Still Here

Just a note to let you know I am still around

Eat Our Chicken Because We Are Bigots

I just saw the saddest post on Facebook by some young boy just starting out in the world who is in support of a restaurant who is opposed to homosexuality.  “Chick Filet” or whatever it is called.  I don’t know – I have never eaten there and now I am relatively certain I never will.

What sort of religion is built on judging and excluding others?  Jesus loved everybody and embraced people who lived in ways that differed from his own life.  From what I know of true Christianity, Jesus would not be in support of the Chick Filet agenda of using this type of forum to hurt others. 

The trouble is that people pick and choose the portions of the bible that support their own agendas.  There are many other scriptures that most Christians just skim through and purposely never notice.  “Hey, buy the chickens we killed.  Our food is better because we are bigots.”  They support murder, which is one of the commandments, but they don’t support love simply because it doesn’t match their own personal experience.  This is nothing new.  We have had this with Apartheid and we have had this with suffrage.     

I have gone to church most of my life and consider myself to know my bible better than the average person.  If I was going to carry one positive thing away from the bible and the Christian religion, it would be the importance of loving one another.

When people attack the gay population, they are rejecting some of the people that I have come to consider some of the most Christian people I have known.  Volunteering at XXXXX, I have gotten to know some very caring good-hearted people who are doing much more than many churches for the poor and needy. 

If you could observe the type of conversations between the church members and then observe the conversations between my volunteers (Many who are gay) I think you would agree which is the more productive population.

I just don’t feel like I can belong to a church or a religion (or a chicken stand) that doesn’t allow gays.  Personally, I think people who bash the gay population are stupid.  They probably know somebody who is gay, maybe a friend or a relative who they are simply unaware about.

Really, sex is such a small part of life anyway.  I feel the same way about both the heterosexual and homosexual populations:  I don’t care and don’t want to see it.  How can it be so bad from a religious point of view though if it is about loving another person?

The gay population is not trying to recruit you into being gay - they simply want the right to be who they are and the right to love who they love without having to hide.

Stop worrying about your “Christian duty” to stop the gays and spreading hate, and instead, start doing something productive and loving.     

Stroller Full of Babies

It is strange to think of some of the things and people which influence who a person becomes. I just read an obituary about a woman who used to live in our town and I’ll bet nobody has any idea how she influenced who I am today.
She owned the first double stroller I ever saw. Not many people had double strollers in the 1960s, so it was impressive to see her going for walks with three small healthy blue-eyed blonde children born less than a year apart. She’d go walking through town with her babies in the stroller and it looked like so much fun. She’d see people she knew and stop to talk to them while her kids waited in the stroller.
She was a tiny woman, almost on the verge of being a considered a midget. She was a smiling, young tiny person and looked more like a child playing with a dolly stroller full of toys than a real mother.
Logically, I know nowafter having children that she must have gone home to a busy evening of thankless work. There is no way to have three young children in diapers and not be worn out. She hid it so well, as she walked smiling with a carefree attitude like a parade of baby colored patterns on wheels.
I must have been about seven years old, but she made an impression on me. “I want that” I thought. I wanted to have several children in a stroller and enjoy thoughtless afternoons of tarrying along, taking time to notice nature’s flowers, trees, and little road animals.
I was never as passionate about anything as much as the idea of being a mother. Something about her joy made a lasting impression on me. I’m sure as the years went by, I must have forgotten what originally inspired me, but the feeling I had as I watch her, lived on inside me around every corner of a new experience. I continued to think about the day I could push a stroller full of babies down the neighborhood street.

The Funeral Rose

Each of the siblings removed a single rose from our mother’s casket to keep. I picked a white rose. As I watched them lower the casket into the ground I thought to myself, “Of all the wisdom, material possessions, and many other things my mother gave me, this will be the last thing I ever receive from her”. I was going to let the rose dry out and then place it into a small vase, out of the reach of small children, where I could look at the flower and remember my mother. When visitors would ask about the rose, I could explain how great of a person she had been.
I was wrapped up in my own sorrow too much to realize that my children were going through their own grief at having lost a grandmother.
One day when I returned home from work, I noticed the rose was missing from the little vase. “Where is my rose?!” I cried in a panic.
My son told me, “It is outside in the back yard”.
I raced outside, looking around the yard until I found my mother’s lovely white rose buried in the mud. I started crying. “Why did you take my rose outside? What were you thinking? That was mine! It is the last thing I will ever have from her! You make me so angry sometimes!”
He looked at me with innocent eyes and answered, “I was going to plant it, so there would be a whole bush of white roses growing from Grandma’s rose. I wanted to surprise you with a rose bush full of white flowers so you could remember Grandma that way.”
I thought of how my mother’s love – a single white rose, had spread to so many other people. Her love became like a full bush of beautiful white roses for others to enjoy. It suddenly occurred to me how appropriate my son’s gesture seemed. Love isn’t something you stick in a far-away spot and keep for yourself until a rare insightful guest notices and asks about it. Love is something to grow and share with others. It keeps multiplying itself onto others till it is its own endless supply.

My New Bike

I guess I have to face it. Times have changed. I just looked out the back window and saw my son’s bike lying in the cluttered yard covered in freezing snow. What gives? We have a garage you know.

When I went to work as a secretary, the first paycheck I received, I took my son to the store to pick out that bike, remembering how much my bike meant to me when I was a barefoot twelve-year-old in cut-off shorts.

I had different bikes when I was small: The neighbor’s little-bitty hand-me-down bike and a bike that the school janitor rebuilt from old used broken bikes that had belonged to other children in town. My sister used to drive me into the country on her handlebars.

My sister had worked hard all her life while attending school and caring for me while my mother worked long hours away from home. Because my mother spent so much time away from home, she tried to overcompensate when she was home by controlling all of my activities and behaviors. That doesn’t work so well once a child turns twelve. I felt a real need for independence.

My sister had graduated high school and gotten her first full time job. She was enjoying her weekend and asked if I would like to ride with her into the city where she would buy herself a bike. We looked at bikes of all colors and sizes. Ten-speed bikes had just become the big rage and few children owned one. I doubted I would ever have one. I was used to seeing other children receive nice things and was contented with my antique-fangled oldies. Joan picked out a boy’s red, white and blue bike. Okay, let’s go. However, she continued to hover around the bikes, looking at the different brands.

“What do you think of this green Coast King bike?” She asked.

“I like the green one because it is a girl’s bike, but I also like the boy’s red, white and blue bike.” I told her.

She began rolling both bikes to the front of the store, and nonchalantly told me she was buying the green bike for me. I kept looking at her, not knowing what to say. I didn’t argue with her. I almost didn’t believe it.

I had no idea at the time, but that bike became the biggest part of my summer. I rode it every day and I was so excited that I could ride into the country. Sometimes, I’d pack a sack lunch and ride into the country and eat my sandwich. I put a radio in the basket in order to have tunes as I traveled. I became very good at driving without hands. The bike gave me such a feeling of independence that I needed badly at that age.

Our St, Bernard dog bit a hole in the seat when I was fifteen, but I just replaced seat and kept on riding. I still had that same bike when I was thirty-two, until it was stolen.

My sister didn’t have to buy me that bike. Ten-speed bikes were expensive in those days and I’m sure she could have spent that money on many items for herself, but that’s just not Joan.

Technology Much?

When it comes to taking advantage of new technologies, I am as guilty as the next person. One of my favorite activities is cuddling with a good movie on television in the evenings. I check my Facebook comments a few times each day. I especially like the security of being able to call people on my cellphone from basically anywhere.

However, I can’t help but to wonder if we have lost something in the process of our technological gains. Nobody plays the piano anymore. It’s quite sad. Whatever happened to the days when men would play chess with friends accompanied by a talented pianist while mother washed dishes by hand in the kitchen with obedient daughters? Where are all the children who used to play outside happily until sunset?

Sometimes I get a hankering to eat my dinner at a long lace-covered oak dining-room table set surrounded by family. I miss how we used to take our time eating dinner at the table and then laughing and having long conversations afterwards. I miss the days of scabby-kneed farm-wives in aprons and their chicken-cackle laughter. Long gone are the days when you could tell the good guys from the bad guys by whether or not they attended church. Clean jokes are “cheesy” and the only jokes anybody laughs at anymore are the obscene ones.

Now days, the kids eat as quickly as possible in order to get back to their video games. They can go the entire summer without ever having the slightest hint of a tan. Most husbands I know share their attention between the television screen and the laptop computer screen, nodding occasionally without sharing eye contact with any human.

Sometimes we are all in the same room, yet nobody is talking to each other because we can’t tear ourselves away from latest gadget. I shouldn’t blame the laptop computer though, because before it was the computer, it was the television. Before it was the television, it was the radio. Before it was the radio, it was an exciting book – and the video game bone is connected to the pinball machine bone . . .

We’ve watched too many comedies where the parents are idiots. The teen star always knows more than the adult, and the television parents are at the mercy of the child’s approval. How did we get the TV families mixed up with our real life? When did fathers quit meeting with their adult friends in order to drink and tell dirty jokes with their sons?

It upsets me because I still think children need to be led by the parents. I should write a book about this, but I can’t right now because my favorite show is on.

Osmond Brother Concert

My sister and I recently had an opportunity to watch the Osmond Brothers perform live in Burlington, Iowa. It was an event I will never forget.

When I found out the Osmond Brothers were performing nearby, I knew I HAD to see them. After all, my sister, Joan and I had been following their career since before we were teens. I called her as soon as I found out, and we were on the phone together, while she excitedly ordered the tickets online within minutes of them going on sale. I felt like a teenager. We exchanged many phone calls throughout the following weeks, talking about what we were going to wear to the concert, what memorabilia we hoped to buy, and wondered if we might speak with the Osmonds or have a picture taken with them. I brought extra money because I heard that it cost $40.00 to have a picture taken with the Osmonds.

We arrived early on the day of the concert, and watched multitudes of excited fifty-year-old Osmond-struck women as they filled the lobby. There was an instant comradely with the other women at the concert. Each woman I saw, I found myself thinking, “She must have been one of the good kids at school when she was little”. We were all there because we loved the Osmonds and recognized true talent. What a performance it was! They sang, danced, played instruments, told jokes and relived old stories.

I always preferred Jay, because of his squinty eyes, but now at the concert I liked Wayne because of his sense of humor, no wait, I liked Merle because of his high voice. Watching the energy of the Osmonds on the stage was amazing. They were men nearing their sixties, with the same enthusiasm, get-up-and-go and talent as their younger days. During a portion of the concert, they went into the audience in order to shake hands with people. As soon as Jay came through the curtain, I stretched out my hand. After he shook it, I wondered how long I could go without washing my hands.

After the concert, we were stampeded back out into the lobby in a large, slow-moving crowd. We searched for any sign of an Osmond along with hundreds of other fans. I had hoped to have an opportunity to take a picture of my sister with the Osmond Brothers, but it looked as if it would not happen. There were no Osmonds in sight. We thought we’d hit the bathroom before we headed home and when one of the other fans who we had visited with before the concert came in, I asked how she enjoyed the concert.

“I just had my picture taken with Jay”, she said. My sister quickly washed her hands and we burst back out into the lobby. I could tell where Jay was, because there was a pinwheel of people tightly spiraling out from his location. We nudged through the cluster, elbows and hips touching against other people in the crowd.

“I just need a picture of my sister with Jay” I explained, as we weaved through the pack. Finally, we reached him.

“Can you sign this and this?” Joan said, and to my surprise, Jay was friendlier than I ever imagined. He was smiling politely, hugging people and shaking hands. He signed Joan’s memorabilia and I began clicking off pictures before she stood beside him. They weren’t even charging money to take pictures! He put his arm around her and posed for my picture. It was like a release of several years of waiting.

“I just want to tell you, Jay. You are wholesome, pure, decent people, just like our family.” I blurted. Gee, that didn’t come out quite right. I knew what I meant though and I think he did too.

Because life was difficult when Joan and I were little, we didn’t have much, but we had music. My sister could sing many different types of music from opera to Negro spirituals. Joan started working when she was just a teenager, and whenever a new Osmond was released, she’d spend some of the money she earned working at the store to buy Osmond records. She’d play them over and over again on her little battery-operated record player. Joan would sing harmony with the Osmond records, and I often thought to myself, if the Osmonds could have heard her singing, they would certainly have added her to their group. We’d talk about which songs were our favorites. We knew the words to every album they put out. Whenever she had a Tiger Beat or 16 Magazine, she’d look for an Osmond poster to tape on her bedroom wall. We felt connected to them. We’d watch the Osmonds on The Andy Williams Show on our old black and white family television set in the living room. Luckily, it was on one of the three station signals that our roof antennae picked up.

My brother-in-law brought over their old stereo, and Joan and I couldn’t wait for Mom to leave for work the next day, so we could blast the sound of the Osmond Brothers throughout the entire house. It was good music - clean, with an innocent message.

Seeing the live concert confirmed these beliefs I held about them all through the years and only increased my respect for them. In the end, the Osmonds have stayed decent and G-rated. That is no easy task.