A Story of Family History and Values

Gather round the campfire for this multigenerational family story of mine.

In the 1950’s my grandfather worked for, what was then called, the Federal Aviation Alliance – today we know it as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) – in Nebraska. He was responsible for overseeing safety and regulations at several airports throughout Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Wyoming. He was astonished at how often pilots were having accidents he felt were avoidable. 

Pilots have a checklist they were supposed to run through before take off. The checklist included things like checking your equipment to make sure it’s reading correctly, checking to guarantee you have fuel, checking to be sure the craft is mechanically sound. It’s a pretty long checklist. I remember flying with my dad and thinking, this checklist is sooooo long, let’s goooo! Today, in multi-pilot and crew situations the co-pilots and crew members run through checklists together for extra insurance. Also, today, checklists are built in digitally to things like navigational systems.

But back to the 1950’s and my grandpa in, what was then, a remote flying region. He saw crashes and accidents happening and he came up with a solution to curb them: remind pilots to use their checklists. He designed a simple sign (check it out here) to place on the runway as a visual to get pilots to run through their checklists before takeoff. He was able to get Champion Auto Parts to sponsor the concept and help distribute the signs nationwide at airports. For decades these signs were in place to give pilots pause to be sure they’d completed the checklist of vital reminders to keep them aware and safe on their flights.

This is a story I heard growing up. I was always reminded of it before flying with my dad, as he’d prep for takeoff he’d reminisce about his own father. Their shared love of flying was a really special bond. I didn’t inherit a desire to fly planes but I inherited a lot of my personality from both of them. But while this story was family lore, it wasn’t until last fall this became something immediately present in my own day-to-day life.

It was the first weekend in October, just days before our eighth wedding anniversary. Our son was recently two-and-a-half and we decided to try potty training. I read one book I’d haphazardly chosen on the internet and filled my husband in on the process verbally and via a Google Doc outlining the plan. I went in really optimistic. I don’t know that I thought it would be easy, but I guess I didn’t realize the kind of hard it was going to be. I thought it would be like, annoying to be cleaning up pee; I didn’t realize it would be a process I’d have so much psychological struggle with. As is often the case, the hard part of parenting isn’t actually the struggle to feed or sleep or potty your kid. The hard part of parenting is the way it makes you feel about yourself and the deeply buried internal, mental and emotional junk it drags up at out of you.

So on day two, just before dinner, I found myself in our tiny hall bathroom across from our son’s bedroom, one-on-one with him squirming on the potty. In the small space I imagined him cracking his head on the porcelain and started to panic, telling him to please stop moving around so violently and let me help him. This only increased his movements and moments later I found myself screaming in his face. When I say screaming, I don’t mean words. I mean guttural, raw, primal, wordless shrieking just to jolt him. It’s a behavior I’d seen before and had hoped to never repeat. I crumbled. My husband came up from the kitchen and gave me some space to collect myself. I fell apart sobbing. Shattered by what I’d done I approached the dinner table, apologized to my son, and asked for his forgiveness. Dejected, I looked at my husband and told him I think we needed to stop potty training. I didn’t know what the repercussions of the decision to stop were but I did know the previous 36 hours had done something to all three of us and I didn’t recognize any of us anymore. 

We spent the next day restoring. We went on a family hike and out to lunch to do an anniversary-like celebration, all three of us. We healed and we reflected. I remarked to my husband I couldn’t believe I’d let this one book tell me how to move my child through a major learning process and convince me my instincts were wrong. It was something I’d done a lot in the first year of motherhood, “but the book says!” or “but this ‘expert’ online says!” instead of listening to what I know. But I thought I’d grown beyond that way of mothering. Yet, here I was, slightly bruised and having caused harm to my family because I’d done it again.

We concluded we should have researched more, researched together, and we should have taken the various approaches and tips and made them our own. Making it your own was actually already a really salient part of my life philosophy. I knew all this, I’d practiced all this, and we were still here in this mess.

“I need a way to remind myself to check in with me, with us. To adapt it and make it our own. To move into things from a posture of our values. I didn’t think I did but apparently I do. I thought I’d learned this but I guess I’m still working on it,” I’d said as we drove home from our hike and lunch date that day.

“Well, it’s kind of like that sign your grandpa made,” my husband had said, “you can know all the things on your list but sometimes you need a reminder to use the checklist. If only we had a sign to remind us -“

“To use our family checklist!” I’d exclaimed enthusiastically, “we can!”

I hopped on Canva that evening and made an adjustment to my grandfather’s design. Then I uploaded my own design to Shutterfly and within a few days I had both a magnet for our fridge and a sign for our bedroom.

Use Your Family Checklist

These reminders in my home help me to pause before I do. They remind me I feel empowered when I adapt good ideas to fit our context, my style, and our relationships. They remind me to filter all my decisions and actions through our four family values (Conviction, Wonder, Fellowship, and Love) as well as my own personal values and motherhood ambitions. They remind me to check in with myself, to pray over things before deciding or doing them, and to slow down to make sure my husband and I are in alignment. In the future I imagine they’ll include involving our son in dialogue before making decisions or taking actions that will have an effect on him. It’s amazing how just having the reminders posted around keeps these vital behaviors top of mind and present.

In the nine months since we have conquered many milestones and a variety of large learning experiences, including using the potty. And we’ve done so our way, authentically, and values-forward. It feels so good to trust myself and my spouse and my child as we navigate daily life together. 

I imagine it feels as good to me when I look at the signs as it did to grandfather when he saw his signs on airport runways. When you love something, like aviation or your family, you get creative to find solutions and you make sure to protect them from harm by using your (family) checklist. 

Originally posted 6/10/23 on old website