"Santa drives my bus"

“I think Santa is my bus driver,” the child whispered to Mrs. Claus.  It was Saturday morning, and the jolly old elf was sitting in the sanctuary of First UMC with a line of children waiting to see him.  Mrs. Claus smiled knowingly at the child and pulled the child closer for a private conversation.

I think it’s lovely that Santa is skilled not only at driving a sleigh drawn by reindeer, but also a yellow school bus full of children. Who better to entrust our children’s safety each morning? In fact, I know for a fact that Santa doesn’t only drive a school bus. Santa can also be seen teaching school.  He works in the pediatric ward of a hospital.  Santa is the one who works with young people to teach them to build a fire or learn life skills.  He organizes youth to rake leaves for a disabled neighbor. Sometimes, Santa is in the form of a trusted adult who listens to a hurting child. At other times, Santa is dressed in a helmet and thick suit as he fights a fire. Santa can look the emergency responder who pulls an injured child out of a vehicle. Or the staff working with at-risk young people, like those people at Spofford and other agencies. Most often, Santa looks a lot like parents, worrying and praying and loving their children through life as best as they can.

Yes, Santa drives your school bus.  In fact, I have a hunch that it’s Santa who’s at work anytime someone helps a child.  Keep an eye out, and you just might catch a glimpse of a twinkling eye or hear a soft “ho, ho, ho” in unexpected places.  He’s out there, every time a child is shown love. Really, he’s there every time we take seriously the words of The One whose holiday it truly is:  “Let the little children come to me.”  

Post-Thanksgiving Letdown

For many, the post-Thanksgiving letdown has to do with sleeping off the tryptophan-induced post-turkey coma. The older I get, the more I learn about another post-Thanksgiving letdown- the emptying of the house.  For several days, our house brimmed with 7 people, creating a family house-party feel.  People slept everywhere, including a sofa and an air bed, and there was a sense of joy in our family crowded-noisiness. 

And then they started filtering away, likely not to be gathered all together at our house for another year.  

Have I mentioned that I hate goodbyes? I really do. The word “goodbye” can lie heavily like a pall, even when it is only anticipated and not yet voiced. It is the boundary between togetherness and apartness, marking change and loss. I have never been very good at goodbyes, and I don’t imagine that I ever will be.

As Andy drove the final ones to the airport, I began to fill the dishwasher and washing machine. Got out the vacuum cleaner and emptied all of the trashcans.  Went to a meeting at church. Began to hear “we made it home safe and sound” messages. Heard one tale of a very near miss on the highway that made me think of an Anne Lamott quote that I had used during the morning’s sermon.  “Thanks is that incredible feeling of gratitude, that you or your family cut a break . . .--it's thankyouthankyouthankyou--that could have been SO much worse.” I said “thanks” a lot last night, for a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday with a wonderful family, and for traveling mercies that keep my family safe.  I even practiced saying thanks for goodbyes, even though I’m still not very good at it.

When the kids were safe and the house had contracted back to the size that fits two comfortably, Andy and I sat in our dual-reclining-electric-powered loveseat to watch a missed episode of a favorite television show.  As we snuggled, we talked a lot about the fun of the holiday behind us and the joy of future plans. And then he walked the dog while I folded some laundry, and the blessedness of our everyday life settled back around us.

My father's life

At my father's memorial service this morning, these words were read. My brother (Jim), sister (Judy), and I wrote them together, as a way to try to capture some of my father's life.

Our Father grew up in a different time, and so much of who he was was defined by the times.

Dad grew up in Homewood, Alabama, a suburb of Birmingham before it was a suburb, the youngest of three boys.  His grandfather came over from Wales to work in the coal mines.  Our father grew up roaming the hills around his home freely, hills that are now developed subdivisions. When he and his friends at age 16 decided to take off in their cars on a trip, the chief of police gave them a note that said, “These are good boys from good families.” They travelled around, showing the note when they arrived in each town and sleeping in fields.  These times were not idyllic, of course. Dad had adventures and a few misadventures. He was in a car accident at a young age and left for dead. Thankfully, he wasn’t, or none of us children would be here.

It also meant that he grew up in Bull Connor’s Birmingham in the nascent days of the civil rights movement.  Those days had an impact on him, and he was always a positive force for desegregation in the South.  

His first career was as a journalist for the Atlanta Journal. He won awards for his writing on city issues in the late 50’s and early 60’s. He shone a light on civil rights issues in the city.  He researched the slums of Atlanta, by walking and talking to the residents. He even named names of slumlords, which was a risky thing at the time.  He interviewed Martin Luther King, Jr. the night he was in the Atlanta jail. 

Dad moved to the Georgia Safety Council. For us kids, that was the most exciting career ever, because he brought the Safety Bug to our house!  The Safety Bug was a Volkswagon Bus decorated like a lady bug that could talk and teach children about safety. We never noticed that the voice sounded strangely like our father’s. While there, he also worked with then-Governor Jimmy Carter on seatbelt legislation. During these years, Dad also continued his involvement in civic and civil rights.  Among other things, he worked with Andrew Young and others to ensure a peaceful desegregation of the Atlanta swimming pools. 

He worked for the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, and then as Vice President for Urban Affairs of Georgia State University.  While there, he earned his PhD in Education, a huge accomplishment!  He also did most of the work to enable Georgia State to start a law school.

Dad was a wonderful father. Dad enjoyed being with his children. When he got home, we’d all yell “Dad’s home!” and go running. He would pick us up, with a big smile. He was always happy to see us.  If you called him at his office, he would drop what he was doing and pick up the phone immediately.

He took Jim to Indian Guides, where Jim was Quick Rabbit and Dad was Slow Turtle. In Boy Scouts, on a father/son hiking trip, Dad was always one of the few fathers that actually showed up.  Dad decided on the spur of the moment that he and Jim would learn to scuba dive together.  “We’ll never do it if we don’t do it now,” and so they did.  There were times of throwing a baseball in the back yard. Dad would tell wonderful stories. He would read Nancy Drew, Jerry Todd, Poppy Ott, and Hardy Boys books out loud to the children, buying the latest Nancy Drew book whenever it came out.  Dad shared his interest in models and stamp collecting with his children. Dad was an avid birdwatcher, and it was a gift he shared with his children and grandchildren. When he and Jim, and later his grandson Winston, went birdwatching early in the morning, it wasn’t so much looking at the birds as it was being together.

Every Christmas, he would be the first one to go in to light the fire in the fireplace and turn on the Christmas tree lights.  He would sit by the tree and distribute the presents. One year, he even assembled an entire swingset in our living room, so that we would be surprised when we walked in on Christmas morning!

Many memories of Dad as a father have to do with our family vacations to Florida.  Each morning, Dad would be the one to get up early with the squirmy, excited kids. We would go on a long beach walk, picking up shells. Then we would go for a swim in the ocean, always in water just beyond where we could touch.  Then afterwards, we would swim in the pool.  After dark, we would go hunt ghost crabs on the beach. 

He worked hard and long hours, but he still took the time to be a good father. In fact, in an age nowadays of so many absentee fathers, Jim has known that he would never be one, because of the example that Dad set. 

In the same way that he loved his children, Dad loved his grandchildren dearly:  Tori, Mary, Winn, Robert, Caroline, Vera, and Betsie. He kept up with their lives and was very proud of them.  The grandkids always enjoyed seeing Vee-Vee and Grandaddy.

Mom and Dad moved to KC in the early 1980’s. After as stint in Kansas City as President of American Humanics, they left for Belize and then Jamaica with the Peace Corps.  Being Country Director of the Peace Corps is actually a presidential appointment. Dad was not the same flavor of politician as the President at the time, so he wasn’t sure that he would get the appointment. However, the Peace Corps in Belize needed some work, and so they chose my father for his abilities as a problem solver. After three years in Belize, he had done such a good job cleaning up things there that they sent him to Jamaica for three more years to do the same thing. 

Mom and Dad were able to spend 13 good years of retirement travelling around the world.  They loved their travels and have many photo albums to bear witness to their journeys. When Mom got breast cancer, Dad cared for her.  Here’s the thing about that. Before Mom’s illness, Dad was a typical man of his generation.  He didn’t do the cooking or the housework. For him, gourmet cooking was opening a jar of Cheez-Whiz, a can of deviled ham, and a sleeve of Premium saltines.  Once Mom got sick, though, Dad started cooking!  True, he brought in a wide variety of foods many nights, but he also sought out cooking advice from the kids.  

You see, most of all, Dad loved our mother. They met at a high school house party in Florida. Mom thought he was terribly skinny, and he was sporting an ice-pick injury from a frat house game.  But their love was true and deep and extended until the present. When going through Dad’s papers, we discovered that he kept a love letter on his desk that he wrote to Mom before they got married. It is beautiful.  In one part, as he is describing their marriage, he says, “Darling, I wish you knew how much I am anticipating us spending quiet evenings at home. We’re going to have to get a t.v. set so you can sit on my lap and watch it.  I find myself daydreaming about it more and more. Let’s spend about 90% of the time being lovey dovey and the other 10% being serious.”  He closed the letter with “My darling, we are going to be the happiest, most in love couple that ever got married.  Good night my darling, I love you.”

For Dad, being with Mom was the most important thing. Whether he was moving across the country or to another country entirely, he needed Mom by his side.  In fact, Mom was an important part of his work as Country Director of the Peace Corps, and he loved having her by his side as they worked with the Peace Corps volunteers together.

One more story: Once we were going camping on the Sewanee River with his brother Winn’s family.  So, we loaded up the big old station wagon and set off, getting terribly lost while taking a shortcut.  As they were trying to find their way to the campsite, Mom and Dad finally saw the other family in the distance. Dad turned onto a tiny trail – not the right way- that got smaller and smaller until it dead ended at a rickety wooden bridge with a big sign that said “condemned.” There was no way to turn around; the only option was to drive over this terrible bridge towing a pop-up trailer. So Mom and the kids got out of the car, carrying as much as we could. We waited and watched, because the bridge looked too flimsy to even walk over.  And Dad drove the car slowly and carefully over that tiny bridge while they watched, and he made it over.

That’s what it feels like now. Dad has crossed over to the other side of death while we have watched him go first. Once again, he is leading the way, showing us how to get there safely.

Hospital Rooms

Hospital Rooms. Sometimes, they are exactly where you need to be, sitting beside someone you love. And hospital rooms today are much more guest-friendly than in the past. There’s wireless internet so that I am connected, and cable television to play the old shows that I think my father would like. (No Game Show Network, though.) There are free newspapers at the nurses’ station, and room service for me is only a phone call away.  If I want a change, I can sit in the window seat and watch the parking lot comings and goings.

What even the most well-equipped hospital room cannot mitigate is the mental wilderness that is the hospital bedside.   Technically, I have most of the tools I need to do much of my work of sermon preparation and writing. I am in email communication with any church members or staff that choose to find me through that medium. (I can even blog!)  The one thing that I am lacking is the ability to focus on much beyond these four walls. 

So I’ll quit trying.  I will turn back to the hard-hitting stories found in my complimentary USA Today. After I meander through that, I’ll pick up a mandatory book that I’ve got to slog through before a mandatory seminar next week.  And that will pretty much use up what little brainpower I’ve got sitting in this hospital room. The good news is that my father will exchange his hospital room for his apartment by the end of the day.  Once he gets home, hopefully my brain cells will find their way home, too.

Steaming

Steaming. No, I’m not talking about the weather outside, although I certainly could be.  I’m talking about The Wedding Dress.  Designed by my mother, made by her mother, and worn by six brides, including me.  Now my daughter is wearing it in a week.  After having been carefully cleaned and preserved following the last wedding, the dress simply needed to be steamed in preparation for this wedding.

It took me one phone call to discover that it costs $300 to steam a wedding dress.  I decided that I could purchase a professional-style steamer and do it myself.  I spent much of the 4^th of July steaming the dress. I discovered that the skirt had four layers: a satin layer with a train, two layers with yards and yards of tulle with a train, and a top layer of tulle and lace, with a lace train. It is all very lovely, but it is a lot of material to steam.  As I wrestled with the steamer and the tulle and some small burns, the $300 started to seem like more of a bargain.

Except.  As I steamed the dress, I saw up close the careful stitches that my grandmother made. I began to think about all of the time and effort that she invested in creating the dress according to my mother’s wishes. My grandmother made a dress whose fitted bodice was the perfect size for my mother and, amazingly, six others of us.  Working on the dress, I saw stains on the train that the most careful cleaning had not been able to remove.  I discovered some tiny tears in the tulle and a few age spots on the satin. I love that each imperfection is a reminder that the wedding day is a celebration of a marriage, not a veneration of a dress. As I steamed every inch of the dress, I could feel the history. Vee, Gene, Nancy, Judy, Sally, Louise, and now Caroline have all worn this dress.  There has not been a divorce among us. The fabric of that dress has seen the start of many joined lives, and the memories seemed almost palpable as the steam rose from the dress.

The dress is hanging in my living room for the next week, so that I can continue to steam and fluff. (Obsessive?  Me???)  More than that, though, I enjoy looking at a testament to life and love and hopes and dreams, all pulled together by the careful stitches of my grandmother.

Tears

Tears. I’ve got ‘em.  Always have and always will.  They were the bane of my childhood, when I would cry too easily at playground injuries or slights.  I still remember when my 5^th grade class was forced to watch “Old Yeller.”  My grief at the dog’s death was surpassed only by my mortification at crying yet again in front of my classmates.  

Time has tempered my waterfalls- usually.  I remember an older preacher once commenting that “sometimes you just have to suck it up and help others in really emotional situations without getting that way yourself.”  There was great truth in his words, and I am thankful for the God-given grace to be present in a situation without falling apart myself. That does not mean that there are no longer times when I can feel my tears welling up. For instance, if I know I am telling a tender story during a sermon, I might practice it until I can say it without clouding up. And there are situations when the right thing to do is the most natural thing to do; as the old hymn puts it, “and often for each other flows the sympathizing tear.” By and large, though, I cry a lot less easily than I did in grade school.

Except for now.  It began while I was officiating a wedding on Saturday.  When the organ began “The Wedding March” and the doors swung open to reveal the bride, suddenly all I could see was Caroline coming down the aisle to the same song in two weeks.  Luckily, everyone was looking at the bride, not me when I began crying, and I managed to compose myself before she got down the aisle. The wedding was completed without incident.  

The floodgates are now open.  Last night, I watched the 1950’s “Father of the Bride” with the Bride and the Father and cried. Profusely.  (Andy's shirt sleeve was really wet by the end of the movie.) I was telling some of my favorite church people this morning about that incident and started crying in the telling.  I looked at a practice flower arrangement for the reception that I had made and cried.  It is going to be a wet week and a half.  

The thing of it is, these are happy tears. Tears of joy can be more precious than any other tears. It is such a happy time, a time of promise and hope, and I want to enjoy every moment of it.  If you see me burst into tears in the coming days, I hope you’ll share my joy and cry along. Oh, and if you’re in the area, you might bring by an extra box of Kleenex or two.

Finding the Gifts

I spent many hours with my father in the emergency room last Friday night and, like the last not-long-ago visit, all of the tests showed that whatever is messing with my father’s memory is Not Fixable.  It was a difficult and confusing evening for him, and so I considered it a blessing when my mother told me that the next day he did not remember the e.r. visit.

And then he called me Saturday night. I was impressed that the fog had cleared long enough for him to dial me.  It took me a couple of moments to piece together the gist of the conversation, but, had he been fully able to verbalize, it would have been this:  “Sal, your mother told me that we were in the emergency room last night, and I just wanted to check on how you’re doing. I don’t remember why we had to take you, but I hope you’re better.”

Aww. For all that is going on for him, he is still my Daddy, taking care of his girl.  My heart was and continues to be deeply touched.

I was out there again this morning, my parents’ 59^th anniversary.  Mom was getting dressed and needed my Dad to put in her hearing aid.  “Ed, you’re the only one who can put it in right.” When she gave it to him, he started fumbling with the device itself, looking to fix some unknown broken something.  “No, Ed, put it in my ear.”  And saying something that must have made sense to him, he reached over to her and some internal memory kicked in, and he placed that hearing aid in her ear the way that only he could. And she looked at him and smiled, and he smiled back at her, and I almost had to look away at the intimacy of their gaze. 

For all that is going on, they are still sweethearts, even after 59 years of marriage. 

We don’t know what the future holds, and that is true for each of us and not just my parents. About the best that any of us can do is to celebrate those moments that are gifts of love.