Nancy Parker Brummett

Author Writer Speaker

Back Porch Break

Falling Afresh

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It’s been 60 years since I spent all day every day in a school building. And yet when September rolls around I get that “first day of school” excitement all over again. To me, September feels more like the time for a fresh start than January ever does. I have to rein in my shopping excursions this time of year, however, because I have a real weakness for new pencils and pens, lined notebooks, and everything else stores set out in their back-to-school displays. I’m still enjoying a purple folio I bought one year because…well, because it was purple with a purple legal pad inside. Who could resist?

Beyond the back-to-school feeling, however, are all the refreshing signs of change. My Virginia Creeper begins to take on shades of orange and gold. The tips of the leaves on the red maple behind our house hint at the bright ruby brilliance soon to come. And there’s always that one day in the fall when the light becomes noticeably different. Rather than the sun beaming down with a harsh glare, a more peaceful, golden light descends upon our world. Such a beautiful and peaceful change.

And don’t we need this season to recover from the hectic pace of summer and restore our souls to prepare for the winter to come? Maybe it’s because we remember the chilling winds and icy roads winter brings that we savor every golden September day. Autumn days are just too precious and fleeting to spend them holding on to summer or fearing what’s to come. Rather they bring an opportunity to take a deep breath or two, clip the last of the roses to bring in the house, and curl up on the back porch with a light blanket and an uplifting book.

We hear a lot about New Year’s resolutions in January, but fall is an even better time to reflect on the months of the year behind us and embrace changes that refresh us before we head in to the holiday season. If you find joy in de-cluttering your office or culling clothes from your closet, fall’s the time to do it. If you want to replace the grab-and-go meals of summer with some hearty stews and soups or pumpkin-flavored everything, now’s the time. Refresh family menus with some new recipes from those seldom opened cookbooks!

A praise hymn by Daniel Iverson contains the lyric, “Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me.”  I want to be still long enough this fall season to feel the renewal of the Spirit within me. Then I’ll have a chance of falling afresh in to the new season with joy and hope.

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Salon Sagas

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I had my first manicure in a nail salon when I was in my late fifties. I only went then because my two little granddaughters who were visiting one summer wanted to go. When the woman who answered the phone said she would give the girls a “free flower” I thought that was very kind and expected them to come home with a long-stemmed rose or a carnation but no, it was a daisy painted on each small thumbnail.

That was over 20 years ago, but since then I’ve become a semi-regular client at several different nail salons. You may think that the best “people watching” may be found at airports, malls, or ER waiting rooms, but I assure you, the clientele at nail salons can be most bemusing and amusing.

People become very loyal to their nail technicians, and I’ve followed my favorite to three different salons as his job changed, but I’ve noticed many similarities in terms of clientele at the different locations. It always warms my heart to see a faithful daughter or caregiver bringing in an older woman to get a manicure or, even more rejuvenating, a pedicure for her ailing feet and hard-to-cut toenails. I also like seeing men getting pedicures to make their wives happy!

But those heartwarming observations pale next to some of the situations I’ve observed. Once a fortyish business woman was on her phone the entire time she was getting her pedicure. She also had her laptop open on her lap and was conducting business as if she were seated behind a mahogany desk in a high-rise office building. I actually overheard her offering a job to someone. They were negotiating salary, vacation time, job title, etc., and everyone in the salon could follow along with each discussion point. In the end the fellow on the other end of the phone evidently said he’d talk to his wife and let her know, so we were all left wondering if he took the job. It’s been a while since I was in the corporate world, but is this the new business etiquette? I hope not.

Keeping up with the life events of manicure seekers is entertaining as well. You overhear that someone wants bright orange because they are headed to Mexico on vacation, or you witness a giggly bridal party coming in to get their nails done for the wedding. Recently two little girls proudly held out their hands to show me the ice blue polish they got because they were to be flower girls in their aunt’s upcoming wedding.

Much of life can be witnessed in a nail salon, and seeing those two little girls reminded me of two others many years ago. I guess salon sagas can be sentimental, too.

From a Patriot

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I was born a patriot and I will die a patriot. Patriot is not a derogatory label to me. It’s one I wear proudly. The official definition is “one who loves, supports, and defends one’s country.” Yep, that’s me. I’m a patriot.

I knew I was a patriot when I stood to say the Pledge of Allegiance in elementary school, my hand over my heart pressing against the starchy fabric of the first-day-of-school plaid dress I wore. I knew I was a patriot when my FBI-agent dad punctuated every family vacation with photos of my sisters and me huddled around the base of a flagpole at whatever historical site we were visiting. He would go across the street in order to capture the entire flagpole, so in every photo we are miniature-sized patriots.

I knew I was a patriot when I sent my first husband off to Vietnam, so proud of his service and blissfully unaware of any consequences to come. My toddler son and I spent that time near my parents and his, and my dad entered me into a local essay contest on “Why I’m Proud to Be an American.” I won. The article in the local paper confirmed what I knew. I’m a patriot.

In 78 years there have been so many times my eyes have filled with tears over just the thought of a country as brave and beautiful as the one we are blessed to call home. Parades and fireworks shows attended, Old Glory waving in front of every home I’ve lived in, red-white-and-blue decorations, American flag cakes—all evidence that could be used against me if I’m ever put on trial for being a patriot.

Recently I visited our nation’s capital with a group from our church. Walking the streets of D.C. I couldn’t be prouder of how beautiful and safe the city is again. Monuments restored and gleaming, gardens in full bloom, fountains flowing that haven’t worked in decades, and an overall spirit of celebration and gratitude. As a patriot, I’m not afraid to give credit where credit is due for this restoration of what is arguably the most awe-inspiring capital city in the world. Thank you, Mr. President.

Today’s newsletter from another patriot, Gary Bauer, contained a quote from President Ronald Reagan: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

I’m in my sunset years. I pray I won’t see the total demise of our country before I die, but there are powerful forces at work to distort and destroy all that’s good about our republic—the one Benjamin Franklin questioned whether we would be able to keep. Those who strive to magnify our mistakes and failings and demonize our successes and sacrifices would like nothing better than to snuff out the flame of freedom. As one of our grandsons recently asked, “If they hate America so much, why don’t they just leave?” If only.

So if I am put on trial and convicted for being a patriot, so be it. The truth of the Gospel assures me that my true citizenship is in heaven, and my primary allegiance to Jesus Christ insures my future there. But please, Lord, if it be Your will, do not remove Your hand from this country You have protected for so long.

Happy 250th Birthday to our amazing country! And God bless America.

It’s Yardening Time!

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(Repeat of a “fan favorite” from 2008. Well, my husband likes it.)

By this time of year almost everyone is into gardening. Or is what you do really “yardening” instead? There’s a difference, you know.

First, the wardrobe differs drastically. Gardeners wear floppy straw hats, sturdy pants with big pockets and loops for hanging tools, and clogs. Yardeners work in the yard wearing a hat from Disney World, cut-off blue jeans, and the sneakers they bought the year they graduated from high school.

Then there are the tools themselves. Gardeners have tools with matching handles. Each tool has a special function—and a special spot in the wooden gardener’s bench at the end of the day. Yardeners are more likely to be out digging with an old serving spoon from the kitchen. They just toss it in the kids’ sandbox once they have the petunias in the ground.

Gardeners have a master calendar for all their gardening tasks, such as dividing seedlings, rotating rose bushes, whatever it is Martha Stewart finds to fill up her calendar even in the dead of winter. They wouldn’t even dream of pulling weeds unless it was on the schedule.

Yardeners, on the other hand, may lapse into their yardening tasks quite spontaneously. I once talked to a freelance artist who explained she had missed her deadline because she went out to get the mail and noticed a few weeds growing by the mailbox. Naturally, she stopped to pull them up, and four hours later she was still out in the yard pulling weeds. I understood completely. That’s yardening at its best.

If you see people strolling their grounds, or setting up tents for a garden party, they are probably gardeners. Yardeners are more likely to be seen standing in their front yards on a Saturday morning drinking coffee, contemplating brown spots, and staring down the dandelions. The only grounds on their minds are the ones in the bottom of the coffee mug.

Of course gardeners don’t have to deal with dandelions because, you guessed it—they don’t have any. The anti-weed substance spread with their lawn fertilizer takes care of them. Yardeners, on the other hand, wield little spray bottles of environmentally friendly “Dandelion DOA,” and pop each stubborn dandelion root up with an old screwdriver. (The screwdriver conveniently fits in the back pocket of the cut-off jeans and is equally useful for setting the choke on the lawn mower.)

The aesthetic results differ, too. Gardeners carefully coordinate the shades of green they combine in any given area of the landscape, and are careful to plant flowers which bloom sequentially, clustered in color groups of cool or hot tones. Yardeners, however, are happy whenever anything turns green, and they’ve been known to water weeds for weeks before realizing they weren’t zinnias.

Gardener or yardener? Whichever you are, it’s time to get out there. And remember, those dandelions grow while you sleep.

Are You Feeling Egg-centric?

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Memories of Easters past always include fond recollections of the annual egg dying experience. We remember watching our mom spreading out yesterday’s newspaper on the kitchen table and getting out the egg dying kit from the grocery store. Today’s kits have fancy add-ons like stickers and such, but we just recall the package of tablets in different colors, the one copper wire egg dipper we took turns with, the wax crayon for writing our names on the eggs we chose, and the box with the punch-out holes for displaying our finished designs.

For many of us it was the first time we inhaled the pungent smell of vinegar as we watched intently for the different colored tablets to dissolve in the cups of hot water. It didn’t take long to discover, once the white hard-boiled eggs had cooled enough to be carefully dipped in the dye, that the blue, green and purple dyes would work their magic first while the orange and yellow dyes took much longer. And red always turned out pink, right?

I’m glad I also have memories of dying Easter eggs with my boys and with several of our grandchildren over the years. Inevitably some child would turn over a cup of dye and it would flow over the newspaper on to the floor, someone would drop an egg and crack it, or a grandchild would complain that a sibling was hogging the best colors, the dipper, or the crayon. But when all was said and done and the mess was cleaned up, we had a beautiful array of colored eggs nestled in fake green grass in a basket—all ready for an Easter morning egg hunt. There might have even been some slightly multi-colored egg salad to enjoy after Easter in the days before we knew about salmonella!

Whereas kids can have just as much fun hunting for plastic eggs as real ones, especially if there’s a piece of candy or other surprise inside each one, much fancier eggs from different cultures have been a part of the art world for centuries and are often displayed under glass in golden egg cups in museums. Whether it’s the delicately painted Ukrainian pysanky egg or the jewel-encrusted Faberge one, they are truly works of art.

The eggs displayed on my coffee table each Easter are the multi-colored marble ones I collected on travels in Germany and Italy in the early seventies. But I’m thinking this year I may just toss one of those egg dying kits in my grocery basket and have an egg-stravagant dying experience again. While I’m waiting for the fizzy tablets to reach their potential, I’ll turn in my Bible to Isaiah 43:19 and be reminded of God’s promise: See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? For the symbolism of the Easter egg, of any variety, should not be missed even by the youngest of us. New life, new birth, the promise of spring and of resurrection. That’s Easter in an egg shell. So add some egg-centric fun to your celebration this year as you focus on the real reason we rejoice–the resurrection of our living Savior. Happy Easter!

For the Love of Hearts

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TM Willow Tree

My friend Andrea loves hearts. You may be thinking, “Well, don’t we all?” but you don’t understand. The majority of Andrea’s home motif is heart décor. Heart-shaped placemats and throw rugs, heart candleholders, heart tree ornaments at Christmas, heart wreaths and wall hangings, all abound in the Colorado Rockies home she shares with her husband—who, when he proposed years ago, presented her with a heart-shaped diamond! The girl loves hearts.

My younger sister Mary was born on Valentine’s Day. Each year my mom would bring out her heart-shaped cake pans to make a birthday cake for Mary, usually chocolate with Mom’s memorable, fluffy white Seven-Minute Frosting. If Mary resents having to share her birthday with Valentine’s Day she never says so. She’s very lovable and loving so it just works.

This time of year we see hearts wherever we go. On T-shirts and hoodies, on paper plates and napkins, in the candy aisle at the grocery store and on a lot of the advertising in newspapers and online. We all probably remember folding red construction paper to cut out hearts to paste on a shoebox for collecting valentines, or for making our own valentines out of red hearts and doilies.

But hearts aren’t just for Valentine’s Day. Google informed me that the heart icon is the most popular Emoji by far, which is not surprising given that millions of people use it to express their agreement, affection, maybe even love for, someone’s Facebook or Instagram post. And what if we could collect every type of heart Emoji used in texts since that form of communication emerged? We would need many heart-shaped silos to contain them all.

Where did our love for hearts begin? The earliest designs go back centuries and many were crude representations of the anatomical heart, of which today’s heart icon has only the slightest resemblance. A simplified version appeared on Victorian-era valentines and now the heart symbol signifies love of all kinds—as well as heart-healthy choices on a menu!

So do we love the heart symbol, or the sentiment it represents? Both, for sure. As we see hearts this year we may think of romantic love, the love of a parent for a child, one friend’s love for another, or even our love of pets.

And then there’s the strongest love of all: God’s love for us which is expressed through His grace, mercy, and forgiveness. I Corinthians 13:13 says, And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. And so we cherish the love He extends to all human hearts and thank Him for comforting the broken-hearted.

Wishing you and those you love a heartfelt Valentine’s Day this year!