Children

I sometimes look at my daughters as if they are aliens.  Not that they have two heads or green skin or speak strange languages, although they do speak strangely sometimes, but alien in the sense that they are different from me.  Separate from me.  For me, it's good to do that to recognize and remember that my children are not mine (even though I claim them) but are a gift from God to cherish and train up in the paths of God's goodness.  For these three young ladies, I am forever grateful.

They don't always do as they should, or at least what I think they should be doing.  That's just part of being young; but they have a sense of amazing self-discipline and grace that I know isn't my doing - obviously Christine plays a major role in it, but raising kids in a home where Christ is present changes everything.  It is as if somehow, in preparing them for a life apart from us, they begin to recognize life with Him is even more important.  And when they leave our house to start down their own adult journeys, we can release them even more into God's care and creativity.

Now that they are all in high school, I ponder each day from my own alien perspective, what my dreams are for these young Matthiaslings.  With wonder, I imagine great things (and small things) for each one of them and I am blessed in the imagining.

That's what parents receive in the process of parenting.

On our journey, we stayed with two sets of parents who are at a different stage of parenting (one that we are quite happy to be done with) but who show to be incredible caretakers of their own gifts that God has given them.  On New Year's Day we went to visit one of my favorite manfriends in the world, Ben Spiger and his wife Kendra.  We met in Chicago and we stayed in a hotel right down by the river and not to far from the Mile.  Ben is a dentist and Kendra is a Lutheran pastor.  When Kendra was on her internship from seminary, Ben's apartment was right across the hall from us.  That's how I got to know him.  That, and the fact that he was the best player on the seminary basketball team.  He's got good teeth, too.

We spent a lot of time together that year while Kendra was away.  Pretty much every night of the week he would find his way to our apartment, have a meal, play with my daughters and then when the girls would go to bed, I'd wander over to his apartment where we'd have a beer, talk about basketball or invite two of the other guys over for a game of Settlers of Catan or Pinochle.  When you spend that much time with a person, sooner or later they start to seem like family.  I don't know when the change happened, and I'm not really concerned about it, but I have one natural born brother and a whole slew of adopted brothers.

Adoption is a great thing.  All over the world there are parents seeking the opportunity to raise children.  Ben and Kendra have been parents for a long time - they just didn't have children until eighteen months ago.  They were parents for my kids; granted, I don't remember Ben changing any diapers, but he read the girls books as they sat on his lap.  They ate meals with him; they hugged him good night.  And now, as Christian has entered the Bendra family, my girls recognize that they, in many ways, have a little brother. 

We are two of Christian's godparents - Christine and I.  And for the first time we were able to experience the little miracle in the flesh and see the miracle of parenthood for Ben and Kendra and how amazingly gentle they are with him; how he has changed every aspect of life for them.

Christian was adopted at birth.  And he will be blessed forever by being placed in Ben and Kendra's lives.

Luke, also was adopted.  He entered the Gaweinowski (don't even try to pronounce it) family just about the same time that Christian found his way into the Wilde-Spiger family. Luke is a rambunctious toddler that is learning the mysteries of the world through his parents Michelle and Peter.  We are following the same theme: Michelle is a Lutheran pastor also and Peter is... not a dentist... but works as a guidance counsellor in a school.  For many years they have desperately wanted to be parents, but just a year and a half ago, their adoption came through also.

It just so happened that it happened on a Sunday morning.  Michelle was preaching, which made for exciting news as the pastor left the pulpit to attend the birth of her son.  Driving all those miles, just like a first time father hurrying to the hospital to make sure to be there on time, Michelle and Peter hurried to find their young son born to them. 

The first time you see your child, or at least this is my experience, the depth of every feeling washes over you like an emotional tsunami.  The sight of the helpless infant, squalling for new breath, brings you to one's knees; every confidence that you had about being a 'great' parent is flooded away by the feeling of inadequacy and undertow of responsibility.  And then, as you hold them, your own breath is taken away, your eyes swell with tears, and you can only begin to dream about what God has for this little one wrapped in swaddling blankets lying red-faced in your arms.

We met Michelle and Peter at a converted bed and breakfast that used to be a one room schoolhouse.  It was bitterly cold in Wisconsin, but we'd had such good weather, a little bit of old Mister Winter wasn't going to hurt us.  We entered the schoolhouse and enjoyed a meal and getting to know young Luke. 

What was really enjoyable, though, was to watch the disassembling process of Peter and Michelle, of life without children to life with.  They had an exhausted rhythm of life that all new parents have - changing diapers, feeding, playing all the things that fresh parents encounter and yet through the exhaustion, you could sense incredible contentedness.  That life was, well... right.

The blessing was ours to meet two of the newest installments in our lives both Christian and Luke and to spend time with their amazing parents. 

If you have a chance, reconnect with new parents wherever you are. 

Blinders

It was our birthday today.  Notice the plural tense that I continue to use and even though I celebrate our birthday sixteen hours before my brother and sister, it's still ours.  I had a great day today reveling in the still strange opportunity to celebrate my birthday (notice the singular).  No one in Australia (from where I live now) has met either one of my same womb siblings, so I celebrate as a singular - and it's fun.  The presents that I receive aren't opened in hurried isolation; I don't have to worry about peering over my brother's working hands to know what my present is.  I can open each present with relish.


It's funny how I can write 'relish' because here, in Australia, relish is often eaten with cheese.  As the school at Faith knows: I am a kaseaholic.  In other words, a cheese addict.  I can eat almost every kind of cheese except vomitcheese - blue cheese (which tastes like a mixture of stomach acid, bile and nineteen-day-old eggs) - and I can eat it heartily.  The only real side effect is that I start to sweat a little bit when I eat it.  It's strange: when I grab a piece of cheddar I might as well grab a handkerchief to wipe my brow.  So, this year for my birthday, I weighed the amount of cheese that I was given.  Two kilograms - four point four pounds.  That's a lot of cheese and a lot of sweat.


The reason I'm given so much cheese is the fact that at a worship service I mentioned my penchance for that fine dairy product.  It happened almost fifteen years ago...


Elsa was still little and Josephine was still a baby.  I was finding that I was gaining a little weight while living in the north country.  During the winter, I was putting on pounds while at the same time pounding down loads of cheese.  Especially string cheese.  When Christine would go to the Red Owl grocery store, I would always ask for her to stock up on string cheese.  I don't know why that suits my fancy so much; probably it seems like if you can peel the cheese apart it doesn't have as many calories.


So, being the wonderful wife that she is, she bought me string cheese by the eight pack. Sixteen ounces worth.  A whole pound of delightful stringy cheese, easy to be consumed in small, snack sizes.


But as I found that I was gaining weight, Christine said this:


"You know, if you just cut down on your cheese intake, you'll probably be able to lose some weight."


I stared at her with vacant wide eyes, looking at her as if she'd asked me to cut out my spleen with a butter knife. 


"I can't do that, dear.  That's not in my make up.  Cheese is life.  It even rhymes with Jesus."


Christine rolled her eyes.  "That's your problem.  You take everything to the extreme.  Just cut back a little bit.  Instead of having cheese on everything - you don't really need to put cheese on your cereal - just have cheese every once in a while.  Slowly but surely you'll be able to not only cut back on your intake, but also shed a few cheesepounds."


Fear.  When the thought of losing something registers in your brain you can fight it in one of three ways:  1. Embrace the challenge that your wife sets before you. 2. Ignore every intelligent idea that she speaks about cheese because the thought of leaving cheese in the fridge is akin to leaving her.  3.  Just go cold turkey.  I don't know why they call it 'cold turkey.'  It should be called 'cold cheese.'


In this circumstance, I thought I would prove to my beautiful wife that I was indeed, not addicted.  Like every good addict, I denied the fact that it ruled my life; that when I woke up in the morning, the first thing I thought about was cheese on my French Toast; when I made my lunch - Peanut Butter and cheese; dinner - you guessed it - roast beef with melted cheddar. 


Okay, so maybe I exaggerate a little, but I reaaaaallly like cheese.  But I decided to go cold cheese.


After a week, things got bleak.  I saw cheese in everything - the sun a wonderful shade of cheddar; I heard cheese in every sermon - Pharisees became Pharicheese.  I felt a comfortable cottage cheese in my pillow at night.  I smelled the absence of cheese in every meal that we ate and I became morose, listlessly eating my meals as if they contained no source of joy.


After that week, Christine, Elsa and Josephine wanted to go for a walk and I had to stay behind to do something; nobody cares who that something is anymore, but all I remember is the fact that there were seven lonesome cheese sticks in the refrigerator that seemed to be singing to me every time I opened the door.  I ushered Christine out of the house as quickly as I could - tucking Josephine into the pram surrounded by pounds of blankets as it was still cold outside - helped Elsa put on her snow boots and carried the pram down the front steps with one hand.  Christine could sense that I was jumpy and as we later reflected, she wondered if there was something wrong with me.


There was.  I was in withdrawal.  The minute she left the house, I walked to the fridge as nonchalantly as I could, but soon the door was open, I had blinders on - only one thought in my mind - and within seconds I had the package of cheese sticks open; seven cheese sticks were making their way down my gullet.  The sweat was already starting and as I was munching away in dairy heaven, I heard the door open.  Christine had forgotten something. 


She found me sitting in the kitchen with the remnants of four cheese sticks sticking out of my mouth.  Busted.  No more going cold cheese.


I wish I could have taken the blinders off, those things that horses wear so that they don't notice anything outside their vision.  Australians call them blinkers which doesn't make any sense because horses don't need to signal which way they are turning.  They blind their peripheral, not blink them - but that's an argument that I'm sure Australians would like to debate with me because that's their national sport.  Forget cricket - it's arguing.  They like nothing better than a good argument.  It doesn't even matter if they believe what they are talking about as long as they can have a few good broadsides of their opponent...


Anyway, blinders are imperative for a horse.  They keep it directed, goal oriented. 


On our trip, we had the opportunity to be taken out in a one horse open carriage.  We wanted it to be a sleigh, to head out across the fields feeling the snow flitting against our faces, but unfortunately, Old Man Winter was taking a nap during much of the time we were in the States.  But my Uncle Dale took us out in the carriage, the one he uses for various weddings throughout the area.  As he assembled the carriage, I noticed the looks of my daughters, who have seen enough Disney movies to make them truly believe that a knight, or an ogre, or a bumbling idiot is going to chase them over the countryside, is really going to happen.  Maybe it will. 


But I'll be there with my clerical collar and a shotgun.


So, with my Uncle Dale driving the veritable stallion (in all honesty, I've never seen a tamer horse.  He was like a forty-two year old dog - oh wait, that's me today) and we sat enjoying the view of rural Iowa.  Cars passed us on the road; people waved at the princesses in the carriage and I sat with Christine, holding hands underneath the blanket.


My Uncle Dale and his wife, Barb, are some of the most amazing people on the planet, but what is special about my Uncle Dale is he was also a sponsor at my baptism.  For some people, being a sponsor is just a figurehead job - the vows they take are symbolic. 


My Uncle Dale is not like that.  In fact, as I think back over all the significant events of my life, he has always been there, not just birthdays, sporting events or graduations, but he was at my wedding - even though all the way on the other side of the planet - when I was in college, he was always available to be the ear I needed.  We sometimes stayed at his bachelor pad at Christmas; I was in awe that he was so old - thirty-something - and didn't have a wife telling him how he should be cleaning the house. 


My Uncle Dale is the most intelligent, down-to-earth person I know.  His ability to make people feel comfortable is unparalleled.  His awe-shucksness is legendary, but it's not debilitating for him.  He's just a genuinely awesome man. 


We stayed with Dale and Barb for a night, played some cards, had a meal with my cousin Ward, and through it all, it just felt like a full circle, from birth to adulthood - he did his job with aplomb.  He was the perfect sponsor.  He had the ability to help raise me but not overwhelm me.  He was cool enough to take me squirrel hunting, but knew enough to let me learn from my mistakes.


He had blinders when it came to me.  One goal.  To work with my parents to make an adult Reid.


It worked.


I think.

A Boy and His Buffalo

In the northern hemisphere summer of 1995, I met Christine for the first time.  August 15 at roughly 3:00 in the afternoon.  Why do I remember this?  Because my sister was dropping me off from our yearly family trip to Canada.  Just she and I drove in her white car, windows rolled down, stereo blasting.  We had talked about the week of fishing, the various shenanigans that occur when there is no phone, no TV, no internet - only family.  We also discussed my relationship with the girlfriend I had at the time, who was a friend of Vikki's.  I assured her that distance didn't make any difference, that I would be faithful to my young girlfriend who, at that time, was still in college. 

But then we pulled into the parking lot of the church.  The very first person I saw was a tall, bronze brown-haired young woman wearing short shorts and a t-shirt.  Incredibly, she was the very first person.  I must have had my mouth open, pupils dilated as the Greek Athena that was wandering past the front of the car.  It's slow motion, now, wind whipping through her hair like a Whitesnake video. 

Vikki punched me in the shoulder.  "Don't even think about it."

Too late.

I had a joined a Christian ministry organization called Youth Encounter.  Over eighty young people age 18-29 had descended on Minneapolis to begin training for a year of music ministry to churches and youth groups across the world.  I had been assigned to the team Watermark, whose designation was the Midwest and East Coast of the United States and then five months in Germany and Denmark.  There were seven people on my 'team,' eventually they would be known as family, as, after a few months, we interacted and understood each other like brothers and sisters.  Well, that's not entirely true.  I wanted to make out with Christine.  I didn't want to do that with my sisters.

Christine was the lead singer - still is - with a voice that would make the angel Gabriel stop and pause.  From Australia, Christine had left a teaching position to travel to the United States, a place, she later confessed that was not in her top destinations to go.  There's a delicious sense of irony, isn't there?  She wanted to go to Africa, but the year we joined team, there was no African group; there were, however, eight bands that would travel across the U. S. and four international teams. 

We connected quickly, the seven of us - three males and four females.  Aaron, a red headed wunderkind guitar player from Redwing, Minnesota; Jason, the bald drummer from Joliet, Illinois with a chin divot that looked like small children could get lost in it; Jenn, the acoustic guitar player from, Michigan who had an affinity for short overalls, plaid shirts and black tights; Desley, keyboardist  from New Zealand, vertically challenged, and prone to embarrassment from all areas of life; Jill, sound tech, a fiery redhead from Wisconsin who had various difficulties driving the minibus (which included almost tearing the back five feet off in an attempt to pull away from the curb as she hit a telephone pole.  Duck tape works for that too.) Then, Christine and I.

We spent our first week of training being drilled in Lutheran theology.  Nothing like sitting in a church, in the middle of summer, for a whole week learning about 'Simultaneous saint and sinner.'  I can remember passing notes to Christine in the middle of the classes, like we were junior high kids intent on filling in the boxy "Do you like me?  check 'yes' or 'no'. 

But then the second week, we traveled to Lee Valley Ranch in Black Hills of South Dakota.  This extraordinary camp is nestled in between various small mountains on the northern side of Mt. Rushmore (basically the Presidents' backsides).  The valley traps the scent of pine trees and the sounds of cows mooing between the mountains has a tendency to put everyone to sleep easily.  We slept in tents with old, worn out mattress.  Each person got an individual tent, but I can think of many times that in between practice sessions Aaron and I would go back to chat for a while. 

Because I didn't have a pillow at the time, one of our excursions into Custer, I bought a stuffed toy buffalo.  I named it 'Buford.'  This became my pillow for the next sixteen months and a half months.  Buford and I saw many things - some are worth remembering; some are worth forgetting, but in all the time that I spent with my Watermark teammates, I think that thing that resonates most with me now is that friends that you live with, whether college or else wise, are one of the true reasons that life has meaning.  No matter how long we are apart, we could pick up the same conversation, remember the same stories, and slip into the same rolls as we did ten years earlier.

2015 is our twenty-year anniversary of starting with Youth Encounter.  Christine organized a New Years' Eve Watermark family reunion at a place called Grizzly Jacks outside of Utica, Illinois.  We rented a large cabin that accommodated all of us.  Desley married a Youth Encounter member from another team, Kevin, and we met up with them first.  After unpacking and having a little time to chat, then Jason and his wife, Tara, arrived.  By this time there are already seven kids playing together.  Jason and I went into the metropolis of Utica to pick up some essentials for the weekend.  Here's a brief remembered conversation from our shopping time.

Jason: (as we pull up to the store)  What do you think we should get?

Reid:  Essentials, I guess.  Milk, eggs, bread, pbj...

Jason:  I'm talkin' about beer.  You know, essentials for the adults.

Reid:  I don't think we're going to find that at the family grocery.

Jason:  (Points behind the counter) There it is, man.  Right there. 

Reid:  Let's go to the other store for that.  (We buy the essentials for the family, spend about fifty dollars on some hamburger and spaghetti, essentials.  Then we drive to the liquor store.  It's a room the size of a small Laundromat.  It's dark; light only filters through dusty, slatted shades.  The man behind the counter looks like hasn't moved in four months.  Unshaven, strangely enough, wearing one of the same flannels that Jenn used to wear.)

Liquorman:  (Deep gruff voice)  What can I help you with?  (It's obvious that we are tourists because we are not wearing flannels)

Jason:  We're going to get some wine, beer and whiskey.

Liquorman:  Beer's over there.  (He points to the cooler that has an astonishing four kinds of beer all of them ending with the word 'Light.') 

Jason:  Is that all you've got?  No imports or microbrews?

Liquorman:  What do you think this is, Walmart? 

Reid: I think I'll get some wine.  What have you got?

Liquorman:  It's right behind you.  (I turn around and notice the dust encrusted bottles that seem to have been sitting there for multiple years - aging, of course.) 

Reid:  What's good?  Any local wines that you'd recommend?

Liquorman:  Don't know nothin' about wine.  Beer drinker myself.  (obviously, judging by the size of the keg he tucked under his shirt this morning.) 

Reid:  (as I looked over the wine behind me, I noticed that most of the bottles did not say 'shiraz' or 'cabernet' or even merlot.  Most of them just had the label of a local vineyard and the words 'red wine' on it, as if somehow the locals would not be able to tell that it was red by its color.)  I think I'll just buy a bottle of whiskey.

Liquorman:  What are you looking for?

Reid:  Any scotch or well edged Irish whiskey?

Liquorman:  Huh?

Reid:  Never mind, I'll just buy a bottle of Canadian LTD.  Fifteen dollars for two liters.

Liquorman:  That's good stuff.

Reid:  Yes, usually buying bulk whiskey in a plastic container means that it does have a nice bouquet and should be sipped slowly.  (my sarcasm flowed right over his head as he nodded at me.  Jason started laughing.)

Jason:  You're not really going to drink that, are you? 

Reid:  What would you suggest that I do with it

Jason:  You could disinfect your toilet with it?

Reid:  You don't have to drink it.  (I put the plastic bottle up on the counter along with some wine coolers for Christine.)

Liquorman:  You ain't from around here, are you?

(Inwardly, I was grateful that we were not frequent fliers at this liquor store.)

Jason:  Let's go home and drink some LTD!

Reid:  Yes, let's do so.

The plastic two liter bottle of LTD became of constant source of entertainment for the weekend which included a rap song, a Tarzan-like call and about half of it left over.  But throughout the weekend as we went to the waterpark with all the kids, climbed the indoor rock wall, flying fox and lasertag, it became increasingly obvious that as a family, Watermark has done really well. 

In our current social networking age, we don't make friends anymore, we manage them.  We don't argue very well, we don't laugh out loud so someone else can hear us, we don't tell others that we love the enough so that it can resonate with our voices inside their heads.  As I watched Jenn and Desley, Jason and Aaron and their families interact with ours, I wished multiple times that we had more time together, to walk across the street to see if we could hang out on the back porch sipping LTD or just listening to music.  I wished that I could have friends like that close by; not that I don't have friends here in Australia, but friends that require nothing of you but expect great things from you. 

New Year's Eve we stayed up until about two playing music and games with the kids and talking through the morning.

It was precious.

I wished Buford could have been there.

Rake

I'm not sure that my hometown of Rake, Iowa, has ever been considered a city.  Even though the city boasts an 'International Airport,' there is little to differentiate Rake from small hamlets in a variety of countries all over the world.  The size of the town city limits is not directly proportional to the size of its spirit, the collective soul of its citizens which strive for excellence and notoriety in the area in which it is situated.


Rake isn't known for much, I guess, other than two yearly events that draw people from far and wide - most of them of Scandinavian descent.  The first happens right around our birthday every year.  At the end of February, the lutefisk dinner occurs.  For a while, this always used to happen in the church basement which was a double-whammy for me as a kid.  Firstly, going to church twice a week was not exactly something a young boy wants to do. (But in February, in Iowa, what else is there to do but go to church?)  Secondly, the odor that emanates from a freshly opened box of frozen cod soaked in lye, is eye watering.  You see, lutefisk, as tradition goes, was meant to be like a Scandinavian Trojan Horse.  The Swedes sent it across the channel in an unmanned boat to poison Norwegians hoping that the Norskes would see fish, eat fish and die.  Lutefisk is soaked in the same chemical that they put in dishwashing detergent.  You've got to hand it to the Norwegians, though, they are a tough lot.  Not only did they overcome the lye soaked cod, but they miraculously still are able to engage their olfactory systems.


Lutefisk stinks.  Reeks.  It smells as if everyone in a tri-state area took out the padded instep of their basketball shoes after a nine hour game and strapped them around their necks.  Imagine, as church is about to occur four weeks after the 'lutefisk festival' (yes, it's a festival!  They should have made t-shirts that said, I survived the smell) and you're sitting through the first bars of the worship service, the odor rises from the basement, and so does your gorge.  The words "Lord, have mercy," ring out from the pastor and take new meaning.  You are sitting in the ninth row from the front (because your family was late getting to church) pinching your nose and saying, "Yes, indeed most gracious God, have mercy on us."


These same Norwegians who enjoy ingesting poison soaked fish are the same ones that created the Mange Tak Days which are Rake's holy days during the summer.  'Mange Tak' in Norwegian, means, 'Many thanks."  We used to say that it meant 'Mangy Dog.'  Either way, the highlight for me was always cowchip bingo.  Across the Rake park, a grid had been set up where people would 'purchase' a square and then let loose a Holstein onto the grid where, after days, minutes or hours, the cow would feel the urge to drop one and where ever the cowchip ended up, the owner of that square received a pot of money.  The last Bingo game I saw, the cow took almost three hours to effectively move her cud out the backdoor.  But in those three hours, while Rakivites lined the roped off Bingo court, dozens of people milled around sharing life, talking about the weather or about family relationships. 


Under the guise of watching a cow defecate, community life blossomed.


This is by no means an attempt to say that the residents of Rake and surrounding areas are simple.  Some of the most intelligent people I know graduated from the Rake community school district.  Like any other town, or city for that fact, they just have certain traditions that, from an outside perspective, seem strange or ridiculous: what could be more strange than eating fish soaked in poison and then rubbing your belly while exclaiming, "Mmm, mmm, mmm that was soooooo good," when in fact the actual swallowing of the gelatinous mass probably caused the gag reflex in most of them?  What could be odder that standing around for much of an afternoon waiting for a cow to poop so that you have the chance to win seven dollars and thirty-six cents?


Traditions often lose meaning by the repetition.  What I mean by that is, after a while, we sometimes forget why we do something, only remembering that we are supposed to do it.  Every family has these traditions, every church, every community and every country repeats an action that made sense when it was first done.  Some of them are good, some of them are, well, better.


With my family, I attended Christmas Eve services this year in Rake, Iowa at Zion Lutheran Church.  It is the only church in town now, a cathedral like erection on the south side of town.  Over the years the outside has changed drastically, but the inside, apart from putting in an elevator, has been relatively stable.  Christmas Eve was/is my favorite service of the year.  When we were growing up, we sang in the choir in our little red robes looking like Christmas candy canes singing about the little baby Jesus.  As we grew older, we progressed through junior choir to the varsity choir getting blue robes with a  gold collar which hung over the neck and down the back.  If you looked from the back as the choir was walking in, the choir looked like a pack of ambulatory candles.


I got to sing with the choir again this Christmas.  They don't wear robes anymore; in fact, they don't even sing from the choir loft.  When it comes time to sing, they move out from their families, trek to the front and stand on the steps leading up to the chancel (front of the church).  But they still sing with passion.  As we sang, I continued to notice that these were the same people we sang with when we were growing up albeit that many of them had either less hair, or slightly less colorful hair.  Fortunately, most of the ladies don't have a blue or purple tinge anymore.  Natural gray is wonderful (not fifty shades of it, though.)


We sang two songs that night; I don't even remember the first, but I stood next to my brother who was extricated from his seat to reluctantly sing the bass part.  It was fun, looking out over the crowd of people who had come home for Christmas, some of whom I hadn't seen for a decade. 


But then, the tradition that always made my night.  When we were little, the combined choirs of the church, cherub, junior and senior, would circle the entire sanctuary holding hands and sing the song, "Let There Be Peace on Earth."  This is the part about tradition that makes me smile.  The song in itself is not really a Christmas song - it's more like a 1960's equal rights hymn dedicated to 'walking with my brother in perfect harmony.'  But the spirit of the song is that we stand together and embrace the gathered church on Christmas Eve and sing as loud as we can hoping that peace can come to earth this Christmas.


There aren't enough people in the choir to circle the church anymore, so everyone in the congregation got out of their seats to sing at each other this year.  It was a powerful experience to see this amazing congregation at Zion, which in two months would be trying to poison each other with fish, stand and sing to each other.


There aren't enough Zion Lutheran Churches in the world. 


The service was the best Christmas present I had.

Reacting to Reactionaries

I woke up two days ago whistling.  My normal routine is to place both bare feet out of bed at the same time, stretch my back and head to the living room where I'll first do my devotion, deep breathing and prayer, then on to my computer where a digital avalanche of e-mails is waiting to snow me under.

The whistling is done quietly and I find that they actual expulsion of breath through pursed lips does, in fact, make the work easier.  So two days ago, I whistled while I turned on the computer and then cut it short.  In front of me was a photograph of twenty-one men in orange kneeling before twenty-one men dressed in black outfits.  Those who stood behind, garbed in darkness, had their faces covered and I've seen enough of this picture the last months (too much of this picture) to know that there is nothing life giving about this scene.

What plays out, not only in the visual description but also in the written commentary causes the mind to boggle and explode in tumultuous confusing emotions.  Horrified - mortified - I read the described scene: the water in the background - the metaphor, the inherent evil that rides like a villainous demon behind these men in black clothes.  And I find myself wanting to point my finger, denounce the heinous action as cowardly and call on God's holy angels to avenge the deaths of these twenty-one.  I want to call on the governments of the world (as if I had any power whatsoever) to smash the perpetrators of this horrendous evil; I see my enemy as a set of eyes peering out of a black mask.

And then I open my Bible, reading the book of Matthew for devotions, to chapter 5 and I am accosted with the insanity of this world set alongside the inexorable difficulty of Jesus words.  Don't murder, not just the body, but with words.  No more eye for eye, or tooth for tooth, head for head; if your enemy slaps you, turn the other cheek.  And I want to scream. THIS IS NEITHER RIGHT NOR FAIR, JESUS!  How can you possibly suggest that we should, at this time, turn the other cheek, to be weak? 

It's impossible.

And then even harder:  ⁴³ “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ ⁴⁴ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵ that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. ⁴⁶ If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? ⁴⁷ And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? ⁴⁸ Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."

And I can't do it.   I can't be perfect. I can't for the life of me understand how to love this enemy.  The questions Jesus asks are well and good when they are rhetorical, but when they meet me in the most vulnerable part of life, they strike me deep at my core and I have no answer - "If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?  If you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others?" 

I don't have an answer.

From a Lutheran's perspective, from the right-hand kingdom, it's our responsibility to use the law to protect those who have no protection, but from Jesus' words above, how does turning the cheek work?  From a Christian's perspective, I am lost, adrift on a sea of righteous anger, tossed about by seeing red enraged against these reactionaries who believe that they are justified in committing murder, but at the same time seeing how I, at the same time, kill people over and over again with my cutting words.  Where is the judgment against me? 

C. S. Lewis writes about this in his book The Great Divorce, an allegory of life after death, as the bus that takes people to heaven is leaving the station, the main character greets the ghost sitting next to him, the one who, in life, was a murderer,

"If they choose to let in a bloody murderer all because he makes a poor mouth at the last moment, that's their lookout.  But I don't see myself going in the same boat as you, see?... I'm a decent man and if I had my rights, I'd have been here long ago and you can tell them so."

"You weren't a decent man and you didn't do your best.  We none of us were and none of us did.  Lord bless you, it doesn't matter." 

"You!" gasped the ghost. 'You have the face to tell me I wasn't a decent chap?'

"Of course.  Must I go into all that?  I will tell you one thing to begin with.  Murdering old Jack wasn't the worst thing that I did.  That was the work of a moment and I was half mad when I did it.  But I murdered you in my heart, deliberately, for years.  I used to lie awake at nights thinking about what I'd do to you if I ever got the chance...  You made it hard for us, you know.  And you made it hard for your wife too and for your children."

Ouch.

That's hard for me to stomach because I want to point my finger at someone else, turn God's omniscient eye on anyone but myself.

But I still don't know what to do about the news.  I still don't know what to think?  What is the response by Christians in all of this?

He Ain't Heavy

It was a little before my time, I think.  1969 it was, when the Hollies recorded and performed their hit single, He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother.  Neil Diamond sang it again a year later in 1970.

The road is long
With many a winding turns
That leads us to who knows where
Who knows where

But I'm strong
Strong enough to carry him
He ain't heavy, he's my brother

So on we go
His welfare is of my concern
No burden is he to bear
We'll get there

For I know
He would not encumber me
He ain't heavy, he's my brother

My brother and I weren't born until 1973.

I don't spend enough time thinking about my siblings, probably for the mere fact that thinking about them reminds me that I am on the other side of the planet; and that can be a painful thing at times.  And if there is one thing that humans are good at, it's avoiding pain.  Whether through denial, or falsehood, or just plain ignoring it, pain isn't forgotten, it's just pushed to the side.  But the problem is, when I don't think about the pain, I don't think about the amazing relationship I've always had with my brother, Ryan.

We were born five minutes apart.  After a short wrestling match, I won the opportunity to exit my mother's womb first - well, that's  not entirely true; we both allowed my sister to go first as good brothers and gentlemen do, but as soon as she was out, it was on.  I don't remember the wrestling match, but I assumed that I won because I was born one ounce heavier.  He ain't heavy, I am.  When you only weigh four and half pounds when you are born, that ounce makes a big difference.

As the song goes, "The road is long with many a winding turns that leads us to who knows where who knows where..."

I never imagined that I would have lived this far apart from him.  For most of our growing up years, we shared a room.  Bunk beds - every few months we'd swap bottom for top to that the one on the bottom bunk could kick the one on the top to annoy him.  We had identical desks, identical lamps, identical boxes, identical toys.  You name it, it was identical.  I think most people, when they give gifts to identical twins, they don't want to short one of them, for instance it would be a bad idea giving one of them an Atari 2600 for Christmas and the other one a brand new latchhook.  Fortunately, this didn't happen.  For our birthday, it was a race to see who could open their present the fastest because once Ryan opened his, I already knew what I was getting.  Not First World Problems: Identical Twin Problems.

In my case, there were never any difficulties in being an identical twin.  We shared everything: clothes, books, basketball.  Everything, that is, unless it was emotions.  We never really had to talk about things, issues, etc. because I already knew what he was thinking before he said it.  Some call it ESP; I would call it normal.  Strangely enough, we never fought.  I can only think of the one time when I hit Ryan in the middle of the back because he tried to pull a plastic bag over my head to see what would happen to me, but other than that...

Sometimes when I really miss him, I'll call my own phone and leave a message like this:  "Hey bro, I miss you.  Things are going really well here in the States, wish you could be here, but I know that God's got an excellent plan for you."  Then, after I hang up, I'll listen to the message because we have identical voices and my recorded voice sounds so much like his.  I should leave more messages on his phone too.

Through our growing up years, we were like Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum in almost everything: I was the quarterback, he was the receiver; I was the pitcher, he was the catcher; I was the tenor, he was the bass.  But even in those years of being opposite sides of a magnet, we always looked like each other.  Some people at church used to check our ears because my brother had a small mole on one, and even then, they couldn't remember which one actually had the mole on the ear so they would call both of us Reid/Ryan. 

Mrs. Hagedorn, our third grade teacher, had a difficult time after a test when we switched desks and names.  We would have gotten away with it if Vikki hadn't said something.  It didn't matter, we got the same grade anyway.

Our high school band teacher, Ms. Tuecke, always grew a little frustrated with our antics because we could play multiple instruments.  Sometimes she'd stand there with hands on her hips, baton twitching with flustration, saying 'OK you two, I don't know which one you are, but get back to your correct section."

Even when we moved to college, the opportunities for an identical twin continued.  If any one of our friends called us by the wrong name, they would have to chug their glass of beer.  I never mixed us up though, thankfully.

Now that we are older and have families of our own, the times that we have connected have been fewer and far between.  Even when we both lived in the States only a couple hours apart, we didn't take enough time to simply drive over for a night; perhaps it was the heaviness of separation that all twins have to go through, that kept us from going there.  That heaviness manifests itself when one has to leave, like a weight dropping on your shoulders with that last question, "When am I going to see him again."

But he ain't heavy, he's my brother. 

But I'm strong
Strong enough to carry him
He ain't heavy, he's my brother

So on we go
His welfare is of my concern
No burden is he to bear
We'll get there

For I know
He would not encumber me
He ain't heavy, he's my brother

 

I'm strong enough to carry him; he's had to carry me through various trials and struggles; it's like piggy backing your self.  But when I carried him, I found that the simple act of being useful to the other half of the egg caused me to actually feel lighter.  His welfare has always been my concern and even now, as the days, months and years pass between being physically present, and the encumbering feeling of getting lost in the daily rut and being ground down to nothing by the grinding stone of life, I find a sense of lightness that God created my brother for my own good.  God created all people for our good.

 

The last time I saw him was December 29.  We were at my Uncle Neil's house for the Matthias Christmas party.  All our relatives were there, but I was aware of my brother's presence all night, because each of us, and probably many there knew we wouldn't see each other again for probably eighteen months.  At the end of the evening, as everyone was leaving, I couldn't find any more words.  They'd all been spoken and I found myself a little kid again, at the other side of the room we always shared, not needing to speak, but simply a hug and a turn away.  He came outside to see us off and for the first time in many a year, I saw a tear run down from the middle of his right eye.  A diamond.  He didn't wipe it away, I liked that.  He wasn't embarrassed that he was sad, and I wasn't either.

 

His pain was not heavy; he's my brother.

 

I should leave myself a voice message today. 

50 Shades of Black

I have to interrupt this regularly scheduled blog for an important announcement.  According to most of western culture, the most important film of our time is about to hit the movie theaters this weekend - Valentine's Day for crying out loud.

And all I have to say about it is:  literally, God damn it.

I'm not talking about the people involved in the production, although somewhere deep inside of them they probably know that neither the book nor the movie should have been written or made.  Free speech supposedly includes them, but why does free speech seem to hinder the ability to speak out against something as treacherously dark as bondage pornography?  Each and everyday it seems like I'm bombarded with news or vocalizations of students or adults that unconsciously, or consciously, allowed pornography to take hold of their lives.  And with each voice crying out in terror at the way they start objectifying the other gender, or even the same one, there is the louder voice in culture today proclaiming with a smug, self-satisfaction, "What's the harm?  It's consenting adults in a relationship - experimenting." 

I hate that word now.  It used to mean something in a science class room, checking to see which chemicals will combust or lay dormant; it meant donning safety gear in a laboratory to see how elements punch each other in the face.  But now it is almost exclusively used in the realm of sexuality.  It's just people trying out new things to see if they like them.  The problem is, instead of adults doing most of the experimentation, it's curious young people on the verge of adulthood who are having their innocence raped by pornography.

"It's just a bit of fun.  Stop being such a prude.  The world has changed; get out of the 1800's."  I hear them all, every day.  They know I'm a pastor and sometimes they say it just to get my goat, but let's lay aside my pastorhood for a little while and let me talk as a father.  Has our society been flushed into the toilet in such a way that we, as parents, would revel in the thought of seeing our children on screen portraying the degrading acts on the silver screen?  Would any parent like to see his or her daughter tied up, bound and gagged pretending that this kind of sexual activity is preferable to genuine, honest connection in a marriage?  Would you as a father or mother, after seeing your daughter whipped and beaten in a 'playroom', not stand up and make a large amount of noise to see that that person would be punished?

"It's just a movie," they say; just like they would add, "they are just video games or music videos.  They don't really change how people behave.  You just need to know how to process them."

In 1980 I saw Star Wars for the first time.  I was overwhelmed by the cinematography, the acting, the characters and the realism.  I saw the light saber and the guns and I wanted to be a Jedi.  For the next weeks, I fashioned my own light saber and my brother and I acted out the scenes of the movie that we could remember.  At seven years of age, I still remember the moment when Obi Wan Kenobi gets sliced in half.  The horror I felt still lives with me this day.  I can't erase it.  I remember when Major League came out.  It shaped the kind of athlete I wanted to be.  I remember when Silence of the Lambs came to the theater in Forest City and for weeks I was afraid to even ask for skin lotion.

Movies move us.  We can't erase what we've seen, no matter how hard we try.  According to recent statistics, ninety-nine percent of teenagers at the age of fifteen will have seen some sort of pornography.  Pornography, in my opinion, is defined as a distortion of the intended sexual relationship which is then distributed by some sort of media.  In seventy percent of pornographic films, the woman is either beaten, slapped or abused in some way.  When young men, especially, view pornography, it literally changes their brains.  According to one of the science teachers at my school, Mel Hall, viewing pornography changes the connections in the brain and creates a hardwiring for young minds to only become aroused when they see pornographic like abuse conditions.  In other words, young men are told that sex is only good when the woman suffers.

Some would say there are varying levels of pornography and some can be used for teaching.  I say that's like saying there are fifty shades of black. 

It's interesting that 50 Shades is coming out on Valentine's as an appropriate opportunity for couples to take in a movie and 'discuss' some possibilities for spicing up their relationships.  Forget about emotional and relational stimulation, let's try out bondage scenarios.  They are, of course, just a supplement to the love we have for each other.

God damn it.  Damn the devil and his ability to distract couples from experiencing sexuality in a healthy and pleasure-ful.  God damn this infatuation with projecting the next level of sexuality on screen to be ogled by young and old alike until this new form of subjugation of females becomes the ever increasing norm.

The most interesting piece of evidence is that the lead actress, Dakota Johnson playing 'Anastasia Steele', does not want her family watching it even though her mother said 'She was proud of her.'  Read this article if you would like.  
 http://www.msn.com/en-au/entertainment/movies/fifty-shades-of-grey-banned-in-malaysia/ar-AA92g0x?ocid=mailsignout

I don't know think I've even said the words 'God damn it' out loud for probably twenty years, but here is a perfect opportunity.  I'm asking for anyone who reads this, whether you agree or not, to think deeply how we are shaping the sexual identities of our younger and older generations by creating the 'norm' to be bondage.  Speak out, if you can, not as a Puritan, but as a member of society who longs to see young people re-establishing healthy relationships seeking, eventually, to always look out for the pleasure of the other and in doing so ultimately finding the truest love in marriage.

P.S.  I have read the books.  From a purely literary point, they are rubbish - badly written and little plot.  On screen, the plot doesn't have to be imagined.  There is no refuge from the crap.

A Little Fuzzy: Part Zwei

I tried playing basketball this weekend.  The operative word was 'tried.'  For some reason, and I would guess that all people past the age of thirty would say this, there is a deep sense of loss about not being able to stretch and bend like you used to.  As I played basketball, my brain kept shouting at me, "Yeah!  You can do this!  Just jump a little higher, twist a little faster, run a little quicker," and my soul kept whispering to me, You're gonna pay for this big time.

My soul was right.  Just two days later I feel as if almost every one of my joints has sand in it.  My muscles, especially those in my arms, feel like plastic bags stretched too far.  And my ego has a basketball size bruise on it.  It was nice of them, those twenty-somethings that I played with to shout encouraging things like, "Hey, Pastor Reid, you're everywhere," but behind their kind words, I could feel the pity of watching a forty-one year old male try not break anything on anyone.  Which, in essence made me try harder.  Why is it so hard to accept pity?

It wasn't that long ago that I was a decent basketball player.  Well, that might be stepping out of bounds a little bit.  It's been a long time since I could run, shoot and rebound well; now, I'm kind of like the unyielding block of relaxed muscle that sits in the lane and swipes at anything that gets close.  Think of me as like a basketball spider creating a web on the defensive end of the ball court.  On the other hand, let's not think of spiders at all.

A little over twenty years ago, I joined a basketball team of college 'athletes' to play intramural sports.  There were ten of us, most of whom had played a little basketball before either in high school or junior high.  As we were all in our late teens, we still had some energy, but fitness was very relative.  We lived on Hebron III which was an all male dorm on the north side of campus.  It was connected in a 'U' shape to two female dorms.  Along the path to the gymnasium were various bushes and plants, green in the spring and fall and relatively dead in the winter.  During the basketball season, we'd dress in our t-shirts and shorts, headbands and out of date basketball shoes.  We passed the one ball we had between us bouncing it and fumbling it on our way to the gym.  We didn't expect to win.  We were usually right.

We called our team, "The Warm Fuzzies."

The only other team that we could really beat was the chess club, I think - or, maybe it was the brass section of the band.  I can't remember and I've been accused on this blog of misrepresenting the past.  Hard to imagine.

Either way, we enjoyed the time together - the bonding of being part of a team, living on the same floor and spending most nights playing cards, video games, watching movies, and of course, studying.  My brother and I shared a room on the floor; the other eight lived in various combinations of two and three man suites.  Most weeknights, we would at least do some studying but then on the weekends, the late nights would begin.  Sometimes we played cards until dawn.  In those quick four years of college, we packed in a lifetime of togetherness.

I guess it can't be understated how important friendships are.  Not only do friends support you and keep you sane, but they have a way of knowing exactly what needs to be done at exactly the right time.  The Fuzzies (we have called ourselves that for these twenty years hence) have a way of showing up when showing up is needed and then blending back into the woodwork of the great pictures of the past.  Included in our ranks now, after finishing all sorts of post graduate schooling are four doctors, two accountants, two teachers and two pastors.  There have been tragedies and hard times between us and in the midst of those, somewhere, somehow at least one of the Fuzzies has been at the ready. 

What is also amazing about this group of ten people is that all of us have been married at least twelve years.  That would be a rarity, I think, in this day and age, but each time we get together, the amount of Fuzzies enlarges.  I would think, now that we are all in our forties, that our days of procreating would be done.  Between the ten of us there are twenty-three kids.  Fuzzlings.

We drove into Des Moines, into the parking lot and parked our car.   The hotel in which we were staying had an indoor waterpark, small enough for Fuzzlings, big enough for Fuzzies.  The thought of two days with the other nine had left me in high spirits: I knew that there would be plenty of laughter, plenty of card playing and plenty of memories shared that probably shouldn't have been repeated in front of the Fuzzlings.

As different families straggled in throughout the night, hugs were passed around.  When you hug an old friend, it's like waking a memory, or bringing a picture to life.  As each one passed in and out of my squeezed arms and I held a step back to look at them, I felt a true sense of... relief?... is that the word?  Relief to be able to let down what little hair I have left, no pretense, no putting on airs and faces.  It was fun to watch how, as the night wore on, the Fuzzies settled back into their own roles we had twenty years ago.  Lots of singing (strangely, almost all of us can sing quite well), Dan found a way to be wonderfully loud, Maasen found new and inventive ways to describe his displeasure at losing at cards.  Raber smiled and laughed loudly like no other day.  And it seemed as if there had been no time in between this moment and the last one that we had met.

That's what real friendship is like.

My brother arrived after a short while.  It was the first time I'd seen him in a year and a half.  I was shocked at his appearance - amazedly surprised at how well he looked.  He's lost so much weight and bulked up in strength, he looked like a new man.  And it showed in his demeanor too.  I watched him throughout the night, turning on my own video camera inside my head, memorizing him because I miss him.  He was loud and brash and fun.  Just like twenty years ago.  Just like the time we went cliff jumping.

There is a picture in one of my albums of the Fuzzies standing in the shade of a tree, swimming trunks on, wet towels draped over our shoulders.  It seems like that photo is taken out of one of those old movies that you expect that the picture will start moving, that somewhere deep inside the fading colors of that photograph, the happiness of that memory will spring out.

We left early morning, probably a Saturday but more likely a Friday afternoon.  I had found a spot at a rock quarry where I had done some cliff jumping earlier that summer and I decided that we'd go there as a Fuzzy get away.  We piled into the cars: Raber had a Ford LTD which seated eight comfortably, four in the front and back (no seatbelts required in those days) and then Curtis' car, I think.  Across backroads about twenty miles we traveled to the quarry at Iona.  After parking the vehicles, we popped out to see the cliffs on the other side of the pond.  They weren't small either.  Because it was hot, it was not hard to get into the water, but we did notice that it wasn't all that deep.  The summer sun had evaporated a layer of the water.  It's watermark could be seen in the rock.  When Raber asked where we were going, I pointed up onto the sandstone rock wall.  They all shaded their eyes to look up. 

We reached the other side and we began to scale the wall.  One hand hold and foot step at a time.  There was a ledge about twenty feet up that we should have stopped at, but this was a group of males who, at this time, had every sense that they were immortal.  Nothing could hurt us at this time in our life.  I looked around at those guys, all the cajoling and calling of names.  No one was going to wimp out first.  How dumb we can be in our youth.

Ryan led us to the top and it was there that we took a pause.  Before we had climbed, I made sure that where we would be jumping there would not be any submerged rocks and that it would be deep enough.  I pushed myself down to the bottom and was dismayed to feel that the water was only about eight feet deep.  As we were on the ledge, it was just about fifty feet up and eight feet probably wasn't deep enough. 

We stood in a circle, hands on our hips, enjoying the drying moment in the warm setting sun.  I suggested that we probably should just head back down and was called a few choice words for verbalizing my hesitation.  So, I asked who was going to go first.  They looked around, quiet, hoping that someone else would be the first one to jump.  Always, there was someone to jump first, to leap, to make it all right for everyone else.  Just like Dettmer, the first to get married, or us, the first one to have kids, or Raber the first one to have survived cancer, or Curtis, the first one to have moved away.

Ryan said it.  Always the toughest.  I'll do it.  I tried to stop him, to hold him back.  He's much more valuable alive, but he didn't even hesitate when his mind was made up.  He walked back five steps and threw himself into the air, into the void, into the fearful whistling drop.  He screamed, I think, or he should have and as we peered over the edge, hearts in our throats watching the splash and roiling water below, we waited for the eternal seconds before he came spluttering to the top, fist raised and wondering from fifty feet down who was coming next.

Did you hit the bottom? I asked from my lofty position. 

It doesn't matter, he replied from his posture of treading water.  It doesn't matter.  It doesn't matter.  I can't remember who went next, but I didn't want to be last - second to last is still not last.  And after all of us had shared the same scream, shared the same explosion of water at the base, hit the murky bottom of the quarry, we felt a different sense of brotherhood or, as I think of it now - Fuzziness.

I wish that I had more time with them, to get together and revert to my post-adolescent, immortal stage.  To hear the laughter and the carefreeness would heal all sorts of present day worries and cares.  To receive a hug and a kind word each and every time, a hand shake and most importantly the password to my deepest friendships, to be called...

Fuzzy.

It was a great weekend to be back together. 

A Little Fuzzy: Part Eins

This May, it will have been twenty years since I graduated from Wartburg College.  It sounds like a long time, and, I guess in the average life span of an individual, a quarter of my life has been spent between that day and this one, but why does it seem like it was yesterday?  I'm not being figurative - it really does feel like....

Christine and I drove down I-380 from Cedar Rapids, Iowa on our way to Des Moines.  During the summer, the vast expanse of cornfields and beanfields create a green ocean across most of the Midwest.  As the wind rustles the top leaves and tassels of the corn plants, it looks like God is running his hand across them.  But in the winter, Eastern Iowa takes on a vastly different view: the contrast is stark and no more stark than this year: instead of tall banks of drifted snow, windblown topsoil creating dark, silted patterns in the pure white, there was a dry brown vista.  No snow had fallen and it seemed as if the entire visible world had fallen asleep and turned into a desert.

You forget what the slight wobble of the earth does when you live nearer the tropics.  As we turned west to head down I-80 towards Des Moines, I noticed the sun bustling through my window, but not in a baking-my-driving-arm way.  This wintertime Iowa that I'd forgotten reminded me that the sun liked to stay in bed in the mornings and then, at 4:00 in the afternoon, it would start to pull the blankets up over its head for a night long nap. 

The girls were in the back seat doing what they do best.  Reading the metric ton of books that we'd lugged from Australia and my parents'.  We had two hotel rooms.  The girls were sleeping in one room and the parents in the other.  Normally, this would be a moment where Barry White would start to croon.  We put the girls to bed at 6:00 to watch a movie and said, "Don't even think about coming next door unless there is a fire," we thought we'd watch one of the movies that we'd picked up for Christmas.

Talk about the airplane of love crash landing on the tarmac of bad cinema.  There are really bad movies in history: Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion, Ishtar, Austin Powers 3: Goldmember, but this one was so bad, I can't even remember the name of it.  After it was finished, I looked at Christine and wondered how I could retrieve the last hours of my life while at the same time erasing the memory of what just went before our eyes. 

Needless to say, Barry White morphed into Betty White.

After brushing our teeth, we rolled into bed having nightmares about the scriptwriting that had assaulted our senses.  Such a nice bed.  It would have been so nice to sleep in the next morning.  It would have been...

BWOOOOOP! BWOOOP! BWOOOP!  When you are awakened suddenly, a person does all sorts of strange things.  Because it was six o'clock in the morning and the sun wouldn't make a cameo for at least two hours, I ran into the door frame, the closet, stubbed my toe against the table.  The TV stand became the world's largest hurdle because somewhere in our wonderful hotel, either by purpose or by accident someone had pulled the fire alarm.  Then, my words to the girls came into full effect, Do not come to our room for any reason except for a fire.

The fire alarms were raging.  If this were college, and I was living on Hebron III which was the dorm in which we lived, I would probably attempt to sleep through it.  The odds are, at that time and place twenty years ago, someone had stumbled in and thought it funny to get everyone out of bed.  But now, as a father of children in another hotel room, (albeit right next door) it was time to find them.  Quickly I threw on a shirt (inside out) shorts (backwards) and stumbled out the door to see if there was a raging Hyatt fire.  The lights were blinding in the hallway and next door I saw three young cubs emerging from their room in their pajamas.  They tried to shout to me, asking me what was going on, but all that I could remember was that we weren't supposed to take the elevator in times of fire. So, I gathered the three chicks under my wing, told Christine to meet us downstairs outside the hotel and then pulled the girls down the steps. 

Unfortunately, I forgot my hotel key.  I didn't realize that until it was too late.

I pushed the bar to open the emergency door and stepped outside.  As the sun had not yet risen, the frigid night air blasted us in the face and, unfortunately every other body part.  When you are awakened quickly you don't think about these things, but as we stood there, in -10 degree temperature (Celsius), barefooted and non-coated, I thought to myself, Nice one, Doorknob.  Out of the pan and into the icebox.  Your children are going to die of hypothermia instead of smoke inhalation.  I looked at the children standing cross-armed and shivering uncontrollably next to me and thought, Stuff this - I'm going back inside.  At least when the fire gets to us we can warm our hands and feet up.  I pulled on the door and, of course, it was locked.

Panic from the girls.  Nobody could even feel their feet anymore; no one else in the hotel had come to save themselves outside with us.  So, with numb feet, we tiptoed the two hundred yards from 'fire gathering area' and headed to the front doors.  I looked up and couldn't see smoke roiling from windows, so the odds are, if we got to the lobby and no one was screaming to head for the exits, we would be okay. 

If you were an outsider watching us, it might have been funny.  A father and three young girls, ouching their way around the outside of a hotel in the dark, in the cold... But for us, it was almost shameful, well, for me, that is.  How could I do this to the girls?

We entered the lobby and were greeted by panicked front desk staff.  So strange to see them staggering around downstairs in their Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer outfits calling the fire department to check out why in God's name the fire alarms are going off. 

What did we do?  We sat down and had coffee with the rest of the guests who were much calmer than I was.  Most of them had brought down their handbags, their iPads, valuables and, of course, their dogs and cats.  It was a scene that, if watched in slow motion, would have resembled Barnum and Bailey's Circus.  Sure enough, the firefighters came in, and after them I was waiting for the clowns and elephants.  I was tired, but surely this was much better entertainment than the movie we watched the night before.

Lastly, descending like a princess amidst the full geared firefighters, tossing her hair to the side and smiling like a supermodel, was my wife Christine.  She had grabbed the room card, dressed herself, brought coats and boots for the girls and anything else we might need for a four alarm fire.  She's always ready for anything.

Come on Barry White.  Keep Singing.

The trip from Iowa City to Des Moines seems like one of the longest on the planet.  Apart from the world's largest truck stop, there's not much to see.  And as we drove past that monstrous truck stop, I wondered what the next few days would bring.  I hadn't really spent much time with my college friends, the Warm Fuzzies, since the time we went to Canada about six years ago.  After twenty years, I was excited to see how life had changed and how life had not.  Des Moines is where we would meet them.

As I looked back at my girls reading in the back seat, I wondered just for a moment, what it will be like for them in College in a few years.

We pulled into Des Moines, found the hotel, and life turned back twenty years.

A Slide Show

I can remember a time when my parents invited over some teacher friends to share with the whole family their slide show of their trip to Germany.  For a young person, this is nightmarish for multiple reasons:  firstly - it's hard enough that your parents are teachers in your hometown (the only thing worse would be if your parent was the pastor) but to have more teachers in the house makes a young persons hair follicles stand on end.  Secondly - If anyone remembers slides, they are tremendously cumbersome to actually display well.  Some of them are upside down; sometimes the slideshow engineer will get one stuck and spend ten minutes trying to 'unstick' the slide while simultaneously exclaiming, 'Ow, that bulb is hot' and blowing on their fingers.  Then, if that's not bad enough, they spend a good minute on each slide describing ad nauseum what the picture is already showing, giving background on each blade of grass and each syllable of conversation with each strange foreign national.  It's enough to give a young kid the heebie jeebies.  Lastly, there aren't any slides of yourself.  Pictures without me in them are, well, boring.


I guess that's why selfies are proliferating.  Whenever we look at pictures, we look for ourselves - we look to see if we have a part in the story, and if we don't, well... let's move on.


I've often thought what a slide show of my life growing up would be like.  Certainly there's the picture of my parents in early child mode - surrounded by three little satellites.  As this first slide goes in, I wonder what my parents were thinking.  Did they wonder why God had 'blessed' them so?  Were they wondering how they were going to make it financially?  If they were going to comment on this slide, what would they say? 


My first memories of my sister, Vikki, only go back to kindergarten or so.  I suppose that my parents have told enough stories of us eating dirt, or getting kicked down by the rooster, that we probably think that we remember, but really, the slide that comes up first comes from a picture of us attending kindergarten for the first time.  We're standing by a plastic wheel, one that children could crawl inside.  Our teacher, Mrs. Jacobsen, is smiling behind us.  She is diminutive with sandy blonde hair.  She wears a pleated dress and has her hands behind her back.  I saw her later on in our journey in the States, but I'll get back to that later.


Vikki stands in the middle of the two of us boys.  Ryan, on the right, I think.  When I look back at those pictures, I have difficulty telling us apart too.  But Vikki never did.  She always knew who I was. 


She still does.


It took a lot of years to figure out what sisters were for.  Mostly, when boys-with-sister are growing up, they kind of look at them as if they are some sort of alien life form.  Nothing seems to make sense.  At times, she is joyful and laughing and then .7 seconds later, some kind of bee has blown directly into her bonnet and she has become Godzilla with a negative attitude.  I wish I could put myself back in those slides now, just for a little bit, to see Vikki as she was then and tell her everything's gonna be all right.  I wish I could have told her that she was awesome and her true value is not dependent upon her physical beauty.  But brothers don't often do that when they are young; they have to wait until they really understand what sisters are for.


Sisters give the opportunity for brothers to practice protection.


Brothers give the opportunity for sisters to learn patience.


My little sister, Danielle (she has a nickname that my dad gave to her, which I won't share here), was born nine years after the three of us.  When she was growing up, she was more of a hindrance, I think - not because she was particularly perturbing, but she was like an anchor on a young boy's boat.  I can remember a night that my parent's decided that they were going to go out (a rarity for teachers in small town Iowa in those day.)  I was probably ten years old - Dani was still in diapers and not the nice, elastic-legged plasticky kind you see today.  No, no, these were old school cloth diapers with which you encased the lower half of their body with a rubber sack which supposedly gave them protection.  When you are ten years old, there probably is no worse fate than being left in charge of your diapered little sister. 


I don't know where Ryan and Vikki were at that time - babysitting someone else for money probably.  I got left with Dani and I was probably none to happy about it.  So, as my parents left, it was my job to entertain one-year-old Dani for the night.  Little kids like that don't need too much attention, I  though, so I probably let her run rampant around the house hoping she'd get tired at seven o'clock so I could watch Fantasy Island. 


Then, it happened.  Dani got really quiet.  Dear Lord, please let her find the ability to be toilet trained just for one night.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  Dani had found a way to defecate and fill her diaper and her rubber pouch in one swift explosion.  I don't know about you, but there are few things more disgusting than feces making an appearance up the shoulder blades of a little one.  She crawled towards me, legs splayed moving the movement a little farther up her back.  I probably gagged.  I am right now as I write this.


I wanted to run, but she would have found me.  Little turd basket.  So, I plugged my nose with one hand and did what my parents said.  I picked her up by her hands and carried her into the bathroom.  I didn't touch her abdomen or other side in anyway for fear that the rubber pant thing would pop like an excretory zit. 


She started to cry.  I was probably almost dislocating her shoulders, but I didn't care.  She had just dislocated my entire olfactory system.  Putting her down in the bathroom, I found the little cracked plastic mat and laid it on the floor.  Then I gathered the precious little bundle of... joy and laid her on the plastic.


I actually heard it, then.  Her rubber pants let loose and up the front of her shirt as well as the back.  Oh for heavens' sake, Dani.  What did you eat?  An entire watermelon?

Somehow I got her onesy off; I carried it with two pinched fingers while my other hand pinched my nose.  I just threw it in the sink.  Surely it's not the job of a young ten-year-old boy to rub out his sisters digested dinner.  By this time, Dani had gotten antsy and had rolled around off the mat and stepped in the streaks on the plastic mat.  She was making brown footprints in the bathroom.  My parents owed me a raise on the five dollars per month they were giving us for an allowance.


I picked her up by the hands again and placed her back on the wondrous mat where, after getting some wet toilet paper (I couldn't remember exactly what I was supposed to do - the aroma had fried my brain cells) I wiped down as much as I could stomach.  Certainly that was as thorough as a ten-year-old boy is going to be around that area of his one-year-old sister.  I think I probably closed my eyes in terror through most of it.


Then, the tricky part.  You have to hold down the one-year-old in order to figure out the incredible engineering feat of cloth diapers.  Supposedly you are supposed to fold them first, but I had had enough of this, so I took the first diaper and basically wrapped it around her like a bath towel.  I wanted to use diaper pins, but I was afraid I'd stick her.  Serve her right, though.  The problem, of course, with wrapping a diaper like a bath towel is that it doesn't really cover anything; it kind of just makes a pipeline...


But, that was as much as I could stomach.  That, and the fact that Tattoo and Mr. Roarke were standing on top of the bell tower waiting for the plane.  So, after the gift wrapping of my sisters waist, I pulled on the rubber pants sure that they would seal in any goodness for when my parents came home. 


Fantasy Island was good that night and so was the Love Boat.  I was mesmerized by the depth of the plot lines - always different, fresh, exciting and new.  So absorbed was I that I didn't notice that my parents were driving down the lane.  9:00. 


I was supposed to be in bed; so was Dani.


I looked over at the little grubber and she was in the final stages of downloading again.  I didn't swear when I was younger, but I'm pretty sure I could have come up with something.  But, my parents were home. 


So, I grabbed Dani by her fingers and carried her out the room, up the stairs, down two bedrooms and hauled her up over the railing of her crib.  Her rubber pants had leaked everywhere, but of course my parents wouldn't notice at all, would they?  So, I laid her down in the bed, covered her up, and she began to cry, I held a finger to my mouth.  Shhhhh.  Dani!  Help me with this.  Just pretend that you're asleep.  That's what I'm going to do.


So, I left her there, in bed, crying, hoping that my parents would be the most naïve people on earth. 


But they aren't.  And as they came upstairs to check on their crying baby and their fake sleeping son, I knew I was in trouble.  I could almost hear my mother exclaim from the downstairs bathroom, "What is this on the floor?  Are those footprints made out of...?"  And then I could hear my father standing over Dani's crib, and the gag fest that was occurring.  If there was anyone more allergic to dirty diapers, it was my dad.  And then I could hear him calling out, "Diane, Dani needs you!"  He walked down the hallway to where I was pretending my butt off that I was asleep.


"Nice try, Frederick."


I don't think my parents increased my allowance that night.


Of course both Dani and Vikki have changed.  Dani no longer requires rubber pants (or at least I don't think she does) and both Vikki and Dani stand tall as some of the strongest women I know.  I no longer look back at the slide show pictures of the two of them, seemingly overexposed, and wonder what sisters are for, I just wish that I could see them more often - not in still life; not in 1970's clothes or diapers or as teenagers, but just as they are now.  Both excellent mothers, both strong women bent on providing for their families until life fades into another life.  I wish I could do another slide show of them standing beside both Ryan and me and remember what it was like to live in the same house with my parents.


But that's what slide shows are for.  They are to start the story telling.  But it's the words that make the stories come alive.  Not the pictures, the words.  I never grow tired of hearing the stories about my sisters.

Church

They say that cat's have nine lives.  For one of our cats, he had at least sixteen.  Seventeen if you count the near drowning. 


His name was Church.  He wasn't very big, not much larger than a nice oven mitt.  When he was a kitten, his ultra soft gray hair would stick up at all ends after he'd awakened from sleep.  Instead of bed head, Church had bed body.  My memory of thirty-five years ago probably isn't perfect, but I assume that Church wandered near our house one day conscious of the copious amount of scraps we threw out after meals.  Like most felines that wandered near our house, they were wary at first of the dog, but as we were an accepting family, even the dogs turn a blind eye to natural enemies.


Church was different than most cats.  He didn't seem to purr - more of a guttural hacking sound, like the sputtering of a lawn mower that isn't quite ready to wake up.  Probably one of his lives was consumed by feline consumption - who knows, but when you get down to it, there aren't really ninety-nine ways to kill a cat.


We weren't really into caticide.  Feeding them was a natural progression of farm life.  Sooner or later, though, they'd all end up on 20th Ave. that ran next to our homestead becoming a nice little speed bump for a passing grain truck.  The cats on our farm met their ends in strange ways: in the winter, they like to find warm places to sleep.  Unfortunately, one of our cats strayed a little too close to the fan belt...  Sometimes they'd wake up actually under the hood of the car five miles down the road screeching hysterically because we inadvertently were taking them to school and after we had stopped, they'd pop down from the engine and, well, they became our unfortunate small speed bump.


That's just the unfortunate life cycle of country cats sometimes.


Church had the opportunity to survive many of these things, but one night he didn't get so lucky.  Granted, Church never seemed like the smartest cat, like one of those goofy hyenas from the Lion King that couldn't seem to keep its tongue inside its mouth, but Church's greatest Matthias memory happened early winter, probably in the mid 80's.


One cold and stormy night... 


That night probably wasn't stormy, because if it was, Church would have walked away from the cement slab in front of our garage.  He must have been very sleepy, probably done with catnipping for the day, and he fell asleep on the front corner of the cement.  Sometimes in north central Iowa, in winter, the temperatures drop really quickly - who knows really what happened at that point, there are varying interpretations from the rest of my family - and things flash freeze, kind of like in the movie The Day After Tomorrow when a perfect storm turns the entire northern hemisphere into a frozen wasteland.  That's pretty much every January where my parents live.


To make a long story short: Church was so tired that he didn't notice that his body was starting to stick to the cement.  Just like when kids stick their tongues to metal during the winter, so did Church's body.  We didn't notice him at first, but after a while - perhaps just after supper while doing dishes, I looked out the kitchen window and I saw the little patch on the cement covered by a thin film of snow but yet somehow a piece of it moving.  It was Church's front right paw and his back right paw.


The whole left side of his body had frozen to the concrete.


Racing out to Church, I was unsure of what to do next.  Being relatively young, I thought perhaps I'd tug on him a little bit.  Not such a good idea.  His fur started to stretch a little bit and he made this small revving lawn mower noise.  It never occurred to me to perhaps go get some warm water and run it along underneath him. 


It did occur to me to get a snow shovel.  A big one.


When I came back, Church was in greater distress; his mewling had diminished and if I didn't excise him from the sidewalk, he'd have redeemed his ninth life.


So, I did what any normal ten year old would do: I scraped him off the cement with the shovel.  Oh you should have heard him then.  Most of his fur was still there.


With cat on shovel I walked into the house.  I'm just going to put the conversation down that I think I remember - the odds are I'm going to embellish a lot, but it makes it more fun as this actually happened.


Mother: (Still finishing up with the dishes)  What were you doing outside, Reid?


Reid:  Mom!  Mom!  Guess what?  I brought Church inside.


Mother:  (wiping her hands on a dish towel)  What?  (turns around) Okeeee, what have you brought in here?  Is that a rat?


Reid:  No, Mom, it's Church.  You know, our cat!


Mother:  (takes a step closer)  Well I'll be...


Reid:  He's dying, Mom.  We have to do something.


Mother:  We've got to warm him up somehow.


Reid:  Do you want me to wrap him in some towels?


Mother:  I don't want that thing messing up my good dish towels.


Reid:  Then what are we going to do?


(Pause:  then, both Reid and Mother turn towards the oven at the same time)


Reid:  Yeah, we could put Church in there.  That would warm him up good.


Mother:  (thoughtful) I don't know if this is a good idea. 


Reid:  We've got to save his life!


Mother:  (takes a cookie sheet out of the drawer next to the oven)  I don't want cat hair all over my good oven.  (puts the cat on the cookie sheet.)


Church:  Meeouch.


Reid:  Hurry, Mom, Hurry.


Mother:  Easy, Reid.  He'll be okay.


Reid:  How hot should we make it?


Mother:  I don't know - we don't really want him to char; maybe set the oven on bake - what do you say, 100 degrees? (Fahrenheit)


Reid:  Sounds good to me.  (Turns on the oven and places Church in the oven)  Do you think we should shut the door?


Mother:  Probably not.  But, I've never done this before.


Reid:  Me neither.  But it sure is fun.  This is good bonding time, me and you, my Mom, baking some cat.  (Gives her a hug)  Thanks, Mom.




We left Church in the oven for about fifteen minutes and when he was good and warm, we got some oven mitts out and pulled him out of the open oven.  Strangely enough, Church was as good as new - or as good as Church ever was, apart from the slight vertigo, the weeping eye and the ear that kind of hung off to the side.  Come to think of it, his tail didn't look that good either.


Church survived, but we wanted to keep him near us for a few days.  As it was Christmas, we went to Grandpa and Grandmas.   Church rode with us in the car.  I think he was probably sick the whole time and what we hadn't had the foresight for was that Church's fur on one side of his body fell off - he kind of looked like that guy from Batman - Two Face, except it was Two Sides.  One had hair, the other had frostbit skin.  Oh, and he lost that one ear, all the hair on one side of his face, two joints of his tale and the ability to really control his bladder.


But, he was still alive thanks to our quick thinking. 


When we were back in the States, we sat around and told stories at Christmas time.  This was an old favorite and even though everything that I remember is probably wrong, and my mother will probably scold me for making her look addled (I'm sure it was I who actually went through with putting the cat in the oven over her argument) it is a good story to remember. My mother was laughing so hard she started crying.


In the next couple of blogs I'm going to remember some stories about my sisters, Vikki and Dani.  Some of the stories might be embellished a little, but when we went back this time, we spent some time in Cedar Rapids.  An interesting thing happened there, also.