Reflection – Page 5 – Plain and Fancy

The Million Dollar Baby: Ian’s Miracle Birth

October 1, 2014October 1, 2014 marianbeaman36 Comments

Since my mother’s death in July, I have written several posts of her home-going including A Grief Observed: Missing Mother and Crossing the Bar.

This time I’m focusing on a birth, our grandson Ian’s miraculous birth seven years ago this week. According to the doctor’s calculations, he was scheduled to arrive on January 9, his Grandpa Beaman’s birthday. Instead he made his appearance on his mother Sarah’s birthday, October 5.

All births are miraculous, really, the tiny embryo maturing into a marvelous baby with millions of synapses making connections within the brain, a sense of rhythm and an ability to breathe and suckle at the same time. One study mentioned that babies can pick out the gender of other babies even when they are cross-dressed, something adults cannot do.

But Ian’s birth at 26 weeks gestation weighing a mere 2 pounds, 5 ounces meant many un-connected synapses and a severely undeveloped breathing apparatus. For weeks it was touch-and-go, and we weren’t certain that we would be bringing him home from the NIC Unit at Wolfson Children’s Hospital. Aside from the frightening awareness that Ian had a hole in his heart, we were introduced to a whole new vocabulary of problems: bradycardia, retinopathy, hip dysplasia. Translation: Slow, interrupted heartbeat requiring a nose cannula, undeveloped blood vessels in retina, and an immature hip ball and sock requiring a harness to hold legs in a frog-like fashion. Here is his photo-story:

My journal records that on November 29, 2007 Ian weighs 4 pounds, 3 ounces and is taking three bottles a day. He is also employing the services of a speech therapist and an occupational therapist along with physical therapy.

How would a speech therapist help a premature baby who can’t speak or an occupational therapist assist a child whose main job was trying to survive? Speech therapy facilitated the transition from tube feeding to bottle feeding and the occupational therapy improved the range of motion inhibited by hip dysplasia.

"Did you finally bring me home?" asks Ian. — “Did you finally bring me home?” asks Ian.

After a 14-week stay in the hospital, Ian is brought home. Glory, hallelujah! Though still on a breathing apparatus, he resumes a more normal life with his family, under the watchful eye of his brother.

"Ian, here's my advice," says Dr. Curtis. — “Ian, here’s my advice,” says Dr. Curtis.

Praise God – At age seven, Ian is now at the 98 percentile in height and weight for his age and is taking an advanced course of study in first grade at his school. There are delays in behavioral development though, possibly attributable to his prematurity. But who can be sure whether it’s prematurity or personality.

* * *

I wrote a letter to each of my grand-children before their first birthday and sent it to their home address so it would have a post-mark. In Ian’s case, I waited until the one-year mark to write and send his letter. Call it a welcome-to-the-world, a blessing from Grandma/NaNa in writing. Here is a copy of the letter he received:

Ian has not opened this letter yet though he is able to read. In fact, none of the grand-children have opened and read their letters and I’m wondering at what age they should be read. It seems the opening and reading calls for some special occasion. What do you think? I welcome your suggestions!

For you created my inmost being;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

your works are wonderful . . . .

Psalm 139: 13, 14 NIRV

Your advice on letter reading welcome. Other comments or suggestions from your own experience. You will always get a reply from me and maybe from other readers. Thank you!

“Every child is a story yet to be told.” Sesame Street

Purple Passages and a Mirror

September 20, 2014September 21, 2014 marianbeaman25 Comments

The earth laughs in flowers.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

MIRRORS

Life is a mirror and will reflect back to the thinker what he thinks into it. – Ernest Holmes

Mirrors can both reflect and distort as Tennyson suggests:

And moving through a mirror clear

That hangs before her all the year . . .

But in her web she still delights

To weave the mirror’s magic sights . . .

– The Lady of Shalott

An old friend is the best mirror. – George Herbert

* * *

PHOTOGRAPHY

Definition of photograph before the digital era: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art. – Ambrose Bierce

Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still. – Dorothea Lange

Later we’ll look at photographs, the way every family does, making much of the frozen moments, the icons of ancestry, the dead laughing right in your face, or just staring that non-committal historical gaze.” – Patricia Hampl The Florist’s Daughter

What Tallulah Bankhead thinks about photographs: They used to photograph Shirley Temple through gauze. They should photograph me through linoleum. Ha!

* * *

Photographs and mirrors. Your thoughts or quotes about either.

Do you think they have anything in common?

Coming next: Milk Bread: Good for What Ails You

The Beach at Sunset: Crossing the Bar

September 17, 2014September 19, 2014 marianbeaman28 Comments

Sunsets, especially sunsets on the beach are # 1 on the list of clichés to avoid in photography. Yet beach sunsets persist on Instagram and Facebook because they are breath-taking, evocative.

Photo credit: Jackie Gassett

. . . the gauzy hinge between sea and sky, the limitless horizon dividing the elements, the disappearing point where we were headed.”

Patricia Hampl The Florist’s Daughter

My mother had a placid and accepting attitude toward life and death. At her funeral the hymns sung by the congregation were full of hope, “I Stand Amazed” and “The Love of God” among them. Another song in the Mennonite Church Hymnal entitled “Sunset and Evening Star” (which was not sung) pulls out the first four words of Tennyson’s poem “Crossing the Bar” written in 1889 just three years before he died.

Tennyson, also appearing to accept death as part of life, uses the metaphor of the sandbar on the beach to paint a picture of the tide of life pushing out to the “boundless deep” to which we return. The poet hopes that though he may be carried beyond the limits of time and space as we know them “he will look upon the face of his ‘Pilot’ when he has crossed the sand bar.”

This past July Mother crossed the bar into eternal glory and there she has beheld the face of her Pilot. Oh, how we miss her.

But now I must cross the bar of challenge and opportunity ever looking for new horizons. How about you?

What bar of challenge and opportunity confronts you now?

The Wonda-Chair and the Heirloom

September 13, 2014September 12, 2014 marianbeaman33 Comments

Did you as a baby sit in one of these?

Did you buy one for your child?

Produced by Babyhood Industries of Shrewsbury, MA, the Wonda Chair was “a do-it-all, all-in-one, convertible wonder. As the seller mentions, the multi-piece furniture/stroller kit mixes and matches to create the following: Hi-chair, youth chair, chair and table, dressing table, desk set, rocking chair, stroller, baby carriage, basinette, and cradle.”

As expectant parents, we fell prey to this marvel and sunk hundreds of dollars into this magnificent wonder, the Wonda Chair. We used it mostly as a high chair and stroller for our children. Later, Crista and Joel pushed each other around on the sidewalk with the stroller base. Here they are improvising their own version of a horse and buggy with a dog and Wonda Chair carriage wheels.

Recently, we have been going through Mother’s things in her attic and came upon this 19^th century marvel—a high chair that converts into a baby carriage—hand-made and still serviceable.

Mother was the first daughter in the family after four brothers, so she is the fifth in her family to use the chair. It is vintage, however, and probably handed down to the family from the previous generation, frugal Mennonites who valued quality and heritage.

Mother in high chair, 1918 — Mother in the Metzler high chair, 1918

Two wonderful chairs – the Wonda Chair and the heirloom . . .

* * *

Your turn: Take your pick – The Wonda Chair or the Vintage chair?

Or tell your tale of special pieces handed down in your family.

Dancing to a Different Tune: Kathy Pooler’s Memoir

September 6, 2014September 6, 2014 marianbeaman33 Comments

Kathy and I are not old friends. In fact, our friendship is rather recent as we have explored each other’s blog posts early this year, discovering that we both were developing our writing skills after long, satisfying careers, hers in medicine and mine in education.

In March, she featured me on a blog post describing my writing process and in May I published a preview of her memoir now published in July 2014. Beyond this, we have discovered that our values are rooted in a strong Christian faith.

Kathy Pooler’s memoir Ever Faithful to His Lead is a smooth read but with a tale that is often tumultuous. Her memoir unfolds like a novel with pleasing dialogue and silky descriptions of her prom dress and her hand-made wedding gown in stark contrast to the rocky road she travels to become a strong, assertive woman.

In the course of her journey, Kathy earns several academic degrees among them the distinguished Certified Family Nurse Practitioner qualification. Yet she stumbles with poor choices in love, choosing one wrong partner after another in her search for a stable marriage like that she imagined her parents’ to be. In fact, she admits early on that she can trace her “inability to discern dangerous situations to a lack of exposure to anything out of the ordinary.”

Readers can applaud the resilient woman emerging from the frightened person who hid from her first husband in her hallway closet to a woman who is finally able to trust her own instincts. Her candor and vulnerability appear on every page. Kathy often pulls the reader aside to contemplate her motivation, as for example: “I was always second-guessing myself, quickly shoving doubts aside to paint the picture of what I needed the world to be.”

When you as reader want to snatch the blinders off the writer’s eyes and yell “Stop!” into her ears, you know the author has succeeded in pulling you into her world. This memoir is a cautionary tale for anyone on an elusive search for Mr. Right. For anyone already in an abusive relationship, Kathy’s story offers courage and hope. Admitting it is time to make big-girl choices, her last chapter promises, “Raw, hopeful, ready to dance to my own song—my new faith waiting patiently in the background.”

The book concludes with nine discussion questions for book clubs and a “Share the Hope” section with the notation that each purchase contributes toward the National Coalition of Domestic Violence Awareness Association. Author Pooler is already at work on a sequel: Hope Matters.

You can buy Kathy Pooler’s book at Goodreads and Amazon.

Kathy’s blog

Facebook page

Twitter page

Coming next: My Mother’s Recitations

Purple Passages with a Camel

July 16, 2014August 20, 2014 marianbeaman27 Comments

Birthdays

The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been. – Madeleine l’Engle

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm. – Aldous Huxley

There are years that ask questions and years that answer. – Zora Neal Hurston

It takes a long time to grow young. – Pablo Picasso

Friendship

Throughout our lives, friends enclose us like pairs of parentheses. They shift our boundaries, crater our terrain. They fume through the creaks of our tentative houses, and parts of them always remain . . . .

– Beth Kephart, memoirist and National Book Award nominee.

Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious. – St. Thomas Aquinas

Friends are a reflection of the issues we are working on. – Melody Beattie

Be Yourself

Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you! – Dr. Seuss

Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel. – Gilbert K. Chesterton

Humor

Some of us suffer from a debilitating mental disorder called irony deficiency. Seeing a doctor won’t help, but seeing a paradox will.” – Swami Beyondananda

Yesterday’s the past, tomorrow’s the future, but today is a gift. That’s why it is called the present. – Bill Keane, comic strip creator “The Family Circus”

And a Question:

Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings? – T. S. Eliot

Your answer: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ !

I look forward to your response and to your musings on anything else that strikes your fancy. While you’re at it, why not add a quote too. The humor section could use some beefing up. 🙂

Thank you.

Laundry at the Longeneckers

July 12, 2014October 21, 2014 marianbeaman45 Comments

We have to try it again. Here’s another shirt,” Jane said as she plucked one of Dad’s blue work shirts out of a plastic bag full of shirts—clean, sprinkled and rolled—all ready to iron. “Start with the yoke,” she directed.

I grabbed the damp shirt out of her hand and flopped it onto the ironing board. “I know where to start,” I huffed. I knew to start with the yoke, then iron the collar, then the left sleeve and cuff, front and back, then the right sleeve and cuff, front and back, then the right front, taking particular care around the buttons . . . and with the button hole placket where it was so easy to iron in wrinkles.

So begins Carol Bodensteiner’s chapter “Laundry Lessons” in her memoir Growing Up Country, a chapter that describes to a tee the washing, drying, folding, sprinkling, and ironing of laundry, chores that were also observed in the Longenecker family.

Mother’s work week was regulated by the pendulum of ritual. Certain tasks were done on certain days in her 1950s household. If it was Monday, she washed clothes, on Tuesday she ironed them, and so on through the week to Friday, the big cleaning day.

Her wringer washer and a rinse tub was pulled out to the middle of the “washhouse,” a room next to the kitchen every Monday. Sometimes I helped by feeding clothes from the rinse tub into the washer wringer, a tricky task for a child. At least once I got my arm caught in the wringer. Of course, my screams and yells summoned Mother to fly out of the kitchen, bang on the release apparatus to make the two rollers fly apart. After the fright and the pain subsided, I was amazed my arm wasn’t as flat as a paper doll’s.

When I was tall enough to reach the clothes line, I hung up wash clothes, towels, shirts, and dresses, instructed to “hide” underwear in one of the inner lines so neighbors wouldn’t see. To this day, if there is a sunny day with a breeze in Florida, I hang sheets out to dry.

On Tuesdays, Mom pulled the ironing board out of the wall, set up the iron and away I went, attacking first the easy stuff like hankies. I nourished my sense of order and accomplishment letting the point of the heavy, hot iron smooth out all the wrinkles in the garments that followed: school blouses and skirts, finally graduating to Daddy’s white, starched Sunday shirts.

We never ironed sheets though one Mennonite woman we knew, Pearl Longenecker, sat down (probably on Tuesdays too) in front of her ironer, a white appliance shaped like a miniature piano, with a hot roller that smoothed each crease in her sheets and pillow cases, pressing them into lovely squares and rectangles to fit her closet space.

Grandma Longenecker’s ritual matched our own though it took place on her back porch. Like Colonial American women before her, she made her own soap cooking together grease and lye in a big metal tub, stirring the whole mess as it boiled. Though the smell was pungent and slightly disagreeable, Grandma smiled as she cut the congealed mixture into squares and rectangles, knowing the grease and grime would be erased from her laundry on wash day. If there were spots that wouldn’t come out with lye soap, she spread the stained garment, usually white, on the grass because she was sure “the sun will draw it out.” And it usually did!

Share your laundry rituals, past or present. Something historical–or hysterical!

Marriage to a Difficult Man: Part 1

July 5, 2014July 5, 2014 marianbeaman18 Comments

In case you thought I would be writing an exposé about my difficult marriage to artist Cliff, you’d be wrong. I may write about my own marriage at some point, but it would have a different title.

The marriage under the microscope is that of Sarah Edwards to the famous colonial theologian, Jonathan Edwards, best known for his fire-and-brimstone-sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”

You may surmise that the title comes from the mouth of a fed-up wife to her biographer. However, the book is Elisabeth Dodd’s commentary on the unique union of Jonathan & Sarah Edwards often using primary sources like diaries and letters to show the personal, human side of this towering figure of faith. The blurb from Amazon touts this 1971 classic on the domestic life of Sarah and Jonathan Edwards, the most famous theologian of colonial America, as a “tempting blend of family guidance, sociological study, . . . and devotionally-oriented American historical biography.”

According to Dodds, Jonathan was a “moody, socially bumbling, and very shy young man of twenty” already a college graduate and professor at Yale, when he first met the vibrant thirteen-year-old Sarah, who had “burnished manners, and skilled at small talk.” Completely smitten by Sarah, Edwards

. . . took to walking past her her house at night for a glimpse of a candle flickering behind an upstairs shutter. When a boat came into Long Wharf with a cargo from England, he would manage to be around as it was unloaded. Almost every ship from England brought a box for the Pierreponts, and there was a chance that James [Pierrepont] would bring a daughter down with him as he checked his orders […]. Edwards even tried to improve his social dexterity, and admonished himself, “Have lately erred, in not allowing time enough for conversation. (16)

Both avid readers and nature lovers, Jonathan and Sarah married and raised a family of eleven children, in whose education both parents were heavily invested. At the end of the day this firebrand preacher and proponent of the Great Awakening of the eighteenth century, took off his jacket and wig and, smoking his pipe, devoted a full hour to his children and took them on trips with him individually.

What about Sarah though? It’s true, when he wasn’t preaching, Edwards was usually holed up with his books, but he often “read aloud to her from his skull-cracking sessions in his study,” recognizing her as his intellectual partner. (164) And Sarah knew he would reserve time for her alone away from the house, often spent horse-back riding.

Why is this Puritan Preacher called difficult then, as the book’s title would suggest? Actually, I get the impression he was more eccentric than harsh, more odd than obstinate at home as this quote suggests:

Edwards was less than helpful as a host, for he was still a light eater and would often finish his meal before the others did. He would then slip out to his study, returning to the table only when he was alerted that the others had finished and he was needed to preside over the grace which was always said at the end of meals as well as at the beginning. (56)

Peculiar in his eating habits, Edwards was also either eccentric or just being practical in recording his sermon notes. “He kept old bills and shopping lists, stitching them together into handmade notebooks in which he copied out his sermons on the unused side of the papers. Because his sermons were saved, we have a record of the everyday details of his family’s life together.” (31)

One reviewer comments that “Suffering was a part of Sarah’s life, too. Her husband’s brilliant mind and heart were never adequately recognized until shortly before his death. An insane man once spread false accusations about him.” Their teenage daughter Mary died of tuberculosis. Money was sometimes scarce.

Sarah herself went through a short period of mental breakdown, “nerves stretches like an over-tuned viola.” (72) Her support and comfort, Edwards persuaded her to take a trip to Boston with him, taking her away from the fish-bowl of the parish and the constant demands as mother and hostess to a steady stream of visiting preachers.

Nevertheless, Sarah herself a woman of heart, intellect and purpose maintained a contented home, a home that produced healthy, well-balanced children all of whom carried on the genius of their parents. As author Dodds implies, a trust in the living God runs as a common thread throughout Sarah’s life story, giving her strength to carry on.

Part II will answer the questions:

1. What kind of house-keeper was Sarah?

2. Why was their union called uncommon?

3. What were Edwards’ parting words to his wife?

* * *

Do these details about the Edwards’ marriage surprise you?

Is there an “uncommon union” in your family’s past? Your own history?

Mennonites at the Beach 1950s style

July 2, 2014August 24, 2014 marianbeaman23 Comments

Atlantic City, New Jersey was the beach mecca for vacationers on the East Coast in the early 1900s. Still dressed in fancy Victorian formality, vacationers caught the salt air as they strolled along the famous board-walk at the Steer Pier, a combination theatre and amusement park: “Rain or Shine … There’s Always a Good Show on Steel Pier” the saying goes. But for most Mennonites, the Steel Pier was an elegant building to ogle only. The theatre was worldly and therefore strictly forbidden by church rules.

But Mennonite families liked the ocean, including my own. Many summers Daddy took Mother and the family to Atlantic City or Ocean City, New Jersey for a day. Mother just loved the water. From the time she pulled on her white latex bathing cap over her bun and donned her black, satin bathing suit with a fluffy skirt, she was bobbing up and down in tune with the waves.

Daddy in his maroon, scratchy-wool, full-body suit was usually at the shore line yelling to her, “Waaatch ooouut for the un-der-tow!” By the end of the day, he was sun-burned and out of sorts, insisting on taking his thirsty, sandy-toed family straight home, a 3-hour drive. In spite of our protests, there was no stopping for a meal let alone an over-night stay in a motel. Daddy was much too frugal for that. Yet he’d dutifully come back for more next year.

Daddy tames the undertow and gets into the water--finally! — Daddy tames the undertow and finally gets into the water!

Uncle Leroy and Aunt Clara liked visits to Atlantic City too. I don’t remember them in bathing suits, but they liked riding the bicycle built for two on the boardwalk.

And so did my parents!

On a Bicycle Built for Two . . .

When Grandma Longenecker came to Florida the year our daughter Crista was born, she strolled Jacksonville Beach with plenty of sun-protection: black bandanna on top of her covering, caped dress, black stockings and black-heeled shoes, apparently enjoying herself.

What family vacations stand out as memorable, past or recent? The beach, the mountains, or some place else?

* * *

Coming next: Marriage to a Difficult Man: Parts I and II

Remembrance of Things Past: She Kept His Sweater

June 25, 2014June 25, 2014 marianbeaman38 Comments

Jane Martin Walters never attended a single Elizabethtown High School Class Reunion, and Dr. Norman P. Will no longer attends college graduations as a president emeritus at Florida State College at Jacksonville. Yet, they both linger in my memory though Jane died in her mid-twenties and Dr. Will in his late-fifties. I have vowed to get rid of memorabilia in anticipation of down-sizing one day, but I can’t – I just CAN’T – part with the pieces of paper that attach their memory to mine.

Jane was smart, very smart, and excelled in college prep track classes in high school. Unlike mine, her learning appeared to be effortless. And her home life quiet and orderly too. After a snow day off from school one winter Jane remarked that she loved snow days because her Mom would pop popcorn, and she and her family would sit by the fireplace and read or play games. In contrast, after the thrill of sledding on traffic-free roads passed, our house was noisy, no hearth for refuge in sight.

Jane and a note from my mother who saw her in Harrisburg at the MCC (Mennonite Central Committee) relief sale. — Jane and a note from my mother who saw her in Harrisburg at the MCC (Mennonite Central Committee) relief sale – 1960s

You might get the impression I felt envious. But I didn’t. Jane was poised on a pedestal in my eyes, and I admired what appeared to be her calm cadence through life. When I heard she married and worked at the Library of Congress in the Congressional Reference Department, I was pleased. Maybe I’d visit her in Washington D. C. some day. But some day never came. She died of cancer shortly after after her marriage and at the beginning of a promising career. Aunt Ruthie told me, “She ate a nice dinner with her family, said her goodbyes and died in her sleep that night.” I was devastated.

* * *

I admired Dr. Norm Will too, though in a vastly different way. An English professor had become a college president: All’s right with the world! College operations purred along smoothly with Dr. Will at the helm. He advocated free thought, offering friendly evening colloquia for faculty on diverse topics like current ideas in neuroscience and the health of Florida’s St. Johns River. But on the first day of Convocation in 2005, Dr. Will did not appear. He had died the night before while sipping wine and reading The History of God by Karen Armstrong, a text I later happened to reference in my paper for The Oxford Roundtable.

In her piece “Dealing with the Dead” (The New Yorker, October 11, 2010), Jennifer Egan discusses the deaths of three close family members and observes that she has kept an article of clothing from each: her grandmother’s 3-tiered necklace of fake pearls, her father’s navy-blue wool V-neck sweater, and her stepfather’s gray and burgundy argyle sweater. Though the pearls eventually broke as she rounded a corner in the East Village, Jennifer vows to wear the sweaters “until they unravel into shreds” because she likes their feel against her skin. Author Egan shares wisdom gained from loss as she opines:

“Wearing the garments of a person I loved was like being wrapped in a protective force field.”
“When the clock stops on a life, all things emanating from it become precious, finite, and cordoned off for preservation.”
Keeping items from those who have passed on “is a way of keeping them engaged in life’s daily transactions—in other words, alive.” [Italics mine.]

I will add a quotation of my own from Shakespeare’s King Richard III: So wise so young, they say, do never live long.” And then from Scripture:

“So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” Psalm 90:12 KJV

* * *

Have you experienced loss? Is your story like any of the stories I tell or very different? Here’s the place to share it.

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