My birthplace

After hours and hours spent at a recent convention and then a few hours at a restaurant, I was pretty exhausted and very contemplative.

Contemplative: the mood I'm in when I'm not real interested in talking to anyone, but rather I think. What I think about depends, but it's often just wondering about the future, thinking about the past, considering where I'm at and how I got there and where I'm going. If you wanted to sum it up in one word, you could say that "life" is what I'm thinking about.

So I was very contemplative. I decided to visit the home I was born in. Okay, I was born in a hospital, but you get the point....

It was only a mile or two out of the way, and I haven't been there in a while. I was born in St. Paul, MN, 8 blocks west of the capitol, 2 blocks north of University Ave. Charles Ave., to be exact. 488 Charles Ave., if I'm not mistaken.

I enjoy going back every once in a while. I can never remember the name of the street to turn onto from University Ave. I think it starts with an M. Regardless, I somehow always seem to be able to find it. And there's the house, across from a Lutheran church. The area is predominantly lower income minorities who probably rent most of the houses there. In fact, the home in which I was born was up for rent when I stopped by a few years ago.

I like going back because I like to imagine what it was like for my parents. I can't remember if they rented the basement or the upstairs of the house. All I know is that my bedroom was a closet. My dad was in college, and my mom quit her job to stay at home with me. Her full-time job ever since has been "mother." Or homemaker, or housewife. Somehow, I like "mother" much better as a job description. Of course, she's also a teacher, home schooling me all the way through high school, and continuing to home school most of the kids still at home. But still, isn't "teacher" really just part of being a "mother"? I think so. At least it should be, regardless of where your kids go to school.

I'm now older than my dad was when I was born, though not by much. I like to go back and imagine that it's me living in that house with a wife and a newborn, a junior in college who's trying to pay rent, buy food, and pay for tuition, and now has hospital bills from a newborn. Oh, and I can't forget the bill for the oil that had to be dumped into the car that drank it.

I know a lot of other 20-something-year-olds who resent their upbringing. It's easy to see what their parents did wrong. I'm the oldest. I know what it's like to be the "guinea pig," as they say, and being able to find plenty of reason for complaint. I've been guilty. But really, we're all guinea pigs, if you want to put it that way. Just because a parent has raised 7 kids already doesn't mean the 8th is going to be raised any better. The parent is no less human on kid #8 than he/she was on kid #1. Wiser? I'd hope so. But who's to say that the childhood of the 4th kid is better than that of the oldest because, "Well, my parents knew what they were doing by the time they got to me." Whatever.

Many of those 20-something-year-olds will continue to resent their upbringing for a long time. Some may never get over it. Many others resent it until they have their own kids and begin to realize the struggles their parents went through.

While I know I won't fully appreciate what my parents have gone through as parents until I have my own kids, I don't want to have to be that person that has to wait until he's a parent for the light bulb to finally go on. It's so much easier for us humans to find the flaws in everything - especially in each other; especially in our parents.

I suppose some people's complaints about their parents may be somewhat deserving. But I don't think the majority of them realized how good they really have it. In fact, whenever I meet a girl who has nothing but complaints about her parents, I pretty much cross her off any supposed "list" of "potential" future anything. If she has nothing but complaints about her parents, she'll probably have nothing but complaints about me.

I suppose I'm sort of rambling now, and I probably lost your attention about four paragraphs ago, but hey, I'm contemplative.

The bottom line is, visiting my birthplace really wasn't about a house. Seeing a house doesn't do much for me. We moved out of that house when I was barely a year old. But considering the sacrifices that my parents made on my behalf? That does something for me.

My dad's not a great communicator. He knows it, and he tries his best. But my dad's a thinker, and my dad taught me to think. I could complain about the lack of communication that was sometimes there - admittedly on both ends - or I could thank him for giving me some of the most important skills that have made me who I am. I can complain about the gifts he doesn't have, or I can cherish the gifts God gave him.

I can complain about the fact that there were too many kids in my family to warrant enough attention being paid to me. (I'm one of 11, and the youngest is two months old.) Or, I can thank God for the leadership skills (among numerous other skills) that I learned as the oldest of the bunch. (And I can wonder at the fact that my parents were able to devote as much attention to me as they did considering the circumstances.)

Visiting my birthplace is rarely about seeing a building. (As one friend put it when we drove by that home over a year ago, "Joey, you were born in the ghetto! Ha ha! That's so funny!") Visiting my birthplace is about revisiting a time in my life that I can't remember, and hopefully coming away from that with an increased appreciation for what I have today.