Solid Memories

Of all the tasks that would need to be completed after my mother-in-law's death, this is the one I had dreaded the most.

We had moved her things into storage as she progressed from apartment to assisted living to nursing care, and even though Husband had rented the largest space available, every inch of it was packed. It comforted his mother to know that her normal life hadn't been completely scattered, and she told us often how glad she was that we hadn't gotten rid of her belongings. "There are some people out here who don't even know where their stuff is," she would say, "but I tell them 'Any time I want something I know just where it is.'"

Three weeks after we gathered for the memorial service, her children gathered again this weekend to go through the storage space. We reminded ourselves on Friday night that stuff is just stuff and family relations are way more important than furniture or Christmas decorations. 

But we know that stuff isn't just stuff--stuff is memory solidified. This is the table where my Husband and his two brothers ate all of their Sunday dinners. That is the cedar chest that holds dozens of love letters in a pink ribbon-wrapped bundle. Over there are the boxes of dishes the family collected in antique shop scavenger hunts.

Some of the stuff has monetary value and some is measured in joules of sentiment. Would we be able to get through this distribution without hurt feelings and resentment? I was afraid that would take a miracle.

Well, I'm here to tell you that Saturday we saw a miracle. Here's how to duplicate that miracle if you're ever in the same situation:

1. Start with family members who love each other and want to do this well.
2. Order up perfect weather, and kick off the morning with the world's best cinnamon rolls eaten off the tailgate of the pick-up.
3. Do the easy stuff first--load the pre-bequeathed furniture into trailers and get it out of the way.
4. Designate staging areas for things to keep (three brothers' worth) and another pile to go to Goodwill, and have several large trash cans for everything else. 
5. Enlist Boy#1 and Lovely Girl to run the shuttle between the storage space and Goodwill throughout the day. You may think to yourself, "Oh, I'll just have a garage sale and get rid of that stuff," and then you will remember that the most you have ever made on a garage sale is about $100, and that you would gladly pay twice that to have a free Saturday, and you will heap more on the Goodwill pile.
6. Have a table where your sister-in-law is unwrapping odds and ends of antique glassware. Every so often she will call everyone over to pick out any to put on their own piles, and the rest will be re-wrapped for Goodwill. 
7. Remember that sentimental things are only sentimental to the person who knew the story, so be ruthless in discarding old newsletters, polyester baby sweaters, ticket stubs, old and unsafe Christmas lights, and anything else that makes your skin crawl (artificial flowers, anyone?). 
8. Watch out for brown recluse spiders, because a bite from one of those could really put a damper on the day.
9. Keep going and going and going until suddenly you realize there are no more boxes to unpack. 
10. If in doubt, ignore numbers 2 through 9, and just concentrate on the first step. You'll find yourself at 9 p.m. having completed what you thought would take at least two, maybe three, days to get done, and you'll be exhausted but delighted. You'll part with hugs and smiles.

Then tell yourself this is the best Mother's Day gift this family ever had and your mother-in-law would have been so proud of her clan, because it was and she would have been.

Final Graduation Post -- Psych!

I'm assuming by now my faithful reader(s) are just about fed up with graduation posts and this week's oh-my-goodness-how-wonderful verklempt musings.

But since I have one more picture I simply can't resist using--and who could, with that Mortarboard Bear growing out of our new graduate's head?--I'm padding my graduation coverage to extend to a Friday rant. This rant can be extrapolated to encompass all kinds of public events, from concerts to church services to movies, and the rant is this:

SIT DOWN AND BE QUIET!

Ahem.

Boy#1's graduation ceremony was a lovely thing, with a touching invocation and a funny faculty address and some rather rambling but heartfelt presidential remarks. And through all of the aforementioned presentations, one large family (not mine) traipsed in and out. In and out. In and out. In to deliver a bouquet of flowers and some signs to the rest of the group that was seated near the front. Out to find someone who hadn't arrived yet. In to (noisily) point out where the seats were saved. Out to take a phone call.

That occasion was not the only place I've noticed that audiences have trouble sitting quietly. The youngsters in my church, I'm sorry to say, seem to have alarmingly weak bladders, if we are to judge by the number of times they leave and re-enter the service. The family sitting behind us at the movie last week kicked my chair every time they reassembled after a trip to the lobby, to the point that I almost missed seeing Jackie Robinson make his major league debut.

What's up with this? Back in my day, my parents asked us before we settled ourselves if we needed to use the bathroom or get a drink, and that was it. Once we were seated it was hold it until the event had finished or...well, there was no "or."

Of course, the day I was back in was the Mesozoic Era and things have changed since then so maybe the beginning and ending lines for events are fuzzier, and it isn't considered rude to make a commotion when people around you are trying to pay attention. (That is a rhetorical statement designed to make you say "NO! YOU ARE CORRECT, MomQueenBee, AND WE AGREE!")

And with that I will stop posting about graduation--until next week, when we attend Boy#3's commencement exercises, where I'm sure everyone will be seated quietly and decorously.

Hahahahahaha!

Traveling Without Kids

The lady at the next table in the hotel was traveling with three children, the oldest maybe eight years old or so. It was 9 a.m. and she looked exhausted.

Oh, honey, I've been there. I've gotten chocolate milk for everyone and brought our own box of (marshmallow-spiked) cereal. I've given permission for just one more mini-muffin. I have seen the ONE BITE taken out of the apple. Just thinking about the stress of trying to get everyone to LEAVE THAT TELEPHONE ALONE AND GO TO SLEEP in this alien environment makes my blood pressure spike. But I'm here to give hope--some day you will absolutely love traveling with your kids.

Here's what I enjoy about traveling with older offspring:

1. They carry their own luggage in from the car, pack the dirty clothes into the side pockets the next morning, and carry their own luggage back to the car.
2. Also, they carry this luggage with the muscles of their body and don't insist it needs to go on a luggage cart that somehow, mysteriously, always seems to end up carrying at least one Boy and veering into a wall.
3. No one says "But it's MY turn to sleep in the bed! I was on the floor the LAST time!"
4. No need to pack two sleeping bags for the on-the-floor turn takers.
5. If room occupancy is greater than number of towels in the bathroom, someone else can go down to the desk to ask for more.
6. No fighting over the remote control. ESPN, and all ESPN, all the time, is just fine with everyone.
7. You want six Texas-shaped waffles for breakfast? It's your digestive system. Knock yourself out.
8. "Mom, want me to bring you a cup of coffee?"
9. After emptying an apartment into two cars and traveling through three hours worth of road construction, supper can be a half gallon of cookies 'n cream ice cream, split five ways. Yes, it can. And it will be delicious.

And here's what I miss about traveling with little kids:

1. .....

 Sorry. I got nothin'.

Lady at the next table, I feel your pain but in a couple of years they'll morph into fabulous traveling companions. Hang in there.

Government Economics

Usually when Husband and I are on our way to or from Distant Big University we are trying to make tracks. It's a good 7 1/2-hour drive, and normally there's a time crunch of some kind--a concert we're trying to hear from the beginning, or a sleep-induced crash we're trying to avoid by not driving too late into the night.

Monday was different. We had left Boy#1 and Lovely Girl in charge of getting Boy#2 to his plane on time and moseyed home with no pressing deadlines. That's how we ended up in an antique store in Ardmore, Oklahoma, standing next to the alluring item Husband is modeling above.

Know what it is? I'll give you a hint. It also can look like this:

It's a Murphy bath. 

(I'm sorry about the picture, which appears to have a blood alcohol of about 2.4.  I was so captivated by the item that I appear to have been aflutter--a better shot of a similar item is here.)

Have you ever seen anything more gorgeous? The gleaming copper. The silken woodwork. The anticipation of hot water and a long soak with a good book, then the knowledge that it can be folded away and tucked into a corner out of the way.  I have rarely wanted something in an antique store more ardently.

But then we looked at the price tag, and I knew we were not buying a $4,500 portable bathtub, not even the gleamiest, silkiest, loveliest bathtub in all of Oklahoma, and we walked away.

Later we were wandering through a fabulous locally-owned bookstore and I bought a $4 used paperback. Normally I don't buy books (my overdue fines could be the sole support of our public library but that's still cheaper than owning) but I told my accountant spouse that I felt entitled to this extravagance.

"I just saved us $4,500 by not buying that bathtub, so really, we're $4,496 ahead," I said.

He only rolled his eyes slightly as he considered my math.

"Congratulations," he finally said. "You've mastered government economics."

Yay, I think?

Reaching the Top of the Slide

Lovely Girl and Boy#1

For most of his life Boy#1 has been the kid for whom school was easy. He approached each class, each year, each stage of his education, as if he were playing on a slippery slide. Some subjects were a little more difficult than others, but usually he was the one teachers looked to as the curve-setter, practically yelling "Wheeeeeee!" as he flew down the chute and vaulted to the next class.

That was true until he entered law school.

Even though Boy is analytical and thoughtful and a wonderful writer, law school had been different. Professors weren't just looking to teach, they were also looking to harden their students to the rigor of the courtroom, and a three-year boot camp that added intense competition and and a certain degree of intentional humiliation to the stress of upper-level academia turned One's normal love of learning into something completely different. The playground slide suddenly was reversed and instead of sliding with the wind in his hair, he was grabbing the sides of the chute and bracing the rubber soles of his sneakers against the metal to try to climb back up.

It was enough stress, in fact, that he had told us he wouldn't be going through commencement ceremonies; he just wanted out of town as quickly as possible. But he knew how difficult this spring had been for his father and me, so at the final moment he decided that he would walk across the stage to receive official recognition of graduation. The moment wasn't important to him, but he knew it was to us.

We didn't know until we were seated in the auditorium that One and his classmates had been given the opportunity to give personal shout-outs in the commencement program. Most were standard awards ceremony fare--"Thanks to mom and dad for their support, and hook 'em, Horns!" and "I couldn't have done this without my wonderful fiance."

We read through a few of them, then turned to the back page, the location to which alphabetical order has always doomed our family, and a lump came to my throat. Our son's dedication was a quote from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," a movie he's watched countless times with his father:

"I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness and a little looking out for the other fella, too."  

Then the graduates began to process and our son was at the front of the group. He had been chosen by his classmates to deliver the invocation, the only student-elected representative on the dais. His prayer was thoughtful and inclusive, reminding these future attorneys that their focus must be on people and not on profits. He called on God to guide their attitudes as well as their endeavors.

"Help us to remember the promise You made in Isaiah," he said.

I gasped. For as long as they've been able to read I've sent the Boys off to big events with Isaiah 41:10. If they were going to math contest, or taking a PSAT, or leaving for college, I reminded them of their roots by taping a verse card to the back of their calculators, sliding the reference into a backpack, tucking it into their hands. And as One read the words, tears leapt from my eyes.

‘Do not fear, for I am with you;
Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you, surely I will help you,
Surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.’

Boy#1 did not finish law school as the top-ranked student in the class, but he finished. When he could have quit, he didn't. He worked harder than he thought was possible, with kindness and looking out for the other fella, and as we wiped our eyes and watched him receive his hood Saturday we could not have been prouder.

He had reached the top of the slide.

I Already Know That

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It's not snowing today in Small Town.

That's not exactly the kind of announcement I normally make on May 2, but in this year of weird weather (and the fact that people all over God's country are waking up to mandatory shoveling) I don't want to take anything for granted, so I'm telling you, it is not snowing.

This don't-take-anything-for-granted attitude is rampant at Small College, where I walked in our building to find the falling man caution signs out. This was not a surprise, because our maintenance folks scatter them EVERYWHERE if there is the slightest sign of damp weather.

For some unknown reason, I find them irritating.

I absolutely get the reason for caution when there is not the likelihood we would notice the floor is wet. Just mopped the floor? Put out a sign until it dries, because no one is expecting slick conditions. Roof leaking? By all means warn me that I should tread carefully.

But if it's raining, or snowing, and this is a foyer door that is the main entrance to the main administration building, don't most people know the floor is likely to be damp? And that damp tile tends to be slippery? Or are we all too dense to know that, even though we work at an institution that grants GRADUATE DEGREES?

Hmmm. I may be just a wee bit cranky. Naps for everyone.

Born, Not Made

Which one is the high wire artist?

Boy#3 is in his last few weeks of student teaching, and to be honest, he's ready to be done. He loved the weeks he spent with the high school and middle school bands, but the past few weeks in the early elementary classrooms? Not so much. (I believe his exact comment was "If I never have to sing 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat' again it will be too soon.")

This reminded me again that teachers truly are born, not made, and that they're born with affinity for certain age groups. My sister and brother-in-law were born to guide junior high students as they traverse the white-water rapids between elementary and high schools. The Boys were fortunate enough to have a kindergarten teacher (the same for all four) whose reaction to the frenzied chaos of the parent-hosted Christmas party was "I'm glad it's only one day a year, but look at the fun they're having." (That was in direct contract to my fortunately-repressed instinct which involved shouting words not normally allowed in the MomQueenBee household.)

My best friend from high school was a teacher perfect for first graders but I hadn't realized this until relatively recently.

The four of us who get together every year were sitting around working on a craft project when C. mentioned that one of her favorite things her students is the wide-eyed ability of that age group to accept the wonders of the world.

"Yeah," she said, "this year I had my class convinced I grew up in the circus. I told them my dad was the ringmaster and my mother was a trapeze artist, and I was learning how to walk the high wire when I decided I'd rather be a teacher."

We were slack-jawed in amazement. We knew C.'s father and mother and although they were dear people and exemplary parents, he taught math in the high school and she was a housewife, not exactly denizens of the Big Top society. Then we started to laugh.

And we laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

I'm not sure why this seemed to funny to us, but it still makes me laugh--the thought of my algebra teacher in red coat and top hat, "LADEEEEEZ AN' GEEEEN-TLEMEN! PLEASE DIRECT YOUR ATTENTION...." Or maybe we were reacting to the thought of the goggle-eyed first graders suddenly seeing their teacher in a completely different light. She wasn't just someone who was teaching them letters and numbers, she was a STAR. A star who had chosen to spend her twinkle on them.

That's why I loved seeing the picture of C. tagged on Facebook yesterday. She was hugging a couple of kids I didn't know, and the picture obviously was taken several years ago.

"This is Mrs. T., our first grade teacher. And now we're graduating from high school," the poster had written.

I had to respond.

"Did you know Mrs. T. grew up in the circus?"

"No! But I know she was the best teacher I ever had."

And I smiled again.