Entertaining Angels

“Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” – Hebrews 13:2

The knock sounded for the second time on our back door and realizing that nobody else was up or around I jumped out of bed to get it.  The man was beginning to look around..maybe for some people who were actually awake. He looked vaguely familiar and guessing that he was probably picking up or dropping off a package for our company I put on my most formal -bed head- voice.

“Can I help you?” He started, apparently not realizing that I had opened the door behind him, so I repeated myself, “Is there something I can do for you?” I probably looked a little agitated. Actually, I have NO idea what I looked like but it couldn’t have been too good.

He asked if my dad and brothers were at work and when I replied that they were he asked if my dad had his contractor’s license. I said that he did and the man explained that he needed a contractor to “sign off something”.  So he’s heard of us from someone I thought to myself maybe I‘ve seen him from work…? I half-coherently gave him my brother’s number explaining that Justin runs the business and he could help –not explaining that I don’t give Dad’s number out to strangers. He thanked me and asked what we were doing this Summer. I was appalled by his audacity and gave a vague, “I don’t know, probably working on our house,” as I gestured toward the house behind him. He asked how the house was coming and I quickly but shortly told him that it was “getting there”, explaining that the downstairs was almost done but the upstairs was not.  I think he realized that I wasn’t too fond of such a personal conversation so he took his leave apologizing for waking me up. I watched him go as a realization struck me: This man put up 12 of our guests during my sister’s wedding. In other words, we consider this man a “friend of ours”.

Confession: I facebook stalked his wife to make sure I was right and sure enough…it was him.

Now I felt like a fool. What must he think of us?? I couldn’t believe my manners.  I was determined to apologize and asked my sister what she thought of the idea of making cookies and bringing them over.  When I explained the story to her ending with, “I treated him like I would’ve treated one of the neighbors,” (referring to our neighbors who come often asking for money or use of the phone or internet), it was Annie’s response that hit me hard:

“Maybe you need to make cookies and bring them to the neighbors then.”  ………..oooh…..

I talk about love, and I pretend to practice it. I even think that I’m pretty good at it sometimes. But I treat my neighbors like intruding strangers, keeping my guard up to protect my privacy, keeping my conversation short to let them know that my life is not their business, keeping my attitude cool to show that they are not my friend.  I read what I just wrote and think that I’m being harsh on myself but it’s all true. I can be as cold as I can be warm, and the thought of it chills my bones.

It’s true, we’re not expected to be totally open to strangers but my conscience tells me otherwise. I have been placed in a house on a property with a big, ugly, blue sign out front that proclaims the place to be a church.  This property has been placed next to several apartment complexes with a lot of very needy people. My conscience demands that I love each of these people, and while that doesn’t necessarily demand my being completely open to what’s going on in my life, it does demand warmth, time, and care for each person no matter who they are.

God gave me His love with a command to share it. It’s a big love, the biggest, which means that it’s not just for a few people, I have to share it with every person I meet. He also says that if I withhold that love from anyone, I am keeping it from Him. I’m picturing a pile of wasted love, wasted because it was not given to someone and now cannot be given to God either.   I think I’m going to work on distributing that pile…because I cannot love God as long as it sits there.

EDIT: I apologize for any ads that show up on this post. I’m not sure yet how that’s happening. :\

Imagine…

The coming election and all that it entails has been a burden on my heart for some time. I’ve attempted to put what I’m thinking into words but find that it’s just not that easy.  Tonight I read a blog entry that I felt I could share, instead of writing something myself, because honestly, I could not have said it better.

It’s quite provocative and I think it’s something that every Christian should seriously consider.

“Imagine a chance to be honestly and morally proud of our government and our nation.  Imagine being able to look back completely free of the guilt you would have felt if the man you helped put into office had been unjust, taken innocent lives, or lied to the country he swore his honor to.  When I think of this opportunity being at our fingertips, I don’t lie when I say that I’m almost overwhelmed at the thought of being able to be honestly free and morally proud of our country again!

Us, who call ourselves the Evangelicals, have undoubtedly held the swaying factor on every presidential election in my life time and have proven without fail that we’d rather be able to be the power putting our president into office, than have to face the shame of casting a vote that doesn’t count because we voted for what we knew was morally best.

The more I consider, the more I’m becoming aware of a serious power struggle.  Not between the Republicans and Democrats, not even between America and the government, but between the American Christians, and the world.  Unfortunately it’s the Christians, in all their worldly wisdom, who have forgotten the power of God and therefore played right into the hands of the ‘powers that be’.  It’s the Christians that the government has discovered to hold the deciding destiny of the nation.  And it’s their pride and greed that the government has found to drive them on in their lust for power.  It’s the power of winning that allows them to set their God and His ways aside, that allows them to compromise and choose what they would otherwise decide is wrong.  It’s us!!!!  who should be down on our knees, confessing and repenting of our pride, our lack of faith, and our hunger for being lord of all the earth instead of trusting the actual True Power.

Do we honestly not think that we’re digging our own judgment deeper and deeper as we choose a little bit of immorality over the option of loosing a vote, election after election?  Do we honestly think that God would even touch offerings that are bought with compromise?  Do we honestly think that He would use our own wisdom to aid His own ruling of the world?  Did we honestly forget that He in His own power doesn’t need any power we might be gaining in our own skewed wisdom?  Have we actually forgotten God, and that He alone puts up and takes down rulers?

These are the questions on my mind tonight.

“Consider this, you who forget God, or I will tear you to pieces, with none to rescue:” -Ps. 50:22“

 

 

Enough

“Enough for me that Jesus saves, this ends my fear and doubt.”

Recently I was convicted of having an ungrateful and unthankful spirit. It’s true. It’s all too easy for me to fall into depression or discouragement because I simple don’t see a reason to be happy. Fortunately God is totally forgiving and since then has opened my eyes to see that the reasons are surrounding me. Now instead of having a mindset of, “what can I be happy about?” I’m trying to have instead a, “why should I not be happy?” mindset.  It’s amazing how much that can change one’s perspective.

I was laying on my bed this afternoon just finished with my Spanish homework, trying to decided if Spanish was even worth it after all and if anything else I was doing was worth it. I was starting to get discouraged and began praying about it when a friend sent me a text message. Our conversation caused me to remember my new mindset and it was like a light bulb went on in my head.  All of a sudden I felt free of the discouragement. Why did I need to be discouraged? What reason do I have to worry? Is it not enough that Jesus died for me?

Not only is it enough for me, sometimes I am overwhelmed by it. What am I that He loves me this much?

“Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” -1Thes. 5:18

 

Something to think about

My dad shared this interesting blog entry with us this morning and not only was it something I have been recently contemplating, but I found myself totally convicted of putting off others in order to “work on my relationship with God”.

I feel almost as though the author of this article stole the words (that I wish I had) right out of my mouth.

So read it, and tell me what you think.

The Bait and Switch of Contemporary Christianity

This brings to mind the verse that says: “Whatsoever you do unto the least of these…that you do unto me.”

Children

The house is filled with pleasant, yet semi-unusual sounds today.  There is a chair, laying sideways, in the doorway between the kitchen and living room; Caleb is practicing his acrobatic skills by climbing over it, all the while singing out:”Taco taco, taco taco taco…” We’re not sure yet what this means, but he’s happy when he says it.

Julia sits on the living room floor holding her new doll. She points at the eyes on the doll and says, “Uh!” which we translate to mean “eye”. When asked what her doll’s name is, she replies, “Dug!” which is not surprising at all since she refers to most everything as dug.

They both go into Dad and Mom’s room where Dad happens to be at the moment. They both love Grandpa very much and squeal whenever they’re near him. Caleb has driven his truck-chair in and is now performing his acrobat act for Grandpa while Julia continues to squeal.

These sounds make me happy. In-fact, it is very hard for me to hold an ungrateful attitude when I’m around these kids. I cannot help but be amazed by the complete disappearance of logic when someone can coo and ah over a baby, and in the very same minute turn around and try to convince you to not have too many of them.  Really? Attempt to limit one of God’s most priceless blessings to four? Why would I want to do that?

“Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.” -Psalm 127:3

 

Drawing Nearer

When I was very little I remember wondering at the statement of a young lady we knew who was about to be married. It was something to the effect of: “I knew it was God’s will for me to marry him.” I remember picturing her in my head, kneeling at a church, hands clasped, listening to God silently tell her that this man was the one for her.

That picture stayed with me for a long time. I was so curious about what it sounded like, or felt like, when God told someone His will for them. It seemed so foreign to me, because I had not yet known that “still, small voice”.

As I got older I began to worry about how exactly I should know God’s will for me. Because I was older, more experienced in praying as well as “understanding” God, this made it much more complicated. Obviously God wasn’t going to just whisper it all in my ear. I can just picture that:

“Joanna, this is what you’re going to do with your life. Here is where I want you to live, you’re gonna be able to buy a nice car but I want it to be red…..”

Yeah, I didn’t picture that one happening any time soon. But how was I supposed to know where to go, what to do, what I shouldn’t do???

As I got older I began to realize that I knew this really cool person whose name was Dad. I was given to Dad to raise, nurture, and love, but the coolest thing was, God gave me to Dad, which means that God trusted Dad to make decisions about raising me and so on. Dad has a pretty deep relationship with God but that doesn’t change the fact that God has commanded that we honor our parents, and has shown throughout history that this is a very important command to obey. Anyway, this is all to say that when Dad made a decision about whether or not we should do something, we could take that as God’s will for our lives. This realization was very satisfactory and I figured that I would seek God’s will through my Dad until I married, and then I would seek it through my husband. How simple is that?? I remember feeling a little sorry for the men, it’s way harder to get a clear answer from God than it is to get one from someone you can look at and have a verbal conversation with. I thought.

Now that I’m older it’s not near as easy. I don’t know if it has anything to do with my age, for all I know it could just be that my dad is feeling a little more grandfatherly lately.   But all of a sudden I’m finding myself faced with choices to make, choices where I feel it’s extremely critical to choose the right thing.

One day I was seriously bugged over a couple of pretty important decisions I felt that I needed to make. Automatically going to my Dad I shared what was on my mind, looking for his opinion a.k.a. God’s will for me. I was rather pleased when he helped me to make two wise choices, and encouraged by that, I plowed into the next decision I was torn between. Expecting an, “I don’t think that’s a very good idea because of such and such.” but preferring an, “Yeah! I think that’s a great idea.” I was a little disappointed when he said, “Sure, if you want to do that.”

Now what kind of an opinion was that anyway? I asked myself as I pondered it later. It seemed that this was something my dad wanted me to figure out by myself, and anybody who knows me knows that I dislike making decisions. I truly wanted to make the right choice though and found myself seeking an answer from God Himself. Now don’t get me wrong, this wasn’t the first time I had sought direction from God, but it was the first time I was so worried about possibly making the wrong choice.

Looking back I am more than grateful to my dad for leaving it up to me. Not because of the freedom I might have felt, but because of the experience he sent me through. All of the worry, all of the sleepless nights, all of the jumping back and forth, the days I spent waiting for an answer, all of these things I would not trade for the world. These things brought me to a point of humility, gave me a lesson in patience, and gave me a deeper understanding of who God is: Because I didn’t want to miss my answer, whenever He was planning to give it, I had no choice but to draw nearer to God, and that nearness is something that I treasure more than anything. That nearness brings me back to the girl, kneeling in the churchyard, listening for that still small voice. I may not have been kneeling or clasping my hands when I waited silently for my answer, I was, in fact, laying in my bed. I heard that still, small voice, and it showed me that where God wanted me to be was exactly what I had come to want as well. The peace that flooded through my spirit was immense.

I can find out for myself what God’s will is for me. It’s true that He uses my parents to help define it, which I am still very satisfied with, but the sweetness of communing with my Savior, whether over a decision or simply in worship of Him, is the most beautiful thing I have ever known.

“Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you.” -James 4:8

I completely recommend this.  It’s worth every moment.

I’m not biased, I just think she’s awesome.

My rat killing sister, Annie, wrote this song for anybody and everybody who is 18 or older, single, and knows what pressure feels like. She also wrote it for everyone who likes to give pressure. I think you’ll get what I’m saying if you just watch the video.

Enjoy!

Adventures at Home part 2

Here it is, the long awaited part 2.

This post is dedicated to Merrie. The sister I fight with.

Warning: This story is not near as amusing as part 1. –At least, it’s not amusing to me.–  But it’s not meant to be amusing anyway. If, however, you find my over-reactions and thoughtlessness somewhat comical, you have my full permission to laugh.

Adventures at Home Part 2: Why I have a recently acquired, special consideration for my sister, and why I am considering swearing off anything other than a “feel good” novel.

Picture this:

Dad and Mom are gone. In Idaho still. (They’re not still in Idaho, it’s just that they were when this happened.)

Chris, Annie, Will, Jack, Alyssa and Trevor are at the mountain, snowboarding. (Disclaimer: Chris was not snowboarding, he was skiing.)

Merrie is working.

This leaves at home: Charity, Kaylee, Heidi and myself. Fun right? Right.

Now picture this:

I am outside attempting to dig a splinter out of my foot when Charity comes out of the house, running, and holding my cell phone toward me.

“Joanna,” she says, “It’s Merrie, she wants you to pick her up, she said to bring Dad’s truck so that you can put the bike in the back.”

Before I continue I must inform you that Merrie has a habit of riding a bike to work sometimes. This is rather an important thing to know if you really want to understand the story.

Charity is somewhat breathless about all of this so I take the phone to find out what’s going on. There is nobody on the other line. I attempt to call Merrie back. No answer.

“Where does she want me to pick her up? Is she still at work?…”

My questions are numerous but Charity shrugs her shoulders at me and says, “She said something about Colima and Aguiro.”

I roll my eyes, “Charity, Colima does not meet Aguiro, they run parallel to each other.”

“I know, but she hung up and she said to hurry.”

A tiny fear enters into my mind as I try to think sensibly about what to do. Finally making a decision, I give orders for the girls to stay inside and continue dinner prep while I go to find Merrie. Gathering my keys and some flip flops I limp to the truck -splinter still in my foot- and head down the road.

After dialing Merrie’s cell phone number for the third time without getting an answer I begin to worry. I throw up a prayer for her safety and for help in finding her as I continue down Colima; scanning the sides of the road as I drive…

My imagination begins to go wild as my calls continue to go unanswered. –And believe me, when my imagination goes wild, it goes wild.

She got a flat tire, or maybe she got hit by a car, she’s hurt. Oh! Somebody’s holding her up. Oh great, that would be like Merrie to choose a day like today to get in trouble. And now I have to go get her out. What was she thinking? She probably tried to stand up to them on her own…she would try that. What am I going to do? The thought crossed my mind to look for emergency lights and possibly, nearby dumpsters.

My prayers grew frantic and my mind went from worried to scared and mad mixed together. Yelling at her voice mail to “PICK UP THE PHONE AND ANSWER IT!” I continued my search.

By the time I hit the turn-around point I had talked myself into calming down somewhat. Singing a praise song to acknowledge that I was trusting God’s plan, I tried to be more thorough (if that was possible), I kept scanning the road finally making the decision that if I did not find her on my way back I would see if she had made it home, and if she wasn’t there then I would call Nathan.

By the time I got home I was beginning to feel agitated again. No sign of her. No answer on the phone. –Oh, and for those of you who think her phone might have been turned off. It was not going straight to voicemail. I’m not that ridiculous.

I couldn’t get a hold of Nathan so I called Tiffany. She seemed to think it wasn’t a very big problem and offered all kinds of excuses that I had already thought of. One of them being that her phone might be on silent. I remember telling her that the idea of it was stupid. How thoughtless could someone be if they would put their phone on silent while they were riding their bike? So she recommended that I call Uncle Mike since he was the nearest, and he might know what route Merrie takes from work since they both work at the same place.

By the time I got off the phone with Uncle Mike the sun had gone down and the light was quickly disappearing. I didn’t have very many new ideas but I was determined to look again. Heading back down the road I dialed Merrie’s number. Again. AND SURPRISE!!!!! No answer. I felt helpless and defeated.

I was fighting tears as I waited at the light to turn onto Colima, what if something did happen to her? What could I do? I had been reading several intense stories just in the past couple days and all of the situations that the characters had gotten into came into my head. There was nothing exciting or thrilling about this. I would never want to be in any such situation –even if I did get some wonderful person out of the deal. There was no way it was worth it.

I looked down at my phone because it was ringing. It was Merrie. As relieved as I felt I was still pretty upset. I answered with a short, “Where ARE you?”

“I’m at Starbucks.” She replies nonchalantly with a “where else would I be?” tone in her voice.

I let out a huge sigh of relief. “Starbucks, where??” I persist.

“The one at Fairway and Colima. I already told you!”

I was ready to hang up on her because I knew I was either gonna cry or yell at her. I chose yelling and in no sympathetic tone let her know all that I had gone through. She was very wise, like she can be sometimes, and chose not to take offense. After telling me that she would call Tiffany and Uncle Mike to let them know she was fine, we hung up.

It turns out that her phone was on vibrate, she had no idea that she had talked to anyone other than me when she called earlier, had said to meet at 6:00 at the Starbucks on Colima and Fairway, never mentioned hurrying, and she hung up because she couldn’t hear over the train passing by.

Needless to say, I am trying to limit my reading. Very few suspenseful books appeal to me at this time.

I am also learning to treasure the people around me, because I realized something while I was out there searching for Merrie, and that is this: even though sometimes she makes me so mad I could scream and drives me so crazy I want to explode, I love her to death and don’t know what I would do, or where I would be, without her. –Okay, so maybe I realized that before, but this definitely reinforced it. If you know what I mean.

It took me a long time to get over that incident. In-fact, later that evening when the five of us girls were walking in a dark neighborhood Heidi was feeling insecure about the fact that a dog or a person might try to hurt her, and let me just say that I was not at all amused when Merrie tried to make Heidi feel safe by informing her that she wasn’t scared because she would beat up anyone who tried to hurt her, and then went into detail on how she would dismantle said attacker.

Uh…yeah, I guess maybe some of my worry was legitimate. I think I probably snapped at her, informing her that she would do no such thing until Dad and the boys were back so that they could rescue her. And she hasn’t tried it yet. I’m so grateful to still have an older sister who obeys me. =)

Adventures at Home part 1

My mom and dad went on a trip. In-fact, not even a week after I flew home from Idaho, I found myself on my way back to the airport to drop off my parents who were headed to….Idaho (via Spokane [GEG] airport).  [By the way, my trip was...let's just say, a major highlight. But that's not the point here.]  When Dad found out that he was leaving -which he didn’t learn until the night before he left- he put Annie in charge as “Boss”, giving her special instructions but mostly telling everyone else to “back her up”.   This was fine with us since we all like Annie and tend to get along with her -whether she get’s along with us or not is a completely different matter- so we started off our separation from our parents, or our “Home Alone “, on a good note, making plans to help us not miss Dad and Mom so much.

Adventure #1 (not a part of our plans): Why we think brutal thoughts about certain species of critters and love the thought of seeing them in rather gruesome situations.

We have a rat. We’ve had this rat, as far as I can tell, since we came back from camping last December. This rat is big. We know because…well, I’ll get there. It started of course with finding a bag of bread eaten into, and progressed -or should I say digressed- from that to finding rat waste under the drawers.  A rather brilliant member of our family came up with the idea that a rat-trap might catch it, and so went to the store and bought two(?) I think two. But these only served to scare unsuspecting persons reaching on top of the fridge for an innocent sandwich fixing and what-not, so we chose not to re-set the traps (again) and instead used and reused them as secret santa gifts all holiday season.  After this we didn’t do much about the rat, not really caring since nobody had spotted it yet.

One night Annie could not sleep because she kept hearing a noise in the kitchen. Going to investigate she found that something was stuck in the trash-can enclosure. Rather, the rat was stuck by its tail in the trash-can enclosure. She tried to decide whether she should wake up some reinforcements, but after deciding that she should definitely not wake up Merrie a.k.a. the bedroom witch,  Alyssa, who only yells questions about why you’re waking her up when it’s not 10am yet, she considered me, –which was, I admit, an honor to be thought of…even if it was only because she knew I’d wake up without biting her head off,– and decided that I would not be of much help (which is sadly true), so she set out with the broom to battle the rat on her own. I will not bore you with details but will simply say this. The rat got away.

A couple of weeks later the rat having been spotted now by several members of the family, dared to show its face in broad daylight while Mom was in the kitchen. Needless to say, it got Dad’s attention. He got his pump-action BB gun and staked out that night. After sitting in the kitchen for a few minutes the rat appeared but seeing Dad sitting there, ran back behind the wall. This annoyed Dad who got Jack to get his BB gun and lie in wait so that Dad could maybe go to bed.  Jack thought that turning out the light might prompt the rat, who we will unaffectionately name Heinous, to come out again. His hypothesis proved to be correct when about 8 shots later we heard Jack announce that he had shot at it.  Yeahhh…it was something like that. Nevertheless, the rat appeared unharmed, rather, Heinous disappeared back behind the wall.

Dad began to spend his time closing up holes in the walls using boards and spray foam depending on the spot he wished to cover. There happened to be plenty of said spots, so it took him a couple of days.  Last Saturday he was spraying the fireproof spray foam near the water heater when poof! a large flame began to taunt the demise of our house. Yelling for Mom he began beating it with bath towels which happened to be the nearest possible thing. A couple of buckets of water later and finally the garden hose, found a wet shower room, a Daddy with a slightly blistered, yet hairless hand, and a house not too damaged. We praise the Lord for His mercy and goodness to us. It could have been much worse.

This brought sure hatred all around as we plotted the capture and execution of this rat who by now was locked in the walls and under the house. We thought…

The next night Alyssa saw that rat run through the kitchen. Not 5 minutes later the kitchen was torn apart as Annie, Dad, Alyssa, Trevor and I tried to find either Heinous or his doorway. Trevor sat with Dad’s BB gun trained behind the stove as Dad and Annie moved it forward to reveal…a beautiful, perfectly rounded hole, leading right beneath the kitchen cabinets. Not entirely satisfied we continued to check the kitchen and found one more opening beneath the sink. Dad went out to get his spray foam and a piece of wood to cover the hole while Annie, Alyssa, Trevor and I kept guard. I thought it would be a good idea to turn off the light so that the rat would come out so we could just kill the stupid thing with the BB gun, but Alyssa wasn’t altogether on board with the idea.  She was pretty sure that while we all watched one hole waiting for Heinous to come out, he would pull a regular Tom and Jerry and sneak out the other hole just to bite each of us in the rear. So Dad covered the holes and we breathed a sigh of relief and went to bed.

The next morning we discovered that rats like to chew through poisonous, fire starting foam, which did not happen to make Dad’s day. He, this time, built a door in front of the water heater closet, bought special, new-fangled, rat traps and set them just inside. Surely we were safe now. All we had to do, he informed us before he left, was check the traps and if they disappeared, unscrew the nine screws and find the dead rat and throw it away. We felt very safe, for a time.

That night as I lay in my bed reading I kept hearing a really weird squeak, not high-pitched, sort of like a grunting baby. Then I heard some light scurrying noises. Not bothering to deliberate I quickly called Annie out of her sleep telling her what I heard.  I scooted to the edge of my bed to peer into the darkness of our kitchen. I couldn’t see anything. Yet the noise continued so Annie and I got out of bed and darted to the kitchen light switch.  After giving the kitchen a good search we shrugged our shoulders at each-other and went back to bed. I could still hear the noise as I went to sleep but figured we’d just have to deal with it later. Around 4:30am I was aroused by the sound of Dad’s BB gun discharging, pumping, pumping, pumping, and discharging again. Wondering if one of the boys had gotten up for work and had a run-in with Heinous, I groggily pushed myself up out of bed and followed Merrie into the kitchen. There we found Annie, on her 5th shot at least, aiming the rifle underneath the meat slicer. Picking up a flashlight Merrie shone the light under the slicer and I peered over her shoulder, there in the corner, stock still, was the big, nasty, ugly, stupid rat.

“It didn’t move after the first time I shot it so I shot it a couple of times to see if it’s dead, hang on, I’m gonna do one more.” Annie leveled the gun at the slicer and pulled the trigger. The BB missed this time, but Merrie said she was pretty sure it was dead and she didn’t think that Annie needed to shoot at it again.

Turned out it was dead. I think she killed it on the first shot. I’ve never felt such satisfaction in seeing a dead animal before. I’m usually pretty touchy about seeing dead things. But this one really just made my day. There’s something very satisfying about revenge on a rat. I don’t know..it just feels good.

I don’t think I will ever be able to picture that scene in my head again without relating it to the old lady on Ratatouille who goes after the rat with a gas mask and a shot-gun.  Annie quickly won points with everyone, became our hero for the week and, well, there’s no doubt about it: she’s BOSS.

 

Memory Lane

For those of you who did not know, my Papa passed away last August. One of my cousins is trying to put together a book of memories for Grandma’s 80th birthday and has requested that the grand kids share some memories.  So I will try for the 20th time, to write about Papa, though for the 20th time, I feel as though I just can’t do him justice. But here goes….

 

There were so many special things that I did with Papa… I’m not sure where to start.

Even though we lived right next door we had special ways for visiting each other. When Papa and Grandma came over to visit they always used our side door which had a little leather strap with a couple of jingle bells on it. If we heard just a gentle jingling of the bells we knew it was Grandma, coming over to get something. But if we heard the special knock that rattled the bells with each rap, we would go running to the door because Papa had come to show us something interesting, tell us a funny story, or maybe he had just come to borrow something, it didn’t matter, we were interested.

If we wanted to visit Papa we used the same special knock on his door and then waited, listening. Very soon the response would come, faintly at first, but it got louder and louder as Papa got closer.

Who’s that knocking at my door?

Who’s that knocking at my door?

Who’s that knocking at my door?

then the door would open wide as he would sing the last line.

It’s Barnacle Bill the sailor!

Papa taught me countless useful, and possibly useless, things.  He taught me how to jump rope, using his special rope which he would hide beneath a planter in his backyard. He taught me how to play solitaire which is probably what started my addiction to brain games.  He taught me how to say “may I” instead of “can I”.  And he tried to teach me to wear shoes whenever I went outside. We had a game that we would play: whenever Papa caught us outside without shoes on he would chase us saying, “Papa likes to step on bare feet!” over and over again. We would run all over the yard squealing until we would finally run to the porch which was considered “safe”.

Whether it was raking leaves, smashing cans, gardening, bringing in groceries, trying to steal the Papa hat, playing hop-scotch, sharing a coke on the porch, bouncing up and down on his knee, sitting on his lap to “drive the car”, or just listening to him; I enjoyed every minute spent with Papa.  He never spoiled us, he couldn’t, there were way too many of us. But he loved us, truly loved each one of us, not because we were well-mannered, not because we did things for him, he didn’t need a reason, he just loved us. And we all loved him in return, I don’t think we could help loving him.

There’s one thing that Papa has told me countless times: when I was small I had to climb “the mountain” to hear it, but even when I was too big to be climbing the mountain, I still got to hear it. He would whisper in my ear with his whiskers tickling me, “Do you want to know a secret?” And when I would bob my head vigorously, “Papa loves you very, very much.”  Then he would let me down while saying boisterously, “And don’t you EVER forget it!”  I never will.