My Son - Part 1

It’s always amazing how on occasion it seems as if time comes to a stand still and then before you know it time seems to race past you. It seemed like yesterday that we were living in Walnut Creek. Anne and I had been married 16 years and we had the munchkin daughter Heather who had survived a miracle birth. She had spent the first year of her life in a pre-historic neo-natal ICU in San Francisco. Now we are in the middle of doing a church plant and have the arrival of our new son and daughter, Jon and Julie.

You have to understand that Anne and I don’t do things in the most normal fashion. Just as Heather came a little early with complications, now we have an instant family with our newly adopted daughter and son. As I flash back to the week of hearing that their social worker will fly them up to Walnut Creek we are excited and scared. I truly wanted a son and in some ways had considered our present live in college student, Freddie, as my first son. Julie was 8 going on 16 and Jon was 4 going on 2 years of age.

I can remember how excited we were to have them officially be ours. We had been visiting them over the last year but the complications of paperwork and the social services department in San Diego County and Contra Costa County made it seem like the adoption wouldn’t happen. We had gotten their rooms ready or I should say that Heather sacrificed half of her room to Julie and Jon would have his own room. We had been the perfect 1 kid couple and knew that life would never be the same.

My first memories of Jon, actually his name was Jonathon or Jon Jon, go back to this shy little guy who was a little afraid of his new dad. Anne and I initially reacted a little bit to Jon and Julie calling us mom and dad but we knew that the social worker, Anna Palid, was correct in having them call us not Dave and Anne but mom and dad. Just as they didn’t have a choice in their being adopted we did become their parents. If we were to make this work it was important that they sense our commitment, care and love from the beginning.

My real first memories, of my Jon, were at his foster mom Connie’s house. We had gone to a birthday party and between this small dog that looked like a beached whale and our son to be was actually dwarfed by Connie’s dog. Jon was your cute little guy that was small for his age. His smile and look would grab at your heart. Their grandma Mary had just spent the last few months persuading us that we should adopt her grandkids. I was excited to see Jon and Julie and have a chance to hear more about them from Connie and Grandma.

I have to admit that I didn’t take any classes on parenting or how to be a father with a new son. I understood the family history of our two new kids but really didn’t have any sense of the impact it had on their lives. I was born into a family where my mom and dad stayed together and provided consistency in my life. I couldn’t fathom what it would have been like to live in a car with a mom that was gone most of the time and then be placed in foster care. I say this not to demean my son or daughter but to highlight how special they are to Anne and I and our larger family, Yet, I know that the first couples of years that they lived with us was a transition for them and for us.

I will be the first to admit that I loved being able to play with all of my kids. I know that it is easy at times to put them in situations where they have to stretch a little and learn about normal life lessons. I will always remember Larky Park, which was across from our house. It was a great little park that had a swimming pool and a special Wildlife Refuge Center that consumed many families’ attention on Saturdays or weekday afternoons.  We spent many hours at the park both with being involved with the Walnut Creek Swim Club and also learning how to ride a bike without training wheels.

I’m afraid that I probably scared all of my kids by forcing them to ride a bike without training wheels. I will never forget that Saturday afternoon that it was Jon’s turn to ride his bike down the grassy hill that was just above the swimming pool. We had fixed up Heather’s first little bike for Jon. We painted it blue and replaced the handlebars. I knew that Jon was a little scared but believed that as my dad challenged me to step up I would do the same. Little did I know that my little push down the hill on his newly painted bike would see him collide with a bush or little tree. I don’t remember any sirens or ambulances coming to his rescue but he crashed and was psychologically damaged according to his own words for the rest of his life.

Years later Jon would reflect on that day as not one of his best. I’m hoping that today he would laugh at himself and realize that as he walks down the aisle and has kids in the near future he probably will do the same thing with his son or daughter and most likely will be a tougher coach then his dad had been on him. I know that our Julie and Jon ended up participating on swim team because of some close friends whose kids were all on the team. Our Julie was at an age where she loved to swim and did really well. I know that with Jon there was always a question a to whether he could swim across the lane without drowning.

The next 5 years of our lives in Walnut Creek saw us survive one of the worst earthquakes in California and the world. All of our kids were in school when the big one hit. Anne was in the City working at the Foreclosure Company and I was in downtown Walnut Creek finishing some brochures for our new church start. I can remember the sensation of feeling this high-rise building start to shake. I will always remember watching the BART track shake and the inbound train actually makes it to the station. I quickly made it back home and got our kids and waited word to see how Anne was doing. Remember this was before the day of cell phones.

What I will remember was the following couple of weeks when we had aftershocks where all of our kids would quickly run out of the house into the backyard. We lived in a 2-story house and didn’t really have any structural damage but the quake knocked over a few of our bookshelves. It wasn’t funny while these quakes were happening but looking back it brought together as a family. I quickly realized that our family was now Heather, Julie, Jon, our dog Penny and Blackie the cat.  

I know that Jon truly believed that God had cursed him and that he would be stunted or a midget for the rest of his life. I know that Anne’s dwarf like stature frightened him because you can’t be a NBA superstar if you are less than 5 feet tall. The real hope for Jon was that his special friend Freddie was an amazing basketball player but he was barely 5 feet tall and could still make all of the moves. The great news is that Jon did eventually catch up with most of his friends.

I was pressured by my close friend Skip or George to do soccer with him. So whether my Jon had a choice or not I can’t remember. The Pfeiffers were a sports family so between soccer and swimming they were busy 24/7. So I became an assistant coach and Jon ran around the field like the rest of the massive sea of little players. I’m not sure whether Jon developed his dislike for soccer in Walnut Creek or after we moved to Chandler. I had fun coaching and watching our little guys get exercise and have what appeared to be fun.

I have many memories of watching our Freddie walk Jon to first his pre-school and then to his elementary school, Pleasant Hill Elementary. I have no clue whether Jon remembers much of this but I know that our Heather has detailed memories of all of her teachers and schools from kindergarten to high school. I have this picture of our little Jon riding on Freddie’s shoulders the few blocks to pre-school and eventually to his kindergarten class.

I will close this portion of my Jon blog with a story of my sons’ expertise as a painter. We had just done a father-son project working on his bike. We had painted it a bright blue and used a few cans of spray paint. The bike looked awesome and I truly thought Jon liked it. The following day I come home from doing church work and I see little Jon with blue paint all over himself. At first this didn’t really bother me until I saw the imprint of a piece of plywood on the chimney of our house. The difficulty was that the chimney was red and the outline of this piece of wood was blue. I quickly asked Jon if he had any idea of how the blue paint mysteriously ended up with the chimney?

I remember laughing at Jon as he attempted to persuade me that he had nothing to do with painting the chimney. The unfortunate thing for Jon was that he was covered with blue paint. Jon would reflect on how his dad had attempted to burn down the house a few days latter by emptying the barbecue into the trash not realizing that the ashes were still capable of burning not just the plastic trash bin but also the bush next to it. So I can laugh at Jon’s blue paint and he can chuckle at his pyro dad.