Our granddaughter Norah and the actor portraying JESUS.
A few months ago on April 20, 2019 We are blessed to have 12 grandchildren. Five of them live in Syracuse Indiana. For the last couple of years these 5 kids have been a part the CHRISTS PASSION, play that is a dramatic presentation depicting the Passion of Jesus. It is an hour-and-forty-five-minute reenactment of the last week of the life of Jesus Christ. His trial, suffering and death.
We have heard them talking about all the rehearsals, combing thru Goodwill stores in search of pieces to make their costumes, and the late nights when they practice and perform the show. I’ve always wanted to go see them, just never have been able to make it happen. In April, this year I decided I was going to make it a priority to see their play. I brought two of our five granddaughters Allyson and Emmalynn, and we invited my dear friend Cheryl to come with us as well. Once we arrived at the large church, we stood in line to buy tickets, it was then I realized this was a certified real production company that travels all over putting on this play. They don’t just come in and perform the show, and take off.
They invite people from the surrounding areas to participate in the play. The are many openings of the play that a person can audition for, a seller of wool, a seller of grapes, a Shepherd, a seller of chickens, or sheep, someone who gathers wheat, and grinds it into bread, there are many townspeople needed. Its really an awesome procedure. From the moment we walked through the doors to the gymnasium, it’s almost completely dark and the smell of incense is heavy as you walk down a darkened funnel like isle to your seat. Tents line each side of the walls, and are set tightly side by side. People are walking about in authentically handmade clothes from that era. Some people are sitting in their tents, busy with food preparations, woman are tending children, making baskets, weaving rug, or spinning yarn. Others are weaving throughout the crowd shouting eggs for sale, buy my eggs, bread for sale, finest grapes for sale….they come up and ask you to purchase their product and explain to you why you should buy from them and not the other sell who may be circling up behind them.
There is a blind woman sitting alongside the streets of Jerusalem yelling at no one out loud. As if she is crazy. There are people selling fine jewelry, and livestock, hay, or grain. They are approximately 20 followers, supporters of Jesus and another 20 followers who are NOT supporters of Jesus. This whole production leaves you feeling as if you are really there, in person, just walking the streets of Jerusalem like everyone else. It gives you such a REAL FEEL for what it must have been like to be in that time and place. BIG, LOUD, BRUTAL looking men all dressed as Roman Soldiers are weaving in and out of the crowds of people. Suddenly they will shove someone and in a deep baritone voice yell, ” WHERE ARE YOU GOING, WHAT IS YOUR BUSINESS HERE”..”GO HOME, GET OUT OF THE WAY”.
Sometimes they will slip behind your seat and suddenly yell STAND UP, WHERE IS YOUR PASSPORT, and if you do not answer in the way they want you to they call the guards and you are taken away. Obviously, the only audience members that literally are hauled away by the Roman soldiers are people they have agreed to this participate in the play this way ahead of time. Still, it is riveting to witness.
(On a side note, they did stop and do this our granddaughter Emmalynn, who did not think it amusing and she cried right away. What was precious about the situation is here is this actor who is suppose to be the big, tough, mean Roman solider and now with everyone watching he’s trying to tell her he is sorry and its just a play).
In the past years, these 5 grandchildren have always been able to have parts in the play along side their mom. They have been townspeople, sellers, and during the time of the trial and crucifixion they were all followers of Jesus. They supported him with chants of respect and admiration as they pleaded with the Roman soldiers to leave the Son of God alone, to spare his life. They shout prayers and pleas for Jesus to be spared. They sit and cry alongside Mary when her only Son is crucified.
This year, my daughter in law, and grandchildren said they had to play the part of the NON-supporters, hecklers, non believers of Jesus. The people who shouted for him to be killed, to be beaten, hung and crucified. Several times their mom Brandy told me it was the most difficult part to play, as it was so totally opposite of how they felt, and it made her cry. Still they all played their part. I watched in amazement as our oldest grandson Benjamin 14, played the part with such authenticity. He shouted and yelled; he was pushed back into the crowd several times by the ACTING Jerusalem authorities as he tried to leap forward towards Jesus. Benjamin preaches at his church sometimes, and he’s right good at, so again playing this kind of role wasn’t his first choice but he took it and ran with it.
(After the play was over, Benjamin and one other boy could be found standing at the exit doors handing out tracks from their church, all tired and sweaty.)
From the beginning of the play, through out several scenes a very sick man is laying in the middle of the street on a tattered wool blanket. He cries out now and then for help but everyone continues walks past him or steps over him. (Within the production He is the man that Jesus tells says to him “ You are healed, get up and take your bed with you) One of many healings Jesus performs.
Before the play begins, the large auditorium is dark except for a faint light over the stage. As the narrator begins to read passages from the Bible, Jesus appears from the right side of the gym and walks slow and deliberate with purpose towards center stage. He wears a faint smile and waves slowly.
The man playing Jesus looks so incredibly real. As he is making his way onto the stage, he side steps toward the audience. I quickly sent a bullet prayer upward and ask God to have this actor portraying Jesus to shake my hand. I cannot even tell you why. I think my entire surroundings made it all seem so real I wanted to take a part of it home with me. TO FEEL DIFFERENT WHEN I LEFT, TO HOLD ONTO THE REAL FEEL OF IT ALL. LIKE I WAS A WITNESS. Jesus stopped only in two places. An elderly woman in the first row, and then he stopped in front of me, I put my right hand up to shake his and he wrapped both of his hands around mine, squeezed gently and nodded.
I KNOW, I KNOW he is just an actor pretending to be Jesus. But I confess, it sent chills up my spine and I couldn’t help but feel a tinge of what it might have been like to touch the hand of Jesus, or feel the switch of air from his garments as he passed by me in a crowd. Honestly, WE CAN ONLY IMAGINE…but it still felt special. To me. After all, this was a play, and perhaps somehow God was allowing me to really feel for a fleeting more a scared snippet of the joy.
The rest of the play was too beautiful for words. I could write about it for another three pages. I cried several times, I grew angry and I hurt when they beat OUR JESUS, and when they crucified OUR JESUS. I couldn’t stop the tears from falling.
As a young mother, in church on Easter Sundays I used to think I could “sympathize” with Mary losing her only son, and in such a terrible way. I used to hold our own son a bit tighter during that story. (Let me make it clear here, that we had four babies, and we have been so BLESSED to be able to raise three wonderful people, great people. I loved our babies; I cherished every moment with them. You would have to ask to hold them…otherwise I never let them go. They were my salvation, my hearts delight and our whole world. They still are, and have given us 12 Beautiful Grandchildren, who are also our whole world).
Still I thought that I could sympathize with Mary. Oh My. When we witnessed the whaling and sobbing of Mary kneeling at the feet of her Son Jesus, losing herself in such a loss, it was pure EMPATHY I felt. When a few woman had to help Mary up on her feet and get her out of the way of the Guard, we all ached for her. When Mary and several other women race to the tomb of Jesus to anoint his body with oil and spices and instead, they are met by an angel that tells them that Jesus have been raised from the dead, the tomb is empty. You can feel the relief and hear the joy in Mary’s crying and you can see and feel her tears of relief.
This was just a POWERFUL play. Here is a precious reason why I wanted to share this whole story. Wanted to get it down on paper so as never to forget it.
Our youngest grand daughter Norah, is two. She has been so mesmerized by this man portraying Jesus. On one of the first nights, as her Mom was trying to gather up her five children to go home, as it was getting late, Norah stops her mommy and says “Wait Mom, I have to talk to Jesus, and tell him goodbye”. She was so in LOVE with JESUS.. To have the faith and love of a child is precious. No wonder in Mark10:14 Jesus said “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.”
My words cannot do justice to how sweet Little Norah is, or how precious it was for me to witness the way she was always staring at “her Jesus”, sheepishly smiling at him. She never let him out of her sight. If he looked down at her to speak, she would just stare up and him and smile. My writing cannot capture all that this CHRIST PASSION PLAY is or explain a little girls connection to a pretend Jesus…BUT THIS PHOTO OF HER AND JESUS SPEAKS VOLUMES. As you can see, this was a group picture, but there is no mistaking the adoration she had for what she believed was “the real Jesus”. Perhaps our little Norah should bring home the Emmy, for her part was played with such honesty and truth…it moved all our hearts.
Gossip is not attractive, and neither are those who spread it.
Words are powerful; humans are the only ones that can speak. Animals cannot speak words, yet we carelessly toss words around and spray them like poison potions. Words have a double edge to them. They can create such beauty, peace, and tranquility, or they can destroy everything and people within moments.
We can use words to accuse, blame, abuse, or verbally assault others, or we can use them to lift up others, encourage them, and help them through whatever happening they are trying to walk through.
Gossip is like black magic, its emotional poison we learn from adults as we are growing up. More often than not, people suffering in their own lives, within themselves don’t want to suffer alone so they spread gossip. Some spread words for concern or pray. Others spread gossip to destroy. They embellish the stories before they repeat them, and if they can make themselves look better than who they are talking about they are more than willing to add to the sad mixture. The truth about gossip is, you need to ask yourself if you know for POSITIVE what you are repeating or creating is real, or is it something you believe because you are upset or angry from within and rather than own your mistakes, or mishaps, you choose to take the light off yourself and slash someone else.
Gossip cuts to the core and can change the lives of an individual in moments. It is harmful. It is MALICE with intent. Words have too much power over us. Gossip is a big audience grabber; it plants a negative seed, that SOMETIMES, PEOPLE can’t handle, cannot recover from, and take a permanent solution for a temporary problem. (suicide). It is not a laughing matter how many teens, women, and men have taken their own lives because the gossip or bullying about them was more than they could handle. They did know how to cope, didn’t reach out to anyone, and were powerless to survive the black storm.
SLANDER-Is when you spread something you heard or believe without proof about someone else, their life, or their behavior. Its pettiness and bitterness squared! When you believe something told to you by someone else and you repeat it, you receive a twofold lesson. You know that the person sharing the juicy gossip isn’t trustworthy, so anything you tell them will most assuredly be repeated elsewhere. Also, you have now become a part of the vicious gossip triangle without being consulted first.
Gossip is a way to HOT-WIRE a quick friendship, like having a common denominator. “If you have nothing nice to say, sit next to me. We can share stories. The bond is built on gossip and mistrust. Yes, folks, it has a name. It’s called CLOSE ENEMY INTIMACY. What you share is NOT real, it’s based on hating the same person, and that’s just plain counterfeit.
We need to be mindful of and remember this: Words are powerful, and when you gossip or slander another, you are hexing yourself, for if you do it about someone else, it will surely come back on you. Gossip takes the tension off of you for a moment, you are creating all these “juicy half-truths” around someone else, and it takes the eyes off you and your situation or troubles.
If we own what is going on in our own lives, stop pointing fingers and blaming others, if we honestly look at ourselves from time to time and look at our “MESSES,” we won’t have the time or the energy or the inclination to be engaged in other people’s business, or partake in idle gossip.
When we choose to gossip, we have no idea how far the ripples will go, how far the damage will go. In the movie “The color purple,” when Celie says, “Everything you have done to me has already been done to you”. I believe that. What we put out into the world will come back to us. Instead of spreading negativity, spread something positive. Navigating through this life is difficult; though we all are on different paths from time to time, our journeys still come down to the same thing. What matters most in this world is to GIVE LOVE AND RECEIVE LOVE. Share goodness. You have the choice.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT: ASSUMPTIONS
We can create so much emotional poison just by assuming we know something. Only GOD knows everything and everyone. Assumptions lead to our version of gossiP, our own version of the truth AS WE SEE IT. When we assume something, we suddenly believe whatever we think is true. Then we blame and react by sending emotional, poisonous words out of our mouths. Its as though we have just written a script for a new movie; we have it all planned out, how it goes, what will be said, how it will end when the TRUTH IS…you could be way off base and be left standing in an empty studio because no one else had the script to go by. They don’t understand anything that is going on. Most sadness and drama in our lives has been created by assumptions.
ASK ASK ASK…..TELL TELL TELL. Ask the questions when you want to know. Dont always expect someone else to KNOW what you want, tell your people exactly what you were hoping for or needing or wanting. It will cut out a bunch of unnecessary heartache and drama for you. Most the time, when the truth is revealed about something we have assumed, it has made an “ass” of you and me, its wasted precious time, and may have caused a great deal or hurt to someone else.
Making the assumption that your love changed a person is not true. If they have changed in any way its because they wanted to. They saw room for growth within themselves. Your personal love doesn’t to have that much power. Though wouldn’t it be nice if it did, imagine how much easier the world would be to live in.
REAL LOVE is accepting someone exactly as they are, without trying to change them, without beating them up senselessly with harsh words, or trying to control their every move or word with your physical sighs, your eye rolling or your angry words. Love is not supposed to be binding or toxic. It is supposed to be accepting and forgiving.
Real love comes to the front line when you are under attack, and fights beside you. Fights with you and fights for you. What you wish for and need will come so easily when your spirit is allowed to move freely within you. GOD BLESS the ones who learned this lesson early in life, to love people as they are and not be their judge or jury. Those are the relationships that we should all strive to have. We should be giving love with an open heart and open hand, not a clenched fist, and we deserve to receive that same kind of love back. Open hand to come and go, to live the best life we can, and an open heart to feel and express as we need to.
WE ARE ALL DYING. SOME SOONER THAN OTHERS. LIVE YOUR BEST LIFE, DON’T LIVE BENEATH ANYONE’S BOOT OR DWELL IN A CORNER BECAUSE SOMEONE HAS SPREAD THEIR POISONOUS WORDS ABOUT YOU. What they do says MORE ABOUT THEM THAN IT DOES YOU.
There are two basic fears in all of us. The first is rejection, and the second is a fear of dying, and thinking that during our brief stay in this world, those who we really love will never knew who we truly are.
It’s a crazy world we live in most days. Seems we are always in rush to get a multiple of things accomplished in the shortest amount of time. I am as guilty of this as the next person. As the years go by, we soon realize that everything is NOT made to last, and the truly beautiful things never do.
They come into our lives for a moment, for a day, a season…if we are fortunate a few seasons. Then they are gone and there is this vast emptiness that lays dormant in the bottom of your soul waiting like roses beneath the snow. Then something sweet will happen, and the snow will begin to melt and the roses will come back to life again.
Once upon a time, long ago I knew a man, and he was a kind man, a loving man with a heart as large as the outdoors. A place he loved to be. If there was a selfish bone in his body, I never saw it. Never heard it. He was good to everyone he met, and those he didn’t care for, he was good at keeping his darkened opinion of them to himself and shared them only with me. He also shared the great sadness of his life and for some reason he believed and told me in writing several times that he thought I saved him from taking a permanent solution to temporary problems.
I don’t feel that he was necessarily correct, for I would say that it is the reverse. He reached out to a lonely, self-conscious momma of three small children, and fed my soul with his friendship. He saw me. Who I was on the inside, who I wanted to be, and when someone cares enough to really know you, you cling to their words, or in my case, to THEIR LETTERS.
I knew Burt from the time I was a wee child, and through the years, he had coffee at my parents’ home and just about every home in the neighborhood. He was a lonely man. Everyone treated him well, but no one took the time to talk with him as a friend and find out what his life was all about. To invest in him, listen to him and eventually allow him to speak candidly about his years on earth.
In the Spring of 1983, Burt and I began having coffee together at my home, maybe once a week. It was a intimate situation at all. I had three small babies all around my feet, two of my brothers were still in high school and I was a teacher and thesis writer by night, and I helped watch my older brothers 4 children while they worked. It was difficult some day to finish a whole sentence at my table.
On a frigid October day, Burt stopped by in the pouring rain and my little girl told him I was around the back of our old, broken down single wide trailer. (This trailer had no working windows, they had to be propped open with sticks in the summer and taped shut in the winter.) I was unhooking the gas line from an empty 100-pound cylinder of propane, and hooking up to another full tank sitting beside it. I was just finishing up when he came around the corner and ask if I needed some help. I smiled and told him I think I had it. Then he followed me around while I relit the pilot for the water heater and back inside to relight the furnace and cook stove. All of this was standing operating procedure for me.
A few days later, I received a card in the mail from Burt. In it to talked about how much our coffee sessions meant to him and how he was just awe struck that I could go out and change my own propane tanks and juggle kids…etc etc. I looked forward to him stopping for coffee each week, and if it rained, I knew he would be coming by and the visits would last longer than normal. There was nothing we didn’t talk about, and there seemed to be nothing I could say that bored him or irritated him.
For the next 26 years, Burt sent me the sweetest cards and letters. There was never any real occasion, in fact now that I look back on it, I wonder if it wasn’t a part of his healing to be able to write things out. There is nothing in these cards or letters that could have been detrimental for him or me. In 1994, he married his first High School girlfriend and ask me to work with him and buy his farm, as he didn’t want it to go to any of the bigger farmers. He wanted someone who would love the place the way he did, and carry on the dream his parents began in 1936 when they bought the farm. For a dollar down, to bind the land contract…I bought a farm on Valentines Day.
Many changes came to the farm, to the farmhouse, which was in dire need of repair. Seventy cats lived in this house, and there is no way to explain in this blog, the number of messes I cleaned up and carried out in multiple 5-gallon buckets. Not to mention I learned how to rip out subfloors and lathe and plaster just to rid this house of the strong cat stench. I learned to take out windows, put in new windows, hang drywall on ceiling with homemade T sticks and the help of 3 not so happy teenagers, I learned to do my own plumbing (thank God for PVC) I sided the house, built decks, and put an entire new roof on brand new 3 car garage alone, except for one day when my teen son ask to stay home from school to help. It was late November and the roof needed to get on and get sealed by the sun. Thomas laid out the 3 and 1 shingles and I ran behind him fastening them down.
(Side note: I was on the roof for 2 day, a man drives in my driveway, and asks me to come down off the roof, he wanted to talk to me about how I was shingling the roof. I had my old Eastwing hammer in my hand and I remember thinking “Dude, if you stopped here just to tell me how I am doing this all wrong, I am apt to plant this hammer aside your temple”. I climbed off the roof, trying to reign in my irritation. And it’s a good thing I did. The man, turned out to be a preacher/carpenter and he was down at my neighbors building a garage for them. He said he had heard me down here hammering for two days and wanted me to use his roofing nail gun. I thanked him but declined his offer. I had never used one and didn’t want to mess it up. He insisted I used it, and unload from his truck with an entire box of nails. He said when I was done with it, to just leave it on my front porch and he would stop and pick it up.
I did use it, it made my job much faster, and when he did stop to pick up the nail gun, I gave him 200.00 for the use of it. He then tried to decline the money, and I told him to give 10 percent to his church and use the rest for his kids for Christmas. It just a sweet story, that goes along with the house…but I love that a stranger helped someone else without waiting or wanting the notoriety for it.)
After he married and moved an hour away, our coffee sessions weren’t as prevalent as they once were. Still his letters would arrive in the mail. I had become like a child with his letters. If I retrieved one from the mailbox, I would race inside, and get all my household chores down, get laundry going, dinners prepared, and it was only when I could take 5 minutes to sit down and absorb his letters would I open them. Most of them were now filled with stories of his new life, his new church, the men’s group he had joined. Burt was always an emotional man; you could tug at his heartstrings easily. I like a man that is strong enough to cry now and then. It shows they are real, connected to their own hearts in a good way, and connect to others in a healthy way.
Now and then, I would receive a letter that would blow me away. Words from him about how he saw me, and all that I did, all that I was or was trying to be. He knew the wounds I carried, he understood the constant need and yearning I had to feel loved and accepted and treated decently.
There are a few of his hand written letters, that I have laminated. That may sound crazy to some, but if I live to be a ripe old age, I don’t want the ink to fade, I want to be able to read the words he wrote to me. The words that live on, even though he is gone from this Earth. He told me I was his hero. Imagine a man 36 years older than me, 36 years wiser, 36 years stronger and more accomplished, thought I was a hero. Those are the letters that I still read today, to remind myself that sometimes …just sometimes there are people among us, that see us, and because of them and their generosity with words, we can SEE OURSELVES in a better light, and continue to grow in a good direction.
I miss people communicating by rural mail. No one writes letters anymore, if they can’t text it or type it, they don’t do it. The kids of today, wont ever know that feeling of excitement when a letter arrives all the way to their mailbox from wherever just for them. This side of 100 years ago, letters were the only way to stay in touch with loved one. By the time you received news by way of mail it was old news but it was still good to receive, a gift that could transport you out of your life for just a few moments. The times they are a changing, we must change along with it, or get left behind. For this writer, I am grateful for this stack of letters that I have, and for the days when I least expect it and I pick a book from my bookcase and find yet another small card or letter that I must have stuck in there when they arrived back in the day. They are timeless. There is a song Charley Pride sang and the word remain in my head and seemed to fit this blog post.
Through the years, I have often fallen, I’ve been every kind of fool a man could be, for I never could control the devil in my soul, but somehow you never did give up on me.
When I couldn’t keep my word, I struck at you for anger for things I didn’t need, when I couldn’t neither break or bend, you were there to be my friend, and somehow you never did give up on me.
And I’m proud to know God gave me such a person, who had eyes to see the good somewhere in me, without you my life would only be a ruin, somehow you never did give up on me.
Burt saw the good in me, when I didn’t see it myself. He knew when there was too much silence between us, when he didn’t hear from me, I was hiding out. Something was wrong, and I was dealing with it on my own. He told me once, that even though I put up this brave shield of strength, he knew it couldn’t dodge the barbs and bullets of life as well as I hoped it would, and he was worried about me. He would love me always and forever. WHAT A GIFT HE WAS FOR ME, WHAT A GIFT HE LEFT FOR ME.
The opportunity to buy his farm, and give my children and grandchildren a beautiful place to live and grow would have been more than a person could ask for, but to have a friend of his caliber, and keep him till the end. Well, I spoke at his funeral. I choked, and cried while I spoke trying to do him justice but my closing line still holds true today. Burton Chester Stafford was STEEL BLUE AND BLADE STRAIGHT.
Shortly before Christmas 2015, I received an instant message from someone I had never met. It was an older woman named Rosemary, and she messaged me out of the blue to tell me that she really enjoyed some of the posts I had posted periodically on Facebook. I thanked her of course and tried to come off as a “normal” person, when in fact at this time of year, the Holidays tend to remind me of what family is and isn’t.
It seems that the older I get the more I can identify with that old adage that family isn’t always about BLOOD, its more about who shows up time and time again when you need it most with a few spare feathers in one hand and some “super friend” glue in the other and is there to piece you back together and tell you that you WILL fly again soon!!!! I was in the midst of that sort of day when I received such an message from Miss Rosemary.
I responded in kind, and then she responded again. Then I answered that message, and she answered another one of mine and by the new year January 2016, we were sharing messages that were 8, and 9 paragraphs long. It is true that we will divulge more to a stranger sometimes…..thinking that we will never meet so it sort of becomes a “safe place” to land. We shared, family stories, past hurts, gave encouragement and just seemed to communicate as if we had known one another for years.
Well, finally I believe that Miss Rosemary invited me for coffee. I would normally never go to a strangers home, but I had been inquiring around town and heard several glowing reports about her and her equally….beautifully spirited hubby. So I accepted the invite and over I went one Wednesday morning.
From the moment I crawled out of my truck, she opened her door and she was a DOLL!. Bright, happy, beautiful , with more talent and kindness in one hand than I have seen in a long time. She invited me into her home as if we had known one another for years. I was PLEASED that her husband was lingering in the next room. A safety guard that anyone as good and kind hearted as she is should have close by. Half way through our visit, Tom joined us for coffee. When I write “joined us” I mean He was literally invited. He didn’t just walk in and park his tall lanky frame at the table. Miss Rosemary “invited” him to join us. If you cannot read between the lines here, let me lay it out plainly.
I adored these two people . Not because they were so warm and receptive to me, not because I felt like I had known them for years, and not even for the fact that I wanted to drop at their feet and ask “Am I too old to be adopted by you two”. No, none of those reasons.
I was mesmerized by the way they treated one another. The MUTUAL LOVE & RESPECT is so completely evident in their marriage of 50 years. She has an idea, she mentions it and off Mr, Tom goes to “help Miss Rosemary” make it a reality. They laugh with each other, and at each other. They don’t bark or snarl or say crude hurtful things in a joking manner. They are the real deal. What a BLESSING for me to just sit in their presence. I assure you , they are the best kept secret in town.
To date, I have had several wonderful visits with these two fine people. I have had Miss Rosemary at my home, and still I can attest that she is both delightful and inspiring. There is NOTHING that she cannot create, in fact the home in which they live resembles yet another precious “Little home” they created together.
We bought a farm 23 years ago, I am still in the processing of bringing back this old vintage farmhouse built in 1880, Shortly, I hope to begin to make my own doll house to replicate my home today, and I pray that Miss Rosemary and Mr, Tom will be available to help me make the inside of my doll house as adorable and warm as they have made theirs.
There is an absolute doll inside a real dollhouse in town, and she is a real, living, breathing lady. She has a wonderful, kind husband, and together they have created a beautiful life with four children, grandchildren, and a town that adores them. Their story matters to me, their history, how they met, how they raised a family, and where they arrived at the home they have today. It matters to me, because THEY MATTER TO ME. Because they are a SAFE PLACE for my tired, weary soul in this CRAZY, GONE MAD WORLD. They feel like family, and we share no common denominator of BLOOD. We are connected by HEART.
Update: 2025
We did make a dollhouse that resembled the home I live in, and I am thankful to say this has been home to my family and myself for over 34 years now. What a blessing. The inside of the dollhouse is not complete yet, but perhaps this year by Christmas. Who knows.
My older brother Stan, after we bought this vintage dollhouse off ebay and we added an addition and cut windows and doors and such to make it look like our place.
Our youngest of five grandsons Jacob .. February 2020
Two of our seven granddaughters working on the house. Alaina and Emma
Many times throughout this crazy vessel called life, we jump on board a passing tugboat, leap onto a speeding jet-propelled outboard, or perhaps wine and dine with others on a fancy Yacht. Real life sometimes gets turbulent, and staying above the rising water tide can be almost impossible.
Every single human begins the same way. We are held in a tight, warm environment, where noises are sometimes muffled by the sound of the very water bag inside our mother’s body, keeping us alive. During this period, we float with ease and comfort, feeling loved—more love than we can even comprehend.
Then we are pushed out into the world, the cord sustaining our lives is severed, and from that moment on, we never feel that warm, whooshy feeling again. What do you do with your one broken heart? When you feel slighted by a parent, sibling, or someone you have given your heart to.
We only have one heart to feel with, one heart to love with, and it gets beaten and bruised throughout life’s journey.
If I could go back in time, I would grab hold of my young self. I would tell myself over and over that ‘”you do matter, that you do have worth, you are pretty “enough” and “smart enough” to go farther in this world than others would have you to believe. I would strive to be sure that my “young self” understood that she needed to go into every situation standing on my own two feet. Don’t lean on anyone, don’t expect anyone to have your back, and don’t look for others to validate your feelings or emotions. We are all entitled to feel the way we do, and no one human should ever have the right or the power to take those things from us. And, be careful sharing your life stories with people you just met, casual strangers. People need to earn the right to hear your stories, and you need to earn the right to hear theirs, too.
Believing other people’s opinions or compliments about you is unnecessary. You need to know how you feel about yourself. Take stock of all you are, stay humble, but stay alert. Trust yourself and your instincts. You really do have to love yourself, or at least accept yourself, before you can completely love others.
And I would tell my younger self what I tried expressing to my children and now my twelve grandchildren, whenever the opportunity presents itself, I tell them:
“Go well into this world; protect that precious heart of yours. Please don’t give it away to the first person who shows up on the scene with fancy flowers or fancy words. Actions will always reveal who a person truly is. Believe them the first time they show you what they are made of.
When you decide to share your ONE HEART, release it slowly and carefully. Watch the other person…. how they treat others and handle situations when times get tough or life is really kicking them. Please pay attention to how they treat their parents, siblings, friends, or co-workers.
Every time your heart gets broken, it will heal, but with every blow, it will take longer to recover, and there will be scar tissue, lots of scar tissue forming around all those cracks.
I hope that, with healing, those cracks will make it easier for more love to find its way back into your heart. We will all struggle and work hard to become brighter, better, and more intelligent people, and we will face many opportunities for heartaches… until our lives on earth are through.
Hopefully, with time, wisdom, and grace, we will have the opportunity to handle the next situation better and work harder on controlling our emotions and how we respond to hard situations or hurting people.
I recently read that our minds reserve special places to process negative emotions. Yes, you read that right, though I had to re-read it a few times myself. Apparently, negative emotions actually help us achieve enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose because they can keep us safe and alert to danger. Negative emotions are also believed to prevent us from making the same mistakes repeatedly. (I have to question that theory a bit, I tend to walk around the same mountain too many times before I get smart.) But, they say when we are sad, angry, or hurt over something that has happened to us, we are more likely to fix it and protect ourselves from it happening again in the future.
Without unhappiness, we would not truly thrive or survive. We would become stagnant people, standing in the puddle of our pain day after day, and that is not progress. That is a grave!!!
We wouldn’t grow or change as people, and we wouldn’t look forward to a brighter tomorrow. Without negativity or broken hearts, we probably wouldn’t make the necessary changes to improve the situation, and perhaps we wouldn’t fully appreciate the precious moments when they come.
Leaves on the trees turn green, then beautiful hues of orange, yellow, red or gold. Their beauty would not return the following year without the old leaves dying at the beginning of winter, so the fresh, vibrant leaves can return for the following spring.
I am responsible for the energy I bring into a room, and it’s contagious. I need to rise above the daily grind of things, take the hits I have coming right between the eyes, learn from them, and move onward.
Stop wasting time on things that won’t change, things that don’t matter and are not worth the enormous amount of energy they zap from my being.
Try Applying the four steps of agreements to every situation.
Use your words carefully. There is so much force in them. You can hurt or heal with them. It’s your choice every time you open your mouth.
2. Don’t take anything personally unless they speak your name before the sentence. When you take their words into your heart, you become their prey. If you can repel their words while they are shooting them at you, that is a gift.
3. Don’t Assume.
Assumptions cause us to believe whatever we want to think is true. When we assume, taking things personally often follows. Take a moment; if the statement is true, let it in; if it’s not true… let it go.
4. Always do your very best.
Always do your best when dealing with others, though remember that your best may not be good enough for them. Moods change from moment to moment; the mind grows weary, and the body grows tired. Slow down, be slow to anger, slow to get frustrated, and slow to reject others because you have had a bad day.
Live your life to the fullest each and every day; never think you are above anyone else; you are no better than the person you stand beside in the grocery line or at the post office. YOU ARE just as good as anyone else, though, and should never hang your head in shame or try to stay in the shadows of any room.
You are here, on this Earth, at this appointed time for a reason. Enjoy it. With the blink of an eye, a sad, quick blink, you or anyone you love can be gone, gone forever. Do your BEST always…..Even God’s Angels Above can do no better than their own very best.
Go well, my brothers and sisters… out into this crazy mixed up world, and spread love and light, laughter and joy.
Life can be so hard. It can push you up against the wall with so much sadness and turmoil, drama and tragedy till you are not sure which end is up. Life is also full of beauty, bliss, joy, and happiness. Most days, we feel like we are in the middle of the ocean of life, our boat is taking on water, and we are struggling to choose the right island to row towards. I’ve heard it said that HAPPINESS is something we create, but I believe that sometimes our arms can just grow weary from rowing the boat, and we need a little support, a little push to keep us going in the right, happy direction.
There is cancer all around us, diseases, losses, sicknesses that linger too long and affect the quality of life a person is having. People with money don’t seem to deal with half the stress that people without it experience. If you work hard and always try to do what is right, it looks like you just get knocked back on your butt and there is no “Atta boy” anymore.
I recently learned a vital lesson for life and dealing with people. I find it to not only be profound and accurate but it DOES IN FACT help me in dealing with people from all walks of life.
Take a moment and write down the name of a person(s) who has hurt you, angers you, annoys you, irritates you or plain fills you with resentment and frustration when you are around them. Seriously, sometimes just writing their name could ruin a good feeling for me.
Now ….imagine if you will WHAT IF…..what if that person(s) is doing the very best that they can .
As miserable as resentment, disappointment, and hurt make us feel, we are only fooling ourselves into believing we will feel better by continuing to dislike that person or by talking about them and judging them on their every action or word.
See, we really don’t know people. We assume we do, and we even make up our own stories about them in our minds. But we don’t really know them or what makes them who they are and what has transpired in their lives that got them to the boat they are in today.
Judgment and anger take up too much of our emotional well-being, not to mention our time. Let those people “OFF THE HOOK”. Stop trying to figure out why they are doing or saying or acting a specific why, stop pushing them or talking behind their back because they aren’t acting exactly as YOU think they should. Using compassion and generosity will serve us all better, towards a brighter future.
WITHOLDING AFFECTION WILL POISON THE VERY GROUND WATER FROM WHICH LOVE NEEDS TO GROW.
We must learn to accept people for WHO THEY ARE..not for who they could be, or who we wish them to be. It is a known fact that we tend to judge others in an area where we ourselves are the most vulnerable, or feel not good enough. We need to practice compassion towards ourselves now and then, embrace our own imperfections, accept ourselves before we can WRITE off other people’s imperfections. When we KNOW and BELIEVE that we are enough exactly as we are, we are worthy, our stories matter, we will not feel the need to criticize others.
CONNECTING WITH OTHERS VIA GOSSIPING IS NOT A GOOD COMMON DENOMINATOR; IT TEARS UP ROADS OF REPAIR, BURNS BRIDGES.
ASSUME these people are doing the best they can. If they bite your head off, take something you said or did completely different from the way you meant it…you can apologize, but then you have to say to yourself, “This is not about me, John must be having a bad day, a bad week, or a bad year. We don’t have to wait around kicking the same rock repeatedly and hurting our feet. And this way of processing people is not a free card to allow them to continue it hurting us. Its a card for us to step back and say…..I’ve said or done the right thing. If I assume that he or she is doing the best they can….its liberating to US and our heart and mind to give acceptance for the way things are and move forward.
We need to set boundaries. We need to try and treat people well, be the best we can be, and if we miss the mark, apologize. We do better when we know better.
As humans, we can get so torqued up over every little thing. Social media can almost destroy a person if you don’t maintain boundaries and integrity. Often, we don’t know what the other person’s whole story is, what they may be dealing with today, or what past wounds they still carry, what they have been told, or what has been instilled in them. What tragic events have occurred in their past that may trigger anger and hostility in a situation today?
Give people the freedom they need. Just assume they are doing the best they can with life, and walk on. Don’t hang on the mean email or text, or the way they yell or snap at you. If they are truly good, wholesome people, they will come back and make it right… it’s not MOVE THE ROCK…..stop kicking it and hoping your foot will be able to budge it. You will merely end up with a bloody foot. Do your best today, and let GOD have the rest.
Life is too short. AND ABOVE ALL ELSE REMEMBER THIS;
WHEN SOMEONE TREATS YOU BADLY, WORKING HARD TO MAKE YOU FEEL SMALL AND insignificant, IT REALLY says more about THEM THAN IT does about you.
They see in someone else something they are lacking or something they wish they had, and they feel the need to criticize and destroy. Their fault-finding is a lack of examining their own lives, and holding themselves to a higher Authority. When people believe in the Lord Jesus, they usually strive to become better people every day. Unbelievers, who are Godless, do not hold themselves to any accountability except their own. Then the world becomes an Adult playground with no supervision. No one expects teachers to keep manners and courtesy in check.
MARCH 2012 —-Became a member of THE SISTERS ON THE FLY CLUB (member # 3513)
This is a group of ladies that travel all over the Country in a caravan so to speak in vintage trailers. No Men, No Kids, No pets. Just woman having fun. It looked like a fun NEW thing to try. So I became a member of THE SISTERS ON THE FLY.
MARCH 2013
We bought a vintage camper ( 1967 De Camp) from a young man who received it from his grandparents and had been living in it -in their backyard. I looked it over, paid the young man and we pulled it home. To say it needed some help was a total understatement, but it was what I could afford …so THE DREAM BEGAN.
MARCH 2015
We pulled it out of the fence row where it has set for two years and pulled it into one of the garage stalls attached to our home. There my “great” friend Cheryl and I began to gut the old camper. It was a fun day as we ripped and tore and entertained the idea of a girls weekend when the restoration was complete.
TODAY–FEBRUARY 2017
You cannot move a mountain in a day, or maybe a year, or two. That’s a given. My original concept was great, but implementing the time and attention it would take to make this restoration happen is something I sorely underestimated.
Life can be crazy busy. Mother Teresa said once “we all have that same amount of hours in a day, its what we choose to do IN THOSE HOURS that matter”. Between Three grown children with spouses and 12 BEAUTIFUL GRANDBABIES……(and i do mean beautiful, there isnt a throw away in the bunch…. lol) time for working on this ” trailer dream” is slim to none .
AS YOU WILL NOTICE IN THE PHOTOS BELOW, THIS TRAILER HAD FAR MORE EXTENSIVE DAMAGE THAT WE ORIGNALLY ESTIMATED. ONCE WE BEGAN TEARING DOWN TO REPAIR…..WELL THE “TEAR DOWN” KEPT GOING DEEPER AND DEEPER.
This January (2017) We began yet again. We tore it all apart….literally down to the frame. up to a point, all systems were a go, then while i was attempting to cut the side walls separate from the roof with a reciprocating saw… and smash and cut my index finger between the neck of the saws hammer head and the trailer. Pinched the finger and then blew the whole under side of it out and open. I saw the blood and about one inch of the bone and felt pretty sick. Quite painful, throbbed for days and took 3 weeks to heal.
As you can see, it’s almost not worth re-modeling. And I admit that while I can have the tenacity of a wolverine once I sink my teeth into something, I have contemplated several times of just throwing in the wrecking hammer, chopping up the frame for scrap and just “buying” someone else’s dream.
However, at this point it is our goal to have this back together and in useable shape by Memorial Day 2017. We will make repairs to the walls, and once we sand the frame, spray it, lay it, insulate it….set the new walls and run new metal on the exterior then the interior will begin.
These are a few of the reasons we wanted to go with a vintage camper ,
This vintage girl came from the Masonic Temple (Masons) in my township. When I helped moved the old lodge to the new one almost 18 years ago this gem was headed for the scrap yard. It is my intent to use it in my camper. We come from 6 generations of biscuit makers so its important to me to be able to cook biscuit in this stove for those two reasons.
I began a quilt almost 30 years ago of a Dresden pattern …made with the clothing from our three babies. I have made many quilts through the years, but this one has lingered in a tote far too long. I was waiting for the right purpose. Over 22 years ago, ” a friend” at the time told me these little “material wheels” were ugly, didn’t match, and she wouldn’t make anything out of them.
My Lemonade today to her lemons is….I am going to sew them strategically together on pieces of distressed muslin and then when I have large enough pieces of them all sewed together, I will cut our curtains and they are going to be the curtains in my camper. I know every piece of clothing in these wheels. I know which was our first daughters dress, or jammies, our sons shirt, and our second daughters little dress, skirt etc. I hope to surround myself, and fill my camper with the BEAUTIFUL THINGS I CAN FROM MY LIFES JOURNEY.
I will leave this writing for now…. with God’s Blessing and a lot of family labor, I hope to update it soon with more photos and share the continued progress of our vintage camper restoration.
UPDATE: In 2025, the camper was scrapped only after it was deemed beyond repair by several people, but not before I nearly cut off my first two fingers with a reciprocating saw while trying to separate the roof from the side wall. To this day, I still dream of a small vintage camper but I have decided that I am too old now for buying one to repair, rebuild and make mine. One day, I will buy a small trailer for myself. Maybe.
Today is your birthday (June 20)…all that I want to is to sit in here at my deck, and sort through this box of pictures, and letters, till the day is gone, maybe wear one of your t-shirts and drink a Coors-lite in your honor.
As long as there is a breath in this human body, there will always be “question marks” regarding some of the chapters in the Grand book of Life. I KNOW that I will not understand on this side of Heaven why things happen as they do. The good stuff and the bad things. It’s strange how something incredible can happen to us, perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime thing; we accept it and move forward to the next station of our lives, rarely revisiting that good fortune. We live in it, and we may be all the better for it happening, but we continue walking the path of the daily grind and don’t give it much thought.
Alas, this cannot be said about a rough time, a sad time, one of those moments that broke our hearts in two. Those moments live inside of us daily. They never go away, and only time eases the intensity of the pain or the brokenness, but it never removes it. IT’S THE CIRCLE OF LIFE. We learn from the tough times, and appreciate the good times…What doesn’t kill us makes us more alive.
Larry is my cousin. He was born 13 years before me. On June 20, 1949. By the time that I was 5 years old … Larry had been drafted into the Vietnam War. By the time I was 15…I saw him once or twice at his parents’ house, which was just west of my parents’ home.
Most of the time, we, the younger brood of cousins, kept our distance from him. His family quickly discovered, upon his arrival home after serving three years in NAM, that Larry was in a fragile state of mind. If you started a vacuum sweeper without warning him, or a loud truck drove by, he would DIVE under a coffee table or chair and start yelling for his comrades to take cover. Larry would not speak of the horrors that He saw over there, and normally, he wore a beautiful smile, and no one would have guessed the damage within his mind.
When I was 16, He had a wedding and was married. A little boy was born of that union. Then another marriage to a wonderful gal, two little boys were born from that union. And I believe there were 2 other marriages after those two. Eventually, Larry moved out west to Nevada and bought a mountain. His own mountain and he was proud of it. It had no electricity and no running water, but he LOVED it. He used generators for power, and He carried a 300-gallon tank in the back of his black Ford Ranger pickup. Once a week, after work, he would fill up in town at his brother’s home and drive it out to his mountain to offload it. He used a gravity feed system to supply his RV park model trailer with water for showering and such. He also had a poly take on the roof of his little cabin, to heat the water for showers. He was inventive.
I saw him in 1989. He flew home for the funeral of his sister-in-law. We spoke a few words to one another but nothing long or meaningful. In the summer of 2000, through another cousin, I was given his email address. I touched base with Larry then and we began to visit via the net regularly. Larry invited us to come out and see his Mountain, see where he worked and how he lived. His mountain he said, 4 miles off the road, and clear around to the top. By March of 2002, I was making plans to visit Nevada with my 18-year-old son.
On June 17, 2002, we landed in Reno, Nevada. From the moment we saw one another, Larry and I instantly became “like twins”. We were so similar in our actions, thoughts, and feelings. We used to joke and say, ‘Isn’t it funny how much alike we are? Do you think it’s our spirits meshing or just the fact that we have the same DNA?’ We would be talking about our childhood memories and suddenly reminiscing about the same room at Grandma’s house, or the red hip-roof barn that we were not supposed to go into, or all of Grandpa George’s rose bushes in the garden, which we were not allowed to disturb. Then, suddenly, we would laugh at the fact that we were both talking about the same grandparents, the same home, but our memories were 13 years apart. He could remember a younger and more vivid Grandma than I could. He had a small Golden Book about the Lone Ranger sitting on his bookcase. He said, my Grandma gave me that for Christmas when I was four. It was signed to Larry, Merry Christmas 1953. Then he would laugh and say….well OUR grandma.
While we were there, we visited many of the area sights. Silver Springs, Fallon, The Ponderosa and BEAUTIFUL, HISTORICAL Virginia City. Where we walked on old, weathered, boarded sidewalks. I loved the sound of boots walking across it, and just about every man out there wore spurs that jingled when he walked. I was mesmerized by the sound. My Son spent a lot of time missing his girlfriend, and that cell phone bill when we got home is something we laugh about today, but didn’t find it funny in 2002. ($350.00 roaming charges. On a dis note, He married the girl and they have 5 beautiful children today. First a Son, and four girls followed close behind him.)
A few days after our arrival to Nevada, Larry’s celebrated his 54rd birthday. One afternoon Larry told My son and I that there was a mountain he had still never climbed since he moved out west almost 20 years prior and he wanted to drive out there. So, the three of us did just that. Out west, it’s always dry and everyone has a cooler in the back of their truck or car. It will have water, beer, pop, tea, etc but no one travels without a cooler because it is hot and dry out there.
I remember that morning well, Larry packed the cooler, told Thom and I to each grab a gun belt off the lamp post, which always had several guns loaded and ready to strap one on. In Nevada, everyone carries a gun wherever they go. Thom was all about this. We stopped at a gas station on our way out of town with holsters on and guns loaded we walked into the gas station and picked up a few more drinks and snacks. It was just the oddest feeling to me to walk around armed….in public….lol. I am a dead aim with a 44. Loved it.
As we traveled closer and closer to the distant mountains and then began our climb around the outside perimeter, it was hair-raising to say the least. The roads were narrow at times and very nerve-racking to look over the edge, but we continued our pilgrimage up this unclaimed mountain that Larry had always wanted to conquer. When we arrived…We got out to stretch our legs, and Larry let out a yell of celebration. It was amazing, and beautiful, and you could literally see for miles and miles and miles.
There was a large rock formation that would make a cool picture but there was a 3-foot-wide crack we had to jump to get to that rock. If we fell or lost our footing, it would have been an absolute death sentence. Ask me today why I ever made that jump, and I could not tell you. I wouldn’t allow my son to jump it, but I did. I was 40 years old…. should have known better but thought I had already had 40 good years, so why not. It wasn’t a smart move. Today, I realize how awful it would have been for Thom to have to find his way back to a town some 98 miles away and live with what he might have seen that could have happened. I will blame it on the elevation and lack of oxygen in my head.
On the way home from that celebration, Thom and Larry wanted to get a rattlesnake hide for Thom’s hat, so we all stopped on the Carson River and Larry and Thom hunted for rattlesnakes from the banks of the river. They poked holes in and around rocks. It was crazy to me….but the two of them were having a blast. (They never did find a snake that day, and Lord only knows how I would have taken it …if they had.)
Larry and I spent a lot of time drinking coffee in the early morning hours. We tried to catch up on one another’s lives, what we had done as kids, as adults, as parents. We talked about the family reunions at our Grandmothers house or Aunt Mary Helen’s home, and all annual Christmas Eve gatherings there. He had more fun stories to tell about our family, again, because he was older.
One morning, while the two of us were drinking coffee, he started talking about Nam and told me several stories about the time he served there, and how much of it haunted him daily. As he told me some of those horrors, I was in shock. I couldn’t move. My body was frozen, as if a rattler was crawling across my boot. I didn’t speak, I didn’t interrupt. I just tried to listen without an expression on my face. I could see it was hard for him to talk about it all, but for some reason, He was recalling it all and talking about it. A little while later, Larry stood up and walked over to the kitchen sink. He was crying hard, struggling to catch his breath. He blew his nose a few times then turned to me and said…. “I have never told anyone those stories. I can’t believe they just came out like that……. It’s so hard to talk about them, but it’s such a relief to let them out”. I stood up out of my chair, and approached him slowly, then wrapped my arms around him and hugged him tight.
I understood after that why He asked God NEVER to give him a daughter if he had children. And GOD never did. The images he carried in his mind haunted him daily, all that killing, the horrible things that he had witnessed. Among the stories………He and 5 of his comrades were sleeping in a tent; there wasn’t enough room for all of them on cots, so Larry said he would sleep underneath one of them in his sleeping bag. When he woke up the next morning, all 5 of the men sleeping above him had been killed with complete silence. Man after man, he had to find them, and radio for help to get them lifted out, or picked up, all the while wondering if the Vietcong had moved on or were waiting a few hundred yards away.
He turned to drinking to dull the pain and bury the memories, but he told me that once his body hit its limit, he would pass out, no matter where he was, but he could never DRINK AWAY the memories, and that they never gave him any peace. When he came too late, they were still there haunting him.
It did not help that upon arrival home, these men were greeted with less than a hero’s welcome. He said as they boarded planes for home, they were all excited, but once they landed on American soil, they could see civilians gathered waving signs that called them baby killers and murderers. They had invectives hurled at them, and people spat on them. Finding a job was more than difficult; if you could try to function normally again, people would see you were a Vietnam vet, and they would be met with a veil of disgust and discrimination.
The VIETNAM War lasted longer than any other war before. From 1964 to 1973, it claimed 58,000 American servicemen and wounded over 150,000. Men came HOME…they returned HOME, but it wasn’t the warm, welcoming HOME they remembered. They were broken, bleeding, and wounds that weren’t visible with the human eye, and they were told to go home, with no psychological evaluation or help.
GOD, AMERICA DROPPED THE BALL during that time. WE WERE ILL-PREPARED TO GIVE THESE SERVICE MEN ALL THAT THEY DESERVED. They didn’t need a parade; they just needed our love and support, a universal embrace for all they had endured. They didn’t ask to go over there, they didn’t get to vote on it, they were drafted and shipped out to the very PITS OF HELL!!!
The rest of the day, we continued exploring, and now and then he would shake his head and say, “I can’t believe I told you all that stuff about Nam this morning.” I soaked it all up, and still today, I feel that God placed me there, at that time, in that moment, so Larry could release and heal from a few of his scars …move forward. And He did. From then on, when he would call me, He would tell me little things like…”I haven’t dreamed of Nam in months, or he would say I stopped seeing the horror movie in my mind. He felt a sense of relief, and he was grateful for it. And I was thankful to be there for him.
GOD did give Larry a Granddaughter. And one day while we three were in town Larry wanted to stop by and show her to us. He stepped inside that door and yelled, “Haylie Marie, come see your Papa,” and just like that, a little 4-year-old girl with long brown pig tails wearing only her panties and a little t-shirt came running down the hall and leaped into her Papa’s arms. It brought tears to my eyes just watching him with her. She has no idea, the healing she brought with her when she was born.
Larry saw many beautiful, young Vietnamese children who the Vietcong strapped and concealed bombs to their small bodies and made them walk into the American soldier camps. These poor children had no idea what was happening or what they were being used for. The first few were met with love and awe, as the bombs then exploded, killing or wounding the American soldiers who stepped forward believing the child was lost or needed help. After that, a child who wandered into their camp HAD to be considered an enemy and ……..well, imagine being that soldier who has been commanded to take them out. HORRIFIC.
Larry and I became the best of friends. There was no subject we couldn’t talk about….and we loved many of the same things in life. We left that weekend to return to Michigan…and it was an emotional, sad goodbye for me. It felt like I had just found a long-lost brother, and now I had to leave him. Was it our similar DNA, or was it the fact that he had shared the darkest, haunting secrets of his soul with me, and now I felt connected to him? I carried the weight of his confession for a long time.
Three months later, Larry invited me back out for a 3-day gun show in Reno. I had inadvertently scheduled the flight out of Kalamazoo to Reno for September 1st …the anniversary of the 9-11 attack. I was scared to fly, scared to leave my little farm, and yet I hated to miss the opportunity. I, a person who had never flown, never gone anywhere except to have a baby at a hospital, was now going to fly for a second time. Alone. (An incredible story about my fellow flying passengers, I will save for another time.)
We attended a 3-day gun show in Reno, where I met Neil Armstrong. We fished on the banks of Topaz Lake, using a brown paper bag as a makeshift cutting board while eating cheese, bologna, and crackers. We also drank Coors Light off the tailgate of his Black Ford Ranger. He pulled his dog tags from his tackle box later that day and said, ‘Back during the VIETNAM war, you were only issued one pair of dog tags, and I had kept them all these years, but now he wanted to leave them with someone who would care about having them.’
Sweetest coincidence. I have my dad’s army tags, my uncle Fred’s army tags, Burt’s army tags, and now Larry’s. How I became THE KEEPER OF THE TAGS, I am not quite sure, but I treasure them all just the same. I hang them on the Christmas tree every year, and then they go back into the lock-fireproof box and leave me wondering, who will care about them when I am gone?
Here we were at the HAAS center, and there were several signs. After I got home, I noticed a sign that said ‘Wayne’s Gun.’ Larry’s dad (my dad’s oldest brother) was an avid gun collector and had been selling, trading, and repairing guns his entire life.
This is Larry fishing in Lake Topaz. Here is where he passed on his dog tags to me. What a great day fishing we had. I fished from the shore. He walked out clear up to his belt, and at one point ask me to bring him a beer. I rolled up my jeans to my knees, waded out only that far and yelled “Haas, if you want this beer you are going to have to walk this way, because I don’t aim to soak myself and wear wet clothes the rest of the day” His brother and sister-in-law just roared with laughter. He met me but filled both his front pockets with cans of beer.
After I came home, He and I talked via emails every day, and about once a week or so by phone. Larry was the plant manager for Northern Kenworth where they made Allison Transmissions. For a short 15 months Larry and I shared a beautiful, powerful, deep friendship and then late one night on November 14, 2003, Larry was killed in an accident. In that same black truck, we had explored the countryside in, and had picnic lunches on. He was turning into his driveway off the main road, and turned in front of a young man going 90 miles an hour in a silver Jag. Both drivers were killed instantly. It is believed that Larry, saw nothing…that he began to turn into his driveway in the same way he did everything, slowly and methodically and this young man flying at 90 m.p.h. was on top of him before he knew. Investigators said that even if Larry did look before he began to make his turn, the kid would have been on top of him that fast. . …And just like that Larry was gone.
I felt like someone had just crushed my chest and all breath was gone. It was impossible to believe. I could not wrap my mind around the fact that He and I would never talk again, I would never hear him say my name again, or hear his laughter.
I had agreed earlier that week, to take my daughter and her boyfriend (now hubby with four beautiful children) hunting for the first time on Opening Day of deer season. I went forward, I smiled my way through it, and once we were back in my woods, and I knew that I was alone, I sat with my back against a large oak tree and cried and cried and cried. The blow was so hard to take. If the biggest, most beautiful buck had walked right up to me, I couldn’t have lifted my gun to shoot it. I was devastated.
I flew out to Nevada one last time for his funeral. My Dad and Uncle Fred also flew out with me. Nothing…..,NOTHING ,,,,,,prepared me for seeing him lying in a coffin. I stared at him, till it hurt too bad to breath and took the nearest exit out of that little white church. It was hot and dry outside and his sister was standing to my left smoking a cigarette. It was the first and only time in my life that I wished I smoked. Can’t even explain why, perhaps it was because I subconsciously remembered at that moment that he was a smoker too.
In the hot, Nevada desert sun, we attended his memorial service. Through a flood of my own tears, I had to laugh and whisper “OH Larry, you would get such a charge out of seeing all these women here crying over you”…and the men in wranglers and Stetsons never stopped walking up to the graveside. It was an awesome sight. Couldn’t help but wonder if this was the same scene that we would have viewed at the funeral for Wyatt Erp or Tom Mix. It was that real, that authentic, that true blue western saga. The stuff that legends are made of and books are written about.
Larry died at 54. He was much too young to leave this world. Much too young.
LIFE IS SO FLEETING, SO SHORT. ACCEPT THE LOVE THAT IS OFFERED,
GIVE LOVE IN RETURN AND REMEMBER to
ENJOY THIS DAY TO THE FULLEST…..BECAUSE TOMORROW MAY NOT BELONG TO YOU.
FIFTEEN months wasn’t long enough, why did it have to happen, why did God created it so that we would be so close just BEFORE he passed. I don’t know. I do know I miss him, I miss his smile, his laughter, the sound of his voice when I would call and he would answer “Hello this is Larry”. He LOVED my soaps and kept himself and half his workers at ALLISON’S TRANSMISSIONS stocked up with it. He heard me when I spoke, there was nothing too silly or ridiculous, or unimportant to him…He wanted to hear anything and everything I had to say, and it was that way for me when he would talked. The beauty of the memories, the strength of the bond will live on.
Whenever we walked down the street in Virginia City, He would never say a word but would just step behind me and end up on the “Street Side” of me, saying ” Out here, woman don’t walk on the curb side of the road, same with planes. No matter what the ticket says…. the women always give a man the aisle seat.”.
Larry Served His country proud in Nam, and he truly is one of the last REAL COWBOYS that I had the PLEASURE and BLESSING of getting to know. He fit the bill of everything a cowboy was.
Today He would have been 67.
HAPPY HEAVENLY BIRTHDAY MY DEAR COUSIN. I love you always…look forward to having another cup of coffee with you one day. Save me a seat, and get a large table. I am sure that our friend Burt and your Dad, our uncles, aunts, and other family members will be joining us for a great visit together
Larry Karl Haas June 20, 1949 – November 14, 2003
Garth Brooks sang it best:
“And now, I’m glad I didn’t know, the way it all would end, the way it all would go.
Our lives are better left to chance, I could have missed the pain, But I’d have had to miss the dance.”
(I Wouldn’t have missed our time together Larry…not for all the world. Lots of love and laughter, no regrets, no goodbyes, I will see you on the other side.)
“Be of good courage and I will strengthen your heart.” When we are going through tough times and there is no relief in sight, we usually start looking for the nearest and quickest way out. It’s that “escapist” in us all. We tend to think that MAYBE we deserve better conditions than what our current situation is. When we think like that, we are ignoring that God is in every detail of our days. Any painful or difficult circumstance is not worthless. We should try to muster the courage to say “yes” to life and trust that GOD is in control and with us throughout all struggles. Large or small.
Recently, we took an unexpected trip to Branson Missouri to meet up with my Brother in Law and his wife, whom we had not seen since 2007. They live in Texas and it seemed that Branson was about equal time for us all. Our Son and his wife and five children also met us there, though He left at midnight and drove the 8 hours straight for sanity sake and so his children would sleep their way to Missouri. In total it was only a four-day trip. We would spend 2 days on the road and 2 days off the road visiting. I am NOT a travel-bunny. I am a “stay on my farm and tend to whatever needs tending to bunny. I am happiest in my little corner of the world. It takes more courage that you would believe for me to climb into my truck and drive out of this drive way.
I am not comfortable at all going 70 miles an hour or faster if heavy city traffic is breathing down our necks. I ride in “zombie” mode. I try to converse with others, but my right hand has a death like grip on the passenger door and I admit at this point I do a bit more “foreboding” than I should. The human mind schemes up the worst things happening and there is no comfortableness in my own skin and sometimes not for the driver either.
I took my Bible along as I usually do, but after some good advice from my ” wise owl friend” Cheryl, I decided I would keep track of how many times I saw God throughout the trip. Mind you, I could not possibly list them all, but I was happy to see that even in the smallest, silliest, details HE is still there.
Our first morning, we all ran to the local Walmart for a few things we needed. Our oldest Grandchild Ben, found a perfect small video camera and wanted to record the trip. Since He had been saving his birthday money He was ready make a purchase. When He got up to the counter to pay, He couldn’t find his roll of cash. His Dad paid for the camera and He and his Mom went back inside in hopes of finding where he might had lost the money. Within 15 minutes they came walking out of the store with his roll of money. Someone who worked at Walmart found the money and had already turned it in. It wasn’t even 9 a.m. GOD KEPT HIS MONEY SAFE.
That same morning, one of his four sisters had been to visit the Disney Store with their Mom, gotten a darling pair of pink sunglasses. If you have ever been to Branson, it’s a whole town built on a hill, parking lots leave your vehicle leaning heavily to one side, the lobby of hotels are level with the road on the front side and the 3rd floor from the back of the building. The entire family walked and walked for probably 4 miles. Shortly after noon, we all walked to the top of a hill, and sat below a huge cement Chicken that towered above us all by 30 feet and rested. Then we all decided to walk into the local McDonalds further up the road and get a drink and use the restrooms. After more walking we all went back to the hotel, children napped and around 6 that evening when my brother-in-law and his wife finally arrived. Everyone went out to dinner. We decided to eat at the Great American Chicken and Burger Barn. My son and his family pulled up in their van, got out and Little Carly noticed her bright pink sunglasses were still sitting on the cement pad where we had all rested almost ten hours earlier that day. What are the odds with all the tourist in that town that NO one took those little girls glasses. GOD KEPT THOSE GLASSES THERE.
Just before we left on this trip, I was talking with our oldest daughter Tonya, about an idea I had for writing my own publication. She was very encouraging and was honest that she also thought what I had in mind really should be done. An untapped source that needed to be tapped. We discussed it for a long time and I concluded with:
“Well, you know I would have to find a publisher to publisher it and I would have to find the time to interview these certain key SENIOR CITIZEN people (before something happens and they aren’t here to interview) . I wanted to mix in Bible verses throughout the publication showing how GOD is still just as present in our everyday lives today as He was in the lives of our ancestors. I already have a full plate with family and farm animals, crops due to be in when Springtime finally arrives, and harvest in the fall. Not to mention hay throughout the summer months. I decided that I would just add it to my prayer list and see what the Lord thought of it all.
On Saturday, in Missouri, the whole family was dining out. I walked over to look at some souvenirs for the grandkids and our two daughters that were not able to come with us on this trip. (We always travel together like a gas-powered wagon train). I was checking it out when my son Thom happened by and grabbed a hat that said CIA (Christian In Action) and said I love Jesus all over the back of it. He said “Mom, Uncle Jeff would like this hat”. I told him he was right and I bought it.
Sunday Evening, we went to a large horse and dinner show called the DIXIE STAMPEDE. After the show there are hundreds of people leaving the arena in a dozen way. A tall, older cowboy walked up to my brother-in-law and said “I sure like your hat, I’m a believer also”. My brother in law walked on, and the gentlemen turned to me and said something. I muttered that I bought the hat for him and then the cowboy showed me two magazines he was holding and said He wrote them and He explained how He uses books from the Bible He studies, and then intertwines stories with a few stories from the old west. He said he carries a few magazines with him everywhere he goes. So, we bought the two he had with him.
I ask him again “you write these? “He just smiled as he was walking away and said “Yes, just check out page 6 when you have time”. And just like that the “messenger” was gone. I didn’t take time to read through them that night. In fact, I stashed them away in my truck for the long journey home.
I call Elliot Johnson “a messenger” NOT because HE SPREADS THE WORD OF CHRIST in every moment of his day…..but because when I opened one of the magazines to page 6 , sure enough there He was. Explaining everything just as He had mentioned in those few seconds we met. What hit me was this:
I felt like GOD brought a “human messenger” right to my face. Everything that Mr. Johnson is doing is what I had talked about doing with my daughter the week before. What I had been praying about. Should I begin this endeavor, Do I have time, what will be my startup cost, where will I get it published, how often should I publish it. Right there on page 6 was all the answers and GOD PLACED IT IN MY HAND DIRECTLY FROM THE AUTHOR himself. I believe with my whole heart that it was NO ACCIDENT that I met ELLIOT JOHNSON.
PROOF….for me anyway that GOD is alive, He is listening to all our prayers, all our conversations, He is PRESENT TODAY in EVERYWAY.
**The publication that I have been contemplating doing will take me out of my comfort zone and put my writings and beliefs OUT IN THE WORLD. A scary thought for me. I Will keep the readers of this Blog posted as to my progress.
When the telephone rang tonight, I knew why it was ringing before I answered it. I felt it. Clear down inside my heart. I knew My Grandmother was gone. As I answered the call, my uncle confirmed my thoughts, and with my Dad away on a fishing trip he asks if I would have to convey the message when he returned home that his mom was gone. That was a hard piece of news to deliver to my dad at 3.a.m. Yet, she lives on so VIVIDLY in my heart.
In May of 1921, my grandmother met my grandfather while they were both living at a Boarding House. Stan was a third-grade teacher by day and took classes at night. He was within six weeks of obtaining his pastoral degree and had plans of going west to teach on a reservation and preach the gospel. Doris was a stenographer. They were introduced by a principal that was also staying at the house, and within days they both felt deeply towards one another. By May 20, of 1922 they were married, and had seven children together.
My Grandfather, Stanley Arthur Haas, had left this earth on May 16, 1948. He was only 47 years old. The two of them were barely married 26 years when he died at home on a Sunday afternoon. He had danced a jig around the Livingroom, excited that the farm they had bought together on May 18, 1946, was paid off. They had let their home in Vicksburg go back to the back during the depression rather than loose it.
Four years later, after living in a small outbuilding at Grandma’s parent’s home, they found a farmhouse and some acres home, the whole top story was broken in. A large pine had fallen on it. There was snow a foot deep in the upstairs when they first looked at it. By Springtime, they used a team of horses and block and tackle to hoist the massive tree off the house and they set about replacing the walls and the rebuilding the roof. They had paid off the note in full, and soon after his celebratory dance, he sat down in a chair and died. (At the age of ten, Stan had his appendix removed on the kitchen table by a doctor who told his parents then, that he had a smaller than normal heart and heart rate, and a small tear it in.) Afterwards, his parents were careful not to allow him to jump and run as other children did. He played, but never to the point of real exertion.
Forty-seven years had come and gone since Grandma lost the love of her life. There was never a moment that lapsed that she didn’t think of him. In many ways there was a part of her that left when he did. Her grief justifiably was debilitating to her.
I never met my Granddad face to face, but I felt like I knew him from all the stories Grandma would tell me. Each Sunday, of my youth I would walk the mile west from our farmhouse (the same house they bought in 1946) and I would sit at her feet while she talked about their life together. She shared stories and poetry she wrote for him or about him. She never held back when it came to talking about Stan and I sat and soaked it all up like a sponge. She kept his memory alive and graciously shared him with anyone who would listen. She was proud of him.
Grandma had three of her older children married, the fourth was a teen, and my dad was ten when he lost his dad. Little Fred named after grandma’s Dad was six, and young Kathleen Eva was four. I cannot begin to imagine how hard her life was during the years that followed. By the time I was soaking up her stories, she had remarried a man at the end of the road, Mr. Labadie and My Dad bought the farmhouse from her in 1961.
I believe with every fiber of my being that Grandpa Stan was waiting at Heaven’s Gate for “his dearest one” no doubt as anxiously as he awaited the birth of their seven children. (Though their last baby was born in a hospital he was very cross about that, and insisted on standing outside the room and the moment the baby was born, the nurse had to bring the little one to the door so he could tie a string to the arm. He was afraid they would mix up the babies.) You gotta love that kind of thinking. Otherwise, they delivered their other six babies in the same bed they were made in, and she spoke frequently of the love, coaxing, the nurturing and strength that he offered her during those times.
(Their Seven kids behind Grandma. Merle, Wayne, Kathy, Fred, Mary Helen, Lola and My Dad Jim)
I imagine, their oldest son Wayne, is with him. I could almost feel his excitement once he received the news that she was finally coming to join him. I am sure he has had many wonderful reunions up there, but this is the one he must have been waiting for. The one important part of his heart that has been missing far too long.
I want to imagine him with his arms stretched out wide, leaning as far forward as he can to make her journey to Heaven smoother and quicker. I can almost hear his laughter and see his face all ashine. As I write this tonight, I can see my grandma walking with grace and eloquence towards his waiting arms. The arms that held her and always gave her such warmth and comfort, the arms that she has missed wrapping up in for 47 years.
I want to believe GOD IS THERE. He is watching them and nodding his head in approval as if to symbolize “Yes Doris, the time has finally come, your time on earth is through my good and faithful woman. I can almost see their embrace, feel their tears as their hearts overflow at their feet. This is the moment they have both waited for, dreamed about in separate realms.
I like to imagine them walking hand in hand again. Strolling across heaven now instead of their small Volinia farm with Grandpa almost absent mindedly whisking Grandma off to show his dearest to the Lord, as if the Lord didn’t already know her, know of her kind and gentle spirit. As if he didn’t KNOW exactly when she was coming.
Like so many years before, they walk hand in hand again. Together they will look down and view their every growing family. There are many new generations now since 1948.
For the last several years of her life, Grandma was in a Nursing Home, and she missed out on a lot of changes in the family. Births, deaths, weddings, graduations, new careers, new homes spreading all across this great country of ours.
UNITED once again, they will watch over us all together now and are no doubt praying for those of us who linger behind them.
For me, at this time of great loss, I reflect on what a positive role model she was for me. Within each of our little visits SHE taught me how to be a wife and mother. She tried to instill in me how to love, and how to find a man as good as special as my grandfather. She taught me how to write simply because she shared her stories and journals and poems with me. No matter the weather, every Sunday we would walk up to her home. If she had company my Dad would ask that we just come back home and not bother her and Grandpa George.
Those were sad Sundays for me. Not because she always dished up some little dab of sherbert in a glass bowl for you or whipping up some homemade apple fritters by cutting up an apple and stirring it into a bowl of bisquick and plugging in the little deep fryer soon the house would fill with the best aroma while she dropped Spoonfuls of the batter into the hot grease.
A missed Sunday visit for me meant, I missed out on hearing a new story, or sometimes the same stories, but I would pick up on another little tidbit I missed the first time she told it. She began painting at 55 years old and painted the most beautiful scenic landscape pictures. She had seven children and way too many grandchildren and greats to count but she NEVER forgot anyone’s birthday, Christmas or graduation. The gifts were big candy bars, a pack of pencils, a journal, a book, a stack of comic books, a wooden whistle, a box of notecard, a pack of gum or cookies. As little as those gifts were, those are the ones that us adult remember the most today.
TOGETHER, may their spirts go well into the days ahead and may their great SEPTEMBER LIGHT shine will all their joined Brillance down upon us all, and may we feel their warmth and love trickling into our own busy lives.
Of all the many gifts that I gleaned from Grandma Doris, and there were many, the one that will remain with me as long as I live is I KNEW where I came from, it made me feel proud of the two of them and all that their love built together, and I wanted to be sure that my children KNEW where they came from also. And they do. And that, is a good feeling for this momma to carry on around in this troublesome world.
