Here we are again. Another Lent. Another wilderness wandering. Another start to reflecting on the world via my very sporadic writings. It seems Lent has been the time I feel most compelled to write. Perhaps because of the introspective nature of the season. Maybe it’s just the experience of taking the United Methodist Photo-A-Day challenge and turning it into a post. All I know is here we are again and here I go again.
Day 26: Cared
The house has changed a bit since I last visited it. When I lived here, the front deck had not yet been added. There was a concrete sidewalk which led from the front steps down to the street. The cottonwood tree, though, that tree has stood off to the side for a great long time. It saw my grandparents, whose house this once was, raise their family and then their families in turn. I remember the “cotton” blowing through the yard. I remember the cars parked on the street out front. I remember holidays and meals and life crammed into this small home.
I was reflecting just a couple of days ago about being a kid sitting in what was probably the garage at one time (the right side of the house if you are looking at it like we are in this picture) watching “spaghetti westerns” and old-timey monster movies. The kitchen is in the back of the home and I can still see my grandmother making the pasta sauce I have tried to replicate with little success. The whole family smoked like chimneys back in those days and my own mother claims the missing ingredient is the nicotine which laced everything in that small space. She is probably right.
In my mind, just inside that front door sat a candy dish filled with the kind of hardened sugar you might expect; butterscotches, root beer barrels, and at holiday time, those colorful ribbon candies. If you were standing just inside that door and you turned away from the living room on the left and the candy dish, you could enter the dining room on the right (and that entertainment area off of it) or you could open the door in front of you and head upstairs where five children had shared two bedrooms. The other side of that staircase, around toward the kitchen I have mentioned, were stairs heading down to the basement. It smelled of damp and spiders and sometimes laundry. The wooden stairs never gave me much confidence and fortunately I never had to test them much.
This house is the home where my mother and aunts and uncles were raised. This place is where I too lived on more than one occasion. Whoever else lives here and whatever other changes it undergoes, this corner of the world will forever be where I learned what it feels like to be cared for. It was and is a great feeling, made more so for having been felt so deeply for such a short period of time in my childhood and youth. Perhaps that too is a lesson I am learning in this Lenten wilderness; those who love us and who we love in turn may die, but the love itself endures, persists, and continues on. This may be the house where I discovered what it was and is to be cared for, but it is my memory of that love I am thankful for this day.
Life is better together,
Shawn
Big Rubber Band Ball 