By Lee Schoenbeck

It begins in such an innocent and seemingly insignificant way. You see a cute girl at an event, your buddy Kevin introduces you and something sparks. You don’t really see it coming. You don’t realize that with that first phone call the seeds are laid for something bigger than you. This is how families begin, lives are created and communities are built.

You thought you were just trying to make-out with a cute girl! Three months later you own a diamond ring (briefly), and you’re calling the priest and reserving the church. You don’t see and didn’t realize that you were about to be part of a great work of humanity.

THEY WERE JUST LITTLE BUGGERS

Four times in the next nine years we visited our friend Dr. Bjordahl in the maternity room at the hospital in Webster. Each child’s story, already nine months in the writing by then, could fill pages of humor, struggle and pain all the way to that first breath and loving cry (by us, not them).

Over the years after that, each parent can recount the events, big and small, that made up each life’s story. You remember the birthday parties, first days of school, baptisms and confirmations and friendships made and lost as each child grew — unexpectedly — to adulthood.

The most common admonition young parents receive is to”enjoy them while they are young,” which falls on deaf ears. At that point, they’re coming every couple of years. You’re up to your elbows in the smells and feels of fresh diapers. They don’t let you sleep at night. They toss food all over your car, and your former sporty ride has become a distant memory next to the mini-van that is now a necessity. It’s true there was much to “enjoy,” but there didn’t appear to be any reason to see an end (or peace and quiet) in sight, that required you to appreciate it.

IT’S NOT AN ACCIDENT

It seems like happenstance, but it isn’t. Parenting is a vocation each person is called to. In the words of John Henry Newman:

God has created me to do some definite service. He has committed some work to me, which he has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connections between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do his work.

The vocation of parenting is summarized in our faith like this:

A child is a creature and a gift of God, which comes to earth through the love of his parents. True love does not desire a couple to be self-contained. Love opens up in the child. A child that has been conceived and born is not something “made”, nor is he the sum of his paternal and maternal genes. He is a completely new and unique creature of God, equipped with his own soul.

Admittedly, numb from lack of sleep, while feeding a screaming little one at 3 a.m., it is hard to grasp your place in the bigger scheme of creation. But to those to whom it matters most, the message eventually comes through clearly. I saw a friend’s daughter’s Facebook post recently that thanked her parents for enduring the struggles, staying together and raising her to adulthood. As I read that, I thought,”Dang, so that’s what this has been all about.”

SOMETHING CHANGED ALONG THE WAY

Long after you fell in love — over a decade later — things changed. The little buggers started making intelligent conversation! The acne-fighting, crooked-teeth, emotional roller-coaster kids were now talking about college and careers. They weren’t asking to be walked to the park any more. They actually wanted a bike, so they didn’t have to drive their cars all the time. They don’t empty the candy dishes any more, and they start thinking exercise is a good thing.

It’s like you blinked and the sippy cups were gone. Now there are adults walking around your kitchen.

YOU BUILT A GENERATION

Parents get forewarned. They start hearing from people that they will soon be”empty nesters,” and just like”enjoy them while they’re young” you don’t get it. It doesn’t sink in. It doesn’t make sense. You’ve got four babies. Nobody asked permission for them to grow up and be adults.

Then it happens. For us in one week we shipped the last three off to college. In eight days our life changed. For 27 years we built a family, nursed wounds, cleaned up after them, tried to teach them a little about right and wrong. Then it happened: they were adults. They had plans. They were gone.

I thought she was just a cute girl in a hallway. I didn’t know it would lead to that. Then we thought we were building a family, and we didn’t know it would lead to this. They’re gone, and it turns out we built a whole dang generation!

Enjoy them while they’re young.

Lee Schoenbeck grew up in Webster, practices law in Watertown, and is a freelance writer for the South Dakota Magazine website.

By Lee Schoenbeck

This is the big day, maybe an infamous day — certainly, apparently, an inevitable day. One of our young’uns is taking to her wings and leaving the nest. She’s even leaving the 5-7 zip code. We spent twenty-two years encouraging her to learn, to question, to explore — but we never really figured she would use those talents and traits to fly so far from home.

THEY CAME IN SMALL PACKAGES — NO WINGS

Twenty-five years ago we were blessed with our first little child. In our faith, the catechism says:”A child is a creature and a gift of God, which comes to earth through the love of their parents.” They also come without wings.

Through holidays and home-creating, through activities, travels and books, parents work to expand their children’s understanding of the world about them. It starts simple –“stove hot”– and advances to more complex concepts –“work and sleep good.” Every generation finds new ways to expand their children’s worldview. Growing up in Day County, going to Philmont Ranch Boy Scout Camp in Cimarron, New Mexico, was as extreme of an opportunity as I understood existed. Our kids have travelled the 5-7 zip code and the globe, learning and understanding more about the world about them than their parents did. That’s where I see that whole wing problem starting to develop.

HOME IS ABOUT SAFETY

When our eldest took off across the middle United States as a cold-calling door-to-door salesman, calling on retail accounts for the Mad Bomber Hat Company, his mother was a little scared, but his dad thought it was pretty cool. When it’s your son, and he’s big enough to handle an idiot with an attitude, it just sounds like an adventure for the young in spirit. Besides, our firstborn was coming back to the 5-7 zip code at the end of the summer, and so we could embrace the experience.

If parents are honest about it, those who are fortunate enough to have their children land close to the 5-7, maybe as far away as Minneapolis, Fargo or Omaha, feel very fortunate. The others feel a little green with envy. It’s partially about access — you want to see the little buggers, even if they aren’t little any more, but it’s about more than that.

Here in the 5-7 we’re a pretty big community. We’re a group of people who embrace reasonable political perspectives, respect the practice of faith, affirm life, and have a healthy understanding of firearms and the outdoors. Even in our only metropolitan area, Sioux Falls, while the complexion of the residents has been changing, the perspective hasn’t — be they Norwegian, Lakota, German or Sudanese, they are pretty comfortable knowing that they have created a community of safe homes, neighborhoods and schools.

But out there — outside the 5-7 — I’m not so sure. We see their news. There are surely some normal people to be found there, but the latest collection of misfits battling to lead our nation’s largest city only reaffirms that the values and practices out there — well, they don’t meet the standards here at home in the 5-7.

WINGS MAY BE ABOUT OPPORTUNITY AND FEARLESSNESS

So back to where this bleak day started. Our second child boarded a plane for Baltimore. This college graduate flew off to work natural disasters from Maryland to Maine (seriously — that’s the job). We’d be lying if we said we weren’t scared. When our first one left home, he found great opportunities in Sioux Falls, and we get to see him — we like that. He uses his wings for business opportunities, and he still finds his way home for food every couple of weeks. But this East Coast thing, that’s a little scarier deal for all of us.

Today was a day to remember the kids each in turn packing their backpacks and going off to a new first day of school. The whole wing-sprouting thing started there, and we encouraged it. We packed them off to college too, but the wing thing hadn’t really sunk in yet then — they came home every holiday and some in between. With number two child, I think I blame President Rob Oliver and his Augustana for shipping her off to India and Cuba, and who knows where else, in her four years there.

So while we packed number two off on the plane at 6 a.m. to Baltimore, we tried to control the tears. We understand that this is about using the wings God gave her and we helped grow — but it’s still a little tough to sort out.

Sunday at Mass, my formerly little girl did snuggle up against me one last time during the recessional. As I shook a little at the thought of losing her to this public service she feels driven to, the words of that hymn provided some inspiration, solace and maybe some understanding:

We are called to act with justice.
We are called to love tenderly.
We are called to serve one another, to walk humbly with God.

So, we have to be ok with our daughter’s decision to spend a year saving some part of the East Coast, but the message I think each of us 5-7 parents hope each young flyer takes with them is that even in the feathered world, the homing instinct is strong. Those geese fly south in the fall, but those same wings bring them back to their roots here in the 5-7 to raise a family each spring. I like those wings.

Lee Schoenbeck grew up in Webster, practices law in Watertown, and is a freelance writer for the South Dakota Magazine website.

Tag: parenting

Built: A Generation