Confessions of a Book Abuser

Stillness. There it is. From rushing here and yon, planning, preparing, going, doing.... it is rare. If I look for it, I can find it. That's easy to say, now that my four children are grown. I can remember when a trip to the bathroom was fraught with perils beyond the door lock. You never knew what was going to happen and what you might miss, just because of your tiny escape to the bathroom. I used to keep a Reader's Digest in there, because you could read a whole book in about 20 minutes, if you were fast. So I learned to read lightning quick. And type like a woodpecker. And fold clothes like it was a contest. All those Wonder Woman skills that I remember seeing my Mama churn out in record time....I would ask her, "How do you do that so fast?" She'd say, "Lots and lots of practice." Eventually I became the skilled one because I had so much practice it was scary. There's not a lot of room for perfectionism when life is going on without you if you don't get all the mundane things whipped out in a jiffy.

On another note... (but talking about Reader's Digest made me think about it). The Library. Oh how I love the library and books. Back in the van-full-of-kids days, I'd get two armloads, one for me and one for our kids. We'd carry them home in a milk crate. I still like to read 4-5 books simultaneously, one in each bathroom, one beside the bed, one in the living room by my chair.... The number of bathrooms in our house has always dictated how many I might be reading at any given time. Oh yeah, and there's the tub adventures too. One day, years ago, I asked my brother to borrow a book and he wouldn't let me read it. He told me that he would only be buying me books from now on, and that I would not be borrowing any more from him. I was offended until he told me that the last book I borrowed came back looking like one of those old Reader's Digest Christmas trees we used to make out of folded books....not to mention that it also had bite marks on the cover. He checked and said that the bites were definitely human and definitely adult-sized. How can I help it if the book slips into the tub while I'm trying to balance my bowl of ice cream in the other hand, leading to two memorable events, one involving a hair dryer and the other resulting in bite marks? He's been true on his promise to buy me books, thankfully, and they're always the good ones. I relish reading them whenever and however I like. 

Back to the Library. Libraries would be just peachy if it weren't for those people they employ, Librarians. Librarians do not like me. I don't understand that. I exude much joy and happiness when I walk in there. Most people really do like me. I adore books, acres of them. And so do Librarians, correct? They are always nice when I first come in, and then they seem to get upset when I don't bring books back, when I make too much noise in there, and especially when I do bring the books back but they have bite marks on them. One day I brought back my truckload of books and they were quite late...so late that I had a fine of $12.10. I had $12 but not 10 cents. I assumed she'd be merciful (why would I think that?) and I took an hour to pick out another bucket of books, but when I failed to come up with the extra 10 cents, the Librarian wouldn't let me check them out. I went to my truck and dug around, asked a couple of people for a dime and then began begging on the sidewalk. There was no money to be found. Maybe those black helicopters hovering over the library weren't just looking for marijuana fields. She refused to let me take the books home. That was the day I began to wonder if it was time to move, since apparently my cover had been blown. I mean, how many times does a book actually get read? Surely only a few, right? Especially if they're paperbacks. They get read a couple of times then go in the 25-cent bin, where I buy them and then trade them in at the used book store for more books. Why would I keep most books? I'm only planning on reading them once, maybe, maybe twice, unless it's the Bible, so why all the hostility? Either way, when we moved to Villa Rica, I don't think the Librarians here got the memo, so somehow I have been able to remain incognito for three and a half years. Maybe it's because I've gained some Ninja-Library-Sneaking skills. I don't know and here I am now, risking my cover again. Meanwhile, if I call you a Librarian it probably means that you are much more reverent and obedient than I and I probably do not understand you. And of course you don't understand me. Since I don't actually call anyone that to their face, maybe it will go well and I won't get tarred and feathered soon. Many apologies to all decent and good Librarians that I may (and surely) have offended in this life. You are truly better than me and I mean that from the bottom of my heart. I wish I could be that good. And please understand that I'm a very sarcastic person and that God's gonna get me for all my Library Sins. I don't think those are on the 7-worst-sins list, but I'm pretty sure they're still sins.

What is love?

Hollywood is just full of love. Bookstore shelves are filled with novels about it. The computer seems to have a permanent scrolling banner, proclaiming promises of how to find love with this or that singles site. The movies and TV have story after story, finding love, unrequited love, everlasting love. At least half the songs written are about it. At least.

But what is it?

I have been married a long time. 33 years at last count. I married a 6'2" hunk of a man with about 8% body fat, shoulders like a lumberjack and biceps like Hercules. He married some woman who looked like a model, with long blonde hair to her teeny-tiny waist, wearing 4-inch high Candies heels and a size 5 ring. Something happened along the way and those people can no longer be found. It's as if they vanished. A mirage in the desert. A few pictures in an album. Four babies now grown, three daughter-in-laws, five grandbabies (one in the oven!), lots of houses and jobs, and way too much cheesecake later....the years peel off like a waitress's orders at a barbecue pit. When we married in a fever all those years ago, we had no idea what we were in for. 

The movies and books that tell about "true love" are always some convoluted story that ends in someone running because the bus is about to leave or the train is departing or the boat is pulling away from the dock. Then there's hugging and kissing and happily ever after. And a lot of times, in real life, that stuff happens (though not usually). There's the flush of infatuation, all the etc.'s in between, and then a conclusion with some sort of commitment. But in the real world, over 50% of married couples don't make it. For a million different reasons. It breaks my heart when they don't make it, because there's always so much more that gets broken than all the "reasons."

Part of our dilemma is that real love, in the real world, doesn't have a screenplay, a plot and a soundtrack. Well, we do, but it might wreck your ears. Most of our problem is that we're a bunch of sinners and we mess stuff up. Real love involves blood, sweat, tears, vomit and worse. But the trial isn't the drama, it's the spaces in between. When everyone is tired, Mama's sick, Daddy's not making enough money, the laundry needs doing, the bathroom needs cleaning, the joints are aching, everybody's hungry, it's sticky and hot and 95 degrees and the air goes out, there's seventeen things to do today but only time for four of those things, and then Uncle Joe dies and we need to pack up and go to the funeral in Mississippi. Rev it up and start it all over tomorrow. Then there's the days where you've gotten up to go to work for the 10,000th time at an ungodly hour, worked, driven back and forth, come home, eaten and gone to sleep and nothing even remotely exciting has crossed your path. Day after day. Year after year. The same ole gal across the table. The same ole guy across the table. You can speak each other's sentences before they roll out. You know those rumply hands, those mangy toes, and the way he takes five decades to get out of the car because he's got to get everything arranged just so. Then there's the way she makes a mess at every stop and station along the way, with apparently no promise of food coming out of the kitchen yet and it's 6:30, and seems to have no regard to the fact that company's coming tomorrow, but she's managed to talk to 23 people today.

This is love. It is the "putting." Putting one foot in front of the other. Putting up with the snoring, the mess, the neurosis.  It is the remembering. Remembering why she liked him. Remembering why he liked her. None of us really change that much. Looking to the core of that person and what made us connect like two magnets (besides just the animal magnetism). Remembering that he is a person, he needs to be acknowledged, affirmed, respected. Remembering that she longs to be cherished, loved, and believed. 

And then it's just the miracle. For us, the miracle of God. Because only God could make these two sinners put up, shut up, and forgive when they need to. Two strong-willed, opinionated first-borns on opposite ends of the spectrum...who on a bad day and without the spirit of God might have the capacity to kill each other. A miracle because in the midst of a thousand different, boring spaces interspersed with homicidal tendencies, we found the grace of God. Rather, it found us.

The grace of God. That's all I got. 

The Story of a Door

The Story of a Door

One hundred and eleven years ago, a man built a house. He put a beautiful mahogany door on the front of the house. It was massive, with a large beveled glass window in it. It was handcrafted for the house. A knocker, brass handle and a twist-type doorbell completed the masterpiece. 

A door. A doorway. Brides carried over the threshold. Babies born and visited. Children played on porches, uncles smoked and told stories, funeral meals were taken, good news and bad news welcomed through its portal. Lives born, lived out, extinguished. Time, weather, more weather. Someone painted the door green. And then black. It weathered some more. Thankfully, an expansive porch protected it from most of the elements. It stood proud, with a handmade screened door between it and the world. Then an owner came that stayed almost thirty years who rarely, if ever, used the porch or the door. The door was locked, with acres of beautiful antique furniture inside blocking entrance or egress. It sat still, old but perfect, not moving, not aging much. Then one day the door was opened, and all the furniture that had taken up the house like a warehouse was moved out. The people left for the mountains. The house was still again. Empty. Waiting. All those years, the doorbell unused. Another year went by, with many people going through the house, some lookers, some buyers. Offers given, refused, disqualified. 

Then we came, new caretakers grateful for the love and protection given the house and the door over these many years. The door gained a lively new life, not so protected anymore. Children passing through, slamming, adults banging on it, youngsters twisting the doorbell and driving everyone to distraction. The old black paint started to chip and fall off, exposing wood to the world.  So I stripped the door. The old wood did not want to be naked. It didn't want to be stained or polyurethaned. It cried out and told me that it was meant to be painted. Since it was rare and beautiful, it deserved all the glory I could give it. So I painted it red. Bright red. A siren song red. It was a thing of beauty. Happy, unashamed, just-a-singin'.

Then we painted the rest of the front of the house. The red glared and looked vulgar against the warm historical colors I brought the house back to. Everyone knows that a door holds an important place in the face of a house. It needs to pop, to say "Come on in, ya'll!" So I thought, "Yellow!" I bought little buckets of yellow paint, painted big poster samples and set them up against the door. Looked at them for a week. Yellow, right? That's an autumn color. It should work. People pay me to pick colors for them, so how could I go wrong? I started painting the door with my quart of high-quality oil paint. I do this for a living, remember? I have had only a couple of accidents in 30+ years of painting. But somehow, some way, I tipped the whole quart of bright yellow-gold paint onto my porch. I slopped up as much as I could with my dropcloth and headed out to the yard with it, dripping all the way. Dripped it onto the porch, the concrete, the ancient bricks, the shrubs, the grass and me. My new tennis shoes (don't ask). My clothes and hair were covered in it. I look over at my Australian Shepherd and saw that she had plopped down right in the middle of it.  This is oil paint, people. You can't clean that up with the hose. I whip out my gallon of mineral spirits and try to mop the worst of it off the brick and concrete stairs, praying no one decides to use the tiki torches later and incinerate the house. After much consternation and internal swearing, it gets somewhat cleaned up. I start over. Given drying time and two coats later, it's done. I enjoy a few days of opening the door and seeing that happy yellow face every morning. A couple of weeks go by. I still enjoy opening the door to the joy, but when I drive by my house or walk the dog in the front yard, the yellow up against the other colors begins to irritate me. Badly.

What's an artist to do? I can abide a foot-high pile of papers on the kitchen table for months, dog hair on the carpet or that infernal mess that's all over the inside of my car....but don't irritate me with a color hitch. So I prayed. Yes, I finally resorted to that. Shoulda done that before I started. Ya'll think I'm kidding, but I'm not. He never misleads me on these things. Yesterday's exciting job was to buy yet another quart of paint (that makes three so far, in addition to a grocery sack of paint samples). Today's exciting job was to paint over the infernal yellow. But of course it rained and it's supposed to rain all week. With oil paint, you better wait for low humidity or you've got a permanently sticking door. I can't disrespect the door that way. I'll make myself wait.

So what is the new color? Sherwin Williams Roycroft Copper Red. From the historical collection. Red with some brick-ness in it. What was I thinking? Of course the door had to be red. Didn't it tell me that in the first place? I just had to find the right one. I guess if this one doesn't work out, I'll have to resort to stacking furniture in front of the door.

Magnolia Street, Villa Rica

A little over three years ago, when we sold our home in the middle of the Winston countryside, I thought I was going to die from grief. We had virtually put our heart and souls into a gorgeous piece of land in 1996. That's a whole book of stories that can't be pieced together in one column, but suffice it to say, out of necessity we sold our life's dream and began hunting for a new place to live, with the cash-out of 30 years of sweat equity to pay for it with. I have my real estate license, so was able to do my own looking without bothering anybody else. My husband, Ken, and I had a system: I would preview the houses and then drag him around to the ones I found interesting. Thankfully he is a wise man and has usually trusted my instincts.

I put in all the parameters of what we could afford...which was an exercise in restraint. We looked at dozens of homes, scads of them. Nothing really stood out and nothing spoke to us, but we were willing to buy a simple, sound home in order to be at a more peaceful financial place in our lives. Coming up short, I started thinking about where we would like to live, rather than just a dollar sign on the page. So I put in "Villa Rica" as my criteria and began looking through the homes available. I had always liked the small-town feel of Villa Rica. It seemed more peaceful and more hopeful than some of the other towns around us. Up popped this adorable Victorian house, charming and quaint...but out of our price range. I decided to look at it on my day's wanderings. I believe I looked at twelve houses that day and it was the last one. 

I pulled into the driveway behind the house. The yard was as big as two city lots and looked like a park. Two massive pecan trees hovered over the back lot like a set of grandparents pampering their progeny. The house, even the backside of it, was darling from the street. The lockbox was on the back door. I was stunned by the door itself. It was indescribable...a whimsical, sweet confection of stained glass and Renaissance revival carvings. Then my jaw dropped at the star-like light fixture hanging in the laundry room.  The laundry room! Each corner I turned had surprises in store. Inlaid floors, five fireplaces, huge windows that seemed to pull the outdoors in. Stained glass, pocket doors, leaded glass, a massive porch, a sweet wrought-iron gate and fence, woodwork still in its original state, a giant built-in china cabinet in the dining room, and a freshly-renovated lovely kitchen. It even had a little room on the back that I could use for an art studio. The last owner (and probably many other owners) had taken loving care of the house. It was hard to believe a 100+-year-old house could be in this kind of shape. So why wasn't it selling? Besides the fact that God was keeping it for us, the walls were dark and ugly, dated with decades-old wallpaper and colors. Each room had its own color scheme, with no rhyme or reason as to why. There was no flow and it felt cavernous. I have spoken to numerous people who said that they loved this house and wanted to buy it, but they just didn't know what to do with all the clunky colors and walls. How thankful I am that they didn't! Because that's exactly what I (and we) do -- I am a decorative painter and have spent the last 30 or so years buying and selling homes, fixing up, painting them and repainting them. My husband said of one of our houses, that we would be safe from nuclear fallout because of the nine paint jobs that I layered in the master bedroom...in nine years, no less. Now with so many years of practice, it doesn't take me several layers before I know what looks right, fortunately. So this was no problem, in my book. But there was the question of Papa Bear -- what would he think? I had two houses in my mind that would work for us -- this one and a different one in another town (that was smaller, not that old, and a lot simpler). I took him for the next round of house-hunting, showing him several. I said very little about any of them, hoping to get his gut reactions.....and of course, saved the Victorian for last. When he saw the house, it was over. He was in love. I even tried to dissuade him with arguments about the age of it, the upkeep of it, etc., but all he could focus on was that this was to be our Grandparent House (even though we had no grandchildren at the time).

Next problem: the price. Oh yeah, that. We knew exactly how much we would have, after the sale of our other house. And with the downturning of America, the loss of a 23-year-career through downsizing and outsourcing after 9/11, medical bills and the influence of God and Dave Ramsey, we offered what we had left. The homeowner came back willing to owner-finance, which we quickly declined. There were other houses we could buy. We didn't have to have this one, though we really wanted it. But God moved the heart of Pharoah and they took our offer. 

There are many more stories since that day, but I'll hold those for later. Now, every morning we wake up in the sweetest house (that feels like a Bed and Breakfast) and sit on porches that catch the breeze perfectly. We have the best neighbors you could ever hope to have, we walk to town with friends and loved ones and enjoy all the loveliness of our precious town, Villa Rica. Ken says they're going to bury us in the backyard. Best of all, God has sent us four grandchildren in less than eighteen months. We are wearing this place out.

Mrs. Keener's Pound Cake

I am not that old, but have already reached my cake quota. Well, I'll make a list...I've reached my pie, candy, chocolate, ice cream and popcorn quotas as well. That doesn't mean I'm not having any more. It just means I probably shouldn't.

I have a bit of a love affair with cake. Who doesn't love a yummy, slightly-warm, buttery piece of cake (except for my eldest son Jon)? Somewhere along the way, I probably ruined it for him. I bake pretty wedding cakes for relatives and loved ones, but I quit doing it for strangers as it dawned on me that it was a very real possibility that I could ruin a bride's whole day if I messed up her cake. Hopefully, loved ones will give me a pinch more grace if I mess up theirs? But before I had that epiphany, on "cake days" I would become a shrieking diva, freaking out and making my whole family miserable (see above note concerning eldest son). It started with cake-decorating classes and my oldest nephew's wedding and then with realizing that decorating a cake is like an adult excuse for playing with playdough.

Besides all the art and playing, I stumbled upon three of the best four cake recipes in the world (because I already had the fourth one). This wonderful, delightful lady on the internet shares her recipes with everyone. She is retired, lives in Texas, and is honestly the Queen of All the Wedding Cake Makers. Her name is Miss Earlene and that's all I'm going to tell you about that....you'll have to google and dig to find her. Her cakes are moist, yummy and have special ingredients that make you have to sneak into the liquor store to get them. She is a precious Christian lady and when you think about it, what was Christ's first miracle?!

Which brings me to the best pound cake in the world. 

When I was a child, our dear friend, Mrs. Keener, lost her husband. Mrs. Keener is a true-blue country gal who is still kicking at 92, working on her farm. (When my husband met her after hearing years of stories, he introduced himself and she just about crushed his hand, which is no small feat since he's got hands like a lumberjack.) Back then, she had a massive garden. As in -- several acres worth. A few families began helping her with it since her husband had died. Mama and us kids would go to her farm very early in the morning, while it was still dark. We would pick whatever produce was ready -- corn, peas, green beans -- and then dump the contents under the trees by her house, where she had strategically placed plastic tablecloths on the ground. When it got close to lunchtime and things starting heating up, we would leave and go home. My Mama would make us clean up and lay down for awhile. That evening, we would go back over there for a potluck dinner, everyone bringing a dish. We would eat and then proceed to the backyard where she had lanterns hanging and we would process the day's produce....shucking corn, shelling peas, stringing beans, etc., while the Moms got everything ready to freeze and can. Mrs. Keener always had this giant pound cake on a stand on top of her refrigerator. It was so good, so moist, perfect every time. And as soon as one was eaten, she'd bake another. Such happy, uncommonly contented times we had and not really that long ago (I'm telling myself that). I ran into her grandson a few months back. He said that she is still working rings around him on that farm. 

So I've decided: that's why I'm fat. Cake = happy times and memories. Or -- it's possible I'm an addict. I have a disease and some Cake Genie forces me into the kitchen and stuffs my face with cake. Or maybe, all that cake never really ever leaves my body. It just floats around in there making cake babies and crowding out my kidneys.

With 33 years of marital bliss and a large family around me, I've had my share of company, potluck dinners, family reunions, church picnics, not to mention thousands and thousands of meals cooked for my super-human-sized offspring. When I make one of Mrs. Keener's pound cakes, it gets wolfed down within about 24 hours. Just like it did at her house. And my Mama's house. Some people think it's "Rose's Pound Cake" but then that would just be false pride. I must say that it's never the same way twice, for some reason, when I bake it. I think that's because I'm really an artist, not a baker, and I'm always tweaking things too much. That just means I don't like to follow directions. So today I am going to bless you with this time-honored recipe. You can thank me later:
Mrs. Keener's Pound Cake
310 degree oven (or thereabouts)
8 (or 9) large eggs
1 cup shortening
1 cup butter
2-2/3 cups sugar
3-1/2 cups plain flour
1 Tbs real vanilla
1/4 cup milk (or maybe a little more)
Separate and beat the egg whites with 6 Tbs of the sugar. Put aside in a separate bowl. Cream remaining sugar with the butter and shortening. Add egg yolks, flour, milk and vanilla. Fold egg whites carefully into batter. Pour into greased bundt or pound cake pan. Bake for about an hour (sometimes a little less). 

You want it almost underdone. Then it's great with strawberries and cream or coffee or for breakfast or lunch or dinner in spring or summer or the first of May. 

They have 12-step programs for people like me.

I remember a girl that almost messed up her life....

Life comes in stages, it seems. My daughter, Elizabeth, has just graduated from college, and is now home for good after working as a camp counselor for 6 weeks. It seems like, in a four-day-span, her life just ratcheted down into slug mode. I can feel her pain. She was in a bubble away at school, a senior year filled with deadlines -- last year of college volleyball -- first semester with 19 hours, last year of college basketball -- second semester with 21 hours (not to mention the class she took over Christmas break), then her Senior Capstone project just for fun..... and to top that, she kept her Hope scholarship all four years and made Dean's List this last semester..... But college can be an artificial environment compared to the real world. Then away to a hyper-intense camp situation for six weeks. Back home, where I've let her sleep and rest for the last four days. As we ate supper tonight, I felt her decompressing .....realizing for the first time that now she is facing the rest of her life without a plan. Without a coach in her face, a schedule to follow, a class to go to, a deadline to make. The world is out there, a still, sullen, stagnant place for now. Nothing is stirring. The humidity is stifling. There is no wind, no rain, no change. This is finally, it. Childhood is over, high school is over, even college -- is over. Mr. Right has not made his swoop into her life. No ready-made job was waiting for her upon her exit. It's all a great mystery, waiting to unfold. In truth, it's not really a fun place to be. 

I remember a desert time in my own life, many years ago. I left college after two years, defeated, deflated. I was a rock star going in, a stupid and foolish girl going out. I came home where my best friend, my sister, was leaving for her own college adventure and my heart was lonely and sad. All my aspirations and dreams had fallen flat. I had come close to marrying someone in college and realized I had been deceived into believing he was my soulmate, when truthfully his heart did not at all share the God that I loved. I had been simply stupid. My eighteen years of a respectful, accomplished life before that were no reflection of how I behaved those two years in college. I felt ashamed of my littleness, my inability to discipline myself apart from my parents and coach's boundaries. I ran home, realizing that I had to be cocooned under my family's protection or I might be lost forever. 

It was the best thing I could have done.

I came home, humiliated. In humiliation, you are ready to hear from God. I went to work at my old summer job in an office (which I hated), went to the community college at night, hunkered down and worked hard. I confessed my sins. Put my nose to the grindstone, no longer expecting oohs and aaahs from the crowd. Went to church with my family. I bought a used bicycle. Started riding it around the country roads near our house. I picked blackberries with my sister that summer, talking blue streaks with her, then meekly cried when she left to go off to college in the fall.

The world was lonely. The people I worked with did not understand (or care) who I was, urged me to drink and party with them, but instead I went to school at night and then home to my parents for the weekends. The world was a dry, parched land. To me, there was nothing else exciting that was ever going to happen. Nothing was going to change. God had forgotten me.

It seemed that way for a long time.

I was tired of playing games. Tired of dating people that didn't love God with all their heart. Tired of guys that were too attached to their Mamas. Tired of games, so many games. Sick of performing and sick of trying so hard to not miss God's will and never knowing what that was anyway.

I surrendered. To God. I just gave up. I said, "Hey, it's You and me." I cried in my car, alone. I prayed. Cried some more. I sang songs. Some jammin' rock songs. Then surrender-to-Jesus songs. Then love songs, but to Him, not to anybody else. My heart was quieted and I learned what it meant, finally, to really fall in love with the Lord. I had been stripped of man's accolades and ideas of what success were. I felt like I was nothing.

God sent me two crazy friends. Ken and Brian. Two funny, smart guys who loved the Lord, but who treated me like a sister. They were both very desirable men, but we had a summer without those kinds of expectations. They would pick me up for lunch, for weekend outings, for whatever. We would talk and laugh and laugh some more. It helped heal me. I was crispy-burnt from that wrong college relationship and needed the agape/phileo love that comes from brotherhood. They would say really offensive, edifying things like, "Hey Rose, we don't think there are any guys in this church tall enough for you, you Amazon!" Or -- "Rose, we think you're cute. But there's NO guys around here for you." Or -- "Rose, don't you want to go out with __________? Oh yeah, he's too short." Or, the worst one of all: "Rose, we love going out with you, because you're safe." Wow. Just what a gal wants to hear (who's being simultaneously hit on all the time at work by a bunch of heathen men). 

God has His own highly-honed sense of humor. He intended Ken and I to be together and make awesome progeny, from the foundations of the world. When the electricity ignited, we got married in a fever and the rest is history. It has been pretty much a 32+ year whirlwind. 

Could I have believed what God had in mind for me, all those lonely evenings and seemingly-stagnant days before? No. He never does anything the way we plan it. Not my original words, but they bear repeating: "If you want to hear God laugh, tell Him your plans." It makes me happy to hear Him laughing.

I think you can fry crickets....

Babe's quilt. (Babe was Ken's maternal Grandmother's name). It is gargantuan, like a patchwork field in a giant's neon-lit dream.
Seriously.
It was made, apparently, for either a king-sized bed or to cover field crops before the earth warmed up in the spring.
It is the ugliest combination of colors imaginable: neon green and pink, brown, orange, yellow, bright blue, and the odd patch of some other color. Zillions of tiny octagons, crafted with thousands of hours of hand-sewn quilting.....and all done in a fabric that has stood the test of decades: polyester knit. For those of you who do not remember that revered fabric, suffice it to say, it doesn't breathe or tear. I'm pretty certain it's still off-gassing and putting chemicals into our home. My husband is nearing 60 years of age, and his earliest memories of childhood include this quilt. Here it is, all these years later, in full, bright color, unscathed and unmoving, heavy as lead and probably as radiation-proof as that. Babe gave it to us when we got married, because it was his favorite quilt when he was a child.

It accidentally got left out in the rain a few years ago, for months, when we were building our last house. It was covering the whirlpool tub we were storing in the yard (because I bought it too early). When I salvaged the Quilt, it was covered in mud and looking quite sad. I was ashamed of myself for not paying attention, for disrespecting Babe that way. I took it to the laundromat and dutifully washed it in one of those monster machines. It came out completely clean and bright, like a newly-minted penny. Garish and unashamed, ready to face another century or two.

We have raised four children to adulthood and this has always been known as the Beach Quilt. For heaven's sake, who could actually put it on a bed, in these politically-correct, Martha-Stewart-infused times......though it did serve us well when our heating system died last winter. You could insulate a house with that thing.

The beach.

We always drag Babe's Quilt to the beach with us. It's some trouble hauling it out there, with all the other necessities. But it's also always worth it. When you unfold it in all its tacky glory, you have a huge area to throw your towels onto, easily seen for thousands of yards. Our kids never had trouble finding out where the family was stationed. This year's trip was especially memorable, as our three brand-new grandbaby girls shared it for the first time. Call it tacky, vintage-tacky, or just plain embarrassing, it's the only one of its kind.

This summer, we hit the jackpot. We got two trips to the beach. We have some dear friends who invited us to go to the beach with them, and they provided the condo. Not just any condo. A  million-dollar penthouse suite, up in the ozone where you can see the sky, the moon, the stars, the beach, the water....in ways you didn't know existed. I don't know if they know, still, how much that meant to us. Ma and Pa go to the beach! Ken and I have enjoyed various blessings in our life and we'll start bantering back and forth like two country bumpkins, seeing things for the first time (or maybe it's just seeing)...."Look Pa!" Opening God's box of delights is always an adventure.

I'm thinking about one of our days on the beach. I was out in the ocean, floating idly about, when I noticed a cricket floundering in the water. I have no idea why or how a cricket was swimming in the gulf of Mexico, but poor thing, he was going to drown for sure. So I slid my boogie board up under him so he could get a footing. He promptly sprung towards the shore. I did this a few more times until he could get onto land....then I went back to my floating duty. Eventually I flopped myself out onto dry land, onto Babe's Quilt. Twenty minutes or so go by as I'm sunning and drying out. I look down and notice the cricket, yes, the cricket....sitting on Babe's Quilt. There are hundreds of people around us on the beach, but that cricket found me. How could it not?! I told Ken and our friend, Kent, about how I had saved that cricket. They laughed and made jokes about it. I reached down and kind-of petted it. It sat there quietly for a few more moments. Suddenly, it popped up as only a cricket can, straight towards my face. It flew into my (typically) open mouth! Yelling and spitting, I got the thing out without killing it. As I calmed down, I realized it had either bitten or poked both my upper lip and the inside of my bottom lip. I spent the next few days nursing my poor lips and pondering life. What did this mean -- that a cricket tracked me down after I saved it and then tried, in his own little way, to kill me? There are so many deep and meaningful stories that follow us through life, so many things we can use to illustrate spiritual truths and drive home all the important stuff.

That's not what this was. 

Sometimes life is just weird and we are given things that make us laugh hysterically. And ponder the life of a cricket. Or a quilt.