to revise the time you'll go to sleep tonight in order to get a more human quota of hours. 4:30 isn't the final word. It's only a scene from the picture book of your life, buddy.

And then we add Shaving. Yes. How I wish I could shave! But I cannot. I have no throat, after all. And no cheeks. But Luke, you consider the ways in which your three-year old son helps you hold the bottom of the razor, watching in amazement as the hair falls from your stubble-beard and leaves your face looking clean, fresh, exhausted. You watch your sons eyes. You listen to him say, "I do not have a beard so I do not shave. But when I get big like you I will shave too." And you realize that the wake-up doesn't feel as hard. That the revision starts to feel possible, exciting even. The Shaving marries those first two activities and creates a third, entirely feasible, reality: life is about balance. Some mornings, you will wake and feel exhausted. Some mornings, you will wake and feel ready to do one-hundred jumps on the trampoline of your soul. Other mornings, it's an in-between mixture.

But you take what has happened--the 4:30 wake ups of your life--you add the possibility of revision, and you lather a thick layer of shaving cream all over that and say, Yes, there are going to be moments of such startling joy and mundane delight that the balance of it all will somehow work itself out.

And then you go on living the rest of your day. Including me, of course, in everything you do.

Me: Thank you Synthesis. Really. I appreciate your words very much.

Synthesis: I know.

Me: Yes. Are you sure you wouldn't like some coffee?

Synthesis: Mock me once, shame on me. Mock me twice, shame on--wait a minute, we can add those two instances of your mocking me and...

Walnuts: I feel like I'm invisible, like no one ever really SEES me, you know?

You Know What?

Sleep, in all its grandeur, has once again become a part of our lives. I'm reluctant to write too confidently, as it is still a new found friend in these last few months, but Tyler had made it straight through numerous nights, and though he wakes up at 5:15 ready for action, still.

Still.

Today, by ten in the morning, Tyler's eyes were rolling around his head like ice cubes in water, and his eyelids grew pink and heavy, so I decided to take him out in the stroller for a walk in order to hopefully lead into sleep. We walked by our church, and Tyler immediately wanted to head inside--to thew warmth of the Village Cafe they run three mornings a week--where great coffee, juice, and biscuits are offered cheaply and a corner houses toys and coloring books.

"Daddy! Let's go to the church and get one juice! It will be great!"

"See, we've got to keep walking right now. We'll go to the church later."

"Then can I get out and walk? I am a good walker."

My mind sees both possibilities--the good in each.

1) Tyler stays in stroller, possibly naps. Sleep = positivity. Positivity = aaahhhh. Aaahhh = happy family.

2) Tyler walks, gets good exercise. Exercise = positivity. Positivity = aaahhh. Aaahhh = happy family.

While my mind plays ping-pong against itself trying to determine which parenting choice is the best one, I trump myself. A third ping-pong competitor enters the match and claims, inside my head, but Tyler doesn't have his winter coat on now. He's buried beneath his go-on-a-walk-and-hopefully-fall-asleep-blanket.

"But Tyler, you don't have your winter coat on now. You're buried beneath your go-on-a-walk-and-hopefully-fall-asleep-blanket."

"Daddy, I have this sweater, see?" Tyler points to his red fleece, gloriously proud that he has found a way to combat each of my initiatives.

"But Tyler, you don't have your winter coat." Broken record, baby. It's all about the broken record.

"Daddy, you know what?"

"What, son?"

"Sometimes sweaters can keep people warm, too." Tyler smiles this glorious smile. The kind of smile that feels like waking up after twelve hours of sleep to a cup of strong Sidamo fair trade coffee with loads of cream.

Checkmate.

He knows it. I know it.

Tyler and I both walk to the church. We get the juice, the coffee, the biscuit. We color. We play.

Afterwards, Tyler climbs back into his stroller, and I tuck him in under his go-on-a-walk-and-hopefully-fall-asleep-blanket.

And you know what? On the way home, he falls asleep.

Early

The word early has become something of a trickster to me. One of those manipulative kinds of people who constantly make you guess what they're really thinking yet never let on that--even if you guess right--you are any closer to deciphering where they are, in fact, really thinking.

Early used to be a straight shooter with me.

Twelve years ago, in college, Early and I had a very normal, healthy, clearly-defined relationship. I had an eight a.m. class one semester. Early was forthright with me. He said to me, "Yeah, man, that's me. That's Early, alright."

When I began teaching English at the high school level, Early was still striaght with me. I never had to guess what he was thinking. He told me, on the very first day of teaching while I walked fake-confidently into the classroom with sweaty palms and an itchy belly button, "Yeah, man, I'm back. Seven-thirty is me, Early."

But lately, in Life with Toddler, Early has thrown me for a loop. He started off decent, telling me, "Yup, I'm back, buddy. Six-thirty in the morning is certainly me, Early."

But then, my beloved son started waking at five-thirty. Then five. Then (and I wouldn't kid about something so deeply meanigful as sleep) four-thirty.

4:30am.

And Early just plain stopped talking to me. As if I had somehow offended him. As if I had somehow jeopordized our previously clear, straight-forward, delightfully honest relationship.

Now, I was left a bit clueless as to where Early was, and whether or not he was in league with one of his friends, Ludicrously Early, to try and get a rise out of me.

Thankfully, in the last couple of weeks, Ludicrously Early has relaxed a bit, and Tyler has been sleeping in late again.

Or, rather, perhpas I should say that Tyler has been sleeping in early again. That clear, straightforward kind of Early that sounds like seven.

And I have never been more thankful to get up at seven.

On Missing Sleep

In the past week, Tyler came down with a cold. It's nothing like the Winter Vomiting Virus that Tyler, Jen, and I all battled a couple of months ago, but the current cold was enough to wake Tyler up more than a few times each night, mucus attacking his throat and nose like angry red ants attack the kinds of things that angry red ants attack.

Thus, Jen and I have been lovingly batting our eyelids at that incredibly attractive persona: Sleep.

However, sleep has eluded us. We are both coming more and more to accept this as a somewhat stable truth: in the due course of parenting, Sleep is never a guarantee.

But I've had another reason to miss even more sleep than I should have this past week. A friend let me borrow Steig Larsson's Milennium trilogy, and I have been utterly and completely absorbed in the life of Lisbeth Sanders.

In the third book now, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest (after having skipped the first of the three books because we had watched the Swedish film adaptation before leaving the States in September), it's hard to stop reading.

Lisbeth's journey is harrowing and tragic and sad and the part of me that won't stop turning pages keeps saying, She has to get justice! Someone has to do something...it's going to be okay for Lisbeth, right? Right?!

And so, the pages turn and I keep hoping.

It strikes me now that Lisbeth's journey is far too familiar to many women the world over: at the mericless hands of players far more powerful than they, be they police officers, government officials, or men who happen to be on the same trains or streets where they walk, late at night.

What makes Lisbeth's story so fascinating, and yes, stand-up-and-cheer-for-her-ish, is that she sees the corruption within the system--she sees how despicably so many men behave, and they way so many wield power to abuse. Patriarchy, too often, is synonymous with misogyny. And so Lisbeth acts.

What stands out, of course, if the reticence and passivity of so many of us men. A recent book published by Lisa Shannon entitled A Thousand Sisters details the author's account of her transition from comfortable life to getting involved in the fight for justice for Congolese women. Shannon leaves a comfortable life in Portland, Oregon to travel to the Congo to work with women there, and she realizes what is at stake, and what atrocities are being committed against women every day, every hour, every minute, yes, every second.

Shannon's work is remarkable, powerful, and a model.

But what the fictional character of Lisbeth Sanders and the real-life journey of Lisa Shannon ask us is simple: Where are all the men?

Where are we, men, when women are abused? Where are we, men, when power structures that oppress women are held rigidly in place? Where are we?

The answer is, sadly, all too clear: we are often absent from the picture. As bystanders, we might like to claim, Hey, I'm not the one doing any injustice! But this line is woefully incompetent. Did such a claim work for those German citizens who sealed their lips during the genocide committed by the Nazi regime?

Before Jen and I and Tyler left for York, my brother Chris and I went to Washington DC. During our trip, we visited the Holocaust Memorial Museum, and I was struck--as most are--by the gruesome atrocities committed during the Holocaust.

However, in one area, I found myself standing facing a wall with a quote written on it in massive letters, taken from Elie Weisel's harrowing memoir Night. The line said, "God is dead."

As a Christian-male-feminist-teacher-writer--husband-father-Democrat, I stood looking at the quote for a long time.

A long time.

I asked God, How am I supposed to read this, Lord? How could I ever say to someone who has experience such horror that such a claim is false?

I stood there and asked God as tears came down my cheeks and my heart burned inside of me.

And then, God spoke.

I heard this small voice bubbling up, and the words that became etched in my mind and soul were: "I am not dead, but my people have remained silent."

The words shocked me at once in their simplicity and their truth.

And in every great tragedy--even and especially those tragedies committed in the name of God but really nothing more than mass murder at the hands of men pretending to claim God as an excuse--the above line has been true.

In the Rwandan genocide, where were we?

In the current genocide in Darfur, where are we?

In the destruction and violence against women in the Congo, where are we?

In the systematic oppression of women in every country on the globe, where are we?

It has become painfully obvious that men--even good men--would often prefer to remain passive on the issue. And it has also become painfully obvious that those who profess to follow a faith don't see any of Christ's numerous class to action on behalf of the oppressed as reason enough to look outside the walls of their own church, and try to find something meaningful to fight for.

Sadly, for many in the Church, protesting gay rights seems to be the only rallying cry to which they respond.

But Christ, if we read what he's said and done, does something far different. He fights for those who are oppressed. He stands with the persecuted, the defeated, the weak, the poor, and the needy.

Christ never says, blessed are the rich and he never says blessed are those who judge others.

No.

It's time for men and for Christians to redefine--no, reinvent--the roles we have enacted for far too long. If we need a model, look at Jesus himself, who is startlingly different than most Christians I see today.

Jesus didn't dress in three-pieces suits, hang with the wealthy, and oppress women.

So, all of that to say that missing sleep is sometimes necessary when a voice of justice begins to creep into one's heart.

Perhaps we'll see a book like Lisa Shannon's come out which accounts for the way men will begin to stand up for equality and justice and oppose the oppression of women the world over.

Call me an idealist, but yeah, I'm holding my breath for this. It happens when those of us born into privilege are willing to peer out from behind the walls and see life as it is lived for the other 95% of the world. I've got a heck of a long way to walk on this path, but I want to try and follow the trail as best as I can.