Joy to the World. . . Every Day

May 10, 2015March 6, 2024 ~ Sharon Abbott ~ 1 Comment

She was my easiest labor, easiest delivery and was born on the Thursday before Mother’s Day. We had some friends over for dinner: chili and cinnamon rolls – admittedly an odd menu choice for May but nonetheless, that’s what we had. Why I remember this detail is anybody’s guess. We left for the hospital about 7:00 p.m. and a couple of hours later we were the proud parents of our fifth child – Joy Leanne. Joy because it just seemed so right and Leanne because it was the middle name of her three older sisters (another story for another day) and it seemed a little odd to change things up now.

I came home from the hospital the next day. On Sunday we went to church and then to Ponderosa for lunch since it was Mother’s Day. Paul took the other four in to get a table while I stayed in the car to feed and change the baby. When I finally made my way through the very crowded restaurant (it was Mother’s Day) an older lady stopped me. “How old is your baby?” she wanted to know as she admired the little red-headed bundle in my arms. “Three days”, I answered, sweeping the room for the table for seven. “Oh honey! You might do something this stupid with your first one, but trust me. . . by your second, you’ll know better! You’ll know to stay at home and rest!” Apparently I am a slow learner.

The child was a force to be reckoned with. She walked at seven months – not a few, halting steps but she walked across the room. And she never looked back. They asked us to move her out of the nursery because she roamed the room, snatching crackers out of the babies’ hands and moving on to the next one before anyone could stop her. At home, our only recourse was for everyone to man their stations and keep her out of their stuff and away from places she shouldn’t be. There is no use trying to teach a seven month old what is off limits.

If she learned to walk early, speech was not far behind. By a year old she was talking in sentences and by two she was talking in paragraphs . . . and talking. . . and talking. . . and you never knew what she would say or sometimes even what she meant by it but you had no doubt that she knew exactly what her point was.

Her favorite song was Joy to the World and she would randomly (and loudly) serenade the family, the restaurant, her Sunday School class or herself – even in mid July. I mean when you have a song that is written about you, why would you not?? Sometimes when she was feeling particularly generous she would substitute someone else’s name in place of her own “Fletcher to the world….” and always at full volume. But mostly, and often, it was Joy to the world. When people would comment on her head full of red curls – which they always did- she would agree “Yup, it sure is cully”.

When she was almost three we had a single guy who was living in our basement for a few months while he was between houses. Joy would corner him on his way in or out and chat with him. One day she said to him, “Joe, did you know I’m getting married?”

“Really??” he asked her. “I did not know that! Who’s the lucky guy?”

“You’re looking at him!!!”

As it turns out, that relationship did not work out – but not for her lack of boldness.

In both the church and the neighborhood I was known as Joy’s mother. She knew everybody and everybody knew her and they all found her enchanting – as did we. She seemed to draw a crowd wherever she went. One day Paul took her to McDonalds for lunch. Usually on such an outing she was so busy talking that she left most of her food untouched. But this day she had eaten all of it. “Good job on the chicken nuggets!” he encouraged her. “What does that mean?” She wanted to know. “Well, it just means you ate all your chicken nuggets. So good job.” She thought about it for a minute and then said, “So was that in Spanish?” One day I was combing her hair (or trying to) when she said to me, “Mom, you know why I like you? Because most of the time, you don’t even treat me like an orphan.” There was her revelation that the Super Bowl is really only a football game (which I wrote about in the story “It’s All About the Snacks”.) It was her world and we were only visiting.

When she turned two we rented a house that had an indoor swimming pool and a sauna. Crazy, right? I was paranoid about having a baby and a pool and so we set out to teach her to swim. Before long, she could jump into the pool, turn around, swim to the side and crawl out. We worked on this routine every day, but after putting her through her paces a few times, her teeth were chattering, her little body was shivering and she would say, “Only one more time, and then I get to sit in the warmer.” And while I could do without the swimming pool, I have often wished that every house I lived in thereafter had a warmer where I could reward myself at the end of an unpleasant task.

It was in that same house where she grew into our “hobbit child”. Not because she acted like a hobbit in terms of avoiding adventurers, but because she just so looked like one. I always thought if she had been born at the right time and the right place, Peter Jackson would have totally cast her in his films.

She was about three when we got a Cocker Spaniel puppy. Always thinking ahead, she asked if the puppy would have puppies. Maybe. What would we do with the puppies? Well we would probably sell them to somebody else who wanted a puppy. It was shortly after that she learned a new baby was coming to the family and that she would get to be the big sister. She seemed to take it in stride. And then one day I heard her talking to herself: “We will have baby puppies and a baby baby. And if we want, we can always sell the baby.” Let the record show, however, that when the new baby brother arrived she was over the moon and has been a devoted and loving big sister for the last 27 years – except, of course, for the times when he was being an annoying and irritating little brother. But as far as I know, she has never once considered selling him.

Her older siblings were 12, 10, 8, and 6 when she was born, so she came into a family with a clearly defined pecking order and a history that she had not shared, which my own experience teaches me had to make her feel at times like the odd man out. But her sisters doted on her. They carried her in their bicycle baskets, put her in a cardboard box and pushed her around the house keeping her happy with an unending supply of Smartie Pills, bought her toys with their own money, threw her birthday parties, and advocated on her behalf. When she desperately wanted an American Girl doll for Christmas and I thought they were outrageously expensive, they offered to pitch in with their own money. It was their idea to give her a Victorian doll house (one that came in a kit and had to be glued together piece by piece and then painted and then decorated and furnished) and helped put it together late into the nights before Christmas. It was her brother who salvaged an old computer and repaired and restored it for her when she got older.

My mother always said that looking at her was like turning back the clock – that in her she saw me at that age. She died when Joy was only five and I’m sad that her youngest granddaughter has few, if any, memories of her. She lost her other grandmother in her early teens and this, too, robbed her of a strong and remarkable woman. But she comes from a long line of such women, and their legacy and their traditions live on in her. And for that I am grateful.

And now, 31 years after that lovely May evening when Joy came to our world, she has a husband and three little girls of her own. And I swear that sometimes it’s like turning back the clock. Each in their own way, they are like their mother: sensitive, filled with a bull-in-the-china-shop energy, and the one with the head full of “culls” (even if they are blond instead of red.)

Happy Birthday to you, my dear . . and Joy to the world. . . this and every day!

This Week on Nana and the Colonel

April 6, 2015March 6, 2024 ~ Sharon Abbott ~ 2 Comments

We have 13 grandchildren ranging in age from 23 to 1. Sometimes that realization still shocks me – that we are the grandparents. Not the kids, not even the parents, but the grandparents. That role should be played by my mother or Paul’s mom and dad. But in truth, they are gone and the roles have been re-cast. The grandparenting has fallen to us.

So maybe it’s time to explain exactly how Paul became The Colonel.

Over twenty years ago we were having dinner with our oldest son Sean and his wife Marge. We visited about this and that through the salad and the main course and then came the reason for the invitation: “What do you want the grandkids to call you?” We were going to be grandparents!!!! Obviously we were over-the-moon excited. The speed with which we delivered our answers reflects our personalities. I blurted out as though I had been thinking about this forever and was just waiting for the opportunity to share it (which of course was true) “NANA! I want to be called Nana!!” Paul said, “I’ll have to think about it and get back to you.”

But he couldn’t decide. My nephew, who had been a grandparent for a couple of years already, went by Papa Nick which I always thought was kind of cool. I suggested Papa Paul. He rolled his eyes. “That sounds like I should wear a beret and have a cigarette holder.” Clearly that was not going to happen. “Well, there’s always Grandpa.” Nope. That wasn’t an option either.

My sister Lila was married to a man named Tony. But he never went by Tony. Lila called him Slim and his kids all called him Snads. The Slim I got. Snads? Who knows? But Paul liked it. Then there were our friends, Julius and Audrey. Audrey’s Dad went by Chief. His kids called him The Chief and his grandkids called him The Chief. And Paul really liked that one. A lot. I think he actually wanted to be called The Chief but that was taken. So somehow he settled on The Colonel. I’m not sure where it came from, but that’s what he decided. And now – a dozen grandchildren later – he is, indisputably and without a doubt, The Colonel. You will understand when I say that, along the way, this has created some interesting moments and some “issues”.

1. Here’s the first problem. Sean was in the Marine Corps for four years. Then he got out, went into the business world, got married, and had three kids. When Paul chose The Colonel as his name, he had no idea that Sean would re-enlist and be a Marine for the next 20 years. That we would be spending a lot of time on military bases. See where I’m going with this? It got a little awkward to be walking around a military base with a four old who is yelling at the top of his lungs, “Colonel! Colonel! Wait for me!” and watch all the young privates suffering whiplash from spinning around in circles looking for the officer they were supposed to salute.

2. When he chose the name, I’m sure he wasn’t thinking about a toddler’s vocabulary and how, when they are asked to pronounce a word that is unfamiliar to them, they will replace it with a similar sounding word that they recognize. Thus “Colonel” became “Turtle” for Jackson, the first born grandchild, and if our own kids had had anything to do with it, it would have stuck.

But to his credit, he held the line and by the time the next one came along, Turtle was in the rear-view mirror, and he was firmly entrenched as The Colonel. Ezra calls him Kerkel – but he is outnumbered by the seven older ones so I doubt it will gain any traction. If you can get them going in the right direction, the ones down the line just sort of seem to fall into step.

3. When he said he would be The Colonel I asked him what he was going to say when these kids grew up and asked him what war he fought in. “I’m going to tell them ‘you have no idea how many battles I’ve fought’.” Fair enough. After 40 years in ministry, I couldn’t really argue with that.

4.. But then there is. Nana and the Colonel sounds like a sit-com. Am I right? You can just hear the voice over now. “Next week on Nana and the Colonel.. . .”

But it is what it is and now all the bigs are used to it and the littles don’t know him as anything else and so Colonel it is. They could not love him any more if he were a General.

Tabitha, Arise.

March 4, 2015March 6, 2024 ~ Sharon Abbott ~ 7 Comments

She was born exactly two years and two weeks and two days after her brother. This time I was prepared. I knew not to expect her on my due date – which was good considering she was almost a full two weeks late. By this time we had moved from Colorado to Kansas and so my mother had agreed to come and help out. When she arrived, she took one look at me and announced, “Oh, this will be a while. You’re not nearly miserable enough to be at the end.” As usual, she was right.

11001641_10205939108940665_4626973006023086453_o — “If you need anything,” she offered. She had no idea how much I would need her over the years.

But eventually I was miserable enough. It was a Sunday night and we had been to our house-church that afternoon. I should preface this next part of the story with this: this was a church made up of predominately college students. We were one of the few (as in two) families in the church. One of the young, single, (and not very sensitive) young men approached me. “I don’t mean to be insensitive, but I just have to tell you that being around pregnant women really makes me uncomfortable.” What do you even say to that? I was getting ready to tell me him exactly what he could do with his discomfort when a girl standing nearby, sensing the volatility of the situation stepped into the conversation. She was fairly new to the group and I knew her only a little. “Sharon, isn’t it? I just wanted to tell you that if you need anything, you can call me. I could come watch your little boy or whatever you need. Here’s my phone number.” I should pause here to say that that woman became one of my very best friends-for-life and befriended and mothered not just this baby, but all of my first four. Her name is Lori and I am deeply grateful for the part she played in my life in these years.

Which takes us to Sunday evening. That young, single, and insensitive guy, (who was also our good friend until his unfortunate comment earlier in the day) had stopped by to see Paul about some church business. The two year old was in bed, my mother was reading in the living room, and I had gone to lie down, exhausted from the day. Before long, I wasn’t feeling so well and my body remembered before my mind, that this was the same pain from two years ago. So I set the plan into motion. I told Paul to send Bill home since I obviously wanted to be sensitive to his comfort or lack thereof. My mother would stay with Sean, and Paul and I would head off to the hospital. Here is where the plan went awry.

Bill said that if it was all the same to us, he might like to come along for the ride and my mother wondered if there was anyone we might call so that she could also be at the hospital (my guess is she couldn’t tolerate the idea of Bill welcoming her grandchild into the world before she did.) Which is how we ended up calling Lori Phillips (a girl I barely knew) to come and stay with Sean so that Paul, my mother, and Bill could all be at the hospital – and even as I write this I wonder – What was I thinking??!!

Tabi as a flower girl in Lori's wedding — Tabi as a flower girl in Lori’s wedding

Through the night, Bill and my mother kept each other company in the waiting room. This time Paul was allowed to stay with me (we had made a lot of progress in two years). Sometimes my mother would come in and sit with me and give Paul a break – I suspect it was so that she could get a break from Bill as well. I drew the line at Bill: he would remain in the waiting room. And then came transition: or the “hold my hand don’t touch me” stage of labor as we affectionately call it (see post entitled “Valentines and Birthin’ Babies” ). I grew agitated and unhappy and snapped at my mother: “I can’t do this. You go get Paul and tell him to get in here because I am done with this. I can’t do it.” She was happy to leave. Paul’s greeting to me as he walked into the room was, “You are never going to believe this??!!! Guess who is in the waiting room??!!! You’ll never believe it!” I assumed the only reason he would bring this up now is because it was somebody that he knew I would really care about (Robert Redford comes to mind though what he would be doing in Lawrence, Kansas is beyond me.) So I gritted my teeth and managed,

“Who?”

“Bill’s dentist!! His wife is in the room down the hall. Small world, right!!!?”

“ARE YOU ^&*%$## KIDDING ME??!!!

And the only thing that saved him was that the nurse said, “We should get you to the delivery room.”

This was Paul’s first time to the dance and I have to say that having him there made all the difference. When my first one was born I remember being wheeled into the delivery room with bright lights, masked faces, and I felt so alone. Paul was amazing and throughout I knew that this time I was not alone. This time was different – we were there together and we were a team. I had no idea how the next hour would unfold and how desperately I would need my team. I pushed and pushed and pushed and with each push I knew I was pushing this life into the world and I felt powerful and strong and invincible. Paul was encouraging and cheering me on. The nurses and doctor were cheering. Everyone was cheering! One really hard push, another and another and then the doctor said, “One more push and we’re going to have this baby here!!” And I pushed and the baby was here and then the cheering stopped. It was quiet. Too quiet. And then it got noisy and the doctor was barking orders and the nurse who had been at my head hurried to join the doctor and they were all moving so fast and the doctor asked for something and a nurse dropped it and he swore and they ran to get another one and they put something down my baby’s throat and I kept asking what was wrong and why wasn’t she crying and I could hear Paul praying, and the tension in the doctor’s voice as he gave instructions to the nurses and they seemed to grow ever more desperate while the two of us watched this helpless little baby turning bluer and bluer, her eyes huge and her mouth opened wide, struggling to draw air into her little lungs. It was clear they were losing her.

Do names matter? Do we live up to or grow into our names? I don’t know. Maybe.

Somewhere in the pregnancy we had decided that if the baby was a girl we would name her after a woman in the bible, “a disciple named Tabitha” whose life was characterized by her kindness, generosity and service to the needy. When she died, the people in her village were so distraught that they sent for the Apostle Peter who happened to be in a town nearby, hoping against hope that he could do something. The book of Acts records it this way: “He knelt down and prayed; and turning to the body he said, ‘Tabitha, arise.’ And she opened her eyes, and he gave her his hand and raised her up”. And now, early on that Monday morning of March 4, 1974, it felt to me like a voice spoke into that room, a voice heard only by the baby girl named after a woman who was raised from the dead: “Tabitha, arise.”

How overwhelmingly grateful I am that this child who almost wasn’t came to be in our family. She has filled our lives with love, with laughter, with care, with generosity, with joy, and of course, with stories.

We lived on the second and third floor of a big house in the student slums that had no air conditioning, so in the summer we slept with the windows open. Our neighbors were a houseful of college guys that liked to party late into the night and then crawl out their second floor window to sleep on the porch roof. Tabi’s crib was next to the window which meant that she (along with the rest of us) were awakened often during the night by the party revelers. But the thing about her was that no matter how little sleep she got the night before, she always awoke at first light in a really cheery and talkative mood. And I always felt a wicked sense of satisfaction when I could hear her calling out the window at the top of her little voice, “Hi, guys!!! Whatcha’ doin? HI!!! HI GUYS!!!” until they crawled back through their window to sleep off the remainder of the party.

It was in that same house that she and her brother were playing one afternoon, he with a toy fire truck and she with an abandoned set of keys she had found. I suppose it was inevitable that eventually the metal keys would find their way into the exposed electrical socket, that sparks would fly, little fingers would get scorched black, that piercing screams would bring me running into the same room from which her brother was fleeing (expecting that he might be blamed for the incident), and this would be forged indelibly as one of her very first memories. Later I asked her why she had put the keys in the electrical outlet. “To see what would happen.” Of course.

We lived in that house the year that she so desperately wanted a tricycle for her birthday. A red one. With a bell. I tried to explain that there wasn’t a lot of money for tricycles right now and offered some other (less expensive) options. What I knew was that there was NO money for a tricycle. And while we fretted and worried, she prayed for a red tricycle with a bell. I knew that this was going to end badly, and I was heartsick over her impending disappointment. The house had a big front porch and it was on that porch on Ohio Street in Lawrence, Kansas, that God showed up one March morning. Paul left for work and when he hit the porch he turned back, taking the stairs two at a time. “Tabi, come outside!! You have to see this!!” And there it was. A bright, shiny, red tricycle. With a bell. And tied to the handlebar was a tag which read. “To Tabi. From Jesus.” She had prayed every night, we had said nothing to anyone, so…. where. . . And then we noticed the little girl standing next to us with tears spilling down her face as she stared wide-eyed at that tag. “Oh no,” she cried.” What could possibly be the problem? Isn’t this exactly what she had wanted? Her bottom lip trembled. “Jesus was here. And I missed him.”

And since that day I have always wanted to be like that little girl who yearned for the giver rather than the gift. We did our best to explain to her that sometimes Jesus uses people to be his hands and his feet and that this time he had asked somebody else to deliver his gift to her. And maybe this is why, from that day to this, she has sought to be the hands and feet of Jesus to others – anticipating and meeting needs in an almost supernatural way. A sidenote: it was not until two decades later that I ran across that tag in Tabi’s babybook and recognized the handwriting as someone who, for years now, has been one of my closest and dearest friends. Whether we called her Amy Oliver, AO, Amy Patton or just Amy, she has for almost 40 years been a part of our family’s stories and our lives. At the time I didn’t know know her well enough to recognize her handwriting. I knew her then as a young, single woman in our church (who also had no money) and who almost certainly, had no idea how far reaching her act of generosity would be.

Tabi could read by the age of four though I don’t think anyone taught her to do it. She just sort of picked it up by osmosis and maybe so as not to be outdone by her older brother. One day I asked him if he could recite the Bible verse we had been learning. He could. “A wise son makes his father glad, but a foolish son is a grief to his mother. Proverbs 10:1.” Tabi said she too, had learned the verse and would like to say it. I was ready to coach her but she put up her hand to shush me . She didn’t need any help. “A wise son makes his father glad. And a foolish son agrees with his mother. Problems 10:1”. I have always felt in my heart of hearts that Paul preferred this translation.

We went through a phase when we decided that the kids needed to learn table manners. So once a week we would fix a nice meal, set the table with a tablecloth (okay, so it was plastic) and flowers (maybe they were plastic, too) and everybody got a full table setting of silverware at their plate (which admittedly is a little sketch to give even butter knives to three kids under the age of seven), put on some music, dress up in our nice clothes, turn down the lights, light the candles and try to get through the meal. The idea was that if you gave them a challenge they would rise up to meet it. And so Paul would say, “Tonight, Mom and I are so glad to be dining with such ladies and gentlemen.” And then through the meal would remind them, “Oh a lady doesn’t blow bubbles in her milk. . . A gentleman doesn’t eat his peas with his fingers . . . A lady doesn’t climb on the table . . . A gentleman says, ‘Please pass the bread’ instead of grabbing it out of his sister’s hand. A lady doesn’t kick her brother under the table.” Finally Tabi could stand it no longer. She stood on her chair and demanded in her most authoritative voice. “TURN ON THE LIGHT! I WANT TO SEE THE LADY.” This lady would grow up to share more characteristics with her father than either of his sons did. She loved to talk cars with him and was the only one of the six who inherited his sense of direction. She was his constant football companion and spent many a Sunday afternoon watching the game with him (just ask her about her about Walter Payton, but not unless you have some time) and she shares some of his perfectionist tendencies. And of course, she has those blue eyes.

It seems she has always had a job – since she was eight years old. By the time she was 14 she was an administrative assistant and handled the day to day of operations of an office with such skill and efficiency and maturity that when people met the person behind the voice on the phone, they were astonished that she was little more than a child. She saved her money and bought herself a car before she was old enough to drive. She did her research and she and her dad poured over ads in the paper until she found the right one – a stick shift no less. She put herself through college, working full time and going to school full time and graduated suma cum laude from the University of Maryland. And all the while she continued to love and to serve and to care for her family and her friends and strangers – to be the hands and feet of Jesus. Because she doesn’t know any other way to be.

She is a first grade teacher who, like all good teachers, does more than show up for her shift. She has loved so many six year olds over the years and taken them into her life, her heart and her prayers. She nurtures them, accepts them, celebrates them, challenges them and makes a real and lasting difference in their lives. I am in awe at how she continues to give so much, to show up and be present with them day after day, how she gives hours of her own time because there is no way to get it all done in the work day, and most of all I am in awe at how she loves them and just keeps showing up for them.

And of course you can’t tell her story without telling about the little people (some of them now grown big) who call her Aunt Tabi and who love her to the moon and back as she does them. One of the best gifts she has given to this family is her husband Jason and together they have captured the hearts of these nieces and nephews and been the hands and feet of Jesus to them as well.

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Our story would not be the same without her. And every year, on March 4, the memory of that baby struggling so desperately for breath comes rushing back to me; I offer up a prayer of thanks to the God who spoke life into her lungs and who brought her to live out His grace among us; and I hope she has changed her mind about the folly of agreeing with her mother. And I am so, so grateful for all of the ways that Jesus shows up through her. Happy Birthday, Tabitha!

Valentines and Birthin’ Babies

February 16, 2015March 5, 2024 ~ Sharon Abbott ~ 1 Comment

I was 21 the winter of 1972. I was a full time college student, a full time wife, a part time Dunkin’ Donuts employee, a soon-to be first time mom and it could have been me instead of Prissy who said to Scarlett in Gone With the Wind, “I don’t know nuthin’ ‘bout birthin’babies.”

And yet. . . on February 14th I was going to have a baby no matter what I did or didn’t know. I knew with absolute certainty that the baby would come on the 14th because when my obstetrician had said, “Congratulations, you’re pregnant!” he had also told me “and your due date is February 14th.” Which explains why, when I told all my professors the first of February that I would not be in class on the 14th because I was having my baby that day, they made the obvious inquiries: c-section? induction? And when I explained that no, but my doctor said the due date is the 14th so I will need all of my assignments ahead of time and will probably be out for several days, the kinder ones smiled and the rest snickered and some even laughed out loud.

While I had never really been a die-hard chocoholic, as this Valentine’s Day drew near I drooled over the elaborate boxes of chocolates on display in all of the stores and cursed my doctor who had threatened me within an inch of my life if I gained more than 20 pounds – seriously, this was the dark ages. But I made it known to my husband that I would be expecting one of those super large boxes of confectionery delights to show up in my hospital room in a few days and I didn’t care if he had to spend the rent money to buy it. I oh-so-carefully selected a Valentine’s Day card for him and wrote a sentimental and loving note in it since I didn’t want to be outdone by what he was sure to give me along with my candy: a beautiful expression of his gratitude, appreciation and love for the mother of his new little baby boy or girl.

Valentine’s Day arrived. I refused to go to class because how could I show up there still pregnant??? Later in the day we sat at our kitchen table. I gave him my card and he swallowed hard. “I haven’t gotten you anything yet. I thought I would bring it to the hospital.” “That’s okay,” I said barely choking back the tears. “I wasn’t expecting anything.” But of course I was. I was expecting a baby. And he hadn’t come. I was devastated. No baby and no candy. Could this day get any worse?

Lucky for me (and my GPA), we didn’t have to wait long. Paul worked the night shift and it was early in the morning that I called him to come home. “I think this is it.” Suffice it to say that my labor was long, it was hard and that due to the fact that I was pretty heavily drugged because that’s the way it was back then, I don’t clearly remember much about it. What I do remember is that I had no idea what was happening, I was scared, I was hurting and they kept chasing Paul out of the room. I also remember that eventually I reached the point where I could not go on. Only later would we learn that this stage of labor is called transition and that it is marked by irritability and a need for emotional support. And that’s pretty much the way it went down.

Paul: What can I do for you?

Me: Just hold my hand.

Paul: I’m right here and I’m holding your hand.

Me: But don’t touch me.

Paul: Okay. I won’t.

Me: Just hold my hand!!

Paul: Okay.

Me: But don’t touch me!!!!!

Paul: oka…..

Me: HOLD MY *#$% HAND!!!!!!!!!

And so it went for the next hour.

Finally they took me to the delivery room. My 68 year old mother and my 21 year old husband (who they almost didn’t let onto the maternity ward because the nurses thought he did not meet the requirements of being 14 or older) sat together in the waiting room. Finally the doctor left the delivery room to give them the news. He looked from the old woman to the boy and unsure of any of the relationships asked, “Are you with Mrs. Abbott?” They assured him they were. “You have a son,” he told my husband. It was February 16th. The day my life changed forever.

That evening Paul came during visiting hours (yes, even husbands were restricted to visiting hours) carrying a big, heart-shaped box filled with chocolates. This had worked out well for him. “It’s so good you waited to have the baby because now all the Valentine Candy is 50% off!!!!” Of course, by then the craving was gone and I don’t think I ate even one. But the nurses were grateful.

Thus began our journey into the world of parenting. And from that day to this I have lived with the revelation that if I knew nothing about birthing babies, I knew even less about parenting. Thank you to my first born for loving me anyway and for not giving up on us. And thanks for some great stories.

I think he was about six when I heard him explaining to his younger sister that when she grew up and got married she would have a different last name. She found this slightly alarming. “What would my name be?” “Well, if you married George Norcross then you would be Tabi Norcross.” “What if I married Mark Kennerly?” “Well, then. . . he said with only a hint of hesitation. “I guess you would be Mark Norcross.” Say what?

He was maybe four when he yelled to me from the bathroom one day. “MOM, COME IN HERE NOW!!” I came running, expecting there to be a crisis of unimaginable severity. “What’s wrong???” “There is a spider in here!!!” By now he was hyperventilating. And don’t ask me why I asked him the next question or what I expected his answer to be, but certainly not what it was. “What kind of spider is it?” I asked him as though he would know or it would make any difference to either of us. “I don’t know,” he replied. “But I think it’s Jewish.” I have no idea.

When the first Star Wars opened in the theaters he was five years old and like every other little boy in America, he lived and breathed the characters and the stories. . . for years. He drug his sisters outside to play, assigning them roles. He would play both Hans Solo AND Luke Skywalker and they would be cast in the roles of Leia ( the sister who had the braids that she could put into buns on the side of her head), Chewbaca (the sister who had a rust colored winter coat that he insisted she wear even in the August heat), and C3PO (the sister he wanted to be able to turn off her constant chatter with a switch). There’s only room for one director.

He might have been ten the year we gave him the book The Hobbit for a Christmas present. He read all that day and into the night, caught up in the world of hobbits and elves and dwarves and the Shire. It must have been after midnight when he came out of his room into the living room in tears. “What’s wrong?” we asked him. “Nobody told me that Fili and Kili died,” he sobbed. “Who thought it was a good idea to give a little kid a book like that for a present?!” But thus began his life long love of Tolkien.

He was 19 when he joined the Marine Corps. The recruiter came to the house to pick him up and watching him get in that car and drive away was one of the hardest things I had ever done. His stories from the Corps are legendary, but those are his to tell. . . and he does it so much better.

Except for this one: He graduated from Boot Camp on July 4th in Paris Island, South Carolina. The entire family traveled to his graduation. What we didn’t know is what we carried with us.

After graduation he returned home with us for a few days and then we sent him off to North Carolina for more training. A few days later we got a call on our answering machine: “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Abbott. This is Captain _____ (I no longer remember his name.) I am calling in regards to your son. Private Abbott is under quarantine at the Base Hospital with the Chicken Pox. And our experience is that in situations such as these, the Marine recovers better at home.” Translation: the Marine needs his mommy.

And then there is this. It was his fifth birthday. We lived in an apartment which was on the second and third floor of an old house, and I had sent him up to my bedroom on the third floor to retrieve my hair dryer (the kind that was sort of a portable model of a salon hair dryer.) As usual his sister, two years younger than he, was on his heels because she followed him everywhere. He was lugging the dryer down the stairs and explaining to her: “Tabi, it’s a good thing Mom sent me to get this hair dryer because it is so heavy that only a five year old can carry it.” She nodded, appropriately impressed with his new-found five-year-old strength. “And,” he continued, “sin is so heavy that only Jesus can carry that.” From the mouths of babes.

My first born is now himself a good husband and father and leader of men.

It has been a long road from that day 43 years ago when I finally got my Valentine Card, my box of candy, and my son. And not always an easy one for either of us. But Jesus has carried us and our sin and His grace to this place where we are today, and for that I am grateful. And I am blessed to be his mother.

Happy Birthday, Sean! And have some Valentine candy. It’s half off!

The Proposal

September 5, 2014March 5, 2024 ~ Sharon Abbott ~ 3 Comments

We had known each since the 4th grade. We
were high school debate partners who became friends and then began to date. We fought and broke up and got back together like most high school romances and then we graduated high school and he moved away for the summer and we became pen pals – writing daily letters back and forth between our cities, each envelope containing a window into the other’s soul.

He returned home and we started college and fought like crazy. But by Christmas, when he left town again, there was no question but that we were in love.

The problem, as I saw it, was that he had made it pretty clear from the beginning that he had no plans to marry me or anybody else really. Ever. He wanted to serve God. I say all of this to explain why then, when he returned from Christmas break and wanted to take me to a really nice restaurant (one where they set the desert on fire right at your table!) and a movie (Bullet starring Steve McQueen – I know, right?) I was not really expecting what came next which is how the whole plan went terribly awry.

This of course, was long before wedding proposals were well choreographed, well scripted, and well planned productions complete with a supporting cast, a film crew, gynormous budgets and an engagement ring in its little black velvet box awaiting the reveal. They were really more like. . . well, like improv. In hindsight, it might have gone better for him had he made his move during dinner with a little set up: I’ve been thinking about this and praying about this and over the past six months I realize that serving God and marrying you are not actually mutually exclusive – or something like that only more romantic. At any rate, either because that was not the plan, or he deviated from the plan, that conversation never took place – not until much later. So after a lovely dinner and a car chase through the streets of San Francisco with McQueen, he took me home where we sat outside in the car, saying our goodbyes. And that’s when he said, “Will you marry me?”

There is a reason why the next words out of my mouth have become part of the family lore and legend.

What I said was, “Go home and sleep on it. And if you never mention this again, neither will I.” Granted, if I had had a better script writer I might have said something like, “Are you sure you’re not just caught up in the moment and the romance of the evening – the flaming dessert and Steve McQueen? This seems contradictory to all our previous conversations about marriage. What changed?” But it was the best line I could improvise in the moment. And so, while what I was thinking was – you are in love with this moment and this evening and the romance of it all, and tomorrow you will wish you could take it all back and I do not want to have that conversation with you – what I actually I said was, “Go home and sleep on it. And if you don’t mention it again, neither will I” and I got out of the car and went in the house.

He called the next day to say he had to run some errands and did I want to come along. Sure. We might as well get this over with sooner than later. I had just “set” my hair. You may or may not remember using empty orange juice cans for hair rollers. You get the picture. If we were going to have this conversation, it was going to be with the real me. In the cold light of day. We were driving down 18th Street.

“Well,” he said.

“Well what?”

“Will you marry me?”

“Okay.”

“Okay WHAT?!”

“OKAY! I’LL MARRY YOU!!” I type this all in caps because, when he tells the story, he yells this part – in sort of an angry voice. I don’t remember it that way. But who knows?

So that was the proposal. By today’s standards, not a very impressive production. But a great story. And it is our story. One of many.

We have been married 45 years today. Those years have seen their share of incredible joy and gut wrenching heartache. But he is now, as he was then, the love of my life. And had I known him then as well as I know him now, I would have known that that proposal came with great planning and care and intention. That he would never have been swept up in the moment (even if it did include Steve McQueen) and that he always, always acts out of conviction. I would have known that his love for God is what fuels his love for me and that together we would make a pretty good team.

Had I known then what I know now, I would have said without a moment’s hesitation, “YES! I’ll marry you!” But then again, where would the story be in that?

Lemon Meringue Pie, Coughing Cows, and More

June 18, 2014December 12, 2024 ~ Sharon Abbott ~ Leave a comment

What you have to understand first is that though Raeleen and I are related by blood (I am her aunt but only five years older than she), we really knew each other hardly at all. She was a country girl from Nebraska and I grew up in a city in Colorado. The oldest daughter of a brother 21 years older than I, we had spent a few Christmases together in our childhood though she was designated as one of the “little kids” and I was part of the “older crowd” – those nieces and nephews that were a little older or maybe a year or two younger. Other than that – our paths had not crossed at all. I knew about her, of course; when my mother was alive she kept me updated on the comings and goings of all the family but that was about it. As we grew to adulthood we bumped into each other from time to time – at my mother’s funeral, my sister’s funeral and a few other times when family circumstances brought us together. . . but the truth is, we really only knew about each other.

How then, you might ask, did I, as a woman in my 60’s, end up sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night to stand on a country road in central Nebraska under a start-studded sky waiting for my accomplice in an adventure which would lead us deep into a pasture with no-trespassing signs posted all over? This story is the answer to that question.

Raeleen is a physical therapist – and a very good one I might add. She has a thriving practice in a small town in Nebraska. People come to her from neighboring towns and even from out of state to experience her healing touch. My sister credited her with keeping her out of surgery and a wheelchair when everyone else had pretty much given up hope. And so, as the arthritis in my hip got worse and the pain from it began to impact my ability to function, I reached out to her. “Give me four weeks and I can help,” she promised. Of course, since I didn’t have four weeks to give, I wrote it off. My hip got worse. “Three weeks,” I said in my best negotiator voice. “I’ll see what I can do,” she promised. But as the time got closer, I began to get cold feet. I had too much to do, I couldn’t be gone from home for three weeks, and of course the real issue was “what in the world would I do THERE for all that time?” No WiFi, I wasn’t even sure I would have good cell phone coverage, no place to go and nothing to do. “I’m not going,” I told Paul. “It’s a bad idea.” But he was convinced that I should go. For no other reason, he said, than to spend the time with my 85 year old brother. When would I get a chance to do that again? “ It will be restful,” he said. “Take some good books, listen to music, spend time with God, and who knows? You might even have some adventures.” Plus – maybe she could help my hip.

And so I packed two suitcases one of which was overweight and cost me $75 (one would have been more than enough because as it turns out, you don’t really need that much in Nebraska) said good-bye to my home and to civilization and headed off to the hinter land.

I stayed with my brother and sister-in-law at their place outside the town of Taylor (population 190). We quickly established a routine. Every morning, either my brother Irvin or his wife Joyce would drive me the 20+ miles from their house outside of Taylor to Raeleen’s office in Burwell (population 2,210). My hosts had been forewarned that I would need to be driven to and from treatment because, as my husband told my brother “there is no way on God’s green earth that you want to turn her lose in one of your vehicles if you ever want to see it again. She can’t find her way around the block when she has street signs.” So off we would go every morning after breakfast. Raleen had an empty office in her building in which I set up shop and I was able to work (the office had Wi-Fi after all and lucky for me somebody knew the password) so I could actually communicate with my office back home via email.

Then, twice a day my niece would come to get me and put me on her table and work me over. And for an hour as she pushed and pulled, evaluated and stretched, rotated and chiseled, we would talk. We learned each other’s stories and how our lives had intersected the other’s in ways we had not known. We shared family history and filled in gaps in one another’s memory. She told me things about my mother that I had never known and I saw her through the eyes of a granddaughter rather than a daughter and I envied Raeleen the years that she had spent with my mother after I moved away and she moved closer to her. We talked about God and how we had each come to faith. We talked about our kids. We talked about being kids. We talked about books and movies and life. We talked about the joys and trials of small town life and what it was like to be a pastor’s wife in suburban Maryland. Daily I grew in my respect and admiration for this woman who was both salt and light in her community like no one I had ever seen. We talked about our failures and our journeys and in the telling and in the hearing we discovered in the other a kindred spirit and our “other best friend” – because we each already had best friends and of course would not want to replace them – we were just adding on. And then, at the end of the day, Cindy, (Raeleen’s sister and “office manager”) would give me a ride back to the Corner Stop (a gas station with a table in one corner where my brother often met his buddies for coffee in the afternoon) and I would ride the rest of the way home with Irvin and sometimes we would talk and sometimes we would just be and it was one of the best times of all. Joyce would have dinner ready for us and we would eat at 6:00 and then watch some kind of sports or bull riding competitions on TV until 9:00 when they would go to bed and I would go to my room and read. And the next day, we would do it over again.

But on Wednesday nights I would go home with Raeleen so that I could go to her Wednesday night “Bible study” with her. This consists of a group of ladies who get together, drink ginger tea which is how they came to be known as “the ginger ladies”, share their week and their lives with one another and sometimes study the Bible. And on those nights her husband Tom would cook for us. He is a rancher who raises his own cattle, raises the crops he feeds them, fattens them and then sells them. And so their freezer is filled with little bites of heaven – the best beef you will ever taste any time anywhere and the best argument I know not to be a vegetarian. I’m not sure I will ever buy another super-market steak again – I would rather just do without.

And then sometimes we would wake up before the sun, get in the car, and drive out into the pasture and sit in the dark and wait for the sunrise. Sitting in the dark, I learned to recognize the “night sounds” – the sound that insects make in the dark before the dawn. “Listen!” Raeleen instructed. And then it grew absolutely quiet. No sound at all. Then one bird. And another. And another. And soon the air was filled with their song – as if it were they who were waking the sun. And then came the first shafts of light and color, the sun would peek over the horizon and the day had begun. It was magical.

I was there for three Sundays: Palm Sunday, Easter Sunday, and the one after. The first two I went to the little Methodist Church in Taylor with Irvin and Joyce. We went to the “before service coffee time” and sat at the table and I learned where the best fishing had been the week before and we talked of the drought and how desperate they were for rain and whether it would snow again this season. It did. On Palm Sunday we marched around the sanctuary waving our palm branches as we sang a hymn and the children and the old men and young mothers all joined in the hosannas. On Easter we went to a sunrise service out on somebody’s ranch at sunrise and sang some hymns and a boy played the cello and we watched the sunrise and drank coffee and ate coffee cake and I loved knowing that all over the world on this day Christians would be celebrating the resurrection in one way or another and that we were a part of that.

I met other characters in the story. Cody: the son of my brother’s neighbor who was an award winning bull rider and now works on a local ranch. One day Raeleen and I found my mother’s recipe for lemon meringue pie in an old recipe box she had given to her granddaughter before she died. Raeleen loves lemon meringue pie and so I said I would make one for her.

Before leaving town, we stopped at the grocery store to buy the ingredients. When I went to bake the pies I realized I had neglected to buy cornstarch. At home this would have been no problem – just run back to the Food Lion and pick it up. Out here in the back country – not so easy. Joyce and I were debating what to do. Irvin said – call the neighbor and I can get in the pickup and drive over and get it (next-door has a different meaning where they come from). And so we did. And they did. And Cody was heading out to go do some branding and would drop it off. Which is how I came to have my forgotten grocery item delivered to me by a cowboy in his hat and boots who came in and sat down and had a piece of banana bread with us before being on his way.

Food Lion is sooooo overrated.

I met Carol: one of Raleen’s best friends who is the post-master in a little town where she ministers to and prays for everyone who comes in to collect their mail. Who has an amazing gift of hospitality and opens her home to the ginger-ladies each week and her stable to some city slicker who wants a photo-op on a horse. And who loves her community to Jesus each and every day

I met Dennis: a retired teacher who went into ministry in his retirement and now pastors my brother’s little church as well as another church in the next town over and goes between them every Sunday, making a long day for him and a blessing for those whom he serves.

I met Dan, a friend of Irvin’s who opened his private fishing pond to us one afternoon and evening so that I could go fishing with Irvin without a license – and stayed and had a picnic dinner with us down by the pond and how we didn’t catch any fish but I got to have physical therapy by the lake and really – how often does that happen where I come from?

And then there was the time my cell phone rang in the middle of the night. The sound that actually woke me was the pounding of my heart against the wall of my chest because my body had already registered what my mind was struggling to hear as I swam toward consciousness – this could not be good news. But it was Raeleen: HAVE YOU SEEN THE STARS??!!!!! I had mentioned to her a few days before that you could never really see the stars at home because of all the lights. “What time is it?” was the only answer I could muster. But I did as I was instructed and went out into the yard and gazed at the heavens. And then I cried for the sheer beauty of it. My phone rang again, “Get dressed! I’m on my way. We’re going star-gazing!!!” I knew it would take her 40 minutes to get there so I went in the house, got dressed and left a note explaining my whereabouts. Then I locked the door behind me and tiptoed out into the night. I walked out to the road so that the headlights wouldn’t wake my brother and his wife. Was I concerned about their sleep or about getting busted sneaking out? Hmmmmm….

.She arrived with two travel mugs – coffee for her and tea for me, blankets, and away we went. We drove through a gate into a pasture off the beaten path – the headlights shown on a no trespassing sign but she didn’t seem too worried. I assumed she knew the property owner so I wasn’t worried either. And there we sat and watched the stars, tried to pick out constellations, and marveled at the beauty and mystery of it all. Shortly before dawn, one bird began to sing. And then another and another. Raeleen named them for me by their songs and there was not one she didn’t know. Then came one from the darkness that was deep and low. I heard it over and over again. What bird is that? I wanted to know. “That” she laughed, “is a coughing cow”. I still had so much to learn! As the stars faded and the sky colored with the coming dawn, we basked in the beauty and sat surrounded by cows and birds and windmills and grasses and flowers. And more “No trespassing” signs. Whose property is this? I asked her. “I have no idea,” came her reply.

Those three weeks changed my life. They gave me time. Time to move slowly with the rhythm of the season and the land. Time to visit with characters in the story and learn from them a different way of life than my own. Time to sit in a rocking chair and watch my brother braid the leather harnesses and headstalls that are nothing if not a work of art. Time to plot how to catch the varmint that was digging up the garden and set the traps and marvel every morning how the trap was sprung, the bait was gone but so was the varmint. To bake lemon pies and go fishing and eat homemade biscuits and gravy at the fundraiser for the high school. Time to read and to talk and to listen. To watch the sun come up and go down and star-gaze and enjoy conversation over a good steak. Time to fall in love with the land where I was born. To hear the stories of my family and my heritage and to learn what it looks like to love and to serve God in ways I never knew and to learn from this truly amazing and remarkable woman who is related to me by blood and now by love. Oh, and my hip is better, too. Thanks for asking.

When All You Have Are the Stories…

June 14, 2014December 12, 2024 ~ Sharon Abbott ~ 2 Comments

Father’s Day wasn’t celebrated at our house when I was growing up. My father died when I was four. If I could go back in time I would ask my mother if we could celebrate the day by telling stories about my dad. Tell me what he said the first time he saw me. Tell me what was his favorite meal. Tell me what you thought the first time you met him and then why you wanted to marry him. Tell me how I am like him and how I am different from him. I know so little about him and I have no memories of him. My siblings were all grown by the time I was born so they had memories. I only
know what others have told me – I only know the stories.

He met my mother at a box supper. She was the school teacher in town and he was traveling through as a corn shucker -“The fastest one the county had ever seen” my mother once bragged. When it came time to bid on the boxes, someone sitting next to my dad said, “Get that one no matter how much it costs. She’s the best cook you’ll ever meet.” He outbid all the others, ended up with my mother’s box and of course, as was the custom, ate its contents with the one who had prepared it. And that’s how Ray Fletcher met Hazel Barnes.

He was a quiet man. Today we would call him an introvert. He liked solitude and being outside which worked out well for him since he was a farmer and spent most of his time with his cows and his crops. He rolled his own cigarettes and never drank. He suffered all his life with “sick headaches” which of course today we call migraines. He had a hard time showing or expressing emotion. Was that the times he lived in or his temperament?

He was an extremely hard worker. When his own farm work was done he would help a neighbor with theirs. He was the first to help those in need and the last to ask for help for himself. He was intense and had a hard time relaxing or being idle, though he did like to rock the babies. On winter nights when he couldn’t be outside, he played checkers and cards with his kids and while they all looked forward to the day they could beat him, that day never seemed to come.

He only graduated eighth grade, but by everyone’s telling, he was smarter than most. Determined that all of his children would get an education, he forbade my brother to quit high school when WWII came and insisted he stay in school until graduation. While other farmers would keep their sons home from school to help with the farm, he never allowed his children to skip. Though probably none needed the help more than he.

When the dust bowl came and the depression with it, he struggled to provide for his family: a dark and bleak time for him. Determined to care for them, he got day jobs in town when he could and worked for the WPA; but the bank foreclosed on the farm he was leasing, he had to sell all his equipment, and the family moved to town. My mother cleaned houses to buy food. He was a proud man and unwilling to take help or assistance. Eventually my grandfather asked him to come and work on his farm and live there. He was back on the farm, working hard. doing what he loved to do. And then came the flood. My sister remembers standing on the front porch of the house which was up on a hill and watching a wall of water come down the Frenchman River wiping out crops and drowning farm animals. Dad just picked up the pieces and started over.

Three years before he died, he finally was able to buy his own farm. Yet his troubles were not yet behind him. He sent his second son off to fight in Korea and his daughter contracted polio and was very, very ill. He worried about me getting it and how they would pay the mounting medical bills. Everyone agrees he worried a lot, though never talked about any of it.

By 1952 things were turning around. Both his sons were home from the war, all his children would be home for Christmas, my sister was on her way to recovery and they were celebrating in their very own place! They took a family picture – the only one ever taken of my parents with all six of their children. I don’t have many pictures of him, but this is the only one where he is smiling and seems relaxed.

In July of 1954, he was working construction in town to bring home some needed extra cash. On the way home, the tire blew out, the truck hit a telephone pole and he suffered a spinal cord injury. Every day he asked the same question: Doc, how long before I’m walking? Then finally on the 14th day the doctor explained that he would never walk again. Two days later he died.

My sister once wrote this to me in response to my questions about our father: “Dad got along well with all his children but then he was an easy man to get along with. He was not one to let his emotions show and didn’t give hugs or kisses or show outward signs of affection. However, from his actions you knew there was a lot of love there and you were his life. His entire life seemed to be focused on providing food, shelter and clothes for his family and most of it seemed to be a struggle for him. Nothing came easy for him, but he just kept trying.”So today, on this Father’s Day, thanks to all of the dads who just keep trying. Because, in the end, that’s really all anybody can do. And it is left to us to pass along their stories.

The Dog Days of Summer

July 20, 2013December 12, 2024 ~ Sharon Abbott ~ 5 Comments

I love summer.

I even love the “Dog Days of Summer”. You know – those hot, sticky, muggy, days that hit Maryland around July. Don’t hate me. I just love them. I love drinking gallons of iced tea, sitting under the ceiling fan, going barefoot, pulling my hair up in a not-so-neat pile to get it off my neck, eating cucumber salad for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I love going outside at 10 o’clock at night and being
hit with a blast of hot air. I love all of it. And I don’t know why. Being a red head, I was never one of those girls who could “lay out” as a summer activity. You know – spread your towel out in the back yard or on the concrete beside the swimming pool, slather on the baby oil, put on the shades and bake your way to beautiful, golden skin. Oh, not that I didn’t try. I would go through all the steps – only to end up with a hideous looking sunburn that left me in so much pain and misery that I wanted to die (that’s the teen drama speaking). And when the pain subsided I was left with peeling skin and freckles – the bane of my life. I remember once reading in a beauty magazine that you could bleach them out with lemon juice. Not true. Anyway, as a kid and teenager, summer was fraught with peril and danger and I never considered it my friend.

But somewhere along the way, that changed. Now I sit in the shade and read my book and listen to the insects and the birds and it feeds my soul. I don’t like air conditioning. I almost refuse to eat at a restaurant in the summer that doesn’t have outdoor seating because I hate to bundle up in a sweater and hurry through my meal because I’m freezing. I like the heat. (In the interest of full disclosure, we do cool the house down at night to sleep. But the first thing I do in the morning is warm it up.)

This week has been unusually hot. And though the evenings are the way I like them, hot and humid, the day after day of near 100 degree temps with high humidity can wear a little thin – even for me. And they take me back to the summer of 1976.

It was August and we lived in Kansas in an apartment that was on the second and third floor of an old house. I was nine months pregnant and had a four year old and two year old. Our apartment had no air conditioning. None. I stripped the kids down to their underwear, put on a tent that I called a sundress, and wondered to myself if I had really died and gone to hell because surely this is what hell must feel like. Did I mention I was nine months pregnant? And we had no air conditioning? We did find an ancient window unit in the basement that the last tenant had discarded and we (and by we I mean Paul) hauled it upstairs and installed it in the living room window. We plugged it in, prayed, held our breath, and hit the on switch. The sound that came from that machine sounded like a tribe of banshees each using a jack -hammer to break up concrete. The kids – who had been playing out in the yard (in their underwear)- came running up the stairs “Daddy, Daddy, make it stop!” We only knew that’s what they were saying by the look of terror in their eyes and reading their lips – we certainly couldn’t hear them over the racket. The best relief to be found was to stand in front of the open refrigerator. Which I did. Often. Everyday the weatherman talked about the record breaking heat and I prayed that relief would come soon. Paul went to work every day, drove by the bank with the thermometer that confirmed what he already knew – he would return home that evening to a bowl of cereal; sweaty, cranky kids; and a wife who had seen better days. But the baby came in the middle of August (we named her Faith, maybe because of the faith it took to believe we would both survive those days), finally the heat broke, and life went on. I’m sure it was sometime after the memories of that summer had faded a little (a lot) that my love affair with summer began.

I have been reminded of that summer because now, in the heat of these days and nights, as I wait for the birth of my granddaughter who is due the first of August. I understand how miserable the wait is for my daughter Joy and how if feels like it will never end. But it does.

As for me, I will pour myself another glass of tea or buy a 5 cent glass of lemonade from a budding young entrepreneur, turn the ceiling fan on high (okay – and maybe I’ll turn on the air conditioning just a little) and soak up these dog days of summer.

And many thanks to my second “August baby” (yes, I did it again) Sarah for the use of her photos which always tell a story.

It’s Not the Years….

March 26, 2013March 5, 2024 ~ Sharon Abbott ~ 3 Comments

It was a Monday. I only know this because I looked it up on the internet. The date was March 26, 1950, and a 47 year old woman labored away in a hospital in McCook, Nebraska, to bring her sixth child into the world. The doctor told her husband that he thought the baby was dead. They couldn’t get a heartbeat and they needed now to turn their attention to saving the mother. She had delivered five other children: all at home in her own bed with the country doctor attending. She was convinced the problems were with the hospital and insisted if they would just let her go home, she could have this baby by herself. The doctors were not convinced. The husband was adamant – they would do nothing until his daughter, the nurse, arrived. She was on her way from Pueblo, Colorado, and she would know what to do.

My sister arrived from the big city with her “modern technology” – a stethoscope designed to detect a baby’s heartbeat. “This baby is alive and well,” she told my mother – we just need to get it here!” My mother was worried about my dad, pacing the hall outside her room. My sister assured her he had been tended to. “It’s okay,” she told her. “He fainted a while ago and they have him in bed in a room down the hall.” And so it was that my sister, Lila Rae, attended our mother as she brought me into the world. And the “new” parents, who were also grandparents twice over, began again this journey of caring for and raising a child.

By this time in her life my mother had already survived some hard times: her fifth child Lola had contracted whooping cough when she was five days old and the raging high fever had left her with some brain damage and physical disabilities. Surely she was concerned with the health of this child now born to her 17 years later. She had sent a son off to fight a World War and lived through the hell of the 118 days he was missing in action. She and my father had lost their farm in the Great Depression and she knew the despair of trying to feed five children with a husband out of work and no way to pay the bills or provide the necessities. But by 1950 things were looking up and though this red headed baby girl was not in the plan – they made a new plan, welcomed her enthusiastically and maybe thought that the hard times were behind them.

In four short years, my mother would find herself a widow with a handicapped daughter and a four year old daughter and no way to provide for them. She transitioned from a Nebraska farm wife to a single working mother and did it all with grace and with determination and it is to her credit that I never once felt like I had made her life harder instead of richer.

I was 16 the year my mother turned 63 – the age I am now. And 63 seemed so old to me. My mother seemed old. Am I that old? Surely not. Sixty three is the new fifty, right? But I am really only beginning to learn what by now my mother knew so well . . . it’s not the years, it’s the mileage.

I always think of my mother on my birthday. And of my sister. Two strong and beautiful women. I owe my very life to them. And I miss them.

It’s All About the Snacks.

February 3, 2013March 5, 2024 ~ Sharon Abbott ~ 1 Comment

In our family, Super Bowl Sunday was never about the football… unless the Bears or later the Skins were playing… and really, how often does that happen in one’s lifetime??

No. Super Bowl Sunday was always about the food. The snacks. All the stuff you got to eat on that day on any other day would have been considered indulgent and gluttonous. On this day, everything was allowable.

I think it must have been about 1987. I can’t remember if we had friends coming or it was just family – either way it would be a party and I had been cooking (junk) food for days. That afternoon I was finishing up the Chex Party Mix (this was before you bought it in a bag and actually made it from scratch). Joy was “helping” me. We mixed the three different kinds of Chex cereals, the peanuts and then poured the buttery mixture over it and put it in the oven. The M&M’s would be added later. So messy, so fun!! She was at the “helping” stage most children go through at about three or four and she was relishing the role. I remember Fletcher one Thanksgiving when he was about the same age wanting to help. He pulled a chair over to the kitchen sink where I was preparing the turkey to put in the oven. He watched for a while before he put voice to the question, “What is that?” “THIS,” I proclaimed proudly of the 20 pound foul sprawled in my sink, “is the turkey!!” “It looks like some kind of dead animal,” he said with mild alarm in his three year old voice. Well, when you put it that way. . . but I digress.

Joy was helping me with the Chex Mix for the Super Bowl party and carrying on a running dialogue – mostly with herself.“I just love the Super Bowl. I have always loved the Super Bowl. I think Super Bowl parties are the best parties ever. Don’t you love the Super Bowl? When can we have the snacks? What time will the Super Bowl start? How much longer is that? Is this YOUR favorite party? Don’t you just love Chex Mix? Can I have some Chex Mix now? Well, how much longer till the Super Bowl starts? Shall I ask the kids if they are ready for the Super Bowl? Can I fix my bowl of Chex Mix now and just hold it till it’s time for the Super Bowl to start? What shall I wear to the Super Bowl? What are you going to wear to the Super Bowl? How much longer, now?” And so it went…. for most of the afternoon. She was so excited for it all to begin. The other kids begged me to make her stop, but she was not to be shushed “She doesn’t even LIKE to watch football!” they complained. “She hates Sunday afternoons when that’s all we do. Why is this so different?” Who knew?

Finally it was time. She spread out her blanket on the floor. She brought pillows from her bed. She put on her “special party pajamas”. She brought in her favorite doll to enjoy the festivities. She straightened her blanket. She fluffed her pillows. And she oh-so-carefully carried her bowl of Chex Mix into the living room and sat on her blanket. We turned on the television. The announcers were talking, the fans were screaming, aaaand the kick-off. Joy was shocked – almost beyond words. She jumped to her little feet, whipped around with her hands on her hips and in the most accusing and disparaging tone I have ever heard in a three year old she said to me, “THIS LOOKS JUST LIKE FOOTBALL!!”

Whatever she had thought a Super Bowl party meant, never in her wildest dreams did she imagine that it was about football.

because our stories matter

Once Upon My Story

Author: Sharon Abbott

Joy to the World. . . Every Day

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Tabitha, Arise.

Valentines and Birthin’ Babies

The Proposal

Lemon Meringue Pie, Coughing Cows, and More

When All You Have Are the Stories…

The Dog Days of Summer

It’s Not the Years….

It’s All About the Snacks.

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