Pepper Tree Times

Since I signed the pink slip for my car over to Robin in exchange for free taxi rides to places I can’t go on the Willows bus I find myself frequently waiting in the car while Robin runs into a store for something or other. I enjoy those times. There’s such a sense of freedom in getting out on the streets and roads of Orange County. The scenery is always beautiful, the weather always ideal (I’m really not exaggerating, much,) and as a passenger, not a driver, I get to gaze out the window. 

Yesterday I waited while Robin was in her own home doing a few things. The parking space faced a sunlit wall and over the top of it a pepper tree let down some branches.  Now I should explain that pepper trees are favorites of mine. The sight of one stirs up a host of memories along with its pungent perfume. Before Robin left to climb the stairs to her second story home I asked if she’d pick me off a small twig. Just big enough to scratch its stem and hold it to my nose.

As she handed it to me through the car window I said, “Oh, honey, I hate to ask you this but could you get me a pad of lined paper and a pen? I feel a blog coming on.” So, here it goes in second draft. 

I’m thinking of my earliest encounter with a pepper tree. Grandmother Darling was showing me around her little adobe house in Riverside, California and when she opened the back porch door she waved her hand over the landscape. “We can see two mountains from here, Mt. Pachapa and Mt Rubidoux. Below the short stairway lay a tiny back yard with a canopied swing perched under the branches of a large pepper tree. As we descended the steps I said, “What is that deliciously strange scent?”

“Oh, that’s our pepper tree,” she said. Immediately her use of the word “our” made the pepper tree mine too. During the two years I lived with Grandmother we often sat in the swing and somehow we never felt such a thing called "generation gap." When a certain young Marine pilot came a-courting Grandmother discreetly let the two of us occupy the swing. Captain Wallace G.Wethe had come home from the Pacific war zone where Grandmother had been writing to him. The son of former next door neighbors to my grandparents in Minneapolis, Grandmother had known him since he was a toddler. She even had his picture on her mantle when I came. The pepper tree's swing for two fit right in to her plan, no doubt. The tree looked down happily on us and when he asked me to marry him I thought I heard the pepper tree whisper, “OK.”

Skip ahead now about 40+ years. Jenny, my eight year old granddaughter who remembered her grandfather as “Wally G.” is riding home with me from the desert where we’d been to see the Ramona Pageant. We came along a stretch of the road that was lined with beautiful pepper trees. “What are you stopping for, Grandma?” asked Jenny as I slowed down and pulled off to the side of the road. “I want to smell the pepper trees,” I said. Then I told her about Grandmother’s pepper tree and about how her grandfather and I had sat together under it long ago.

“I want to cut a few sprigs off the pepper trees,” I said as I fished a small pair of scissors out of the glove compartment. She helped me gather a little bunch of them as I cut. With each sprig I said, “I’m sorry!” But they all whispered back, “It’s OK.”  After breathing in their fragrance we laid them on the back seat of the car. 

Down the road a few miles I saw something else that made me step on the brakes. “Oh, my! I didn’t know we were going to be near this place!”

“What is this place, Grandma?”

“See that sign, Jenny? It’s a place where service men and women and their wives and husbands are buried. That’s where Wally G. was buried.” She looked up and read, “Riverside Nation-al Cem-it-ary?” 

We stopped for a map and she helped me find the location. When we got out and found the headstone with his name on it we stood for a few minutes remembering. 

“If I’d known we’d be here,” I said, “I’d have bought some flowers in the last town.” 

”We have the pepper tree leaves,” Jenny said.

“Of course! They’re perfect for Wally G.” I said. “He’d love them!” 

Jenny was already running to the car. When she came back we each took a few sprigs and laid them on top of his name. I looked around at the beautiful trees and lawns with the stones nearly hidden in the grass. “Someday...” I started to say. But I didn’t finish. It was no time to tell her my name would be carved on the stone too,- someday. 

Before we left I took one last glance at the pepper tree sprigs and they seemed to say to me, “It’s OK.”  

What Shall I Say?

To begin with I’ll tell anyone who may have been missing my blogs lately:

1. There was a reason for it, - I was suddenly thrust out of town.
2. The reason?  No need to relate for you, easier for me to forget. 
3. Good news: I'm in my new home now and loving it! (e-mail me for the address if you want.)
4. I’m grateful to God and to all my well-wishers.

Sorry to be so vague, dear fellow bloggers, but you know, too, writers get to edit their own work and I’m trying to edit my own thoughts and life as well.  There are always good lessons to learn from every experience and they may come out in some of my future blogs. 

While I was away I used to dream about coming home, but this time seemed strangely different. One can usually trace in his mind the nooks and crannies, the scents, the sounds, the familiar feelings of a place called home. After all, he’s lived there. In my case I was going home to a place I’d never lived in before, one I had chosen before my departure but one I could not remember as home.

Now I’m here and Robin is with me helping in all kinds of ways. She’s good at  unpacking. “Now do you really need this, Mom? How often do you use it?” And pulling out another small decorative thing I picked out at some thrift shop she’ll say, “Mom, you have so many of these cutesy things, don’t you think someone else might enjoy them now?” And into the box for Good Will they go. I’m here, I’m home, but this will be a more elegantly simple surrounding than I’ve been used to. No more the Old Curiosity Shop look. A new kind of home for a new life.

Tommy, my little red canary, is singing his heart out. I’d like to think he’s gotten his voice back because he’s finished molting or is happy with his new home, but I’m told it’s probably because he’s staking out his territory, telling all the other winged creatures they must keep out of his space now. I love to hear him sing. Like little Tommy Tucker, I expect him to sing for his supper. (Haven’t had a complaint from the neighbors yet.) 

Robin has finished her journal entry now and is back to sorting out the contents of packing boxes. “What on earth is this, Mom?” And, “Do you really need it?” So I’d better go. See you tomorrow!

A Truthful Mirror Doesn't Need to Flatter

Rereading my last blog I was reminded of one wardrobe mirror I have that’s flattering to me. It makes me look about 2 inches taller and 30 pounds slimmer. I know that it’s not true but I check myself in it occasionally anyway and it makes me feel better. Have you ever walked through a hall of mirrors? You know, the ones at state fairs? They are amusing but you know they lie. There are some religions that forbid the use of mirrors. They say mirrors disobey the second commandment. Well, if a mirror reflects the truth or not it tells you one thing, that a person called by your name is present.

A friend of mine used to say, “You, sitting there in that chair, tell me that you are, but you, sitting in that chair, do not tell me what you are.” He was expressing the same idea St. Paul did when he said we see “through a glass, darkly.” It behooves us all to clean up our lens or get a better one. The vision of the most enlightened individuals who have ever trod this earth in the past, many who are doing so right now, and all who will do so in the future, gives us hope. John saw “a new heaven and a new earth.” Jesus described his Father’s house as one containing “many mansions.” Other sages have tried to describe their visions of life in a higher realm.

Just sit down with a pencil and pad, close you eyes for a few moments and think how you would describe a better life, a better world, a better sense of being. Then write down your ideas. It’s a good exercise.

My husband used to say, “If I were God and I looked at this world the way it is today I’d go back to the drawing board!” But I know that he knew that the way we see our world is not the way God sees it. God just has a better window, a better lens, or a better mirror, even better vision, perfect vision. It’s not a flattering one, it’s just a truthful one. The prophet, Habakkuk, said it this way, “Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity:...” and he goes on to explain that if this were not true, how could God see the world as we see it and not do something about it? 

Haven’t we all questioned God this way at times? But seldom do we stop to think that the reason God does not see evil is the mere fact that there is no evil. Evil is only a lie and God sees right through lies just as we do when we see the railroad tracks come together in the distance. As we grow spiritually close to God we begin to see more intelligently, more clearly, that God’s creation is as He pronounced it to be in the beginning, “very good.”

Now, I suppose I’m attempting to make up for the hall of mirrors expressed in my last blog. I don’t want to see anyone, much less myself, “through a glass darkly.”  Nor do I want to see a fake paradise out of imagination. I just want to see the way God sees. I can make this my goal and work toward it or I can go on, as I often do, being a “sluggard in the race.” I really do believe that a sincere seeker for truth is the happiest of all. It’s a wonderful quest to travel along that path, especially with others who are going the same direction. Mark Twain was once asked if he’d choose heaven or hell in the hereafter. He thought a minute and then said wryly, “Well, I reckon I’d choose heaven for the climate, but that other place for the company.” Since God is everywhere I’d look for the right vision to be able to see myself and all others in good company and enjoying the best of weather in heaven. 

Have a great day!

  

"Mom, You Need To Pick Up Your Feet"

When my daughter, Robin, told me I was shuffling that’s when I decided to look for a cane. Way back in my blogs you can read about that in a piece called Stanley, My Sidekick. Then I saw my new cane in a positive way. To me it looked sporty, or maybe even aristocratic. Lately I have to admit, I need that cane. And with it I am better able to take Robin’s advice and pick up my feet. No one thinks of me as old because of that cane, do they?

I thought not at first but now I think I was wrong. People stepped aside for me, made a path, hastened to open doors or help me over curbs. Was that because of my cane? Oh well, that was not altogether bad, but when I’d catch a glimpse of myself passing a store window I didn’t like the impression. I hadn’t noticed before that my back, which had always been erect, was beginning to hunch over a bit. Was that the fault of the cane? Well, by then I liked the feel of the cane. It gave me security, prevented the occasional walk which might give just a hint of “one too many.” I knew I could walk unaided with Stanley quite nicely inside my house, but he was good company outside, like having a handrail at my side. Stanley stayed.

I do have to admit though that I’ve become a little surprised at how I’ve changed in just the last year or two. I sometimes feel like I’m playing a part in some play where I’ve been cast as an elderly lady. That’s it. Playing a part. Grasping the fact that in any given room I’m probably one of the oldest has crept up on me too. I always used to think I was one of the youngest, and perhaps I was. When did that change?

I can tell you when it changed. Just before I started writing this blog. I saw the years piling up and began to wonder how I could put a positive spin on that. But the mere admission of age and old age in particular soon began to ricochet and symptoms began to spook me.  Like the mirror over the sink in the bathroom and cameras whose pictures made me ask, “Who’s that?.” Before I’d been not nearly so focused on age, good or bad. 

True, I have found a number of good things about these added years and I like to say, “I prefer getting old because the alternative can't be so nifty!” But that puts me in the position of having to prove it. When I was a kid I loved to run, swim, roller skate, even ice skate and ski. Later I rode bicycles, and much later I played golf with my husband, and even went jogging with him until I thought better of that. I don’t have any desire to act young or do those things anymore but neither do I want to act old. And that’s exactly what if feels like, that I’m acting. Can this really be me? I ask myself when I notice that I’m wobbling or stuttering or slumping. 

So, what do I do? I start thinking about how I can do better. Pray, get organized, stay sharp in my mind and quit shuffling. Straighten up, I tell myself. Use your cane, but use it as if it were not a necessary appendage. Moving to The Willows is going to help me a lot. There are many interesting activities one can participate in but they are not mandatory. People are all genuinely considerate, friendly and loving. I find myself admiring the beauty in others whether they use a cane, a walker, or not.

I walked over to no. 312 this morning to see how the guys are progressing with my new home and when I opened the door, gloryosky! the new flooring has been installed! It is a light hardwood and it’s beautiful! It’s in the entry, the hallway, and the dining room. One day soon I’ll see new sinks in the kitchen and bathroom as well as new fixtures and countertops. Then there will be beautiful new carpeting, a general finishing touch to everything, curtains hung, and final inspection.

I did something yesterday that I hadn’t planned to do so soon. I found a lovely new sofa-bed and a perfect dinette set. My old lady self said, “Wait, this is the first you’ve seen except on-line.” My younger spontaneous self said, “But these are perfect! The money is in the bank. Well, practically. Why do I need to think it over?” Guess which one won.

These new pieces of furniture are all I need or want now for the new home. The store is holding them for me (after paying for them, of course,) and they will move in with me whenever the jobs are done. I’m grateful and glad. There are a few left-overs in the fridge which I’ll now warm up. I’m feeling hungry, I’m feeling blessed, and even if I’m getting older, things are certainly getting better for me in a host of ways. Guess I’ll go on blogging. No need to change the name of the blog just yet.

   

Little Home, Someone's Looking for You

My little Quail Creek home has been on the market for only three short weeks. Thanks to the help of our one-in-a-million seller’s agent, Virginia,  it was emptied, cleaned, repainted, given a new bedroom carpet, and nicely staged with a potted plant, a table and two chairs. Oh, yes, my plain comfy rocking chair, hand-crafted by an Amish farmer was there too. It looked so inviting! Last Sunday there was an Open House.

“Now you have an assignment,” Virginia said to me and my family. “Pray!”

How did I pray? At first I asked just that question, how should I pray? Immediately the thought came, “Turn away from your own need and pray for the one who is looking for just this particular home. Now, that was a switch. I knew where the idea had first come to my mind. Back in 1953 my husband, myself, our two young sons, about seven and five, and our little shaggy dog found ourselves near Chicago in Glenview, Illinois where Wally had been sent to be the Commander of the Naval Air Station for the next two years.

Every time we’d moved, and that had been often, the problem of finding a home had seemed challenging, but this time it seemed impossible. First, it was wintertime, cold, wet, dark and totally inhospitable! The only motel in town was run down, untidy and gloomy. Around Glenview people owned their homes. There was nothing to rent except one country house that literally leaned to one side on its foundation. Inside the floors were covered with chipped and stained linoleum, the windows grimey and the woodwork,,,well, I could go on, but won’t. The place was the only one in our price range, $125. a month. (Remember, this was 1953.) 

Sunday came along and we managed to get ourselves presentable enough to attend church and Sunday school. After the service a host of young people our age welcomed us. That was one plus. Another plus was that the sun had come out, the wind died down, and we could visit with our new friends outside without shivering.

Then a petite elderly white haired woman was introduced to us. “Where do you live,” she asked. I told her, “Well, actually, we’re still looking for a place to live.”

With merry blue eyes and a big smile her response was a cheery, “Oh, it’s looking for you!” She was so positive I thought her next words would give us an address, or at least a lead. But then I realized she was just stating the truth. Someone else soon caught her attention and we went to a local eatery and then back to the motel carrying a fat weekend Chicago newspaper. The comics would entertain the boys for a while.

As we passed by the office the attendant said, “You had a call while you were away. Here’s the number.”

Wally thanked him and then asked to borrow the phone. After hanging up he said, “That was the real estate man. He has something for us, but I warn you, it’s another country house.” Well, it would beat spending all day in the motel.

Again, the realtor did not accompany us but gave us the address. When we found the number on the mailbox I said, “This can’t be it. This place is beautiful, and it’s huge! It was, indeed, a large white house set far back from the road on a super wide lawn. A curving tree-lined driveway led up to it. 

The next house was not quite so big. “Let’s stop here and see if these people can tell us anything,” I said. It turned out that this house was the home of the owner of the first and yes, the big house next door was for rent. 

(I can see this blog is getting too long so here I’ll abbreviate and get to the end of my story.) The owner had built the big house by putting three houses together back during the war when building materials were hard to get. His wife had refused to live in it and he was willing to rent it to us and, without any bargaining on our part said, "$150. a month is the rent, but I don’t want to hear from you if anything goes wrong, You just treat the place as if it’s yours. There's a gang mower out in the garage you can use, but you mow the lawn, call the plumber, fix the furnace if it quits or whatever. Just pay me the rent.”

We lived there two years. Our baby girl was born in that house, and I have many fond memories of it. The real estate man, I suspect, had finagled the rent with the owner and we had only a few minor fix-it jobs. The little white haired lady became a good friend, and I’ve never forgotten what she said that day. 

So, as I started to pray about my condo I didn’t start with a prayer that it would sell and my own needs would be met. I said, “Father, I know there must be someone looking for just such a place as this. They need a home and they’re looking for it, even now. You are guiding them, and they will be happy to find it. Thank You!”

So, last Sunday when we had the open house this couple walked in. “We’ve been looking for just a place like this for our daughter,” they said. "And we can pay you the full price with cash.” 

My real estate friend and I went over the papers yesterday. The escrow is due to close on Valentine’s day. “I can’t thank you enough for all your work,” I told her. She said, “You’re welcome, but remember, you prayed, God answered, and we can all thank Him.” My mind went back to the little white-haired lady who knew just what to say so long ago. Home looks for us as we look for it, and prayer gets the looker and the looked-for together. Now isn't that neat?   

  

A Lesson Hard to Learn

“Don’t worry about it. Things will turn out all right in the end.” These words can be comforting or they can be an irritation. I looked up the word “worry” and it means to allow one’s mind to dwell on difficulty or troubles. Knowing that I’m allowing my mind to do this calls for another way to tackle the problem. A problem won’t go away by worrying over it, so what will make it go away? 

I have a friend who talks to God as if He were her servant. “Now God, I need you to watch over my grandchild. He’s in trouble and I can’t help but You can.” She has great faith in God which I admire but the idea of telling God to do His work, like ordering a servant, seems odd to me. Still, because of her faith she gets results.

The only way I can take the words “Don’t worry...” seriously is to also take the other words, “Things will turn out all right in the end” seriously. Then I need to bring the “end” right into the now. The way I do that is by acknowledging that God’s work is done, His kingdom is come. Then I find the faith to let the problem go and open my mind to the solution.

Someone has said, “It’s God’s business to take care of us and it’s our business to let Him.” This doesn’t mean to do nothing, but it does mean to allow God to guide in thinking and doing the right thing at the right time. Allowing worry to blind us to right thought and action is certainly not the right thing at any time!

Sometimes I feel helpless in helping someone I love. Worry makes me feel in need of help. Then I find encouragement in looking back at times I’ve been helped when things looked terribly worrisome. Faith, (not blind faith but the kind of faith that is “the substance of things hoped for,”) can work wonders if I allow faith to occupy my thoughts instead of worry.

You see, when things seem to be working out so well for me it almost shames me to see others in dire need of the very things I’m enjoying for myself. So that’s when I need to let God help them even if I can’t and not allow myself to worry and dwell on difficulties or troubles. 

God’s goodness can reach every one on the whole wide earth. I’ll do what I can to share in what’s been given to me, but I need to remember that the only dependence that is unfailing is dependence on God.

In our advancing years we can’t just sit around and twiddle our thumbs! I’m reminded of a story I once read. An elderly fellow was working in his garden and was called out to his gate by a neighbor. After chatting a while the neighbor said, “Say, Joe, every time I pass your place I see you out working. You’ve worked all your life. Don’t you think you deserve to just sit on your porch now and take it easy?”

Joe’s answer came out in a slow drawl something like this: “Well, I do see your point, my friend, but then again I don’t see any point in dying before my time's come!”

I woke up this morning about four o’clock worrying about someone I love. Funny, isn’t it, how we tend to let love haul a bag of worries? It just isn’t fitting! I had to get up and set my mind straight. Blogging does it, every time!

About Retirement

I’ve been thinking about the advantages of old age and retirement lately, and here is a sample of what's turning up.

1. Retirement should never become decline-ment. 

Oh, yes, I know we often scoff at the idea of retirement. Retirement can have its negative side, but look at the positive. If we’re not still eager to preserve our youthful activities too much we might find that there’s a whole new world of mental and spiritual activity to discover. Many of us oldsters are happily spending more time seeking out answers to life. I call this kind of retirement exercise, tough work and a great occupation! 

2. Retirement can be a growing time.

Growing old need not be seen as growing worse if we can see it as a time of discovery. How many of us have trapped ourselves in brick walls of personal opinion and common belief? Well, there’s a real pleasure in getting out a mallet and slamming those walls down! The first Beatitude lauds those who are “poor in spirit.” The reward for this is the kingdom of heaven!

3. Retirement can be a time of restoring our faith.

Why give up and give in to the so-called inevitable accompaniments to old age? If we see life as heaven on earth we can explore it "through the valley of of the shadow of death," not as an end called death.

4. Retirement can be a time of putting our good intentions to work.

Somewhere we’ve heard that “the road to hell is paved with the bones of good intentions.” That need not be our fate!

5. Retirement can be joyous and invigorating. 

Knowing the omnipresence of good instead of engaging in unkind criticism, and idle observation of the oddities and infirmities of ourselves and others, gives us ample work.  Someone has said, “Negative criticism is the public acknowledgment of one’s inability to see the Christ in man.” A friend of mine used to say, “What you see is what you be.”

6. Retirement is a time of working to end evil. 

So, I think that’s not possible? So I don’t even try? Well, then. at least I can acknowledge that that’s what God is doing and follow suit. It’s work that invigorates us spiritually and mentally.

7. Retirement is a time to accept Eternity.

We may think what we like about this but I choose to believe that, having accepted the gift of life, it cannot be taken away, not even by our consent. So, we’d better make the best of it,  For this we need divine help. In all our years we can choose to be ageless. An astronomer once told me that we’ve all been alive as long as life began. He said. “We’re made out of star dust, literally.” I say we’re made out of God, Spirit. By the way, how old is God? How does God keep from aging? It says in the Bible that God rests. He/She must know how to rest in action. It doesn’t say that God quits! We oldsters should not be quitters! 

Note to my readers: Please forgive me when I get on my soap box. You who know me know I’m mainly preaching to myself. Something in the morning air is to blame for it.