by jphilo | Mar 21, 2016 | Family
In her prime, Mom was a sparkling conversationalist, She easily handled a variety of topics with great knowledge and wit. Her favorites were teaching, gardening, quilting, cooking and baking, reading, history, neighborhood gossip, genealogy, and family.
These days, her unprompted contributions to our Wednesday conversations consist of complaining about her runny nose and asking for tissues, gossip concerning fellow residents, reminders that she needs new library books, smack talk while we play Rummikub, reports of cards and letters received from family members, and stories about either her childhood or mine.
Every week, I try to draw her out a little while we waited for our meals to arrive at Applebee’s. “Did you fly kites when you were a kid?” I asked last Wednesday, which was a very blustery day.
“No,” she said. That was all.
I soldiered on. “Did you ice skate?”
She nodded. “Once. I fell on my butt/”
I persisted. “Did you roller skate?”
“Yes.” She brightened. “I liked to roller skate.”
“DId you skate outside or at a roller rink?”
“At a roller rink. In Pipestone.”
“Your family didn’t have much money. How did you pay for it?” I asked.
She shrugged. “My brother Wayne took us, I think. He was always kind. And my brother Ralph was a good skater. He could even skate backwards as well as I could skate going forward.”
Our food came then, and we stopped talking. But maybe it set her to thinking, because on the drive home, she brought up a new topic of conversation.
“What year did your dad die?”
“1997,” I replied. “19 years ago.”
“That’s a long time,” she said.
“Yes, it is,” I agreed. “Do you miss him?”
“A lot.” She nodded.
“Me, too,” I said.
“But missing a husband,” she went on, “is different than missing your dad.”
“I’m sure it is,” I said. “And in a way, you lost your husband twice. Once to multiple sclerosis and again when he died.”
“You’re right, Jolene,” she said before going quiet again.
It was the most substantial, thoughtful, and sweet conversation we’ve had in months. I looked at her and smiled. She smiled back.
by jphilo | Mar 11, 2016 | Family
An enduring joy of my life has been close relationships with many of my cousins. Thankfully, my daughter has similar relationships with several of her cousins and second cousins (Right to left: Lara, Tessa, Anne, Caitlyn, and Lauren). Both the post and the picture make me grateful that these young ladies have one another in their ordinary, everyday lives on this Fantastic Friday.
Life Is Good When…
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.
by jphilo | Mar 7, 2016 | Family
Nineteen years ago this day, my family was at a funeral home.More mourners than we expected came to say good-bye to my father, Harlan Stratton. The mourners spent long minutes studying the photographs that chronicled his life.
“That’s the way I remember him,” each one said, pointing at the photograph that encapsulated the years when they had shared life together.
Some chose his high school graduation picture.
Others lingered by the snapshot of him standing by his prize steer, Snowball.
The flower girls from my parents’ wedding pointed to a picture of a grinning groom.
Former 4-Hers smiled at the studio portrait taken when he became a county extension agent.
To be honest, I was jealous of those people who remembered my dad in his prime, when he could still walk into rooms. When his voice boomed above the crowd and took control. When he laughed and traded jokes long into the night. When he drove and Mom sat in the passenger seat. I was jealous because they knew my father in ways I never did and never will.
But now, 19 years after we celebrated Dad’s life my photo pick is one that didn’t get much attention on March 7, 1997. My favorite is his college graduation picture. The one where his flat top is a bit unruly, his eyes a little squinty, his smile crooked, and his chin on the jowly side.
That less-than-perfect face is my favorite because looking at his hair, his eyes, his smile, and his chin, I see where I came from. The envy I once felt toward those who knew the man I didn’t has disappeared. How can I be jealous of people who knew Dad in ways I never will when the imprint of him is on my heart and face?
Oh, Dad, I miss you.
In memory of Harlan John Stratton: May 11, 1929 – March 4, 1997. Dearly loved husband, father, father-in-law, grandfather, uncle, cousin, and friend.
by jphilo | Feb 12, 2016 | Family
The Valentine’s Day frenzy is upon us, so this Fantastic Friday takes a look back at a Valentine’s Day, 2013. It wasn’t very fancy, but it was full of love and its own kind of romance.
Our Healthy Valentine’s Day
Valentine’s Day at our house was about as healthy as they come:
- No lunch date because Hiram spoke about heart health at a noon meeting for a church group.
- No home-baked sweets for Hiram because he’s watching his blood sugar.
- No heart-shaped box of milk chocolates because they contain dairy.
- No flowers because they make me sneeze.
- No dinner out because a) we’re just getting over viruses and have no desire to catch new ones, and b) Hiram helped the high school worship team at evening practice.
Our romantic Valentine’s dinner consisted of:
- Whole wheat spaghetti with marinara sauce,
- Crispy garlic bread,
- Greek salad,
- And fresh pineapple for dessert,
- With a tissue box centerpiece because we’re almost but not quite over the aforementioned virus.
In fact, our healthy Valentine’s Day was making me sick until I thought about:
Thank you God, for romance alive and well at our house!
by jphilo | Dec 18, 2015 | Family
The weather’s been odd this December.
More grey clouds than sunshine.
More rain than snow.
More green than white.
I am tempted, and perhaps you are also, to wish for a white Christmas. This Fantastic Friday pick from December of 2009 is a reminder than white Christmases aren’t always wonderful, but God’s daily grace most certainly always is.
Don’t Waste His Grace
Last week’s winter storm made the Wednesday evening before Christmas a rather trying one at our house. Anne and her fiancee thought they could outrun the storm bearing down on northwest Iowa by leaving for Wisconsin early in the afternoon. For the first few hours, they made good progress. But as darkness fell and traffic slowed the storm caught up with them.
Anne called around 6:30 PM to say they had pulled into a rest stop on I-90, not far from Rochester, Minnesota. “We’ll spend the night in the car,” she said. “The visibility’s so bad we can’t even get to the next town.” After reassuring me they had plenty of blankets, food, water and gasoline, she hung up.
If the call had come two or three years ago, the thought of my daughter marooned at a rest stop in a blizzard would have kept me awake most of the night. But in the last few years, I have seen God so powerfully at work in our lives, I was able to fall asleep, confident that He would watch over my daughter and the man she’s going to marry.
The same night Anne slept in the car, the cold woke Hiram and I woke in the middle of the night. An ice storm had knocked out our electricity, but instead of fretting about when it would come on and how our daughter was faring, I piled extra blankets on the bed and thought about something I’d recently read in John Piper’s Don’t Waste Your Life.
“We simply take life and breath and health and friends and everything for granted. We think it is ours by right. But the fact is that it is not ours by right.” Piper goes on to remind us that we are sinful, we’re the ones who rebelled against our Creator. “Therefore, every breath we take, every time our heart beats, every day that the sun rises, every moment we see with our eyes or hear with our ears or speak with our mouths or walk with our legs is, for now,a free and undeserved gift to sinners who deserve only judgement…for those who see the merciful hand of God in every breath they take and give credit where it is due, Jesus Christ will be seen and savored…Every heartbeat will be received as a gift from his hand.”
I lay, waiting for the extra blankets to warm us, and thought about my daughter’s life in a new way. The years we’ve had with her are an undeserved gift. So is electricity and a warm house and Christmas and a husband who loves me. If I accept these good gifts from God, then I can trust him, even when what he gives is not what I think I need. Then, I fell asleep asking him to prepare me for whatever news came in the morning.
When we woke, the electricity was on. The house was warm. An hour or two later, Anne called to say the snow had stopped, and they were on their way. By noon she called to say they had arrived. Once again, God’s grace was poured out upon our family. I thanked him for the undeserved gift of our travelers’ safety. I asked him to make me mindful of his grace.
Please God, I pray again whenever I feel my heart beat, continue to make me grateful. Don’t let me waste your grace.
by jphilo | Dec 11, 2015 | Family
Today’s Fantastic Friday selection needs little introduction as you’ll soon see. Pay close attention to the handsome young man in the red and white Simpson sweatshirt who appears at the 57 second mark. This summer he got married. And it was a wonderful day.
My state is populated in large part by hard-working, low-emoting, never-wear-your-heart-on-your-sleeve stock. Not a people given to big scenes and making themselves stand out in a crowd. So when my cousin, who also lives in this state, shared this link on Facebook, I was surprised.
Seems that one particular college crowd, also in this state, is pushing the edges of the keep-your-eyes-to-the-ground mentality of their elders. The chorus from Simpson College, a private United Methodist College located south of Des Moines in Indianola, made their presence known last weekend.
They got plenty of notice last Sunday during their flash mob performance of the Hallelujah Chorus at Jordan Creek Mall in West Des Moines. One man in the crowd even started singing along. In my state, people like that are called exhibitionists. Proof of how these things can get out of hand and should be stopped.
But I didn’t stop it. I shared the link on my FB wall, and now several other people have shared it on their walls. And another of my cousins, also from this state, sent an email to all our cousins (and there are lots of them) with the YouTube link attached because guess what? Her son is in the Simpson College Chorus, and there’s a really good shot of him, singing away with his heart on his sleeve and emoting for all the world to see.
Click on this link to view the YouTube video. At the 57 second mark, pay close attention to the tall, bearded, handsome young man wearing a red Simpson College sweatshirt and his hands in his pocket. That’s my cousin’s son.
Believe me, all his hard-working, don’t-make-yourself-stand-out rellies are pleased as punch that he and the other members of the chorus didn’t follow their elders’ examples. In fact, I’m wishing I was brave enough to do something to spread Christmas cheer myself
Any suggestions?
