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Apparently, the primary lesson one Sunday centered on honesty. As good parents do, we prodded our children as to what they learned asking questions such as, what does honestly mean? Do you want to be honest? Is it easy to be honest? Do you know someone who is always honest? To this last question, Klark answered, "Not grandpa." Again, we prodded. Which grandpa? When was he not honest? Here is the story as told by Klark:
Grandpa Whiteley lied in church. Everybody thought it was funny. On Sunday, Grandpa gave a talk and he said to everybody that grandma sat in pee then had to stand in a long line with wet pants. He said that grandma used to have a big nose and never makes him any pies. He said she had a very bad day.
The good news for Grandma is that Klark knows those things were not so. The bad news for grandpa is that Klark thinks he was not honest. Don't worry, Grandpa, we rearranged the comments to help him understand better what had happened. Klark can attest to the fact that Grandma does make pies (he has tasted them), he can look at her nose and know it isn't big, and as for her sitting in pee? Well, I think Grandpa can best address this part of the story.
The day began with a late night before. I wanted Klark to have the Thanksgiving lunch at school and knew that I must pay before school at least one day before the day he is to eat school lunch. Hence, Thursday morning I ventured out with my gang totalling four children and one adult to visit Morningside Elementary with the necessary $1.75. I must backtrack a little to create better the imagery I am trying to invoke with this blog post. You see, I left my purse at the Lincoln Log house where I painted doors and baseboards into the night holding one baby and interrupted by three others needing either drinks of water, food, scratches on the DVD to be forwarded through, peace to be restored, or stinky diapers to be changed. That night, however, is a story in and of itself to be left for another time. Too much complaining makes me look bad. My point: no purse, no money. Living half in one house and half in another left me without a penny to my instant disposal and having no husband this week left me without pocket change and a little frazzled. I called on Lanse for help and he had $1. 07 (his piggy bank had been moved, as well, however he somehow manages to always have coins) and I remembered a time when Della had showered me with change one day for no reason I can understand and I believed there was a strong likelihood it hadn't all been recovered. The search began and in the end we had $1. 74 to bargain with. I, still in my pajamas, hair ruffled, and obviously no makeup, took my children still in their pajamas, with the exception of Klark who had to attend school that day, to the school to purchase the Thanksgiving school lunch. Klark was worried about the one cent and we decided to pray that we would find a penny on our walk to the school. Our search was in vain although not due to lack of effort. Klark, particular as he is, was worried to say the least. I assured him and sent him to class. The nice lady in the lunch room came to our assistance and I explained that I was one cent short as I dropped the change with mostly nickles, but some dimes, pennies and even one quarter into her hand. She looked at Lanse wearing pajamas that were at least two sizes too small (surely she didn't consider that they were McQueen pajamas and highly favored by the boy despite their small size), the toddler with out of control hair and her toes sticking our of her footsie pajamas, and the baby with mismatched socks on her hands for gloves and pajamas with her footsies completely cut off. Of course Leah didn't keep her hat on and her nose was runny and her eyes red and gubbery. Lanse looked at the school children eating Fruit Loops in the lunch room and went something like this: "Mom, I want Fruit Loops really bad. We never get Fruit Loops and I love them. We only get oatmeal, oatmeal, oatmeal." Della started jumping up and down saying, "Yeah, Fruit Loops." The nice lady asked, "Do you have reduced lunch?" I answered in the negative. "Let me give you an application," she said. I said something like no thank you. "It is easy," said the nice lady. "Let's fill out the application together right now." Again, I turned down her kindness. Lanse was crying (a forlorn whine, I would say) by this point. "Please, let me help. I will write down your information for you." My lack of response to this was credited to my begging children and the nice lady offered the children a bowl of Fruit Loops which they gobbled up in seconds. I consented to take an application home and the nice lady graciously assured me that my missing one cent was of no concern. On the way home, Lanse found a dime.
Am I to conclude that that is what destitute may look like? Perhaps. Perhaps it is the look of a mother who is two steps behind in life, in a hurry, frustrated, and unorganized. Or perhaps it is the look of a loving, yet sometimes overworked mother of four in the middle of moving and fixing a home with a sick (pink eye) and fussy baby who doesn't sleep much at night. Did this experience weigh on me? On the contrary. I must say that it brought to my remembrance my blessings. I love my husband who works so hard for my family and does everything he does thinking of our welfare, my children who are the delight and hope in my life, my family who, as moving sometimes reminds me, hold tender strings in my heart, a home that is ours and that we can establish as our very own with flowers and memories and everything, and the fact that I can afford school lunch for my child if I choose (just not that day). We may have created the look of destitute, but my life is indeed full.
Della is exquisitely delightful, yet, her youth in all it's bloom is the hardest to catch on paper. Her newest phrase consists of, "member (remember), mom?" to most things whether past tense or present. She now uses "mover (mother), faver, brover, and sister" when addressing her family. She and Lanse have grand adventures together mixing spiderman attacks on their stuffed animal den and superheros and house. Della loves to talk on the telephone. Her language skills are splendid and her ability to tell stories from the past is uncanny as well as comical. She understands Strawberry as if it were her first name and can always lighten my mood.
The orange spiderman can shoot out razor blades. What? You didn't know there was an orange spiderman? Well, there are as many spidermen as there are colors of the rainbow and if you have any questions about any of them, Lanse has all the answers. He knows. The pink spiderman (always played by Della) makes everybody fall to sleep, the red spiderman causes monster trucks to run over you, the yellow spiderman shoots smoke bombs, grenades, and colorful explosives that look like fireworks, the green spiderman shoots glue, goo, and gum sticking you to the spot where you stand, the yellow spiderman jumps as high as the sun and sings a lot of songs, and the purple spiderman is faster than the Flash and has bullets, and the blue spiderman? Dah, haven't you ever seen the movie. That is him (with some red on him). There are of course gold, silver, grey, white, and black spidermen as well. I somehow forget much of there mystical abilities and will endeavor to acquire an interview with Lanse, for I think he is the only one with all the answers.
Here is child who will never leave the bathroom without washing his hands, go to bed without brushing his teeth, wear shoes without socks, lie, or eat an entire piece of chocolate at once. He is a scientist inside out. His love for reading is intense and nonfiction knowledge he has of the world is boggling, to say the least. He knows definitions to words such as "hermaphrodite, cephalopod, mutation, and mitosis" and knows what a double helix is. Today he told me he is ready to learn more about the brain. We will learn together. Certainly this child was designed for something very specific.
I washed our camera in the washing machine. Not because it was dirty, but because it was in a pocket unawares. No more pictures on my blog. Sigh.
You don't have to know a person for a long time to know they are a kindred spirit. A person can be of a different generation, eighty-four years old to be exact, and be able to touch your heart in a way that brightens your countenance and gives you new perspective and appreciation. This was so with Azel. The first time I met her, she was standing on a bucket on the other side of our backyard wood fence watching the children play. I could only see her face from the nose up, but I knew she was smiling. The way her her hands hands grabbed to the top of the fence, her eyes smiling, would remind you of a child looking over a fence to watch a circus rehearsal. However, her hands were not young, but old. Her hair is grey. Her love for life, obvious. There was no criticism in her watchful eye as the boys wrestled and hollered about acting the part of superheroes in their capes, but, rather, she cherished their youth. She found pleasure in the small girl who was always there with those spirited boys, but who would sweetly talk to herself, the butterflies, and the bumble bees. I, the child's mother, in my rush to accomplish the daily tasks might have let such a moment slip by if this woman did not bring notice of such pure childhood to my awareness simply by being aware of it herself. Sometime later, Azel invited me in her home. Oh, how she basks in the beauty of her home. She filled it with treasures, so many with a story to be told, and each with a memory for her to hold, such as paintings, old books, dolls, painted tea cups, stain-glassed lamp shades, a decorated hair brush and matching hand mirror, chests, and delicate porcelain figurines. In a world were the aim has turned to mindless mass production of questionable quality, it is no wonder she finds beauty in the skilled workmanship involved to create her various pieces of furniture including a carpeted chair with decorated wood framing, an elegant chest with glass cupboard doors which came from someones garage and took a great deal of cleaning, a two-tones walnut table with an oval glass base, a tall bed with gold nobs, and, my favorite, a writing desk that looks as if to be from the home of Jane Fairfax. So many of her things she found at garage sales. Her soft green walls calm her, she says. She finds value in the talents and creative minds of the creators and can appreciate the purpose of the art in its various manifestations. She enjoys the beauties of the earth and dotes on her flowers. Her lush lawn is weedless and she gave me tomatoes from her garden. She gave my daughter a seashell to which my daughter commented repeatedly, "It's soooo pretty and soft. Is it mine?" She gave my son a football so he could have something too.To surround yourself with beauty, not as the world sees it, but as you see it. That is what I want to do. I want to love the moment. I want to bask in my children's youth. I want to appreciate the glory of God as I enjoy the splendor of this world in its fullness, the majesty of the earth along with the peace it can give. I want to fill my life with beautiful things, words the inspire and uplift, and, mostly, people I love. That is what I learned from Azel.
Klark and Lanse tied a string to the air conditioner. They tied a nail to the opposite end of the string. They held the nail, ran away from the air conditioner, flipping the nail back and punctured two holes into the air conditioner. The antifreeze squirted out. Chad thinks this is an unlikely story. I think kids can do things that cannot be repeated in a thousand tries.
Our first week in Idaho was spent in an accommodating room at the Days Inn. Even now, when we drive by the hotel, Della will exclaim, "there's our hotel" as if it were a previous home we moved from. The week consisted of peanut butter and jam sandwiches, coloring, reading, more peanut butter and jam sandwiches, more coloring, and the daily frightful outings to look for a place to rent. The rental market was enlightening providing us with the farm house option where the red painted pipes ran along a 6 ft ceiling matched the red bathtub but did not match the sea foam green painted cinder blocks which were the walls. There was carpet to which Klark commented, "I didn't know they made camouflage carpet." The kitchen looked like a fire hazard and the boys were thrilled with all the spiderwebs and spiders they saw in every window, crack, and corner. The carpet in the bathroom was also camouflage although not by design but due to a leaking toilet or where it's target had been miscalculated. Suitable places to rent were usually rented just that morning or met with remarks such as "Are all these children yours? I see. Your deposit will be $5000." After a weekly excursion of address finding, talking to strangers on the telephone which inevitably requires you to ignore your children, repeated nursing stops, and coming up with ideas for my children to help fool the people into thinking they are well behaved with games such as: "Okay, let's pretend we are soldiers at this house and march in a straight line, keep our hands to ourselves, and only speak when spoken too," I was delighted to find a two bedroom, 3rd story apartment available immediately. I immediately filled out the paperwork and signed all the places they told me to when a lady stepped into the room and asked the loaded questions, "Are all these children yours?" With hesitation, I confirmed that they were. "We don't have a place for you. You may only have two people per room and you exceed that number. I am sorry we cannot accommodate you." I left the apartment, called Chad to explain that we were once again homeless, and started crying. Lanse says, "Mom, why are you crying?" to which Klark replied, "She is crying because there are too many people in our family to live there. She has to decide which one of us to give away."
In a quaint little farm town is a quaint little grocery outlet store. A mother and her three youngest children visit this store unaware that the store only accepts cash or food stamps for its purchases. To her disgruntal, her two year old child discovers Bottlecap candy in all their splendor by eating the middle ones before reaching the checkout counter. This is where the mother learns that only food stamps or cash are acceptable and to her further disgruntal, she finds herself with neither. She disregards her groceries hoping to present the cashier with the necessary 33 cents plus tax to pay for the Bottlecaps. She only has two car wash tokens she got at a parade, broken beads, legos, and Cabela's coins. The cashier will not accept these. She goes to her van hoping to discover coins among the clutter and discard on the floor. She finds 2 cents. She gathers her children, including a nine month old daughter who was referred to twice as a boy, and goes home. She find 40 cents in her son's ball bank, puts a giant flower headband on her nine month old daughter, and returns to the grocery outlet to pay for the Bottlecaps. Her two year old child is very satisfied with the transaction and enjoys the remaining Bottlecaps on the drive home.
Klark has been working on his handwriting. Each day he write a letter in his very best print. One letter went like this: Dear Grandma, I am sick. I need to visit you soon. Love, Klark. This letter made it's way to the mailbox without postage or envelope. The following day Klark found his letter with these words written on it: Dear Klark, I hope you feel better. Mike the Mailman. Next, Klark wrote: Dear Mike the Mailman, thank you for bringing us our mail. From, Klark. Klark included a peice of hard candy with the letter. Mike the Mailman responded: Dear Klark, thank you. My favorite candy is Snickers. Mike the Mailman. A few days later, Mike the Mailman was rewarded with a Sickers Candybar and a note that read: Dear Mike the Mailman, I do not like chocolate very much. From, Klark. Mike the Mailman responded: Dear Klark, it is too bad you do not like chocolate. Thank you for the Snickers. Mike the Mailman. Klark's latest letter reads: Dear Mike the Mailman, I really like bubble gum. Do you have some? From Klark. Updates on the correstpondence with Klark and Mike the Mailman will come.
