10 million miles

Evan (#11) and Jared (#8) just finished up incredible baseball seasons.  Their dad, Scott, coached both teams. Jared’s team enjoyed an undefeated season!  I don’t know much about baseball itself, but I do know that these are some of the cutest players around!

On Tuesday night, our book club met to discuss our first book, Corrie Ten Boom’s The Hiding Place.

I had originally started the club because:

1. I’ve always wanted to be a part of a book club, so why not invite me to my own?

2. After reading and watching The Jane Austen Book Club (which I don’t necessarily recommend), I realized that people need a safe place to gossip about other people, hash out the finer details of relationships, and air thoughts. I figured, a book club is a safe place because the subjects of gossip don’t really exist.

I hadn’t anticipated the worth of:

1. spending time with real people who think, and respond, and love

2. spending time with “book” people who, it turns out, I don’t want to gossip about, but rather want to be like

I think we all discovered that The Hiding Place is full of admirable, courageous people doing things we all aspire to do. Corrie Ten Boom sheds such a brilliant light on the virtuous characters that the evil characters fade into the background.

I most appreciated the theme of home. Through her story telling, Corrie invites us all into the loveliness of Father, Mama, Betsy, Tante Jans… We can’t help but feel like we are home when we are with them.

Most precious to me were the lessons I learned from Corrie’s Father and Mama. It was because of Father’s and Mama’s examples of tangible love and wisdom that Corri and Betsy were able to thrive in the worst of circumstances. For example, because Father read Scripture aloud to the family every evening, Corrie and Betsy knew the treasure of reading Scripture aloud to their prison mates every night. Because Mama provided meals and clothing for others even when she herself was not feeling well, Corrie and Betsy were able to tangibly serve their prison mates despite their own discomfort.

During their years of pro-active love, Father and Mama could not have known the ways in which they were preparing their daughters for the future. But because two parents were faithful, two daughters helped to transform prison cells to sanctuaries, and convert hardened guards to forgiven friends.

No one wishes for their children to experience such tragedy, but may we all be like Father and Mama, equipping and inspiring our children to adore Scripture and serve other people… no matter what.

The word on the street is that these frightfully prolific insects hatch in droves every 16 years. If that is true, than this is the 16th year.

These furry black caterpillars are everywhere; they’ve been falling into our hair, onto our shoulders, and onto our patio table. Yesterday’s downpour sent them all to our house. They are climbing all over our siding, patio, doors. Utterly disgusting. The neighborhood is fighting back. I spotted one neighbor out back with his lighter, burning the poor dears, one hairy body at a time. Another neighbor was beating them with a broom. I opted out of engaging the bugs at all and convinced Viv to hibernate inside with me for the afternoon (after calling Ryan for moral support).

Here’s a fun poem about the “good old days”…

Long ago and far away, in a land that time forgot,
Before the days of Dylan, or the dawn of Camelot.
There lived a race of  innocents, and they were you and me,
For Ike was in the White House in that land where we were born,
Where navels were for oranges, and Peyton Place was porn.
We learned to gut a muffler, we washed our hair at dawn,
We spread our crinolines to dry in circles on the lawn.
We longed for love and romance, and waited for our Prince,
And Eddie Fisher married Liz, and no one’s seen him since.
We danced to ‘Little Darlin,’ and sang to ‘Stagger Lee’
And cried for Buddy Holly in the Land That Made Me  Me.

Only girls wore earrings then, and 3 was one too many,
And only boys wore flat-top cuts, except for Jean McKinney.
And only in our wildest dreams did we expect to see
A boy named George with Lipstick, in the Land That Made Me Me.

We fell for Frankie Avalon, Annette was oh, so nice,
And when they made a movie, they never made it twice.
We didn’t have a Star Trek Five, or Psycho Two and Three,
Or Rocky-Rambo Twenty in the Land That Made Me Me.

Miss Kitty had a heart of gold, and Chester had a limp,
And Reagan was a Democrat whose co-star was a chimp.
We had a Mr. Wizard, but not a Mr. T ,
And Oprah couldn’t talk, yet, in the Land That Made Me Me.

We had our share of heroes, we never thought they’d go,
At least not Bobby Darin, or Marilyn Monroe.
For youth was still eternal, and life was yet to be,
And Elvis was forever in the Land That Made Me Me.

We’d never seen the rock band that was Grateful to be Dead,
And Airplanes weren’t named Jefferson, and Zeppelins were not Led.
And Beatles lived in gardens then, and Monkees lived in trees,
Madonna was a virgin in the Land That Made Me Me.

We’d never heard of microwaves, or telephones in cars,
And babies might be bottle-fed, but they weren’t grown in jars.
And pumping iron got wrinkles out, and ‘gay’ meant fancy-free,
And dorms were never coed in the Land That Made Me Me
We hadn’t seen enough of jets to talk about the lag,
And microchips were what was left at the bottom of the bag.
And Hardware was a box of nails, and bytes came from a flea,
And rocket ships were fiction in the Land That Made Me Me.

Buicks came with portholes, and side shows came with freaks,
And bathing suits came big enough to cover both your cheeks .
And Coke came just in bottles, and skirts below the knee,
And Castro came to power near the Land That  Made Me Me.

We had no Crest with Fluoride, we had no Hill Street Blues,
We had no patterned pantyhose or Lipton herbal tea
Or prime-time ads for condoms in the Land That Made Me Me.

There were no golden arches, no Perrier to chill,
And fish were not called Wanda, and cats were not called Bill
And middle-aged was 35 and old was forty-three,
And ancient were our parents in the Land That Made Me Me.

But all things have a season, or so we’ve heard them say,
And now instead of Maybelline we swear by Retin-A.
They send us invitations to join AARP,
We’ve come a long way, baby, from the Land That Made Me Me.

So now we face a brave new world in slightly larger jeans,
And wonder why they’re using smaller print in magazines.
And we tell our children’s children of the way it used to be,
Long ago and far away in the Land That Made Me Me.

…who is in the exersaucer: Lia! It seems like yesterday that it was Vivienne…

…oh, it WAS just yesterday that Vivienne was in the exersaucer!