Category: family

family · Life

Children: the Gift I Didn’t Know I Needed

Sally11 Comments

This weekend I was getting some things ready for a bridal shower for my oldest daughter and came across a notebook in which I had written this quote: “This is often the way God loves us: with gifts we thought we didn’t need, which transform us into people we don’t necessarily want to be.” ~~ William Willimon

I looked up the source of the quote and read through the whole article which you can find here: From a God We Hardly Knew. In short, it is a Christmas message about Isaiah 9:6 — “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given” — in which Willimon makes the point that Ahaz, in the original context, was looking for an army and instead God promised a child.

A bridal shower and Mother’s Day seem appropriate days for me to think about my children. I heard from all eight this weekend. Plus all three daughters-in-law. I am rich indeed.

And I never could have imagined this.

Ever.

There was a point in time when I had been told that I wouldn’t have children without using fertility drugs.

Okay, I thought, a family is not in my future.

One of my favorite professors in college had encouraged me more than once to pursue medical school. “I don’t usually do this,” she had said. “I’m usually trying to dissuade students who think they want to be doctors.”

But I got married two weeks after graduating college. I supported my husband while he finished his schooling and began his first job. Once he was settled in, I began thinking about medical school and figuring out which classes I still needed — Calculus and Organic Chemistry. I contacted the nearest university to find out how to enroll.

Then I found out I was pregnant.

When you’re in high school, the guidance counselor never suggests motherhood as a career track. When you’re in college, the career office doesn’t suggest it either. Honestly, it wasn’t even a blip on my life radar.

Yet here I am today to tell you that being a mother — a full-time stay-at-home mother, who decorated funny-looking birthday cakes and washed-dried-and-folded mountains of laundry, who read the same books over and over until I could “read” them with my eyes closed, who played road-sign spelling games to entertain on long road trips and refused to get an entertainment system in our minivan because I WAS the entertainment system, who shopped at yard sales and thrift stores and sorted through bags of hand-me-down clothing because living on one income isn’t easy — being a mother was, and IS, the absolute best thing in the whole world.

Children are the gift I didn’t know I needed.

In addition to all the dandelion bouquets and crayon artwork, I received from them the very best lessons in patience, kindness, forgiveness, generosity, understanding, perseverance, creativity, humor — and that list could go on and on.

There’s a part of me that feels like I need to apologize. I know that not everyone has this opportunity. Not everyone can have children. Not everyone can afford to stay home. Life happens in different ways to each of us.

But I’m not going to apologize. I’m simply going to be grateful.

From the bridal shower
family · Life

Who Knows?

Sally4 Comments

The other day someone called and asked, “Is it going to be busy in the bowling alley this afternoon?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I thought about making a snarky comment about my broken crystal ball.

I think it was the same day that some called and asked how far we were from Woodstock. “I suggest using Google maps for that,” I said.

That was the same caller who asked about what else there is to do in Cooperstown, NY, besides our sports center. “Most people come here for the Baseball Hall of Fame,” I told her.

“Oh, I don’t know anything about that,” she replied.

How or where she got our number remains a mystery to me. Why someone would call a sports facility with questions like that also remain a mystery.

***************

“Where do you see yourself in ten years?” My friend who had asked me about my goals asked me that question yesterday.

Who knows? Literally, who freaking knows?

(Side note: my use of “freaking” indicates what a frustrating question that is, but that’s about as far as I go with “f”-words. Side-side note: I saw an story yesterday that the actor who plays Roy Kent on Ted Lasso had done a bit on Sesame Street about his favorite “f” word — which turned out to be “fairness.” Well done, Sesame Street.)

Where do I see myself in ten years? I started doing mental math on how old my children and grandchildren would be. Laurel, my youngest daughter, would be 28. Wilma, my youngest granddaughter, would be 12. My oldest grandson would be 17. My oldest son would be 47.

The more mental math I did, the more I realized how much I define myself by the people in my life.

So what about me? In ten years, I will be 72.

At the gym I see 72 year old women climbing the rock wall. Heck, I see a 92 year old woman who comes in nearly every day to swim and walk the track.

But if COVID has taught us nothing else, it has taught us that life is fragile and can’t be taken for granted. Health and life can be snatched away with little warning.

Where do I see myself in ten years? Phooey. I hate the question. It ranks right up there with “What’s your goal?”

As hokey as this saying is, I think it holds a lot of truth — “Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. And today? Today is a gift. That’s why we call it the present.” (Eleanor Roosevelt)

(This post is mostly Stream of Consciousness writing based on the Linda Hill’s prompt: nose/noes/knows for today.)

family · patience · people

What’s Your Goal?

Sally3 Comments

(Warning: Long, rambling, and probably pointless)

Yesterday, I talked with a friend who had been a guidance counselor. I had asked his advice regarding one of my kids who needed a little direction.

“What’s your goal?” he asked.

I answered with the goal I have for the child in question.

“No,” he said. “That’s your goal for your child. I want to know your goal for Sally.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Just think about it,” he said, and waited about 2.5 seconds before he moved on. But he circled back to that question a couple more times.

“This feels like a guess-what-I’m-thinking question,” I said one of the times.

“What are you looking for?” I asked another of the times.

In the end, I felt incredibly frustrated.

What’s my goal? Sheesh. (I wrote that just before bed last night, still trying to process the whole conversation. Then I wrote about another 250 words expressing the same sentiment.)

…What are we even talking about? Are you asking about my goal as a parent — which has been my primary job for the past 38 years? Are you asking about my goal at the gym? Or at the house where I still have a thousand things to do? Is it my goal for today? This week? This month? This year?…

To be kind? To be a lifelong learner? To love my family?

What’s my goal? Seriously? I don’t know.

This is going to make me crazy.

I walked to the post office this morning. It’s about two and a half miles there. I thought and thought and thought while I walked.

Karl once told me that one of the doctors he works with has three goals for every day: to learn something, to teach something, and to laugh. I wish I was clever enough to come up with three succinct goals like that. Even if I had, I don’t think it would answer the question being asked by my friend.

Anyway, my three would be something like to listen, to see, and to be kind.

Again, I’m sure it’s not what he was looking for.

I copied another Thomas Merton quote into my journal the other day. “Therefore if you spend your life trying to escape the heat of the fire that is meant to soften and prepare you to become your true self, and if you try to keep your substance from melting as if your true identity were to be hard wax, the seal will fall upon you and crush you. You will not be able to take your true name and countenance, and you will be destroyed by the event that was meant to be your fulfillment.”

Merton was talking about sealing wax and the way it will crumble if it’s not adequately prepared for the stamp. Mary had just sealed a bunch of envelopes with wax. In fact, that’s what I had walked to the post office to mail. The seals were beautiful because the wax had been melted and was ready to receive the imprint.

But to say that preparing my heart for God’s imprint on it is my goal doesn’t sound right either. Plus, I don’t think it’s what my friend was asking.

Walking is such good therapy, especially walking on a country road, where the deer bound off into the woods when they see me coming and the ducks fly out the giant puddle in the cornfield in groups of 6 or 8 quacking and complaining at the inconvenience of my passing. A deer skeleton lay in the ditch. Last week, it had probably been covered with snow. A small collection of broken car parts were strewn about the ditch a little further down the road. A lone Lexus symbol at least told me what kind of car it had been. I wondered if the deer and the car parts came from the same mishap.

In the churning of thoughts about all these things — the deer, the ducks, the skeleton, the Lexus, the hawk circling over the field, the winter’s worth of garbage now revealed in the ditches — I kept circling back to the question: What is my goal?

Career goals for a stay-at-home mom are not a thing. Some days feel like survival. Some days feel like you won the lottery.

When my oldest son was born, what was my goal? To see him grow up, become independent, productive, happy. To help him discover what he loves and what he’s passionate about. In the late ’90s, he loved computers and knew he wanted to do something related to them. We had dial-up internet and I told him that if he wanted time on the internet, he would have to get up at 6 AM because I didn’t want him tying up the phone line all day. Doggone if he didn’t get up at 6 every morning so he could have his hour on the internet. Now it’s his livelihood.

For each of the kids, that has been the puzzle. I would watch them and ask them, “What do you love?” Two have gone into nursing. One works in the realm of outdoor recreation. Three are currently in college or graduate school. One is still figuring it all out.

I feel immense gratitude at the fact that most of them have found their way.

I love talking to them all on adult levels. I love when they call me. Or come visit. I love family Zoom calls and game nights.

I think my goal, maybe, has always been to have adult children who still love me in spite of the thousand mistakes I have made as a parent, to have children who are settled and happy with the choices they have made with their lives, to have children who still occasionally want my advice, to have children who share their lives with me.

I’ll try that goal on my friend and see if it works.

I doubt it.

family · Grief · Life

Maggie

Sally6 Comments

Maggie would have loved the snow this morning.

Even in this, her 14th year, she would run out the door when she saw fresh snow, throw herself down into it, and roll on her back, like the snow was scratching some itch that she couldn’t otherwise reach. When she was on her feet again, she would shove her snout into the snow, bringing it up with a small white pile on her muzzle. She always liked to grab a few bites of snow on her way back in the house.

I’ve never seen another dog love snow like that. The joy of Maggie’s snow-love always brought a smile to my face.

This morning’s snow is pretty — but there’s no Maggie to revel in it. No Maggie to bound through the depths of the drifts. No Maggie to chase the snow thrown from the shovel as we clear the driveway. No Maggie to leave that odd dog-snow-angel print just off the deck.

Maggie had been my birthday gift 14 years ago. I had long wanted for a dog, but my husband was resistant to adding a furry member to our family. In 2008, I received a leash, a collar, a dog dish for my birthday — and I looked up at him and said, “What’s all this?”

“You can get a dog,” he said.

And thus Maggie was adopted into our family.

On my birthday this year, we had to put Maggie down.

I still haven’t even been able to cry about it — life is too full. If you’ve ever been in that place of not being able to cry, you’ll know the giant lump of ice resting in your chest that can only be melted by tears — and the tears won’t cooperate.

I looked at the snow morning and missed Maggie intensely.

Now she’s a real dog-snow-angel and I hope someone somewhere is throwing snowballs for her to chase.

Rest in peace, Maggie.

Blogging Challenge · Faith · family · Life

Anticipation

Sally5 Comments

Dear Kim,

When I was trying to choose a word for 2022, I confess that anticipation didn’t make the list. It’s cousin, expectancy, did. (For the record, I ended up choosing aware and I’ll explain it another time.)

Anticipation (today’s prompt word) walks a little too closely with anxiety. To anticipate what’s coming next may feel thrilling, but it may also shift into dread.

I nixed expectancy for similar reasons. Expectancy sounded too much like expectation — and you and I both know that expectations from others can feel like a heavy thumb pressing down on us.

But, you know, I have been an expectant mother nine times over (if you count my one miscarriage) and that kind of expectancy is pretty wonderful. Each time, though, I remember in the early days holding the secret close and not telling anyone because I needed to get used to the idea of my life changing — again. I’ve loved being a mom. I truly have.

About that miscarriage, he or she would have been child #2. I hadn’t even told my husband about the positive pregnancy test. He was going away to a class and was going to be gone for a week or more. I wanted to think of a special way to break the news. I remember spending that short period of time whispering secrets to the little person inside me, with my hand on my abdomen, while I lay in bed at night alone. My first son was sleeping in the next room and he had already been such a joy.

Anyway, the night before Bud was to come home, I started bleeding. This was back before cell phones and I think he was already at the airport for his first flight. I had no way to reach him. I called my closest friend and she came to take care of my son while I went to the hospital.

I was alone when they did the ultrasound and then the laparoscopy. I was alone when they gave me the news — an ectopic pregnancy. Honestly, it was probably one of the loneliest times in my life.

But I had a son who needed me and a husband, home again, who had picked up a virus somewhere in his travels and wasn’t feeling well.

You know how we women do it. We get up and we start the next day and the next day and the next day. We make breakfast and do laundry. We change diapers and go to the grocery store. We press on — because what is the alternative?

I think back then was when I first chose to live in hope. Hope is also a cousin to anticipation and expectancy. They’re all good words. It’s that looking ahead that keeps me going.

Why does God allow us to go through awful things? I don’t know except that our experiences in the hard places build compassion and hope — and for that I am grateful.

Sorry for such a heavy letter.

Love,

Sally

the sign I painted and put on our barn
Blogging Challenge · family · Life · people

Generosity

Sally6 Comments

Dear Kim,

Yesterday at work, a little boy wandered in front of the desk and finally stopped to ask if he could borrow a pencil.

(Months ago I brought in a small stash of Blackwing pencils which are the greatest pencils ever made and I wanted to have them on hand for moments like this. “Where did these cool pencils come from?” some of my co-workers asked, but I’ve never fessed up.)

“I have to write a sentence using the word ‘pact’,” the boy told me.

“Pat?” I asked. I had trouble hearing him.

“Pact,” he replied.

“Like you packed your bag?” I asked.

“No. Pact. P-A-C-T,” he said. “It means agreement.”

“What grade are you in?” I asked.

“Third,” he replied, and hurried off to write his sentence.

I turned to my co-worker. “That’s not a 3rd-grade word. I didn’t learn that word until I don’t know when.”

She laughed at my irritation.

When he brought the pencil back, I asked him what sentence he wrote.

“My brother and I found a pact,” he said confidently. “It means we found an agreement.” I like that he felt the need to explain it to me.

A pact, to me, is a more abstract kind of agreement and a 3rd-grader lives in a concrete world. In his 8 year old mind, he found a tangible something with his brother. He probably packed it in a pack. I wondered what his teacher would think of the sentence.

But this is supposed to be about generosity, the prompt for the day.

Generosity is also an abstract idea. I can’t pick up in my hands and hold a generosity.

I was thinking, instead, of coining a new phrase for a group. You know, like, a pride of lions or a murder of crows — except it would be a people group. A generosity of sons.

I have five sons, all of whom are now amazing men. It’s a marvel. A gift that I don’t deserve. A generosity.

My father used to tell me that I was the richest person he knew, and then he would add, laughing, “And maybe someday you’ll have money.”

To fill you in on what my sons are doing, I’ll give you a few clues, like one of those logic-grid puzzles. Two are still in school. Three are gainfully employed. One owns his own company. One lives in Canada. One lives in Florida. Three live in New York state. Three are married. Two have children. I”m proud of every single one of them.

Maybe in a future letter, I’ll tell you more details.

But I did want to say, in closing, that the very first person I think of and associate with the word generosity is you. You are such an amazingly generous person. You could win prizes for it if someone gave out prizes — but you’d probably give your prize away if I know you.

And I’m so glad that I do know you.

Love,

Sally

My five sons (2014)
Blogging Challenge · family · Life

Abundance

Sally5 Comments

Dear Kim,

I want to use this letter to tell you about some of the abundance in my life. In your most recent message to me, you asked me about my girls. Talk about abundance! I’m so proud of each one of them.

My oldest daughter has her master’s degree in nursing. She works for an organization that cares for low-income elderly, trying to keep them living independently. Her career path was inspired by both my parents. The other day, one of the other kids said something about Helen pursuing law school. That may have been just idle conversation and have absolutely no substance to it — or maybe it’s true. I could see her doing that — arguing on behalf of people who cannot. She’s strong, strong-minded, and compassionate.

And she’s getting married — to a kind, compassionate man who knows how to handle someone who is strong and strong-minded. I’m so very happy for her.

My middle daughter just finished her first semester at an all-women’s college in Virginia. I was driving her to Syracuse yesterday to catch her flight back to Roanoke when she got a text from the airlines that one of her flights was canceled. She had gotten an email the day before from the school that a water main had burst in one of the residence halls. We had been watchingbracing for news that they would go remote because of COVID but that didn’t happen. Last night, though, she heard that in-person classes are being postponed for a week. In my heart, I rejoiced. I LOVE having her home.

She has blossomed so much at school. During the fall semester, she would call or text things like, “Guess what I learned today?!” and it made me so happy. My father would have been thrilled to see someone so excited about learning. Heck, I was excited about her excitement.

My youngest daughter also finished her first semester at college — a straight A student, but she’s not going back. Instead she’s going to pursue dental hygiene. It’s an interest she has had for a long time. Maybe I didn’t encourage it enough in recent years because the thought of working in people’s mouths all day was so YUCK! It’s the right path for her, though.

Today she came to visit me at work. “What a beautiful girl!” my co-worker remarked — and she is. Absolutely lovely.

I realize as I write this that abundance may have been a better word to describe my sons since I have five of them. But I’ll save that for tomorrow when the word is generosity. I have a generosity of sons. God’s generosity.

I also have an abundance of blessing — three daughters.

Love,

Sally

family

Whoopie Pies

Sally8 Comments

I think baking is very rewarding, and if you follow a good recipe, you will get success.

Mary Berry, judge on The Great British Bake Off

One of the nicest things to happen to me recently was when I came downstairs to find the kitchen clean.

Not only clean, the coffee maker was ready to go, with a note taped to it to just push start (or play, as one of my other children used to say).

Not only clean and coffee-ready, I found whoopie pies baked and ready to be assembled.

If you aren’t familiar, a whoopie pie is a New England thing (although the Amish also claim them) made with two chocolate cake-like cookies with a sweet cream filling sandwiched between them.

“I remember you saying that Grammie used to make them for you for your birthday,” my daughter Mary said.

Yes, that’s true. My mother grew up in the Boston area and I loved her whoopie pies. I used to make them for the older kids, but I don’t think I ever made them for Mary.

“I had to look through three boxes of recipes before I found this one,” Mary said, showing me the old hand-written recipe which my mother had labeled “Whoopee Pies.”

“Then, I just thought of it as a technical challenge like on the The Great British Bake Off,” she said. “I followed the directions exactly. When it said, ‘Sift the dry ingredients,’ I sifted the dry ingredients. When it said to put them by teaspoonful on the baking sheet, I used a teaspoon.”

It’s amazing what happens when a baker carefully follows an old recipe.

Even sweeter than chocolate and cream is a person so thoughtful to find a special recipe and make it for someone who would appreciate it.

Mom’s Whoopee Pies

1/2 Cup Shortening
1/2 tsp Vanilla
2 Egg Yolks
1 Cup Milk
1 Cup Sugar
2 1/2 Cups Flour
1 tsp Soda
5 Tbsp Cocoa powder
1 tsp Baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Sift. dry ingredients.
Add rest and mix until smooth.
Drop by tsp on ungreased sheet.
10-12 min at 375 until set but not crisp
When cool, put together with filling.

2 Egg whites
2 Cups Confectioners sugar
1 tsp Vanilla
1/4 tsp Salt
1/2 Cup Shortening

Mix until smooth.

Faith · family · prayer

Bedside Prayer for an Aging Parent

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The following prayer was written nearly six years ago when my mother was hospitalized. She was eventually discharged, but then died later that year.

I share it today because I know so many people are now caring for their own elderly family members. I want to encourage those of you who are in that position to use those quiet bedside moments to talk to God. Offer your thoughts, your observations, your concerns and your memories to Him — maybe in gratitude or maybe as a way of reconciling. The single most important thing that got me through those days was prayer.

O Great Physician —

You love the hoary head,
including my mother’s silver waves,
now matted from too much time on the pillow.

As I sit beside my mother’s bed
and study her lined face,
I watch each breath pass through her lips
with an effort she did not used to exert.
Occasionally, her weary eyes open,
but, Lord,
she doesn’t even know me!

Heavenly Father, cradle her.
She worked hard in this life,
raising five children,
supporting her husband,
preparing meal after meal
for family, friends, and strangers,
using her nursing skills
to give hope to others,
using her tragedies
to encourage those
who encounter the same.

Let her know the rest
that only You can give.

While I sit here
don’t mind me.
I’ll just hold her hand
and weep a little.
I’m content to wipe her face,
give her sips of water,
and wait.

Amen.

family · Life

Primary Experiences of Life and Death

Sally1 Comment

Many persons live their entire lives without ever seeing a human being die.

Howard Thurman, “Life Must Be Experienced” in The Inward Journey
My father caring for my mother in her last days

At the time, I didn’t realize what a privilege it was to sit with my mother and then my father as they passed from one life into the next.

In some ways, it felt like an awfulness. Especially with my mother, with that gurgle of excess fluid that the nurse would suction out to make her more comfortable. It’s a sound I won’t forget.

And I prayed in my mother’s last few days conflicting prayers of “Please, Lord, let her live until my sister gets here” and “Please, Lord, relieve this terrible suffering.”

She lived until my sister arrived. We were all gathered around my mother’s bed in the hospital — her living children and my father — as she died.

My father went more quickly. One day he was up, dressing himself, coming out breakfast. Before the end of the day, my children had to help him back to bed. The next day he didn’t get out of it and he died that evening.

My brothers were there. One sister-in-law. One nephew. Most of my children. His home health aide. My sister had not yet arrived. My brother played a song on a CD for him as he passed.

My sister got there in the wee hours of the morning and went to see him as he was laid out in his bed. The hospice nurse who had prepared the body had clasped my father’s hands across his abdomen and it looked so unnatural. He looked so dead, and I wished with all my heart that my sister could have seen him alive one last time. We had Face-timed with her in the afternoon, but it’s not the same.

These days, the stories that come out of the hospitals impacted with COVID are awful — the shortages of rooms, equipment, and personnel. The makeshift morgues. The isolation.

I wept one day in the car listening on the radio to a nurse describe staying over and over after her shift had ended to sit with a dying patient because she didn’t want anyone to die alone. How many patients had she done that with? I don’t remember — but it was many.

And I realized the great privilege I had — to sit with my parents in a non-COVID world and tell them I loved them one last time.