Month: January 2020

Fan

The glory of the celebrating crowd

Jeff Foley

Is there anything more glorious than tens of thousands of people all cheering and celebrating when something happens that they weren’t expecting?

Take for example, this play from the NFL. The Minnesota Vikings were losing by one point with seconds left in a playoff game. Needless to say, their chance of winning the game and not ending their season was unrealistic at best, but the crowd was hopeful. Then on a freak occurrence, two people guarding their receiver Stefon Diggs collided with each other, meaning he could score a 61 yard touchdown to end and win the game.

These moments happen most often in sports, be they the Malcolm Butler interception in the Super Bowl, Dave Roberts stealing 2nd base before David Ortiz’s home run, or the final seconds of the US hockey team’s victory over Russia. The shared joy between the athletes who have dedicated countless hours preparing for these snippets of time, and their audience witnessing the payoff for their hard work, is infectious.

If you ever need a quick pick me up, watch one of these videos or one of your own favorite sports team coming through at a key moment with a stadium full of witnesses.

We may not have a playing field or a full stadium of onlookers for our own triumphs, but why not try to capture and spread that joy ourselves to celebrate each other’s victories in life?

Father, Husband

Leaving the birds in the nest

Jeff Foley

There’s an important joy corollary (joy-ollary?) to baby birds peeking out of the nest and then them coming back into the nest to snuggle. It’s being able to leave them in the nest.

When our kids are young and first mobile, we spend most of our time keeping an eye on them, because they don’t know enough about the world to take care of themselves. Every stray Lego, every staircase, every pullable tablecloth is a hazard that they can discover through experience or through coaching — and we’d prefer to coach them than to take them to the emergency room.

As they grow older and more self-sufficient, we struggle with the helicoptering. Can we leave them at home for 5 minutes for a run to the pharmacy? Can we give them time on the Internet without supervising every video and website? Can we trust them to be home alone all evening? The ponderables pile higher and higher. The answers require trying and holding our breath.

But as parents’ kids pass hurdle after hurdle, the parents discover new joys. The joys of going out on a date night. Of not puzzling over the logistics of which parent will be Home In Time. Of realizing that Finding a Competent and Available Babysitter has been downgraded from a major crisis to No Longer a Thing to Worry About. It’s the joy of reclaimed time for ourselves. Being able to leave the birds in the nest while we go grab a worm for a few hours is a joy unto itself.

 

Father, Son

Back to the nest again

Jeff Foley

If there’s joy in your baby bird peeking out of the nest, then there’s even more joy in the homecoming when they look back inwards and snuggle back in.

When they do, it can be a trickle of information, or a flood. The chorus might be “Yeah,” “Uh-huh,” and “I guess.” Or it might be a blow by blow description of whoever was there, whatever they learned, and the activities they took part in. Or both, depending on the subject.

It’s also pure improv time for parents. Do you need to be encouraging and supportive? Angry on their behalf? Reassuring and matter-of-fact to counter disappointment? Eager and animated to share in their excitement? Calm and logical to help them process? None of it’s really written down in our non-existent Parenting Handbook, so we turn the empathy dial up to 11 and hang on for the ride. And try to remember what we craved at that age when we looked to our parents for help.

Most of our answers are right, anyways, so the pressure to parent is entirely self-imposed. And it’s all swept away in the joy of the return home – a special joy that’s magnified by its rarity.

Father, Husband, Son

Baby bird peeking out of the nest

Jeff Foley

The first sleepover. The first sleep-away camp. The second. The third.

As a parent, one can’t deny the fear and dread that comes with seeing your child taking on some measures of independence. There’s something about them walking away for that bus ride, for that camp registration desk, for that assigned cabin, that makes ever parent want to run over and hug them tight. Parent brains can come up with the worst extreme case answers to “what could go wrong.”

But the fear and dread gets overshadowed by pride and joy. Pride that your son or daughter has reached this milestone. Pride that they can function on their own, and be trusted to make decisions and take care of themselves. Joy that they’ve found new friends, new hobbies, new passions for life that they’ll pursue. Joy at their joy.

It’s a far cry from our original duties of keeping a constant eye on a walking toddler who’s exploring a dangerous world of sharp corners, hot stoves, small inedible objects, and gravity. But it’s a welcome one. And it makes you appreciate your own forays out of the nest long ago.

Keep peeking out of the nest, little birdies, because we know you’ll spread your wings and fly some day… but not forget where the nest is.

Citizen, Fan

Trivial trivia

Jeff Foley

There’s important trivia, like “Who was the 30th president of the US?” There’s less important trivia, like “How many different ‘Mountain’ roller coasters are there on Disney properties?” And then there’s completely irrelevant, important-to-no-one-but-a-few-people-trivia, like “What was the name of that cereal that had a commercial that started with a cowboy singing ‘Get along, little blueberry critters, get along?’ ”

Unfortunately, the way our brains sometime work, those irrelevant questions can get stuck in our heads.

Fortunately, this is one of those situations where the Internet giveth rather than taketh away. All of those questions, yes even the blueberry critters one, is solvable with a quick Internet search. Our society’s collective brains have been indexed for us, so our trivia answers can be on demand, while our brains focus on more important things.  (Y’know, like more difficult posers the Internet can’t answer, such as, “How many different characters touch a lightsaber handle in the original Star Wars trilogy?”)

So yes, there is joy in having a repository of knowledge stretching back decades to scratch those mental itches, instead of everyone shrugging their shoulders or pulling out encyclopedias from the library.

 

Father, Husband, Son

Family laughter around the TV

Jeff Foley

It’s surprising these days how much active fun can be had by getting the family together in front of the television.

Growing up, we’d gather around the TV to watch favorite weekly sitcoms together. Even though some of the jokes went over the heads of us kids, enough landed for us all to share the experience of doubling over with laughter from a good one.

Back then, as it often is now, screen time usually translates to “vegetation” down time. Brain off. Go away, and leave me here to drool. Many an hour has been lost to insultingly dumb shows, solo Xbox/PS/Nintendo gaming, or a diversion on a pocket screen. That’s a fake joy of stasis that can wear off quickly. Unless… you’re not watching alone, and you’ve got something good to watch. Then the equation changes.

First of all, the amount of streaming content available now – be it favorite classic movies like Naked Gun or Airplane!, or binge-watchable fun shows like The Good Place – means that the family can experience (or re-experience) great entertainment. We’re no longer trapped to the NBC Thursday night lineup. We can find good things to watch together.

Then there’s multiplayer video games. “Super” Nintendo games like Mario Party, Smash Bros, or Mario Kart get the whole room engaged. And, Jackbox has a bunch of hilarious party games (Quiplash, Drawful, Patently Stupid, to name a few) that have players doubled over with laughter at what friends (or kids!) in the room come up with. It’s astonishing how many evenings were livened up by a quick electronic game on the big screen.

There’s joy in shared experiences for any family… even if together in front of the TV.

Friend, Human

Gifts

Jeff Foley

Both giving and receiving gifts are paradoxical activities. On the surface, they’re signs of generosity and gratitude. However, forced-gift-giving events (birthdays, Christmas exchanges, house warmings) can be troublesome.

When you’re the giver, you have the time pressure of buying something before the event combined with showing that you give a damn.  That adds a lot of unwanted pressure to your life and a chance to miscommunicate.

When you’re receiving the gifts, you don’t want to inflict that same pressure on your friends. Many of us have so much crap in our house already that adding more things just means more targets for a KonMari sparks-no-joy cleansing down the road. Invitations for birthday parties occasionally state “no presents except your presence” as a way to remove that pressure.

But sometimes. Sometimes, you receive a gift, and it’s so thoughtful, or above and beyond what you were expecting, that it warms your heart. And sometimes, you find the perfect gift, and the look of joy once the present is opened is immensely satisfying. Both are enough to make up for all the gift cards and useless tchotchkes cluttering your space.

Here’s to giving and receiving more of those joy-creating gifts.