Motherhood and Muffin Tops : March 2022

Well, this renovation thing is obviously going to cause some blog disruptions from time to time. Sometimes, I, the night owl, fall asleep around 10:00 from having been up since daybreak. Waking up at 6:30 makes one doze off by the time the news comes on- hours which are quite foreign and uncomfortable for me. If I do manage to stay awake, I may be busy sweeping and mopping the sheetrock dust of the day, which can be quite impressive. Some nights, we’re having to evacuate one room to take up residence in another before they get here the next morning. You have to be flexible and get your shampoo and soap and just go find a bathroom that is in commission at the moment. And I’ve discovered I may or may not be set in my ways as I’ve discovered I can’t write in all the rooms in the house. I tell myself this is only temporary at least 10 times a day. Thankfully, we’ve seen a lot of progress, which helps my feelings, but we’re just a small step above camping at this point.

And, last week, well, it was a really good time for me. You know, sometimes, you just have those weeks that are especially nice. Along with Carson being here for some of spring break, I was fortunate enough to spend part of each day with old friends from my childhood and teenage years. Some were here from out of town and some were teacher friends who were out for spring break and some, well, it just turned out to be a good time to get together. When you’re with old friends, old times are bound to come up and they did. We talked about the things we did and the places we went when we were young. When your face is starting to show the lines of age and you can still look across the table and see the faces of your childhood, then you are blessed. There’s nothing quite so dear as having a friend who endures from the innocence of youth through all the years since. There’s something about having traveled through all of life’s stages with a person that connects them to you in a deep down place. After the different conversations, I thought about all the good things we did- so much that kids don’t do anymore.

Today’s kids will never know the thrill of sliding over the top of a vinyl bench seat and falling into the back floorboard while going 55 mph. Or stretching over the front seat from the back to press the radio preset buttons. Or sitting in the opened car window or in the back of a truck while going down the road. Or sticking your gum in those little car ashtrays- my word, we were surrounded by ashtrays everywhere we went. They’ll never have the feeling of living dangerously- traveling down the interstate unbuckled, because the seat belts were hopelessly lost in the bowels of the vinyl seats. It’s not really a bad thing that they’re missing out on this, but it sure seemed fun at the time.

Kids probably never smear Elmer’s glue on their hands and peel it off after it dries anymore. Sometimes, we used candle wax. No, with smart phones, gaming systems, streaming tv, and travel ball and dance, they’ve likely never experienced the level of boredom that is required to come up with such pastimes. When the glue thing got old, we’d get our mothers’ stick pins and run them through the skin in our fingertips. Or maybe that was just me. If so, just forget I said anything.

They’ll never know the mystery of answering a phone with no idea who’s on the other end- could be a good surprise or a bad one. Either way, you were on the hook. On the flip side, the anonymity it provided when calling someone just to see if they were home and then hanging up was priceless. It also gave you cover when calling strangers to ask if their refrigerator was running. And they’ll never experience the fear associated with their parents answering their phone calls and the great unknown of what they might say to their friends when they call to speak to them. It was harder back then to conceal the fact that you did, indeed, have parents.

Nowadays, schools have early dismissal every time the weather even thinks about getting bad. Back then, we just crawled under tables or lined up in the hall- heads between our knees with our books shielding our skulls. Sometimes, we just squatted with our heads against the wall. I remember kids crying and wailing and one even wetting her pants. Everybody wanted their mama. I don’t care what kind of weather was headed straight for the school, if it wasn’t 3:00, you weren’t going anywhere. We still had sentences to diagram and we weren’t done carrying the one. Que sera, sera, kids.

The whole school lunch experience was different. There weren’t all the convenient disposable things they have now, but our lunchboxes were the coolest. These kids will never know the smell of metal mixed with bologna and cherry kool-aid after your lunchbox had gotten left in the car. The stern threats from your mom when she sent ravioli in your thermos, “you bring back my fork- that’s one of my good ones.”

I don’t think kids know about the freedom a bike could give back then. Unlike today, the bike was your most prized possession. There was a feeling that it was an extension of yourself and your key to a day of independence. Your mom didn’t have to know where you were going. She said nothing about staying where she could see you. Why in the world would you want to do that? As long as you got home when you were called to dinner, the bike could take you anywhere you wanted to go. You were queen of the road on your pink Huffy with the banana seat, handlebar streamers, and playing cards flapping in the spokes.

Kids don’t know about the novelty of Saturday morning cartoons anymore. They have cartoons whenever and wherever they want them. And you can’t talk about Saturday morning cartoons with out mentioning reading the cereal box while eating for a lack of anything else to do- unless it was Sunday and the funny paper had come. Then, there was digging around in the cereal with your dirty hands to find the prize at the bottom before your brother did. I mean, you couldn’t let him get his hands on the plastic terrarium, or diving submarine, or secret decoder ring.

Most kids will never know what it’s like for the outdoors to be their playground where the playground equipment consisted of swollen creeks, culverts, bridges, drain pipes, tall trees, flooded ditches, and railroad tracks. Where were our mothers? I’ll tell you where they were. They were watching Victor and Nicki on The Young and the Restless, while swishing Pine Sol around in the toilets and smearing lemon Pledge on the furniture- forgetting they even had children.

There are no longer any dangerous toys, because they do this new thing called safety testing. Instead, toys now have warnings to not eat the batteries. Back then, you were welcomed to eat the batteries if you were that dense. Nobody was going to tell you that you couldn’t. There were a lot of dangers in our toy boxes. Recall? Pshhh. Here, take these clackers outside and knock yourself silly. Go spear your friends with these lawn darts. Let’s see how many limbs you can break when your Keds slip off those metal monkey bars and you fall through that nest of rebar. Here are some Fisher-Price figures that will fit perfectly in your small throat- go suck on these. Not to mention, all the boys were running around with loaded BB guns and pocket knives. It was survival of the fittest out there. Our legos contained lead and who knows what that nuclear material was inside Stretch Armstrong. Our childhood was really a test- a boot camp of sorts. Who can make it to adulthood alive?

Fun but unhealthy activities were a must. Did our mothers know water from the hose contained lead and a heaping dose of BPA? Of course, not. And ignorance was bliss as we ran behind the mosquito truck in the cloud of DDT with them waving from the kitchen window. The feeling of your hair blowing in the wind as you rode down a big hill without the confinement of a bike helmet. Or the thrill of lying on a friend’s black roof slathered in vegetable oil or baby oil or any other oil you could find to fry your epidermis so it would eventually turn brown. I don’t ever remember our parents supervising our fireworks. They just sent us out with a box of matches and our explosives and trusted that they hadn’t raised idiots. No, mothers now are armed with so much information and so many warnings that their kids will miss out on these fun, yet questionable activities.

Everybody has their own phone now, so gone are the days when you’d have to get off the phone so someone else could use it. If you didn’t get off when you were first asked, well, they’d just pick up and give you a friendly reminder so your friend could hear. “Joni, your daddy needs to use the phone to make an important call.” And privacy was only found in pulling the phone cord under the door of your bedroom, which eventually caused it to short out and get all static-y and you’d have to hold it just right to continue your conversation.

Teenagers are now getting cars as nice or nicer than their parents. They’ll never develop the coping mechanisms needed to drive a 15 year old gray tank up into the student parking lot. It fosters the development of one’s sense of humor. Of course, a lot of people had these type of cars, so we just named them and gave them a life and personality of their own. Most of the time, your parents didn’t just go buy you a new car when you got your license. That was something you had to work toward. Starting out, you were only getting one if, say, your grandmother was getting a new car and you got her old one. I believe that’s how I came to drive the Green Bean for a short time- only to have it replaced later by the Pale Rider that my daddy bought off some old lady without any consultation with me. He seemed more impressed by the low mileage and garage-kept condition than he was worried about how it would look to a 16 year old.

Neighborhood kid camaraderie. I’m not sure a lot of children have that anymore. The kids who lived in your neighborhood were your posse. You were like a large, non-violent gang. You didn’t choose them, but it was like fate chose them for you on the basis of your home address. Most of the things you did around the hood, you did as a group. Kickball, baseball, bike trails, fishing, fort building, hide and seek. Can you tell I lived in a neighborhood where the boys had the majority? There were fights, conflict resolutions, compromises, trades, bets, secrets, disagreements, competitions, and such. The neighborhood was one of the primary sources for friendships and everyday was brimming with fun possibilities.

There are other things our kids and grandkids will never know about, which include but are not limited to: Television programming actually going off for the night with the singing of the “Star Spangled Banner.” Having to get your mom to drive you to the library to look up James Polk in the World Book Encyclopedia for your research paper and praying nobody was already using the “P” volume. Memorizing phone numbers and using them so frequently that you can still recite your friends’ parents’ numbers when you’re 53. The burning of the corneas which occurred when your dad used flash cubes to take your picture indoors. The level of imagination one needs to believe that moving a small bar up and down with a joystick in order to hit a square back and forth is an enjoyable and realistic technological version of playing ping pong. Watching people like Evel Knievel do dangerous stunts on television specials, which targeted young kids, so, afterward, they could go look for some rotten plywood and cement blocks to “try this at home.”

I wouldn’t trade my 70’s childhood and 80’s teenagehood for anything. We’re the survivors. The fittest. The ones who figured it out on our own. And when I think about the times in my life when I have felt safe, secure, loved, and happy, my mind takes me there, first of all. There’s no greater gift that a child can get or a parent can give than that.

“A happy childhood is perhaps the most fortunate gift in life.” Dorothy Richardson

I enjoyed remembering with y’all. Hope you’re having a great week!

JONI

Well, we’re home from our week away. We had wonderful food, wonderful weather, and a wonderful time. Here’s a brief pictorial summary.

We enjoyed some beautiful days out in nature. We looked for trails that were on the shorter side as you know I’m the weak link on our family hiking excursions. Apparently, I inhaled too much of nature as I came home afflicted with allergy and sinus troubles- so, for the last couple of days of romantic getaway bliss, I smelled of honey lemon menthol and snorted a lot.

Our hiking reminded me of this meme on my phone.

We did the Biltmore tour. We’d been to Asheville, but never to Biltmore. It was a nice quaint, little bungalow. It seems to me that they likely spent most of their time trying to decide which room they’d occupy each day. Which book to read. Which window to look out. Which chair to sit in. Which fireplace to warm by. Which garden to stroll. There were a lot of choices to consider. What a lovely, fairytale place.

The room where the masterpieces from Washington’s National Gallery of Art were hidden during WW2.

We had some time left after Biltmore, so we went to Billy Graham’s retreat center, The Cove, since it was nearby. We got there just an hour before they closed, so we were the only ones there at the time. Our guide, Stanley, was an older man who asked if he could pray for us and if we had any specific prayer requests. There in the little church, just the three of us, he prayed the sweetest, most sincere prayer for each one of our children in the places they are on their life journeys and for our friend, Mary, who was having surgery that day. I’m not sure if prayers carry more weight coming from Billy Graham’s neck of the woods, but they certainly were a blessing to us on that beautiful day.

I shared with our guide the memory of being called to the den whenever one of Billy Graham’s crusades was being televised. It didn’t matter what you were doing or how many tests you had the next day or who wanted you to come out and play, when Billy Graham came on, you were going to sit on the couch and listen to his sermon and nobody was getting up until they started singing “Just As I Am.” That was a wonderful time back when people would pack stadiums to hear about God and the major networks would televise it in prime time slots and families would sit down together and watch. Our country sure could use some of that about now.

We stopped at the Downton Abbey exhibit on the way home and it was wonderful. So many costumes, props, and sets were there. It was nicely done and had drawn quite a crowd of fans on that day, which was the day before it was ending.

Granny is my absolute favorite. I mean, I couldn’t love her more.

We’d catch bits of the news in the room while we were getting ready to head out to the next place. In the middle of the beauty of God’s creation, it seemed like the whole world was falling apart by the looks of things. Ukrainian mothers bouncing little babies on their hips while they told about near-miss explosions. Little children screaming at the loud noises of war. Men taking up arms and doing whatever they could to defend their country. Desperate masses of people kneeling to pray in the snow.

I thought about something I’d seen while we were out hiking. There on the very edge of a rocky cliff, I saw a plant growing out of seemingly nothing. There was no soil or any obvious matter to support its life. But, it was there. Coming out of the hard rock. Living and being sustained where there seemed to be no hope. Like the tiny pine tree growing in the gutters. The weed coming out of the crack in the sidewalk. The daffodil springing up from the cold, hard ground.

When I saw the mothers in Ukraine exhausting all of their energy protecting their children and the ordinary citizens eager to get their lessons on how to be a soldier, I thought about that plant. We all have an innate desire to live and thrive and we can find ourselves adapting and surviving in places we never imagined we could as long as we feel the potential for life is still there. It’s what makes a dying cancer patient keep looking for their cure. It’s what helped hundreds of thousands of Jews survive concentration camps. It’s what kept a sailor clinging to the side of a raft for 76 days before being rescued from the ocean. No matter how dire our circumstances or how the odds are stacked against us, if life still has a chance, we want to fight for the possibility with everything in us. That’s what I see the Ukrainian people doing.

We came home to day 9,258 of our renovation. Everything was covered with a fine, white layer of dust. I have to get up and at ‘em so I can be showered and dressed before the men get here just before the rooster crows, each day. We’re currently down to one bathroom option with limited counter space. We’re using paper plates with plastic forks that break and shoot across the room when we eat. I’m not sure where my hair dryer is. Davis has to buy his coffee at the convenience store. Ruby is looking at us like we must have forgotten to pay some bills or something.

In most recent history, we’ve been so insulated in our country from any kind of discomfort or inconvenience or real hardship. Especially my generation and younger. We think a hard time is when the Wi-Fi is down or our car is in the shop or we’re roughing it for a short time while our home is being renovated. Most of us have spent the majority of our days flourishing in the green, fertile fields of life and opportunity, but so many around the world are struggling to survive in the dry crevices and the hard cracks. The places where the elements are harsh on life, conditions are unfavorable for growth, and where there’s little place for hope and peace to take root. I’ve grown a lot in my gratitude watching the news, lately. And also in my admiration for the Ukrainian people who are praying and hoping and fighting hard for their lives and their land. I pray the Author of Life will sustain them in those difficult places and continue to work mightily on their behalf. That He would cause them to not lose hope or the will to fight for life. And may they also know of the life in Heaven that’s offered to them through Jesus.