Age is Just a Number

Grateful, mostly....but still...

I’d like to rant just a little. Most times rants are just crustiness aired. Sometimes they are hurts. I guess this one is a hurt over a sensitive topic.

Mom moved along to Goodness, and our family shared in a very honoring service for her. One day after her passing spouse-man told my oldest stepdaughter that it would be good for her to call me or send me a card or something – he was doing his best to give parental guidance. That lodged in the back of my mind, because after all, we all want to know that Everyone on the planet loves us and is there for us and cares about our life. I subconsciously noted time passing not hearing from my oldest stepdaughter. I admit, alright?, it made me a bit bitter knowing that she had told The Mother’s household about it before we had a chance to tell my younger stepdaughter. Once in a while I wander into the Why question, but this time I was a bit burdened by other things.

Three weeks after it all my oldest stepdaughter shows up with a fabulous card and a really cool ceramic thing with plants in it, with hugs and appropriate mood. No, no griping now, in fact I internally ate crow for admonishing her for her lack of manners.

And goll darn it if then my youngest doesn’t comes home and I showed it to her and she said she’d already seen it. My mind clicks in – okay, maybe a bit oversensitive presently – maybe not - and I realized this gift presented to me has visited The Mother’s house first. I don’t get it; the oldest no longer lives at home, drives herself all over tarnation and has what it takes to find these things for me, but they need to go inside to The Mother’s house first? Can anything just pertain to spouse-man and/or me? Does it all have to go through The Mother filter first? Can I just have a bubble around my mother’s passing without even that getting tainted by The Mother?

This is when I pray to myself to help let go of this nastiness … Lord, I know you see all of this and will set it all straight one day in everyone’s heart.

Mom

June 6th, 1921                                                October 23rd, 2007

Shut It Up!

My sister lives in Arizona.  We chatted today.   I highly suspect she is somewhat loyal to the Diamondbacks.

Me:    I just want to start out by saying that I apologize in advance for the humiliation the Diamondbacks will suffer ... she interrupts here while I am still talking .... at the Rockies hands on your home turf.

Her:    Your nephews told me to tell you to just Shut It Up.

I guess they were ready for my phone call.

How to do a Road Trip

Any Questions?

Trowel Trades

I finally made the connection today why I have thought of so many things related to Dad this week; his birthday is on 9/11 and he would have been 91 now. He was a bricklayer. As with many things he did, he was highly skilled. It just seems so old fashioned to think about someone doing manual labor like he did.

My brother decided to go down that path after – even at one point being an ordained minister – trying other ‘careers’. He too has become very skilled in his profession. Recently he was involved in a restoration project in New York of a Frank Lloyd Wright complex. Here is a picture of just a small part of one of his latest projects – he’s the dude on the right…

A Wing and A Prayer

Or in this case, a Miata and a Prayer. We’ll be driving this:



to Florida shortly. Yep, 3 or more days in this little thing. I was coining the phrase "Death Rocket" to coworkers until one made several appeals that I refer to it as something else…maybe I should. Okay, it’s "The Mazda".

I admit, I have some trepidation. This is a little car. An 18 wheeler could run over the top of us and he wouldn’t know the difference. We may not either. We could run into – no pun intended – the same fate as my nephew, the owner, when he ran into a horse that was hit on the road late at night in the complete dark on an Indian reservation. Okay, so we’re not driving across any reservations that I am aware of, but we’ll be going through places like southern Kentucky and Tennessee and Georgia where, according to Hollywood, the word cousins take on a whole different meaning.

I love road trips, but I haven’t experienced one strapped into a cocoon with only enough room for my water bottle and couple carrot sticks. The trunk won’t even close on an upright inflated bag of chips. Believe me, I’ve already tried. In this car, the Laptop will mean literally that, on my lap for the entire time it is not in the trunk. I even thought it might be handy to lose some number of pounds, but rationalized myself out of it when I figured we’d need the weight to give gravity a hand on the highway.

So, I ask all of my devoted and consistent readers to lend a few prayers for safety and no hitches for this trip. We’ll be thankful and send a postcard.

Together-ness, or Alone-ness

While listening to Scott teach last Sunday about Going it Alone or Together the image of a story my dad told me flooded into my mind from who knows which archive buried in my brain.

He was in the Army in WWII and happened to be a smoker at the time. One day while in the middle of Africa he decided to quit. No patches, no support group or special gum. He just decided in his mind that he was done smoking. He told me that "the guys" would taunt him and try to get him to smoke – shaking their packs at him and other nonsense. After getting enough of it, at some point, while driving a truck ( I think an ammunition truck!) down a dusty road, he pulled his gun on one of them and told him "if you do that again I’ll shoot you".

I heard many stories from my dad about how he used brute force to solve his problems, so it didn’t shock me in any way to hear that. He was raised in rough times; in an orphanage, in foster homes, out on his own…on into the Army, nearly mortally injured, sent home to recover or die. What I was always impressed by – meaning, as a kid I was truly Impressed – is that he was able, by his own strength, to make up his mind and just do it; he set his mind and the task was done. I inherited that trait. I have always been proud of that trait.

Play - alone.
Move out on my own – alone.
Go to college – alone.
Take care of business – alone.
Make small and large decisions – alone.
Home repairs, car repairs, bodily damage repairs – alone.
Live – alone…. All until my late 30’s.

The toughest challenge is to live with another person well. I became aware on Sunday just how much my dad’s example has penetrated my character; how much it has possibly hindered my relationships, how much it has probably hurt me.

Going it alone has advantages, as Scott said. My mood affected no one – it didn’t bounce off anybody to come back and nail me. Life wasn’t so messy, it was simpler. It was soooo much simpler. I once told spouse-man the best vacation would be if he went somewhere with the girls for a week … and I got to stay home. Is that bad?

Now I am wondering and pondering about 1. being Proud of the trait and 2. the Trait itself. It is difficult to reach out and depend on other people, especially when God gave me so many physical talents and abilities to do things myself. Reaching out emotionally has netted great, great disappointment in the past. I find that people are quick to jump in to help with material things when someone is in need, but shy away from helping relationally - like schools of fish when you dip below the surface and swim near them. So I wonder how many others out there inherited a similar trait - one that keeps all of us hovering at a distance like a school of barracudas?

Dive Anyone?

More pics from Saipan.  Here is my brother and sis-in-law diving on a WWII site.  You can see part of an anchor in the second pic.  Life is tough on the other side of the planet!

Observing

After spending 7 lucky years of hurting and praying, praying and hurting, not necessarily in that order or consistency, experiencing exactly what Stephanie tells us about in her recent post about Trust, I am observing, and being open to a changing relationship between spouse-man and his oldest daughter. I have not yet healed from or built trust back, nor has he. It will take time.

A year ago when she got her driver’s license and car, she’d swing by our house in that newborn sense-of-freedom flurry, and we saw her more in that first month or two than we had in a year. She had a new boyfriend we didn’t meet until 6 months or so into it; earlier this year. We’ve watched her struggle with getting into college partly because of that "I want to do it myself" attitude, and partly because of The Mother’s lack of knowledge of anything pertaining to gaining knowledge. We’ve heard her say that she needs to "get out of that house" (The Mother’s) in frustration and in the same sentence tell us that she needs to "play the game" though because The Mother is going to "pay for" tuition. I’ve noticed – with detached faint joy - that she has called her dad somewhat frequently - more recently - in her efforts to get college information, and we’ve been severely dismayed by the fact that she wasn’t able to get her mother’s cooperation in obtaining financial aid – the cheap government kind. In the end, the end being actually getting herself settled into her dorm and starting classes, it appears that The Mother put her efforts into cosigning on a private loan with high interest…and the interest starts now thankyouverymuch. I won’t even go into other promises we’ve heard second-handed-ed our way that might make a head shake a little.

We were invited last evening to have dinner with her at her dorm/cafeteria where, she claimed, they serve pretty doggone-good food. And sure enough, the food wasn’t bad, and there was evidence that lunches and breakfasts were pretty good too. She has done pretty good for herself in that she works at the dorm which nets her free room and board. Amazing, free room and board, a loan for tuition and books – where DOES our child support go anyway? Yes, still. That aside, we visited for a whole 2+ hours. Yes, we sat down, met some of her friends, ate, had conversation, and I had hope. She is growing up and growing out of the clutches of her mother’s direct influence – to some degree. I have reservations, I admit, as she jumps when her mother calls her home to run an errand or fill in where she stops. I’ll bet as soon as school gets a bit busier those trips may decrease over time. When she gets older, molds her own life; not so many trips home. But she invited us over to eat and that’s cool. Spouse-man meets her after her class some days on his way to his. As we made our way to our car she looked back and asked if she’d see him tomorrow…That’s cool.

To Video or Not to Video

It’s a dilemma. Tonite is the first high school football game and my stepdaughter’s first cheerleading experience in the real sports world. We’ve been blessed by having her presence in our house this week for the first time in 3 months ‘cept for 2 days 2 weeks ago. So we get to take her and experience a little reminiscing ourselves of sitting on hard bleachers, hearing the whistle, the cheers and, last but not least, the marching band. I’ll tell ya right off the bat, I don’t cheer. I don’t do the 2-4-6-8 Appreciate thing. You might, might, catch me on a good day at the baseball game raising my arms in a faint attempt to do the wave. I don’t have a secret desire to be a tv star or do motivational speeches for lots of money either. If you know anything about me, Limelight does not come to mind. Oops, I started to ramble-rant.

So here we are, the neglected stepfamily suddenly reinstated after a summer hiatus. The family cheerleader is very excited about this whole deal, especially since she is a freshman and she made the varsity squad (do they still use that word?).

She asks me last night: "Do you know how to videotape?" "Uh, not sure." was my most articulate response. She says, "Can you videotape me cheering since mom can’t see me and she wants to be able to see me cheer?"

Now wait just a minute, I didn’t envision going to my first high school football game in 20…25…um, ok, nearly 30 years to sit behind a digital camcorder recording cheerleaders so that The Mother, who is not present for some important work related unavailability, can see her daughter cheer for the first time in high school. We’re leaving work early to get her there early, why can’t The Mother take time off 10 minutes away to make a showing? Why can’t the stepdad camcord for his wife?

I suppose the Christ-like thing to do is to lovingly smile, pick up the camcorder and happily fulfill the request for this youngster who probably needs to see more Christ-like examples in her life, and who probably has no other concern on the planet than whether her makeup will be right, hair in place and if she has the right set of cheer clothes on per her coach’s request. I am, however, not feeling very Christ-like. My selfish, beat-up feeling, taken-advantage-of, and gossiped-about self wants to give a big giant NO and explain all the reasons why, point out every negligent aspect of her mother and throw in the stepdad too while I’m at it, maybe toss in a few other people and leave the camcorder on The Mother’s front doorstep and ring the doorbell 92 times while she’s sleeping.

Thanks for letting me get that out of my system.

Self Note: Read Eph 5:1 from The Message for an attitude adjustment.