Past Due Tribute

(E.H. (Jack) Byers Jr. standing, third from left)

Our new house has a guest room. The guests right now are boxes. Most of the boxes are from my momma's estate and contain things either I haven't seen in years or things I have never seen. Last night, while I was casually opening another white Washington apple box, I pulled out an old metal file box labeled, "Mama and Daddy Keepsakes," written in Momma's handwriting. I could have put it aside with the rest of the keepsake stuff I need to go through, but I decided to endulge myself and take a closer look.

I was hoping for love letters or old valentines sent between my grandpa ("Pa" to me) and my grandma ("B" to me) while he was away in WWII. Instead, I found items that spanned time from Pa's high school days (Letterman N's from his days as a Nashville, AR Scrapper) to his death (obituary, church bulletin containing a tribute and part of his eulogy). There were some things about B also, but I'll save those for another time. This one is for Pa.

I can only go by what I found, what I've been told and what I remember about Pa. He passed away one day after my 14th birthday and a week shy of his 60th, so I can't ask him.

From what I was told when I was young, he grew up with one brother and four sisters, and his father was a hard man who drank and sometimes beat the kids. I know the family owned a good sized farm because I found my great-grandpa's will in which he stated how he wanted the 240 acres in Howard County, AR to be divided. I'm sure Pa learned how to farm, because he had a large and beautiful vegetable garden every summer. When we came to visit, my brother and I would help pick peas, tomatoes, beans, eggplant, squash and okra. I also remember sinking my fingers into freshly turned over soil as we walked behind his tiller picking up potatoes.

One thing Pa never talked about was the war. I knew he was a veteran and had been a gunner in airplanes, but no details. Now I know more. He served for two years during WWII. If I had never opened that box, I would not have known that he spent 1 1/2 years in the South Pacific and was part of 45 air missions. His honorable discharge papers named his decorations and citations as:Good Conduct Air Medal with 2 Bronze Clusters, American Theater Asiatic-Pacific Theater with 5 Bronze Stars, and Philippine Liberation with 2 Bronze Stars. I don't know what any of that really means, but he would never talk about the war or what he did. If I could guess why he didn't, I would say he was proud to have served and proud of his country, but not happy that he had to be part of death and destruction. His title was Staff Sgt. Airplane Armorer Gunner with this description: Flew in 45 combat missions in a B-24 Aircraft over enemy occupied territory of New Guinea and Luzon. Pulled firing pin to arm bombs while airplane was in flight. Inspected and assisted in the repair of bomb racks, gun sights, and turrets. Fired caliber 50 machine guns while in combat. That's a lot of responsibility.

He had married my grandmother before going to war, and returned to Howard County after he finished his service, where he must have worked with his dad and brother for a while. I found a weekly time book with the three of them listed along with hours worked in November of 1945, a month after his discharge. I don't know how long he did that, but he eventually took a job with Reynolds Alluminum. He worked in various locations with Reynolds for 25 years until he retired with disability from a back injury.

His time at Reynolds produced the next surprising piece of information. I found an envelope that contained a picture of him at his retirement. There was a newsletter in the same envelope, so I opened it up. Right there was an article about my Pa and an invention he had made that saved labor and money for the company. I never heard about this. The newsletter was dated 1966, which was two years before I was born, but I still can't believe no one talked about it. I have often wondered how all the improvements have happened to make factories and machines more efficient. Now I know. It is because of people like my Pa, men or women who might have just made it through high school, didn't graduate from MIT, but worked hard, saw a need, and figured out a way to fulfill it. I'm proud that Pa was one of these people.

He was also a poet of sorts. My grandma published some of his poems in a little booklet after he died. I have several copies, but had not looked at them in a while. There was one in the box. Poetry was a way he had of expressing his thoughts and feelings about things, but he never thought his work was worth publishing. My grandmother wanted to give everyone something to remember him by, so she made the booklet. I'm glad she did. The verses are a little window into his viewpoints and his sense of humor. Since we just had the Super Bowl, I thought I would share his poem about a trip to the Cotton Bowl:

Cotton Bowl 1961

We and our friends the Tolletts

Had this brainstorm one day

To drive down to the Cotton Bowl

In Dallas U.S.A.

It was so dark that morning

You couldn't see outside

And most of all those people

Drove just like Bonnie and Clyde.

We finally made it down there

Boy, and what nerve it took

Then the girls went in to change their clothes

And left them on the hook.

Then Glen and Libba told us
You both show little class,
By washing off your fingers with
The water from your glass.

We had a little drizzly rain
But very little heat
Oh, yea you got it figured
The Razorbacks got beat.

We finally made it home that night
By jumping curbs and ruts
Now we've left all those pleasures
To the other football nuts.

Pa's moments of fame weren't limited to company newsletters and postumous publications. He made it into the newspaper too. In 1980 he broke the state record for hybrid striped bass when he caught a 10 3/4 lb., 28 1/2 inch fish. He's actually smiling in that picture.

When we moved to Arkansas in August of 1982, one of the things I was really looking forward to was spending time with Pa. He came to Kansas to help us move, and helped us get settled into the duplex next door to the house he shared with my grandma and where my momma and aunt had been raised. He encouraged my brother to sign up for football and got to see him practice, but never got to see him play. About a month after we moved, he developed a sore throat and was gone less than a month later from a fast acting luekemia. There were so many people that came to pay their respects at his funeral, that the chapel couldn't hold them all. The spilled out into the vestibule.

I know Pa wasn't a perfect man. He had mellowed by the time I came along, but he still had a temper and pictures of him often show his mouth in a hard line rather than a smile. I know he was strict with my mom and aunt sometimes, but I also know he loved them and my grandmother to distraction. He loved my brother and me too and would have loved his other grandchildren if he had lived long enough to know them. He made a difference in his service for our country, a difference in his workplace, and a difference to me. I can attribute my love for home grown tomatoes, red skin potatoes, cornbread and buttermilk, and the smell of pipe tobacco (unsmoked) to him. By example, he taught me to work hard, listen respectfully to my elders yet think for myself, and grow in my faith. There is so much more I could tell, but instead I'll share another poem with you that will let you know another reason I loved Pa and why I miss him still. He loved me.

Untitled
Lana is a nice sweet girl
She loves her Pa and B
And if I had one word to say
She would live with B and Me.

Jedie is a hamburger boy
But Lana's a Pop Tarter
Big Mac's always do you good
But Pop Tart's make you smarter.

New chapter

Wow, I haven't blogged since October. So much has happened since then. I haven't had time to write a decent blog, and now there is so much to write about that I'm not sure where to begin.

I guess I'll start with the big news. We have moved to Texas, and some, but not all, things are really different here. (I know, Duh.) I'm tempted to stop there. When I start talking about all that has happened in the past year, I start to sound whiny, and that is not the tone I want for this blog. It hasn't all been bad, not by a long shot, but it's difficult to explain the good without mentioning the bad. I'll say this, "all is well that ends well." We have ended one chapter of our lives and begun another.

Our new chapter begins the day after Christmas. We packed two vehicles to the ceiling with belongings we had taken to Heber Springs, Arkansas from our old house in Benton. Most of our stuff was being stored in Irving, Texas. It had been there almost 4 weeks as we waited to close on our new house in Saginaw. I'll talk about life in Heber some other time. Our time there deserves its own blog.

The good thing about traveling on a long trip (7 hours in this case) the day after Christmas is the kids had new stuff to keep them entertained. We also had the added benefit of putting one kid in each car so they couldn't fight...except when we stopped to eat, then you would think they had been cooped up together for hours.

It was cold that day, even in Texas. Trey and Mason reached the house first, and called to warn me that the last homeowner had left the sprinkler system timer on, so the driveway had ice on it(more about that in the next blog). Other than that, everything was great. Our savvy realtor suggested we make the seller have the house and carpets professionally cleaned before we moved in. I'll remember that next time I buy a house. It was wonderful. She had also come in before we got there, turned on the heat and left us a sweet note and some Chili's gift cards. There was even toilet paper in the bathrooms. When you've just been on a long trip and have two kids and you're a mom whose bladder isn't what it used to be, that's important.

I had only been in the house two times before, so I had to go exploring. It was better than I remembered, maybe because now the seller's stuff wasn't in it. It was easier to imagine us and our things there.

We unloaded the two cars, and left for some supper at a nearby Genghis Grill. That's when we found out everything is close to us...in multiples. You want a Wal-Mart? There are at least 4 within a 15 minute drive. You want Target? Well not so many, just 2 within 15 minutes. Grocery stores? Restaurants? Try any category, multiply by four or five, drive 15 to 20 minutes. They are all there. For those of you who live in or near a truly large city, this may not seem unusual. To us? Unbelievable.

This new access to so many shopping areas is a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because if you need something, you can find it. A curse, because there are waaaayyy too many places to spend money. The budget is going to have to be strict.

Giddy from so many options and places to explore in the future, we headed back to our new home. We would be on air beds for the night, because the furniture wouldn't be delivered until the next day. I couldn't imagine putting the kids in separate empty rooms on an airbed in a strange place, so we all camped out in the den. We got everyone settled and went to sleep.

Sometime during the night, I thought I heard a vague sound of a train whistle (more on that later, too), but other than that we slept well in our new home.

Coming up: movers

Part-Time Kids?

While perusing craigslist jobs in the Dallas area under the subheading of [ETC], I came across a part-time nanny position. "Sounds interesting," I thought. So, I clicked on it. After reading some expected duties such as light housekeeping and occasional tutoring and afternoon hours, I was still interested, so I read on. My jaw dropped as I read the following (I kept their spelling and grammar)

"My wife and I have one full time childe that is 12 years old and two part time children that are 11 & 9."

What? Part-time children? What are these, and how do you get them? Do you get to pick your hours and days? Does this mean they belong to them part-time, are only there part-time, or are these some kind of mutants who are children part-time and adults (or something else) the rest of the time?

Whatever the answer, I don't think I want to work for these people. They sound unstable.

Some Things Don't Change

We normally take our daily walk in the morning, but today we were running a little behind, so we took it after lunch. It has been a hot summer, still is, and today it was pretty warm at noon. I noticed something. Because it has been so dry, many of the trees in the neighborhood have shed their leaves or pine needles. So, it was hot, but smelled like fall because of all the dead leaves. Kind of weird. But that's not what I'm writing about today. I noticed something else today, too. My kids have grown and changed, but they still have the same natures they did when they were toddlers.

When they outgrew their double stroller, I stopped going on walks. Why? Safety and harmony. Mason was between 1 and 3 and Jessica between 3 and 5. Mason would run way out in front. He wanted to go fast, and he didn't want to look at anything. He didn't care about the leaves or the stream or the birds. Knowing him, he probably memorized everything when he walked out the door. Jessica? She wanted to lag behind and look at everything. I stopped showing her stuff, because she would stop and examine it...forever. While Mason was 20 feet in front of me and still moving. I was constantly making one slow down or one speed up. When they didn't want to comply, I had to use force or threats or punish, because there's not a sidewalk in my neighborhood, so we were in the street and they needed to be with me. Not exactly a fun family time. They were so different. I just gave up on family walks as a routine. We still went sometimes, but it was too much work for everyday.

Now they are 12 and 10, and we are trying again. Sometimes we all walk and sometimes one rides a bike or a foot-powered scooter, but it is the same. Mason is way out in front and finishes before all of us, and Jessica lags behind and picks up leaves or watches birds. The difference? They don't have to be right beside me to be safe. They are old enough to watch for cars and get out of the road. So, they are still the same. One on-the-go with his own agenda and one day-dreamy and in her own world moving to the beat of her own drummer.

I wonder what they will be like at 22 and 24?

Houses

We are getting our house ready to sell right now. As I was rolling on yet more paint this evening, I started thinking about houses and how each one I have lived in has had a different personality and a different function in my life. Sure houses are only brick and mortar, walls, ceilings and floors. That's true, but we live our lives in them, grow up in them, raise our babies in them and laugh and cry in them. They aren't always just houses. Sometimes they're homes. And homes, even though we know they are temporary, are important.

I lived in several houses growing up. The first one I remember was in Nebraska. Some of the memories I have are sparked more by pictures I've seen. Without the pictures, I don't know if I would remember the porch or sidewalk or tree stump, but I do remember a feeling. I remember missing it. We moved kind of suddenly when I was four, and I just know I missed it.

Our house in Oklahoma was small and plain. I heard my first ghost story in that house and had many a sleep over with my best friend, Dana. I remember getting into some trouble for playing in a huge mud puddle at the end of the driveway. I don't think I formed an attachment to that house. It never seemed like home. I tried to run away while living there at least twice (I was between the ages of four and six, so I didn't get far). There was some turmoil in our family during that time, so maybe I attached some of those feelings to the house. I didn't miss it. I missed my friend when we moved, but not the house.

When we moved to Kansas, we lived in a rent house, then we moved to another one after the first 6 months or so. A lot happened in that second house. Quite a few things happened that I didn't find out about until later. I know I'm being vague. Maybe I'll share them in another post some day, but the things that happened aren't the point. The house became some place we seemed to need to be away from. It was small and had some problems, but life wasn't all bad there. I had birthday parties and played with friends there.

My craziest memory of that house was an early baking experiment. For some reason my mom wasn't home and I decided to make cupcakes. I couldn't find cupcake liners, but I knew they were made from paper with a wax coating on them - just like those paper cups with the wax lining, right? Wrong. I had a friend over, and we were both a little surprised when the inside of the oven burst into flames. We ran to the neighbors house. I can't remember if she called the fire department or not, but the cups must have burned themselves out in the oven without spreading to anything else because nothing else caught on fire. I still avoid making cupcakes.

I had one advantage at that house that I never had anywhere else we lived. I have to start by saying that I always had trouble going to sleep as a child. My mom used to say I didn't want to miss anything. She was probably right. Anyway, my bedroom was closest to the living room, and the way the hallway was positioned, I could sneak out of bed and sit in the hallway to watch TV without my parents seeing me. I don't remember if they ever caught me, but I stopped after I accidentally saw part of the movie Sybil one night.

When I found out we were moving to a new place, I was not sad I was leaving the house. It meant a change in schools and neighborhood friends, but it was time to leave, time for a change. I am somewhat indifferent about that house.

My favorite house was the one we moved into next. It had been built in the 1920's and had antique velvet wallpaper, beautiful wood floors, transoms over the bedroom doors and water radiators, which it still used for heat. It even had a back staircase from the kitchen that lead to the second floor. At the top of this staircase was a little maid's room.

It was cold in the winter and hot in the summer, but I loved it. It was warm, and friendly. Even the front of the house looked a little like a face. Life was not always rosy there. I turned into a teenager there. My parents' marriage took a big turn for the worse there. I cried over friendships and boys and all kinds of things while I lived there. The house still holds a special place in my heart, though. Maybe because it was older and had been well lived in or maybe it just suited my personal taste, but for some reason it seemed stable and sound and...well, just right. We lived there for about four and a half years, the longest I had lived in a house. I missed that house when we moved. When I visit Lawrence, I have to drive by it - even though it doesn't look the same and is smaller than I remember. I smile when I see it. It seems to smile back.

When we moved to Arkansas, we didn't have much. My parents were divorcing and my mom didn't have a job at first, so we lived in the duplex that my grandparents owned. My mom, brother and I shared a large bedroom. My mom put up a divider so my brother could have some privacy. There was no shower, only a tub, which made washing my hair really hard to do, so I rebelled and didn't wash it for a week one time. I guess I had to rebel against something. While we lived there, my parents divorce became final, my Aunt Judy died, and my grandfather died, all within a 6 month time period. I can't think of that little duplex without a twinge of leftover mourning and a sense of loss I can never quite put my finger on. It was not a good place for us to live, and we were excited to find a house to buy.

After my mom had found a stable job, we started looking for houses. I don't remember any of the other houses we looked at. The one we ended up buying was love at first sight. It was an older house, turquoise with white scallop trim. It had two bedrooms on the main floor plus an attic bedroom. What sold us, though, was the backyard. It must have been spring time. All I remember was walking to the back and seeing color everywhere. There were flowers and flowering bushes from one fence to the other. My mom took out a mortgage and we moved in.

While we were there, we started our lives over in a way. We started new routines. It stopped being quite so strange to set three places at the table instead of four. We even got used to the sound of the trains that rumbled past us a couple of blocks away. I miss that little house. It wasn't perfect, but it was ours, and it was where we started building our new definition of family.

I want to fast forward after we left that house. My mom remarried and we moved into his house, which was never really our house. After I graduated from high school I lived in a series of apartments and such. None of them were really home to me. I even told my mom once that I didn't really have a home, just places I lived. Then I married Trey.

After about three years of apartments, we decided to buy our first house. We fell in love with a little house in a neighborhood that was developed in the 1940's. It had some issues, and we had to do a lot of work to it, but it was cozy and we made it a home. We brought our first child, Jessica, home to that house, and she learned to walk there. We made the difficult decision that I should stay home with her in that house. We learned how to be a family there. We never intended to stay there forever, and we outgrew it pretty fast after Jessica arrived, but it was our first real home. I feel warm when I think of it.

We moved to our current house next, when Jessica was almost one. We have been here over eleven years now. We brought our second child, Mason home here, so this is the only home he has ever known and the only one Jessica remembers. I have lived in this house six years longer than any other. We've had growth marks on the door frames and drawings on the walls. One of the bedrooms has been used as a nursery for both of my babies, and the carpet we just ripped out had sippy cup and potty training stains I'm sure. We've been through a pregnancy, surgeries and the death of a parent while living here. There have been times when I had it neat and decorated and ready for company and other times when I wondered if I would ever find the kitchen table again. We have had the normal ups and downs of a maturing marriage here and have grown emotionally and spiritually as well as physically here (the physical growth has been vertical for some and horizontal for others.)

I don't consider myself a material person. I know that the things of this earth will all pass away, but this little corner of the earth that we have carved out over the last eleven years has meaning to us. It represents where we've been and what we've achieved; what we've done and who we've become.

How can we not feel an emotional attachment to the space where so much has happened? How can I not care what color I paint the walls or what cabinets I pick out. Yes, they are for someone else, but this house still means something to us. I care what happens to it.

So, I can't help it if I want to make this a place someone will fall in love with. I want someone to come in and make it their own. I want them, not to just live here, but to love, cry and laugh here. This house, just like anything else on this earth, is not perfect, but it has been a blessing to us, even when there were things I wanted to change about it. It has been our home.

Fundamental is Not Fun

Heard one day during school:

Kid -"Mom, I think all school work should be fundamental."
Me (eyebrows raised)"What do you think that means?"
Kid - "It means fun and educational, you know, fundamental!"
Me (eybrows down but trying not to laugh)"No, that's not what it means. It means basic."
Kid - "No. It's a made-up word. You just put fun and educational together and get fundamental."
And the battle was on. My weapon - a dictionary, the kid's - a knowledge of the usage of the word when adults are trying to make learning fun. I won by a narrow margin. I could definitely see why there was a misunderstanding. The thing is, the groups that are using it aren't exactly using it incorrectly, but just in a way that could be easily misunderstood based on context.

Here are some examples:

http://www.myparentime.com/categories/fun.shtml

and, ironically, http://www.rif.org/

It made me wonder if this is how some words change in meaning over time.

Now, I use slang and jargon about as much as the next middle aged mom, which means most of what I use is 20 years old and out of date, but misusing something to the point that kids misunderstand the real meaning of the word is different. It's been done before, though - intentionally and unintentionally. I can think of some choice words that have changed meaning over the last 50-100 years or so. Some of these words have changed so much that a person's whole reputation could ride on how he or she uses them.

English is clearly an evolving language. That's why we need a translator to read Chaucer. Some of the more recent changes in definition make reading classics to the kids challenging and sometimes even embarrassing as I have to decide whether to use the word in the text and explain what it used to mean or change it as I go along.

I wonder how much words will change in the next 20-30 years. Maybe by the time our kids are grown there will be an additional definition for "fundamental." I know one kid who will make a case for it.

Change in My Pocket

An old proverb says, "Change is the only constant." Whether you think change is constantly annoying, constantly exciting or constantly unpredictable, you must agree. We change our clothes, change our minds, change our attitude and sometimes even change our point of view.

Sometimes change is not something we choose to do. Sometimes change is something we don't want to do.

When I was little, we moved around quite a bit. Not as much as some military families I have known, but still, it was enough that I never lived in the same house more than four years. I went to a total of four elementary schools, two junior highs and one high school. I'm not griping about it, though. I have found that change, even change we don't want, can lead to things we would never know or experience - good things, life-changing things.

If I had never moved from Nebraska to Oklahoma, I would never have experienced ground that cracked open after a rain, horny toads, or my first best friend, Dana. I might never have been the mascot at a homecoming basketball game or been on a hair-raising ride on the back of a Shetland pony or attended school in an underground schoolhouse.

In the middle of my first grade year, we moved to Lawrence, Kansas. I woke up one morning after we had only been there a couple of days with incredibly sore jaws, yep - mumps. That was a new experience.

I finished first grade at Schwegler Elementary, but then we changed houses, so it was off to a new school for second grade. That was a BIG change. I attended Broken Arrow for second, third and fourth grade. It was a "pod" school, or "colony" school. I don't know who had this idea, but he or she was nuts. I never fit in and never felt comfortable at Broken Arrow, but again, I experienced things I would not have experienced without that change: Colony sings, guitar lessons, the worst teacher I ever had (yes, fourth grade was a character building year), and some new friendships. One of those friends, Kelly made me feel welcome at the school when I knew no one.

We moved again before fifth grade, and I finished out elementary school at Pinkney. My fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Montgomery was the first teacher I ever had who really encouraged me. She took the time to pull me aside with my parents and compliment me on my writing in front of them. My sixth grade teacher, Mr. Grant, gave us an assignment that introduced us to journalism. I don't know if it was the timing, the teachers, or just what I was supposed to do, but these two years greatly influenced the course of my life. Without change, it might not have happened that way. I made some important friendships during those two years, too. Elyce, Regina, and Carmen are all friends who were a positive influence on me in many ways.

I won't talk to you much about junior high, because for everyone, junior high is all about change. There are to many changes to mention. Not all were positive, but they all had a purpose.

Personally, my life took a major detour during those years, however. It was between eighth and ninth grade that my parents separated and we moved to Arkansas. This was probably the biggest change I had ever experienced. Almost everything was different after we moved - culture, accents, style, language, living conditions, even the number of plates we used to set the table (going from four to three was one of the strangest things ever). It was all different. But Arkansas has become my home. I went to high school and college here, met and married my husband, had my kids, started my first job and made more lifelong friends like Michele and Ronna.

I have grown up here - physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. I have lost loved ones and made many memories... and mistakes.

Now I am preparing for another big change. We are moving away from Arkansas, my home of 28 years and my house of eleven years. I know how hard change can be, but by experience, I know how rewarding it can be also.

So, with change in my pocket, or rather with the knowledge in my heart that change can lead to great things, I am ready. At least, that is what I'm telling myself.