One Little Memory

Last year, we decided to go home and spend Christmas with Mother. She wasn't doing real well, and she had her special diet. She was pretty weak and short of breath. We stayed in her basement and took care of our own meals.... so different from every previous Christmas where she would wait on everyone hand and foot, and shoo off anyone who got in her way in the name of trying to help.

But we had such a good time!

 One day, I had a little shopping to do and asked her if she wanted to go, and lo and behold!, if she didn't decide she would! She never liked shopping especially.
"Go on!" She'd say, if we'd invite her, "I'm glad I don't hafta go anywhere."

But this time she said she'd go! So she and Regan and Todd and Becky and I went shopping. She wanted to show us off to her sisters. She thought they would be at the Farmer's Market eating, but they weren't. We went to her bank to deposit her paycheck.
 She wanted a flashlight, and she wanted a hook to hang her wreathe to her metal door. We found a strong magnet hook. Just what she wanted.  She turned up her nose at the expensive flashlights on display but the man at Rocking R Hardware found her one cheap enough to suit her. She leaned on me when she walked and she was breathless and exhausted till we were through, but we had great fun!

 When we got home she stuck her magnet to her door and unceremoniously tossed her wreathe over it with pert satisfaction. So like her...taking care of business without a bit of to-do.

I knew it was our last Christmas with her, barring some incredible miracle, and every moment  felt  like gold slipping through our fingers. She was there. So real. So alive. Yet impossible to hold. Time just moves forward. forward. forward....

I have a metal door. I have a wreathe. And now I have her magnet hook.
Merry Christmas,  Dear Mother. I know it will be heavenly.
But we miss you. Oh... we miss you.

Joy to the World, Y'all.

The wigwam has been hit with a scourge of historic proportion. Todd got it first, annihilating the travel plans the Chief and I were on the verge of implementing. I was the second victim. From there we dropped by ones and twos until the Chief at last succumbed. So we've had a week of dreaded symptoms answered by tonics, sleep, despair, and misery.

I am better now, the only one who's completely better...which is good on one hand, because somebody can take care of the fallen...and bad on the other, because a whole Sunday spent in a convalescent home has real potential for sending you to a home of a different sort.

So I am escaping to here, and lacking any cohesive stream of inspiration, I think I'll just post disconnected thought-bites pertaining to Christmas.

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 I think we should petition the powers-that-be to ban those giant inflatables that pop up like boils on the night landscape this time of year, and collapse in big puddles of vinyl by the dawn's early light. I will not call them Christmas decorations. Classing them as decorations of any description would be too kind, and even though they appear with the lights and wreaths and garland characteristic of the season, whether they have anything in world to do with Christmas is clearly entirely optional. Take, for instance, the big yellow chicken in our neighbor's yard, located next to the Eiffel Tower right there where their garden had been located.

The next neighbors have a gigantic green helicopter with a slowly rotating propeller in their yard among numerous other inflatable things. Santa is in it, and I suppose it is meant to serve as gentle comfort against realistic worries the reindeer union may strike for better working conditions just when they are most needed....I don't know!  But it ruins their otherwise beautiful lawn!!!
 White lights, people! Colored lights, even! Candles! Wreaths!
Anything! Anything but those vinyl things!

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Christmas was entirely wonderful to me when I was a little girl.
I was analyzing the other day what made it so. The "Let's Make A Memory" enthusiasts would no-doubt be at a loss to find much. Mother "wrapped" all our gifts in brown paper grocery or lunch bags, taped them shut and scrawled the name of the recipient on it with a black magic marker. Maybe they had a bow stuck on top.
When we came down Christmas morning each child had his pile on one chair or spot on the couch. And Mother and Daddy had their spots too. We'd read the Christmas story, and maybe sing a few carols, alive with caged anticipation. And then we'd decide who would start... and we'd open gifts. I am sure they were modest gifts and certainly not numerous. I don't know that I can remember a single thing I ever got. But it was altogether wonderful, that much I know.

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One year, Mother bought a nativity scene. I think she got it at Glen's Fair Price.
Glen's Fair Price was a dusty, darkish shop in downtown Harrisonburg. Not the type of shop that will ever be a national chain, but the kind bursting with character, covered with dust, and crammed with second-hand stuff. I loved Glen's Fair Price.

The nativity scene had characters with slightly exaggerated poses and expressions, and they weren't fine porcelain, by any stretch, but when they were tucked inside that little stable and the lights were lit, I could sit  there entranced for long minutes, transported to another time and place by some artist's depiction of that first blessed Christmas.

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I think Christmas takes on a different aura when you find yourself in a position to be the one responsible for making memories for your own little people. At least, it did for me. The moms who create and implement all these beautiful and meaningful traditions to stock their children's memory banks full of haloed treasures, amaze and intimidate me. I bake special Christmas things, and two days later they are eaten, because I didn't quite get them to the freezer in time...and what else was there to eat anyway?

And what else do I do? Hmm I don't know. I do wrap their presents usually. Maybe only a day before Christmas... but they are wrapped. Not that it matters. It sure didn't matter to me.
I'm hoping a blanket of love and warmth will shroud their lack of concrete memories somehow....like maybe how wonderful it was when mom let them pack all those Christmas pecan tassies in their pre-Christmas school lunches.

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I love Christmas music. I do not get tired of it. I am not talking about secular Christmas music featuring Santa Claus....or Rudolf.....or grandma who met him and an untimely demise on Christmas eve. Or songs that were manufactured by recent artists to fill up the obligatory Christmas album. But I love the old songs. The ancient carols. The orchestra music. Handel's Glorious Messiah. Every year it is wonderful all over again.

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Some of those old songs have some phrases that bring me a lot of pleasure for a variety of reasons. Here's a sampling:

"E'en so here below, below,
Let steeple bells be swungen,
And "Io, io, io!"
By priest and people sungen."
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"The Master of the Inn refused
A more commodious Place;
Ungenerous Soul of Savage Mould,
And destitute of Grace."
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Bring the torch Jeanette Isabella!
Bring the torch and hurry and run!
He is born! Good folk of the village
Christ is born and Mary calls you
Ahh! Ahh! Beautiful is the mother!
Ahh! Ahh! Beautiful is the child!
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I thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along th'unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
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And I love the "Bohm" at the very end of  Carol of the Bells, which is a supremely enchanting song from the first note to the last.

Nobody writes songs like that anymore.

Joy to your world this Christmas! Stay well!  God bless us, every one!

"Honey, You Need a Bath."

He needed a bath. He really did.
He wasn't going to want one, poor thing. But he needed one.
And he would feel so much better when he had had one.

I set about getting it ready for him. I set up the little space heater so it would be nice and warm. Then I put in the plug and turned the water on, tweaking it till the temperature seemed right.

Hmm, what else?
I found some of the Chief's body wash. "New!" it said. "Irish Spring Body Wash." "Legendary Classic."
How can it be both "new" and a "legendary classic?" I wondered.

These are questions with no answers.

I opened the lid and put it to my nose. Ahhh...nice.  I squirted some into the rushing water and watched as it exploded in a swirl of foam that rose and built.
 A masculine bubble bath. He would like it, I thought, andwatched the water pounding into the tub briefly before turning to the task at hand. A nice fluffy towel, laid out right here. A wash cloth there. Soap here. A cup to rinse his hair.

Okay then. He needed clothes.
I searched his drawers. Fresh underwear. Fresh socks. What should I get him to wear? I extracted a few things from his drawer that should have been in the hamper. "No wonder he's always low on clothes" I mused. "Why can't I teach him the dirty stuff does not go back in his drawer even if it's his favorite shirt?... Especially if it's his favorite shirt?"

More questions with no answers.

Jeans looked stiff and collared shirts seemed wrong.
I shut that drawer and opened his pj drawer. There lay a pair of red and black plaid fleece pj's. Nice, soft, clean, and folded. "Probably means they aren't his favorite." I thought. I had made them for his older brother, but they fit him now. A gentle reminder of the fleeting nature of little-boyhood.
They looked perfect from the mom angle. I would take them out and ask him if he wanted to wear them, I decided. I'd let him wear whatever he wanted.
As long as it was clean.

Gathering my collection of clothes and taking them to the livingroom, I stood there and watched him quietly for a minute as he slept.
He had been curled on that corner of the couch wrapped in his blanket since Sunday, venturing out now and then only when the Ibuprofen was doing its best work. The Tylenol helped some too, I guess, but not enough to inspire him to rouse much. He was burning up with fever. Keeping it down to 103 was a challenge.

Hair sprouted wildly from his head. His cheeks were bright and each breath was junky with mucus.
"Toddy, you need a bath." I said softly.

Without a word he pulled the covers over his head.

"Would you like to wear these pj's when you get out?" I asked.
He turned reluctantly to look at what I had with lids that hung heavy over languid eyes, and nodded.

I took them in and arranged all his clothes on the counter near the heater.
"Come on dearie. It's time to take your bath."

Like a lamb to the slaughter he came, surveyed my preparations and seemed weakly grateful. All he had to do was get in the tub. He peeled off his clothes and stuck a toe into the water. It was too hot.

I turned on the cold water while he perched, waiting, and when it was just right, I left him to his tub of new legendary classic bubbles.

In the living room I settled in my chair with my cup of coffee and opened my Bible to the place in Isaiah where I had been reading, and my eyes lit on one of my favorite verses of all time. "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound..."

They are prophetic words, speaking of Jesus, and are the very words Jesus stood and read in the temple at the beginning of His earthly ministry to humanity.

They echoed in my heart, and as many times before my eyes were opened to the similarities between the heart of God and the heart of a parent.

What a tender mission! Our heavenly Father in the flesh, sent to bind our wounds and free the captives. He came to a cold world, ravaged by spiritual illness.

And He set to nursing it back to health, mixing truth ("Honey, you need a bath") and mercy, ("Everything's here, dearie, all you need to do is get in.").

That's our Heavenly Father. The Gift of Christmas. Oh come, let us adore Him.

Reflecting on Reflection.

 The degree to which we reflect the people around us intrigues me.

Many years ago, when my sister would spend time with her friend Naomi, she would come home with Naomi-isms radiating from her person.  We would point this out with juvenile derision as if it were some unique and super-weird phenomenon.

But it wasn't. At least, it was not unique.

These days, I notice the same thing going on with the natives. The expressions they use and the attitudes they adopt take on shades of their latest comrade with fascinating ease.

If you know a person well, it doesn't take but about 3 to 4 sentences-worth of eavesdropping to be able to tell who is on the other end of a phone conversation. Not because of the subject matter as much as the expression and voice qualities of the person you can hear.

When The Chief's voice deepens and gets louder, I know who called him. It adopts a whole other aura when he's talking to his brothers. I can tell instantly if an old friend from his bachelor days makes a rare call.

Recently, his phone kept putting the person he was speaking with on hold without him knowing when another call would come in, and transferring him to the incoming call. One sentence, I was the one responding to him, the next, he was talking to Mrs. P.. And then I called back and he realized he was in conversation with me again.  It was more than a little confusing on various fronts, not the least of which is that you use a different tone with your wife than you do with Mrs P. and who knows what sort of havoc might be wrought on either account? When he realized what was going on, the portions of conversation I was privy to were held with a man who was choosing his words and tone very carefully.

I have friends who perk me up. Friends who calm me down. Friends who make me crazy. Friends who can make me see everything through their eyes just by coming and sitting beside me in church, I start thinking like they think. I see the humor in everything in which they see humor. Do I talk like they do when I'm with them? I don't know. I can't hear myself the way I hear other people.

Then there are those people who have spoken normally their entire lives, go to Canada or Wisconsin, and within weeks are warping their native tongue in unspeakable ways.

What causes it, I wonder. Do our words and demeanor mold only to those people we are fond of? Do we  adopt their traits because we approve of them at some level? Does our instinctive effort to find common ground with the Canadians inspire us to start saying our "o's" and "i's" in ways never uttered by Georgian lips?

These last couple days I have had a very sore throat. So sore that I haven't been talking much. When I do talk, it is mostly a whisper. Yesterday the Chief made a comment to which I would normally have responded with a bit of well-chosen sass. I said as much as could be said without saying anything. He laughed, "I believe I like a silent wife!" he said with undue enjoyment.

My friend Hilda called to give me the announcements from the ladies' Sunday School class. She talked. I whispered. By the end of the conversation she was speaking very, very softly. I smiled to myself.

My children too, began to sidle up and whisper when they spoke to me. The whole household was subdued.

In the evening, I was huddled in bed, reading. The Chief came and told me about a difficult repair job he had successfully completed. He whispered the entire time.
Then he fixed the covers around me. He always knows just how covers ought to be fixed. "I hope you feel better soon." He whispered.

It was very nice.
I believe I like a silent husband.

Brief Musings of a Fevered Brain.

Do you ever find yourself pondering whether to be happy or sad?
This morning, after coaxing myself through the beginnings of the morning routine, it dawned on me that I was sick. I suspected it yesterday, but there was little time to give the matter due consideration.
This morning though, it reached the point where consideration was no longer crucial to the awareness thereof.
After family devotions I pawned my various duties off on the most susceptible victims, some of whom didn't exactly agree to assume them, and went back to bed. 
I woke up several hours later to an empty house: The natives had been delivered to school, the laundry had been started, and some of it folded.  The kitchen was cleaned up and a note of sympathy from the Chief  lay on the dining room table.
It was the first day in many that there hadn't been a sick child at home, appointments to keep, hot lunch to make for school, or some other significant obligation calling for extra time and attention.
I had looked forward to this day, had seen it coming from afar...unless it was a mirage...which such days sometimes prove to be...and invested a significant quantity of hopeful anticipation into it.

"So...", I reflected, while padding quietly around in the kitchen in search of something to alleviate symptoms, "should I be happy that to have gotten sick on a day I didn't have anything big planned, or should I be aggravated to have gotten sick on the one day I had nothing else planned?"
And I contemplated this for a little while... the pros and cons of each choice...when suddenly the portion of my brain which mothers the rest of it, kicked in (I can only assume this particular mother had also been in bed with a fever as well, to have arrived so late on the scene) and said, "What could be more irrational than considering the advantages of being annoyed?"
And of course, she was right, as mothers always are, (ahem).
It's cold out, and rainish. But inside it's nice and warm, the lamps are lit, and I have nothing to do.
What could be nicer?

No!...don't ask!! I might start pondering it....

Confessions of a Disappointed Woman

The Chief and I have been married 22 years. So we know each other pretty well. One thing I know about him: he loves a nice clean house. One thing he knows about me: I am no born housekeeper. I can clean as well as the next woman, but the art of maintenance I have not yet mastered. I say "yet", because I choose to believe that while there is life there is hope.

That is the backdrop for the following drama. It took place barely long enough ago for the river of time to round its edges.

The Chief had been out of town for a few days working, so the natives and I were holding down the wigwam. When the Chief had left, the wigwam was in a state of mild disaster that hadn't improved with age.

The morning of the day of his return I decided it would make him happy to come home to a sparkling house, and I was going to clean. I am not a great fan of cleaning. I don't know why; it defies logic, really, There is definite satisfaction in the whole process, a satisfaction I feel anytime I buck my natural inclinations and do it. And there really are few things I enjoy more than living in a sparkling house, so I don't know why I don't gravitate toward cleaning...but I'll move on here lest I get bogged on some psychological bunny trail.

I began in the morning by making a list. It was one of those lists you know from the very start you will never get to the end of. And then the cleaning commenced. Things were picked up. Manymanymany things. How we leave out so many things is quite beyond me. But I picked them all up, from one side of the house to the other. I organized and put away all my sewing project stuff. No small task. I went through the paper piles that accumulated because no one knew what to do with the items thereon. I did laundry and folded it and put it all away. I cleaned the bathrooms and scrubbed our shower till it sparkled. I swept porches, and polished windows and mirrors and door glass.
When the children came home from school I had them vacuum. And then I vacuumed again because I wanted it to be perfect. It made me smile just to think how happy it would make him. His face would light up a little and he would say "The house looks great, Babe." That would be all there was to it. But it would be entirely worth it. You know these things after 22 years.

I cleaned the microwave and arranged decor, and then I decided to get out the carpet shampoo and shampoo the spots on our bedroom carpet. Wow. It looked so much better. They had bugged me for awhile.
I was starting to feel a little sick but it looked fabulous, and I surveyed the results of my labor with supreme satisfaction. It was a good welcome home gift for my hardworking Chief and I couldn't wait till he came home. I made supper for the natives and they cleaned up the kitchen while I did more cleaning.

Before bedtime we sat down and played a game of Settlers of Catan together.
They needed some maternal interaction that didn't involve toiling at the behest of a driven woman. It was a fun touch to the end of the day even though I didn't feel so great.
While we were playing Regan realized she wanted a certain dress washed so she jumped up and threw it and a few other items into the washer...and then into the dryer.

We cleaned the game all up and put it away. A happy day for sure.
"It's not what you do that makes you tired, it's what you don't get done." I don't know who said it, but there is much truth in it.
The Chief still was not home, and I was feeling progressively sicker, so I took my shower, and got ready for bed. 

I went and checked the things in the dryer but they weren't dry yet so I started it up again and tucked my nauseated self between the covers. It didn't matter if I was sick, it didn't matter if I was exhausted. The house was clean and the Chief was coming home tonight.

I was just drifting off when I heard him at the door. I lay there quietly, drowsily, happily, listening. Absence does indeed make the heart grow fonder.

He walked in....strode from the front door to the laundry room, opened the dryer door and said  "How long has this dryer been running??? We can't afford to have this thing running and running like this. It still has 40 minutes on it!

I said, "I'm sorry". I should have made sure to check the time on it. I should have waited a few minutes and looked after that stuff before I went to bed.

But I was also incredulous.

 He, after being gone for days had walked blindly THROUGH my decluttered sparkling, scrubbed, polished, disinfected wigwam, sniffed out the one thing wrong and fussed about it!
 How could he??? What sort of beast was he anyway???

He was taking care of the things in the dryer, and making enough noise about it to properly punctuate his annoyance. Brisk, efficiency defined his every move when he was annoyed. I knew about him.

I hunkered down under my covers with my back to his side of the bed and simmered in my juices. When he came in I was going to be sleeping.
What was up with him? Not even a "Hi, Babe."
Why did I even bother? Suddenly my churning stomach and aching joints trumped all else. Just 10 minutes earlier they had seemed a trifling thing.

I would just go to sleep. I couldn't, at any rate, tell him how mad I was. That wouldn't be nice, and above all else, I was not the bad guy here. It was important that I maintain my faultless position.

I tried to go to sleep. By the time he got out of the shower I wanted to be traveling the roads of dreamland. He didn't tell me "Hi"? I didn't have to tell him "Hi"..

Despite my best efforts, my thoughts and my roiling insides prevented me from sleeping. But they couldn't keep me from pretending to sleep.

When he pulled back the covers I was the sleepingest thing in the room.

He crawled in beside me, "I shouldn't have mentioned the dryer, Babe. I'm sorry."
"That's okay," I said in the voice I imagined I'd use if I were sleeping.
Apparently, men married 22 years can sense resentment even in sleeping women. Well, fine. I hadn't done anything wrong except let the dryer run when the stuff was dry, and I had said sorry for that, so my sins were under the blood.

My physical ailments kept me awake long into the night, and while I lay there I obsessed like a spoiled bride with no brothers discovering for the first time that men and women are from different planets and speak different languages.

I should've remembered how mad I was the first time I was mad at him that he didn't have a clue that I was even mad. I should've been grateful that after 22 years together he could tell I was mad even when I was sleeping.

I finally got up in search of relief for my stomach and my joints. On the table neatly laid out were socks and various other pieces of clothing. They must have been from the dryer because they certainly weren't there when I went to bed. I went over and felt them. They were damp. The dryer hadn't been running with the stuff dry as a bone after all. The stuff was still wet.

I crawled back into bed and eventually, with my case against him built solid and strong, I went to sleep.

In the morning we awoke to my beautiful house, but he still didn't mention it. It was too late now, anyway, he had thoroughly blown the parameters of timely noticing.
The morning routine mercifully claimed my time and attention, and I was just glad when everyone was at school and work where they belonged and I could have some peace.

 But there is no peace for the wicked, saith the Lord.

Reason began to creep in. Here I was in my nice clean house, and I couldn't even enjoy it because I was too busy obsessing. How absurd.

 I thought of a book that I read that mentioned the "disappointed woman." This woman, it said, spends large portions of her life disappointed. Her husband doesn't meet her expectations, and she is disappointed... the project they had hoped to get done barely gets started, and she is so disappointed.....the grocery store was out of the item on sale that matched her coupon and she is so disappointed, because running in there again would cancel out any savings....the family reunions on either side of the family are planned for the same weekend in July and she is so disappointed.
These women choose disappointment concerning what they don't have, over happiness. Disappointment concerning what they don't have, over thankfulness. It is a way of looking at life that sucks the joy right out of existence and the light from their husband's eyes. (I don't know that the book said quite all of that, but it is true). I have thought of the disappointed woman a lot over the years and have strenuously avoided being her. And yet, here she was. Inside my own skin. The Disappointed Woman on steroids. And she could not have looked uglier. Ugh.

The light of truth continued to shine ......Who was I really cleaning the house for...the Chief?...or for the appreciation I would feel when he noticed? Obviously, the latter.

And then I started thinking about myself in relation to my heavenly Father. He has given me so much. Salvation. A beautiful world. The exact number of children we wished to have. Many, many friends. A wonderful church, A good husband (yes, it's really true) The list is long and luxurious...and yet, how often when I show up at His front door do I walk straight to the back door and say, "God, look here. Such and such is out of line. Why don't You fix it?" Too many times to count.

And what about the Chief.. really? He had walked in the door to a nearly dark house. After working long days and driving for hours providing selflessly for his family, he had to come home to a silent house with no wife at the door to even say "Hi Babe!" and the dryer running, burning up his hard earned money as fast as he could make it while the whole house slept.

So I had a little heart to heart with God about reality, and the joy started slipping back in. My house was beautiful. My heart was singing.

When the Chief came home that evening he put his arms around me and said, "I love what you're doing to the house, Girl." And it was not too late. It was right on time.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

It has been pouring for hours. I was going to go dump the rain out of the rain gauge down at the garden, because I was sure it was overflowing and wanted to know how much rain we were getting. In these parts the ongoing rain deficit is a significant issue and tracking rainfall a point of interest.

 It was still dumping rain big time and thunder was crumbling at every corner, but I was determined to go, (in a timid sort of way). So I went in search of the umbrella and couldn't find it anywhere. I knew Regan had had it earlier and remembered seeing it in some corner, but I looked in every corner in the house to no avail.

Finally I woke Regan up enough to ask her and she said, "The umbrella?? It's on the back porch."
And there it was, streaming with rain. So much for the umbrella... opening it would have produced roughly the same effect a wet dog has when he shakes.

My memory seemed to pull up some yellow raincoat or something that we had, so I searched The Chief's closet shelves, and sure enough, folded with his trademark precision, was a rain suit from his biking days.

I pulled it out and looked at it. I tried to put one leg in.
I decided it might be easier to talk him into going.

"Here Babe!" I said, hauling it out to the living room and holding it up temptingly, "Maybe you should go!"

He accused me of all sorts of things.
Wait, that's not true.
He accused me of only one thing.
He accused me of plotting all along to get him to go out, and only faking any intention of going out myself.
It was a false accusation.

"Here, you put it on!" he said.
"No." I said. "You put it on and I'll find you a flashlight."
I went and got him his rubber boots.

But I couldn't find a flashlight anywhere.
"Come on, you put it on." he said.
He just wanted to see me in that crazy yellow rain suit.

"I can't go because I can't find a flashlight."

I really was looking for one.
I finally found a camping lantern.
I also found a very small turtle-shaped inflatable pool.

I returned to the living room. He was putting on the rain suit.
"What am I going to do about my head?" he said.
I produced the wading pool and handed him the lantern.

And out into the dark and storm he went.

I watched him from the window as he slogged across the lawn to the garden; knelt down, held his lantern high and checked the rain gauge, He pushed it back into the ground, and slogged his way back up to the porch, the lantern bobbing rhythmically. I imagined he was some ancient seaman returning safely from a treacherous voyage. It wasn't hard, except for the green turtle pool.

I opened the door and took the wading pool, and started helping him get the suit off.
"This was a great rain suit!" he said. "It does exactly what it was designed to do....It makes me want to ride cycle again!"

 Oh, and we've had over five inches, so far.