Margaret Philbrick

Author. Gardener. Teacher. Planting seeds in hearts.

Author. Gardener. Teacher.

Planting seeds in hearts.
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I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.   1 Corinthians 3:6
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Archives for December 2019

This Bed…

December 16, 2019 by Margaret Philbrick Leave a Comment

Did you make your bed this morning? Do you have an attachment to your bed which causes you to look at it as your safe zone, safe haven, safe harbor? How would you describe your bed to someone who’d never seen it or been in it?

Over the past seven years we’ve entertained many overnight guests and we’ve noticed that very few of them, as in less than five percent, make their bed. This is puzzling to grownups whose parents taught them to always make the bed period, anytime, anywhere and especially if you are a guest in someone’s home. My qualitative mind is wondering, is this evidence of a mobile millennial culture that holds little regard for their bed as a sacred, rooted space? How do people under 30 think about their beds? At the end of a long day, my husband and I let loose a contented sigh as we settle in and one of us whispers, “Ahh, we made it back.” The cares of the day set aside. 

I grew up sleeping in the first bed my parents bought when they married— a green, double canopy bed. It’s the first bed that Ted and I slept in together, (read last week’s post to find out about Ted.) After my parents said, “goodnight,” my brother and I would play tag on it, the equivalent of the playground game, “Man on Woodchips.” We would chase each other around the posts, leaning out as far as possible without ever touching each other or the floor. We didn’t have air- conditioning and I remember falling asleep sweaty from our bedtime romps.

Painted this oil painting of my childhood bedroom when I was 10?

When I got married, it became our first bed. We ditched the canopy after I decided to cover it in grapevines and bird nests. Charlie grew tired of waking up with bark and twig fragments in the sheets so it became a four poster bed. Our children climbed up with their stockings each Christmas morning and we opened up their gifts (whoopie cushions, kazoos), crammed together on the bed. When they were little, we played “soccer barbies” with our daughter’s tiny dolls, molding the comforter into an apartment building where they all lived their miniature grown-up lives.

Later in life, my dad bought this “cathedral window” stitched quilt from a quilter in Arkansas. I’m not a quilter, but I do appreciate the hand-work that’s gone into each intricate patch and the years of collecting fabrics that make them. It’s a quilt worth studying. Era’s of style and color are represented, the 60’s psychedelic fabrics line up next to the 50’s cotton calico apron fabrics that the quilter’s grandmother probably wore. We sleep under the story of this country quilter’s life. A single decorative pillow from my college roommate speaks, “A bouquet of Love and Friendship” with a teapot of pansies in the center. I think of her every time we make the bed.

Wish I knew the woman who made this quilt so I could thank her!

All of this adds up to a reflective ritual with a dose of discipline. The bed means something to us so we make it and look forward to our return knowing we prepared the way for another night’s sleep when we accomplished the first task of the day. “If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed,” U.S. Navy Adm. William H. McCraven shared in a speech at a U. of Texas commencement, “If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day,” he said. “It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task, and another, and another. And by the end of the day that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed.”

On a broader platitude, perhaps making the bed suggests the value we as a culture place on rest. We don’t just flop down anywhere and take a nap, unless we’re a toddler crashed out on sugar, strung out by the holiday season. We rest and perhaps rest best when the place has been prepared for us. My husband and I love Holiday Inn Express because of their beds. Those beds are so comfy, the sheets tucked in just right, the four pillows marked with “soft” and “firm.” Even if we accidentally book a smoking room instead of non-smoking we’re going to sleep well, just because of those beds. 

In this Advent week of rushing around finalizing holiday preparations, think about His bed. A manger bed, fluffed with straw or a shawl arranged on the ground prepared for him. It wasn’t Holiday Inn Express pillows and 300 thread count sheets, but it was a simple bed prepared for the King of Kings. Prepare the way, make your bed.

Caravaggio’s Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawerence

Part three in a four part Advent series on the tangible and intangible things in life that last.

Filed Under: Advent Tagged With: Caravaggio, cathedral window quilt, Holiday Inn Express, QuiltersWorld, sacred places

This Bear

December 9, 2019 by Margaret Philbrick Leave a Comment

I Love Him! Yes, my husband and Jesus and Ted D. Bear which is his formal name. In his younger days he went by just Ted until the insane “Ted” movie series came out. This blasphemed and confused him, forcing him to take his formal, full name to maintain his innocent identity. Recently, I found this letter on the chair in our bedroom where he resides, keeping watch over his flocks by night — a small selection of ladybugs who climb through the screens when it first turns cold and manage to stay alive through most of the winter. They keep him entertained, but with the departure of our children he has too much free time on his hands which is probably why he penned this letter.

Look at that loved off fur!

Dear B.F.F.,

We’ve been together since you were seven and your grandfather picked me out of Hayward, Wisconsin’s only toy store, on Christmas Eve. I remember the exaltation of being chosen and the relief that he didn’t pick the stuffed muskie next to me. I can still picture you flouncing in on Christmas morning wearing your white robe with the long, red ribbons and your matching fuzzy slippers. You grabbed me first and hugged me before opening any of your other presents. That’s when I first loved you too. We went to slumber parties together, at Meg’s house you hid me inside your sleeping bag so the other girls wouldn’t see. I kept your feet warm. My worst moment came when your roommates hung me off the balcony of your fifth floor dorm room at that boiling hot college in Texas. They forgot — I’m a stuffed bear so I can’t die. You forgave them and we’re all still friends. I forgave the big man when you two got married and he banished me to the linen closet, calling me a “dust ball.” I can’t help it if he has allergies! He didn’t know you came into the closet and hugged me during all those years he traveled on business and your kids grew up. I loved those tea parties with Beauregard and all the other bears that came to live with us: Snuffle bear, Grey bear, Dan bear. Now in Wisconsin, I get to sleep with you and that mangy dog whose breath is unbearable. Fortunately, she sleeps at the foot of the bed and I’m still right next to you, only when the big man is gone and I accept that, no hard feelings between us. I can’t help it if he has allergies! The last time we slept together my pillow was covered in crumbly, dried out orange foam. That’s my stuffing and in case you haven’t noticed I have several holes around the seam of my neck. For Christmas I’m asking for you or your daughter to sew me up. If you don’t, I won’t last. I might turn to dust and the big man’s nickname for me will come true! Please, all I want for Christmas is my seams sewed up.

Forever your loving cinnamon bear, Ted D. Bear

He’s precocious and adorable and one of us will sew him up which brings me to the point of all this. There are far too may stuffed animals in the world that end up in landfills and far too few who take their place among the living, like The Velveteen Rabbit. These are the ones who are loved so much, that they become “real.” A lifetime of childhood memories attach to them and to a degree they are more real than the thousands of disorganized, forgotten photos held by our phones and computers. They are tangible, we held them and cried into their fur and if we take care of them, they last. What is hanging around your house or apartment that is precious enough to you that you’ve glued it together when it broke or sewed it up when it ripped? How can we live less disposable lives and truly “cherish” something or even better, someone this advent season? For He cherishes us enough to sew us up and fix us with every repeated fall and failing.

Psalm 103:2

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits,
 who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases.”

Spend some glue this December and mend a relationship that’s broken or at least a favorite bear.

Part two in a four part advent series on the tangible and intangible aspects of life that last.

Filed Under: Advent Tagged With: Bears for life, cherish, childhood

This Couch

December 3, 2019 by Margaret Philbrick Leave a Comment

A single question, asked on this couch changed everything. Thirty-one years ago today I lived in a tiny apartment in Chicago on Dearborn street, worked in an advertising agency and stopped for groceries at Treasure Island after getting off the El-train. Snowflakes mixed with yellow gingko leaves on the sidewalk as I slushed my boots into 1100 N. Dearborn. I pressed the 19th floor elevator button and checked out my hair in the mirrored glass. We’d decided earlier in the day to go pick out a Christmas tree that evening. After dropping my groceries onto the only counter in my “galley” kitchen, which is a romantic city term for inadequate kitchen, I changed into jeans and a Christmas sweater. This was the end of the 80’s — people wore gaudy sweaters for real, not as a joke at corporate Christmas parties. 

Over on Rush street a bar with outdoor seating beckoned commuters, a busy watering hole called Melvins. During holiday season they filled the red-painted wrought iron furniture with Christmas trees beneath multi-colored lights, the old fashioned kind our grandparents hung on their trees with single colored, large light bulbs. The evergreen smell and warm, holiday glow created an oasis in the city rush.

He tucked his gloved hand into my mitten. We found a tree that might fit. I took the top and he carried the trunk. City lights and taxi horns mingled with the “Charlie Brown Christmas” theme song as we carried my first “big” Christmas tree back to my first “big” one bedroom apartment. 

“I think I’ll take a shower,” I said. The tree sap pinned my fingers together and I felt sweaty. Radiator heat equals boiling hot, unadjustable indoor temperatures. We’d wrestled the tree into the stand and moved the furniture around to make space for it. “Oh, okay,” he said with a puzzled look. 

I emerged in a yellow robe and hair up in a towel, (we’d been dating for six years so this was not a big deal.) Slumping down next to him on the couch I noticed he looked pale, almost gaunt. He gathered my hands in his sweaty palms, “We’ve been together for awhile. We both love family and I want that to continue, to grow. I want us to have our own family someday. I want what we have to go on.” Oh, how I could not believe I’m sitting in a robe with no make-up on at this moment. He slid off the couch onto his knees. “Will you marry me?”

THE wicker couch

“Of course I will!” I laughed, screamed, and surprisingly did not cry. Being sneaky, he’d tucked the ring box behind a pillow on the couch. After we finished hugging (and of course, kissing) we sat back and stared at each other, he handed it to me. Laughing louder, I opened the black, velvet box and to my shock there was a ring inside, his grandmother’s ring which I knew nothing about. I’d been expecting a cigar band with a cute message written inside, something like, “I.O.U. an incredible ring when I’m a successful lawyer someday.” We’d never looked at rings or even talked about them and he slid his grandmother’s beautiful ring on my finger. My “of course I will” went silent. To this day, it is the most special ring in the world.

The view this morning from this couch is a world of white. First rain, then ice, then snow coated all the trees in our neighborhood and it stuck. Just like his question 31 years ago today. It stuck. In an age of IKEA furniture that ends up out on the curb and disposable Joanna Gaines signs, I hope this Advent we seek after something that sticks, something that lasts. My parents bought this couch on their honeymoon for ten dollars off the porch of the Thorp Hotel in Fish Creek. WI. It still says “ten dollars” in pencil on the bottom. Then it moved to our back porch in Geneva, IL and held many dressed up girls at birthday parties, then on to my studio apartment and down the hall to apt. 1901, my one bedroom and now it’s back home where it began. We changed the color from white to forest green and each spring we take the wicker furniture outside and touch up the chipped paint. My mother and father take naps on the couch they bought on their honeymoon, our friends laugh and cry as we tell stories and drink craft beer around the fire. This couch…his question…the pure joy of something that lasts. And today, “Of course I will, my love.”

Part one of a four part Advent series on the tangible and intangible aspects of life that last.

Filed Under: Love Tagged With: 1100 N. Dearborn, Door County, engagement stories, memories



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