Author: Mark Myers

I am a husband of one, father of four daughters, a dreamer, a builder, a believer, and most enjoyably a writer. In 2015, I became a reluctant Childhood Cancer Advocate as we lost our youngest daughter Kylie to the disease. Kylie taught me to steal joy from even the worst of circumstances and I will always be on the lookout for happiness among the thorns of life. Join me for a generous helping of laughter and tears.

Magic Pish and Psychiatric Expenses

.Reading time 5 minutes.

Has anyone ever lied to their kids? I don’t mean big ones, I mean little to medium sized lies that shouldn’t impair their ability to trust another human being down the road. I am not proud of it, but I have blurted things to my children and walked away wondering how many sessions on the couch of a psychiatrist I had just caused. Somewhere out there is a young resident with a name like Fringlehoben preparing himself to tackle the emotional burdens of others. Study hard, young man – I may have done some damage.

I love questions from children. I love it when their inquiring minds pull something so imaginative out of the air. Questions are the lifeblood of knowledge. I like them, I really do. Unfortunately, since I am a big child myself, I don’t always see questions as a teaching opportunity. Sometimes, I use them to funnel my own creativity.

In her early years, my oldest wondered how we got things put away in her room without her knowing it. The correct answer was that she was a very hard sleeper. What did I say? I told her that I had the power to shrink super small. The ruse took a few nights, but I finally convinced her and laughed my normal-sized self to sleep. Until, that is, she showed up in my bed and slept there for a month, utterly terrified to be in her room.

Toys have their own category of deception. Annoying toys need to be lied about to maintain domestic sanity. For instance, did you know that often, batteries cannot be replaced? Unfortunately, the toys that make the loudest noises are disposable. Once the batteries die, they are just worthless hunks of plastic. Those screws? Decorative, I promise.

The lie that scarred our oldest the most was about her fish. Or “pish” as she called it at the time. We are pish killers. Not on purpose, just through neglect and ignorance. We’ve had an aquarium, read books, and really tried. Yet they all still die under our care. The only pish we’ve ever been able to keep alive was a plecostomus named Squeegee and that’s because they live off the junk that kills everything else.

betta

We once got a purple betta pish named Flounder. Our daughter loved that little pish. She watched her pish, fed it and took every care to make sure her pish was happy. She doted on it when it slept sideways at the top of the water and laughed when it sliced its way from the top slowly to rest on the rocks. That amazing little pish died 1000 deaths and somehow still rose every morning to greet my curly-headed love. This was no miracle of resurrection, it was solely a logistical effort since the pet store was on my way home from work.

One fateful day I got the death-call but the store had no purple pish. The closest was a deep red one which I purchased and dumped in the bowl when our little angel was fast asleep. The next morning, she woke us slightly perplexed.

“Daddy, come see!”

“What is it?”

“Pish is red!”

Surprised I’d been busted so soon, I ran to her room and watched the little red pish paddle around. The ph balance of the water must have changed it because the deep red had worn off and it was nearly shiny – nothing like Flounder of the day before.

“Why Flounder red, daddy?”

Think! Think! Think!

“Flounder must be a magic fish,” was all that came.

“Ohhhhhh, magic pish,” she said in wonder.

From that day on, I was no longer tied to purple. Magic Pish changed colors frequently. I viewed the little scam as liberating until years later I heard her sincerely describing her color-changing fish as a young teen. I felt a rare twinge of guilt and had to come clean, which brought an open-mouth stare of horror as if her childhood had been shattered.

Please forgive me, Dr. Fringlehoben. If one of my children ever comes to sit on your couch, maybe you should just do a quick study of me to undo whatever damage I’ve caused. I can probably answer a great many of your questions.

The Frailty of Fair

.Reading time 5 minutes.

We’ve talked a great deal about the concept of fair of late. An odd word, fair. If you look it up in the dictionary you will find it has nearly seven times as many definitions as it has letters. The one that pertains to our conversation is:

conforming with the established rules.

Children all over the world cry daily, “That’s not fair!” I have a daughter who has a justice meter and feels that everything should line up equally. If things do not, she will protest the unfairness of the situation. She gets that from my lovely wife whose righteous indignation will rise at anything wrongfully appropriated. Things must be fair.

But they aren’t, are they?

Fair is a myth. Oh, we try. We make rules and establish laws to make things as fair as humanly possible. But there is something bigger at play. There is an overarching fairness that we can’t comprehend. When we put things in their cosmic proportion, we can make things as equitable as we want to and they will never be fair – because we are not in control.

Tell the orderly little ant about fairness when he is marching in the line, doing his job and he watches fifteen of his co-laborers get stepped on by the careless human. Sometimes, I feel like that ant. I’ve seen the footfall of God land on someone I love. His concept of fair is different than mine.

It isn’t fair that Kylie got cancer. No one can explain how it happened. They told us that somewhere along the line a gene mutated and boom, a tumor appeared. Random. It isn’t fair that she started doing so well only to fall victim to the silent spread of the disease. Likewise unfair is that she had ten torturous months of treatment.

While she was in treatment, she met a housekeeper in the hospital whom she loved. Ms. Nikki made her smile. Whenever Nikki came in to do her job, she made it a point to talk to Kylie, encourage her, and always seemed to find a way to make her laugh. She was sunshine on many awful cloudy days. Early on, Nikki and I started doing a “Going Home” dance together on discharge days. I assure you, she was a much better dancer than me and Kylie always wanted to find her before we left so she wouldn’t have to endure my solo.

Kylie with her friend Ms. Nicki
Kylie with her friend Ms. Nikki

On a trip with her children recently, Nikki’s car was struck by two cars going in excess of one hundred miles an hour. Two of her children were ejected from the car and killed on the scene. The third died at the hospital a few days later. In an instant, the wonderful Ms. Nikki lost the three things most precious to her because of someone else’s carelessness. Where is fair?

Death is never fair – be it instantly or after a long illness. It leaves too much pain and too many jagged edges.

My heart cries out for Nikki – for her loss, her pain. While I am grieving my own loss, I cannot imagine hers. I pray for a peace that seems as unattainable as fairness in this broken place.

I wish I could make things fair. I never will be able to, neither will you. The only thing we can do is love those we are tied to as long as we are here and as long as they are here with us.

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Thank you to those who helped Kylie’s friend Nikki