Hope and Irises

 

I'm always running across quotes in books that I like. I may jot them down. Or I take a photo of them. Most of the time, I don't find a way to use them. It's kind of like those recipes I see on Facebook or in blogs that I print ... then promptly bury in a "might make someday pile" on my kitchen counter.

But this one from Charles Martin's book, The Last Exchange, recently rose to the surface again:

I've been some places where there is no hope, and yet somehow, it swims through the cracks. Rises to the surface. I've found hope staring me in the face when reason screamed I had none.. ... Not in all of human history has hope ever been laid to rest. When we breathe in, it's the stuff that expands our lungs. It's the reason we're not just dust. ... If you press me, love is what makes us who we are. Hope is how we express us. Hope is love with legs. 

from The Last Exchange by Charles Martin

 

 

Maybe blooming iris are like hope, too. Earlier this month, the bulbs were tightly closed. There was little hint of the blossom that would later unfurl from the tight, cocoon-shaped bulbs. 

 

 

But, like a butterfly breaking through a chrysalis and unfurling its wings, the iris' colorful petals also broke forth into a riot of purple framing our front doorstep and the mailbox. It's kind of like hope in the book quote, isn't it? The bloom breaks through the cracks and arrives at the surface - just like hope.

 

This year has seemed a particularly good year for iris. As I've mentioned before, they always remind me of my Grandma Neelly. She had purple iris outside her kitchen windows.  

 

She had a much better green thumb than I do. In fact, Randy is the reason we have anything growing in our yard and garden. But even if I don't carry her strong gardening gene, I still imagine her standing at the kitchen window, washing dishes and seeing the purple iris through the panes. They must have given her joy and hope...

just like seeing the iris surrounding our country road mailbox brings a smile as I arrive home.

And I feel the span across time connecting me to their old farm house and sweet memories of homemade noodles, green apple pie, a plastic candy dish, a manual typewriter, sugar-and-milk-laden coffee at breakfast time, Lassie and The Wonderful World of Disney with Grandpa Neelly, gathering eggs from the chicken house and so much more.

It's like a mental bouquet of love and hope. And even though the iris will soon be gone for the year, there remains the hope for next year ... and an invitation to say thank you.

It doesn’t have to be the blue iris

it could be weeds in a vacant lot,

 or a few small stones;

 just pay attention, 

then patch a few words together

 and don’t try to make them elaborate,

 this isn’t a contest

 but the doorway into thanks, 

and a silence in which another voice may speak.

Praying, by Mary Oliver

Marie Kondo Would Not Approve

Marie Kondo would not approve.

"Tidy your space; 
transform your life," she promises.

But I'm a pack rat.
There: I said it.
I've also lived in the same house for nearly 35 years now.
It's a recipe for an overwhelming task.
Only a pandemic could have forced my hand.
Well, that's one good thing, I suppose.

The casual visitor wouldn't necessarily uncover this particular character flaw.
On the surface, there may be a little extra dust from time to time.
For the most part, my house is presentable ... at least, at surface level.
But I sure didn't want anyone opening a closet or drawer.

And even though I've been slowly chipping away - a cabinet or closet at a time - I still am not ready for a visit from the white-glove lady.

Kondo - the organizational guru - says you should get rid of "stuff" that doesn't "Spark Joy." OK, but some of it does spark joy - or at the very least - it sparks memories. (I am guessing Kondo is happy enough that some people bought her book. She must be betting that her missive is worth the real estate it takes on the book shelf. Something to ponder, right?!)

Anyway, I've thrown away a bunch of stuff.
We've donated some other stuff.

I couldn't bring myself to throw away some of the cards or letters my kids sent, so those went into a little storage box. I guess they'll get to throw them away some day.

I uncovered a stack of thank you notes from people from back in my days as a writer at The Hutchinson News. Among the stacks of letters I'd saved, I counted five from people who had a bone to pick with a story I wrote. Two of them were connected to a story in which I quoted someone saying that the Kansas Author's Club members were "a bunch of old ladies in hats."

First of all, I didn't say it.
I shared an accurate quote from someone I interviewed.
Their opinion, not mine.
Upon further reflection, perhaps I should have left that quote out. I was young.

A couple more were from the grammar police.
I usually do a better-than-average job with grammar.
But I'm certainly not infallible. One lady enumerated my many faults in a multi-page missive.

Isn't it curious that I've spent a whole lot more time thinking about the criticisms than the largely-positive "thank yous" and "so well done" remarks?" I suppose it's a lesson in human nature as much as it is grammar.

Long, long ago, the Class Prophecy for Skyline High School's Class of 1975 predicted I'd be a writer at The New York Times. Since I'm a small-town girl through and through, I never bought into the vision some creative classmate penned 45 years ago. At the time, I suppose we all envisioned that success was measured far, far away from the plains of Kansas.

I'd forgotten a letter from an opera singer I'd interviewed. It said, in part:

My friends here in New York have decided that you should be on the staff of Opera News or at least The New York Times. I agree. You captured the essence of "me" on paper.

A Lindsborg native sent me a letter from Germany by "Air Mail" after I interviewed her for a feature story. 

I found notes from two of my elementary-school teachers. My college advisor and instructor sent a note after I won some national writing and page design awards.

Two other letters were addressed to Kim Moore and Pete Souza. At the time, Pete was a staff photographer for The News.

Pete Souza went on to serve as White House photographer for both Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama. (Well, at least one of us moved on to bigger things.)

I read all of the letters again and then reluctantly tossed them. And, in truth, I didn't specifically remember three-fourths of the articles they mentioned. 

In an evaluation I uncovered, a former editor called my feature work "exceptional." He had a lot of nice things to say, but he also pegged my shortcomings rather well.

1) While her reporting is - as always - thorough, it tends to be lengthy ...

2) She often gets very involved in the stories she's doing, and while so far that has actually been a benefit by giving her greater insight, caution must be exercised to see that it doesn't foul her ability to still look at the issue with the detachment necessary to provide balanced reporting.

Guilty as charged to both counts. This blog post certainly qualifies.

I feel really old after finding some thank you notes from Mrs. Leavelle's 2nd grade class at Stafford Elementary. They were sent to me following their field trip to The News. Some of those "second graders" are now friends on Facebook and have their own families.

I may have a harder time throwing away the actual clippings. I'm still in the sorting phase of that particular Kondo-inspired project. It's slow going.

 

I have a whole legal-sized file folder filled with the love of Herman. (No, I haven't been two-timing Randy. Herman was a sourdough starter whose appeal grew as exponentially as his dough.) Ironically, during this pandemic, there's been a resurgence in bread baking and also an interest in sourdough. I just haven't heard anyone call it "Herman" yet. See? Maybe I'm not ready to get rid of that file quite yet.

I'm having similar withdrawal pangs about tossing:

• Mountains of newspaper clips, some of which I had entered in state and national competitions;
• Foothill-sized mounds of newsletter publications for Wesley Towers, Newton Medical Center, Youthville and others for whom I wrote as a freelancer after "retiring" from The News;
• Vocal solo accompaniment tapes, even though I don't have a working cassette player any longer and the church audio system can no longer play them;
• 4-H foods and photography leader files. This represents another huge investment of time and effort through my kids' growing-up years.

I did toss a stack of newspaper clips crammed inside 5- by 7-inch manila envelopes. How research has changed! Back in the pre-Google days, we filed articles so we could reference them again. For example, if I was going to write another article about the Cosmosphere, I could pull my handy-dandy manila envelope for background material.

Also destined for the trash pile are file cabinets full of clips from other magazines, newspapers, etc., that might serve as a springboards for story ideas. They range from asparagus to zucchini in the food article realm to files on miscarriage, adoption and more. As long as my helper's back holds out, I'll keep weeding out those file folders and having him tote them by laundry-basket-full out of the basement.

Isn't Google miraculous when you think about it?

I was amused by a file I found labeled "computers." An article in Kansas Farmer from 1989 had this headline: To Computer Or Not to Computer" with the subtitle: That is the question. A computer for your farm isn't necessary. Be aware of how much time it's going to take if you do decide to buy a computer."

My, how times have changed, right?

Another article in the computer file was from Family Fun magazine: "So You'd Like to Buy A Computer: What every family in search of a computer needs to know to get the biggest bang for the buck."

I guess that article ended up with the most pull, since there's also a receipt for the first home computer I purchased in that file folder.

Another publication made me kind of sad. When I worked at The Hutchinson News, it was the flagship paper in the Harris Group. The community newspaper is on its deathbed, I fear, as large media conglomerates have swallowed up papers and slashed local staff.

My old proportion wheel reflects a time when page design required more brainpower than a computer.

I know my old Junior Parent notebook is obsolete, but serving as chair or co-chair of those efforts for both Jill's and Brent's classes also represents a lot of time and effort. Same goes for the kids' scholarship notebooks. And no way am I getting rid of the 3-ring wedding binder yet. 

I don't even want to think about the tubs of photos and my kids' school mementos that need to be sorted and organized. But I have plenty to do before I get to that seemingly insurmountable task. I sure wish that digital photography had arrived a little sooner.

You can't expect miracles, Marie Kondo. I'm trying ... I really am.

Hope Begins In the Dark

I've been thinking about this quote quite a bit in the last week or so. Sometimes, you don't get another shot. So I guess it's even more important to focus on what's important and try my darndest to forget the negative, even when it's hard.  

Today, David & Lisa Schemm again say goodbye to their youngest son, Luke, who was taken off life support last Wednesday. For the past week, people have been honoring the 17-year-old football player, who collapsed at a playoff game last Tuesday night. Football teams have played in his honor. Farm neighbors have harvested their fields. Strangers and friends have lifted them in prayer.

On Facebook yesterday, I saw a link to an editorial, A Delicate Balance, from the Hays Daily News. The writer, Patrick Lowry, says, in part:

Nobody dies unexpectedly. You’ll see such a reference in an obituary notice on occasion, but it really isn’t true. Everybody born into this world is expected to die. Life and death are two of the so-called three certainties that exist.

In a perfect world, death occurs only after a life fully lived. Parents go before their children. Loved ones are bedside when it takes place, and the individual is at peace with all of them as well as their own guiding force. Unfortunately, the natural order of things isn’t always recognized. ...

While we have absolutely zero influence on the length of time one’s fate allows, we can control how we respond to each glorious sunrise we see. We can’t dictate how others should act, but we have the power to react in a positive manner. We don’t decide what challenges will come our way, we do choose how to confront them.

I didn't personally know Luke, though Randy and Luke's dad, David Schemm, worked together on the Kansas Association of Wheat Growers board for several years so we are colleagues and acquaintances. Our hearts break for them.

 

Last Wednesday, when the Schemms removed their beloved "gift from God" from life support, a song came up on my Facebook feed. It's called "When I'm Gone." I could look at it as a coincidence, I suppose, but I prefer to think of it as a "God-incidence."

I'd only recently been following the story of Joey and Rory Feek, a country music duo. Joey, 40, and the mama of an 18-month-old daughter,  is now in hospice. Though I watched Joey + Rory on a reality music show, "Can You Duet?" and Randy sometimes watches their television show, I'd never heard this song until last week. Ironically, they recorded it two years before Joey's terminal cancer diagnosis.

In a 2012 interview, Joey explains the origin of the song, written by her friend, Sandy Lawrence:

“I was devastated, absolutely devastated when I heard it and what it meant and coming from the person who is leaving their loved one,” says Joey. “That concept was just something that I had never heard or thought of before, and it really struck me. She wrote it about her mother who was dying. ... She needed affirmation that everything was going to be okay after her mom died, and she wasn’t able to get it from her, but she wanted to write this to leave to her son and to her husband and to let them know that if anything were to ever happen, everything is going to be okay when I’m gone. It just knocked me out. When we recorded it, it was just magical. She came in while we were recording it in the studio, and then I had her sing the harmony vocals on it with Rory. Then, when we shot the music video, it just seemed so fitting that she played the piano."

Here are just a few of the words: 

A bright sunrise will contradict
The heavy fault that weighs you down
In spite of all the funeral songs
The birds will make their joyful sounds
You wonder why the earth still moves
You wonder how you'll carry on
But you'll be okay on that first day when I'm gone ...

Life will call with daffodil
And morning glorious blue skies
You'll think of me, some memory
And softly smile to your surprise
And even though you love me still
You will know where you belong
Just give it time, we'll both be fine
When I'm gone.

There are many people hurting today. Some have lost loved ones too soon. Some have said goodbye after a long illness. Some are searching for a diagnosis. Some are holding on to past hurts when they should let them stream through their fingers like sand.  Some are spending time arguing about silly things like Starbucks coffee cups.

Lord, I pray I see the bright sunrise, hear the birds sing amid the changing colors of fall and glory in the glorious blue skies that signal Your presence in this world. And I pray that You'll surround all those hurting people with Your comfort and peace.

Click HERE for the video of "When I'm Gone."

***

I'm linked to Tell His Story at Jennifer Dukes Lee's blog today. Check out what other bloggers are writing about.

SHS: Memories Cling Like Smoke

Like the smell of smoke from the still smoldering ruins, the memories cling as tenaciously to our minds as smoke does to cloth.

On March 15, the old Stafford High School was destroyed by flames. We had been out of town and didn't know anything about it until Sunday morning, March 16.

The school sat just catty-cornered from the Stafford United Methodist Church. As I stood at the door and greeted people for the Sunday church service March 16, I kept glancing over at the front of the school, the upper floors blackened by soot and wood pieces hanging out of broken windows. When we saw flecks of white in the air, we weren't sure whether they were snow or ash.

After church, we explored, staying behind the yellow crime scene tape. As I looked at the 1916 date on the east doors, I thought about the history there.

1916 ... 98 years standing in that very spot.

But I was remembering another Sunday morning in December 1998. We had crossed the street after church that day, too. I had been taking photos outside the church, trying for that year's version of our annual photo Christmas card. 


But I wanted to mark another event. That Sunday, while Jill and Randy were dressed up, I took some photos of them in front of the school. A move to the new school just down the street to the east on Broadway was planned for February 1999. I wanted some photos of the two members of our family who had walked the halls of the grand old building as students. Randy graduated from Stafford High in 1974. Jill was a 7th grade student at the time, and the middle school attended classes there. (Brent didn't make the photos because he was a 5th grader and was still in the elementary school building.)

It was a minor miracle that I found the photos in my less-than-organized tubs of photos.

And then there were the photos of moving day, February 25, 1999. Bernard Bartlett carried mementos from the old school to the new one by a horse-drawn buggy.

Earlier, teams of students formed a version of a bucket brigade to transfer supplies from the top floors to the ground floor. They sat in the auditorium and listened to some history. Some of the students then carried desks and trophies to the waiting buggy.

Just as it had for many other families, the school was the centerpiece of the community. Randy's maternal grandmother Laura Russell (Ritts) graduated from there. So did both his paternal grandparents, Clarence Fritzemeier and Ava Hornbaker (Fritzemeier).

His Dad, Melvin Fritzemeier, graduated from SHS in 1948, and his Mom, Marie Ritts, got her diploma two years later. As I dug through tubs looking for old photos, I found a 1948 Staffordonian, the yearbook from Melvin's senior year.

The front of the yearbook showed the school through a window. Inside, someone had drawn a sketch of the school. (I think the artist may have been Lawrence Tretbar. Click on the photo to see it larger.)

Randy graduated there in 1974; his brother, Lyle, in 1976, and sister, Kathy, in 1984. Their graduation ceremonies were all in the old auditorium, where the memories were piled as deeply as the debris.

I took a photo of Jill on Moving Day 1999. The torch of education was passing from the old three-story building to the brand new addition a few blocks east.

It's there where Jill's graduation ceremonies happened in 2004 and Brent's two years later in 2006.

But last Sunday, I was remembering the old school. It's where I went to work part-time in the middle/high school office when Brent was a first grader. It was a teeny-tiny office I shared with Judy Clough. It's where I first accompanied for the high school choir under the direction of Presley Herndon. On several May days, I was one of four pianists who played Pomp and Circumstance on two pianos in the auditorium for SHS graduation.

It's where Jill debuted as Woodstock in "You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown" in 1996. It was a high school play, but as a fifth grader, she got to play the part of the little yellow bird. (My attempt to find a photo is unsuccessful so far.) She remembers staying up past her bedtime to go to play practice. She says that if Dad took her to town for practice, she got to get a pop. (I guess Mom wasn't so easy.)

Then, as a seventh grader, she joined the cast of "Grease."  It, like Charlie Brown, was under the direction of Pam Turner. Jill and several of the middle school kids, were added to the large cast. Grandma Marie made her a poodle skirt.

Jill sang a solo as Teen Angel (bottom left in the collage above). It would have been the last play in the old auditorium, produced November 13-14, 1998.

It's been a week of reminiscing as crews have torn down the walls of the old school. With three days of working baby calves, I didn't witness it in person.

Photo by Stafford Emergency Services

But the school's demise was center stage on Facebook news feeds for Stafford residents and SHS graduates.

Photos in collage by Janet Vasey Hardin

Just one week later, the majestic east entrance is all that's left of the three-story building. The corner of Broadway and Park will never be the same.

But the memories? The good thing is that they don't just drift into the atmosphere like smoke. They are alive and well.

Time Will Tell and Time Will Fly

Notice the pink polish on the toes to match her cast!

Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas
 if you stop opening presents and listen. 
–Anonymous

I wish I could say that Kinley was pointing at wonder to the overflowing stockings and the full array of presents under the tree.

 

But that would be a falsehood. (That sounds so much better than a lie, doesn't it?)

 

Instead, I believe she was pointing to her favorite television show, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, while we waited on the rest of the family to wake up.

Instead, I was the one staring in wonder.

How times have changed in the past two years! Our belated family Christmas of 2011 was interrupted by a little girl who couldn't wait until her January due date to make an appearance. She was scarcely bigger than her stocking when our little family opened presents on January 1, 2012.

And, two years later, she's a go-getter who doesn't even let a bulky cast slow her down.

Does her fascination with lip balm portend a love for make-up during her teen years? Time will tell. And time will fly.

She is a helper - whether it's in the kitchen, dusting the furniture, sweeping the floor or constructing with Grandpa and Daddy on Christmas morning (or on December 23, which is when we had our little family Christmas).

As I quipped on Facebook: "How many engineers, farmers and toddlers does it take to successfully complete the construction of one doll nursery?" Evidently, one of each, since Kinley was able to use it to feed and sleep her dolly later in the day.\

As I watched her loving her baby dolls, I thought of another little girl.

It doesn't seem that long ago. 

Jill & her dolly

As she ripped into the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse that Uncle Brent was sure would be the best gift of the year, I thought about the little boy the gift giver used to be.

And I remembered a gift that he thought was the best Christmas gift of all time. I can still hear him say, "I'm naming him Lucky because I'm so lucky to have him!"

Amidst the empty boxes and torn paper were other memories, too, especially of a very special Santa's helper in our lives. Christmas itself would be emptier without the memories.

Brent & Santa's helper - AKA Grandpa Melvin at a long-ago Stafford Santaland

I wish we could put up some of the Christmas spirit

in jars and open a jar of it every month. 

–Harlan Miller, author

Isn't that kind of what we do when we remember? I think so.

(I know it's January 2014, but I took a vacation from the blog during the last week of December. I'm still playing catch up!)