There is truly nothing like being sick during the holidays. It started with a dry little cough at our wind ensemble concert on Tuesday night. Luckily I had a container of water which was guzzled in short order. But it wasn't over. The little tickle grew to a cough on Wednesday, when my whole family was coming over for Thanksgiving dinner. I plied myself with medicine, but the roar was there by the time I climbed into bed. I've now had two whole days of coughing up my lungs, and as luck would have it, all the doctors took off the day after Thanksgiving. Probably sleeping that tryptophan out of their systems. Meanwhile, I think I have either cracked or sprung my ribs out of their proper places.
When sickness takes over the body, a whole lot goes out the window. I had two jobs today which didn't happen. I meant to call one of my clients about his listing, but he beat me to it because I was comatose in a big comfy chair. I needed to deliver paperwork and scan and send stuff. Didn't happen. I laid on the couch all day and all evening, watching reruns of What Not To Wear. As If I Care. Normally my numerous Christmas trees are decorated by now and we are cleaning up the bits of glitter and greenery that fall everywhere. But nope. I walked (staggered) the dog out tonight with my wild hair and no pants on and noticed that my neighbors have their decorations up. What is going to happen to us if I don't haul that paraphernalia out of the barn? You know how it is when you're sick -- you wonder if you'll ever do anything again. Am I the only one who gets mad for not appreciating life before, when I wasn't sick? I denounce myself for all the poundage that makes hauling this carcass off the couch that much harder. I'm gonna work on that before I get sick again, I am.
Meanwhile, my grown kids and grandkids are all busy elsewhere with their lives tonight, Liz is gone for the evening and Ken retired early since he has to go to work before daybreak. Here I sit, alone, in my icky shirt, no pants, with seemingly busted ribs and no gumption to do anything but breathe in and out. If that. Makes me reckon about death. Because there will come a day that I won't be able to order my body to do anything and it will finally surrender itself to the gravity. People don't like to talk about it, but it's a huge fact that's going to happen to all of us. So on a night when I am feeling like that might just be a good thing, I am thinking of the Lord's goodness, of how in His mercy He called this family to Him. There's much bantering back and forth in our current environment, from doubters, haters, unbelievers, atheists that hate God and His people (and would indeed blow them up). When I consider the grace that He has showered on me through the thick and thin that is this world, I cannot help but love and trust Him. I have said it many times and I fully believe this -- if it were not for the grace of God, I would be in a gutter somewhere. That's where my sin's conclusions would take me and worse. I told my niece Olivia that and she laughed and said, "Oh Aunt Rose, no!" But yes, it is true. His goodness fills the heart and overwhelms us with His nature. It's inexplicable.
So with my sprung ribs, stuffed head, leaking nose and leaden behind, I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving, even though I'll really be glad when it's over.
Friday, November 27, 2015
Friday, November 20, 2015
Blood, sweat, tears and a good teacher
Della T. Pearson. I will never forget her name or her face. She was my fifth grade teacher. Back then, you had one teacher for all your subjects. She was tough and strong, with a quick wit and a killer throwing arm. This was 1970 and the world was changing. She was a stout black woman in a nearly all-white elementary school in the suburbs of Atlanta.
The first day of school that year was epic. As we sat in our assigned seats, she told us that she would not be calling us by our first names, but by our last names. So for that year, my name was "Slate." She barely smiled that first few weeks and laid out the rules and what she expected from us. I was a little scared. I also noticed that the worst boys from my grade were in this class. The big, bad, tall ones that made everybody nervous. For some reason, she had them all sitting near the back. Apparently she wasn't afraid of them. There was a huge, long paddle resting on her desk, with holes drilled into it, and a hefty red rubber ball next to it. She also had a staple gun, something I had never seen before. Curious.
We all quickly learned that in Mrs. Pearson's class, you were expected to behave and you would behave or face the consequences. The incorrigible boys tried a few things, a few times, but her unorthodox discipline methods immediately earned their respect. I feel certain that she was always inheriting the lost kids. She was quick with the paddle, leaving the door slightly ajar when she took a wayward child into the hall to spank. She did not have to do it often....we all decided it was better to cooperate. I remember when my friend, Susan, who was a spoiled only-child and had a mouth like a sieve, smarted off at her with her nose in the air and a chunky hand on her hip. Mrs. Pearson was on her like a panther. With our mouths agape, we watched as she marched that sassy gal into the hall and gave her a new badge of humility. The first time one of the bad boys disrespected her from the back of the room, I felt the wind from that red rubber ball as it whizzed past my face straight to the head of the wayward boy. I am laughing now, remembering the shock and awe from the whole classroom. I wonder what today's parents would do with her brazen disregard for all those poor little childrens' psyches?
What I haven't told yet is the fact that this woman profoundly altered our lives. She, looking down at you with her half-glasses and enough spunk to wither a volcano, had a heart of gold. She truly cared about her students, enough to take them down a rough and rocky road and then to teach them to soar to the heights. She was a math genius. She passed out big, fat, red notebooks (red was her favorite) during our first math class. She taught us Algebra in the fifth grade. She told us to keep our red notebooks and never throw them away. As we toiled away that year, filling those accursed pages with all of her magic tricks, we had a resource that helped us even into high school.
She taught us poetry, both how to read it and how to write it. Shakespeare. She made us read "To Kill A Mockingbird." In the fifth grade. She took us to the Atlanta Symphony, which changed me forever. We did artwork. Science. Studied the Renaissance. We had to learn "To Dream the Impossible Dream" -- a song from The Man of LaMancha - and sing it for the whole school. She drilled us like she was a military sergeant and then taught us the finer things of life, leading us to the edges of what is beautiful and cultured in this world.
I feared and revered her, but I especially loved her.
She pulled stuff out of me I didn't know was in there and expected me to rise to greater places. She taught me to take pride in doing things myself, without whining or expecting someone else to help. I was in the fifth grade, ten years old...that time before the hormones start to confuse the world. There is an innocence that you never quite find again after that. This was the zenith of my life before the onslaught of that hellish place in life: middle school. She built on the foundations I had been blessed to have been raised with, but she didn't presume upon them. She called all of us to dig deep and find a way to press out more than we thought we could.
It's a place of strength and beauty that I hark back to, that year with Mrs. Pearson. She made me understand that I could do way more than I imagined. That the road to doing something well was usually and often paved with pain and difficulty, but was also worth it. And that to dream the impossible dream was just the beginning...
The first day of school that year was epic. As we sat in our assigned seats, she told us that she would not be calling us by our first names, but by our last names. So for that year, my name was "Slate." She barely smiled that first few weeks and laid out the rules and what she expected from us. I was a little scared. I also noticed that the worst boys from my grade were in this class. The big, bad, tall ones that made everybody nervous. For some reason, she had them all sitting near the back. Apparently she wasn't afraid of them. There was a huge, long paddle resting on her desk, with holes drilled into it, and a hefty red rubber ball next to it. She also had a staple gun, something I had never seen before. Curious.
We all quickly learned that in Mrs. Pearson's class, you were expected to behave and you would behave or face the consequences. The incorrigible boys tried a few things, a few times, but her unorthodox discipline methods immediately earned their respect. I feel certain that she was always inheriting the lost kids. She was quick with the paddle, leaving the door slightly ajar when she took a wayward child into the hall to spank. She did not have to do it often....we all decided it was better to cooperate. I remember when my friend, Susan, who was a spoiled only-child and had a mouth like a sieve, smarted off at her with her nose in the air and a chunky hand on her hip. Mrs. Pearson was on her like a panther. With our mouths agape, we watched as she marched that sassy gal into the hall and gave her a new badge of humility. The first time one of the bad boys disrespected her from the back of the room, I felt the wind from that red rubber ball as it whizzed past my face straight to the head of the wayward boy. I am laughing now, remembering the shock and awe from the whole classroom. I wonder what today's parents would do with her brazen disregard for all those poor little childrens' psyches?
What I haven't told yet is the fact that this woman profoundly altered our lives. She, looking down at you with her half-glasses and enough spunk to wither a volcano, had a heart of gold. She truly cared about her students, enough to take them down a rough and rocky road and then to teach them to soar to the heights. She was a math genius. She passed out big, fat, red notebooks (red was her favorite) during our first math class. She taught us Algebra in the fifth grade. She told us to keep our red notebooks and never throw them away. As we toiled away that year, filling those accursed pages with all of her magic tricks, we had a resource that helped us even into high school.
She taught us poetry, both how to read it and how to write it. Shakespeare. She made us read "To Kill A Mockingbird." In the fifth grade. She took us to the Atlanta Symphony, which changed me forever. We did artwork. Science. Studied the Renaissance. We had to learn "To Dream the Impossible Dream" -- a song from The Man of LaMancha - and sing it for the whole school. She drilled us like she was a military sergeant and then taught us the finer things of life, leading us to the edges of what is beautiful and cultured in this world.
I feared and revered her, but I especially loved her.
She pulled stuff out of me I didn't know was in there and expected me to rise to greater places. She taught me to take pride in doing things myself, without whining or expecting someone else to help. I was in the fifth grade, ten years old...that time before the hormones start to confuse the world. There is an innocence that you never quite find again after that. This was the zenith of my life before the onslaught of that hellish place in life: middle school. She built on the foundations I had been blessed to have been raised with, but she didn't presume upon them. She called all of us to dig deep and find a way to press out more than we thought we could.
It's a place of strength and beauty that I hark back to, that year with Mrs. Pearson. She made me understand that I could do way more than I imagined. That the road to doing something well was usually and often paved with pain and difficulty, but was also worth it. And that to dream the impossible dream was just the beginning...
Sunday, November 15, 2015
Hug Em While You Can
When my husband and I married, a few dozen years ago, we had numerous sets of grandparents still alive. The real problem with that began hitting the fan when the holidays rolled around. On a typical Thanksgiving or Christmas, we had 3-4 feasts that we were expected to participate in. I didn't (and still don't) have a clue what the word "no" means, or "let's take turns." We would drive 2-1/2 hours to Lincolnton and Thomson, Georgia, have two Thanksgivings there, then drive home and have another one at Ken's parents....and then have another one the next day at my folks' house. Somewhere in there we would visit his other grandparents in Marietta. Then Christmas came and it was even more complicated, particularly when we started popping out progeny. I remember one epic Thanksgiving. Ken's Grandmama Babe fed our firstborn son about two boxes, not joking, of Vanilla Wafers, behind my back. In the space of four hours. I didn't realize how many of those things a human can eat, until we experienced something akin to a lava flow, a golden brown one, in the back seat on our way back home to our third Thanksgiving dinner. This from a child who had never eaten anything with sugar in it, at least not from his Mama's hand. I had a lot to learn.
There's never so much fussing as a great-grandmother does over a child. They are way too far removed from child-rearing to be giving advice, at least when it comes to food. But they also don't care what anybody thinks anymore, so you get the full brunt of it. As a new parent, your insides are still quivering about all the decisions and responsibilities. You want to prove that you can do it all, though you're pretty sure you're messing it up. But nobody better tell you that. I remember my guts being in turmoil any time I had to parade my culinary prowess and parenting skills in the same visit. Which was pretty much any visit. The baby was always too cold, too hot, chugged up, crying too much, I wasn't feeding him enough or I was feeding him too much. I didn't bring what I was supposed to bring to the soiree or I forgot or I didn't ask the right question and just brought what I fixed. Or brought what was easy. There was no way to win this Wonder Woman event.
Now that I am a Yaya, time has mostly erased the hard parts of being a young Mama. It's easy to stand back on the hill and remember with fogged-over eyes how much I loved my babies, how I fed them right and disciplined them so well. I mean, look at those babies now - they're full grown, responsible adults starting to raise their own children. They're strong, healthy and even potty-trained. So with that fuzzy memory of what was difficult about it, I'm also thinking of how I miss those grandparents that I fussed about back then. How I'd give anything to ask their advice, to quiz them about things that I never bothered to find out. I assumed they'd always be here, because for all I knew, they arrived before the dawn of time. But this must be the way of it, that God doesn't inform us about what the future is, to know what we know now. The rhythm of time and the seasons turn over the earth of our souls. What was then is simply hard to believe. How did we do it? Where did that girl go? How did I forget her?
She's wrapped up, like so many threads in a garment. A tapestry garment, with crazy-quilt squares and garish knots. It can get ugly. As the world turns, there are fresh crops of expectations from all sides. I thought that somewhere in there, I'd get a free guilt pass. But no. And then it dawned on me. That is exactly why all the Grandmamas, Grandmas, great-Grandmamas, Nanas, Mimis and Yayas love their grandchildren so passionately, even when they can't do everything they'd like to do for them. They realize that all the casseroles, turkeys, gumdrops, money and everybody's silly presumptions and opinions are a bunch of hooey when it comes to that baby. There's a whole lot that just gets thrown out the window. Yaya (or whatever she gets called) looks deep in those sweet bunny eyes and says its me and you kid against the world. And that baby knows it.
There's nothing like Grandmama love, when you know she loves you even if you commit a felony. In fact, it might be why you don't.
There's never so much fussing as a great-grandmother does over a child. They are way too far removed from child-rearing to be giving advice, at least when it comes to food. But they also don't care what anybody thinks anymore, so you get the full brunt of it. As a new parent, your insides are still quivering about all the decisions and responsibilities. You want to prove that you can do it all, though you're pretty sure you're messing it up. But nobody better tell you that. I remember my guts being in turmoil any time I had to parade my culinary prowess and parenting skills in the same visit. Which was pretty much any visit. The baby was always too cold, too hot, chugged up, crying too much, I wasn't feeding him enough or I was feeding him too much. I didn't bring what I was supposed to bring to the soiree or I forgot or I didn't ask the right question and just brought what I fixed. Or brought what was easy. There was no way to win this Wonder Woman event.
Now that I am a Yaya, time has mostly erased the hard parts of being a young Mama. It's easy to stand back on the hill and remember with fogged-over eyes how much I loved my babies, how I fed them right and disciplined them so well. I mean, look at those babies now - they're full grown, responsible adults starting to raise their own children. They're strong, healthy and even potty-trained. So with that fuzzy memory of what was difficult about it, I'm also thinking of how I miss those grandparents that I fussed about back then. How I'd give anything to ask their advice, to quiz them about things that I never bothered to find out. I assumed they'd always be here, because for all I knew, they arrived before the dawn of time. But this must be the way of it, that God doesn't inform us about what the future is, to know what we know now. The rhythm of time and the seasons turn over the earth of our souls. What was then is simply hard to believe. How did we do it? Where did that girl go? How did I forget her?
She's wrapped up, like so many threads in a garment. A tapestry garment, with crazy-quilt squares and garish knots. It can get ugly. As the world turns, there are fresh crops of expectations from all sides. I thought that somewhere in there, I'd get a free guilt pass. But no. And then it dawned on me. That is exactly why all the Grandmamas, Grandmas, great-Grandmamas, Nanas, Mimis and Yayas love their grandchildren so passionately, even when they can't do everything they'd like to do for them. They realize that all the casseroles, turkeys, gumdrops, money and everybody's silly presumptions and opinions are a bunch of hooey when it comes to that baby. There's a whole lot that just gets thrown out the window. Yaya (or whatever she gets called) looks deep in those sweet bunny eyes and says its me and you kid against the world. And that baby knows it.
There's nothing like Grandmama love, when you know she loves you even if you commit a felony. In fact, it might be why you don't.
Saturday, November 7, 2015
Learning Dis-tract-abilities
After many years of wrestling with a brain that both likes to dream and think about lots of things but then misfires and forgets the most mundane of specifics...I discovered that I have a condition called ADOS. Attention Deficit Oooohhh Shiny. This is a real condition, where the brain never fully leaves behind certain behaviors from childhood. It manifests in rabbit-trail conversations, where one can be discussing the mystery of Luther's leaving the Catholic faith to start the Reformation and marry a nun, then jumps the track completely to admiring the exquisite handmade necklace my neighbor has on. Many nights, I wake up with myriads of thoughts churning in my head and then can't get back to hibernating. They say that your brain works on sussing out solutions to your thoughts and problems while you are asleep. I wish I could go back to the netherworlds of dark, sweet slumber and just dream and figure everything out without having to actually be conscious of it. Life is a maze of puzzles, connections, people, problems, solutions, and then, not. They say that without a plan, things are just happening TO you. And you're not making change in the world. I don't know if that's true. I think it may be more like we're in a big boat, traveling the seas of this life. We're trying to navigate ...we've got a map, a rudder, sails, a crew...but the weather keeps changing and the waves tend to swamp our silly plans. Which reminds me of one of my favorite passages in Mark that talks about Jesus sleeping through the storm, then stopping it dead in its tracks and him telling the disciples they don't have enough faith. I love that. It's his humanness and his God-ness in one fell swoop.
I like storms, but only when I'm safe and dry and warm. The idea and thrill of it is exciting. But not when you're out there soaked to the skin and anticipating lightning bolts any moment. I guess what I'm doing here is summing up my last three weeks of writing and thoughts... We can try to make our lives snug, buttoned-up and free of danger, particularly people-danger. It's our nature to want it to be that way. The difficulties of relationships, confrontation and actually walking through problems rather than walking around them can be more perilous than any thunderstorm. There are so many distractions right there at our fingertips: work, a bottle, entertainment, the internet and its images, gadgets, games, a bowl of cookie dough. All that stuff can be more comforting than actual living and working it out. I've been navigating marriage with the same (very patient) dude for nigh thirty-four years and still have days that I don't know how to ask for what I need without starting a hell-cat-fight.
I'm very much the freakout queen, always shrieking about the tornadoes swirling around me. I embrace life like a wide-eyed child but in the next breath I fear death. Then I remember his words to that ghastly storm. I think about him sleeping on that pillow and I can't help but laugh, thinking about those disciples flipping out. They must be my relatives. God says a lot about being still, a whole lot of times. I want to avoid that, substitute for that, distract for that. ADOS. But it's in the still, small voice that is on the other side of the wind that I finally find peace.
I like storms, but only when I'm safe and dry and warm. The idea and thrill of it is exciting. But not when you're out there soaked to the skin and anticipating lightning bolts any moment. I guess what I'm doing here is summing up my last three weeks of writing and thoughts... We can try to make our lives snug, buttoned-up and free of danger, particularly people-danger. It's our nature to want it to be that way. The difficulties of relationships, confrontation and actually walking through problems rather than walking around them can be more perilous than any thunderstorm. There are so many distractions right there at our fingertips: work, a bottle, entertainment, the internet and its images, gadgets, games, a bowl of cookie dough. All that stuff can be more comforting than actual living and working it out. I've been navigating marriage with the same (very patient) dude for nigh thirty-four years and still have days that I don't know how to ask for what I need without starting a hell-cat-fight.
I'm very much the freakout queen, always shrieking about the tornadoes swirling around me. I embrace life like a wide-eyed child but in the next breath I fear death. Then I remember his words to that ghastly storm. I think about him sleeping on that pillow and I can't help but laugh, thinking about those disciples flipping out. They must be my relatives. God says a lot about being still, a whole lot of times. I want to avoid that, substitute for that, distract for that. ADOS. But it's in the still, small voice that is on the other side of the wind that I finally find peace.
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