Category Archives: Thankfulness

Newlywed Love (#20)

Posted on by

January 15, 1970

The month was half over, and it was time to establish another tradition: the burning of the Christmas tree. My family had done that almost every year, and it was always a festive evening.

StairwayNate and I walked two floors down and knocked on the door of friendly neighbors in our building. Fred and Alice were a sweet elderly couple who had been kind to us from the day we moved in. I remember Nate shaking hands with the old man the day we met. “So,” he said, “what do you do?”

Alice answered for her husband. “I have no idea what he does now, but he was a bank examiner when I married him.” Then they both laughed. Nate and I found that statement to be a charming commentary on a happy marriage and quoted it to each other often after that, always remembering Fred and Alice.

When we asked if we could borrow a saw, they wanted to know what we were sawing. “Our Christmas tree,” Nate said. “We’re going to burn it in the fireplace tonight.” Fred and Alice’s apartment was the identical layout to ours, but we doubted they’d ever used their fireplace. It looked pretty clean.

“Well,” said the old man, “don’t burn the building down. It would be a disappointment if we had to move.”

well used sawThey sent us off with a well-used saw and a plateful of yummy brownies topped with powdered sugar – wonderful examples of warm hospitality.

Back upstairs, it was easy to dismantle the tree – two ornaments and one string of lights. The sum total of our Christmas decorations fit nicely into a shoebox. And then it was time to make a big fire.

The previous August, when we had been hunting for a rental apartment, we had narrowed it down to two possibilities: one had a swimming pool, the other a fireplace. We agonized over the choice, but the fireplace won out.

Since even before Nate and I had married, we’d had fun scrounging the neighborhood and local forest preserves for pieces of firewood and kept our stash in the basement storeroom that came with the apartment – a rough-hewn closet 3 feet by 5 feet. Other than a couple of suitcases, we didn’t have much to store, so it was perfect for our collection of wood. And we made cozy fires almost every evening.

Burning the treeOnce we  had Fred’s saw, Nate set to work dismembering our brittle tree, then stuffing the fireplace full of branches. When he touched it with a match, however, neither of us were prepared for the size of the flames that roared to life and filled the fireplace with an angry orange blaze top-to-bottom and side-to-side – a situation dangerously close to being out of control.

Nate shouted, “Get a bowl of water!” (We didn’t own a bucket.) Thankfully, with the screen and a couple of fireplace tools, we were able to control things just enough to keep flames from leaping out onto the hardwood floor. Once everything calmed, we sawed the tree into smaller hunks and moved a little slower.

After all, we didn’t want to be the reason our downstairs neighbors had to move!

“A prudent person foresees danger and takes precautions.” (Proverbs 22:3)

Newlywed Love (#19)

Posted on by

January 10, 1970

Now that Mom and Dad were fully recuperated from the back-to-back stresses of our wedding and Christmas, they turned their focus to our nearly-bare apartment in Champaign. Long ago they had asked if we wanted some of the furniture they couldn’t fit into their new, smaller home. We didn’t think twice.

Mom wrote that a small moving van would arrive by the end of the week. When the truck came, we couldn’t wait to see what was inside.

FurnitureIt turned out to be a table and chairs, a dining room “breakfront” with drawers on the bottom and shelves on the top, a couple of lamps, a set of book shelves, a plant stand, a living room chair with the promise of another one coming later, a round hassock, and an end table.

Mom also sent her sewing machine, just on loan, so I could make a few things – maybe a tablecloth and napkins (I was good at straight edges) and possibly some simple, A-line skirts.

New furnitureOnce we arranged all this furniture, our apartment began to look home-y. We decided to celebrate by inviting friends John and Cathy for dinner. Though I had no confidence that I could produce a good meal, I thought of a way to avoid cooking altogether.

We would unpack a couple of our new fondue pots, and each of us could use the long forks to cook our own. I did have confidence in my veggie-chopping/meat-cutting skills, so with a little hot oil in the pot, our guests could do the rest. Even dessert could be managed fondue-style with cut-up fruit and a pot of melted chocolate.

I bought some fabric and made a gold tablecloth (i.e. hemmed the edges and put a seam right down the middle). Napkins for each of us completed the set. Thanks to our generous wedding guests, we now had plenty of silverware, plates, and glasses. So setting the table for our very first company felt just like playing house.

First dinner guestsThe evening was a success, and the 4 of us sat at the table “cooking” for several hours – fun with fondue. Cathy and John had just put their wedding invitations in the mail the week before, and when they wished out loud for a fondue pot of their own, Nate assured them they’d have one by the end of the month. We’d received 5 of them, and if their wedding gifts didn’t follow suit, they could have a couple of ours.

Well after midnight, as Nate and I did the dishes, we rated the evening A+ and talked about who to invite next. Many of his law school friends were far from home and would love a home-cooked meal – even if they had to cook it themselves.

We had our doubts, though, about Nate’s parents, who planned to spend the last weekend in January with us. Would they embrace the fondue system? Nate suggested I make a more traditional meal, something nicer, but I wasn’t sure he knew the magnitude of what he was asking.

“Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.” (1 Peter 4:9)

Newlywed Love (#18)

Posted on by

January 5, 1970

On January 5th, both Nate and I started back to school, and it wasn’t easy shifting away from our tranquil time together at the apartment. But we both admitted the reason it had been so special was that we knew it couldn’t last. After thanking God for our first month of marriage, we moved back into the world of law school and 1st grade.

1st gradeWhen the horn beeped for me in front of our apartment building that Monday morning, it was still dark out. But I scampered down the steps, eager to see my driving buddies, and was glad to jump into Judy’s warm car on a bitter cold day. After we’d picked up Linda for our 40 mile commute, we had fun sharing all that had happened over our Christmas breaks.

In our classrooms, the children wanted to do the same. My students and I all laughed as they competed to be heard, stretching their hands high in the air with gusto. “Oooo! Me! Me! Choose me!”

Show and Tell was dominated by new toys and tales of joyful holiday adventures, and I was reminded again how much fun it was to have so many children in my life. Their joy was contagious, and by the 3:00 bell, I was feeling grateful for such a pleasurable job.

Principal Scarce poked his head into my classroom that Monday afternoon, letting me know he was in the process of scheduling teacher evaluations. Mine, he said, would be the following week. “How does that work?” I said.

He told me he would arrive unannounced to my room, observe my teaching for a while, then fill out a form rating me. He would study my lesson plan book, inspect our room (and cloak room), and chat with the children.

Evaluation

Following that observation day, he would arrange for a one-on-one meeting to go over the results. I would sign and date the form, as would he, and the results would go into my permanent file.

This was new to me – and sounded like a threat. The Chicago Public Schools hadn’t evaluated us at all, though I had to remind myself they were in emergency mode when I began teaching. As they scrambled to find enough classrooms and put an adult in charge of each one, my guess is they intended to do evaluations but other things pressed harder.

When I got home that evening, I told Nate about the evaluations. The whole thing was unnerving, especially since I still wasn’t officially certified as a teacher. Both Judy and Linda had majored in education, and their paperwork was in order. Just having a degree in literature, I was the only teacher at McKinley on probationary status.

Since Nate had one more year of law school, I would need permission to teach again. If I couldn’t teach, what then? What other job could possibly support us?

As Nate and I talked it over, he spoke words of praise about how much the children loved me, but nothing he said could talk me down from my fears. Surely Mr. Scarce hadn’t forgotten the day Judy, Linda, and I had decided teacher training sessions weren’t important enough to attend.

Of the 3 of us, though, I was the most expendable.

“[She] will not fear bad news; [her] heart is confident, trusting in the Lord.” (Psalm 112:7)