Put Your Left Hand In

Can you remember as you grew up or as you raised your own children, trying to teach them their right from their left? You would repeat the words right hand, left hand and right foot, left foot, over and over until they got the idea of those directions. I can remember teaching my kids as we were driving in the car and teaching them up and down as well. I’d repeat, “Up we go” as we climbed a hill or “Down we go” as we descended. “Left we Go” or right we go” as we motored to wherever we were going. For weeks, it was a constant drill. The older kids hated to hear my wife Cindy of me when we’d start.

Sometimes, even today, if one of my children is in the car with me, I’ll start the chant and watch them either smile and tell me to stop it or they might join in for a line or two. This memory has changed little over the years. But today I say it’s my good knee or my bad knee, my good wrist or my bad wrist, depending on the weather and which one aches the most.

I am creeping up on another birthday in March. Most of my past birthdays haven’t bothered me. Most I’ve laughed about or shrugged them off as just another year that I’ve been blessed to live. But this year is a milestone for me. I go from sixty-nine to seventy and for some reason, I am dreading it.

I’ve shared before the only other birthday that bothered me was the year I went from nineteen to twenty. The reasons were that I was in the Navy, it was my first birthday away from home, and I was no longer a teenager. I felt I was well on my way to adulthood.

Other reasons for my dread to see March roll around each year are the sad memories that cling to my birthday month; the death of my wife Cindy from ovarian cancer sixteen years ago and the death of my mother Sybil from Alzheimer’s disease three years later on the very same day. These anniversaries are memories that I revisit each March.

March is also a month that can’t make up its mind. It’s not quite winter and not quite spring. I am weary of the cold snowy months and anxious to feel the sun’s warming rays. The battle continues each and every day. Just as the memories of past birthdays and past events struggle with the present.

Constancy

As the world changes around us, sometimes too quickly to adjust or to follow, we have to have an anchor. Something onto which we cling and be certain it will remain firm. As a child, I was taught a small ditty about two men who constructed a house. The first man built his house on shifting sand. When the trials and storm of everyday life came and assaulted him and his home, the building collapsed because it had no solid foundation. The song went on to describe the second man as having built his house upon the rock. When the storms assaulted him and his house, it stood firm. It was immoveable and the man remained safe.

The sermon last evening and the wicked winds of the west throughout the night caused this song and its truth to be brought to mind. There are some things that are immutable, are unchanging, and are established truths. At the core, the very center of this is the Rock, the triune God, the unchanging Eternal Being. This omnipresent, omnipotent being is the infinite truth and Creator of the universe in which mankind exists. Nothing is or ever was without his knowledge or foreknowledge. Creation was his handiwork as was each creature on Earth.

He is infinitely interested about the minutest details of our lives and yet controls the universe. Storms and winds obey his voice. The sun, moon and even time can stand still at his command. He has shared his majesty and design for each of us in the Bible.

The King James Version sticks closest to the original meaning and intent of the given word. Too many of the Johnny-Come-Lately transliterations either change words or omit words completely, altering the meaning to the text.

I laugh when people say the King James Bible is too hard to understand and yet they swoon over the words of William Shakespeare. The verbiage is from the same era. If some folks would read and study the Bible as much as they do Shakespeare, the words become clear and the meaning is revealed.

The Bible and God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit can be your solid rock in the ever shifting sands of time and circumstance too.

Staying Busy

When I retired, I thought that things would slow a bit and in some ways it has. I feel I move slower, sometimes more cautiously in the snow and mud, I certainly don’t want to slip and fall in the driveway again. Once was enough. I do less laundry, cook smaller meals, and don’t vacuum and dust as often as I should, but lately, more things seem to have crowded in.

I am still writing, trying to pull together multiple plots and side stories to create a novel about my retired homicide detective, Tommy Two Shoes. I’ve been rereading his old escapades to keep people and facts to match.

I finished making the Easter crosses. Finished for this year; I don’t plan on making anymore, even though a friend has asked me to make two more. After she saw a proto, she begged for one. I made one for her and she plans to give it away to a sick friend. Constructing the crosses from straight sticks isn’t the problem, but weaving the crown from branches of crab apple thorns is. My hands and fingers are sore and scratched.

I’ve also been strengthening the stairway to my second floor. My house is nearly 50 years old and occasionally needs to be upgraded. Adding supports to each step takes a bit of time for someone who is mechanically dyslexic like me.

I was nominated by a friend as illustrator for her newest children’s book. She told me that she listed me as the illustrator in the acknowledgements before I agreed. I guess she relies on me as much as I rely on her to help with computer questions and to get my books ready for printing.

Her new book is about what can be found under a kid’s bed. I’ve been drawing and redrawing the child’s bed several times over, the child in the bed with different expressions. Some have a different creature at the bed: monsters of all shapes and sizes, dust bunnies, the normal flotsam and jetsam that collect on the floor under the bed. Another illustration is of a younger brother trying to scare him. One is of the mother clad in a “Ghostbuster” type coverall with the vacuum strapped to her back. We’re meeting today to decide if she needs something else of something more.

Shooting off My Mouth

Over the past few days I have had a running argument with two people who feel that guns need to be regulated and restricted. I am vehemently opposed to yielding any rights that are constitutionally guaranteed. Our forefathers and framers of the Constitution decided to allow the common people to keep and carry guns. Upon these rights our Republic was founded. At the time of its inception, weapons were equal to those the government held in their arsenal. There was no quibbling whether the weapons were to be used as protection or for hunting; it was the right of the citizen to bear arms.

The two naysayers’ argument was that guns were made for killing. I tried to explain that guns were created for protection. Guns were designed to protect oneself, one’s family, and one’s possessions. The gun was to intimidate the person invading to think twice about entering another person’s home or threatening to rob or harm the person’s kin.

Guns were also created to make it easier to provide food for their family. The hunter no longer had to rely on throwing rocks, sticks, or trapping. A bullet travelled much farther than shooting an arrow or throwing a spear. Larger and more dangerous game animals were more easily dispatched to provide protection or to add food to the larder.

I tried to explain that a gun was only a tool. If it was used to kill another human being it was because the person wielding the gun chose an evil pathway to slay another person. The reasoning behind the event might be jealousy, robbery, or just the wickedness of a warped mind.

A person’s heart is a fickle and unreliable thing. Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” That means a man can reason to do anything if he relies on his own understanding. Proverbs 3:5 warns, “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.” Without the morals of an absolute truth, a person can rationalize anything and it’s not necessary to have a gun to commit murder. Cain used a rock or a club. Now men have “advanced” finding new ways to murder. Even the unborn is unsafe from forceps and a vacuum.

Respected and Unexpected Find

While going through some of the papers and memorabilia stored at my house, I found a 35 page booklet titled The Memorial Messenger that highlighted local men and women who were in the military during WWII. Several local people were responsible for gathering and publishing this memorial. They concentrated on local men and women who served from Hickman Chapel, Mill Run, and those from Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania.

The correspondents and editors were Ferne Work, Rella Mae King, Lillian McCahan, Ida Bailey, and Rev. M. T. Hulihan. They tirelessly collected information and photographs, then compiled them into a collection of local heroes. The dedication of the booklet gave special honor to the men who did not return.

Inside, the alphabetical listing of the soldiers and sailors call to mind many of my friends and neighbors I‘ve met and to whom I’ve spoken. Some were my wife Cindy Morrison’s relatives: her father, and several uncles, while  many of the other soldiers and sailors were outstanding citizens, local businessmen, and community leaders.

Cindy’s uncle First Sgt. William Mason fought in Rhineland, Ardennes, and Central Europe earning a bronze star. F/O Ernest Johnson was another of Cindy’s uncles who was stationed with the Air Corps throughout the United States. S1/c George Rugg was my uncle. He enlisted in the Navy  and was stationed in the Bikini Islands, Marshall Islands, and Japan.

My wife’s grandmother was a Jackson. There were several Jackson men, but I am not sure if they are related. I had an Uncle Fred Hyatt and there was a Pvt. Fred Hyatt, Army stationed in France. I’m not sure if he is the one mentioned, but I know he was in the Army.

Sgt warren D. Leonard, Cindy’s uncle was overseas in France and Rhineland. Cindy’s uncle James Morrison belonged to the Parachute Infantry in France, Belgium, and Rhineland.

There were about half dozen women who were nurses, ferrying pilots, office workers, supply, and even overseas in Germany and Japan freeing men to be on the battle fronts.

I saved Cindy’s father, T/S Elmer E. Morrison until last. Bud belonged to the 266th Engineers, 66th division who worked on the Alaskan in 1942, drove flatbed trucks hauling equipment in France in 1944, and in the Rhineland in 1945.

Sore Fingers

In the past, about this time of year, I’ve constructed a craft project that is extremely hard on my fingers. In a swampy area near my house grow bushes that have thinner straight offshoots which are easy to cut and harvest. Bundled and wired securely together, they become an integral part of the project, but these sticks aren’t the cause of my sore fingers. Another tree that thrives in the swamp is the reason for my pain. Several crabapple trees share the marshy area with cattail reeds, blackberry brambles, and grasses. The trees’ thorns are the problem. Collecting straight sticks is painless and easy, but collecting the branches from the crabapple trees is another matter. Avoiding their long, thin thorns as I harvest the limbs is a challenge.

Once the straight sticks are wired into two bundles, I intertwine and wire them together to form a cross. The ends are trimmed and I cover the wires at each end with heavy twine, rawhide, or shoelaces to camouflage the wires. The collected thorn filled branches now become a large part of my concern. The task challenges my safety as I attempt to weave them into a tight circle. The braided circle of thorns are to represent the crown of thorns that Christ wore with his trial before Pilate and when he was mocked, spat upon and beaten with a cat of nine tail-like whip before his crucifixion.

Each time I weave the branches of thorns into a circle, no matter how careful or cautious I am, those rapier barbs pierce my fingers and hands. Sometimes the tips bury themselves beneath my skin and break off, requiring me to dig them out with a sewing needle and tweezers. The injuries always seem to happen on the mast tender part of my fingers and te soreness remains long after the imbedded tip has been removed. Because of needed dexterity, wearing gloves are not an option. The cloth gloves snag doing little to protect my hands from the thorns.

This year I made four crosses. They’re used as Easter decorations for a door or as a wall hanging. Tone is for my son’s family and now all of my children have a cross of their own. I made one as a birthday gift and one as a present for a discouraged friend. When another childhood friend saw a photo, and begged, I made one for her, too.

Snuggled This Morning

When I woke this morning, wrapped in the folds of my thick blankets, I contemplated rolling back over and remain cocooned in their warm depths or should I rise and face another cold winter’s day. I had things to do and people to see , as the saying goes, but I was reminded of the many times at my grandparent Miner’s house in the late fall or early winter’s sanctuary I found on their front porch.

The cinderblock pillars and walls protected the front entrance to their old, rambling farmhouse. It was an integral part of the farm and because they had eight children, it was necessary. The porch was guarded by two massive short needled pine trees that kept the porch cool in the summer and held frost and snow at bay in the winter. Gram covered her planter boxes with rugs and carpeting to protect them from the frost. Later when the plants had succumbed to the cold, she would roll and store the rugs on a dark green Adirondack settee. This was the spot to which I would escape when the heat, noise, and general hubbub of so many cousins, aunts, and uncles became too much.

I would climb back into my winter coat and slip unobtrusively out the thick wooden front door to the relatively peaceful oasis of the porch. I would listen to the icy winds play songs in the branches and needles of those old pine trees and create a nest in which to burrow.

Lifting the edges of several of the old carpet and rugs, I would slowly make a spot to relax and regain the peace and warmth that I so desired. Wrapping my body and burying my head in the folds, the initial chilliness of the thick rugs would give way to an enveloping, warm dark bastion against the noise inside the house and the cold outside. Soothed by the soft soughing of the icy breeze in the old pines, I would hover between wakefulness and slumber. There were times that I actually napped there. My parents would find and roust me, before heading home.

All thoughts of my warm retreat were chased away as I climbed into my parents’ car to begin the journey to our nearby home. The inside of the car never warmed, because we lived only two miles away.

Tough Sledding

My first sled I can remember owning was a Flexible Flyer. Its varnished wooden platform slats seemed to come alive as the sled was unwrapped. Bright red steel runners begged to be taken out for an adventure in the snow. The small slope beside my parent’s house was the beginnings of my youthful winter downhill excursions with my sled.

As I grew older and the paint began to wear from the sled’s runners, the adventures with my sled extended to tides with my friends and that became more challenging. The course was Coal Bank Hill Road. The pathway was rather steep and we could have ended up on Route 711… if we were unable to roll off the sled to stop the downward plunge. Sometimes cinders the township spread on the road stopped the sleds before we were ready. I lost more than a few buttons that snagged on my sled when it stopped and I didn’t.

A homemade, “Little Rascals” contraption we constructed was the neighbor kid’s toboggan. The body was made of a 2 x 12 plank, 8 feet long. It had chrome clad runners and a steering wheel taken from a car to guide it. Hauling it back to the top of the hill after each run was a chore. It was abandoned when we discovered it was so heavy.

We joined some other friends when my parents visited a friend’s nearby farm. Their toboggan was just the opposite, it was light and fast. Also kid created from a corrugated aluminum sheet with one end curled back, this aluminum toboggan glided on the snow with ease and speed.

My cousins were forced to discard their makeshift “sled” when they found they were unable to steer it. The hood of a car was fast, but it was also dangerous. It crashed into a tree and one of my cousins fractured her pelvis.

Other cousins used their wide coal shovel removed from their basement for as a sled. Taking turns, they would rest their feet on the wide metal blade. By pulling back on the handle they’d glide in the snow. These were the same cousins who ran around barefoot in the snow after losing their shoes when the snowplow came by their house.

Over the years, my kids used several types of sleds. Plastic toboggans and inner tubes mostly, but my youngest rode in a plastic produce drawer from a refrigerator while visiting my parent’s house, sliding on the same hill where I had my first sled riding adventure.

Soggy and Foggy

 After the past few days of wet weather and the envelopment of fog, if I hear a weather person fuss about drought conditions in the southwest corner of Pennsylvania, I think I would consider strangling him or her. I was walking in my side and back yard today and it was mushy; sink your boots down into the earth and water squish up the sides. It almost felt like I was walking on a sponge. Puddles of water were standing in the low areas, but even the higher knolls were soft and gushy. I’m not sure my yard feels that way because the ground below is still frozen and the water is unable to soak in or whether it has rained so much, it collects on top.

Since then, there have been several episodes of driving downpours and deluges pushed by whipping winds. The splattering sounds on my windows made me thankful that it was frigid enough to create hail, sleet, of freezing rain.

My furnace was on the fritz and managed to get by for a few days with a fire my wood burner. It kept the house toasty, but my sleep pattern was interrupted, fearful that the fire would die down and my house would grow cold allowing my water pipes to freeze and burst. That’s an ordeal no home owner wants to deal with. After setting my internal clock to waken every four or five hours, I would make the trek from my bedroom, down two flights of stairs to my basement, and fill the firebox with wood.

While I was already out of bed and awake, I would take the opportunity to make an excursion into the bathroom and relieve some bladder pressure. Sometimes, I can be forgetful, but that is one thing that an old man can’t forget or ignore.

I’m glad that I had a small load of firewood delivered in the middle of January. I knew there would be enough wood to last through the month of January, but I was just as sure that I’d need more to keep the home fires burning bright and cozy through February.

I am certainly thankful to be warm, snug, and dry with the rain today and the coming cold snap.

Surprised, Sickened, and Saddened

Each time that I think that our elected officials’ morals cannot sink any lower, they manage to find a way to open a deeper crypt than I thought possible. It amazes me even more that the American public would allow them to do that. We were once appalled at the barbaric customs of sacrificing babies to the gods of Ashtoreth and Baal. The priests would lay the babies on the red hot bronze arms of the idols and the infants’ flesh would be seared as they rolled down into the burning furnaces of the altar.

The Aztecs made human sacrifices. In the past, our scientists and scholars thought it was barbaric, brutal, and cruel. Other primitive tribes committed the same acts to appease their gods.

Hitler convinced the German populace to allow the torture and murder millions during the holocaust. Inhuman “scientific” experiments, slave labor, and the gas chambers were just a few of the horrors perpetrated on the Poles, Jews, and other minority groups.

The Russian’s had death camps that accomplished the same thing, repression, slavery, and death as did Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot and the Chinese people under Mao. We can trace similar events back through history to the despots’ death cults.

But this is America. This is a land where our people have tried to protect the weak, the innocent, and the oppressed. Our military men and women have fought and died in multiple wars to extend that protection to other countries and other people.

In the past, our judges have callously passed judgment on the weakest, most innocent, and most fragile Americans by allowing the abortion of these babies to be considered healthcare. Under that guise, tax dollars are now subsidizing the murder of an untold number of lives. Millions of infants who cannot speak for themselves are being sacrificed on the altar of convenience and greed. Politicians have recently decided to extend the reach of the Grimm Reaper to snatch children after they have been born.

There are several ways that an abortion can be accomplished; all are horrendous and painful for the infant. Saline can be instilled in the mother’s womb and the child is scalded. The skin is sloughed from the tiny body, causing severe pain. Or a suction catheter can be inserted into the uterus and the baby is vacuumed out. Pliers-like instruments can be shoved inside the mother to clamp onto, crush, and tear apart whatever body part of the child’s tender flesh the “doctor” can clamp onto. The infant feels the pain of each flesh rending act.

Please, please do all that you can to stop these heinous acts of infanticide, these horrible acts of sacrifice to the gods of convenience and greed.

One thing on my bucket list that still eludes me is to write a hymn. This is the rough draft that I'm working on now.

Infinite

Infinite mercy, infinite grace

Infinite love even time can’t erase

Eternal blessings, mine evermore

Infinite manna from such a great store

Lost in sin’s darkness, gloom deep as night

Enslaved by its grip, with no hope in sight

Drained of life’s essence, empty inside

No understanding of why Jesus died

Guilty of trespass, sins of my past

Transgressions untold with my crimes so vast

Sins are bright scarlet staining so deep

I knelt at the cross and began to weep

The Lord provided the sacrifice

Allowing his Son to pay my sins price

Christ satisfied debts I could not pay

Christ’s sacred blood took the grave’s sting away

Just Another Day

Yesterday was another busy day that I wasn’t sure would happen. My daughter-in0law Renee Beck was to have same day surgery. Because of my son Andrew’s schedule and her arrival time, he wasn’t able to drive her to the appointment or to watch their two children, Celine and Moriah. Grandpa Tom said he would do it.

Wednesday evening, I was worried. I started to have periods of feeling hot and feeling off balance, the same feelings that kept me off my house roof; for a short period of time. I was concerned that I may not be able to keep my part of the bargain and leave Renee without a driver and the kids without a daycare supervisor. When Renee called with the time, I told her I was having the hot flushes to kind of say I may not be able to drive her. The alternative was for Andrew to call off from his job. That’s something no boss likes and shorts the paycheck.

I felt okay yesterday morning and was able to do my grandfatherly duties. Renee’s blood sugar was really low after the fasting and she drank some juice. The worse the hospital would do is to insert a naso-gastric tube prior to surgery. The low blood sugar wasn’t tolerable.

I dropped her off and headed back to her home to oversee the girls as they worked on their homeschool assignments and to keep the home fires stoked in the wood burner. The girls were great, completing their schooling work and their house chores. Chickens watered and lunch made, we settled back to wait for the call saying it was time to pick up Renee.

The wait seemed long. I found out later that there was a delay in the starting time, but the phone call finally came. Packing up the girls, we made the 35 minute drive to Mon Valley Hospital. The route from their home to Mon Valley has to be another roadway in Pennsylvania that is very winding. It follows the Monongahela River much of the way.

With everyone safely back home, I began the 45 minute drive to my own home. I was glad to be home. Shortly after arriving home, the feeling of disequilibrium returned. It was not intense, but if I’d have had it when I awoke, I’m not sure I would have felt safe enough to drive the car with Renee and kids in the car.

I’m having less nasal congestion and feeling much better this morning. I am beginning to believe that sinus pressure is at the root of my balance problems.