Heart-y Celebrations

On Valentine's Day, Ken and I take the opportunity to express our love to each other in more direct words and with more frequency than we probably do on an ordinary day. We exchange rather lovey-dovey cards, and sometimes I get roses from him. It sounds kind of sappy and superficial, but I like it, nonetheless. It's a fun way to celebrate the deeper current of our commitment that's there quiet and steady beneath the upper splash and froth.

We celebrate the love of family and friends, too. Over the years, I've tried to make a little bit bigger deal than usual out of one meal around Valentine's Day. It's a way to tell my loved ones that they're extra special and I value them. 

From table decorations...

                             Idea Credit: My daughters and nieces

...to red jello...

...to heart shapes in the breads and salads and veggies...

                        Idea Credit: My sister-in-law Sharon (Troy)

...to meatloaf in the heart-shaped pan...

...to chocolaty desserts...

...hopefully they get the idea!

This year, we discovered that a special Valentine's meal for just us3athome is pretty sweet, too!

 

Also this year, we were treated to a special meal (and I mean far-out, all-out amazing!) at our friends' house on Valentine's Day evening. To gather with this young couple and their girls and some of the wonderful ladies from Oasis was a great way to share the love of church family. We had a splendid time eating, visiting, laughing, singing, and playing a game (Codenames). At the end of our visit, we were invited to tour and hang out in the Gingerich's custom-built igloo which is even outfitted with a light and a heater. Love-ly idea, but we chose instead to head home where, as they say, the heart is.

How did someone make your Valentine's Day special?

Ten Things I Liked About Last Weekend

Last weekend, Ken & I and Kerra went on a little trip to Guys Mills, Pennsylvania. We were privileged to have our first overnight visit in Kayleen and Carlin's home. We arrived there on Friday evening and returned home on Sunday evening. What a great weekend! Following are some things I especially enjoyed about it. 

1. Seeing Kayleen's creative touch in their home's decor:

2. Watching Kayleen and Carlin work together in the kitchen, using their beautiful shiny and new wedding gift dishes and appliances:

3. Eating Kayleen and Carlin's delicious food - smoothie bowls for Saturday brunch, homemade burgers for Saturday supper, and Thai chicken soup and naan for Sunday lunch:

4. Hiking on the mile-long roadway that forms the top of Woodcock Dam:

5. Seeing Carlin's excitement over techie gadgets, such as a vintage Polaroid camera. (It is a very amazing thing that the Kenites now have an IT guy/computer doc in their midst!) 

6. Sharing memories with our children - while listening to a recording of the songs sung at Carleen's wedding, during a run-through of the wedding service and reception pics, when eating fruits and veggies canned by Kayleen and Yours Truly last summer, or when seeing the girls wear souvenirs purchased on our Newfoundland Trip:

7. Making brownies in a mug in the microwave, putting a dollop of peanut butter to melt on top of the hot cakey goodness, placing a scoop of vanilla ice cream to dissolve into creamy deliciousness over the brownie and pb, and then going to the couch in the living room to sit and eat the cup of sweetness among good family company:

8. Watching Ken and Kerra build a snowman in Carlin & Kayleen's front yard while waiting on everyone to be ready for a Sunday afternoon walk:

9. A lovely walk in the snowy countryside in general, and specifically at the Erie Wildlife Refuge: 

                            Photo Credit: Kayleen Atkinson

10. Embracing the stage our family is in right now - Ken and I as the parental couple observing our young adult children doing life, delighting in being with them, hashing life's puzzles with them, sharing laughter and tears, deepening relationships, growing in character, offering love and receiving hope:

Last Post's Childhood Memories

Last year, my blog posts all had two features in common. At the end of each post, I included a section called "This Post's Quotable" and one named "This Post's Childhood Memory." My most recent blog post, the only one I have done so far this year, did not include those features. That was on purpose - I don't plan to add them to the posts I do in 2020. They were fun and good in serving their purpose while they were here, but now they are there, and there they will remain - lounging or romping about, as the case may be, in back issues.

In farewell to those features, this post will be a small collection of childhood memories, some from me and a few from some of my sibs, as well as from an author I discovered recently.

~ Me: I remember wearing plastic bread bags on my stockinged (or tightsed, or snowpantsed) feet inside my winter boots, to help keep my feet dry while I played or worked outside in deep snow. I'd turn the bags inside-out so I wouldn't get bread crumbs on my socks. The bags helped provide a waterproof barrier against melting snow inside my boots, at least until the bags got holes in them...

~ Troy: I remember learning some reading skills before school at the urging of you and Anni, perhaps you more than her. My memory is of struggling with the short e sound and getting it confused with the short a sound.  I think you were patient. (Thanks for that strong vote of confidence, there, Bro.)

~ Faye: During the time leading up to one of my childhood birthdays, I told Mom that I wasn’t going to sit on her lap anymore whenever I turned whatever age it was (seven I believe), thinking I was too old/big.  When the birthday arrived, I received a book as a present.  Mom told me she’d read this book to me if I sat on her lap.  I didn’t remember my earlier declaration and agreed to the deal.  Mom did remember however, and enjoyed the fun of luring me onto her lap in spite of me trying to grow up. And now I enjoy the memory of the love and humor. 

~ Me: Many times, in reading Full Moon, Half a Heart (one of the children's books I mentioned in my previous blog post), I was transported right back to my childhood days because of the author's superb description of life in Wisconsin. One of those times was when the main character in the book was introduced to the dairy barn. When I read that part, I recalled with startling clarity all the sights, sounds, and smells of "going to the barn" when I was at my school friends Monica and Michele's place or staying with my cousins on the Kauffman side. I'm going to steal author Vila Gingerich's words here, because I can't think of a better way to describe my childhood memories of that scene:
"We stood in a sort of entry, the walls made of whitewashed concrete...a room bedecked with cobwebs and dust. In it stood a wheelbarrow, loaded with what looked like dark green sawdust...more sounds came from ahead, where a doorway wide enough to drive a small car through led into the main part of the barn. A rhythmic sucking sound echoed through the building. Scooping and banging rang out now and then. Beneath it all ran strangely muffled noises, as though a giant animal shuffled its feet and munched on lettuce...rows of cows filled the barn. Shiny pipes ran above their heads, and milking machines chuff-chuffed a rhythm...cows munched hay, their jaws moving steadily, feet shifting and stomping away flies..."

~ Annette (aka Anni): Mom occasionally purchased Chef Boy-ar-dee pizza kits, likely when they were sale items at Co-op or Simmon’s grocery store. It was great fun to help her make pizza out of a box for supper. We dumped the bag of dough mix into a stainless steel mixing bowl, added water, and stirred till the wad of pizza dough chased the fork in circles. After the dough was patted and coaxed out to the corners of a cookie sheet, we opened the small green tin can of tomato sauce with a manual can-opener—carefully!—and spread an ultra-thin layer of sauce on the dough. Next we snipped open the tiny packet of herbs, smelling predominantly of oregano, to sprinkle over the sauce. Mom had a skillet of fried hamburger waiting on the stove, perfect for snitching a mouthful of salty oniony goodness before scattering the meat chunks over the pizza. The last little packet contained parmesan cheese to sparsely coat the meat layer, and finally the pizza was ready to slide into the oven to bake just in time for a special supper.

~ Me: This past weekend, we visited Kayleen and Carlin in their home in Guys Mills, PA. One of the many fun things we did with them was to hike through a snowy forest in the Erie Wildlife Refuge. When I saw a "crop" of tiny little evergreens poking through the melty snow ground cover, I was immediately taken back to the woods at the Peninsula Rd White House where we lived for much of my growing up years. The woods had many fascinating features, such as the Princess Pines that popped up their petite selves in pretty patches on the forest floor.  

Perhaps reading these memories has stirred up some childhood memories of your own. Feel free to add them to this collection by including them in the comments section.

By Regal Robes

I have long been a dabbler in poetry. My love of the rhythms and rhymes of the lilting lines probably began with my mom's quoting snatches of poems she'd learned when she was in grade school - stuff of frost on pumpkins and barefoot boys with turned up pantaloons, not to mention wily spiders speaking craftily to silly, gullible flies.

I even began trying to write lines of poetry on my own. Once, when I was in third grade, I entered a short poem in a poetry contest that Blackboard Bulletin, the educational branch of the Pathway Papers, initiated.

Evidently the poetry judges winked at my poetical ignorance, including the jolt in the third stanza when the rhyme scheme in my poem went divergent, because they granted me a prize anyway. My twin sister had also submitted a winning poem and maybe they didn't want to seem partial and not allow me to choose a prize book, too - any book I wanted - from the pages of reading material for sale in the Pathway Publishers Catalog. At any rate, winning with a poem was heady stuff for an 8-year-old.

I wrote more poems. Predictable poems, mostly, the kind that had the same number of feet in each line, (and matching socks to boot), marching to the same beat throughout the entire predictable four stanzas of four lines each.

("Riding her bike, the dog chased my sister.") 

Sometimes I did more than correct the dangling modifiers in English class.

Somewhere along the way, though, I began to clue in that poetry is more a rich language than an unyielding frame in which to structure words. And I saw that much of the delight of that language lies in its unexpectedness.

It was like I had been trying to stuff words into a neat wooden box and make sure I got the top closed just so over them, but then I caught on that some words would not be crammed or lidded. They insisted on dangling a leg over the side of the box here and jabbing out an arm over there, and I became intrigued. (I was especially fascinated by the ones that popped up and said "boo".)

My poetry output dwindled after that, partly because I discovered there's wonderful poetry to be had in writing prose, and partly because I felt inadequate to compose truly wonderful poems. Great poetry seems so full of mystery and unseen connections now that I can only read it, and reread it, hoping at least to catch a glimpse of the deeper meaning.

I continue to love reading poetry - and trying to catch its deeper meanings. Some of my poet friends have, on occasion, asked me to critique one of their pieces. I would love to be able to do that for them adequately, but it feels strange to comment on the meaning of their poem when I have to ask them in the first place what much of it means.

Still, poetry intrigues me. Often, in good verse, a line or two will reach out to pique my interest, to compel further reading, to impact my thinking. Such are many of the poems I encounter on The Curator's page on Facebook. I "follow" the contributors there, which means occasionally I wander onto their site, hoping to lick up any poetic crumbs that fall from the rich scribes' pens. A particularly delightful wander on that page occurred last month.

During the Christmas season just past, I opted not to follow an Advent tradition I began several years ago. When I read through Ann Voskamp's The Greatest Gift for the first time, I knew I'd want to make the book a yearly treat in December. Each time I go through the book, meant for daily reading throughout the four weeks of Advent, I underscore and highlight lines that impact me, and I note which year we're in.

I was away from home on our Thailand Trip when Advent began this year and I didn't have my book with me. When we got home, I knew that getting back into routine (while jet-lagged) and trying to catch up and stay on track in the Advent book would put enough pressure on me that treat would soon turn to overwhelming task. I decided to take a break and pick it up again next year.

Instead, I chose to look and listen for Advent signs in my daily life, times when I knew He had come, is here, is coming again. Signs that it will be worth the wait - and worth the weight of this life.

I read some of the Advent poems posted on The Curator. One especially caught my eye, or I should say my heart. From its opening lines "Lord of Heaven, I thought I was afraid You'd come cold and commanding" to its closing lines "come slowly, come softly...O Christ, have mercy", Advent X by Conrad Martin put me in that poetry-so-far-beyond-me mindset, and yet. Something in it reached out and touched me.

It felt like royalty was going past, and I got brushed by swishing purple robes.

I wonder if my ongoing discovery of God is similar to this. He is such Deepness. He is such Mystery. He is such Unexpected Nearness.

He kept showing up during Advent. I wouldn't be thinking of Him at all, and then I would see or hear something and suddenly, there was this certain inner rush of knowing, or sudden tears, or laughter of confirmation: He IS!

This happened during the Sunday School Christmas program at church, when a class of young girls shared a reading their artist teacher Renee, had written. It was Mary's welcome to Jesus, her coming Baby, and was accompanied by a painting of Christ in utero.

Art can do that to me; can cause a little leap of joy unbidden. One of my son Ricky's daily drawings did that recently. Coming from the prompt "Romance in bloom", he had a man's angular shoe and a lady's daintier shoe toeing together in the sketch, and I can't really explain what it connected and stirred in me at the result.

By Ricky Martin, on his drawit366 Instagram account. Used by permission.

For me, Advent signs also appeared in winter snow and sky scenes:

On Facebook, I read Keeshon Washington's description of the Christmas Home-going of Clayton Shenk, the father in the family that took Keeshon into their own: "... finally, at 4:47 am, we said goodbye to our hero. We wailed for a long time, and then closed the early morning by encouraging and being together." That word "wailed" spoke to me of people being real, and that somehow made God seem more close and real.

Another Advent sign came in the form of an illustration brought to mind. Sometimes, I question my Christianity. (Yes, you heard that right.) I say I'm a Christian, but I wonder if I truly live as one. I long to worship the real God, not just who I imagine Him to be. When I pray, I want my faith not to be in my faith, but in Him alone. One day, I got a mind picture of me turning my doubts and worries about this over and over in my hands, the constant kneading turning them into a messy ball of shreds. Suddenly, I noticed that bigger, stronger Hands were curved around mine, encompassing the turmoil and struggles.

Sometimes I listen to a Read-aloud Revival podcast, and while I enjoy the insights from the host (Sarah Mackensie), I look forward to the very last feature as much as anything in every new episode. Sarah invites children from anywhere in the world to call in and share with her their name, where they live, what their favorite read-aloud book is, and why it's their favorite. She records these calls and posts them on her podcast for her listeners to enjoy. One day, there was a little tyke - I don't know, maybe 3 or 4 years old, who talked about a book he likes. He just got me with his young, endearing voice saying, "fravorite".

Two of the books I requested and received in the book exchange our family does every Christmas are actually children's books. I've already read both Growing Toward the Sun and Full Moon, Half a Heart. How I loved them! Author Vila Gingerich has an extraordinary gift for pulling the reader into 11-year-old Celeste's (the main character) world. In the book about Celeste's adjustments in the family's move from Kansas to Wisconsin, I got tears over this part: "The bell rang then and we put our lunchboxes on the shelf and went out for recess. Just as I reached the door, Miss Koehn (teacher who was also new to the area) put her hand on my shoulder.  'Celeste', she said, 'I'm going to tell you a secret. This morning I got up and saw that old yellowish couch in the teachers' house and looked out the window at the neighbor's dairy barn, and I smelled that barn, and - you know what - I was so lonesome for home, I cried. I know how you feel.' She gave me a half-hug as we walked outside together. I looked into her blue eyes and couldn't say a word..."

Yes, lately there have been times I've felt brushed by regal robes swishing by. I know I've been touched by His Majesty.

How have you been brushed by royal robes lately?