When Lizzie Smiles

The refrigerator is on the back porch...have I mentioned that?  On the other hand, it is functioning, keeping the milk cold and the cheese safe for consumption with crackers for a Sunday supper.

Ten years ago, that was not the case.  Ten years ago, we were running by Casey's at six in the morning to buy a quart of milk for breakfast. Ten years ago our hand-me-down fridge gave up its chilly ghost during the first week of May and we didn't have time to replace it.

Until May 3, when Blake bought a fridge at Lowe's in St. Joe on his way home from a plant trip and Matt came over to haul it out of the truck and into our kitchen.  Ann was there too....and Lizzie!  Lizzie wasn't around to see the fridge, but we knew she was coming the very next morning, her birthday, which is why I always remember how old our fridge is.

Lizzie!  The first child we knew by name prior to her birth. First grandchild Aaron was introduced after he arrived; Gabe and Abbie were names chosen, but not bestowed until their mom and dad met them.  But we all knew Lizzie would be Elizabeth Carol before ever we saw her, so we spoke of her in conversation like she was just out of sight, like we knew her, like she was a person we had yet to meet at the airport, the train station, the bus stop....

And there she was!  Sleepy and soft wearing a pink headband.  I remember texting Kenzie that she was a beautiful baby girl.

Baby Lizzie had big blue eyes and an infectious toothless grin....

.And she has kept that inviting and captivating smile through these ten years, toothless or tooth-ful, braced or un-braced.

..

Love you, Lizzie!  Wishing you so many more smiles and excitement and happiness for this birthday and more to come!

A Toast!

We like to toast...or "Clink and Drink", as Levi calls it whenever his mommy fills him a glass with juice.  We are people who will toast a success, a season, a wedding, a baby, the end of harvest, the completion of a project, togetherness, even survival...

....and tomorrow, we will be celebrating a birthday...a big one, the kind with a zero.  And because our kitchen has no appliances and it's the middle of plant season, this post falls into the category of  "in lieu of".  

What I mean is: 'in lieu of ' a cake aflame with candles, a great big celebration, a super special present.....'in lieu of'...a steak dinner, a night out, a singing card'....or any of those other surprises or commemorations or decorations or ways of measuring six decades.... here's what you get.....

Here's  a slide show of lots of what you love, Blake.  Here are your grandkids, and your farm, and your kids.  Here are you and me enjoying our work and our travel and our business and our family and baseball.  Here's what you do: thinking and reading and writing and talking about life on the two lanes and the gravel roads, life in rural America in small towns and farm fields, changed from the generations that preceded us on this land, but still rooted in community and stewardship of what matters most.

Happiest of birthdays to you, even though it's just another working April 21st; enjoy good work, beautiful flowers, loving family, and some hot jazz.

A toast!  

And a few remembrances from our recent...and not so recent past.... 

This Old Man

 Shall We Dance

A Malling

Perspective: Its What's for Dinner

When the Seed Catalogs Arrive

Country Mouse at the Big Ball

Vote for This Man

Homesteading

Raindrops on Roses

 What Does the Farmer Eat

Poison, Poems and Prairies

Seeing Red

Flowers of the Field

The stove is in the garage; the fridge is on the back porch; the microwave perches on a church pew.  The coffeepot still lives, parked on a plastic Rubbermaid tub with two plaster dusted mugs and a box of Starbucks pods alongside.  Our kitchen, always the heart of our house, is down to bare bones.

Forty years ago, my mother and father sold their land in Calloway county and bought a property with a limestone creek, a gabled barn, a milking parlor, some pasture ground and a couple of fields planted to milo. They had a vision and over the years they realized their plan, seeding the upland field to warm season prairie grasses, building ponds, and fences, and facilities in and around the big barn for handling cattle and storing hay.  The milo fields became a pasture, and an orchard.  The rundown outbuildings were painted red and roofed in silver, jacked up and leveled and put to use.  There was a bountiful garden with soil mellowed by well aged manure carted up a wheelbarrow at a time from the red barn floor.  Over time the rambling old home was remodeled; two greenhouses spoke to the resident green thumbs; a swing set was built for grandchildren and a telescope turned the former milking parlor into a planetarium.  Summertime and wintertime:  holidays and harvests: the farmstead was a lovely busy fruitful place.

But neither a house, nor a farm, really makes a home.  The couple who lovingly restored and improved and transformed the worn out ground and aged house are worn and aged themselves.  The gardens have gradually shrunk and the apple trees are bent and broken.  The place is still lovely; the pastures with well fed cattle, the grasslands without sprouts, the ponds fenced, the little trees planted decades ago now mature.  But there is an air of emptiness this spring as the daffodils bloom unnoticed and the early opportunistic weeds spring up unabated.

As a gardener I know only too well how quickly our most strenuous efforts at taming the land to our wishes can vanish.  It is a visual manifestation of the Biblical klaxon, a warning that:

15 As for man, his days are like grass;

         As a flower of the field, so he flourishes.

16When the wind has passed over it, it is no more,

         And its place acknowledges it no longer. 
(Psalm 103:15-16)

....or

For, "All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; 

the grass withers and the flowers fall,
(1 Peter 1:24)

  

Our works, our beauty, our efforts...ephemera. 

But... that is not all...  

To paraphrase St. Paul, " I will show you a still more excellent way...." (1 Corinthians 12:31)

In a desk drawer upstairs is a packet of letters tied with black twine addressed to a midshipman in the Navy from a young woman at Greenberry Road.  The bundle of letters has made many moves: from Jefferson City to Columbia to Chicago back to a farmhouse attic in Calloway county to an antique dresser on the other side of the Missouri and now safely stowed in a desk my mother's father made out of hard rock maple.  I haven't unwound the twine string, but the survival of these letters after more than a half century and many more miles attests more loudly than any words to ties that bind.

When memories fail and words won't come, but she looks for him every day; when they hold hands while watching Wheel of Fortune each evening; when my father and mother still kiss good night; these are the times I catch a glimpse of the more excellent way, a merest hint of the eternal within the mortal, a reminder of the next chapter, 1 Corinthians 13: 

 4Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, 5does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, 6does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

 These two people are not perfect, not always patient and kind, at times provoked, but they are faithful. They care for each other....even when they cannot care for themselves. This and every other long marriage testifies that love bears much and endures all.  Gardens lie fallow and houses stand empty; bodies become fragile and break.....

"for now we see in a mirror dimly...but then face to face." 

 It's a promise.

     

The Second Time Around

Makes you think perhaps that love, like youth, is wasted on the young

Love's more comfortable the second time you fall
(Sammy Kahn, Jimmy Van Heusen)

Mr. Bustepher Jones and Mr. Mistoffelees

The theater is aquiver.  Moms and Dads crane their necks in the dark of the audience, cell phones at the ready.  The performers are so tightly wound, they practically vibrate with suppressed energy.  Thank goodness these are dancers, and all this potential will be unleashed in spins, and leaps, toe tapping and hip-hopping.  The moms and dads may be nervous, but not one child will forget a line, nor will anyone know if a move is choreographed....or ad-libbed.  No medals will be awarded...everyone will take bows....and whether a tiny tot stays on stage into the next scene...or makes her getaway to the safety of her parents, we will applaud and celebrate every moment because it has been FUN...

That's not always the case.  I am a grandma now, but Blake and I used to be the mom and dad of the kid on the stage, or at the podium, or on the court or the track or the mat....or the bench.  We held our breath, crossed our fingers, yelled at refs, bit our tongues, mouthed the words, clenched our fists, prayed, paced, and encouraged silently and out loud to hold on, keep going, and don't give up.  We rejoiced sometimes, were relieved others, and spent the rest of the time thinking of the right words to say to reassure or comfort the broken hearts or hurt feelings of our children when they felt they had failed.  Speeches and races, spelling bees and solos, free throws, at bats;  black holes of memory, dropped passes, false starts; all these bring to mind Adam Smith, if you can believe it.  "There's a lot of ruin in a nation," said he, and my application to child rearing is thus: kids are resilient. Failures will come and perspective...and a tougher hide...can only be gained by getting over it.  Kids hurt...and the moms and dads hurt more, because as parents we are forced to be adults.  

 Love is lovelier the second time around

Just as wonderful with both feet on the ground....

But... grandparents can give hugs and know they won't be rebuffed....grandparents don't have to analyze the aftermath, they can listen.  Grandmas and grandpas can simply enjoy the spirit of the endeavor, the energy and the heart and the will; we can appreciate the practice and effort....and not  bound by the skill or end result.  We aren't wiser...but we are older...and we see the parents of our grandchildren superimposed in the time/space continuum every pitch or performance. We know they survived the strain then and will live through both the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat...and the hours of bleacher butt in between.  

Meanwhile, Gabe will be investing in a first basemen's glove this spring and Aaron just played his trumpet during Junior High Performance night.  We laughed reliving Ann's exit from the county spelling bee after spelling 'raspberry' the fruit like 'razzberry' the noise.  Lee blacked out and forgot half a page of her solo at State Music contest.  Aaron showed remarkable equanimity while pitching last year, but his uncle Ben didn't bother to throw four balls; like Bob Gibson, he saved time and energy by just hitting the batter.

All the dances in CATS were delightful; shrinking the show to an hour and having adorable children, not underfed adults, dressed to the nines as felines, made it so much fun.  But  my eyes and camera were pretty well glued to the grand girls each time they took the stage.  Mr. Bustepher Jones twirled his giant spoon with élan, tripped and bounced right up before his fellow CATS could aid him.  Miss Abbie Harms, playing Mr. Jones, knew every word to every song and sang them all under her breath, at the very least, thereby proving that this particular apple hadn't fallen very far from her mama's tree.  Mr. Mistoffolees, radiated energy and joy in every move. Lizzie's smile never failed, even when her dance slippers led her astray during her song and she landed hard on her side.  She kept her place in her routine and made each subsequent pirouette and jump with confidence.  

  When the dawn comes

Tonight will be a memory too

And a new day will begin

(Andrew Lloyd Webber)