CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter
My grandchildren, in their 20s, are too polite to say it, but they must get disgusted with me when I talk so much about when they were little, times that they can’t even remember. After all, that’s not who they are now. But, for me, it is. Yes, they are these bright young adults, but also, always, those delightful little laughers who sat on my lap as we read stories.
One day, back when we had only line phones, I called my friend and colleague, Jean Cramer-Heuerman, at her church building. There was an answering machine that announced she wasn’t there, but went on to give me their Sunday morning schedule, which included “Sunday School for persons of all ages.” I told the machine that I was a person of all ages, but I was busy on Sunday mornings so could not come. Jean, being a smart preacher, used that in a sermon, about how each of us is a person of all ages.
I was thinking this morning about getting my head stuck in the wall at Cedar Crest when I was about 3, maybe 4, because I am still a person of all ages.
Cedar Crest was the big old farm house on the edge of Oxford, OH where we lived off and on with Grandma and Grandpa Mac, and sometimes Uncle Glen and Aunt Mable and their girls, Patty and Joan [pronounced Joann], and sometimes Uncle Harvey and Aunt Helen, and their daughter, Elizabeth Ann, and the 3 bachelor uncles, Bob and Randall and Mike, who couldn’t get jobs because of the Great Depression, and so still lived at home, and slept on the sun porch. Whenever my father or Glen or Harvey was out of a job, we’d move back in to Cedar Crest.
Grandpa and Grandma supported everybody. Grandpa was the stationary engineer at Western College for Women, which is now part of Miami U, and Grandma was a maid and salad cook there. We kids would fix up a store in the old barn and stock it with stuff we took from Grandma’s room and make her come shopping at our store when she got off work and buy back her own stuff. She was an amazing woman.
Mother was busy being Grandma’s helper, for cooking and cleaning, so Uncle Randall was my main playmate and care-giver. He would ride me on his shoulders into town and back, and he taught me to play baseball. He was then in his early 20s, about the age my grandson is now.
When I got my head stuck in the wall one day during Sunday dinner, it wasn’t exactly the wall. There was a niche for the ice box, with just enough room on one side of the ice box for a little boy’s head. “My nose was out of joint,” as the saying went in those days—soon to be really out of joint—because my sister, Mary V, four and ½ years older, got to eat white bread, the kind with all the nutrients processed out, while I was consigned to “brown” bread, for my mother declared that I was still growing and needed the nourishment. At 3 or 4, you so much want to be treated like you’re older. [Not so much at 83 or 84.] So I got up and stuck my head into that opening beside the ice box, to express my disgust with the ways of the world, and twisted my head sideways to see if anyone was watching. Then, when nobody seemed to care about my existential angst, I couldn’t get that sideways head out.
When I started wailing, everybody jumped up and tried to get me free, especially Grandma, who decided to free me by tearing the wall down, all five feet and 80 lbs of her pulling at the wall. Uncle Randall tried to calm everybody down while they figured out the best way. Mother, of course, just grabbed me and yanked me out, which, as I said, was how my nose got even more out of joint. She always teased Grandma about how silly she was to think she could move the wall. I was totally on Grandma’s side.
When the first edition of my cancer book was published, Aunt Gertrude found Uncle Randall crying as he read it. “He’s okay now,” she reminded him. “I just didn’t know he hurt so much,” replied Uncle Randall.
I’m sure he wasn’t thinking of that 53 year old man on chemo, but remembering the little boy stuck in the wall.
John Robert McFarland
My Aunt Joan's name was also pronounced Joann. I didn't know there were others. My dad said their mom always believed in "Joann of Arc."
ReplyDeleteI too have an Grand Aunt Joan (Joann). I've always wondered about that. :-)
ReplyDelete