Grandma Doesn't Come Here Anymore-a poem

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith for the Years of Winter… ©

Is this a reflection on faith? Well, yes, it’s about faith that comes in and with grandmas. I had a grandma like this…

Whenever our grandma comes to stay

For just an hour or even a day

She brings such good things for us to play

There’s a soldier that jerks

And a game called Quirks

And an old typewriter that actually works

Best of all are the books that she brings

About birds that build castles and trees that sing

And little children lost in a cave

Who nonetheless are smart and brave

Grandma climbs up with us high in a tree

Then she jumps from the rooftop and shouts out with glee

From all over the city people come out to see

Grandmas get old, though, and can’t drive at night

And sometimes their hair is a dreadful sight

And folks are afraid they’ll give children a fright

So Grandma doesn’t come anymore

They say her legs are tired and her knees are sore

They say she’s afraid we’ll think she’s a bore

They say that now she’s too old and too frail

To come to play croquet and slide down the rail

But we know the truth and we’d act without fail

If we only had money to make her cash bail

 John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

I started this blog several years ago, when we followed the grandchildren to the “place of winter,” Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP]. I put that in the sub-title, Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter, where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] The grandchildren, though, are grown up, so in May, 2015 we moved “home,” to Bloomington, IN, where we met and married. It’s not a “place of winter,” but we are still in winter years of the life cycle, so I am still trying to understand what it means to be a follower of Christ in winter…

I tweet as yooper1721.

My new novel is VETS, about four homeless Iraqistan veterans accused of murdering a VA doctor, is available from your local independent book store, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BOKO, Books-A-Million, Black Opal Books, and almost any place else that sells books. $8.49 or $12.99 for paperback, according to which site you look at, and $3.99 for Kindle. Free if you can get your library to buy one.