Tag Archives: tim moslander

The Birthday Blizzard

2 Mi Familia, 3 Celebrations & Festive Events, 5 Songs I am Singing, , , , ,

Right around this time, our spring-season birthdays start appearing in a flurry of cakes & gifts & celebrations!

birthdaze

Amelie Belle was born on a spring day, a few days after Grand-poppa’s birthday. We celebrate them both just as spring has sprung.  Then April happens and things really heat up! Bailey-Baby and Stormie have celebrations. Then we have Tara, Stephanie, Gemma May in May with Gavin, Tredessa and DP just as spring is about to turn in to summer.

Ten peeps of our family-of-20 happen in this one little season.

Then there is Easter, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, May-Day, last day of school, and the sun shines bright in blue skies while flowers emerge in full color and the green grass starts its’ wildly renewed growth as lawnmowers criss-cross over subdivided lots creating  an emerald plaid any leprechaun would be proud to wear.

No wonder I love spring so much!

Plus there are those other people we love, from our families of origin (like my Mamala in early June). And ~ who remembers what I was doing on Stormie’s birthday (April 15) last year very early in the morning??? That is right! I was helping birth baby-boy Wryder of Holyoke. Now – I didn’t do much of the birthing work – that was his mom, but I sure do think that kid is handsome! He and his sweet sister dropped by for a few minutes Saturday afternoon and I got dandelions. :)

hapbday

LOVE these people – so glad they were all born to be in my life!

My little brother, Tim, just had a birthday Friday.  I called him “the gorgeous one in the family” and he acted surprised. Please. He’s a handsome fella and he knows it. Plus – he is an excellent Elvis impersonator. I will try to share video with you sometime on that.

joey and timmy november 1964

Joey was 3 1/2 and Timmy was 1 1/2 in this November 1964 photo.

And tomorrow is Joe’s birthday. He was my first younger sibling and has been my most enduring friendship. I wish he were here today with his guitar and we were singing and reminiscing on life because no one else on earth shares as much early-life history with me. He knows where the bodies are. I mean, there was my mom, but Joey saw things from my eye-level. And I will always have the Joey-Joey-Joey-Joey down in my heart.

Here is a song for you, Joe-Joe, to say I LOVE you on your birthday! “May your party never stop”


And the years go by

And we don’t know where they went

We just let them fly

‘Cause they were all heaven-sent

We’re on borrowed time

And we still owe half the rent

For soaking up the sunshine

‘Til we’re dead gone

We will laugh until we drop

Here’s your birthday song

May your party never stop

Singing on and on

We go stumbling down the block

Soaking up the good wine  –Chris Trapper

Speaking of blizzards –

Must be Springtime in the Rockies because is was hot-hot-hot yesterday and today – sleet and snow. Good grief.

But just beyond the white, dancing flakes, where the birds frolic and sing anyway, I see the pink blossoms of the flowering pear tree just next to the sunny yellow, forsythia. I am not deterred in my springtime hope…Oh it is true:

“See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone.

Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land.

The fig tree forms its early fruit; the blossoming vines spread their fragrance.

Arise, come, my darling; my beautiful one, come with me.”  ~Song of Solomon 2.11-13

It’s the season of celebrations and many birthdays. It’s the season of singing.

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