Risk part two

I found out what I was risking when I decided to put a political bumper sticker on my car. I ordered one on-line last week. I haven’t even received it in the mail yet and the risk is already coming home to roost. Silly me that I didn’t anticipate what would follow.

I'm on everybody’s mailing list. Thankfully, nobody calls anyone on the phone anymore so the mail is either in my box beside the road or on my computer. Easy enough to ignore. But how to you ignore it when the IN box says I have mail from Barack Obama or Michelle Obama? Wouldn’t you open it? The kicker was when Caroline Kennedy sent me a note. It reminded me of the times I get a letter from Jimmy Carter wanting money for Habitat for Humanity. It makes us mortals feel so special to get mail from people like that.

One of our family secrets is that Beaven’s mother was a rabid,foaming-at-the-mouth conservative. She had a gun, combat boots and membership in the John Birch Society. Needless to say, she was a Goldwater supporter. That got her on a mailing list back in the days when mail only came from the guy walking around the neighborhood who put pieces of paper through a flap that led directly onto the hall floor. Remember that kind of mail?

Blanche always sounded like she and Barry Goldwater were close personal friends because he had written her a letter.

Sometimes I miss old Blanche. She was one of the strongest women I’ve ever met. She could out-drink a sailor and out-cuss a truck driver. She died of cancer after smoking a pack or two of cigarettes every day for 50 years. By the time she died, it had spread everywhere in her body and you could tell she was in undescribably pain. The night she died she cooked a pot of beans for dinner, put the leftovers in the fridge, cleaned the kitchen then went into the bedroom and laid down and died. They don’t make women like that anymore.

I have always regretted that I couldn’t make a relationship with her work out. My daughters remind me that there weren’t enough medications in the world for either of us to make that happen.

I’m rambling and last week I promised you better words today. I must have spring fever. We’re expecting rain today and we need to mow before it starts.

So here’s where you can find something great to read today. Go to Nancy’s blog. Forgive me for outing you, Nancy. But I’ve got to offer these folks something decent to read. And the stuff you’re writing is too good to keep it to myself and not share.

www.positively-indecisive.blogspot.com

Her entry today on The Want To is a classic. And for those of us at the church picnic Sunday the photo is a reminder of how much fun we’re having at First Presbyterian Church in Garland. Would that each of us climbed the ladder of faith with such ease and earnestness as my friend in Nancy's photo.