Two old cars and a full size van are broken down in my driveway.Two of the cars belong to my oldest daughter.The first I convinced her to buy only to discover its electric system is a mess.The blinkers don’t work, so it isn’t safe to drive.Now, the battery is dead.The second, her Dad helped her buy from a friend of our oldest son, Rob.My husband knows how to replace the necessary part.But, he’s been stymied by the right front wheel.In order to replace the broken part, the wheel must be removed.The wheel can’t be removed because two of the five lugnuts are completely stripped.We’ve had a mechanic over, who couldn’t remove them and didn’t charge (thankfully) when he couldn’t.Friends of my son Danny have all taken a hand in trying to remove them.It became a strength contest.Strong, young men versus the car.Guess who has won so far?The next suggestion is to use a blow-torch to heat the nuts to make them come loose.My husband borrowed a small torch from a friend. Rob and his roommate, Jared, came to help.Unfortunately, the torch wouldn’t work.So, the car still sits in the drive.
As the car saga unfolded, the school year came to an end.I was discussing, somewhat manically, the car situation in my yard. In addition, the roof of the garage is rotten, and the backyard fence is sagging inwards in various places. Our old house continues to molder in various ways.We continue to fight the fight against termites, sagging floors and an electric box that needs replacement.However, my bedroom is redone and the bathroom was recently remodeled (after replacing a termite-infested floor).There is some hope.
I asked my co-worker why no end-of-year party was scheduled.No one had volunteered to host it, Debbie told me.“Well, we could have it at my house, but for the dead cars, broken fence, and house in need of repairs.”I laughed.“I’ll call it a ‘white trash’ party and we’ll be all set.”We both laughed.Pause.“Why not?”The motto of the party became, “It is what it is” which I painted on a piece of barn wood pulled off the wall of another room we are renovating.Nailed to the back fence, it looks quite inspiring.It was the final touch to our comfortable outdoor room furnished with various chairs picked up from the side of the road.It has a great fire pit, made from a Weber grill that lost its legs.When my husband had the inspiration to bury the grill and surround it with gravel, our outdoor gathering area was born.We added some “party lights” and were ready for company!
Turning fifty has brought home to me what matters most: people and relationships.Why worry about appearances?So, my house is old and needs a ton of work.So, half my yard is weeds, rather than grass.Since we bought our house, my husband and I have rarely entertained. I constantly put off having friends over, waiting for that elusive time when our house and yard are finished. Deciding to host the annual end-of-year staff party gave me a chance to shrug off the supposed barriers to entertaining and chose having fun with friends over worrying about our housing and car issues. As we grilled hotdogs over the fire pit and enjoyed a wine tasting (Boones Farm, of course) I relaxed and appreciated the chance to laugh at life’s difficulties.I may have to recognize that “It is what it is” but I’m not what I was.
“Do you mind waiting out here?” My husband glances towards the room where his friend is hooked up to half a dozen machines, brain dead according to his wife. She had her daughter call to ask his friends to come and say good-bye.
I wait in the hall of this bright intensive care unit, large oval command center surrounded by rooms with glass doors. Some closed off with curtains but most exposing the occupant to any passing stranger. I try not to peer into those spaces, keep my eyes averted from bleak possibilities that I’m not ready to consider.
My birthday is this week – 50, half a century, old to the young and young to the old. Harold is 67. He was born only five years before my husband. Sixties contemporaries. My husband returns. “Let’s get out of here.”
Apparently none of the family is in the hospital. Mike says he is ready to go. Visibly shaken, we quickly head downstairs and out to our car. As we begin to pull from the parking lot, a white car pulls in. It’s Pam, Harold’s wife, and his daughter. My husband opens the window and lets them know we will come back.
After parking, we go back into the hospital. We head upstairs, to Harold’s room. Pam isn’t there. We go back to the family waiting room, and there she is, looking tired and pale. We give her quick hugs.
Mike asks, “How are you doing?” “Okay, I guess.” I listen to them exchange surface pleasantries, a mask for the pain of the occasion. I drift. Suddenly, Pam’s words catch my attention.
“You didn’t know the real Harold. After his first heart attack, he wasn’t the same. He wouldn’t do what the Doctor told him. They wanted him to rest and recover for surgery to unblock his arteries, but he wouldn’t. Just the other day he was mowing the lawn. The goddamn machine they made him wear kept going off. I’d hear it beeping and beeping. He just kept on mowing. He sure was a stubborn man.”
A pause. “He beat me, too. Couple days ago, he was standing at the foot of my bed. I’d just got back from the doctor – I was sick. He started screaming at me. He’d a hit me, like he used to, if my daughter hadn’t stopped him. That’s the real Harold.”
Mike looked shaken. He hadn’t expected Pam to express her pain in a matter-of-fact voice, devoid of almost all emotion. I’d detected a shade of relief, and maybe remorse. What stood out was the phrase, “like he used to.” She continued to tell us how Harold abused her. Mike didn’t know what to do or how to respond.
“I thought all men were like that, cause of my father. That was Harold. That was Harold.”Pam wiped the tears from her eyes and was silent.
When we turned the car around, to offer our understanding and support to the grieving wife of my husband’s friend, the shape of that grief was not yet revealed. Soon after these unsought revelations, we left. All the wires and tubes were removed a week later. No funeral was planned. Harold didn’t want one, Pam had explained. And anyway, there isn’t any money. So, no celebration of a life would be made.
Mike was unnerved by knowledge he didn’t need and didn’t want about Harold. His memories of a man who freely offered his help and smiled easily were torn in two by Pam’s revelations. Mike was forced to view a different face of his friend Harold, a face he’d always keep hidden away. But, was that the “real” Harold? We all have faces we keep hidden away from the world. Certainly, Pam had suffered in her marriage. And there is no excuse for physical abuse.
But, that wasn’t all Harold was - he was a good friend. The words of his wife didn’t change the friendship he’d always freely given to many people, including my husband. His life cannot be reduced to one simple statement. He was a complex individual - he was human. The smiles and the anger, the love and the insecurities, and much, much more: that was Harold.
“My God,” my friend exclaimed. “It was just a valve! If my husband didn’t fix that right away, I’d throw him out!”
“Well,” I responded, “I’ve learned to let that stuff go. Over 20 years of marriage, and some things just don’t seem as important.
“Bull. Quit rationalizing. That’s a load of crap.” She took a sip of her tea, and glared in my direction. So much hostility over my husband’s lack of knowledge regarding hot water heaters! He did get it fixed – it just took a summer of cold showers to find a way.
Judy’s succinct reply called to mind the multitude of unfinished projects around my home. I have a beautiful, newly decorated bedroom. We’d moved our room from the second floor of our old home to accommodate my husband’s arthritis, so Mike took extra care to understand and bring my desire for a restful place to life. When our roof leaked, the walls were damaged and new wallboard had to be placed, along with a new ceiling. He rented a machine to blow insulation into the attic space. Of course, it jammed and he had to call for help from the rental place. My husband painted the walls a soft green, not exactly what I pictured, but after mixing a couple leftover paints, he achieved walls that call to mind an early spring morning. I splurged on cream-colored accordion shades. Light, blessed light. Our old room, while much bigger, was dark, and cluttered with papers and books I’d allowed to accumulate over the seven plus years we’d inhabited the space. Finally, all was done. The result is a quiet haven filled with my Danish memorabilia – figurines and miniature reproductions of Olaf Host paintings.
Today, Mike put up the towel rack I chose for our latest project, the bathroom, which is almost finished. Though, I confess, there is still a missing baseboard in my bedroom. I love my new bathroom, and adore the peaceful air of our bedroom. Perhaps the small unfinished tasks should be left as is. Finishing a project seems almost sacrilegious. To finish is to stake a claim on perfection, a state far from my own, or my husband’s. Leaving small tasks to complete is a way of acknowledging our own humanity.
Perhaps I am rationalizing again, as my friend Judy states. I like to believe what I am actually doing is choosing to put my relationship with my husband before my relationship with my house. After all, my house returns all favors by breaking down in some other fashion. My husband faces the inevitable deterioration of our old house with grim determination, convinced his love for me and our family will enable him to conquer all. Regardless, I savor the two rooms that are (almost) done as testimonies of his faith in our future as he invests his sweat to maintain our home.
It’s true, what they say, that a daughter brings joy to a mother’s heart.While absent, she stores up every moment like precious jewels: glittering diamonds, glowing emeralds, and burning rubies.
When she returns, she pours them out, heaping them up in my lap, polished brilliant by her smile.Every one of them must be picked up, admired, held to the light so I might see the truth glowing in the heart of each precious moment of time.
The absurd, the enchanted, the hilarious and the moments of discovery are burnished bright before being added one by one to the necklace of time we spent apart.Its beauty she places around my neck, a gift of life she has returned home to share.
Hegemony: the dominion over others, particularly nations over other nations.
Peaceful Melody
Hands out, eyes smile,
invite to begin;
forget life’s uncertainties
find rest within.
Lift the brokenhearted
into trust again,
cherish needy others
without trumpeting sin.
Unified in hope,
united as kin;
speak peace into truth
love resides within.
Phil 2: 5-8 (NIV)
Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross!
Note: written on the occassion of Peace Lutheran’s 40th Anniversary.
No, not nostalgia.The end of May I turned 50 – Fifty!This is an amazing milestone.
Since I’m a teacher, I couldn’t have a real party yet, as school is incredibly busy at the end of May/Early June.Now that we are on summer break, I’ve got multiple plans to celebrate, not once, but all summer.That’s right.Fifty deserves more than a cake and candles! I have got plans to go and do and see.Lots of life still to experience and write about….more blogs to come!
After re-reading my last post, I realize what seemed so foreign about it.Humidity!Written last summer (when we had a real summer), it was actually hot in June. Where has all the summer heat gone?Does global warming warm the oceans but cool the earth?Not being of scientific bent, I’m curious.But, not curious enough to do research, so I guess I’ll just remain mystified.And cold.Much, much too cold! I’m sure, if the humidity ever shows up I’ll be complaining, but maybe with less force than in the past. Maybe…;)
The air breathes a promise of relief from the pressing humidity.I try to concentrate as my husband enthusiastically shares the schedule he and my younger children have created for the first month of summer break.My older son, Danny, comes out asking me to spread aloe vera on his sunburnt shoulders.The thunder continues to rumble.A few drops splatter, then stop.My oldest daughter, Katie, comes out, stares into the rain, and disappears indoors again.Zachary, my youngest, climbs onto my lap.He hugs me, slides off and vanishes inside, returning with a book to read.Sliding in beside me, he lays his legs across my lap.
The rain settles into a gentle beat, wetting the flowers my husband planted yesterday.The phone rings.I wonder if it is my oldest, who moved out, leaving the bustle of our home to shift and cover over the hole that remains.Not him.Salesman, of course.
Cars slither by.I hear the vacuum running indoors.The people in the cars have lives I’ll never know.I wonder if they notice the woman and young boy sitting together on a porch, refreshed by the breezy pleasure of soft summer rain.
Our old Weber grill is half-buried in our backyard, our version of the fancy outdoor fireplaces that have become so popular. It serves as a great fire pit, surrounded by abandoned furniture rescued from the roadside, refinished and refitted, put to new use in our backyard “living room.” I treasure the moment, bathed in flickering light, wrapped in the shadows, while we sit and ponder. I smile at our neighbors, sitting with us in this makeshift room, sharing a glass of Zinfandel and a moment of peace. The early spring twilight is lightly chilled, like good wine, as we linger, unwilling to break the spell cast by the fire’s glow.
The thin places, where eternity touches today, remind us to care. I recall a ten-mile wilderness hike taken during a childhood vacation. We walked besides a chattering brook, through quiet, birdsong filled woods. We trekked past the woods into tall grasses, hot sunlight at first welcome, then wearing, as we neared our destination. Away from the sound of water, long before the advent of water bottles in stores, we fought off our thirst as we plodded on through the early summer heat.
A sharp turn, through a thin barrier of woods, and we reached HiddenLake. A hard winter had created an amazing view, created due to extreme spring runoff from the glacier that feeds the lake. A multitude of waterfalls roared over the mountains surrounding the water pooled at our feet. Awed, I gazed in wonder at the majestic sight. The enormity of the mountains, the tranquility of the lake brought home the nearness of eternity. My family and I walked out on the logs damming the end of the lake closest to our path. I stooped and cupped the water, taking a long drink of the cold, mountain water. Refreshed, we lingered, unwilling to return to the path and leave this picture of eternity behind.
Now, the experience a faded memory, I cherish the moments when eternity breaks through my consciousness and reminds me of what really counts. Staring at the coals, I memorize the messages hidden in their heart, as they burn down to embers, still glowing, still holding the heat of life within. Eternity presses through their heart, reaches out and prods me to remember what matters. People. Keep investing in the lives of others. Love with a whole heart. Live in peace. Keep learning and growing. Build hope.