Our house guests have created havoc in my life.  Well yes, in my home too.  More than that, though, my spirit is full of noise and activity, to say nothing of the accumulation of snuggles and glorious smiles.

They came in like a tornado, all noise and motion.  I am speculating that they will leave in much the same manner.  I will readily admit that the walls of my comfortable existence have been shoved a little out of kilter in the process.

Kids.  They have three of them.  As I understand the unofficial rulebook, since they are not my grandchildren I am not required to love or even to like them.

I do anyway.

Who could resist that gorgeous smile from the little sweetie as she peeks out from her hiding place beside my recliner, or the lit-up face of the all-boy artist as he shows off the glowing picture of the dolphin he has just created on the old-school Light Bright?

Yet, in the midst of my enjoyment (and exhaustion), I suddenly realize that these small people are not just children learning and growing and enjoying life.  I have become aware that they are teachers, opening the door to lessons I should have learned ages ago, but have lost in my single-minded focus on making ends meet and racing into old age.

The  boy, with his creation of plastic and light, shoves his way to the front of the classroom to drive home the point.  His completed art project is destined for destruction, but not tonight.  His sisters want to remove the pegs and begin a different picture, but he is adamant.

“I built this.”  This is said as he crosses his arms and prepares to take on all comers.

In his mind, it is all the explanation needed.  I understand perfectly and I concur.  I have actually been considering this very thing for awhile now.  

Just a couple of days ago, I helped the Lovely Lady straighten up the house after the grandchildren had been for a visit.  They do their share of creating havoc, too.

Off and on, a favorite toy of the kids has been a ziploc bag full of plastic geometric shapes which hook together and form whatever object that child’s mind imagines they resemble.  Bicycles, airplanes,  guns–if their fertile genius can visualize it, that is what the shapes become.

On this day, one of the little girls had left her creations lying intact on the corner of the dining room table.  I picked them up, knowing that they were destined to become flat one-dimensional pieces of plastic momentarily.  All I had to do was to disconnect the pieces from each other, nothing more.

In my mind, I heard the little cutie’s voice naming off the objects she saw in the little plastic projects.

“Look, Grandpa.  I made an airplane!  And, this one’s a car!”  They were exact replications of the original–in her imagination.

I stood there, with the unrecognizable objects in my hand, and could hardly bring myself to take them apart.  She built them.  They represented her talents, her efforts.

They were a part of who she is, a product of her labor.  How do you destroy that?

Foolishness!  Take the silly things apart and get done already!  I hear the voices in my head, but still–just for a moment–I hesitate.

A couple of months ago, against my better judgment, I placed a little antique table near a window in our living room.  The Lovely Lady wanted it there.  It is the same table we placed in her mother’s room at the nursing facility a couple of years before she passed away.  It is sitting in the living room to be used for the same purpose it served for my mother-in-law.

Every few days, a cardboard box is placed at the edge of the table and the Lovely Lady stirs her hand around the contents inside.  One by one, little pieces of thick glued paper are pulled out, first the ones with one flat edge.  These are hooked together to form an outside perimeter for what will eventually become a beautiful picture.  After that is complete, hours (and I mean literally, hours) are spent in searching for pieces which have tabs and sockets that fit together to form the balance of the picture.

Puzzles!  I detest them!

I have for years.  I never could quite put my finger on the reason.  Until I stood in the dining room the other day with the little girl’s creation in my hands.

Now I know.  I hate to take apart something which is the product of someone’s labor.  When it is taken apart, there is nothing left to show that the thing was ever done.

Nothing.

Hours spent in fruitless labor, the only evidence of the deed, the movement of the clock, the passing of time.  The work complete, the laborers do the only thing that can reasonably be done with the product of their efforts–tear the puzzle apart and start another.

I want to leave evidence of having been here.

I want to make a difference in the world I leave behind.

I wonder.  Am I just building puzzles?  Am I leaving behind unrecognizable geometric shapes that will be flattened within moments of my departure?  Is all of this just a Light Bright creation, destined to be dismantled the instant I am not here to protect my work with my arms crossed and eyebrows threatening?

I want to be a builder, a craftsman.  I desire to leave a legacy for future generations to see and from which to learn.  It will take careful selection of materials.  It may even take a calculated plan of action.  No more throwing these frantic ideas from my helter-skelter brain on the page and expecting a masterpiece.

The all-boy artist in my house tonight told his parents the other evening that he was sure of what he would be doing the next day because he already had a road map in his head.

I want that, too.

I wonder if I will be able to ascertain the route that the Master Cartographer has already placed there.

I guess I may have to work on my navigational skills, too.

This is one road I don’t want to miss.  You coming along too?

“The Christian shoemaker does his duty, not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes because God is interested in good craftsmanship.”
(Martin Luther ~ German theologian/reformer ~ 1483-1546)

“‘Leave your country and your people,’ God said, ‘and go to the land I will show you.'”
(Acts 7:3 ~ NIV)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2014. All Rights Reserved.

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“We’ll take it!  You’ll deliver, won’t you?” 

The heavy-set, unkempt man in front of me was not cut from the same cloth as most of my other customers.  He was what some might call local color, wearing his dirty overalls, one strap unhooked and hanging behind him.  The long, bushy beard looked wild and the dirty matted hair, even wilder.  Nevertheless, he reached into his pocket to bring out a handful of cash and paid the price for the old upright piano.

It was a good instrument, but was showing clear evidence of its seventy years of use.  We had done everything we could to make it function properly, but the darkened, almost black finish would never polish up.  His wife and daughter hung back nearby, and it was clear from her demeanor that the girl was to be the principal beneficiary of the purchase.

The teenage girl was, like her father, heavier than average, but she was also a little backward.  I asked her if she was taking lessons and she looked nervously to her father for help with the answer.  It was the same with every subsequent question I directed to her.  After a few unsuccessful attempts at conversation, I realized that I was making her uncomfortable and I turned my attention back to her dad and the task of concluding last minute arrangements.

On the day of the delivery, my piano-moving companion arrived and the trailer was loaded quickly and efficiently.  We had done this many times before, so nothing was going to catch us napping, or so we thought.  The first 15 miles of our journey passed uneventfully, but then we left the pavement of the state highway for the gravel road.  Still no problem.  Then, following the instructions I’d been given, we turned again into a dirt lane, along which we traveled for several miles.

We soon realized that we were driving through what we commonly call the boonies.  Of course, that word comes from the more common boondocks, which our military brought home from the Philippines in the early 20th century.   The word bundok, from a common Philippine dialect, means simply mountain, and came to signify any place away from civilization and hard to get to.  (Yeah, only a word-nerd would care.)

Wherever the word came from, we were in it.  The foothills of the Ozarks have many such places, but we seldom deliver pianos to them.

We passed old, tumbledown shacks with porches piled high with debris and multitudes of dogs piling out from under them to bark and snarl at us as we swept by, the dirt swirling up behind us.  The one or two individuals we saw didn’t seem as friendly as the country folk we’re used to when out in most of the more traveled areas.  There were no raised hands in friendly greeting, and no smiles in response to ours.

My faithful sidekick muttered from his side of the truck, “Deliverance! It’s just like in that movie.  What have you gotten us into?”  

Thankfully, following our homemade map, we reached the entrance to the driveway between the fence posts, as it was described to us, and we turned in.

“Just follow the driveway up to the house,” the man had said, so we followed the winding course of the driveway, actually no more than a couple of ruts through the field.  It wound around the edge of the hillside and all we saw before us was a couple of decrepit, tumbledown chicken houses.

“Surely this can’t be right!”  I exclaimed to my helper, who just shook his head. 

But, we followed the drive as instructed and were steered right up to a small tin building stuck between the two long-abandoned chicken houses.  This was obviously the shed where the poultry had been processed over the years, where sick animals would have been treated and feed might have been stored.

There was a car parked in front, so we pulled up and went to the door.  The man greeted us from inside and showed us where we were to place the piano.  A look around made it obvious that the family was indeed in residence there, although I had never before seen such accommodations.

The shed had a few bare light bulbs strung up on extension cords inside its one-room interior.  There was a wood stove for heat and an ancient, filthy refrigerator, along with an electric hot plate to cook on.  Other than that and a couple of beds in opposite corners, there was nothing but junk in the tiny dark hovel.  The piano was quickly taken off the trailer and moved into the designated location and we prepared to leave, still reeling from the conditions that we had observed.

We were amazed as the gentleman bid us goodbye, just as jovial and pleased to be the new owner of that piano, as if it were the finest grand and we had just placed it into a well-appointed drawing room in his mansion on the hillside.

My companion and I were relieved to be out of the area and back onto the highway within minutes, but still, we couldn’t get over what we had just witnessed.  But, as seems to be common with unusual events such as this, as soon as we arrived back at our pleasant comfortable homes, the plight of this family was all but forgotten, except when I related the tale to a few friends who expressed complete disbelief.

I didn’t think much about it again, until one afternoon about two years later when the Lovely Lady returned home from a high school music contest, which she had been asked to judge.  Because of her years as a piano teacher, she, along with a couple of other knowledgeable educators had rated the pianists entered in the contest.  The contestants had played their prepared pieces on the Steinway grand piano at the local performing arts center; for most of them, it was the first time they had even sat at a grand piano.

The Lovely Lady told me about one girl in particular, a heavy-set young lady, dressed unfashionably, who was reticent in her responses to the judge’s questions about her teacher and the piece she had selected.  She sat at the piano, obviously in awe of such a fine instrument.  It took a few moments for her nervousness to pass, so she could proceed.

Then, she began to play.  Almost it seemed as if she was no longer in the room with the judges.  Her playing was confident, the timing impeccable.  She executed the piece with feeling, starting quietly and soaring to a climax of emotion with great musicality, then back down again as the passion of the music ebbed, concluding the performance with beautiful chords and quiet melodies and counter-melodies spiraling down into silence.

As it was related to me by the Lovely Lady, it was not the best performance they heard that day, nor was it perfect, but without question, it was worthy of an excellent rating.

The performance was also a great surprise to those present who had been inclined to expect much less from the backward young lady.

Yes, it was indeed that young girl who lived in the chicken house, learning to play on a rebuilt seventy year-old clunker of a piano.

In the midst of poverty and lack, accomplishment reared it’s lovely head.

I am still learning that appearances can be deceiving, and presumption is a dangerous path to follow, but this one was a real wake up call, almost a shift in paradigms (if I may use that trendy, trite term).  I have delivered beautiful pianos to astounding homes, the buyers only interested in the integrity of their decor, with no interest whatsoever in the quality of the sound or the touch of the keyboard.  I have left homes, having delivered the piano, only to be followed out the door by the whining tone of children asking why their parents bought that stupid thing.   

But, I’m fairly certain that I have never delivered a more important instrument to a more important customer.

I have no idea what she has done with her talent and skill since then.  Simply to know that this young lady had in two short years developed the joy and confidence that she displayed on that afternoon inspires and motivates me to believe that no one, regardless of their environment or financial condition, is beyond hope or expectation of great things.

I pray that it is never otherwise.

“Men in general judge more from appearances than from reality.  All men have eyes, but few have the gift of penetration.”  (Niccolo Machiavelli~Italian writer and statesman~1469-1527)










© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2014. All Rights Reserved.

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“Just say it!”

The scruffy boys clustered around the little towhead couldn’t bear to watch the little guy writhing in pain, so they urged him to take the only way out.  Just one word and it would all be over.

He bit his lip and stubbornly shook his head.

“Never!”

It was a stalemate.  The dark haired aggressor clearly had the upper hand, since he had the smaller boy’s arm twisted behind his back in what is known as a hammerlock.  The higher the arm was pushed toward the shoulder, the more the level of pain intensified.  The stronger of the two, he was certain that the scuffle would soon be over.  Domination was certain.  Victory was his!

But no.  The obvious loser refused to submit.  The word would never cross his lips.  He prepared for one last, desperate move.
____________________

As I relive the event in my memory, it occurs to me that the reader might wonder why a man of advancing years (I will readily admit to it) is concerned at all with a common school yard tussle which happened nearly fifty years ago.  I almost wonder myself.

I have mentioned before that my mind doesn’t always heed its master.  It goes where it wants with increasing frequency these days.  Perhaps my admission in my most recent post, of giving up control, is to blame.  I do tend to mull things over a bit, after the words have been written in black and white for the world to see.

I think though, that it was more likely the conversation I had with an old acquaintance this morning.  I’ve known the man for thirty years, having done business with him and his father too, when the old gentleman was living.  My friend is retired now, although he is not many years older than I.  His words are tumbling around in my head, along with my own from earlier.

“When I left the workplace, I guess I withdrew from life.  I don’t have much to get excited about anymore.  It’s just me and my wife and we’ve got nothing to talk about, since we do the same things together from daylight to dark.”

As he went out the door to go home, he assured me that his discussion with me would be the high point of this day for him.  Poor fellow.

For all the words he said, I really hear just one.  The little towhead refused to say the word, but this sixty-year old man is living it everyday.  

As I headed out for a run tonight, my thoughts ran along with me.

photo: Nicholas A Tonelli

The stars shone brightly up in the sky above me as I left the house, their brilliance shining through even the annoying glare of the streetlights that I moved under and past.  I looked at them up in the sky and  suddenly realized that those were the very stars which were shining when I was a boy.

The very ones.  Fifty years is nothing to them.  Fifty years of being stared at.  Fifty years of having projectiles flung from this little sphere of dirt and water up into what we call outer space.  Not one of those projectiles has ever come close to touching a single one of those stars.  Not one has dimmed their brilliance a single lumen.  Since I was a boy–since my father was a boy–since my father’s father was a boy…

The very same stars are shining brightly in the sky.

I will admit to talking to myself frequently, but tonight I talked to the stars for a minute.  Just for a minute.

They were brightest as I ran through the cemetery.  Looking up, I actually said the words out loud.

“Are you still there?”

There was mute silence, but their brilliance shouted in the quiet.  I didn’t hear an answer, but I had it anyway.  I wasn’t done quite yet.  Two words.  That’s all it took to finish my conversation.

“Me too.”
____________________

The little towhead had seen the luchadores, the Mexican wrestlers, on the black and white television set at his neighbor’s house.  He remembered seeing them caught in the hold that his opponent now had on him.  It was a submission hold that few escaped.  But once–just once, he had seen it done.

Reaching back to grab the other kid’s head for support, he lifted both his legs and, holding his weight with the hand on the boy’s head, he shoved against the tree that was just in front of his body.  When the luchadore had done it, he had flipped up and over the other wrestler’s back, pulling him into the same hammerlock.  Of course, the wrestling moves on television depended on the cooperation of both wrestlers, one helping the other as they performed their spectacular gymnastics, but the boy didn’t know that.

What actually ensued is that the boy who appeared beaten simply knocked the other boy down backwards, landing with his full weight on top of him.  The tables were turned as the surprised boy on the bottom of the heap, bruised and in pain, begged to be allowed up.

The towhead, himself surprised by the turn of events, shouted out instantly, “Say it!”

The other little boy, all the fight knocked out of him along with his breath, gasped out the word that his conqueror had refused to utter only moments before.

“Uncle!”
____________________

I know too many who have already said the word.  I’ve seen them waiting for time to pass.  The things that life has thrown at them have dimmed their brilliance.  The submission hold that trials have put them in has them on the ropes, and the towel of surrender has been thrown over those ropes into the ring.

I wonder, if we fall–no, when we fall–I wonder… Could we just roll over and look up?  They’re still up there, aren’t they?  The same stars that shone brightly way back when–back when nothing was going to stand in our way.  Those very stars that shone as we made plans and laid the groundwork for conquering our world.

Our Creator put them up in the sky, along with the other lights.  I’m wondering if we’ve forgotten that He also made us to shine like stars in the universe.

They’re still shining, aren’t they?

Me too.

And, I still won’t say that word.

“…So that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.  Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky.”
(Philippians 2:15 ~ NIV)

“Being defeated is often a temporary condition.  Giving up is what makes it permanent.”
(Marilyn vos Savant ~ American magazine columnist)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2014. All Rights Reserved.

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On a recent afternoon we stood or sat in the music store, three old musicians, swapping stories of the glory days gone by.  I’m not sure if any lies were told.  Life is stranger than fiction, I’ve heard, and I have thought it true on an occasion or two.  If that is the case, perhaps no lies were necessary to the conversation that day.

I have followed a different path than these old pros, making a living by providing the tools of the trade for them and other in similar pursuits.  That doesn’t mean that I don’t have my own stories, just that they have occurred in different venues.

Still, I like to hear their tales.

I found as we talked that at times our conversation became animated and loud, since each of us had something to contribute and wanted to be next in line to share his story.  I think a time or two I may even have had my hand up in the air like an anxious schoolboy pleading for attention from the teacher.

Pick me!  Pick me!

I need not have worried.  We all got a chance to tell our stories before the session ended and I realized that the attention-getting antics of the participants may have been exactly what we were discussing anyway.

We talked, as old musicians are wont to do, of gigs–events long past–in which we have participated.  There seemed to be a thread woven through each of the stories told on that afternoon.  That common thread was the need to be noticed, to hold the attention of the audience.

We spoke of noisy patrons in bars and at fairs, and even of haughty society matrons who shushed the band at wedding receptions.  None of us enjoy that aspect of performing.

We labor hard at our craft.  We rehearse and rehearse, both individually and as a group, to be sure that the product we offer our customers is of the highest quality we can present.  We work out tricky passages and quirky rhythms, discussing crescendos and fermatas–all in the hopes of pulling off the perfect performance.  The thing is, we want our audience to listen while we pull off that perfect performance.

They usually don’t.

One of the participants in the discussion told us in animated fashion of the good-old-boy saloon his band played many years ago–a venue more famous for its fist-fights than for its top-notch musical acts.  One more night, they had played, unheard and completely unnoticed, through several songs as an argument between two inebriated customers had escalated to include half of the patrons of that establishment.  The staff had tried in vain to halt the fracas, so the local lawmen came spilling through the door to see if they could attract the attention of the combatants.  They weren’t having much luck, until the sheriff walked through the door with a shotgun on his shoulder.  He said not a word, but simply stood in the middle of the room and cocked the shotgun.

Click.  Click. 

The band had fallen silent by that time, but it wouldn’t have mattered.  The distinctive sound of the shotgun shell being chambered carried throughout the hall.  No voices were raised, no whistles blown.  The simple, menacing promise of those two syllables was enough.  The yells, grunts, and curses of the unruly mob ceased in an instant.  Throughout the bar, bloody noses were wiped and split lips sucked on as the humble and contrite men picked up chairs and tables in silence.

The sheriff knew how to get and hold attention.
____________________

Funny, as I put the story into words tonight, my mind is carried back in time.  I am once again seated on a hard pew in the little red brick church in which my formative years were spent.  When the doors to that church were unlocked, we were in those pews.  The whole family.  All seven of us.  Mom, Dad, one obedient sister, and four rowdy and rebellious brothers.

It’s funny that my mind should jump from the battlefield of that profane country tavern to the sacred quiet of the little church, but I remember the sheriff and his shotgun in the church, too.

No.  It wasn’t actually the sheriff, but there was a fight going on.  One of my brothers and I were involved in a clandestine tussle that involved kicks to the shins under the pews and a dig or two of the elbow into the ribs.  Like the bar fight, this was escalating.  Until the sheriff took notice.

He didn’t wear a badge.  Didn’t even carry a shotgun.  But I don’t think the distinctive sound of that gun being cocked could have created any more panic than the sound the battling boys heard that morning.  This sheriff had only to slide his thumb and middle finger together in a firm motion, and the deed was done.

Snap!

Elbows were instantly to the sides and hands on legs.  Feet came out from under the pews and either rested firmly on the floor or dangled unmoving directly below the individual lad.  No shotgun in the world could have effected the change any faster.

Those boys knew what that same thumb and finger were capable of, if they came in contact with the fleshy portion of the back of the upper arm.  It had happened before.  The agony of being pinched in that place was almost more than the mind could bear to think about.  (The reader may feel free to attempt the maneuver for him or herself if there is any question.)  The threatening sound had weight behind it.

Nothing more was needed to gain their attention.  Or their acquiescence. 
____________________

Once again, my mind returns to the present and the conversation which had been going on around me.  We spoke of methods of getting and keeping the attention of the audience.  Almost as quickly as my mind has come back though, it begins to drift.

I wonder.  Why is it that we crave attention?  What is it within us that wants people to care about what we do and how we perform.  This is not true only of musicians, but is, in spite of protestations to the contrary, the common human condition.

We want to be loved.

We don’t just want attention; we want love.  Of course, the person who cannot achieve that purpose will seek other ways to gain attention, but the root desire is to be accepted and to be cared for.  As babies in our parents’ arms, we sought to be the center of their world.  We still seek that attention.

Some gain the attention by brute strength; some achieve it by trickery.  You know both types, to be sure.  Some make themselves pitiable to draw the attention of their target; others make themselves physically alluring to gain the eye of their audience.  We jump.  We wave our arms.  We scream at the top of our lungs to be heard above the din surrounding us.

I wonder if there is a better way.

I sat one Sunday morning some months ago and watched a curious thing.  Five minutes before the church service was to begin, amidst the noise of a crowd of people enjoying each other, the Lovely Lady mounted the steps to the platform and sat down to the grand piano.  Unobtrusively, she opened a book, and quietly, the notes began to stream forth from the beautiful instrument.  The hubbub of voices and chairs being moved around continued, unabated. 

For a moment.

I can’t tell you what it was; can’t even begin to define the reason.  All I know is that subtly, almost imperceptibly at first, a change came over the room.  Folks who were talking animatedly suddenly grew quiet.  Men who were standing up sat down.  Almost in a wave, the silence in the crowd grew, while the music from the piano wound its way to our ears and into our hearts.  It wasn’t a bombastic piece.  It didn’t have a lot of runs and arpeggios.  There were just beautiful chords and the sweet music of an accomplished musician who had selected a piece, not to attract attention, but to deliver a message of peace and joy.

No jumping up and down, no shotgun being cocked, no fingers being snapped.

Just the quiet of melody, harmony, and the Spirit of God.

It was a powerful moment.

A moment with a powerful message.  The attention we need doesn’t come from our efforts to attract attention.  The love we crave won’t come as we attempt to force others to love us.  If we will simply do what we are called to do, faithfully and skillfully, those things will follow.  Perhaps not immediately.  Perhaps not even for years.  But, they will follow.

I’m trying to learn the lesson of quiet faithfulness.

I may still wave my arms in the air a time or two, just to catch your eye. It’s obviously a work in progress.

Just be glad you’re not hearing the sound of the shotgun being cocked.

“Lighthouses don’t fire cannons to call attention to their shining–they just shine.”
(Dwight L Moody ~ American evangelist/pastor ~ 1837-1899)

“Everything they do is done for people to see…they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the churches; they love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to be called teacher by others.”
(Matthew 23: 5-7 ~ NIV)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2014. All Rights Reserved.

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She wasn’t my favorite grandma.

You know what I mean.  My other grandma laughed when I said stupid stuff.  She even stood up for me with my parents when she thought they were being too tough on me.

This grandma corrected my grammar and didn’t really like my jokes.  That in itself isn’t all that strange; many of my friends feel the same way, still.

Grandma Kirkpatrick thought I needed a firm hand, and she was just the one to lend it.  She made me change my socks when they stank.  She forced me to help my mom clean the house whenever she was around.  She didn’t think I should read so much, so she was always chasing me out of the house.

Grandma Kirk was grumpy.

Still, she loved me and I knew it.  She never forgot a birthday, always sending a dollar inside a birthday card.  She even sent the most wonderful treats at Christmastime, treats she made herself.  Candied dates–or were they figs?  No matter; they were wonderful.  She loved me.

But, she was grumpy.  She wasn’t my favorite grandma.

Funny how our minds trick us, isn’t it?  The years have passed, she’s been gone for twenty-some years, and I’m more fond of her than I ever was.  I miss the crotchety old lady.  And, I’m not being disrespectful when I say that.  I would love to have just one more visit with her.  Just one more.

Still, one of my favorite photos (you see it above) keeps her close to my heart these days.  If you can’t tell what is happening in the photo, the old lady (Grandma Kirkpatrick) is buttoning the little blonde girl’s coat.  The little girl is grinning from ear to ear, although you can’t see that.  That little girl is my daughter, herself now mom to four lively children.

Grandma was visiting at my brother’s house–one of the last times I would ever see her alive.  It was November and we were to have a feast with my brothers and their families, along with Grandma and Grandpa, on Thanksgiving day.  The little blondie wasn’t always that sociable a creature, especially when it came to strange adults.  But, she took to my Grandma instantly.

My grumpy Grandma.

Funny.  She must have changed.  Maybe she didn’t fuss that much at the racket the tyke and her cousins constantly made.  She may have even ignored the kid throwing a hissy-fit about having to eat her vegetables.  Whatever it was, the little girl adored her.

Every time we left my brother’s house that week, the little blonde two-year old had to make one stop before heading out the door.  She would let us help her find her coat.  She even tolerated her Dad helping to pull on the garment.  But, Great-Grandma had to do the buttons.  No one else would do.  There was no way she was going out the door until it was done.  By Great-Grandma.

I still don’t get it.  I’m starting to have a glimmer, though.

The little girl knew two things.  1) Great-Grandma loved her (and her Daddy).  2) She could be trusted to keep her warm when she went out into the cold.

One followed the other.  Nothing else mattered.

Was the old lady grumpy?  Possibly.  But, she loved her.  And, the old lady made it so she was warm.  Every time.

The little girl never knew that her Great-Grandma was grumpy.  Never.  All she knew was this one very important thing:  Great-Grandma knew how to keep her warm.

There are so many more things I want to say.  I like to control the lessons that are drawn from my little stories.  But I’m still learning my own lessons from this one, so I’ll leave the reader with just a nudge or two in the direction I’m headed.

I wonder if we don’t focus so much on the negative that we miss the most important things about people.

I wonder if we all need a little child to instruct us.

I wish we would always get one more chance to tell people how much we love them.

We don’t.

I’m thinking that today we should thank the people who keep us warm.

Let’s do it while they’re still around.

…and a little child will lead them.
(Isaiah 11:6 ~ NIV)

Sometimes, not often enough, we reflect upon the good things
And our thoughts always center around those we love
And I think about those people who mean so much to me
And for so many years have made me so very happy
And I count the times I have forgotten to say thank you
And just how much I love them.
(Sometimes ~ Bessie Jones/Allen Lomax)
Listen to the Carpenters recording here.

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2014. All Rights Reserved.

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“Look!  A flare.”

I know better than to look up in the sky when the Lovely Lady says the word.  My eyes automatically drop to the ground and I see it.  What she is pointing to are actually the tips of the leaves of our old friends, the crocuses.  Last week it was a skin-biting six degrees one morning, yet here are the crocuses, making promises.

Okay.  I know you want to know why one would look to the ground to see a flare, so I had better get that out of the way or you won’t hear a single word I say.  It is a story I have heard numerous times since I became part of her family, thirty-five years ago.  The Lovely Lady’s mother told and retold the bit of lore and it has long ago intertwined itself into our everyday life.

It seems that the young family was visiting grandparents in Florida many years ago.  On a lazy summer day, the adults sat and enjoyed their iced tea on the screened-in porch when the voice of one of the Lovely Little Girl’s brothers wafted on the breeze from the garden beside the house.

“No Jessie.  Don’t say flares.  Say flow-ers!”

The little neighbor girl, her southern accent firmly in place, could say no such word, but the young boy certainly gave promise of becoming a first class grammar cop.  He has made good on the promise.  I like him.

Now, where were we?  Oh yes!  The crocuses are making promises.  The weeks ahead will show us if they also can make good on that promise.

I’m betting on the crocuses.

Reading this, one could be forgiven for thinking that I am once again railing against the harshness of winter, although, in a way, I guess I could be.  It has been a brutal winter, one of the worst I can remember, and I am tired to death of it.  The ice, the frigid temperatures, and the accompanying hardships, along with the gloomy skies that follow have sapped me of any resolve to stay positive and upbeat.

More than once in the last month, I have thought about sending up a flare–no, a real flare, a signal of distress–to make sure that the Creator knows we’re still down here, waiting for relief.  I’ve certainly done enough complaining in my flare/prayers that have gone up His way.  Isn’t it odd–how the distance between us and Him seems at times to be as hard as the icy ground was last week?

But when all is said and done, I’m not talking about the weather at all, am I?

May I talk about the crocuses for a minute more?

I didn’t plant them.  Someone else did that.  Down there, under the ground, there are some bulbs.  I’ve never seen the bulbs, but I know they are there.

Two weeks ago, when there was four inches of snow on the ground above them, they were there.  As the snow melted and refroze into a hard, glistening sheet of ice that made walking hazardous, the bulbs weren’t wondering what they should be doing.  They weren’t concerned about whether the shoots they were preparing to push skyward would be able to punch through the ice.

Those bulbs, which I have never set eyes on, just did what they do.  They gathered nutrients from the soil, some of those actually put there by that snow up above; they turned those nutrients into the immature leaves which were developing, and they began to push them up through the ground above them.  When the shoots got almost to the level of the soil, they stopped.  It was too cold for those leaves to be above ground, so they waited.  Then this week, the ground warmed up above freezing again, and they immediately started pushing upward once more.

The bulbs, which I really cannot give witness to actually being there, have been doing this for all the years we have lived here.  I have never tended them, never lifted a finger to aid them.

They have always kept their promise.  Every year.

No.  I’m not talking about the weather.

Come to think of it, I’m not really even talking about flower bulbs.

Life is not as easy as it once seemed to be.  Complications have set in.  Plans which have been set in motion haven’t come to fruition.  People I expected to remain alongside me have gone elsewhere, some physically and some spiritually.  There are more than a few who have gone from my world permanently.  I will never see them again, never hear their voices again.  Paths I have chosen have been blockaded, dead ends which disappoint in their ending.  Frequently these days, I am in a dark place.

But, I realize that I didn’t plant the seed.  I’m also coming to realize that I have no control over the end result.  That said, the promise of spring that follows winter has been made.

Someone planted the bulbs.

There will be crocuses.  Right on time.

The leaves are pushing through the ground right about now.  I can wait.

Seasons change.  There are still promises to be kept.

Look!  A flare.

“If winter comes, can spring be far behind?”
(From Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley ~ English poet ~ 1792-1822)

“He who makes the promise will find ways and means of keeping it.  It is mine to obey His commands; it is not mine to direct His counsels.”
(C H Spurgeon ~ British pastor/theologian ~ 1834-1892)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2014. All Rights Reserved.

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“Flowers for my heart with tender words
And a gentle touch that says so much
This is how I’ve heard that love should always be.” *

Valentine’s Day.

Again, the commercialized and cloyingly cute messages are filling the in boxes, mail boxes, and trash boxes across the country.  More flowers, candy, and cheaply-made cards will be purchased than at any other time of year.

All to express a love that never was and never will be.  Love, that is.  It will never be love.

Love isn’t flowers, isn’t a close embrace, isn’t sweet nothings whispered into an ear as you dance in the dark.  And, it certainly isn’t the thousand dollar diamond necklace slipped around the throat of the picture-perfect beauty queen primping in the mirror before slinking out to a romantic dinner for two.

Our culture lies.

It lies every time an ad suggests that all you need to keep your mate’s love is some pretty new bauble.  It lies with each new revelation of ways to keep love fresh in some exotic destination or with an amazing new scent.

I want some new images to exemplify love.

How about a toilet seat?  Either up or down will do.  Love is him, putting it down for her.  It’s her, ignoring the fact that it never gets put down.

Perhaps it could be black olives.  He loves them, so she includes them in her recipes.  She hates them, so he removes them from the frozen pizza before it goes in the oven.

The list could go on, including not a single item that Hallmark could market.  The old toothbrush he used to clean up that ugly old vase that she bought at the second-hand store.  The spool of thread she emptied to mend his favorite old work coveralls.  The ice scraper he uses on frosty mornings, so she doesn’t have to stand out in the cold and do it herself.

In recent years, I have found some new items that illustrate love.  You don’t want to hear about them.  They are uncouth and will make you say the word gross as you see them in print.  And that’s a shame. Because, you see, the other lie that our culture tells is that your mate will always be attractive and will always be healthy.

He won’t.  She won’t.

The bedpan and the urinal spring to mind.  Bodily functions become the concern of the one who loves.  Embarrassment and squeamishness are abandoned as love does, not what it wishes, but what it must. Not so uncouth, but still not an attractive thought, the fork and spoon push their way into the symbolism, as one mate must feed another.  The memory of feeding the cake to each other at the wedding comes back with a rush, and we realize that it is a promise we will keep.

I believe that the one item I would chose to symbolize love most is nothing more than a simple handkerchief.

 These cloth relics of the past have fallen out of fashion–replaced by the paper tissues we use and crumple into the trash by the thousands, but I like to have one in my back pocket.  I would be lost without it.

With the handkerchief we dry the tears of children, and yes, wipe their noses too.  I mop my forehead when the perspiration beads and threatens to run down my face.  But, all through my life the one thing I have used that square bit of cloth for, more than any other use, has been to wipe away the tears that have come.

When puppy dogs died suddenly, the tears from the children’s eyes were soaked up; those from my own, as well.  When the frustrations of financial want were too much, the handkerchief once again dabbed away the tears of fear for the future.

I have seen the tears of spouses as they turned away from the hospital bed their lover lay upon, perhaps for the last time.  Other tears have been wiped away as elderly parents departed from this world to a better place; they were wiped away as conversations led to the realization that mental faculties were failing.

Tears fall.  Sometimes, they are tears of happiness.  More often, as life progresses, they are tears of worry and of sorrow, but always, they are tears of love.

Tears fall.  And we wipe them away.  For each other.

And, there’s nothing cheap about that.

You can keep your cheap paper valentines.  You can keep your sugary-sweet chocolates (well, maybe just one…).  You can even keep your diamonds and jewels.  They’re cheap too, in a way.

Tears fall.  And we stay.

Because–love.

Life is like an onion; you peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.”
(Carl Sandburg ~ American writer/poet ~ 1878-1967)

“He will wipe every tear from their eyes.”
(Revelation 21:4 ~ NIV)

© Paul Phillips. He’s Taken Leave. 2014. All Rights Reserved.

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* from “How Love Should Be” by Jeremy Michael Lubbock ~ American singer/songwriter