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Twenty-Somethings, One And All (#215)

Tonight, at midnight, Doug and I will reach a milestone (not a millstone) in our marriage. At the stroke of twelve, we will officially resign from the duties and responsibilities of raising teenagers.

Our baby, Kevin Patrick, turns twenty tomorrow.

It's a more bittersweet feeling than I imagined it would be. When I told Doug this was our last day of parenting a teen, his response was one I never expected, especially since we hadn't ever seriously considered his idea when we were younger.

"Let's adopt," he said.

And you know what that tells me? It tells me that my husband, just like me, considers raising our kids to be the best, most valuable, most satisfying thing we've ever done. So much so, that we'd almost entertain the notion of starting all over again.

Did I mention that we have the three best kids in the world?

Happy Birthday, Dear Kevin...

Posted by Katy on 01/09/05
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Year In Review (#216)

Doug's rifling through DVDs in our bedroom, and comes up with one we haven't seen.

"Do you want to watch it? The reviewer says it's one of the best romantic comedies of the year..."

"OK," I say. "I'm in."

"Of course," he deadpans, "the review was written on January 1."

Posted by Katy on 01/05/05
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Okay. So We’re Not There Yet. (#217)

Why Doug and I have taken so completely to collaborating on some writing projects, when we've never attempted anything like this before, I can't exactly say.

But I will say that recently, we've been reminding me of my favorite husband and wife author team, Brock and Bodie Thoene. We've cooperated on a number of blog subjects by writing companion pieces, and suddenly I'm entertaining illusions of publishing grandeur.

Soon, surely, we'll be co-authoring historical novels, with Doug doing all the award-winning research like Brock, and me introducing the fictional elements and assembling the story line, just like Bodie. We'll edit each other's work without taking it personally, not feel threatened by the other's achievements, and grow closer--emotionally and spiritually--with every passing day.

"Hey, baby," I say, when he comes up with his eighth or ninth brilliant idea today, "I'm gonna' start calling you Brock."

He shoots me a look.

"And you can call me Bodie," I add with a grin.

"Can I call you Body?" he asks.

On second thought, we'd better just stick with Doug and Katy.

Posted by Katy on 01/04/05
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Fashion (Non)Sense (#218)

Overheard at the grocery store, when Doug and I passed by several young women with paunchy bellies overhanging their already-down-to-there pants:

"Yeah, and I heard they're coming out with even lower jeans."

That's just what the world needs now.

Posted by Katy on 01/04/05
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Dirty Word (#219)

"Dear children, let us stop just saying we love each other; let us really show it by our actions."

John 3:18 NLT

When you're a nice, Irish Catholic schoolgirl, and it's 1969, you don't just go around dating random Baptist boys.

Not that I hadn't seen it happen before—I had. My own Uncle Francis—still fresh off the boat!—hooked up with a seemingly wholesome Baptist girl who'd been raised on a farm, no less. The second he said "I do," she started shouting "Oh, no, you don't!"

It turned out my aunt had unreasonably high behavioral expectations for her new husband, things like "No Smoking!" and "No Gambling!" and "No Dancing!" Francis tried to clean up his act to suit her finely-tuned Protestant sensibilities, but it pained him no end.

He felt the very essence of his inborn Catholicity draining out of him each time he snuffed out a Lucky Strike at her insistance or passed up the chance for a whisky with Father McInerny.

The clincher was when the family—Francis's siblings and their progeny—found out that my aunt had been systematically destroying, before poor Francis could open his mail, all invitations to weddings and other occasions where frivolity would certainly take place.

"How could she keep him away from his own family like that?" we asked among ourselves. "Oh, well...that's what he gets for marrying a Baptist."

So it must have been more an act of charity than anything else when I found myself, during my sophomore year at St. Teresa's Academy (For Young Christian Women), dating a tall, red-haired senior who not only attended public school, but was also a diehard Baptist.

If it hadn't been for the fact that my best friend Beth and I worked for St. Luke's Hospital (which also wasn't Catholic, and why didn't that alone tell us something?) passing out dinner trays to patients, we never would have met the guys.

Larry was a cute blonde whose leg was mangled badly enough in a motorcycle accident that he had the casted appendage suspended with pulleys over his hospital bed for a couple of weeks. He and Beth hit it off right away, over a shared tray of meat loaf and canned peaches and succatash, if I remember right.

Shouldn't even the idea of peas unnaturally mixed up with cubed carrots make a Catholic girl in 1969 remember to ask, "Hey, no offense or anything, Larry, but you're not a Baptist, are you?"

But Beth was the very definition of compassion, and she considered it her religious duty to nurse Larry back into a suitable-for-dating condition. Her ministry would not be considered complete until she had witnessed with her own eyes that Larry had been restored to his previous status as a hunka-hunka-burnin-love.

That's where I came in. Beth wasn't allow to car-date, unless she doubled, and neither was I. Russ—Larry's best Baptist friend—happened to be visiting Larry one evening when Beth and I made the rounds with spaghetti and meatballs, Wonder bread, and fruit cocktail.

Before Beth could pull the tabbed lid from Larry's tiny cup of vanilla ice cream, a sufficient number of sparks had flown across the bed between Russ and me to melt the stuff.

And so the ecumenical double-dating began.

I'm going to have to go ahead and admit at this point in my story that one night, we nearly went too far. We'd been dating several months by then, and the four of us—who all enjoyed the advantages of homes with an abundance of adult supervision, thank you very much—chose deliberately to drive Russ's sedan into the empty parking lot of a Jewish synagogue for purposes which can only be described as non-religious in nature.

At first, Russ and I talked in the front seat and Beth and Larry in the back, but you know how these things go. The talking died down and things got pretty quiet in the car for several minutes. Russ had drawn me closer to him on the bench seat and we'd exchanged as many kisses as it takes for the windows to become opaque.

Suddenly, I got the "oh-oh" feeling, only it wasn't from wandering hands, since Russ's weren't. No, it wasn't something he did—it was something he said.

Right in the middle of the most wonderful Catholic/Baptist kiss you can imagine, he blurted out, "So, do you tithe?"

"Do I WHAT?" I pulled away from him in revulsion. I had heard about guys like him, only he'd had me fooled. Russ had pretended to be such a gentleman until...this. "What kind of girl do you think I AM?"

Beth had heard the whole thing from the back seat and she whacked Larry several times for being best friends with someone as sick-o as Russ. "Take us home," she said, and Russ—knowing we meant business—started the engine.

I pulled out my Webster's in the privacy of my room, expecting the word "tithe" to mean something so disgusting that neither Daniel nor any of his successors would have dared to define it in print.

Needless to say, I was...surprised. And poor Russ, who must have believed my failure of his litmus test to be a sign from God about the ill-fated future of our relationship, never called again.

But that single question, put to me in good faith by a teen-aged tither, changed my life forever. Amazingly, a conscientious Baptist boy turned me on to the myriad of God-ordained acts of charity that can be accomplished through the simple decision to give away a tenth of my income.

And to think I thought it was an act of charity to date a Baptist.

Read the Marginal take on this quote...

Posted by Katy on 12/31/04
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Firming Up My Lack of Resolve (#220)

I'm starting to think the reason I'm so pathetic at keeping New Year's resolutions is that I'm horrible at making them.

For a person who loves nothing better than an original thought, I've never managed to think up a resolution even remotely creative enough to spark a fire of inspiration or motivation under my sorry rear end. And so, here I sit, with only two short days left to come up with a clue.

And I got nothin'. Amazingly, though, I can look back on this past year and see positive changes in my life.

I didn't resolve, exactly, to get a handle on the clutter in my life, but in two months' time this fall, I made remarkable progress toward that end. I didn't make a formal calligraphized notation in a leather journal announcing my intention to have our finances in a much better condition by the end of 2004, but nevertheless, it happened.

I didn't write down the customary "Exercise and lose weight!!!!" like I've done every year since Twiggy was the one to watch, and sure enough, I didn't exercise or lose weight.

Oh, well. You can't win 'em all. But I'm thinking you can win some of them, even if you don't bore yourself into oblivion by promising you will.

Can you look back on this past year and feel good about an area of your life that changed for the better, sans New Year's resolution?

To me, when that happens, it feels so great it almost makes me want to resolve to never resolve anything again.

Posted by Katy on 12/30/04
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How Many Quarters Can I Stuff In A Phone Booth? (#221)

"Flights to Scotland are still so cheap," Doug said. "If we travel before mid-March, we can fly to Glasgow for practically nothing. What do you say?"

I'm in a weird mood, I guess. Part of me says, "I ain't getting any younger, baby. Book it now!" (And that part of me knows what it's talking about: Today is my birthday and, true to trend, the number keeps getting higher.)

Still, we don't exactly have the money to book it now, baby. In addition, we're self-employed, and our outlook for the coming year doesn't hold quite as much financial promise as the year that just ended--although that could change, of course.

Here's the deal: A few months back, I started a Europe fund in a goofy red tin bank that's shaped like a British phone booth, and I've accumulated $290 in spare quarters so far. I'm getting a huge kick out of "saving up" for a vacation, instead of putting it on a card and paying later. It feels good to me--like when we finally go, we will have earned it, instead of just taken it.

So, we agreed on this: For my birthday present, Doug is dropping a nice chunk of change into the phone booth. And then again in six weeks, on our 28th anniversary, another chunk. And then for Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, and Father's Day.

By the time we finished discussing how to get back to the old country, we were both really excited about our plan to actually save up for it, instead of just booking it, baby.

Question: Do you ever actually save up for a financial goal? Do you feel any differently about that than you would if you put what you wanted on a card and paid later?

Does anyone else believe anymore in the joys of deferred gratification?

Posted by Katy on 12/29/04
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Twinkle, Twinkle Little Toes (#222)

I planned to check in this Christmas Eve morning, just to say Merry, Merry and Happy, Happy. But I awakened with my toes twinkling, and that usually means I'm trying to remember the fun thing that happened right before I fell asleep.

"Hey, babe," Doug had said, and it must have been well after midnight, "I've got a blog up for you."

"I'm too sleepy," I groaned. "I'll read it tomorrow..."

The twinkling toes reminded me to check his blog, and as always, the toes were right! It's five minutes later, and they're still twinkling.

Enjoy Doug's entry, and Merry Christmas from both Fallible and Marginal Comments!

Posted by Katy on 12/24/04
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Such A Dealz! (#223)

The older I get, the more stuff I don't have time for.

I started realizing this a number of Christmases ago, when Doug and I shopped to replace our 1980s fake Christmas tree. I'd already started blogging back then, something I've decided I definitely DO have time for. I wrote about our choice of trees, and our reasons, here.

This Christmas, something new has been added to my list of stuff I don't have enough good years left to pursue. I had no way of anticipating that this item was about to be added, until I headed upstairs to the "wrapping room" (AKA: Kevin's old room, the guest room, the bed and breakfast, and the Irish-whistle-playing room where Doug plays when Katy has a migraine).

On my way up, I paid particular attention to the radiating pain in my lower back, which appears mysteriously when I even contemplate hunching over a bunch of presents on the floor and cutting wrapping paper to size. In addition, my neck, which is the sad bearer of not one but two herniated discs, called attention to the fact that I had slept so soundly, it had developed a crick.

Or a cric, or a crik. A hitch in my git-along. Whatever.

By the time I reached the wrapping room and took in the sight of the slung-around tissue sheets and rolls of paper, the several dispensers of Scotch tape, and the horde of oddly sized and shaped unwrapped gifts that would take eons to wrap, I was sorely tempted to scream. And possibly even run from the room--with scissors.

Instead, I calmly walked back down the stairs, picked up my keys and purse, and headed to Dealz.

Dealz is a dollar store, and they boast an entire wall of gift bags. Now, you should know that since the whole concept of gift bags arrived on the scene (which, for you younger readers, really wasn't all that long ago), I have resisted the urge to go there. On principle, you understand. They were just too darned expensive, sometimes nearly as costly as the gift I needed to wrap. But dollar stores have changed all that.

I don't mind telling you flat out that I spent upwards of $45 (OK. You got me. Exactly $45) on precisely 45 gift bags. Bags that were marked with retail prices of up to $5 each, with such exhorbitant retail prices being the precise reason I have avoided the wholesale use of gift bags until now.

What shocked me was the comments that both customers and employees of the store felt compelled to offer. It used to be considered the height of rudeness to comment on another's purchases, but these days, all bets are off. During my brief episodes in retail sales, we were trained never to say anything like the following:

"You shouldn't be giving that many presents. I stopped doing that years ago."

"What do you need all those for? You're spending too much money."

"Do you have something against wrapping paper?"

"Did you leave any bags for the other customers?"

"My goodness! How many people are you buying for?"

"I wish I lived at YOUR house."

I was relieved to be deaf in my right ear by the time I got up to the check-out lane. My disability was the only thing that prevented me from hearing the exchange the clerk had ABOUT MY PURCHASE with the customers in line behind me!

When I arrived home, I hauled my bags upstairs for another stab at gift containment. An hour later, I emerged from the room victorious and jubilant. Those $1 bags turned a back, neck, and patience-straining event into a sublime, time-saving pleasure.

Like I said, when you get on in years, you've got to make some hard choices, people! Next time I go to Dealz, though, I think I'll choose to wear an earplug in my left ear.

Posted by Katy on 12/20/04
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Warning! Holiday Pantyhose Alert! (#224)

You think I’m kidding, that I wouldn’t dare issue a pantyhose alert, probably because I have promised on more than one occasion to cease and desist from posting ever again about panties, bras, pantyhose, girdles, and etcetera. But believe me, I’m doing this for you.

Consider this a public service announcement.

Ladies, if you have purchased or intend to purchase a pair of No Nonsense Great Shapes Tights, beware! In the process of applying them, you will likely incur more aerobic benefit than you have in every Curves session of 2004. Either that, or you’ll suffer a heart attack and when the paramedics arrive, they’ll find you in, let’s just say, a compromising position.

Here’s the fine print on the package: “ALL OVER SHAPER with a vertical rib pattern for a slimming effect. Slims your tummy, hips and thighs.”

I’m no fool, at least not where undergarments are concerned. You don’t survive to reach your 51st birthday without gaining some wisdom about how the world works. Trust me when I say that when the world DOES work, it’s largely because of underwear.

I’ve known since I was a teenager and first gave up my garter belt and seamed stockings for new-fangled pantyhose that the weight charts on the back of the package are a bunch of hooey. You always, ALWAYS need to purchase at least one size bigger than the chart indicates for your size, unless you want to end up hoseless for the prom or something.

So, since I’m actually a size A, I bought my tights in a size B. For a 5’2” chick, a size B is meant to cover the legs and rear end of anyone who weighs between 135 and 175. I weigh less than 135. Trust me when I tell you that when I weighed 175, these tights wouldn’t have fit onto my ARM.

I wasn’t too surprised when I opened the package and the tights looked long and, well, slim. That’s the way they always look. I’ve never approached a new, unstretched pair of pantyhose without a huge surge of faith in the supernatural. If I can worm my way into THOSE, I think, I’ll never doubt God again.

Today was different. Today’s encounter nearly caused me to lose my religion, and just when the Christmas spirit had descended upon me in all its beauty.

Sitting on the edge of the tub, I got my left foot in just fine, thank you. I even pulled the left leg of the tights all the way up to my knee before gasping from the sudden pain of the astonishing constriction. I rested for a moment, adjusting to the agony, cheerful at least for the way it took my mind off my migraine.

A little strategizing caused me to discern that I would need to gather the right side in my hands, starting with the waist and ending with the toe, before attempting to insert my right foot. I soon found that concentrated gathering while in the throes of a vascular accident (the constriction of my left knee) is no small feat. Pun intended.

I valiently pulled my right knee up to my chest, the starting position it would unfortunately need to be in to get my right foot into the toe of the tights, since they were now gathered into a bunch adjacent to my withering left knee. I managed to get my five toes into the space alloted for them and started drawing the tights upward, hoping to achieve at least symmetrical pain with the other leg.

Just then, my beleaguered right toes began cramping, and immediately the cramp spread to my whole foot, up my leg into my calf. I was still stuck with my knee in my chest and unwilling to relinquish the little progress I’d made, but what choice did I have?

I yanked my right foot from the tights, jumped up and pounded out the cramps which, I found, was difficult to do with no circulation in my left leg.

“You haven’t heard the last of me,” I heard myself say as I hobbled back to my perch on the tub. “One of us will emerge the victor today, and it won’t be you.”

Before making another stab at the right leg of the tights, I massaged my toes for reinforcement. “Hold on for just another minute,” I reassured them. “Don’t fail me now.”

I managed to finish the job. It wasn’t pretty. In the process of inching the tights true north, I condensed many angry body parts, which much prefer to occupy more space. I witnessed with my own eyes configurations of flesh which no one should have to see, the images burning themselves upon my sensibilities.

Thirty minutes have passed, and my migraine’s back with a vengeance—a good sign, I’m thinking. My breathing and pulse are gradually returning to normal. But you know as well as I do that after passing through a trauma like this, normal can never be the same again.

Mark my words, and let this be a warning to you.

Posted by Katy on 12/18/04
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Gifts That Keep Giving (#225)

There are presents, and then there are presents. Right?

Assuming it's not the size of the package or the cost of the gift that counts the most, are there certain qualities that go into making a memorable gift?

The thing that always impresses me the most, when I receive a gift I truly cherish, is how well the giver knows me.

Maybe that's why the Father's gift of his Son means so much. He knew my heart, and what it would take to touch it.

Have you received a gift that stands out from all the others? Name one, and tell us why it meant so much to you.

One of the Christmas gifts I've cherished the most is a Kinko's-produced book my mother assembled, of all the poems my father ever wrote. Oh, my. Each of us kids received one--maybe ten years ago, or so--and we laughed and cried the rest of the day as we took turns reading his poetry aloud.

My mother hand-wrote my father's poems before having them copied and bound. At the time, I wished she'd typed them, or that they were in my father's original hand, but now I love the fact that she wrote them. It made it a project they worked on together somehow, even though he was long dead when she "published" his work.

This was a gift that cost my mother about $1 per copy, but brought all of us so much enjoyment.

Thanks, Mom...and you, too, Dad.

Posted by Katy on 12/16/04
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Connected (#226)

“Tug on anything at all and you’ll find it connected to everything else in the universe.”

John Muir

“You could have been electrocuted.”

Our lifelong friend and on-an-as-needed-basis heating/cooling professional, Neal, sat in our living room with a somber look on his face, a cup of coffee in one shivering hand, and a pencil in the frozen clutches of the other.

Of course, I, technically, could NOT have been electrocuted. If my understanding is correct, in order to be electrocuted one must do something at least marginally stupid somewhere in the vicinity of electricity. Like swim or play golf in a lightening storm. Where the odds of electrocution are concerned, I’ve noticed that electricity and water combined raise the stakes considerably.

Still, even using a common kitchen butter knife to pry a frayed toaster cord from the wall plug of an ancient motorlodge kitchenette in Branson, Missouri, in 1964 might do as much as throw you across the room onto the Only-25-Cents-For-A-Magic-Vibrating-Massage bed, not that I would know or anything.

No, not me. I am a virtual paragon of caution. In our home, it’s only Doug who could have been electrocuted.

You probably don’t know this, but my husband’s father was an electrical engineer. Not only that, but the degree program our son Scott first chose upon beginning his studies at the University of Kansas was “Engineering Physics,” whatever that is.

But Doug? Doug is the kind of man for whom a loving wife prays every time she hears his feet plodding down to the basement, even if his only ostensible reason for descending into the miry depths is the annual hauling up of the thankfully-pre-lit Christmas tree.

Why then, on such occasions, do I beseech the God of all mercy on my husband’s behalf? Because…well, he might touch something.

And also because I just don’t get home systems.

“Home systems,” I’m guessing, is a term that can be used to describe the plumbing system, the electrical system, the heating/cooling system, and many others. Including but not limited to the home entertainment system, the network system, the sprinkler system, and the filing system.

Did I mention the roofing system? Because right now, it’s the system that worries me the most.

Pursuant to a spreading and darkening spot on my kitchen ceiling, I am increasingly aware that a “roofing system” includes not only a roof but everything that might be in contact with anything else that has ever contacted a roof.

In other words, to repair the incorrectly installed flashing on the chimney—which appeared to the roofing-systems specialist to be the ONLY problem—and then to have to subsequently tear out the molded back wall of the house, replacing the insulation, wall board, and wallpaper at significant personal expense, is NOT to guarantee that all systems are go.

Not by a long shot.

The nature of a roofing system is that as soon as the ONLY thing causing the problem is fixed, and as soon as all the resultant disasters are mitigated, another even more insidious element of the conniving system will rear its ugly shingle.

“We stand behind our work with Our Exclusive 100% Satisfaction-Guaranteed Lifetime Transferable Warranty,” the roofing-system specialist will say with an extremely straight face, except for the part of his right cheek which contains the tobacco. And then he’ll spit once into your rose bush before adding, “If ANYthing goes wrong, we’ll make it right. You have our word on it.”

Well, Mr. Roofing-Systems Specialist, something has gone wrong. Very wrong. So wrong, we had to call our Heating/Cooling-Systems Specialist.

“You could have been electrocuted, really,” Neal repeated. “Your furnace can’t go on like this. It’s actually collapsing in on itself. It—and the air-conditioning system, of course—are caput.”

He went on to explain, in language that could only make sense to a Systems Analyst, that the reason it’s approximately 14 degrees fahrenheit in our home is that the furnace has somehow been barely surviving a barrage of repeated and unbelievably strong electrical surges, the likes of which have finally caused the ten-year-old major appliance to heave its final hot breath.

“And, Neal, another thing…the spot on the ceiling is back,” I mumbled. “Every day, as I stand at the sink washing the dishes, I watch it grow. It’s bigger and darker than yesterday. The blue spot of mold on the wallpaper is spreading, too…”

“Now, Katy,” Neal said, and I couldn’t help noticing he’d pulled his cell phone from its holster and his thumbs were hovering over the nine and two ones, “You know the roof and furnace are not related, don’t you? Besides, I only do heating and cooling…”

I know. And if ANYthing goes wrong, he’ll make it right.

“Oh, yeah…you’re the heating/cooling systems specialist. How much will this set us back?” I asked, right before I started whimpering.

I may not know much about home systems. But I’ve lived long enough to know that while everything may not be CLOSELY related, everything IS related.

I’ll bet you that if we replace the heating/cooling system, and then throw a few more thousand at the roofing system while vainly imagining that our systems problems are completely and forever UNRELATED, it won’t be six months before the roof springs a new and mighty leak, causing the furnace to have a surge of electricity so violent it collapses upon itself—again.

Yeah. That’s what I’ll bet.

Read the Marginal take on this quote…

Posted by Katy on 12/14/04
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Angel Eyes (#227)

Have you ever had a encounter with a complete stranger and afterwards come to the near-certain realization that you’d just been visited by an angel?

You know the kind of angel I’m talking about: one who masquerades as a ragamuffin during the Christmas season, let’s say, on a mission from God to get some selfish Scrooge to recognize his own rousing good fortune long enough to share the wealth.

Yesterday, when I had only slept four hours after a 24-hour bout of wakefulness, I had to go out in public. But the public I had to go out into was an iffy public, a borderline seedy public, so I figured it didn’t matter that I wore my almost-a-bag-lady barn coat, with two major zits plainly uncovered by concealer of any kind.

It didn’t matter that my sweater was purple and my socks were brown and my shoes were white. It didn’t matter—or at least I didn’t care—that I sported a case of bed-head that was anything but, uh, sporty.

All I had to do was run down to a crummy gas station near the interstate and get my car inspected, like Missouri law says I have to do every couple of years. It would take ten minutes, I’d fork over twelve bucks before heading home for a long winter’s nap, and I sure wouldn’t see anybody I knew.

I was right. I didn’t see a body I knew. But it wasn’t a ten minute stop, like I’d hoped. My car needed three hours worth of work to pass inspection, so I decided to wait it out.

If an angel had volunteered to take my place on the greasy folding chair in the two-seater waiting area, and just called me when the whole unsavory ordeal was over, I would have kissed her feet. But what kind of an angel would volunteer a stint in a joint like this? One of those fake-homeless angels like Roma Downey, strung out on too many over-caffeinated cappucinos?

Toward the end of my wait, a young girl came in to get her car inspected. She cast a too-trusting look in my direction, must have decided my questionable company was better than none, and sat down next to me. We talked about the weather, but only for a few seconds before we moved on, to her upbringing in Iowa and her move to Kansas City just a few months ago.

We talked about college, and how her new husband had quit after two years and joined the military.

“He left for Iraq the week before Thanksgiving,” she said. “I can’t even turn on the news, I’m so upset. I just have to go to work, and try not to think about it.”

Then she told me about her job teaching second graders at a small Christian school in an even seedier part of town. I noticed the green magic marker streak on her sweater and the specks of silver glitter on her shoe.

The subject came back around to her soldier-husband.

“Has he called home since he’s been there?” I asked.

“No. He called from Kuwait to say he was on his way to Iraq, but I haven’t heard anything since he’s been there. I don’t even know where in Iraq he is. Besides, it’s so expensive to call…”

Do you ever look for angels in day-to-day life? I don’t very often, I have to admit, but the Bible gives every indication I may have been in the presence of them—and even seen them without realizing their identity—on any number of occasions.

Somehow, though, this girl—with the clear-nail-polish-stopped runs in her black stockings and her fresh-scrubbed face—looked just like an angel to me.

They called her name after only ten minutes, and I watched as she carefully drew twelve dollars from her purse and laid them individually on the counter, as if the drawn-out process would somehow make them last longer. She thanked the attendant and turned to leave.

She beamed a radiant smile in my direction.

“Merry Christmas,” she said, reaching for my hand.

Are pretty young angels really surprised when mere mortals press a wad of cash into their open palms?

“Buy your husband a calling card,” I said. “Tell him it’s from a weird chick you met at the gas station. That’ll keep him guessing.”

She took the money and embraced me, promising to send him the card. I’m sure he’ll call home soon. Who wouldn’t call if he knew an angel waited on the other end?

She left the station and as she walked toward her car, she turned around and flashed me another big grin. But this time, there was something like a flicker of recognition in her eyes.

Yesterday, I looked—and felt—like a human being in desperate need of her own personal angel.

Today, there’s a lonely girl in Kansas City who thinks a bag lady named Katy just might have been one.

Posted by Katy on 12/11/04
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Story Time (#228)

“Most people want to wake up in the morning with a general at the foot of their bed saying ‘Go do this.’ The problem is there’s somebody at the foot of their bed saying, ‘Once upon a time. . .’”

N.T. Wright

“Mama, I want addle dooce!”

I bolted upright in bed—even if it was pitch black outside and the clock said 5 a.m.—every time a little general named Kevin stood at the footboard bellowing his rise-and-shine command. The way I saw it, if a kid can’t pronounce “juice,” you sure don’t let him pour it.

For years on end, my days—like those of parents everywhere—started like this. I still can’t even say for positive whether I enlisted in the mommy service or got drafted for active duty—only that once it started, the kids called the shots.

After fifteen-hour days of diapers and drama, bananas and baths, tantrums and tears, I told bedtime stories to an army of little generals—three of them, to be exact. Unfortunately, by the time the sun went down on my toddlers, I didn’t have an ounce of creativity left in me.

I wasn’t like the inimitable Peter Falk in The Princess Bride, who regaled his ailing grandson with illustrious personal interpretations of his nocturnal storybook-of-choice. I may have begun well with a mysterious-sounding “Once Upon a Time,” and may have occasionally ended with an overly-enthusiastic “And They Lived Happily Ever After,” but in between?

In between, I struggled to focus my sleepy eyes on the words, to form my tired lips around the syllables, to keep from yawning my way through entire one-sentence picture pages.

Sometimes, I cheated.

I’d skip a phrase that seemed unimportant to the sketchy plotline, maybe a description of the king’s fur-trimmed robe or a few of his horse’s longwinded snorts. The little generals, upon whose commands my entire life revolved, caught me every time.

“That’s not the way it goes, Mom,” Scott would say. The kid couldn’t read, but he sure could memorize. “Start the page over.”

“Mommy, do the voices!” Carrie insisted. And so from somewhere deep inside my exhausted self, I brought forth the theatrical voices of “Burp” and Ernie and Kermit the Frog once more.

When little generals move on to their next command post in life—as they always do—it’s hard to take orders from only yourself. The transition from having your days filled with demands to having more time to “once upon” is startling and stark.

“What time is it?” I groan, as the alarm raises its scratchy morning voice. If I roll toward the windows, I’m blinded by the dawn’s light just long enough to imagine a little general standing at the footboard.

“You don’t have to get up yet,” Doug says. “Rest a minute.”

I always panic a little then, because the generals are grown and gone. The life of automatically responding to demands and commands has softened around the edges, and in the center, too.

And once upon a time—so familiar in the seconds before sleep—is a scary way to start the day. I’m nearly paralyzed with the fullness of its possibilities, almost breathless with its fresh potential. It’s a comfort to me, then, that the other, more-familiar words follow on once-upon-a-time’s heels: “Go do this.”

So I sigh and stretch, pour a cup of coffee, and begin again, once upon a time, to go write the rest of my story.

Read the Marginal take on this quote…

Posted by Katy on 12/05/04
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Father and Son (#229)

"There will be other babies," my father said, and of course, he was right.

But I didn't want to hear it, not when I was crying into the phone about just losing our first son, a baby who had lived inside of me for fourteen weeks before falling from my body into my own hand.

"But I want this baby..." I wailed.

My poor father didn't know what else to say. Thank God, though, he knew what to sing. Christmas came around, and I stood beside him in the Catholic church I'd grown up in, one hymnal between us, with him never needing to look down at the words for reassurance.

"Glo-o-o-o-o-o, o-o-o-o-o, o-o-o-o-o-ria in excelsis Deo!"

He sang a haunting descant, born of more suffering than I could have understood, at least at my delicate age. Woven gracefully throughout the notes of his chant were the unspoken echoes of his fatherless childhood, the terrors of war, and yes, the heartbreaking loss of his own firstborn son.

All of it tenderly mingled with faith in a mysterious Savior.

When the stirring rendition came to an end, he touched my hand, by accident I thought back then, but now I'm not so sure. I looked over at him and smiled, but he looked straight ahead, unblinking. Still, I didn't miss the tears in his eyes.

There were other babies, of course. And one more baby lost, too. And many, many tears.

Two days after my father died, I found out I was pregnant with the boy I will forever call my baby. At the time, I remember thanking God for the gift He had given to console me over the loss of my father.

Next month, the gift will turn twenty years old.

This morning at church he stood beside me, a grown man. Together we lifted our voices to our heavenly Father and I--in some strange way--to my earthly father, as well. My son's voice rose strong and melodic, and this time I provided the haunting descant.

"Glo-o-o-o-o-o, o-o-o-o-o, o-o-o-o-o-ria in excelsis Deo..."

When the song ended, I touched his hand, by accident he must have thought. When he turned to me, I smiled, but my eyes stared straight ahead, vision blurred with the tears of generations.

"There will be other babies," my father said.

Ah, yes. My baby.