Nancy Parker Brummett

Author Writer Speaker

Graduations Galore

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We’ve had a lot of pomp in our family this graduation season—under all kinds of circumstances! Five of our twelve grandchildren celebrated graduation milestones recently, adding all their hopes and dreams to that cumulative pile formed by 2012 graduates everywhere.

Our granddaughter Amanda had the most significant graduation—she graduated from high school. It was wonderful to hear her give the invocation at her graduation ceremony, and so reassuring to know that in certain small towns in America it’s still acceptable to thank God and give Him the glory! She and I will celebrate by going to New York together, and I’m as excited as she is.

On the opposite end of the educational spectrum, our grandson Will graduated from kindergarten. Imagine, if you can, about 75 little five-and six-year olds proceeding into an auditorium with their faces framed by giant paper flowers! According to Will’s dad he wasn’t too keen on dressing up as a flower, but the effect on stage as they sang some precious songs like “Everything Grows” and “Each of Us is a Flower” was just darn cute.

Our other three graduates celebrated leaving eighth grade and moving on to high school, and that caught us more by surprise than the others. In 1998 I wrote a column titled “Baby, Baby, Baby” in which I mused about the excitement and preparation around welcoming three baby girls into our family within four months. That those three baby girls, Ellie, Riley and Morgan, are now young ladies who dressed up and did their hair for eighth-grade graduation dances and ceremonies absolutely blows our minds! Echoing the sentiment of every parent and grandparent of every graduate of the season, where did the time go?

We only got to attend two of these ceremonies, but we loved every minute. Even if you weren’t there, you’ve been there. Graduates grinning from ear to ear, cameras flashing, parents and grandparents beaming in that foolish way we do so well.  And why shouldn’t we? Graduations are great milestones on this journey of life we celebrate.

Honoring Our Soldiers

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To add to the Memorial Day tributes I am re-posting something I first wrote in October 2009, with a grateful heart for all the men and women who sacrifice so much for all of us.

The faces and stories on the news and in our local paper have appeared in a steady trickle over the last eight years. Another soldier lost, another family grieving. But the news this week that eight young men from the 4th Brigade Combat Team at Fort Carson, CO, had lost their lives in a bloody firefight in Afghanistan—where they were horribly outnumbered by attacking insurgents—has hit me extremely hard.

You see,  I can stand out on my deck and see part of Fort Carson. I drive by the Mountain Post often. At the shopping center just down the hill, I frequently encounter young GIs in their crisp, starched desert fatigues, going about all the ordinary activities of their lives that don’t put them in mortal danger.

As I watched the news accounts of the losses this week, I looked at each face intently. Is that the young man who held the door for me as I went into the cleaners carrying a pile of dirty clothes? Are those the guys who stood in line with me at Black Bear Coffee last summer, turning to say, “Have a good day, mam!” before they left?

One day my friend Pat and I were having lunch in the sushi restaurant down the hill in that same shopping center. We couldn’t help but notice a couple of young soldiers counting out their change to cover their lunch tab. “Never mind!” we called out to the waitperson. “We’ve got their lunch.”

“Oh, no mam,” one of them said, turning to look at me with his piercing blue eyes. “You shouldn’t do that. We’re here to serve you.”

“Well, you are serving us,” we said. “This is the least we can do.”

With a heavy heart one morning this week, I dug one of those rubber bracelets everyone wears to support their causes out of my jewelry box and stretched it over my hand. It’s camouflage green, and I got it when I gave blood in a drive for the soldiers a few years ago. I wanted to wear it as a reminder to pray for the eight families grieving.

As I went about the activities of my day—enjoying my protected, free life—I wanted to remember that we are still at war, that troops are still in danger, and that all of them need our prayers and deserve our deepest gratitude.

These were our boys who died this week—guys from our neighborhood. Remembering them with honor? Well, it’s the least I can do.

What I Learned from Two Old Women

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Occasionally you read a book that stays with you long after you close the cover for the last time and place the book on the shelf (or delete it from your reader!).  So it is with a small volume I read with my book group not too long ago, Two Old Women by Velma Wallis.

A poignant account of aging is found in this short but powerful book. Based on an Athabascan Indian legend passed along for many generations from mothers to daughters of the upper Yukon River Valley in Alaska, it’s the inspirational tale of two old women abandoned by their tribe during a brutal winter famine. The chief regrets having to leave the old women behind, as do the families of the elders, but the decision is made that they must be abandoned so the others can move on.

What happens next should encourage all of us who aren’t as young and capable as we once were. “We have learned much during our long lives,” said one of the women named Sa’. “Yet there we were in our old age, thinking that we had done our share in life. So we stopped, just like that. No more working like we used to, even though our bodies are still healthy enough to do a little more than we expect of ourselves.”

Her slightly older friend, Ch’idzigyaak, listened carefully to her friend’s revelation as to why they were left behind.

“Two old women,” Sa’ continued. “They complain, never satisfied. We talk of no food, and of how good it was in our days when it really was no better. We think that we are too old. Now, because we have spent so many years convincing the younger people that we are hopeless, they believe that we are no longer of use to this world.” And then she lays down a challenge for herself and her friend: “If we are going to die anyway, let us die trying!”

By the end of the book, the two old friends have done more than try—they have survived and survived beautifully. So successful are they in employing all the wisdom and skills they accumulated over their many decades that, when they are eventually reunited with the tribe, they have pelts and food enough to share with those who walked off and left them to die in the cold!

The lesson is one we can apply to helping our elders. Without unmercifully nagging them into doing everything they once could do, we need to gently encourage them to do that which they still can. How often we hear of elders dying shortly after retiring simply because they felt their life was over. Likewise, older adults can simply give up once they move into an assisted living facility if those around them treat them as if they can’t do anything for themselves anymore. Better to err on the side of encouragement than discouragement. Wait until you are sure help is needed before jumping in to button a blouse, tie a shoe, or make a bed.

And the lesson for those of us who aren’t quite there yet? Stop moaning about what we can’t do as well anymore and keep doing everything we can! Then, like the characters in the Alaskan legend, we’ll do far more than survive–we’ll survive beautifully!

Momilies to Remember

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My mom has been gone almost four years but this classic column from years ago reminds me fondly of her. The peonies are from my childhood home–lovingly gathered by my sister Mary to welcome me to Tennessee last month. Happy Mother’s Day, one and all!

I grew up in the South thinking everyone’s mother said, “Katie, bar the door” in times of trouble and “I’ll swan” when something truly amazing happened. On a really busy day, there would be “no flies on us,” and when something was perfectly ready it was “all saucered and blowed” (like you do to hot coffee before you drink it). Someone who talked all the time was described as having been “vaccinated with a phonograph needle” and a braggart was “too big for his britches.”

I call such phrases momilies: like homilies but a lot less preachy. They are the gentle bits of advice passed from moms to children and repeated with a frequency that insures their remembrance.

“Rise above it” my mom would say when she was encouraging me not to stoop to someone else’s level. Whether applied to junior high gossip or office politics, this simple three-word phrase always has helped me keep my focus.

“It’ll never show on a galloping horse” was my mom’s version of “don’t sweat the small stuff.” A pimple on the end of your nose the night before the prom? A greasy stain on one of the linen napkins you need for a dinner party? Not to worry. “It’ll never show on a galloping horse.”

In fact, horses were the subject of a lot of her wisdom. “Don’t put your cart before your horse” was trotted out whenever I impatiently scrambled the logical order of events, and “no sense closing the barn door after the horse gets out” reminded me to think about the consequences of what I was doing before it was too late.

There must have been chickens in the same barn, because I was frequently reminded not to count them before they hatched. (They may have been the same chickens who later ran around with their heads chopped off.)

Young girls coming to terms with their physical appearance need all the support they can get. My sisters and I remember our mom telling us “beauty knows no pain” as we squeezed into patent leather shoes a size too small or, later,  girdles with garters. But since she was a lot more concerned about our behavior than our beauty, we also daily heard “pretty is as pretty does” and “beauty comes from the inside out.” Little did we know it was her subtle way of teaching us the truth of 1 Peter 3:4 which describes beauty as a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.

Whenever we said we wanted something we didn’t need or couldn’t have, Mom would remind us that “people in jail want out.” It was years before I saw the connection between those people in jail and me. I just knew that whenever they came up, I wasn’t going to get what I wanted.

When it came to wanting all the food I saw in a cafeteria line, Mom would say, “don’t let your eyes be bigger than your stomach”—meaning take only what you can really eat.

That particular momily is one I passed on to my own kids. My son said it was years before he knew what it meant, but he sure thought about the possibility of having eyes that big! Since I also warned him not to “cut his nose off to spite his face,” he worried about his facial features a lot.

Although it was always strange to hear the same momilies my mom used coming out of my mouth, I’m glad I passed them on. After all, she wasn’t “just whistlin’ Dixie.”

Defining Dresses

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Imagine my delight at not only getting to go shopping with my granddaughter Amanda and her mom to pick out her prom dress, but also getting to see her in it before her senior prom last weekend! That she carried a gold evening purse that had been my mom’s was an added blessing.

Little does Amanda know how long that dress will stay in her memory…and what a defining dress it is. I subscribe to the theory that anything we don’t wear for a year needs to go to a consignment shop or charity bin–everything except those few defining dresses that we all have in the back of our closets. If, because of a move or a  housecleaning frenzy, such a dress isn’t there anymore, the memory of it occupies a familiar closet of our minds. It’s a defining dress not because of its expense or style, but because of who we were when we wore it.

We remember everything about such a dress: how it felt to pull it on over our heads; the sound of the zipper; the smell of the fabric; the feel of the sash. All are as real today as the day the dress first hung on the outside of the closet door waiting to be tried on just one more time.

A dress that is forever in my mind was not mine, but my older sister’s. I was ten when she was nominated for homecoming queen, and rode around the edge of the football field waving from the back of a white Thunderbird convertible. She was wearing what I thought was the most beautiful dress in the world. It was a long, strapless gown made of tiny rows of red netting forming a huge, hoop skirt and a heart-shaped, fitted bodice. To me, my sister was Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and the fairy godmother all rolled into one, and that red dress was the most gorgeous dress I’d ever seen.

Most of us will mention a prom dress or two when asked about our defining dresses. Mine was long and straight with an empire waistline. The top was yellow, the bottom was yellow and white, and an avocado green, velveteen ribbon separated the two fabrics. I can still remember dancing to the music of The Temptations in that dress, my fake cascade of curls bouncing up and down on my head as the 150 bobby pins I had used to attach the hairpiece poked into my scalp in a desperate attempt to hold on.

A cotton dress I’ve saved for 42 years has multi-colored alphabet letters scattered at random over a bright yellow background. You guessed it. It was a mini maternity dress in 1970, and I wore it to the hospital when my first son was born. Since he turned out OK, I decided to wear the same dress to the hospital three years later when my second son was born, but this time it was a maternity top.

Now the dresses I can’t seem to part with are all connected to one of our grown kids’ weddings. We all have so much more than we need. I’m prepared to simplify my life and my wardrobe as long as I get to keep the memories…and just a few defining dresses to keep them fresh.

Old Friends Are Best

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Those caring for older adults would be wise to remember the power and comfort of lifelong friendships, and to do all they can to help the elders they love sustain their key friendships, whether in reality or just in memory.

“The Best Antiques are Old Friends,” reads a popular friendship saying. Whenever I see that motto stitched on a sampler or framed in a gift shop, I think of my mother-in-law, Mary Frances, and the friendship she shared for almost 70 years with Dorothea and Dorothea’s sister Jim (a nickname that stuck). All three of them are gone now, but while they were still alive I had a chance to ask them how they became such good, lifelong friends.

“We met at the streetcar stop on Pearl Street in Denver when I was sixteen,” Mary Frances remembered. “I lived in one apartment building and Dorothea and Jim lived in the one next door.”

“I saw her standing at the stop from my second story window,” Dorothea remembered. “I knew she went to our school, so I decided Jim and I should go down and talk to her.” The three were inseparable from that day on.

“One time we rode the streetcar together to a band concert at the park, but I couldn’t even tell you who was playing,” Dorothea said. “We talked a blue streak that night, and I guess we just never stopped.”

One summer my husband and I took Mary Frances to Las Vegas, New Mexico, to Jim’s 80th birthday party. Although she was the youngest of the three friends, Alzheimer’s was slowly robbing Jim of their shared memories. Through tear-filled eyes we watched Mary Frances and Jim embrace. Dorothea was there too, oxygen tank and all.

“If we live to be 103, we’ll still be best friends you and me,” reads another friendship quote. Given the power of friendship to sustain us, it’s no wonder a strong friendship can even outlast the death of one of the friends.

Help older adults you know stay in touch with their friends who are still living, even if it has to be a long-distance phone call rather than a visit over a cup of coffee. When you visit, ask them about good friends they have lost. How did they meet? What did they like about one another? What would they change if they could? What do they miss the most about their friend?

The gift of friendship is too precious to discard along with all the other losses that can accompany growing older. Embrace it, and encourage it in the elders you know and love.

Easter Memories

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Occasionally I will post a “classic” column on this new site. Here’s an Easter message from many years ago. The “little granddaughters” mentioned are now 20 and 18! Happy Easter, everyone! May you be blessed by the good news that Christ is risen indeed!     

Spring is springing up right through our new flagstone patio. I asked the workmen who put the patio in last fall to watch for bulbs as they dug, but maybe they didn’t know what a dormant bulb looked like. Through sheer determination, the bulbs have forced their way through the mixture of clay and mortar holding the stones in place. We’re going to have red tulips in the middle of our patio!

Their success is so remarkable that I can’t be too upset about the cracks. St. Augustine wrote, “We are an Easter people and alleluia is our song!” With the resurrection message in our hearts, we want to celebrate all things new, even misplaced tulips, and this is the time of year to do it.

People even look new this time of year. Although I know God doesn’t care what we wear to church on Easter Sunday, it seems to add to the celebration to see everyone all spiffed up in their best clothes. My sisters and I usually had new outfits for Easter when we were growing up. I remember the smell and the feel of the typical Easter dress. It was always stiff and “crackled” when I put it on. I also had new patent leather shoes, and white socks with lace around the top. A hat with a ribbon hanging down the back and a small purse to match completed my Easter ensemble. Just going shopping for this outfit was a treat, because I probably hadn’t shopped for new clothes since before school started in the fall.

The hats the ladies wore to church fascinated me. I’m afraid I spent more time staring at them during the church service than I should have. Why didn’t these ladies need a scratchy elastic under the chin to hold their hats on? My mom usually had a jaunty new bowler with a veil, most likely navy blue and white, and I thought she was the most beautiful person on earth.

Every year I still enjoy seeing little girls dressed up on Easter. One year in particular I remember admiring the angelic-looking little girls at church and at the place where we went for brunch afterwards.

Oh, well, I thought. At least my two young boys looked nice in their 3-piece polyester suits–one light blue, the other light green. Of course that was before they went outside and slid down a railroad-tie banister, getting splinters caught in the bottoms of both pairs of suit pants! I made them wear those suits until they outgrew them, but boy did they complain.

This is the time of year I get out all my bunnies to add to my year-round population of decorative rabbits around the house. It’s also the time for hoping the grass turns green soon, but the aspen trees don’t leaf out before the last big snowstorm. New things are happening, and I want to celebrate them all.

On Easter I’ll get to see two of our little granddaughters all dressed up. I hope the tulips are in full bloom by then. I think they will love seeing them, and I’ll love explaining how we can all be triumphant through difficult circumstances. That is, after all, the message of spring…the message of Easter.

 

On Whitney Houston and True Love

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My heart is aching over the loss of Whitney Houston and all those who aren’t able to fully embrace how loved they are. Instead they go looking for love in all the wrong places, often with disastrous results.

I guess what makes me both sad and hopeful about Whitney is that from the time she was a little girl she knew the love of God—the beautiful, unconditional love that will sustain us through anything. Even as an adult she comforted a concerned interviewer with the statement that she knew God loved her, and everything would be OK. This makes me sad because she knew the truth, and was led away from it anyway. It makes me hopeful because I believe that in the eternal sense, everything is OK with her. All is well with her soul.

So how did she manage to take her eyes off of the one true Source of love and fall into the trap of dependence on worthless substitutes? No one knows the whole story, but at least one telling chapter is her relationship with Bobby Brown.  Like so many women before her, and I fear so many yet to come, it seems she was attracted to the bad boy in him and joined in the destructive habits he brought to the relationship. Smart women, dumb choices. We see it again and again, and it’s never pretty.

If only she could have stayed true to her “first love,” the God who created her and blessed her with a world-class talent. A dear friend recently loaned me the book The Life of the Beloved by Henri Nouwen. In it, this well-loved Catholic priest and well-read author writes a letter to a young Jewish friend who asks him to share what it means to have a spiritual life in a secular world.

“First of all, you have to keep unmasking the world about you for what it is: manipulative, controlling, power-hungry, and, in the long run, destructive,” Nouwen writes. “The world tells you many lies about who you are, and you simply have to be realistic enough to remind yourself of this. Every time you feel hurt, offended, or rejected, you have to dare to say to yourself: ‘These feelings, strong as they may be, are not telling me the truth about myself. The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God’s eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity, and held safe in an everlasting embrace.’”

Evidently, Whitney Houston allowed the destructive forces of this world to temporarily win.  But one of the most powerful songs she sang, “I Will Always Love You” by Dolly Parton, ironically tells the rest of the story. We can take comfort in knowing that because God said that to her, she now adds her amazing voice to heaven’s chorus of praise. The greatest love—the one true love—is hers at last.

The Crazy Cat Lady

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Do you ever read an account of some bizarre bit of human behavior in the newspaper and, while everyone around you is bemused, think to yourself, “That could be me?” I had that experience recently when I read an account of a 95-year-old woman found passed out in her front yard. When the first responders went into her house, they found 40 cats.

Lately I’ve become more aware of the thin line between being “a lady who likes cats” and “a crazy cat lady,” and I have to tell you, it’s getting thinner. I wasn’t always so attracted to cats. We owned and loved two Golden Retrievers and I remain to this day a “big dog person.” When a cat entered a room, I would instinctively put my hand to my throat, because I was sure it was just looking for an opportunity to go for my jugular vein. After all, they looked like miniature tigers. How could you trust them? All I can tell you is that, as with most biases, knowledge dispelled my fear and increased my understanding and appreciation. And getting to know one cat invalidated the generalizations I had accepted about all of them.

So how many cats would I like to have you (and my husband!) might ask. That’s hard to say. After having at least one cat around for the last two dozen years, I’ve learned to truly appreciate their unique personalities. At the Humane Society of the Pikes Peak Region all the cats available for adoption are categorized according to one of nine “feline-alities.” (I think they should have called them purr-sonalities.) For example, our cat Molly clearly fits into the Personal Assistant category. If anyone is wrapping a gift, working on taxes, or flipping through a cookbook to come up with something for dinner, she’s right there to lend a paw. Our cat Beau, however, would be classified as the Leader of the Band, a cat who does everything in a big way. Although he does love to cuddle, he’s especially big into adventure and couldn’t care less what we are doing unless he sees one of us go outside. Then he waits right by the door for us to open it again in hopes of blowing this boring baby boomer abode for some real excitement!

So you see, that leaves seven cat purr-sonalities I’m missing! What about the Private Investigator, the Secret Admirer, the Love Bug, the Sidekick, etc.? By my calculations, I only need to add 1.2 cats per year to reach 40 by the time I’m 95. That doesn’t seem excessive, does it? (Although I’m not sure what one feeds a partial cat.)

Actually, just writing this has been therapeutic. And there is one really good reason I’ll just continue to enjoy Molly and Beau and won’t go over into the “crazy cat lady” lifestyle. You see, I have a pretty good idea why that woman (who was fine, by the way) was passed out in her front yard. It was the smell of 40 litter boxes.

Beating the Mid-Winter Blues

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It’s week two of a hacking cough and the wind is howling outside just to see if it can make more noise than I can. This is the time of year when those cruise commercials to places in the Caribbean begin to look very inviting, but alas, that’s not always an option.

I wish I could be as patient about winter as my cat, Molly. She does meow at the deck door on a regular basis just because she wants to check and see if the 85 degree temperatures have magically returned. But when I slide open the door just a bit and she sees the snow and feels the wind on her face, she shakes one paw, then another, and then quickly turns to go look for the first sunbeam she can find streaming into the house. This time of year I should just follow her from room to room as she seeks out the sun. Even if I have to curl up on the floor to get my dose of Vitamin D!

But I know, much to Molly’s delight and mine, spring will return in time. Even now the Master of all seasons is crafting hyacinths and crocuses under the snow, and soon we will be able to proclaim with Solomon, “The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come” (Song of Songs 2:12).

Until that day arrives, there are things we can do to give birth to spring in our hearts! Even a stroll through the grocery store can provide some mid-winter relief. Today I spent an extra long time in the floral department looking at all the orchids and other exotic blooming plants—easier than going to the botanic garden! I chose a small one for our kitchen table.

In the magazine aisle I noticed spring issues are already on the stands. As I walked by I heard one woman pointing out a spread on “springtime in Ireland” to her husband. “Want to go there?” she asked. “I think we just did,” he prudently replied.

The photo on my screensaver is of the last beach we visited, so when I need a break I just stare at the sand, the sea, and the gulls and try to transport myself back to that spot. Looking through gardening and bulb catalogs and imagining all those flowers blooming in my gardens provides similar relief.

A good dose of color can do much to elevate our winter moods, too.  Beat the blues by dressing in bright colors instead of the dour grays and browns we tend to wear because they suit the mood we’re in…not the one we desire!

And keep the faith—spring will be here before we know it!