Grins, Gifts, and a Grateful Heart

“I think somebody forgot to rinse out his lunch bowl. This is going to need a good soak.” I filled the bowl with warm sudsy water, staring out the kitchen window at the reeds bending low over the lake.

“My bad,” came his voice from the next room.

“That’s it. I’m just done. I can’t do this anymore.” I retorted.

He came up behind me and wrapped his arms around me, my fake anger escaping into a fit of laughter as he joined in. “I guess I’ll just have to give you a reason to stay,” he teased.

“Just rinse your lunch bowl,” I teased back.

“Not exactly what I had in mind, but I’ll try.” He grinned and kissed the back of my head and went back to whatever he’d been doing before all the silliness.

I stood there for a few minutes while the bowl soaked, my thoughts steeping in the moment. It occurred to me as I stood there just how grateful I am to have been married to my best friend in the whole world for all these years, how privileged we are to share this connection that has only grown stronger and more intricate as the years have gone by.

It occurred to me that far too many people in this world never experience this kind of love, this certainty of foreverness that I have been blessed to know for most of my life.

I am sharply reminded that I can never take any of this for granted.

In the busyness of these days, it’s easy to forget to tell him how much I love him, how much I appreciate every tiny thing he does for me. Like the flowers he brings home the moment he sees the ones on the table even thinking about wilting. Last week, he brought some into my office and set them on my side-desk, explaining that since I spent so much time in here, he thought I might like some in here, too.

His is a beautiful heart. Best of all, his heart is for me.

If I am reminded of the special gift of this man in my life, maybe there’s someone in yours, someone you have forgotten to thank lately—like, specifically call out those little details that warm a heart and enrich a life.

Maybe it’s time to stop for just a tiny moment and let someone know your love, your gratitude, your joy at having someone so treasured in your life?

Steve will be home in a few minutes, and I will be looking for the perfect words to tell him how much he means to me.

He’ll probably be looking for a vase.

Mothering Grownups

It occurred to me this morning that I’ve had to become my own family counselor as a mama to grownups.

Mothering adults isn’t for wimps. If you are a champion mom of adults who glides through this season with ease, I’d like to know your secrets. It would be great to see a resource helpful for navigating this terrain without the negative responses of guilt, confusion, bewilderment, and even occasional anger. I think I can safely say there’s a market for your mothering prowess.

I have looked around for guidance materials on mothering adults, but thus far I haven’t found much. It seems there’s plenty out there on mothering babies, toddlers, and even teens. But adults? Not so much. Maybe it’s because everyone else is as clueless as I am.

When I have actually found relevant materials, they typically refer to damaged or toxic relationships with one’s offspring, and that doesn’t apply to our family.

I am learning that relationships don’t have to be destructive to be painful.

I’ve never fully understood the whole “leave and cleave” thing. Once in a class on marriage relationships, speaker Jimmy Evans explained that biblical “cleaving” actually does, as we might assume, mean cutting. I pondered that a bit and it made sense.

In recent years as our adult children have grown older, I have begun to more deeply comprehend the pain of that severance. I remind myself that this is the way it’s supposed to be. But it hurts.

To be clear, we have wonderful, even enviable relationships with our adult children. But as a mother to five adults, I am continually learning the ropes in this new season. And y’all, I’m a strong woman, but I’m about to buy some stock in Puffs Plus with Lotion.

I will quickly add that pain does bring growth, and for that, I am genuinely grateful. And to be fair, this season is certainly not all painful, and not even predominantly so. I think the hurt just sticks out because–if I’m completely honest–it was unexpected. I didn’t see it coming, and I guess that was rather presumptuous of me.

I have wonderful, amazing adult children whom I love with all my heart. And I am willing to admit that in my feeble efforts to mother them well, I’ve likely flubbed some of it up. One thing they can count on is that their silly, sappy mama is always working on learning and growing–even if I yelp every now and then.

I love them and I am for them, and that’s something they will never outgrow.

30

She would be 30 today. We’d be celebrating, all of us together as a family.

Today, we mourn.

It’s been 30 years since we kissed her little forehead goodbye, and we still grieve.

Every day, but particularly every year on her birthday, I wonder what she would look like, what she would like and dislike, what would make her smile or feel sad. How she would interact with her sister and brothers and all the lovely people who’ve been added to our family over the years.

I wonder what it would be like to have her here.

Every year, this day has been hard. But today hit me harder than I expected and knocked the wind out in ways I wasn’t quite prepared to navigate. I cried pretty hard, bowled over by mama-grief and stay-at-home orders that have dragged on for weeks and a thousand thoughts I can’t begin to understand, much less put into words.

I need something to be normal, and so few things are.

Then I think of my sweet husband and the normal he is—the kind of normal that holds my world steady when it feels like it’s spinning off its axis, the kind that loves fiercely and forever no matter what is happening, what is hurting, what is off-kilter. He is a kind of normal I need in ways I too often take for granted. A kind most people won’t experience this side of Heaven.

Today, in the midst of the tears and pain and longing and if-onlies, I am grateful.

Happy birthday, Heather Rose.

Lockdown

I’m on lockdown in my house with a pandemic out there and my mother-in-law in here.

A few weeks ago, my father-in-law, who has been my only dad since I was 15, took a fall and ended up in a rehab facility. The day he was put into that facility, it went on lockdown with no visitors allowed. No one. For the sake of brevity, I will skip to the part where he went sharply downhill, was readmitted to the hospital, and died a few days later. His graveside service was limited to family only, and the following day our county enacted an official stay-at-home order.

We asked my mother-in-law to stay here with us because we wanted to make sure she was safe, comforted, and among family instead of alone for the duration of the lockdown. She’s been with us now for two weeks, and when I think of being cooped up with my mother-in-law for weeks, the thought strikes my funny bone because I don’t imagine most people would think that sounded like a whole heap of fun. But she is, after all, a sweet little old Italian lady and she makes a great red sauce. She also made a really good guy who has been my husband for nearing 40 years, and she’s one of the kindest people I’ve ever known. We’re missing Papa, but we’re missing him together.

I don’t know how long this shelter-in-place will last. I don’t know how long we’ll have Mom in our lives. Hopefully soon, things will go back to some kind of normal. But I hope normal never looks quite like it did before because I hope we’ve learned a lot in the lockdown. I know I have. For now, I will be thankful for these days spent with a woman I am honored to call Mom. For now, I will be grateful for family and home and life. I’m glad she’s here.

An open letter to elderly-care facility personnel

My father-in-law, a beautiful man who has been my only dad since I was 15, spent a week in a rehab center in March. He was then sent back to the hospital showing evidence of less-than-optimal care while in the facility. We had no way of knowing the care he was (or was not) receiving because the facility was on lockdown with no visitors allowed due to COVID19. We lost him a few days later, and the world lost an amazing man who blessed the lives of many.

We got to spend his final day with him in Hospice Care–a gift from their staff that will never be forgotten. We stayed in for the next several days and some of us have only left home for his burial. Saying goodbye was never going to be easy, but it was made much more difficult because of the questions that will always plague our family regarding the likelihood of his life being shortened by a lack of quality rehabilitative care.

I’ll be honest–the thought of that sweet man being neglected is one I have a really hard time processing.

Since his death, we have heard numerous stories of advanced-age loved ones being neglected in rehab care facilities. That hurts my heart. Know what else hurts? Being told by doctors that most facilities caring for the elderly have sub-standard care, that by and large the attendants in such places don’t value their calling, and that it makes medical professionals hesitant to even release a patient to that type of facility because the prognosis automatically takes a nose-dive. I’m not sure why that came as a shock to me, but it did.

To clarify, not for a minute do I think all people who work in that type of facility provide less than optimal care. I personally know some wonderful caregivers, and I thank God for them and the vitally important job they do.

So here’s my message to those who work in such a place:

First, you are appreciated. You are seen. The work you do is valuable. If you haven’t heard that in a while (or ever), I am saying it now.

Second, please, if you cannot care for the elderly lovingly and gently and diligently, please find a new career. These people are precious to their families, and they are a treasure to our society. They are often under-appreciated, but these lovely seniors have seen so much we’ve never seen, experienced things we haven’t and could teach us so much if we care enough to listen.

We can’t look forward to more of their stories and being blessed by their presence if you fail to see them as worthy of your time and attention. Take the time to look beyond their condition, their needs, their complaints, their pain, and see them as we do. Please. At the very least, don’t be mean.

This plea applies to all the time, but particularly right now during this challenging time of quarantine when our beloved elderly are at your mercy and we have no window into the quality of their care. I beg you, if you can’t go above and beyond and love on our loved ones, at least do your job and care for them on a basic level. We count on you to keep our loved ones thriving, so I’m asking you to carefully consider the way you approach the job you do.

Please take care of our elderly family members. They are worth your time and energy. They are our very heart.

Seasons

For most of my life I have readily recognized the truth of the verse that says, “To everything there is a season.” I get it, the whole that was then, this is now thing. I understand that some life seasons are harder than others. I’m not sure I was fully prepared for how confusing and bewildering this season would be.

Becoming a mother of five adults crept up on me and by the time it popped out from behind the tree I was too far in to run and too scared to scream. Don’t get me wrong–there are some pretty awesome things about watching five adults grow wings and take flight and make their own way in the world. Something fulfilling, even, about knowing I had a key role and a ringside seat to who they have become.

But just about the time I get excited about being a big part of something so amazing, I catch a scent of something concerning going on with one of them and the creative in me goes all imagination-nutso and suddenly all the pride and joy gets vacuumed up in a whirlwind of worry. I like to consider myself fairly flexible and resilient, but this is maddening.

Maybe the truth is that I’m just beginning to realize what a key role fear has played in my life. What a key role it still plays, if I’m totally honest. The perfectionist in me grumbles that I should have grown out of this by now.

And yet here I am, in the throes of peri-menopause, with emotions flailing all over the map and me in the middle playing wack-a-mole to keep them subdued. I’m exhausted.

I find myself wondering what women do in my situation when they don’t have the fierce love and support of a family like mine. I know how the frustration mounts for me, how it feels like a vise I can’t escape, how on my worst days I wish I could start walking and not stop till I fall into an exhausted heap too far away to negatively affect my family. I can’t imagine doing this without the grace and patience of my people.

One bittersweet facet of this time in my life is that memory is acutely sharpened for times gone by. Someone asked today if I remember my childhood phone number. It’s 912-382-0273. I was eleven when that stopped being my phone number. Eleven was a very long time ago. Memory moments keep popping into my head–not just monumental moments but plain old ordinary ones–with an acuteness that has my senses piqued in ways it’s hard to describe. This is a part of my season that I don’t really mind; I find comfort in reminiscing.

All in all, I guess I don’t mind being here in this season. Things could be a lot worse, and I am not about to wish away the blessings that keep me rooted in the here and now. It’s hard sometimes, but it’s where I am. And even with the frustration and the occasional fantasy of heading for the mountains and the life of an old hermit lady, I’m glad I’m here.

Simple

“One day I will find the right words and they will be simple.”
Jack Kerouac

These days, they are anything but simple. They are complicated, complex, wrought with conflicting opinion and stand-taking and assertion. I am tired.

I long for calmer moments, of rainy afternoons and dark clouds gathered and thunder like the rumbling of a distant train.

Things are about to become much less quiet in my life as I start work as a TA and simultaneously begin work on my B.S. in Ed Studies full time online. This will be far from simple, but I need rest soul-deep if I have any hope of getting through the next two years.

I want the election to be over. Whatever we are going to wind up with for leadership I just want it done so (hopefully) the arguing and judgment will stop. If it doesn’t stop, then social media will not be seeing much of me. I need to focus in a positive direction.

I long for quietness, for lightness of being, for peace. I long for moments spent holding my husband’s hand or playing Little People with my grandchildren or making dinner for my big, beautiful family. I need to pull inward, to beckon my heart back home. Only then can I pour myself out the way God calls me to do as a wife, a mother, a Mimi, a teacher, a friend.

I am praying for renewal of purpose. For all of us.

Our Children

From back left: Papa, Charly, Jeff, Trevor, Matt, Steve. Next row: Amanda, Strider, Jenna, Rosie, Joe. Next row forward: Lisa, Nana, Morgan, Lakin, Luke. Front: Rosabelle, Archer.

One thing we believe in most strongly at Easterhouse is the value of FAMILY. We’ve built ours on a culture we’ve grown from our earliest days. It is a culture that says family done intentionally according to God’s design is the hub of everything in this life, and that what we do and say and experience becomes the spokes stretching from that base. We try with all we’ve got to live it personally, and we’ve mentored it in family ministry for years. We believe in it, and we know it works beautifully.

Our son Jeff, who arrived the day after we moved into our first apartment of our own, is a born leader. In those early years his headstrong personality provided quite a challenge for our fledgling parenting skills. We bumbled around trying to be a good mom and dad, but thankfully he is also quite resilient. Every so often we extend what we refer to as the “guinea pig apology”, our ongoing “I’m sorry” for him having to be the one on whom we learned the ropes of parenting. He has always been an amazing dad to Morgan (b. 2000). He served on staff at the Museum of Science and Industry in Tampa for 19 years, and in July of 2014 he moved to Seattle to work for Microsoft’s 343 Industries. He continues to spend as much time as possible with his beloved Charly, who is working on a biology doctorate at USF.

Just shy of five years later Luke joined us, with a disposition about as calm and accommodating as Jeff was headstrong. His goal was to bring peace and make everyone happy, and he did. I caught myself worrying that he would grow up to be a pushover who couldn’t speak up for himself or stand strong on his beliefs. That thought makes me laugh now, seeing the courageous man of God he is. He married Lakin in 2007 and has since become a daddy to Rosabelle (2010) and Archer (2013). He is Senior Director for a local youth sports enrichment program, and a sports journalist for USA Today‘s Draft Wire.

We lost a baby we named Jamie to miscarriage in May of 1989. In April of 1990 our precious newborn daughter Heather lived ten hours before she died of a Beta Strep infection. I share more about these times of grief and God’s provision and comfort within the pages of this blog.

Trevor joined our family in March of 1991. With chipmunk cheeks and a ready smile, he filled our home with joy and brought healing where our hearts had been crushed with grief. In the sixth grade he announced that he felt led into worship ministry. He set to work immediately preparing for that calling, and throughout his life has continually shown us ways to walk more closely with God. He married Amanda in November of 2011, and is now a worship leader at Grace Family Church in Tampa.

Matt came in March of 1993 with big blue eyes and a head full of curls. He quickly developed a disarming wit that left people scratching their heads. His childhood was spent growing into a young man who strongly values honor and personal integrity, and who pours himself completely into every task at hand. All who know him love and respect him as an exemplary man of God. He married our music pastor’s daughter Jenna in June of 2013. Their son Strider was born in December of 2014, and their daughter is due in August 2017. Matt works as a CAD drafter for UC Synergetic.

When Rosie came in May of 1995, our whole world turned pink. We named her Rose after my mother, and she brought a completeness to our family none of us could have anticipated. She twirled before she could walk, and has continued to follow her lifelong passion for dance. She teaches dance at a local studio and is working on a business degree at St. Petersburg College. She dearly loves children and is a trusted sitter and childcare worker. She and her beloved Joe have been together since May of 2011.

Marriage made in Heaven

Steve and I had quite a beginning to our love story that you’ll want to read more about if you haven’t already, but here we’ll pick up where that part of our story left off.

Most folks would say we started off behind the eight-ball in our marriage. It’s hard to be deeply in love and not make unwise choices during a long engagement. We were grounded in our faith, and yet we still made some of those choices. We found out in June of 1980 that we were three, and on July 13 we walked the aisle in our tiny church in East Tampa and promised to love each other forever.

On our wedding day I was green with all-day sickness and Steve had the flu. We spent our three-day honeymoon unable to sleep too near each other, him burning up with fever and me with my face in a bucket. Thankfully we missed the memo that all these things were supposed to spell our doom as a couple. We loved each other, and we figured the “in sickness” part was just arriving a little early.

I was “Sixteen and Pregnant” before it was cool enough for a reality show. Truth is there was nothing cool about being a pregnant teenager. I watched my friends fall off like flies one by one, all but a tiny few who didn’t mind being seen with me. I resigned as band captain and left my beloved music program behind to finish the few classes I needed to finish school early. It was one of the loneliest times of my life with regard to friendship, but I will never forget how our parents and church family gathered around us and loved us through those early weeks and months.

Steve has always been my best friend. Because of that friendship rooted in our love for God, everything that has happened to us in life has happened to us, not between us. I really don’t know any other way to explain our relationship, or why we don’t argue, or why we don’t struggle in ways most people do. It isn’t that we never disagree; it’s that we approach everything as a matter of how we will work through it, not whether or not we will. We made a covenant on our wedding day that the D-word wasn’t even in our vocabulary, so we’ve simply lived our life together based in that safe place.

Our Love Story

On Friday, August 31, 1979 my friend Cheri and I were on our way home from the mall. At a stop-light I noticed a blue 1965 Mustang stopped next to us, and about the time I noticed the driver’s afro bopping to the Blue Oyster Cult song shrieking from his radio, he also noticed me. I blushed and grinned, and for a reason known only to the Lord, I waved. He waved back.

The light changed, and since we had to turn left at the next light we fell in behind the Mustang. After both cars made the same turn I joked to Cheri that they probably thought we were following them. She grinned and said, “Hey, we should!” So we did, through a couple of turns, until they got smart and turned into a church parking lot. Spooked, we took off as quickly as her dad’s Beetle would carry us.

We should have expected that they would come after us. They were quickly behind us, so Cheri tried to lose them in an empty Winn-Dixie parking lot. Don’t judge. We were teenagers. To this day I’m not sure what Cheri was thinking when she drove straight to the apartment where my mother and I lived alone and parked in front of our building. I asked her if she’d lost her mind, certain those creepy stalkers were going to murder us before we could escape.

I hid behind my algebra book and Cheri tried to look busy. The guys got out of their car and I remember thinking as they approached ours that I was really not fond of the idea of dying so young. I was about to scream at Cheri for rolling down her window when she pointed to the afro and said, “Hey, I know you!” Bless Jesus, we could live.

Cheri laughed and we both sighed our relief, then we got out of the car to chat with the no-longer-total-strangers. Turns out about a year before, Cheri and Steve had been briefly introduced at a Tampa Jam concert. Briefly was working for me, since it at least assured me of seeing the morning. We talked for a while and before they left Steve asked if he and his best friend Dave could hang out with us sometime, and mentioned a concert that was coming up. We said sure, thinking we’d never see them again.

We bailed on the concert, of course, but I felt a little guilty we didn’t go, so I asked them to meet us for pizza after our high school football game the following Friday night. Friday came, along with a massive rainstorm that combined with a huge loss for our team and drenched us body and spirit. Cheri was in no mood to go out at all, but I convinced her to at least come to the pizza place and hang out for a while.

When we arrived Steve naturally paired up with Cheri (I assumed since they had been introduced) and I sat with Dave. Steve and I sat across the table from each other goofing off and making silly conversation (I recognize it now as massive flirting), and as the evening wore on I felt a heart connection with the tall, skinny Italian rocker with the big hair. They took me home and I introduced them to my mother, and after they left she said, “I think Dave is terrific, but I honestly think Steve is more your type.” I hurried off to my room so she couldn’t see the pink in my cheeks.

The following week I called Steve’s house “looking for Dave”. Of course he wasn’t there, so Steve and I chatted for a little bit. He mentioned that he was going to the mall later to buy a present for a fraternity brother and asked if I wanted to come along. As casually as I could voice it, I said yes, then promptly hung up the phone and went dashing through the house to find my good jeans and the red button-down with the gold lame’ stripes.

As we arrived at the mall, Steve mentioned that “The Muppet Movie” was playing at the cinema and asked if I’d seen it. I said no, so he invited me to the movie. I was beginning to feel really comfortable with this guy, and I still marvel at how easily I fell for him since I had grown up watching my mother struggle in relationships, had seen her used and abused by men, and had fallen into a wreck of a relationship myself at the tender age of barely-fifteen and paid a high price for my misjudgment. Steve made me feel safe.

And so we come to the corniest part of our story, when Miss Piggy sees Kermit and her eyes twinkle in that love-at-first-sight way and Steve kissed me. After you stop gagging and laughing, I will tell you that it was the most perfect kiss on the planet, ever—even better than Westley and Buttercup at the end of “The Princess Bride”. It was gentle and sweet and it melted my heart into a puddle then and there.

A few weeks later as my feelings for Steve continued to grow, it hit me like a freight train that it was going to kill us both when we broke up. Everyone broke up. Broken relationship was all I’d ever known. I hadn’t uttered the word love in regard to Steve because there was still that part of me that fearfully withdrew at the thought of giving my heart to a man. It’s hard to describe the terror that overtook me when I realized I loved him. So I did the only thing I felt would save us both: I broke up with him.

I asked that he not contact me, knowing it would take nothing for my will to break. He honored my request, and I cried for the next two days straight. After a weekend of misery and a painful heaviness I can’t even describe, I finally called a friend, who called him for me and nudged him to call. I told him there was something important I wanted to tell him but it needed to be in person. He said he’d pick me up from band practice the next night.

The whole ride home after practice was quiet. Scared out of my mind, I couldn’t even make small talk. We stood outside the Mustang the way we had done many evenings before, him leaning against the driver’s door and me leaning on him with his arms around me. Every time I tried to find my voice nothing would come out. Finally he took my face in his hands and said, “I love you.” Tears came quickly as I said, “I love you, too.” I don’t think I hit four of the twenty steps up to our apartment that night. I felt I could fly.

A month later he asked my mother if he could propose to me. We would go on to joke for many years about me thinking if I hadn’t been in love with him she would have made me marry him. She gave him her own wedding rings, and on November 17, 1979, he asked me to marry him. At my choked out “Yes!” he put the engagement ring on my finger. It was my 16th birthday.