"COLD SNAKES AND WARM HEARTS"

 “COLD SNAKES AND WARM HEARTS”

Today is our son David’s 42nd birthday – we give thanks for him and for all his gifts to us and to so many others.  It snowed in Norfolk, Virginia this past weekend, and I will always remember that on the night that when we went to the hospital for David’s birth in Norfolk in 1980, it snowed six inches there.  I had a VW bug, so I drove Caroline to the hospital in the VW, and we made it just fine.  She dilated quicky to eight centimeters in her labor, and we thought that David would come out in short order.  However, as he always has, he had his own timetable, and he would wait another nine hours to emerge just after 9 AM on January 31.  

    David has always said that he is constantly looking for warm weather because he was born in the midst of a cold, snowy time.  Indeed, his arrival brought about 35 more inches of snow to Norfolk in the month of February.  Caroline’s parents drove from Chattanooga to help us after his birth, and they were one of the last cars to make it over the bridge from Williamsburg before it was closed because of the huge snowstorm.  There was snow on the ground in Norfolk for a long while after David was born.  We were so glad that her parents made it in for many reasons, but one main reason was that David never slept!  We hoped that it would pay off for him some day, and it has – he got his PhD with a spouse and two small children.  

    David has always had a kind and compassionate heart, and we sometimes ended up with various creatures in our house that he had found or brought home from his class at school.  He also has always had a strong moral sense, growing up at Oakhurst Presbyterian where we emphasized that love and justice had to be woven together.  We also taught that God was at the center of life.  When we took him to the Atlantans baseball games in the summer, we would stand for the national anthem, but we would not put our hands over our hearts, as most other fans did.  When David asked why we did not put our hands over our hearts, we would reply that our hearts belonged to God, not to our country or anything else.

     In his final year of elementary school, he was named as captain of the safety patrol, and he brought home a dilemma.  As captain of the safety patrol, he was required to lead the school in the pledge of allegiance to the flag.  And, in so doing, he would be expected to put his hand over his heart.  He wanted to be true to our heritage, but he also wanted to meet the expectations of the school and the safety patrol.  I suggested that he think about passing that duty along to the next officer of the safety patrol, but he indicated that leading the pledge was part of his duties, and he wanted to fulfill his duties.  He came up with a compromise – he would only put his hand near his heart – he would not put his hand over his heart.  In that way, he would try to fulfill both his heritage and his duties.  We appreciated his struggle over this, so we indicated that this approach would work for us.  He ended up winning the DAR Good Citizenship Award, and on the day that he received it, he wore a statement T-shirt in 1992 saying “How could Columbus have discovered America when people were already living here?”

    He later became a snake guy.  I’m not sure when exactly he crossed over to the world of herpetology, but he learned a lot of it in the creek in front of our house on Kirk Road in Decatur.  He went to Davidson College and was a biology major there.  He was an assistant in herpetology there, and I remember him calling me early in his snake career saying:  “Dad, I caught a snake today, and it bit me 5 times, but don’t tell Mom!”  I replied:  “Well, I hope that it wasn’t a poisonous snake,” and his retort was:  “Dad, I’d never pick up a poisonous snake.”  But, of course he did, as I found out later.

    He became known there as ‘The Snake Guy” because he was often the “go to” guy in what was then a small town – if you had snakes in your house, he would remove them for you.  He also did demonstrations on reptiles and amphibians with church and school groups.  In those demonstrations, it was clear that he was a natural teacher, and that is what he ended up doing.  After teaching in middle school for several years, he decided that public education needed reforming, in order for  all children to be served equally well.  He got his PhD in science education and now is an associate professor at Michigan State.  He has won many awards for his teaching and his revolutionary view that public education schools must pay attention to the needs of each of its students.  He’s now working on his second book on education for Harvard Press.

    I could say many other things about David, but most important is to give thanks for his being in our lives and giving us so much over these 42 years, especially his spouse Erin Graham and daughters Emma and Zoe.   And, from my personal point of view, he taught me a lot about fathering.  I made many mistakes in my fathering of him, but his hard work, his loving heart, and his vision of equity and justice prove to Caroline and me that we did some good stuff in parenting after all!