The Life of a Tree

In the mid-80s, my husband came home one Saturday with a tiny little slip of an evergreen tree. He had stopped at the local McDonalds, and they were giving the trees away with every cup of coffee.

We picked a spot near the back of the house, between it and the adjacent house, and planted the tree. It was so tiny, that my husband put a stake next to it, so that he wouldn't forget about it and mow it down when he cut the lawn.

In 1991 we had an ice storm. All of the tree branches were weighed down with a heavy coating of ice resulting in many limbs snapping off. By this time, the little evergreen was just a bit taller than our four-year-old son. He stared out the window at the drooping branches of the forlorn looking little tree. "I have to go out and help that tree," he declared.

He bundled up in jacket and boots and crunched through the ice to the tree. Carefully, gently, he reached up to the top of the tree and shook it, loosening the coat of ice. As the chunks and fragments fell to the ground, the branches of the tree popped back up into normal position.

In the late 90s, my mother had a stroke and was bed-ridden in our dining room. After her passing, my Dad lived with us in that room. During those years, the evergreen was right outside their window and a perfect height to be a Christmas tree. I strung it with lights and ran an extension cord through the nearest basement window, so that they could look out on some holiday cheer.

My parents are gone. My son is married and lives across the country. The tree soars upward. If I want to see the top of it now, I have to climb two flights of stairs and look out the window on the third floor of our old Victorian home.

We are moving this summer and will sell our house. Someone else may enjoy the tree, but not as much as I have.

Confession

I didn't sleep well last night, and I was under no pressure to get to work at a specific time today, so I rolled over. As a result, I was still in bed when my daughter called from Maine. After chatting with her, I talked to her two girls. Maddie (age 3) and I had a brief conversation, but Meri (age 4 1/2) is quite a chatterbox.

Here is a snippet of the conversation:

Meri: What are you going to do today, Grandma?

Me: I am going to go to work, but I guess I need to get out of bed first.

Meri: I had oatmeal and juice for breakfast this morning. What are you going to have for breakfast, Grandma Ruthie.

Me: Oh, Meri. I think I am going to be naughty. I made a rhubarb pie, and I think I will eat a piece for breakfast.

Meri: WHAT!!!???

It isn't possible to relate in text the expression that went into this....or the volume. My husband who was in bed next to me heard this although the phone was nowhere near his ear.

She then turned to her mother and quietly, but disapprovingly, said, "Mommy, Grandma Ruthie is going to eat rhubarb pie for breakfast."

I could hear her mother chuckling. She and I have been known to eat pie for breakfast together.

So...there you have it...my dirty little secret.

I do indeed eat pie for breakfast.

I would never be tempted to eat banana cream or pecan pie for breakfast, but raspberry or rhubarb? Well, that's a different matter entirely.

Doing the 5K Loop

I have an exercise area set up in the house: Nordic Track, rowing machine, treadmill and a flatscreen TV to distract me during the otherwise boring process of trying to lower my LDL and raise my HDL. However, this afternoon, although the air was chilly, was also beautifully sunny. Going for a walk outdoors seemed like a great idea. The down side of this decision was the concern that I might end up limping home. Occasionally when I walk, something goes amiss before I make the complete circuit, and I hobble home with pain in my left hip and knee. There have even been a couple of times when I have had to call my husband on my cell phone and request taxi service home. At least if I am on the treadmill, I am already home.

My husband has been a distance runner since his teen years. He has several routes through the city all measured out. One of these is a 5K (3+ miles) loop which he does in a counter-clockwise direction, so that there is a steep hill in the first half of the run and a gradual downslope home. I prefer to go clockwise with a gradual uphill in the first half and the steep downslope on the home stretch.

When I left home, he was on the computer, but said he would shortly be going out for a run. I started out with a tissue stuffed up the left sleeve of my sweatshirt (my nose runs in the cold), and my cell phone stuffed up the right sleeve......no pockets.

It really was a glorious afternoon. Daffodils and tulips are in bloom. Trees are beginning to bud. A dog barked ferociously from behind his fence....fortunately, a nice sturdy fence.

I came along just in time to see a grandmother get out of her car and head toward a house where two little heads peeked up over the windowsill in anticipation. She glanced my way, and we exchanged a smile. "I love it...I just love it," she said. I nodded, because we grandmothers know about this feeling. I was glad I had decided to walk outdoors, as I thoroughly enjoyed that shared moment.

In the next block, I noticed a man out mowing his lawn. I recognized him as a professor from the community college, who had known my son when he was a student there. He saw me coming and turned the mower off as I approached. He asked about my son....where he was, what he was doing. I must confess to delighting in any opportunity to "brag" about my son.

In the next block, I saw a runner coming toward me. It isn't unusual to see runners while I am out walking, but I decided to give this one a kiss. He has been my favorite runner for over 40 years. I then spent some time musing about the morning he had surprised me.

Several years ago, I was going through a time of emotional upheaval, and I kept waking up ridiculously early. If I stayed in bed, I would just toss and turn and feel distraught, so I would get up and walk the 5K loop. I often saw early morning runners. My husband has never been a morning person, much less a crack-of-the-dawn runner. He was always in a deep sleep when I left...or so I thought. On one of those mental health walks, I realized a runner was coming from the other direction straight at me. It wasn't until a few seconds before he planted a kiss on me that I recognized him. Every time I think of him overcoming his morning inertia to surprise me, I smile inside.

He, of course, runs a lot faster than I walk, so he beat me home today. About a block from home, I saw the car pull out and head in my direction. He was coming to find me and make sure my leg wasn't bothering me. He said he had projected when I would arrive home based on when he had seen me, and I was behind schedule. My leg was fine, but there had been so much to see and to ponder, that my focus on a pace was non-existent.

When I walk outdoors, my mind travels a lot farther than 5K.

You know you have been married a long time when...

Last evening Bill and I went out for dinner to celebrate his 67th birthday. He was upstairs getting ready to go, when it occurred to me that there was something I wanted to talk to him about. I also needed to use the bathroom, so I thought I would multi-task by using the upstairs bathroom and talking simultaneously.

When I arrived in the upstairs bathroom, I discovered that he was occupying the porcelain throne.

I said, "I was going to talk to you while you got ready, but..."

Guessing what I was about to say, he said, "Oh, you needed to use the toilet too."

Turning to leave, I replied, "I'll just go use the other bathroom."

Then thinking I had come up with a clever line, "Hmmm....maybe we should..."

He burst out in laughter when I was only three words into my punch line.

"Do you know what I was going to say?"

Still laughing, "Yes!"

"Seriously....you knew I was going to say that maybe we should remodel the bathroom and put in adjacent toilets?"

"Yup."

Now that seems to me to be a pretty random comment. So, you know you have been married a long time when your husband laughs at your joke before you have even gotten it out of your mouth.

When we were young, we used to get in the bathtub together and have great discussions in which we pondered our own problems and those of the world.

Now that we are old, we apparently are both picturing ourselves on adjacent toilets working out our own problems and those of the world.

Perhaps this isn't such an off-the-wall idea. When I was a kid, I had friends who lived on farms that still had outhouses. Most of these seemed to have two adjacent holes in the bench seat.

So when some home designer comes up with the notion that having two toilets in the bathroom is simultaneously both innovative and retro, remember you read it here first.

In other words, to borrow the phraseology of a currently popular ad, "I'm an old lady, and adjacent toilets were my idea."

All Men

O you who hear prayer; to you all men will come. Psalm 65:2

All men....

Not only the priest and prophet,

But,

The rich and the poor,

The genius and the slow,

The strong and the weak,

The educated and the ignorant,

The devout and the profane,

The young and the aged,

The urbane and the backward,

The eager and the reticent,

The believer, agnostic and atheist,

From,

Every nation,

Every race,

Every language,

Every extremity of the earth.

Perhaps not today,

Not even tomorrow,

But someday...

By choice,

Or of necessity.

All men.

Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other....before me every knee will bow... Isaiah 45: 22, 23

Spring Cleaning?

A couple of days ago I was standing outside talking to the neighbor. We were near the back corner of her house, when I saw what appeared to be two bumble bees flying together. And, I do mean flying together....as in, one was carrying the other. They were flying around about 8 feet above the ground, when one of them plummeted to the ground near our feet. It was dead, and clearly had been dead for awhile. The other bee flew up to the eaves of the house and disappeared into a crack.

What I am guessing is that the dead bee had expired over the winter, and in an effort to tidy up the household, the other bee removed the corpse. I guess it makes sense that such a thing could happen, but it certainly was surprising to see it.

Of course, now my neighbor needs to consider that there is probably a bees nest in the eaves of the house.

This Life is not the End

It is Good Friday evening, and a song I wrote about 25 years ago just came to my mind.

The Dawn

If I had stood at Calvary, and viewed the darkness there,

Looked up and seen my dying friend, and felt the deep despair,

Of seeing helpless, him on whom, I thought I could depend,

I think I would have cried out, "Oh, God, this is the end."

If I had stood outside the tomb and seen the awful stone,

That sealed in the kindest man that I had ever known,

I might have thought, "He wasn't God, he was only just a friend."

And in my grief, I would have cried, "Oh, God, this is the end."

But a new day was coming. There was sunrise near at hand.

There would be a brand new morning. New life was in the plan,

For Christ conquered death, and rose again, upon an Easter morn.

And just as surely as He lives, we too with see the dawn.

And if today you stand here, so overwhelmed by life,

If you cannot make sense of the confusion and the strife,

Put your faith in Him who conquered death, eternity you'll spend,

In lifting up your praise to Him. This life is not the end.

For a new day is coming. There is sunrise near at hand.

There will be a brand new morning. New life is in the plan.

For Christ conquered death, and rose again, upon an Easter morn.

And just as surely as He lives, we too will see the dawn.

It is hard to imagine the overwhelming grief that Christ's friends must have experienced on Good Friday, but joy was just around the corner. Morning was coming.

And....morning is coming!