Category Archives: 9 TV & Movies/Books & Entertainment

EPIC LOVE: Opal & Everett

{ O P A L   &   E V E R E T T }

My Grandma and Grandpa Allison

By the end, frail and broken-down, they were shriveled old people, quietly enduring the ravages of the so-undeserved Alzheimer’s Disease and doing their best not to be a bother for their family or health care workers.  The strangers who witnessed their final months and days could not have comprehended, I am sure, the life of love and joy they had lived. They didn’t know about the ever-enlarging family, the children and grandchildren,  the greats and great-greats, or of the fruitfulness these two people had unleashed.   They couldn’t have looked down the heart’s hallways of the past to a man and a woman wholly devoted to one another, fully giving and loving each other across decades, clinging to one another and living their lives for an epic love, the passion of which never waned.

The beginning.

Their start wasn’t picture perfect.  For in those days many years ago, theirs was an “broken” beginning.  My Grandpa Allison had married and had 2 daughters with my mom’s mother, but it was doomed from the start, it seemed.  He married Opal shortly after his divorce.  My Grandma Allison had been married before as well and came into their union with one daughter.  And so they were now the 2 + 3.  It equaled truelove (yes, I meant that as one word). My Grandma and Grandpa never really talked about their start or their love story to my mom.  It seemed some things were best left unsaid out of respect and a show of honor of their former spouses, with whom they shared children.  So they kept their romantic connection to themselves.  There were innuendos and whisperings, as blended families might have, but as for Opal and Everett,  they maintained the dignity of silence and, focused on their love for one another, building a beautiful life together.

Early memories.

I don’t really come from a family that is all that outwardly affectionate.  Love runs deep among us and we are now much more giving in public displays of heartfelt warmth, but words of affirmation, outward demonstration and affectionate touch were not hallmarks of the family I grew up in, except perhaps from my mom, who taught me to do Eskimo kisses and butterfly kiss-flutterings and is my biggest cheerleader and hugger even now.

But my very earliest memories of my Grandma and Grandpa Allison are all about the affection, the visible sign of the intensity of an inward passion.  They touched constantly.  He attended to her every whim, he doted, he adored.  He held the door and he held her hand.  He always checked her needs, reactions, and responses first in any situation.  There was never a doubt in my mind that my handsome, raven-haired, energetic and athletic Grandpa, whose hair only fully grayed during his final few years, adored my Grandma. And she in turn looked at him lovingly, from the dark brunette and sometimes frosted days until her coiff was pure as snow.  She was his gentle home, his soft place to land, his True North.  Her approval, as a strong and beautiful woman, full of wisdom and grace, was poured on him freely and he thrived successfully in any endevour he attempted because of it.

My grandparents at my own parents’ wedding, August 1957.  Are those the most beautiful four people you have ever seen?  Ok, maybe I am prejudiced about that, but my mama sure had a handsome and stylin’ dad and chose a cutie-patootie for a husband!

There was such deep love.  He served in WWII in the Phillipines in the Navy, leaving his wife and now 5 children-between-them at home.  My daughters and I love the pictures she had taken in a beautful gown to send to my Grandpa there because he desired, as he told her when he requested the photographs, his own “pin-up girl” in his foot locker.

Every memory I have of  them, through my Kodachrome-colored memories of the early 1960s (I wish there were more actual photographs, but the times…), and throughout my life includes the touching, the hugging, the kisses, the hand-holding, the warm affection and assurance of a lasting love.  And they shared that, too.

My Grandpa was the man who’d hold me on his lap like a little princess and call me “Debbie Jean” to make my momma happy (she’d lost the name game to my dad’s choice).   This beautiful man I admired with all my heart and soul as a little girl became even more deeply imbedded in my heart when, after I was grown and married, he made a decision to follow Christ, quickly becoming a man of the Word and leading the adult Sunday School class at his Baptist church. He’d spent years investigating religions, a good man who didn’t fall lightly in to things.  When he decided to follow Jesus, he sent me a letter and said, “Oh, how many years I wasted looking for truth.  I wish I could get them all back to serve Jesus.”  I got my business sense from him, he was a mover and a shaker and quite entreprenurial.  Brave and creative, his influence on me, especially in retail aptitude, is undeniable.

  

I admired them, perhaps even revered them.  Attending a family funeral when my children were little and watching them walk in, he, my ruggedly handsome and distinguished grandpapa in his suit, she, my darling grandmama, elegant and serene ~  I was mesmerized at the regal sight of them, so proud to call them my grandparents.  They sat down the row from me, in their early 70s.  They were holding hands like young lovers, yet seasoned and wise sweethearts; the embers, once shooting flames in a youthful, passionate romance, now white-hot and glowing, a stronger, deeper love for the years.

The end.

My Grandpa passed away a few years ago.  He’d been fighting to retain the identity Alzheimer’s so ruthlessly rips from a soul.  His final days in a nursing home left Grandma rattling around their large retirement home on the Lake of the Ozarks mostly alone.  When my parents visited and they planned a trip to see Grandpa, my mom says Grandma Allison (my mom’s beloved step-mother, a woman whose love and acceptance meant everything to my mom), would become as giddy as a school girl, curling her hair and doing her make-up, excited to go see her love.  She even complained that several of the nurses flirted with him and she was not happy about it.

And even as he was failing and struggled to recognize his own children, when his love arrived, he knew her.  And the affection between them melted away the wrinkles and the years.  Those times, they were just Opal and Everett, lifetime lovers.  And she would sit in his lap and put her arms around him.  They were head-over-heels in love until the end, “two hearts that beat as one,*” that ridiculous almost never-seen kind of love that everyone thinks they have on their wedding day – but few seem able to maintain to the end. Before Grandpa even died, my sweet, tiny Grandma, the most loving and thoughtful, and gracious woman in the world, was also diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease.  When he passed on, my gentle grandma deteriorated quickly – just started slipping away.  She was moved to a care center and went very silent.  My mom was able to bring some glistening light to her eyes by singing a song she loved, one my Grandpa had sung to her “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine…”  Grandma would somehow muster strength to hum along, a pleasant memory dancing behind her eyes.

I made a short video tribute with the few photos I have

A Nicholas Sparks movie has nothing on my grands.  She died 2 years to the day after the love of her life had gone.  Somehow it didn’t seem an ending so much ~ just that she’d finally been released to go where her heart had already gone.  And wherever Opal and Everett are, I know they are holding hands or he’s got his arms wrapped around her or they’re embraced under a tree near a lake, a slight breeze touching their contented faces.  And their true love remains. Endless.  Endlessly. *Lyrics from the 1981 hit by Lionel Ritchie and Diana Ross, “Endless Love.”

 

Con-trak’-shun RANT!

{And, she rants} 

Found in drafts folder fom a year ago.  I had received several emails about English language stuff (“‘their, they’re and there’ are 3 different words, learn how to use them correctly”) and how we slaughter it (I know I do my share) and I decided to impose my own particular this-irritates-the-crap-out-of-me issue on my readers, just after a meeting I’d had with a young woman trying to get me to spend lots of $$ on her product.  She spoke very childishly, slurrishly (it may not be a word, but she did it), and dare I say it: in a way you should reserve for your grandma or some boy you are trying to get to buy you something.  It was like she was used to being able to use “cuteness” to make the sale and I was just. not. charmed.  At all.

“Didn’t.”

That is a contraction for the words “did not.”  Whether or not a contraction that deletes only one letter, but adds puctuation is necessary or  not is neither here nor there.  At some point, some one decided that a sweet little combo would just hurry things along and so we have the option of making two words one.  You may say “did not” as didn’t.  Didn’t.  Did-n’t = Did-not.

But not the way we hear it way too often now. 

No you dih-unt.

Ok, that was sort of funny.  The first 3000 times your suburban friends attempted the hand-on-hip, head-lurking stance and tried their pasty-white-adaptation of some ethnic sass.  But geez-Louise!  What is going on? 

Toooooooooo many young women have adopted some form of this utter and most aggravating mispronunciation as a part of their I-am-just-so-cute semi-baby talk and when they speak, you hear:

I dih-unt’ know what time it was.  Or  He dih-unt’ tell me where he was going.  Aaaaargggghhhh!

Would you actually say, if you weren’t contracting: “That is unt what I meant”?  Or, “That is unt’ a good thing”? 

No, you wouldn’t. 

<note: wouldn’t = would not>

 “n’t” is not pronounced “unt.”  There is a “D” in there, too.  It’s pronounced “nnnnnnn-t”.  Try it: wouldnnnt.

I am not sure what the appeal of this new, lazier, almost-exclusively female, way of speaking is?  Do they really think it makes them cuter or something?  It doesn’t.  Whatever happened to the art of enunciation?   Well, ok – I don’t know if there ever was an art of enunciation, but I sure as heck remember Mrs. Devlin in our 1st grade reading circle making sure we learned to speak and pronounce our words well.

It reminds me of the scene in You’ve Got Mail where Meg Ryan’s character is talking about young women {she calls them “stupid 22-year-old girls,”  her words} who only introduce themselves by their first names, “Hi, I’m Jennifer…Hi, I’m Kimberly,”  Meg observing that it makes them seem like a whole generation of” cocktail waitresses.”  [see 2:30 – 2:50 on the Youtube video below] 

Hey there, sister – it was so cute to talk like you were 6 when you were – 6!  Even 7.  But it is time to grow up and speak clearly like the woman you have become.  Put away the cocktail waitress cutesy-ness because it is worn out.  Pronounce your words as they are meant to be pronounced.  Phonate, people, please.  You can do this.  And you’ll move from cuteness to real beauty. 

{Thus endeth the rant}

Having a Martha House the Mary Way

31 Days to Clean by Sarah Mae

Well, my curiosity is piqued. Currently #1 bestselling e-book in Amazon’s home cleaning, care taking and relocating category, this book throws in the tagline “Having a Martha House the Mary Way.”  And for this self-described recovering Martha (trying to figure out why {the heck!} Mary just gets to sit around when there is work to be done)…oh, that’s ME, btw, well, I am definitely curious.

The author says we are, in the course of this month-long daily reading and the challenges provided, forgoing perfection and choosing life.  Where was she when I was o-so-much younger?

Never too late, though, right?  Only $4.99 for your Kindle.

Um, yeah – Carole King, ok?

American Idol contestants did Carole King tonight.  I. LOVE. her!

My favorite moments?

Casey and Haley doing “I Feel the Earth Move”

James did “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow.”

Scottie actually did “You’ve Got a Friend” in a way I truly enjoyed.  But I hated his part in the duet of “Up on the Roof” he did with Lauren.

Casey solos was, as usual, fun, very cool, awesome! (“Hi De Ho”)

And Haley’s “Beautiful” was really great.

Even Lauren was pretty good with “Where You Lead Me”

Ah {happy sigh}.  I love the Carole!

newswire: Steve Chavis is the coolest!

http://stevechavis.com/ 

   
 
Heaven Fest Gives Away All Ticket Money in 2011

In its 4th year, Festival commits to the poor, the hungry & the exploited

LOVELAND, Colo., April 21, 2011 /Christian Newswire/ — Heaven Fest, the Rocky Mountain region’s massive music and worship festival in its fourth year, will donate ALL TICKET REVENUES this year to organizations that work with the poor, the hungry and the exploited around the world. Heaven Fest, scheduled for Saturday, July 30, 2011 at The Ranch in Loveland, Colo. ( www.larimer.org/theranch), is expecting 35,000 guests. Tickets are now on sale at www.HeavenFest.com for $35 or “WHATEVER YOU THINK IT’S WORTH.” More than 100 artists on eight stages are also committing to participate in this cause.

“In the past we have had the privilege of giving away tens of thousands of dollars to people in need,” said Dave Powers, president of Heaven Fest’s parent organization Worship and the Word Movement. “This year we will build a platform that activates a seven-state region of people to give hundreds of thousands of dollars, and we are inviting our staff, our volunteers and the bands to pitch in as well. Since we are giving every ticket dollar we receive to the poor, the hungry and the exploited, we are DARING everyone to pay whatever they think it’s worth!”

Beneficiary organizations serving the poor, hungry and exploited include Love146.org (fighting child sex slavery), Compassion International ( www.Compassion.com, global child advocates), Gospel for Asia ( www.gospelforasia.org, digging 100 fresh water wells in India), and Convoy of Hope ( www.convoyofhope.org, for their established work in Haiti). One of the Colorado-based beneficiaries is Larimer County’s Project Self-Sufficiency ( www.ps-s.org), assisting low-income single parents.

More than 100 artists will appear on eight stages at The Ranch. Confirmed bands include Skillet, Mercy Me, Fred Hammond, Jeremy Camp, P.O.D., Red, As I Lay Dying, Sanctus Real, KJ-52, Superchick, Shonlock, Phil Keaggy, Andy Hunter, Transform DJs, Proxy, Everfound, Random Hero and many, many more. The most updated artist line-up is always at www.HeavenFest.com.

Heaven Fest, founded in 2008, is the largest Christian music and worship event in the seven-state Rocky Mountain region. The event includes camping, a kids area, a skate park, and experiential features that promote a seven-part vision, including making Jesus the headliner, giving, introducing people to Jesus, introducing a new generation to God’s heart for the poor, biblical unity, being a catalyst for transformation along the Front Range, and establishing a 24/7 worship and prayer movement.

Heaven Fest is a project of Worship and the Word Movement, a not-for-profit, tax-exempt 501(c)3 organization ( www.WorshipAndTheWord.com).
Media materials available at heavenfest.com/press.

Christian Newswire

To: National Desk Contact: Steve Chavis,
Heaven Fest,
303-772-0307



 

Who Loves Investigation Discovery? I do! I do!

ID: Ivestigation Discovery, just another Discovery cable TV channel among, how many now, 37 or 152?  Ah, but this one is great.  All unsolved crimes and crime mysteries and FBI and CIA and Paul Zahn-On the Case; there are crimes and I-almost-got-away-with-it cases and pretty clever criminals, but some hero-type officers of the law who investigate and solve tough situations.  It is my one TV potential-addiction.  I know this because I have already plotted, should I break a major bone and have 7 -10 days where I have to just be on the couch, I will watch ID around the clock.  It is weird to know that, but I like to plan ahead.

Last night I didn’t get to {really} watch any ID, but I did sort of land on it for a few minutes while waiting for the Papa Murphey’s pizza to bake.   What I was able to surmise, in this particular show about the FBI in Carroll Parish in Lousiana, was that some crazy alligator-wrestling swamp-guy did some bad stuff (like shooting & killing a man outside a bar while some one hed him down and claiming self-defense), but escaped from from the courthouse after sentencing and they could. not. find. him.  Why?  Because he knew how to live in the woods and the water and the swampy areas.  Even when his feet were chained and the sheriffs came out with the dogs, he knew to bury himself into wet marshes and the mud, allowed the soaked earth near the water’s edge to come up around him and they say the dogs walked right over him and couldn’t even pick up hs scent because he was covered, face down,  in the mud and water. 

Life-Changing Moments with God, Praying the Scripture Everyday by Dr David Jeremiah

My mom gave me her copy of her favorite-ever devotional book by David Jeremiahwhile I was there visiting  in January.  I love it because she jots little notes in the margins and notes family milestones.  She’ll add a song she is singing that day and definitions to words that stand out.  It is sort of her journal and very personal.  She got herself a new copy and let me have the one with the real treasures.  I pick it up periodically so I can see what my mama has been meditating on on any given day. Each page starts with a scripture, then a prayer made up of scriptures, then the scripture references are noted.  For today ~

April 16, page 119

I said in my haste, ‘I am cut off from before Your eyes,’; nevertheless You heard the voice of my supplications when I cried out to You.

Lord, I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing; I have come into deep waters where the floods overflow me.  Waters flowed over my head; I said, ‘I am cut off!’  I called on Your Name, o Lord, from the lowest pit.  You have heard my voice. ‘Do not hide Your ear from my sighing, from my cry for help.’  You drew near on the day I called on You and said, ‘Do not fear.’

Lord, will You cast me off forever?  Will You be favorable no more?  Has Your mercy ceased forever?  Has Your promise failed forevermore?  Have You, Lord God, forgotten to be gracious?  Have You, in Your anger, shut up Your tender mercies?  I said ‘This is my anguish; but I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most high.’  I will remember Your works, Lord God; surely I will remember Your wonders of old.  I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see Your goodness, loving God, in the land of the living.

Great is Your faithfulness, Lord!  I will remember Your works and Your tender mercies.  Praise Your name!**

Yesterday.

I had one of those days.  You work hard, really hard, for a long period of time.  And suddenly, you are overcome, overwhelmed, at your end.  There is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, no relief in sight.  You have done all you know to do.  You have done as much as you can and suddenly the ground seems unstable.  You sense you are sinking into the mire.  Nothing is working as it should.  Wait, what?  How did I get here?  What happened?  Did I take a wrong turn?  What is going on?

Yep.  I had one of those days.

And in reading this this morning, and having watched the FBI show about the swamp-guy, I realized it is ok, sometimes, to just surrender to it.  Burough down into the mud and let the waves and water surround.  The promise from God is that they will not overtake me, anyway.  Yes, it is a pit, but from there the Lord still hears my cry.  The Faithful One is on it.  But the enemy won’t be able to find me, hidden in the land, the land of the living.  The enemy may prowl, but I’ll be where only God can find me.

That is where I may be reached at this time.

**Psalm 31.22, Psalm 69.2, Lamentations 3.54-57, Psalm 77.7-11, Psalm 27.13 (from the book, page 119)

Life by Design

HOW DO YOU DECIDE HOW TO DECORATE AND DESIGN YOUR HOME/YOUR LIFE?

Easy.  E A S Y !

Ask yourself:  If some one spent several days visiting my house, how would I want them to recount their time here?

How you answer that question will give you insight into what your home should reflect about you.  Just remember to throw out pretentiousness and airs.  A real home with well-loved belongings and sunlight streaming through squeaky-clean windows (I need some of those!) filled with the sound of life will impress everytime.  Plus be a place you you will want to nestle into every single day.  It isn’t perfection.  Repeat that, please: it is not perfection.  It is authenticity.  Edit, putter and enjoy the process.
And isn’t home, really, after all, the sum of the people living there?

Stef shared this with me the other day from the movie “The Notebook” (yes, yes, yes, you should see it!).

When Noah’s grown children were trying to get him to move back “home” leaving his wife, Allie, in the nursing facility as she was failing, he said,

“This is my home now.  Your mother is my home.”

See?  Nicholas Sparks knows.

Room 222

Before I’d even turned 5, my dad had gotten rid of our family TV in favor of more prayer and  Bible study time.  He was devoted in his faith and we are none the poorer for it, after all, but it did take away Popeye and The Jimmy Dean Show for me.  I loved Jimmy Dean when he’d sit on that porch swing with his guitar and sing…he died last year, I think,  and I felt sad.  And it ripped The Rifleman and The Fugitive from my mom’s favorite-viewing list. 

Now and again, though, we’d be visiting my grandparents in Ames, Iowa or my neightbor Nancy Lydon across the alley in Des Moines and get to catch up on the television shows of the times: Mayberry RFD, Julia, Love-American Style, That Girl, Batman (powzowiebop!), or Hawaii 5-O.  I loved it!

One show I always really liked from those years was Room 222.  When my dad decided to re-immerse himself and our family into television 5 or 6 years later in time for the World Series that fall,  Room 222 was still playing and I got to watch it now and again on Friday nights.

I always just really liked Mr. Dixon (played by Lloyd Haynes).  He was the handsome (quite dashing man with a beautiful smile), idealistic teacher who gently taught the high schoolers to be tolerant and have understanding on the social issues of the day, even if they were watered down for prime time TV.  I thought Mr. Dixon looked like a black version of my dad  (whom I also thought to be very handsome).  Even in retrospect, I think I was on to something because I was looking at photos of my nephew Ross Moslander (my dad’s namesake) and still saw a family resemblance.

Whaddya think?

  

 

 

I am telling you: we could be related!

Ahhh…..memories!