Month: March 2024

My grandma used to say she could forgive, but she couldn’t forget. This was always in reference to a comment made by a neighbor about pickles my grandmother had entered at the fair. The neighbor criticized the pickles for being sliced as rounds instead of spears, or maybe it was the other way around.

Grandma was a good woman. Hard worker. Married to a farmer. Raised six kids during the Depression and had a seventh when she neared 40. She did not have a mean bone in her body, but when the best you have to offer in hard times is criticized in front of friends, family, neighbors and fair judges, you might forgive, but you don’t forget.

Of course, it was never really about pickles. It was about humiliation—a humiliation you may forgive but, no matter how the years pass and how hard you try, you never completely forget.

Forgiving is often a complicated and multi-tiered work in progress, particularly when you are the one doing the forgiving.

I am always stunned when someone gives a victim statement in court and announces they have forgiven the one who inflicted unspeakable evil on a loved one. My first thought is always, “Did you not once think about jumping over that courtroom railing and taking a swing?”

Maybe they did. Maybe jumping and swinging was their first, second and never-ending thought for days, weeks, months and years. But maybe they kept thinking, processing, praying, crawling over broken glass, and somehow, some way, by the grace of God, made it all the way to forgiveness.

Forgiveness can be a lifetime achievement.

But even when we commit to the act of forgiving, we can’t always forget. Memories return out of left field, sitting at a stoplight, in the middle of the night, there you are back at square one.

It is that time of year when many are deep in thoughts of forgiveness. Lent spans the days of contemplation; Good Friday commemorates Christ’s work of forgiveness on the cross, and Resurrection Sunday celebrates the splendor and glory of an empty tomb and new life.

In addition to extending forgiveness, God does something humans often cannot—He forgives and forgets. “I will forgive their inequities and remember their sins no more,” says the book of Hebrews.

Forgiving and forgetting is the slate truly wiped clean.

We began married life in a 1930s Craftsman bungalow with three small bedrooms. Each bedroom had a closet the size of a telephone booth. Everything fit.

We added a baby to the mix. Everything fit.

We added a second and third baby. Everything fit.

Today, we live in a four-bedroom house with double-wide closets in every bedroom and a small walk-in closet in the master bedroom.

The three babies grew up and left home years ago. It is just the two of us.

Nothing fits.

Something is wrong with the math. We decreased the number of people in the house, increased the amount of available closet space, but are out of room.

Critical thinking and analysis are required every time we switch out cold-weather clothes for warm-weather clothes and vice versa in the semi-annual Changing of the Closets.

No article of clothing escapes rigorous scrutiny.

Take the black velvet jacket with a tucked waist and shoulder pads. I last wore it when Bush was President—41 not 43. Does this fit me anymore? It might if I could stop breathing. Are NFL-size shoulder pads in style? They might be tomorrow. The jacket stays.

Does the dress with the smocked top and free-flowing skirt make me look like someone from Little House on the Prairie? Yes. Is the dress flattering? Only in a funhouse mirror that elongates. Is the dress comfortable? Yes. The dress stays.

Off-season clothes rotate to one of the kid’s old closets and in-season clothes return to our closet.

There is a place for everything and everything is in its place. If I could just keep track of all the things and places.

Assorted jeans that vary in fit, depending on my salt-intake and water retention, and my husband’s worn jeans, suitable only for yardwork after dark, stay in a bedroom closet that also holds office supplies. I can’t count how many times I’ve had to remind my him, “Your work jeans are under the padded mailing envelopes and next to the toner cartridge!”

Clothes of dubious status move to the closet filled with board games, Legos, Lincoln logs, puzzles and three bridal gowns.

Why we have three bridal gowns when I have only been married once, I am not sure. I suspect closet squatters.

The last closet is crammed with suitcases, computer bags, backpacks, tote bags and four towers of boxes of classroom supplies from when our youngest taught first grade. This is also where we keep all the things I plan to donate and treasures for the neighborhood garage sale.

It is the final resting place of closets.

After going through the Changing of Closets again this spring, I finally understand why pictures of those enormous high-end designer closets the size of our first house all have an upholstered chair in them. All the sorting and rotating is simply exhausting.

 

 

One of our sons-in-law, a combat veteran who works out on a rowing machine and treadmill, lifts weights, runs five miles in scorching heat and freezing cold for fun, and often grabs a protein shake to tie him over until dinner since he works from home and rarely has time for lunch.

Because we have so much in common—the part about working from home—I decided to try protein shakes as well. Sure, I could scrape together some leftovers for lunch, but our leftovers have spawned so many aging leftovers, they could chart themselves on ancestry.com.

When I turn to the ‘fridge for lunch, I usually come away with salad. Lettuce, carrots and cucumbers do not have protein.

I need protein. I know this because I hear this and see this all the time in pop-up ads, and commercials and messages from extremely fit and well-paid health experts. You know what has protein? Things that moo, oink and cluck have protein. My taste for meat has developed an inverse correlation to age. The older I get, the less it appeals to me.

So I bought some of those little chocolate protein shakes, the brand with a picture of a wide-eyed cow on the label. One protein shake has 60 grams of protein. I am basically drinking two chicken breasts for lunch. Chocolate chicken. Yum.

Over the course of a week, I probably consume all the protein you would get from an entire side of beef. Consequently, I feel taller, stronger, younger and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

I am sailing along, feeling good about life and protein, when some of the grands drop by and swing open the door to the ‘fridge to see what we have to eat.

A voice says, “Grandma, when did you start buying chocolate milk?”

“That’s not chocolate milk, girls. That’s my protein shake,” I say, exuding an air of confidence that says I am in the know and on top of things.

Silence.

“It’s not a protein shake, Grandma. It’s chocolate milk.”

They hand me the bottle with the wide-eyed cow on the label and point to type at the bottom that says, “Chocolate Reduced-Fat Ultra-Filtered Milk” and drop to the floor laughing. I have been drinking chocolate milk for lunch.

I have since switched to the real protein shake, which fortunately gives me strength to endure the ribbing that keeps coming my way.

I wonder if the kid in me knew I was drinking chocolate milk all along.

 

 

 

 

I often walk a trail a short drive from where we live, mostly for exercise, but partly for the quiet to see if I can still hear myself think. Once you pass through the tunnel under the interstate, and beyond the roar of trucks and traffic, you are engulfed beneath a canopy of maple, elm and yellowwood.

Squirrels chatter, barred owls call to one another, and on one occasion I caught a opossum napping in a tree. Or maybe the opossum was playing ‘possum. I saw a deer last spring, not more than 10 feet away, just standing, watching, taking it in, enjoying the view. Tulip trees, redbuds, lilacs and serviceberries.

The trail is popular with walkers, runners, moms and dads pushing strollers, dog walkers, couples strolling, cyclists and even cross country teams. There are no giant TV screens or enormous speakers anywhere, only the chirping of birds, an occasional dog barking or a fellow traveler saying hello.

Finished with the trail and headed home the other day, I reached into my pocket to pull out my driver’s license and credit card, which I always carry. One is for identification, the other for a grocery store I pass on the way home. My driver’s license was there, but the credit card was missing.

I had a sudden knot in my stomach. Maybe I had left the credit card at home.

The sick feeling continued growing on the drive home. It was a mix of worry and dread sandwiched between two very thick slices of “I can’t believe I did that.” The credit card was not at home.

I headed back to look for it, even though I was reasonably confident someone had probably already found it and was on a shopping spree. I began wondering what I was buying when my cell phone rang. It was the credit card company. Someone found my card.

“Was it on a trail?” I asked.

“Yep. A woman walking her dog. She called to report it and asked for your address so she could drop it off. We don’t do that for privacy reasons.”

Naturally, I asked for the contact info of the woman who found it so I could thank her, make her dinner, make her dog dinner, paint her house and anything else she wanted.

She couldn’t give out that info either, but she sounded as excited as I was to connect a lost card with the owner.

I wonder if I passed the woman who saved the day. I wonder if we said hello. We may not always know who or when or where, or even have a chance to say thank you, but there are still good people doing good things.