These arrived at the beginning of my 7th hour class on Friday:
This was the card:
“Thank you for being my Mom and giving birth to me on this day 25 years ago. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you, and I love you so very much. I hope you have a wonderful day.”
I recently began contributing to Adding Zest to Your Nest, a blog that explores women’s sexuality as Christians. If you’ve not had a chance to visit, please do.
In researching my upcoming blog post for Adding Zest, I found Be the Smart Wife, and promptly decided to add Carin Goldstein to my BFF list. Her blog’s subhead is: how to take care of yourself and your marriage without killing your husband.
What’s not to love about a woman who, in two minute video vignettes, addresses dilemmas such as
“WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU COME HOME TO THIS?” When you come home from an afternoon of errands, are you baffled by the fact that your husband is completely unaware of the disarray throughout the house? If you find yourself biting your lip and trying oh so hard to not say “What the HELL is this?!?” then watch my video below and I will guide you to a muuuuuch better place:
“ARE YOU KIDDING??? I CAN’T BELIEVE HE’S STILL UPSET WITH ME!” Just when you thought the argument was over, you were wrong, wrong, wrong. How do you know this? Because your husband is acting as if you just ran over his cat and he wants little to nothing to do with you.Watch the video below to hear how we answered YOUR question on how to handle the above…
And there’s more…just visit her blog. You’ll laugh and learn.
Carin is a wife, a mother of two, and a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with over 10 years of experience. And she’s witty. And honest. And real.
I’m so excited that my husband is 50 today.No, really I am. I don’t share this often and, well, now that this post is going Google…for the 6.3 of you reading this daily…the reason I’m glad is we’re once again in the same decade.
Ken is actually almost eight years younger than I am. This requires high maintenance on my part. Our decade-sharing will be short lived, but Ken’s quick to point out that I’m the only one of the two of us who makes age an issue. But I’m not the only one of the universe of us who makes it an issue. Truth is, if he was the one eight years older, fewer people would raise an eyebrow. Of course, we’re nowhere near Demi and Ashton, so there’s always that!
We’re actually going to be able to spend some time together today. Together as in without the television and the laptop. Together as in celebrating our decade-ness1
Ten years ago, on April 23rd, I became a grandmother, and my life changed beyond measure.
Bailey Ramon. A gift from my past, brought into the present, to change the future. Son of my daughter Erin and her husband Andrae, he arrived on an Easter Sunday.
I drove over twelve straight hours, from Louisiana to Kansas, with my daughter Shannon. Ribbons of highway winding tighter and tighter around the wheels of my car until we reached him. Holding Bailey in my arms was and is the most astounding moment of my existence. Truly, it was as if God said, “This is why I created you. For this minute, to hold this treasure, to understand this love.”
Thirty days later, God took Bailey home.
Once again, my life changed, but this time beyond something I never wanted or expected to have to measure.
I thought I knew grief; after all, my parents had died before I reached the age of forty. I was wrong. Grief is picking out caskets not cribs. Grief is helping your daughter dress for her son’s funeral. Grief is sending flowers to your grandson’s grave on his birthday, not balloons to his party.
Bailey’s funeral was held in the church his parents married. He is buried next to his father’s grandfather. Near there is a bench on which Erin and Andrae had these words, attributed to Oswald Chambers, engraved: “We are born into this world, and we may never know to whose prayers our lives were the answer.”
In his precious days on earth, Bailey answered my prayer for forgiveness. Erin’s pregnancy healed a relationship between the two of us that had been broken for too many years. He answered my prayer for acceptance. Andrae, my son-in-law, is a compassionate, gentle, and courageous young man. He is black. We are not. I was raised in a household of prejudice that I never wanted my own children to experience. We lived Martin Luther King Jr.’s petition that we judge others by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.
Bailey taught me to appreciate the sacrament of the moment. His too brief time with us reminded me that none of us will know when will be called home. None of us should ever take for granted the time we have together. We don’t know the price we’ll have to pay for that until it’s too late. Some people in my daughter’s life chose not to acknowledge Bailey’s birth because of his father’s race. People who proclaim and upheld themselves to be Christians. People who never saw Bailey until the day he was buried.
Because of Bailey, I am reminded to live a life worthy of the reward of storming the gates of heaven at my death. Nothing, no nothing, will stop me from-once again-holding my grandson.
“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in the time of trouble. Therefore we will not fear, even though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the sea..” Psalm 46:1-2.
.forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God…For our citizenship is in heaven…” Philippians 3;14, 20
I came home today and vacuumed. It’s what I do when it’s too hot to do my weed (as in the garden) therapy.
Both of these tasks can be accomplished with mindlessness, movement, and muteness. And they both provide a sense of completion. After not so much time, I can step back and actually see what I’ve accomplished.
This “job well done” satisfaction rarely happens in teaching. And with less than two weeks of school (including exam days), job well done is redefined as ending the year without poking my eyes out with a red pen.
For reasons primarily related to job security, I’ll not disclose why I arrived home today and wondered if I should consider a new profession, one for which I may be highly qualified. Like arranging the candy bars by the grocery store checkouts.
It’s not helping my emotional sanity thermometer that Sunday is Mother’s Day. My mother died over twenty years ago, and I miss, so deeply miss, being her daughter. The conversations of my friends discussing mom’s day gifts and gatherings bore a hole in my heart, and the memories of my mother spill out and soak themselves in longing.
When I read this poem by Billy Collins, I wish I could see her just long enough to say, “Thank you.”
The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.
Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.
The Mustard Seed just had its groundbreaking for their new women’s home. Here’s a photo of Sarah and her pals!
. . . and here’s the drawing of the new home!
Over four years a
go, my multi-talented web designer friend Natalie Jost, wrote a blog post about her search to find her birth mother. She generously offered one of her books as a giveaway on my blog so that others could read of her challenges and gain hope.
Natalie is one of the most soul-baring, deeply honest, and truly humble women I know. She’s not afraid to rock the boat of complacency if it will move it closer to the shore where Jesus waits. Her book, Finding My Mother, offers hope and courage to other adopted children who are beginning or in the midst of their searches.
Half of all proceeds from the sale of her book and its companion journals will go to support CASA, an organization that uses volunteers to act as advocates for children caught between their birth parents and “the system” trying to help them, and similar organizations.
Please leave a comment to have a chance to be sent this book. Click HERE for information about PDF downloads and journals. And while you’re in her web neighborhood, check out her textiles and paper goods at her Olive Manna store online.
There are variations of this floating
around the internet. I happened to find this one on one of my former student’s Facebook site [thanks to Stephanie!]. I added a few of my own…Feel free to share your hometown oddities!
You know there’s such a thing as snowball season.
When giving directions you use words like “uptown,” “downtown,” “backatown,” “riverside,” “lakeside,” “on the bayou,” “‘cross da lake” or “on the Westbank” (which i
s on the eastside).
When you refer to a geographical location “way up North,” you are referring to places like Shreveport, Little Rock or Huntsville, “where it gets real cold.”
You remember making groceries at Schwegmann’s.
You’ll have Community Coffee, by yourself.
We like our sandwiches “dressed.”
We think a fried shrimp po-boy is healthier than a Caesar salad.
We judge a roast beef po-boy by the number of napkins used.
We can eat Popeye’s, Haydel’s and Zapp’s for lunch and wash it down with Barq’s and several Abitas.
The four seasons in your year are: King Cake, crawfish, duck, and deer.
We “wrench” your hands in the “zink” with an onion bar or crumbled crackers to get the crawfish smell off.
We didn’t learn that Mardi Gras is not a national holiday until high school.
We believe that purple, green and gold look fine together.
Having an axe in your attic is a give
n.
Your last name probably isn’t pronounced the way it’s spelled.
We know what a nutria rat is but still pick it to represent our baseball team.
You have spent a summer afternoon on the Lake Pontchartrain catching blue crabs.
We describe a certain hue as “K & B Purple.”
We pronounce the largest city in our state as “Nawlins.”
We know those big roaches can fly, but we’re able to sleep at night anyway.
We shake out our shoes before putting them on.
We assume everyone has mosquito swarms in their backyard.
We realize the rainforest is less humid than Louisiana.
Your sunglasses fog up when you step outside.
We can stop and ask someone where there is a drive-through Daiquiri Shop, and they will tell us where to find it.
We get on a bus marked “Cemeteries” and don’t think twice.
We have burial plots six feet over rather than six feet under.
Every so often, we have waterfront property.
We have flood insurance.
We worry about a deceased family member returning in spring floods.
We know that people will push little old ladies out of the way to catch Mardi Gras throws.
You can leave a parade with footprints on the top of your hands and not be odd.
There is a parade ladder in your shed.
You know what a parade ladder is.
You raise your hand in the air and yell loudly, “Throw me something mistah,” in public.
You have a monogrammed go-cup.
We think New Orleans the best place to live, even if it is rated number one in every category, good and bad.
No matter where else you go in the world, you are always disappointed in the food.
When it starts to rain, you cover your beer instead of your head.
The best thing to add to a pot of boiling water and salt is rice; it will go with anything else you’ll fix for dinner.
Tomato sauce is “red gravy.”
We ask, “How dey running?” and “Are dey fat?” when inquiring about seafood quality.
We say “Who Dat!?!?” without asking a question.
Your house payment is less than your air conditioning bill.
Your grandparents are called “MawMaw” and “PawPaw.”
