Happy Birthday Reid

Ten years ago tonight I became a mother for the second time. Reid Glenn Anderson came into this world at 10:37 pm weighing a whopping 8 lbs 8-1/2 oz and, get this... 23-1/4 inches long. Is it any wonder I was incredibly uncomfortable at the end of my pregnancy? He was almost half my height!

Reid was another dream baby. Well, sort of. As long as he was being held he was a happy as can be. He hated being put down and he absolutely hated riding in the car. As a result, I became adept at doing my daily activities with a baby strapped to my body. Though, unfortunately, I had to put him in his carseat while we were in the car. Our car rides were a bit of a nightmare for about the first 9 months of Reid's life. I was so used to his screaming while I drove around that it unnerved me if he suddenly stopped. When Reid was five weeks old he was diagnosed with RSV and his pediatrician ordered me to take him directly to the hospital. Already upset about having to put my baby in the hospital, I was a bit of a nervous wreck as we drove the 3 miles or so to Frederick Memorial. As per usual, Reid started the drive screaming as soon as I strapped him into his seat. I'm zipping down the highway when he suddenly stopped crying. I whipped that car onto the shoulder, jumped out of my seat, flung his car door open and screamed his name. His eyes flew open and he was so startled he screamed louder than he ever had before. The poor thing was so tired from being sick he has fallen asleep. I was both relieved and remorseful. I showered him with kisses and apologies and we got back on the road.

Reid has always had a zest for life. He loves to laugh and learn new things. I call him my "stop and smell the roses" child because he doesn't do anything fast. He loves to take his time and soak everything in. This can be very endearing. He notices the world around him and as a result he has made me slow down to see what he is looking at. In many ways, this is maddening. Occasionally you have to get moving. We don't always have the luxury of watching where the squirrel is going.

Reid loves to be the center of attention, in a good way. He likes to do presentations in school. He was recently in the school play and tomorrow he will be performing a magic act at the school talent show. He's a natural and is very confident in his abilities. The unfortunate partner to creativity seems to be sensitivity. Reid is incredibly sensitive and gets his feeling hurt easily. Glenn and I noticed that when Reid was a toddler he could take a spectacular tumble, jump up, brush himself off and keep on going, but if you raised your voice to him he completely fell apart. Tears would actually shoot out of his eyes. Still to this day he can brush off physical pain, but emotional pain turns him into a sobbing mess.

It is this sensitivity that worries me most as his mother. How do you teach a child to harden his heart? I want him to be sensitive. His sensitivity makes him a more caring and tender individual. He always roots for the underdog and he has such a big heart that he hurts when those around him hurt. That's a good thing, right? Not always. He wears his heart on his sleeve and it makes people around him uncomfortable. We live in a society that doe not encourage tenderness. Our society says that boys need to be tough. Reid is not tough and he knows it. He knows that he is different and it bothers him. All I can do, as his mother, is encourage him to be true to himself, but at the same time, choose his battles wisely. I am helpless. I can't hang out in the fourth grade and run interference. He is going to have to figure some things out on his own. That kills me. I yearn for the days when all I had to do to pick him up, hold him close and all would be right in his world.

We are ten years into this adventure with Reid. I can't wait to see what the next ten years bring.

Milestones

Today is a milestone in my life. My father lived exactly 44 years 3 months and 8 days. Today I have lived 44 years, 3 months and 9 days. I was 14 when my father died. I knew at the time that he wasn't old, but I don't think I ever realized how young he really was.

My dad lived in a different time, different culture. He left home and joined the Navy when he was 17. It was his only chance to escape the poverty of his family home. The Navy gave him stability he never had and taught him that if he showed initiative he would be rewarded. He became an Electricians-mate and completed his high school education. He married young and started his family while he was in his early 20's.

He was functionally illiterate when he joined the Navy. When he retired 22 years later he was an avid reader and loved going to the library with his children. He relished learning interesting, yet useless facts. He used to call himself a "warehouse of worthless information". He passed that loved onto me. Very frequently he would challenge us to trivia contests. At dinner he would say something like, "The first one of you that can tell me who invented the toilet will get $1." This was long before the internet, so I would race to the library to find that little nugget of information. In the early years of our contests, my sister, Laurie would be right there with me, and would usually win. Once she moved out it was just my brother, John and me. I could never beat John in feats of strength, but I mopped the floor with him in these trivia contests. Maybe that's the way it was meant to be. He and John had sports. But he and I had the library. When we first moved to Altus, OK, the library was in an old house on Broadway Street, about three blocks from our house on Commerce. He and I walked those three blocks time and time again. I remember we once had an encyclopedia salesman at our door. The man was passionate about the merits of encyclopedia ownership. My father listened to his whole spiel, then politely said "I've got a whole library around the corner and it's free." That was the end of that sales-pitch.

When my dad retired from the Navy as a Senior Chief Petty Officer he was only 39 years old. So this young retiree and avid reader started the next phase of his life. He became a part-time college student. His dream... become an elementary teacher. The first few years he worked full time as and electrician and took a couple classes per semester. He and my mom decided it would be better for him to go to school full time so that he can finish up and start working. So that's what he did. In the fall of 1980 he became a full time college student at Southwestern Oklahoma State University. He was gone a lot and we missed him, but somehow we all understood it was for the greater good. In the spring of 1981 he started his student teaching at Wilson Elementary School in Altus. He loved it and was offered a teaching job to start in the fall. All he had to do was finish his last two classes over the summer session at SWOSU. He never did. He started feeling sick at the end of June but pushed through it. By the ninth of July he realized he was very sick and checked himself into the hospital. He died the next day. It was that sudden and unexpected. What we thought was pneumonia turned out to be end stage lung cancer.

As my own life passes this milestone I have to compare my life to his. I wasn't born in poverty. It was an unspoken expectation that I would go to college. Seeing my father work so hard and fall short of getting his degree made me that much more determined to follow through on mine. I even entertained the idea of being a teacher. Somehow I felt like I owed it to him. When I changed my major from Elementary Education to Journalism I feared I was letting him down. Then I realized he would want me to find my passion and make a career out of it. Educating young people was his passion, not mine. My dad influenced almost every aspect of my life and I think about him all the time.

He died a young man, but in his 44 years, three months and eight days he changed lives. He made the most of his life and he always pursued his dreams. I have to think that each day I live from now on is a gift that I should cherish. I owe it to him to pursue my own dreams. His life and untimely death taught me to take opportunities as they arise. You never know how many days you have left.

John Henry Weatherly, April 2, 1937 - July 10, 1981