Valentine's Day and memories

I do like some things about Valentine's Day, including this photo of my mother and her twin sister. But most of the time my twin and I weren't dressed alike and could choose or not whether we were dressed the same. I think it may have had something to do with the number of times my mother and her sister were. Including dresses with hearts for a birthday (I think) photo.

Virginity pledges

I believe in chastity until marriage and fidelity in marriage and committed relationships. But it always strickes me as somewhat incestuous when I read about dad's dating their daughters. It doesn't matter that it's a purity ball where girls are pledging their virginity. Actually that increases the 'ick' factor. I could go into a long list of reasons. But I won't. And I'll not go to any protest against these things. I just tend to think that they're irrelevant. A good class in sex ed which includes birth control methods and how to practice safe sex is more important for the physical and mental health of children turning into adults than any pledge, which if one read statistics on the number of people in the USA who have had premarital sex, is likely to be broken.

I thought I had a link to a study on premarital sexual activity that came out this year. I can't find it right now, but if I do I'll post it.

Preparation and more

In my previous post I told a story about how my dad learned new things. But there were also things to which he was oblivious. My mother and I had the same habit when getting ready to go out with the family. Once we were prepared we sat and waited. My dad was a putterer. He would go around and do this and the other thing and finally would ask, "Aren't you ready yet?" To which I would reply, "I'm waiting for you." Dad never made the connection that my mother or I sitting meant that we were ready to go. Not even though both mom and I mentioned that directly to him as in "Dad, when I'm ready to go I sit down and wait for everyone else to arrive."

Oh well, he had many things which he did better. One of which is that we knew he loved us. I guess for that we both put up with some little irritations. And I know he put up with some things in us that irritated him, so....

Preparation

My dad was wonderful in many ways - warm, loving, always ready to lend a hand or the shirt off his back - but he never got how seriously I wanted to prepare for doing a solo or helping with the music in worship. He'd go, "You've got the afternoon free, come do a piece for the nursing home." and wonder why I said, "Dad, you've got to give me some notice." I don't think he really started to understand until a car trip - the last trip I took with both my parents.

Then he watched through the trip as I took a familiar piece and broke it down. I worked on my breathing. I worked on the phrasing. I worked on the sounds of the vowels. You name it, I worked on it. I spent most of the eight-hour drive on a piece which he had heard me do more than a few times. And dad started to realize that, as a musician, I took a great deal of care and worked each piece over before any performance.

He didn't have that many opportunities to warn me before asking me to perform as he was retired by that point, but at least he learned - when I was in my mid-thirties - that while I could performe without much notice, I really wanted to work on preparing for anything I did.

I guess old dogs can learn new tricks.

Family Worship

Our family has produced ministers, elders, deacons and lots of people who are active in their congregations. After he'd left the area where my mother was raised one of the pastors told me, "I'd been warned about the 'family name' when I came to 'community' - they ran the church. But I never had a problem. They were good about telling me how they felt and if they opposed something everyone knew it, but once the decision was made they supported it." Currently there are two Ministers of Word and Sacrament in the PCUSA, but I have no idea how many there are other places. This photo is of the family worship we have at every reunion.

Who am I

I'm one of the two in this photo. But not the one using the computer. We had almost verbatim notes from our family meeting at the reunion. The main topic was putting people in charge of the next reunion - to be three years down the line. There's thirty-some direct descendants in my generation, some of my generation are grandparents. There's more than a little work involved.

Another elk photo

I wasn't able to get this sized larger, but it's still a great shot of the elk that was at my family reunion

Top of the mountain

A group of us who made it to the top of the mountain. And since none of the younger than eighteen crowd had to be carried I was pleased. And since the storm didn't come until after we got down I was especially pleased.

Trek to three crosses

At the top of the mountain, with a storm that didn't quite get to us until we were back down and one of the three corsses.

Trek to three crosses.

The person who took this wanted me in it so as to give the proportions of the tree. But it's still a great photo. We were trekking to the top of a mountain where there were three crosses, but enjoyed the wildlife along the way. The little red flag is one of the markers of the way to the top. And I'm the middle aged, balding, heavy-set animal.

Child and Elk

Last summer I posted a picture of child and elk from my family reunion. I sent to to David Mixner's site where it is now the picture of the week. I've seen lots of elk. I've seen lots of elk with velvet, but this is about the best view of velvet that I've seen. And the child, one of my first cousins once removed, makes it one of the best photos I've seen - of both child and elk.

Family and including others

I was looking over my family phots from the reunion this summer and realized something. The photos of my aunts and uncles - the one's that are just of the siblings - include my Aunt Pat. Aunt Pat was married to my mother's brother but he's been gone for awhile. Uncle Lyle's funeral is when I had the chicken pox. She's been married to her second husband for longer than I think Uncle Lyle was alive. I don't remember the photos of the siblings from the reunions when my dad had survivied my mother, but I suspect when I find them they'll show my dad.

That's what I call family values. The generation before me includes the spouses even after their brothre and sister have died. Another story about that inclusion is also about my Aunt Pat. When she decided to remarry they walked across the farmyard to tell his mother, then drove down the road and told my grandparents, and finally got to her parents. And when they celebrated their 25th anniversary all three sides of the family came - her side, his side, her first husband's side.

And should I mention that the youngest in this photo won an age discrimination suit, is past sixty-five and is working as a ditch rider?

Pet peeves

I heard someone refer to herself as a girly-girl and give that as a reason for not being able to do something fairly simple mechanically - change the flush handle on a toilet - today. That's one of my pet peeves. In my extended family there's a lot of women. My mother was one of nine, I have thirty-plus cousins. I can't tell you the numbers of women, but will say that it's a lot. They vary from the always dressed well to the cowgirl. But I think every single one of them would disdain to use the girly-girl excuse for not doing something.

All of us have our different strengths and skills. Certainly mechanical stuff is not something that I have as one of mine. Yet there are many tasks that we can do even as we don't like them. Simple repairs whether to clothing or toilets are among them. My mother sent her sons out into the world able to iron, clean, cook, sew. If she'd had girls they'd have known how to change a tire, do simple plumbing and similar things.

Being able to do those things has nothing to do with being feminine. My mother certainly showed me that. My mother could go up and clean the gutters of leaves, then come back with her jeans still looking perfectly creased. She was one of those women where the wrinkles fell from her clothes and they looked perfect the moment they were on her. (That's really irritating for those of us who don't have that sort of magic.) Yet one of the anniversary gifts that she loved was a set of tools. That gift from my father meant that they each had their own set that they could use and keep arranged just the way they wanted. My mother was feminine, but strong and certainly never used her gender as an excuse for not getting things done.

So saying something like, "I'm a girly girl and just can't fix the problem." just plain irritates me.

Strong mother and weak father

It is a mystery to me why so many ex-gay sites seem to think that gay men all have overbearing mothers and weak fathers. I suppose if it is twisted more than a little one could say that about my parents - it would be wrong. My mother was a strong woman who raised three sons and my father was a strong man who was involved with his children. In many ways my father looked more like a peacemaker than my mother. My mother was, in some ways, more involved with the church on the state and national levels, while my father was involved more with the local congregation. Yet they were both involved in many ways in the lives of their children. From my dad taking on the leadership for a Boy Scout troop - in part so their would be a troop for his sons to my mother teaching all of her sons how to cook, sew, iron and do laundry - so that they wouldn't be as helpless as her husband when they were living on their own. To both being at almost every event from school to music recitals to scouting to graduations and more; they were involved, supportive parents. They were partners in life and in the raising of their children.

And so on this day, the birthday of my father, I give thanks for both of them.

And I especially give thanks for the love my father had for my mother. Because of the evidence of that love I did not settle for marriage to a woman, even though I came close, since I just could not see the love between myself and the wonderful women who wanted to marry me. I just couldn't marry anyone without what my parents' had and so spared more than one woman the heartache of finding that the man she married was gay. And so I continue to give thanks for the love of those women and remain grateful for the care they have shown me.

Simple pleasures

It's often the simple pleasures that we remember. One of thememories I have of growing up is our Sunday dinner. We always used the good dishes and the menu didn't vary much from pot roast with carrots and potatoes, another vegetable, gravy. Then we washed up the dishes and relaxed for the afternoon.

Our good dishes weren't saved for special ocassions, they were used to make the ocassion special and used often. And yes, they were used from the time we were very small. Mom's good dishes were a set that dad had brought back from Japan after WWII. He bought three sets - one for each of his sisters and the last for his future bride - and all of them used the sets regularly. And so we took pleasure in the small things.

Now it is also true that the dishes got broken. I remember them on the table as some of my earliest memories. And then as we began helping around the house I remember breaking some doing the dishes. And after we were in college mom found a place to replace the dishes and spent more on the few replacements than dad had for the whole set. And it was worth it for her, because we had the memories.

And I applaud my mother's wisdom, since I have the memories and not just the dishes.

We Grieve

This is, and should be, one of the passages used frequently at Christian funerals. It speaks of hope in the midst of sorrow. Certainly we Christians grieve. After my mother's death my grief was such that I fell into depression. But in many ways that grief over my mother's death was because of the bottling up of emotions rather than the grief. The depression was not so much about grief as not grieving.

This passage has sometimes been used to deny the loss that is felt. One pastor I knew told of having a family member rupture their gut in an attempt to hold back the tears. We grieve. We sorrow. We mourn. We just plain miss them. Holding back those feelings is wrong, even as we Christians continue to proclaim a hope of something beyond death.

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

[13] But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about
those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.
[14] For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through
Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. [15] For this we declare to
you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the
coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. [16] For the
Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel's call and with the
sound of God's trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will
rise first. [17] Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the
clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with
the Lord forever. [18] Therefore encourage one another with these words.

Another Elk photo

Another picture of the elk we saw at my family reunion. I've seen elk. I've seen elk with antlers. I've seen elk with antlers and velvet. But this is the most perfect velvet I've ever seen and so close up deserves to be seen by more than just my family.

Posed

This is from the early 1960's when we lived in Cuba....

wait for it....

it's not the one that's an island...

it's the town of Cuba in Kansas where my father was one of the pastors in a five point parish. He preached in Cuba and Narka on Sundays and was primarily responsible for the youth activities. I remember playing in the light from a stained glass window that was in the manse and musty smells bring back wonderful memories of worship there. The church building had a leak that had been fixed a number of times, but somehow regularly came back and dripped into the same spot every year.

My mother's siblings.

Since seven of the nine siblings are still alive on my mother's side, and the youngest just won an age discrimination suit, while the eldest is fretting about only walking a mile a day - I hope my longevity and health take after that side of the family. Should I mention that of the two that are missing - one died in a car accident and the other from complications during surgery to correct a problem caused by one of the infectious disease for which we're vaccinated these days - didn't really die of natural causes?

Women in my family

My mother and her sisters.

My mother is the twin holding her youngest child.