The Ramblings of Weesatch Joe

Letting your oldest child go, leaving home, heading off on his or her journey to study, earn, or just live, is a terribly painful moment. As a father, I don’t know what childbirth is like, first-hand, but I imagine in some ways, it is almost as painful. After all, in child birth a woman releases her child whom she cared for and nurtured in utero for nine months out into the world. When that same child reaches early adulthood, somewhere between sixteen and thirty, and the ersatz adult decides it’s time to fly the nest, that too is a parent releasing the child, whom he or she now cared for somewhere around two decades (which equates to approximately 25 pregnancies worth of time), out into the world. Again, it’s a birth of another magnitude, a full-blown earthquake compared to the rumblings that preceeded it, but it is painful in a wholly new way and level. Now, I have experienced some parents – fathers, mostly – who blustered about how when their child left home, they had new paint on...

This week is "Teacher Appreciation Week." As the son of teachers, the brother of a teacher, the husband of a teacher, and a veteran of many hours sitting in front of teachers, I want to take a moment to thank those who impacted me so much. My Mom and Dad, Janet Meyer and Walt Meyer, of course were my first teachers. From tying shoes to tying fishhooks, cooking and baking, driving nails and driving cars, shaving whiskers and shaving "pills" off sweaters, how to listen in church and how to enjoy sitting still, the list is endless of what they taught me. I never had Mom as a classroom teacher, but she taught me a love for (and how to read) music, the hymns and liturgy, how to patiently sit and read a book, and how to wash the dishes. Dad was my school principal, from kindergarten through 8th grade, and my teacher for 5th - 8th grade. Talk about having to toe the line! I still remember lessons he taught us in Zion Lutheran School in Walburg. Math, reading, English, spel...