Slip Sliding Away

So, here I am Memorial Day weekend with the whole family here. We had a wonderful time filled with food and laughter. We had too much food, for sure. You can never get too much laughter.

May is birthday month. Essie was born on the 3rd. Sarah on the 31th. So we just celebrate all month long. Sarah got a Slip and Slide for her birthday and the fun began. Nobody was sliding correctly so Granny had to show them. I grew up with the Slip and Slide. I think my generation even invented them. I know my Slip and Slide. I pawed the ground; turned to Emily and told her to be sure to get it on camera for study purposes.

I took a running start, flew through the air and landed with a deep thud and not an inch of slide. Not a centimeter, not a molecule of forward movement. It was as though I had been deposited straight to earth directly from the sky. I was as astonished as I was embarrassed. In fact, I laid there for over a minute or two before Emily could stop laughing long enough to take this picture. I ended up looking like a beached whale. Everything on me hurts today. It's probably a miracle I didn't break something.

So, you're gonna have to cut me some slack today.

Besides our Mega-Birthday May we're planning a trip to Disney World next week. We leave the morning after school is out. It's a top secret project and we're planning it right under their noses. It's code name is "the big trip to Wal-Mart." The very name of that store is used so many times in a day around here that we feel safe that the kids tune us out the minute they hear the word 'Wal-Mart.'

We've orchestrated it right down to the minute we wake the girls up to tell them we've decided to hold our annual Grandmother Camp in Orlando, Florida this year. We've got airline and van reservations,reservations for lunch with an assortment of princesses, we've booked the hotels and packed and re-packed. I won't go into detail here but our planning makes D-Day look like an impromtu stroll on the beach in comparison.

What I've got to do now is avoid breaking any bones by slip sliding away.....To quote Paul Simon:

"you know the nearer your destination, the more you're slip sliding away."

I only hope the second grade teacher doesn't start a unit on blogs during the last few days of school and Sarah volunteers to look this one up.

That's got to be our story for today. I need to go update my packing list I've got on an excel spreadsheet. Give me a week off and I'll be back with more stories.

Miscelllaneous

I don't have much for you today. Our cat went missing for almost a week. A neighbor had seen a bobcat a few days before so we suspected the worst. Murphy had recently been expanding his territory and would sometimes accompany me on walks that stretched so far that he would be out of breath once we got home. He's not the most graceful cat we've ever had so we could picture him getting himself into a jam that took his life. I visited with a neighbor who claims she's had an indoor/outdoor cat for over eleven years and the cat has never caused her to worry. Not so Murphy. We were plenty worried and finally we decided we'd never see him again. I was about to take up his food bowl when he sauntered through his cat door Sunday afternoon. Not a hair out of place. Not a word of explanation. He looked totally fine except a little disoriented.

I'm actually busy this week writing other things and don't want to spend a lot of time on this blog today. I think I have written a book so I've been using all my brain power editing and assembling my mission reports.

I do have one other thing, though. A friend of mine always asks for book suggestions before she goes on her summer vacation. Then she sends around a compliation of what everybody she contacted has told her to read. Many times there is an overlap. This summer the books getting the most recommendations are on my list: Eat, Pray,Love by Elizabeth Gilbert and Animal, Vegetable and Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.

But the real bonus this summer was that she sent me the summer reading list for the Hockaday School. She not only works there but her daughter attends Hockaday, as well.

I have long had a theory that you can get close to the same education by going into a college bookstore and just buying the books they have their students read for the classes. I've done this every time I was in a town with a college. This includes Harvard, MIT and Smith. I may not have attended any classroom lectures but I could say I've read the books. So I intend to really look at the books on this list. Hockaday is requiring their students to read at least one book out of their four-page list. It's a very predictible list and some of them I've already read. But, besides the multiple choice of picking one from the list, Hockaday is requiring their entire student body to read one book I've never heard of: Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner.

Beaven and I have a busy summer coming up. Between reading Hockaday's list and writing a book, I have a healthy calendar of travelling. We're going to Disney World and Mexico and I'll be in Oklahoma for Synod Youth Workshop. We'll host Grandmother Camp for one week, maybe more. I intend to continue my weekly postings as much as I can but will let you know if I have to skip a week.

Remembering Our Baptismal Vows

Our pastor started her sermon last Sunday with the observation that her son seemed to be AWOL. She is raising him alone with the help of her sister who lives with them. Most Sundays her sister is the one who wakes Austen up and gets him motivated to dress, eat and walk the short distance to church. But on Mother’s Day, Rev Sister was out of town. And you know how teenage boys are. “Happy Mother’s Day, Anne!,” somebody called out. Happy Mothers Day, indeed. Everybody knows how fifteen year old boys are. Not quite a man, not a child, either. They are starved for adequate sleep and utterly incorrigible.

I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Stephen Cottingham, one of our college kids, quietly slipped out of the sanctuary. And I knew what would happen. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We had a baptism Sunday. A baptism on Mothers Day. How cool is that? Everybody loves a baptism. In the Presbyterian church we like to do it to babies. We’ll take them up to the chancel when they’re about a month or two old. We like infant baptism because it shows that no one can do this on their own. Humans are never the ones to begin a relationship with God. Everything starts with God and baptism is merely a sign of something God has already done.

Presbyterians have been on a kick lately to "Remember your Baptism." But how are you supposed to do this if it happened when you were a baby? I decided it was my job to remember it for them. The congregation takes a vow, too, just like the parents do in a baptism. I promise to love the child (the easy part) and teach him Sunday School, Confirmation Class and Vacation Bible School. Definitely the hard part.

After the baptism the preacher walks around the congregation for a bit with the baby, introducing the newest member to his or her new godparents. It’s a child’s entrance into the family of faith. Around the congregation of the First Presbyterian Church in Garland we take this event seriously.

I love sitting next to children at baptisms, and Sunday I had my eight year old granddaughter with me. I told Sarah that this baby would be her responsibility. There would be some things she could teach this baby that I couldn’t. It would be up to her to help him when he felt left out or scared. She would have to stop little Jack when she saw him doing something dangerous like running in the hall. Children seldom see ways they can contribute to the life of a congregation. But bossing around a toddler is right up their alley. Years later, down the road, there will be things Sarah can say to this new person that he could never hear from an old fossil like me; but would be able to take it from somebody just a few years older.

Anne was almost finished with the baptism and was walking the baby around the sanctuary when the woman sitting next to me nudged me in the ribs, “Looks like Austen finally showed up.” I didn’t need to look for Austen. I looked for Stephen and there he was back in his regular seat listening intently like he had never been gone. I smiled when I pictured it in my mind; something like a loud banging on the back door followed by “Yo, dude! Get your butt out of bed!”

Steven wasn’t in the sanctuary the day Austen was baptized. But anytime we witness a baptism we vow to do the same to any child we encounter. We promise to love them and teach them. “Yo, dude! Get your butt outta bed and get to church!” is a lesson Austen will probably never forget. And only Stephen could have taught him that.

Trying for Two Worlds

I find myself caught between two very different styles of living and I’m trying to figure out if it’s possible to have them both.

On one hand, I am trying to keep pace with all the modern options and technologies we have available today. Some have been so easy for me to embrace it’s silly: cell phones, e-mail, Amazon.com, Netflix, Tivo, and iTunes.

iTunes has been a special blessing and one I’m most proud of. Why, just to start with, did you ever think you could begin a sentence with a non-capitalized word? But the service is hilariously easy to use and fall in love with. For a mere 99 cents I can have the single of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”, and not the spastic version Diana Ross did as a solo….no, the original song by the Supremes and the Temptations. It’s that kind of niche that iTunes offers me. I can get lost on many delicious side roads with it. Just this morning I decided to check into “Finlandia”. Did you know there are over a hundred versions of that song available on iTunes? And there's even one in Finnish, or whatever language they speak in Finland, just in case you have somebody from Finland over for dinner and want them to feel at home.

Tivo’s been another pleasant surprise. It didn’t take that long to figure out how to use it and now I can’t imagine life without it. I can watch The View at night and Larry King in the morning if I want to. And I can postpone watching either of them until Beaven is safely out of the house if he wants me to.

But I still need a little help with a couple of the new cutting edge applications. I don’t have the hang of Power Point yet, which is one reason I’ll have to cut this short today. I’m supposed to make a Power Point presentation tonight and I’m not really sure I know what I’m doing. And I need to understand My Space by July when it’s the theme of this year’s Youth Workshop at church. I’ll be living and breathing My Space for a solid week and I don’t know the first thing about it at this point. In little over a month I need to have my own My Space set up and be able to discuss it with great authority. So, I would be grateful for any help you can give me.

But all of these technologies all bring me to the balancing act I am longing to perfect. Because, in the midst of this cornucopia of technology, I truly long to simplify my life.

I’ve been reading Barbara Kingsolver again. Last week it was “Small Wonder” and this week I got her newest book “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” (brought to my mailbox with no effort on my part through Amazon by the way.) Both of these books are about the simple pleasures in life-- listening to the birds, feeling the wind against your cheek, tasting an apple, planting a garden and living off what it provides. Turning off the TV is a major step I’ve made. It's slowly been getting easier and easier. We are developing the knack for just sitting quietly and reading.

So, here I am living in the East Texas version of paradise. It’s spring and everything is gorgeous. The grass is green everywhere I look. This is actually a very unusual sight in Texas. Come July the heat will kill everything off into a dusty brown hue and it will likely stay that way until around October. (We usually have a brief "spring" if it rains in October and the grass greens up for a couple of months.) But for now there are new calves and colts in the pastures I pass on my way to the store. I have lettuce and spinach growing in our garden and I’ve even had a few salads from it. I’ve made a couple of batches of pesto from the basil I planted. The tomato plants look promising. We have a farm just up the road from us offering blackberries and peaches when they ripen.

But sometimes it just seems a little schizophrenic to have both of these lifestyles available to me. The blackberry farm even has their own website. Is that legal? Should I worry? I don’t think there’s any going back. Certainly ipods and cell phones are here to stay. Now that I think of it, though, they may even be obsolete in a few years after they’re replaced by an even newer technology.
……………
OK, here’s something interesting. Just now when I got to this exact place in writing today’s posting I was interrupted by an incoming e-mail. It was from a guy in our church who was suggesting a My Space account for our church.

How weird is that? The oldest institution around is meeting the latest technology. And I was worried that it would conflict with my tomatoes. I guess if Jesus is getting a My Space account it’s OK.

I can stop writing now and go figure out Power Point. Then maybe Bob can teach me how to do My Space.

Soft

If anyone asks me what the best day of my life has been so far I immediately have an answer. It was the day my second granddaughter, Elisabeth, was born.

The second? Not the first? Not the day my own daughters were born? Maybe the day I got married? Not by a long shot.

The second grandchild brings far less stress and far more excitement. We knew Emily and the baby were healthy. We knew Emily and Steve were great parents. There was no uncertainty about anything. Everything was glorious: we would love this child and she would love us back. We would have great family times full of laughter and love. There was nothing but promise in the soft morning air.

Emily and Steve were living about two blocks from us at the time. They called us around 2 am and asked us to come stay with two year-old Sarah while they went to meet her new sister. We drove the two blocks to their house and went back to sleep in the guest room. About 2 hours later they called and said we could come meet Elisabeth. I will never forget the feel of the air that spring morning. It was so soft and full of promise. As we loaded our sleepy granddaughter into the car seat and headed off to the hospital there was nothing but lighthearted excitement in my heart. It was the same feeling I had when I was little and my parents woke me early in the morning to start a vacation: a little sleepy but a lot excited.

I was reminded of all this by two recent events. First, Elisabeth’s sixth birthday is coming up this week. However, she has long since become Essie to us. Essie, as in ‘Elisabeth with an ‘S’, is what we tell people. Our family is covered up in Elizabeths and it can get confusing at times. When she entered Kindergarten she made a solemn decree that she would now be known as Elisabeth. When she found how long it took her to write her full name and she was back to Essie within a week.

The second event that reminded me of that soft morning was a birthday party I took Sarah to last weekend. For some reason that only the mental health people could explain, Sarah’s friend’s family had invited 20 other little 8 year–old girls to a Build a Bear workshop to celebrate Makayla’s birthday. You can imagine what the inside of the shop was like, especially when I tell you that these 20 girls were only one party out of three that Build a Bear was hosting that morning.

What you need to know about Build a Bear is that you get to create your own customized teddy bear. You get to pick the style, the color, the fur, the clothes, the eyes and everything. You can even choose how you want the bear stuffed. You can have it stuffed firmly or softly, I guess. Sarah knows more about these matters than I do. I watched her ponder this decision carefully. She became the calm center of this hectic store. The lady in charge of stuffing the bear waited patiently until Sarah finally decreed in a very quiet and shy voice: “Soft.”

Doesn’t everybody want their teddy bear soft? Don’t we all wish for more softness in our lives? My four year-old friend, Anita, takes her stuffed doggie with her everywhere she goes. He is limp with age and his fur has rubbed bare in some places. Her parents tell her she won’t be able to take him with her to Kindergarten next year but that’s not an option in her mind. Doggie is soft in the way good friends and good parents are and Anita has chosen to take this softness with her everywhere and forever.

When does the world get so hard for us? If I could give Essie anything in the world for her sixth birthday I would prefer to give her a soft world to live in. I would wrap her up in soft clothes, give her a soft bed at night and never let anyone say or do a mean thing to her.

The world doesn’t work that way, I know. But how did we get this way? We all start out as children wishing for tenderness for ourselves and then later wishing it for our children and grandchildren. When do children get the urge to act hateful to each other? Where did this war come from? We were not made this way by our Creator.


A few weeks ago we had a bird build a nest under the overhang of our front porch. It seemed the perfect place to build a nest. It was protected from rain. The porch light attracted plenty of juicy bugs. Beaven and I are great landlords. The only drawback was that we have three dogs and a very macho cat. But she not only built her nest here, she laid five eggs. I watched with trepidation. The eggs hatched. Motherbird stayed busy flying in and out with food for them. They never uttered a single peep. I figured Mama had warned them about the feisty dogs and cat.

Last week, though, as I was going out the front door, I noticed the five babies had grown so big they were literally sitting on top of each other there in the nest. I stood there at the door and told Beaven how worried I was about them learning to fly with the dogs and cat around. I knew they would make a fascinating toy or, worse, a handy snack for any of our pets. As we discussed how to keep them away from the front porch, right there while I was watching, there was a general flutter and I watched as all five of them swooped out of the nest, into the front yard and up into the tall trees. There were no training flights, no “school”, they just did it. It was a marvel to watch. They looked like they had been flying for years. How on earth can instinct be so accomplished? I don’t think they had really watched their mother fly. They just knew how to do it.

Then this morning, there was another couple of birds building a nest right in front of my kitchen window. I don’t know if it’s the same mother. I know she is building the same kind of nest and using the same materials—soft moss.

Everybody gets to start out with soft. Something changes along the way and things get harder. On most days, this is a hard world when I wish for a soft one. Then nature shows me that she knows exactly what she’s doing and I should stop worrying. But I still don’t like the war part.