My Australian friend Ganeida has won this month’s giveaway, a wonderful Radio Theatre production of The Hiding Place, the story of Corrie ten Boom and her family during World War II.

Michael and I have listened to this set twice now, and I can’t recommend it enough.

Ganeida, if you’ll e-mail me your mailing address, I’ll make sure your package is on the next boat to your island! Thank you also to Carey, Jessica and Sharon for your comments.  🙂

My friend Carey and I were chatting recently about the pummeling a menopausal woman’s memory takes. My other friend Sue calls these frustrating mid-life memory lapses “Senior Moments.”  I live by the written word now that I’m old approaching my autumn years…by God’s written Word, by the written words on my calendar, and by the words on my Day Planner. Because if it’s not written down, it doesn’t get done.

My mother used to tell me I had a photographic memory, and I’m finding lately that her words are absolutely true: I can look at an old photo and recall things about the people, time and location that are a little freaky. But if you ask me if I made a deposit yesterday or when Michael’s next Physical Therapy appointment is, I may not be able to tell you unless I look at my notes.

As we move at a snail’s pace toward listing our house for sale, I’m going through things when I have extra time. I found this old class picture in a bin of photos. It’s from my sixth grade class at Workman Avenue Elementary School in Southern California. Miss Nancy Curry was our teacher and I just loved her. She was encouraging and strict and had a good sense of humor and pronounced the South American country VEN-zoo-AY-la instead of VEN-ez-WAY-la. Isn’t it fascinating the details that our memories bring back to us to savor?

Below is the photo (click to enlarge), and the names of my classmates and what I could remember about them:

Back row from left:

Mark Sartain (quiet and tall but could be goofy), Anthony LoPiccolo (tall and side kick of Kevin O, my first crush), Bill Butler (great athlete even in primary grades), Sheryl Reagan (taller than I, flustered, kind), Bernice Something (was there for one year – moved frequently, had a southern drawl), Moi (this was the only year I wasn’t the tallest girl in the class), Denise Bailes (never stood for the pledge of allegiance because she was a Jehovah’s Witness), David Uphill (smart and a bit nerdy).

Second row from top, from left:

Irwin Fast (Jewish, attended Hebrew school, asked lots of girls to go steady), Armando Galindo, (nice, made a diorama of a volcano with cotton for the puff of smoke) Barbara Benuska (reed-thin, had adult like cursive handwriting I coveted), Can’t Remember, Suzanne Dunnicliff (a friendly girl who lived one street over from me), Gary White (class clown with a unique and contagious quack-like laugh), Laurie Keene (gracious and poised for her age, swift runner), Elaine Rampley (outspoken, friendly and practical).

Third row from top, from left:

Robert Eskew (quiet, nice and had a slight lisp), Jimmy Lange (sanguine and often smiling), Leslie Cortellessa (had incredible handwriting and was one of the faster runners), Kristi Hathaway (was a good friend, we went to Sunday School together, bowled together, and she was an amazing swimmer), Lisa Something, Jeannie Wren (had a pool, was giggly and friendly), Scott Molina (wiry and small, he died in a car accident a few years later).

Front row, from left:

Doug Kerner (the shortest boy in the class, friendly and made people laugh), Glenn Mills (one of the bad boys), Carl Rowe (had a pool, was athletic and always smiling), Laura Kopaz (shy and very kind), Ricky Bowe (sophisticated for his age, the subject of many girls’ attentions), Peggy Donohue (shy and very sweet), Can’t Remember, Miss Nancy Curry (one of my favorite teachers at Workman Elementary).

I wonder where some of these people are now. Maybe Google will lead them here and they’ll be able to say hello.

It’s strange how the memory lets the current whereabouts of important documents and the dates of important anniversaries fall through the holes in the mind’s sieve, but never lets go of details like Barbara Benuska’s uniform handwriting, Gary White’s laugh, and the way Miss Curry said Venezuela.

Do you remember odd (and seemingly pointless) details too?

If you do, will you share a few here?

One person will be randomly chosen from those who leave comments, and will receive a brand new Radio Theatre production of The Hiding Place, a magnificently dramatized version of one of my favorite books. To hear a very short audio clip, click here.

Comments will be taken until Tuesday morning (June 14th) at 10:00 a.m., and the winner will be announced later that day! If you’ve won something here before, that’s okay…go ahead and try again!

Happy, quirky memories to you…

I have been a medium ash blonde most of my life. If you had asked me to define that term when I was young I couldn’t have done it. But now I can proudly say that I’m able to explain this to anyone who asks, even though no one does:  ash blondes have cooler blonde shades to their hair, often with a grayish cast to it, hence the word ash. Someone can be a very light ash blonde, like many Scandinavians are naturally. And someone can be a dark ash blonde, which is what my hair grew to be after I started having children in 1977. I have no idea how the uterus signals the hair follicles on the head to start producing darker hair once a child has been born, but it does, take my word for it. This covert utero/follicular communication has taken place in many women I know who’ve had children, and most don’t appreciate it. If we wanted our hair to get darker, we would dye it darker.

After a few years of having dark ash blonde (aka light brown) hair, two of the first friends I made when I moved to Minnesota, Kathy Harju and Connie Lippitt, talked me into having my hair frosted. In fact, they were willing to do it for me. Frosting consists of putting a plastic cap with tiny holes all over it, securely on your head, pulling tiny strands of hair through said holes with a toothpick-sized metal crochet hook, smearing hair bleach all over those pulled-through strands, and then washing it all out when the desired result is achieved. One of the benefits of frosting one’s hair is that only some of your hair becomes damaged and crispy, rather than all of it when one uses an at-home system from a bottle. I was surprisingly pleased with the result of having my hair first lightly frosted in 1983, and kept having it done every six months for years. It made my hair look closer to the shade it had been before my uterus started blabbing to my scalp.

But apparently in the new millennium, frosted hair became passé. Warmer, golden blonde hair became the trend, not the cooler, grayer, ash blonde. My three grown daughters would occasionally diplomatically drop hints about how it was time for me to come into the 21st century and stop frosting my hair, and that I should have my stylist put some warm tones in the highlights the next time I had it done, etc. They said that when my hair was frosted, it looked light blondish gray, not light grayish blonde.

I’m 53 years old and had grown a small streak of real, silvery gray in the front of my hair, and I kind of liked it. I didn’t like it enough to let my whole head look like that, but I didn’t mind a little silver at my temples when the months between visits to the salon went by.

Anyway, before I get to the tremendously tragic point of this post, I just want to say that I’m pretty sure most of you know what I’m talking about when I say ash blonde versus golden blonde, but just in case you’re one of my Taiwanese or Estonian readers (yes), here’s the difference between the two:

Ash blonde hair

Golden blonde hair

So yesterday I went for my three times a year visit to the salon. I told my lovely and experienced stylist Bobbie that my three daughters had reached a consensus, and they had agreed not to do an intervention on me if I would try some warmer highlights in my hair. That last sentence is only partly false. Evidently at one time my daughters actually talked amongst themselves about staging a hair intervention on me! Can you believe that? The mother who labored and birthed them in pain and travail with no pain medication whatsoever, the one who nursed each of them almost until they went to kindergarten, and now they’re conspiring against my frosted hair! These are nervy girls, I’ll tell you.

The strange thing is, I think Bobbie agreed with my daughters. She smiled and nodded and acted like she really approved, and proceeded to pile up strips of foil, brought out some bowls and brushes and began mixing colors. No more cap and crochet hook for me.

Two hours later I drove home with a very short cut (I’ll save the reason I keep opting for short hair for another post) and what I thought was now stylish, more in vogue, golden blonde hair.

Imagine my stupefaction when I turned on the downstairs bathroom light to peer in the mirror and found that my hair was now orange. Not orangey red like Anne Shirley of Prince Edward Island. But a light, bright-ish orange.

The first thing I thought of was this:

As I looked in the mirror I called out to Michael, “My hair is orange. It looks like the color of a fox.” He came in to look and I asked him, “Don’t you think my hair is the color of a fox?” Michael inspected carefully and then answered, “A little.”

I then texted this message to all three of my daughters at once:

“My hair is orange.”

Sara texted back, “Oh dear! I’m on my way home.” No doubt she was preparing how to best encourage me how to have it fixed, trying to think of the words to reassure me that it didn’t look that bad, etc.

Sharon texted back her sympathy and asked if I was certain it was orange. Yes, I said. It’s orange.

Like the skin of an apricot:

Like a tangerine. Like an Orange Julius. Like a chewable Vitamin C.

Like the color of a Creamsicle.

Sharon texted back that she was positive it wasn’t like that, that the solution to my problem was finding better lighting.

I was undeterred. I texted my children and told them their mother now had hair the color of a tiger:

(And the expression on my face wasn’t too far off from this either.)

So I took a photo of my hair with my cell phone and sent it on, and was assured by my daughters that there was nothing wrong with my hair color, the problem was with my eyes. Carolyn came over yesterday and said she didn’t think my hair was orange but that she did think I was a bit crazy. The girls think my hair is now “warm, bright, golden blonde,” but when I look in the mirror I still see orange. Pink and orange, as a matter of fact. Skin that’s porcine pink and hair that’s light orange. And they clash.

So today I clicked the button on the Photobooth application on my iMac so you could see my new tigerish look:

Tell me you don’t see the pink and the orange.

The good thing is that my hair grows quite fast, and I really am fine with waiting for it to grow out. I have too many other things going on in my life to actually worry about it.

Years ago when I was a younger wife and mother I started to grow a small horn out of the top of my head. You think I jest? I do not. After the “subcutaneous horn” started peeking through my hair I had it surgically removed, and during the following months about a third of my hair fell out and never made a return appearance. Someday I’ll do a post about the family jokes that were spoken over someone in the house sprouting a horn — I’ve often wondered if this phenomenon explained a lot of things, but I’ll share about that another day.  🙂

Anyway, I’ve learned to flex, adjust, and be matter-of-fact about my hair. It used to be long and lustrous. Then it used to be ash blonde and shoulder length. Then it used to be frosted.

Now it’s very short. And is a foxtailish, apricoty, tigerish orange.

Grrrrrr,

My oldest grandchild Clara, age 9, spent two nights with us this week. I picked her up after school on Tuesday and we drove to Target. We bought her a new pair of shoes, some jeans and some socks. She also picked out a set of three soft juggling balls from the dollar rack.

Then because I didn’t feel like cooking, we stopped at Arby’s on the way home and picked up a lot of food to bring home to the multitudes I always seem to cook for at dinner. While in line at the drive-up window at Arby’s, Clara told me about the kinds of trees her mama thought she and her siblings would be, if they were trees. She said Audrey would be an apple tree, which is so apropos it made me grin….a cheery round face with red cheeks, yes, Audrey would be an apple tree. Vivienne would be a willow tree, flowy and ethereal, Elijah would be a beech with its sandy/silvery colored bark, the color of his hair, and Clara would be a birch…tall and straight and slender, different and standing out from the other trees around her.

While Clara was here we worked on a kids’ book of Sudoku, played with clay, read, and chatted. We have such interesting conversations! After she showered and washed her hair, I brushed Clara’s very long golden tresses, and loosely braided it for the night so it would be easier to deal with in the morning. We listened to the Radio Theatre production of Anne of Green Gables for the last hour before going to bed, Clara all nestled in her pallet of blankets on our bedroom floor. I was tickled when she seemed to love Anne, and I could tell she was very engrossed in the story. She thought it was pretty amusing that Anne kept renaming things…Barry’s pond was rechristened “The Lake of Shining Waters” and The Avenue became, “The White Way of Delight.” Too soon it was time for sleep and I promised Clara I’d pick her up from school the next day and she could stay one more night. “Can we listen to more of Anne of Green Gables when I get home?” she asked excitedly. When I assured her we would, she smiled and nodded, then pulled the feather-filled comforter up to her chin and closed her eyes and smiled a sleepy smile before falling asleep.

Grandpa and I picked her up at school yesterday and I can’t even describe what a thrill it gave me to see her come out of the big brick building, scan the parking area for our car, then smile and run to us when she located us. She’d had a good day at school; had gotten all the words on her spelling test correct, and told us how they’re working on shapes in Math. She said that when her teacher had written many shapes and their names up on the board, Clara noticed that one was missing, and raised her hand to say so. “What shape was missing?” I asked. “A nonagon,” she answered matter of factly. “It’s a nine-sided polygon.”

Later that afternoon Clara made an origami frog, did some more six-block Sudoku for kids, and right before dinner I let her watch the first hour of the movie Anne of Green Gables since she enjoyed the Radio Theatre production so much. After dinner she sculpted a little dog from some clay, did her homework, and got ready for bed. We listened to the last part of Anne and when the part came where Matthew dies in the field and Marilla and Anne are gathered around him weeping, Clara’s eyes grew wide and she pulled the cover over her head. She feels things so deeply.

Auntie Sara came to say good night and we all laid together under the covers and giggled. Sara said she’d been listening to the old song “Graverobber” by Petra, and she and I belted it out so Clara could hear it. I told Clara that song would be played at my funeral some day and she looked at me like I had lost a marble or two. “Is that an appropriate song for a funeral Grandma?” she asked sincerely. “It’s very appropriate, Clara — even though it’s an outdated song, the words describe exactly what will happen to a Christian when they die.” She’s heard this before, but I told her again that when a believer dies, they don’t stop living, really. They just stop living here. They change addresses. I told her that when I stopped living here someday, I would still be alive in heaven, and I would be waiting for her, for all my loved ones, to come and join me when their time came to change addresses too. I wish I had a photo or video of Clara as she listened intently and so obviously pondered this in her heart.

Right before it was time to turn out the lights and go to her pallet for the night, Clara cuddled me and told me she loved me. She reached up gently to run her fingers through my hair, and it was then that she drowsily uttered these words of obvious affection:

“Grandma…your hair feels like really soft steel wool.”

I have an appointment to have my hair cut and highlighted this afternoon. I think it might be time to talk to my stylist about texture, as well as color and cut.

For there is hope for a tree,

if it be cut down, that it will sprout again,

and that its shoots will not cease.

Though its root grow old in the earth

and its stump die in the soil,

yet at the scent of water it will bud

and put out branches like a young plant.

Job 14:7-9

*        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

Living as far north as we do, our green-up and blooming days always seem a little slow in coming. Last weekend I was in the Minneapolis area for this, and the farther south we drove, the greener it got. Driving back home was like driving into winter without the snow; mostly bare trees and not much grass yet.

That’s why I had to go outside to take some pictures today of our full-blown spring. The grass has been mown already, the flowers are blooming, and there are dozens of birds everywhere, making our yard sound like the soundtrack from Bambi.

Speaking of Bambi, this little newborn fawn was photographed in our town last week, resting peacefully in someone’s front yard.

Isn’t that the most adorable photo? It’s enough to to make me never want to eat venison again!  OH WAIT! — I already never want to eat venison again. I almost forgot.

I love Bleeding Hearts — these are in our garden that surrounds the big maple tree in our front yard:

I noticed how huge the rhubarb leaves have gotten in just one week — the largest of these leaves are about the size of a large pizza pan. I think if you put a chair right next to this plant and kept really still, you could probably see them grow before your very eyes. Time for some rhubarb crisp!

I noticed some small, feeble-looking leaves on the ivy vines that grow up our chimney, too. It’s hard to believe that in just a few months this chimney will look like the photos I posted here.

You might never suspect from the picture above that this is the vine that wants to eat Michael and Julie’s house every year, would you?

I’ve been watching our backyard maple tree through the kitchen window for several days now. A few days ago there were just little red buds. You can click on these pictures to enlarge them if you like….then there were new, shiny leaves unfurling:

And closer to the south side of the tree, there were larger maple leaves beginning to spread out and take their shape:

This tree will put on the most gorgeous autumn performance in about three and a half months. And then all the leaves will turn brown and fall to the ground. And then it will be winter. And then the temperatures will plummet to thirty degrees below zero. Waah.

And what is spring without a hammock?

And what’s a hammock without a Schnauzer?

I can hear a small plane drone overhead as I type this. I can see my husband and daughter in the front yard planting the truck full of flowers they bought at the nursery today. I see chickadees flutter fast to the feeders on our back deck. I can not hear the quiet hum of the furnace.

I guess this means I can stop wearing SmartWools with my Birkenstocks now.

What does spring mean to you?

Tell me you don’t have a school picture like this in your past.

A photo with teeth poking through all over the place and not knowing where to finally settle, with hair done by your mother who probably used Aqua Net hair spray, and with freckles and innocence all over your face.

When I was ten years old and in the fifth grade, my parents began furrowing their brows whenever I smiled at them. At that age I hardly looked in the mirror, so I had no idea that my teeth were looking so, er, outstanding. But I guess parents can see things that ten year olds cannot. Even one of my older brothers, Steve, had noticed. But he wasn’t furrowing, he was guffawing. And he called me Bucky Beaver a lot. He also called me Porky Pig, but I was twig-thin back then so all these years later I’ve finally figured out that he was just plain mean.

This is my fifth grade school photo, which just seems wrong on so many levels. 🙂

First of all, the hair. I shared here about how my mother had an intense aversion to a thing about long, stringy hair, and did not like bangs at all. I guess the do she gave me (I slept in hard, plastic rollers secured with hair pins) reflected what she thought was the best look for little girls in 1967.

Second, the lavender bow. I had a whole drawerful of velvet bows and plastic headbands, and this one was obviously picked because I was wearing my purple ribbed turtleneck sweater.

What you can’t see is the matching purple and white plaid wool skirt with the thick purple belt. And the purple fishnet stockings. And the black Mary Jane shoes. (The spots you see on the sweater are on the picture itself — there is no way my mother would have let me out the door on picture day with spots on my clothes!)

Thirdly, the old lady pin. I’m pretty sure the pin was my mom’s idea too. I don’t remember balking at wearing it, because I was ten years old and didn’t care about things like purple flower pins to go on purple sweaters. What I cared about was 1) swimming, 2) reading books, 3) tether ball, and 4) riding bikes with my friend Denel.

Oh, and I wanted my parents to be happy and to love each other all the time and forever.

Fourth, my teeth. My permanent teeth had begun their eruptions two years before, and I think everyone held their breath to see if my bite was going to be a steep slope or go all the way to a cantilever. This photo doesn’t quite show just how much of an overbite I had.

My dentist, Dr. Kent Payne, recommended a good orthodontist. After my first appointment with him, Dr. Teal, a master of understatement, came out to the waiting room to gravely tell my mother “Well, we’re pretty sure she’ll need braces.”

I had to wait one more year until more permanent teeth came down into place, and then I was fitted for headgear, which looked very much like this photo. The headgear was designed to move my upper molars back to make room for the correction that was to eventually be done on my front teeth. I wore the headgear at night while I slept and on weekends. I can remember many hours of curled up reading with my headgear on.

After a few months of the headgear, I had braces put on my front teeth. I wore those braces for less than a year because my teeth moved quickly. I was called Metal Mouth and worse, but I don’t ever remember minding that moniker. I never minded the Metal Mouth moniker. I like alliteration so just spontaneously decided to say the quadruple M-phrase over again for your enjoyment.

Then I was fitted for a retainer, and I was to wear that round the clock for two years. It was a pink plastic mold that in hindsight looked like a crustacean of some sort, that was fitted to the roof of my mouth and had a wire in front of my teeth to keep them in place after all the realigning that had been done. My friend Denel had braces and eventually a retainer too, and we liked to have our pictures taken in photo booths — some of our most memorable were when we smiled at the camera with our retainers sticking out.

I’ve always been thankful that I had braces when I was young, and I told my parents so. My brother stopped calling me Bucky Beaver, and I was finally able to easily close my mouth after years of several front teeth getting in the way.

Did you have braces? What were your experiences with them?

And if any of you have an elementary school picture of yourself, scan it and email it to me, and I’ll put it here on the blog. It’s good to laugh together. Anyone who sends me a photo wins something too. 🙂

UPDATE — May 26 — My sweet friend Shari, whom I met in Junior High and have some wonderful memories with, sent this photo of me today. It would have been around eighth grade, I believe.

You can actually see the retainer I wrote about above. So exciting, I know.

And here’s a darling photo of Shari. Shari is a wife, mother of two beautiful grown children, a gifted, published artist, and follower of Christ. She and I used to swim together a lot when we were in Junior High School, and I’m so thankful to still be in touch with her forty years after this photo was taken.

My friend Carole and I were in Bella Flora last week and she found this card. She bought it and plans to frame it.

I know it’s supposed to be funny, but it impacted me in a wistful way.

This is a person of resilience, this person who can rejoice at seeing the moon after the barn was reduced to ashes.

I would like to be more resilient. In fact, if I could find a Resilience 101 class, I would sign up for it.

Are you a resilient person? If so, how do you think you became resilient? What are some strategies you use to bounce back? If you’re not the resilient sort, what do you think you could do to become more resilient?

My friend Steve sent me this excerpt from C.S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair recently, and my eyes immediately filled with tears. It’s a scene between the girl named Jill and The Great Lion Aslan…

“Are you not thirsty?” said the Lion.

“I’m dying of thirst,” said Jill.

“May I – could I – would you mind going away while I do?” said Jill.

The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience.

The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic.

“Will you promise not to – do anything to me, if I do come?” said Jill.

“I make no promise,” said the Lion.

Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer.

“Do you eat girls?” she said.

“I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms,” said the Lion. It didn’t say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it.

“I daren’t come and drink,” said Jill.

“Then you will die of thirst,” said the Lion.

“Oh dear!” said Jill, coming another step nearer. “I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.”

No thees and thous for me these days. Not that I’ve ever prayed using thees and thous…

Just short, heartfelt, pleading prayers.

“I call to you, LORD, every day;
I spread out my hands to you!”

Psalm 88:9b

*       *       *       *       *       *       *