Jesus, You know I often struggle to assume an attitude of gratitude. But on this chilly, damp Monday, with one flush, I remembered my papaw’s outhouse.
Image by Dieter Scharnagl from Pixabay.
OMG, for cleaning two-and-a-half indoor baths, I am THANKFUL.
Image by congerdesign from Pixabay.
These small words elicit king-sized effects.
My first cranky thought, another songwriter has run out of originality, as in:
Being there (ooh, baby) Being there (ooh, baby) Being there is like … Being there (ooooh, BABY!)
Okay, I need a second cup of coffee today. With double cream.
Much better.
Now I recall that being there when airline personnel solicit volunteers to take a different flight, I might land a free future trip.
Being in the right checkout line can mean the difference between three Tylenol® and only one.
Being there at a library during a 1970 Christmas break placed me near the railing of a second-story atrium, eyeing my future husband below. Thus, I ensured he wasn’t with a girl and could “accidentally” run into him. (He still calls this stalking, but that’s because he hasn’t yet drunk his morning tea.)
Being there at a gas station when someone, perched on a ladder, is changing prices can mean a savings of 11 whole cents per gallon. Although, if the price is upped 11 whole cents, you’ve picked the perfect time and place to ruin your morning.
Though that timing isn’t as bad as certain shoplifters’ when, according to Reader’s Digest, they attempted major heists on Shop-with-a-Cop Day.
Being there can get complicated. Still, we want others to be there for us.
My mother refined this into an art form. One joyful day, when I learned I was ranked 10th in my high school class, I arrived home to the fragrance of muffins fresh from the oven. She’d baked them either to celebrate or console. Whatever happened, they were there for me.
So was Mom.
However, she also was there to enslave me with chores, require church attendance, and stare through my dates and me with righteous black eyes.
Years later, I appreciated her when I, too, baked after-school treats, mini-vanned my kids everywhere, and wandered into the den to “get stamps” from my desk while they were entertaining dates.
Being there can be threatening, wonderful, scary, tedious, triumphant, smelly, or comforting, but rarely boring. And lots better than not being there.
Sometimes, it’s just plain cuddly.
Tonight, Hubby and I are watching a Cubs game. We don’t make brilliant conversation. We don’t have to make conversation at all.
We simply savor being there.
Ooooh, baby.
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Who’s been there for you?
O Lord, You know my husband does a great job with the laundry. Recently, though, the cranberry-colored place mats he washed dyed our towels pink. Very pink. But, OMG, it was easy to forgive him. You recall that as a new wife, I accidentally turned all his underwear lavender. Very lavender…
O Lord, You didn’t give plants the ability to speak words, bark, or meow. They can’t even drag their dishes across the floor. But OMG, when we forget to water them (for two whole days!), they make their feelings very clear.
How did the dresser start out in life? I don’t know, but its size and plain, sturdy lines said, “I belong to a kid.”
The dresser’s original kid probably wadded clothes Mom had folded and stuffed them into its drawers. Perhaps he yanked out drawers, climbed the “stairs” and jumped off the top with an umbrella parachute.
Years later, I discovered that dresser in a secondhand store, marked half-price. It would do until my three-year-old son started school. However, it wore a woebegone, cast-off aura.
My mother, two thousand miles away, whispered in my mind, “Nice find. Great price. But this little dresser needs happy paint.”
As a teen, I’d rolled my eyes when Mom painted end tables orange and a bedroom suite blue. Who did that?
Well … I did. After a critical paint chip comparison, I began painting the chest eye-popping blue. I planned to paint its handles equally vivid red.
Then my young husband needed an emergency appendectomy. While Hubby slowly recovered from complications, I slowly finished the dresser. Late at night, I added a second coat, a third, maybe more — I don’t remember. I experienced a glad moment when I hauled the completed dresser upstairs to my son’s bedroom. An even happier one when I brought his daddy home.
David, flanked by his older sisters, was a toddler when I painted the dresser a vivid blue.
Both had jobs to do. Daddy returned to work. The dresser once more endured yanks, shoves and a “helpful” kid who stuffed clothes Mom had folded into its drawers. (He also attempted to climb to the dresser top, but I stopped him on the second step.)
A doggie bank constructed from a Pringles can resided on it, along with half-consumed PB&J sandwiches and piles of baseball cards. With ABC curtains, Mickey Mouse sheets, and a carpet perpetually layered with toys, the dresser helped make the room my kid’s haven.
But adolescence sneaked in. The first clouds of Eau de Gym Shoe settled over his room and, with them, a dark cloud of protest: Mickey Mouse sheets? Seriously? Did he really need ABCs displayed on his curtains?
David with his wife and their first baby.
I changed his décor to manly navy blue. Strangely, he didn’t ask me to lose the dresser.
Perhaps, even he realized he didn’t need a bigger one. Why, when his wardrobe resided in heaps on the floor?
Plus, the doggie bank’s big smile still matched the dresser perfectly.
One day, he departed for college, then marriage. The cheerful blue dresser, deprived of its kid, looked a little sad.
Now, though, it proudly houses coloring books, finger paints, and Play-Doh for grandchildren.
That dresser was made for kids.
And this old kid still loves it.
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What furniture in your home tells your family’s story?
O my God, You designed me with neatnik DNA. You know I dared my sister to cross a line I’d drawn in our bedroom, lest she deface my perfect side with her clutter. I’m not sure what genetic catastrophe occurred in my makeup since then. OMG, do you think I should apologize?
O my God, thank You for the promise of eternal life. For a future perfect home — including the perfect linen closet — that You’re designing for me. OMG, I’ll even be able to find the pillowcases?!
When we moved into our first house with a fireplace, a primeval pyro urge pumped through our veins. A friend gave us firewood, appropriately enough, as a housewarming gift. We could hardly wait to rest chilly bones by a roaring fire, snuggling close with our children and toasting marshmallows.
The kids would say, “Tell us stories from long ago, Mom and Dad. Teach us your words of wisdom.” When we needed wood, they would fight for the privilege to trudge into the cold and haul it in.
We built a real fire. Once.
My pyromaniac father considers this immoral. He turns on gas heaters only in an emergency (if the U.S. is attacked by ice aliens). We wear shorts during visits, even in January, because Dad builds fires that make us sweat like August athletes.
He designs woodpiles as objets d’art. The wood must be perfect in composition, age and texture. With the precise calculations of an engineer, he stacks it in symmetrical rows, and woe to the bumbling, fumbling fool who upsets his perfect balance.
Dad mostly grants sons and grandsons the privilege of helping. Occasionally he extends this glorious favor to granddaughters. But I, his 60-something daughter, endure the ignominy of being left out with a martyr’s smile. Somebody has to sleep in front of football games.
Occasionally, we adult children consider buying him firewood because we fear for his safety and well-being. But we don’t, because we fear for ours. The wood never meets his standards, and Dad, seasoned by years of chopping, can also throw it.
My wussy fireplace
My siblings and I confess, to our shame, that we have not inherited his noble fire-building genes. We own wussy gas fireplaces with ceramic logs and fake coal beds that don’t emit the magic fragrance of wood smoke. We, the children of hardy pioneer stock, use decorative fire pokers and shovels to hit the ON button. From the sofa. Before we fall asleep in front of football.
Occasionally, Dad has visited, condescending to sit by our fireplace and marvel at its convenience. Just the same, we hide any old Boy Scout hatchets hanging in the garage and count our trees every morning.
We stand in awe of our father — but we keep his fire-building activities a deep, dark family secret. After all, we don’t want him to get in trouble with the government. Despite extensive research, they still don’t know Dad is the primary cause of global warming.
And if they try to take away his ax or woodpiles, we know Dad will get a little fired up.
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Do you use your fireplace? Is it the real thing? Or fake?
Once upon a time, in our backyard, there lived Penelope the peach tree.
Actually, two lived there. But even as we moved in, Percy the peach tree took one look at us, his new owners, and said, “There goes the neighborhood!” He never recovered.
Penelope delayed her judgment. Still, she expressed her disapproval: not one peach appeared that first summer. Next spring, though, pale pink blossoms crowded Penelope’s branches, exquisite as an oriental painting. I told Hubby, “That tree loves us.”
Visions of bubbling, crusty pie à la mode and caramel peach praline shortcake filled my salivating days.
However, when Hubby thinned tiny, excess peaches from Penelope’s branches, she took revenge by producing three edible fruits — and a thousand that resembled green ball bearings rolled in pepper.
The mutant peaches did not go to waste, however. I made jam as Christmas gifts for my less-than-favorite relatives.
Penelope the peach tree can be temperamental.
The following year, we respectfully requested Penelope produce real, peach-colored peaches, bigger than a marble. And no black rash, please.
Some trees, like some people, can’t take constructive criticism. The following spring, she wore only a few sulky blossoms and no fruit. Our fractured relationship distressed me. My relatives started speaking to me again, once they knew they wouldn’t receive pepper peach jam at Christmas.
It was a very sad year.
Next spring, however, blossoms crowded Penelope’s branches. Perhaps she’d repented of her pettiness. More likely, she simply forgot. Peach trees aren’t known for sharp memories.
When hubby thinned Penelope’s too-plentiful peaches again, I exercised caution when walking behind the garage, her domain. Would Penelope throw her remaining peaches at us?
Surprise! Penelope’s green peaches grew from marble to golf ball to baseball size. So many loaded one branch that it cracked. She obligingly provided just enough greenish, pepper-dotted fruit to make Christmas jam for my relatives.
But Penelope’s peaches ripened in her time frame — not when I was free to pick, peel and slice. Because of writing deadlines, I remained chained to my laptop.
Hubby made new weekend plans.
As my dearly beloved donned an apron, we heard devious chuckles from behind the garage. Penelope exacts revenge on peach-pruners, one way or another.
Hubby griped. But I had infected him with my pie and praline shortcake vision. He peeled and packaged.
Is he a peach of a guy, or what?
To Penelope, this ending to her saga may seem like the pits.
But smiling at each other over hot peach pie and ice cream, we’ll take Penelope’s “happily ever after” every time!
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What’s your favorite peach indulgence?
O my God, thank You for our escape to a national forest for two carefree weeks of camping. But OMG, look what followed us home!