Nativity

      I think I have a living nativity.

      It’s actually made out of china.  I bought it at an After-Christmas Sale at some store in Mayfair for $15.00.  The box didn’t say that it should move.  But it does.
      The nativity sits on the polished wooden top of the wardrobe in my entryway.  There’s a mirror behind it, and a vase full of greenery that arches over the figures’ heads.  An angel stands behind Mary as she stoops over the manger.  Joseph holds a lantern, the shepherd holds a lamb.  There are three wise men, a camel that only comes up to their knees and would be useless as transportation for anything larger than a lap dog, a cow, and a sheep.
         I look at the nativity any time I walk in our out of the living room or the front door.  I like the contrasts of the china on the gleaming wood.  But a few days after I set it up, I began to notice something.  The tiny red cardinal I put in the greenery flew down to the top of the vase to look at Jesus.  Then the cow came to lay by the manger.  A wise man came closer and stood by Joseph. 
        I gave a sigh of frustration, put everyone back, and issued an edict that no one dissarange the nativity.
        The next day, the angel had moved closer to Mary and Mary had turned to the manger.  Perhaps they were changing a diaper.  I moved them back. 
        The next visitor was the sheep.  It actually came up and kissed the baby.  It was an incredibly sweet scene, but for form’s sake, I yelled at the children.   They vehemently denied all knowledge of nativity nonsense.  They looked at me with wide innocent eyes.  “We wouldn’t touch it, Mom,” they all said earnestly, ”You told us not to!”
         The next time I noticed it, all three wise men were together and conferring about something.  I decided to leave them alone and not worry about it.
        There were several visitors to the manger over the next couple of days.  A shepherd knelt in adoration for hours.  Each wise man took a turn presenting their gifts.  The camel crossed the wardrobe to sneer at the sheep.  The cow lay adoringly at the angel’s feet.
        Then when I took out the trash this evening I stopped in horror.  The manger was empty.  I knew it!  I knew if they kept messing with it they’d end up breaking something!  Why did it have to be the best piece of all, the most important piece?  What’s a nativity without Jesus?  And he was such a cute one, laying and kicking the cloths off his hands and feet.
         Then I looked again.  Jesus was balanced in Mary’s arms, laughing and pushing his little feet against her knees.  I’ve held my own babies that way many times.  They push so strong and gurgle so happily, delighted by their own strength.
         He looked happier there than when he was lying all alone in the manger being adored, so I left him.

       Peace on earth, goodwill towards men.

Saying Goodbye

Neal left for our new home this evening.  The first night without him is always the worst.  He sat and hugged each of the children, trying to squeeze two weeks’ worth of love out in five minutes.  I’ll be taking Patrick and a load of furniture up next weekend, but the older kids will be staying with friends and won’t see him again until he comes down for the Christmas production.
I lost my husband and my church in one day.  We said goodbye to Pastor Ron & Norma after service today.  I kept looking around the room during service.  There was Gretchen.   I taught her son piano lessons for six months.  And Angelina, who gave us a bag of boy’s clothes out of the blue and in the nick of time.  Melanie, whose friendship I have treasured dearly, and another Melanie, whose love for my kids knows no bounds.  How will I replace them?  Eric and Edith were there up front, Lori and Mike, Carrie Robinson who walked me through my first bible study, Nancy and Kaye who prayed with me at women’s prayer every week for nearly five years!  Tex and Ruthie, whom we have adopted as our parents in Christ and who have done so much for us… Tex helping Neal get off sugar, and Ruthie guiding me through my changing relationships with my children.
The more I looked the faster the names and memories flew through my mind… even people who are gone now.  Derek Capps, who was the patient recipient of my first word of knowledge.  Debbie Davis who taught me so much about prayer.  Pastor Abbye’s writer’s guild that changed my life.  Michael Porter and his sweet gentle wisdom.  Alison, who now wears two new rings on her fingers.  Fran, Beverly the “kissy” lady, Katherine, Sarah and her encouraging words, Kelly in the nursery, Tim and Ruth and their darling girls.
And that doesn’t even include the wonderful people I’ve known in the homeschooling group!
I could give up everything easily.  I can give up Hugh MacRae park and the forsythia reflected upside down in the pond.  I can give up the beach in all its moods, swimming at the YWCA, A.C. Moore, walking around Greenfield Lake and the summer Shakespeare with a background of loud frogs, the snakes, the sand, going to the aquarium and watching the sharks glide by, picnics under live oaks, all my favorite old books at the library… all these things I can give up.  But how do I give up the people?

I’ve done this all before.  At first you swear you’ll keep in touch.  You promise to write.  You talk about how easy it is to visit.  But after a few months, you become busy.  Calls dwindle.  New friends take up more of your time.  There are new demands.  And you forget and you forget and you forget….  After five years, you send Christmas cards.  After seven years you barely remember the names.

I guess the only thing is to say that I loved you guys while I had you.  I loved this church.  It changed my life.  I have poured my heart and my life into it while we were here, and I regret nothing.  I have loved the people, given and recieved friendship, prayed and been prayed for.  You have taught me about what love really is.  You have planted rich and beautiful things in the sterile place that was my heart before.
And even though memory may fade, what I am and will become will always be partly what you made me.

And who knows, we may suprise ourselves and keep in touch!

The Small House on Ash Street

We just got back from a long day’s rental house shopping.  2 apartment complexes, five houses, two realtor’s offices, two park visits, one gas station, one stop at McDonald’s, one at Pizza Inn, and one at Mai Tai once we got home.  Neal saved all the receipts because the company is re-imbursing him!  He also clocked the mileage.
I told him, “They’re not going to give you mileage- you’re already getting re-imbursed for gas.”
Neal kind of hunched over the steering wheel and growled, “They’d better.  We’re not hitting them up for a hotel bill.  They should consider themselves lucky.”
I suppose he has a point.  We’re allotted a week’s house hunting with hotel, and we did it in one day.  I doubt the relocation people will look at it that way, though.
The house we settled on was NOT one of the ones marketed by the Slum-Lord.  Yes, apparently our new town has a slum lord.  I was kind of sorry I didn’t get to meet him.  Local color, don’t you know.
Neal’s temporary house will be on Ash street 1.3 miles from Butterball’s offices.  I wish I could convey some sense of what this house looked like.  I tried to with Lisa on the phone earlier and I couldn’t manage it.  But I guess I’ll try again.
It was small.  We’ve already taken to calling it the “small house.”  It’s on a weedy, well-treed lot across from a used car dealership at a busy intersection.  Despite that, it’s flanked on both sides by farm land.  The crops were already in, and the dirt lay tilled in rich brown lines like a zen sand garden.
Three brick steps lead up to a tiny covered brick porch.  The door looks like one of those antiquing projects you see on HGTV, with about four harmonizing colors of paint showing through the red.  (Yes, it has a red door.  And y’all know how I feel about red!)  Inside is a little hall that opens into a living room on the right with a glass-door wood-burning fireplace and dark, almost mahogany, stained wood floors.  The fireplace is small, like the room, and has a white mantle.  The walls are soft yellow, and there’s an arched opening into the dining room.  Most of the texture on the ceiling has worn or rubbed off.  (Indoor raquet ball?)
The dining room is like a cross-roads.  From this room you can enter practically any room of the house.  There’s a door for the hall, the utility room, the kitchen, and the arched opening to the living room.  A large window fills one wall.  It has to be a dining room, because any furniture placed in it will be forced to dwell in the center of the floor.
The centerpiece of the kitchen (the last room at the back of the house) is an antique enamelled sink.  It is the largest one I’ve ever seen with two bowls and a drainboard in between.  There’s a window above it that looks out on the back yard.  To the right side of the dining room door is a set of shelves nailed over another door and papered with red and white check shelf paper.  There’s a tall cupboard and a stove on that side also.  Directly across from the sink on the left is a refrigerator full of molding I-don’t-want-to-think-about-it.  I shut it hastily.  “We’re going to clean that,” the agent said.  One would hope so.
All the kitchen drawers open.  The cupboards, by the way, are painted some sort of light aqua blue.  Beside the refrigerator is a curious object.  It looks like a small dishwasher with no doors and no buttons.   It turns out to be a quick-recovery water heater.   It looks like it holds about six gallons of water.  There is a door behind the water heater and another across from it out into the back yard.  I have never been in a house with so few rooms and so many doors!
Another opening (no door) leads from the kitchen into the hall.  There are two bedrooms exactly alike on either side of the bathroom.  They have the same mahogany-type wood floor, plain white walls and wooden windows.  They each have a small closet with one shelf and a hanging bar.
An interesting architectural feature of the house appears across the hallway from the bathroom.  A section of hallway leading to the dining room door and the kitchen door behind the water heater has been enclosed.  Two long clothing rods fill the space, and a door opens upon this jury-rigged “closet.”  The enclosed doors, because of the bars, no longer open.  This is difficult to describe, perhaps because to modern sensibilities it is hard to understand why there would be so much hallway in this home in the first place.  The rooms are lilliputian, full of doors and nooks, fitted together like jigsaw pieces, and the hallway twists and turns and fills all the space in the center of the home.
The bathroom is small, white, dilapidated, and ordinary.  There is nothing more ordinary-looking than a very old bathroom.
Off the dining room is a door I had not previously opened.  It leads to a utility room nearly as large as the living room and quite as large as one of the bedrooms.  Tucked against one wall are the washer and dryer hook-ups.  Another door leads out of the house to the side yard.  Unfortunately this large space is not heated or cooled, or we could stick another kid in there!  It would seem to me to be a better place to put an extra closet than in the middle of the hallway.
The outside door of the utility room leads across the gravel drive to a one-car detached shack.  The boards are dark and curling upward, showing a good deal of insulation in the cracks.  I was almost afraid to open the door.  Suprisingly, the inside is completely finished and very nice looking.  The garage door is gone, replaced by a regular door, and it would make a lovely shop.  There are several electrical outlets, a light with no bulb (there have been no bulbs anywhere in the house, and we could see our breath while we were exploring) and dry wall on all the walls.  The floor is concrete, not dirt, as one would expect from the exterior.
There is a rusted propane tank at the back of the house- the source of our future heat.  The yard is circled by trees, and our feet rustle through thick leaves as we walk.  All the children have disappeared behind the shop and are making quite a bit of noise.  It turns out that there is a strange platform-like cube constructed loosely out of beams and two-by-fours.  The children are climbing it and crowing about what a wonderful play house it is.  It’s original purpose is shrouded in mystery.  Perhaps it was built to be a play house.  I can’t tell.
The yard is impossibly folorn, unmowed, unraked, and untended.  The mailbox is laying in the ditch, and a flat heap of sand in the center of the back yard has been seeded with new grass.  It’s about six inches long, pale green, and completely prostrate.
I suppose some of you are going to think we’re crazy, but the whole house had this air of cosy, dilapidated charm about it.  The kitchen was cheerful, if a little odd, and the living room was pleasant.  I don’t know how we’ll fit in the bedrooms (I think there will have to be some stacking going on), and NO relatives will be invited to stay!  But for $500 a month, it will do.
I really kind of liked it.  It was like an eccentric grandmother- a little tipsy, but basically sound.  And I’m glad she’s going to be taking care of Neal for me when I can’t be there.  He’ll be in experience hands.  I get the feeling this house has been taking care of people for a long, long time.