There we would be – however many of us there were at the time. All lined up, or as close to that as possible, in the moment before the boys got into some dirt, the moment before we were herded into the car – hopefully not late for church. It was the Easter photo op.
Weeks before the event the planning would begin. Mom always made a new dress for me and I still have memories of many of them, partly from seeing the pictures so many times but also I remember how I felt in them, what I thought of the fabric, who I was trying to look like. Little girls always got a hat. Who started the Easter bonnet thing is still a mystery to me but it was a habit that died hard. Easter was also one of the two times when one might expect to get new shoes to go with the new dress. And because the snow might be melting by Easter I sometimes got to wear the new shoes without boots over them. There were so many things about the holiday that spoke of spring freedom.
The real miracle of Easter was getting all my brothers cleaned up and dressed in their church clothes before something tragic happened to one of them. For simplicity’s sake they always had matching outfits in various sizes. Often one component or another would go missing – a sock, a belt, a shoe – adding to the craziness of the morning. I can remember family routines of getting things ready on Saturday nights (commonly referred to as bath night). Shoe polishing must have been one of my favorite things to do as I have a mental picture of small shoes lined up, last week’s newspaper underneath them to protect the floor. But it was mom who did most of the work. I think she was the one who took most of the pictures, just to prove she had done the job.
Our church family and the routine of the church calendar added much to my growing up years. It was a pretty safe place to be, and there weren’t expectations of perfection that left me disillusioned, jaded or burned out. We were just people and we seemed to know there was something about God that called for our attention. Sometimes we gave it fully and lots of times we didn’t. I don’t think God was surprised.
Let me say first of all that I am very understanding of people who take vacations and go someplace where they don’t know anyone. That is a very healthy thing (not that it’s my experience but I’ve heard it said…). I, however, am blessed with family, all of whom on occasion choose to give up some “alone time” to bond and connect with other family members. I am also blessed to live in Florida. Like, who wouldn’t want to come visit this?
Yes, I live here. It’s great.
Those of you who don’t get to have family vacations with other family members really need to see how it works. One of my brothers and his family decided to escape four months and several feet of snow and spend some time in my sunshine. The five of them arrived for the one week this year when there was fog and grey skies pretty much every day. This is a weather phenomenon that you can expect to happen.
I love my family and don’t want them to get sick on their vacation so I do clean my house (sort of). But I will say that if you don’t have time, just forget cleaning the floor, because after the group arrives you can’t find it anyway. Get people tired enough from their traveling and they will sleep anywhere, on the floor, on the couch, on weird mattresses. “Just find a place that looks good to you”, I tell them. And from that point on, don’t ask people how their night was and if they slept well. Don’t do it.
Refugee camp decor…Blankets, pillows, bags, shoes, stuff X 5 = no visible floor.
Maybe your family will need some down time after being in airports and cooped up in planes for a day, but maybe not. We went to the beach the first day. Nobody came here to sit in the house. The fog was thick but we found our way. The squirrels were plentiful, the waves were big, it was surprisingly warm and peaceful on the beach and we big people might have taken a short nap. There were a couple minutes of sunshine. I had a great time and learned that I can indeed carry two kayaks on my small car. Yay.
At least the white stuff isn’t snow.Only people from up north go swimming in 65 degree water.The moment of sunshine.
The second day of my brother’s family vacation was also his wife’s birthday. She did not mind at all that the activity planned for that day was a zip line/ropes course high above the ground. Wouldn’t you like to test your youthfulness and defy aging in such a challenging way? Of course you would. It was awesome (watching them from the ground and taking pictures). That evening, in spite of terrorist mall threats, we had a superb evening meal at the new University Town Center – to celebrate the birthday and the fact that we had no significant injuries from the day’s activity. A fun, fun night.
Gearing up for hanging from high places.High places. Yep.More “down to earth” activity – at dinner after an exciting day.
The third day of family vacation, my daughter and my sister-in-law ran away to the shopping outlet for some quality girl time. The rest of us “elite” shoppers went to the flea market. But on the way, just to make it an educational outing for the homeschooling teens, I took them to lunch at the local Hispanic grocery store/deli. I find that this is one of the most fascinating places to experience a different culture. I will say that most American kids are not used to seeing whole cooked fish, with eyes and scales. It is so exciting to order a meal and not know exactly what you’re going to get. Who knew that “Fajita Mix” was a plate of meat big enough to feed all five of us? At the flea market we had excellent success getting the things on my nephew’s list – a watch, sunglasses and an antique teapot. He is a guy with very eclectic interests. That night we sat out in the yard watching a bonfire and dodging the sparks and smoke. For some reason this is a favorite activity with my family and they ask for it all the time. Go figure.
Humongous plate of meat. We took it home for another whole meal.
Day four. Did I mention my nephew has eclectic interests? One of his goals for me (bless his heart) was that I should help him sew a cape that he could wear to the Renaissance Festival. Because he might actually have picked up some sewing skills it was classified as a school activity. So, that day’s drama had a lot to do with floor sweeping, black velvet, hooded clothing. We did however take a break and a ride to Apollo Beach to see the manatees gathered at the electric power plant. The water was full of the large, gentle creatures just trying to stay warm. There were so many of them that I couldn’t help but wonder what they were all finding to eat. It was like a big family reunion where no one planned any food. But maybe I was just projecting some of my own anxieties, yeah, that was probably it.
Me and my sister-in-law with our manatee friend, appropriately blue with cold.Brrr… poor manatees.
And finally, the last day of their visit with me was today. We invited some more family over for breakfast, waffles and strawberries, conversation and reminiscing. They packed up their things in their rental car and headed off to spend time with another brother several hours away. They will come back briefly to spend the night before flying back to the cold,snowy north.
I love my family. We plan together, work together, play together and want to stay together. Because we live in such scattered places, sometimes that “family vacation” is the way we do it.
The blogging world is full of posts about Christmas, lights, trees, presents, the good of it and the bad of it. None of that here. We spent the holiday with the lady horse doctor who was on call all weekend. The best decoration we saw was not red and green but was best described as ROYGBIV. It was a stormy drive up to Jacksonville and for the last hour we saw the most beautiful rainbow directly in front of us. It was the most vivid, bright rainbow I have ever seen and it just kept getting better and better. My pictures don’t do it justice but here it is…
the prettiest decoration we saw
Being on call for Dr. Julia means having to go everywhere with the vet truck and two cell phones just in case someone needs an emergency visit. She got through Christmas Eve and the next morning with no calls. Finally,during the one celebratory dinner that we were invited to, the answering service finally found out she was the designated doctor and the calls started coming. Off she went to help a suffering horse.
I say that she had to take the vet truck, but part of the challenge of the weekend was that her truck was in the shop getting wheel bearings replaced. She borrowed a truck from one of the other docs and it had to go back to him the next morning. So, for Friday morning’s calls she had to bear the indignity of driving around in “the Mary Kay car” as she calls it (no it’s not a pink Cadillac, It’s my gray Mazda with a small MK sticker in the back window…). And I got to come along. We put on a couple hundred miles driving up to the Jekyll Island area to check out a horse with a swollen eye. It was a sunny, warm day and the Georgia coast was stunning. I want to go back when I have time to stay. While I’m thinking about it, if anyone wants to help me start fund raising to get Dr. Julia a good truck that doesn’t break down every other week, let’s do it.
Sinus infections. Yes, horses get them and they have a lot of sinuses in those long heads. The next stop was to check out a horse with copious, foul smelling drainage coming out of it’s nose. Dr. Weldon and Dr. Julia got to put a camera up this horse’s nostril and rule out a tumor/lesion, after which Dr. J. punched a hole into the sinus and irrigated it. Not your average Christmas activity. Not smelling at all like pine boughs and cinnamon. It was gross.
See the little square over the sinus area where the hair has been shaved.numbing the areaworking the large bore needle into the sinus to drain and irrigatelooks brutal but it works (I’ve seen just about the same procedure done to humans)
This horse felt a lot better when she was done. Really.
The next day when her own truck was back, Dr. J graciously allowed the husband to ride with her on morning calls and he found it very interesting. His only complaint was there weren’t any stops for food and it was way past lunch by the time she brought him back. She still had to do one more barn call up in Georgia.
What a great weekend it was. I love spending time with my grown children, seeing what they do, what makes up their days. There is time to talk while we drive or fix meals together, or watch Master Chef episodes back to back. I love to help with the housecleaning and dishwashing, I don’t mind sleeping on the couch, letting the dog out or feeding the cats. It’s all good.
Sunday morning we threw our bags in the Mary Kay car and headed out into the fog toward home. Dr. J was standing at the door and there was a text on my phone, “I miss you already.” We waved and cried. And those are the things that I will remember about Christmas on call.
(Order Mary Kay from me in 2015 and help fund a vet truck for a struggling horse doctor … just sayin’.)
When you think about it, it’s a rare thing to step into someone else’s life and live there for a few days when they are not there. It’s a little surreal in fact. This week I am still me, but I am living as a “stand in” for my brother and his wife while they are gone on a well deserved anniversary trip. This morning after sleeping in their bed, with their dog, I got up and watched the sky get light from my sister-in-law’s favorite chair in her second story bedroom.
My brother’s house and the upstairs bay window that looks to the east – love it.
I walked over to my parents house for my first cup of coffee for the morning, and then back to have breakfast with my brother’s two children Claire and Evan. Today they are starting the week’s schoolwork which is scheduled in detail for them. They study at home and I’m warned there might be questions about algebra, geometry and writing.
My nephew and the dog studying together.
My brother and his wife have a genuine interest in their children and their children’s friends. They invite a small group of teens from their church over to their house every other week – yesterday was the day for that and my brother explained how he hated to cancel it just because they weren’t going to be home. So he didn’t. I am glad my brother isn’t afraid to freak me out, and I’m thankful God keeps me calm and trusting when I’m challenged.
Evan and I went shopping Saturday and got healthy snacks and he cleaned up the family room in preparation. What a responsible guy! After church on Sunday, Evan and I got into the van and I sat waiting for the rest of the kids to come out and join us, I didn’t realize they were already seated behind us until one of them asked me what i was waiting for. What a quiet, well-behaved group! (this really happened).
At the house they had a great time cutting up apples and making hot chocolate. They spent half an hour eating and talking with each other, half ah hour listening to me talk about my experiences with teens in Cambodia, and half ah hour playing a game while waiting for their parents to pick them up. They were respectful to me, kind and encouraging to each other and still looked like they were having a lot of fun. What a refreshing look at today’s youth!
Getting ready to play Dutch Blitzthe game gets crazy…
The family dog really misses my sister-in-law. He is a lap dog and it’s almost like having a baby in the house – one that wants to be held all the time. He is getting used to me though, as is the family cat. This morning they were both giving me “the stare” as I started doing things in the kitchen. The water bowl was empty and they seemed to know how to get someone to fill it. As i said, the dog sleeps quietly all night on the bed with me, and yesterday he took me for a walk too. What a sweet dog!
Scruffy, taking Aunt Shirley for a walkMore of what we saw on our walk, the dog and I.
It’s all good so far and I fully expect the rest of the week to go smoothly. I suppose it’s partly a case of extra good behavior to go easy on Aunt Shirley, and that’s okay, but mostly I think it’s a blessed life that I’ve stepped into and get a chance to live in, for a few days. What an interesting opportunity!
I love birch trees.I love autumn.I really love autumn!I love this silhouette of a martin house against the sky!I love water scenes.
Today I will think of all the spent hours of your life that translated into food for my body, clothing to cover me and as much security as you knew how to create. Today I will consider that you started out as a teenage man with little instruction in family life, except that you grew up in a family yourself. I will think about the times you changed your path and the uncertainty you must have felt as you searched for a better way to provide. I will think about why you would fall asleep in your chair at the end of all those long days – not from laziness or drunkenness or escapism, but because you were physically exhausted.
I will realize that as a human you probably experienced sadness, frustration, anger (oh yeah), despair and doubt and yet you never bothered us children with any of it. We had little knowledge of your struggles because you were a man and we were self absorbed children. You taught us how to work alongside of you, but you always worked harder and longer. And yet I can remember that you sang in the barn, and whistled and tried to yodel. You modeled that it was possible, and desirable to enjoy work. You gave me the idea that sometimes when trouble seems overwhelming the best thing to do is just go out and work at something. Sometimes the trouble loses interest and goes away unfulfilled. And at any rate, working is better than worrying.
As you’ve grown older with so many limitations ganging up on you, your persistence to do what you can inspires me (and scares me, but, hey… how can a nearly blind man on a rider mower cause any trouble?) I see you teaching lessons of humility (when Mom is right and you are wrong), lessons of love (when you rub Mom’s feet and wash the dishes), lessons of trust (when you put those unsolvable things in God’s hands). And you still whistle now and then and have Pandora playing on your cell phone, announcing your presence as you go. I honor you for all of that.
Today I will grieve that as a society we have almost lost the concept of honoring our fathers for anything. Temptations are everywhere, expectations are high, psychology focuses on faults and there is nothing that cannot be blamed on a father. I will remember how hard it is to be the head of anything, particularly a family. I will be thankful for you – that you have not run away, that you are my dad, my father.
flowers seem more exciting and glorious after 6 months of winter
hello tulips, glad to see you
I’ve been “up north” waiting to see spring come, hoping I had my timing right. I think it’s here. The children have lessening interest in their schoolwork, rain has made greenness appear everywhere and swollen the ponds and marshes. The woods are full of trilliums and fiddle head ferns. Mosquitoes follow us in clouds and dandelion seeds float in the air like snow. The garden is 80% planted and the reliable onions and radishes are already making their rows visible. Tulips and petunias are in place. And the lilacs have purple buds almost to the point of opening up – one of the things I wanted most to experience. The sun brightens up the horizon at 4:30 am and it’s still light at 9 pm, reminding me that the longest day of the year is less than a month away. It’s spring, but only for a little while.
fiddleheadstrilliums
There are no days to waste, no extra hours in the spring. Last night the weather cleared after an all day rain. My brother had bought seed corn and potatoes and was not willing to wait until today to plant – after all, he had to work at his “other business” during the day and there was no guarantee that it would not rain again. Best to get at it. He could hardly sit still through supper. We planted 12 rows of corn and put up the electric fence to keep the deer from eating the tomato and squash plants. I know it works because I tested it accidentally. The gardens have a good start this year, almost two weeks ahead of last year’s schedule. Hopes are high. It’s hard to realize that it still could freeze and one cold night could set everything back.
But today is beautiful and sunny, alive with birds (and mosquitoes) and plant life. Spring up north, how I have missed it and how wonderful it is. Just sayin’…
garden, with precautions for possible freezing weather (No, no, no!)
A friend of my daughter, a thirty something business associate, lost her mother last week. In an email to my daughter she said “go call your mother, now”, and that’s why I got a nice, long chat with my eldest girl. I couldn’t help but think how blessed I was, at 60 something, to have my mother and dad visiting me for the past month. I went and gave my mom a hug and a good chat as well.
And this morning in the dark I drove the parents to the airport and watched them depart to their flight. Departures. Whole lists of flights going to everywhere. I wanted to go with them because their carry-ons were really heavy and Dad’s shoulder isn’t good. I wanted to be there to help hold things, find things, zip the zippers, turn off the devices, settle them in. But sometimes departure means you don’t get to go. Then there’s that final glimpse as the tram doors close. I have that fleeting thought “what if something happens and I never see them again?”. No one else thinks morbid things like that, right?
Back at home I have to look at the places where they sat at the table, the closet where their clothes were hanging. I have to change the bedding and put the bedroom back the way it was before they came. The pain of missing them has it’s very vivid moments when I can’t avoid the fact that they’re gone. It’s a little like rehearsing for the last, big departure we’re all going to experience, not that rehearsing will make it any less sad, or easier – but maybe more familiar. It’s ok to be sad. I’m giving myself permission to miss them, for a while.
Fortunately, departures are only half of what’s on the board at the airport. We get to have arrivals too! If the snow ever melts up north, the husband and I are planning a car trip to Wisconsin to help Mom plant her garden. We’ll take Dad to Walmart to walk the aisles for exercise. We’ll help clean the attic, play us some Mexican Train, look through old letters and work on the memoirs, probably have a picnic and cook hotdogs in my brother’s yard. We’ll enjoy being a family! I am already looking forward to it with anticipation! Now that I think about it, I’m might be rehearsing something there too… Yep. Just sayin’.
Cambodia starts with C It’s not a country we hear very much about. Any time I had heard about it prior to my first visit three years ago was in conjunction with the Vietnam war – Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. I’m still not an expert but I know enough to have developed a love for […]
We were a fairly young family with two daughters, ages 8 and 5. This was our first big move, leaving friends, family and a comfortable home in the north for unknown circumstances in a state as far south as one could go. Almost everything was unfamiliar. All our belongings were packed into two trailers for the trip. My parents helped us move by towing one trailer and we pulled the other one behind our van. I remember the end of that long trip – I was driving in the early morning on the interstate and hit an armadillo. It was our introduction to Florida.
After our first day of resting in a motel, our Realtor helped us to a temporary furnished apartment near the famous Siesta Beach with it’s wide, white sand beaches. We found a storage facility and unloaded pretty nearly all our earthly possessions into two rented rooms to await the new house I was sure we would find within a short time. We weren’t wealthy but we were blessed with enough. Our “things” were dear to us, having either been received as wedding gifts or handed down as heirlooms from both sides of our families. We had only some clothing and personal items with us in the apartment.
A week and a few days later we went back to the storage facility to get something we needed. I walked down the second story corridor to the rooms at the end and tried to figure out why the door on one of our rooms was standing open. I looked in the empty room and tried to tell myself there had been a mistake. Was I somehow in the wrong building? the wrong corridor? What could this mean? I was in a state of repressed panic. I tried to remember all the things we had put in that room but it was impossible – there was too much. My grandmother’s china cupboard, our best (only) dishes and flatware, our few pieces of art, clothing, my precious knitting machine I had worked so hard to buy… where was it all?
As the next hour unfolded we learned the truth about what had happened that was stranger than anything I could have made up. It took a while to figure out because, at first, the owners of the storage facility were clueless and defensive. Gradually putting it all together, this is how it came about. Previous to our arrival, the now empty storage room had been rented to a customer who was delinquent in paying. The manager had put an overlock on the room and notified the person that they had X number of days to pay or the contents of their room would belong to the storage facility. Sometime before that deadline, the customer managed to get in the facility, remove the overlock and get all their belongings out without the manager knowing about it.
I entered the story. Having been sent up to inspect the building where I was told there were two empty rooms, I saw two rooms, adjacent to each other, empty with the doors standing open. They looked the right size and we paid for them and filled them up. I don’t remember even looking at the numbers on the doors. There were actually three empty rooms off that corridor, one that I didn’t know about. It’s door was closed and I didn’t even notice it. Unfortunately that was one of the two rooms the manager thought we had rented. The third room, now full of our things, was the one that had belonged to the deliquent customer. And now the deadline had come.
The customary action when the account for a storage room is delinquent is to offer the contents for auction, hoping to recover the delinquent payments (think Storage Wars on reality TV). Our belongings were bought, sight unseen, by a business that accumulated goods from estate sales and storage units and then held a weekly auction on a Friday night. We learned this on the Saturday after our things had been auctioned. We were allowed to go through their warehouse and look for anything we recognized that hadn’t been sold. We bought back the wooden highchair that had been mine as a child. We found our family picture albums in their trash. There was nothing else. We were devastated. Although they knew names and addresses of those they had sold to, they would not release any of that information to us.
We felt it was a shared mistake, and attempted to collect damages from the storage company. Because we had no receipts for the missing items and no appraisals of the furniture and antiques, we were told that legal precedent would be against us. We would be better off to accept a small settlement rather than take the matter to court and get nothing. Our lawyer felt so sorry for us he did not charge us for his services. That was the only overt blessing that I’ve ever been able to recognize concerning this event.
Did life go on? Yes, of course. But there are differences since then. I wish I could say that I learned never to make a quick decision, always to check every transaction thoroughly – but that hasn’t always been the case. What did change was that I hold loosely to “things”, in order that they might not get a grip on my heart. I’ve bought very little furniture, invested very little in things that might fit into a packing box, spent more time in Goodwill, second hand shops and garage sales for the things I do need. I’m not sure I understand why God allowed this to happen at a time when so many other difficult things were also taking place, but He did. I think I will understand it better some time in the future. And I’ve never given up hope that some day, in some backwoods antique shop, I might see Grandma’s china cupboard again. I’m just sayin’ it would be kind of like God to do that…
I Just Have to Say... 