What Did You Say?

This weekend my daughter and son-in-law were up for a visit. While my husband and sil were doing manly things like getting haircuts together and figuring out how to put a 22 back together correctly, my daughter and I made two brief visits to see my mom. Mom is in an assisted living facility not far from where we live. Even though mom has hearing loss and memory loss, she is still very much who she has always been. She has a keen sense of humor, a big heart and a strong will. She told my daughter yesterday,"I will love you from now until eternity." Something my daughter and I will never forget.
It is interesting to hear some of the conversations going on around us. Yesterday, a lady at the table in the dining room next to where my mom was sitting was quite perturbed with a gentleman sitting next to her. He tapped her on the arm to talk to her as the other lady at the table was dozing. She said, "I don't think it's right for you to touch me like that." The poor guy kind of shrunk back and we felt so sorry for him. All he wanted to do was chat. Today the same lady was wheeling herself toward another resident's room. The lady who lived in that room said, "This is my room. That is my name on the door. I bought it and you need to go to your own room. Do you know where your room is?" The lady in the wheelchair responded that she didn't know where her room was. The lady saying that was her room must have misheard what she said because she said to the wheelchair-bound woman,"You swallowed it?! I don't think you can swallow a whole room!"
The other day, one of the nurses told me that my mom was sitting in her recliner and her roommate, who mumbles a lot, was in her recliner. The nurse walked in to hear mom's roommate saying something which could not possibly be understood to which my mom replied, "I understand what you're talking about." The nurse said to me that she was glad someone understood. What is funny about that is even if mom's roommate were speaking clearly, my mom's hearing problem, not to mention the memory loss, would have prevented any type of communication.
I am finding that each time I go visit I enjoy the fun comments. The people are very happy in this home. They receive excellent care. They maintain their dignity and they care about each other. Just like you and me, there are times when they get their feathers ruffled. The good news is those times are quickly forgotten. A friend from high school wrote this quote in our senior yearbook, "The power of remembering may be a gift, but the power to forget is a blessing." What did you say? Let's hope we remember the fun and the profound comments of life and let's hope to forget the sticks and stones.

Daughters!

Today is my younger daughter's birthday. It is hard to believe she is the age she is.
Wasn't it just yesterday that I held this little pink joy bundle? I was so thankful when she entered the world at 10 minutes to midnight. I can remember thanking everyone in the delivery room. If the custodian had been in there, he would have been thanked too. Several years after she was born, I learned that Hitler was born on April 20th, whoo, that was close. The doctor called her "The Midnight Rider" and he called me a professional mom at her birth.
Maurice Chevalier sang a song called "Thank Heaven for Little Girls". In the song, one of the lines says, "Thank heaven for little girls
they grow up in the most delightful way!"
This is definitely true of the daughters God blessed us with.
Little girls steal their daddies' hearts and do all the other things that make their dads crazy about them. We know a young man who is very much a man and he just found out he will be the daddy to a baby girl in August. He will be an amazing dad! Yes, I am positive every man would love to have a son, but in God's grand design, He knows exactly what each man really needs.
I am not my daughters' papa, but oh how happy I am to be their mama! Thank you God for my daughters!!

Family

I don't normally write a blog two days in a row, but when I wrote yesterday about marriage that led right into this. When I was a little girl, one of the first song I can remember singing was "Love and Marriage". You know the one, "go together like a horse and carriage..." I was thinking of family today. We all have families. Although when you take a look at some siblings, it is hard to believe they are even related due to different looks, way different personalites and likes and dislikes. We are part of the family of God once we put our trust in Christ. We are part of an earthly home family. We may be part of a church family. We may be part of an extended family through a group we have ties with. When I was teaching, I had a school family.
The other day, I visited my mom at the Assisted Living Home where she lives. She has a dear freind, Wilma, who lives a couple doors down from her. Mom hasn't been feeling very well the past two weeks and Wilma comes in her room in her wheelchair and holds her hand and talks to her. I thanked Wilma for taking care of mom the other day and she said, "Well she's a part of me." Family once again. Both she and mom have dementia but they meet each other's needs. They care for each other. They may not remember each other's names but their faces are a familiar and welcomed sight. My "Mother Teresa" daily calendar right here in the computer room says for today, "You must try to bring the presence of God to your families. I think that just being together and loving one another brings peace and joy and strengthens the bond between family members in the home. That is the way to overcome all the evil that is in the world." As Dionne Warwick would sing,"What the world needs now is love sweet love....". We can echo that in our own family whether at home, in church or in an assisted living home.

Heart Healthy Marriages

Today I shared with the MOPS moms some thoughts on Marriage~A Blessing or a Burden.
A couple months ago, my friend B. and fellow Mentor Mom shared her thoughts on Motherhood~A Blessing or a Burden. I shortened my Mentor Moment since the Y ladies were there and we wanted them to have the time to answer exercise-related questions and a time to do some exercises.I shared about "wifering" and not allowing "mothering" to take a front seat to being a wife. I know first hand, as I was guilty of this when our children were preschoolers. We hear constantly about high profile marriages in shambles from Tiger Woods to The Goslings. Truth be told, many marriages silently are in shambles because marriage priorities are wacko. What happened between dating and several years into marriageland? I guess you might say, "Well, I got my man, now I'll drop the ball." That's what happens more often than not. As my husband has said,"It doesn't take much to make a man happy. There are women out there who, on a daily basis, are offering themselves on a golden platter even if your husband is dog ugly." Wake up, wives, date your husbands!! Sure, Professor Henry Higgins had a fun conversation in song with Pickering about why can't a woman be more like a man, but men are interested in the opposite sex, not a carbon copy of themselves. Proverbs 14:1 says "A wise woman builds her home and a foolish one tears it down." You are the heartbeat of your home. Have you checked your heart rate lately?

Blossoms

What is it about the first signs of spring that cause us to rejoice? Although my favorite season is fall, I would have to claim spring as a close second. We have a red bud tree in our front yard. My husband planted a red bud tree the day after my brother died in 1996 in his memory. That tree was destroyed in a wind storm a year or so ago. So the new red bud is in the same spot and is thriving. Its blossoms are a deep pink. Our pear tree is also in bloom and its blossoms are white. We have apple trees and peach trees sharing in the glorious show going on in our yard. You would think I would be content to just sit and look at all the signs of spring right here on our property. But.... when I saw the cherry blossoms on TV in our nation's Capital, I just needed (wanted) to go there and see them close-up. My husband and I were going to go on Good Friday until we saw the I95 traffic going that way. Then, we decided to go after church on Easter Sunday, however, the traffic said once again,
"That is not a good idea." What we ended up doing was surprising the blossoms and the traffic by being covert and coming in to DC from another angle. Yes, it worked! Of course once we got to Cherry Blossom Central, we encountered the rest of the world who were also there to witness the pretty trees. With no place to park, my chauffeuring husband and me,with camera ready, snapped pictures right and left as our souvenir. We even went to Haines Point where my family and my husband's family had taken us when we were both young children. We may have even been there at the same time way back then and didn't know. Needless to say, it wasn't as crowded back in the sixties as it was this year.
The lesson learned on this Easter is one of gratitude. Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift of Jesus who died and rose again for each of us. The blossoms sure are pretty too. Thanks, God.