Look at that Baby!

January 8, 2020December 11, 2024 ~ Sharon Abbott ~ Leave a comment

It is a story she told often around this time of year. She had gone to church that morning, come home and fixed Sunday dinner. She didn’t feel all that great but was sure it couldn’t be labor and even if it was, it would be many, many hours before she would give birth. She knew this for a fact because her first one had taken hours if not days of excruciating pain, and this was not that. And so she did the dishes, straightened the kitchen, and dismissed the growing-ever-more-regular twinges in her belly. Until she finally agreed that they could go to the hospital just to check things out and make sure everything was okay

By 5:00 that evening she was sitting cross-legged on her bed reading the Sunday funnies, eating a snack and chatting happily and excitedly with her husband. She had just delivered her second son! Perhaps she credited her doctor with the ease of this delivery which is why she chose the doctor’s last name as her baby’s middle name. In any event, the delivery was perfect; the baby was perfect. Or so they told her. This all happened in 1950 – in the days when babies were whisked away to the nursery as soon as the cord was cut to be attended by “professionals” and once they were cleaned and scrubbed and dressed, then and only then, would the parents be allowed to look at them through the nursery window.

And so she hopped out of bed (she always said it this way – “hopped out of bed”) and walked down the hall to the nursery. There was another mother standing at the window admiring all of the freshly scrubbed and swaddled babies and they stood there together recounting their recent birth stories, one contraction at a time. And then mid-sentence, one particular baby caught her eye. “Oh look!” she said to the other mother. “Look over there at that one. Isn’t that just the ugliest baby you ever saw!?! Don’t you feel sorry for his mother?!!” It was only then that she saw the name taped to the bassinet. “Baby Boy Abbott”.

My mother-in-law loved to tell this story about her second born son: Paul Rowan Abbott. And then she would laugh at herself and add “And he turned out to be the cutest baby anyone ever did see!”

And so today, on his birthday (a birthday he shares with Elvis and claims is the best gift his mother ever gave him), it seems only appropriate to tell the story again. And to honor this woman who birthed and raised the man I love to the moon and back.

She had eight children, a multitude of grandchildren, took in every stray (including me) who came along and loved them all fiercely. She loved her fur coat, her jewelry, her Denver Broncos, her red dresses, her coffee with cream and her husband of over 60 years. She was an opinionated and outspoken woman and I loved her for it. Having grown up in abject poverty herself, she was generous to a fault. A pastor’s wife for over 20 years, she understood and appreciated my life better than most people ever could. I knew from early on that she liked me at least as much if not more than she liked her son and that I would always have an ally in her. She proved this to be true until the day she died.

She taught me to make chicken and noodles the way she did (don’t waste time rolling the noodles paper thin) and how to welcome the stranger. She taught me to celebrate or grieve with a good chocolate pie. She taught me that life is both amazingly wonderful and also filled with disappointments and heartache and that there are no guarantees. And she taught me that the only way through it is to love with abandon and pray to Jesus.

Though we disagreed about many things – the proper amount of sage to put in stuffing, the merits of sweet tea, the need to cook beef until it looked and tasted like charcoal – the one thing we always agreed on was that that baby in the nursery window turned out pretty darn good. And I have always thought that she had a lot to do with that.

Thank you, Judy. And Happy Birthday, Baby!

With This Ring. . .

July 3, 2019February 20, 2024 ~ Sharon Abbott ~ 6 Comments

When Paul proposed in January of 1969, he did it without an engagement ring. That is another story and one that is told in the story called The Proposal. But this is a different story.

The day after we graduated from high school, Paul got in a car and drove to Denver where his Dad had moved earlier in the year for a job. He got a job in the same bakery where his dad worked and eventually would land a second job at the Leaning Tower of Pizza (yup, that was really the name of it). The rest of the family stayed in Pueblo to finish out the school year and over the summer, they would all relocate. I stayed in Pueblo for my job. We wrote letters back and forth every day and I penned mine on stationary that I had purchased with some of my graduation money – a box filled with bright neon orange and green and yellow sheets and matching envelopes. He used a yellow legal pad with white envelopes (once a debater, always a debater). They were love letters of sorts and also a daily journal of what we had done that day and whatever it is that eighteen year olds write to one another when they are falling in love. I wish I still had them.

I say all that to say that even after working two jobs all summer and putting in lots and lots of hours because he had nothing else to do really, at the end of the summer he had no money to show for his efforts. Not because he spent it all on himself, but because his family was struggling financially trying to get moved and established in Denver, and Paul signed over his paycheck to them every week. That, with what his dad was bringing home, kept the wolf from the door until they could get on their feet.

He returned to Pueblo at the end of the summer to start school at the local college where we both had full scholarships and got a job at Sears selling paint to pay for gas to get back and forth to class from the home of a family friend who boarded him for free.

In December he returned to Denver to spend the holidays with his family and when he came back for the second semester we got engaged.and set the wedding for September. And yes, I know., We were too young, we were too poor, we were too stupid, we were too. . . . But that’s the way the story goes.

I think it must have been sometime in the spring, maybe over Spring Break, we went to Denver to visit his family. His mother wanted to go to the mall, and usually when Judy made a plan, it was going to happen. So we were walking through the mall, window shopping and visiting and at some point we ended up at the Sear’s jewelry counter. His mother stopped to look – she loved jewelry! I think I wandered off in a different direction to look at sweaters or some such thing and she called me back. She was pointing at engagement rings. “So when you get a ring, what kind do you like?” I hadn’t really thought about it. “Well. . . I like white gold,” I offered. “But what STYLE do you like?” I wasn’t sure what to say. “Do you like that one?” Not really, though I could’t really give her a reason. “What about that one?” Uuummmm. . . it’s okay. “That one?” No. “How about that one?” Yeah. I do sort of like that. She got the sales clerk’s attention, “Can we try that one on?” I put it on my finger. “What do you think?” she wanted to know. I thought it was pretty. “Okay, we’ll take it,” she told the clerk. And just like that, I had picked out my engagement ring. Had I known we were actually going to buy a ring that day, I’m not sure it’s what I would have chosen. But I did like it well enough. Looking back, I know we went to the mall that day to get a ring, and when Judy makes a plan . . .

Over the years, I wore it and the plain matching wedding band without really giving it much thought or notice. I wore it when I kneaded bread and when I bathed babies. When I washed dishes and when I folded laundry. When I slammed the door after a fight about who knows what and when I caressed his face and said, “I’m sorry “. When I taught my little ones to hold a pencil and when I walked down the street holding hands with the one who had put it on my finger at the altar. I wore it when I wiped away tears from little faces and from my own and when I served up ice cream floats to college students as we sat on the front porch on hot summer nights.

And then one day, about 20 years later, I looked down at my hand and the diamond was missing from the ring. It was not a big diamond, but now there seemed to be a huge gaping hole where the stone should have been. I had no idea how long it had been missing or when or where I lost it. I only knew it was gone, and I was devastated. All of a sudden the ring that had not mattered, mattered so much. Money was tight and while Paul wanted to get the stone replaced, I insisted that we should just get plain bands and wait on a diamond . . . so that’s what we did. For twenty years, we wore plain gold bands and I told myself it was way more practical anyway. Paul continued to wear his original band on his right hand and sometimes people would ask him why he wore two wedding rings. “This one is from my first marriage,” he would say. I wore my mother’s engagement ring and wedding band on my right hand which is another story for another day called The Fellowship of the Ring but also worth reading.

And then on September 5, 2009, on our 40th wedding anniversary, Paul had a gift for me. He put a black velvet ring box in my hand. I thought maybe he had bought me an anniversary band. When I opened it, there was my ring. With a new stone in it. And yes, I cried. He was explaining he had wanted to replace it with a bigger diamond but it would need a new setting to do that and that would have been more expensive. And that he was sorry the diamond was so small, and he wished it were bigger and maybe he should have just gotten a new ring altogether. How could I explain to him everything this ring meant to me after 40 years?

That this ring told the story of not just his love and his care for me, but for his parents and how he had spent all his summer wages to help them. That I had learned that a man who would care for his parents like that would care for his wife and sacrifice for her which he had done over and over and over again. It told the story of my mother-in-law and her generosity and her love and care for me. It told the story of our marriage: that it had never been built on money or expensive things but on love and commitment and our promise to one another. That ring, which had cost $160 in 1969, held so many stories. It was irreplacable. No, I did not want a different ring.

And now, as our 50th anniversary approaches (but how can we have been married 50 years??!!), Paul made a plan – he is his mother’s son. He wanted to put a bigger, better stone in the ring. “Because,” he said, “fifty years is a really big deal.”. I agreed. Fifty years is a big deal. But only if they could put it in the original setting and make it work. So we took it to a jeweler who helped us to choose the right stone and will repair the crack in the band and give it back better than new. And now this will become part of the story as well.

Side bar: A couple of years ago, I had a minor surgery which required general anesthesia. Following the doctor’s directions, I removed all my jewelry and left it on my dresser before I went to the hospital. I got all the typical warnings and instructions before I returned home: don’t drive, don’t operate heavy machinery, don’t sign any documents or make any major decisions, don’t use the stove. etc. When we returned home, Paul deposited me on the couch, and went across the street to get me a salad. He was gone maybe 15 minutes. During that time I saw my jewelry on the dresser and decided it needed to be cleaned ( I have NEVER cleaned my jewelry before in my life) so I took it all to the bathroom, plugged and filled the sink, slathered it with jewelry cleaner, washed it all off, dried it off, drained the sink, and put it back on – earrings, necklace, bracelet, etc. A few minutes later I noticed I was not wearing my wedding ring. I retraced by steps, looked all over the counter, and decided it must have been in the sink when I drained the water. About this time, Paul returned home. “We have a small problem,” and I explained the situation. “But all we need to do is take apart the pipe under the sink, and there it will be. Easy peasie.” The problem was, it wasn’t in the pipe. I could feel the panic rising. Paul said maybe he could disconnect the pipe in the basement and find it that way. Nope. Full blown panic was setting in. I was in tears and could not be comforted. Paul sat on the bathroom bench next to me: “It’s okay. It’s just a ring. We can get another ring. It’s just a symbol. We are the real thing. And we still have each other. That’s the important thing.” By now I was wailing. “NO!! THE IMPORTANT THING IS THAT WE FIND THAT RING! I HAVE HAD THAT RING FOR ALMOST 50 YEARS AND IT’S IRREPLACEABLE!” Okay, so maybe the hysteria was coming from the drugs still in my system. . . but still. . .

I could hear Paul in the living room calling plumbers, It was after 5:00 so it was hard to get anybody to answer. but he was trying. To calm myself, I stood up and began aimlessly moving things around the bathroom counter. And there, carefully tucked under the soap dish where I had obviously put it for safe keeping but had no memory of doing so, was my ring. That which had been lost was found and now I cried uncontrollable happy tears (didn’t Jesus tell a story something like this?).

Like a marriage of 50 years

Two lessons to learn from this chapter of the story: (1) Always follow your doctor’s instructions after anesthesia, though in my defense nobody said anything about not cleaning your jewelry and (2) The worth of an object is not always measured by monetary value but by the stories we attach to it. Some things are irreplaceable.

You Have a Great Past Just Ahead of You

July 9, 2017March 20, 2024 ~ Sharon Abbott ~ 5 Comments

If you were part of the “second family”, summer vacation to you meant the beach: sand and sea and the smell and taste of salt on your skin. It’s boogie boards and sunscreen and the sound of seagulls and the sting of jelly fish and buying the tee shirt with a beagle in the hammock and going for ice cream on the sound. But if you were one of “the four” and you grew up in the land-locked midwest and it was 1980 something, summer vacation was a whole other thing. It was camping in the rain, little cereal boxes of your favorite cereals (except for the Raisin Bran which nobody wanted), trips to the ER for stitches and ear infections, and Silver Dollar City.

The first family vacation we ever took that was not to visit grandparents came about from a conversation with Paul’s brother David who insisted that the perfect vacation spot was hidden away deep in the Ozarks in an out-of-the-way spot known as Branson, Missouri. Today, of course, Branson is a destination in and of itself which draws thousands upon thousands of visitors each year to its music shows. But this was before all that. This was about a little theme park where you rode the trolley from the parking lot to the gate not because it was too far too walk but because it was one of the few “rides” the park offered and you listened to the patter of the “tour guide” who explained that you were about to step back in time – 100 years to be exact. “Welcome to Silver Dollar City – where you’ll find a great past just ahead of you!” he promised as we stepped off the trolley and into some of the best memories we would make as a family.

The first time we went was sometime in the early 80s; there is some disagreement among us as to the exact year so we’ll just call it 1980something. We sent away for the brochures and when they arrived in the mail (Seriously. That’s how we did things before the internet.), we sat down on family nights and poured over them: planning our itinerary, studying the maps and highlighting the best route from Illinois to Missouri, making a budget, writing the lists of all the things to do and take and ready before our big adventure. How many weeks (months) did we do this?

Because we had no money, we knew hotel rooms and restaurant meals were out of the question. But not to worry – for a fraction of the cost we could buy a brand new tent (I think we already had some sleeping bags we had collected along the way) and thanks to our trusty brochures we found the Blue Mountain Campground nearby (with a swimming pool and laundry facilities!) where we could pitch our tent. We could afford tickets to Silver Dollar City for a day and half and the rest of the time we would vacation at the campground: swimming and collecting wood for the fire we would build to cook our meals and toast marshmallows for the s’mores. What could possibly go wrong you ask. Let me count the ways.

1. Before using a tent for the first time it would behoove. . . (okay – cross that off my bucket list – I have always wanted to use that word in a sentence). . . it would behoove you to set it up at home to make sure (a) all the necessary pieces are present and accounted for and (b) you actually know how said pieces fit together.

2. It rains in the Ozarks. A lot. Not all tents are waterproof. Soaking wet sleeping bags require a heavy duty dryer which can only be found at a laundromat. Also, a strong storm can blow down a tent altogether.

Early one morning, after a night where no one had slept due to the soaking wet tent, the soaking wet sleeping bags, and the all round soaking wet, miserable conditions, the owners of the campground took pity on us. Chad was outside our tent – yelling. “Faye says for y’all to come on up to the house for pancakes and get those babies in outa’ this rain!!” Thank God for Chad and Faye and Ozark hospitality!

3. Camp playgrounds are all fun and games until someone parachutes out of a swing, lands in the gravel, and slices open her hand which will require a trip to the emergency room for stitches, taking up an entire afternoon of vacation. In years to come we would battle strep throat, ear infections and stomach flu – so much so that it seemed it wasn’t vacation if somebody didn’t get hurt or sick.

4. It is best not to allow a three year old to jump into the deep end of the swimming pool holding a beach ball as a flotation device. This can go south pretty quickly.

5. It turns out young children are more enamored with playing in the fire and cooking over the fire than they are with eating the food cooked in said fire. They’re not so much about the char the fire leaves on the hotdogs or the crunch of aluminum-foil-wrapped- potatoes cooked in the coals which never seemed to get done. But they did absolutely love the little individual boxes of cereal that they could open up, pour in the milk and eat right out of the box.

The tent – before it blew down in the rainstorm

And yet, for all of that, we returned to the Blue Mountain Campground again and again, year after year.

And to Silver Dollar City. After the first year we figured out that for not too much more money, we could buy a season pass and then go to the park every day for our five days of vacation. We rode the train with its steam powered engine and never grew tired of the train robbers who entertained the passengers with their scripted and improvised lines.

We were regulars at the Silver Dollar Saloon where the singing bartenders served rootbeer in frosty mugs and peanuts in the shell. The saloon girls put on their show and hauled a sucker up from the audience to mock and ridicule him and so of course the kids figured out which chair they always chose to pull their victim from and convinced Dad to sit in the chair at least once a season. In the middle of the show Carrie Nation and her Suffragettes marched in to break up the riffraff and it took the Sheriff to restore order. The girls bought garters and when they got home they practiced the Can-Can and sang “Why do they call us wild women, wild women, wild women? Why do they call us wild women when we’re just as tame as can be“. Rosie was the main saloon girl and one day on our way to the park from the campground we stopped at a convenience store to pick something up and there was Rosie – buying a loaf of bread! Day made!

Scan 18 — Good times at the Silver Dollar City Saloon.

The street theatre actors recognized the kids from year to year and incorporated them into their acts. They were on a first name basis with the Sheriff and the Deputy, with the Hatfields and McCoys. With the Rainmaker and the Undertaker who wandered the streets with his measuring tape. They loved the Story Teller and knew what time she would be at her spot to tell stories and choose them to be a part of them. They knew the musicians and where they performed and what time to catch them during the day. They knew the lady who ran the general store and the basket maker and the blacksmith.

And then there was Mercy. He was the star of Silver Dollar City. He seemed to be everywhere: interacting with the guests, heckling and teasing and aggravating and everyone loved him. He knew our kids by name and if we missed a year he would ask them where they had been. Eventually they got to know the actor behind the character. His name was Jack McDowell and they invited him to lunch and he told them about Silver Dollar City behind the scenes. We exchanged Christmas cards and kept up with him and his career for many years.

12642961_1121398154561726_7387714377258334224_n — Mercy

There were a only a few rides: the American Plunge which was a log flume ride and left your stomach at the top of the summit before plunging you down the to the bottom and the Lost River of the Ozarks inner tube ride that guaranteed a good dousing under the waterfall. There was a ball pit and a playground and a carousel, but mostly it was about the community: the musicians around every corner and the street theatre which was both predictable and spontaneous, the craftsman and the artisans. It was about the funnel cakes and the frozen lemonade and the penny candy at the general store. As the kids got a little older we would let them roam the park on their own and meet back periodically to check in at a designated spot (it was a different time and a different place). One day I was walking through the park alone and I turned a corner to find the baritone from the barbershop quartet all alone in an isolated spot singing “How Great Thou Art”. His eyes were closed, his arms lifted to the sky and it struck me that he was not performing, he was worshiping. This was a private moment, not a public one. I tried to slip away unnoticed so as to not interrupt him when he opened his eyes and saw me. He blushed a little. “I’m on my break,” he said. “I just needed to recharge.” For years I would recall that scene when I needed to recharge.

Every day at the park started with the sheriff deputizing all the kids with sheriff badges and then lining them up to stand at attention as the flag was raised. The day ended with the lowering and the folding of the flag.

Scan 33 copy 2 — The Sheriff deputizes the kids every morning. . . with a badge.

In the evening we headed to Echo Hollow, the big amphitheater, for the Silver Dollar City Jubilee: an evening of Bluegrass music and comedy with Mercy as the warm up act. They might change the show from year to year but the performers were always the same – and once again they recognized us and greeted us like old friends. And then it was back to the campground where, if we were lucky, the tent and sleeping bags would be dry and we could light a fire and Dad would pull out his harmonica and we would unwind from the the day so we could get up in the morning, eat little boxes of cereal and head back to do it all over again.

I don’t know how many times we went on this vacation. Five maybe? Six? I know we went back a couple of times after Joy was born. She danced in the streets to the music, she plummeted down the American Plunge tucked in between us and rode the Lost River of the Ozarks, squealing with delight as the water fall dumped water over our heads. She rode the carousel and ate the funnel cakes and slept in the tent. But I think it was after that that we moved east and the story shifted.

We made one trip with all of eight of us. In was in 1989. Fletcher was a year old, Joy was five and the others were . . . older. But it wasn’t the same. Some of the old, familiar faces were gone, others had taken their place who didn’t know us from the next guy and there some new, added “attractions”. Still, it was enough the same that we could say, “Oh! And remember this?!” But you could tell that change was afoot.

The last trip – 1995. And that’s Jack McDowell in the middle.

In the summer of 1995 we were making a trip to Colorado for Paul’s parent’s 50th wedding anniversary. Somehow somebody suggested, “What if we went through Branson and spent a day at Silver Dollar City? But maybe we sleep in a cabin.” And so we did. We wanted Fletcher to see it, to experience it, but afterwards we all sort of wished we hadn’t done it. The magic was gone. It was more like a conventional theme park – more about the plethora of rides which had been added over the years and less about the craftsmen and the music and the street theatre. Less personal somehow and more crowded. We did look up Jack McDowell. who was working someplace else by then and had lunch with him. But he had moved on too, and we all mourned the loss of the place where we had met and spent so many happy hours. We stopped by the Blue Mountain Camp Ground just to see if it was still there. It was. Chad had died some time ago and Faye was away when we stopped, but when we went in the office, there on the bulletin board was a picture of two year old Joy.

Joy reminds me that in 1999, Paul and I and she and Fletch stopped again when we were traveling west to see family. Oddly enough, I have absolutely no memories of it. Maybe it was just too different and I didn’t want to remember it that way.

One of the kids said once, “Don’t you wish you could go back to Silver Dollar City for the first time?” And that sort of captures it. It was magical. Pure and utter magic. But it’s sort of like Camelot or Brigadoon. It’s been almost 40 years since that first time and now it’s gone and there’s no way to get back to what it was no matter how much you might wish otherwise. And maybe that’s where the magic lies. The place – as we knew it – is gone. The children – as we knew them – are gone. But the stories. They are alive and well and welcome us back again and again.

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.