An Idea for Our Time?: Family Standup

During these trying shelter-in-place times, our family has adopted a habit from my job: a daily standup.  I work on a software development team, and in software development, especially when using agile methods, teams gather daily for a short, structured meeting called a standup.

The format seeks to correct the ills of longer, less frequent meetings.  It gets straight to the point and maximizes shared knowledge.  It's also designed to identify (as a first step to overcoming) "blockers."  A blocker may take many forms, but it does like it's named: it blocks someone from completing a task that they want to/have to/are trying to do.

Also in the eponymous theme, in standup, we stand up.  Not settling into chairs underscores how quickly the meeting is supposed to go.  

The team goes around in a circle and answers three simple questions:

1. What did I do yesterday?
2. What am I going to do today?
3. What (if anything) is blocking me?

It's important that everyone in the meeting, regardless of their role, answers all three questions.  It's about transparency and acknowledgment that we all need to know what we're all working on in order to make individual and shared decisions and to support each other.

So during COVID-19 home confinement, we have adopted this idea for our family.  We read about the idea several years ago in Bruce Feller's The Secrets of Happy Families.  He described a weekly version of the meeting that his family had adopted.  He extolled how the every-person-speaks nature of the meeting gave voice to his children.  Sometimes, kids don't get to talk, and parents don't have to share what's going on with them.  Standup can help.

We've been gathering at 9:30 (30 minutes after the teenagers have to be awake) to step through our version of standup.  Other families might do something different, but here's what we do:

• We go through the form for Family Prayer in the Morning from the brand-new 2019 Anglican Church in North America Book of Common Prayer.  We include one verse of a favorite hymn, and we pray prayers of gratitude or asking for help for ourselves or others. It helps us remember our place in the universe and the source of our hope.
• The boys report on what they did yesterday, and what they plan to do today in self-guided academic exploration and how they plan to get outside.
• We go over household chores that the boys need to do during the day.  Where there are options, they divvy them up among themselves.
• We identify any blockers and very quickly brainstorm the next thing we can do to clear that blocker.
• The parents report on when they will be on calls and video conferences so that everyone knows when wi-fi bandwidth might be both taxed and important. Our kids haven't stated getting school assignments yet, but they will soon, and wi-fi might become the issue for us that it is for others already.
• We review any evening details that need to be discussed like shared dinner prep plans or any plans we have as a nuclear family or to Zoom with family or friends.
• We finish with a group hug.

The group hug wasn't originally part of it.  That's another beauty of standup: the members of the meeting can suggest ways to tweak the meeting to optimize it for everyone.  My Competent Wife proposed that addition.  We also found that we needed to bump our younger son's wake-up time earlier because he eats breakfast slowly.  Standup works when everyone arrives on time and ready to engage.  

And when it's over, we move on informed, unblocked, and ready to go about our day.

An Everyday

An Everyday

a prose poem
November 2013

Almost as soon as I get into the 
night-lit bathroom on Saturday,
I hear the smallest knock one hears
in our house.

After my "Come in." (compliant
like his mother was as a child), he
enters, his hair a true sculptural 
artifact of sleep.  He never sleeps in long.

Running the hot water for my 
shave, I watch him paste up his toothbrush.
Rather than "Good morning", he says
"I need cold."

Sighing, I switch from
hot to cold for him.

Just like I do, he sticks the pad
of his pinkie into the stream to
see if it's cooled to his liking.

Then it's back to hot for my shave.
And we're standing side by side
Y shaving, 1/2Y brushing.

When I thought about being a
father, I thought about feeding
and clothing, looking out for health,
teaching children right from wrong
and how the world works.

I didn't think much about
shaving cream and toothpaste
squeezed out simultaneously.
I didn't contemplate
competing demands for hot and cold water.

I didn't reckon with
a roommate thirty years my junior
sharing the sink.

While I help them learn how to live,
I also live with them.

And the lack of these 
moments will make me miss
them when they have new roommates
in East Lansing or Lewisburg.

Quiet dinners and clean, orderly rooms
will make me miss them.
Already, when they're gone for just
a day, their mother and I mock-remind
each other of chores to do.
They are not there to remind.
How will we handle it when they're
not coming back to share our
space
anymore?

Apparently not Mysterious Enough

OK, so my mystery post lacked the potency of a real mystery.  After less than twelve hours, two smart guys had solved it in the comments.  These diagrams do indeed represent the timeline of our family's dining room table.

Pre-kids, quiet, candlelit gourmet dinners, string music tinkling in the background (or something like that; it's hard to remember).  This diagram represents tables in three apartments and for a while in our first house.

With our first boy at the head of the table in his high chair.

The boy drops his tray and pulls up to the table between mommy and daddy.

Only when boy number 2 comes along does boy number 1 move to the side of the table.  Soon after, he begins being able to operate a knife, which makes this configuration much more viable.  Gosh, these dinners stank.  Some small human constantly needed attention or help with the process of getting food into his mouth.  This stage also included lots of hopping up to get a food, vessel or implement that didn't make it to the table during table-setting.  Rare restaurant meals without children are savored like never before or after.

Goodbye high chair; hello youth chair; hello fork.  Mommy and Daddy still need to cut your food up and stuff.

Just weeks ago, the younger heir started wielding his own knife.  We considered it high time (after nearly 10 years) that we rejiggered our table into a configuration that does not include a boy at the head.

In acceptance of micro-routines

When I first went part-time at work and took over primary domestic responsibilities, I was less than excited one aspect of the transition: losing my routine. I chalk my embrace of daily routines up to the fact that I moved around a lot as a kid. There's comfort in doing things the same way at the same time each day. When I worked full time, I commuted by bus most every day, and meeting that schedule meshed with a pretty consistent routine.

The part-time schedule has torpedoed routine to the extent I might have guessed. Having to get the kids to and from their various locations can shoot holes in a routine. Also, the schedule I've kept - working M, T and Th and being at home on W and F - builds disruption right into the week. Although I accurately predicted the disappearance of routine, I would not have guessed that I'd be able to roll with it as I have. Early on, I grieved the loss of predictability, but I moved through the initial stages and got to acceptance.

In place of the steady routine, life now consists of short periods of different formations of family life and time. School years and sports seasons help delineate these. As regular readers know, I don't always fare well with any given period. I have come, though, to accept that whatever the schedule and pattern is right now, it will change soon. That makes me appreciate each little segment as it comes and goes. When I was working out before 6:00 every morning, Teddy would get up and hang out nearby until I was done, never asking for his breakfast. Now, we're out of that pattern. When Charlie had trumpet lessons followed by dance class after school for a while, I found that Teddy and I could shop for groceries in the neighborhood while Charlie was occupied. As soon as I had that down, we were out of that pattern and returned to morning grocery shopping.

I'm probably most nostalgic about a micro-routine that preceded all of this part-time stuff. Paige had a Tuesday evening class in law school. Charlie was at the university's childcare center on Tuesdays. Paige would pick him up there and call in a pizza order at the O (a Pitt classic). She liked the pizza but didn't relish taking our toddler into the Dirty O (as the students call it) to pick it up or to eat there. Persistently and inexplicably slippery floors presented just one of the hazards there. So I'd bus up from downtown and pick up the pizza and then join P & C in the student lounge in the basement of the law school for family dinner. For a while there, O pizza was the only kind Charlie would eat. Then Paige would go to her class, and C and I would bus the rest of the way home. Now, that whole setup exists only in memory.

The fleeting nature of these micro-routines motivates me to appreciate what's good in each one. Rather than rail against losing the comfort of predictability, I try to focus on how quickly the boys outgrow the little phases they laser through one after the other. Better to soak up today for what it is than to wish it could be something else. Soon enough, I'll be wishing nostalgically for today.

Atta Boy, Drew Forster

If any blog post can right an injustice, I hope this one will. Last weekend, I attended the grand opening, ribbon cutting and dedication of the Salvation Army Ray & Joan Kroc Community Center in Boston. Joan Kroc, the matron of the McDonald's fortune left $1.5 billion (that's a lot of Big Macs!) to the Salvation Army to build about 30 of these centers around the country. In Boston, the Uphams Corner/Dudley Square neighborhood
View Larger Map had wanted a community center for at least 20 years. This part of Dorchester/Roxbury's recent history has been marked by gun violence and a lack of hope. In vibrant, often prosperous Boston, this neighborhood just couldn't catch a break from the economy or city hall. The spirits of its Dominican and Cape Verdean immigrant families were unbowed, and individuals and groups never stopped working and hoping even when it might have been easy to do so.

Now, they have a 90,000 square foot, beautiful and functional community center with a big gym, a climbing wall, a dance studio, a truckload of elliptical and stairmaster machines, a recording studio, an indoor water park and outdoor splash playground, performing arts space and a "peace chapel" in which to remember those whose lives were cut short by violence.

My brother Drew has been working on this project since it was no more than an idea on paper. After Drew's work five years ago on the proposal helped win a high stakes internal competition among Salvation Army centers in cities across the northeast US, they asked him to stay on as the first full-time employee of this idea. The injustice came this weekend when I read through the twenty-some page program for the weekend's festivities and saw my brother's name nowhere. They compounded the injustice when, in 3 1/2 hours of speeches and festivities by politicians and fundraisers and the Salvation Army muckety mucks from Massachusetts and the upper administration of the northeast US, no one said "Drew Forster" once. Not when recounting the history of the project. Not when they showed the beautiful video presentation he created. Not when they lauded lots of others who did less to make it all happen. The picture at the right is one of the only ones I got of Drew on Saturday, and it's blurry because he virtually never stopped moving, working during the festivities.

I realize that tons of people played a role. I realize that when a billionaire gives you $80 million and you raise another $30 million locally, that there are Certain People to Thank. I just wish they had added Drew to the list.

Drew's daughter Sydney did tell him at the end of the day "I'm so proud of your work, Daddy." But she shouldn't have been the first to say that out loud.

Since the big wigs didn't give Drew an atta boy, I now shall. Drew may kill me, but here's what they should have said.

Tons of people contributed to this grand occasion. It's safe to saw, however, that no one has contributed more time, intellectual resources or passion to this project than Drew Forster. Some helped launch the notion; others contributed money and ideas and expertise. There were those who brought certain aspects to completion. But no one was present - as was Drew - from proposal to ribbon cutting. Drew attended over 100 community meetings. We've said there were 200 official community meetings, so let's conservatively put Drew at half of those. He consistently sacrificed evening family time to talk and listen in Upham's Corner. Drew listened to the community about what they wanted in a neighborhood asset unlike anything they'd ever had before. Drew connected with those who have labored with lesser resources on the goals on which hew as now privileged to work. Drew participated in architecture discussions, fundraising discussions, demographic analysis (56,000 people within a mile of this spot; 19,000 of them children) and program planning. At the end of the first week of operation, Drew knew who had been there five days out of five. Hip Hip Hooray!

Actually, one person said "Drew was here all along", but she said it to her friend in the hallway when she met me, Drew's twin brother, the guy freaking people out all day by looking - if not dressing - exactly like him.
Isaura Mendes said it. Ms. Mendes lost two sons in two years to gun violence in the neighborhood, and now she crusades for peace. She knew that Drew was there all along. She knows that Drew gets it. Drew helped plan for the Peace Chapel, an oasis of serenity in the busy hive of the Kroc Center. it's a place to remember those who tragically don't walk down Dudley Street anymore and to pray that fewer young people die this year than last. Ms. Mendes represents so many other parents grieving the worst possible loss. "Drew was here all along", she said.

On that fifth day of Kroc Center operations, Drew greeted a member of what he dubbed (on the spot) "the five for five club". When he inquired after the man's "better half", who had accompanied him on his first four visits, he first said that she wasn't feeling well. After a moment, he said that, actually, that day marked seven months since their son Matthew had died of a gunshot wound at age 30. His wife didn't come out that day because - naturally - she still grieves over their son's death and that day was particularly difficult. Drew asked the man if he knew about the Peace Chapel and took him upstairs and sat quietly with him on a pointed day of remembrance.

Drew has dreamed this place on paper and in meetings and in PowerPoint and in letters, and I can't think of someone better suited to now be opening all of its many ambitious programs. They should have said that on Saturday. Drew was there all along.

For more information on the Kroc Center or to make a gift in Drew's honor, please visit http://www.use.salvationarmy.org/use/www_use_bostonkroc.nsf/