REMEMBER?

WHY DON’T WE CALL IT RE-MEMBERING?

I was listening to a medical doctor speak at a church. He was talking about the Lord's Supper or The Eucharist or Holy Communion or the Blessed Sacrament: the Christian rite (not "Right"). Christians believe that the rite was instituted by Jesus at the Last Supper, the night before his crucifixion, giving his disciples bread and wine, referring to the bread as "my body" and the cup of wine as "the blood of my covenant, which is poured out for many". Jesus told them to observe the rite regularly and to do it "in remembrance of me".

This medical doctor hinged his message on a key question. He set up his question with an example: when a person has an accident and loses a finger, we call that dismemberment. If we surgically reattach the finger or any dismembered appendage, why we don't call it re-membering?

Maybe we should. After all isn't that what remembering is? When we tell stories from our past, or look through old photos, or visit places we used to know, aren't we reconnecting; rejoining our present and our past.

Times like the holiday season are rife for re-membering. Indulge me. Last Friday, we visited Utica Square Shopping Center in Tulsa. Every year of my childhood included a Christmastime visit to Utica Square to see the lights, and wait in line for a chance to visit with Santa.

Most years we still make a visit there on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Here is a picture of this years visit. We're all there except Haddi and Everly who were spending the holiday with their dad. I truly missed them. A couple of notes on the photo: we should have known that the flood light shining on the nutcracker would have given a ghostly look to those in it's beam. Also, that tall building way in the background is St. John's hospital, where I was born, January 8, 1951.

My Mom saved the hospital statement from my birth, why, I don't know. Maybe as a sentimental keepsake or maybe to be able to say to the future son, "See, not only did I go through the trauma of childbirth for you but it cost us $82.00!" That's not a typo. The bill for delivery and three days in St. Johns was less than a hundred bucks. According to the Consumer Price Index calculator, $100 in 1951 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $1,214.09 today, an increase of $1,114.09 over 73 years. The dollar had an average inflation rate of 3.48% per year between 1951 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 1,114.09%. Considering the price of having a baby these days, I was a bargain!

On our visit to Utica Square we took the whole crew to P.F. Chang's for supper. For what the meal cost, you could have had twins at St. John's in 1951. But! Strolling the sidewalks of Utica Square with the GrandKids in the warm glow of thousands of little lights, sipping hot chocolate or coffee: PRICELESS.

We stopped in at Santa's house for cookies. When he asked the boys what they wanted for Christmas, Malachi was still undecided. Jeremiah, the four-year-old, told Santa with solid confidence that he wanted a watch. Of all the years I sat on Santa's lap at Utica Square as a kid, I can never remember asking him for a watch, unless maybe it was one of those cool Dick Tracy walkie-talkie watches.

While I'm re-membering Christmases past, I have vivid memories of carefully researching and curating my wishlist. It usually started with the arrival of the Sears Christmas catalog around Thanksgiving time. Then, in the breaking days of December, the actual visit to Sears. Walking past a guy with a red bucket, ringing a bell, through the vast doors, there was the candy counter, brightly lit, the smells of chocolate and roasting nuts wafting through the store. On to the "Big Toy Box", which is what the marketing department at Sears called the toy department. I could watch the setup of running Lionel trains for hours. One year I got my own. Carefully putting that cantankerous track together, hooking up the transformer, and finally; movement and the smell of electrical current. Apparently re-membering includes, sights and sounds and smells too.

One of my favorite smells of the holidays was visiting OTASCO with my Dad. OTASCO, by the way, stood for Oklahoma Tire and Supply Company. The smell was a combination of new tires, fan belts, petroleum products and popcorn. At Christmastime, OTASCO had a great toy department. A Google search found me a catalog cover from back in the day. It's all there in a single drawing: Old St. Nick enjoying a cookie the little lad left for him. And, it looks like he's getting everything on his list: a teddy bear, a new wagon, a TV, a blender and a circular saw.

Listen! Did someone just say, "Merry Christmas to all and to all a goodnight!"? Remember that book?

Don't worry. In the home of my childhood and that of My Amazing-Missus, in the childhood home of our two sons and in the home's of our GrandKids we remember the reason for the season. And we re-member with truth and light by telling The Nativity Story again and again. We hold on to the promise and commit ourselves to the pursuit of those words that seem so elusive: Peace on Earth!

Merry Christmas everyone from Pops, My Amazing-Missus and the whole crew. To all those who are spending Christmas without someone who was once with them, we pray that somehow the season and The Story will provide rich opportunities to re-member.

TO HAVE & TO HOLD

June 16th. Our day. That was the day the knot was tied, the vows were said, the cake was eaten. The day it all started was actually weeks and months before that. I don't remember it being an actual moment; more like an unfolding. We didn't shake a Magic 8 Ball. There was no Rock, Paper, Scissors, or coins tossed. There was a bit of ignorant bliss, romance, naivette, hormones, young love and belief that this was a match made in heaven. At least that's the way I remember it.

We didn't use the traditional vows in our marriage ceremony. We wrote our own and they definitely had an early 70s zeitgeist of peace and love to them, but they were sincere and have stood the test of time.

When I speak of traditional vows I'm talking about those that go something like this:

I, ____, take you, ____, to be my husband/wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until death do us part.

First, we didn't even know what "to have" and "to hold" meant. Next, we were kids. We were invulnerable to stuff like worse, poorer, and sickness much less death. Why bring all that crap into the celebration?

As I think about this anniversary of our wedding, I'm 52 years older and I still am not sure I understand what have and hold mean. I could guess; and I will before the essay is finished. All these years later I don't know that I would want those words in our vows if we were to do one of those vow-renewal things. That sounds so possession-y, like some kind of claim of ownership. Like maybe: "I promise TO HAVE control over you and TO HOLD you back from being your own person" or something.

I think my attitude has been marred by all the focus on that twisted theology that religious fundamentalists call "complementarianism". I would love to write about how I feel about it but I'm not going to let it be a dark cloud over my intent of writing a heartfelt sentiment about how blest out of my heart, head and soul I am to have been married to My Amazing Missus for more than half a century.

So, here's how I'm viewing and understanding having and holding. Let's start with the dark side of having/holding.

Remember poor old Peter? The guy that was known for eating a lot of pumpkin; so much in fact that he has been known for eons as Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater?

He had a relationship problem. Or, was his problem a wayward woman, or maybe he had signed up for a doctrine that somehow believes that wives are subordinate to husbands. The question that other men seeking submissive wives might have is: how in the world did he get her into that pumpkin shell and in what state was she in that he was able to keep her there "very well"?

Sometimes seeking to have and hold turns into an ugly form of possesion--dehumanizing another to the point that they exist only for the other's use: like a commodity.

Let me illustate with the this little excerpt from a newspaper article:

The drab free port zone near the Geneva city center, a compound of blocky gray and vanilla warehouses surrounded by train tracks, roads and a barbed-wire fence, looks like the kind of place where beauty goes to die. But within its walls, crated or sealed cheek by jowl in cramped storage vaults, are more than a million of some of the most exquisite artworks ever made. --New York Times.

I realize that it seems like I'm using an inanimate object: art, to try to make my point about being fully human, created in the image of The Creator. But think of it as representing something bigger. Let's call it "beauty". Somethings are just not meant to be KEPT. Having and holding are so much more than that.

Let me try it this way. If you are a parent or a grandparent, or maybe an aunt or an uncle, this next sentence will cause a burst of images and memories, joys and maybe a few sorrows, but sublime all the same. Ready?

We HAVE a new baby and I got to HOLD him.

Can you feel the honor in that? The joy? The desire to share the news.

Here is a picture of My Amazing Missus and me. It is moments after the birth of Jeremiah our youngest Grand. We are crammed in the window seat of the hospital in Enid, Oklahoma, with all of the other Grands, taken January 19, 2022 at 2:11p.

Had he been born a few weeks later the hospital would have been locked down because of the pandemic. Selfishly, I cannot fathom what it would have cost me emotionally to not be able to be there for that moment--that first moment of HAVEing a new grandson and HOLDing him.

That's what it means to me to have and to hold. Obviously I didn't HAVE him. His beautiful mom Brooke did all that work with steady support from his dad, Kyle. And, obviously HOLDing is more than physical, literal holding.

If I haven't made my point yet, then I'm a lousy point maker. It's just that if I were to tell my bride of 50-something years that I am committed to having and holding, I would want her to know it is all about cherishing and celebrating and sharing.

I understand the concept of one thing complementing another. I'm intimately familiar with peanut butter and jelly. But, in a true complementary relationship one thing is not subjugated to the other. That is an ugly distortion, and it is one that I'm vulnerable to. In fact, I've done that kind of crap to others. Hopefully I've haven’t justified it by being a christian, a male, old, white, democrat, introvert, bald, cynical, peanut butter & jelly loving jerk.

Happy Anniversary to My Amazing Missus. Like the old song says, "I love you more today than yesterday, but not as much as tomorrow." I'm still here; to have and to hold from this day forward.

REMEMBERING AUNT BETTY

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Has a better opening paragraph ever been written? I've chosen to start this essay with it because it is in the spirit of what I want to talk about, but I don't have the ability or insight to craft a sentence like it.

A few days ago I stepped into a time capsule and whooshed back sixty years or so. In a little ghost of a town named Dubach, Louisana, we gathered with cousins to remember our Aunt Betty, Dan and Philip's mother and my dad's last living sibling. The night before her memorial service we gathered and told stories of childhood.

My cousin Dale said to me, "Do you remember that time we were playing Tag in the dark in Aunt Betty's backyard and you ran into the clothesline? It caught you right in the neck. Your feet went flying and you slammed on your back. We all stood around you, looking down to see if you were still alive."

I didn't remember it. Maybe I blocked that memory, but others seem as fresh as they did when we were just kids. Dubach was one of those places and the halcyon days of the late 50s and early 60s one of those times when we could run unfettered from morning to night with little to worry about; save a clothesline.

Remembering playing Tag? Did your version provide a homebase where you could be "safe" from the the pursuit of the person who was "it"?

Dubach, and more specifically, Aunt Betty's home, was a safe base. Aunt Betty took grace and eternal hope seriously. To a casual observer she might appear to have a side to her that seemed stern, strict, springing from a devotion to her faith. In reality she had higher aspirations for us all than we even had for ourselves. Make any sense? How about an example:

She was a fine musician. If you had the slightest interest in music (as I did), you would feel sort of a weird accountability to her to get it right. Dig in. Learn more. Practice, practice, practice because the art demanded it. For her, music was created by and was a gift from God. If you claimed to be a musician, you had a responsibility to honor that gift. I can't thank her enough for being my first and foremost teacher of music appreciation.

It was not just music, but in life that she expected the best. We were implored by her example to unrelenting devotion to family and faith.

Those priorities were the super glue that bound my father and his little sister. In the birth order of the six children of Chroley and Bernice Fuller of Dubach, Louisiana, Dad was fourth, Aunt Betty, fifth. Apparently, from stories we've heard many times, Dad saw himself as guardian and protector of his little sister. Later she became his spiritual and doctrinal guide.

Dad, being a Baptist pastor during a time before Baptist fell into the abyss of authoritarianism, sort of complied with the common beliefs and interpretations. One day years ago we were gathered. The subject of the role of women in faith came up. Mention was made of the current fad of religious leaders putting women in their subjective place. My Dad, who grew up with a mother who was a cornerstone in their local church and a sister who was the glue of that church, said, "I tend to agree with that view." His sister, my Aunt Betty turned from the kitchen counter where she was preparing a dish and said, "Brother! You know better than that." Turns out he did know better. He knew empirically and experientially that to view women as subserviant to anyone in the work of faith is untrue, unjust and ungodly.

A few years ago, My Amazing Missus and I were having dinner with my parents. Dad told us he and Mom wanted to talk with us about their last wishes. He said, "We've decided to be cremated upon our deaths." I was so surprised. This had never been mentioned in our many conversations on the matter. Where had this come from?! He continued, "We were visiting with your Aunt Betty on the phone the other night. She has been praying and reviewing scripture on the matter and has come to peace with a decision in favor of cremation for herself."

That settled that.

That's one of the things about homebase, that safe place from the "its" of life. There are trusted voices. People with high expectations for us but also a deep, abiding love that lets us try, and whether we succeed or not, they are there.

That's why even at 70-something, with the passing of my Aunt Betty, the ground feels a little less sure. The certain voices of my early life are passing. But we have their wisdom and spirits with us still.

After the service, a few of us cousins and spouses gathered at the cemetary in Dubach. There are so many headstones there with the "FULLER" name, that if that's your surname, you wonder how there can be any left. But, there we were, the kids who once ran around that little town, who ate at Aunt Betty and Uncle Steve's table. For a few moments, as the sun was setting and the mosquitos were beginning their attack, we were all at home base, safe, about to return to grown up life trying to outrun "it".

MORE THAN A FAST CAR

SOMETIMES I CLOSE MY EYES. Maybe if I don't see it, it's not real. Usually though, I want to be able to see. I think most folks do. "I can't see!" is one of the first frustrations we learn to express as kids.

Remember those early TV consoles built to look like furniture, the ones where the picture tube was six-ish inches off the floor? Invariably, there would be a younger sibling messing around right in your field of view just as Lassie was about to save Timmy's backside for the 997th time. "But Mom, I can't see! That's why I gently nudged him out of the way with my foot."

This post isn't about the physical ability to functionally see with our eyeballs, rods, cones, etc. It's about sensing, looking behind the curtain, having a crystal ball, having vision in the big--you might say--biblical way.

We need (or think we need) to see--the whole picture. I also like to be able to see far enough ahead to know that things will resolve well. Fifties and Sixties TV gave us that, but real life is more; real.

I worked with teenagers for most of my adult life. I consider it a privilge to have had that calling. It was not all pizza and volleyball though. The worst parts sprung from seeing the heartbreak; knowing the stories of those who had been dealt a crappy hand. In most all of those lives there was an inability to see: to see what could be, to see a way out or through, to see there is some goodness and beauty somewhere. The lack of vision didn't come from a lack of desire. Sometimes the weight of life makes us nearsighted or blinded.

Whether we can see around the corner, or beyond the moment, or not, we need to know that there's a way out, something or someone that will deliver us somewhere else, something to get us unstuck--call it rescue. We don't know where it might take us, but sometimes we just need to be elsewhere and a way to get there. Maybe we shouldn't think of this as an escape though. When we're trying to escape we might choose poorly, escaping by means of self-harm, self-loathing or desperation.

A while back, March 26, 2023, I wrote a post called GIRL POWER. It is a theme for me to try to do something that is affirming and encouraging to young women. Since then I've written a few times on the subject. Today, I'm writing another. This is for me the tough kind of writing, where each word needs to mean something. I can feel Hemingway's desire to be able to write "one true sentence".

As I oftern do, I want to use the words of another; a poet. Someone who sees this life from a deeper vision than I have. This time the young lady's name is Tracy Chapman. The words are lyrics to her song, "Fast Car". It is a song, that along with Janis Ian's "At Seventeen", is torturous. It is real and raw and paints a picture we need to spend time pondering. My hope is that when I have done that, I will be kinder, more attuned, more resolved, more focused on the things that really matter.

I've included the lyrics here so that Tracy can have the last word. But, PLEASE PLEASE; don't just read these. Go to YouTube and listen to her sing it. CLICK HERE.

---

You got a fast car
I want a ticket to anywhere
Maybe we make a deal
Maybe together we can get somewhere
Any place is better
Starting from zero, got nothing to lose
Maybe we'll make something
Me, myself, I got nothing to prove

You got a fast car
I got a plan to get us outta here
I been working at the convenience store
Managed to save just a little bit of money
Won't have to drive too far
Just 'cross the border and into the city
You and I can both get jobs
Finally see what it means to be living

See, my old man's got a problem
He lives with a bottle, that's the way it is
He says his body's too old for working
His body's too young to look like his
When mama went off and left him
She wanted more from life than he could give
I said, "Somebody's gotta take care of him"
So I quit school and that's what I did

You got a fast car
Is it fast enough so we can fly away?
We gotta make a decision
Leave tonight or live and die this way

So I remember when we were driving, driving in your car
Speed so fast, I felt like I was drunk
City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder
And I-I, had a feeling that I belonged
I-I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone

You got a fast car
We go cruising, entertain ourselves
You still ain't got a job
And I work in a market as a checkout girl
I know things will get better
You'll find work and I'll get promoted
We'll move out of the shelter
Buy a bigger house and live in the suburbs

So I remember when we were driving, driving in your car
Speed so fast, I felt like I was drunk
City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder
And I-I, had a feeling that I belonged
I-I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone

You got a fast car
I got a job that pays all our bills
You stay out drinkin' late at the bar
See more of your friends than you do of your kids
I'd always hoped for better
Thought maybe together, you and me'd find it
I got no plans, I ain't going nowhere
So take your fast car and keep on driving

So I remember when we were driving, driving in your car
Speed so fast, I felt like I was drunk
City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder
And I-I, had a feeling that I belonged
I-I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone

You got a fast car
Is it fast enough so you can fly away?
You gotta make a decision
Leave tonight or live and die this way

---

For a fleeting moment she felt a couple of those life essentials, the ones everyone deserves: that I belong, that I could be someone.

"Search my heart O God" for prejudice, for misogyny, for racism, for deceit, for arrogance. Help me to see in myself the stuff that I do not want to admit is there. Help me to see the hurting, the injustice, the abuser and the abused. And grant me the courage and honesty to do something and say something.