Month: July 2025

The man of the house is tall, lean, and so bald that his head shines almost as much as his smile. He worked law enforcement all his career. As a state trooper, he once rescued the Beatles from crazed fans after a St. Louis concert.

He worked for the federal government as well, something to do with organized crime and exploding body parts. I don’t ask for details; I just nod. He served with the Secret Service under Presidents Ford, Clinton, “Daddy Bush” and Vice-President Dan Quayle. Barbara Bush was his favorite even though she wasn’t a president.

He’s retired now, mastering the art of gardening and the go-to guy if you have concerns about a tree. Rabbits eating the bark off your dogwood? Call him.

Writing is his chief enjoyment. He’s written 29 books, none of them published. That doesn’t diminish his enthusiasm one semi-colon, nor should it. A lot of good writers are never published, and some published writers aren’t all that good. He prints out his manuscripts, tucks them in three-ring binders and passes them among friends who receive his creations with delight.

At the center of his writing room sits a stately desk with a brass lamp, a desk pad, a pencil holder and a day calendar. The desk sits in front of windows that frame lush greenery and channel oceans of soft, natural light.

The center desk drawer is organized with precision. A divided tray holds a solar calculator, Post-it notes, mechanical pencil refills, scissors, a pink highlighter, a magnifying glass and a small compartment in the middle containing 40 brightly colored paper clips: turquoise, sky blue, hot pink, lime green, white and neon yellow.

Nobody touches the paper clips. He says that with a smile, probably the same smile he wore when he yelled, “MOVE IT!” at the Beatles.

Not even he uses the paper clips. “Those are special,” he says. “I won’t use them. I’m still emotional.”

The paper clips were a gift when he was diagnosed with advanced cancer and underwent 40 radiation treatments. The clips were linked together and hung on the kitchen wall. After each radiation treatment, he and his wife would return home and, because he was so utterly exhausted, she would remove a paper clip.

Each blast of radiation was followed by one less paper clip.

It didn’t look like progress at first. Slowly, gradually the chain began to shrink.

They monitored it when they sat down for a meal, skipped a meal because he was too sick to eat, or when they walked to the garage to head out for another treatment.

One of my most beloved theologians, Ray Stedman, once wrote, “Suffering is part of the program.” Who was better acquainted with suffering than Christ? It was the path to resurrection and life after death.

Most of us subconsciously acknowledge that suffering is part of the program—particularly for others. Then we are shocked when we find ourselves in that equation.

Nobody escapes this life unscathed. Everybody goes through something.

When darkness falls, your steps falter and the path ahead is frightening, keep inching forward, keep believing, keep praying.

The path through suffering is one paper clip at a time.

When I was a kid, we didn’t have air conditioning until we moved from Nebraska to Missouri. People in Nebraska used open windows and fans to cool a house back in the day.

My Aunt Adeline, a resourceful woman, cooled a big house, a husband and six kids, with nothing but a bowl of ice in front of a window fan. That was the Cornhusker version of air conditioning.

There were pitiful looks when people learned we were moving to Missouri, a place many considered Deep South. It was only 200 miles south, but south is south.

From all the talk, it sounded as though the heat down South was so bad that people melted like butter in the summer. They could be sitting in their cars, at the kitchen table, going for the mail or picking tomatoes when—bam!—they melted into a large puddle of clarified butter.

We moved south in August and, as predicted, each day was red hot wrapped in a suffocating blanket of humidity. At night, we slept (more like drifted in and out of consciousness) with a very old and very large oscillating floor fan humming at the end of the hallway by the bedrooms.

That big fan went wherever we went. If we were in the kitchen, the fan was in the kitchen. If we moved to the living room, the fan moved to the living room. The fan was a constant and welcome presence.

The next summer, Mom and Dad bought a window air conditioner and the large oscillating fan quietly moved to the basement. We gave the old fan a friendly nod whenever we went down to do laundry or retrieve something from the freezer, but it was largely ignored and soon forgotten.

The new AC window unit shot arctic air directly at the kitchen table. We ate every meal with our winter coats on. To get cold air back to the bedrooms, it ran full blast at night, which meant there were often icicles hanging from the kitchen appliances in the mornings.

A few years later, Mom and Dad had central air installed. Life would never be the same. There was no hum of the fan or roar of the window AC. The entire house stayed comfortably cool without constant background noise. What’s more, we could eat meals without coats on.

Our kids have never known life without air conditioning, nor have their kids. When one of our daughters and her family moved to a different house, a friend brought lunch for the entire crew on moving day. She also brought an oscillating stand fan, knowing all the traipsing in and out would heat the house.

“It’s an oscillated what?” shrieked one of the kids. The woman lugged the fan into the kitchen, set it upright, raised the pole and plugged it in.

The kids immediately put their red-cheeked sweaty faces directly in front of the blowing fan. As they talked, they realized the fan warped and amplified their voices.

They sang and screeched using all the weird voices they could muster. For the rest of the day, not one of the passed the fan without stopping to cool off and singing a few bars.

“Hey, Grandma!” one of them shouted, “Did you know about these fans?”

“I did know about them,” I said. “That’s how your grandma became cool.”

Parents are giving credit cards to children so young that some of them aren’t able to make their own beds or cross the street alone. These newly minted cardholders are buckled into car seats whenever they travel and wear water wings at the pool but have credit cards linked to their parents’ account.

One mother said she and her husband added their 2-year-old and 1-year-old as authorized users on their bank card in hopes of teaching the children about money at an early age and establishing a good credit history. Their toddlers purchase snacks once a week at the grocery store and pay with their credit card.

I can see it on the college application: “Able to tap plastic at age 2.”

The article did not say how such young children pay for their purchases when the statement comes due. Perhaps parents garnish the kids’ tooth fairy money.

Where do credit card holders not yet potty trained keep their credit cards? In the dresser drawer with their jammies? Under their pillows? Maybe they keep them in a magnetic wallet attached to their cell phones.

This new trend alters the benchmarks of child development.

Year One: Waves bye-bye, can say “Mama” and “Dada,” able to grasp credit cards between thumb and pointer finger.

Year Two: Kicks a ball, eats with a spoon, knows how to tap, swipe or insert the chip.

Year Three: Learns colors — silver is for Citibank, red is for Macy’s and blue is for Lowe’s.

Year Four: Strings beads, dresses self, joins Amazon Prime for free shipping and Prime days.

Year Five: Speaks clearly, uses all parts of speech, can tell a simple story using full sentences about getting a $200 year-end rebate on the Costco card.

We gave our youngest a credit card when she was 18 and went to college. We can’t remember why we never gave her older sister or brother a credit card. Perhaps we were still in the tough love phase of parenting.

If I’d had a credit card as a young child, I would have bought the Barbie Dream House, the pink convertible, and multiple Ken dolls so Barbie had choices.

Who am I kidding? I had a wild streak and would have been the five-year-old buying boxes and boxes of candy cigarettes.

Let’s hope these young users learn how to spend within their means. Credit card debt can weigh you down faster than a soggy diaper.

 

 

The last time we sold a house was 40 years ago, so we were unfamiliar with the current concept of “staging a house” before selling it. When our youngest daughter and husband mentioned staging their house, we thought live music and refreshments might be involved. Wrong again.

Staging a house means you declutter, deep clean and enter all your earthly goods into the Witness Protection Program. A second option is to rent a large storage unit.

Staging a house involves removing family pictures, personal mementos, wall décor and all 400 magnets plastering children’s artwork to the refrigerator door.

Bedside tables are cleared, leaving only carefully curated hardback books that make the owners look like tech wizards or movie buffs.

Bathrooms must look unused and sterile.

The washer and dryer can stay in the laundry room, but no dirty clothes are allowed. Some suggest hiding empty laundry baskets so as not to remind potential buyers of unpleasant chores.

Kitchen counters are to be virtually bare. One staging expert claims that visible cords to coffeemakers, toasters and mixers on a counter look uninviting. I don’t know how we live with ourselves.

To keep the house looking neat, clean and unlived-in, our daughter, her husband and three kids moved out of their house and into ours.

Fortunately, our house is not for sale, which means people are free to use the bathrooms, leave sand and dirt in the bottom of the tub, kick off your shoes anywhere, run up and down the stairs while dragging your hands on the walls and weave all the electrical cords on the kitchen counter into macrame plant holders.

Which reminds me of another “must have” for staging a home: a live plant in every room. Who decides these things?

After four days on the market, multiple showings and no offers, our daughter felt we should stop by the house and freshen things up. Perhaps prospective buyers had messed with the staging.

She was correct—a chair had been moved 10 inches from the dining table. The aging carpet in a hallway had a small visible wrinkle in it. The two of us were on our hands and knees pushing the excess carpet into a bedroom, under the bed and up against the wall.

Perhaps the house wasn’t selling because a sofa was on the wrong wall. Careful not to scratch the floor, we picked up the sofa and moved it to an adjacent wall.

Thirty seconds later, we picked it up and moved it back.

Perhaps the bedrooms needed vacuuming. No-line vacuuming is preferred for staging, but if the vacuum does leave lines, they need to be straight. Despite her apprehension about my initial vacuum lines, I soon got the hang of it.

Three days later an offer came through and they moved back home that weekend. The ‘fridge was once again plastered with artwork and handprints, tennis shoes and flip flops blocked the entryway, the dog lounged on the sofa, pots and pans sat on the stove and dirty dishes stood in the sink.

Home sweet home.