The Memories of a Three-Year-Old

It’s July in the mountains, which means it can be hot or it can be cold. . . it can be sunshine or it can be rain . . . often on the same day – you just never know.

But it’s July in the mountains, so with great hope and anticipation, having forgotten for the moment the vagaries of long winters, we come outdoors and we garden and tend and visit and plan . . . and God smiles.

So it was on Sunday – with a confidence I did not feel, in answer to daily inquiries, I kept to the plan – yes, the Carnival will go on . . . yes, I know they’re calling for thunderstorms and hail . . . we’ll just wait and see . . . yes, bring the bouncy castle . . . yes, unless it’s storming at the time, we will go on.

To plan in the mountains requires the memory of a three-year old, like my buddy Braiden – you have to be willing to simply believe in your plans and keep moving until you can’t.

It tickles me beyond measure that Braiden was looking forward to the carnival, having come to the last one

and having had such a good time – who knew that when you’re three, you can actually remember what happened when you were two?  But Braiden does.

So he was sure there would be a carnival – because we had one last year and Beth said we would have one again this year – and that was good enough for him.

It’s such a gift – having your word be taken as true by one so small.

So it was that the skies parted for a time and the sun shone on our little carnival.  Did God part the skies for a little country fun?  Or was it just the right time in God’s scheme for such a thing?

All I know is that it happened and Braiden was glad because he remembered and it was every bit as good as he knew it would be.

And if it had rained?  If it hadn’t happened?

Oh well – those things happen.

How is it that three-year olds understand so well?

I wish I knew.  All I can do is say thanks to Braiden and Kaden and all the little ones who look forward in faith always with the ability to take disappointment in stride when the rains come.

Maybe that’s what Jesus meant when he spoke of coming to him like a little child – with hearts filled with faith whether the sun is shining or the rains are pouring. . . saying yes even when you know your yes may be turned in to a no by things beyond your own control.

I like to think so.

Playing in the Snow

When I was 7, I had my first (remembered) solo experience of sled riding down the street where I lived.  I watched others first, navigating the teasing boys at the bottom of the hill who formed a line across the road.  At 7, I did not understand that they would get out of the way of my sled.  Apparently neither did my compatriots, as each flew down the side of the street until just before the parked car, jerking hard left at the last minute to sweep between car and boys and onward.

Confident I understood the process, I jumped on my sled and down I went.  I have never had that level of confidence again.  As I careened towards the car, I froze, head up, as the car and I rapidly drew in to our own date with destiny.  Head smacked bumper.  The rest, including my unease around playing in the snow, is history.

Flash forward.  I am 58.  Younger friends decide we should go tubing.  I cheerfully agree.  It was only later, alone, that I started to get nervous: I’m 58 years old!  What was I thinking?  I can’t do this!  I’ll break my fool neck!  And so it went.

I consulted with son Ben (my go-to person on all things physical), who calmly reassured me how safe tubing is, walking me through what it would be like step by step (everyone should have a son so patient with a fearful mom).

So I layered up and on we went.  The journey was, of course, the adventure.

Just a few miles shy of our destination, our driver Melissa politely pulled to the side of the road to allow faster drivers to pass, as I was internally screaming noooo!  We were in West Virginia now and there aren’t shoulders on the road to speak of in West Virginia, even when it looks like there are (as when deep ditches are covered with snow).  We promptly sank – gently, ever so gently, in to the snow-covered crevasse and there we sat until rescued, which was in pretty short order, as Snow Shoe has employees and equipment for just such an occasion as this (shout out to our rescuers - thanks, guys!).*

On to lunch and then the great tubing adventure.  What a hoot!  There were injuries** (aren’t there always?), but we did all survive the experience with lots of laughter and the simple joy of being outside (it was a warm winter’s day after a long January of sub-zero temperatures where we live, so this was our first time outside in a long time – glorious!)

For a brief moment, I saw the folks learning to ski on the bunny slope beside the tube lanes and thought to myself, I could do that.  Ah, confidence.

It passed as quickly as it came as I hobbled home, but now I know some things I didn’t know when I was 7:

1. The boys will get out of the way.

2. I could do that.

3. Snow and sun are a heady combination.

4. Laughter and play are great medicine.

5. One bad experience need not a lifetime of fear make.

But most of all, I was reminded that God’s tender caring looks like a son talking his mother down . . . like

Erin, Deb, Melissa & me (fashion-forward
in Ben's hat and many layers

strangers stopping to help . . . like car rescue guys competent to the task . . . like friends laughing helplessly as they roll in the snow. . . like expanding possibilities . . . like grace.

_____________________
*When you get discouraged about the state of our kindness or lack towards each other, I want you to know that virtually every car passing by slowed down to see if they could help.  The one noteworthy exception entertained us mightily as they sped by, bumper stickers hailing their political persuasion and beliefs, leaving us in their wake, confirmed in our mutual preconception that such folk aren’t nearly as kind as they say they are on t.v. and leaving me to have to internally apologize to neighbors from the north (I thought the license plate was from Pennsylvania or New York: turns out it’s a specialty plate from Virginia).

**Injuries:

1. I was first – fitting as the eldest, I suppose.  It didn’t occur to me (remember, I actually had to call my child to talk me through this) that the bottom of the tube was resting on the actual ground and that resting my bottom on its bottom meant I was sliding butt first down a snowy pathway that just might have bumps and rocks.  And it did.  Thus am I one very sore puppy today.

2. Erin was next – it was our very last run – and somehow she came to a dead stop at the bottom of the run and was ejected from her tube, hitting her head.  Nothing serious, but boy, did it hurt.

3. Melissa was the last to go down.  Heading out the parking lot, we were almost home free, when she stepped onto a sheet of ice and went down hard, landing flat on her back, the kind of hard, scary fall that makes you worry about broken bones and concussions and such.  Good fortune that nothing was broken and home safely we went.

Deb was the only one of us to escape the day without injury, but all of us are aching today.

Stuck in the Closet: It's Not What You Think

I am six years old – or maybe five.  I am at home in the apartment I lived in with my parents in Silver Spring.  They are at work and Uncle Richard is watching me.  We were born on the same day, Richard and I, fourteen years apart.  So he is still a young fellow and not all that interested in the niece who adores him and who, in her only-child solitariness, delights in a companion.

Begging a game to play, he, reading the paper, tells me we’ll play hide & seek and I’m to be the first to hide.  I am thrilled.  I’m good at this and I know just where I’ll go.  I am certain he’ll never find me there.

I go into my bedroom and even then want to make it interesting (at least that’s what I’m thinking I thought), so I lock my door (children should not have locks on their doors and I am living proof).

Then I go to hide in my closet.  It is a space jammed and crammed with little girl stuff – clothes and toy box and toys and school papers and . . . stuff.  I am not an organized child, so opening the sliding closet door is its own challenge.  After wrestling the door open just enough to squeeze in, that’s what I do – squeeze.  But the space is too small and I am stuck – jammed literally between door and door frame, unable to go either in or out.  The closet door is rock solid and will not wiggle even an inch.  Even now I wonder what had it stuck – probably the plastic hand of my favorite stuffed beloved pink monkey – it would be fitting to be caught by the monkey’s paw.  But if it was, I will never forgive that monkey – never – I’m like that about some things.

It didn’t take long to reach a threshold of panic, for no matter what I did, I only became more lodged in the secure embrace of the closet door.  It was like a living thing that would not let me go (hence my aversion to The Wizard of Oz and its grabbing trees – now that’s terror!).

I began to shout my panic to Uncle Richard.  It seemed an eternity before he came to my rescue although I’m sure it was only a few seconds (at least I hope it was – I hope he didn’t leave me in that closet longer than necessary just to keep a kid off his back.  Uncle Richard?  Did you?)

As an adult I can imagine the mounting concern Uncle Richard experienced when he tried to open the door but could not, as he hollered to me to open the door, but I could not.  Impasse.

I think I must have been able to tell him through my tears that I was stuck in the closet, but all I remember is hearing the sounds of my young Uncle, who was and still is handy, getting the tools to take the door to my room off its hinges.  Once that laborious process came to an end, my release was pretty quick as Richard dislodged the thing that kept me stuck (I wonder if he remembers what it was).

The story is shortened in family lore to the time I got stuck and Richard took the door off to rescue me to his parting shot, spoken with his boy-man grin, Next time, hide under the bed, will you?

***

Sometimes a closet is a metaphor.  And sometimes people must free themselves from their closets.  But sometimes a closet is just a closet and a little girl is just a little girl, glad of an Uncle Richard to come to her rescue.  Whether he ever knew it or not, my Uncle Richard has always been my champion since the day he freed me from that closet.  And we could all use a champion every now and again, couldn’t we?