When Grandee Alice died, her grandchildren were devastated by her loss.
Annie and Jack had walked the countryside with Grandee, where she led them along the landscape. Annie held Grandee’s hand, feeling her fingers brush along the sage bushes that littered the fields. Jack gasped after seeing a rainbow.
The sun was into the dusky night. They headed back to Grandee’s farmhouse where she brought slices of watermelon to the porch, juice soon running down faces. Grandee looked off to the farm. Resilience was part of her life, what she left behind was in Annie and Jack’s hands.
Gazing at them, she drank in the art of God’s creations.
These underlined words are Wed. Words from June 28. The complete list of words and other comments in Elephant's Child . Please head over there to see what other bloggers have written with this collection of unrelated words!
A tree in our old neighborhood. For 11 months of the year if was ugly, but at Christmas? It was stunning.
You might think that this post is a tad premature, but there is a reason: I want to celebrate Christ's birth, listen to music, decorate with every bulb and garland I can find, and remember every Christmas possible. Christmas cannot wait and neither can I.
Taken from our Chicago hotel room after my son's wedding
Waiting for Christmas is and has always been the most intense, insane experience of anticipation of all the year.
Standing in front of the tree and being mesmerized by the lights is the disco ball of the season. Then there was the dancing around the tree. Shaking the presents and guessing their contents is always be part of the game.The small train around the base wears itself out by the Big Day, only too happy to be packed away for next year’s new batteries and another chance to whistle.
(That was a few years ago, going into the sixth decade of life. Then my granddaughters informed me then that I have to move away from the tree.It was their time to do the dancing.)
Moving ahead some years and I would be found with the other delights: baking some, fixing meals, cuddling a baby, and moving furniture around to accommodate our grandsons BJ and Jim. (then almost 1 year old baby brother).
BJ 5th birthday, June 26, 2017
Jim at 6 months, June 22, 2017
I was waiting for Christmas, slightly removed from the tree’s perimeter to allow tween girls and a five year-old in pajamas to enter into the thrall of the tree.And now there will only be two girls in their teens. Sweet wonderful girls who are Irish dancers will be there.Christmas starts as a spark of joy, and then fills me all up.Christmas is here!Christ came into the world as a human, to experience the human pain and suffering.Christ was crucified, resurrected, and ascended into heaven.Christ dwells within me daily, reminding me that I am part of His family. This year I will think about those boys in their own home, dancing around their tree.
In a running park
This a repost of 2010. I liked it, and juggled some words about to post it again in 2017. Now, here in 2019, I post it again.
Why is this post going up in early November, you may ask. Christmas 2016 my husband's family went on a cruise because Mom Kane had died in February and none of us wanted to be home, without her. It wasn't Christmas for any of us, we acknowledged it then and now. Now, each year since 2016 we gather in one home or another and talk about times with Mom and Dad, and the joy they brought to Christmas. This year, 2019 my husband and I will dance up a storm around the tree with our teenage granddaughters, laughing about all the other dances of the past. WE will stop our dancing after a few minutes while they carry away the night.
Front: Robert, Mary, Mom and Dad; Back: Susan, Bill, and Don about 1967...oh, the hair-do's of the day...
Originally, the family had five children, who became five adults. Once a year a few of them would manage to meet together from the reaches of Pacific to Atlantic. Robert was the stalwart lynch pin who lived near the "folks", told the stories, and looked forward when the others returned. Then Robert died, at age 46. "Coming home" was now a different matter. The siblings felt the absence of this brother. There was one who never came home; never--well, seldom. Once in ten years, and then another time a few years later. That was Bill. When Bill died, there were only three left: Donald (the eldest and now only brother), Susan (the pushy middle child) and Mary (the youngest and most stubborn). Don was the one who helped Robert in his last days, since he lived only 90 miles away. He helped the folks in their grieving. He flew to Louisiana to bring Bill "home" to be buried. When our mother was dying, Don was there almost every day, holding her hand, taking care of her wishes. Don is now the lynch pin. This is what he recently wrote to me, and he has given me permission to publish it. God bless this man, my oldest brother, my friend.
Sis,
Had an emotional day
which started three weeks ago with (grandson) Aaron’s confirmation
service. If you saw my Facebook entry,
there is a picture of Aaron kneeling at an altar wearing a stole he made in the
course of class activities. His pastors
have their hands on him, and he is surrounded by his mom and dad. What a moment; they call on God to bless
Aaron in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Grandson Aaron
I worship with them
after my (ministerial) time at Loami Church.
I constantly hear from my friends of the contributions of Jeremy and his
family to the community of faith. One
senior citizen told me of a conversation with Aaron, which was closed with
Aaron saying, “I will pray for you”. Jeremy
plays his trumpet in the praise band.
During the sermon he sits with me.
This is no play-acting, but real discipleship is lived out in their
lives.
Three weeks ago I
wrenched my back at the lumbar 5 and 6.
This time was the worst pain I have ever felt. I got meds for pain and still went to
the hospital for relief.
I became
depressed. Every move hurt. Muscles spasms kept relief at bay.
I suffered through
our Loami Church breakfast, only to have a slight mishap on the way to the
platform. A church member helped and
moved a chair to the center of the platform from which I led the service. After my concluding blessing, a member
gathered everyone to the front and then “laid hands” on me, with voice
supplications for healing. What a
moment!
So I went straight
home, and with an hour to kill, I read your blogs.
Your description of
grief over our brother Bill, and the consolation offered by your granddaughter
really overwhelmed me. All I have experienced in the
last month was felt in that verbal visual of a child holding you until you feel
better.
We
wonder why we suffer, and theology gives me the answer. The difference between being a victim
or a victor is defined in the moments you and I have shared on this
page. Somewhere in the experience is an
awareness of LOVE,
ill-defined by language, theology, or any human description. But it is made sharp by faith: we have seen
the face of God.
I don’t know whether it is the novelty of the urinal (boys), or the number of stalls (girls). I do know that children love to wash their hands in the movie restroom.
The soap dispenser either gives out foam or some pink liquid. Either one has a novelty about it.
The faucet may even be automatic, which is delightful to me if not to the child.
Then there is the hand drying bit: paper or air? Doesn’t matter.
Or, at least, it didn’t matter until recently. Enter the new dryer on the movie block:
Xlerator
Excel Dryer
Feel the Power!
Those are the honest-to-God words on the machine. I am telling you the truth.
This dryer blew back the skin on my hand while it air-blasted the water. Imagine a little seven-year old girl with her five year-old sister placing their hands under that power blower. Then their faces. Then their hair….other body parts, clothing…
The fairy house was finally complete.It was a magnum opus when it came to projects-done-with-small-children.We started with grand plans; we had watched “TinkerBell and the Great Fairy Rescue”, and had a vision.Unfortunately, the visions of young granddaughters and their ‘just a little bit old’ grandmother were not the same.
I knew immediately, after the dog-poop complication (refer to “Clap! Clap your hands!”), whatever aspirations I had of a cute fairy-style villa were just not going to happen.The bits of paper on the floor confirmed that conclusion.The fairy house was put aside for about two weeks, while I recovered from a bad cold, and deeply held aversion to the memory of the dog do-do.When I put the house back on the kitchen table, it was with a determination that was akin to completing a black-ops mission.
The girls were excited, and they got those scissors going, while I scouted through the house for anything, anything at all, that would make this house have some glamor to it.I mean, aside from the Disney-cute box, all the work we had done looked for all the world like I had dotted the thing with glue and held it behind a wood chipper.I came back to the table with some empty toilet paper rolls, a few bright ribbons left over from Christmas, and assorted broken barrettes.
It all came together in a rush.The girls got distracted with a new educational game on the old Mac, Mommy came home, and I scooped up all the destruction on the floor.It was raining buckets, so we couldn’t take it outside.Mommy put the now-glamorized house back in its old resting spot until it was a drier day.
Well, today when I was with my girls, the house had been out in its fairy-enticing spot in a tube of the play structure for about a week.Cautiously, we tiptoed out to the fairy house, whispering & hushing all the way. We looked the fairy house over, looking for clues—any clues—that fairies had been visiting.Maybe they had slept in the bed?Maybe they used the coffee table?The girls searched my face for my grown-up assessment of the state of the house:occupied or unoccupied.
Liar, I am such a liar.God forgive me, please.But, looking at those earnest faces, how could I not say, “Well, I do believe that the fairies have been here!Yes, indeed.It looks like they have moved some things around…”The girls ran back into the house, whooping and hollering, “Grandpa!Grandpa!The fairies were there, in our house!...”
If any fairies had been around at that point, I am certain, without a shadow of a doubt, that they would spend tonight there on the bed made from some tissues and parts of a shoebox.
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