Category Archives: Parenting

Young Love (#86)

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September 1, 1969

 

Nate and I were getting closer to the start of a new school year in Champaign – him is law school, me as a teacher. After a double birthday party in Wilmette for my brother Tom and our Dad, the next event was seeing Tom off to college in the East. He had transferred from Wheaton to American University and would be driving to Washington DC the day after his party. We wouldn’t see him again until Thanksgiving.

Bye bye TomMom was clearly having trouble letting go – her baby, a first son, the boy who’d arrived after doctors said “no more,” the child born on her husband’s 50th birthday. Her words were that Tom wasn’t ready to launch, but the truth? She wasn’t ready.

Tom was thrilled to be spreading his wings. After a breakfast together, we waved him off, and I wondered how Mom would cope. When he’d been a Wheaton student, she’d made frequent visits to his campus 25 miles from home. She would do his laundry, bring his favorite foods, drive him home for weekends – in other words, continue as a strong presence. Now there would be 1000 miles between them, and it was a blow to her.

I didn’t understand that at all. It wasn’t as if she didn’t have anything to do.

Bible study girls.She was the every-week organist at Moody Church (two Sunday services, Wednesday prayer meetings, Thursday choir practices). She ran 4 children’s choirs. She cooked dinner at the church for over 100 people every week and taught a Sunday school class of high school girls (left). She hosted a young people’s Bible study at her house.

The church was 45 minutes from home, but that didn’t stop her from driving there repeatedly each week to practice on the 4-keyboard organ, nor did it keep her from attending many other church meetings – such as Missionaides, a group that sewed for missionaries. Each week en route to that, she’d pick up a crowd of elderly ladies who wanted to go but didn’t drive.

Kids galore.She accompanied at scores of weddings and funerals, entertained weekly at home, welcomed youth groups for their socials (right), and spent time memorizing entire books of the Bible. (That was why she kept pages of Scripture rubber-banded to her steering wheel.)

Mom was also managing the redecorating of their new home, painting every room herself. She was shopping for carpeting, drapes, appliances, and furniture with the goal of having it all in place before our November wedding.

Oh… and she was planning that wedding. With everything else going on, it had sunk to the bottom of her long list, and as it turned out, mine, too. Nate and I were on the verge of moving out of town when it finally dawned on me why my parents had wanted us to wait a year before getting married. But it was too late to worry about that now.

UnloadingNext on our agenda was to load up again, clock those 156 miles back to Champaign, unload (with law school friends, left), and prepare for a new school year.

As for the wedding? It would come together eventually…. somehow.

“Nothing will be impossible with God.” (Luke 1:37)

Young Love (#74)

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July 30, 1969

Moving van leavesAfter a moving van had delivered the grand piano, the organ, and all the other large furniture to Mom and Dad’s new house, all of us were emotionally and physically weary.

 

Tired packers

Everybody was looking forward to a good night’s sleep (though I don’t recall where Nate and I actually slept that night), but we decided to wait for Mom and Dad to arrive. When they didn’t come and didn’t come, we began to worry.

Finally, well after midnight, their car pulled into the drive. And when we saw Mom, we knew she had hit a low point. Her eyes were swollen and red from crying – this from a Mom I’d seen cry only twice in my life (once over a niece’s death, and once concerning a church problem).

As soon as they stepped in the door, I held up our “WELCOME HOME” sign, hoping it would cheer her. But it did just the opposite. She burst into tears, throwing her arms around me and saying something like, “God bless you for thinking of your old mother, darling.”

Knowing she was desperate for sleep, we led her into their new bedroom. We had made the bed and turned down the sheets, laying out their fanciest PJs. Candles were burning, music was playing, and we’d put a photo of us 3 kids on the dresser. We were shooting for humor — and as I watched her face, I did see the corners of her mouth turn up a tad, even as tears continued to fall.

Back yardBut poor Dad. His moving decision had been based on logic, as all his decisions were, knowing that empty-nesters didn’t need 5000 square feet of living space. Surely he felt bad watching Mom take it so hard, but having lived with her for 30 years at that point, he knew she would rally. He often said, “Your Ma is an optimist,” and that she was.

Though I had never read Mom’s 1969 journal until I dug it out this week, I was gratified to see what she’d written about that night:

MARGARET RISES TO STAND! BLESS DEAR BABY ANN! [her nickname for me] CARL AND I ARRIVED 1140 [new address] PAST MIDNIGHT, COMPLETELY EXHAUSTED AND EMOTIONIALLY DRAINED. OUR NEW BEDROOM WAS ALL IN ORDER, BEDS MADE WITH GLAMOROUS LINENS, OUR SEXIEST GOWNS LAID OUT, CANDLELIGHT, MUSIC PLAYING, THE CHILDREN’S PICTURE ON THE DRESSER, AND A WELCOME SIGN ON DOOR. Dear, dear Margaret.

After midnight.

I knew when the sun rose, Mom would feel better and would be able to start tackling the wall-to-wall boxes in her living room. What none of us could have guessed, though, was that she had pocketed a front door key to the old house and had already made plans to return there the next day.

Before she could officially say goodbye, she had some unfinished business to tend to.

“May grace and peace be multiplied to you…” (2 Peter 1:2)

Young Love (#73)

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July 28-30, 1969

It was the end of July, and our days were crowded with moving tasks as we raced to beat the arrival of the moving van. An orderly transition was complicated by the fact that Mom and Dad’s new, smaller home needed redecorating… and kitchen remodeling… before they could settle in. Though we were gradually filling the rooms with boxes and furniture, nothing would be put in order until much later.

Sale dayMom kept her emotions at bay as she directed traffic in emptying the house. She hadn’t expected the sale to happen so fast, which is evident in her journal. Two months previously, on the day the house sold, she did some positive self-talking. “We know God led in this, every step of the way. With the added time, strength, and money, may it all be to His glory.”

She referred to selling “the house” but not “our home.” Mom believed the old adage, “Home is where the heart is,” and was hoping her heart would quickly catch up to her change of address. And then she wrote,

“Change and decay in all around we see.

Oh Thou who changeth not, abide with me (us).”

The folksMom knew she would eventually adjust to the change, but it was going to take time. Meanwhile, moving day was difficult. Ever the gregarious hostess, she had made friends with the new buyers before it was time to turn over the keys, and in the two months between contract-signing and possession, she’d invited them over repeatedly — for lemonade in the yard, for lunch in the dining room, to take measurements, and to snap pictures of what would soon be their home. I think Mom literally wanted to keep her foot in the door.

The day before the move, Mom had no time to make journal notes except to write, “Feverishly working!”

That evening our next-door-neighbors invited all of us over to their place for a nourishing dinner with all the trimmings, giving us a chance to reminisce about our happy history as neighbors. And when the moving van pulled in the next morning, we were ready.

All except Mom.

Moving Day.

Movers loaded the truck all morning and then pulled away toward the smaller house on the other side of town. Most of us followed to supervise the move-in, but Mom and Dad lingered at the old place, ostensibly to clean. She wrote in her journal, “We depart, sorrowfully, 708 [our address], but with grateful hearts for the hours spent here. This, and all our homes, are gifts from God.”

Sorrowful

Those of us at the new house thought it best to stay there till they arrived. While we waited, we made a brightly colored poster with a big, cheerful “WELCOME HOME!” on it. But when midnight came and they still hadn’t appeared, we began to worry.

“There is a time for every matter under heaven… a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-2)