Sandy Slaga

“Can I open it when we get home, Dad?”

“Yea, sure.”

“Oh, boy! Vvvrrrroooommmm.”

A three-year-old boy. A blue Matchbox® car. That’s all it took to help that dad sail through a late night trip to Walgreens with his son.

I smiled through tears as I avoided eye contact with the Walgreens cashier who looked young enough to have a three year old of her own.

The breakup with the boyfriend. The fair weather friends. The gossip that, thanks to instant messaging and MySpace, gets around faster than a virus at daycare. And the cell phone is just one more phone in the house that doesn’t ring.

“I wish it was still that simple,” I told the young cashier. “A ninety-nine cent toy and you’re queen of the universe in their eyes.”

And all the owies can still be fixed with Bactine and a band aid.

If it’s late June, this must be the U.S. Supreme Court.

The justices are hard at work these last few days of the term, announcing a plethora of eye-catching controversial decisions certain to be water cooler fodder for perhaps the next week or so.

Kansas v. Marsh, a death penalty case, is one of those decisions. The case was decided 5-4. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion.

“We hold that the Kansas capital sentencing system, which directs imposition of the death penalty when a jury finds that aggravating and mitigating circumstances are in equipose, is constitutional. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the Kansas Supreme Court, and remand the case for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.” Marsh, Slip Opinion at pp. 17-18

Huh? Here’s the scenario. A jury in a death penalty case has found a defendant guilty. Next the jury must impose a sentence. In its sentencing deliberations, the jury considers aggravating and mitigating circumstances. Marsh says that when the jury determines that mitigating circumstances and aggravating circumstances are equal, the jury must impose a sentence of death.

More telling than the actual decision by the U.S. Supreme Court are Justice Thomas’ words in a part of the opinion referred to as dicta. That’s lawyer code for “don’t try to use this when you argue a case.” Justice Thomas writes,

“Indeed, the logical consequences of the dissent’s argument is that the death penalty can only be just in a system that does not permit error. Because the criminal justice system does not operate perfectly, abolition of the death penalty is the only answer to the moral dilemma the dissent imposes. This Court, however, does not sit as a moral authority. Our precedents do not prohibit the States from authorizing the death penalty, even in our imperfect system.”

Moral authority? Precedents? Can you say Brown v. Board of Education?

Sometimes the deeper you dig the trench, the more ludicrous you look standing in it. Which brings me to the State of Arkansas’ Department of Health and Human Services and its argument to the Arkansas Supreme Court yesterday in defense of a policy prohibiting gays from being foster parents.

In its infinite wisdom, the Arkansas Child Welfare Agency Review Board, which oversees the state’s foster care program, came up with a humdinger of a trench. Tucked into its Standards for Approval of Family Foster Homes, this body of book-learned adults included the following:

Family foster parents must have the personal characteristics which enable them to assume the responsibility of caring for foster children. No person may serve as a foster parent if any adult member of that person’s household is a homosexual. “Homosexual”, for purposes of this rule, shall mean any person who voluntarily and knowingly engages in or submits to any sexual contact involving the genitals of one person and the mouth or anus of another person of the same gender, and who has engaged in such activity after the foster home is approved or at a point in time that is reasonably close in time to the
filing of the application to be a foster parent. p. 6, Section 6.0 A.2 PUB-022 (R. 01/2002)

Let me get this straight. If you engage or submit and have engaged at a time that is close in time, you’re out. And if any adult member of your household engages or submits and has engaged at a time that is close in time, he or she is out, too. But if you engage or submit but haven’t engaged at a time that is close in time, you’re safe. You’re also safe if you have minor members of your household who engage or submit and have engaged at a time that is close in time. But you may have other issues in which the State of Arkansas is interested.

The rationale behind this burst of brilliance is that, according to the agency’s lawyer, moral fitness is fundamental to the health and safety of foster children. And everyone knows that sexual orientation is the litmus test for moral fitness.

As Justice Annabelle Clinton Imber so astutely queried during yesterday’s oral arguments, Arkansas is also going to have to ask heterosexuals if they engage or submit.

I, for one, am not saying whether I engage or submit, or even if I have engaged or submitted at a time that is close in time. And you can bet your trench that the members of Arkansas’ Child Welfare Agency aren’t saying either.

One of the harder things to do when The Black Hole threatens to set up camp is to just do the day. Just do the damn day. The basics. Get out of bed. Shower. Brush the teeth. Feed the dogs. Navigate the people in your life without taking their heads off or running from their sight.

The Black Hole is a good place from which to do laundry. Mindless, robotic activity that asks nothing in return.

Today’s a good laundry day.

The only thing better than having two teens around is having three.

Having experienced the life cycle of the human from birth to seventeen (so far), I vote for the mid to late teen years. They challenge but they energize. They infuriate but they amuse. And they can feed, bathe, dress and then drive themselves to the movies.

Here’s to The Teenagers!

If you move one grain of sand, the world will never be the same.

I ran across this anonymous quote today. The clamor of my vigilance to properly source the written word was almost deafening. And when I let go, I heard.

I’m so proud of you today.

My first memories are of a three year old boy sitting behind his two year old sister in a shiny red wagon. Both of you blond, freshly-bathed and pajama’d, holding blankets. As your parents pulled the wagon past our house on their every evening walk, I marveled at the regimen of two freshly-scrubbed little faces, powdered and ready for bed while my two toddlers were still sweaty and dirty in the yard beside me.

Over these past sixteen years I’ve watched you grow into a warm, free-spirited, caring young man who is quick with a smile and enjoyable to be around. As your circle of friends has widened over the years, you continue to value and nurture old friendships. That’s just one more thing that makes you a very special young man.

You are a gentleman. A kind soul. One who feels deeply and passionately and is not afraid to show it - rare for a young man, even in this post-feminist era.

You’ve heard it said that we are products of our genes and our environment. Nature versus nurture. You have in you the best of your mom and dad, both of whom I am blessed to call close friends. Their genes and the environment they provided will serve as a foundation upon which to build the life of your dreams.

While your struggles with them have been many - and that is ever so normal for teenagers and parents - you will find a new relationship evolving with them over these next several years. Always remember that however big the battle, they will be in your corner, forever and without exception.

You are their first-born. Soon you will be leaving home, and though you will return many times, it will not be the same ever again. This is as it should be. As life is. As life must be.

I graduated high school in Green Bay. We’d moved there the summer before my senior year. Yea, it sucked. Graduation represented independence and a new beginning. My whole life lay before me. Now, your life awaits you.

You’ve heard, or will hear, ad nauseam, the standard advice - be careful, make smart choices, etc. So I won’t repeat that here. What I will tell you is to follow your heart - your gut - in all things. It’s taken me over thirty years to learn that.

If you believe in a Higher Power, realize that the “gut feeling” you get is HP talking. Know that any answers you seek are already inside of you, waiting to be found. You need only be still enough to hear them. Find a few quiet moments in each day for this.

A couple more things, and then I’ll shut up.

Know that I love you. I’m always on your side. Don’t mistake that for mollycoddling. But I’m here for you. You know the numbers.

Finally, remember that I’m licensed to practice law in Illinois only. But I’m good for bail money in any state and Mexico.

Phase Reality was previewed at last night’s family meeting. Summer Schedule. Summer Routine. Gasp! Curfews.

Called from the outermost corners of the free world, the Summer Teenagers emerged semi-coherent and ambled into the living room. They collapsed, the seventeen year old into a chair, the sixteen year old onto the couch. Their faces grim, shoulders slumped. Did somebody’s cell phone bite the dust?

The seventeen year old stared at the end of his nose, deep in thoughts of gratitude, I’m certain. His body was now molded into the chair frame like warm wax.
The sixteen year old, reading ahead on the agenda, promptly announced that there was no way she’d be spending a half hour cleaning her bedroom and bathroom daily. With that, she assumed the fetal position in the corner of the couch. The only additional communiques from her were unintelligible but primitive in origin.

Living martyrs, no doubt. As each item of Phase Reality was disseminated, the Summer Teenagers struggled, the weight of their encumbered freedom almost too much for a Summer Parent to bear. Almost.

I’d like to say that after a spirited yet mature discussion, the evening ended in a relaxed atmosphere, a game of Scrabble and hugs. I’d also like to weigh 120.

Damn, I love a good dose of reality.

I’m steeling myself for the invasion of the Summer Teenagers. This variety, unlike School Year Teenagers, is a strange albeit predictable lot.

Summer Teenager is physically indistinguishable from School Year Teenager, but the similarity ends there. Once we’ve left the physical realm, Summer Teenager is to School Year Teenager what Paris Hilton is to Hillary Clinton.

Summer Teenager is unaware of time and space. Freed from the shackles of the school day and the tyranny of homework, the newly liberated Summer Teenager catapults from captivity into the first few days of summer like a sailor on a three day pass. Summer Parent wisely allows this brief seasonal adjustment which will, in fact, last three days and is affectionately known as Phase Frolic.

Summer Parent’s favorite, Phase Reality, begins Monday. Stay tuned.