Family Squeeze (20 page)

   God’s protection

   God’s deliverance

And as I read these wonderful truths, I am struck by a terrible irony: I am reading commands about remembering to a man who can’t remember my name. It’s hard not to reflect on the fact that if this thing is remotely hereditary, I’m in trouble. There’s something about Alzheimer’s that makes me think I have a license to nurse my anger, to fertilize and water it, to trim back the dead stuff, so the plant has lots of light. Yet that was never my father’s way. As proof, he smiles at me as I read, and I hope I’ll do the same for my kids, should my turn ever come.

After visiting my parents one night, I came home to the sound of the phone ringing. A voice said, “Mr. Callaway, I don’t much like your sense of humor. What does laughing have to do with being a Christian? We’re in the last days here, and this is hardly a time for laughter.”

I said, “Is that you, Dad?”

The caller didn’t find that funny.

I wish I’d thought to tell him that if I don’t laugh, the wheels will fall off. That if I can’t laugh, I’m one more sad example of how evil sometimes wins. But I did manage to say, “I have so much to rejoice about. I’ve been forgiven. Eternity is waiting. I get a little excited about that.”

Now that I’ve had time to think about it, I’d also add that I hope the caller wakes before he dies. That I want to die young…as old as I can.

You see, I think we stay young by keeping our eyes in the right places. By not wasting time placing discouraging phone calls. Or listening to gossip. By inviting friends over to dinner even if the carpet is stained and the sofa faded. By eating ice cream nine times a week.

I think we stay young by centering our thoughts on things that are pure, lovely, and of good report. By putting our arms out car windows more often. By burning expensive candles before they melt in storage.
By getting so excited about the love of Jesus that our teeth can barely keep up with our mouth.

So tomorrow morning I think I’ll pull out those sneakers and the dumbbells and the alfalfa sprouts.

You’ll be happy to know that, unlike Satyabhama, we’ve decided against having more children anytime soon. At least until we find a nursing home with a kindergarten attached.

God gave us memories that
we might have roses in December
.

S
IR
J
AMES
M. B
ARRIE

O
ur children have reached the age where they are moving out one by one, sometimes closing the door, and often returning to raid the fridge. It couldn’t happen fast enough for me. The latest to go is our daughter, Rachael, who stole my heart eighteen years ago. She is graduating from a Christian high school with plans to move on, to study in England, then travel the world. She has been threatening to leave since third grade, and it couldn’t come fast enough for me.

She has been eating our food, driving our car, and keeping us up late most nights. Years ago she left her initials on our dryer and carved OINK! into the arm of my old rocking chair. I noticed it while I was snacking late one night.

Rachael has bleached her bedroom carpet with nail polish remover. And painted her walls a shade of pink that causes me to cringe.

I promised her once that the moment she graduated, her furniture would be out on the front lawn. The door would be locked, the keys changed. We’ll have sold the place and moved to Nunavut, where the real estate is cheap.

She laughed. “Oh Dad,” she said. It’s a phrase she’s used a lot through the years.

During the graduation ceremony, Rachael took center stage to deliver the valedictory address. It was the first time in world history a Callaway had experienced such an honor. I ain’t sure why. I thunk the rest of us would have did goodly.

“Our class is going to do amazing things,” she began, throwing half a smile my way. “We are going to be rich. Famous. We are going to turn this world upside down with our impeccable charm and our fashion sense. Yes, we are going to be sports stars, movie stars, and pop stars. We are going to be scholars and musicians and politicians.”

Thankfully she wasn’t finished.

“When I was a little girl,” she continued, “these are the things I thought characterized graduates. Maybe it was all those Disney movies we watched. Happily ever after. Wish upon a star. Dream, dream, dream. But I’m starting to find out those dreams were too small.

“Our motto is ‘To the Ends of the Earth.’ Maybe we chose it because our little town seems like the end of the world. Or maybe it’s because our dream is to stand out from the crowd. To serve Jesus wherever we are. I’ve been reading of missionaries who packed their belongings in a coffin when they left home, fully expecting never to return. Some of us may go to Africa or China and never come back. Others will end up in Moose Jaw, or Seattle, or Cuba. It’s my prayer that we’ll serve Him wherever we are.”

I was sitting near the front, hoping she wouldn’t look my way and see my misty eyes. Was this the little girl I carried and cuddled and loved? All grown up and a preacher too? How could a troubled kid like me grow up to deserve the joy of seeing his daughter follow Jesus? And where did the years go? She’s barely out of her high chair. Last week
she was showing us her finger paintings. This week she’ll show us her diploma.

“Those whose goal is to be famous and own lots of stuff are headed for disappointment whether they get it or not,” she is saying. “All around us people are living for themselves. I would like to present to you the rest. This class is going to do amazing things. We are going to be poor, we are going to be ridiculed, mocked, and persecuted. But we will turn this world upside down with the love of God, because His strength is made perfect in weakness.”

That evening more than a hundred people visited our house to celebrate and thank her for her speech. A few were complete strangers who heard there was free food. And after the last one left, I told Ramona of the glorious freedom we would experience when all our children are gone. Of the financial savings. After all, we had to remortgage the house to pay for Rachael’s prom dress. We can enjoy lunch on our own schedule. Dinner, too. We can watch movies that are not in the New Release section. We can take out our hearing aids and play our music loud. Old hymns at deafening levels. No one will burst into the room scowling at us. We can go to bed at 10 p.m. and rest in peace. We can chase each other through the house wearing whatever we please.

Then why the tears as we stood looking at Rachael’s empty room? The Winnie-the-Pooh border. The carpet scarred by nail polish remover. Because there are times I’d gladly trade every carpet in the house for another evening when she sat on my lap begging for one more story, one more piggyback ride, one more hug good night.

Yet our house is far from empty. In every room you’ll find memory marks. In the kitchen, an oak cabinet bears a black scar where the candles on a surprise birthday cake almost brought the house down. We smile when we look at it. Sit in the living room and you can almost smell
the popcorn from those nights we popped it onto a clean sheet on the floor. Dig deeply enough and you’ll find old kernels buried in the sofa. Ah, memories.

And so we give thanks to God for what we have. For the wisdom to make memories over making money. To hold these children close while we could. And we’re thankful we have one more child left at home. Sometimes I hear him and his friends lugging guitars and drums and heavy amplifiers down the stairs, carving more memory marks in the walls.

“Oops,” they say.

I’m thankful I’m still young enough to sneak downstairs and pull the main breaker.

When I hear somebody sigh, “Life is hard,”
I am always tempted to say, “Compared to what?”

S
YDNEY
J. H
ARRIS

C
omedy was not my first choice. I wanted to be strong and good-looking. I wanted to have girls talk about me in front of my back. But I discovered early in life that the gals weren’t looking for a sense of humor. They wanted solid chiseled features. And money for snacks. I had neither. So my dad tried to console me: “Poverty is hereditary,” he said. “You get it from your children.”

A sense of humor is too. I got it from my dad.

For the most part, comedians come from either of two backgrounds: severely depressed or extremely happy. Trust me on this, there is seldom middle ground. I grew up in a family where laughter was a staple. Where my parents loved each other and loved their children. My earliest memories are of Mom reading me
Winnie-the-Pooh
and Dad hiding in darkened rooms waiting to scare the living daylights out of me. Each of our three children has at some point experienced me pulling back their collars and sneezing down their necks. I got the idea from my dad. (I highly recommend it as a family tradition. I guarantee it’s something your child will remember for years. Before you sneeze, though, make sure it’s your child.)

The older I get, the more this sense of humor is coming in handy.

Mom and Dad lie in separate beds in the same hospital now, not quite knowing where they are. Each time I visit, they ask me about it, so I explain it to them like it’s the first time, and the lights come on, then quickly fade.

I once asked my dad the secret to their lengthy marriage, and his eyes twinkled. “Senility,” he said. “I wake up beside her each morning and I can’t remember who she is. So each day is a new adventure.”

It was funny back then.

But now the two old lovers are saying a slow good-bye to this earth, surrounded by children who love them and nurses whose sweetness surprises me at times.

Looking for Dad the other night, I found him slumped in a chair, tears streaming down his cheeks. “It’s all right,” said a slender young nurse, placing a gentle arm about his shoulder.

“Hey,” I joked to her, “he’s already taken.”

Dad crossed his eyes and pushed his false teeth out at me.

The phone woke me one morning. It was Dad. “Someone stole my pants,” he said. “Where’s my wallet? Can you bring me some money?”

I told him I was loaded, I’d be right over.

“Hurry,” he said. “I’m going to see a movie.” I couldn’t help but grin. Dad didn’t just leave the pool hall in his teens; he hadn’t stepped inside a movie theater since becoming a Christian more than sixty years ago.

By the time I arrived, he had forgotten why. Seeing me, he said, “What are you doing here? Don’t you work?”

I didn’t know what else to do, so I laughed.

“I’ve been out riding the range with Roy Rogers,” he said. “We’re gonna rope some cattle together. Your mother left me, you know.”

Ah, Dad. None of us dreamed it would come to this.

Yesterday, my mother—a woman I have seen share her faith with
leather-clad bikers, the girl who led me to Christ when I was a lad—was convinced that God had abandoned her. I was stroking her white hair and singing:

Doubts come and go. Events of sixty years ago are clearer than the morning news. My mother, once an accomplished writer and my biggest fan, often struggles to finish a four-word sentence. But tonight she is listening to beautiful hymns on a CD player she can’t operate and smiling with her eyes closed. “Tell me about the kids,” she says.

Dad is concerned that he has misplaced the keys to the car—a car that no longer runs. I tell him they’re around here somewhere. I’ll find them, don’t worry. I can’t believe I’m lying to my father. Surely they have manuals for this kind of thing, but I’m learning as I go.

I’ve brought along a book and I read it to my mother out loud. It is the same tattered copy of
Winnie-the-Pooh
that she read to me when I was four. “How cold my toes…tiddly-pom,” I sing using a tune she taught me.

As I leave tonight, I take part again in our grand role reversal, whispering good night to the woman who tucked me in with a thousand good-night kisses.

“God bless you,” I say

“He does,” she smiles. “He gave me you.”

Then she motions my daughter Rachael to her bedside. “Grandma loves you,” she says. “Say it after me so you’ll never forget.
Grandma loves me.”

Rachael smiles and wipes a tear.

Dad is seated in a nearby chair, getting ready for a trip, he says. Going back to Ontario, where he spent his boyhood. Gonna see the tall oak trees and swim in the Elora Gorge. He smiles as he tells me this, and I wonder if it’s not the most profound thing he’s uttered in years. We’re all getting ready for a trip, aren’t we? Packing light. Going Home.

Outside, Rachael wants to drive. I can’t believe she’s already this age. “Will you visit me when I’m old?” I ask, wiping tears and fumbling for the car keys. She smiles her agreement. “I need a hug,” I say. She leans close.

Ah yes, I can feel a sneeze coming on.