I wrote this post over sixteen years ago, when Clara (who is now 23) and Elijah (22) were such littles. She and I got together recently and had a nice time reminiscing about what we used to call W. W. G. It brought tears to my eyes to remember all we used to do, and how things have changed. I thought I would repost it today.

We’ve had a tradition in our family for almost two years now, and it has a name. We call it W. W. G., which stands for Wednesdays With Grandma.

Each Wednesday, I pick up seven year-old Clara and six year-old Elijah after school and bring them back to our house. Ever the germphobe, I first have them wash the gajillion elementary school micro-organisms from their hands when they come in the back door, then they have a snack at the kitchen table and tell me about their day. Typical snacks at Grandpa and Grandma’s house are: mozzarella cheese sticks, a handful of peanuts mixed with raisins, raw almonds and Carr’s whole wheat “cookie crackers,” bananas and baby carrots, or Greek gods honey yogurt. I also give them each a glass of water and a Flintstone’s vitamin. Elijah chooses orange and Clara grape.

Then they both settle in to their favorite things to do here. Elijah usually heads for the Legos and starts putting together swords, robots and Star Wars light sabers. Clara might take out a book that she’s read five times already but still enjoys. Last week it was Ellen Tebbits by Beverly Cleary. Elijah will sometimes take out a large illustrated version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, lay on his stomach on the den carpet and slowly page through the drawings he’s seen a hundred times. Last time he pointed out the fox in the woods that he thought was a spy for the dark side, and the faces in some of the Narnian forest trees. Sometimes they both open the Grandchildren Drawer in the kitchen to take out their art supplies, and Elijah draws comics and Clara an illustrated game or journal. Once in a while they play checkers or Battleship while PBS kids TV is on. They like Curious George and Arthur.

After about an hour it’s time for Clara to change into her leotard and tights, and I drive her to dance class. Elijah stays with Grandpa and they have man time. Clara takes a backpack with her pink ballet shoes and her black tap shoes, and when I drop her off inside the studio, I then collect four year-old Vivienne, who is in the class right before Clara’s. I drive Vivienne home to her house, and remind her that when she is six it will be time for her to join W. W. G.  Then I return home and put the finishing touches on dinner.

Michael and I set the table and get everything ready. On Wednesday we have seven people at the table for dinner so we add a chair. Then I head out again, this time to pick Clara up from her dance lesson. She and I listen to a G.T. and the Halo Express CD in the van on the short ride home, and it brings a joy to my heart that I can’t describe, hearing her pure little voice singing many scripture passages set to music. “Grandma, maybe I should test you on the verses sometime soon, and help you with the ones you forgot!” she said recently, and I told her I thought that was a fantastic idea.

When we get home I serve everyone dinner and we eat together. Clara and Elijah always remind us to pray before we dig in, and everyone in our household enjoys the company of the little ones. They help us to laugh and chat about fun things while we enjoy eat one of my crockpot creations and a green salad.

Clara and Elijah are usually the first ones to finish eating (it doesn’t take long to eat two lettuce leaves and a tablespoon of chicken and rice casserole), and they know it’s time to pick up the toys and get ready for church. I take them to our church’s Wednesday night services, where something for every age is offered. It’s usually packed. Clara attends the little girls’ Prims class, and Elijah goes to Royal Rangers. They both love it. I sign them in and then go upstairs for prayer and worship, where I’m thankful for the darkened sanctuary and the music that leads me away from thoughts of things that weigh on my heart, and instead nudges me to thoughts of my God and His love and delivering power and willingness to help us as we walk out our puny lives. I take a purse-full of Kleenex and use it all up.

By the time church is over it’s already past the kids’ bedtime, but I figure W. W. G. is so special it’s okay if they miss an hour or two of sleep once a week. We leave church and as we drive home Clara and Elijah tell me about Royal Rangers and Prims and what they learned. And what candy they ate. When we arrive home they trot upstairs to get ready for a bath while I tend to things I need to do for those we care for in our home.

Upstairs when the huge tub is filled and ready, Clara and Elijah take a short bath and play with the small bin of toys I keep in our linen closet – there’s a tail-less brontosaurus named Bronto, a lime green tugboat, a plastic pirate, some large jacks, and a funnel, among other things. I put in a teeny bit of LOC from Amway (my favorite product by that company) and turn on the jets, and soon the bubbles are puffing up to their shoulders. They make hairstyles, beards, and bubble cakes while I read aloud to them. Right now we’re reading Stormy, Misty’s Foal by Marguerite Henry. Soon I wash their hair, drain the tub and go turn on the electric baseboard heater in our bedroom. I put two pairs of clean underwear and four socks on the top of the heater so after they dry off from their bath, they’ll put on something really toasty. They never fail to smile and remark about this. “Grandma, my socks are so warm on my feet!”

While they’re putting on their jammies, I prepare the pallet on the floor of our bedroom they like to sleep on. We have room in other bedrooms, but they prefer the pallet. I lay down a large blanket, doubled. I put two pillows down, one on each end, so they sleep foot to foot. Once they’re dressed they put on their slippers and we go back downstairs for a snack (because they usually don’t eat a lot of dinner due to the fact it had lettuce or tomatoes or wrinkle-your-nose “sauce” in it). They might have half a peanut butter sandwich, or a cheese stick with a handful of almonds. Then they brush their teeth at the kitchen sink, and give Grandpa a hug and a kiss goodnight.

Back upstairs, Clara and Elijah choose a book from the children’s bookcases in our dressing room, and they settle in for the night on their pallets. I turn on some soft classical music. I make a big show of covering them first with “the applesauce blanket,” which is a pale yellow Vellux blanket they like. Then I cover them with a down-filled comforter and they smile as it settles down on them. They know they have about ten to fifteen minutes to look through their books. Elijah often chooses a children’s Bible with unique illustrations, and Clara last chose The Seven Silly Eaters.

When they start to get sleepy, which is in no time at all, they set their books aside and we recount the things we’ve done together that day. None of it is that momentous, but we recite aloud what we did anyway. It’s a way to try to hold on to the preciousness of ordinary things done with these children I adore, and they seem to grasp why we do it.

Sometimes I tell them what I think they might be when they grow up. Elijah, who is an amazing puzzle worker and Lego builder, hears from his grandma that he will be a problem solver when he is older. I take him on my lap and quietly tell him that God might use him to build up, either buildings or people, that he might be called to help others solve things they’re struggling with, to help make sense out of puzzling and difficult situations. He looks at me tenderly as I try to bless him with my feeble words, and he seems to be taking it all in like a sponge. Then he looks into my eyes and quietly says, “I don’t like your breath.”

I tell Clara that perhaps she will write and/or draw someday and people will want to read her thoughts and ideas. I tell her that she is so patient and loving with her little sisters and is such a fine example to them. I tell her that when she’s older, Elijah and Vivienne and Audrey will recall what a wonderful big sister they’ve had, and that the way she treats them now will pave the way for loving and beautiful relationships when they’re all grown up with families of their own. I tell Clara that God will use her to bring peace and joy into peoples’ lives, and that she’s already doing that, even though she may not fully understand what I mean.

Then I might sing a song or two to them. They like “Jesus Wants You For a Sunbeam” and “The Life of the Voyageur” and “Victory in Jesus.” When Clara was three she often requested the latter song by saying, “Gwamma, will you sing ‘Bic-ta-wee in Jesus?’ ”

I then pray briefly and ask God to give them deep sleep, good dreams, and for Him to keep His hands steady upon them their whole lives, to keep them close to Him and loving Him with their whole hearts. They might not know all that this entails, and I might not know it either, but God does. I’m so thankful He can read our hearts when our words fail.

Within minutes they’re fast asleep, and I slip back downstairs to take care of tasks still calling my name. I clean the kitchen, visit with others as I get medications ready, talk with them about what the next day might hold for them, ask them about what they’d like to do for the coming weekend, etc. My dear husband might rub my feet and scratch the grooves left in my ankles from my SmartWool socks, which is a little bit of heaven for me. Before we both head upstairs for the night, I make sure everyone in the house is fine and tucked in or has everything they need. I lock the doors, turn out the lights, turn down the furnace.

Each Thursday morning when we get up there’s a lot to do. I lay out clothes for Clara and Elijah, quietly wake them up and tell them I’ll see them downstairs when they’re dressed. Then I go down, still in my exceedingly attractive red plaid flannel nightgown, to turn up the heat, begin making lunches, setting out medications, making each person a different breakfast, feeding the dogs and making sure they go out, and more. I might even throw in a load of laundry right away. Clara and Elijah always come down with sleepy smiles on their faces. They like to have Maple Pecan Crunch cereal for breakfast, and I always put a small handful of fresh pecans on top.

Once they’re dressed in their school clothes, we turn on the television for a few minutes while I do Clara’s hair, which is very long. Mostly I put it in a French braid. They brush their teeth again, I give them each a small snack to take to school with them, and they make sure they have their backpacks before they put on their coats, gloves and shoes.

Clara and Elijah usually take the bus, but on W. W. G. I drive them the six blocks to their school. In the few minutes it takes, I remind them that it won’t be long before the next Wednesday With Grandma, and that I’ll be thinking of them and praying for them every single day. When we pull up in front of the school with many buses, cars, crossing guards and children bustling around, I hop out to slide open the van door for a last hug.

“I love you! Jesus is with you today!” I whisper in Clara’s ear and in Elijah’s ear as I kiss them goodbye and watch them both run off to the front door of the big brick building.

I drive the six blocks home, wiping tears and blowing my nose and praying for all seven of my grandchildren, not just for the two that are old enough and near enough to have W. W. G.

Wednesdays With Grandma.

Who knew a day in the middle of the week could mean so much?

I have been making this pasta salad off and on for almost thirty years now, and I can’t remember one single time that someone has eaten it and not asked for the recipe. It’s unique, not your typical pasta with mayonnaise, or pasta-with-Italian-flavors-salad, and the various textures and tastes are just delicious.

It’s called Spicy Grape Pasta Salad, but with everything in it you could call it Angel Hair Chicken Salad with Broccoli and Grapes, Or Asian-flavored Vegetable Salad with Chicken and Cilantro, or a dozen other titles. Whatever you decide to call it, you should make it. I made a quadruple batch of it recently and it was gone in 24 hours. Granted, I served a group, but I heard mmmms and moans and maybe observed a few eye rolls as people were enjoying it.

Spicy Grape Pasta Salad

16 ounces angel hair pasta

2 cups cooked, cubed chicken breast

2 cups red seedless grapes, cut in halves

1-2 sweet red bell peppers, julienned

1 large bunch of broccoli (or asparagus cut into 2 inch pieces), cut in small florets (I steam these over boiling water for a couple minutes and then cool by plunging into cold water – makes them nicer to eat in a salad)

1 cup finely sliced celery

1/2 cup finely sliced green onion

4-6 T. chopped fresh basil or fresh cilantro

Spicy Oriental Dressing (see below)

Cook pasta according to package directions; drain.  Toss pasta with the Spicy Oriental Dressing. Add remaining ingredients; toss and serve.  Store in fridge.

Spicy Oriental Dressing:

Whisk together:

3/4 cup seasoned rice vinegar (must be the seasoned kind)

3 T. vegetable oil

3 T. sesame oil

6 T. soy sauce (I use Kikkoman lower-sodium)

4 heaping Tablespoons grated ginger root (I grate fresh ginger on a microplane, but you can use the ginger in the little jars and tubes found in the produce section too – the result is just as good)

1/2 teaspoon crushed red chilies (the kind found in a spice jar)

2 cloves fresh garlic, finely minced (don’t use garlic powder)

Let me know if you make it!

We have lived in our current house for almost thirteen years now, and time has definitely flown past. Michael died in this home, and that makes this place sacred to me. I didn’t want to move into this house because it wasn’t my style, but we needed to down-size to a one-level home due to Michael’s declining health, and there wasn’t much available in 2012 that would suit our needs, so we bought it.

Since then, I have come to see countless times that God knows what we need even when (or especially when) we don’t.

I. Love. My. Home.

It has been a haven, a gift, a sanctuary, and I thank the Lord for giving this dwelling to me. I ask Him often to help me be a good steward of it.

When we moved in, our goal was just to get settled, get our two foster gals settled in their rooms, and not do any decorating right away. It was a nicely decorated home when we bought it, it just had a spare, Swedish vibe to it. I appreciated it, but it wasn’t us.

Here is a photo of the dining room fireplace the week we moved in. We just put a few things on the mantel to make it look not so bare, and we lived with it like this for a few months.

My daughter Carolyn painted the fireplace for me, and I eventually worked out a pattern to hang my transferware plates above, for a configuration that was unique and fluid-looking. We also had a gas insert installed, and it’s a wonderful thing to press a button and have heat and flame and cheer in our dining room on winter mornings.

This room below was the previous owners’ nursery. Taupe colored walls (I do like taupe) and some dots and mirrors. It’s a smallish room and I knew it would be my office, but being a toile lover and also craving deeper jewel tones in my decorating, I planned to change things after about a year.

The red and cream toile wallpaper and the teal/aqua velvet drapes have never failed to please me all these years later. My office is a place I love to be.

I put a white folding table in here to give me space to do paperwork. And today there are piles of paper, photos on the wall, a little more clutter than I like, but that’s okay.

Each January I write down what it costs to live in this house. It’s paid off, but the taxes are pretty high in my area, so they’re almost like a mortgage payment. I’m sixty-seven now and hire a fine young man to do snow removal and lawn care. Living here is still less expensive than downsizing to a smaller home, because my utility costs are low and I don’t have a house payment. So when the thought comes that perhaps it might be time to move to a lovely senior cooperative building not far from here, or get a house with less square footage, I dismiss that thought pretty quickly. Even though this house is more than I really need, it’s still wise financially to stay here. Honestly, I would like to die in my home, if the Lord would see fit to answer that prayer.

I don’t know why I have a home and so many other people don’t. What little I do to help others is a pittance compared with what God has blessed me with.

And I thank Him in my gratitude journal, in my heart, in my conversations, in my prayers, and here on this little blog… for being so kind and generous with me.

    *         *         *         *         *         *         *

“Where the eyes are fixed, so the heart is. Where you look is where you love.” ~~Ann Voskamp

My middle daughter Carolyn and her husband Jeremy always host a lovely Christmas party at their home. There’s always a sumptuous spread of appetizers and Christmas treats, music, games, and general holiday cheer. I spent the evening visiting and reminiscing with some of my favorite people.

In this post I shared about how so much of my life would not have turned out the way it has without one woman and her family — Yvonne. She is my late husband Michael’s aunt, and the reason he and I (weirdly) met, married, and raised our family in Minnesota.

From left to right: Jenifer (Frank and Yvonne’s youngest daughter), Yvonne, me, Sara (my youngest), and Carolyn.

I’m giving thanks today for the providence of God, in making sure I met this family when I was eighteen years old, completely unaware of the trials that were ahead. They are part of His story of mercy and joy in my life.

I had my first cataract surgery this month and realize now I don’t have greenish gray paint on my bedroom walls. I have warm gray walls, but there is no green in it. There has been a sepia film over my vision from cataracts for years now, but I didn’t know it.

I’m enjoying seeing true colors from the one eye with a clear new toric lens, and look forward to the second surgery so the other eye loses its beige cast.

My distance vision is pretty sharp now, for the first time since I was a little girl, but my close vision requires readers, until I heal from my second surgery and get a new glasses prescription.

That’s all for now — just jumping in to say a quick hello. xoxo

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty,
my memory, my understanding,
and my entire will,
All I have and call my own.

You have given all to me.
To you, Lord, I return it.

Everything is yours; do with it what you will.
Give me only your love and your grace,
that is enough for me.

This is a well-known prayer called (in Latin) The Suscipe. It’s pronounced soo-SHEE-pay, and it means “receive.” Some sources say the emphasis is on the first syllable, but the Latin sources say it should be on the second.

This simple prayer of relinquishment was popularized by St. Ignatius of Loyola, and I became aware of it about two years ago. I wrote it in my journal and wept.

I cannot honestly say I dwell in this kind of surrender, but my heart’s desire is to move closer to this each day. Because on my deathbed, I know with certainty that my heart and soul will be crying out, “Give me only your love and your grace, Jesus! That is enough for me!”

Are you familiar with this prayer?

“There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.” ~~~ Jane Austen

I was sitting in my living room this morning listening to the quiet. I looked at this view below and said in my heart, “I love my home.” And I thanked God again for the thousandth time that He has given me a home. When people all over the world don’t have homes, I have one. Why that is so, I have no answers to. I only know that I will not be caught being ungrateful for a sound dwelling where I can sleep in peace, have warmth when it’s cold, prepare food for anyone at my table, read by electric light, and of course pray.

I got up to get water in the kitchen for my 20-ounce navy blue Yeti cup and as I heard the creak of the hardwood floors in the dining room, I thanked God. I realize that I am just a steward of my home, and that it’s God who owns this white house on a corner by Lake Superior in northeastern Minnesota. I paused at the dining room fireplace to take this picture:

It reminded me of a promise I believe He made to me decades ago about a very heavy burden on my heart. Cardinals have become meaningful to me, and my home is filled with them because people have given me cardinal gifts after hearing that story.

My 10 year-old granddaughter Miriam asked me not long ago, “Grandma, how many cardinals do you have in your house?” I encouraged her to count, and while the exact number escapes me this moment, we had a fun time going from room to room and she kept exclaiming, “Oh! Here’s another one! And another!”

Here’s a gift I treasure from my friend Su — it was supposed to be a welcome mat but I don’t want it outside to get dirty and wet — so I put it against the living room carpet in the entry way. I step on it every day and think of her, and love its beauty.

I sat in my bedroom chair an hour later and looked out on Lake Superior, on my quiet little neighborhood filled with older homes with young families in them, I looked at the crows on the power lines and the chickadees almost hidden in my hydrangea bush, and I felt gratitude welling up again. I can actually see these things. I can perceive God’s handiwork and His grace to me so that I can see how He works in this world. Slowly. Reliably. In ebbs and flows. With faithfulness.

When I don’t understand what God is doing, looking long and pondering deeply on all His ways in creation helps me. When I see trees that look dead in the winter, I’m reminded that in a few months, the life and fruitfulness that were hidden in the cold and dark were waiting until the proper time to show themselves.

I took my foster gal to a medical appointment this morning and since it was a blood draw for a future doctor’s visit, we weren’t gone long. Even though we had only driven a couple of miles, waited a few minutes inside the clinic, then driven those same miles home, she said, “It’s good to be home!” when I hit the garage door opener on my car’s visor and we pulled into the garage. She feels it too. She knows God has been so generous with us and we have a warm and cozy place to live out our lives.

Like most people who get to the end part of their lives, I think about dying. I wouldn’t say I’m afraid, but I’m sobered by wanting to be ready. I want all the words and love I have for my daughters and grandchildren and friends to be said, and I’m not doing as well as I’d like. I want everything to be in order… not just my “affairs”, but my heart and soul and relationships. I want to know the voice of Jesus and love Him truly. I have absolutely placed my trust in Christ and have no hope of anything good apart from Him. But I know there are things He still wants to do in my life. In this home.

I would like to die in this home He’s given me, and I have asked Him to grant me that. With my loved ones around me. With songs of His love and greatness in my ears. With nothing left undone.

Today, in the quiet, in the jewel-tones everywhere, in the warmth blowing out of the registers, in the company of cardinals, I thank Him.

From my home to yours,

Hello friends. I thought I would share a little something with you that I absolutely love. It’s called The Pause App, and is available for iPhones or Android phones. It’s put out by Wild at Heart Ministries, and John and Stasi Eldredge.

I love why they built this app — it’s for people who struggle to slow down to truly connect with God. The app has what they call one minute pauses, and it has three minute pauses and longer pauses too. There are different focuses you can check out. I am in the middle of the series on resilience and love it.

I have two notifications set on my iPhone, one in the mid-morning and one in the mid-afternoon, to remind me to take a one minute pause, or sometimes a three minute pause, to breathe deeply, turn my heart and mind to God, and ask Him to fill me and help me again.

I realize we don’t need an app on our phones to help us do this, but I have found this one so helpful. Soothing, hopeful, powerful, peaceful, recalibrating.

I am very fond of two apps on my phone (the other one being Hallow), and this is one. I recommend it to you. (There are other apps called Pause, so make sure you use the one that looks like the one at left.) Download it, set up a notification or two, and use it for at least a month. There have been many times I’ve ignored the notifications because I’m in the middle of something, and that’s okay. Just use it as often as you can, and see what you think.

I think it would be fantastic for young people too. It’s an antidote to anxiety, it helps us surrender ourselves to Jesus again and again, and prompts us to remember we are in His presence, loved and cared for by Him more than we can imagine, and we do not have to live at the pace the world wants us to.

Let me know if you try it.

Blessings,

She goes over the whole house in her mind again. The yellow stucco, the white trim, the half circle driveway out front. Her tiny self standing out there and looking south to the rolling gold hills in the distance, and listening for the call of the peacocks. Heelllp. Heelllp. 

She goes back to the small galley kitchen at the front of the house, with a Formica covered table at one end, and the red vinyl banquette behind the table, a novelty to her which she called a booth, the cookie jar on the tiled counter with Nabisco Ideal cookies piled inside, the colored aluminum drinking glasses that gave a metallic taste to the water from the slowly dripping faucet.

She can see the good sized but narrow feet in the sturdy flesh colored sandals, anklet socks neatly turned down, and the stout but long calves above that, and the hem of the flowered cotton house dress above that, standing in front of the gleaming gas range. There is stirring going on, and savory smells she can’t bring to mind now because at that age she hardly ate the things others ate. Eggs, vegetables, pizza, soup, gravy and potatoes, almonds, apricots. All were impossible for her. She ate white rice with butter, Cheerios with whole milk and a spoonful of sugar, Skippy peanut butter and Welch’s grape jelly sandwiches on white Wonder bread, plain hamburgers “meat and bun only,” and Abba Zabba candy bars she bought for ten cents at the liquor store in front of Denel’s house. She would have a small salad if the lettuce was iceberg and the dressing was Wishbone Italian.

On the other side of the kitchen wall was the living room, with colonial style furniture, all arranged so the couple who lowered their bottoms down into the deep chairs and the divan with a sigh could see the television. Ed Sullivan. The Wonderful World of Disney. Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom with Marlin Perkins.

There was a corner used-brick fireplace near the large cabinet television, where no fires were ever lit, and a many-spindled maple dining room set neatly pushed up against the far wall of the living room. A large painting of three little girls gathered together reading a book was hung over the divan. She liked being in this house, liked walking around and taking note of things, even though she was mostly invisible when she was there.

In the entry hall closet, which hid a vacuum and a few hanging coats, she always took out the inflatable Peter Rabbit, which was weighted at the bottom and stood taller than she, the single toy in the house that was a punching bag of sorts. It was dark blue, red and pale yellow, and she would give it a few whacks and smile when it righted itself and wobbled until it was still and waiting again.

She can see herself walking down the hallway to the three bedroom and two bathroom part of the house, in white shorts with cuffs, a white knit short-sleeved top, and bare feet. Her strawberry hair is shoulder length and parted on the side, and has the remnant of a pageboy curl at the ends, something her mother created with pink sponge rollers after a night time bath.

One of the small bedrooms had a gold colored vinyl sleeper couch in it and a desk. It had held her crib when she was brought home from Inter-Community Hospital to this house on Delay Avenue. Before her grandparents had moved here from Kansas and bought the house from her parents.

She looks in the door of the second bedroom, which used to be her two older brothers’ room. It has a double bed, a tall maple dresser and matching vanity and nightstand, and she sees the hardwood floors and the spareness of the room as she passes.

Across the hall to the back of the house, she sees the room she was always drawn to the most. Two twin beds with rich mahogany head and foot boards, white chenille bedspreads perfectly made, and three other pieces. A tall, dark dresser, curved at the front, all the drawers stacked in elegant symmetrical unison, a shorter, wider dresser with a huge mirror affixed at the back and twelve graceful drawers, and a single prim nightstand that divided the two twin beds. Years later she met a furniture expert who looked at this mahogany set in her guest room upstairs and said, “Ooohhh, that’s probably a Drexel.” The expert pulled out one drawer, saw the confirming stamp on the side, and said, “Even in this condition you could get $10,000, easy.”

She closes her eyes and continues, tip-toeing around the bedroom, turning the key on the side of the nightstand lamp, on, off, on, off, so she can see the two china globes light so delicately, taking their turns. She was never much interested in what was in all the drawers. The tour around the house, quietly conducted for such a little girl (whose award years later from her Girl Scout troop leaders was a defining ribbon that read, “Perpetual Motion”) always led to the Japanese jewelry box on the long dresser. The outside was black lacquer, the inside had little portions lined with red satin. It had been a gift from her father to his mother-in-law, her grandmother, when he was serving in WW II as Lt. Commander of the USS Magoffin.

She stands in front of the dresser and reverently lifts the middle lid of the box, listening to the mournful tune that plays, and each tinkly note is still sharp and clear in her memory, over half a century later.

She sees herself close the jewelry box, then walk through the house to the kitchen back door, which led to an attached screened porch on the side of the house. A clean cement slab made the floor, the slanted roof was aluminum, which was so loud and comforting in the rain, and there were metal rocking chairs and a dark red stained cedar patio table along the perimeter of the porch. Mr. Clean, a yellow canary who sang and trilled and couldn’t stay out of his water dish, lived in a cage on the cedar table. She would sit close and say bird things to him, loving how he cocked his head at her and jumped from perch to perch.

Since this going back in her memory is a sunny day, she steps out of the porch onto the pink, porous cement block her grandfather has placed beneath the screen door, into the small back yard. There’s a tall, shady tree close to the house, a rose garden with pale pink and yellow wide blooms she pushes her nose into, and some common bladed grass, rather than the springy dichondra lawn her parents had opted for at their new house.

She can hear the clatter of dishes being set on the kitchen table. The conversation of her parents and grandparents inside. She doesn’t know why her brothers aren’t there.

She was never invited to spend the night there. There was no sitting on a squishy lap for the reading of a book. She doesn’t remember being asked even one question (How is school going? What books have you read lately? Would you like to help me bake cookies?) or looked upon with delight. She knows they cared, but whether or not they loved has never been firmly established. They came from a different generation of course.

A screech coming from the dining room breaks her reverie and she’s back in her own home, knows her periwinkle colored parakeet, Phoebe, wants a morning greeting and a new stem of millet. She looks around her at the antique mahogany Drexel bedroom set now in her own home these sixty years later, and hums the tune from the jewelry box, long gone.

She has been told lately that she is cold and dismissive, that she is unable to make good human connection or change for the better. She has gone back to rake through the bits to see why this might be, what molds she was poured into that have shaped and hardened into what she is today.

She gleans no shiny treasures that would make her cry, “Aha!”

Except perhaps, just one.

It was in this yellow stucco house on Delay Avenue that she was clothed in a frilly dress and black patent leather Mary Janes. Her own lacy anklets were cuffed perfectly. Her hair brushed while she whined. From this circle driveway, the 1957 Buick LeSabre station wagon carried her off to Sunday School when she was three years old. She was taken into the pretty church, introduced to the warm and loving middle-aged teachers, and then her father drove home, returning to pick her up two hours later.

And this verse comes to her mind.

Philippians 1:6 – And I am sure of this, that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

She takes the gem and moves it in the light.