The Gate (11 page)

My train of thought was interrupted as Kelly came back into the room carrying an armload of clothes.

“Hi, Dad,” she said. “Looks like you've about got the loft together.”

“This is the last bolt,” I said, “but before I go, come over here, give me a hug, and let me finish what I was saying earlier.”

She hung up the clothes, put her arm around my neck, and said, “Don't make me cry, Dad.”

I spoke slowly and deliberately. “Guard your heart, Kelly. Be careful who you let in. I want you to have lots of friends, and to fall in love, and to care about the broken people of the world, but I don't want them to break your heart. Like your mother, you have a generous spirit. You're always ready to give of yourself to
anyone who asks, and I love that about you, but be careful, okay? And when life starts piling up and you need to unload a little, call me. I'll always be there. Okay?”

“Sure, Dad,” she said. “But you didn't need to say it. I always knew you were there for me.”

My conversation with Kate came the second summer she went out to Colorado to work at Noah's Ark. It was the premier white-water rafting company on the Arkansas River, and for Kate it quickly became a second home. I knew that she loved the mountains, the white-water rafting, and the adventure, and the people there were some of her closest friends. Like her they were all young and passionate, and they lived with an intensity for life and for God. I also knew that she went intending to again only spend the summer out there, but there was a part of me that was afraid that this time she'd never come back home.

She left for Colorado early in the morning on a beautiful spring day as the sun was just peeking over the eastern skyline. Her silver Subaru Baja was packed and parked in the driveway, ready for the long cross-country trip. We'd had breakfast, and her mother and her sisters had already said their tearful good-byes. Now the two of us sat alone together in the front seat of her truck.

“You have your cell phone?” I asked, knowing she did.

“Yes, Dad,” she replied.

“And the GPS?”

“It's right there on the dash, and you helped me plug in the coordinates last night. Besides, I've made this trip before, you know. Just like last year, I've got reservations at the Best Western in Kearney, Nebraska, and I'll call you when I get there. Don't worry, Dad, I'll be fine!”

“I know you will,” I said. “You've got that same stubborn, independent streak that your Grandma Jackie's famous for.” My kids always called Jackie the fun grandma, mostly because she never really grew up and so she'd let them get away with almost anything. She always had candy, costumes, and the latest toys
and games, and she was always ready to play. Baseball, Slip 'N Slide, Super Soaker squirt guns, fireworks, ice skates, lawn darts, and hula hoops—if it was fun, Jackie had it. Like I said, she was always a kid at heart.

During World War II, when all the able-bodied men went off to war, the baseball owners started what they called the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. After the war the AAGPBL continued play until the mid 1950s, and two days after she graduated from high school, Jackie started traveling around the country with the Grand Rapids Chicks. In '49 and '50 she played second base, and she loved every minute of it. She was independent and adventurous, and Kate has a lot of Jackie in her.

“Listen, Kate,” I said. “You know those letters I told you about? The ones I said you couldn't read unless something happened to me?”

“I remember,” she said.

“Well, in yours I say, ‘Be careful,' and it's not because I don't trust you but because I know you.”

“You know what?” she said with that sheepish grin of hers.

“Don't play that game with me,” I said. “I checked out the pictures on the Noah's Ark website. I know that last summer you went glacier sliding on your back down Mount Shavano, and I know you went midnight rafting with what's-his-name earlier in the summer when the water was deep and fast, and I know that when a kid in your raft lost his paddle, you went in after it and almost drowned.”

“I didn't almost drown.” She rolled her eyes. “I just got stuck in the body slot for a minute or two. It was no big deal.”

“Look,” I said, “anytime you're stuck between two rocks in the middle of the river and the water is washing over your head, trust me, it's a big deal! God himself was watching out for you that day and you know it, so don't go telling me it was no big deal.”

“Okay, Dad,” she said. “I get it. I'll be careful, I promise.”

For a few minutes the two of us sat there in silence, staring at
our shoes. I wanted to hug her and hold her, but I was cautious because Kate doles out affection sparingly. “I love you, Kate,” I said in a low, steady voice. “I know it makes you uncomfortable to talk about it, but I love you with all my heart. In fact, you are my heart, and I couldn't stand the thought of anything ever happening to you. You know that, right?”

“I know, Dad,” she said softly. “I love you too.” She reached over and gave me a hug around the neck. “Now get out of this truck and let me get going before we start crying like a couple of girls,” she said, pulling her emotions back together again.

“You are a girl, Kate,” I said, smiling as I got out of the car.

“And you are too, Dad.” She grinned impishly. “I'll call you when I get to Kearney,” she said, and then she pulled out of the driveway, waving and calling, “Love ya, Dad!”

“Love you too!” I shouted, but I'm not sure she heard me.

Prodigals have a way of taking your heart with them when they go. And when she came home again that fall I wanted to yell, “Get a robe and a ring and kill the fatted calf!” but I didn't. I just whispered a prayer of gratitude and then said, “Let's go out to Vitale's for pizza.”

For Tara, the letter day was her wedding day. That was an emotional day for me on many levels. I was so happy that she and Adam were getting married and so sad that my mom could not be there to see it. Knowing that Mom loved butterflies, Carol, her twin sister Cheryl, and Tara had spent hours making hundreds of them out of colored tissue paper and cardboard and hanging them in the trees along the beach walk at Camp Willows where Tara was going to be married. The day of her wedding, as she and I were about to make our way down the beach walkway toward the outdoor chapel, I shared some thoughts from her letter. She and I had always shared a love of art and beauty. When we went on family vacations, the two of us would sometimes take a day trip to visit the art museums in places like Chicago; Washington, DC; Sarasota; and Detroit. After one of those trips, I wrote a
few lines about the sketches she'd made and added them to her letter later that year.

“You see what others miss,” I wrote. “While others admired the misty colors of Claude Monet, you sketched the old woman sitting on the bench on the edge of the gallery. When everyone else was gazing at the sculpture by Alexander Calder, you drew the little boy in the crowd watching the ducks on the pond nearby as he held tightly to his mother's hand. At the Chihuly exhibit, as art critics and amateurs gasped in awe at the beauty of the blown glass, you captured the sadness in the tired old eyes of the janitor who leaned against his broom handle at the end of a long day. Sweet Tara, you love beautiful things, but you love people more, and I love you for it.”

I held her hands, looked into her eyes, and said, “Thank you, Tara.”

“For what?” she asked.

“The butterflies,” I said. “They're for me, aren't they?”

“Yes,” she said. “And for me.”

Each generation stands on the shoulders of those who've gone before them.

As the music began to play, we made our way down the sidewalk, crying bittersweet tears of joy as butterflies danced in the breeze along the tree-lined path. After giving her hand to Adam, I sat on the bench next to Carol, and then, right on cue, the most beautiful monarch butterfly landed on the cement a few feet in front of me. I looked at Carol and she nodded. No words were necessary. We both were thinking the same thing: my mom was letting us know that she was there. My heart almost beat out of my chest as the butterfly sat motionless until the preacher pronounced Adam and Tara husband and wife. Then, as Adam kissed his bride, the butterfly gently flapped her wings and flew away.

I never prayed that their lives would be easy, or happy, or trouble free. I prayed that they would be faithful and fulfilled, that they
would make a difference in the lives of the people around them, and that they'd feel like they were a part of something bigger than themselves. Graciously, God answered my prayers.

Our girls are grown women now. They each have learned the lessons we taught them about faith and life and family. Now it's their turn to become teachers. That's how it works. Hopefully they'll do a better job than I did, but each generation stands on the shoulders of those who've gone before them.

“I can forgive, but I cannot forget,” is only another way of saying, “I will not forgive.”

Henry Ward Beecher

I
was so lost in thought that I didn't even hear her come in. “Would you like a piece of pie, honey?” she asked, and even though the light was dim, I knew it was her. She was young, beautiful, and in some ways unrecognizable to me. I didn't know her when she was a young woman, but I knew the sound of her voice, the smile on her face, and the sparkle in her eyes. For as long as I could remember, she'd looked the same as she did in the picture on the bookcase at my folks' house.

Her hair was a bluish shade of white, and it was pulled back in a bun. Her glasses were thick, her makeup was a little caked, and she wore faux pearl earrings the size of quarters. When she slept, she kept her teeth in a jar on the nightstand next to her glasses, and when she was awake, she always wore a dress, nylons, and sturdy black shoes with low-wedged heels.

My kids always called her Grandma Great Kate, and she was the kindest, gentlest soul I'd ever known. Grandpa, on the other hand, was another story. The whiskey would have its way with him, and then he'd have his way with Grandma. He let her know who was the boss, sometimes physically but always verbally. He did the same thing with his kids too, but when he'd start in on
them, Grandma would step between them, and usually she'd end up with a black eye or a fat lip for her troubles.

Once my wife asked her how long she was married before she knew she'd made a mistake. Grandma Great Kate said that she knew the day after she said “I do,” but people didn't get divorced in those days, so she tried to make the best of it. Grandma lived to be one hundred and nine, a full twenty years past Grandpa, and we all figured that God was trying to make it up to her.

My uncle Herb told me once that after my dad had come home from World War II, he'd gone over to see Grandma and found her sitting on the back porch nursing a black eye. Grandpa was in the backyard, and Dad went out there, grabbed him by the shirt, dragged him out behind the garage, and beat the tar out of him.

Then, as Grandpa lay bleeding on the ground, my dad shouted, “If I ever hear that you hurt her again, I'm going to come back and finish what I started, and when I do, I'll bury you next to those rosebushes, and no one will miss you! Do you hear me, old man?”

There are times when God expects us to defend the innocent and the helpless.

His words were harsh. He treated Grandpa like Grandpa treated everyone else. There was no grace in his words. It was an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but sometimes God expects us to defend the innocent and the helpless, and this was one of those times. After that, Grandpa never hurt Grandma again, not physically anyway.

Now Grandma asked me, “Did you want cherry or lemon?” Before I could answer, she shook her head. “Oh, what am I thinking? I know perfectly well that lemon is your favorite and Sharon and Ben always preferred the cherry.”

I never met a pie I didn't like, but for some reason Grandma got it in her head that I liked lemon better, and I never saw any reason to correct her. Besides, when she'd start baking, she always made an extra little lemon pie for me, and I figured there was no reason to mess with a good thing.

When she brought me my piece of pie, she also brought a deck of cards. Grandma loved to play cards and talk, so that's what we did. We talked about her mom and dad and how they'd come over on the boat from the Netherlands. They'd had fourteen kids; one of them died young, but all the others lived well into their nineties or hundreds.

“How's Mina?” she asked. Mina was her youngest sister.

“Mina's great,” I answered. “She just turned one hundred.”

“I know,” she said. “You should go visit her sometime.”

“I know,” I replied, feeling a little guilty that I hadn't.

It's a parent's job to give their children the chance to live a better life.

Her father, Great-Grandpa Vanden Bout, was a wooden shoe maker in the old country, and when he came to America, he worked six days a week in the furniture factory and as a janitor in the old Dutch church on nights and weekends. In the only picture I ever saw of him, he was sitting proud as a peacock with his wife and their thirteen children. He wore a suit and spats and had a full head of flowing white hair, which made him look more like the governor than the church janitor.

When I asked why he came to this country, Great-Grandpa Vanden Bout said, “My grandfather, my father, and I were all wooden shoe makers, and if I didn't come to this country, you too would be a wooden shoe maker.”

Great-Grandpa Vanden Bout believed that it was a parent's job to give his children the chance to live a better life.

“He would be so proud of you,” Grandma Kate said, reading my thoughts. “The wooden shoe maker's great-grandson, a doctor. Who could imagine such a thing!” It humbled me to hear her say it. I only hoped I could have the dignity and character that he had.

“Will I get to see him?” I asked.

“Not this time,” she responded, “but sometime soon, perhaps. No one knows for sure.”

“By the way, how's little Kate?” she asked. Kate is my oldest daughter and her namesake. Then she asked about Kelly and Tara, my wife, Sharon and Ben, and my cousins, and I asked her about Uncle Ernie, and Frank, and John, and Nettie. Then I asked her if she knew where Grandpa was.

Forgiveness is simply deciding to stop letting the hurt of yesterday pollute and poison today.

“Oh,” she replied. “He's here, and I'm glad for him.”

“Well, first off,” I said, “I guess I'm a little surprised to hear that he made it, but then I'm even more surprised that you're glad about it.”

“I don't blame him,” she said. “It was what he learned as a child. People who hurt people were once hurt by people themselves. It goes back for generations. It's a vicious cycle, it's part of the conspiracy, and the only thing that breaks it is love. Your dad, your aunt and uncle, and I—we all tried as best we could to love the anger out of him, and on those days when we couldn't love him, we loved each other. Besides, don't you remember that God broke Grandpa's stone-hard heart right before he died, and he gave his heart to Jesus? It's never too late for that,” she said. “Never! There's always room for forgiveness.”

Grandma Kate had often said, “Our sins are written in pencil, but our forgiveness is written in ink.” Forgiveness came natural to her. In the book of Romans, Paul once wrote, “If it's possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” Grandma did that. She believed that just as God had forgiven her, it was her job to forgive others, even Grandpa. Not that her forgiveness justified his actions, because it didn't. She wasn't saying that what he did was all right or acceptable, and she certainly wasn't giving trust where trust was not deserved. She was simply granting mercy where mercy was not deserved, and in her mind that's what God would expect. Each time she forgave Grandpa, she was not letting him off the hook for what he'd done, but she was letting herself off the hook for what he'd done to her.

“You see,” she'd say, “forgiveness is about us, not them. When we forgive someone, we're releasing ourselves from the prison of the past. Forgiveness is simply deciding to stop letting the hurt of yesterday pollute and poison today.”

I can remember Grandma saying, “Forgiveness is a choice; it's always a choice, and if we refuse to forgive, then bitterness, resentment, and hatred fill our hearts with an all-consuming desire for revenge. That's no way to live, and so we have no choice but to forgive.”

Whenever we'd say good-bye to an aging Grandma Kate, she'd hold up her twisted arthritic hand as if to say, “Come, hold my hand, and give your Grandma a kiss good-bye.” Then, when I'd bend down, she would pull me close and say, “Now you pray that I wake up in heaven. Your dad can't do that, he's not ready to say good-bye, but you're stronger, and I'm ready now, so you pray.”

Afterward she'd give me a peppermint to seal the deal. Her peppermints always tasted a little like perfume because they'd been rolling around in her purse for weeks.

I did what she asked. I'd pray that God would take her gently in the night, but I always felt a little guilty about it because God knew my heart wasn't in it. I knew that I'd miss her too; I just didn't know how much.

Love and forgiveness are always a choice.

But seeing her today . . . it was different. I was glad I helped pray her into heaven. She'd given up that old bent body of hers and taken on a new body—young, strong, and beautiful.

Now instead of me leaving Grandma Kate, she was leaving me. She got up, walked over to me, and said what I always said to her: “Don't get up, I'll find my way out. You just sit.” Then she bent low, kissed me good-bye, and said, “This is what I have for you:
Love and forgiveness are a choice
. They're always a choice, so choose wisely.”

“That's it?” I asked.

“That's it,” she replied. “That's it—choose wisely because the
choices you make reflect your heart.” She handed me a peppermint as she walked out the door.

I watched through the window as she walked down the driveway and into the darkness. As I sat there sucking the perfume off the peppermint, I remembered that Grandma never did learn how to drive.

As her silhouette faded into the darkness, I sat down on the couch in front of the fireplace, and my mind drifted back to the time we were all down by the swimming docks at Stony Lake. It was over forty years ago—I was about sixteen, Ben was eleven, and my two cousins, Steve and Dave, were eight and six.

I was knee deep in the water, about to go water-skiing, and Grandma Great Kate had walked out on the dock to watch. She was well into her seventies, and as usual, she was wearing those granny heels and a house dress. Dad and Uncle Herb had just come in from bass fishing—in fact, Dad had caught a big one off of someplace called Promise Point—and they walked up to show off their catch to Mom and Aunt Gerry, who were sunbathing on the beach.

Ben, Dave, and Steve jumped in off the end of the dock, and when Grandma heard the splash, she turned, ran toward the sound, and dove in, headfirst, to save them. In an instant Dad and Uncle Herb got up, raced down the dock, and dove in to save her. By the time I got there, they all had come up, with their heads bouncing like bobbers in the water.

“What the heck did you think you were doing?” Dad yelled to Grandma Kate.

“I didn't know the boys could swim,” she answered with a smile.

“Well,” Dad replied, “then I guess we're even. We didn't know you could swim either.”

Whenever Dad would tell the story, he'd always say, “Greater love hath no one than that they would lay down their life for another.”

Grandma always had peanut butter cookies that bore the marks
of being pressed with a fork, always had Dutch Babbelaars that had started to turn back to brown sugar again, and always had time for you. Whatever she was doing would be set aside as soon as anyone came to call. Nothing was more important to her than the people she loved, and she let you know it.

As the fire dwindled into embers, I said my prayers and went off to bed. That night, for the first time in a long time, I asked for nothing but the wisdom to know how blessed my life has been.