An Open Letter to My Son

Dear brilliant son….and anyone else who is highly gifted,

You may have the privilege of breathing the rarefied air of Google.  You associate with others of like mental capacity.  It is probably easy to think of those with an IQ within 20 points of yours as the norm. 

Think again.

I spent today at the county fair.  Walking past my booth was the complete spectrum of humanity, including those from the opposite end of the Bell curve.  Believe me, those in your circle are not the norm.  I saw folks today who are as many standard deviations to the left of the mean, as you are to the right.  I saw three generations who have been swimming in the shallow end of the gene pool.

It is easy to think of those in our usual circles of friends and acquaintances as typifying humanity.  Once in awhile, we need a wake-up call.

I remember the day when you were about two and a half years old, and you came to the kitchen to talk to me after church.  You announced with some consternation in your toddler voice, “Mom, those other children in the nursery talk funny.”  Uh-huh…other children your age were babbling syllables, and you were already talking in long sentences making observations about the world around you.  I thought, “And so it begins…how do I help him understand that he is different, and that this is a reason not for arrogance, but for compassion?”

So…I am reminding you today, because I was reminded myself, that with privilege comes responsibility; that any one of us could have been born with much less capacity.  We did nothing to earn our gifts…they were, indeed, gifts.  We may be proud of our accomplishments in developing what we were given, but not too proud.  Rather, we should be thankful and caring and giving and humble.

If you don’t need this message today, I do.

Nothing Can Separate You from God's Love

Original lyrics and music by Grandma Ruthie.  Also my voice, before I became an old lady who can't sing anymore.  Accompaniment by my friend Sharon.

Kids and Screen Doors

What is it with kids and screen doors?  They should never occupy the same place at the same time.  The screen on the door to our cottage has been ruptured outward so many times that I have lost count.

Of course, the same has been true of our screen door at home, but it got so much more use that it didn’t seem as ridiculous that it had to be fixed seasonally when the kids were young.  On one of those repair jobs, I watched carefully to see how it was done.  Armed with this knowledge, I have personally repaired the cottage screen door repeatedly.

Grandkids pushed it out the first time, and I’m not sure how many other times.  Then there was the occasion when my elderly father-in-law fell through it badly scraping his fragile skin.  I thought I would be pro-active the next time, so I purchased a heavy duty metal mesh panel and positioned it across the frame at the height where little hands might push or older hands might reach during a fall.

Sigh….the heavy mesh is now pulled loose from the metal frame.  This morning my husband also noted that the screen on the lower portion of the door has been kicked out.

No matter….the season when the screen stays intact will be the year when my husband and I sit here alone in the silence waiting for the sound of a slamming door.

Stuck in Cleveland

Silly me....I thought that being stranded in Cleveland was only the premise of a sitcom.  It didn't occur to me it could/would actually happen.


Yesterday my husband and I left home with the intention of flying to Houston, where he plans to participate in the National Senior Games.  On the way to the airport, he received a call from Orbitz indicating that our departure time would be delayed.  We realized we would probably miss our connecting flight in Cleveland.


As soon as we arrived at the airport, we hurried to the ticket counter hoping that we could get on an earlier flight or some other flight that would allow us to make it to Houston.  The airline agent was very helpful, but so many flights had been cancelled or delayed, that he could not find us a flight that had empty seats and would accomplish our goal.  We finally decided to go ahead with the originally scheduled flight and hope for the best.  i.e.  Maybe the flight out of Cleveland would be delayed too???


Our flight was about 2 hours late.  Since the time between flights in Cleveland was only about an hour, the situation was pretty much hopeless.  On arriving in Cleveland, we optimistically went to the departure gate, but the flight was long gone.


I got on the phone and made a hotel reservation while my husband waited at the airline's customer service counter to get us booked on an early morning flight to Houston.  By the time we got to the hotel, we only had about 5 hours to sleep before we needed to head back to the airport.  Difficulty in settling down, resulted in only 4 hours sleep.


Being stuck in Cleveland may be a joke, but we certainly did run into some pleasant people....the airline rep, the hotel staff, the taxi drivers to and from the hotel.  They were all very congenial.  We didn't encounter anyone rude or surly.  We did not run into Betty White, but they were all nice folks.  


Being stuck in Cleveland wasn't so bad after all, and now we are "Hot in Houston."

Chocolate Covered Strawberries

I recently attended a community event, where my table as a vendor was positioned right across the aisle from a vendor who was selling strawberries dipped in chocolate.  I had no sooner arrived and set up my display, when a man with whom I am acquainted…and who is a real character….approached.  He started joking with me about the position of my table and the temptation to spend the day gorging myself on chocolate covered strawberries.  I pointed out that while I was just across the aisle, I would have to walk quite a distance around several tables to get to the chocolate covered strawberries.

My “friend” apparently didn’t want me to have to surmount this barrier in order to indulge myself.  He walked right up to the display of chocolate covered strawberries, picked up an entire tray, and more or less stuck it under my nose.  I, of course, caved in, took one of the luscious looking berries and gave him the 50 cents to take back to the vendor.

That was an amusing start to the day.  But, as the day progressed I was horrified with what I saw the dipper-of-strawberries doing.  She did NOT wear any gloves while she dipped the berries.  She handled the money and went back to dipping berries without washing her hands.  She cleaned off the chocolaty spoon with her fingers.  She dropped the papers on which she was placing the berries on the floor, picked them up and used them.  As she spread out the papers, she licked her fingers in order to separate the papers.  AND between dipping berries, SHE LICKED THE CHOCOLATE OFF HER FINGERS!!!!

The vendors on either side of me were raising their eyebrows and guessing what would happen if someone from the state health department happened in.

I was reminded of the 3 months of psychiatric nursing experience I had at Chicago State Hospital many years ago.  We students lived on the grounds and ate in the hospital’s cafeteria, which was staffed in part by patients.  One day as I stood in line, I had a view back into the kitchen.  There a patient was placing dollops of butter on little square cardboards.  As she spread out the cardboards on the tray, she licked her fingers to help in separating the cards.  I did not eat any butter the rest of the time I was there.  Most of us gained weight during that 3 month experience, because we figured out that the baked goods came sealed in plastic from an outside source.  If someone was licking things, at least we didn’t know it.  Ignorance is bliss.

Chocolate covered strawberries are also bliss, but I will not be eating any if I attend that event again!

Strawberries Fields

Oh, what a glorious June day, I thought.  The sky is blue, the sun is shining, a gentle breeze is blowing and the newspaper says the U-pick strawberry fields are open!

I had something I needed to do this morning, so as soon as we finished lunch, I hopped in the car with a very large plastic bowl and a roasting pan.  If you bring your own container to the strawberry field, they weigh it on the way in and on the way out, and you pay by the pound.

The first fields I saw were full of weeds, and I felt a bit concerned about the U-pick business I had chosen to go to.  However, those of us ready to pick climbed on a wagon behind a tractor and had a slow bumpy ride nearly a half mile back from the road to a wonderful field with few weeds and loads of juicy red strawberries.  It took me a few minutes to find an area that had not been picked in yet, but once I found it, I was able to pick large handfuls each time I bent or squatted down.  This is important once you are in your 60s.  You don’t want to be squatting down for just one berry.  Each squat or bend needs to be maximally productive.

That lovely sun was pretty hot and the breeze wasn’t quite as breezy as I had thought, so I soon had perspiration running down my face and off my chin.  For the most part, I ignored it.  My minor discomfort made me think, however, about what it would be like to be a migrant worker and have to pick all day.  I decided I was too old to take on berry picking as a second career.

I had to get over my distress at the fact that it was impossible not to step on a berry occasionally.  I found many stepped on by others before me and did my share of squashing too.

When I first saw the fields, I noticed daisies growing wild in the vicinity, and I thought about picking a bouquet.  But, by the time my two containers were heaped, I had no desire to do anything but catch the wagon ride back to the weighing station and my car.  I hoped no one was looking as I tried to stand up with the bowl under one arm and the roasting pan under the other.  I guess I haven’t done deep knee bends often enough to keep myself in shape.  It was a struggle to stand up with the additional weight and no use of my arms to push off.  Note to self:  next time take a container with a handle…a small pail perhaps.

When I got home, I filled seven plastic containers….five for neighbors, one for my father-in-law and one for my daughter and her kids.  After delivering those, I somewhat ambitiously decided that I had the energy to make some strawberry jam with the rest of the berries.  Fifteen jars of jam, a very messy range top, and a sticky kitchen floor later, there were still about three quarts of berries left.  Those are now in the refrigerator.  Tomorrow…..

I am tired, my back aches, and my clothes are berry-stained and sticky.

Oh, what a glorious June day!

Breathing God's Name

This past Sunday I had an extended phone conversation with my 91 year-old uncle, who is one of the most stubborn people on the planet.  I love my uncle dearly, but he is exceedingly obstinate by his own admission.  I try not to get into arguments with him, because even if I “win,” nothing is accomplished.  He never backs off of his opinion.

But…when he told me that no Christian should say or sing “hallelujah” because it means praise Jehovah, I had trouble keeping my mouth shut.  His reasoning is that Jehovah is not really the one true God, because Jehovah and Yahweh come from the equivalent of the Hebrew letters YHWH, which he claims represent 4 different gods.  His claim is that each of the 12 tribes of Israel had a different god, and that at some point 4 of these god’s initials were combined to form YHWH which becomes Jehovah or Yahweh.  When I pointed out that in my multiple readings of the entire Bible, including the Old Testament history of the 12 tribes of Israel, I have never seen this notion, he changed the subject.

Since then, I have been thinking again about YHWH and Yahweh.  Several years ago while exercising on my NordicTrack, I realized that my heavy breathing sounded a great deal like Yahweh.  I inhaled and said “yah.”  I exhaled and said “weh.”  This was a sort of epiphany for me, as I pondered:

*The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.  Genesis 2:7

*The Spirit of God has made me; the breath of the Almighty gives me life.  Job 33:4

*And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.  Acts 17:25

What if every human breath is intended by God to speak His name?  Yah-weh, Yah-weh, Yah-weh….we pant it when we are exerting ourselves.  We whisper it in our sleep.  It is the first thing we do in life and the last thing we do before death.

I have seen these significant moments close up on multiple occasions.  A baby is born and has not yet breathed.  The baby’s body is flaccid; limbs hang down without any apparent muscle tone.  The baby’s color is white with blue tinges.  It has an almost plastic appearance.  Then the miracle of breath occurs.  Suddenly the baby is pink; arms and legs contract.  The much anticipated cry means the baby is alive.  At the other end of the life span, an older person struggles for breath.  He may stop breathing for a few seconds and then with a gasp begin again.  But finally, there is that one last breath followed by silence.  Color quickly leaves the skin.  The body becomes nothing more than a shell, which once contained a living being.

Yah-weh, Yah-weh,

With every breath I acknowledge you.

The pagan,

The agnostic,

The atheist,

The believer,

None of us can stop breathing,

And with every breath,

We speak your name.