Just as I settled into a deep sleep, my husband stumbled out of bed moaning, "I have two cramps in my thigh and one in my calf."
It wasn't the first time he had roused me from a deep slumber with a double and triple whammy of cramps seizing his legs after a day of rigorous manual labor. He knew the drill, he kept a stash of bananas on hand to increase his potassium levels, but when eating two and three a day did not halt the night time attacks he began asking what others did to fight cramps.
"Drink pickle juice. Fixes it every time."
He drained our jars of pickles dry of juice and ate the pickles too.
He woke up with a cramp in his hip and another in his thigh.
"Take Tums."
He bought a big ole' jar of chewable tablets and wolfed a couple down before heading to bed after a strenuous day of shingling the roof on his two-story workshop.
Two hours later he woke me with his groans from cramps.
He began eating the midnight snacks of a pregnant woman: Bananas, milk, pickle juice and Tums. And he still had cramps.
One night he reached for a banana to stave off his anticipated agony and came away empty-handed. It was late. Neither of us wanted to go into town. I searched the Internet for other foods with potassium that we might have in the house.
He gobbled down some left-over cantaloupe and headed for bed — and woke up with mild cramps.
From my own experience with feet cramps when I forget to wear socks on cold nights, I suggested he put on snug fitting long johns. He looked at me as if I was out of my mind, but he scrounged in the back of his unused clothing and pulled out a pair of tight fitting long johns. Since he bought them before his body matured, he looked funny, but they helped. I bought him a new, blue, better fitting pair of longjohns which he wore until the warm weather discouraged him from wearing them.
His cramps woke us both up. Desperate for sleep, I remembered that mangoes also had potassium — and we had jar of canned mangoes in the refrigerator. I suggested he try a few.
He snagged a slippery piece from the jar, ate it, went to bed and slept.
The next day he really did not think he had worked hard enough to cramp his legs — but he had. Two hours later he grabbed the jar of mangoes and ate another tidbit. The cramps stopped and he went back to bed.
Until he emptied the jar, magical mangoes brought instant relief every time.
He finished shingling the barn, his cramps stopped and our nights settled down. Then he had some trees cut down and decided to save money and clean up the tree trash himself.
He saved money, I lost sleep.
As he moaned and marched to quench cramps in the middle of the night, I woke up enough to roll over, open his top drawer and pull out his new, blue long johns. "And we do have mango salsa in the refrigerator. You might try that," I mumbled before falling asleep.
He put on the extra layer of clothes and grimaced as he ate the salsa. He really does not like mango salsa but the cramps stopped immediately. After he told me two days in a row that he did NOT like the salsa - but yes it did stop the cramps, I searched the frozen fruit department in the grocery store and came home with packages of frozen, prepared mangoes. He began a nightly ritual of blending himself a mango fruit smoothie. Thanks to his magical mangoes, he slept, I slept and that's all I ever wanted anyway.
Lying there in the dental chair with a hypodermic needle in my mouth, I suddenly felt faint. Not particularly wanting to lose consciousness with a needle stuck in my jaw I waved my hand for attention. The dentist stopped and looked at me.
“I’m going to faint. I’ve fainted before. I know what it feels like.”
She said something about the medicine — that it can make some people’s heart race. I felt my heart thudding along rapidly. I lifted my hand and caught a glimpse of pure white skin and nails instead of my usual pink.
The dentist asked if I had I ever had that medication before. I had no idea. I really have done pretty much everything I can to avoid medical interference in my life. ... but there was that one procedure about five-six years ago that involved some kind of pain numbing chemical.
Whatever the cause for my physical reaction, the dental assistant kindly explained, “Sometimes when people get older they develop sensitivities to some medicines.”
When people get older!? Get older! Are you talking about me?
That’s not the first time I’ve been labeled with the ‘O’ word by someone still too wet-behind the ears to know anything. I’ve heard it before, but I hardly expected to be labeled that way in a dental clinic.
I’ve grown a bit accustomed to it at the fast food places. So I excused the subtle implication from the cashier when she told me the total for my lunch.
“That’s not right. It’s too low,” I said reaching for my wallet.
“I gave you the senior discount,” she quietly said glancing at my graying hair.
I didn’t bother to tell her that my hair began graying sometime before my 30th birthday about the time my last child arrived.
That child, now the mother of two, also notes signs of aging in her father and I. Fortunately, I still have a few children and grandchildren that think otherwise. Last year I slid on reading glasses to finish knitting a scarf before the recipient had to head home. One of the grandchildren looked at me and laughed, “You look just like a granny.”
I peered at that child over my spectacles, “Well, I do have grandchildren. That would make me a ‘granny’.”
The grandchild did a double take. She had never thought about me that way.
Such blithe awareness of me contrasts with the medical explanation for any fluke I notice in my body enough to take the time to inquire about it at the clinic.
I noticed it first when I thought perhaps I should join my children and have an eye exam.
After the exam, the white-coated opthamologist sort of leaned back in his seat, “Most people find that they need glasses as they grow older.” Well! Does that also explain why half of the children in the family began wearing glasses in grade school.
All too often, it seems to me that physicians just look at me and my chart, perform a bit of requisite poking and prodding and have a quick and easy answer, “Well with age the sense of taste tends to decline ....” With age, your joints do tend to ...” “Sometimes the weather effects older people like that.”
In other words, given enough time the body starts to decline. It refuses to function as efficiently as it did in the past and requires more effort to yield the previous results. Which I found out the weekend I had to go to a church retreat with a face only Freddy Krueger's mother could love. After a childhood of roaming the hills of New York oblivious to poison ivy in any shape, form or quantity, I had become highly allergic to the stuff. The doctor never said the ‘O’ word when I showed up with an inexplicable itchy, red rash. No, he just informed me, to my great dismay, that one’s inborn immunity to the vine diminishes with repeated exposures — translated that means with time and age.
If you ask me, it’s not so much that I am getting older, I just have had more experience and exposure to the physically detrimental aspects of life.
That's my explanation and I'm sticking with it.
(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times. E-mail her at jhershberger@eldoradonews.com.
Honey blonde hair matted around Chloe's hesitant smile of unbrushed teeth. Chloe spoke so quietly I doubt but a few heard a word she said during the few months she lived in the school district. I remember her as the kid everyone teased or ignored — one of the invisible students. Yet, she is one of the people from my past that I wonder — whatever happened to them?
When the bus stopped in front of the worn down barn and farm house where Chloe lived, the raucous games of the high schoolers ceased. They turned to stare at the parade of children with matted, uncombed hair, mismatched lumps of woolen coats, mittens and numbed looks. Like peas in a pod, they silently ascended the steps of the bus. They did not expect anyone to save them a seat. They just looked for any spaced begrudged them when a kid shoved over because every rider must be seated. The poverty side of life had beaten the kids down and robbed them of the joy and enthusiasm other bus riders knew.
The rented farm did not feed them. The farm house only warmed them for a season. They stayed just long enough to reveal the way of kids from the painted farms, the kids whose dads – and sometimes moms – had a job in the city.
Chloe's family scraped by in every way possible. Even the teenage brother seemed too stunned with the harsh realities of life to develop a tough guy attitude. No one invited them over for the night. They bore the brunt of subtle jokes and silent ostracization.
I saw it. I felt it. I knew it. Chloe often sat with me on the bus. We had the same teacher in fifth-grade. Every day the teacher walked around to check that his students had washed their hands and brushed their teeth. When I forgot to brush, I mumbled a humiliated “no.” She turned her hands over and said, “yes,” even though her teeth belied that statement every time.
She may have been as mismatched in her clothing, as the fictional Pippy Longstocking, but she lacked Pippy's joie de vivre. I guess Chloe lived with her parents, I don't remember ever seeing them. I just saw her those few months that we rode the bus together.
And I saw time and again the kids whose parents sent them to school in clean, fresh outfits lording it over her as they did other kids in less fortunate circumstances, including Gloria, the oldest daughter in another family. Smirking fifth-graders piled up their trays and signaled to the neat but humbly dressed girl to carry their trays to the dishwashing window. And she did — with a smile. The others enjoyed the service and their secret joke — they never intended to return the favor, the smile or invite her to sit with them.
Gloria's family had a history in the area. I asked my mother once about my classmate's family. Mom simply said that Gloria's mother had been much better off, came from a nicer family, but had met and married the wrong guy — a man who drank. She had made a mistake and she and her stairstep family of children lived with the consequences.
My frequent seat partner on the bus through the years was another girl in my class, Naomi. She wore the fashionable poofy spring coat of the time. She arrived at school clean, combed and brushed. She played in the band. She smiled and others responded and asked her to join them.
Once she missed school for a while.
No one explained her absence. And when she showed up, no one asked any questions. We knew why she had not come. The fading green bruises on her face told a story without words.
The bruises faded. It never happened again during the years I lived there, but the memory remains of her silent abuse along with the miserable neglect of the transient child and the struggle against poverty of the other. Just three girls, I knew a very long time ago.
Sometimes I stop and think of them and wonder whatever happened to them.
(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times. E-mail her at joanh@everybody.org)
In the rolling hills of upstate New York, farming dominated the culture for centuries. Boys signed up for classes in agriculture in high school. Girls took home economics and learned how to sew and cook.
This summer marks the 100th anniversary of my father’s family - the Hibbards - owning a farm in Steuben County, New York. All of my grandparents lived on dairy farms. They worked the fields using teams of horses until reliable, affordable tractors allowed them to hang up the heavy leather harnesses in the shed to gather dust and the curious looks of subsequent generations.
Whether done with horses or tractors, farming in upstate New York is hard work. Just to prepare a garden we had to shove aside rocks to plant the seeds. As one grandfather said, “You have to plow both sides of the hill to get a decent crop.”
During summers out in the fields, the men and kids worked hard storing up hay, grain and silage for the animals to eat the next winter. Inside the house, the women and girls worked hard preparing, canning or freezing fruits and vegetables for the family to eat.
In the fall, coming home from school to the sight of a slaughtered bovine hanging from the tree meant a family evening spent gathered round the dining room table cutting, wrapping and labeling packages to tuck in the freezer to eat later.
With their parents’ encouragement, few of the farm-reared grandchildren stayed to work the farms. Most sought college, careers and jobs in industry over long days of farming.
The need for the food from the farms, however, did not disappear. That need continues to grow with the nation’s expanding population.
On the plains of mid-America, necessity has advanced farming into the 21st century with massive modern machinery — equipment ill-suited to the steep foothills of the Finger Lake region in up-state New York, but perfect for the horse-drawn equipment of the Amish and conservative Mennonites.
For the plain-clothes folks, the small, farms of upstate New York provided an answer to the encroaching urban life in Lancaster County, Pa.
Each generation of large families of Amish in Lancaster discovered it increasingly more difficult to find farm land. To feed their families, the bearded ones increasingly sought work in factories, little shops or on farms hundreds of miles away.
Today, at least two of the farms I once knew quite well, now accommodate a horse and buggy in the shed and a clothesline beside the house filled with long plain dresses and button-less britches.
The Steuben County I knew has changed. On their way home from work in nearby businesses, my cousins, descendants of the country cooks of yesterday, buy cookies, quilts and freshly made loaves of bread at the Amish-run roadside stands and shops. The old car repair and machine shop which my uncle and his father once owned — and never cleared of the tools from a former age — fits right into the needs of the Amish/Mennonite population.
My cousin makes a living driving the car-less Amish to appointments or the homes of friends in nearby counties. She saves them the day or two it would take to ride there in a horse-drawn buggy. My cousin has a little shop where she keeps a freezer of ice cream handy for Amish children who walk a couple of miles down the road for the cool treat — just as I used to walk down the hill to the little corner shop for a snack.
While my family moved away from farming, another group took up a task that we did not want to do, but which needed to have done.
My grandparents sold their horses to buy a tractor. The current farmers turned their back on tractors and bought a horse. And once again, the kitchens smell of fresh baked bread, wild strawberry jam and the steam of hot water baths for canned vegetables.
(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times. E-mail her at joanh@everybody.org.)
The youngest grandson may not be able to pronounce his R’s and L’s, but Eli works hard to grasp the verbal and physical world around him.
Around Christmas time, he figured out a word he had heard many times. “I know why they are called wise men,” he told his mother. “It’s because they are always asking ‘why.’”
With all the questions Eli asks, he may be a wiseman himself.
One day as he played, a grown-up sat in a nearby chair reading the newspaper muttering, “Those Democrats! No, Democrats. No, Democrats. No.”
The three year-old looked up puzzled, “What’s a demcwat?”
“Ohhh... they are the bad people. You can’t trust them,” the adult answered.
The child turned to his baby sister, Caroline, “Cahyline, you’re a Demcwat. Get out of here, you Demcwat.”
The adult put down his paper, looked at the child and began back-pedaling very quickly.
Another day, Eli’s momma wanted to snuggle a bit with her cute-as-a-button pre-schooler. “Can I have a hug?” she asked him reaching out her arms expectantly.
“No.”
“If you don’t give me a hug, I’m just going to disintegrate,” she pouted.
He looked at her, “What does disintegwate mean?”
“That I will fall apart into little pieces,” she said pathetically.
“Oh,” he ran across the room and embraced his momma and the new word. For the next week when he absolutely wanted something, he would tell his mother, “If you don’t give me that, I will disintegwate.”
He still remains in one piece, but his food does not. After seeing the movie “Robots,” he announced, “my mouth is just like a chop shop for food.”
He added the thought with “plummet” – another new addition to his vocabulary. “If I chew up my food and swallow it, it will pwummet to my belly and ‘sintegrate,” he announced to his mother recently.
With all those new words, his daddy stood at the door and said, “Come on Hot Shot.”.
“What is a hot shot?” the little fellow looked up and asked.
“A cool guy,” his father assured him.
A light of understanding spread across his little face, “I like being your wittle hot shot.”
He understood being a Hot Shot, but did not equate it with his mother’s frequently calling him “Bigs.” After she called him that one day he asked, “Why do you call me ‘Bigs’ sometimes?”
“It’s just a nickname, a term of endearment - like I call Caroline, ‘honey,’ ‘sweetie’ or ‘dear.’ Or your daddy, ‘dear.’ That’s all.”
Thinking about that reminded Eli of his frequent visitor and cousin, Oaken. “I call Oaken ‘my pwesent,’” he announced exhibiting his understanding of someone special in his life.
Nothing special about his recent bout with coughing and sneezing, but it finally ended. He realized it and told his mother, “I’m not sick any more. I don’t have anymore ‘bless yous’ in my mouth.”
Feeling much better with no more bless yous, Eli has kept himself busy being a worker man. He fills up his leather tool belt with anything he can find or begs his mother to loan him: a hole punch, stapler, stamps, compass, clips, tape, etc. “Anything that I’ve told him that he does not need to leave out for the babies to hold,” my daughter told me. ‘He fills his tool belt until things fall out and then he asks, ‘Why won’t they stay in there? I am a worker man and I need my tools to fix things. What can I fix, Mom?”
She hands him something to staple or clip, “You can fix this.”
He works on it for a while, “Okay, Mommy that is fixed, what else do you need fixed?” By the end of the day, odds and ends of stapled, taped, glued or punched papers and boxes clutter the house courtesy of the worker man.
His parents served as workers during last week’s snowstorm and built a snow fort. When Eli went out to play in it, he pulled up the flags on metal rods staking out their yard to pretended they were arrows. Thrusting them into the walls of the fort he slumped down and sat still for a long time because, “I’m dead. The enemy has got me with the arrows.”
For a worker man, busy learning to be a wiseman, it was the only time he sat still all day.
(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times. E-mail her at joanh@everybody.org.)
If your primary occupation on Sunday morning avoids anything to do with church, don't bother to read this column.
If you weary of one more discussion on the importance of defining marriage as a heterosexual experience, stop reading.
If you just want a warm fuzzy tale of family events, take a break and come back next week. This week, I will be sorting my way through a few thoughts I have on marriage as a believer in the eternal, sovereign God.
This week I explore what I think about the covenant which joins two souls in marriage, a decision which modern society has made into a very complex, controversial issue.
Reading through the Old and New Testaments has left me with a deep impression of the repetitive description of God's relationship to His believers. Throughout the Bible, God plays the role of the husband.
Time and again Isaiah refers to Israel as God's bride or wife. "For your Maker is your husband – the LORD Almighty is His name – the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; He is called the God of all the earth." Isaiah 54:5
In Hosea, God tells the prophet to marry a prostitute to represent the way the Jewish nation turned from worshiping God to worshiping idols. When his wife returns to prostitution, Hosea seeks her out in the marketplace, buys her back and takes her home as his wife – just as God sought to redeem and restore His loving relationship with Israel, even after they had prostituted their beliefs to idols.
In the Old Testament the nation of Israel is the bride, the promised and cherished one. In the New Testament the followers of Christ are similarly portrayed as a virgin coming to her bridegroom. For instance in 2 Corinthians 11:2, "I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him." And again in Ephesians 5:25, Paul admonishes, "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it."
All the references to the relationship of God with those who believe and follow Him reflect a husband and a wife – a male/female relationship.
There is no portrayal of God as a female or wife; nor is the analogy ever of two entities with essentially interchangeable roles or capabilities. God provides, protects and leads. Believers — whether Israelites or Christ's followers — are those under His protection. We are the loved ones receiving His provision and watchful care.
Believers look to God for leadership, submit to His commands and enjoy the protection of a sovereign, strong God. And, in spite of all that, believers break His commands, follow false gods and walk away from His protection.
For that reason, God has already done what no human can ever do. He came to earth as the ultimate provision — the perfect sacrifice for our lifelong predisposition to trespass over His boundaries. We can never do what God does for us. The roles are not interchangeable.
Today some push for a different understanding. Today some want marriage to be redefined as any two persons choosing to share their lives regardless of their birth gender. Voices ring out loud and clear on both sides from church halls to city halls, from annoying talk radio to trash talk television shows. But putting all the popular yammering aside, the issue comes down to this: As followers of the eternal God we do not exist merely for our personal happiness. Our mandate as believers is to live in every way possible that brings honor and glory to the God of the universe – including within our marriages.
We do not glorify God when we twist His analogies of His love for us by equating the union of a man and woman to the union of two women or two men.
We do not glorify God when we seek personal happiness and embrace a union diametrically opposed to the picture He regularly uses to describe His love for His followers.
We do not glorify God when we shrug our shoulders and say, "times are changing. We need to re-consider what is socially acceptable."
People change. Their viewpoints, their rules and their focal points change but, God does not change.
Because I follow an eternal, unchanging God, I can not consider a redefinition of marriage structured to suit a temporal, social environment. I choose instead to glorify God by adhering to His analogy of marriage demonstrating His unchanging, sacrificial, eternal love for mankind.
(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times. E-mail her at joanh@everybody.org)
"My friend thinks she understands what it is like to be a parent because she has pets. She has no idea what it is like," declared my daughter, a relatively new mother.
"With a child, you have to think about the 40, 60, 80-year impact of your decisions. You don't have to do that with a dog or a cat. Most of them won't be around 20 years from now, but my children will, and if I don't make good choices for them now, if I don't train them to be kind, gentle, gracious, responsible, my mistakes will be there for others to deal with for a long time."
Her friend owns a couple dogs and volunteers for a local shelter finding new homes for cats – including my daughter's kid-friendly, black cat Pirate. Conversations have waned between the two in recent months because the animal-loving friend simply does not understand the role and responsibilities of a mother of young children.
"I thought I was stressed when it was just my husband and I, and I taught school. If folks called and wanted us to do something on Saturday morning, we were just too stressed, too busy to do that. Busy! Right! We were busy sleeping in until noon," my daughter shook her head in disbelief at that long, lost luxury now that she has a 3 year-old son and a 9 month-old daughter.
"Try sleeping in any day or leaving a 9 month-old child or even a 3 year-old home alone for a couple hours while you go shopping, out for coffee with a friend or to the mall! You can legally do that with a pet, and no will say anything. You can not do that with a child."
"You can leave a pet outside on the porch all night. You can not do that with a child. If you get tired of a pet, realize its personality does not match yours or that it is simply too big and energetic for your house, you can put an ad in the paper."
"Just try that with a child. Can you see the ad?" she laughed, thinking about her 3-year-old. "Available, one charming 3 year-old. Too energetic for our quiet home. Needs large house, sturdy furniture and back yard with myriad of playground equipment."
"I have had a dog and cats. I had a job teaching school, and I thought I was stressed then. Hah! There is an invisible wall that you go through when you become a parent. A wall that you have no clue exists until you pass through it and realize how much everything has changed. Nothing will ever be the same again," she mused.
"I did not realize all that being a parent involved until I had a child, and now I have two and baby-sit a couple others. It is simply not the same as having a pet. It is not the same living inside the parent world as looking into the parent world from the outside. Everything has changed so much."
She no longer spends hours shopping for clothes. Now she is lucky to grab a few minutes to go grocery shopping at 9 p.m. after the children have gone to bed. And, now she shops thrift shops for bargains.
Before she could tune in to any stations she wanted on the television or radio. Now, she has to consider what her son sees and hears. Her little boy copies and repeats everything he hears and asks about anything he sees and does not understand.
Before leaving the house, she has to plan for the children. Her hands and time are rarely empty and free.
Her husband cared for the children alone several hours one Saturday and caught a glimpse of her life. When she returned he said, "it takes some of the fun out of having children when you have to stay with them all day and find ways to make them happy."
"No one said that having children was easy, but there is a lot of difference between knowing that and experiencing it," she concluded.
As a pet owner she fussed over her withdrawn, depressed, arthritic cat. It responded and improved its mood and looks. That was a walk in the park compared to her daughter's first year and the three years she has already completed to prepare her son for school and adulthood. Having children absorbs her life these days — and she would not change a bit of it – not even for the world's cutest kitten or most lovable puppy.
(Writing with her daughter, Sharon Schulte, Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times. E-mail her at jhershberger@eldoradonews.com.)
"Mom you don't need back-ups for your back-ups!" my daughter scolded as she sorted through my kitchen cupboards.
I sighed. I could make do with just four bread pans now that I rarely baked bread. I also could make do with only three pie pans. But, I insisted on keeping the 1970s-style blender pitcher – it would fit my 2000 style machine — if that pitcher ever broke. I would also keep the extra microwave glass tray. I like having a clean tray on hand when food boils over.
As she sorted through the pots and pans, I agreed that I did not need all those iron skillets and pancake griddles. I urged her to take the griddles and pans with not quite flat bottoms. They would work on her gas stove. Only flat-bottomed pans that make direct contact will heat on our glass-topped stove.
Then she pulled out my three rectangular-shaped slow cookers, and said the infamous, "You don't need back-ups for your back-ups." I reluctantly admitted that I could probably make do with just one slow cooker. The other two went into the give away pile.
She filled her van with many of my back-ups and took them home. I gave away the rest, admired my roomy cupboards and vowed to keep them that way.
And I did, to my great regret, the day I discovered my slow cooker had become a no-cooker.
For several months, I searched yard sales for a replacement. I found nothing. Finally, just before a carry-in dinner of soups, I bought a new crock pot.
A week later I found an excellent crock pot at a yard sale. I sighed. I did not need a back-up for my brand new slow cooker. If it failed to work, I would be taking it back to the store.
A month later I decided to whip up a batch of cookies before work. I thought it would take 15 minutes. It took 45 minutes because I could not find the vanilla — and I knew I had just purchased a new bottle.
I searched through every shelf of my baking supplies in vain. I started to close the door when I saw the vanilla – on the shelf right smack dab in front of me. I poured out a spoonful and reached for the baking soda. It too had disappeared. I knew it was not in the cabinet. I had just studied those supplies.
I also knew I had used it that weekend.
I looked in the bathroom. No baking soda.
I looked in the refrigerator. I looked in the cleaning supplies. No baking soda.
I gave up and drove to the nearby convenience store. As I stood in line with an over-priced box of baking soda I remembered: I had used it in the laundry room to freshen the clothes.
Back home, I found the small yellow box on the dryer. I measured out the requisite teaspoon, revved up the mixer and the blades fell off one of the beaters.
Stunned I stared at the cheap mixer. In four decades of cooking, I have never had that happen before.
But I was prepared. Unbeknownst to my daughter, I had a brand new back-up in my closet that I had discovered at a yard sale. I had ignored her mandate and bought it anyway.
It only took two years for me to need it. It worked much better than the broken mixer. I tossed that one out and finished the cookies in time to take a batch to work.
Baking ingredients are not the only items missing from my kitchen of late. For weeks I have looked in vain for the top of my modern blender pitcher. I have no clue where it went.
A couple weeks ago, I opted to just put a plate on top of the blender to make a quick shake. That worked until I forgot the plate and sent strawberry shake to the ceiling.
I laughed at the explosion and grabbed a rag to clean the floor and ceiling. My husband sighed, "Next time, just ask me and I will help you with the blender."
I saved him the bother. I remembered my ancient, extra, blender pitcher and pulled it out of the cupboard. He stood there astonished that it fit the much newer blender base. I shrugged, scrubbed off the grime of storage and have used it ever since.
I'm keeping the other pitcher. I still hope to find its cover. I never know when I might need a back-up.
"Nibble, nibble, little mousey, who is nibbling at my housey," asked the witch inside the gingerbread house as Hansel and Gretel satisfied their hunger with pieces of her house.
Startled, the children stopped and looked up at her with crumbs of gingerbread and frosting still clinging to their lips.
They just wanted a little bit to satisfy their hunger, just as my grandchildren did.
First, the pre-schoolers, 2- and 3 years-old, assembled on the bed and listened to my daughter's puppet and stuffed animal version of the story. With lots of animation to keep their attention, she told them the story about the mean momma plotting and scheming to lose the children in the forest. The lost children missed a couple meals as they wandered in the forest. Stumbling on the gingerbread house with candy decorations they rushed at it for a bite. The witch captured them in with plans to cannibalize them – as soon as they fatten up a bit. The children trick her and escape back to their father.
"Do you want to make a gingerbread house like Hansel and Gretel had?" the story teller concluded.
They followed her as if she were the Pied Piper.
The kit with the pre-made stiff boards of gingerbread cakes came ready with everything necessary to decorate and assemble the house. The frosting, as stiff as hardening cement — worked just right for gluing the pieces together. She covered the gingerbread tree with frosting and handed it to the children to decorate. They stuck gum drops and hard candy on the little tree, licked frosting off their fingers and hung the candy wreath somewhere above the door.
The two-year-old climbed up on the table under her mother's watchful eyes to place lots of candy on one side of the roof while the three-year-old did the other side. Twenty minutes later, she lost interest, but the little worker man did not. He finished his side, turned the house around and finished inundating her side with the rest of the candy.
Except for a few pieces candy, neither had even a nibble of the gingerbread house before they went to bed.
The next morning their parents gathered up their suitcases and left. A day later, I tossed it in the trash.
Fast forward five days, when three much older granddaughters visited. I bought another kit.
The middle-school aged children squabbled over who would decorate each piece. We divided the pieces up into equivalent sizes and poured the candy into small bowls.
"We need more frosting. Will you make some?" one asked as she squeezed on the tube.
"There's enough there, and besides, that is specially made to hold the pieces together."
My husband went to his shop and returned with tools used to apply bondo auto body filler.
The girls' noise subsided as they tackled the task before them. An hour later, with the windows outlined in frosting and the roof covered with gumdrops and sugar pellets, they pressed it all together and hung the candy wreath neatly over the door.
I considered sending the gingerbread home with the children, but the next day when I asked if they and another guest wanted to taste of the gingerbread house, they definitely wanted a tasty Hansel and Gretel experience. I placed the house on the table. Someone pried off a piece of the roof and broke it in two.
"Could we have some milk to dunk it in?" I poured mugs of milk, turned to clear the table and the next thing I knew all but one wall had disappeared — leaving the witch without a house. Again the children conquered in this ageless story.
The comment boards raged. Opinions pro and con flew back and forth after Diane Lions of Columbus, Ohio asked that the police be called when her 6-year-old daughter shoplifted a $3 package of stickers. Chief Ronald Yeager of the Carrollton Police Department in eastern Ohio arrived at the Discount Drug Mart and took the girl to the police station in his cruiser before releasing her to Lions, according to the Associated Press story.
The little girl reportedly rode quietly to the police station where her mother later picked up the first-grader, confident the child had learned a lesson about stealing.
The incident found its way into the news and opinionated folks voiced their take on the situation.
The mother should have spanked the child.
The mother over-reacted.
The mother should have controlled her child.
The mother was right for calling the police.
The mother wasted the policeman's time.
If we had more moms like this we would not have such a high crime rate.
She should have spanked the child.
Good for the mom and the police for helping her enforce that stealing is wrong no matter how young the child or how inexpensive the item.
One mother wrote at length about her many failed requests to have police help her communicate to her son how detrimental his choices were. Finally, his activities grew serious enough to receive a court date. She pled – not for mercy – but some discipline such as probation or community service, so that he would get the message. Years later, after seeing his friend whose parents had taken a softer approach, landed in jail – her son came back and thanked his mom for the discipline.
Other comments recalled stealing some small item, being caught, taken to the manager to apologize and return the item. Each said they never shop lifted again because they remembered the incident.
Obviously, opinions run high. Solutions to the situation vary.
Past actions place me with the "take the child back into the store, make and apology, return the item and/or have the child pay for it."
Believe me, I would rather talk about my children's accomplishments any day but the reality is that between those great moments of parental pride come many difficult lessons to encourage the progeny to be a good citizen to make wise choice and recognize consequences for their actions.
Naysayers who called Lions an "idiotic mother" do not help. I've been there, I know.
I took a child back to a store to apologize and return a stolen item. As we turned to leave, I shook my head regretfully and said, "It's something that every child does at least once."
"Well, mine never did," the clerk snapped.
I crawled out of that store feeling like one inadequate parent for having a flawed child. I knew I had made a good decision as a parent to insist the child return the item and apologize, but the judgmental put-down left me feeling condemned for recognizing and dealing with a child's learning process.
The judgmental attitude, however, did not deter me from repeating the scenario the next time it happened.
Better to make the child go to someone in authority, confess, return or pay for the item than to smile, scold and say, "next time let's make sure we pay for the item. OK, Honey?" and do nothing about it this time.
Actions speak much louder than words. The shame of having to say "I was wrong," and the frustration of not getting to keep the item all work together to underscore the lesson.
Is there a time to have the lesson underscored with a police officer? After repeated parental intervention fails – definitely.
Is there a time to support parents in their efforts to produce an honest citizen?
So kudos to the Ohio mother – and everyone without children who thinks she made a mistake can just hush.
A topsy-turvy wave of confusion spread through our house as my husband moved from room to room, moving furniture, taping the walls and painting. Just because I asked him to please have the walls inside the house re-painted before company came for Christmas, wall clocks and calendars have landed in the piles of odds and ends to be reconsidered for wall placement. Beds, chairs and tables cluster in the middle of the room and we hunch over the counter for meals. We lack order around here. That's my excuse for what happened last week and I'm sticking with it.
Actually the week began perfectly with a five-day trip to Indiana, Michigan and Missouri to visit the boys and their families.
We left my daughter's home in Sherwood just before sunrise and made it to my sister-in-law's home in Indiana by supper time. She proudly showed off all the painting and fixing up she has accomplished. We caught up with each other's families and then went on to visit the sons. We shared a few meals and snacks, handed out simple gifts, took lots of pictures, delivered packages and kicked back to enjoy conversations and a game of Monopoly.
Sure we had to miss the church social and the office party while we traveled, but we had great timing the entire trip. As we drove up to take care of some small business issue, the woman we needed to see came outside. We left 10 minutes later with everything arranged. The two high school friends my husband wanted to see had time to chat when we found them in public places. In spite of the miles, we even managed to make it to hotels and homes in time to get a decent night's rest. Shoot, we even took in an art museum in Detroit and the Lincoln Museum/Library in Springfield, Ill.
The first part of the week went so smoothly, no dropped opportunities, no missed folks. So how could we go so wrong at the other end of the week?
I don't know how we lost our social precision, but we did.
Maybe beginning my work week on Wednesday disoriented me? Disoriented me to the point that I woke up thinking "Hurrah! It’s Saturday" and began planning my day free from the constraints of the office — only to open the newspaper and begin reading it before I realized, "It's not Saturday. It's Friday." I literally turned to the front page and studied the date before I began switching gears mentally.
And then it still took me several seconds to realize, "Hey! I have to dress and scat if I want to check out even one garage sale before work."
My excellent timing did not return to normal the rest of the weekend.
I totally confused the time and day of a funeral and even told my husband the wrong time. He stopped at the funeral home a day late, and had the nerve to tell the funeral director "my wife told me this time."
He wasn't doing much better. Immersed in the painting process, he did not notice until he had finished the hall that they did not glow with just a hint of sunshine yellow as I chose, but glared with something more akin to pumpkin chiffon. Someone made a mistake, but no one admits it.
But we both admit we made another mistake last weekend. A while back, my husband told me his Sunday School party was the 18th. He was thinking Saturday, not Friday. Saturday afternoon, he said, "Hey! We had a Sunday school party tonight. This is Saturday the 18th."
With my weekend confusion still intact, that did not sound right to me, so I said, "You better check the calendar. I don't think that's right."
He looked. He had missed the party that I really had looked forward to attending with him.
We sighed and settled down completing our preparations for Christmas visitors.
Maybe, if we keep working on that one thing, we will get it finished and get our sync back. Maybe. Just don't hold your breath.
(While getting her act together, Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times.)
A topsy-turvy wave of confusion spread through our house as my husband moved from room to room, moving furniture, taping the walls and painting. Just because I asked him to please have the walls inside the house re-painted before company came for Christmas, wall clocks and calendars have landed in the piles of odds and ends to be reconsidered for wall placement. Beds, chairs and tables cluster in the middle of the room and we hunch over the counter for meals. We lack order around here. That's my excuse for what happened last week and I'm sticking with it.
Actually the week began perfectly with a five-day trip to Indiana, Michigan and Missouri to visit the boys and their families.
We left my daughter's home in Sherwood just before sunrise and made it to my sister-in-law's home in Indiana by supper time. She proudly showed off all the painting and fixing up she has accomplished. We caught up with each other's families and then went on to visit the sons. We shared a few meals and snacks, handed out simple gifts, took lots of pictures, delivered packages and kicked back to enjoy conversations and a game of Monopoly.
Sure we had to miss the church social and the office party while we traveled, but we had great timing the entire trip. As we drove up to take care of some small business issue, the woman we needed to see came outside. We left 10 minutes later with everything arranged. The two high school friends my husband wanted to see had time to chat when we found them in public places. In spite of the miles, we even managed to make it to hotels and homes in time to get a decent night's rest. Shoot, we even took in an art museum in Detroit and the Lincoln Museum/Library in Springfield, Ill.
The first part of the week went so smoothly, no dropped opportunities, no missed folks. So how could we go so wrong at the other end of the week?
I don't know how we lost our social precision, but we did.
Maybe beginning my work week on Wednesday disoriented me? Disoriented me to the point that I woke up thinking "Hurrah! It’s Saturday" and began planning my day free from the constraints of the office — only to open the newspaper and begin reading it before I realized, "It's not Saturday. It's Friday." I literally turned to the front page and studied the date before I began switching gears mentally.
And then it still took me several seconds to realize, "Hey! I have to dress and scat if I want to check out even one garage sale before work."
My excellent timing did not return to normal the rest of the weekend.
I totally confused the time and day of a funeral and even told my husband the wrong time. He stopped at the funeral home a day late, and had the nerve to tell the funeral director "my wife told me this time."
He wasn't doing much better. Immersed in the painting process, he did not notice until he had finished the hall that they did not glow with just a hint of sunshine yellow as I chose, but glared with something more akin to pumpkin chiffon. Someone made a mistake, but no one admits it.
But we both admit we made another mistake last weekend. A while back, my husband told me his Sunday School party was the 18th. He was thinking Saturday, not Friday. Saturday afternoon, he said, "Hey! We a Sunday school party tonight. This is Saturday the 18th."
With my weekend confusion still intact, that did not sound right to me, so I said, "You better check the calendar. I don't think that's right."
He looked. He had missed the party that I really had looked forward to attending with him.
We sighed and settled down completing our preparations for Christmas visitors.
Maybe, if we keep working on that one thing, we will get it finished and get our sync back. Maybe. Just don't hold your breath.
(While getting her act together, Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times. E-mail her at joanh@everybody.org)
Please don't disturb Mr. Claus. He's way too busy working in his shop to stop and chat. So many things to do, so little time to do it before the sleigh must be loaded.
Just last night we only had a few moments together over the supper table before we rushed off and left the table cleaning to the elves. I went to my sewing room, he ambled out to his workshop. Both of us are scrambling to finish the last bits and pieces of projects before the church bells ring on Christmas Eve.
Its not that we leave everything to the last minute. In July, I organized visiting elves to assemble cloth tree ornaments. We snipped, stitched, stuffed and sewed it, racing the clock to finish before one elf hopped in her sleigh and left.
While we sewed, Santa sketched out plans for chess boards that close up into a box to hold the playing pieces.
Santa polished and varnished for hours on end. Just when I thought he had finally completed one box to wrap, he drilled holes beneath the squares to hold tiny, powerful, earth magnets in the board. He plastered an opposing earth magnet in the base of the plastic chess pieces. Impatient with air drying, Santa grabbed a hair dryer, turned it on high and let it blow.
Hair dryers do a great job speeding up the drying of wallboard plaster and other minor repairs — but under the dryer's heat, those plastic chess pieces drooped, shrank and warped into droll caricatures of themselves. Santa Claus liked their new look, but went shopping to find duplicates for the gift's recipient.
In August he took apart a child's rocking chair to repair and use as a model for a second rocking chair. Sawdust permeated the air and coated all flat surfaces. His hair yellow with sawdust, he came in to proudly show off carefully formed seats. He mentioned the body shaped chair seat to everyone he met.
In October I began baking and freezing goodies for the holidays to come — banana bread, cookies, coffee cake. I would be done, but we keep snitching goodies for a snack every day or so. With the cold snap, the elves and these old bones welcome the warmth from the hot oven. The fresh goodies just make us jollier — even if our red suits do shrink faster.
In November, I lined up another crew of elves in front of a large bowl of popcorn, a pile of Fruit Loops and a small bowl of cranberries. I handed each elf a sewing needle with quilting thread and showed them how to chain together popcorn, cranberries and colorful cereal into a tree garland. The natural tree decor looks great outside and it feeds the birds. The 3-year-old elf needed a lot of help from Grandma Claus to place, thread and pull. The teenaged elves developed their own designs and finished quickly.
In December, our work schedule moved into high gear.
In the shop, Mr. Claus busily filled, sanded and painted the rocking chairs, assembled packages for gifts – and emphasized the amount of time he spent sculpting the seats in the child-sized rocking chairs.
Inside the sewing room, I hand stitched tiny stuffed doll arms to a small cloth body. An array of unfinished Christmas projects spread around my work room: a cheerful, reversible Christmas quilt, cross stitched fabric to make the skirt of an angel ornament, a bright, red, hand-knit scarf that needs five minutes with the yarn needle and a stack of ideas I hope to finish before Rudolf's nose lights the sky.
One evening I stuffed and sewed cloth apples and a basket for Little Red Riding Hood, attached the ears to the big bad wolf and created a cap for grandma. I joined them altogether to make a topsy-turvy doll. Santa finished painting the white rocking chair. That inspired me to spend a few minutes making a simple Christmas cushion.
Santa Claus put a coat of candy red paint on the other rocking chair and insisted on setting Little Red Riding Hood in it.
Christmas Eve deadlines loom before us at the Claus house: house cleaning, cooking, shopping, a Christmas letter, but all are ignored. They can wait. Toys and gifts come first.
Early in the morning, I quickly stitched and stuffed four cloth ornaments. After supper, I whipped up just one more sweet for the holiday. Late at night, Santa watched me fold, pin and machine stitch the quilt binding in place before we both collapsed. For a few hours, quiet descended on Santa's workshop as Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus took a short winter's nap gaining enough energy to produce more toys for Santa's pack.
(Santa's helper, Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times. E-mail her at joanh@everybody.org.)
Last week's cold snap underscored what a foul weather friend we have in our frumpy, old cat.
In the heat of the summer, she curled up in the middle of the concrete drive, soaking up the radiant heat. As the day waned she aimed for her favorite perch of concrete slab in the back yard or climbed the fence to check out the neighbor's warm spots.
If we would leave the cat food dispenser outside in the garage as we used to do, the cat would rarely grace us with her presence from late spring to early fall. However, we quit serving the cat outside after we noticed the critters flagrantly galloping into our garage to gulp down a week's worth of cat food: Neighborhood dogs, an opossum and a feral cat or two treated our garage as a free buffet. So, we moved the food dispenser inside — and our cat food bill dropped drastically.
Understanding our frugality and lack of hospitality to her distant relatives, the feline expects my husband to act as her personal lackey.
When she howls, he must come and turn the knob to open the door for her any time she beckons: 10 a.m. tea, 11 p.m. late night snack or 4 a.m. hunger pangs. Whatever the time, she wants service – NOW!
In the summer, every few hours as hunger strikes, she lazily stretches, meanders up to the house and commands her doorman to come to the front door.
My husband pulls himself out of his recliner and accommodates. She strolls in flicking her tail at him disdainfully, takes a few nibbles and walks to the back door where she wails until her doorman pauses his computer game, stands up and opens the door for her.
Day after day through the heat of summer, she treats our house like a fast food restaurant with a porter.
In return, all summer, she ignored my husband's invitations to come sit on his lap and purr while he petted her. She had no interest in being petted — until the fall rains came.
Cats don't like being soaked any more than do humans. With soaking wet whiskers and her tail dripping she begs to have the door opened. Once inside she stays until the rain stops or necessity forces her outside.
But, it is the frigid days of winter that reveal the cat's true nature.
In the winter chill, we double up on socks and layer on the clothes to keep warm.
Not the cat. She hollers at us to sit down on that couch, to get comfortable in that lounge chair and wait for her. The minute we stretch out after a long day, she walks over to us, scolds us for taking so long and aims for the belly, the back or a crook behind the knees.
She's not picky. She just wants our radiant body heat to warm her with a lot of petting to top off her pleasure.
She demands to be petted. If we move our hands aside for the briefest of moments to turn the page of a book, pick up a phone or just to rest and she lifts her head, looks around and begins vigorously licking any bare skin she can find, especially the errant hand, its arm or fingers until we begin petting her again.
I can live the rest of my life without ever having another sponge bath from that cat, so I either pet her or show her the door.
The cat acts as if she can live the rest of her life without ever being held or petted – as long the sun warms the dry cement. But let the temperature drop as it did last week, and she is miffed if we refuse to sit down, roll over or deny her room on our laps. The colder and wetter the weather, the more this cat cuddles up to us. She's such a nice cat – our feline, foul weather friend.
(The cat's other lackey, Joan Hershberger, is a reporter at the News-Times. E-mail her at joanh@everybody.org.)
They laugh at me.
My children laugh when I sincerely tell them I put in time on the elliptical trainer just to keep up with them.
My couch potatoes grew up and changed – dramatically so this past summer.
While I stitched up a quilt with the visiting granddaughter, the three younger sons and son-in-law and one daughter-in-law tied on sneakers, hopped on bikes and exercised.
The Michigan son actually lives physical fitness. He walks a lot and effortlessly stays at the lowest recommended weight for his height.
He offered the others advice, but they insisted on taking their own route.
Pennsylvania son pulled out his bike and pedaled 20 and 30 mile circuits around his neighborhood. This year he had one goal in mind — to join the nearly 20,000 cyclists participating in the 37th anniversary of the RAGBRAI – a week long bicycle ride across Iowa. After playing with the idea for a couple of years, he shed the couch potato/computer programmer weight, packed up his bike and went to the RAGBRAI and cycled three days or 210 miles over the back roads of Iowa.
He said averaging 70 miles a day was "fun."
And it does sound fun. All the little towns along the way have something to offer the riders. Churches serve pies, roving trucks geared up to serve barbecue, pasta or smoothies; kids set up lemonade stands along the way. "It's like a rolling county fair," he said.
He has slacked off since the ride. Now he puts in a mere 15 to 20 miles a day on his bike.
"It takes a while to do it," he says, but figures it takes about the same amount of time as it would for him to drive to and from the gym to exercise.
In St. Louis, his little brother and wife – after years of college classes, papers and exams – declared themselves ready to shed the results of coffee shop study groups and midnight cram sessions.
In April, as my son worked hard to win a weight contest at the Y, his wife found the Tour de Kirkwood –≠a triathlon sprint: Eight laps of the swimming pool, 12 miles on bike and 3.3 miles of jogging. She wanted to enter it – with someone.
My son volunteered to be her partner.
"The only reason I did the triathlon was because Joy did it. I said 'if you're going to do it, then I'll do it,'" he told me. She found a schedule of suggested activities to get in shape.
He exercised before work. She went during the day when the Y offered child care.
They cycled. They ran. They swam. They did all the things that defied their personality as a couple when they married eight years ago.
On the day of the triathlon, they still did not consider themselves athletic. They signed up for the last heat of swimmers and trailed near the end. But, they walked away looking slimmer and fitter than I have ever seen them.
"We are still exercising, but not in the same way and not as frequently," my son said last week. They both get in a couple days a week, but already know they will not participate in the triathlon sprint next summer. That about the time they anticipate the arrival of child number two.
A week after they swam, rode and jogged, our only son-in-love tackled his first triathlon sprint in Arkansas: 500-yard swim, 5K run and 15-mile bike ride. For weeks, he prepared with 5 a.m. runs or a bike rides and swam after work.
The day of the event, he plunged in with the first group of swimmers and struggled to finish with the last group. With one arm, his swimming time may be slower, but he definitely can run and cycle quickly – he finished first of the six or seven men from his church who participated in the event with him.
I am astounded. I have not done much swimming since my childhood – and even less cycling. My bi-pedal activity primarily consists of walking fast and a few rounds on the elliptical.
We still are not an particularly athletic family. They've all slacked off a bit since the summer events, but with a new year looming, that could quickly change.
(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times.)
I proposed a fresh coat of paint for the house. My resident repair man agreed.
"If you clean out that closet, I will paint it," he said as I stood in front of the linen closet which held every except linens.
I hauled out toys, crafts, notebooks and family mementos and lined the guest bedroom with the odds and ends.
"I meant our bedroom closet," he said. "But, I'll get that closet next."
So, I emptied out slacks, skirts, shirts, suits, shoes, a pile of Christmas presents, tax returns and framed pictures. I filled up the craft room, the guest beds and end of the hall.
Looking around at all that stuff now cluttering a third of the house, I felt very thankful for closets. Even a small closet holds and hides a great deal of stuff.
I found my daughter's long lost baby clothes, the calculus books I once puzzled over and a manual typewriter I saved in case I wanted to write during an electrical outage – only to never use it.
"I am not returning all these clothes to the closet," I warned my husband. He tried on eight suits and donated more than half to the thrift store pile. I put it aside anything I had not worn in a year.
Even after filling up the trunk of my car, heaps of clutter still sprawled across the floors, the beds, the chairs and tables. As I waited for the paint to dry I realized how messy my house would look without closets.
I wound my way through the clutter to the computer and logged onto Facebook to write, "I have learned to be thankful for closets, they hold and cover up so much stuff ... thank you, God, for closets."
Our oldest son, Randy, having undergone a lengthy time sorting out the accumulation of years identified with the situation. He responded as follows.
I have found that if you aren't careful, closets will get too full and things will start spilling out. Then you have a big mess that tends to get in the way of everything else that you are trying to do. People have been injured trying to navigate through the house, especially at night when the lights are out.
With closet clutter, you never want to have anybody around — they might look in your closets. That is a scary thought.
Scary enough that eventually you just stop having people over at all – and then you get lonely. When the loneliness gets to be very painful you aren't able to keep up with the closet cleaning at all and the whole house falls into shambles.
Thank God for closets — but it is much better if you keep them clean. My closets got completely out of control. I had to get Someone else to come in and start cleaning them. I tried and tried to clean them – with no success. I finally admitted my utter failure and got help.
Thankfully, they have been helping me with my closet clutter – but it was quite expensive. There was no way I could afford it until Someone else saw my plight and mercifully paid the fee.
Now the one who paid thinks they own me.
I suppose they do. I talk to them everyday and I thank them for all that they have done. We still have a lot of work to do, but it is so good to see what they have already done.
My neighbors talk about my messy house quite a bit. I know they doubt I will be able to keep it clean.
They are probably right.
Don't tell the neighbors, but that is exactly the reason I asked my benefactor if the cleaning service can just remain on board indefinitely.
He said that they could. Woohoo! Wow! OK!
It is frightening to consider, but it is time to open another dark, cluttered closet and see what we drag out into the light, he concluded.
A little closet cleaning helps immensely whether inside our house or inside our hearts.
"There is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known." Matthew 10:26 (NAS).
I found a place to store his thoughts and returned to my closet sorting task determined to conquer the clutter.
(Still sorting stuff, Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times. E-mail her at joanh@everybody.org)
Neither man saw the empty log truck coming their way as they pulled out onto the highway after picking up meat from the processing plant.
The driver of the log truck saw them stop and assumed they had seen his truck but the pick-up pulled out in front of him. The logger said he did everything he could to turn his truck so it would not hit the cab where the two men sat.
Brakes screeched, metal slammed against metal as the log truck impacted the pick-up on the driver's side. The pick-up spun around and was hit on the passenger side as well. Air bags popped, glass cracked, bodies jerked around.
And then silence.
Neither man, both grandfathers, knew what had happened, but both suddenly felt cramped, hurting and a deep desire to get out of the truck.
What they wanted did not matter. They had to wait for the emergency vehicles. The emergency techs loaded them into the men onto gurneys. One went immediately to Medical Center of South Arkansas. After assessing the other's injuries, the paramedics refused the injured's request to be taken to El Dorado or Little Rock.
They called for a helicopter to transport him immediately to the LSU hospital in Shreveport.
In El Dorado, the doctors X-rayed, poked, prodded and found a couple broken ribs, bumps and bruises, but only enough injuries to keep their patient in the hospital for a few days. He went home to rest and recuperate with his family and friends cautioned to give him time to recover.
In Shreveport, the emergency room doctor found much more damage. A severe wound to his patient's scalp (but not his skull) had caused major blood loss. He had a fractured shoulder blade, fractured pelvis and seven broken ribs. The accident bruised his heart. His heart rate was too high and his blood pressure too low.
His sister, a nurse, told the doctor he had lost a lot of blood at the accident. She contacted his personal physician who quickly faxed over his medical records and prescriptions.
Once he had four units of blood, he received emergency surgery to reattach the scalp and within hours his wife smilingly reported that the skin had already begun to pink up.
The families, friends and fellowship of believers for both men began praying in El Dorado, across the state, United States and even in Europe. Thanking God for the men's survival, they prayed for their recovery.
At LSU hospital a ventilator assisted the injured man's breathing. Pain medication kept him sedated to allow the body time to recover from the shock. With years of experience in this kind of trauma, the doctors cautiously gave him a few days to see if he would stabilize and begin breathing on his own. If necessary, the doctor explained to the family, he planned to insert a thin plate into the chest cavity to protect his lungs and help him breathe.
Just before the scheduled surgery, he was re-assessed. The ventilator was removed to see if he would breathe on his own. He did and from the first breath continued to breathe on his own with supplementary oxygen.
"I've heard of miracles, but this is the first I've seen, that happen" the doctor told his patient. Three days later he moved him into a regular room.
Eight days after the accident, the pastor called the hospital to check on his parishioner's status. He was surprised and blessed to hear the patient answer the phone. After hearing the report on the patient at the service that morning, the congregation applauded their thanksgiving of praise at the announcement.
A week and a half after the accident, the once critical patient returned to the rehabilitation unit at MCSA for therapy on his breathing. Even with all his cracked and broken bones, his rehab included walking. A week later he returned home, sore, bruised, still broken, but alive, his spirit as chipper as ever, ready to receive guests eager to see proof of their answered prayers.
For the men, their wives, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren and their many friends this Thanksgiving, the list of blessings overflows with a abundance of gratitude that there is no empty chair at either table.
(Joan Hershberger, is a reporter at the News-Times. E-mail her at joanh@everybody.org.)
Thunder rolled and lightning flashed outside my bedroom window. Time to try taking a picture using lightning. Standing in front of my second-story screened bedroom window, I waited for the next long flash of light. As the explosion rolled across the valley, peering through the view finder, I snapped one shot. That's all I dared to try – even as an 11 year-old I understood the expense of processing film.
I came across that black and white picture recently. The grid of the screen obstructs the view but the trees and valley stand out. A bland photo, but I kept it as a reminder of the day I discovered lightning worked like the biggest flash bulb ever.
In high school, my interest in photography focused on my mother's pile of family and school pictures. After organizing albums during our grade school years, she had fallen behind. I sorted and stacked up school photos and candid shots. Organizing them by years, individuals and events, I fixed black corner photo tabs to hold them on manila colored scrapbook pages. Sequential years of five little Hibbards dressed in their Sunday best for picture day at school finally had a resting place. Except for occasional input, my mother and sisters left me to my absorption with completing the scrapbook.
Once finished, I reverently turned the pages over and over in wonder, studying how we grew as individuals and as a family. After I went off to college, the passion for photographic organization snagged my sisters' attention and they put in their own stints sorting and preparing photo albums for Mom.
Last week, my daughter proved she had inherited the same gene.
After a year of digital photography and uploading the pictures to an online photography website; after I had pointed out various sales on digitally generated photo albums, she decided to create an album of this year's pictures.
In the years B.C. (before children) she lovingly put together a number of elaborate scrapbooks – lengthy handwritten descriptions accompany the hand cropped and enhanced pictures. She maintained a stock of scrapbook supplies.
But, with two babies plus those she baby-sat in her home, she discovered the efficiency of online photo albums with their scrapbook backgrounds, varied layouts, print fonts and photo edges.
One more sale ending soon on photo books nudged her to forget sleep for a couple nights to create an album. "And, Mom, would you would look at it after I finish it?" she asked.
Having just asked the same favor of her and my husband last month for my own photo albums, I could hardly tell her I was too busy to look over her book.
She quit around midnight. I woke up in the wee hours of the morning, thought about a day of work and her request. I decided to take a peek at the book so I could tell her it looked wonderful.
She had done over 90 pages of photos with cutlines.
There was no way I could just take a quick look.
After looking at several pages and trying several alternate lay-outs, I realized my tastes might not suit her. I saved the book as a new book under a new name and began working my way through the pages enlarging pictures, moving around cutlines, trying different layouts for emphasis.
As the sun rose, the clock screamed time to go to work. I quickly skimmed over the last couple dozen pages, wrote her an e-mail with suggestions, reluctantly closed the file and dashed out the door.
She called me later to ask, "What time did you get up and look at that book?"
"Early, very early. I saved it as a new book so you could see my ideas. It's okay if you prefer something else."
Somehow between babies napping and playing, she snagged a few more hours to work on the book. Her husband looked it over and approved it. With discounts and shipping, she told him the final cost would equal around seven or eight cents per picture.
No time spent monopolizing the dining room table, yet still she prepared a photo album to be cherished for years to come.
(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times. E-mail her at joanh@everybody.org)
Family life assumes flexibility.
Just when my husband and I anticipated a few days alone, the Sherwood family took turns coming down with a lingering fever and listlessness. I could hear the onset of the illness in my daughter's voice so I volunteered to house her pre-schooler for a couple days.
Well – that is I volunteered my retired husband. He dropped everything and went to get the lad. They had a grand time playing and watching movies during the day and I read books to the child in the evening.
Then the Texas granddaughters' mother wondered if we would house her three for Halloween. I bought another sack of candy and mentally began checking my food supplies for teenagers — only to change all my plans when a former co-worker offered five passes to Magic Springs. Using those five tickets to entertain three girls appealed to me much more than traipsing the dark streets on Halloween.
I made up candy packages for the girls and sent the rest along when my husband took our grandson home for his church's fall festival. Between Sherwood, Texas and El Dorado, my chauffeur drove all day Friday. Saturday we rose early and headed to Magic Springs for a day of rides.
I lost interest in theme park rides after my young at heart guy insisted on rocking the Ferris Wheel gondola back and forth. I like stability. Standing on the ground, watching others ride provides a lot of stability and I can hold the camera, eye glasses and other loose items.
But not my husband. He embraces theme park rides, pumping them for every thrill he can garner. He spun the wheel so vigorously during the Mad Hatter's Tea Cup ride 28 years ago that our tjunior in high school staggered as he left the ride.
So he looked forward to the thrills at Magic Springs. Entering as the gates opened, we enjoyed a long afternoon of no-waiting access to all the rides.
I snapped shots of Grandpa and granddaughters on the swinging pirate's ship before I decided to ride a few myself.
For the first time in years, I threw caution to the wind and rode a couple of the park's many roller coaster rides. Round the corners the cars whipped, shifting me back and forth, up and down. I felt my back tense and my neck grow rigid as it anticipated and resisted the turns. I did not feel very flexible. No, I felt on the verge of a back ache or a stiff neck. I happily walked away pain free.
My husband jovially joined the girls on the upside-down rides that threw him around like a yo-yo being twirled over a kid's head. He sat on the edge of the tower that plunged him down and jerked him up abruptly without warning. He ignored all the signs cautioning away those with blood pressure problems. He would have his fun, exhibit his flexibility and youthfulness.
Midday, the youngest child and I chose the simplicity of the swan seat on the carousel. He insisted on a painted steed. She joined me in the non-riders' section when the others took the Arkansas Twister roller coaster the first time. The next time, she lined up to join them.
She got in the car, looked at the steep mountain path in front of her, shivered and got out of the car.
They begged her to join them. She climbed in. She climbed out.
They assured her it was fun. She got in. She looked. She got out and moved back with me.
I kind of wanted to ride, but I stayed with her.
Grandpa joined the trio for the log ride that ends with a 50 feet spray of water. I skipped the ride because I take no pleasure in walking around in wet clothes. I do, however, take pleasure in the great shot I snapped of the spray of water as their boat hit the pool at the bottom.
Our no-fear granddaughter rode the Gauntlet with Grandpa the first time while the rest of us watched. The ride provides 45 seconds of upside down twirling and centrifugal force at 65 mph. That's when my husband realized, "Why am I doing this? I don't have to do this anymore." When she insisted on one more Gauntlet ride before we left that day, he watched — his flexibility for the day spent.
After a week of changing plans, an afternoon of cruising and bruising, he acknowledged the difference between a flexible schedule and a flexible body. No longer 17 and looking at 70 in a couple months, I'd say, it's about time to he realized that.
I'm not holding my breath that he will remember it.
(So very much, not a flexible 17 year-old, Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times. E-mail her at joanh@everybody.org)
Talking green sounds so responsible – so clean that we overlook the reality that most people ultimately practice brown in their perpetual quest to have bigger, better, more efficient, newer possessions.
Currently, the quest is for smaller, thinner, faster computers with more gadgets that perform slightly better than last year's model. With each replacement, each improvement, hundreds of older models become obsolete – marked for the recycling bin or a trip straight to the county landfill.
Improving our lives, we fill junkyards, stack our mountains of trash a bit higher and expand our rubbish heaps.
The process is as old as man's ingenuity. Archeologists primarily deal with objects which peoples of former cultures abandoned, lost or discarded – unwanted household, business or farm goods left behind in war, catastrophes or to be replaced with a newer version.
In the 1960s, I found a dusty Hoosier cabinet with missing doors and drawers falling apart inside my grandparents' cement block garage. Having just heard an aunt gush over someone else's antique Hoosier cabinet, I mentioned it to my mother, sure that she would point the gusher to it.
"Oh, everyone has them sitting out in a garage or storage shed," she said.
A very popular household item with housewives during the first thirty years of the 1900s, the Hoosier cupboard provided portable kitchen efficiency and storage. It came with a bin large enough to hold 25 pounds of flour. The flour sifter at the base of the bin dispensed flour on baking day. The assortment of cupboards and drawers provided storage and accessibility to everything needed while working in the kitchen, including a pull-out counter for work space.
I learned to whip up cake mixes on my mother's second-hand Hoosier cabinet. My mother-in-law refurbished one and stored her dishes in it. Years later, my sister-in-law found one to accent her country kitchen with its built-in cabinets – the primary reason why housewives relegated Hoosier cabinets to a forgotten corner of the garage.
Entertainment centers began with Edison's invention of the Victrola which were replaced by upright wooden phonographs that landed in storage with the invention of portable record players. As a child I explored an unused corncrib and discovered a dusty, upright phonographs — its an oak cabinet finish shabby from years of exposure.
For young readers unfamiliar with these items, think oversized CD player in a wooden cabinet about the size of a small refrigerator. The thick platters imprinted with music that it played only worked after the listener cranked the handle enough to wind up an internal spring. Very green, no electricity and good aerobic exercise.
My grandparents had a radio with similar wooden cabinetry with a tiny yellow dial. By the time I wanted a radio, portable transistors had replaced the bulky wooden units. Now those, too have landed in storage sheds and leaky barn attics followed by boom boxes as Ipods relegate even more entertainment gadgets to ever expanding landfills.
The current rash of home improvement and home makeover shows add to the garbage collector's load. Do not be satisfied with a clean, non-leaking house. Replace the doors, a small round table would fit better than a medium-sized rectangle table. Wooden picture frames that suited perfectly a decade ago must be replaced with the clean lines of black thin frames.
In the most ironical of makeover shows, an interior decorator acknowledged the person's interest in being green – he replaced perfectly great carpet with bamboo – an acceptable green product – and added another layer of non-biodegradable carpet to the county dump.
Fashionable, no longer fashionable. Must have because it is the newest, brightest invention and then, get rid of that, it is worn out, needs repairs, replace it with something newer, fancier, bigger – or more compact. Given time, the next generation rediscovers a few of these now quaint items and thrills with their newly acquired antiques. No one mentions the hundreds of others that did not make it to the antique store or were sent to molder with age and neglect in barns, garages and storage sheds until someone hauls them off to the dump. At least they don't acknowledge it while chatting confidently about their commitment to a green lifestyle.
(Joan Hershberger, is a reporter at the News-Times. E-mail her at joanh@everybody.org.)
Navigate: (Previous 20 Entries)