priya, sam, anneka, and ellie stories

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

growing things

Morning glories gathered in the ditch on Anneka's fourth birthday...

Humid jungle weather the last several weeks have grown the beans large in these parts...

Anneka's birthday bouquet and her new dress

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

non-professional photos

Anneka's senior pictures at 3-1/2

The tire swing

Grandma and some of the girls

Sam and Ell

Sam and his senior picture

Priya posing for her picture

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

We think we have it rough when we run out of milk.

We also frequently make fun of the previous generation for their frugality.

We don't have it rough, with our poor living perhaps in some cases, with more than we who pay for all our goods, services and wants out of pocket.

My aunt, into her eighth decade, recounted today after dinner, when my uncle was young, growing up in the Great Depression.

While living in South Dakota, his dad was promised a job in Idaho. With three kids, they put their belongings in their car and drove there. I think I need to pack more than that for a few hours away from home. There was a job in Idaho. There was no housing. So they lived in a chicken coop with a wood burning stove.

They started attending church in their town and soon the pastor and a deacon asked to visit their home. Tony remembers his mom making simply hot water to serve because there was no coffee. Mercifully, the church did what the church should still be doing instead of the government: they helped Tony's family out with, at the very least, some coffee for their hot water.

Another memory Aunt Jo remembers Uncle Tony recalling is fishing in hard times. He didn't have a hook, so he'd lay on the bank with his thumb just under the water. When a bullhead would start to nibble, he'd fling it up on the bank. He would have fish to take home to his mom to cook.

As the generation, who endured simpler yet harder times, slips into their 80s and 90s, I want to gather the stories and rehash them a thousand times to anyone who will listen.

Would my generation know how to function without central air conditioning in 90 degree-90% humidity? Do they know how to improvise and save and reuse, with the environment obsession aside, only for necessity? How about not having any convenience food at all - not even cream of mushroom soup or box cereal? Could we make our own entertainment without the aid of 749 cable channels, a smart phone and a myriad of other technological devices that have complicated our personal and public relationships. No, we'd die. In droves. With no ingenuity to create or improvise to get survive. Probably bloating in front of the television.

In a time in history when it is a big deal when a state's (Minnesota) efforts to balance their budget require cuts to government vouchers disallowing its recipients to use those vouchers for alcohol and cigarettes, we've fallen very far.

It probably does not require that we try living like a past generation. Air conditioning and indoor plumbing and electricity are nice touches.

But it might require passing on the stories.

It does demand that we turn off whichever device for a bit to connect with the real world (fellow humans).

It would require a listing of gratitudes and often.

Friday, July 15, 2011

motherhood

Rachel Jankovic writes this in her article on motherhood:

Live the gospel in the things that no one sees. Sacrifice for your children in places that only they will know about. Put their value ahead of yours. Grow them up in the clean air of gospel living. Your testimony to the gospel in the little details of your life is more valuable to them than you can imagine. If you tell them the gospel, but live to yourself, they will never believe it. Give your life for theirs every day, joyfully. Lay down pettiness. Lay down fussiness. Lay down resentment about the dishes, about the laundry, about how no one knows how hard you work.

Stop clinging to yourself and cling to the cross. There is more joy and more life and more laughter on the other side of death than you can possibly carry alone.

Hmmm...that puts this disastrous living room I'm looking at, into perspective, perhaps. And certainly more than just the disastrous mess.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

rain apparel

(older sister hand-me-down raincoat)

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

seasoned love

The best romance is inside the marriage; the finest love stories comes after the wedding, not before. ~ Irving Stone

I found this quote on a wedding congratulations card last week. I wonder if it shouldn't be mentioned at every wedding. Maybe I should have bought all the cards they had that day, except we are invited to only three weddings this summer.

Two of those marriages I have confidence in their longevity. The third not so much.

And I have some theories about why. Two of these marriages have original parents still married to each other. That is huge, although not a guarantee of success.

More importantly, two of the three couples will go to their weddings not having shacked up together, to put it bluntly and crudely. The statistics I've read show that living together narrows a couple's chance of not divorcing, to about 20%. And sadly, it is not an unrealistic to assume that most people have lived together before their huge lavish (sham) weddings. Yes, I have strong opinions on the matter.

Here's how it works for most: the girl badgers the guy to give her a ring, the girl and guy move into the same dwelling space, then they set a wedding date for two years hence.

Really, then, why plan a big old wedding bash? The pizazz is over by the time the invitations are ordered. Is it just for the benefit of the elderly relatives who have still have morals? Why bother with a dress, flowers and taking up the sanctuary of some church? Save time and money: run to the justice of the peace in your shorts and tube top and get busy planning the drunken party to entertain all the friends.

And etiquette were up to me, wedding showers for co-habitators would be uncouth. Because you've been playing house for a while now. A shower really just looks like a cheap-wad way to get some nicer loot. And wouldn't we all like that once in a while.

Can you tell I hold strong opinions on these matters?

Because watching people might be one of my top five hobbies, I even watch people in church. We have the most squirrely children, by far, at our church and so other people's kids don't intrigue me nearly as much as older people. More specifically, older couples.

One couple, who must be pushing 80 or more, came in as we were. (in a rare moment, we arrived when the greeters were still welcoming people). She was more spry than he. He was hunched over quite a bit. They walked together. Sam and Priya held the doors open for them. How many of my generation will still have someone to walk to church with in fifty years?

The other folks, I noticed, were maybe twenty years younger. They held hands the whole service. Maybe they were a product of the some golden agers singles dance. I hope it was because they still liked each other after forty years.

Young love is what moms and grandmas get all teary-eyed about. But is it really love? More like infatuated or desperate? But I would ask, it is really love? Because love doesn't let a promising career and a masters degree rot a marriage, does it? Does real love get wandering eyes that maybe, at middle age with rolls and wrinkles and varicose veins and a nest full of children, there is someone better out there? Does love just tolerate the person they made their life with these past decades, amusing themselves with hobbies, each ridicules the other about, so they won't have to love, much less interact?

Honestly, there is nothing more discouraging than middle aged people snipping at each other and grouching about each other. Really, who arranged this marriage? Didn't you choose each other? Why was he or she such a hot item 10 or 20 or 40 years ago and not now?

But there is nothing more encouraging, to my marriage, than seasoned love. Love with wrinkles and respectful teasing and several decades under their belts. Love with no scorn over the others interests or habits or quirks.

Interestingly, Irving Stone was eighty-something when he died with the same wife he started out with. His wife, an editor before they married, edited his books. Apparently he knew about romance and love stories from experience.