Tag Archives: family

To Be the Provider, the Giver

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Collin, this morning, after a solo turkey hunt

Sometimes my reading life and my living life perfectly coincide.  At lunch I was browsing through Neil Gunn’s novel, Morning Tide.  I’m quite sure you have heard neither of Neil Gunn nor this title.  However, if you lived in Scotland, Gunn would be a familiar author.  In this-coming-of age tale, twelve-year old Hugh MacBeth is reckoning how he can help the family while his father is away fishing and his mother is ill.  I can say with certainty that my sons have all experienced a moment like this.  

But if he got this fish now and Bill and himself set rabbit-snares tonight, it might be something. A great desire came upon him to provide for the house.  To hunt and kill, to bring food home, and fire.  His eyes glistened, but in their light there was also something of awe.  Life could hold nothing more supreme than that.  To be the provider, the giver.  The importance of it made him quiver.  He saw in a flash deep into man’s estate.  The glory, the power, and the self-restraint that smiles thanks shyly away.  To be able to do that…and then for his father to come home, to learn about it, and–to look at him for a moment with his quiet man’s look.  Nothing on earth could beat that.

Wedding Journal

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I love a good wedding.  Our dear Jackie married Zack; it was a day of soaring highlights, re-connections and robust celebration .  Zack and Jackie, ahem!, met in my Shurley Grammar class.  They spent another year with me studying Shakespeare.  Here is a journal of my reflections.

::  The attendants were all related to the bride and groom.  There were more guys than gals, so the procession included the seating of the mothers and grandmothers.  It was wonderful to have all the close family included in the official beginning of the wedding.

::   You know music is important to me.  The entire family/wedding party came down the aisle to Non Nobis Domine (Not to us, O Lord, but to Your Name give the glory) from Henry V. If you listen to the link, the bride made her entrance around 2:35 where the orchestral fanfare builds.  I watched–through a cataract of tears–my people (son, daughter-in-law, grandsons, dear friends) process past me.  I will never listen to Non Nobis again without thinking of a radiant bride smiling at the man she loves.

::  Black Chocolate Wranglers.  There are benefits to marrying a cowboy.

::   It was a large wedding, ~ 500 guests.  The bride’s family emptied their barn and made it suitable for a celebration.  (look at the picture below…coming out of my husband’s ear is a chandelier made out of wagon wheels) Family and friends pitched in to set up, decorate, cook food, iron tablecloths, pull weeds, serge fabric, and park cars.  It was such a joy to be able to help a family who are normally the helpers. 

 


Papa (Curt) and Preston

::  My role in this wedding was to bribe our exhausted grandson to be quiet with M & Ms.  My husband coached my attempts in a whisper.  Not so fast!  Give him another one.  Wait a little longer.  See if he wants water.  He’s going to throw up, he’s had so many.  After we got him in a sugar coma, he fell asleep on Papa’s shoulder in two seconds.  Yay!  We achieved our goal.

::  Generational blessing.  Every decade in life was represented in the room full of guests.  Grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles: extended family were abundant.  Babies, babies everywhere!  There were easily thirty pregnant moms and fifty babes in arms.  Have I said what a blessing it is to be part of a community that loves and values children?

People and realms of every tongue
dwell on his love with sweetest song;
and infant voices shall proclaim
their early blessings on his name.

::   I glanced to the back and saw Carson, Johann, and Jamie standing–bouncing, rocking–with babes in arms and Leah next to them standing with her arms resting on her pregnant belly.  All these kids were in my classes.  They spent endless hours playing flashlight tag, snowboarding, eating pizza and talking about life.  Now they live hundreds of miles apart.  A sob of gratitude bubbled up.  Look at them! 

::   My son’s toast to the bride and groom, paraphrased:  “Let’s go back twelve years to my mom’s grammar class. That was when you and me met Jackie and Jessie (you and I, I correct him from the audience…500 people roar).  You didn’t care much about Shakespeare, but taking my mom’s class meant more time around Jackie the following year.  After that you both went in different directions, but eventually two couples got married from that class.  So Mom, you thought you were teaching us Shakespeare, but in fact you were doing premarital counseling! …

In the Bleak Midwinter

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Winner of Carol’s Best Christmas Music – Category: Mellow
The Gift by Liz Story
Windham Hill.
Solo piano.
Sensitive.
Evocative.
Contemplative.
Recommended first by sister Dorothy.
New to me this year.
Exquisite.

(This post is from the archives.)

One of my favorites is In the Bleak Midwinter, a piece that James Taylor also does very well.

I know you are very, very busy.  You should be wrapping gifts instead of reading blogs.

May I tell you a story?  Why this song means so very much to me?

It is a family story that I only know from the telling, because, sadly, I was not present.  Twenty-one years ago, my father received a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer from Mayo Clinic on Christmas Eve.  The following weekend, those of my siblings who could, gathered at my dad’s place in Dubuque. That Sunday Dan sang  In The Bleak Midwinter at the chapel.  A Capella.  He’s a professional, my brother.  But when he came to the last verse, (What shall I bring him, poor as I am?) he broke down and wept.  Unable to continue. My father walked up to him, put his arms around him, and held him.  No words.

So this piece, which has a mournful tone already (and that is not a criticism), always  takes me to that Sunday, to a sad family, a very brave brother, and a father who was a father in a most public act of comforting his son; to my Father who gave His Son, to his mother who worshiped him with a kiss, and mostly to the poverty of the writer who offers what she can give–her heart.

In the Bleak Midwinter.

Snippet of James Taylor singing it (scroll down).
30 seconds of Liz Story playing it.
Better yet, Glouster Cathedral Choir singing it:

A Night at the Opera

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My brother Dan sings in the chorus of the San Francisco Opera.  Although he has sung in operas for 25 years, Curt and I have only been able to see him play a lead role in Madame Butterfly with a touring company.  One item on my “bucket list” has been to see Dan sing on stage in San Francisco. 

Thursday night it happened.  It was the dress rehearsal for Otello by Giuseppe Verdi, based on the play by Shakespeare.  We had prime seats in the “orchestra” section (main floor); hordes of vibrantly enthusiastic high school students watched from the balconies. 

I’m just going to say it: opera is an acquired taste.  I enjoy it, but I understand it is foreign territory for many.

But there is no better way to introduce, develop and nurture an operatic appetite than to see a live performance.  The Opera House provides a grand and splendid setting.  The three-story sets and lighting were superb.  The acoustics exquisite. The storyline, sung in Italian, was easy to follow with English super titles.  In short order, I was spell bound.  Moved.  Shaken. 

There is no electronic amplification.  The South African tenor and Bulgarian soprano had pipes.  But the Italian baritone who played evil Iago amazed me.  And when the entire cast was singing and all the instruments were playing, the sound went gloriously through my bones. 

The conductor turned to the audience before the fourth and final act.  The kids were not settled and the rustling noises continued.  “This act begins very quietly with a very beautiful French horn solo,” the maestro explained. “This very beautiful music needs very beautiful silence.  Thank you.”

It was a night to remember. 

You can see a three minute segment here, a video filmed during the performance we saw.    

Random Reading Notes

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Lots happening in the “Shire” and it. is. glorious.  Our community is celebrating weddings, music, friendship and growth.  I had not factored in how fatiguing glory can be, but surely there will be time to rest in the winter. 

One of my dear ones is getting married this Saturday.  Here is a Tolstoy quote that landed in her invitation:

The goal of our life should not be to find joy in marriage
but to bring more love and truth into the world.
We marry to assist each other in this task.
The most selfish and hateful life of all
is that to two beings who unite
in order to enjoy life.
The higher calling is that of the man
who has dedicated his life
to serving God and doing good
and who unites with a woman in order
to further that purpose.
~ Leo Tolstoy

The irony of that quote is that joy is the byproduct of a life of service. 

I have so many good books on my nightstand I can hardly bear going to sleep. 

You know, if you’ve read this blog for more than a week, how much I admire Wendell Berry.  I have two new book of essays and I love to read them wherever they fall open. 

Love is never abstract.
It does not adhere to the universe or the planet
or the nation or the institution or the profession,
but to the singular sparrows of the street,
the lilies of the field,
“the least of these my brethren.”
Love is not, by its own desire, heroic.
It is heroic only when compelled to be.
It exists by its willingness to be anonymous, humble, and unrewarded.
~ from “Word and Flesh”

Another author in my top five favorites is Neil Postman.  The Disappearance of Childhood is teeter-tottering in my pile of books.  Some quotes such as “Reading is, in a phrase, an antisocial act.” need a bit more background to be appreciated.  My antipathy to television needs no bolstering, but you can’t blame me for chortling a bit over this Reginald Damerall quote on how television erodes the dividing point between childhood and adulthood:

“No child or adult becomes better at watching television
by doing more of it.
What skills are required are so elemental
that we have yet to hear of a television viewing disability.”

I’m revisiting a book that had a powerful impact on me thirteen years ago: Motherless Daughters by Hope Edelman.  It is curious to re-read the book at a little more emotional distance.  I asked my husband to read the introduction and the first chapter in order to understand me better.  While he believes Wendell Berry is a better grief counselor, Curt appreciated this:

“How do I keep my mother’s death from being a lifelong lesson?
How do I keep it an isolated incident,
something so overarching, so devastating,
so pervasive in my life still?
How do I keep from being crippled by it?”
The answer, I believe–if there is such a thing
as a concise answer to such questions–
is to slowly learn to live with the loss and not under it,
to let it become a companion
rather than a guide.

Helene Hanff is kick-in-the-butt fun to read. 84, Charing Cross Road is high on my list of lifetime favorites.  She uses a strange and intriguing convention in Apple of My Eye, a book about New York City.  The entire book is a diary about a book she *plans* on writing.  Her friend  Patsy is forever commenting, “Put that in the book.”  Her humor is irrepressible, her writing wonderful.  She is one of those friends who is a walking encyclopedia, able to give you a two minute synopsis of the history of anything.  Thanks to Hanff, I’m am SO ready to visit the Big Apple.  The Cloisters, a collection of twelth and thirteenth century buildings, torn down and reconstructed in NYC, is now on my “must see” list.  I had never heard of it before this week.  Anybody been?

Then you look out,
and the splendor of the city
smites you all over again
with “astonishment of the heart,”
as it says in the Bible.

Finally, I am snuggling into Donald Hall’s memoir of his childhood summers with his grandparents in Maine, String Too Short to Be Saved.  I have to finish this so others (who are not yet aware that their earthly happiness depends upon reading this book) can begin.  When our kids were all together last weekend, we spent an evening reading sections of Aunt Doris’ memoirs aloud.  Whenever it sparked a memory, Grandpa filled in his own memories.  Stuff like his Grandpa who died in a field, sitting next to his tractor. My kids heard about the fine art of burning a page of the catalog and throwing it into the outhouse hole before you did your business so the seat was warm.  This book reminded me of that evening.

The idea of their [Donald’s grandparents] mortality
was never far from the surface of my day,
for a flush or a sigh or a hand pressed to the heart
brought death to me,
as if I had heard someone say the word.
It was a pack on my back,
and I would feel the sharp, physical pain
of their approach to dying,
something becoming nothing–or
was it my own approach to bereavement
that made my side ache?

What are you reading this summer?

Just Be Cuz

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We’re back from a trip to Omaha for time with extended family.  We participated in two family reunions (Grandpa’s side and Grandma’s side) and visited with all of my husband’s living aunts and uncles, all but two of his cousins. 

I’m curious about cousins.  Some are functional strangers who happen to be related.  Sharing an ancestor doesn’t appear to be enough commonality to carry on a conversation. 

But other cousins, upon meeting for the first time in decades, seem familiar, because they truly are family.  They are kin and kindred. 

It’s fun to discover family traits that travel through parallel generations.  One cousin said her husband calls her relatives “human doings” because of their high energy and focus on activity.  She quizzed Curt on his personality and came up with many matches; for example, she likes to read but only if all the work is done. 

We heard and told many stories.  Ah, the art of storytelling: the opening, timing, animation, interaction, enthusiasm, and the ability to stick the landing.  It’s fun to listen to couples tag-team their history, one jumping in with color commentary, one handing off the narrative, at times both talking in stereo.  And stories flowing downstream accrue more stories.  There were goofy and crazy yarns, funny and unexpected outcomes.  But the ones that found a home in my heart were the stories where the person opened up his/her life, pain and all, and didn’t mask the hurt.

I have a friend who has no cousins.  No aunts or uncles.  Her dad and mom were both the only child.  Her family history goes straight up the branch like a poplar tree.   

We all grow up with the weight of history on us.
Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains
 as they do in the spiral chains of knowledge
 hidden in every cell of our bodies.

    ~ Shirley Abbott

The great gift of family life is
to be intimately acquainted with people
 you might never even introduce yourself to,
had life not done it for you.

    ~ Kendall Hailey, The Day I Became an Autodidact

Call it a clan,
call it a network,
call it a tribe,
call it a family.

Whatever you call it,
whoever you are,
you need one.

~ Jane Howard


How many cousins do you have?  Do you see them often?  Ever?  With what emotions do you anticipate family gatherings? 

Six-Word Story

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Have you heard of the six-word story?

Ernest Hemingway’s is the most famous:
For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

The distillation process intrigues me.
Because all that is not written captures the essence.

Larry Smith and Rachel Fershleiser collected
six word memoirs and published them in
Not Quite What I Was Planning.
Here are a few.

Good, evil use the same font.
~ Arthur Harris

Detergent girl:  Bold. Tide. Cheer. All.
~ Martha Clarkson

Oh sweet nectar of life, coffee.
~ Daniel Axenty

I am considering starting Six-Word Saturday.
Perhaps in September?
Six words are not so easy.

If George Grant has eleven
and Abraham Piper has twenty-two,
why can’t we (you are included) do six?

It’s great practice.

The art of reduction.

~     ~     ~

Today is my son’s 27th birthday.
For Chris, I offer two sextuples.
Bookends of your life so far.

Beyond exhaustion, strength spent.  Baby Boy!

Backlit strength, silhouetting grace.  He stands.

The Cutting Edge

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I’ve been opening a large bundle of mail everyday with a zip letter opener that looks like a whale’s head with an angled razor where his throat would be.  It was well used but its usefulness had expired.  After a few months of struggle it occurred to me to buy a new one.  What had previously been a pushing, shoving and ripping contest was transformed  to “zip zip”! 

Hello!  A basic maxim of life is to “keep your saw sharp.” 

So my thanksgiving this week is for people who sharpen the cutting edge.

My father — one of his trademarks was sharp kitchen knives.  A few months ago I heard the story about the origin of this minor obsession.  My dad was in a butcher’s shop in Kalamazoo, Michigan; this butcher’s lightening speed in cutting meat was legend.  The reason was simple: he stopped and sharpened his knives often.  This  inspiration from the late 1950s stayed sharp until his death in 1987. Everywhere he went he sharpened the knives.  He was a man with a steel in his hand.  I remember the whisk and whirl of the blade, the circular back-and -forth motions that blur together, the high-pitched tsk tsk of blade on steel. 

My husband Curt is as obsessed with cutting firewood as my father was with kitchen knives.  Beginning in May, he maps out the plan and goes out with our son Chris and brings home the fuel that keeps our homes warm.  He is restless until the wood is in.  Every evening before a wood cutting trip he spends considerable time sharpening the blades of his saw.  Honestly, I don’t know what he does!  But he keeps the saws in excellent working order.  I would be tempted to do this every other time or every third time, but Curt never skips this important step.  Falling trees is serious business and I’m grateful that he treats it with the respect it deserves.    

Last weekend we put in a patio.  Chris brought his father-in-law’s stone cutter saw and made all the cuts for the pavers on the edge.  The ability to cut bricks made a huge difference in the beauty of the finished product.  I saw the same dedication to excellence that his father has in our son.  He considered, selected, measured and cut all the live day long.  And at the end of the day, we had a beautiful cobble-stone-ish patio.  Sitting on the patio at the end of the day with my husband softens the sharp edges of the day.

“For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”  Hebrews 4:12