Of those of you reading this life moment of mine, you will either have already experienced it or most probably will in the future. A site called Sage Advice (the name oozes validity) says that by age 80 ninety percent of people have cataracts. That doesn’t mean they have had surgery, but blurry vision is part of their viewing the world. I set the month of July aside to prepare, have, and recover from the two corrective surgeries to continue my dailiness with clarity if not wisdom. As my plan became known, various and sundry comments of “It’s a piece of cake,” were offered. Only one, “Mine didn’t work,” was mumbled in the background by an old grouch and I ignored it.

Skip to the stress of recovery which has four more days. It’s something I really didn’t consider as a problem. After reading 11 pages of preparation and healing steps I was prepared for oceans of eyedrops, some itching, slow clearing of blurry letters, but the kicker was one sneaky sentence. “Do not bend from the waist.” which leads to don’t lean over to spit in the sink after brushing teeth to picking up the variety of objects that end up on the floor. Hence the title of this week. I have become an expert at squatting while looking straight ahead. (Please stop snickering!) I do have a grabber cane which has been a mess saver at times and some objects just lie and wait for a visitor to appear.

Hopefully, I did write tongue in cheek because I am thankful for a capable doctor and a successful procedure. My face looks different in a mirror without glasses and my hands haven’t broken the habit of reaching out to put on lenses as a final step. Yet, each of us has seen a bush trimmed or a tree cut down at some time. The leafy pile or the giant limbs are hauled off and the area is covered with sawdust which must be cleaned up. On August 5, I may not only read a page in my current book without a magnifier. I may consider trying to bend over and touch my toes while being grateful for what led me to that date.

Oh. my soul, bless God! From head to toe I’ll bless his holy name. He heals all your diseases – every one!

Psalm 103:1, 3b

Today is July 24 if I managed tech correctly. It is past the summer solstice and hours of light are imperceptible shorter, and school is reopening and a fall routine will resume. The time has come for someone to ask the dreaded question. “What did you do this summer?” Now is the confess up time after the May/June question, “What are your plans for the summer?” Does anyone ever answer with a clear conscience, “Maybe visit relatives, sit by the pool, eat watermelon, see what turns up.”

No. Plans are laid out. Boys playing Little League are committed as long as winning occurs. The girl has an art group meeting at the community center. Dad already has a family trip mapped out to drive to three national parks. Neighbors are organizing the annual 4th of July bar-b-que. No one seems to have heard of lazy summer days and Saturday has no special significance when it is just one more day and not an off day.

Just having time off counts. One summer I read Gone with the Wind sprawled on a sleeping porch bed cooled by an oscillating fan. As the mother in charge, I and three children rode bikes after afternoon rests down to the Shamrock swimming pool. A summer membership was cheaper than building and maintaining our own. Another friend and I did half day local field trips: Mrs. Baird’s Bakery and the Coke Company, treats provided. The most exciting happening was riding out hurricanes – always the unknown.

There is no correct answer. A mixture is really nice We all like a treat to look forward to and a quiet time to remember what that meant for the moment. Sometimes plans change: dramatically or just rethought. Ecclesiastes 3 covers both sides of several options, yet I want to land on another verse. I’m glad we get to plan while also welcoming that God can be in charge of the summer. May the answer to your question be, “It all worked out just right!”

Many are the plans in a person’s heart,
    but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.

Proverbs 19:21

No matter what your age or how technically smart you are, you get caught away from your work center and someone on the phone says, “Let me give you your order number. Write this down.” You scramble in your purse or stretch across a table to find a writing implement and, hopefully, you find a piece of paper to write on instead of using your hand. I am reading a book The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper. This intriguing story of the unfolding of the development of personal notebooks and their various uses travels from the 1200’s until today’s final step of adding a reminder on your phone. However, the two words that caught my attention were thinking and paper. When vellum was the recipient of ideas, the option of ordinary people keeping up with new information or ideas was not a possibility. The creation of paper and then the printing press led also to more people mastering reading and writing.

Even if you are an ultra-conservative environmentalist, save every tree person, paper is part of your life. Begin at the top and work down. You create on a computer and print out. Business letterheads and monogramed personal stationary make correspondence official or elegant. It’s nice to have a small spiral to write down info for maybe the stranger who asks the name of a special street. How would you identify sorted stacks without the ability to label with sticky notes?

Even if we don’t write it down, a message can be given and stick in our brain- or not. If the comment, “Don’t eat of this tree!” had been more than oral, would history have been changed? When we memorize names of states or ways to behave or favorite poems, we write those messages “on our hearts.” Paul made three journeys and wrote letters to be sure the message he brought was noted. Those epistles were only one copy passed around and read until a printing press and organizing a canon. To know what would really last, Paul counted on what was in the hearts of his listeners and how that would change their lives. Taking the message down correctly has been commanded from the beginning. What’s written on your heart?

 Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds

Deuteronomy 11:18

I keep a jotting of blog maybes: word studies, neighborhood noticings, touches of the Spirit, and pure quirkiness. I even had a plan for this one, yet the morning of July 5 called me up short. When the world is paying attention, so do you. For Texans especially, that geographic core known as the Hill Country is special. From four corners, native residents come to bask in nature instead of concrete cities and find uniqueness in small towns instead of places of multiple zip codes. Our family has a joint ranch in the area with horses. A friend and I gathered our six children for a long week-end in Ingram for several years. The boys even did the calf-scramble at the local wire fence rodeo. At the right years of her life, we sent our daughter to a summer camp, and as Boy Scouts two Smiths paddled canoes on the Guadalupe River.

Are we allotted only a certain number of prayers? If so, I may have drained the bank. You’ve read specifics and seen the details of unforeseen amounts of rain upstream and what havoc that wrecks in forty-five minutes. One prayer for families who waved good- by through a bus window and days later have waited hopefully for a helicopter to bring that face back in sight. Prayer two is for immense shade trees set back from a river upended and sprawled across the muddy stream. Prayer three is for houses and cars and chunks of road swept up and piled in a tangled mess that makes it even more difficult for assistance to arrive. A picture of creation in chaos.

Thank you who have let me do my private head shaking, tight breathing on a Sunday afternoon as if you are not going to still carry your own noted pain on Thursday. Some of you have names and hand holding connections to those who faced the worse. There have been, and continue to be, helpers. As Mr. Rogers says, “Look for the helpers. There are always helpers.” I don’t know what bottom looks like. I just count on this.

The eternal God is your refuge,
    and underneath are the everlasting arms.

Deuteronomy33:27

Yes, newscasters’ dialects sound as if they all grew up on the same street. Yet, tweaks do remain. My Texas niece, now a grandmother in Oregon, told me the other day that her granddaughters use “you all” and she is working on “I’m fixin’ to” being a part of their vocabulary. My mother had a soft Miss-sippi drawl and would “por tha wha-ter.” I thought I sounded usual in our group until a son’s friend asked, “Now what country is your mother from?”

In the fall of 2000, a girl from Alabama joined my 8th grade class. She had long dark hair, thick eyelashes, and a soft voice that spread like warm honey. When she responded in class, boys followed her every word never realizing exactly what she was saying. These two comments are copied as exact quotes from my journal of the time. To expand plant knowledge beyond cacti, she volunteered information on kudzu.”It’s just aww-ful. Why, it grows ev-rywhere an’ it has snakes! If ya git in it, ya have lotta trouble gettin” out.” A book several days later told of being whipped with a peach limb. Someone questioned why that mattered. “Gracious! Peach trees have ends that snap and have some rough places and they hurt! That’s one whuppin’ you shure don’t want ta have.” Boston was definitely not her city of origin.

I’m not sure what accent Lydia of Thyatira had. She must have had a voice and personality that drew others to her. When Paul found her on a sabbath search to arrive at a place of worship, she had without any props attracted a group to meet and listen to her teach. She had that sense of hospitality that noticed the needs of others and reached out to offer a welcome to strangers. All that was missing for her to be a southern lady was to offer fried chicken for lunch after church.

Pleasant words are like a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.

Proverbs 16:24

You hafta know what day, month, and year it is for various reasons, yet getting to this point has been tangled and not settled yet. Early plant tribes watched the sun and felt the air to know when to plant and harvest as a definition of time. Egyptians, maybe, had a twelve month calendar of 30 days with 5 extra thrown in to round it out. This was concurrent with those who chose to use a lunar calendar which flowed to a requirement of 28 days. The Romans had a calendar until the Julian calendar corrected some flaws. Now those ubiquitous computers have calendar options to note your days and that brings me to my current problem.

Though there is a difference of opinion, I like my year to start in January. I understand school in September, yet have no idea why a day planner has to begin in a July I have already lived through to December of 2024 and am almost in the middle of another year. 2025 needs to include only months with that designation. I am now finishing the month of June at the end of one of those hybrid models and at the front am changing the dates of days for July to match this year instead of last. That is mainly so when my doctor’s office texts that I have an appointment next Tuesday at 10:30, I won’t worry that I am a year late. I am already on the search for a 2026 book running from January 1 at the beginning to December 31 right before the back cover.

God in His wisdom gave us only seven days to count on. Each one can have its designation according to our wishes. We can wash clothes on Monday as the children’s song declares or we can go to a yoga class or fly to New York for five days. A week later we can repeat or move ahead and still feel rooted in the idea of a week. So today I have a list (I always have a list). Completion will give me joy and satisfaction. What is required of this day fits in the slot of this year allotted to it and I already know what to say

³¹ And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. Genesis 1;31

Birthdays are a little tricky. To get to #1, you have to complete that first year. So even though last Tuesday was my magnificent number of 89, it truly denoted 90 years of steps down the road. In Psalm 90:10, mention is of 70 or maybe 80 years and mostly labor and sorrow. If this writing is taking stock of decades, the first thing I need to do is correct that statement. Get ready for personal. That’s the only way life is lived. Happening 1, life unfolded early with the death of my birth mother. That lead to an adoption which resulted in a double group of people who loved me and showed me that adversity was that only if you named it so, otherwise just manage. Happening 2, I had a cancer at 55 just as I thought I was starting a prestigious teaching job I really had longed for. However, that school provided the insurance for surgery and care and opened that retirement fund that none of my previous schools had provided. Happening 3, we all have an end point and my husband’s was Alzheimers. Through his final years, he was still connected to us, and we were able to work with him through some needs to close a family business.

So, woven in between I’ve had adventures, none of which required that I be a competitive athlete. I have always liked things that grow: flowers, yeast bread, piecing material to make a pattern, children in various situations, friends, and of course, family. Since I am a survivor, I get for this time to be the matriarch of the family David asked me to join. I had a 70 year birthday lunch with the nephew who stood as a seven year old at our wedding. I am responsible and dependable. Never in your wildest dreams am I a perfectionist. Too many options for mistakes lurk unsuspectingly in the corner. You can list my faults that sandpaper you.

To wrap up, how can I not say, I am a child of God, whatever work it takes. I can name the places I have chosen to not forsake assembling myself together with others. I have set another place at the table to welcome and make a place for friends and strangers. I have forgone a bauble to give to a need in a cheerful way. I have made sandwiches in a foreign country so others could tend to medical and social needs of those who spoke in a language I didn’t know. I personalize verses like Psalm 90:12: ” So teach me to number my days that I may apply my heart to wisdom.” even as I see the horizon moving closer, knowing God’s word is always true.

Even when you’re old, I’ll take care of you. Even when your hair turns gray, I’ll support you. I made you and will continue to care for you.

Isaiah 46

Though it is undocumented, If someone tells me to make a note of a certain fact, I may be the last person on earth who pulls out a day book and a writing implement (pen or pencil) instead of a phone. At almost 89, I don’t mind not being up to date. I’m surprised there is still a website for pencils, though the designations are china marking, laundry markers and colored carpenter pencils. Children can still get special pencils at a party, but they are usually left behind after they roll off on the floor. The cover it all Amazon does have boxes of yellow #2 Ticonderoga which were my memory jogger.

In a day journal from 2000 was a reminiscence wondering even then how many families still had a pencil sharpener. My daddy could pull open the right hand drawer of the desk, choose a pencil, and if the point wasn’t to his satisfaction, walk to the back porch where the sharpener, turn it yourself, was attached to the wall. Caught in public with a broken point, he could open his pen knife and sharpen on the spot. Sometimes the pencils lasted long enough for the eraser to harden and smear instead of removing the marks.

Pencils arrived on the American scene thanks to the family of Henry David Thoreau who in 1834 developed a mixture of plumbago and sawdust to compete with the mark making addition already developed in England. The initial sales in New York paid his Harvard tuition and supported a school he ran which taught Louisia May Alcott. Eventually the mixture was used for electrotyping and its sale underwrote the publishing of Walden which was not a success. He died of tuberculosis from breathing the dust of what was the pre-graphite mixture.

To wrap up, Paper Mate finally made a use-and -toss mechanical pencil. Children around school knew that brand belonged to me and would religiously return them from a left behind location. I still have half a box available and husband David would keep as many as four in his pocket to note unidentified phone numbers and to hand out to persons caught without something to write with. You’ve probably surmised this offering is not Biblically based; however, yesterday a technical relative had to spend an hour so I could send a text message to an Android phone instead of always having to call. My mind and mouth may know the words, and a pencil at hand to write them down assures their life.  Read what you wrote with a pencil because your phone needed charging.

My tongue is the pen of a skillful writer.

Psalm 45:1

It’s amazing what a little research will do for ignorance. I had an outline beginning with a word I knew though seldom used and tying it to a building at Rice and travels for the summer. Poof! All that was changed by Merriman-Webster. Originally sallyports were gates giving controlled entry to a jail to prevent escape by the prisoners. Then it evolved to a place where boats could be docked and unloaded which is still the meaning in Great Britain. The next step was to assure non-entry to a building that stored ammo yet had gates that could be flung open to allow troops to flow out for battle.

From those thoughts to 1912 and the first building on Rice Campus’s 300 acres was, and is to this day, a Sallyport. In the beginning it was a mixture of dorm rooms and classrooms as well as an entrance to the new university. Now it is steeped in tradition. When new students arrive, they are greeted with a handshake by the president and may not leave the campus through that gate again until they have a diploma in hand. Prepared for their chosen profession, they are to go forth and do good.

Even with summer heat this is the season for sallying forth. Most families find a place with water from an on site pool to a club to Galveston or farther afield. It’s a time for several familial groups to sally to one place for a reunion and catch up time. It may even be the time when new learning or skill is applied to a study camp or even a mission trip. Think what has prepared you to fling open the gates in the next month. After organizing his disciples, Jesus set you a precedent.

Calling the Twelve to him, he began to send them out two by two.

Mark 6:7

Life is lived in forward motion. Only memories can give us back our past, and they can cover the gamut of human emotions. Consider last Monday, a national holiday declared in 1868 to remember those who died in the Civil War and has expanded to honor all who have died in any conflict since then. Wreathes are laid on graves, patriotic speeches are made, and the poignant notes of taps drift across a silent crowd. For many, the memory of this day is recalling a very personal loss. For others, and I’m one, it is a series of various gatherings in varied places of friends and family to eat and share plans for the summer. Once again, school’s out!

We try to make notes or put letters in a folder, or start a diary-like journal to reconnect one time to another. I just read in a July, 2000 journal, that I sat on a porch in Colorado and watched balloons add color to a vast blue sky. One son with long arms is always ready to call everyone together for a selfie. No selfies and that happening may not have been. Fireplace books are pictures taken after we have met as a family for a meal and before everyone goes separate ways again. Even without prompts, we often gather and say that starter sentence: “Do you remember when..” Words tumble on top of one another as moments are relived, restoring something precious that had been buried. A favorite request of children is, “Tell me about when I…”

Remembering what brought us to this place creates a sense of a journey bathed in gratitude. Some disasters for us were survived and some days brought pleasure that still has the power to uplift our spirits. We are most sad when relationships reach a stage where shared memories no longer cement our time together. Time after time, God reminds us to remember by whatever means: twelve stones, an Ebenezer, a date on a calendar, or a picture on the refrigerator.

Remember the former things, those of long ago.

Isaiah 46:9