International Children's Book Day

The radio announcer commented this morning on my drive to work that April 2 is “International Children’s Book Day.” Even though I have never heard of this holiday, I am willing to take off work to celebrate it! (But my boss probably would not be as eager to commemorate this special day, so I will forge ahead with my day on the job and just celebrate on the inside.)

Such a day does bring a nostalgia for some of the books I loved as a child. I am not certain I can name a favorite, but here are the ones that come to mind ~

Earliest memories are of the Little Golden Books (yes, they had those in my day!). Cinderella was a favorite; what little girl doesn’t dream of getting to dance with a Prince who comes back to claim her from her life of misery? When my daughter went for summer visits with my parents, she would do household chores to help out. She and her Maw-Maw had a joke about the times she swept the porch and thought she was Cinderella.

Little Red Riding Hood was another Golden Book favorite of mine . . . although I could never fathom how Red could have possibly not seen that the wolf in her grandmother’s bed did not resemble her Granny in the slightest. Even to a child, that was obvious. I always assured myself that if that happened to me, I would know the difference!

I also had Goldilocks and the Three Bears and the Poky Little Puppy. But one of my favorites was The Three Little Kittens. My parents and sister read me the books until I learned to read on my own, and the images in those books are seared into my memory.

As a child, I inherited beautifully illustrated copies of Little Brown Koko and Little Black Sambo. I never knew they were not politically correct. I just knew that I loved the sweet innocent face of Koko, and could always identify with his exploits of mischief. Reading the book now, I can understand that the stereotypes of Black people in the book would be offensive, but at the time, I just loved it as a sweet, endearing story with memorable characters.

I don’t remember as much about the Sambo book except when the tigers chased each other around the tree until they melted into a river of butter. As with many of the books for children, this one had some good character-building lessons.

We didn’t own a lot of books, so I read over and over the ones we did have. As I grew older, I read Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women many times. My sister owned several Nancy Drew books, and I read those multiple times as well.

My aunt Velma was once a school teacher in a one-room school in the Texas Panhandle as well as eastern New Mexico. She had accumulated some children’s books that she gave us, so I read The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew along with some other classic children’s novels . . . again, reading them over and over because of my voracious appetite for words!

When I grew into a teenager, my aunt Millie from down the street invited me to come to her house anytime to “borrow” books from her shelf. So I read stories of Eddie Rickenbacker, World War I flying ace, and other books about historical events. Until this time, I had to re-read our books at home or check them out from the school library. But in my teenage years we got a community public library, and I became a frequent visitor.

When my own children were born, books were some of their first possessions. We read to them and bought them not only the Golden Books but Dr. Seuss and Richard Scarry tales. They, too, grew up loving books. They were good students, which I attribute largely to becoming good readers at an early age.

Even today, I love reading even more than I love writing. I could probably count on one hand the number of days in the past year when I have not read at least a few pages from whatever book (or e-book) is close by. Reading books, for me, is like breathing. It is just something I do without planning to, and I feel deprived if I haven’t read something for pleasure that day. It is how I relax; it is my method of self-soothing.

Thus I celebrate today for two reasons: (1) today commemorates my Dad’s 103^rd birthday and (2) today is Children’s Book Day, which reminds me of where so many of us had our beginnings. We are who we are today, partly because we learned to love reading at an early age. Parents and grandparents, go read a book to a child! You will be making an investment in something that has no price tag.

Rotten Remnants

Yesterday brought about an opportunity to do something I would really rather not keep doing! But before I tell that story, I need to give some background information.

Last summer, on one of the hottest days of the season, I went with my sister after hours to the church office where she works. When we unlocked the door, we immediately caught a whiff of something unpleasant. We looked around the office and could not find anything in the trash that would give off such an offensive smell. So I went roaming through other parts of the building, and when I started downstairs to the children’s wing, I knew I was getting warmer. I opened the refrigerator in the small kitchen downstairs and stared at one lone object in the freezer: a long, rolled package of hamburger meat. The refrigerator had obviously quit working, and the meat had apparently been there for days, undetected. The plastic wrap was puffed up with an obvious bubble of putrid gas sealed inside, and looked ready to burst. The smell was one of the worst things I have ever encountered.

Like one facing a time bomb, I slowly backed away from the scene and backtracked to inform my sister that I had found the culprit. We brainstormed what to do, and having drawn the short straw, I eventually crept back down the stairs with an open trash bag in hand. Fearing that the bloated package would explode with little encouragement, I sneaked up on it, threw the bag over the meat and scooped it inside, quickly twisted the open end closed, and with my gag reflex working overtime, I hurried outside to the trash container and literally threw it inside. I was almost expecting to hear a huge explosion when it landed, as it felt very much as if I were disarming a bomb. The “de-scentsitizing” of that area of the church took a few days; and the memory of that horrible smell had finally been filed in the basement of my mind.

Until yesterday.

Again, my sister (cohort in crime) accompanied me to a neighbor’s house because we had volunteered to check on things in her absence. We had suspected on the previous trip to the house that something in her refrigerator had spoiled, so we came equipped with baking soda and a plan to clean out the offending object and do our good deed for the day. In and out in twenty minutes, tops. A rotten smell swept over us when we unlocked the back door. We opened the refrigerator and started pulling out things that appeared to be spoiled and throwing them into the trash bag. Soon, I realized that the things I pulled out were not really cold to the touch, and we suddenly grasped the awful truth that the fridge had bitten the dust! Opening the freezer confirmed it as a rush of putrid smells poured into our nostrils.

After gagging a few times, we put together a plan of action and began to haul all the ruined food out to the dumpster, washing out the slimy shelves and putting the empty food containers in the dishwasher. Six trash bags later, we unplugged the offending appliance and left a couple of bowls of baking soda inside to do battle with the smells. As we dragged ourselves home, we couldn’t help but think, “Why us? How did we get lucky enough to discover something this rotten twice in six months?”

We did manage to chuckle about it finally, but it took awhile for all the bad smells to leave our memories.

This morning, I was reading from a book that was a Christmas gift (Extravagant Grace—God’s Glory Displayed in our Weakness by Barbara Duguid) when I had an “aha” moment. The book speaks to John Newton’s writings about grace, and in this specific chapter, Barbara Duguid writes about how we often struggle with our own weaknesses, and may feel abandoned by God when we find we are not victorious over a continual, besetting sin. She proclaims that we ARE victors when we recognize our weaknesses, and admit that we are not able in our own power to defeat them. Please indulge me as I quote a few lines from the book:

“I am speaking here to . . . people who struggle repeatedly with sins that they think are beyond God’s reach . . . Although God did not create your struggle or tempt you to it, he has called you to walk with it. He has assigned it to you, and he loves you as he calls you to walk through it. He is not disgusted by you. There is no sin under the face of the sun that can surprise him or repel him from you. You are not the worst of the worst or more depraved than those who struggle with more socially acceptable sins such as gluttony, pride, or overachievement . . . The roots of sin in the heart are all the same, even if the outward workings of those sins vary immensely.” ¹

Your mind may not be making the leap with me, but what occurred to me as I read that passage this morning was that my heart is much like the rotten smell coming from that broken refrigerator yesterday. From the outside of the house, everything looked fine. The house was neat and trim, and when we stepped inside, everything was clean and in its proper place. Even the refrigerator looked perfectly functional and attractive from the outside. When we opened it and looked inside, however, the reality was obvious: something ugly and dirty, something smelly and foul, was hidden inside.

The same was true of the church building. We walked inside and the floors were clean, the carpet vacuumed, all appeared to be in good order. But going into that basement and opening the door to a refrigerator that was seemingly in good working order, the truth rushed at us that inside, something rotten was hiding.

Those of you who know me may think that to compare my heart to a pile of spoiled food is a ludicrous analogy. I appear to be a decent, good person, and you might argue that I am blowing things out of proportion. But I think if all of us truly examine our hearts, we know that there are things inside that are not pretty. Just one of many ugly things in my heart is pride. Sometimes I hide behind a know-it-all attitude because I am really insecure and recognize that I don’t know it all. But in some areas, I really am prideful about things I know or areas where I excel. And because there is a part of me that doesn’t like to be incompetent in ANY area, I tend to plump up those places where I shine to try to make myself look really capable and smart. Not only does it create a prideful spirit in me when I do that, but it hurts other people because I cause them to feel not so smart, or I alienate them because they recognize my boastfulness for what it is.

There is something rotten hiding inside all of us. The reason for writing this is neither to make us victims or martyrs nor to glorify our sins. Neither is my intention to have us feel defeated because we haven’t “arrived” yet in our struggles against the weak areas we all have. My purpose for such introspection is to point to the Scriptures for more understanding of how to deal with those imperfect areas of our lives.

In 2 Corinthians 12:9, the Apostle Paul writes, "But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.'  Just as Bill Wilson encouraged those Twelve Steppers long ago, there is victory for me in admitting where I am powerless. If I can admit to myself the areas where I am weak, the instances where I know I can’t do what God has asked me to do, and if I can honestly admit to others that I am a flawed human being, God can use my broken heart. He can do for me what I cannot do for myself. The walls of pride and self-sufficiency come down. The arrogance that causes me to act as if I know more than you do becomes a humility that does not wound you, but instead invites you into an honest, supportive dialogue rather than one in which we have to “one-up” each other in order to feel better about ourselves. We no longer have to hide in shame over the unlovely things we harbor in our hearts.

Jesus Christ addressed people like me who were smug in thinking they were “good people”: “What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are filthy—full of greed and self-indulgence! You blind Pharisee! First wash the inside of the cup and the dish, and then the outside will become clean, too.”  (Matthew 23:25)

Perhaps God had a purpose in allowing me those two nasty cleanup experiences. Lord, please don’t make me deal with another of those stinky messes again! As Br’er Rabbit said to Br’er Fox, “Please don’t throw me in that briar patch!”

But if a nasty cleanup job is my briar patch—if that’s what it takes for me to see the ugliness inside my heart that needs the ultimate cleansing—then I will do it. (I won’t like it, but I’ll do it.)

I think I get it, Lord. I am convicted of this prideful attitude, and I know that the only way I can be cleaned up is through your grace. But could you maybe teach me next time through some other method than a stinky refrigerator?

¹ Extravagant Grace, by Barbara Duguid, P&R Publishing, 2013, p. 152

A Handmade Christmas

Grandmother Martin

Although my Grandmother lived in the same town with me when I was growing up, we did not typically exchange Christmas presents. Part of the reason was likely because she had eight grown children, each with a number of children of their own and even with grandchildren by this time, so there were ‘way too many people to shop for. Grandmother was on a limited income, plus she did not drive and it was not easy for her to shop except by mail order. Christmas gifts for everyone would have been nearly impossible for her to manage; and because we had never done it, I never thought twice about it.

But then one Christmas when I was about eight years old, we were invited to Grandmother’s house one evening before Christmas. I can’t remember if we ate dinner with her or just congregated there after our supper at home. I also can’t remember who else was there, but it seemed like at least one of my uncles and his family came too. 

Since we regularly gathered at Grandmother's house to enjoy family times with my uncles and aunts, the invitation had not seemed out of the ordinary. After we arrived, however, it became apparent that Grandmother had a wrapped package for each one of us, and went around the room presenting gifts to us one at a time. I remember being surprised at the nature of our visit, but a wave of pleasure swept over me when I opened my package. I glanced around to see what others were unwrapping, and it became immediately obvious that Grandmother had made something personally, with her own hands, for each of us.

To this day, I don’t remember what anyone else received; I only remember the gifts my sister and I opened. Our gifts were matching crocheted owls. She had stitched an owl-shaped pin cushion out of fabric, then covered it with a crocheted overlay in a contrasting color that added texture. A piece of crochet provided a hanger at the top. Mine was a small one, and my sister received a larger version of the same owl. It likely occurred to my child-like mind at the time, “What am I supposed to do with this?” But it didn’t really matter because I simultaneously felt a profound sense of gratitude, realizing that she had taken time to make something “just for me”, a labor of time and effort. And I think even to my childish mind, I was aware that it would have taken a great deal of time to stitch something for each of us in that room. 

Grandmother, who was somewhere around eighty-five years old that year, beamed with joy and her eyes twinkled as we each opened our gifts, giving full credence to the biblical principle that “it is more blessed to give than to receive.” It gave her immense joy to present us with the objects of her labor.

My sister and I fastened our owls on the wall of our shared closet, and for years they hung there to hold safety pins, straight pins, hatpins, clothespins. Somewhere in a storage box in my home is the handmade owl from long ago. 

During the season when we all strive to search out what our loved ones want for Christmas, we often get overtaken with the monetary value of gifts, and focus too intently on snagging the most sought-after purchases of the season. Whatever is faddish any given year—iPads, UGG boots, crocheted hats—we feel a compulsion to find the perfect gift.

Maybe it’s time to rethink our gifting instincts. What can we give of ourselves to someone we love? If you are handy in the kitchen, consider baking a favorite dish for someone you love. If you can repair cars, find out if a family member needs an oil change or spark plugs you could help with. Give an iTunes gift card and help a loved one download some useful apps if you are a computer guru. If you are a handyman, see if someone you love needs to have new washers put in their faucets or a toilet handle replaced. Those ideas don’t necessarily signal “love” to someone whose love language isn’t acts of service! But to those of us who consider such an offer to be a worthwhile gift, it might mean the world to us. For those who don’t consider it a gift unless it’s something they can open and use, assess whether you own something they want! If you own a lovely necklace that your niece has admired, consider making a sacrifice and presenting it to her. If your daughter-in-law admires your Kitchen-Aid mixer and you know SHE would use it much more than you would, let it go. Those are sacrifices that mean something—to both the giver and receiver.

On the occasions when I have crafted something with my own hands that I think would be meaningful to a loved one, I have received a very specific joy in the giving. Our family has a long-standing tradition of creating handmade gifts, as you can see in the photos below. There is nothing wrong with purchasing a gift to show your love to someone; I do this quite often. But a homemade gift is in an entirely different category.

Jesus modeled a very personal giving for us when He gave His very life for us. His Father demonstrated the concept even more powerfully in sacrificing the life of His Son for us. While we are not required to give up anything quite so immense, it does help us understand what the word “gift” implies: letting go of something significant, whether an object or an act, in order to benefit someone else—freely given with no expectations attached.

What can you do this holiday season to make your Christmas gift-giving more meaningful?

My father made this rocking horse for Eric's first Christmas.

When Nicole was three, I made a Paddington Bear for her and one for Eric at Christmas.

Remembering Camelot ~ A Short Story

THEN:

November 22, 1963:

The school day began with excitement. The cheerleaders were stopping everybody in the halls, trying to sell them spirit ribbons for the big game tonight. There were banners up all down the halls, saying "Beat the Crossroads Cougars!" The football players had decorations on their lockers. It was a big celebration all day as we got revved up about our championship game tonight. We were all proud and a little cocky, believing that we were only hours away from a state football championship win. Any high school in Texas would have reacted the same way.

Right after lunch, I gathered my books from my locker and headed to biology lab. We were dissecting a frog, and my partner and I had ours pinned to the board. Christie had made the first incision and I was peeling back the skin with my tweezers, trying not to gag at the scent of formaldehyde. The lab door opened and Mrs. Curry from the history class across the hall stepped in and motioned to Mr. Skelton to join her. There was something about her face that made me watch her rather than return my attention to our splayed frog.

I watched the two teachers in a whispered conversation, then saw Mr. Skelton’s face turn pale. As Mrs. Curry slipped out the door, he turned to the class, looking sick to his stomach. In a hoarse voice he said, "Class, I have something to tell you." Everyone quieted and turned their eyes his direction. "It appears that President Kennedy has been shot," he said in a disbelieving voice. Several people gasped, and everyone looked stricken, no one uttering a word. He cleared his throat, obviously struggling for control. "We are all going to the library where there is a TV set up, and we can watch the news report."

I glanced down at the gaping frog on the table, and felt a wave of nausea. I quickly dropped the tweezers and scraped my chair back with all the others in the room. We filed in shock down the hall, meeting lines of other students, all of us walking like zombies through a silent hallway. On the TV, they kept showing shots of Parkland Hospital in Dallas as policemen and secret service agents stood near the emergency room doors, keeping crowds away from the entrance. There was sketchy information, and Walter Cronkite continued to remind us of the details of the President’s trip to Texas.  Everything had happened so quickly in the motorcade through downtown Dallas, and everyone on television was speculating about the President’s injuries. It was all so horrifying and unreal.

No one in the library was talking or cutting up. We couldn't take our eyes off the television screen. Occasionally, some of the girls would cry softly, and all of us looked like we wanted to. After a length of time that seemed to stretch forever, Mr. Cronkite announced with emotion that the president was dead. Then all of us began to cry, even some of the boys and the teachers.

We continued to sit, riveted to the unfolding news reports. Eventually the day ended; the school principal announced over the speaker system that the football game scheduled for tonight had been postponed until next week. We all whispered together as we left the building, headed for home. Mama was parked in front of the high school, waiting for me. We drove home, mostly in silence, and once inside the house, we walked into the living room without comment and turned on the TV. When it warmed up and the picture appeared, it was a repeat of all the newsreels I had seen all afternoon—the same photos, over and over, with no one seeming to be able to grasp what had happened. Mama looked up when Daddy came home from work, but made no attempt to cook dinner. Finally, as we sat in our darkened living room with faces angled toward the television, Mama got up and went to put three TV dinners in the oven. When they were ready, we all sat at our TV trays in darkness, numb, watching the unbelievable scene repeated onscreen of Vice President Johnson taking the oath of office aboard Air Force One. Mama just kept muttering, "I can't believe it" over and over. I finally got up and went to my room. I flopped on the bed and the tears finally turned loose in a flood. It is all so unbelievable. I can't think what happens next. How can anything normal happen after this????

November 30, 1963:

The whole town turned out for the final state championship game tonight. It was unthinkable to play the game last week after the President was killed. Thanksgiving this week complicated rescheduling the game. Our principal and the football coach met with UIL officials to discuss postponing the game, so it was rescheduled during Thanksgiving break.

Everyone’s emotions were raw from the events surrounding John F. Kennedy's death last week. It hardly seemed right to be playing a football game tonight in light of all that is happening in our country. We all found it difficult to feel enthusiastic about what was taking place on the field, but we did our best to cheer our boys to victory.

Instead of our band’s usual half-time marching routine, we marched solemnly onto the field to a somber drum cadence and the announcer said there would be a silent tribute to President Kennedy. Then all of us band members dropped to one knee and bowed our heads. After a few minutes of silence, the announcer led a brief prayer for our nation, for the Kennedy family, and for the Johnson family, and we solemnly and silently marched back off the field and into the stands.

The game was a close one, and both sides fought fiercely, as if battling in a war zone. Our team won with a touchdown in the last two minutes, the final score 21-18. We were proud to win, but it was a subdued victory. It almost felt like we had fought a fierce enemy, and that the victory ushered us into a strange new world.

On the two-hour bus ride back home, we were mostly silent, with only a few whispered conversations. No one had the heart for the usual songs, chants, and laughter that often accompanied our trips home. I sat by the window, feeling the cold windowpane against my cheek as I watched the dark landscape slide past. Many of the fields were bare now from the cotton harvest, with only the sight of an occasional cotton harvester’s headlights beaming out in the field. We passed isolated farms, quiet at the end of the day, perhaps with a glowing light from inside the farmhouse the only indication of the presence of life. The bus passed through small towns on our way back to our own village, and streets were deserted. Their residents were likely holed up in their homes, maybe still enjoying leftover turkey, perhaps silently trying to grasp how their world had dramatically shifted in the past eight days.

NOW

November 2013:

Looking back from the vantage point of fifty years later, my own worldview had been turned upside down in 1963. At fifteen, I was just beginning to ease my big toe into the adult world around me. I didn’t know much about politics, other than what I heard the adults around me discuss. There had been skepticism about the President when he was elected, but many felt he had handled the Bay of Pigs situation with strength and bravery. We had discussed it in my Civics class and I had certainly respected Mr. Kennedy as the leader of our country. Who could keep from getting caught up in the romance and excitement of our vibrant young president and his charming wife? They were the fairy-tale family, and most of us were enamored of the Camelot that played out before us on television and displayed on magazine covers.

Now it had all been blown apart by a senseless assassination. I had read stories about the assassination of President Lincoln, but who would have ever imagined we would know first-hand the meaning of that word in our own generation?

THE AUTHOR’S COMMENTARY:

The story you have just read is part fact, part fiction. I actually wrote it a couple of years ago to be included in a piece I was writing about the 1960s. I drew from my own memories of that very dramatic historical period, but altered the actual facts to fit the storyline. I found that all the emotions were still intact, however, because no matter one’s age, a person does not experience something this profound without being changed.

There are some occasions in life when you realize instantly that your world has just been significantly altered—that nothing will ever be the same again. The first such time in my lifespan occurred when my grandma died in 1954. The second one happened on November 22, 1963. In recent years, the most dramatic shift impacted my world on September 11, 2001.

Those moments are forever etched in our memories, for we realize at those times that the world tilts a different direction, and all we have known as stable and steady slides to one side and careens out of control until we can regain our footing once again.

John Kennedy’s death truly felt like the end of Camelot to many people. A few years following his death, I was to watch the movie Camelot and hear these words to the theme song, which may have very aptly described the idealistic world many of us lived in until the end of 1963: 

"In short, there's simply not
A more congenial spot
For happily-ever-aftering than here in Camelot."