For a child’s special day in a school year, a parent brought a treat for everyone. A vacation birthday, like mine, meant I missed out. I completed 88 years yesterday and while nobody is alive who remembers when I was a baby, 35 people from my dentist to my three children acknowledged that June 17 is special to me. I could tell story after story about my life or even give details of yesterday. Yet because it was year 88, I am going to offer a poem that I wrote in 2009 with a class of children to help them consider what defined them. Maybe you will think what you are most like as a person in whatever year you are.

I am an 8: stable yet moving around in smooth circles. Up, over, around . Down, under, up. Resting at the point of crossing.

Even when I lose my position and flip, I am a driving belt keeping gears turning or maybe I’m glasses; looking, seeking a vision, pursuing understanding.

At times I sink to the bottom, weighed down with garbage: worries or commitments

Other times I go to the top: a soaring balloon about to escape entirely unless someone holds my string.

But mostly I am an 8: stable yet in motion, rising at the point of crossing.

So teach us to number our days, That we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

Psalm 90:12

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New York exemplifies the ultimate destination for city traveling, yet for me a tinge of apprehension comes with the excitement of exploration. In my lifetime, I’ve had four purposeful visits to the Big Apple. Each taught me something about myself and what a location requires. Growing up most of leaving home trips were by car to relatives. College age I managed one summer job in Santa Fe, a real adventure, and then camp out field trips with students requiring the appearance of oozing with fun. When I was 35, David had a meeting in New York. Three days away for me. Two memories. Early in the morning, he told me where to meet him at 12:30 and left. I entered the elevator with two men. As the door closed, one of them said, “Do you want a floor.” I answered, “First please. I’m visiting and have three small children and I never get to push the button.” I figured out how the subway worked and took myself to what was important to me, the Public Library. Somehow, I needed to see the lions and wander through what rows of books I could fit in. Not much else in time allotted, yet a thirst for more lingered. I could make survival happen.

Trip two was nineteen years later before school started again after Christmas. I had a friend whose husband was assigned to a lab in the area. We made a train trip to the city and came and went from cavernous Penn Station. Then one day we drove to Long Island, slipped through a barrier, and walked in solitude on a deserted beach between the Atlantic Ocean and elegant sprawling mansions. This was an absorbing atmospheric moment. Trip three came about because all spring WSJ had articles on a Homer Winslow exhibit at the MFA. To see The Gulf Stream in all its glory with the shark circling the boat was all the excuse needed. Throw in supper with friends from a time my son taught in Japan and a dream became reality. Our hotel looked out on the rectangle of Central Park, giving the geographical lobes of my brain a permanent solidity of space.

At age 88, will trip four be a swan song? Don’t bet against me. Some in our church choir were going to be part of presenting a new piece in Carnegie Hall. Their going was my underlying draw. Same son as an earlier time joined in to be travel arranger, planner of days, and wheelchair pusher as necessary. We walked the High Line identifying plants by an App on my phone, had a reunion supper with previously mentioned friends, nodded sagely if not completely understanding the modern art of MOMA, and were impressed and blessed by the music These Ancient Words. Over a period of 53 years, I learned I would be cared for even in riding an elevator, that nature provides solace even in the midst of tall buildings, that creativity appear and endures even as time passes, and that the resounding last ancient word is what age and travel may provide: WISDOM.

Is not wisdom found among the aged? Does not long life bring understanding?

Job 12:12

Not about the Boy Scouts. One doesn’t want to get caught unprepared for a weather change. When I was a child we checked for dark clouds toward Baton Rouge with the wind picking up or listened to Nash Roberts on the 6:00 news for what was happening south of the lake. In 79 AD, the inhabitants of Pompeii saw flashes of fire, heard rumbles, and felt tremors under their feet until Vesuvius blew and changed lives and a place forever with only Pliny who watched from a boat in the harbor to give a written report.

Sometimes knowing in advance doesn’t solve all the possibilities of problems. Houston has had more rain than usual in the last two weeks. One storm was unique, a repeat from 1997 being the last of its specific type. The word went out for several days under Extreme Weather Warnings. As the evening of arrival approached, I put loose pots in the garage and unplugged the computer, and read while daylight lasted. Then rain lashed, wind blew, and the power failed and stayed off for 18 hours for me. However, this storm had a name. A derecho, which is a thunderstorm that lasts over several hours and extends a forward hop, skip, and jump motion for as much as 400 miles, and sustains winds up to 100 mph. From Austin to Florida, some areas had trees down, roofs removed, and windows broken.

An approaching event isn’t very dramatic if one is not on hand to offer the worrying that waiting requires. I was having a joyful carefree trip in New York satisfied I had prepared for eventualities by again unplugging my computer when I got a 10:30 p.m. text from a neighbor. A short rain storm blew though. Yet the wind blew down a tree which leveled a fence and jiggled loose the pole that allowed electricity to travel to 96 families. Across the street had no problems. I was without power for 44 hours.

To wrap this up, the paper keeps saying that this will be the story of our Texas summer. My preparation will continue to be to unplug the computer. After dumping contents of the freezer twice, only keeping two days ahead of food supples sounds like a good idea. Some of you who read may still be trying to repair from the first storm and working on the anxiety that arises with the possibility of a repeat performance. As life has been and will continue to be, storms will come. My middle two paragraphs are my most recent stories. For each of us every storm is our story of preparation, enduring, survival, gratitude in small places, and finding a new start over waiting for us.

God is our refuge and strength, an ever present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the sea, though its waters roar and foam, and the mountains quake with their surging.

Psalm 46: 1 – 3

This is just to say I am alive and doing well, if not knowing that bothered you. I was away from my computer and in New York. I signed on the hotel connection to internet and somewhere all .com’s got scattered and needed new passwords and offered no connections, only the suggestion to create new accounts. I quit trying and hunkered down under a sheltering rock until I got home (a story for another day) and plugged in and booted up old master desktop. So please forgive the lapse in faithfulness and hope for a word from the nerd again next week.

Sufficient to the day are the evils thereof.

Matthew 6:34

I’ve known most of my life I love teaching. A happening today helped me define why. Today I went to the 10th year of graduating 8th graders from what began in fall of 2011 as Nehemiah Middle School, my second retirement job. A sequence of various employments had begun in Caddo Parish, Louisiana. I have notes in a file folder from various experienced teachers that were instructions and ideas for the green girl on the team. We needed to be in a certain place at the end of the year. yet we all didn’t follow the same path. I ventured from there to Elliot Elementary near the Ship Channel in Houston. Houston still had split years and from September to January I taught the last half of 5th grade and had a group in late January to start anew at the beginning. In five years at River Oaks Baptist I reached content goals with Lords and Ladies Day (required costumes), Little House on the Prairie Day (cook venison stew), and Patriot Day (a picnic with old timey games). I concluded gainful employment at Kinkaid for ten years. Five of us teachers made a team to each shepherd five groups of seventeen per period. We met formally and in the hall to discuss ideas and problems, blending agreements and disagreements to bring life to content.

Leaving Kinkaid,I had reached the point where students that I had taught were adults in the world. At times I would hear a cry, “Mrs. Smith? I’m Tom (or whomever)” The next sentence was nearly always, “Do you remember when….?” The memory was some activity that taught an educational goal, but sideways. Presbyterian School filled my first retirement gap for five years.

Then in the summer of 2011, I went to work with a former principal to develop a Middle School Grades 6 – 8 to round out a preschool that existed for neighborhood poverty level families. Five of us spent the summer scrounging for ideas and teaching materials and even lockers. I planned an English curriculum and arranged for field trips. By our efforts some children developed scholastic skills, some grew in a safe social situation, some came for help about family problems that I had no idea existed.

Ten years later after going through growing pains and graduating a first 8th grade, a public charter school has taken over our small efforts. Nine students have been guided to learn content and character traits before graduation this year. They all had plans for a high school next year and even a maybe thought for college. I met again with co-workers who were part of the collegiality dreaming time – a number one reason that validates my teaching, and then reason number 2. A 24 year old brought her little girl to me and said, “Mrs. Smith, do you remember when…”

Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.

Proverbs 22:6

My husband’s granddad had two objects that delighted three small boys. One was a round and round bookcase that swiveled, revealing books on various sides. The other was a prize handled only with special permission. It was a large rectangle with a handle known as a bigger and bigger, or you would say a magnifying glass. The round and round lived out its life in our house on Rice and the magnifier has a home in a pigeon hole of my roll-top desk.

One of my more irritating health problems is weakening eyesight. The directions for medicine prescribed is written in minuscule print. At various times I have added magnifiers to help with a specific need. A small one from Berings lives in my purse. Push a button and it pops out and lights up to help check dosage on a bottle. Then the round one on a stand, also lighted, was bought when I had a cross-stitch project, and it is also used to help change ear pieces on hearing aids. Middle son gave me one on a head band to delineate the eye of the sewing machine needle and a wonderful round squatty one when a side study was identifying islands on an ocean map. This past week I ordered #6, surely the ultimate. It is the size of a piece of paper, has three choices of light, can be held by hand over the whole page of a book or has its own stand with room to slide the morning paper underneath. The comics are no longer one panel at a time.

All of the above represent the primary definition of the word – to magnify, increase in size or reaction. The triumphant finale to 1812 Overture magnifies your response to victory. To see a child take that first step magnifies the commitment of parenthood. Yet, the word can lessen in strength by the waning, “Don’t over magnify!” Choose the importance of a life moment in the vastness of years. Listen to a careless phrase carefully. The speaker may not have intended it to inflict hurt or destroy friendship. Feel shaky about the choice? You’re always safe if you give credit where credit is due.

 O magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together.

Psalm 34:3

One of my unfulfilled desires is to have a bee hive in the back yard. Of course, I have had conversations, and read how-to articles, and checked out boxes from the roof of the Contemporary Craft Museum a mile away to off road hives out from Steamboat Springs protected from bears by fences. I’ve bent over lilies to watch the little creature sip nectar and gather pollen on their legs before zig-zagging off to their unknown gathering place. The nearest I’ve come to mass excitement was a swarm coming in to make a large noisy gathering on an oak tree limb just at carpool time. While we teachers took children one at a time to each car, others in charge called to see what to do next.

No wonder my attention was caught by a fill in article a week ago last Tuesday. Fans of the Arizona Diamondbacks were gathered at 6:40, poised for the start of a game. A dark balloon moved over the field and settle en masse at the top of the netting behind home plate, a prime spot to be disturbed by action below. Scientifically, the same pollen rich air that evokes allergies in humans causes well-fed bees to seek a place to peacefully let their lunch settle. The sound system announced ,”Please ‘bee’ patient” and the call went out to a corporate partner for pest control. A scissor lift was provided for the outfitted beekeeper to climb. His job was to spray, vacuum, remove the swarm and safely relocate them.. Two hours later the game began. The original starting pitcher was scratched and the beekeeper threw the opening pitch to “bee-gin again” Oh, yes, the Diamondbacks did win in a 10th inning walk-off home run.

We know that besides an exciting ball game, bees help give us next spring’s wild flowers and are a necessary part of having California almonds. Less known are the variety of gourmet honeys that vary in taste from the source of the pollen. The most common is clover honey. One of the more exotic is eucalyptus. Any variety provides nutritional benefits and helps lessen stress. Bees aren’t touted Biblically, yet the journey from any Egypt is to a “land of milk and honey.” You can’t get there without bees on the way.

 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey.

Exodus 3:8

I expected a sequence: March winds, April showers, now May flowers. March was rather calm. I do have a lovely front yard in bursts of yellow, purple, and lots of white daisies. However, April ended with tree branches moving from gently to tornadoes in Oklahoma. Wind stories began surfacing with a text last Saturday from a biker doing a two day money-raising ride who mentioned his first day would have 13 mph winds on his left moving to his riding into them at the end of the day. I mentally increased the muscles on his calves and walked to the back yard to check my whirligig.

Wind is wind mostly if affecting something you are looking at like bending branches or trash moving down the center of the street. I had seen tall sculptures with bent cups in the botanical garden at Steamboat Springs. They seemed to turn on themselves like a not-quite-believable Escher drawing. In Santa Fe, I discovered a variety of options and treated myself to one for my yard. Amazing! Even if my cheeks felt nothing, the cups caught a slight moment of air and created motion. Strong winds gave a whirling delight. I did take Whirly out of the ground and put it in the garage for a hurricane.

One wind property I discovered by accident. A friend and I drove her four-wheeler as far as we could in Canyonlands. Balancing ourselves against the wind, we walked across the rocky access to look down on the confluence of the Green and Colorado River. I felt the wind on me; I heard nothing. Wind whistles as it moves around impediments. The noise comes not from revving the engine, but from having to put on the brakes or swing around a curve.

Quips about the wind are almost endless. Pick one for your day. Tossed by the wind. The smell of a hot supper waiting was carried on the wind. Throw caution to the wind and just do it. Survive by bending with the wind. My favorite has identified me at various times and also gives me options. The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sail.

It’s a two instead of one day. Yes, the John verse is true and certainly appropriate. I just couldn’t seem to not remind you to read 1 Kings 19: 11-14 if you wish. The “great and powerful wind” is impressive. What counts at the end is “the still small voice.’

The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

John 3:8

I know many children’s songs that fit me to a T. One of my favorites is “Look all the world over and what do you see? There’s no one like me!” Either by genetics or environmental shaping, I could feel an affirming glow with the headline: Giving 85% of Yourself Gets a Ringing Endorsement. If you are one of the 15% who has to align silverware as you pass the supper table, that is perfectly acceptable. Just don’t expect me to notice.

So, for a coming on 88 year old with fading eyesight and arthritic hands and a skill marginally kept up to par, I have just finished a project overflowing with mostly love. The recipients don’t care about a few mistakes and their parents are nostalgic about past memories, so all is well.

About 60 years ago, one of the gifts to our first son was a handmade floor blanket with a simple cross stitch decoration and terry cloth toweling as the quilt backing. Using the skill and ingenuity I had in sewing, over the years I created almost 100 of such blankets for great- nieces and nephews and offsprings of co-teachers. Those children on the family tree grew up and I became involved in another phase of my life. The greats produced a great-great generation, and I began to get pictures and notes saying, “Mother saved the blanket you made for me and now my child has it. “

This spring, I girded my loins as the saying goes and flexed my fingers and took myself up to my sewing machine in an apartment over the garage and sewed up love for some great-greats on the list. Not a blanket for each child; however, at least one new for most families. That third boy deserved something that wasn’t hand me down. The patterns and the process were simplified, and I had to wear a magnifying headband to hit 85% of the edges. A few mistakes were ripped out and a few just sewed over. Note: a cognitive science expert from the University of Arizona says, “If you never make any errors you can’t learn from the mistakes.”

By the end of 2024, the Smith enumeration which began with one marriage in 1925, will reach 109. One never loses their number. I will forever be 14. True to 85% being good enough, not all have a sewing machine project. I had to make contact with a book or an ice cream coupon to celebrate the end of a school year. Yet, I am part of the story that says, “This is my family and a lot of people love me.” One good aunt counts even if only 85%. My inspirational article ends: “You have to have enough wisdom to know when to stop.”

A good person leaves an inheritance for their children’s children,

Probers 13:22

On one hand hold the thought that being alone in a car is a unmeasurable blessing. One is in charge of where, when, and in what order. On the other hand is the drawn forth chuckle at how many clowns can be fitted in one car, the uncountable amount tumbling out in amazing hilarity. Land in the middle and remember conversations that have happened only because togetherness was enforced for a time.

My earliest memory is traveling to school with my daddy. He taught at the college and my grades were in a building a short walk from his office. An old stick shift Chevrolet could seat two people up front, no age required seatbelts. He kept his eye on the road and made statements I needed to pay attention to for the day: when he would pick me up after school, did I have all my work done, do what the teacher asked, don’t get in trouble at recess. The last comment was always, “See ya later.”

Driving to San Antonio for various visits after a marriage moved in an arc. David and I had getting used to each other conversations that circled around before settling in an agreeable place. Adding each child created a new adjustment from tending to needs of a baby to settling squabbles in the back seat to bringing out songs and games for entertainment on the way. Then there were the years which provided information invaluable to parents known as car pool time. Add three or four teenagers to a car and the driver becomes invisible. The stress of these years was learning to file away the revelations until the best moment to add to a discussion.

Now I drive alone in a distance from home limit. For longer distances, I depend on others to be a driver and their accepting me as a passenger. Yet within these trips, friendships are nourished. We catch up on how changes in each of our families have played out. We find out that strengths one of us called on to meet some challenge were also used by the other. We can come back to those emotional and spiritual foundations that built our friendship in a long ago beginning.

The Bible’s admonitions were before Henry Ford, and yet conversations have had directions since Eden. So keep these in mind for various times. Agree on a time to be together. Build one another up. Be thankful. Encourage each other. Conversation will flow from where you are and what you are sharing together.

 And they talked together of all these things which had happened. And it came to pass, that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them.

Luke 25:14 – 15