Love heals

In these times of unrest and frustration, anger and judgmental emails and Facebook posts, I found solace this past week with my family in Roswell, Georgia. Love - it heals the heart, the mind and even our physical bodies.
Gay came up and took me home with her last week. She and I always find ways to laugh! Laughter is the best medicine ever. She has a terrific wit, and I can't be with her long before my dark mood is brightened by her light.

Living alone with no one to talk to when the world seems to be evolving into chaos is not lessened simply by sending an email or talking on the phone. Getting on Facebook is upsetting when you see that people who are your friends are spouting opinions that make you wonder How can we be friends? I didn't know my friends had such closed minds, that they don't see why the confederate flag is a symbol with vicious meaning for descendants of slaves. Why do I see that, but my friends don't?

I was glad I was with my loved ones when I read that the head of a Christian organization opposed the new anti-lynching law protecting members of the gay community. Does he think it is okay to hang a human being because he is of a different sexual orientation than this so-called Christian?

One of the things I like about visiting my sister is we watch the online service from their Alpharetta Presbyterian church on Sunday and discuss the sermon. I grew up attending a little Methodist Church out in the country where a fire-and-brimstone preacher visited once a month. The man in the pulpit frightened me when I was a child. Later, attending another Methodist Church in my hometown after college, I learned that the men in the church had decided they would stand in the door of the church and refuse entry to any black person who wanted to attend church there. This was in the mid-sixties.

Of course, I did not go back to that church. I asked the young minister, "How can the people in this church call themselves Christians?"

I eventually joined the Presbyterian Church where I found my people. PCUSA, is built on values of love, caring and embracing all people regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnic background. No one is forbidden to enter the church. Women are welcome to minister here.

In some churches women are expected to do all the work, but are refused leadership positions. A good friend of mine told me, "I had been a part of this church for many, many years, teaching vacation bible school, Sunday School, and doing anything I could. But one Sunday when the leadership of the church was discussed, it dawned on me. I would never be asked to take a leadership role. No one wanted my opinion or ideas. I could not be a deacon or an elder, simply because I am a woman. She said she stood up and walked out of that church and never went back.

In my little mountain town, Barry and I were so fortunate to find the most loving and caring little Presbyterian church soon after we arrived here. We both loved to sing and soon Barry had helped form a choir. Singing is uplifting and helps our spirits. He became a leader in the church and because of his outgoing and friendly personality, our circle of friends grew. We had several couples join us each Sunday for lunch after the service. Several couples joined the church simply because Barry made them feel so welcome.

Today when I hear the pastors of Alpharetta Presbyterian Church speak on the injustice of racism and how we can help, I am glad to be a part of such an institution. We can reach out and we can be a part of the changes that need to take place. In our town, the only black church here is a sister church to ours. And the pastor of that church gave an eloquent speech on our town square this past weekend.

I came home yesterday filled with love for everyone, especially my sister who is also my best friend. She is a person who understands my thinking and feels the same way as I do about social justice. However, she keeps telling me I can't change or save the world and must look after myself.
She is also very protective of me because of COVID 19. We will see each other every two weeks for a while now, either here or at their home. As I age, I realize how fragile life is. I want to spend time with the people I love most.

I was so proud of my little sister. She looked so cute in her majorette uniform at Albany High.

I hope you have had a great week and that the coming days will be good. Leave a comment and tell me your thoughts as we all cope with a new normal.

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Easter Sunday back then and now

When I was a small child I usually went to church with our neighbors on Easter Sunday. It was understood that girls had to have new Easter Dresses, fluffy skirts, sashes that tied in back in a big bow, socks with lace on top, so my sister, Gay, and I always had a lovely outfit. Mother wanted us to look our best when we walked in with our neighbors. 

She didn’t go to church with us. Daddy had been insulted, he thought, by the folks at the country church we attended. Mother quit going when he convinced her he would never go back. She said she couldn’t lie anymore about why he didn’t come with her. Having grown up in the church, she wanted her little girls to have that experience, but not badly enough to take us. I wished she would.

Beulah Methodist Church sat quietly in a patch of loblolly and long leaf pines, a white one-story wooden structure with no frills; no stained glass or special accoutrements. The windows of this church were usually open so we could have a breath of a breeze in sizzling summers of south Georgia. Most of the time I gazed out of one of those windows and daydreamed. I could be distracted by a bird on a limb or a wasp that buzzed in and bumped along the ceiling or dropped down to crawl along the top of a pew.

Jarred from my reverie, my mind skittered back to the sermon only when the sweating, balding man at the pulpit slammed his fist on the lectern or raised the Bible in his chubby hand and yelled at us, “Read the Good Book, and follow the words of Jeee-sus!” 

Guilt ran up my spine because I knew he was talking to me. He had caught me daydreaming, I thought, and now he was mad at me. If this man was a representative of God, as he said, then I was scared to death of God. 

On Easter Sunday, while the preacher was speaking, someone or several someones, hid colored eggs in the woods around the bare church yard. We had to bring a half dozen eggs to contribute to the hunt that took place as soon as possible after the last hymn was sung and the last Amen.

This was a real hunt, more difficult than searching out a lost calf or pig. No manicured lawn or even a field with mixed grasses awaited us kids. We had to climb over downed limbs, wade through weeds and grass up to our knees or higher. Piney woods usually have an understory of short bushy plants and tall grass. Around the church the ground was sandy and collected into my new patent leather shoes as I led my shy sister in trying to find some eggs. 

Our neighbor boy hurtled into the woods, intent, along with his sisters, on finding the most eggs. There must have been a prize, but I don’t remember. I know neither Gay nor I ever won. We were careful to protect our new dresses and new shoes and socks. How can pretty little girls compete with a rowdy boy? He didn’t have to spend a minute thinking about where he walked or ran, whether or not he would get dirty, or whom he pushed aside to get the next hidden surprise. I was not too disappointed, just irritated at his arrogance over winning.

Gay and I had our own little egg hunt at home, after we opened our cellophane wrapped Easter baskets filled with candy. Of course we were told the Easter Bunny brought us the baskets. One year the Easter Bunny brought me a large stuffed rabbit, a blue one. We never fell for the hype about a hare coming into our house with presents, but we did believe in Santa Claus as long as we could get away with it. 

Mother made sure the Easter Bunny found us, in one way or another, as long as we lived at home, but we did finally grow up and left. By then we had nieces and nephews. They came with their parents before our big meal and enjoyed the egg hunt on the front lawn.

They were all near the same age and made a cute group in their brand new outfits, their hair slicked down, and feet covered with new shoes. Mother left the kitchen and joined her children on the front porch, the best viewing area for the hunt.  

Stan, my brother-in-law, kept his camera handy, following his two girls around. He captured the faces making happy sounds as well as the crying kid who found no eggs at those Easter Sunday gatherings during the sixties and seventies.

Kaiki, Lee and Lyn - cute little girls in Easter dresses

If I were to go back to that house, and if I were to stand on the front porch on Easter Sunday morning, I’m sure I’d hear the voices of my family members, most of them gone now, talking, laughing, and I’d see them the way I remember them – young and filled with hope and promise for the future, filled with love for their little ones who shared and divided up the colorful eggs in their baskets.

Some of my family members on an Easter Sunday before I married

Christmas Day, Love and strange gifts for kids

December 25, 2008

Today begins the twelve days of Christmas. We began our celebrating and gift giving today.Tomorrow we shop for the presents we wanted under the tree.



Family gathered today and as always we laughed, ate good food, and told stories. Only two of my siblings were with me, my two sisters, but down in south Georgia and North Florida my three brothers enjoyed the holiday with their children and grandchildren.



Once many years ago, there were seven of us who gathered at the "big house" where my parents lived. One of my brothers who couldn't imagine Santa coming anywhere except at that house, brought his boys down early on Christmas morning to see what was under the tree. This brother usually gave his kids some live pet or animal.

One Christmas Eve after Mother, Daddy and my sister and I were in bed and sound asleep, Daddy said he awoke to a noise. He recognized the sound but had no idea why it was coming from the family room of our house. He lay there a minute or two and when he heard the bleating of a goat, he smiled and relaxed. Santa Clause had evidently brought a billy goat for Christmas.



Over the years my nephews were recipients of everything from puppies to ducks to baby chicks. He loved to see their eyes when the little boys walked in and saw the gifts under the tree. In the middle of everything was a cage with some live animal. I'm thankful he never gave them snakes.



To be his kid at Christmas was to always expect the unexpected. He loved Christmas and made it a magical time for me as a child and for his four boys in later years. This Christmas he wrote a song about all our Christmases past. He sang it to my two sisters on the phone, but I know it will make me sad so I hope he won't sing it to me, but will send it to me in the mail. Then when I began bawling, I can do it in private.



Families are not perfect. There are few if any Hallmark parents and siblings. But there are Hallmark moments and mixed in with the bickering and petty jealousies, we often forget those special times. On days like today, my mind takes me back to a simpler time, a slower time when love for each other was the most important element of being. When the love between our parents and the love between each of the seven of us, overcame any challenge we faced. We were all for one and one for all, and together we were strong enough to take on the biggest threat or problem. Distance and time has brought into focus the wonderful world we enjoyed growing up on a farm. Memories of that time grow more precious as we look back knowing we can never retrace those steps.