With summer and family reunions, and family trips, it is natural to recall other trips, or other family memories that such occasions call to mind.   I know that has been our experience this summer.  Who we are and why we are becomes the stuff of conversations riding in a car, or gathering around a shared meal we feel free to voice our recollections with shared companions.

One of my daughters expressed to me this, “Mom, “things” have never been so important to you, have they?  You didn’t have a lot of things growing up, did you?”    I just smiled.   I didn’t have a lot of “things” as society thinks, but, oh what I did have!  First of all, I had a home where happiness was not measured by what you had, but by what you had to share.  Our home became on many occasions a food bank, a sanctuary, a repository of help in health and business advice for a small bit of real estate that society had forgotten.

We had a pristinely clean and orderly home, with a white fence that I had to keep painted!  We had glorious food, ample clothing, and a yard filled with zinnias on both sides of the back door, lilac bushes, peonies, hydrangeas, grape harbors, and two vegetable gardens that filled our table and our bellies.  Things!  If a thing was needed in our home it was for the comfort of our family, like a furnace to replace wood stoves, inner spring mattresses to replace feather ticks, or even straw ticks,  water piped into the house, electricity that changed our lives forever.  That was my world growing up.

Bill and I tried to replicate this style in our own home, and I think the girls got the message.  Time together was more important than things, time was that intangible gift that we could give them that didn’t have a price tag attached.  Grandchildren, get your Mom to tell you about the Holstein Convention trips she took!  Many times, loading everyone into a nine passenger station wagon or the “Barth” motor home and off we went. Eight track tapes blaring, cherries in the refrigerator, Barbara asleep before we got out of Rockingham county, Cathy sitting behind Bill’s seat talking about cuts and fills on the highway.    “Things!”  Not so many….just enough.  We all should know when we have “Just enough.”  Thanks be to God.

John Masefield’s poem resonated in my head in anticipation, and then in reality, as my primal urge was again fulfilled in an almost annual event.  Time and time again from childhood, when brother Charles or sister Carrie would load kit and kin into ladened cars and head to Virginia Beach, to our families Nags Head and Myrtle Beach outings, I feel the call to the ocean.

Last night, in reflection, I thought to myself about what was my favorite moments.  The ocean lived up to its promise of power and wonder in its constant pounding of surf against sand, and the sand still permeates clothes, skin and hair, the sea gulls still squawk as I remember.  Or maybe it was my early morning  three mile tricycle ride under the canopy of live oaks with an occasional spiked, scaled palm tree pushing through the leafy bower for its place in the sun.  It could be that grownup grandchildren prepared scrumptious dinners for us all, or perhaps it was witnessing the phenomena of porpoises driving schools of fish to shore and chasing them up on the beach to feed.

I loved all of the above, but the thing that brought a smile to my lips, as I lay dozing last night, was letting a small fifteen-month old boy hold my finger as he tottered over the beach, chatting an unintelligible conversation (except to mothers and grandmothers) as he pointed out an occasional dog, or a sea bird, or the ocean and allowed me to see my beloved ocean with new eyes.

As John Masefield said.”  I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;  And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying, And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls flying.”

I’ve told my girls that I have to be “inspired” to write my blogs, and this one is no different.  All happening from a thank you note from a special granddaughter thanking me for my  college graduation gift.  She said, in part, that my gift of an antique violet celery dish and salt saucers took her back to a memory of her own.  She said that in furnishing her doll house, she bought little violet dishes because it reminded her of me. That was her gift back to me!!

I don’t know if it is the aging process or some need to enhance the memory of a grandmother, but I have found in sharing a bit of my past and Bill’s past with our grandchildren has given me untold joy.  So passing on antique guns, sportsmanship plaques, high school and college rings, antique violet dishes, and charm bracelets seem to satisfy some primal need in me by saying, without words, this is who we were.

I have never been one to glorify the past by thinking nothing or no one can possibly be as great as we were, but recently, with a drive to Asheville with a nine year old granddaughter who hungered for stories of her family, told me that the new generation desires to hear that past…both good and painful.  A recent family reunion, again, told me how we long to connect with those who laid down the foundation for who we are today.

As Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher once wrote, “Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards.”  I hope that my sharing stories, tokens, and time may be the bricks my grandchildren build upon for their exciting futures.

I just got word that my college roommate and loving friend has died. I wrote an earlier post about her influence on my life, but a lot of that needs repeating, which in some way might make this reality a bit easier to process.

Faye contacted polio when she was about twelve, and for the rest of her life she used body and leg braces, crutches, and wheel chairs to navigate life. That navigation, I might mention, included, a stellar college career at Madison College, a Masters degree from Tulane, University, and a career of working with handicapped children in Virginia. So what’s that say to the rest of us.

She celebrated each of my girls as they arrived, she married a kind and understanding husband and held her family close. A dear great niece of hers sought me out when she came to JMU, and tolerated my stories of Faye and me as coeds and our tales of restrictions on us that made her laugh…such as having to wear a raincoat over any wearing of trousers or gym clothes when on campus.

She will forever be a positive force in my life and a very important memory of perseverance in the face of unwarranted obstacles. Rest well my friend.

Trying out a new web server for my musings, as that is how I best describe my writings.  Lately there’s been too much newness in my life.  Something there is about Change at my age that is a bit troubling, although sometimes exhilarating with new great grandchildren, and new careers for family members, but the news of a beloved minister moving to a new field of service will be one of those changes that will take some time of adjustment.

Newness is very often not a bad time.  As one of my daughters reminded me in her tribute to my 80th birthday.  When we don’t change,when we are content like mushrooms, sitting in goop up to our chins, we die.  Newness is life, newness is anticipation, newness is what we celebrate with this season as we await the birth of one who will tear open the heavens and come down to change our lives.  Newness….embrace it

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton