CHRIST IN WINTER:
Reflections on Faith and Life for the Years of Winter…
The caller ID on the house
phone said IU. I picked it up. So did Helen. I heard a pleasant-sounding young
man ask for Helen. Fine with me; I’m not much for talking on the phone,
especially if people are asking for money. I was right. He was asking for
money. Strangely, though, since he asked for Helen, he was a sports fund
raiser.
I got to hear her side of
a long and pleasant conversation. She acknowledged that we were sports fans but
played the little old granny card, unable to buy tickets because we are no
longer able to walk in from the parking lot in Nebraska to which they assigned
us in the days we were able to go to games.
Then I heard her ask him
if he had a grandmother. Apparently he said yes, for then she asked him if he
emailed his grandmother regularly. He said that was difficult because she was
95, but that he called her once a week. [I got this later from Helen, of
course.] She told him how important it was to his grandmother that he keep
doing so. After a bit more talk about sports finance, Helen giving the young
man a basic course in coach-speak, before she hung up she reminded him to keep
calling his grandmother.
All this came about
because two days previous, grandson Joe had emailed her. [It actually was to
both of us, but she keeps saying, “He emailed me!” when she tells people about
it.] He had discovered that the names Jerome and Hieronymus have the same root,
with one name picked up by the Greeks, the others by the Dutch, with the Dutch
getting the better deal. Apparently he intends to name all his children
Hieronymus.
Joe has always felt that
Grandma should be kept informed of arcane information. I recently found an
entry in my journal, from when he was nine, noting that he had thrown up three
times at school, once through his nose, and when his mother got him home, he
insisted that she call Grandma and tell her, for “Through my nose!” was
important for Grandma to know. He knew she would be interested. Also it was
likely that such information would cause her to bake a cake for him to ease his
suffering.
Now, though, Joe is a
teen, and through his teen years, he has become quiet. Not silent, or
secretive, although he has taken quite literally to “the Messianic secret” in
the gospel of Mark, by growing his hair and beard out long so that he looks
exactly like Jesus, at least the tall white Irish Jesus of the Sunday School
papers.[ I don’t think it was his intention to look like Jesus, but that’s the
way it turned out.]
Bing a teen boy, it is
very rare for Joe to initiate contact, although he is quite pleasant, and
always informative, when others start conversations. Sometimes Helen texts him,
since teens actually look at and reply to texts, and asks him if he has time to
talk on the phone that night. He always says yes, takes the call at the
appointed time. They always have pleasant conversations, mostly Helen asking
questions and Joe replying either “Good” or “Yes,” but he does also offer new
bits of remote knowledge he has picked up.
Joe is busy. He is a
senior and preparing for college. He plays tenor sax in all the school’s bands
and ensembles. He is a letterman on the tennis team. I assume he must talk to
teachers and classmates. At least if they speak first. But he’s not too busy to
let us know about Jerome and Hieronymus.
Now some folks might think
the common root of those names is unnecessary information. To certain people,
it is the most important information ever.
JRMcF
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com
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