life

Sunday Sentiment

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I am blessed beyond measure with a man who is still taking care of his children. They don’t need much tending, but he is the first person they call when anything good or bad or funny or sad happens. If they have a question or learn some new bit of information, his phone rings or his text pings. Always Dad, not Mama. And I am good with that. I don’t know who I might have been had my own father been similar.

We had a good visit with the children yesterday. We also had time with the tiny girls, aka wild ones. They play together and fight over toys and love each other. One is fair and blonde haired, the other dark and brown haired. Both with brown eyes. Stubborn like him and his children.

What will life bring for them? Will I see them as grown women? Will they still want me to paint their nails and pile up in the bed to watch a movie and go to sleep snuggled next to me?

I’m sure he will teach them how to drive the buggy and the tractor. They will learn all about the cows they both love. I hope their interest will continue as they grow. It will mean so much to him.

He is like me about the children and grands. We don’t agree with the saying about skipping the kids to have the grandchildren. We adore our own two so much and always had great fun raising them. He loves being a father and that makes being a Paw Paw even sweeter.

My mood is a bit bittersweet this morning, though. I still miss my parents and his. They did not get to live out their full life span. How different life might have been. How different this day might have been. Life doesn’t go on happily ever after for anyone. We just have to savor each hour as it comes and not waste the next wishing for the last.

Happy Father’s Day to my Rock. And to my son. And to my son-in-law. And thank you, Father, for upholding me through this sometimes bittersweet journey. Help me, Lord Jesus, to savor the now.

Strange Treasures

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From time to time, I consider the following question. If I had to load my earthly possessions in my small car and evacuate, what would my I count as irreplaceable treasure?

Like most, I have photographs. I have two small trunks full of old mementos. The trunks themselves are heirlooms.  Then, there are my books.  I have a lot I would not pack. But, I have previously shared comments about the ones I would try to save.

I have a large pottery jar and an ostrich egg. There is a glass tray of sea shells.  An old flour barrel has some dolls and toys.

I do have a few pieces of furniture I would like to somehow stuff in there. They wouldn’t fit in my car.  So in my imaginings, I allow him to place them in the truck.  One piece is a credenza.  It is full of glassware collected from both grandmothers, my mother and my own purchases.

Three jewelry boxes should go in the pile. For themselves as well as for the odds and ends in them.

My kitchen cabinets are an entirely separate problem. The collection of dishes, pots, pans, casseroles is two lifetimes of work.  My mother’s and my acquisitions are interwoven behind those birch panels.

I am resisting getting up from my writing to wander the house and see what I am missing in my description.

Just today, I pulled from my shelves a small assortment of vinyl LP albums. These are the melodies I would put on the turntable on sultry summer afternoons.  Exotic, dramatic orchestral performances by Mancini or Mantovani.  What does this collection of music my mother acquired reveal about her?

Many of the tunes familiar from old movies that were broadcast on our little television that got two channels, NBC and CBS, until I was a freshman in high school and mother got an antenna booster than allowed us to get ABC, too.

Those albums would go in there someplace. Though I don’t have a turntable to play them anymore, I would rather not leave them behind.

I have had to let go of so many people and so many ideas and dreams for one reason or another. My treasures, strange though they may seem to onlookers, help me feel a connection with my ancestors.  Perhaps my strange treasures will help my descendants feel a connection with them also.  And with me.

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