Archives for June 2014

That Fifth Commandment — She Loves

I’ve been privileged the last few months to write a monthly essay over at SheLoves, one of my favorite spaces on the internet. This is the story for June . . .

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I helped my husband teach Sunday School a few weeks ago. He teaches the kids in grades 1-4 and his usual teammate was out of town on Mother’s Day, so he asked me to step in.

I did all I could to stifle a groan, forced a smile and said, “Well. I guess so.”

Not the most gracious response, I will admit. Since I retired from ministry a little over three years ago, I’ve sort of ‘given up’ Sunday school. I did a lot of planning, coordinating, setting up tables and chairs, and teaching during my years as an associate pastor, and, to tell you the truth, I am pretty burned out on the whole shebang.

Also? I taught adults. That’s what my call was, that’s where my gifts lie, and for a long time, I absolutely loved it.

I think it was the tables and chairs that finally got to me.

So, for most of the last three years, I have gotten up, gotten dressed and driven my husband to church, dropping him off by the children’s wing. And then, I’ve turned my car around and headed right straight down to the beach.

I park my car near the bluffs, under the lone cypress tree that marks ‘my spot,’ and I sit with my tea and my toast and I stare at the sea. Sometimes, I read scripture or a devotional guide. Sometimes I just sit. Always, I open myself to God and listen. And you want to know something? I’ve gotten so much more out of worship when I begin my Sunday this way — by myself, by the sea.

So to give that up — on Mother’s Day, no less — was tough to do.

But.

I wanted to honor my husband.

I don’t do enough of that these days. We’ve grown into a comfortable pattern of occupying this house in separate spaces most of the day. We check in with each other, we check up on each other — but part of the adjustment to our both being home together, all day, every day, has meant the creation of parallel lives, at least to some extent. So agreeing to his request that we do something together seemed timely and important.

And he really, really wanted me there.

Part of the lesson involved looking at the fifth commandment . . .

Please join me over at SheLoves today to read the rest of this story . . .

The Age of Happy Endings Is NOT Dead

A small disclaimer as I tell you this story. This wonderful, happy story. One that I know comes from a position of extreme privilege, something for which I thank God every day. I do know how blessed we are. I do. And the loss described in this small tale is surely not anything grand or even close to horrific. It was, nevertheless, loss. And now it is not. And in the midst of living this story, we felt heard, we felt seen, we felt loved. I share it today because I think it’s amazing. I hope you will, too.

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It was an anniversary gift. An iPad Mini, handed to my husband over a plate of fine salmon as we celebrated #47. At first, he was dismayed: “What am I going to do with this?” he asked.

“You’ll figure something out,” I said, smiling shyly.

He is not a man of the technological age, you see. Not quite a Luddite — but close. He’s learned the basics of email and attachments, but refuses to own a cell phone or to explore his desktop computer any more than he has to.

But I knew something he did not. On a small iPad, he could read books. And he could play Scrabble. And once he had mastered those simple things, he was sold. I mean, that iPad accompanied him everywhere, to each room in the house, in the car when we drove down to the beach to sit and reflect, when we went on vacation.

Everywhere.

He put a great photo on the desktop — Poppy with his two grandgirls — and he became a grandmaster of internet Scrabble, playing only against the computer and usually winning. Definitely, winning.

So, yesterday was a busy day for us. Compared to most of our days since my surgery two weeks and one day ago, it was jam-packed. We had a beach trip in the morning and a doctor’s visit in the afternoon. See what I mean? Jam-packed!

And now that I’m temporarily sidelined, he must load the car with our various and sundry traveling equipment all by himself. So yesterday morning, he trudged out with our two water bottles, his own sunglasses (two pair are required — don’t ask!), his iPad. Then, I slowly wheeled myself out to the garage, carefully positioned myself just past the door opening, squiggled backwards a tiny bit and then plopped down into the front seat. He picked up my scooter and stashed it in the back of our Honda Pilot and then carefully backed us out of the garage.

Instead of reading at the beach, which is our usual pattern, we chose to talk yesterday, so neither of us noticed anything amiss. Then, when it was time to go to the doctor’s, I asked him if he would bring his iPad along for the wait time and we realized it wasn’t in the car. A cursory inspection of the house yielded nothing.

The doctor’s visit was good — cast is off, stitches are out, baseline x-rays have been taken. We could easily see the two, long narrow screws now permanently embedded into my heel bone.

We were, however, told that this healing process could take longer than planned and we were also informed that there might be a problem with the big toe because of what he had to do during the surgery. I remain committed to holding positive thoughts, however, and am trusting that things will go as initially stated — eight weeks without walking, then another eight weeks of physical therapy. Then walking, as usual.

We returned home with some very mixed feelings and Dick began to scour the house, looking for that crazy iPad. We sat down and talked through the day together at least three different times, trying to back-step our way through where it might have landed.

It was not to be found.

He began searching again this morning after we had yet another conversation about everyplace he’d been the previous day.

Nothing.

I prayed quietly. Fervently. “Lord, this is such a good man. His list of ‘pleasure’ activities is pitifully short during this particular siege. So, maybe, could you help?”

I had a phone appointment at 9:00 a.m. and during that call, someone else called through. I made the decision to answer it because I thought I recognized the number.

Wrong.

It was “David.” No clue who David is.

But this is what he said: “I found an iPad with your name on it and I’m wondering if you’ve lost one.”

Say, what?

You found an iPad with my name on it?

YOU FOUND AN IPAD? Where?

It was at the Salinas Street exit of the freeway.

THE FREEWAY, did you say?

THE FREEWAY??

He figured out how to get into it, went to the contacts list and plucked out my cell phone number.

And just like that, we received an airmail, special delivery love note from God. 

Just like that.

Dick hurriedly left to drive across town to retrieve it, I went back to my original phone call, and we were both wonderstruck that such a thing could happen.

Here’s a possible scenario for how it unfolded, given the scant information available to us: sometime during the morning get-in-the-car commotion, Dick put that iPad on the roof of the car near my door while he was helping me get situated.

It remained there all the way to the beach and back, all the way to the freeway on-ramp, only flying off as we began to accelerate. Salinas Street is the very first exit heading north, and that’s where it was found, a slight dent in the bottom, the stylus missing, but otherwise intact and operational

It didn’t go into traffic. It couldn’t have started out on the driver’s side of the car, or it would have been trashed. It didn’t fly off the back of the car, either.  

It was good and gone. Gone, I tell  you.

And then, it was found.

And so were we.

Not a grand miracle. But a very, very good one. Thank you, Lord.

Some photos from yesterday’s grand unveiling:

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Cutting through miles of bandage,

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a huge wad of cotton,

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to a swollen ankle, in all its glory.

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Two incisions, one at the way-back end for the bone breaking and stabilizing, one up a little higher for the tendon rearrangement.

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The two pins in my foot. Can you see them?

IMG_4194The only stitches to be removed were here on the back, at the back end of the two screws. See those darkish round spots? Yup, that’s it.

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Wrapped for protection from the inside of the boot.

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And into the boot for the next six (we hope!) weeks.

 

Vacating the Premises: Reflections on Getting Away from It All

Linking with the fine people at The High Calling for their week on vacation reflections. . .

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 Oh, yeah, this was a LONG time ago. One of our almost-annual treks to Mammoth Lakes in the eastern Sierras to stay with my husband’s extended family and fish, play board games, hike to town, enjoy the beauty.

Many years ago, I began a bi-monthly gathering for women just behind me in the mothering cycle, most of whom had brand new babies and maybe a toddler or two. At some point during those five years, I was asked a good question:

What one thing would you recommend we do to encourage the building of a cohesive and committed family unit?

My response surprised a few, I think. It wasn’t particularly ‘spiritual’ in nature. I did not recommend a regular family worship time, though I believe that is a fine idea for many families. I did not recommend regular church attendance, though that, too, is great to do. I came close to saying this: “Find a way to offer service together as often as you can,” because I believe that is an essential ingredient. And service can look like a lot of things, beginning with the practice of hospitality in your own home.

No, I didn’t say any of those things. Instead, this is what I said:

Find a way to get away every single year. Make traveling as a family a priority, no matter what that looks like for you. 

And I stand by those words. I believe there is nothing better that we can do for our children, for our spouses or for ourselves than to get a glimpse of God’s greater world, to tickle our toes under the sheets in a place that is new to us, to look at the wonders of nature, the complexities of city life, or the remarkable diversity at play in human culture.

So if I had to pick one such getaway and call it ‘the best,’ I would hesitate. A lot. Why? Because every trip was the best. The best we could do for that year, the best destination for us at that point in time, the best. True, some were better than others. But even the rough ones have made for great storytelling. So maybe I’ll string a few of those less-than stellar ones together in a short list and leave it at that.

The year we rented a trailer, sight unseen, saw it coming toward us over the freeway overpass which went directly over our chosen trailer park and realized that FIVE of us would be cramped into 14 feet for a full week And one of us was 14-months-old and getting an ear infection. 

The year we pulled a rented tent trailer, not realizing our station wagon didn’t have a hearty enough transmission to get us there and back. 

The year we put camping gear on top of our car and never took it off because it rained every single day for 3000 miles of National Park trekking.

The time we crept to a motel from our soggy tent at 5:00 a.m., trenches and tarps having totally failed to keep the deluge at bay.

The time I backed our rented car into an unseen cement post below the van’s back window. Thank goodness we bought insurance that trip. 

Our 30th anniversary trip to Italy which was part fiasco and part triumph, involving a lost wedding diamond, and a couple of miraculous discoveries. (A story told at another website earlier this month.)

And, of course, no list of mine would be complete without this one. The two times early in our married life when we took a camping trip without the poles for our tent. True, it was two different tents on two different continents, but still. Twice?

Yes, twice.

 

Report from the Front

 

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The last 12 days have felt a little like I’ve been struggling my way up from the deep water, and awkwardly paddling toward the light, the air. It’s been a limiting, sometimes frightening, always exhausting experience.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had surgery* of any kind. A long time. And I knew this would be a rough one going in — there is no way to avoid the ‘roughness’ of being almost 70 years old, with a badly injured left foot, dealing with blood thinning medication from a previous event/insult to the body, and being told that there will be no weight-bearing for eight weeks.

No way around it. 

And, to tell you the truth, it’s every bit as difficult as I anticipated. Pain medications kept me foggy and slightly nauseated for ten days, the shots-to-the-belly required to manage blood thinners lasted two full weeks instead of 10 days, and trying to be a ‘good girl,’ obedient to the doctor’s instructions to keep-that-foot-higher-than-your-heart-for-as-many-hours-a-day-as-possible-for-the-first-two-weeks. Well, let’s just say that the word ‘boredom’ has taken on several new layers of meaning.

I thank God for several good gifts in the midst of the crush: my husband’s faithful attendance (much, much more is demanded of him than at any point in the previous 48 years!), my children’s kind visits and assistance, my prayer-group-friends boxes of good cheer which have been arriving with lovely regularity, and my new Kindle Fire, a Mother’s Day gift from our kids.

I have watched six seasons of “Inspector Lewis,” a six-part documentary on “The Celts,” and every Jane Austen film production my Amazon Prime account gives me for free. 

In the last three days, I have found the energy and focus to read again, and that has been delightful. I just began the “Anne” cycle last night for the first time in over 40 years, and am partway through both Emily Wierenga’s new memoir and a fun book sent by a prayer friend called, “Leonardo’s Foot.” Perfect topic, or what?

And then, of course, there is my new best friend.

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This has since been tricked out with a little scooter bling by another of the prayer group friends. Tassels and a small bell.

This handy-dandy little 4-wheeled vehicle is called a knee caddy. A wonderful invention, but not without its flaws. LOUSY turning radius, requiring me to bodily pick the entire front half up off the ground to make a 90 degree turn. Still – it’s worth it. I spent the first three days hopping behind a 2-wheel walker, so this is a vast improvement. Our son-in-law built me a ramp to cover the two steps down from the master bedroom area to the living room/kitchen and I try to carefully maneuver that at least once a day.

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I am both looking and feeling my age and am aware of some pretty deep levels of exhaustion and anxiety. By the grace of God, I am trying to remain open to the graces to be found, even here, even now. Giving up self-reliance is a huge monster of a thing for me. Just an ugly, hard thing. I like being competent and in control, even though I know that any semblance of control is always but a ghost of reality, a trick of the mind.

Because as it happens, there is very little in this life that we can control. Except, perhaps, for our responses to whatever it is life hands us at a given moment in time. I remain grateful that God invites me to partner in this life-course, daily choice business of discipleship. I am not a puppet nor is every detail of my day-to-day life mapped out ahead of time. I still get to choose. There are events, circumstances, illnesses and injuries that are beyond me, beyond any capacity of mine to change. But there are always choices. Always.

I can choose to say thank you to those who help me, who pray for me, who bring twice-weekly meals, who send love in a cardboard box, who pay a visit and offer a sympathetic smile.

I can choose to value my family, to appreciate their encouragement, support, assistance and great good humor.

I can choose to lean into the fear when it rises, to say the Jesus prayer whenever necessary, for as many times as it takes to slow my breathing and return my focus to the goodness of my life. Even here, even now.

I can choose to look for God’s grace and goodness, even when it hurts, even when I’m bored, even when I’m tired, even when I’m confused. 

I can choose to lean and to learn, to seek and to find, to listen and to look, to love and be loved.

I can choose.

And so I will.

In two days, we return to the surgeon. Hopefully the cast will come off, the stitches will come out and there will be early evidence of the bone beginning to heal, the tendon attachments beginning to take hold. Then I’ll go into a removable boot for the remaining six weeks, which I hope-and-pray will mean the ability to shower without a huge plastic cover-up over my left calf.

I’ll report again after that appointment.

*For those who do not know what this surgery was about – a brief synopsis Last summer, I injured my left achilles tendon while taking an early morning walk when we were vacationing in Hawaii. I began physical therapy when we returned home, with very good results. Near the end of those sessions, I had a firm massage from the therapist in which the outside of that foot was pressed against the edge of the massage table and I was instructed to resist that movement. In doing so, I somehow managed to rupture the pereoneus brevis tendon, which comes down from the back bone of the lower leg and wraps around the ankle before heading to the outside of the foot and attaching to the little toe. It runs adjacent to the peroneus longus, which takes a turn at the ankle, going under the foot and over to the big toe. After trying three different appliances from three different doctors in an effort to avoid this surgery, the orthopedic surgeon took an additional series of x-rays which revealed a congenital malformation of the heel bone, likely contributing greatly to the tendon rupture in the first place. So. In two different incisions, which I have yet to see, he went in and broke the heel bone, straightening it and pinning it upright with screws and he cleaned up the torn tendon and reattached it to the neighboring one. And  yes, it hurts about as much it sounds like it would.

Rick Steves, Anniversaries, and Italy – A Deeper Story

It’s time for my monthly post at A Deeper Story. Here’s a sampler . . .

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This is a story about being married. It’s an anniversary story, an old one, nearly twenty years ago now, but a true one, and a good one. It began as an adventure, sank pretty quickly to a disaster, and ended with joyful re-discovery.

My husband had to be in London for business, so we figured, “Why not make a trip of it? Let’s go to Italy, rent a car and see as much as we can see.” We’d done that for our 25th — driving all around England, Scotland and Wales, following Rick Steves’s advice the whole way, and we had a fabulous time.

This, however, was a different experience entirely. First off, the London meeting got moved to New York. Well, okay. Hmm. Let’s see what we can do about those tickets. And what we could do with those tickets wasn’t much – NYC to CHICAGO to Milan, turning an eight-hour trip into twice that.

Oh, and while we were in New York, one of our bags got lost – the hotel’s fault – and I spent two days frantically replenishing my husband’s travel wardrobe, purchasing a new suitcase, and replacing my Bible and journal, and — serendipitously — picking up a delightful small guide book featuring ‘inns and itineraries’ of Italia.

Thirtieth Anniversary Trip, here we come!

Except when we landed in Milan, things got a little dicey. I tend to . . . how shall I put this? Take too much stuff everywhere I go. And we had seven — count them — seven pieces of luggage, including two roller bags, two backpacks, a purse and two smaller carry-ons — and after we went through customs, we thought we’d lost one of the backpacks. Dick went to find it, I got on the bus to town with the rest of the bags, and sure enough, the bus took off – leaving Dick with our only Italian money at the airport, and me with all our luggage (yes, all our luggage) headed toward the center of Milan – each of us alone.

And it went downhill from there.

Please join me for the rest of this tale over at A Deeper Story . . .

I’ll Love You Forever

The longer I live,
the more convinced I am that
the way fathers love their daughters
has a profound impact on the
fabric of society.

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My dad, half-smiling on the outside. Always smiling on the inside.

 

As we have walked this last leg of the journey
with each of our mothers,
we’ve seen this truth in surprising,
and sometimes beautiful ways.

My mother-in-law grew up with an affectionate,
charming, faithful, imaginative, wordsmith for a father,
a man who adored his daughter
and told her so with every breath.
She never once doubted herself,
even as the fog of dementia rolled in

and slowly erased her life.

My mom grew up with a damaged dad,
a man who left his family of origin after 
being cheated by his own father,
and then drank and gambled his way
through mom’s early years.
He seldom had a kind word for 
anyone in that house.
And my mother is riddled with self-doubt,
often convinced that others
believe her to be a terrible person.

I’m sure there are more factors at play than just this one. Basic personality traits between these two good women
are markedly different in several ways.

However, I remain convinced that ‘just this one’
marks out one of the most basic ways
in which our two moms have faced
into their long, last journey in life.

I believe that a father’s unconditional love is foundational
for each one of us.
But for female children?
It is critical and crucial.
It can sometimes make the difference between
humble self-acceptance and crippling self-doubt.
I also believe that the formation of the female spirit is
critically important for the healthy development of
family, culture, church.

In other words, it’s a big deal for girls/women to have a loving father (or father figure) somewhere in their story.

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Working through some puzzles with our eldest daughter, one of several in our family tree who have inherited his mathematical and logical gifts. I am not one of those.

My own dad adored me.
And I knew it.

All my life, I have been deeply grateful for that truth.

I’ve got insecurities by the bushel basketful,
that is true enough.

But I have never doubted my father’s
deep and abiding love for me.

Not once.

And I believe that sweet piece of my story says a whole lot about who I am today.

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Mom and dad in the 80s.

My father was a school teacher and a musician,
a handyman and a thoughtful, interesting person.

He liked butter on white bread, Buicks,
and playing the piano.

He was quiet, wise, gentle and good.
And he had an absolutely killer sense of humor,
a dry wit that would pop out from time to time,
most likely very soon after you’d decided that he 
wasn’t even really listening to the conversation.

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My beautiful, fun mama.

He was crazy-nuts about my mother,
and they made quite a pair,

she all bubbles and up-front laughter,
he behind-the-scenes deep and sometimes mysterious.

My father’s hands were big enough to span an octave,
plus 2 or 3,

and strong enough to hold a crying baby,
bringing calm and quiet more efficiently than
anyone else I knew.
He loved being a grandfather
and his grandkids idolized him in so many ways.

 

IMG_0224Me, in the 80s – a combo of the two of them, don’t you think?

He gave his testimony in church once,
speaking honestly about his own wrestling spirit,

and eloquently about the truth that his faith was his life.
And if it wasn’t his life —
if it wasn’t changing the way he lived that life —

then it wasn’t worth much, was it?

Dad believed that a Jesus-follower should be steady,
sturdy,

         devoted and
                           careful. 

And more than once,
he gently but firmly reminded me to 

live that way, too.

 

I love you, Daddy.
I miss you every day and,
as you know —
I talk to you with some regularity!
You’ve been gone from this place for
almost a decade now,
and though I’m grateful that your struggles
with health and frailty are behind you,
I wish you —
the healthy, happy you —
were still here with us.

I miss your advice,
your kindness,
your steadiness
and your unshakeable loyalty.
The older I get, the more I realize
how rare those qualities are,
and the more I miss your being here to model them for us.

I’ll love you forever, Dad.
And I thank God for your love every day that I breathe.

It’s Not That Easy Being Weird — A Guest Post

One of the best books I’ve read this year is Michelle DeRusha’s beautiful, funny, and profound memoir called “Spiritual Misfit.” I’m honored to be guest-posting for her today, in her ongoing series about being a misfit. Here are the opening paragraphs of that essay . . .

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All my life, I’ve been the one who didn’t quite fit. No matter where I’ve landed in my own spiritual journey, I’ve managed to be the one who is different — quirky, opinionated, on the edge.

I was the kid who had the most memory work badges and sang alto in the kids’ choir at our first church. But I was also the kid who hid out in the caretaker’s apartment, playing with his baby and talking to his wife instead of socializing around the punch bowl with the rest of the 5th graders.

We moved to a new town and a new church when I was 12. The youth group was huge and I went to every thing that was offered.  I landed in the hard-working-leadership-tier, but never in the popular-kids-who-also-have-skills elite. And that was okay by me. I was tall and rangy and not terribly graceful. I was also physically fearful and lurking underneath my loud voice, an insecure, uncertain teenager.

I married young. It was a great decision for us, one that took us halfway around the world to live and work for two years. And I was really a misfit there. A southern California conservative looks nothing like a Pennsylvania holiness conservative and I found that out the hard way. Yet, somehow, we survived and even thrived in that beautiful place.

We had our kids early, and our grandkids even earlier. So for the last 40 years, we’ve been ahead of the curve by a long shot. And guess where that puts us now? Smack dab in the middle of just about everything. We find ourselves sandwiched between ailing parents, home-buying adult children, college-aged and pre-school grandkids.

We’ve found ourselves sandwiched between generations theologically, too — 

Please come on over to Michelle’s beautiful space to read the rest of this weirdness. . .

A Granddaughter Remembers — A Guest Post from My Daughter

Visiting the blog tonight is my middle child, Joy Trautwein Stenzel. Joy is exactly what her name says she is – a joy to us. She and her husband Marcus are raising three good young men in Monrovia CA and are both special education teachers, working with blind students across the age span from pre-school to 22. (Our eldest daughter also does this good work.) Our children grew up with their paternal grandparents less than five minutes away and were often in their home, as you will see. I love the way this piece celebrates what some might call the ‘old-fashioned’ virtues. To me, there is nothing old-fashioned about any of it — it’s a heritage we are humbled and pleased to call our own. Interspersed throughout her lovely words are photos scanned for us today by one of our grandsons, Joel Fischinger. Here’s Joy:

IMG_0022Joy, Mama, Lisa – on vacation at Mammoth Lakes, an annual excursion for many years.

Solid, dependable, disciplined, hospitable, thoughtful, committed, consistent. 

My grandmother embodied these qualities.  In an increasingly chaotic and unpredictable world, such characteristics are on the decline.   And for an overly anxious and easily overwhelmed child, the unwavering reliability of my grandmother was a source of familiarity and comfort on which I knew I could rely.

IMG_0104The first in her family to graduate from college, at UCLA in the mid-1930s.

Mama was very steady and measured emotionally—quite the contrast to me.  She rarely (if ever) raised her voice, and I only remember seeing her cry twice—when speaking of a beloved brother who had died too soon, and when her only daughter and her family were pulling out of the driveway to move across the country.   Her level mood created an atmosphere of comfortable predictability for an emotionally volatile child—I knew exactly what to expect when I walked through her door. 

So solid.

IMG_0703Enjoying Crater Lake with Jean and Richard, early 1950s

I knew when I went to Mama’s that there would be no surprises in either her temperament or the physical environment.  Almost all of the furniture, toys, games, dishes, and appliances (no new-fangled microwaves for Mama!) stayed the same in their Wagner Street house from the time I was born until they moved to Santa Barbara. I played with my dad’s old toys, as did my children after me.  I took great comfort in the familiarity of it all. 

So dependable.

IMG_0113One of the last pictures of both Mama and Papa with all of their grandchildren, late 1990s

If we ever spent the night at Mama and Papa’s, we knew what we would find when we walked into the kitchen in the morning:  the two of them seated at their little blue kitchen table, drinking coffee, reading the Bible and praying for family, friends, and missionaries.

So disciplined.

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Same grandkids, several years earlier! On Kauai for M & P’s 50th Anniversary.
We hope to continue that tradition in the summer of 2015 – can you believe it?

We also knew that we would be well-fed when we entered their home.  Mama was a wonderful cook, and hosted frequent meals for family and friends.  She had a small but delicious repertoire of family favorites:  BBQ short ribs, lemon meringue pie, tapioca, homemade applesauce—terrific food served on the same dining room table with the same china, flatware and crystal goblets year after year.  To ensure that everyone would fit around the table, the piano bench served as a seat for the two smallest family members at one of the short ends of the table—no kids’ table at Mama Trautwein’s!  Every leaf of that table would emerge from the closet so that we could all be together.  That dining room set now resides in my own home, where I can only hope to entertain perhaps a quarter of the number of people she hosted so warmly over the years. 

So hospitable.

IMG_0556Gathering around that dining room table, about 1979 or 1980.

When birthdays rolled around, we knew there would be a dinner in our honor at Mama and Papa’s house.   Mama would let the birthday girl or boy set the menu.  We always picked our favorite dishes (which probably weren’t her favorites!):  orange jello packed with pieces of fruit, butter brickle cake topped with toffee pieces and hot fudge.   When we became teenagers, Mama made each of her grandchildren a treasured cookbook filled with handwritten recipes for the family favorites we all loved, complete with personal notes and anecdotes related to certain dishes—a gift we all cherish and use regularly.  My own children have even been fortunate enough to experience the anticipation of an unfailing Mama Trautwein birthday tradition—every year on their birthdays, she has sent them two dollar bills, the same number of bills as their age.  Needless to say, they have amassed an astounding number of two dollar bills! 

So thoughtful.

IMG_0174Not only did she host birthday dinners at her house, she also came to birthday dinners at our house.
We did birthdays up right in this family.
This picture cracks me up because the Birthday Boy almost got cut out of it.
And we just noticed tonight, he’s wearing doctor gear, of all things! And now he wears the real stuff. Go figure.

Mama established countless family traditions which were joyfully anticipated throughout the year.  Every Easter, we knew we would receive a heaping plate of bunny and lamb cookies decorated with pink icing with chocolate chips for eyes.  We dyed eggs every year at that little blue kitchen table, and Mama took us on annual Easter egg hunts at Descanso Gardens.  Mama decorated a Manzanita tree every Christmas with tiny ornaments, and she gave my sister and me our own manzanita branches when we were in college, with new ornaments for them every year.  Each member of our extended family had a stocking that had been lovingly decorated by Mama, unique to our interests.  Mama found a lot of joy in holiday traditions. 

So consistent.

IMG_0515This woman LOVED Christmas! 

IMG_0060And the Easter egg hunts at Descanso continued with the great-grands, too. The four oldest, about 15 years ago.

Mama and Papa also loved to travel.   They arranged annual extended family trips to Mammoth Lakes.  These vacations gave the cousins a chance to bond, and allowed Mama and Papa to share their love of fishing, jigsaw puzzles, and board games with their offspring.  Mama and Papa took exciting vacations without us as well, and invited us over for slideshows when they returned to share their adventures.  They always brought back trinkets and souvenirs for us and sent us postcards from around the world.  And Mama sent our own family off on road trips with boxes of cookies and wads of dollar bills to purchase souvenirs of our own.  She did these things every summer, without fail. 

So committed. 

D-68cMama, Papa & Jean visiting us in Africa, summer 1967.
I was 4 months pregnant with their first grandchild on this trip.

We will miss Mama, but many of the traditions she established continue in our own families, keeping her memory alive.  We have been blessed indeed to have such an amazing woman so actively involved in our lives, setting an example we all aspire to follow. 

Solid, dependable, disciplined, hospitable, thoughtful, committed, consistent. 

Old-fashioned qualities?  Perhaps.  But never out of style. 

Thanks so much, Joy. Beautifully said and right on target.

IMG_0103Kathryn Trautwein, in the early years at the Samarkand, before dementia.
A truly lovely lady in every way I can think of, a good, good woman.