About a year after my dad had his stroke, my mom called my sisters saying that she was ready to move. They had been driving two to three hours back and forth every weekend to help Mom, and the strain was getting to all of them. They found an apartment for my parents, and so the great sorting party began.
This house was my parents’ second in a forty-six-year marriage, and they had been there for thirty years. My sisters had started the sort before I and my children arrived. There were a variety of items sitting along the side of the house ready to be put into a dumpster. Their one-car garage was filled with stuff good enough to donate, and their house was still full. Day after day, family and friends helped sort, pack, and stack. I went to bed exhausted and sore every night, and I got up the next day to start again. I have no idea how many times I asked someone to walk through the basement to see what I might have missed. My dad was notorious for storing things like fishing poles on the rafters of the basement ceiling.
As I was packing up my brother’s Hardy Boys books to ship to him, I called and said, “I’m sorry you are missing this.” He scoffed, thinking I was being sarcastic and that I was probably wishing he was there to pack up his own damn books. I repeated sincerely, “No, I mean I really am sorry you are missing this.” I had lived in that house for ten years—the end of my growing up. He had only lived there for four years before joining the Navy, but I knew that he still had good memories of being there. There were family parties where we had to carry everything downstairs because that was the only place to serve as many people as we were serving. We had a make-shift table my dad made by putting a piece of ply wood on top of our pool table. One of my jobs was to roll silverware into napkins (once only to find that one of my little sisters had unrolled each and every one). With each item I packed or put out to discard, there was a memory for one of us. My sisters did not remember living anywhere else growing up. Despite all of the work and the sad reason behind the move, I was grateful to be there.
These last couple of weeks, I have been remembering that feeling. My family dodged the proverbial bullet by moving out of Texas prior to Hurricane Harvey. I watched the news as often as I could. I checked Facebook constantly to see if my friends were okay. I felt like a nag texting our tenants in the house we still own there making sure they and the house were not flooded. Every day of the hurricane, and every day since, I am grateful to God that we were not there, but now that they are in recovery mode, I feel almost as if I am missing something good. My friends keep posting about how they are helping friends, family, and strangers. The students I taught are back at school, and I am not there to hear their stories. I do not for one minute wish I lived there again. It was not the place for me. However, I wish I could do more for everyone there.
As I post this, Hurricane Irma is barreling toward Florida, the American West is burning, and there was an earthquake in Mexico. The world is a turbulent place, but it is important to remember that for every bad thing that happens, something good can come from it. Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” I enjoyed the experience of clearing the memories from my parents’ house, I pray for those currently in harm’s way, and I am heartened by the camaraderie shared by those recovering from tragedy. Love and hope will prevail.
Author: marebear (Page 9 of 11)
My sister is a published poet. I am very proud of her, but I told her when her poetry book comes out, she will have to explain the poems to me. That’s right. I am an English major who does not understand poetry. If a poet writes about a flower, I usually think it is just about a flower. In college, I practically begged some of my professors to “just tell me what it means” when talking about certain poems. I needed some basis to form my own opinion.
I have made a few attempts to write poems over the years. I was seven when my cousin was killed in Viet Nam. I wrote a poem, but I don’t remember what it said. All I remember is asking my mom how to spell “bear” like when something is hard to “bear.” Sadly, that poem was lost. I am not sure when my poetry phobia began, but I distinctly remember crying in high school because I was supposed to write a Haiku during class, and my mind went blank. The teacher was kind enough to extend the assignment for me. I love teachers like that. I also remember being in a class where a partner and I were assigned a ballad. She suggested we write something romantic. I said, “Let’s write about the Indy 500.” She laughed, but she agreed.
I recently found these poems. Both must have meant enough to me to keep them for almost forty years. A girl named Lynn and I wrote “The Ballad of Mark Silver” about a race car driver killed on the last turn of the last lap of the Indianapolis 500. It was very dramatic. Here is my Haiku:
“The Beginning of Life”
The face of the child
gave mankind a special hope
like the Christmas star.
What do you think? Maybe there is hope for me yet!
People often say that home is where the heart is. My students and I would have discussions about the difference between a house and a home. Home is where we feel we belong the most. It is where we are around people whom we love and who love us. Most of the time, those loved ones are family, but what happens when both by choice and by circumstance one’s family is scattered all over the country? What is home then? If home is where the heart is, what happens when your heart is ripped apart into several places on Earth and in Heaven, our ultimate home?
Throughout life we accumulate things that have meaning to us. We have family heirlooms and pictures we hang on walls. I have photo albums dating back to my childhood. All of these things make me feel at home even when I am in a new place. Also, much of life can be lived anywhere. We go to work. We grocery shop and cook and eat. We sleep, and then get up and do it all again the next day. We make friends in new places, and then the new place feels more like home. It sounds mundane, but if I can find a good hair stylist and a trustworthy mechanic in a new place, I feel as if it can be home.
Some families all stay in the same area, sometimes in the same house, from one generation to the next. I did not choose that life. As a child, I would look at the white streaks in the sky and try to imagine who was on those jets and where they might be going. I liked where I grew up, and I had a good childhood, but I longed for a life somewhere else. I also found as I grew up that I hated winter weather. Putting on three layers of clothes to walk to the mailbox was not for me.
So, my husband and I ventured out to the Southwest where the sky is a deep blue, and the sunsets are crimson against the mountains. It was there that we brought up our children and made friends who became family. Each area of the United States has a culture of its own, and we found that we fit into the lifestyle there even more than the Midwest. The West became home.
Yes, relationships are the most important part of life, but there is something to be said about connection to the land. I feel connected to mountains much more than I ever connected with wheat fields, even though there is a certain beauty to those as well. For me, there is a deep-down feeling of contentment in the West. I recently had to live in another part of the United States, and the people were wonderful, but the weather and the landscape just did not feel like home. No matter how long I stayed, I did not think it would ever be home. So, once again, my husband and I took a leap of faith and moved west. As soon as we curved around the first mountain pass of our road trip, my heart rose, and my soul rejoiced. I was home.
I was reviewing CVCE (consonant vowel consonant “e”) words with one of my students when the word “fine” came up on our list. She asked me what it meant even though she kind of already knew. I told her there are several meanings. If you are talking about shredded cheese, and you like it thinner, look for “finely shredded,” and if someone is dressed up and looks particularly good, you might say he or she is “lookin’ fiiiine.” I then told her that usually if something is “fine,” it means that there is nothing wrong with it.
She looked a little confused. Even as a third grader, she was already learning the nuances of the word “fine.” She knew that if she was arguing with her brother, and they finally just shouted “FINE” at each other, that the issue was not resolved, but they were mutually agreeing not to argue about it anymore. There are memes warning husbands that if their wives say something is “fine,” it is a red flag of warning. Whatever it is, is NOT FINE! A character on a sitcom recently said that when he said something was fine, it meant he didn’t want to talk about it. When did the meaning of the word become so ambiguous that we don’t know what a person means?
I know someone who is going through a particularly hard time in her life, and I talk to her every day. If she is crying when she says, “I’m fine,” I know that she isn’t fine. If she sighs and says, “It’s fine,” I know she is having a slightly better day. If she says in a more confident voice, “I’m not fine now, but I will be,” I am encouraged that she is feeling hopeful. I can usually determine what people mean when they say “fine” if I can hear the inflections in their voices, but if it is in a text, how can one tell?
My husband and I are planning to visit the person who is having a hard time later this year. In a text, I asked her if she wanted us to try to rearrange things so that we could visit sooner rather than later. Her response was, “No, it’s fine.” My husband and I looked at each other and asked, “What exactly does that mean? Is it fine, or is she just not wanting to burden us with switching our schedules? When does “fine” really mean “fine?” Ahhhhh!
You may be asking yourself what the point of all of this is. I guess I want to let you know that if you, too, are having trouble determining the meaning of the word “fine,” you are not alone. Don’t worry about it! No problem! It’s fine.
Family scattered, yet still close:
Too many goodbyes and not enough hellos.
One gone to Heaven and another just across the country.
The ripple of loss travels from one member to another; but
Time and space do not matter—
The love will always remain.
There was a rock in my mailbox at work. Well, it wasn’t a rock so much as a hunk of concrete about four inches long and two inches deep at one end. It looked like part of a curb from a no-parking zone had broken off somewhere because one side of it was painted red. I should say that like most workplace mailboxes, mine it isn’t a true box, but merely a slot connected to many other slots that are open and accessible to everyone.
I know who had the rock before me. Two of my friends share a slot, and someone had put the rock in it. They asked around to see if there was significance to the rock. Does it mean something, such as “You rock!” Or, with April Fool’s Day quickly approaching, was it there as a prank? They were never able to determine how or why the rock got in their slot, but a day or two later it showed up in mine along with mail that belonged to yet other co-workers. Whomever had sorted the mail apparently misread which slot it should go in. I quickly moved the mail to the appropriate spot, but I now had the problem of what to do with the rock.
This is when I thought, “problems.” We all have problems, large and small. Nuns sang about a problem they had in The Sound of Music, and we all know that the crew of Apollo 13 told Houston that they had a problem. Sometimes we have time to do research and think about how to solve our problems. Sometimes problems arise quickly and need immediate solutions, so we make our best guess and deal with the results afterward. Those of us who are planners spend a lot of time worrying about problems that may never even become problems. We spend our lives playing “if, then” and worry ourselves sick. This is not a good way to live because sometimes we don’t have to do anything, and problems resolve themselves. Sometimes we cause our own problems, sometimes things just happen through no one’s fault, and sometimes people, even our friends, cause us problems. I can picture my friends putting the rock in my slot with both affection for me and a little glee that it would no longer be their problem, then swiping their hands together and thinking, “We took care of that!”
I let the rock sit in my box for a day. I needed time to think about it. I considered simply throwing it away, but then I wondered if there is a real purpose to the rock. Is it someone’s paperweight, a child’s work of art, etc.? It was then that I realized that I had the perfect solution. Maybe, (not really) it was meant for the people whose mail was accidentally put in my slot. I had a great excuse to pass on the rock! It was my turn to place the rock in someone else’s slot with both affection for them and a little glee. I looked down both ends of the hallway when I went so I wouldn’t be seen. I put the rock in their slot and calmly walked away.
Of course, Catholic girl that I am, I felt guilty until I checked the mailboxes a day later and saw that the rock was in another mailbox. It seems that they didn’t want the rock any more than I did. How do you solve a problem like a red rock? Just pass it on.
Another Lent started this week. I must confess that Lent is my least favorite time of year. Part of the reason for this is that I am just not good at “doing Lent.” A coworker offered me a couple pieces of chocolate that had come with her lunch. She said that she was giving up chocolate for Lent. I quickly snatched them up in order to save her from herself. I told her that I, too, had once given up chocolate for Lent.
It did not go well. I had not only given up chocolate candy, but all things chocolate flavored. This meant no hot cocoa, no brownies or chocolate cake, and worst of all, no Girl Scout Thin Mints or Samoas or Tagalongs. Nothing chocolate crossed my lips every Monday through Saturday of that Lent. I had a little on Sundays since that was allowed. No chocolate went in my mouth, but boy what came out. I was grouchy! I snapped at my family. I lost patience with my students at work. Even my friends noticed a difference in me and asked why I was doing it. I found that the thing I was doing to try to make myself more like Christ was instead making me less Christ-like with every passing day.
So, why do it? Lent is all about appreciating the sacrifices Jesus made for all of us. We are supposed to make sacrifices to better understand what He went through and why. Anyone who is introduced to Jesus will probably be told it is important to form a “personal relationship” with Him. I believe this happened for me when I was a teenager, and from that point on, Lent has been hard for me. I know that Jesus is God and Lord and the Almighty I Am, but He is also my best friend. I hate reading or listening to the Bible readings that tell the story of what He went through before He died. I remember running out of the living room crying during a scene on TV that showed the Crucifixion. All I could think was, “Not for me. I don’t want You to have to do it for me.” Yet, I knew that I was no better than anyone else, so He did it for me too.
The thing is that none of us asked Him to do it, and it isn’t as if He minded doing it. He did it willingly, but seeing it represented on film reminds me that even if it was His choice, it still hurt. Now, every time I sin, I feel like I hurt Him, and Lent just reminds me of that. So, I try to ignore Lent as much as possible because I feel guilty, and then I feel guilty about ignoring Lent, and then I feel bad because I am not “doing Lent,” so I try to do Lent every year.
This year instead of giving up a certain food, I am trying not to complain about things that often bother me. You know, things like when the bagger at the store puts a book and a birthday card underneath the produce that has just had water squirted on it; or when your computer doesn’t work as fast as you want it to; or when someone cuts you off in traffic; or, or, or. See, I find that I complain about a lot of things even when I am alone. This Lent, I am trying to be more grateful and less whiny. So far, I am not doing all that well, which is not surprising. I guess I should go to Reconciliation (aka Confession). Of course, I am not very good at that either, but that is another story.
We have all heard life be compared to a roller coaster. There are high points and low points. Sometimes something in life blindsides us and puts us on a ride we would never choose—we or someone we love is diagnosed with a disease, someone dies suddenly, etc. Sometimes, though, we put ourselves on a ride. We choose to stir things up—we change jobs, move, get married, etc. We make major life decisions hoping that we are doing the right thing. Usually, we prepare for the ride as well as we can.
This is the time when we are seated on the coaster and we are click-clicking slowly up the track. We anticipate the unknown with excitement but also trepidation. Then there comes the moment when we are suspended at the top, and if we are near the front, we can see the plunge we are about to take, and our thoughts run along the lines of, “Ohhhhh CRAP!! What have we done?” There is no turning back at that point, though, so we go forward. The decision is made. “Que sera, sera. Whatever will be will be,” as Doris Day used to sing. We fly downwards at a speed we could only imagine. Our hair flies back and our faces are contorted, but we feel light and free. The fear is still there, but so is the exhilaration and the FUN.
I find as I get older, I am less likely to purposely get on that ride. There have been enough unexpected rides I have been forced to get on, so if my life settles for a while, that is fine with me. Lately, though, I have watched my adult children purposely set off into unknown territory. I am proud of their courage and worried about their futures at the same time, and part of me misses being young and the freedom it entails. As my son pointed out recently, if we do not take chances, we will never get anywhere.
So, I send them forth with the reminders that even if we get on the wrong ride sometimes, good things can happen when we get off. We learn from our mistakes. We meet people we never would have met. Our lives are richer because of the experiences we have. We have to trust ourselves, and we have to trust that God makes all things good. And so, the ride continues.
As another year ends, the list of famous people who passed away is published in many forms. I watched TV coverage with thousands of others and read the list posted on Facebook. Some I never heard of. Others were in movies or TV shows or recorded music that somehow were a small part of my life. A friend of mine wrote on Facebook that those people had no real meaning to him and reminded us that the service members, firefighters, and police officers who lost their lives are the ones who should be listed. I still read a good old-fashioned newspaper once a week, and one page covered “Notable Deaths” of 2016. So, what makes a person “notable” enough to make the list of celebrity deaths, and, as my friend states, why should we care?
There are some celebrities who have passed away whom I still miss. I miss John Denver and Gilda Radner, for example. This is not to say that I miss them in the same way that I miss the relationship I would have had with my cousin John if he had not been killed in the Vietnam War. My mother-in-law passed away in 2016. I certainly miss her differently than I miss my cousin whom I never really got to know. There are family members I wish would have lived longer so that I could have known them as an adult. My Uncle Joe, for example, was what we affectionately called an “Odd Duck,” but he may not have seemed quite so odd if I could have talked to him when I was older.
I guess what really matters is not if our deaths, whenever they may be, are “notable” to the general public. What matters is if the people we came into contact with take note. Have we loved people enough for them to miss us when we are gone? And, let us remember that even those notably famous people were friends and family to someone. We may or may not miss their music or their other talents, but to their families, they were mom, dad, son, daughter. Whether or not we will ever be notable to strangers, we all should strive to make ourselves notable to those who are closest to us.
My father’s parents both “came over on the boat” from Italy. My grandmother was only ten, and my grandfather was seventeen. She came with her parents. He came alone. Their marriage was arranged by her widowed father when my grandmother was fifteen because her father wanted to return to Italy, and she did not.
Especially in those days, Italian Catholics were expected to marry other Italian Catholics. My grandparents had five children, four boys and one girl. The girl broke with full tradition and married an Irish Catholic, much to my grandmother’s displeasure and dismay. My aunt paved the way, however, for my father who broke both traditions and married a non-Italian, non-Catholic, who agreed to convert to Catholicism. It is not that my grandmother was prejudiced against my mother, but it took a while for her to accept that my mother was good enough for her son. It is a family joke that it took thirty years or more for her to accept “the Irishman” into the family. He knew he was in when Grandma put a five-dollar bill in his birthday card.
By the time my generation came along, it was not necessarily expected that we marry an Italian, but the question still came up. I was at a family gathering at my grandmother’s house when Cousin Elfie stopped me and asked if my fiancé was Italian. I told her that he was not—that he was Hungarian. She patted my hand and said, “They’re good people too.”
I think of this often when I hear all of the hate that is spouted on the news these days. We are not all going to agree on politics, religion, world issues, etc., etc., etc., but please, let’s remember that there is some good in everyone. We need to remind ourselves that even people who have done terribly bad things in their pasts are still capable of doing good things in their futures. Every day we have the ability to help another person, even if is something as small as opening a door or smiling while saying hello. We can practice patience while driving. We can welcome new people to our families, our work places, or our neighborhoods and make them feel at home. We do not have to understand why people are the way they are or believe what they do in order to show them kindness. So, the next time we see hate, let’s show love. And when we do not understand another’s point of view, let’s remind ourselves that they are most likely “good people too.”