Month: July 2008

  • Letters from Mom

    This letter, dated 10-07-57, was written a week (ish) after the birth of Nellie’s seventh child (that’s me!) from her home in Michigan.  Her husband, John, is in Illinois teaching college.  I’ve lightly edited the letter, snipping details about others that wouldn’t hold up to public interest.  Evidently my dad had been sick on his last visit home.  What strikes me with this letter is how “other oriented” she is. 

    My Dearest,

    Though there is not much in the way of news, I do want to get a note to you, so that you will know that all is going well – and that we are wondering how you are making out.  I did hate to see you leave when you weren’t feeling a bit good, but I felt that you wouldn’t get much better around here – so hard to keep down.

    The baby continues to eat and sleep – imagine, not one crying period yet.  She even slept through the night feeding on Saturday night.  Her cold is a little worse, but really not bad.

    David [my oldest brother] is home today with whatever you had.  No temp, just a sore stomach.  He was fine when he got up, was helping me with breakfast, when all of a sudden he turned white and said he didn’t feel good.  He was on the davenport, but when the bus came he said he felt O.K. then and went to school. But at 9:30 he called me up and I had to go after him.  I asked the Lord to make the gas last for that trip as I had no money with me and it registered zero yesterday when I took the children to S.S. I don’t know how long it has been there.  David is sleeping now. 

    Danny [my youngest brother] came in from seeing Jimmy [next brother up from Danny] off on the bus and grinning said that the driver said he was cute!  He sits for periods of time on the footstool by the baby’s bed and watches and waits for her to wake up.

    Don’t feel that you have to leave the homecoming to get home this weekend.  I would love to have you here, but I feel that I have had more than my share of your time so far this school year.  And I have certainly appreciated having you home and helping out – but if you can stay and get a little done on your classes for Monday you had better do that, as preaching here will make you a very short night’s sleep.

    Going to sign off now, don’t want to miss the mail carrier.  I miss you here – really seems lonesome without you – just a few weeks like we had in Sept. spoils me.  But since I love you so much I know that it will always be that way – I don’t get used to you being away, I just wait for you to come home.
                                                                                  
                                                                  All my love,

                                                                  Nellie

  • The Diminished Art of Letter Writing

    Technology always offers trade-offs.  It is wondrous, still awesomely amazing that we can hear daily from loved ones on the other side of the globe.  Long-distance grand-parenting is palatable with a telephone and an online connection.  Mamas of soldiers are relieved each time the inbox holds a letter from their child. 

    But!

    We miss the archives, those bundles of letters wrapped in a ribbon, letters which have been read and re-read,  kissed and kept.  I have a dozen books of collections of letters on my shelf.  More precious yet, thanks to my brother Jim (the doctor, artist, travel expert, gentleman farmer, and the dear one who taught me how to tie my shoelaces-Happy Birthday, btw) who made copies of every letter, I have the correspondence of my mom to my dad during the three years they were separated by work circumstances. 

    Now that I have just signed up for the 100-Species-Challenge, after I have been re-juiced about Fine Art Friday, am gaining some regularity in walking, in addition to adding a 40 hour work schedule for the next two weeks, and remembering my vow to finish my ironing pile, a most wonderful blogging idea has struck me brain:

    Re-read my mom’s letters and quote excerpts on the blog.

    I will fall in love all over again with the most marvelous woman I ever knew.

    A mother of seven, functioning as a single mom, scraping the bottom of the barrel with a laugh on her lips, while her husband teaches at a college two hours away.  Some stuff simply amazes me:  I believe they owned about five junker cars with never more than two working at one time.  The letters report which car my dad would need to repair on his next trip home.  She was articulate and full of grace, and the anecdotes about the kids’ shenanigans are always related with wry humor.

    Will it translate to today?  Will her words build up?  Will it make me cry?  Will it inspire me–to trust God more, to work harder, to laugh louder?  Will it be a gift to my grandchildren?  Will it make me thankful?

    A thousand times yes…

     

     

  • To Kenya

    Do you like my new laptop tote? 
    It’s kind of cute, eh?

    It (and contents) is on its way to Kenya. 
    My heart, a huge chunk of it, is on its way to Kenya. 

    Katie, a family member by love instead of blood,
    (meaning we’ve adopted each other as family)
    is going to Kenya to work as support staff
    at a Trauma Healing Conference.

    Representatives from more than 15 African countries
    will get training to help those who have been through
    war, natural disasters and other traumas.

    Katie spent her childhood in Zimbabwe.
    She has been back to Africa multiple times.

    Go well, my friend.

  • 100 Species Challenge

    Quote from Homeschooling the Doctorate:

    Someone I was recently reading (I cannot remember who–Berry? Wirzba?)
    lamented the decline of local knowledge among modern westerners. “Most
    people,” whoever-it-was said, “cannot recognize even a hundred plant
    species within a mile of their home.”

    Can you recognize a hundred plant species that are living within a mile of your home?  Sarah has designed The 100 Species Challenge and it has got my juices going.  As I said in her comments section, I am tired of responding to inquiries about plants with, “I don’t know…I’m just not any good at remembering names of plants.”  This is a great way to grow in knowledge of my locality. 

    And since I have a plant specialist living one mile away (my daughter-in-law) I have no excuse.  I love the pace Sarah is planning: two new species a week.  Oh, people, I am getting EXCITED! 

    Here are the rules:

    The 100-Species Challenge

    1. Participants should include a copy of these rules and a link to this entry in their initial blog post about the challenge. I [Sarah] will make a sidebar list of anyone who notifies me that they are participating in the Challenge.

    2. Participants
    should keep a list of all plant species they can name, either by common
    or scientific name, that are living within walking distance of the
    participant’s home. The list should be numbered, and should appear in
    every blog entry about the challenge, or in a sidebar.

    3. Participants
    are encouraged to give detailed information about the plants they can
    name in the first post in which that plant appears.     My [Sarah's] format
    will be as follows: the numbered list, with plants making their first
    appearance on the list in bold; each plant making its first appearance
    will then have a photograph taken by me, where possible, a list of
    information I already knew about the plant, and a list of information I
    learned subsequent to starting this challenge, and a list of
    information I’d like to know. (See below for an example.) This format
    is not obligatory, however, and participants can adapt this portion of
    the challenge to their needs and desires.

    4. Participants are encouraged to make it possible for visitors to their blog to find easily all 100-Species-Challenge blog posts.
    This can be done either by tagging these posts, by ending every post on
    the challenge with a link to your previous post on the challenge, or by
    some method which surpasses my technological ability and creativity.

    5. Participants
    may post pictures of plants they are unable to identify, or are unable
    to identify with precision. They should not include these plants in the
    numbered list until they are able to identify it with relative
    precision. Each participant shall determine the level of precision that
    is acceptable to her; however, being able to distinguish between plants
    that have different common names should be a bare minimum.

    6. Different
    varieties of the same species shall not count as different entries
    (e.g., Celebrity Tomato and Roma Tomato should not be separate
    entries); however, different species which share a common name be
    separate if the participant is able to distinguish between them (e.g.,     camillia japonica and camillia sassanqua if the participant can distinguish the two–”camillia” if not).

    7. Participants may take as long as they like to complete the challenge.  You
    can make it as quick or as detailed a project as you like.  I’m
    planning to blog a minimum of two plants per week, complete with
    pictures and descriptions as below, which could take me up to a year. 
    But you can do it in whatever level of detail you like.

    I know it is wicked of me to bring a plant topic around to books, but those of you that have stuck around MagistraMater know how big a fan I am of Wendell Berry.  And you can guess how delighted I am to be reminded of Norman Wirzba.  His book on the Sabbath is on my wish list at PBS. 

    You know, don’t let the number 100 frighten you.  Can you name twenty species?  Wouldn’t ten be a good start?

    Oh, yay! 

    **Addendum**

    In another of those lovely intersections of interest, I read “The Life of Trees” in the current online edition of Books and Culture.  Alan Jacobs cites Garrison Keillor: “he came to see that his ignorance of trees was emblematic of  his difficulties [in writing a novel]“.  GK’s characters “leaned against vague vegetation.”   Ayup.

    In this short essay on books about trees are some fascinating new discoveries by scientists at Humboldt State (my husband’s alma mater) who have climbed to the top of the redwoods to study the ecosystem of the canopies.  I learned three forms of arbor  (arboreal, arboriphile and arboriphobic) and was introduced to a froe (a tool for cleaving wood by splitting it along the grain).   I recommend this article.

  • The Moment That Changed Our Marriage

    At twenty, I was a young bride.  Granted, early loss and later family friction forced me to grow up in certain ways.  I had been financially independent for three years.  Nevertheless, one of the tacit agreements in our relationship was that my first-born husband would take care of me and I, the youngest in my family, would be taken care of.  Curt was only nine months older than me, but I was younger in many, many ways.  Thus ends the setting of my story.

    One Sunday morning [isn't it always Sunday morning?], three months into our marriage, we had an argument.  Who knows the whys or the wherefores.  We disagreed on some decision, and I was adamant in wanting my own way.  As our little white Toyota pickup drove down Olehanson Road I burst into tears.  Not tears of grief, but tears of thwarted desire.   By the time we turned onto Old Highway 101, Curt had relented, capitulated, backed-off, reversed.

    I had hardly finished wiping my face and blowing my nose when I took a few slow, deep breaths. An incipient smile began shaping itself on my face.  Something between a giggle and a chuckle came out of my mouth. What made me say the next words?  Where was the governor of my mouth that moment? 

    “I can make you do anything I want.”

    The words hung, suspended in the cab of the truck, for an eternity.  We were both shocked. 

    It was a silent, sober and subdued young couple that arrived at church that morning.

    I didn’t see myself as a manipulative wench.  I thought I was a loving wife.  But the words said something entirely different.  Curt didn’t recognize the pattern that had been developing until it smacked him in his eardrums.  

    It was God’s mercy, Kyrie Eleison, that turned the filter off, and let those words tumble out the instant they came into my head.  From that moment, we both knew that things would be different.  I apologized, crying tears of grief this time–grief at my selfish pigheadedness. 

    In the thirty years of our marriage, we have probably had half a dozen decisions where we strongly disagreed.  We have hashed out our arguments, talked through the issues, supported our positions.  But we have always agreed that the last word was Curt’s, that he, as my husband, was the head.  Several key decisions in our marriage that were initially very painful for me have turned out to be “hallelujahs” in my life, occasions to be thankful for the wisdom of a godly husband.  He didn’t turn out to be a tyrant.  But, thank God, he is not a pansy.

    Happy Anniversary, Babe.  You are The Best!