Honoring the Stories: Floyd

Last week, I came across a writing prompt at Peter Pollock's One-Word Writing Carnival. The word was "farm." I had written about my grandparents' farm not long ago, so I didn't join in the fun. The prompt got me thinking about the farm again, however, and I realized I had no idea how it came to be a part of my family's history. So I asked my mom, and her stories started flowing. Mom's stories were rich, with incredible, odd, and historic details, and I knew I had to write them down and preserve them.

The emphasis of this piece is on my mother's brother Floyd and my goal is to honor his life and his story, as well as those of my hard-working, God-fearing grandparents. The story is rough, and I'm not sure what to do with it, which, I think, makes it a good candidate for Imperfect Prose:

Believing the city was no place to raise a family, my grandfather purchased a hundred and thirty-four acre farm including a house, a barn, two granaries, and a chicken coop for two thousand Depression-era dollars. Somehow Grandpa had put aside half the purchase price and then, for his service in the U.S. Army Veterinary Corps during World War I, received a five hundred dollar bonus. His neighbor agreed to let the farm go for fifteen hundred dollars, the two men shook hands, and Grandpa’s farm became a fixture in the history of my family.

My grandparents moved into the farmhouse, which was in desperate need of repair, only to find that bees had moved in ahead of them. Honey dripped from hives in the upstairs bedrooms. Conveniences were few on the farm. Grandma asked a neighbor to drive her into town and to the home of an aunt, a nurse, when it was time to give birth to her youngest child. At the time, Grandpa had an old Essex sedan which didn’t have a back seat or a proper rumble seat. In order to show them their new baby sister, Grandpa drove my mother and her sister into town in the trunk of the car with the lid down.

The Essex was not the first family car. My grandfather first had an old Model T which he never drove. My mother’s older brother took it apart and rebuilt it as a truck which he used to run up and down the old dirt roads out in the country. Apparently, the local cops were always out after him.

My grandparents had six children, one of whom died at age fifteen. Diagnosed with muscular dystrophy, Floyd quit walking at the age of eight and was confined to a wheelchair for the remaining seven years of his life. My grandparents were unable to afford a wheelchair for him but were able to borrow one from a family in a nearby town whose son had succumbed to the same disease.

My mother remembers her younger sister frequently asking Floyd to read to her. Having few books in the home, Floyd would read the same stories to his sister over and over again until finally saying, “And that’s the last time I’m going to read it to you.” My mother sometimes played checkers with her brother but says, “One of my regrets is that I didn’t think enough to help him occupy his time.” She was twelve years old at the time of her brother’s death.

As Floyd’s disease progressed, he lost more and more strength throughout his body. He used to put his head down to his hands at the table in order to eat.  Once, Mom’s younger sister stepped up onto the foot rest of Floyd’s wheelchair, tipping it over. Having no way to steady himself, Floyd fell out of the chair and onto the floor. “She felt awful about that,” Mom said. For seven years, Grandma stayed at home with Floyd, lifting him in and out of the wheelchair and onto the cot where he slept.  There was no indoor plumbing in the house, and the outhouse was too far away for Floyd to use. When he needed to go to the bathroom, Grandma had to lift him onto a can kept in the house for that purpose.

Mom’s family attended a little local Methodist church not far from their home. Because Floyd was unable to go to church, someone in the congregation asked if he was retarded or something. The question crushed Mom’s older sister. She thought it cruel that people didn’t take the time to figure out Floyd had a physical thing which kept him home. One time, however, the Methodist preacher came to visit Floyd and talked with him about his soul. He prayed to receive Christ and, Mom said, “He read his Bible clear through at least one time before he died.” The preacher also got Grandma listening to The Old-Time Gospel Revival Hour on the radio. “Mom was always so thankful for that preacher,” my mother said.

Mom remembers being in the eighth grade at her little one-room schoolhouse on the day her brother died. Her older sister was a freshman at the nearby high school. About that day, Mom said, “I don’t know why I had that uneasy feeling. I don’t remember much of anything other than that I had a man school teacher and I saw him staring out the window at the road up to our house. I don’t know why that stuck with me. I didn’t know Floyd was that sick. I never really knew he would never get better.” Mom walked over to meet her older sister at the high school not knowing anything had happened but, she said, “When we got home, then we knew.”

“Dad had a premonition the end was near and didn’t go to work that day. Floyd’s breathing got shallow and Mom tried to go in and Dad said, ‘No.’ Floyd said, ‘Oh, Dad, I’m going to die.’ Dad asked, ‘Are you afraid to die?’ He said no. He stopped breathing and Dad tried to breathe into his lungs like they did.”

Mom doesn’t remember how her family got ahold of the undertaker because they didn’t have a phone. She does remember her older sister running to the neighbor’s house and crying.  The weather was bad, and Mom remembers the hearse getting stuck on the old dirt road and the undertaker having a heart attack.

And before he left to serve during World War II, dropping paratroopers in Normandy ahead of the invasion, the eldest son in my mom’s family dug his brother’s grave by hand in the frozen March ground.

When an Amaryllis Speaks

It’s not often that my plants speak to me.  Okay they never do or, at least, they never did until recently.

I’m pretty good at getting my amaryllis plants to bloom right at Christmastime.  I start looking for bulbs right after my daughter’s birthday in mid-October and then get them started around Veteran’s Day in early November.  One year I timed my planting perfectly so that my amaryllis bloomed beautiful and red early on Christmas morning.

This year, I searched and waited to find bulbs for sale.  None of my usual outlets had any available until well into November.  Then life happened, and time got away from me, and I was late in getting my plants started.  My bulb and my plant seemed to be on their own schedule, taking their own sweet time in sprouting and growing this year.

My amaryllis bloomed almost a month after Christmas, the same day Ann Voskamp’s book One Thousand Gifts arrived in my mailbox.  I had pre-ordered copies for myself and as gifts for some dear friends.  Because of the frequent and continuing snowstorms we’ve been enjoying (ahem) here in the northeast, my books seemed to take their own sweet time in arriving.  I tracked the slow progress of my packages as they made their way from warehouse to mailbox, frustrated by the days when snow prevented any delivery of mail at all.  When the books arrived on the same day my amaryllis bloomed, I thought it a happy coincidence as Ann’s book was my final Christmas gift to me and to friends.

I had no idea.

There has been much waiting in my family, in my household, throughout the past year.  We have been waiting to find out whether or not my son would be able to enlist in the Army.  I’ve not been in love with the idea of him enlisting—something having to do with sending my dear, beloved boy into harm’s way, I guess.  But.  I’d seen abundant evidence of God’s leading; His presence with us in the process of deciding the Army would be a good fit for him, so I yielded.  With more fear and trembling than faith I prayed those familiar words, “Your will be done.”

And then my son was disqualified from enlisting.

We were encouraged to appeal the decision, to seek a waiver.  We asked for letters from his doctor.  We waited.  We received letters.  The first was rejected.  We asked for another.  We waited some more.  My son felt trapped in a horrible holding pattern, wanting desperately to become independent and be on his own but having no place to go.

And I was as helpless to move his plans forward as I was to cause my amaryllis to bloom.

We knew we would have a decision shortly after Christmas and, once the decorations were all packed away, I began to panic.  I became more and more fearful that the answer would be no and that the answer would be final.  And I had no idea what my son would do then.

And I knew God had every right to say no.

This year, I’ve been working my way through Eugene Peterson’s devotional, The Message Remix:  Solo.  One morning at a low point of fear and panic, I read from Exodus 3 about God speaking to Moses from a burning bush.  Reverend Peterson, in his notes on the passage, encouraged me to pray asking God to reveal himself to me today in a fresh way, a way that he has never revealed himself before.  So I did.  I got on my knees and through my tears prayed that God would reveal himself as present and working good in my son’s life no matter what decision we received.

I got up off my knees and looked around.  Nothing.  No burning bush.  Not even a hummingbird, God’s usual messenger when I pray asking to see His presence with me.

I then picked up my copy of One Thousand Gifts and found my place in chapter five.  In that chapter, Ann Voskamp wrote of giving thanks, of finding grace in places of suffering.  She told the story of her son badly injuring his hand in a fan and of not knowing if he would lose fingers or even his entire hand.  She told of wrestling through the problem of seeing God as good, of being able to give thanks in hard places.  As the mother of a dear son whose hands coax beautiful music from piano keys, this was a difficult chapter to read.

Because sometimes our beloved children do lose fingers and hands and sometimes they lose their very lives in this dangerous and broken and fallen world.  And sometimes the answer is no when we’ve pinned all our future hopes and dreams on one particular path.  And I profess to believe in a good, loving, powerful, sovereign God who superintends all those things.

Thanksgiving, Ann reminds me, is the key to holding on to the goodness, to grasping the glimmers of grace in the hard places.  Her book chronicles her journey in counting a thousand gifts given by the hand of her heavenly Father, the practice of living eucharisteo.  Thanksgiving, she says, always precedes the miracle.

And then I read of her thousandth gift:

1000.  Resurrection bloom, an amaryllis, a gift a year in the coming.

The bulb had been a gift from her mother-in-law, received a year earlier.  It bloomed after cancer had claimed her mother-in-law’s life.   Ann saw the amaryllis and the timing of its bloom as a gift, trumpeting joy, reminding her that joy is always worth the wait.

And I knelt and wept and prayed again, and I gave thanks.  I gave thanks for the waiting.  I gave thanks for my son.  I gave thanks that his heavenly Father had seen him in the jungle on a remote island in the Philippines and placed his hand upon him, bringing him to our home.  I gave thanks that he was placed where he could touch a piano and coaxed beautiful music from it when his hands, whole and healthy and good, moved over the keys.  I gave thanks that because of the waiting he was able to give the gift of music to his sister at her wedding.  I gave thanks that he is here to use his beautiful hands to help shovel the snow that continues to fall and fall and fall.  I gave thanks for the snow because I know that it, too, is a gift from my Father’s hand and somehow, that makes it good.

I gave thanks for whatever decision we were about to receive because I knew that the decision would be God’s gift and that He is good, and because He is good He can only give good gifts.

I could give thanks for these things and believe them because God speaks to me and tells me that these things are true.  Sometimes He speaks through a burning bush.  And sometimes, through a blooming amaryllis.

And two days later, we received word:  my son is going to be a soldier.

Asking grace from emily and dear friends at imperfect prose as I tell my lengthy story:

Army Wives

They bought a round of drinks for the soldiers, three handsome young men wearing dress uniforms, Airborne patches on their shoulders. They said they wanted to thank these men for their service, these army wives whose hearts and husbands were far away in a place of unimaginable brokenness. They told of the kindness of a stranger who, several weeks earlier, had taken notice of their sadness and tears and picked up the tab for their dinner.

It was my privilege to bear witness to the world of these women, these army wives. They laughed and broke bread, raised glasses, and commiserated over things like broken vacuums and broken computers and children who missed their daddies at night. Those who had already lived through a husband’s deployment shared wisdom and encouragement for those walking this lonely and unfamiliar road for the first time. These women bore one another’s burdens; they bound up wounds; they blessed.

In bearing witness to this grace I wondered why I don’t often see it lived out with this same kind of urgency and intensity, both within the church and within my own life. Perhaps it has something to do with wanting to set aside military metaphors, those having to do with enemies and warfare and battles. Though these images are prominent in the biblical story, they make us—they make me—uncomfortable. We are divided, within the church, about things like war and peace. We know that those to whom the power of the sword has been entrusted have not always wielded it nobly or well. The enemy of our souls himself first introduced battle and enmity and strife into Eden’s peace. With war a reality in this broken and fallen world, that same enemy uses its very existence to divide us one from another.

Imagery of the church as the Bride of Christ seems much more pleasant, more comfortable and safe. We think of weddings and think of things like white lace and promises, beauty and love and joy. These are good images, given to us by our good and loving Father. Yet I wonder if, in clinging to the beautiful and the safe, we don’t sometimes forget that we are indeed at war, that we are in danger from one who prowls like a lion seeking to destroy us and those whom we love. His desire is to destroy Christ’s bride. But even at weddings when dressed up in our beautiful clothes, smiling at those around us, there can be an undercurrent of ugly. We find fault with the ceremony, with the music, with the parents who don’t attend to the wiggly children around us. We criticize the Bride herself.

Perhaps if we, like those army wives, knew for certain that we are at war, that we and our loved ones are in harm’s way, it would become more important to us to build up than tear down. Perhaps we need to be reminded that, when sending loved ones out the door each morning, we send them to do battle for the kingdom in reclaiming every square inch of this fallen world. The thorns that infest the ground cause pain.  We are wounded soldiers, battled and broken and bruised.  Perhaps then we would see the urgency, the necessity, of extending grace to one another; of bearing one another’s burdens, of binding up wounds, of blessing. Perhaps we’d be more willing to offer a cup of cold water to one weary from the fight. Maybe we’d even offer to buy a round of drinks.