Birthday Flowers

It's hard to explain how I viewed beauty as a child. Oddly. Differently. I suppose I stared out the window around six months old or so, just like any child does. But my memories, of course, don't start that early. My memories tend to center around endless stops at scenic overlooks, waiting while my father took snapshots of valleys or flower gardens. If you look through our old photo albums you'll find pictures of my sister and me pointing at flowers, pointing at rock formations, pointing at historical markers, pointing at faraway mountains—all staged. “Point at the tiger lilies.” “Which ones are the tiger lilies?” “The one that looks like tigers.” “Oh, okay.” Snap. Another one for the album.

Those long roadtrips up and down the eastern seaboard have become an blur of endless stretches, my sister and I snoozing and staring out the car window, followed by tedious stops to look at pretty things. You got out of the smelly car, drowsy from heat, shuffled along with my dad. You stopped and looked, you wished it to be over with, looked at more stuff, then got back in the car for another long stretch of staring and snoozing.

As I grew older my appreciation for natural beauty utterly failed to grow. I'd seen it all, staring blearily over guardrails, the backs of my knees tickled by sweat from plastic car seat covers. I found nature sometimes fascinating, but I did not find it beautiful. It was beautiful because everyone said it was.

I lived on the campus of a home for kids with different kinds of problems. My dad was the chaplain there, and we lived near where the teachers were housed, about a half mile from the school house. So it was not uncommon for me to find myself walking to school with a teacher. I remember one evening—I would have been about fourteen-- my sister and I were walking to supper. The cafeteria was also at the school end of campus, and we were walking with my English teacher, whom I admired. There was an unusual cloud formation overhead and my sister and the teacher were commenting on it. Half the sky was covered by clouds. The other half was clear and blue, with a distinct line marking the boundary between the two halves of the sky. I remember thinking, “It's the edge of a cloud front!” and feeling a delicious thrill at the thought of seeing the edge of a cloud front. The teacher said what she thought the clouds looked like. My sister said what she thought the clouds looked like. I said, “It looks like the edge of a cloud front.”

The teacher said, with a chuckle, “Oh, Connie, shut up!” The kind of laugh you would share with a smart alecky peer, but I wasn't a peer and I wasn't being smart alecky (not this time, anyway). Her comment stung, but I laughed to cover. My sister said later, “Your mouth laughed but your eyes definitely didn't laugh.”

I saw some beauty, but not in the traditional places you look for it. My mother would set me to washing the dishes and there I'd be, an hour later, holding a handful of foam up to a window, watching soap bubbles slide down my hand. I don't know if you know this, but if the sun shines through a soap bubble it creates a prism. And a handful of bubbles was like a fairyland of globes, each one shining with its own little rainbow. I admit it. I was an odd child.

Later on, when I started dating, the flowers started rolling in. I didn't get it, but I pretended I did. I mimicked the way other girls exclaimed over flowers. I learned you could put a corsage in the refrigerator and make it last a week, so I dutifully put corsages in the fridge and threw them away when they turned brown. Woo hoo.

* * *

Ironically I went to Toccoa Falls College, one of the most beautiful college campuses anywhere. I was told I ought to go enjoy the falls all I could, so I took my homework up there a time or two. My homework got damp. After that I studied in my room or the library.

I enjoyed hiking with friends. There were cookouts above the falls and campfires with guitars, so I certainly recognized that nature had its benefits. And while I did not always appreciate nature's beauty, I was utterly fascinated with its wildness.

Near the end of my college career I moved off campus, away from the college scene. I slowed down on classes so I could work more hours. At the slowed-down pace my friends began to graduate and move away. I developed new friends; friends with lives apart from school and its social life.

Then came the Birthday; the birthday nobody remembered. I went through classes as usual that day, then stopped by the snack bar to visit with a friend—my best friend at the time. We talked for a while, and I don't know how it came out, but I remember she suddenly exclaimed, “It's your birthday, isn't it? Oh, Connie, I forgot completely!” I graciously accepted the apology, but then the day continued just like any other. Not that I expected anything. Well......

--most of that day went unmarked.

I got back to the house where I was living alone at the time and settled into some serious self-pity. “Well, buck up, kiddo,” I said to myself. “There are just going to be times in your life when you're going to be alone.”

Then this scripture popped into my head. Funny how that happens. The verse was, “I will never leave you or forsake you.”

“I know, Lord,” I said, sniffling. “And it's not that I don't appreciate your being here all the time, forever. It's just that—well, sometimes you just need that human touch—just to be told you're special.” I summed it up-- “You can't send me flowers.”

Petulant youth. He knew as well as I did how much (or how little) I appreciated flowers.

I was hungry, so I pulled myself together and fixed a little something for supper. I pouted over the dishes. I looked out the window into the back yard and saw a miracle.

A bed of daffodils had apparently been planted by someone along the middle of the yard, and the gardener had mowed around them, and they were budding now. Today—the unmarked day—the daffodils had all gone from bud to bloom. Not staggered out over a week, but all in one day. I quickly dried my hands and rushed out to handpick my own bouquet. I hadn't known there were so many varieties of daffodils! All in bloom right on my birthday! And you know what? They were beautiful. Each one a little marvel, and proof that God loved me and marked my birthday.

I set my bouquet from God on a counter in the kitchen. That evening every time I walked by them, the fresh aroma was a sweet reminder of the miracle, like a little smile between God and me. I've never again had a birthday that no one remembered. But no birthday stands out as being more precious.

I love flowers these days! I can't get enough of them. I look for them everywhere I go. And I'll travel a long way to look at scenery, and I love to take pictures (although I don't make my kids point at things). It's all a marvel, and I view beauty in nature as a gift from God.

So last night my family visited a retired co-worker of Roger's. She gardens avidly now, and loves to share her hobby with company. She showed me around her garden, and I wished I had brought a camera. Later we sat and talked outdoors for a while, then she made us go stand around these little plants—evening primrose, she said they were, and they bloomed at dusk. There was one pretty little yellow blossom, which I admired, but she said, just wait. We stood there and talked for a while, then—I kid you not--a bud bloomed right there as I watched. Then another. Each bud, in turn, bloomed. It's one of the most moving experiences I've had.

On the drive home it occurred to me that this experience was a gift. I mean, an actual, planned, thought-out gift. Yesterday I found myself thinking of that long-ago birthday bouquet, then the primrose show followed that very evening. I said to God, “YOU planned that, didn't You?” Does God smile at us? If He does, He did right then.

L'Chaim

This past week I found myself in the most rare of privileged positions. My sister was in the house. My family had to behave to a relative degree. They had company. My sister had to behave—she was a guest. I, on the other hand—it was my sister, against whom I had faced off in the most competitive of burping contests. My sister will never be quite company to me, and therefore I could pretty much behave as I pleased.

She's all filled up with life. When we were teens she was the boy-magnet, all blond and blue-eyed, spending her babysitting money on pretty things, make-up to enhance her natural good looks and Tiger Beat magazines. I was the auburn, freckled Celt, no big fan of babysitting or little kids in general. My money was made walking dogs and spent on model cars and airplanes.

She once made a rather prophetic comment. She said, “I won't have kids. I'll be the eccentric aunt who comes bubbling in to spice up YOUR kids' life, and then swoops off to live her own life some more.” At the time it seemed far-fetched and I laughed. Today, she is indeed that aunt—sweeping in on a cloud of charismatic personality, showing my girls a good time and leaving behind a trail of fun memories.

She came alone this time, flying to a nearby city and coming in on the train. I picked her up at the depot and drove her home. The train schedules aren't good here in the Midwest, so to get to my town's station would have involved a long day on the train with a rather long layover in Chicago. I opted to pick her up halfway between St. Louis and Chicago and drive her the two hours to my house, a drive that gave us sisters a rare opportunity to chat. She had brought a treasure with her, and she drove so I could pull it out of her laptop case. It was pages and pages of stories.

My aunt, my mother's oldest sister, lost her husband a couple of years ago and is living with her daughter, my cousin. Luckiest of old ladies, her stories are being written down and preserved by her daughter; family lore, stories of my sweet grandaddy and feisty, scary grandmother. And those stories now sat in my lap, over 100 pages photocopied, for me to keep.

I couldn't help but glance at the treasures in my lap as we chatted on the way home. There was so much there to remember, and even more to read and absorb for the very first time.

* * *

Some of this stuff I had already heard from other relatives. My cousin Sammy, for instance. Sammy and I have struck up a friendship over the years based on a mutual interest in family history. When Sammy was a kid he and his brother were sent to live with our grandparents, about the time my mother was in her teens. They were there because his family was struggling, pretty hard. Sammy's mom, my aunt, had gone away to “rest.” She had been run ragged, you see, worrying over her husband's gambling addiction. Life was rough on that family, and the kids were at the grandparents' so she could do her thing; and then they sorted things out and came together as a family again.

Things didn't really pull together for Sammy's dad, though, not until he was saved and swept into what was then the new Charismatic movement. He was never the same after that. Never went back to the old stuff. Much later, after the kids were grown, Sammy's mom and dad did a lot of things with my family for a while.

I will always remember the excitement we felt, my sister and I, when Aunt Sally and Uncle Sam pulled into our driveway. Aunt Sally was a true Southern eccentric lady with her big floppy hats, classy southern drawl and peculiar ways. Uncle Sam stood in stark contrast. A Brooklyn-raised Italian, thick with an accent that made him sound somehow important to our southern ears. He was a believer, of course, by then, full of stories of his ministry to drug addicts, his work with troubled youth, and his relationship with God. He would tell a story in the way that leaves you clinging, white-knuckled, to the edge of your seat.

We went to Opryland in Nashville one year, my family and Aunt Sally and Uncle Sam. Back then there was this roller coaster there called the “Wabash Cannonball.” I'd never been on an upside-down roller coaster before, and I gulped nervously, staring up wide-eyed as this one loomed over us. I loved a good roller coaster, though, and it didn't take any convincing to get me in line with my sister and Uncle Sam. My parents hung back with Aunt Sally, happy to wait until we got through the half-hour line for two minutes of insanity.

We finally did get through the line and rode the coaster. I remember screaming and raising my hands and my long hair dangling over the ground as we were thrown upside down in the corkscrew turn. Uncle Sam went white under his dark brown skin and he lost all the change from his pockets. Too soon it was over and we rounded the last turn and pulled into the station. My sister and I were laughing weakly as we were walking away when Uncle Sam cried, “Let's do it AGAIN!” and we got in line and waited a half hour to do it again. Uncle Sam was an adult who knew how to play, and this was an amazing thing for us to see, like a gift. And we loved him for it.

He was so full of life that it came as an extra hard shock weeks later when Aunt Sally called and said he had died of a massive heart attack. My dad took the call, told us the news and then retreated into himself. We all retreated, walking around the house as though lost, like strangers, not making eye contact. I didn't know why I couldn't talk about it. I guess I was embarrassed to see my pain mirrored in my family's faces; and there was my fragile mother to protect and shield, and you couldn't shield her from this one. So she kept to herself so I wouldn't feel bad, and I kept to myself so she wouldn't feel bad, and we all kept to ourselves and felt bad anyway.

* * *

So this time it was my sister pulling up to a house, and this time it was MY house, and she was swept in to smothery hugs from two excited little girls, another set of sisters, MY daughters.

But on that two-hour drive she had dropped a seed that found a nagging spot in my thoughts. She says that these days she takes anti-depressants to cope. And she says that often they don't seem to be enough and she entertains thoughts of ending her life. We talked of depression and what it's like to be middle-aged women, of medical things and such.

The week moved on as if nothing had been said. As usual I entertained hopes that this was the visit where the tide turns and she comes to know God as her friend. But again this wasn't to be the time. She remains ensconced in the belief that what she would give up is greater than what she would gain. She spent her days entertaining my family while we entertained her, and then the two of us talked late into the nights. We talked of family and laughed uproariously over the dysfunctions of our childhood years. It was all good and fun.

My family of origin is, of course, very different from my husband's family. His is much more healthy in many ways. He and his parents tend to travel through life, though, not stopping along the way, a constant making of plans and carrying them out and moving on quickly to the next set of plans. Even an evening slide show at Roger's parents' house is an event to be planned, carried through and then you move on, planning the events of the next day. I, on the other hand, like the stops. I view life as a series of snapshots, where you collect remembrances from each stop on the timeline.

We built lovely snapshots, remembrances, this week. Thursday Roger went off to spend the day in the Quad Cities working, so it was just us girls. The four of us went to the library, then we marched, armed with books, across the street to spend time at a local coffee shop. My daughters dove into their books, while my sister and I pulled out laptops and spent some time surfing the net. It's a wonderful little coffee shop owned by Christians. The internet is free, kids are welcome (there's even a little play area), the coffee is good and the chocolate-laced desserts are delicious.

We spent much of the afternoon there, then my sister walked up the street to scout out a new Italian bistro in town. She made them photocopy their menu for her and brought it back for me. The menu looked good, so we packed up our things and relocated.

There was an indoor balcony, which of course piqued the kids' interest. We were told it was kind of warm up there but we climbed up to check it out anyway. It was comfortable, with fans gently blowing the air in cross breezes. We stayed. The small balcony was empty except for us, with a quaint view of the town square through filtered blinds on one side and the bustling downstairs on the other. There was a sofa and overstuffed chairs to which we could retire after our meal if we wanted.

The evening was like a gift. The two sisters and the two sisters, out together, we raised our glasses in a toast—a lemonade, an apple juice, a raspberry tea and a glass of fine wine. With the view of the town on the one side and the lively little restaurant on the other, the toast that came to mind was, “L’Chaim.” To life. And my sister's laugh rang out, that appreciative laugh you give when “L’Chaim” is invoked in a toast. But there was something more I wanted to say with the toast, so I cast about for the right words. “To quote the one good line from that unremarkable Lionel Richie song,

'Life is good, wild and sweet.'”

And we connected. I could tell because her brows raised and she nodded appreciatively as our glasses clinked and we toasted the evening, with the balcony to ourselves, the view, the cross breezes and the “sisters squared” and all of life.

Friday my sister and I wandered the house, restless, the last day of a lovely visit. We quarreled over nothing and made up with tears and sweetness. On the way back to the train depot, just the two of us again, I asked her to call the next time she entertained thoughts of suicide. I laughingly threatened to put one of the kids on the phone when she did. It was an ignorant thing to say and of course I would never do that, but I do want her to call; and I wanted to drop my own seed, a remembrance of the ones who would be hurt the most.

Sometimes when you entertain such self-driven thoughts you forget those who would be hurt the most by the action. Feelings overwhelm and loom larger than life, urging you to snuff it out. But the world left behind by someone who voluntarily checks out leaves the biggest of holes, and as hard as it is to imagine going on with life, it's harder to imagine the hole that the memory of your stolen life would leave.

Saturday I found myself avoiding God, wandering the house, restless for I don't know what. My sister's absence from the table was keenly felt. I wonder if my feeling of loss found a mirror in God's sense of loss. She's also absent from HIS family table. Life is so fragile. Time is so fleeting. I'm never quite comfortable with the fact that she's not safely enfolded in God's family yet. Maybe say a prayer for my sister today.

Time is now fleeting; the moments are passing,

Passing from you and from me.

Shadows are gathering; death's night is coming,

Coming for you and for me.

Come home; come.

You who are weary, come home.

Earnestly, tenderly Jesus is calling,

Calling, “O sinner, come home!”

* * *

Saturday night as I was getting the kids ready for bed, I asked my youngest to say her prayers. She opened her mouth and burst into tears. I wrapped my arms around her and she molded herself against me. We ached together for a bit. She has a hard time saying goodbye, you see, and hasn't learned any skills for hiding her emotions. I keep hoping she'll never have to learn them, but she probably will anyway.

We stayed together for a while like that, then I tucked her in and went in to say good night to her older sister. I laid down by this one's side and we talked about things, facing them without fear, staring at the ceiling while we talked. Life is a wonder, but it's also a shadowy, rocky road. It's much better if you face it together.