Mom's 80th Birthday
My mother turned 80 on June 2. We had a family celebration on Friday with a barbecue and potluck in Marvin and Lois' backyard.
It was a rare and lovely evening, cool and clear with a light breeze. Ever the consummate "occasion" planners, Marvin and Lois arranged for everyone to present Mom with a rose--home or florist-grown--with a note attached. Ahead of time, with a nail clipper, Grant busily clipped off the multitude of thorns from the rose he plucked from our yard. Bryant, Andrew, and Diana got their roses from the yard of their piano teacher, who lives in our house on Trail West Road. I planted those roses, and knew immediately which one would smell the loveliest. Andrew, who usually carries out his missions intensely and promptly, gave Grandma his rose immediately upon arrival at the party. Because I forgot to remind him before he left, the content for Joel's note arrived by email from Kansas City where he had gone to take the test for Level 1 of his Chartered Financial Analyst certification. The rest of the rose-with-card presentation came off according to plan.
After the food preparation was done, we gathered inside and retrieved our roses and then marched out the front door and lined up at the side of the house. Those at the head of the line began singing Happy Birthday as we all trooped into the back yard and formed a circle around Mom and Dad and Aunt Lizzie who were visiting till the meal was ready. One by one each person stepped forward and read aloud from their card as they handed the rose and card to Mom.
Ahead of time, Lois had prepared a window box to receive the roses. The bottom held saturated floral foam topped with bright green moss in which stood a forest of baby's breath. Each rose stem was stabbed into the "forest" and the whole thing served as the centerpiece on the serving table. It went home with Mom and Dad afterwards.
We all sat at tables, each topped with a white cloth. Serving as a centerpiece for each table was a grouping of clear glasses, decorated on the outside with a stem of flowers and greenery tied onto each glass with twine, and each containing a tea light. The flames flickered as expected, but, protected as they were from the breeze, they stayed lit--a great touch of class for a backyard party.
When it got nearly dark, Benji started a small fire in a designated spot near the periphery of a huge spreading oak tree in the back yard. The NE breeze obligingly carried the smoke out from under the high leafy canopy and toward the small ripening wheat field across the street and SW of the yard. The more sedate among us sat and watched the fire while the restless ones did things like jumping on the trampoline.
No one needed stitches this time, but Joseph ended up with his front teeth bleeding after an encounter with Andrew's head. The head was fine. Go figure. Earlier Dad had a surprise when the chair he sat in to eat silently tipped itself over backwards from having been placed in a spot where runoff from an earlier scrubbing job had softened the ground. He gathered himself together, we moved the table several feet west, and he was apparently none the worse for the experience. Obviously, the evening lacked perfection in every detail, but it still felt wonderful.
Not everyone gets to celebrate their parents' 80th birthday, and we are grateful to have the privilege. Earlier, I thought my mother was unlikely to reach this milestone, especially during a time about ten years ago when she was very sick with pneumonia. I think she has stayed relatively well by taking better-than-average care of her health in recent years. She has fibromyalgia and now, diabetes, and walks carefully to avoid tripping and falling. But she feels well most of the time and works in her flower and vegetable gardens a lot, resting when she gets tired. Every day she exercises with the help of a chi machine, and takes an assortment of food supplements. She watches her diet, measures and records her blood sugar every morning, and knows how to cook well-balanced meals--minus the decadent accompaniments many younger people have grown accustomed to. Her food repertoire includes an assortment of ethnic foods, learned from international guests and traveling family members--Salvadoran, Japanese, and Indian.
My mother has never had public prominence as my father has. But I can't imagine anyone better suited to mother the 12 children God gave her and Dad. With the same kind of opportunities I have had, she could have been a good writer and teacher, and sometimes I think it's unfair that she did not have that opportunity. She is smart and gracious and well informed on a great variety of matters. Most people probably don't know that because most of her life has been lived behind the scenes, invested in supporting her husband's ministry and nurturing her family. Through them, she is part missionary, professor, pastor, nurse, teacher, farmer, builder, travel agent, business manager, landscaper, seamstress, cook, homemaker, pastor's wife, and writer. Each of those vocations represents the growth of a seed our mother planted as we were growing up. Certainly we also benefited from our father's input and other people's investments, but that is another story.
On my card, I wrote about having acquired many practical skills through my mother's teaching and example, noting that, in cooking and gardening particularly, she was more artistic than most. I treasure what she taught me.
I'm glad Marvin and Lois had the vision for nudging all of us to "give her flowers while she's here" by planning this celebration for Mary Elizabeth (Beachy) Miller--Wife, Mom, and Grandma. In a week when I've seen four parents buried by their grieving families, it's so much more pleasurable to be celebrating a birthday than planning a funeral.
It was a rare and lovely evening, cool and clear with a light breeze. Ever the consummate "occasion" planners, Marvin and Lois arranged for everyone to present Mom with a rose--home or florist-grown--with a note attached. Ahead of time, with a nail clipper, Grant busily clipped off the multitude of thorns from the rose he plucked from our yard. Bryant, Andrew, and Diana got their roses from the yard of their piano teacher, who lives in our house on Trail West Road. I planted those roses, and knew immediately which one would smell the loveliest. Andrew, who usually carries out his missions intensely and promptly, gave Grandma his rose immediately upon arrival at the party. Because I forgot to remind him before he left, the content for Joel's note arrived by email from Kansas City where he had gone to take the test for Level 1 of his Chartered Financial Analyst certification. The rest of the rose-with-card presentation came off according to plan.
After the food preparation was done, we gathered inside and retrieved our roses and then marched out the front door and lined up at the side of the house. Those at the head of the line began singing Happy Birthday as we all trooped into the back yard and formed a circle around Mom and Dad and Aunt Lizzie who were visiting till the meal was ready. One by one each person stepped forward and read aloud from their card as they handed the rose and card to Mom.
Ahead of time, Lois had prepared a window box to receive the roses. The bottom held saturated floral foam topped with bright green moss in which stood a forest of baby's breath. Each rose stem was stabbed into the "forest" and the whole thing served as the centerpiece on the serving table. It went home with Mom and Dad afterwards.
We all sat at tables, each topped with a white cloth. Serving as a centerpiece for each table was a grouping of clear glasses, decorated on the outside with a stem of flowers and greenery tied onto each glass with twine, and each containing a tea light. The flames flickered as expected, but, protected as they were from the breeze, they stayed lit--a great touch of class for a backyard party.
When it got nearly dark, Benji started a small fire in a designated spot near the periphery of a huge spreading oak tree in the back yard. The NE breeze obligingly carried the smoke out from under the high leafy canopy and toward the small ripening wheat field across the street and SW of the yard. The more sedate among us sat and watched the fire while the restless ones did things like jumping on the trampoline.
No one needed stitches this time, but Joseph ended up with his front teeth bleeding after an encounter with Andrew's head. The head was fine. Go figure. Earlier Dad had a surprise when the chair he sat in to eat silently tipped itself over backwards from having been placed in a spot where runoff from an earlier scrubbing job had softened the ground. He gathered himself together, we moved the table several feet west, and he was apparently none the worse for the experience. Obviously, the evening lacked perfection in every detail, but it still felt wonderful.
Not everyone gets to celebrate their parents' 80th birthday, and we are grateful to have the privilege. Earlier, I thought my mother was unlikely to reach this milestone, especially during a time about ten years ago when she was very sick with pneumonia. I think she has stayed relatively well by taking better-than-average care of her health in recent years. She has fibromyalgia and now, diabetes, and walks carefully to avoid tripping and falling. But she feels well most of the time and works in her flower and vegetable gardens a lot, resting when she gets tired. Every day she exercises with the help of a chi machine, and takes an assortment of food supplements. She watches her diet, measures and records her blood sugar every morning, and knows how to cook well-balanced meals--minus the decadent accompaniments many younger people have grown accustomed to. Her food repertoire includes an assortment of ethnic foods, learned from international guests and traveling family members--Salvadoran, Japanese, and Indian.
My mother has never had public prominence as my father has. But I can't imagine anyone better suited to mother the 12 children God gave her and Dad. With the same kind of opportunities I have had, she could have been a good writer and teacher, and sometimes I think it's unfair that she did not have that opportunity. She is smart and gracious and well informed on a great variety of matters. Most people probably don't know that because most of her life has been lived behind the scenes, invested in supporting her husband's ministry and nurturing her family. Through them, she is part missionary, professor, pastor, nurse, teacher, farmer, builder, travel agent, business manager, landscaper, seamstress, cook, homemaker, pastor's wife, and writer. Each of those vocations represents the growth of a seed our mother planted as we were growing up. Certainly we also benefited from our father's input and other people's investments, but that is another story.
On my card, I wrote about having acquired many practical skills through my mother's teaching and example, noting that, in cooking and gardening particularly, she was more artistic than most. I treasure what she taught me.
I'm glad Marvin and Lois had the vision for nudging all of us to "give her flowers while she's here" by planning this celebration for Mary Elizabeth (Beachy) Miller--Wife, Mom, and Grandma. In a week when I've seen four parents buried by their grieving families, it's so much more pleasurable to be celebrating a birthday than planning a funeral.
posted by Mrs. I at
5:08 PM
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