Maybe They Really Were Radical...

My Mama just turned 80 years old and I'm not far behind her. She had me when she was still a teenager. She never had a childhood, until my Daddy gave her one. He bought her every doll, every trinket, car or flower he imagined she wanted. She spoiled him too...I think she was still combing his hair up until the day he died. All my life, she said she'd probably never make it past 60, since most of her people didn't live long. But she's still here -- sleeps like a boss, with skin all soft and dewy (that's odd, too, because she had terrible acne for the first half of her life). I don't think she was birthed in the normal way -- she came here fully grown, all ready to be an adult. She was an athlete, though nobody knew it except us. Daddy would be playing basketball in the driveway with us, when Mama would come marching by (she marches; I've never seen her sashay) on her way to the mailbox. We'd throw her the ball. With no delicacy or finesse, she'd fling the ball into the hoop every time, like a rocket. On her way to pick errant weeds that dared to poke their head up in our grass, we'd yell for her to take a turn at bat. Daddy would lob the ball and she'd smack it out of the yard. You could throw her any sphere and she would catch it. There was no playing, just quick hints at the coordination underneath. She had other fish to fry, literal fish, and was very happy to leave the playing to Daddy and us kids. 

When the five of us would be in the car, going somewhere, often we would start singing. Mama was probably the best voice, but she would leave it to the other four of us while she stayed quiet. Daddy was tone-deaf, but would sing to the top of his lungs. I wondered for many years why she didn't join in. She was in the church choir, for heaven's sake. I asked her why she didn't sing when we did. She said, many times, "I just like to hear you all do it." 

As I got older, I began to see the gift that she gave us. She never knew the sweetness of a Daddy who played with her, or sang with her, or threw a ball to her. Hers was a cold man, who married, made four daughters and then sat down, old before his time. He wasn't a bad person, just absent. When her and my Pa married, she wanted a different life. She herded us towards Daddy, made a secure and ordered home, and was happy to watch her progeny thrive with the opposite chemistry of she and him. She was the wind under his wings. Not that she's ever suppressed anything about her opinions, no indeed. She's strong-willed, sassy and assertive. It's a God mystery, for sure. They fussed and talked and made up, but I saw her respect and love him and I saw him love and respect her. 

Sunday night's sermon was from the current intern at our church, a young man who looks like he could be my grandson (I'm kidding -- I'm only 39 and I was still playing hopscotch when I was 14, so he couldn't be my grandson), with few rings around his trunk.  The theme running through his homily was that of quiet faithfulness. As young folks, we thought we were going to be radical, we were going to change the world. In God's economy, however, it seems to usually be that constant, resolute, true daily walk that bears fruit. The tortoise really does win the race, though I chafe at the thought. My hare-ness might just be the death of me. As I think of my folks and the things they did so well (even though they were both sinners with cracks a-plenty), I honor them and especially my Mama this day, for that golden thread that ran through the pieces of their life. They were rarely quiet, but their faithfulness was soft, simple, peaceful...a refuge for us children. Two people, flawed and bumbling, who learned to depend on Christ. Now a swath of  humanity follows them, an eternal legacy built on things that last, rather than things that don't. They actually have changed the world. Grace, grace...  

Love Song

It's a sweet thing, our anniversary. It comes in the middle of a Georgia winter, right in between Christmas and Easter. I just have to say it: I hate winter. Mama said that Daddy hated it too, though I never really knew that until today. It's too late to ask him about it, but we shared two hates: chicken and winter. Yes, I despise chicken, though I choke it down when I have to. Beef is the real deal. There's a diet that talks about blood types and all that, and they say that my blood calls out for beef (and bison). I'm an O positive. Praise the Lord and pass the burger, minus the bun.

Even though it was our fourtieth anniversary and that means a "Ruby" year (oh I love rubies!), we opted for the Carroll Symphony and a local hotel, more like a staycation. We dashed about, after Ken got home from work, threw some things in a bag and checked into our hotel. We lounged around and ate some $20 snacks, when suddenly it was time to go. I told that man we were gonna be late, but he don't listen. Ken qualifies for NASCAR getting anywhere, but when it comes time to park, he meanders around the lot until he finds the choicest spot, usually far from any entrance we're planning on entering. Then it takes several turns and precise maneuvers until he can back the car into that oh-so-special place. I slink down into my seat in embarrassment while people wait for our back-in. To add insult to injury, he has to completely clean out any trash, arrange all his paraphernalia just-so before he will exit the vehicle. On this night, steam was coming out of my ears. As soon as he put the car into park, I was out the door and stomping across the lawn to the venue. I done tole ya and tole ya we were gonna be late and now we were. We rushed in the door and sat down, too close to the front. No music was playing yet and he said something about that, but I wanted to be mad for awhile. 

Finally the music starts and I am in awe of the amazing musicians, the lush sounds, the acoustics in the building. I stop and think about this man beside me, who dressed up and brought me to hear the symphony. A man who'd rather be pretty much anywhere else. He didn't complain, heck, he even gave me running commentary on the finer points of the music and the people playing. Then he indulged me afterwards when we went to the restaurant, being okay with eating with some of my music nerd friends. He prefers a booth, with just me and him, but apparently he loves me and I wonder how. 

Fourty years of marriage is a long, high mountain. You'd think it would get easier, more like a slide than a hike. But it doesn't. There's the flush of first love, then the honeymoon, then the years of struggles with children, work, fixing up houses, decades of casseroles and messes to clean up. You blink and the kids just disappear somehow, only to start reproducing exponentially, the thing that we drilled into their brains from birth. Don't be havin' no kids without brainwashing them into bringing you some grandkids later. But then comes the space, the quiet, the reinvention. If there are things you didn't deal with early in the marriage, they have buried themselves and then spring up later, like dandelion seeds. Maybe that's why so many people divorce late...stuff was hibernating in between all the bullet points and comes back later to bite you. Ken and I talked about our wedding, how every single married couple on that stage that day, except for he and I, are now divorced. Yes, the pastor, the associate pastor, the organist, the singers, all of them now kaput. That makes me shake in my boots a little bit, maybe a lot. Dear Lord, help us see what we need to see.  

We had the best of weekends, though it started out rough. The next morning we found ourselves in Jerry's Country Kitchen, at the bar, watching the well-oiled machine. I had a bird's eye view of the biscuit maker in the back. I showed her my praise hands, hands that have laid a lot of food on our table but never really learned to do the miracles she was making. I was struck with all the people working there, working so hard they didn't have time to sit down or hardly talk....but they were happy, cheerful and thankful for their customers. It was a beautiful morning, and a long, sweet weekend with more food (we spent more on a steak dinner than I've spent on a week of groceries); we sat by the Chattahoochee River in the twilight, held hands, saw a movie and ate at Cracker Barrel. I took a nap or two and still squeezed in a real estate deal. 

Love isn't always moonlight and roses, in fact it rarely is. There's a lot of thorns and rain to get those flowers. The true parts of love aren't ethereal things that possess and sweep us away, though I've been swept away many times over these fourty years. It's more like the ocean tide, where the ebb and flow of it, the seasons of warm, then cold, then seaweed, then glorious sunsets...all of it part and parcel of the whole. Love is an abiding place, a choice. It's much more complicated than that, and the truth is that only God's grace has gotten us this far. And I got lucky to have a steady, true-hearted man. Here's to fourty more.   

Main Squeeze

Tonight, as I was balancing on the thin blade of a real estate knife (oh the drama), I began to get texts about my Mama. My sister had taken her to the urgent care with many strange symptoms, scary things. Crazy technology enables us to type one struggle while we're talking another, while the dog keeps putting her cold nose on my hand, reminding me of her important matters. I step outside with her, the cold night air filling my petered-out lungs. Amazing how you forget to breathe, when the crush of life looms close. I glance at the crystalline sky, its diamond-crusted stars ignorant of the six short decades I've been making dents in the dirt. Before you know it, I will be soil myself and all my little crises will be obliterated like so much fairy dust. 

One of my granddaughters had asked me, several days ago, if I would take her to her piano lesson today. Her Mama said it seemed too much to ask, just for a 30-minute lesson where we wouldn't even be together for long. But it's not the event. It's the ride. I don't think I said ten words in that first part of the day...there wasn't room for that, when an 8-year-old's windows are open. I had that 30-minute slot, when the lesson was taking place, to race up the road to a hill where I could get cell service. I had four important calls to make before I had to get back. Thirty emotional minutes later, I gunned it back to collect the girl. During that mad dash, I cried out to God "I can't do this! Please give me time to look in this girl's eyes and be able to actually be here today." Everybody and his brother were pulling on me with the tyranny of the urgent. The accursed phone lost service, praise God. We meandered to the library, then to the produce stand, then back to her home. Her siblings were jumping about, the four-year-old set of twins and the new baby. His downy eyelashes curled over rich blue eyes, alert and smiling. His Mama handed him to me, all bundled in somebody's fleecy coat. She put his quirky hat on. He stared at me for what seemed like ages and then his sweet eyelids fluttered shut. I kept thinking about what I needed to be doing, then I realized I was doing what I needed to be doing. Warm, sugar baby love, talking with my daughter-in-love, watching the dance of a mini ballerina and the whirling dervish of a mini man. The phone can wait. Babies can't. 

Mama is at the hospital tonight, late, my two siblings and I texting back and forth. Melanie took her there, ever faithful. Jerry picked up her dog and her meds, ever watchful. I sat crying alone in my kitchen. I laughingly say that the Lord left my Mama with a trinity of people, after Daddy died...Jerry's her spiritual overseer, as her pastor and son, so that's kinda like the Father part. Melanie's quick to take care of her physical needs, so that's kind of like the Jesus (Son) part. I'm the one who talks to her all the time, so that's kind of like the Holy Spirit (comforter) part. Except we're all flawed and sinful and all that, so I'm hoping I'm not being disrespectful. When the night waned and it was time to go to bed, the love texts started flying. We're siblings. We occasionally disagree or grumble or even fight. But in those squeezed moments of clarity, you wonder will she make it, when the murky parts of life fall away. When you regret the mean things you've thought or said, when petty differences suddenly seem silly...what comes out is that we love each other, in that dark night. I pray that morning finds Mama okay, that the sun shines again, that I learn to let go and let God (well, as if I had that much power. Let God, really?!) Life is short. Squeeze all the goody out of it. 

Stumbling About In the Real World

 It seems to be inherently the human condition...that we run after idols and forget God. Idols like: money, boyfriends/girlfriends, prestige, the pull of a successful career, the adulation of people (thank you Facebook, for all those easy likes), and maybe a million other things that distract us. Our baser natures...the simplest of our natural, listing sins can become cruel masters of our destiny, starting with that easiest of flaws: laziness. It just feels so good to not do what we ought, to take the path of least resistance. Why get up and off my duff, to walk around the block, when I can just sit peacefully and relax these aching bones? All this stuff rusts if you don't move it around, but I like to attribute it to age rather than slothfulness.

And another thing, about forgetting God...you would think that after all this time, I'd remember how He works, and not neglect to be grateful for His crazy last-ditch rescues. He did that for me this very week. I wasn't paying attention to my bank account, as I am wont to do (if I'm honest). The second half of 2021 was a gargantuan distraction where I was ill with a newly-acquired autoimmune disease. I kinda forgot to keep working, since I was slightly preoccupied with trying to peel myself out of bed every morning and finding new ways to put my clothes on. We were bleeding money, attempting to find a cure, paying medical bills and trying every pill, supplement and voodoo doctor known to modern (and ancient) man. Somewhere in there, our savings got drained and my normal real estate pipeline dried up. I guess folks get nervous about hiring you to find them a house, when you're on the prayer list every week at church.

I might be the Queen of Freak-Outs and Ken happens to be the King of Calm. I can never seem to convey to him that there are perfect times to panic. I imagine I've worn him out with my dramatic life. Why would he need to react, when I'm doing enough for the both of us? This past week, what could have been construed as a really big train coming through town might have also been our latest meltdown. Yes, we still do that, even with fourty years under our belts. After our "discussion" was over, declarations were made, a peace treaty was hammered out and we snuggled up and went to sleep. There's no slumber like that in the whole world. We decided we'd eat beans and rice, order water wherever we went, and pray like mad. It's like I've been floating in the ether on my own merits and money, as if He wasn't our provider after all. We've been poor, not poor, then somewhere in the middle, and literally never missed a meal. What was I thinking?

After the peace treaty, well, I lay my head on the railroad track, waiting on the Double E. But the train don't run by here no more. Poor, poor pitiful me (apologies to Linda Ronstadt). Nobody showed up for my pity party and things just got worse. It was too cold, my bones were aching and God was not listening. I couldn't have gotten any bluer. Then we just up and went to church, Sunday School in fact. The class was about hymnology, which honestly seemed about as dry as old, musty pages in the back of some library. I showed up, with my bum shoulder throbbing like I'd had a beating. God likes to surprise me, I've found. He doesn't come in with the thunder or the lightning, or even with the whirlwind, but with the tiniest of whispers. It comes in after the storm, when you're spent and laid out on the floor. The army's done marched through and you've done given up. I really love that about God. He does what He wants, when He wants. He's not tied up with my timetable or my agenda. The longer I know Him, the less I know. I used to think I was pretty good. Now I laugh, because I understand that my sanctification isn't emanating from my pitiful "goodness" but from His blood-bought redemption. Where I'm seemingly going backwards, He's got it handled. Mysteries of the universe, for sure. 

Back to Sunday School...I was struck by the words of the hymn we were studying. It's hard to explain it except to say that it was describing how God pursues His people in love. He's not a safe God, though we make up all kinds of gods in our own image that have nothing to do with the truth. So I kind-of had an epiphany moment, where I suddenly just trusted Him with our troubles. I started crying and Ken (perfect Southern gentleman that he is) handed me his handkerchief with puzzlement over why I was carrying on in Sunday School like that. I reached into my purse, saw a strange piece of paper floating in the netherworld that is my handbag. When I unfolded it, there was a large check from long ago that I had not remembered to deposit, a significant oversight that God knew was there the whole time.

I might need to get saved. 

Winter Doldrums

There's a reason they put Valentine's Day in between Christmas and Spring. Besides a ripe opportunity to get people to spend guilt money on love relationships and such, it had to be so we wouldn't lose our minds in the frozen tundra of winter. My Yankee friends laugh, but it feels colder here than in Alaska (so says my Alaskan neighbor Jackie) because of the high humidity. I think, too, our wild temperature swings keep us from ever really acclimating to winter. We keep getting whiffs of balmy weather and getting our hopes up. February 2 is looming and I'm really hoping for a short winter. Ken and I desperately need to prune the old fig tree in the yard. I did it a few years back and thought I'd done killed the thing, but it came back and tried to take over the house. It might need a little humility and now's the time, if I can just muster up some winter courage. It's unbelievable how much you can whine, in this day of every sort of convenience. 

Ken and I have our fourtieth wedding anniversary coming up in a few weeks (we had a major winter distraction all those years ago) and decided to do a little staycation rather than a big trip. We're staying in dear ole Carrollton and going to the Carroll Symphony's rendition of Beethoven's 5th and other pieces. I'm old enough that that seems more exciting than Disneyland. That weekend, we also have reservations for Ray's on the River for the first time ever, if we can keep our eyes open that long. We really do need to get out more. 

Our family crawled through the big C-monster these last few weeks. Thank God, it was not dire for us, though I did manage to get pneumonia with it. One thing's for certain: those steroids make your joints feel like a million bucks. Too bad there's all those side effects, but isn't that the way of any medication? I'm really sounding like an old lady and I must resist. My Daddy insisted he was 39 up until the day he died, and that worked pretty well for him. Bears and snakes and other critters hibernate. They fatten up in the fall and then sleep it off until spring. I think that's a good strategy and probably explains why we don't feel like doing much after Christmas. I'm gonna look for a patch of sunshine this afternoon and try to soak up what I can. I just gotta say it -- that groundhog fella better not disappoint this year...   

Claustrophobia in the Heights

There are moments in life, when suddenly you realize you have made a bad mistake. Or maybe a lot of them. Perhaps those thoughts hit many folks right before they expire, when a train runs them down because they had on headphones and didn't hear...or the two-story deck gives way (after years of the wife nagging about the shakiness of it). Not to be morbid or anything. I found myself in a pickle last week: two stories up on a balcony, freezing cold, locked out of a vacant building. I was with a prospective realtor and we were checking out our company's cool new digs, all the way out to the fun party deck, when the door slammed shut behind us and summarily left us locked out in the weather. She looked at me, I looked at her and we started hollering "Oh no!!!!!" It was surreal, how my mind began to backtrack our steps up there. I had left my phone and purse downstairs (don't I know better than that? I'm a Realtor, for heavens' sake. Our phones are glued to our bodies. Normally). My prospect lifted her phone out of her pocket, about to die any minute. But of course. I rattled off our company phone number as she dashed about, calling the broker, to  no avail. She looked up the insurance agent who shared an office, with no luck. She called her husband, too far away. We began to shiver, brainstorming a way out of the cold. I climbed over the railing to the flat roof next door, inched my way to the exterior windows but bless Pat they were locked. This was a perfect time to panic. Yes, we were in the middle of town (two stories up and all the other buildings were one-story and down-yonder). Yes, surely someone would call back (but would the phone still have a charge?) Yes, we might freeze to death out there. My mind pondered our modern state, where we live and move from one conditioned building to another, unless you're into those gyms where they roll tires around the pavement under ungodly conditions: heat, cold, dead of night. I look with amazement on those people as I turn on the seat warmers in my SUV. I'm pitifully ill-equipped for the Apocalypse. 

Time seemed to stand still as we gaped at each other and then the tops of the buildings around us. I couldn't believe this was happening. My partner-in-crime began to talk about shimmying down the gutter. Bad ideas are born of desperation. Just as we were about to start shouting at the tops of our lungs, to passersby (though we had seen none) her phone rang. The broker said "there's a key beside the door." We hunted, felt all around it, looked high and low, to no avail. "There's a nail with a key on it." With her phone literally powering down at any second, I saw a tiny rusty key hanging, nailed to the side of a step tread. With trembling hands, for surely I would drop the thing, I tried the lock. Shouts of hallelujah went up as we bundled ourselves back into the building. I can't remember feeling so free. 

The doors that we lock behind us...sometimes we bar them to escape danger; often because we are weary; then occasionally because we are presuming the door will let us back in. There's lots of life lessons about doors, but the best ones for me, today, are about the open ones.  

That's The Good Stuff

A great pain in my right leg woke me up tonight. They say if you don't use it, you lose it. Apparently I haven't used my legs, because I tried to yesterday and now I'm limping like an old gimp. Ken and I worked on our neighbor's yard, to get it ready for sale. This was after I had vacuumed and cleaned inside all day. I haven't been to the gym in months but decided to double up, all in a 24-hour period. Silly girl.

I was about eight or nine years old when my Daddy started teaching me to work with him on the lawn. I didn't learn to cook until after I got married, but I could cut down a tree. I sensed that Ken wasn't planning on cooking or cleaning inside, but was a whiz at yardwork. So I put down my hedge trimmers and broke out the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. I received it as a shower gift, some 40 years ago, and it's still the best reference for simple meals I've ever found. Mine is greasy and falling apart, but there's not a week that goes by that I don't use it. I didn't know how to boil water, so those directions for mashing potatoes came in real handy. We seem to eat out more than we eat in these days (thank you, Trading Post, Cowboys and that wonderful Waffle House by the Villa Rica Walmart). We raised four jumbo-sized chillun to adulthood, by hook or by crook and with the help of those big, flat carts at Sam's Club. I look back and wonder what planet we were on and how we got here. Time just flies like the wind, and you can't grasp it as it slips through your fingers. 

We had our annual trek to the Varsity on New Year's Day. Except for a couple of years, for the last 29 years our family meets up there for greasy burgers and onion rings. Yummmmeee! I've been behaving for nigh on two years, so I ate my healthy meal before I got there and didn't even feel sorry for myself. Well, maybe a little, when they brought out the fried peach pies. I want to know what the phenomenon is called, when there's a gathering and those last few minutes are usually the ones that mean the most. As we walked out to our cars, hugging this and that grandchild and saying our goodbyes, the sweetest things were said. It's like squeezing just that last little bit of juice out of the orange... the goody part. We all know that life is short, that we shouldn't take our loved ones for granted. In those last parting moments, there's always a bit of that knowing, even if we see each other often...that we need to hold each other a little tighter, and say the love things that we feel. Go ahead and do it. We aren't promised tomorrow. Today's the day.