by jphilo | Jun 9, 2010 | Family
In my last blog entry about my man of steel – way back in November – had just been diagnosed with shingles, couldn’t get outside to jog because a terrible winter had just begun, and the hospital where he works insisted he get the flu shot, his first ever. Day after day, he was moping around the house, feeling like an old man in decline.
Well, these days he’s a different man. On Saturday he joined thousands of other runners in Des Moines for Dam to Dam, the largest half-marathon in the United States. Next week, he’ll be in the Boundary Waters hiking across Isle Royale with several other men from our church. An amazing transformation, huh?
If you’re ready for a transformation, follow the simple steps he followed:
- Lose any excess weight. Hiram lost 20 pounds, mostly by not eating ice cream.
- Run every day.
- Do palades twice a day.
- Join your wife for her morning walk. Be sure to embarrass her by wearing your hiking pack.
- Load your hiking pack with 60 pounds of weight and then mow a 1.3 acre lawn with a walking mower.
These days, my man of steel doesn’t mope around the house feeling like an old geezer in decline. He acts like a Cub Scout getting ready for his first camp out while he dries apples for the trip to Isle Royale and repacks his pack once a day.
And every day, he makes me laugh out loud. Who wouldn’t laugh at the sight of a guy with a 60 pound pack on his back mowing the lawn?
by jphilo | May 24, 2010 | Family
My sister called the day of baking 31 pies for our niece’s graduation the Pie Extravaganza. The party guests pronounced it a delicious success. My mother declared her decision to make pies for her oldest granddaughter’s graduation four years ago since it meant the same thing would be done for her other two granddaughter’s, too.
But four days after our baking day, I call it a learning experience. Here are a few of the lessons pie baking taught us last Friday:
- Sometimes even Grandma Conrad’s Never-Fail Pie Crust fails. When it does, a new batch doesn’t take too long to make.
- If you’re low on cherries, use 4 cups cherries and 1 cup sliced strawberries for a 9 inch cherry pie. The finished product elicits rave reviews.
- Strawberry-rhubarb pie is on par with fresh sweet corn, BLTS, sugar-snap peas and wilted lettuce for best summer foods.
- Minute tapioca is almost foolproof as a thickener.
- Mom has failed greatly in the past four years. Then she kept up with my sister and me, pretty much running things. This time, sitting down to peel apples, slice strawberries and chop rhubarb nearly wore her out.
- Peeling apples, slicing strawberries and chopping rhubarb is a great way to show your granddaughter you love her.
- My daughter, Anne, is becoming an accomplished cook. She filled in where Mom couldn’t.
- I’m really glad both my kids’ high school graduation parties are behind us. They’re a lot of work.
- My daughter has earned my undying gratitude for not requesting homemade pie as her wedding dessert.
I could go on and on, but it’s time to stop. The list of lessons is substantial, and it’s time to attend to everything that didn’t get done last weekend. Who knew pie baking could be such a good teacher?
by jphilo | Apr 23, 2010 | Family
Playing dress-up was serious business when my kids were little. Since both of them active in drama, their love affair with costumes continued through high school. True, my son still goes gaga over cowboy boots and goofy hats and my daughter is a seamstress at her college’s theater department. But I thought they’d left their dress-up days behind like the rest of my adult family – mother, sister, brother, cousins, aunts, uncles, in-laws, out-laws – and become staid, respectable and a little bit stuffy.
The photo booth at my son’s wedding reception proved me wrong. The picture factory went into production after the ceremony ended, while the wedding party and immediate family went outside for pictures. By the time we entered the reception hall, the to the photo booth was populated by revelers wearing the hats, clown nose, pig and elephant noses, scarves, shawls, kazoos, do-rags, aprons, parasols, and old glasses I described in All Packed, one of last week’s posts.
I hadn’t expected the older generations to let their hair down with such enthusiasm. Seeing my uncle, the former high school world history teacher who gave killer essay tests, enter the booth wearing a blond wig and tiara far exceeded my wildest expectations of silliness. But he wasn’t the only one whose inhibitions bowed to the lure of playing dress-up. The party was awash in goofiness of the rib-tickling, nose-snorting variety. It transcended generations and genders, inflicting belly laughs indiscriminately.
Next time my son and new daughter visit, they have to bring their guest book which is full of photo booth pictures of the guests, along with their signatures and well wishes. I need a second look at one of the pictures. If my uncle’s neat and proper signature is beside the photo of the man in the blond wig and tiara, I’ll believe it really happened.
And if it did, I’m gonna rent a booth for my daughter and future son-in-law’s wedding in July. Apparently, this dress-up thing is in the blood, and I’m not gonna fight it. We’ll make it a family tradition instead.
To take a peek at the photos go to http://www.grandphotobooth.com/see-my-photos-login/. Here’s a handy index for some of the strips:
Strip 2 – my brother’s family
Strip 5 – my cousin and her husband
Strip 7 – another cousin and two of her girls
Strip 9 – my sister and her husband
Strip 10 – my husband’s twin and his wife
Strip 17 – the bride’s mom and her friend
Strip 18 – Hiram & me – notice who selected the same costume as his twin!
Strip 19 – my daughter and her fiance
Strip 23 – my daughter and her girl cousins spelling out the name of their one cousin who’s in Spain this semester
Strip 26 – the bride and groom
Strip 31 – my generation of cousins
Strip 33 – the groom and his grandma, my mom
Strip 34 – my mother with her sister and brother-in-law
by jphilo | Apr 14, 2010 | Family
Looking back on the past week is like peering into a kaleidoscope, one lovely image melting into another before I have time to process them.
A walk on a spring evening beside a West Virginia river is replaced by a conference room. The psychiatrists and therapists cry and blow their noses as they listen to the story of my infant son’s surgeries and the legacy of trauma it created. Those people fade away, and I am eating pizza with family gathered for my son and almost daughter-in-law’s wedding. The next few days are a blur of more family arriving, watching my sister arrange flowers, using her kitchen to fix meals for out-of-town guests, decorating the hall for the reception, and going out to supper after the rehearsal.
The pictures in the kaleidoscope of my mind tumble and dissolve. But one picture never changes. The love on the faces of my son and his bride during the wedding ceremony never wavers. His eyes are soft and wet with tears. She smiles at him with an unfaltering gaze.
I see their faces while I walk this spring morning – in every leaf full of the promise, in every flower bud plump with beauty. A glorious sunrise greets me at the top of our hill, and in its glow I see two lovely faces. The kaleidoscope stops tumbling. For a moment, I can not breathe for the joy pressing upon my heart. I am home.
And so, I know, are my son and his new wife.
by jphilo | Apr 9, 2010 | Family
Most of the time, identifying with women in the Bible doesn’t come easy to me. I’m not queenly like Esther. I didn’t follow my mother-in-law to a foreign land like Ruth, and my chosen professions have been quite different than Rahab’s. My humility and faith fall far short of Mary the mother of Jesus, and I certainly didn’t raise a perfect child. (Sorry kids!)
I can’t dance like Salome, cut hair like Delilah, or sit contentedly at Jesus’ feet like Mary of Bethany. I can be as bossy and driven as Martha, but who wants to admit something like that?
Even with my rotten track record, one woman from the Bible made my kindred spirit short list about eight months ago when our son announced his engagement to a wonderful young woman. Sarah, wife of Abraham, is one chick I totally get. I get why she laughed when God promised she would bear a child, though she was old, old. old.
Two years ago, if God had said something like, “Your son will get married on April 11, 2010,” I would have laughed, too. See, back then my son’s career choice made no room for marriage. And after five long years of his stalwart resolution to pursue that course for life, I’d come to accept his choice. More than that, I’d found peace and a way to maintain a loving relationship with my son. I’d even learned to accept God’s will instead of demanding He fulfill my hopes and dreams for my firstborn.
After I made my peace, if God had dropped the he’ll-get-married-and-you-might-have-grandchildren-someday bombshell, I would have done one of two things. Either I would have gotten really mad and told God to quit raising my hopes about something I didn’t dare hope about, or like Sarah, I would have laughed at his joke. Sarah made the better choice, to laugh, drop the matter, and move on.
But God, in his infinite wisdom, didn’t drop the matter. He gave Sarah a son in her old age. In Genesis 21:6, Sara says this after her son’s birth. “God has made laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh over me.”
I totally get what she’s saying because what she describes happens to my family these days. When we tell people about our son’s upcoming wedding, everyone responds with joy. Smiles, chuckles and beaming grins abound. Sarah’s words come alive.
God has made laughter for me.
Still, in the midst of joy, I am aware of the suffering and sorrow of others. My laughter could mock a mother estranged from a son, a single person wishing for a spouse, an infertile couple unable to conceive. So in the midst of joy, tears fill my eyes. I ask God to comfort those whose stories are so painful they can’t laugh for someone else’s joy.
Help them find your peace in their current circumstances, dear Father. Give them hope to hang on until you bring laughter back into their lives. Give them a sweet story to tell, one that brings joy to their hearts and to the hearts of all who hear it. Amen.
by jphilo | Mar 8, 2010 | Family
For the past month and a half, my cousin has been forwarding emails from her daughter, Lara, who is studying in Spain this semester. Lara is four days older than my daughter, and like Anne, she’s a junior in college.
Reading Lara’s adventures has been pure delight. She’s learned to live with cold showers, cook with butane fuel and purchase new fuel when the tank runs dry. She’s been befriended by a family of Bolivian immigrants, eats weekend meals and goes to church with them, and bakes them banana bread. She’s climbed mountains, ridden trains, taken taxies, and to make the most of this opportunity, forces herself to speak Spanish instead of English to fellow students to improve her language skills.
The wisdom of a comment she made in a recent email makes me smile whenever it comes to mind. After Lara describing a busy weekend with the Bolivian family, washing laundry and cooking meals together, she said this. “You know life is good when doing mundane, everyday activities is nice.”
Her insight delighted but didn’t surprise me. She’s part of the pack of girl cousins (Anne, my brother’s two girls, Lara and two of her cousins) who were born in a span of four years. They spend as much time as possible crammed together like puppies, playing games, talking, sharing clothes, writing stories. When they aren’t together in body, they connect on Facebook, joyfully sharing their “mundane, everyday activities.”
I don’t have a crystal ball. I can’t predict the joys and sorrows in Lara’s future or those of her pack of puppy cousins. But these young women already know what Dorothy had to learn over the rainbow and what many people spend their whole life never learn: life’s greatest pleasures are the small things, the ordinary days, and the people who experience them. They have what they need to appreciate the joys and weather the sorrows sure to come.
They’re ready to face the world.
