Category Archives: Memories & Melancholy

I’m at that age where you have lots and lots of memories. When I am waxing melancholy…

H i d i n g Place // Song for a Sunday

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You are my hiding place

You are my hiding place

You shall preserve me from trouble

And You shall compass me about

with songs of deliverence

What time I am afraid

I will trust in You.

Some days, I just pull out the old Hosanna! Ingrity Music and  worship my head off.  Couldn’t find a Youtube for this particular Hiding Place song, though the other You are My Hiding Place song that I also love like crazy is everywhere there.

But in looking, I also found this one.  I sang this so much back in the day that people in our church liked to play it and say, “Hey, Tredessa (or whichever kid), - who is this singing?”  “Mommy,” they’d say.  I sang it that much.  I’ll tell you something now, we’d have to drop it about  3 or 4 keys!

Wow I loved this song back then!  Those late 1980s…

I Hear Angels

 

T W O songs for a Sunday!  Sing with me!

Just My Imagination

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I probably started fantasizing about being a bride and being married right about the time I started having memories that would stay with me.

I am a romantic.

I love love and I love songs and stories and the energy of it.  And as far back as I can remember, into that twinkly-gold-flecked-slightly-8mm-film memory haze of the early 1960s, I would imagine being married.  At 3, naturally, the groom was a figment of my imagination, “Joe Penny.”   During my daily nap-time at 3 or 4 years old, I would imagine being married to to this phantom Joe Penny and how my name would be “Jeanie Penny.”  I imagined being a housewife, except all done on my little play kitchen, with my little play dishes, me in an apron, as would have have been indicated by the black and white movies of the time.  Joe Penny would go to work daily while I puttered about in the kitchen and he would return home where fresh iced tea would await him..  Wouldn’t married life be lovely?

{Remember Joe Penny, the actor who emerged in popularity in the 80s?  Well, there he is, I thought.  My 4-year-old-fantasy husband.  Yes, he would have done just fine.}

First comes love.  Then comes marriage.

And as I got a little older, I still looked at boys for the suitable husbands with acceptable last names they might be.  And I never thought about it in terms of us being grown up, no.  Somehow I was certain if the adults around us would just support us a little, we would undoubtedly be able to have a very successful Leave-it-to-Beaver-home-in-the-suburbs existence.  I was quite certain, even though I really had no interest in the domestic arts otherwise, if I could just marry the object of my current affections, I would be transformed into a virtuous and quite accomplished wife, dusting, cleaning, ironing and preparing dinner.  Naturally, mature as I was, I also anticipated hand-holding and a kiss here and there.

Here is what girls do.

Am I supposed to reveal this?  Is this a big secret?  Well, I am telling.

So – there is a boy and you deem him cuter and sweeter and funnier than all the rest and he is nice to you and so you start writing his name on pieces of paper and eventually you write your name + his name and then the inevitable: your first name + his last name – you know, practicing, just in case you need to write a check with that name someday.  Yes.  This actually happened all the way back, from the time I could write.  For from the youngest days, I knew Moslander was just too difficult a name to bear, so, since I can remember, I was auditioning possible names along with the cutest boys.  Yes, I was.  And that is common among romantic girls.  Shocking, I know.  But true.  Feign to deny it, women!

Jeanie Rhoades.

So, as of this weekend, I will have been Jeanie Rhoades for 30 years.  It has been much easier a name to carry and has been with me longer than Moslander was.  For some reason this morning, I just started remembering all the possible names I might have ended up with if only my parents and some little boys’ parents would have understood that we were unusually mature for our ages and should have been allowed to set up house.  Beginning in 1965, after the make-believe Joe Penny was no longer on my mind:

I might have been Jeanie Bricker.  Kenny was in my Kindergarten class and had brown, curly hair and a few freckles and wore that brown terry-cloth tunic-style shirt with such panache.

In first grade, I would most assuredly have been Jeanie Sutherland, married to a tall, quiet, strong blond from a holiness family down the block.  Danny often walked me home from school, protective, watching for cars as we crossed the street.

I could have ended up, during those grade school years, as Jeanie Sable or Jeanie Sandry.  There were 2 entire years devoted to being Jeanie Gray, for Kevin was o-so-dashing as 3rd and 4th graders go, in his gray slacks and Hush Puppies.

First kiss: Jimmy Green.  I would have been Jeanie Green, which is funny because of course now, my friends and fam all refer to my favorite shade of spring-green as Jeanie-green.

My junior high friends will know those years were all about being Jeanie Roby for the most adorable meaty, tall and charming president-of-the-student-body type and his size 13 shoes, Bill.  How apropo that the song, “Billy Don’t Be a Hero…come back and make me your wife,” was playing on the top 40 stations of the time.  Oh, he was a charmer and just so darn likable.

I could have ended up, had my silly girl fantasies and name-writing practice ever come to fruition, being, at various times and places, Jeanie Gonzales, Jeanie Smith, Jeanie Jenkins, Jeanie Dixon, Jeanie Martino (well, I mean – that actually almost did happen, a broken engagement), Jeanie Henderson, Jeanie Worley, Jeanie Carr,  Jeanie Wells,  Jeanie Mericsko and perhaps a few more.  Perhaps.

But I am : Jeanie Rhoades.

That has worked out just fine.  Still “playing house” with my husband, a Latino with a white man’s name.  It turned out that Dave + Jeanie did not equal me being a domestic machine, duster in hand and dinner on the table at 6.  And I only use an apron when Dave makes me (to save my clothes, people).  But sometimes, our life is sorta like a black and white movie with a happy soundtrack, sunshine streaming through the windows, or a really hot scene from a 70s movie I wasn’t even supposed to see back then (shhh…don’t tell my parents), or a romantic comedy with  a high-stress-level working girl from the 80s.  Sometimes not.  But mostly, crazy-good. And sweet.

You are my love, you are my life

Oh and I get high just holding you tight

We always dreamed we’d make a lot of money, o but

I don’t mind being poor

‘Cause when you make love to me, honey

I couldn’t ask for anymore

All our friends seem to be in a hurry

But darlin’ we’ll just keep on taking our time

We’re living such a sweet life, o what a neat life

Sharing  my love with you

We’re living such a sweet life, o what a neat life

Making our dreams come true

We’re making our dreams come true…*

Dave + Jeanie = sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g. First came love, then came marriage (in less than 6 weeks-all of that!), then came 5 kids and growing up and marriages and 6 grandbebes in the baby carriage…so far…

I am not quite as “mature” and good at it as I thought I’d be.  But I am learning.  And it is better than I imagined.

Jeanie Rhoades.

*Paul Davis, “Sweet Life.”

THE NAMES HAVE NOT BEEN CHANGED TO PROTECT THE INNOCENT.  No way, Hosea.  These are the real names, baby!  They are innocent of any compliance or party to these imaginations.  Their stories are their own.  These are mine.  *smile

Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair

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My mom wanted a Debbie.  My dad wanted a Jeanie.  They compromised and named me Debra Jean, but I was called Jeanie from the moment I was born.  My mom’s dad, my Grandpa Allison, called me Debbie Jean to make my mom happy.

But I was always Jeanie.

My dad said he knew who I’d be when he saw the Northern Tissue ads on billboards in 1959.  “There is our Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair,” he’d tell my mom.  She bought the set of posters by Frances Hook, an American artist whose friendly depictions of Jesus with children you would recognize.

The Northern Baby with light brown hair and blue eyes.  And me. With the light brown hair.

The song.

So,  a few times during my life, people have burst into song when they’ve lerned my name.  The song is an oldie, written in the 1800s and has some quaint words.  My parents chose the actual spelling of my name, which could have been spelled a bunch of different ways, from this old song.  And though I have heard a gazillion renditions, I only just learned of this one.  And I really like it.  I finally feel like some one sang it like they meant it.

Having had red hair 18 out of the last 25 years and even brown-black hair for a year, I have been feeling a little frumpy with my return to a light brown (because I can’t stand the upkeep of red nor the constant attention to roots with dark hair).  It is the least work.  But it seems boring.  Just plain old me again.  Then Sam Cooke sings

I long for Jeanie with the daydawn smile,
Radiant in gladness, warm with winning guile;
I hear her melodies, like joys gone by,
Sighing round my heart o’er the fond hopes that die…

 

 

Aaah. I am in love! Thank-you, Sam Cooke!  Suddenly ok with my hair color!  O happy day.

Who Says You Can’t Go Home Again?

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The basement apartment in Des Moines, Iowa (1959); the Washington Street Apartment (Joe and Tim show up 1961 and 1963); 1310 York Street, just two houses down from Grandma and Grandpa Baker; then the beloved 1723 York Street across the alley from Nancy Lydon (Tami and Danny are born, 1965 and 1966); the Jersey Ridge Road house in Davenport (1971); then the brand new house we built at 5506 North Howell (1972); the corner parsonage in Cedar Rapids (1973); a parsonage right next to the church in Robert, Louisiana (1975); Finally – 4995 ROOSEVELT PLACE IN GARY (1977) - the last of the houses where we all, Ross-the-Boss, Mrs. Moss and all the Little Landers, dwelled together before leaving the sweet (Glen Park C of G parsonage) nest my parents had provided the 7 of us…

 

 

“I’ve been around the world and as a matter of fact”*

Dave and I have lived in a few places (Minot, ND; Kokomo, IN; Sioux City, IA; Norfolk, NE; Denver-forever), different houses.  And my parents have been all over since I left their home, too (Hobart, IN; Willard, OH; Richmond, IN; St Joe-MO; Butte, MT; Springfield, MO; back to St Joe-MO).  I visited my parents in their current digs in Saint Joe early in the year.  The house they are living in?  Not home.  No.   But my parents?  Wherever they land, is kinda home to parts of me.  I always need to know where they are and what their house looks like so I will know the space my heart is rambling about in.  Mom and dad are the fixed stars in my sky.  LOVE them!

God, it seems you’ve been our home forever; long before the mountains were born,

Long before you brought earth itself to birth,

from “once upon a time” to “kingdom come”—you are God.  Psalms

“Goin’ back to Indiana” ~ The Jackson 5

While we were at the Moslander Family Reunion last week in Chicago and Northwest Indiana, us old-timers took a late-afternoon,  impromptu drive through the old neighborhoods; saw places we had worked and schools we’d attended and the house we called home.  It is all the same, but so different.  The huge mountain spruce in the fron yard at 4995 Roosevelt Place, trimmed to above roofline and barely clinging to life now, was once a full, thick, green privacy wall between the house and street.  There are pictures there of my brothers in their graduation attire and even my babies running on the lawn from way back when.  The juniper has all been removed in favor of more manageable potted flora.  The dings Tim and my other brothers put into the side of the house playing baseball in the 70′s are still there, a testament to long summer days spent with a bat and ball in hand.

And we actually were just a few blocks from the Jackson family home in Gary, Indiana, btw!

The streets of Gary used to be positively frightening during business hours, the traffic heavier than the city had prepared for.  The business district I used to drive is nearly a ghost town.  Boarded up windows and abandoned buildings everywhere, yet minutes away, there are still quiet neighborhoods with established lawns and trees.  You can buy a beautiful brick bungalow for $15,000 (the for sale signs made of cardboard and black marker) there on an empty street.  The same would cost 1.3 million in Denver.

“Who says you can’t go home again?” ~ Bon Jovi*

Surprisingly, standing there in the old yard, looking at the house in conjunction with neighboring homes and recalling old times and people from the past, it didn’t seem smaller.  Often you’ll return to a childhood haunt and you’ll just feel like, “Wow-this seems so small now.”  But that wasn’t the case at the Roosevelt Street house, the last home we all shared under one roof, the place my kids remember going to see Grandma and Grandpa Moslander.  It really didn’t seem smaller. 

It just seemed like: wow-how did this house ever hold all the life and loud love and laughter and memory and family and patio swimming in a 12-foot pool and Uno, all the huge bags full of 19-cent White Castle burgers after church ball games, or Bronco’s Pizza with 5 pounds of melted, dripping, greasy cheese, and church friends and Lake-effect wind and graduations and marriages and teen-agers and letter writing and boyfriends and girlfriends and Lake-effect snow and family altar and family feuds and kids and toys and books and WGN afternoon movies with our first color TV, first jobs and rusted out cars and Tip Top and Bible study and early morning prayer and first grandchildren and the first few spouses and all the rest of living that the Moslander family brought to it? 

How on earth did this modest house on this unicorporated county street handle all that? 

And it yet stands as a testament.

The Moslanders were here June 1977 – Spring 1990.  And again in June 27, 2011.  We were here.

* LOVE Bon Jovi’s song, “Who Says You Can’t Go Home Again?”  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abzbVFuxigg

So you think you can dance

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Well, I don’t think that.  I have no such delusion on the matter.  I cannot dance.

But, boy-o-boy, I wish I could.

You see, I am a Pentecostal preacher’s daughter and dancing was considered…of the devil?  I can’t remember the exact thing, but it was associated with sin and off-limits.  Remember the the movie “Footloose?”  Preacher’s daughter likes the bad-boy dancer and they plan a secret dance?  Well, in that movie, the preacher gives in.  Not so for me.

But oh how I loved the TV show American Bandstand with Dick Clark when I was little.  My dad got rid of our TV in favor of more prayer and Bible study before I turned 6 (which was really good for reasons I shall write about soon), so sometime before that, I managed to get to watch American Bandstand with no one knowing.  Rock music was out, too, naturally.

Joy moment

I have this memory of me in the living room on a Saturday evening, adults in the dining room visiting, eating.  I’d been watching the Alfred Hitchcock Show and I am not saying it was condoned, but I don’t remember worrying about being found out. Anyway, it went off or I turned the channel, not sure which, but suddenly I am watching American Bandstand in 1966 in all its’ flip hairdos and pencil skirts and white sweaters and maybe a little twist going on.

I think I am alone.  I lower the sound so as not to be found out.  I start dancing like the teens on the TV.  I am really in to it, so much so I spin around and -

The color surely drained from my face because there stood my Grandma Hallet. She had walked in on me. She saw me dancing. I just knew she was going to tell my dad and I would be in for it. Doomed.

But instead, sensing the depth of my mortification, she started waving her arms and bouncing her ample girth up and down and stepping a little to the right, a little to the left.  While fear was still pounding through my ears, she, in an effort to put me at ease and act as though this were the most normal thing in the world, said to me, “Isn’t this great?  Such good exercise, put to music!”

I retreated to the footstool, no courage to join her in fancy dancing.

I’d been caught.  By grace.

I wish I’d have danced with my Grandma.  What a silly little scaredy-cat I was.  It makes me smile to remember her, covering me with a happy dance, though. 

Every kid should have that kind of a grandma!

Another JOY thing!

At Tara’s wedding, we somehow convinced my parents to dance and they liked it.  So now, at pretty much every reunion, our whole family finds some reason to dance – even the parents.  I guess my dad finally did give in, just not in time for me to figure it out.  I am going to try to “encourage” square dancing at this reunion.  It seems it would be fabulous fun!

pictured: My little brother Joe, my Grandma Hallet, and me when I was 3 1/2 or so.

Love Letters from My Father

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Dad and me.

Two birds in a tree.

Both driven and bossy {but vulnerable and deeply sincere},

Choleric, melancholoy, always right and no fear

(at least not that we’ll let you see,

we puff and get growleeeeeeeey —–)

I got the rougher part of him, but also the best.

And I’m looking forward to all the rest

Of time, and love and laughter and lots more years with my dad.

 

A few years ago I asked my dad to write me a book about himself.  Because it explains so much about me and helps me really see him for who he is and who he was meant to be and all he has accomplished and all he is still working hard to do.  And I knew parts of it were difficult for him to reveal and I knew it was a risk for him to share because I can be judgemental.  But my admiration for him runs so deep it hurts.  My love for him just keeps increasing, year after year, season after season.  As a little girl, I was always proud of him, proud to say he was my dad, and I was a little in awe of him and sometimes, really, kind of afraid of him.  He was, after all, quite strong and powerful.

           

Young married  (1957) to young pastor (1968)

What a surprise, when he wrote in the book he brought me, to find out he had fears that he’d worked hard to conquer.  I didn’t think he was afraid of anything.  How insightful to know there had been very hard times he’d lived through, things he’d never mentioned, that made my heart go out to the little boy I never knew.   And how expected and natural the stories of God’s faithfulness, because that is the life he’d lived since 15 years old, and that deep consecration and devotion to God, I knew full well.

I consider the letters and cards he sends me these days, the quick calls from his cell and the book he wrote, love letters.  From my dad to me.  Messages that tie our hearts together, tied in a ribbon of remembrance.  Treasure for a rainy day.

In my whole life, I have never wanted anyone else to be my dad.  He is the one God knew I needed and he will ever and always have my heart.

Happy Father’s Day, Papasan.

See ya in 5 days!

Do not try this at home

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I found a memory I had recorded a few years ago for posterity in a folder of recipes.  Thought I’d share it here.  And though when I originally wrote it I entitled it “Tupperware and the New Bride,” I think now I will call it

Who on earth would even want to try a recipe called “Shrimp-Macaroni Casserole?”  That would have been me, I guess.

My co-workers at Bible College and a few friends threw a “Tupperware” shower for me before dad and I married [note: I was writing this for the kids].  That meant that the Tupperware lady would come and display her wares and everyone would order something for me from her.

I don’t really remember anyone asking me what I wanted.  And I don’t really remember wanting anything in particular. My mom had been the queen of re-using bread bags and cottage cheese containers before there was ever even a green-movement.  So I had not grown up dreaming of the Tupperware that would grace my kitchen cabinets one day.  Not at all.

Luckily, my friends and co-workers knew just what I “had to have,” and excitedly began scouring the catalogs and items on display at the shower.  I witnessed great exuberance over matching sets of plastic storage containers, and crispers and pie-rolling mats and lids that “burped” the air out before sealing.  Much enthusiasm to be sure.

Everything I got was the late seventies brown or avocado green or harvest gold.  But it was nice.  The lettuce crisper wasn’t the savior I thought it would be (you do eventually have to make sure you don’t leave it in there for weeks on end) and the huge yellow mixing bowl with lid was soon pitted with hot popcorn kernels.

As a “hostess” gift from the Tupperware lady, I received a Tupperware cookbook.

30th Anniversary Edition, published in 1981 Tupperware’s Homemade is Better cookbook

As a new bride, I decided to try one of the recipes they had.

Now, growing up in the Moslander household, you really pretty much doubled, tripled, or quadrupled every recipe when you made it.

I was already struggling to rein it in for dad, Tara and me, because I couldn’t quit doubling recipes.  There was always tons of everything I made (150 homemade meatballs, pounds and pounds of noodles for, in theory,  just one spaghetti dinner, etc).

The Moslander auto-double+ Tupperware’s HomeMade is Better cookbook

Now – take my doubling obsession and mix it with a Tupperware cookbook and you’ve got trouble.  For what I failed to understand was that the Tupperware people were trying to get you to believe you needed more Tupperware so the recipes in the books were already made to fix and then divide and then store in your handy dandy Tupperware for 3-5 future meals.  That would have been a good thing to understand.  I did not.

So one day, I wanted to find a new and really special recipe for our little family.  In the cookbook, I found something, a casserole utilizing ingredients I loved: macaroni, Corn Chex and cooked shrimp.  I could imagine a wondrous and delightful meal.  I decided to double it, naturally, because if it were really good, we’d want leftovers, and I could just tell we would.

Well – may I just say I could have catered a party for 50 with that much of the cereal, macaroni and shrimp conglomeration?  I don’t know if we had a loaves and fishes miracle happening or what? But the more we ate that stuff, the more there was left in our small fridge.  Dad ate it, graciously.  He, who prefers Rice Chex, can take or leave anything with “macaroni” in the title and doesn’t like shrimp unless it is generously breaded and deep fried beyond the recognition that is was once a living sea-creature – he ate it.  And he ate it the next day.  Maybe the next even…?

I discerned immediately – that if I was going to be cooking like that – I did not have enough Tupperware.  I think we may have actually used every storage bowl and a few old bread bags to boot.  Of course, I actually loved it and ate it for breakfast and lunch, too.  After a couple of days, dad asked me, “Do you think it’s still safe to eat this?  I mean it is seafood and I don’t know how long it will be good.”  He was gentle and very honoring.  Sadly, I watched him scrape it into the trash.

“Next time,” I thought, “I’ll only make one recipe.”  There has never been a next time.

written 9.22.07

PS – Just in case you’re curious, I decided to look up the old recipe.  And OOPS.  It was supposed to be Rice Chex.  I guess I used Corn Chex because I love them and was trying to sway Dave.  That may have made all the difference.  Haha. Or not.

Shrimp-Macaroni Casserole

2 7 1/4 oz. packages of macaroni and cheese dinner mixes
1 1/2 c milk
3 10 3/4 oz. cans of condensed cream of chicken soup
1 16 oz. package frozen cooked shelled shrimp
1 1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 1/2 cups Rice Chex, crushed

Prepare macaroni and cheese according to package directions, except substitute the 1 1/2 cups of milk for the total amounts called for.  Stir in the shrimp and soup, Worcestershire sauce and pepper.

To bake immediately, turn one-third of the mixture into a one-quart casserole.  Bake uncovered, in 350-degree oven for 30 minutes.  Stir.  Sprinkle with 1/2 cup crushed Rice Chex.  Bake 10 minutes more.

To freeze and bake later, divide remaining two-thirds of the mixture between the Seal-n-Serve Set.  Apply seals, label and freeze.  Immerse sealed container in warm water for about 3-5 minutes, just till mixture is thawed enough to remove from container.  Invert into a one-quart casserole.  Cover and bake in a 400-degree oven for 40 minutes; stir to spread mixture evenly in casserole.  Bake, covered, for 30 minutes.  Uncover and stir.  Sprinkle 1/2 cup crushed Rice Chex atop casserole.  Bake 10 minutes more.

Makes 3 casseroles, 4 servings each.

This recipe exhausts me just reading it.  Thank goodness the common folk could start to afford microwaves in the 80s.

So, um…I actually might try this again, for fun, and I think now, after all these years, I would definitely double it again, but probably quadruple the shrimp.  And the Corn Chex?  Stays!  Dave won’t eat it anyway.

The Grand-mamas

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Grandmothers.  I had 4.

Come Mother’s Day, you realize how may women you actually came from, what they brought to your life, how they are all part of the river that flows through your heart.

Ressie Belle Anderson Moslander Baker

 

This is the grandma whose personality I may most likely have.  Choleric and able, a little bossy and pretty strong.  She is the one I lived near and saw most often in my early years.  She is my dad’s mom, a hard-working farm girl from the mid-west whose first husband was killed in a car crash leaving her with 2 baby girls and 6 months pregnant with her son, my dad.  

She was not a “gooey-warm” grandmother, necessarily, but maybe a little ornery.  She was sensible and busy, opinionated and strong and protective when Grandpa’s teasing  went a little far.  She lived down the street and I could go see her anytime.  And she was always working hard, the house getting an entire “spring cleaning,” every single week of the year (that part of her, no, I did not get). 

She gave me gifts, which I thoroughly now suspect were her love language.  Not often, not even regularly on gift-type occasions, but when she gifted, they impacted me.  A large clear jar with yellow flowers on it, filled with Minuet in E toilette water.  A red plaid-skirted outfit, double-knit with matching red tights.  A set of used Cherry Ames Nurse books and Mrs Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, a book I love to this day. 

She also bequeathed to me, because I loved music and sang along to anything I could get my hands on for my little blue record player, a large selection of 78s and 45s from Disney and old radio shows. “Here is something I thought you might like,” she’d say, handing me a brown paper bag.  And she was always right. 

She gardened for food and potted plants for joy. She had a cactus collection I could never resist touching, yet always regretted, and several cages with brightly colored parakeets as pets, but also as business.  She raised and sold hundreds from her basement, as it happens.

She was strong-willed and smart, very entrepreneurial (if they needed money, she would figure out how to make it happen and it was done) and the glue that kept the family together.  Her house was the center of my extended family universe.  And when she died at at the age of 57, when I was just 11, I was at her house, on her giant round ottoman, in her tangerine-colored living room (she loved bold color, too) and time stood a little still and things were never the same.  Carefree childhood, life as we’d always known it, a little less so.

Berniece Quick Hallet

 

She is my mom’s mom.  She was gentle and tender and misunderstood and lived quietly with a broken heart.  From the stories I have heard, most from her, even in childhood she was a misfit of sorts.  Very young, she married my mom’s dad and they had 2 daughters together before the marriage broke up.  And she never quite rebounded.  Court proceedings and custody battles led her in to a second marriage merely to provide a stable home environment for her daughters.  Her second husband loved her fiercely and treated her daughters well and fathered her next child, another daughter, but she never really gave her heart again, it seems.

“Nervous breakdowns” and “mental illness” were used to describe her at times.  She attempted suicide on more than one occasion, my poor mama finding her once on the kitchen floor as she came in from high school.  My earliest memories of my Grandma Hallet were when my mom dressed me up and we drove to see her at a state mental hospital, a green and rolling-hilled compound that seemed lovely to me.  My mom wore a leopard print dress.  I was three and very excited to be visiting her, no comprehension at all of why she was there, so far away from home.

But with me, towards me, she was a kind, loving woman, cheering me on and encouraging my efforts.  On our birthdays, or anytime she could muster up money, she would give us $1.11.  Yes.  Exactly $1.11.  Why?  Because the dollar was our spending money, but to teach us tithing, she’d throw in the dime so we could have the whole dollar.  But then you havd to pay tithes on the dime, right?  Thus the extra penny.  One-dollar and eleven-cents.

By the time I was 7 or 8, she didn’t live alone again, but stayed with my Aunt Helen’s family and would visit us for extended times.  She lived from a brown paper bag between houses.  And she slept in a bed with my sister and me and always prayed with us for the whole family.  She smiled really big and crinkled her eyes.  Sometimes when I see pictures of myself laughing unabashedly, I think I see her there.  She loved to clean the house and put away dinner and claimed to adore doing dishes (I did not get this from her at all).  Or at least she said she did.  Sometimes now I think she was just trying to pay her way, trying to prove she had value.  This, I probably did get from her – the need to prove my value, earn my way all of the time.

And I hate that she didn’t know she did have such value in our lives.  And that she saw herself as an embarrassment and  as weak, and so did others because of her tender heart.  She never wanted to be a bother. I have always been opposed to the thought of being less-able-to-handle-thingslike her, or forgetful like she was, and sometimes I have looked at broken heartedness in others as a fault, as if you can avoid it in a life where you love deeply.  And I think of 1 Corinthians 12 and now understand how she should have been handled:

And the parts we regard as less honorable are those we clothe with the greatest care. So we carefully protect those parts that should not be seen, 24 while the more honorable parts do not require this special care. So God has put the body together such that extra honor and care are given to those parts that have less dignity. 25 This makes for harmony among the members, so that all the members care for each other. 

Grandma died that week between Christmas and New Years when so many lonely people do.  She was alone, at her state care facility.  Only 68.  Now I know she wasn’t weak, not unable, but just unjaded, un-harshened as a true-heart response.  Her heart was still flesh.  And it was still pure white as her hair had become.  And I think that if my grandkids at all remember me with any gentle kindness, praying for them, cheering them on and gently, but always, in their corner, than I shall be glad to have been compared to her.

Opal Wright Allison

I wrote a little about her recently HERE.

This is my Grandma Allison.  While my Grandpa was exuberant and boisterous in his love and affection, while he would loudly proclaim his enthusiasm and love for us and make such a big deal of our presence, Grandma was this classic beauty.  She was serene and graceful, even-tempered and kind.  I always found her fascinatingly beautiful.  I can remember so far back as to include gloves and hats and leopard-print high heels, a size 5 for her tiny feet. 

She spoke to me.  I wasn’t just a kid in the room to her.  I was a person to talk to with graciousness and kindness.

The last time I got to spend time with her, I sat at a piano and played and songs as she picked them.  I was surprised to learn how much she loved music and how she played and sang herself, though not for us.  She picked her favorite just before we had to leave.  And she held the music open while I did her favorite, Amy Grant’s, “El Shaddai.”

To the outcast on her knees,

You were the God who really sees,

And by Your might,

You set Your children free.

She loved that, for reasons I don’t really know, as far as my Grandma was concerned.  But I love it because knowing He sees me is setting me free.  I love that we shared that worship that day.

We will praise and lift You high, El Shaddai

Looking forward to singing and worshipping with her again soon.

Laveta Davis

I guess she wasn’t my “real” grandma as grandmas go, but she was to me and her impact on my family and me is undeniable.

She was my mom’s pastor’s wife, the one who nurtured my mom in her baby-Christian days.  My mom, raised in an unchurched home, had made a decision to follow Jesus as a young teen and this godly woman saw something in her and poured in to my mom, and discipled her and walked the Christian walk with her. 

When my mom was carrying me, LaVeta Davis asked, “Can your baby call me Grandma?”  And I always did.  All the kids did.  And she brought me “grown-up” books about sewing and flower arranging.  And she brought us paper for creating and card-making supplies and all things creative.  We always knew after she visited, that there would be fun things to make. 

She gave us, when I was very young, a set of old 1940s Pictorial Encyclopedias.  I doubt she knew how much I would love those things.  For when I was 5, my dad ridded our home of the television set in favor of more time for prayer and study.  And as a little girl, for entertainment, I read the encyclopedia.  For hours I would sit at the base of the shelves in the formal dining room reading and learning and discovering, all in black and white.  I couldn’t wish better times on my grandbebes if I tried.   

These are some of my most unforgettable, most influential women.

Yes.  I come from strong, loving, godly women.  They taught me to be resourceful, tender, strong, sassy, opinionated, gentle, creative, gracious, intelligent, passionate, long suffering, loving, discerning, well-doing, forgiving, hard-working, giving and so much more.  If I haven’t turned out right, it is not the fault of these women.  They were amazing all.

EPIC LOVE: Opal & Everett

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{ O P A L   &   E V E R E T T }

My Grandma and Grandpa Allison

By the end, frail and broken-down, they were shriveled old people, quietly enduring the ravages of the so-undeserved Alzheimer’s Disease and doing their best not to be a bother for their family or health care workers.  The strangers who witnessed their final months and days could not have comprehended, I am sure, the life of love and joy they had lived. They didn’t know about the ever-enlarging family, the children and grandchildren,  the greats and great-greats, or of the fruitfulness these two people had unleashed.   They couldn’t have looked down the heart’s hallways of the past to a man and a woman wholly devoted to one another, fully giving and loving each other across decades, clinging to one another and living their lives for an epic love, the passion of which never waned.

The beginning.

Their start wasn’t picture perfect.  For in those days many years ago, theirs was an “broken” beginning.  My Grandpa Allison had married and had 2 daughters with my mom’s mother, but it was doomed from the start, it seemed.  He married Opal shortly after his divorce.  My Grandma Allison had been married before as well and came into their union with one daughter.  And so they were now the 2 + 3.  It equaled truelove (yes, I meant that as one word).

My Grandma and Grandpa never really talked about their start or their love story to my mom.  It seemed some things were best left unsaid out of respect and a show of honor of their former spouses, with whom they shared children.  So they kept their romantic connection to themselves.  There were innuendos and whisperings, as blended families might have, but as for Opal and Everett,  they maintained the dignity of silence and, focused on their love for one another, building a beautiful life together.

Early memories.

I don’t really come from a family that is all that outwardly affectionate.  Love runs deep among us and we are now much more giving in public displays of heartfelt warmth, but words of affirmation, outward demonstration and affectionate touch were not hallmarks of the family I grew up in, except perhaps from my mom, who taught me to do Eskimo kisses and butterfly kiss-flutterings and is my biggest cheerleader and hugger even now. 

But my very earliest memories of my Grandma and Grandpa Allison are all about the affection, the visible sign of the intensity of an inward passion.  They touched constantly.  He attended to her every whim, he doted, he adored.  He held the door and he held her hand.  He always checked her needs, reactions, and responses first in any situation.  There was never a doubt in my mind that my handsome, raven-haired, energetic and athletic Grandpa, whose hair only fully grayed during his final few years, adored my Grandma.  And she in turn looked at him lovingly, from the dark brunette and sometimes frosted days until her coiff was pure as snow.  She was his gentle home, his soft place to land, his True North.  Her approval, as a strong and beautiful woman, full of wisdom and grace, was poured on him freely and he thrived successfully in any endevour he attempted because of it.

My grandparents at my own parents’ wedding, August 1957.  Are those the most beautiful four people you have ever seen?  Ok, maybe I am prejudiced about that, but my mama sure had a handsome and stylin’ dad and chose a cutie-patootie for a husband!

There was such deep love.  He served in WWII in the Phillipines in the Navy, leaving his wife and now 5 children-between-them at home.  My daughters and I love the pictures she had taken in a beautful gown to send to my Grandpa there because he desired, as he told her when he requested the photographs, his own “pin-up girl” in his foot locker.   

Every memory I have of  them, through my Kodachrome-colored memories of the early 1960s (I wish there were more actual photographs, but the times…), and throughout my life includes the touching, the hugging, the kisses, the hand-holding, the warm affection and assurance of a lasting love.  And they shared that, too. 

My Grandpa was the man who’d hold me on his lap like a little princess and call me “Debbie Jean” to make my momma happy (she’d lost the name game to my dad’s choice).   This beautiful man I admired with all my heart and soul as a little girl became even more deeply imbedded in my heart when, after I was grown and married, he made a decision to follow Christ, quickly becoming a man of the Word and leading the adult Sunday School class at his Baptist church.  He’d spent years investigating religions, a good man who didn’t fall lightly in to things.  When he decided to follow Jesus, he sent me a letter and said, “Oh, how many years I wasted looking for truth.  I wish I could get them all back to serve Jesus.”  I got my business sense from him, he was a mover and a shaker and quite entreprenurial.  Brave and creative, his influence on me, especially in retail aptitude, is undeniable.

  

I admired them, perhaps even revered them.  Attending a family funeral when my children were little and watching them walk in, he, my ruggedly handsome and distinguished grandpapa in his suit, she, my darling grandmama, elegant and serene ~  I was mesmerized at the regal sight of them, so proud to call them my grandparents.  They sat down the row from me, in their early 70s.  They were holding hands like young lovers, yet seasoned and wise sweethearts; the embers, once shooting flames in a youthful, passionate romance, now white-hot and glowing, a stronger, deeper love for the years.

The end.

My Grandpa passed away a few years ago.  He’d been fighting to retain the identity Alzheimer’s so ruthlessly rips from a soul.  His final days in a nursing home left Grandma rattling around their large retirement home on the Lake of the Ozarks mostly alone.  When my parents visited and they planned a trip to see Grandpa, my mom says Grandma Allison (my mom’s beloved step-mother, a woman whose love and acceptance meant everything to my mom), would become as giddy as a school girl, curling her hair and doing her make-up, excited to go see her love.  She even complained that several of the nurses flirted with him and she was not happy about it.

And even as he was failing and struggled to recognize his own children, when his love arrived, he knew her.  And the affection between them melted away the wrinkles and the years.  Those times, they were just Opal and Everett, lifetime lovers.  And she would sit in his lap and put her arms around him.  They were head-over-heels in love until the end, “two hearts that beat as one,*” that ridiculous almost never-seen kind of love that everyone thinks they have on their wedding day – but few seem able to maintain to the end.

Before Grandpa even died, my sweet, tiny Grandma, the most loving and thoughtful, and gracious woman in the world, was also diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease.  When he passed on, my gentle grandma deteriorated quickly – just started slipping away.  She was moved to a care center and went very silent.  My mom was able to bring some glistening light to her eyes by singing a song she loved, one my Grandpa had sung to her “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine…”  Grandma would somehow muster strength to hum along, a pleasant memory dancing behind her eyes.

I made a short video tribute with the few photos I have

 

A Nicholas Sparks movie has nothing on my grands.  She died 2 years to the day after the love of her life had gone.  Somehow it didn’t seem an ending so much ~ just that she’d finally been released to go where her heart had already gone.  And wherever Opal and Everett are, I know they are holding hands or he’s got his arms wrapped around her or they’re embraced under a tree near a lake, a slight breeze touching their contented faces.  And their true love remains. Endless.  Endlessly.

*Lyrics from the 1981 hit by Lionel Ritchie and Diana Ross, “Endless Love.”