The Miracle of the Baby Formula

 When my youngest child needed formula at the age of two months, I picked the cheapest of the well-known brand names, because we really couldn't afford formula but didn't have a lot of choice in the matter. Our nearest grocery had quite a variety, and all the name brand ones were largely the same price except for the one which went home with me. I was pleased and felt triumphant at having found a good deal. 

Em was happy with it, and grew and thrived, so all was well. The price stayed the same and we worked it into the budget, but I was still looking forward to the day when we didn't need to buy it any more. 

When that day came, I ceased to put it on the grocery list, but I still had to venture into the Baby aisle at the store for something else the next week. Probably diapers--as my dad was fond of pointing out, with babies you just keep one end full and the other one dry. When I got there, there was a stocking clerk and a manager there looking at the formula selection with some consternation. I overheard the manager asking how long that formula had been at that low price, because it should have been just the same price as all the others. How long had they been losing their profit on it? 

I knew the answer to that, and I suddenly knew why as well. Once again, I had clear proof that God was looking out for his children. So I just smiled, and quietly picked out my diapers and went on my way rejoicing.

Love, Spud

For Want of a Mop

Some of us were discussing last night the old neighborly habit of borrowing sugar or eggs or what-have-you. And it took my mind back to the day several years ago when I truly, desperately needed a mop.

On a Thursday afternoon I was doing laundry and getting ready to host a small Bible study in my home that evening. Two ladies with whom I had been meeting for some time were coming, along with a guest. My husband was out of town at a conference, and whenever Stu left town, something, without fail, would go hideously wrong. This time, it was the sewer line. When the washing machine drained itself, all that water came up through the powder-room toilet and into the front hallway instead of through the sewer line like it was supposed to.

I ran to the garage to fetch our mop, but quickly realized that the Swiffer-type mop which I owned was thoroughly inadequate to the task. I needed a MOP--and a real old-fashioned one, not this pathetic new-fangled thing. So I ran out my front door, turned left, and started knocking on doors. One neighbor after another confessed that the Swiffer-type mop was all that they had also. Good grief. We are all so modern!

I finally in despair knocked on one last door, and my wonderful next-door neighbor (the one who lived to the right) had not one real mop but two, and marched over the lawn to my house with both of them in hand, and helped with the clean-up. Bless her chatty old Italian heart. I owe her so much.

By the time the other ladies arrived to study a couple of hours later the hallway was restored to its usual dry self, but the man with the giant motorized plumbing snake had arrived also, and was reaming out our sewer line through the access in the pantry with an alarming level of noise. We valiantly decided to go through with the Bible study anyway for the sake of the guest, and sat around the corner from the pantry in the living room, cheerfully bellowing at each other in order to be heard above the sound of the motor. I don't remember the passage for the evening, but the guest reminded me years later that she clearly recalled my explaining the Ark of the Covenant through the din. It was an evening none of us could ever forget.

Love, Spud

POP!

Acts 2:24

I came across this verse referenced in a book I was
reading, and even though I’d seen it many times
before, this time it really caught my attention.
”But God raised him from the dead,
freeing him from the agony of death, because it was
impossible for death to keep its hold on him. “

I looked in other versions to see what word they used
instead of agony, and found pains, pangs, and suffering.
None of these things are good things! Death is not
meant to be a good thing. Romans 5:12--sin entered
the world through one man and death through sin, and
in this way death came to all people because all sinned.
So death is this big bad repercussion that we all earn,
and it is meant to be an agony that we all go through. 

But it was impossible for death to keep its hold on Jesus.
Not even possible! Like trying to keep carbonation from
rising to the top of your glass of soda--or your champagne.
Or like trying to keep an air-filled ball submerged in a
swimming pool. It can’t stay down--it just goes POP
up to the top and freedom. 

I love the fact that Jesus was irrepressible--he just could
not stay dead. Of course, this is because death came for
all people because all sinned. But Jesus never sinned so
death had nothing it could grab onto, and so it couldn’t
keep its hold on him. Not. Even. Possible. Honestly, that
kind of makes me laugh--ah HA Death! 

So what about us? Yes, we die, because we are part of
sinful humanity. Even though the sins of Christians are
forgiven--put away as far from us as east is from west--
the fact remains that we did sin, as all humans do. So
death waits for all of us regardless. 

But the Bible talks in Revelation about two deaths. We all
go through the first one, but 20:6 says that the second has
no power over us, because we are God’s children and
Jesus’ sisters and bride. He presents us washed clean
and pure, so the second death has nothing to grab onto.
Once we go through death once, we never go through it
again. We will be irrepressible, like the bubbles in
champagne. I love this thought--it fills me with gladness.

Love, Spud

Legacy--Dad

My dad was a man of many passions. He loved travel, history, machines, cars, woodworking, gardening, pie, old hymns, flirting with children, the Ohio State University Buckeyes, and my mom--not necessarily in that order. But one thing that he really loved was a good story. Consequently I have much more material on my dad than on my mom. The trouble has been deciding how much to leave out, as he had a full life with lots of stories. 

Dad claimed that he was born leaving Michigan, and to be honest I have no evidence to the contrary. He was the son of a veterinarian, and a housewife who loved to sing hymns as she worked, but it all fell apart during the Depression. Grandpa could find plenty of work, but nobody could afford to pay him for it, so his veterinary career went by the wayside. He spent a few nights sleeping in Grand Central Station and looking for work of any kind during the day, and finally landed as post as a federal meat inspector. A good steady job, but he had to travel a lot for work.

His wife, my grandmother, soon fell ill with an illness that plagued her for the rest of her life, and she died when my dad was around twelve. But since she had been ill for so long, and her husband was constantly on the road as an inspector, Dad and his older brother had been farmed out (literally) when Dad was still quite small to Aunt Ottie and Uncle Henry's farm. Ottie and Henry had seven children living, and so they barely noticed two more little boys added to the house. 

Dad was the youngest of the nine cousins, and sort of became everyone's roly-poly pet. His nickname was Itty Bitty Teeny Tiny Earl Tommy Tiner Baby, and he tagged along after the eight older ones and thrived. For the rest of his life, he considered all those first cousins to be siblings, and I was relatively old before I recognized that they were not in fact aunts and uncles of mine, but cousins instead. They were very close, and we paid lots of visits. 

The kids all fought every morning for the honor of taking that day's milk down the road to Aunt Susie (after whom I was named) because the person who delivered the milk invariably got a lovely home-baked treat fresh from Aunt Susie's oven. Dad became a really good baker himself, living on that farm, specializing in pies and Christmas fruit cakes. Another feature of Dad's childhood was, surprisingly, embroidery. Dad broke an ankle at some point, and Aunt Ottie declared that no one on a farm could lie around all day with nothing to do, so sewing and embroidery it was until he was up and about and into mischief again. 

Dad, his  brother, and his dad moved to Piqua at some point before high school, and he graduated early in order to join the navy. Uncle was already on a ship in the South Pacific, but World War II ended before Dad could get out of basic training and onto a ship of his own. He did join the army later and spent a tour of duty in Korea, as a cook for the army. He found out that war wasn't all it was cracked up to be, and for the rest of his life didn't like Fourth of July fireworks as they reminded him too much of the sound of the guns. 

After the army he went to Ohio State, traveling home on the weekends to be with his church and his future bride, and they were married while he was still getting his second degree, in agricultural economics. There was a problem though--Mom was determined to not be married to a farmer; so he ended up working as a sales manager (for seed corn, naturally) for a while, and eventually ended up working for the air force. Ellen and I were born during the sales job, and Tom later on during the air force job. 

Dad designed the house we built on the hill above town, and Ellen and I helped to the degree that people in elementary school could. My hands were the smallest, so it was my job to stuff insulation into the cracks around the window frames. The house was largely done all by us, with the exception of some things like the basement digging and the cement walls, the framing, and the plasterwork. Otherwise, it was very much a family affair. Grandpa Martin did the wiring, Uncle James worked on duct work, and it came together in about two years, in time for Tom to put in his appearance. 

Most of my memories of growing up with Dad center on the fact that he was what you could only call jolly. He was constantly humming, whistling, beating time to his singing. He was one of the few men I know who actually laughed until he cried, and it happened often. I think my son inherited this personality. Not that Dad wasn't serious when seriousness was called for. He somehow managed to always be on the governing board or a committee of our church, and that gave him no end of frustration. It was a case of duty calling, I suppose, because he certainly didn't enjoy that experience, and yet it persisted for decades. 

Dad also had a history of heart attacks. I'm not sure now how many there were, but there were quite a few. That must had been very scary for him and Mom, as his own father had died of heart failure before I was even born, so I never met either of those grandparents. When we met with the pastor of the church to work on Dad's funeral, we were read an interesting document about Dad and his heart which he had penned to be given to us after his life was over. Apparently at one point it became apparent that Dad's heart was not going to last. He spent some time desperately begging God in prayer to let him live long enough to see Tom graduate, and God came through. As he slept, he saw a golden light come into his chest and rest on his heart, and he knew his prayers had been answered. Sure enough, his heart healed up significantly from that point on, and he died much later of something else entirely. Our own little family miracle. He ended up seeing all his grandchildren, and that made him happy too. 

Dad loved to travel, and as a result I ended up visiting a majority of the states. We were always short on funds though, so I'm not sure how he managed it. I suspect he took out hefty loans from the Bank of Uncle James, and there was some evidence to support this. And one more thing Dad loved--battlegrounds. We never saw the things that would appeal to children, for the most part, but we did see a LOT of battlegrounds. It was part of his love of history, because an awful lot of recorded history involves battles, so there we went. When I finally, in my fifties, voluntarily went to visit Valley Forge, I knew that my Dad would have been proud of me. 

And that's another thing about Dad. He was immensely proud of all three children and all four grandchildren. And he let us know it. This man of great enthusiasm was enthusiastic about US, and it made all the difference in the world to an awkward child's aching heart. He was proud of Mom too, and even occasionally managed to sneak in a hug when she thought nobody was looking.

When I was a new mother, I was working a job that gave me one weekday off every week. From the beginning of my motherhood until the kids were in school, there would come a knock on my door in the mid-morning on those days off, and there would be the proudest Grandpa in the world, come for a visit. He was with me one day when I was lugging around my two-year-old non-mobile child with a bunch of bags of equipment in a medical building (another feature of my weekly day off was an endless round of specialist doctors for my son), and I was pregnant again at the time. I could tell by his reactions that he was distressed that this had become my reality, but I was oddly comforted that there was one other person in the world who had a small clue what my life was like at that point. Proud Grandpa was also Understanding Grandpa. That helped, emotionally.

Once Mom became a victim of dementia, Dad stuck pretty close to home. Those were some lonely years for him, but he didn't feel like he could leave her alone. The one time that he did go to an appointment without her, Mom left the house and wandered, crossing a busy road and getting picked up by a policeman who saw her looking vague and endangered. He never left her side again unless she was in someone else's hands. 

When Mom died, he was broken-hearted, because she had been the love of his life for more than fifty years. At the same time, he was freed. After a time of mourning, he set off cross-country in his car and visited all those cousins he hadn't seen for a few years. He was on the road quite a bit there for a while, catching up with his "siblings". He also did the other thing that Mom would never let him do, and grew a most luxuriant white mustache. He looked just like Wilford Brimley and I loved it. 

Mom had this little finger wave she would do to say good-bye. When Dad was in the hospital post-stroke and she had been gone for nearly four years, I paid a visit. He wasn't really aware of what was going on and who was who. As I went to leave, without even thinking about it I did that little finger wave. His face lit up like the sun and he did it back, and I realized that he was disoriented enough to think he was seeing his beloved wife once again. It made me sad, but I was glad that I had made him happy.

My dad had a big happy life, and I am sure as I can be that he's still having one. Someday we'll meet again, and I'm sure about that too. See you later, Dad. 

Love, Spud

Legacy--Mom

In the interest of providing a little history for my daughter, it's time to talk about her maternal grandmother. Some of the more important bits can be found in the August 2019 posting "Ambivalence", and so I won't repeat them here. I'll get to Grandpa next time.

My grandfather was born in a little place called Buzzard's Glory. The last time I went by, decades ago, there was little more than a crumbling wall of a brick building, so there probably isn't even that any more. Granny, my mom, was born in Dawn, which was one street long but had a church and a school for all that. They moved to Versailles sometime in her childhood, and that's where she went to all but the last year of her schooling. 

My mother was the oldest of four, with straight blonde hair and big blue eyes, and childhood photos often featured an enormous bow on the top of her head. She was a child of the Depression, so she knew how to get by with not much, which turned out later on to be a good thing. Her weekly chore was to walk to the store to get the family's ration of oleomargarine. It was white, and came with an orange capsule of food dye, and she would be the person to mix it all up so that the white oleo resembled butter, but fooled absolutely nobody.

They moved to the town where I grew up right before Mom's senior year of high school, taking her away from her good friends, an occasion for bitterness for the rest of her life. She had taken the secretarial classes in high school, and went right to work. She wanted desperately to go to college, and she would have been quite successful there, as she was extremely intelligent, but there was no money for her to go. This was another cause of bitterness, as her younger brother went to college with the rationale that he was the boy. Her younger sister went to a school for the deaf, and the very youngest was sent to college in her turn but wasted the opportunity, skipping class to run around with her friends instead. 

At some point in the first couple of years after high school Mom dated a man who later became a lawyer, and her mother used that against her when she complained about not having money later in life, saying "You should have married that lawyer!". Thanks Grandma, very helpful. But in a couple more years she married my dad. The way he put it was that he was the Sunday school president and she was the vice-president, and they just kept it that way for life. Dad was smitten with Mom to the end of his days, despite ups and downs and fierce, noisy arguments.

They dated and were married in a time of wide skirts, tiny waists, and adorable shoes, and went to live in off-campus housing on 12th Avenue in Columbus (the upstairs apartment of a family named Gump) while Dad finished his master's degree. Mom hopped on a bus and worked downtown as a secretary while Dad was in classes, and loved every minute of it. And in her spare time, of course, she typed up Dad's thesis. You can still view it from the Depository at OSU.

After graduation, they moved to Findlay where my sister and I were born, and when I was five we all moved to Piqua. We went to the church where Mom and Dad had met, and Mom had a wonderful, true, soft little voice for singing hymns. Sometime in those first couple of years back in Piqua, I think they came close to divorcing, although I don't know if my siblings even know this. I remember Mom taking my sister and me with her to an office which I recognized much later in life as that of a lawyer, and Mom cried and cried in front of him. Shortly after this my grandmother pulled me aside and told me that if my parents split up that I was to make sure to tell them that I had to go live with her. It didn't impress me at the time, but I put the pieces together later. 

My baby brother was born a little while later, and I have always wondered if he was a reconciliation baby, but I'll never know. We were living outside of town at that point, in a house Dad designed and built himself. We never had more than two pennies to rub together, so it wasn't the house they wanted, but it turned out to be a great house anyway. And there was room on our property for a substantial garden. Poor Mom--she had told dad before she married him that she wouldn't be a farmer's wife, and she never was, but thanks to that garden and the even larger plot down the road, she still spent all her summers canning, freezing, and otherwise bitterly processing produce. But technically, Dad was a military contractor, not a farmer!

Mom had two great loves in life--big cities, and books. Dad was thoroughly allergic to big cities, but he shared the love of books. I grew up with lots of books in the house and a well-worn library card. We kids didn't really own much in the way of kids' books, but I made up for that later. Mom was like I am, or perhaps I am like she was; if we weren't doing anything else we had a book open in front of our faces, and always carried one with us wherever we went. I still do.

When I was in junior high school, Mom was diagnosed as diabetic. I suspect she was diabetic several years before she knew it, as looking back I can tell that a lot of her behavior was that of someone who just wasn't physically well and took it out on everybody else. Taking it out on others took several forms, none of them good. Once she got treatment things got better, fortunately, but then her own mother died. Mom always accused her mother of "digging her grave with her teeth" as Grandma loved food and didn't let her own bad health slow her down any in the gustatory department. Mom considered it a form of suicide, and was bitter about that too. 

Once I was in college, as my college years overlapped with my older sister, funds went from "tight" to "pretty much non-existent". So Mom went back to work, using those faithful old secretarial skills, and was a happy woman at last. By the time we three were all out of college, she had that income but not as much to spend it on, and life got much better. She and Dad went to the UK twice, and in fact were stuck in Scotland at one point as they were over there on 9/11. Nobody could leave. Ah, what hardship, to be stuck in Scotland! And Mom, for the first time in her life, finally got to indulge in shopping for shopping's sake, and not as a dire necessity. One time my little family went to visit for the weekend and managed to miss taking one of the suitcases. Mom joyously put on her shoes and took me out to buy a small boy some pajamas and clothes to replace what had been left behind. I don't think I could have made her happier if I'd tried. 

In her last years, the doctor put her on progressively more restricted diets in an attempt to control her increasingly severe diabetes, and Mom got thinner and thinner. This was yet another cause of bitterness, as Dad could still have whatever he wanted, and was as large as ever. It really did not seem fair. And then dementia set in, little by little. It showed up in her cooking, as she began to leave crucial ingredients out of dishes she had been making for decades, and also in an unfortunate paranoia that had Dad as its focus. She was convinced he was hiding things from her, and that he was moving her bookmark in the book she was reading. Or trying to read, at any rate, as her vision was nearly gone by then--the final bitterness of one who lived to read. So she would hide her book when she wasn't reading so he couldn't get at it and move that bookmark. Of course what really happened is that she just forgot what had happened in the plot last time she read it. 

There is a trend, here, and it probably wasn't difficult to pick up on. Mom was a bitter woman. Of course, she had plenty of reason to be, and I understand that. I wish I could have changed her life for her, sent her to college and waved a fairy-godmother wand to fix all the frustrating events of the years, but of course I couldn't do that. I wish I could have known her as a young woman, and given her the female friend that she never had by her side during her married years. I wish I could sit down with her now and ask for some happy stories to mix in with the sad ones. Mom was baptized at the local Baptist church in her sixties, and I know that the pastor there would not have baptized her if he hadn't been certain that she was a believer. It's my consolation, the hope that God is making everything wonderful for her to make up for the years the locust has eaten. I do hope that indeed, and that someday we'll be able to sit down together and marvel that all the bitterness is gone, and never to come again.

Love, Spud

Protected

I am very conscious that God has protected me numerous times throughout the years. Today is my birthday, so the fact that I have lived this long seems to be an appropriate topic for rumination.

Some of the protection has been physical. I did not manage to die of measles at age seven, hard though I tried, and an attempted abduction during my freshman year at college did not succeed. And I really did take candy from a stranger in a car when I was about six. Nothing came of it, and I'm not sure I ever did tell my parents.

Two instances involved cars. While driving back home to Columbus from my hometown one night, I found myself surrounded by semi-trucks. They hemmed me about before, behind, and beside for about an hour. I eventually pulled off the highway and stopped, went to turn off my car lights, and discovered they had never been turned on. God bless those truckers, who guided a young woman through the dark.  

The other automotive adventure was on a day when I was driving the other direction--from Columbus towards my hometown--and I was suddenly in a fog bank. I couldn't see a thing, so I went to slow down and pull over until it should pass. My car had other ideas, and instead of slowing it sped up and shot right through the fog and came out the other end. There was no visibility whatever and it was a terrifying few minutes, but it was out of my hands. I've always wondered what was getting ready to slam into my car from behind had I slowed down as planned. 

I guess I should also include the two or three times that the master cylinder went out and my cars lost their brakes, and yet I was not in an accident. Well, not much of one. One of those times I did rear-end the person ahead of me at the stop light, but there had been a very heavy snow the night before, and all I did was knock some of the frozen muck off her bumper. I was less than three blocks from the repair garage when the brakes deserted me that time, so I just coasted on in and walked to work.

Some of the protection has been spiritual. It was all the rage, when I was in high school, to play "Stiff as a board, light as a feather" at slumber parties. And it featured at the one slumber party that I was allowed to attend. One by one the girls went into a trance, and the rest of us chanted the name of the game and lifted them up into the air with only two fingers from each of us underneath them. When it finally came to my turn, I just couldn't go into a trance. I started the countdown from one hundred as the others had, got all the way down to one, and started counting up again. The other girls gave up on me at that point. I've always been amazed that I was unable to participate in this, in retrospect, occultic activity.

I'm aware that there are several more examples, but those are the ones that spring to mind right now. But the burning question has always been: Why? Why me? I'm not complaining, heaven knows, but I'm curious anyway. Bad things happen to good people on an hourly basis, and I'm not necessarily even all that good. Why have God's hands been keeping me from peril for all of my life? I have no good answer for this. I'm nobody important, and I don't do anything of import either. I'm not even a particularly good example of a Christian, although I do try. Maybe I've been preserved from harm for the sake of my family, or maybe, and this is my favorite theory, because it just gives God pleasure to rescue me again and again, to see if I'll notice. Like a little game, just between us. "I see what you did there, God!". 

I'll never know, in this life, why I have been so very protected. All I can do is be grateful every single day that it is true, and that I have another day during which to notice His kindness and grace, and let him know that I appreciate it. Thank you, God, for looking after me. Keep my eyes open to Your grace.

Love, Spud.

Ambivalence

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Nellie. She grew up and married a farmer named Ben. I have seen a photograph of her, and she looked a lot like me, with the same facial shape, curling brown (no longer!) hair and a lack of height. I love that photo--Nellie is standing with her feet planted firmly on the ground, and the reins to a large horse in one hand and her small daughter (my grandmother) in the other. She looks strong and capable.

Great-grandmother Nellie outlived her husband, and then went to keep house for her daughter and her grandchildren. My mother was among those grandchildren, and learned everything she knew about cooking and cleaning and managing a household from Nellie. This is because my grandmother Keitha was a working mother. Whether or not she needed to be a working mother was a subject for debate, but the fact of the matter is that Grandma really liked to have a paying job, and had one paying job or another for most of her life. I have no idea what my grandfather thought of this--he never said, at least not in my hearing.

But I do know what my mother thought of it, and it wasn't favorable. Mom thought that her mother should stay at home and BE a mother to her children. She loved Great-grandma Nellie but wanted her own mother to be at home. Well, Grandma Keitha would have been miserable at home. 

So when my mother became a mother, she stopped working for pay and stayed at home with her children, as she thought was right and proper and the best thing to do. Unfortunately, my mother also really loved working, and once we children emerged from toddlerhood she didn't really know what do to with us. We had become uninteresting. So she was miserable too, as her mother would have been.

This came out in all sorts of ways, including the fact that I was never really "mothered". There were plenty of repercussions of this later in my life, especially when I left home for college and discovered just how little I knew about life, being a socialized person, and even about basic manners  and hygiene. She didn't like to be touched, and once we were past early childhood had never touched us without anger, so I was a little stunted and starved.

With two daughters in college, Mom had to (!) go back to work, so our much-younger brother had a very different upbringing from mine, and didn't experience the same unhappy atmosphere. I think it also helped that he was a boy, and so Dad took a lot of responsibility for his parenting. 

So after all those long boring years of wearing a cotton house-dress and slippers, which got replaced every couple of years when they wore out, Mom had to wear suits and heels (oh she did love those high heels!) and make-up as though every day was Sunday. She had income of her own and that was the end of the years of scarcity of funds, and there were fewer people at home on which to spend it anyway. Mom was happy.

Of the two of us, my older sister was the one who learned to cook family dinners and do all the house-running activities. She went as far in the 4-H sewing projects as you could go, eventually tailoring her own suit. I was as entrenched as possible in school in music and theater and dancing, which left precious little time to learn all the domestic arts. My still-single sister and I were as different from each other as we could be.

Eventually, I married and had two children of my own, but I could not stay home with them as money was extremely tight. Even with my income, every month came down to the penny, and we did not waste any of it. There were no dinners out, cable television, new cars. For several years, most of the kids' clothing was second-hand. Everything had to last as long as possible. Finances got better by the time both kids were in school full time. So when it might have been possible for me to stay home with the kids at last, there was no longer a need for it.

To be honest, I'm not sure I would have been a happy stay-at-home mother either. I always thrived in the work environment, and on days off I was stymied by the need to play with my kids. I still don't really know how to play, but fortunately they both loved to be read to (a thing I never experienced myself once I could read) so I had that activity with them, and I made it a policy that my lap was always open. I have never turned down a cuddle, even now that they are both adults. 

The whole reason to get into all this is to explain the ambivalent relationship I had with my mother. Stu and I moved into a two-story house twenty-some years ago, and when my parents came to see it I was happy to see that they were pleased with it. Until my mother hissed at me how it was unfair that I had the husband and house and children, as it was my sister who deserved it. 

That shocked me, and devastated me, and it was many years before I was able to put the pieces together and figure out where that angry remark had come from. It wasn't until I finally understood my mom's relationship with *her* mother and grandmother that I was able to forgive her and let go of the hurt. 

It took sitting down with a large pile of seemingly unrelated facts to start to understand my mother, and once I put them all together and realized what her outlook and experiences had been, I came to peace with so much more than anyone knows. I did love my mother, and I wish I could have known her as a friend before motherhood happened to her. I hear she was a sparkling person with her own forays into community theater, who loved to go to the movies and dancing. I remember her becoming so alive the year that Dad was in an officer training course, and she was suddenly part of the Officer's Wives Club. When it ended, she deflated again. 

Mom wasn't a terrible person, she was just not suited for the role that life handed her. Bless my husband, who insisted on showing her love in ways she probably secretly yearned for but didn't know how to ask for. I tried to make her last years happy, on the times we visited, and by talking every Saturday night on the phone. The last time I saw her, she confided that she was certain she would not live out the year, and she was correct. Nothing made me happier afterwards than the realization that I had made her laugh a couple of times during that last meeting, a difficult accomplishment during her intermittent dementia. 

It was a gift from God that I was able to understand and forgive, and show her the approval that she had rarely shown me. Only having known the love and approval of God made me capable of examining my past and letting God blow the chaff away. I hope I get to see Mom in heaven, so we can start over and do it better next time. And I hope that my own kids will be willing to forgive any damage I have inadvertently afflicted on their own sweet selves. Family is a gift, and God is good.

Love, Spud.