BoldUlysses.com

Just got home from my first half-day stint at Peter Meier. Job-wise, I can’t imagine a better fit. It’s such a blessing and it was so encouraging. I got reacclimated with SolidWorks and remembered how much I love that program. It’s intuitive, versatile and targeted precisely towards the kind of products I’ll be drafting, so the channels in which it operates align very well with my tasks.

Even my coworkers are great. Very ethnically diverse staff–one Chinese gentleman, several Hispanic guys and a considerable population of northern European folks, all laid back and friendly. My boss used to work for Buell, so we talked motorcycles for a bit, and I also discovered he’s a fellow SNL fan whilst discussing my desk’s proximity to the coffee machine (Rob Schneider paraphrase: “Makin’ coffeeeee!”). And even John, the guy I’ll be working closest with on the project, is another NCSU alum (class of ’94, IE). So there’s no dearth of conversation.

Heard on the radio a few minutes ago that Stan Berenstain, co-creator (with his wife Jan) of the Berenstain Bears series of kids’ books, died late last week. I grew up first having those books read to me, then reading them myself. We had a substantial collection of them and I must have pored over every one at least a dozen times, in that childlike way of watching or reading something until every last ounce of enjoyment is wrung out of it (and then some). My mom’s probably given them all away by now (I’ve halted her ongoing effort to sell off parts of our “library” by making her promise to give/will the whole thing to me. I love books). It was sad to hear about Stan Berenstain’s passing, but it brought back good memories of his books.

One in particular stands out. It’s something I’ve been thinking about recently even before I heard the news today. I remember reading a Berenstain Bear book about Christmas. I must have been about 7 or 8 years old and I think the book was one of the first they wrote, before they were really stretching to find new, more up-to-the-minute themes. I don’t even remember the plot of the book, only that the family of bears was experiencing Christmas together in some capacity. I can recall pictures of them shopping for one another and bring a tree home to install inside their tree house. One moment stood out, though–an image of Sister Bear and Papa Bear standing outside on the front porch, looking at a star-covered sky and discussing the plausibility of Santa Claus. Sister, being the age that she was and still believing in Santa Claus, asked Papa Bear all sorts of questions about Santa’s purported abilities, like being able to fit down chimneys and deliver toys to all the children in the world in one night. And Papa Bear’s response wasn’t to topple her belief, but to speculate about how, in his view, there’s something “magic” about the time of year and how Santa Claus was wrapped up in and privy to that “magical” effect of the season, allowing him to do the things he does.

The memory of reading that came back to me as this year’s Christmas season was getting ready to begin, and I started to realize that it’s exactly the sort of theme some overprotective parents want stricken from the books their kids read–especially in the ostensibly Christian community with the outcry against the Harry Potter series and its heavy emphasis on magic, and even some parents who have issues with the Narnia series, unable to grasp its metaphorical themes. Somehow they think that their kids are impressionable enough to read things like that that have it shake their worldview or worse, encourage them to believe in some form of occultism themselves. But thinking back on my own experience as a young child having read many, many books with “magic” running through them, it didn’t faze me a bit. I believed in Santa Claus for a few years, sure, but almost from the beginning I was self-aware enough to know it was a childish belief, and I held on to it just for the sake of believing it. And even without any explicit guidance from my parents, I knew better. The things they said and did, the way their real belief system meshed with the reality of their lives–these things had a far greater and more lasting impression on me, and through their tacit influence I was able to easily see through little things like the viewpoint of the Berenstain Bear book, and that of many other novels and literature.

So initially it might seem like I’m speaking out against the kind of spiritism depicted in the book, but really it’s more of a knock against parents whose well-meant efforts to guide and instruct their children are misplaced in creating animosity toward influences that exist mainly on a surface level, not realizing that children are affected more significantly by deeper things: worldviews borne out, actions taken, things stood up for along the lines of more fundamental concepts like trust, love, honesty, responsibility and the like. Those are the things that make a lasting impression on kids. And those are the areas of my life I pray that He will shore up to the degree necessary, and supply me where I am weak, when I have kids of my own.