Category Archives: 6 Looking Back // Memories!

I’m at that age where you have lots and lots of memories. When I am waxing melancholy…

MOVIES : : I have added to the list

6 Looking Back // Memories!, 9 TV & Movies/Books & Entertainment, Stuff I Actually Think

There are movies I like that are in their whole own grouping.

I didn’t realize this list was so long until I actually started typing it.  And I am not sure how to classify it, or what to call it.

This particular grouping – In common::

1:: They are movies that I saw with people I love when I was able to just take a break and get in to the story.

2:: They are period pieces, historical, but in a very recent sense.

3:: They have a message that touches my heart, and indeed may actually express something of the deep parts of my very soul.  There is something in each that carries a sensibility I was born in to,  a value I hold close to this day.  And something that inspires me for the rest of my days on earth.

4:: There is almost always furniture or wallpaper or some accessory that one of my grandparents had in their houses.  Or that my family owned, a hand-me-down, perhaps, or used, but useful item.

5:: And I love the characters and the colors and the accurate depiction of the time of which they speak.  There is nothing worse to me than having a hippie (late 60s, early 70s) have a Rubik’s Cube (extremely late 70s) in their hands.  Tsk, people.

6:: Oh, and the movie will almost always have a music track I just really love.

Basically, there is something of these movie I recognize and wholly relate to because of the times in which I have lived.  Now Grace of My Heart {1996}, the quintessential inside-my-soul movie is very much like these in some ways, but is also kind of like its’ entirely whole category, so I didn’t list it.   Here goes:

To Kill a Mockingbird, {1962}

Field of Dreams {1989}

Driving Miss Daisy {1989}

Avalon {1990}

Fried Green Tomatoes {1991}

A League of their Own {1992}

Corinna, Corinna {1994}

Shawshank Redemption {1994}

The Green Mile {1999}

The Notebook {2004}

More recently, Julie, Julia {2009}

To this list I am now adding The Help. {2011}

No Spoilers, no worries.

1:: Did I love it?  I totally did!  I saw it with Dave and Stormie, Tredessa and Ryan.  First movie in a while because of a little thing I like to call Heaven Fest.  I was ready, Qdoba in hand!

2:: My French teacher at Hammond High School (1976) told us many stories of her “mammy” who raised her on their North Carolina Plantation and explained that was just how “things were done.”  Growing up in the 1960s, I have strong remembrances of the Civil Rights movement.  At school, we watched some of Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches and I remember the sinking feeling I got when I heard he’d been killed.  The flags were at half-mast and after the pledge of allegiance, our whole school observed a moment of silence.  It spoke to me in a roar.

3:: Messages…Forgiving your enemy is hard. Leaving the theater I thought that, even though the movie was about exposing the hypocrisy of white rule and unjust laws toward other human beings, even in this movie (from a book by the same name), the savior was the white girl.  A rich, white girl.  And – Hilly, the worst of them all, she really isn’t so different than any of us {me} when we are  crusading to get our way, our rights, our own viewpoint across.  I have been on the receiving end of that horrid religious superiority, and sadly, I have probably been a perpetrator.   And that is sad…

Best message in the movie, though?  The one that nearly made me cry every time?

You is kind.  You is smart.  You is important.

4:: I remember women still wearing those same netted hats to church, with gloves, when I was very small.  Oh yes I do.  You did not know I was that old, dod you???  The “house dresses,” the aprons, the “modern furniture”

5:: Emma Stone was awesome.  So were Viola Davis, Bryce Dallas Howard, Allison Janney and pretty much everyone else.  Great cast, great sets.  Pretty decent accents, too.

6:: The music in this one didn’t stand out to me a lot, yet.  But we’ll see as I watch it again.  Maybe it was just so perfect it was part of the whole movie-loving thing.   Oh wait – I do remember some Johnny Cash, a little Bob Dylan and oh, Ray Charles!!  And?  I was singing along to “Victory Today is Mine” in the church scene (yes, sang it in church many times in my life).  Hmmm…I think it must be a great soundtrack.  Now I am excited to go back and see!

I relate to the movie.  I connected with it.  I cried several times and a lot at the end – probably more than anyone else because of the “writing” thing.  And I never cry at movies.  I won’t spoil.  I just loved it.

Go see!

 

Moslander Reunion 2011 :: For the Mamala

1 Christ is All, 2 Mi Familia, 3 Celebrations & Festive Events, 4 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, 5 Songs I am Singing, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, Stuff I Actually Think

Arriving in Chicago on a Friday night. We get real Chicago-style pizza near Midway Airport where planes fly just above our heads.  Near the south shore in Hobart there is a wedding rehearsal with the other half of the family.  We will all gather for a celebration of a new marriage on Saturday.

BBQs at Dan and Dawn’s, corn-holing competitions, waffle-ball in the backyard.  Even the matriarch and patriarch got into the games!  There was the beach at Lake Michigan and driving the old neighborhood.  Remember 4995 Roosevelt Place and all the baseball dings in the side of the garage from the 3 Moslander boys?  Oh, they are still there.  Our giant spruce is nearly dead now, but there is the house, the one we all finally lived in together before growing up and moving away began.  Schools and businesses and streets we travelled.  A Vienna Red Hot at The Village Shopping Center.  I could still smell J C Penney’s even though it hasn’t been there now for almost 20 years.  My first real-life job was there.

Once green-grass, established neighborhoods with distinct ethnic identities, houses where people had lived for over 40 years in a thriving steel-mill industry and could be counted upon , like clockwork to be edging their perfect lawns at exactly 6:15 pm every Wednesday evening now have the signs of transience at best.  Bars on inhabited house windows, boarded up openings on empty, beautiful brick homes on hills.  You can buy a million-dollar Denver-type home there for $15,000, cash.  So says the hand-written cardboard sign.  The city waits to be revived.

But we remember our life and  times.

And the vivid colors come flooding back and our hearts are warm in the remembrance.  These were good times and good places.  This is where we finished growing up and where our parents had to let us go.  There are altars in every direction, signs that point to God’s faithfulness in our lives.

Jordan and Alise start their life as husband and wife.  We dance and eat and make merry.  We see old friends and catch up on 30 or so years.

Joe and Robin and their family couldn’t come this year.  We are remembering them always, bringing them up constantly, missing their presence…

The boys wrestle and play pool and work out to get pumped up. I give my mom a perm, which, though a bit kinky to begin with, of course, turns out just fine.  I get lots of time with Averi & Amelie Belle and they are truly the “belles of the ball!”

Southlake Worship Center – home church

We got to attend church at Southlake on Sunday.  So sweet.  More on that later.  But Pastor Sam Abbott and congregation welcomed us fully.  Rocky and Tara led worship, with a small acoustic, all-family band.  It was lovely.

Back to Chicago

On Tuesday there is a trip into the city: Navy Pier at Chicago.  Then an authentic Puerto Rican meal to. die. for. at Tami and Gerron’s church, provided by some ladies of the congregation.  Sitting on the front stoop at the church, we get a taste of a busy Chicago neighborhood.  The sounds, the smells, the accents – colorful and unique.  Tami and Gerron are perfect there.

Before we part we have our standard Family-Mass, a time of worship and fellowship around Him whose mark on our lives keeps us one, Jesus Christ.  It is informal, it is easy.  I wish it really could be captured in a way everyone could experience it.  Somehow, we just blend.  We just are :: The Moslanders.  The descendants of Ross and Norma Moslander, 4 generations of us, declaring God’s faithfulness from one generation to another.

In all my dad pastored in Des Moines, the Davenport, then a short time in Cedar Rapids, and a short time in Robert, Louisiana before we got to Gary, Indiana.   I kinda call it home and Dan and Dawn are still there.  And with all of us there, it felt like home.  But home really is where my mom and dad are.

These are just a few of the moments, especially dedicated to my mom.

HOME is wherever I’m with you.

 

Familia: Phipps

2 Mi Familia, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, Stuff I Actually Think

So, we met in WalMart.

I saw you wearing your bright turquoise “Are you IN?” Northern Hills Church t-shirts and you were so young and beautiful (I’d seen you in the hallways at church) I didn’t think we were really in your league, but I passed Wrex and said,

“Yes. We’re IN.”

Then you called out to us.  And Stef, you won my heart wholly when you said, “You’re Tredessa’s mom: I want to be just like her when I grow up.”  Of course I adored you both right away.

Then you helped birth Heaven Fest.  You just came right in and became a part of this whole crazy thing.  And we never want to do it without you…not ever!

Then you just became part of the gang, family parties and holidays and even let me be there when Baby Sawyer came along, just a little less than a year ago.  And you helped me make our grandbebe Christmas cards and wrote us songs and just made yourselves a place deep in our hearts.

Then you had to leave.

There you are in Texas until the new job gives you permanent placement.  Could be far, far away.  Or closer.  But it won’t be at the corner so close by, the place you were so near.  We’re so proud of you for your courage to follow Father Abraham in a faith adventure with God – just going out into the holy wild to follow His plan, in faith believing.  I know it is being credited to you as righteousness.  We are so proud that you have made choices setting you up to know Him more, to follow Him more closely, to be His more wholly and to be and do all He has for your lives.  And you have gone together, as one with Baby Sawyer.  You are a family, full of love and hope.

So I hope you have left behind fears and tears and broken things.  I hope you know it is good to leave behind old baggage and unfinished projects and half-grown gardens.  Because this is from God, a fresh start in a new place.  It is God and it is good.

We will always hold you close

Just know that we treasure you for the gift you were to us while you were here and you will never be replaced.  Your generosity and kindness, your willingness to bear our burdens and laugh with us, too, have given you place in our hearts, in our home, around our table and in the familia.

Yes.  You are IN.

My video for you and bebe.

H i d i n g Place // Song for a Sunday

5 Songs I am Singing, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, Stuff I Actually Think, , , ,

You are my hiding place

You are my hiding place

You shall preserve me from trouble

And You shall compass me about

with songs of deliverence

What time I am afraid

I will trust in You.

Some days, I just pull out the old Hosanna! Ingrity Music and  worship my head off.  Couldn’t find a Youtube for this particular Hiding Place song, though the other You are My Hiding Place song that I also love like crazy is everywhere there.

But in looking, I also found this one.  I sang this so much back in the day that people in our church liked to play it and say, “Hey, Tredessa (or whichever kid), – who is this singing?”  “Mommy,” they’d say.  I sang it that much.  I’ll tell you something now, we’d have to drop it about  3 or 4 keys!

Wow I loved this song back then!  Those late 1980s…

I Hear Angels

 

T W O songs for a Sunday!  Sing with me!

Just My Imagination

2 Mi Familia, 3 Celebrations & Festive Events, 5 Songs I am Singing, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, Stuff I Actually Think

I probably started fantasizing about being a bride and being married right about the time I started having memories that would stay with me.

I am a romantic.

I love love and I love songs and stories and the energy of it.  And as far back as I can remember, into that twinkly-gold-flecked-slightly-8mm-film memory haze of the early 1960s, I would imagine being married.  At 3, naturally, the groom was a figment of my imagination, “Joe Penny.”   During my daily nap-time at 3 or 4 years old, I would imagine being married to to this phantom Joe Penny and how my name would be “Jeanie Penny.”  I imagined being a housewife, except all done on my little play kitchen, with my little play dishes, me in an apron, as would have have been indicated by the black and white movies of the time.  Joe Penny would go to work daily while I puttered about in the kitchen and he would return home where fresh iced tea would await him..  Wouldn’t married life be lovely?

{Remember Joe Penny, the actor who emerged in popularity in the 80s?  Well, there he is, I thought.  My 4-year-old-fantasy husband.  Yes, he would have done just fine.}

First comes love.  Then comes marriage.

And as I got a little older, I still looked at boys for the suitable husbands with acceptable last names they might be.  And I never thought about it in terms of us being grown up, no.  Somehow I was certain if the adults around us would just support us a little, we would undoubtedly be able to have a very successful Leave-it-to-Beaver-home-in-the-suburbs existence.  I was quite certain, even though I really had no interest in the domestic arts otherwise, if I could just marry the object of my current affections, I would be transformed into a virtuous and quite accomplished wife, dusting, cleaning, ironing and preparing dinner.  Naturally, mature as I was, I also anticipated hand-holding and a kiss here and there.

Here is what girls do.

Am I supposed to reveal this?  Is this a big secret?  Well, I am telling.

So – there is a boy and you deem him cuter and sweeter and funnier than all the rest and he is nice to you and so you start writing his name on pieces of paper and eventually you write your name + his name and then the inevitable: your first name + his last name – you know, practicing, just in case you need to write a check with that name someday.  Yes.  This actually happened all the way back, from the time I could write.  For from the youngest days, I knew Moslander was just too difficult a name to bear, so, since I can remember, I was auditioning possible names along with the cutest boys.  Yes, I was.  And that is common among romantic girls.  Shocking, I know.  But true.  Feign to deny it, women!

Jeanie Rhoades.

So, as of this weekend, I will have been Jeanie Rhoades for 30 years.  It has been much easier a name to carry and has been with me longer than Moslander was.  For some reason this morning, I just started remembering all the possible names I might have ended up with if only my parents and some little boys’ parents would have understood that we were unusually mature for our ages and should have been allowed to set up house.  Beginning in 1965, after the make-believe Joe Penny was no longer on my mind:

I might have been Jeanie Bricker.  Kenny was in my Kindergarten class and had brown, curly hair and a few freckles and wore that brown terry-cloth tunic-style shirt with such panache.

In first grade, I would most assuredly have been Jeanie Sutherland, married to a tall, quiet, strong blond from a holiness family down the block.  Danny often walked me home from school, protective, watching for cars as we crossed the street.

I could have ended up, during those grade school years, as Jeanie Sable or Jeanie Sandry.  There were 2 entire years devoted to being Jeanie Gray, for Kevin was o-so-dashing as 3rd and 4th graders go, in his gray slacks and Hush Puppies.

First kiss: Jimmy Green.  I would have been Jeanie Green, which is funny because of course now, my friends and fam all refer to my favorite shade of spring-green as Jeanie-green.

My junior high friends will know those years were all about being Jeanie Roby for the most adorable meaty, tall and charming president-of-the-student-body type and his size 13 shoes, Bill.  How apropo that the song, “Billy Don’t Be a Hero…come back and make me your wife,” was playing on the top 40 stations of the time.  Oh, he was a charmer and just so darn likable.

I could have ended up, had my silly girl fantasies and name-writing practice ever come to fruition, being, at various times and places, Jeanie Gonzales, Jeanie Smith, Jeanie Jenkins, Jeanie Dixon, Jeanie Martino (well, I mean – that actually almost did happen, a broken engagement), Jeanie Henderson, Jeanie Worley, Jeanie Carr,  Jeanie Wells,  Jeanie Mericsko and perhaps a few more.  Perhaps.

But I am : Jeanie Rhoades.

That has worked out just fine.  Still “playing house” with my husband, a Latino with a white man’s name.  It turned out that Dave + Jeanie did not equal me being a domestic machine, duster in hand and dinner on the table at 6.  And I only use an apron when Dave makes me (to save my clothes, people).  But sometimes, our life is sorta like a black and white movie with a happy soundtrack, sunshine streaming through the windows, or a really hot scene from a 70s movie I wasn’t even supposed to see back then (shhh…don’t tell my parents), or a romantic comedy with  a high-stress-level working girl from the 80s.  Sometimes not.  But mostly, crazy-good. And sweet.

You are my love, you are my life

Oh and I get high just holding you tight

We always dreamed we’d make a lot of money, o but

I don’t mind being poor

‘Cause when you make love to me, honey

I couldn’t ask for anymore

All our friends seem to be in a hurry

But darlin’ we’ll just keep on taking our time

We’re living such a sweet life, o what a neat life

Sharing  my love with you

We’re living such a sweet life, o what a neat life

Making our dreams come true

We’re making our dreams come true…*

Dave + Jeanie = sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g. First came love, then came marriage (in less than 6 weeks-all of that!), then came 5 kids and growing up and marriages and 6 grandbebes in the baby carriage…so far…

I am not quite as “mature” and good at it as I thought I’d be.  But I am learning.  And it is better than I imagined.

Jeanie Rhoades.

*Paul Davis, “Sweet Life.”

THE NAMES HAVE NOT BEEN CHANGED TO PROTECT THE INNOCENT.  No way, Hosea.  These are the real names, baby!  They are innocent of any compliance or party to these imaginations.  Their stories are their own.  These are mine.  *smile

Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair

2 Mi Familia, 5 Songs I am Singing, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, 9 TV & Movies/Books & Entertainment, Stuff I Actually Think

My mom wanted a Debbie.  My dad wanted a Jeanie.  They compromised and named me Debra Jean, but I was called Jeanie from the moment I was born.  My mom’s dad, my Grandpa Allison, called me Debbie Jean to make my mom happy.

But I was always Jeanie.

My dad said he knew who I’d be when he saw the Northern Tissue ads on billboards in 1959.  “There is our Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair,” he’d tell my mom.  She bought the set of posters by Frances Hook, an American artist whose friendly depictions of Jesus with children you would recognize.

The Northern Baby with light brown hair and blue eyes.  And me. With the light brown hair.

The song.

So,  a few times during my life, people have burst into song when they’ve lerned my name.  The song is an oldie, written in the 1800s and has some quaint words.  My parents chose the actual spelling of my name, which could have been spelled a bunch of different ways, from this old song.  And though I have heard a gazillion renditions, I only just learned of this one.  And I really like it.  I finally feel like some one sang it like they meant it.

Having had red hair 18 out of the last 25 years and even brown-black hair for a year, I have been feeling a little frumpy with my return to a light brown (because I can’t stand the upkeep of red nor the constant attention to roots with dark hair).  It is the least work.  But it seems boring.  Just plain old me again.  Then Sam Cooke sings

I long for Jeanie with the daydawn smile,
Radiant in gladness, warm with winning guile;
I hear her melodies, like joys gone by,
Sighing round my heart o’er the fond hopes that die…

 

 

Aaah. I am in love! Thank-you, Sam Cooke!  Suddenly ok with my hair color!  O happy day.

Who Says You Can’t Go Home Again?

2 Mi Familia, 3 Celebrations & Festive Events, 4 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, 5 Songs I am Singing, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, Stuff I Actually Think, , , , , , ,

The basement apartment in Des Moines, Iowa (1959); the Washington Street Apartment (Joe and Tim show up 1961 and 1963); 1310 York Street, just two houses down from Grandma and Grandpa Baker; then the beloved 1723 York Street across the alley from Nancy Lydon (Tami and Danny are born, 1965 and 1966); the Jersey Ridge Road house in Davenport (1971); then the brand new house we built at 5506 North Howell (1972); the corner parsonage in Cedar Rapids (1973); a parsonage right next to the church in Robert, Louisiana (1975); Finally – 4995 ROOSEVELT PLACE IN GARY (1977) – the last of the houses where we all, Ross-the-Boss, Mrs. Moss and all the Little Landers, dwelled together before leaving the sweet (Glen Park C of G parsonage) nest my parents had provided the 7 of us…

“I’ve been around the world and as a matter of fact”*

Dave and I have lived in a few places (Minot, ND; Kokomo, IN; Sioux City, IA; Norfolk, NE; Denver-forever), different houses.  And my parents have been all over since I left their home, too (Hobart, IN; Willard, OH; Richmond, IN; St Joe-MO; Butte, MT; Springfield, MO; back to St Joe-MO).  I visited my parents in their current digs in Saint Joe early in the year.  The house they are living in?  Not home.  No.   But my parents?  Wherever they land, is kinda home to parts of me.  I always need to know where they are and what their house looks like so I will know the space my heart is rambling about in.  Mom and dad are the fixed stars in my sky.  LOVE them!

God, it seems you’ve been our home forever; long before the mountains were born,

Long before you brought earth itself to birth,

from “once upon a time” to “kingdom come”—you are God.  Psalms

“Goin’ back to Indiana” ~ The Jackson 5

While we were at the Moslander Family Reunion last week in Chicago and Northwest Indiana, us old-timers took a late-afternoon,  impromptu drive through the old neighborhoods; saw places we had worked and schools we’d attended and the house we called home.  It is all the same, but so different.  The huge mountain spruce in the fron yard at 4995 Roosevelt Place, trimmed to above roofline and barely clinging to life now, was once a full, thick, green privacy wall between the house and street.  There are pictures there of my brothers in their graduation attire and even my babies running on the lawn from way back when.  The juniper has all been removed in favor of more manageable potted flora.  The dings Tim and my other brothers put into the side of the house playing baseball in the 70’s are still there, a testament to long summer days spent with a bat and ball in hand.

And we actually were just a few blocks from the Jackson family home in Gary, Indiana, btw!

The streets of Gary used to be positively frightening during business hours, the traffic heavier than the city had prepared for.  The business district I used to drive is nearly a ghost town.  Boarded up windows and abandoned buildings everywhere, yet minutes away, there are still quiet neighborhoods with established lawns and trees.  You can buy a beautiful brick bungalow for $15,000 (the for sale signs made of cardboard and black marker) there on an empty street.  The same would cost 1.3 million in Denver.

“Who says you can’t go home again?” ~ Bon Jovi*

Surprisingly, standing there in the old yard, looking at the house in conjunction with neighboring homes and recalling old times and people from the past, it didn’t seem smaller.  Often you’ll return to a childhood haunt and you’ll just feel like, “Wow-this seems so small now.”  But that wasn’t the case at the Roosevelt Street house, the last home we all shared under one roof, the place my kids remember going to see Grandma and Grandpa Moslander.  It really didn’t seem smaller.

It just seemed like: wow-how did this house ever hold all the life and loud love and laughter and memory and family and patio swimming in a 12-foot pool and Uno, all the huge bags full of 19-cent White Castle burgers after church ball games, or Bronco’s Pizza with 5 pounds of melted, dripping, greasy cheese, and church friends and Lake-effect wind and graduations and marriages and teen-agers and letter writing and boyfriends and girlfriends and Lake-effect snow and family altar and family feuds and kids and toys and books and WGN afternoon movies with our first color TV, first jobs and rusted out cars and Tip Top and Bible study and early morning prayer and first grandchildren and the first few spouses and all the rest of living that the Moslander family brought to it?

How on earth did this modest house on this unicorporated county street handle all that?

And it yet stands as a testament.

The Moslanders were here June 1977 – Spring 1990.  And again in June 27, 2011.  We were here.

* LOVE Bon Jovi’s song, “Who Says You Can’t Go Home Again?”  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abzbVFuxigg

So you think you can dance

2 Mi Familia, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, 9 TV & Movies/Books & Entertainment, Stuff I Actually Think, ,

Well, I don’t think that.  I have no such delusion on the matter.  I cannot dance.

But, boy-o-boy, I wish I could.

You see, I am a Pentecostal preacher’s daughter and dancing was considered…of the devil?  I can’t remember the exact thing, but it was associated with sin and off-limits.  Remember the the movie “Footloose?”  Preacher’s daughter likes the bad-boy dancer and they plan a secret dance?  Well, in that movie, the preacher gives in.  Not so for me.

But oh how I loved the TV show American Bandstand with Dick Clark when I was little.  My dad got rid of our TV in favor of more prayer and Bible study before I turned 6 (which was really good for reasons I shall write about soon), so sometime before that, I managed to get to watch American Bandstand with no one knowing.  Rock music was out, too, naturally.

Joy moment

I have this memory of me in the living room on a Saturday evening, adults in the dining room visiting, eating.  I’d been watching the Alfred Hitchcock Show and I am not saying it was condoned, but I don’t remember worrying about being found out. Anyway, it went off or I turned the channel, not sure which, but suddenly I am watching American Bandstand in 1966 in all its’ flip hairdos and pencil skirts and white sweaters and maybe a little twist going on.

I think I am alone.  I lower the sound so as not to be found out.  I start dancing like the teens on the TV.  I am really in to it, so much so I spin around and –

The color surely drained from my face because there stood my Grandma Hallet. She had walked in on me. She saw me dancing. I just knew she was going to tell my dad and I would be in for it. Doomed.

But instead, sensing the depth of my mortification, she started waving her arms and bouncing her ample girth up and down and stepping a little to the right, a little to the left.  While fear was still pounding through my ears, she, in an effort to put me at ease and act as though this were the most normal thing in the world, said to me, “Isn’t this great?  Such good exercise, put to music!”

I retreated to the footstool, no courage to join her in fancy dancing.

I’d been caught.  By grace.

I wish I’d have danced with my Grandma.  What a silly little scaredy-cat I was.  It makes me smile to remember her, covering me with a happy dance, though. 

Every kid should have that kind of a grandma!

Another JOY thing!

At Tara’s wedding, we somehow convinced my parents to dance and they liked it.  So now, at pretty much every reunion, our whole family finds some reason to dance – even the parents.  I guess my dad finally did give in, just not in time for me to figure it out.  I am going to try to “encourage” square dancing at this reunion.  It seems it would be fabulous fun!

pictured: My little brother Joe, my Grandma Hallet, and me when I was 3 1/2 or so.

Love Letters from My Father

2 Mi Familia, 3 Celebrations & Festive Events, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, Stuff I Actually Think

Dad and me.

Two birds in a tree.

Both driven and bossy {but vulnerable and deeply sincere},

Choleric, melancholoy, always right and no fear

(at least not that we’ll let you see,

we puff and get growleeeeeeeey —–)

I got the rougher part of him, but also the best.

And I’m looking forward to all the rest

Of time, and love and laughter and lots more years with my dad.

 

A few years ago I asked my dad to write me a book about himself.  Because it explains so much about me and helps me really see him for who he is and who he was meant to be and all he has accomplished and all he is still working hard to do.  And I knew parts of it were difficult for him to reveal and I knew it was a risk for him to share because I can be judgemental.  But my admiration for him runs so deep it hurts.  My love for him just keeps increasing, year after year, season after season.  As a little girl, I was always proud of him, proud to say he was my dad, and I was a little in awe of him and sometimes, really, kind of afraid of him.  He was, after all, quite strong and powerful.

           

Young married  (1957) to young pastor (1968)

What a surprise, when he wrote in the book he brought me, to find out he had fears that he’d worked hard to conquer.  I didn’t think he was afraid of anything.  How insightful to know there had been very hard times he’d lived through, things he’d never mentioned, that made my heart go out to the little boy I never knew.   And how expected and natural the stories of God’s faithfulness, because that is the life he’d lived since 15 years old, and that deep consecration and devotion to God, I knew full well.

I consider the letters and cards he sends me these days, the quick calls from his cell and the book he wrote, love letters.  From my dad to me.  Messages that tie our hearts together, tied in a ribbon of remembrance.  Treasure for a rainy day.

In my whole life, I have never wanted anyone else to be my dad.  He is the one God knew I needed and he will ever and always have my heart.

Happy Father’s Day, Papasan.

See ya in 5 days!