Learning To Drive, The Butki-Way

Growing up Butki we had a tradition - you learned to drive at the cemetery. That way if you hit anyone, well, odds are they are already dead. Curbs at cemeteries are usually curved which is easier on the car if you hit them and is practically begging, "Please learn to drive on me."

So we did learn to drive at cemeteries in Riveside, Calif. First my older brother than my older sister and then it was my turn - first we would drive at a small cemetery and, when good enough, move on to a bigger one with more turns. And finally, when good enough, we would move up to empty parking lots at the community college on weekends.

I thought at the time it was brilliant. Actually, I still think it was pretty smart - it was very typical to how the mind of my dad worked: practical, a bit outside of the box but completely logical. I mean this is the same guy who would insist we order different items on the menu so we would not only each try something different but explore as much on the menu as possible

After dad died I got to know for the first time his side of the family, who live in Michigan. While there my favorite uncle died - the one I had used as a platform for a newspaper column urging parents to tell their kids those words they need to hear (that you love them, that you are proud of them), which prompted total strangers to reach out to me to tell me they had just had the best most meaningful conversation of their life. That may have been my biggest accomplishment as a journalist.



I attended this uncle's funeral. While there an aunt invited me to return but this time for a happier occasion, namely Thanksgiving. So I did and had a great old time.
The last stop on the trip was a cemetery, where I saw for the first time where my grandparents on my dad's side were buried. On a hunch I asked a question and had a suspicion confirmed: Yes, they too were taught how to drive in cemeteries like this.
What I thought to be dad's ingenuity was actually the continuation of a family tradition.

And so it goes, traditions passed down. By the time I have kids I hope to be driving hybrid cars. But still, kids need to learn to drive so guess where I will teach mine to drive? That's right - the cemetery. So if you are going to a cemetery and see an erratic driver, step aside and watch as a Butki ritual and tradition drives by.
The end

Explaining Grief To My Charge

As I read Harry Potter to my charge we hit at least 10-15 words a day that he doesn't know. During slow parts of the book I might stop and add them to a vocabulary list but when we're in fast, intense parts like the last half of book 4 (we just finished it) I'll summarize it in 15 seconds or, for words like 'astonished," just act it out.
And so it was that he asked me today what "grief" is.
Oy.
Can't think of a time when I've mentioned, heard, felt, explained or expressed grief as much as I have in the last two weeks. It's one of the reasons that I decided to provide a safe space for people to process grief and pain and sadness both with our high school class at church (I wanted them to not only have that space but also to know that adults are still processing emotions, including grief, from those killed by cops and the cops killed by a man, and so if the teenagers don't know how to feel that is perfectly normal) and with our anti-racism group of adults at my church.
So it wasn't hard to summarize grief... the challenge was doing so without mentioned the violence of recent weeks of which he is (at parent's request) ignorant. So instead I asked if he remembered how people reacted to Prince dying.
Yes, he said, and when Michael Jackson died, too.
Yes, I said. Some people get mad, some get sad, some want to cry and some, like the character in the novel (Mrs. Weasley, if memory serves) was tearless but perhaps wanting to cry but no tears came right then.
Basically, there's no "right way" to express grief, I told him.
Then I remembered something, it was one of the first issues i saw with my charge, unsure what to do with his emotions and it was about grief.
When he got home in May of 2015, after 3 years in residential clinics, and when I started working with him immediately, he had just learned that his grandpa had died and he didnt know how to react to this news and the emotions, and he laughed. And his mom corrected him that this was sad news.
And thus my charge "knew" that he should be sad about this.
But how long to be sad? How to express this? These are questions we all face, many of us in recent days.
Each of the 6 kids in the family had been given a bookmark that marked the life and death of his grandpa. And my charge, not knowing what to do with that, thought the proper response was to carry that with him every day to dayhab and that he needed to be sad each time he got home.
And I'm pretty sure that was one of my first lessons to him about this important topic, namely you don't have to act or look sad if you are not truly sad. And then he lost the bookmark and THAT made him mad and sad because he felt like he'd somehow dishonored his family or his grandfather. And that's when I explained to him that it's ok that's gone, it was just a way to remember his grandpa.
Do you remember him? I asked.
He did, he said.
That's what matters.
And so today we returned full circle to that topic of grief and how it comes in all shapes and sizes and types and forms and all are ok.
Teachable moment.... taught.
Scott out.... drops mic.