Coffee Chat: Wisdom Of Ages

 

Hello, dears.  I didn't mean to go so long without a coffee chat.  I've started four, but they irritated me.  One sounded too complaining.  One sounded too confrontational.  One sounded boring.  I gave up and went away and now I am back.  We shall see if I come up with anything reasonably between the three previous failed ones!

There are no real sweets on hand, since John is fasting sugar until next week.  I expect he will want to cut way back following this fast of his and I shall do my best to accommodate him.   

Do you fast during the 21 days of January?  Most churches promote it and ours is one that does also.  I gave up chocolate and coffee and being Southern I say Coke, but that isn't just Coke it's all carbonated drinks.    I thought in the beginning that giving up coffee was too easy.  I mean, I gave it up last year and I found I rather liked hot tea, so I started drinking one cup of hot tea and just one cup of coffee each morning.  "Too easy," I said so I added on chocolate and Cokes.  Ha!  

The two stumbles for me this whole time have been coffee and chocolate. Don't get me wrong, I do miss my soda now and then, but it wasn't a daily affair for me anyway, now that it's cold.    With chocolate it's more that even though I can have sweets, I don't seem to realize how often sweet equals chocolate in my own mind.  I reminded myself this week at Aldi that I really do like short bread cookies, something John's not overly fond of.   In fact, there are lots of other cookies I like that I never or seldom buy because they aren't John's favorites.

 But coffee?  It's NOT easier this year when I'm just giving up the two cups a day instead of the four, I gave up a year ago.  Oh no, it is not.  It's been a whiny affair some mornings when I've slept poorly, and it's been a stoic affair most every other morning.   And some afternoons, when John's having coffee, I have something sweet.  It's like a taunt/taunt instead of a win/win sort of thing.  I find I miss my morning cup but I really, really, really miss that mid-afternoon cup of decaf.  He really wants that bite of something sweet about the same time, hence the taunt/taunt.

But never mind, come in and have coffee if you like and I'll have my tea and we shall have a chat.

Was it New Year's Day or the day after that Sam called to tell me his paternal grandmother had died?  She'd had Alzheimer's for a number of years now.  She had grown up poor with a large family.  11 brothers and sisters.   She'd grown up a sharecropper's daughter.   She was a hard-working woman.  Truly I never knew her to sit and do nothing, but she often spoke of TV shows she liked to watch so she must have stopped evenings.  However, I only ever saw her during the daytime, and she was always busy.  

She wasn't an educated woman.  She never learned to read, and she only just knew how to write her own name but nothing more.  She never held a driver's license.   Oddly enough she later loved playing the lottery and she had worked out a fairly accurate mathematical formula for winning the smaller lotteries. 

She was a hard woman in some ways, but she was also kind.   She was the first one people called when they wanted someone to sit with a loved one at the hospital overnight or to keep their children when in dire straits.  

She was a thrifty sort of woman, but her husband had her beaten because he was cheap, so he bought groceries and she made do.  But turned loose in a butcher shop or grocery she soon was serving seafoods and cubed steaks instead of the more usual chicken and ground beef and bacon off cuts.   She was a country cook.  Not a good one, not a bad one.

She had a kitchen that you or I would sneer at.  It was truly just a glorified laundry space and not even a big space at that.  Where the washer and dryer might go next to the hot water tank, she had a single sink cabinet and a tiny apartment sized stove.  Her washer sat on the opposite wall butt up against the hot water heater.  Her fridge sat in the dining room because it could go nowhere else.  She had one set of upper cabinets and the under the sink cabinet for storage.  It was paneled in dark pine wood, and you truly could not have two in the room at once without pushing one out the door.  Yet she cooked there day in and day out, three meals a day, boiling hot weather (no AC in the house) or freezing in winter.

I didn't like her really.  She was often unkind, and I was foolish and young.  Yet when I divorced her son and was trying desperately to get back on my feet she called and said "I'll do what I can to help you.  I'll keep the kids for you..." and since it was summer and I was desperate, I agreed though fear filled my heart that she would attempt to turn my children against me.  She did not.  She refused to allow anyone to speak ill of me in front of them, regardless of personal opinion.  I admired her greatly for loving my children enough to overlook her dislike of me in that way.

And later, when my father's drinking had escalated to a scary scale and the fights between, he and my mother grew worse and worse, I went to her and told her the truth of what we were living with in my parents' home.   "I don't want the children there on weekends.  But I can't just leave them with you all the time.  I need them."   She understood.  She'd raised her children while her husband was an alcoholic, and she knew the toll it took on their family.   She said "Then I'll keep them weekends for you.   And if you need to come here too, you call, and I'll have Richard come get you."   That's the sort of woman she was.

Once the divorce was final, after I had Katie and met and married John, the two former in-laws treated Katie as the others.  No Katie didn't go spend weekends but if they gifted to Amie and Sam they gifted to Katie.  If they gave the other two money for school supplies, they gave Katie a smaller but generous amount as well.   And when their son stopped taking the children to see them, they came here and accepted the hospitality of my home. 

It wasn't until later, when the children were grown, and she continually tried to force a relationship between my ex and his children that my children stopped seeing her.  She felt it was his right to see them regardless of how he treated them or wreaked havoc in their lives.  Indeed, she never took their word for the troubles he caused.  That was the one spot where she was totally and utterly blind.   Her son hung the moon and caused the sun to rise.  Her husband knew and admitted differently but never did she allow herself to believe that he was less than she thought him.

Amie and I spoke of her during that hard conversation following Thanksgiving.  She told me then that her Nanny had confessed to her that she wished she'd been different towards me, not so hard and harsh and yes, hateful.  But I told Amie of her great kindness during the days following my accident when I'd had to move in with my parents and couldn't keep them with me due to my parents' toxic and brutal relationship.   That's the woman I choose to remember, rather than the one who was my mother-in-law.

What I didn't share was that she made me determined when my children married, I would do my utmost to show every kindness to their spouses.  I tried my best.  I had only one child whose spouse was difficult to love though I tried.  I did try.  I failed but I tried.  And when she needed a kindness a few years ago I was able to say "Yes" and do what was necessary and much needed at that time.  It was my paying it forward.  Perhaps one day she may do the same for her own daughter in law.

So, I thank the woman who lived and died and made an impact on my life in many more ways than she will ever know.

We went off to the mountain this week.  It's been quite a long while since we've been over.  Today marks our tenth year making that little trek over to pray on the mountain.   Ten years.  We've gone there once a quarter and here lately more like once every six or eight months.   We've gone over broken hearted and wept our way through prayers.  We've gone in confusion, begging for understanding to come.   We've looked back over the years and believed that God was real and able but wondering why we felt so alone.  And one day, we sat on the side of the mountain and wept with sheer weariness of spirit and agreed we'd trust God with every thing.  

Everything is so much more than we think we mean at the time.  "I'll trust you in this season of waiting and trust the door will open."  And when the door didn't open again, we waited in trust for the new door to open and wandered the long hallway called "Waiting."   "I'll trust you for my children's heartaches to heal..." and we waited through them all for healing and renewal to come to those children.  "I'll trust you with my finances..." and we went through some losses and some spots that were difficult as money drained out and savings dwindled.   "I'll trust you in sickness..." and there followed illness that was life threatening.

But this day we went thankful.  Thankful for blessings and thankful for our church home, thankful for what has taken place in our children's lives, thankful for John's retirement and thankful for making it through the year behind us financially, and thankful for where he's placed us all at this time.  

We also took time to re-dedicate our lives to His trust once more.   For the ten years behind us, I'm pretty sure we've just barely started well in this trusting business.

The road we travel over in our county and into the next is old.  It was old in Federal times...There are lovely old houses there along the roadway built in the square 1830's style and churches, too built in the same time frame and just as square,  every few miles.

Today as we drove past the churches,  I thought longingly of going into one of them and just sitting in the quiet of it, feeling the prayer and worship that has gone on in them for nearly 200 years now.  The atmosphere of those buildings must be powerfully full of sermons and prayers and healings and salvations.  Worship is a powerful thing and it leaves a residue behind that you can never swipe away with a dust cloth.  It sinks into the bones of the building and sifts down between the boards.   

There are days I'd give much to sit where women and men have sat and called upon God for years on end.     I'd like to absorb the wisdom they'd learned in their lifetimes right through the pores of my own skin and know what they knew.   

But maybe, they had more patience.  Maybe they understood something more  that I don't.  Maybe their faith was stronger than mine appears to be at present.   Then I remember my age.  It's unlikely they knew any more than I do now.  It's unlikely they fought battles I haven't already fought and raged any less at closed doors and despaired any less over any number of life's ails.  

What comfort though, to think someone somewhere, even someone long past did know more...As Granny used to know more.  Golly how much I miss her quiet unassuming wisdom!

Well dears, I shall leave off here. It's moved on to supper time rather quickly this afternoon.  Great cyber hugs to you all...