Thirty Three: 2004
30 December 2004- Excerpt from Diana’s journal entry entitled: Looking Back at 2004
“… This has been probably the saddest year of my life. I miss my babies- that’s all there is to it. Isaac, Taylor, Zac, Natalie, and Ezra moved to New York City in order to promote Underneath this past Spring. It threw the chemistry off in the entire Hanson household. We all missed seeing Ezra grow- knowing he was learning new words without all of us to hear him babble them. Although the boys were only in New York from January until April- four months- it was the longest they’d ever been away from home without all of us. They flew back to Oklahoma once in between and all of us flew out to Sayreville, New Jersey for Taylor’s birthday but it put a strain on the whole family. Being a really tight family, we all really missed having them around. I took it the hardest simply because I don’t feel whole when my children are far away from me. I don’t know what I’m going to do when they all grow up and move out… although I pray no one will go far from Tulsa.
I guess I didn’t realize how hard the year was going to be or how much they’d be gone until they showed us the tour dates they’d set the weekend of Taylor’s birthday. They only returned for part of April and May- about a month in total before they left again for tour- taking Jessica with them to sell merchandise for the second summer in a row. They were doing the electric version of Underneath for the release of the album. With my oldest four children gone, Gabrielle working in downtown Tulsa almost all day, and Walker single-handedly managing the distribution of Underneath, I got really lonely at first. Finally I realized that perhaps God was telling me to spend more time with Avery, Mackenzie and Zoe- to bond with them without everyone else distracting me. I have so many positive things to say about how much I got to do with my youngest children this past year, but as I do every year, I will discuss my children in chronological order, more or less, in order to maintain some organization to this summary.
My children returned from an extensive US tour in October. Though I’d seen them a few times while they were on tour and we even spent a whole 3 weeks on the road at one point, it threw me off how much they’d changed in just one tour. Taylor’s hair was shoulder-length and Zac was apparently considering proposing to Kate at Christmas- although thank God he didn’t end up doing it. Now he’s saying Valentines Day. He just isn’t old enough. Isaac was dating Nikki who, like I’ll explain more later, I hadn’t even met yet! And Jessica… my first daughter was so mature and responsible. Although she’d always been closer to Gabrielle, she returned home from tour with a new close bond to Natalie.
Ezra was speaking in full sentences, running all over the place, and had the most ridiculous bedtime for a 2-year-old. The boys didn’t even stay home for a whole month before they left for an international tour- covering England, Asia, and Australia. Taylor had actually asked Natalie to stay home in Tulsa with Ezra while they were overseas because he didn’t want the stress of a baby on flights, but I guess Natalie felt left behind and joined them anyway. I have to admit, I think it would have done Ezra good to get to spend the fall home getting into a normal routine. Essentially, he’d just spent an entire summer with young adults- staying up late and eating fast food the whole time. He’s only two years old and I think he needed this past fall to relax without airplanes and late-night concerts. But as much as I’d like to make decisions about him, I bite my tongue because Natalie is his mother.
Before they left for the international tour, Taylor and Natalie announced something that I should have guessed by Natalie’s ever-present nausea but never would have imagined all the same. They announced they were expecting their second baby in April. The reason it surprised me so much was because Jessica had been telling me on the phone all tour that Natalie and Taylor weren’t doing well. She reported that they were fighting a lot, Natalie was feeling really neglected, and Taylor was dedicating almost all of his time to work. Jessica had told me they practically had screaming wars with each other almost every night either in the back of the bus or in the comforts of their own hotel room. As Taylor stood there robotically wrapping his arm around Natalie while they told us the news, it almost seemed as if they baby was their way of trying to fix things. Despite our confusion, we all became very excited for the baby. Zoe started saying nightly prayers that they baby would be a girl and I think that as much as Natalie denied it, she was too. We still don’t know the sex of the baby yet, but Natalie should find out next month.
I could tell it threw Gabrielle off so as soon as they left for Europe, I took Gabrielle to Dallas for a day to do some shopping at the Galleria mall. I figured we needed to dedicate a Saturday to just doing girl stuff together. On the trip she revealed to me her feelings about the new baby. She said that sometimes she thinks Taylor still loves her… something about subliminal messages and the red suspenders he wore during the acoustic tour. I couldn’t exactly understand what she was talking about but the general idea was although Taylor never said it, sometimes she could just sense that he was still in love with her. She admitted she didn’t want Taylor to love her anymore because they had to move on, but hearing about the due date of his second child made her realize that a very small part of her couldn’t bear to see him move on. She said that when she heard about the new baby, she let go of any subconscious hopes that Taylor still loved her. She said it was probably for the better anyway. There was no point in going through life wanting what you could never have.
For the most part, Gabrielle is doing well. She has officially gone through four majors and has finally decided what she wants to do with her life. She started as a biology major, switched to psychology, and then she switched to sociology the second semester of her sophomore year- this past spring. She liked most of the classes, but she wanted to narrow her concentration more so at the end of her spring semester she got her favorite sociology teacher to help her design her own individualized major- Urban and Community Studies. When she told us all about it, Walker’s reaction was, “What else did we expect?” Gabrielle is different from other people her age in so many ways so it’s no surprise that she has designed her own major. She will be studying what she knows best- people who are struggling and need help. She says that her time spent working on community service projects and studying sociology lead her to believe that her hardships were actually blessings in disguise. She was meant to have the life she did because she was meant to help people going through the same thing she went through. It takes a mature and intelligent woman to say that.
This past fall there’s been a definite change in her attitude about school. You can tell that she has a cause now- a purpose for studying that goes beyond just making good money one day. It’s so good to see her talking about classes that she genuinely loves. She says a lot of her focus is on immigration to America, especially from Mexico. She’s taking classes called Social Welfare, African-American Politics, and Public Policy and the Family. She has changed a lot in the last year. Her appearance alone is a lot more… “earthy” shall we say. The way she dresses almost reminds me of myself when I was young in the 60’s and 70’s. Taylor made a bet with Zac in the spring that by Christmas, Gabrielle would have a feminist bumper sticker on her car and would be wearing Birkenstocks. Her Blazer is still bumper sticker-less, but it’s been interesting to see her style choices change. She’s finally realizing she cannot only buy clothes, but she can buy what she wants to wear. Her “tree-hugger” friends, as Taylor refers to them as, have definitely influenced her. She’s also become a vegetarian, much to our family’s horror. The positive weight gain I mentioned last year has reversed again and she’s just as tiny as she was when we met her. As the mother of a red meat kind of family, I would probably feel critical of her newly adopted hippy ways if I didn’t see how good it is for her to express herself. But I try the natural lotions she brings home and I even choke down the horrible wheat-grass drinks that she encourages us to consume for our health. For so long I saw Gabrielle as a girl just trying to find her place in this world, and she has finally found it. In one year she has redefined herself and really discovered who she is. In the world she grew up in, her personality and interests were repressed by the environment. I am so thrilled that she is celebrating her individuality now and that she is happy! Well… she’s the happiest I’ve seen her since before…well before she and Taylor broke up. I was looking at a picture of her and Taylor from a dance at her school they want to her senior year of high school… they both looked so young in it. Time has passed so quickly… it’s been almost three years now since she joined our family.
It was strange though how much younger Taylor looked in the picture. He has changed so much. I know I say that every year, but it never ceases to amaze me what fatherhood has done to him. His eyes are no longer bright and curious but tired, wrinkled crescents. He’s got wrinkles around his mouth too from a couple years of smoking now. He only shaves every couple days now and so he always has far beyond a five o’clock shadow.
The biggest changes seem to be on the inside though. Taylor has been a wreck for so many years now that he knows exactly what the signs are that make me worried. He knows to eat well when I’m watching him, to pretend to sleep even when he’s restless, to wash his hair even when he’s too lazy to. I know the signs of my son’s depression. His appetite changes, his sleeping patterns change, he stops caring about personal hygiene, he starts spending more and more time inside, he spends less time with Ezra… less time with all of us. He knows that I watch him like a hawk to make sure he’s okay. I’d like to sit here and write how he is doing better, but I don’t think he is. He’s just gotten better at knowing how to hide his pain. He’s become an excellent actor- always pretending he’s fine when sometimes I think he’s just screaming inside. It’s strange because Taylor was the son I never worried about when my boys were growing up. Isaac was so temperamental… it’s so easy to set Isaac off… and once he loses his cool there’s no hope for him gaining control back soon. I always saw Isaac almost as… emotionally weak. Zac is very sensitive. He doesn’t show it as much as Isaac does but being left out, criticism, and insults, no matter how light-hearted they may be, hurt him more than they hurt other people. I always worried that he would feel left out by his brothers or hurt when Taylor was critical of him in the studio. Taylor was the son I never worried about. Taylor has always seemed so strong… but I’ve come to realize that Taylor isn’t stronger than Zac or Isaac at all. He is just better at pretending than they are. He is better at forcing a smile and giving people what they want to see. No one wants Taylor to be sad and lonely so he does his best to be strong for everyone else. He’s a people pleaser. Anyway, I never expected Taylor would turn out to be the son that worried me the most.
I looked at Gabrielle in the picture and noticed how different she looked. She looked so naïve and insecure standing there awkwardly in her pink dress. I compared the picture to a very picture taken at Christmas and it was as if I was looking completely different people. How time changes us…
This past summer she got a job with Triumph working in inner-city Tulsa, which I think was an experience that shaped her academic goals. Monday through Friday she went downtown to work from 8 until 4 on a project that researches the economic problems of Tulsa and gives to people who need it. Her main focus over the summer was helping young, pregnant girls develop positive skills for raising their expected babies. She helped them establish places to live, sign up for food stamps, and even did some counseling with them. I asked her once if she thought that the reason she picked that particular project out of all the community service projects that Triumph runs was because of her Mom’s experience as a poor, young mother. She admitted that she never looked at it that way, but it might be.
Gabrielle said to me during Thanksgiving break, “You always think that the reason I am so passionate about helping people who need it is because of my childhood or my mom. But the truth is, this family and you… you’re my inspiration. It wasn’t my impoverishment that encouraged me to follow the path I’m following. You reached out to me and helped me when I needed it most, and I owe it to the world to return the favor to other people who need it.” It touched me a lot.
It’s strange because my family is really quite conservative. Sure, we differ some on politics once in awhile, but when it comes down to it we all support George W. Bush and we all have more conservative, republican values. Taylor, Avery, and I seem to be less conservative, while Zac, Walker, and Jessica seem to be more so… Isaac is so fickle that he changes his mind of politics every other day. But the general Hanson family consensus is republican. Sometimes it feels like having Gabrielle in our house is like having an exotic species living amongst us… she has such different views from the rest of us. We believe in low taxes where as Gabrielle’s philosophy is tax the heck out of Americans. We all tend to be very pro-life where as Gabrielle insists that a woman is in charge of her own body. Sometimes, without meaning for it to happen, dinner time can turn into debate time.
The main person instigating these debates always seems to be Taylor. Gabrielle would never sit there and preach to us about her liberal views, but if probed she will defend what she believes in- which I think most of us respect despite our conflicting opinions. Taylor likes to egg her on and try to rile her up. It’s as if he’s looking for conflict sometimes. The more liberal Gabrielle becomes, the more conservative he becomes. Just the other day a big argument escalated at the table because somehow the pro-life/pro-choice discussion came up and Taylor said something like- “I just don’t understand how you can be Christian and pro-choice at the same time. Which one are you faking?”
I think most of us would agree that it was ignorant of him to say that because Christians come in all types. Gabrielle ended up leaving the table and I told Taylor quietly that if he wanted to support her faith in God, it wasn’t right for him to make judgments like that. I think he apologized to her later on and I don’t think he ever meant to be malicious, but I think he was just looking to stir up some trouble. Walker, who’s usually your typical male lacking any intuition, told me later that on that he thought maybe Taylor was looking for things about Gabrielle that he could dislike and put between them. I was impressed by his reasoning. I think he might be right.
I am so happy… relieved even… that Isaac has found a girl that he’s actually showing some interest in. I know how sometimes he feels so left out… with Zac and Kate, Taylor and Natalie…”