August 8, 2011

let me tell you a story...

I'd heard the stories before... some of them, anyway... told by my daddy, or my aunt or one of my uncles... about how when they were growing up, there was almost always somebody living with them... uncles, aunts, cousins, nieces, nephews, parents, grandparents, distant kin, somebody... sometimes just one or two people and sometimes whole families... sometimes for short periods of time, and sometimes for periods of time that ran into years. The door was always open, there was always a place to squeeze one more pallette, there was always another plate or bowl to share what food there was, and there were always, always loving hearts, smiling faces and welcoming words to wrap them up in. That was just God's way. The way Grandpa and Grandma saw it, none of it belonged to them... everything they had was all His... they were stewards of His bounty, called to share in lean times as well as times of plenty... and if ever there was a doubt in their hearts about what they were doing, or a moment when they wondered if they could afford it, they never let it be known to the people who found shelter under their roof. God always met the need. The jug of oil never ran dry.

Now I have to believe this... you can't live in this state of Godly servitude your whole life and it not be part of you... it was real. And I have to believe this, too... that they learned it from somewhere... I suspect from the families one or both of them was raised and grew up in... I suspect there are more stories, ones that go way further back than I'll ever hear this side of heaven.

So, let me tell you about one of those stories. The one I know of personally, even though at the time of it's happening, my precious grandpa had long been gone home to heaven, and my beloved grandma, who was married to him for over 54 years, had been a widow for ten or twelve years.

The time was about 1979 or so. My grandma, who was in her 80′s, was about to make the "rounds" again. She'd been doing this ever since Grandpa died... spending a couple of months a year going from this place to that, visiting all her children and grandchildren. She'd catch a bus from point A to point B, and someone would carry her from Point B to Point C, and one way or another, we'd get her around to see everybody before she went back home to North Carolina where she lived with her daughter. Always, always, she was sure this was going to be the last time. " I'm getting old," she'd say to me, "I don't think I'll be here to do this again next year." Sometimes I was fearful it would be true, and other times I just knew she'd outlive us all, and the fact was... she did live to be one month shy of 106 years old before she left this earth. But that's another story.

So, anyway, Grandma was a letter-writer, and she kept in touch with family all over the place, and this one year, she'd been pining away over folks she hadn't seen in years, and, oh, my... the timing was perfect. I was about to make a big move to New Orleans. My little car was paid for, and I didn't have any debt (the days of credit cards were still in the future), so I took three weeks off to take Grandma rambling.

I don't remember everything about that trip. I wish I did. I remember going to Louisiana and spending a few days with Frances (Grandma's niece, my daddy's cousin) and her family. I remember long summer days of hearing family stories and listening to Grandma and her older sister, my Great Aunt Mary, sharing memories of growing up, of the war years, of raising their children, of birthing and dying. I remember falling in love with Frances and her whole family (and I still keep up with them today). I remember going to Leland to visit with Grandma's older brother, Harry, another somebody she hadn't seen since before Grandpa died, and sitting quietly in a recliner while they sat at the kitchen table, holding hands and reminiscing. I remember thinking she was going to get up and bop him on his head when he took both her hands into his and said, oh, so softly, "Randy, I always thought you was the prettiest thing I ever did see." She let out a yelp and jumped up and told him she ought to just beat him senseless, that she'd gone her whole life thinking she was ugly because of his teasing when she was little. Then they both laughed and sat back down to talk... and I remember wishing I had a camera.

But, mostly, oh, mostly...

There was this one niece she wanted to visit who lived up in the hills in Mississippi. So we took our worn and trusty road map, and the directions she'd gotten in the mail, and headed out from Great Uncle Harry's house into untamed wilderness... at least it seemed that way. We left the two-lane state highway for even narrower county roads and finally turned off onto a dirt and gravel road that wound through the lush springtime green. We came around a corner, read the number on the mailbox and turned into the dirt driveway, and there they were... there it was...

An old country farm-house, with two chimneys and a wrap-around covered porch. The ancient hardwood trees surrounding it filtered the sunlight into prisms and flashes of gold light, the scent of honeysuckle and roses and more flowers than I could identify filling the air, a big old barn, sheds, tractors, cars, pick-up trucks, bicycles.

And people...

I cry now to think of it...

There must have been better than 50 people there... country folk... farmers and their families... old and young... men and women... children and babies... and they were lined up on the porch and in the yard like in one of those old tin-type photographs you see from the turn of the century...

Waiting for Aunt Randy...

The laughter and the tears, and the talking and the hugging, and the telling and the showing, never stopped. We got there just in time for dinner... (this is the south, you know... dinner is the mid-day meal... supper comes at night)... and there in the big old dining room was a huge, worn, satin-smooth and beautiful, hand-carved wooden farm-house table with twelve chairs around it... not enough, surely, for so many people to sit down at once, but no matter... Grandma and the other most elderly sat, and the rest of us loaded up our plates with enough bounty to bless heaven, and found places on the porch and throughout the house...

Over the next four days, I heard of the times Uncle Malcolm or Aunt Randie did this... and the times they did that... of the time the house had got burned up and how Grandma and Grandpa (Aunt Randy and Uncle Malcolm) had taken that whole family in, parents and four or five children, and kept them til the house could be fixed back to being livable... of how first this one, and then that one, had found shelter in the lean times with my Grandpa and Grandma.

At night I slept in a big old bed I climbed into with a little three-step ladder, in a room papered with cabbage rose wallpaper and a ceiling I couldn't reach no matter how high I jumped, with a pretty daisy-patterned porcelain pot hidden under the bed "in case you need to go in the night, so you won't fall and hurt yourself because it's dark out here in the country" whispered the sweet little white-haired lady who gave up her bed for me.

We were there 3 or 4 days, and there was a steady stream of people in and out, going home to do what needed doing on their own places, but coming back as fast as they could so as not to miss a precious moment with Aunt Randy.

This legacy of love didn't stop with Grandpa and Grandma. It isn't resting-in-peace in the cemetery where their markers are... it lives on...

I have seen it in my parents, and my aunts and uncles... I have seen it in my sister and brothers... and in myself... I have seen it in my niece... and will no doubt continue to see it in them all... and in the others as need demands in coming years...

When times are hard and one of us needs a helping hand, there is always someone there... always somewhere to go... sometimes for short periods of time, sometimes for periods of time that run into years. The door is always open, there is always a place to squeeze in one more pallette, there is always another plate or bowl to share what food there is, and there are always, always loving hearts, smiling faces and welcoming words to wrap someone up in.

And like Grandma's niece told me as we rocked in that huge old wooden swing on the front porch of that big old farmhouse... the niece whose house had burned down all those years ago when it was struck by lightning... when there was no insurance and no money to rebuild right away... when what money there was had to go into the fields... when she told me about the time she and her husband and their children just moved right in with Uncle Malcolm and Aunt Randy and their five growing children...

"We wasn't staying for a spell. They wasn't puttin' us up, or just keepin' care of us. We was made to know, every day and in every way, that it was OUR home, too, for howsomever long we needed or wanted it to be, that we wasn't puttin' anybody out, or taking nothin' away from nobody. And that's why there's so many of us here now... why we got to pay our respects to Aunt Randy.. we love her and Uncle Malcolm... because they loved us."

Isn't that what God does? Isn't that why we love Him? Because He loves us?

I love Him. I love that He loves us. And that His love lives in us. I love that it's visible. May it always be so.

Wonderful things... , for love of others... | By Spiderlillies | 8:22 PM | Comments (0)

January 7, 2011

on time travel and pink dresses...

I look at the picture... and step back in time... to the day it was taken...

it is summertime on Sand Mountain and in its valleys... and we sit in braided lawn chairs in the shade of the carport... at ease... at peace... wrapped in the stillness of the heat... teased occasionally by light breezes carrying the scent or roses and fresh-mown grass through the brick latticework... serenaded by honeybees, the irregular roar of the neighbor's lawn mower, birdsong, and the whisper of the weeping willow as breezes tickle the branches... there is no hurry... no need for action... simply time in God's green earth to sit and be... to enjoy each other's company.

I think that not since those days have I spent time so simply being... not doing... not anticipating... not worrying... not fretting... just being...

And this is what I remember... of what he remembered... and if part of it is lost or misremembered.... there is no-one now to say... but this is what I remember... of what he remembered... that day...

Pa said to me...

I was just a little fella when my daddy died... he come home one night... hardly got there... he was gut-shot... was holding his insides in... the man over the ridge shot him... they said it had something to do with property lines... where they started and ended... my momma took care of him... she tried... but there wasn't no hope... he died... and then... it seems like it wasn't long, and she was gone, too... she was at the stove... we had a wood-burning stove... and she just died... fell over dead... fell right on the stove... and they pulled her off... said it was her heart... I think her heart was broke with daddy gone... and then there was us... and folk took us in... some took one... some took another... but nobody really wanted me... I knew that... I heard 'em talking... I was the littlest... I wasn't too big then... and couldn't do as much work as the others... but they took us in... I stood it long as I could... I was eleven years old when I first took off to ride the rails... it was a good life... oh, it was a hard life... and you was hungry sometimes... or cold... but it was a good life... and it put a calling on you... the night time sky and all the stars in the heavens spread out over your head... places you rode by going by fast and slow... people looking and watching... lights shining out of windows in the darkness.and I would stop to home sometimes... but I would always go back... you'd get off the train somewhere, and work for food... or for longer if you liked a place... you would work and when it was time to move on... there'd be another train... and you'd be gone again.

One time... one time, I come home and I saw this girl... oh, she was a pretty thing... and she was standing there in a pink dress... I still remember that pink dress... and I can look at her today... sitting in that wheelchair in there... and my mind can still see her standing in that pink dress... just looking at me look at her... oh... but she was a dandy in that pink dress... and those legs coming out of it would make you take step back a bit to get a better picture of them... her in that pink dress... I knew I wasn't going back on that train... and I married my Nellie... and I never did go back on the trains... still and all, sugar... sometimes... sometimes when I hear a train whistle... it makes me mighty lonesome.. it calls out to me... but I don't expect I'll ever ride one of those trains again... but I did get the girl in the pink dress.

And that is what I remember of what he remembered... and that story stayed with me... haunted me...

Once, when we were camping up in the mountains, I found a can of Hobo Soup on the shelf at a little country grocery store, and couldn't resist buying it to take home to Pa. I still remember the tears in his eyes when we gave it to him.

Just a few years later, when he and Ma died, we found the label from the soup can, carefully removed from the can, smooth and flat, safely in a box with his treasures.

And we buried Ma in a pink dress.

I miss them still...

for love of others... | By Spiderlillies | 8:18 PM | Comments (0)

December 29, 2010

it happened not so long ago...

He came unsteadily down the sidewalk, moving for all the world like a mechanical toy whose spring had sprung. His legs flailed wildly from the hip in jerky circles/squares, as if they were searching the air beside, in front of, and around him, not sure which direction the ground was in. His legs bent only slightly at the knees, and his feet, when they did make contact with the ground, hit jarringly hard and with solid thumps that carried easily through the cold air to where I stood.

His arms moved in a dance of their own, seemingly not in concert with the machinations of his legs, not so much like a spinning pinwheel as like the disjointed strokes of a swimmer who, tired beyond belief, is caught in a riptide, unsure which way to go. Yet, together and in spite of the apparent discord, it worked, and he strode forward with great purpose.

His face wore a solemn expression of intense concentration, and he looked neither to right nor left, nor even toward his feet, but seemed to keep his gaze on the goal... a telephone pole upon which a city bus sign was tacked.

I watched as he reached the pole and halted there beside a group of unsmiling people he only then seemed to see. With the concentration on simply moving no longer necessary, his solemn, serious face suddenly burst into a smile that reached from his mouth to his eyes and spread out to envelope the small group of unsmiling people waiting for the bus. He reached up in a wide, sweeping arc, and removed his ball cap to bow slightly to the lady standing beside the pole and wish her a good day. Suddenly, they were all smiling and reaching out to one another in easy conversation.

I boarded my own bus then, and as we pulled away, I couldn't help thinking of that wonderful little white-haired man with his kaleidoscope gait, carrying sunshine and smiles, and respect and a lightening-of-the-load everywhere he went... and comparing him to all those able-bodied, somber-faced, care-worn figures passing by at break-neck speed on the same sidewalk... and I wondered what the difference was.

The answer seemed to flood my heart. God carries his burdens for him, leaving him free to carry the sunshine... and those other folks are likely stumbling along trying to carry the full weight of their own burdens and cares, with not another ounce of strength to carry the sunshine...

I'd rather carry sunshine, too...

Adventures in Everyday Life | By Spiderlillies | 1:19 PM | Comments (1)

July 28, 2010

Something BIG landed on my shoulder...

Supper is finished. We sit beside one another, holding hands, sharing the details of our day, a nightly ritual I'd be lost without. Plop! Suddenly something BIG lands on my shoulder, tangled in my hair. Did I say BIG? SOMETHING BIG! Ayeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! I scream. LOUD! I jump up, slinging my head around, pulling at my clothes, dancing a jig that is designed to make me a most unpleasant resting place. I gather the courage to look, and there is nothing there. I frantically tell my wonderful husband, who is now standing beside me, propelled from his comfortable spot on the sofa to the end of the coffee table by my screams and wild gyrations, that it was a BIG BUG! A BIG BUG! "No," he says quietly, "it was a frog."

Calm now. I am calm now. I like frogs. Calm now. My focus has gone from sheer terror (did I mention I don't like bugs and all their little wriggly legs?) to concern for the frog and how scared he must be. How I HAVE to find him and put him back outside before he withers away and dies and becomes a little frog mummy hidden in a dark corner. (Visions of the watering can incident last summer drench my heart with guilt.) We look and look. And look. We move the sofa from the wall and peer underneath with flashlights. We gently rearrange the sofa cushions. We check the lampshades. No frog. Aha! There he is, on the wall, clinging to a framed photograph, his brilliant lime green color a stark contrast to the wide black picture frame he clings to, so vivid and exquisite in form and color he might have been an ancient Japanese porcelain attached to the frame for decoration.

I reach over slowly, talking softly (wondering if he understands I mean him no harm), and gently cup him into my hands. His fat little belly feels funny/sweet in the palm of my hand, and his little heart beats ferociously, but he does not struggle. I walk to the door my husband is holding open for me and out into the darkness that covers the world outside. I reach up into the branches of a crepe myrtle tree and let the hand that is holding him rest on the branch in front of me, then remove the other hand, the one that is tented over him. I feel the tiny suction cups on his toes release their hold on my hand, and he moves... takes a step... climbs onto the branch in front of me. Suddenly, he is gone.

Good night, little frog.

| By Spiderlillies | 12:21 PM | Comments (0)

July 14, 2010

she lost the battle, but won the fight...

My friend Oralyn lost her battle with lung cancer yesterday. At first, I thought she lost the fight... but she didn't. It was just the battle for her body and for life in this realm that she lost. Our friend Margaret pointed out that maybe she won the fight after all... the fight of living life with humor, love and good grace despite whatever circumstances were handed to her. I think Margaret's right.

Father God, thank You that she is safe with You and we don't have to doubt the truth of that.

Thank You that when we see You, we'll see her again, too.

Thank You that You hold her in the palm of your hand, right there in heaven, and that You also hold us in the palm of Your hand, right here on earth, which makes us only a breath away from her.

Thank You that we had her for so many, wonderful years.

Comfort us, Father, and all those who loved her.

Fill the void she leaves behind with Your presence.

Heal our broken hearts.

Give us the grace to accept the days ahead without her, living always in anticipation of seeing her again.

Keep her memory strong in our hearts.

Use us, each and every one, to comfort and uplift one another.

In Jesus' precious name, Amen.

for love of others... , prayers and praises | By Spiderlillies | 8:42 AM | Comments (2)

July 1, 2010

the continent of us...

I stepped off the elevator, and there he was... sitting in his wheelchair in the middle of the lobby, facing down the hallway, but lost in something inside himself that only he could see.

Continue reading "the continent of us... "

| By Spiderlillies | 1:41 PM | Comments (2)