What's Good for the Hummers.....?

You've all hear the saying, "What's good for the goose, is good for the gander." Or more

commonly, we get in a place of, "If you can do it, so can I!" I've been thinking a lot about that lately in a reverse sort of way. Here's how it happened:

The boys were over for some yard work, because each of them is saving money for something special. I told them to come early, wear work clothes, and bring a change to go home in, in case they got wet. And, oh yes, they were to bring their bathing suits. All work and no fun......you know!

They climbed the slope, built steps by the fence so we could keep the morning glory from taking over absolutely everything, slid down the ground cover, got not only dirty, but green. At lunch I noticed that the hummingbird feeder was out of nectar, so I went outside to get it in preparation for filling it up.

My recipe is:

In a 2 cup measuring cup, fill it with 1 and 1/2 cups of sugar. Then fill to the 2 cup measure with water, add a drop of food coloring, place it in the feeder and hang it up. The hummingbirds love it and we have regular swarms. Sometimes all six spots on the feeder are busy. I have even begun to "talk" to them when I hang it up so they get used to me. I'm not sure they know what I'm doing, but it makes it more interesting for me.

Davis was watching as I slowly poured in the sugar. His eyes got bigger and bigger.

"That will have them bouncing off the walls!" he said.

I think I know where he might have heard that before. His mom watches the sugar intake of her boys carefully, and they are learning to know when they have had enough.

"But that's what they eat, Davis," I replied. "It's good for them." We all laughed, and I think even Davis caught the significance of what he had said.

I began to wonder how many times I judged someone for doing something that was not good for me but might be just fine for them. Doesn't the Word have a lot to say about our attitudes?!

In The Message, Romans 14 is listed as the chapter on Cultivating Good Relationships. "Forget about deciding what's right for each other. Here's what you need to be concerned about: that you don't get in the way of someone else, making life more difficult than it already is. ...Don't eat or say or do things that might interfere with the free exchange of love. Cultivate your own relationship with God, but don't impose it on others.

Continuing in chapter 15 - "May our dependably steady and warmly personal God develop maturity in you so that you get along with each other as well as Jesus gets along with us all. Then we'll be a choir-not our voices only, but our very lives singing in harmony in a stunning anthem to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ"

I think I'll go sing with the hummingbirds.

Uncle Joe

It's 4:40 AM and I'm wide awake! As I laid in bed wondering why, I looked over at Don lying next to me and thanked God for one more day to love Don, and praise God together.

I looked at him with his silhouette barely visible against the light of his alarm clock (which he doesn't have to use very much anymore).

I listened to his breathing - barely audible - which usually is a roaring cacophony of wheezes, splurts, and sputters at this time in the morning.

I remembered that Uncle Joe died last week, and today would have been Joe and Dee's 53rd anniversary. That means ours is not far behind. Our wedding was the first thing they attended after coming home from their 2 week honeymoon. They were such good friends! I had known Dee since arriving in Whittier at the Brethren Church in 1945. That's a long time ago.

Since there were no boys at the church then, all of us girls had to go out and find husbands, -Joe and Dee met at Westmont - but when we all landed back in Whittier, we raised our kids like cousins. Five families - 20 kids. No one had less than 3. Beach days on Wednesday afternoons in the summer saw our cluster of kids playing in the sand, digging holes to jump in,romping in the waves,and later body surfing and skimboarding.

But Joe didn't swim. He watched. He dug. He ate. He carried things. He put up the windbreak so we could stay until long after dark and enjoy the firepit, and roast marshmallows. We hadn't heard of S'mores,yet. He was always there, and we loved the gentle giant. He was a big man, but gentle as they come. And he didn't say much. But we always listened when he spoke.

Then he got prostate cancer about 3 or 4 years ago. I can't remember exactly. But it was long after Don's diagnosis in 1989. He had surgery, just like Don. His PSA numbers began to climb, just like Don. Then we heard they were doing a bone scan, just like Don. Found a metastisis in his neck bones, just like Don. Had hormone therapy, just like Don. Then he took a turn for the worse a couple of Sundays ago, went to the hospital with a 911 call, and died last Thursday.

And I still have Don.

Only God knows why, but I thank him for each day!

Oh, sure I've been angry with him (Don, not God). We've been through a lot. But I'm beginning to know what the "to have and to hold" part of the wedding ceremony means, and what the "in sickness and in health" means. We've been doing sickness 20 years now. But I have yet to experience the "till death do us part."

And now Dee will be learning what that is all about. She will be in my prayers.

Regurarly.

I think I'll go back to bed and hold my husband of 53 (almost) years and thank God for this new day. Some of the best things in my life have come in small packages. Most gems do, you know.

It's time to try to get a little more sleep now. The sun's about to come up any time soon.

Single Digit Kid

We're down to only one single digit kid now, and it's going to last only one more year. Davis turned 9 on March 31 and I reminded him he had only one more year as a single digit kid. He's enjoyed his place as the youngest of the cousins, but I do think he's ready to be a double digit kid. Ethan will turn 11 next Thursday, so he's been at this double digit stuff awhile. Why do they want to grow up so fast? It's amazing how much faster the grandchildren grow up than their parents did. Maybe it's the daily thing, I don't know.

Anyway, when I was with the boys for lunch last Wednesday we got to talking about digits, and I asked if they thought we'd ever have any triple digit people in our family.

"Do you think I can live to be 100?" I asked.

"I think so," they both agreed.

"How old will you be when I turn 100? I'm 72 now."

In no time at all they added 28 to their ages, and gleefully came up with 37 and 39. Such smart boys - and always full of fun. I doubt that they will have time for lunch with their grandmother when they are 37 and 39. I wonder if Schlotsky's Deli will still be around. That's one of our traditions, you know. We have several.

I wonder if I'll still be around, or enjoying the presence of Jesus. Maybe we all will be. Their Dad used to think it would be such fun to go to heaven (when he was 3)because you would have your own lion and everything. Must have heard about the lion and the lamb thing in Sunday School. He said to me that day, "It's not a bad thing to die is it?" Oh, how I wondered if God was preparing me for something that day, and I just had to explain to him that being in the presence of Jesus is a wonderful thing, but the ones left behind miss the one who is gone so much.

"Maybe we could just hold hands and all go up together," he very seriously replied.

We all hung on that vision for a long time, and it's still one of our family's famous lines.

A long while later I asked him if he remembered wanting to go to heaven and he said, "I kind of want to grow up now."

Which he did, and now his sons are growing up. And, now, I'm trying to decide if I want to be a triple digit person. I'll take whatever God has in mind and thank Him for each day.

But I still think it would be fun to all hold hands and go up together. Maybe on Father's Day as we form a circle and hold hands around the chopping block to pray before our meal.

Oral History and Oreo Shakes

I guess you can take the teacher out of the classroom, but can you ever take the classroom out of the teacher?

Had a really unusual classroom a few months ago when Ethan, Davis, and Maddie were with us at the Jack-In-The-Box at the corner of Orangethorpe and Placentia Blvd. My motives were not totally pure, a little manipulative maybe, but than I love Oreo shakes, and I wanted to let my Grands know a little more about our family. We hopped in there, and not wanting to load them with too much sugar, we ordered one shake and three straws. And sat and talked about the family.



Not only was I teaching about the family history, - Don's grandmother, Mattie Judson, owned the property which was all orange groves - but I wanted to help them understand a little more about time.



Don's mother was born in 1900. Davis was born in 2000. That's 100 years. A century. I never knew Don's grandmother, but I want my Grands to rememeber me. So I sat there, feeling like a fulcrum, as I talked with the Grands about Grandma Judson, how she was widowed, but still a good business woman supporting herself and her small daughter, and watched the children drink a Cousin-Three-Straw-Oreo Shake.



I told them how Don's parents sold off the 9 and 1/2 acres for an automobile agency when they retired, and lived off the proceeds, but kept the corner piece for further development. I think Grandpa Earl was a good business man, too. He had a lot of foresight, but not enough to worry about oil prices, soil contamination and all of that. No one could have known all that.

So he first put a gas station on the corner.



Then 20 years later, we inherited the property, and had to deal with all the contamination from the old leaky tanks.



We dealt with:




The Environmental Protection Agency



The State Water Control Board



The Orange County Health Association



The City of Placentia



Finally, everything was in order, and the people at Foodmaker, Inc. (Jack-in-the-Box) said they were ready to build.



So now once a year, the city license comes, we take it down, give it to the manager, and sometimes get an "owner discount" on our lunch. We look at the area, think of it as orange trees, and no freeways, and the stress of what we went through hardly comes to mind.



I hope the Grands will take their children to "our" restaurant, and tell them about their family history. I'm so glad they won't have to go through all the horrors of cleanup, and maybe there will be a new favorite flavor of shakes by that time, too.



But I doubt it. I think Oreo Shakes are here to stay.

I wonder if they'll make their kids share?!

The Rock Concert

This is just unbelievable! I don't even like Rock music - most of it - and here I am in the middle of planning a Rock Concert! Here's how it happened:

Along the top of our latest newsletter about the school in Gorodishi, I wrote on a friend's letter, "Help me get the word out!" Got a telephone call within days of sending it.

"I know some Christian rock artists that have a real heart for Russian children. Let's do a benefit concert." It was Bob Noonan.

"Ooo-Kaaay," I responded slowly. "What do I do next? How do I get in touch with theses guys? What do we do first? A date? A venue?" I was full of questions.

"Let me call Darrell Mansfield and tell him to expect a call from you," Bob told me.

"Who?" I said. "Who's he?"

"You know. He's really big, and has won some Dove awards for his Christian recordings. If he can come, we really have a good deal on our hands."

Now, I trust Bob Noonan. He knows just about everybody. And he's just enough younger than we are to know a lot about the current Christian artists. But Don and I are not concert goers. We had never heard of Darrell Mansfield or Brian Duncan either. The last time we paid to go to a concert was before we were married when we went to the Greek Theater in Glendale to hear Harry Belafonte. (Remember, we couldn't go to movies?!) That was more than a half century ago, too.

I felt totally out of my element.

"Let's do it! Call me when you are able to reach Darrell, and I'll give him a call."

So he did, and I did, and we are - planning a Rock Concert, that is.

May 2, 2009, at Whittier Hills Baptist Church - 7 PM - all to benefit the school in Russia!

Who would ever have thought that God could use Rock Music to fund a project that we have felt was getting over our heads in terms of finances? God is not limited. Why should I worry, or fret? He is in control. And since this was never our idea in the first place, and we had never set out to have a Christian school in Russia, and did not feel we could raise the amount of money it was going to take to keep it growing like it is, we have just HAD to let go, and let God do His thing!

Unbelievable! Remarkable! Wonderful! Astounding!

Be sure to save the date! It's going to be good!

And I'm still shaking my head.

Date Night

Been thinking about our "Date Nights." When you've been married for 52 years, and dated two years before that, it adds up to a lot of Date Nights!
How they have progressed and changed. We've been through a lot of phases.

Dating before marriage usually consisted of dinner out, since I was not allowed to go to movies, and it was a top priority of mine to honor my parents. After all, that's the first commandment with a promise - "....that your days may be long on the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee."

(We were a King James family, too!)

Married, and on our honeymoon, I saw the first movie of my life. OKLAHOMA! It was great, and I was hooked.

Then Don went into the service, and one of his patients was the ticket taker at the movies. He let us in free, and in those days at the PX theater it was only twenty-five cents anyway. But one of the objections to movies that I heard all my life was that we were supporting a lifestyle that was anything but godly. So with a free movie, I didn't think I was supporting anything. Boy, how I wish my parents had taught me to make choices in entertainment. This was before the days of ratings, and even that can be deceiving.

Date night became dinner out and a free movie!

Once out of the service and with a young family, we began having date nights in the evening with a babysitter. This was the '50's and early '60's. It was always great to get away for a while, but we usually spent dinner talking about the children. I loved to tell Don all the warm and funny things they had done.

Date night was dinner out, a movie, and a babysitter!

Then we gave up date night for a long time (at least it seemed like it to me) because the children were growing older and we "wouldn't have them with us forever." Used the same excuse for vacations. "They'll probably not want to come with us when they get in high school, so we'd better be sure to have a nice family vacation now!" They still come with us now and then, and the last time we were all together on vacation was in Oceanside with 4 condo timeshare units. It was a great time to remember.

Date night was everybody all together, eight adults, eight grands. This stage was rare.

After that, we began to be too tired to go in the evenings anymore.

Date night became lunch and a matinee.

Now, with Don on a 24/7 oxygen tube, and even less energy and more pain we have entered into another phase. We've joined Netflix, and have a ton of choices at our fingertips. We love the historical fiction movies and have watched a wonderful series on the establishment of the Israeli nation. As soon as we return one DVD, another comes! Our queue stays about 20 ahead, so there are a lot of dates out there. The big flat screen TV in the bedroom is great for viewing and one of the few pleasures Don still has.

Date night is Take Out and a Netflix movie.

How thankful I am that I have a date! Phil. 4:11 has become a reality, and I am resting in it, and content in this state. It may not be the last, so I had better learn the concept well. What blessings we have - each other, and breath with which to Praise God - each day!

Singing your string

Been trying to teach my grandsons to sing in parts. I thought everyone could do it since it always seemed to come easy for me. Funny how that works. If you can do it you think everyone else must surely be able to do it, too. Not so. Especially in this singing thing.

When I got married I found out that some people can not even carry a tune, let alone hold their own parts while you sing the harmony. Oh, well. How tolerant and understanding we get as we grow older!

Every week, I take the boys out to lunch just to give Mom a break from homeschooling. The car is a wonderful place to have their complete attention. Like a cocoon.

We started out whistling in the car to a CD piano rendition of "The Rose." The piano held the tune steady, and the boys and I would whistle a third above in harmony, and the entire car would be filled with music. What fun! I looked up the words to the song on the internet, and decided we wouldn't need to sing, just whistle.

This week, I wanted to go the next step and start singing in parts. In my training as an elementary teacher, we had a segment on music in the classroom. Way back 50 years ago, the method was to learn a melody, then sing it as a round, graduating to 3 parts. I thought we could do that. The boys are very quick, and very musical. Later the harmonizing would come.

We (I) chose "Row, row, row your boat." As soon as we got home, I asked Ethan to get his guitar, and play it for us. He was all in to chord progressions, and wanted to get really fancy, but with rounds, you can't do that. It's all the same chord throughout the whole song. Next, Ethan sang it by himself, while Davis and I came in on the second part. That worked nicely, too.

Then the real test came when I dropped in to the third part and we were each singing our own part, and holding our own pretty well, if I do say so myself!

Now we wanted to get a little creative at the end when we all ended up singing "Life is but a DREAM." So we slowed it down, modulated up, with great pomp and circumstance, and held out "DREAM" as long and as loud as we could. The only trouble was, we tended to drift together.

"Sing your string, guys!" I told them. Ethan plucked out each string of the chord, and one by one we sang our string until we had a beautiful chord. We were singing our string. It worked! We did it with gusto! And tremelo! And lots of volume.

Then Kathleen came home, and we had to show her what we had been working on all afternoon. She thought we were pretty good, too, I think. And we sure did have a lot of fun singing our string!

Next step, two different melodies in counterpoint. Who knows where this will end? Sometimes the most fun is in the process.