Family Squeeze Read online

  Praise for

  Family Squeeze

  “Family Squeeze reads like a novel, one of three generations laughing, growing, and conquering. With its twists and turns—even a surprise ending—Phil’s story is one most of us find ourselves in as the sandwich generation copes with troubling questions while looking for examples of those who are thriving amid the challenges. This book will make you laugh, cry, and leave you bursting with hope. I highly recommend it.”

  —LEE STROBEL, New York Times best-selling author of The Case for the Real Jesus

  “Phil Callaway is master of the funny bone and the heart-tug. In Family Squeeze, he plays both to good effect, mining wisdom and wit from some of life’s trickiest terrain—the growing up and leaving of children, the growing old and nursing of parents. He pretends to be just a fellow traveler, but I’m not fooled: he knows the ground well, and I’d follow him anywhere.”

  —MARK BUCHANAN, author of The Rest of God and Hidden in Plain Sight

  “My sisters and I watched my dad live with Alzheimer’s for six years. I learned that two things are absolutely necessary if one is to navigate that difficult journey: a boatload of compassion and a sense of humor. In Family Squeeze Phil Callaway demonstrates both. He has also managed to be a good dad to three teenagers in the process, which means he is now very wise or very crazy. Either way, this is a great read.”

  —KEN DAVIS, author and speaker

  “Phil has done it again: made us laugh and cry reading just one page of this magical, wonderful book! The best of life is always captured by Phil Callaway’s words, and he inspires us all to live a life worthy of passing on to our families and friends. He brings out the best in humankind, all while making us laugh out loud.”

  —BILL AND PAM FARREL, authors of Men Are Like Waffles, Women Are Like Spaghetti

  “I don’t know of anyone else who makes me laugh out loud, and then within moments, finds a way to touch the deep parts of my heart. Maybe it’s because I helped care for my parents the last ten years of their lives, or maybe it’s just that our journeys really are much more similar than we realize. Whatever the case, Family Squeeze was particularly timely for me. Phil has a knack for helping us remember God’s presence in the hardest seasons of life, and he provides a generous dose of humor, lest we get lost in the maze of self-absorption.”

  —STEVE GREEN, Dove Award-winning musical artist and author

  “This book blindsided me big time and moved me profoundly. A masterful, well-crafted manual filled with phenomenal advice and fall-down funny stories, this book has been a life-changer for my wife and me. If you’re caught in the squeeze of two generations, Phil delivers life-saving counsel to help you navigate the darkness. In implementing the wisdom of this book, my lost joy has come home. The power of this book is in the fact that Callaway has already been where I am going! Thank God for his warm, wise words that illuminate the unknown path ahead.”

  —MIKE SILVA, evangelist and author of Would You Like Fries with That?

  “I loved reading this book. Family Squeeze is funny; VERY FUNNY and seriously honest. I’m grateful that Phil has transparently shared his life so we baby boomers could be reminded how to leave footsteps worth following.”

  —BRIAN DOERKSEN, worship leader and author of “Come, Now Is the Time” and “Faithful One”

  “I laughed and cried and identified wholly as I read Family Squeeze. Phil Callaway has the gift of using gentle humor to convey powerful truth; in this case that family is infinitely worth loving, however difficult the moment, and that God’s grace and strength are the hope that carries us through each day. A must-read for every parent caught in midlife crisis between teenage hormones and aging parents.”

  —JEANETTE WLNDLE, author of Crossfire and Firestorm

  “I commend to you the sentiments expressed in this volume, not only because we need them and because Phil wrote them, but more importantly because he and Ramona live the grace so humorously articulated here. I’m already planning to move in with them when I retire.”

  —TIM CALLAWAY, columnist, pastor, and brother to Phil

  “Phil Callaway’s books are not just a pleasure to savor, like eating a perfectly ripe pear. They are full of firm insights that give grace for the daily race, especially when the journey is hard. I loved Family Squeeze. If your life is full of children, parents, and everything in between, you’ll love this book too.”

  —ELLEN VAUGHN, New York Times bestselling author of It’s All About Him and Time Peace

  To my loving siblings, Dave, Dan, Tim, and Ruth,

  who tell people that their younger brother

  is a successful court stenographer.

  And to my children, from their number one fan,

  who anticipates the day they discover that

  the volume control also goes left.

  CONTENTS

  Introduction: Shotgun Memories

  1 Grandma’s Baby

  2 Extreme Makeover

  3 Suite Memories

  4 The Teenagers Are Coming

  5 I Used to Have Money, Now I Have Teens

  6 Baloney Detectors

  7 Squeeze the Day

  8 The Thief

  9 Eight Simple Rules for Dating My Son

  10 In Sickness

  11 From Hollywood to Iowa

  12 Saint Bernard

  13 One Ring

  14 A Few Good Words

  15 Middle-Age Memories

  16 About Time

  17 The Twenty-Five-Year Itch

  18 I Proposed in a Chain Letter

  19 The Great Big Marriage Quiz

  20 Day of Rejoicing

  21 The Longing

  22 Hows Your Stuffometer?

  23 The Trouble with Success

  24 Mondays with James

  25 Brad, Britney, Bill, and Jim

  26 Doubting Dad

  27 The Winding Road

  28 Great Escapes

  29 Freedom 82

  30 Caregiving 101

  31 My Shark Hunter

  32 Bumper Cars and Harpoons

  33 Regrets, I Have a Few

  34 Dying Young

  35 The Move to Nunavut

  36 The Slow Good-Bye

  37 While I Was Watching

  38 The Mailbox

  Epilogue

  Notes

  Acknowledgments

  Snatching the eternal out of the desperately fleeting

  is the great magic trick of human existence.

  TENNESSEE WILLIAMS

  A few years back, when my forehead was covered by hair, I agreed to write a column called “Family Matters” for Servant magazine. It was a daunting task for a young father and one for which I feel underqualified to this day. Staring down the barrel of that first deadline, I whined to my wife, Ramona, about the stress of it all. “I can’t do it,” I said. “Look at me. I’m an imperfect dad. I get mad at my kids. I used to slide hamsters down banisters when I was a child. I argue with my wife sometimes.”

  She laughed. “So write about it,” she said. “Tell stories. Tell us you feel like a failure sometimes. And tell us there’s hope.”

  “But I’m no Dr. Dobson,” I protested.

  “I know,” she sighed, stabbing at a potato in the sink. “He has money.”

  The next day I sat at my desk, wondering what to write. The job was too big for me, so I pushed my chair back and got on my knees to pray. Then I wrote “Shotgun Memories,” the story of a hunting trip gone right. With five children and a to-do list taller than me, my dad somehow managed to throw a shotgun into our ‘62 Meteor and invest a Saturday in his youngest son. A decade later we fishtailed down those same dusty roads with the same shotgun in the backseat. But this time it would serve a different purpose. This time Dad
handed it to a farmer, trading it in on my very first car. The shotgun was an emblem, of course, of a father who took time for me.

  Animal rights activists got hold of my article and twisted it. They didn’t appreciate my hunting or my work with hamsters. But kind letters began arriving too. People stopped me on the street. One said, “Great article! I’ll never forget you, Bill.” The farmer even called: “Phil,” he drawled, “I want you to have that shotgun.” I thanked him repeatedly, surprised that he had been so utterly blessed by the article that he was offering me the precious shotgun as a gift. I couldn’t stop thanking him.

  “How does two hundred bucks sound?” he asked.

  I coughed. “Not very good,” I said. After all, we hardly had two quarters to rub together in those days. Where would I ever come up with two hundred bucks?

  Our children were three, two, and almost one at the time. (We had them so fast the anesthetic from the first birth was still working for the third.) They came along with no instruction manuals, no mute buttons, and no guarantees. They slimed doorknobs, left pointy toys on the stairway, and yowled long into the night. We were underqualified for the task, plus we were terrified. What if they turned out to be…well, what if they turned out to be like me? And so we did the only thing we knew to do: We got down on our knees and prayed.

  A surprising thing happened: We found that we loved parenting (after the kids were asleep, and sometimes when they were awake). Sure, the children screamed, put jam sandwiches in the VCR, and turned dinnertime into a full-contact sport. But we loved these precious, sticky-faced gifts. We held them tightly, read to them often, and gave them back to God each night.

  Our children are teenagers now. They come with a whole new set of challenges. Sometimes it’s hard to decide if growing pains are something they have or something they are. Once again, we’re in over our heads, so we get down on our knees.

  And now a whole new challenge has entered our lives: aging parents. Once again I find myself looking for an instruction manual, a mute button, and some guarantees.

  Instead, I have discovered that we are not alone. That a zillion other baby boomers are experiencing a stretch of time when the answers grow quiet and the questions slither in like the neighbor’s cat every time you open the door:

  How do we honor our aging parents without guilt while raising our children without regret?

  How do we retain our sanity in the midst of so much change (assuming we were sane in the first place)?

  Is it possible to live without the stress, remorse, and anxiety that so many lug around with them?

  How do I learn to laugh so that when I retire all my wrinkles will be in the right places?

  And who said I’m having a midlife crisis? I’ve wanted a red convertible since third grade.

  One night I sneaked up behind Ramona as she was stabbing potatoes again (be careful when you do this) and asked her if I should write about these things. She said, “Yeah, we need the money.” No, she didn’t. She said, “Sure. But we’re tired, so make us laugh. And tell us there’s hope, too. Oh, and while you’re at it, would you fix the dishwasher?”

  What follows are stories of hope and hilarity amid the turbulence and splendor of what I’ve come to call the Middle Ages. I’ll admit that I often felt ill equipped for the task while writing this book. But then I was reminded that God seldom gives us anything we aren’t to share with others, that nothing worthwhile I’ve ever accomplished didn’t initially scare me half to death, and that God often uses the timid and trembling to do His work. I guess it’s because we know we can’t do it on our own. And when good things happen, we never doubt who deserves the credit.

  I pray this book will meet you where you are but not leave you there. I pray that you’ll savor these stories and find some help here too.

  Sometimes, as I was writing, I found myself looking at a shotgun that hangs above my study door. It’s a lifelong reminder of a father’s love for me. A reminder that time is ticking. That the best retirement investment in all the world is memories. And it’s a reminder that sometimes writers strike it rich. After all, I sold my very first article to another magazine for two hundred bucks and bought that shotgun.

  It’s not easy taking my problems one

  at a time when they refuse to get in line.

  ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT

  How far you go in life depends on being tender with

  the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with

  the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong—because

  someday you will have been all of these.

  GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER

  One of the most profound prayers I have ever prayed is “Help!”

  Sometimes it’s as simple as “Help, I cannot find my left shoe.”

  Or “Help, I cannot find my passport, and I’m second in line.”

  But lately the prayer has been increasingly desperate, uttered through clenched teeth, because I feel like a pair of wet swim shorts about to be squeezed through one of those ancient wringer washing machines.

  On my forty-fourth birthday—the same day Mick Jagger turned sixty-three—I dragged myself out of bed to take my younger son golfing. I could think of no better reason to get up and face old age.

  As we strolled the course together, whacking a little white ball and sometimes kicking it, Jeff informed me that he was thinking of buying a Ford Mustang and dating a pretty girl. I threw him a Charles Manson look and said I was considering pushing him in the creek. The child lives life like he golfs: carefully planning his attack, then lunging at things and whapping them.

  After tallying our scores, we drove to visit my mother, who needs me, among other things, to finish sentences for her. They don’t prepare you for this in college. You learn of ancient languages and philosophy, but there’s no course on what to do when your mother insists that your son’s iPod is her hearing aid.

  As we visit, Mom hands me her “baby”—a blanket scrunched, twisted, and spilled upon by numerous patrons of the long-term care facility where she now resides. Few know that she was once the author of many books, adored by her children and a dozen women who still call her Mom and mentor. The years have been kind to her relatively unwrinkled face, but her memories are distant now, her mind perpetually fuzzy, frantic at times, like she knows things I don’t and wonders if she should burden me with them.

  She leans forward, eager to ask me something. “Is your wife—you know—pregnant?”

  Jeff snorts.

  “No, Mom, not that I know of.”

  “Did the divorce go through?” It is one of her longer sentences.

  I shake my head and smile. I, her lastborn son, who has been married to his high school sweetheart since the advent of disco.

  While nursing Mom’s bundle of blankets, I try to lighten the air with chatter. I tell her of our golf game, of my birthday, which we will celebrate at lunch tomorrow, just the two of us. She is focused on my bald spot now and is holding hands with Jeff.

  The boy loves his grandma; loved to sit on her lap as she read to him when he was toddling. But he never saw the story ending this way. How quickly his face changes from grin to grimace when we visit her. He leans forward and drapes his other arm across her shoulder.

  I am holding the baby with one hand and a steaming cup of herbal tea with the other when my cell phone begins playing the “Hallelujah Chorus.” Setting the teacup on a table, I flip the phone open to find things further complicated. Though the connection is bad, I can hear my wife’s desperate voice:

  “Phil,” she sobs, “it’s Steve. He—”

  And the phone goes dead.

  Handing the baby to Jeff, I sprint for the nearest landline, praying my favorite prayer. My mind races to keep up with my pulse.

  Steve, the eldest of our three teens, is on a trip overseas, smack-dab in the middle of one of the world’s hot spots. My nightmares of late have been plagued by images of his demise. I dare not think the worst, but now it appears to be
upon us. Down the hallway around the corner, I grab the phone but hesitate before dialing.

  I suppose this day is a microcosm of our lives the past few years. Dreaming. Dreading. Laughing. Answering the phone a little less eagerly. We are parenting two generations now, wedged between the demands of elderly dependents and energetic teens—neither of whom think you know very much. I attend to my duties begrudgingly at times. I am husband, father, and son. But my resume also includes psychiatrist, doctor, advisor, and Power of Attorney—which, I assure you, does not come with a lawyer’s salary. I feel like a rookie juggler who has been put in charge of ticket sales, concessions, and training the animals too.

  Years ago a scholarship sales representative sat us down to threaten us with how much it would cost our kids to go to college. He didn’t mention the price of caring for our parents.

  Most weekends find me traveling near and far helping audiences laugh, telling them where the joy comes from. Yet in those moments of stark honesty I must admit that my stiff upper lip quivers sometimes, that lurking just beneath the smile is a growing sadness. It’s the kind of sadness you feel watching the last sunset of fall, knowing that winter is about to stagger in on you.

  I dial the number, expecting the worst. The phone rings, and Ramona picks it up. She is more composed now. “I’m sorry,” she says. “It’s just that…Steve called. He has malaria. Sorry, I sort of lost it.”

  I am elated. My son has malaria! If I were any good at dancing, I’d break into the salsa right now.

  Jeff is talking with Grandma when I return, curling her hands in both of his. Already he has learned one of the secrets to a rich life: In dark times, give off light.

  “Everything’s fine,” I tell him. “Steve just has malaria.”

  He squints at me like I’ve lost my mind. And since Grandma has lost her hearing, he quietly shares what she’s been saying to him.