Of Babies, Boxwood and Bamboo

August 23, 2023 by Margaret Philbrick 9 Comments

Three weeks ago our first grandchild surprised us by coming into the world a month early, welcome Asher Scott! Countless friends have told us, “Being a grandparent is the most treasured time in life.” So many in fact, that we began to doubt this itty bitty generalization. With almost 34 years of marriage behind us, there have been many treasured times in life. Why or how could this one be even better? To wrap my mind around such a question we turn to one of the most trusted plots of answer, the garden.

While growing up, our family spent many wonderful vacations in Nashville, TN at the home of my cousins. My Aunt was a talented formal gardener. Everything was knotted boxwood, cascading herbs and trickling fountains. The nearby Cheekwood Estate served as her model and “Martin Boxwood,” long established and revered there, provided inspiration. I learned to dislike the acrid, baking in the sun and humidity smell of boxwood. Although its deep green eternal color and lovely leaf flatters a garden the plant smells like cat pee.

When we finally could afford landscaping at our own home we planted a long row of tiny boxwood on either side of the front walkway, several inches apart. Wonder of wonders, you can grow Asian boxwood in the north that does not smell, but gives the same tidy effect. My husband and I babied these plants. It took about a decade for them to finally grow together and form a low hedge. We knocked the snow off them in winter and watered them consistently in summer. Our kids dreaded the “Go out and weed the front walkway” chore, but the boxwood deserved a clean flagstone walk. The plant grows about six inches a year in warm climates and less in cooler ones. It needs lots of trimming to promote filling-in growth. After a couple of decades the desired effect took hold and it looked dreamy in front of our home, providing an established french country welcome. A few months ago I drove by our former home (we moved away five years ago) and saw that several of the boxwoods had yellowed or died. Some were replaced with baby new ones, so the perfected look of our walkway was gone. Asian Boxwood has a life expectancy of 20 to 30 years so this should not have happened. Did it dry out in summer, suffer too much salting in winter? Who knows, but in 20 or 30 years I will be a much older grandma, and our new grandson will be in the prime of his life. God willing, he will not be yellowing, he will not be in decline. The majority of babying and tending will fall to his parents. We get to take in the beautiful view and watch him grow! Less work, more immediate benefits! Maybe that’s one of the reasons grandparenting is treasured.

I occasionally exchange panda videos with our youngest son, now the new dad!!!! (Can’t believe I’m writing this?) Together, we envy and laugh at these bamboo eating bumblers. We can’t get enough of them sitting all day mowing down vast swaths of the brittle canes, roots, shoots and leaves. When our son went to college at Belmont University in Nashville we began to notice that there is bamboo all over the place in that hot and wet town. The climate is perfect for it, but sadly too hot for pandas. A bamboo cane grows for only sixty days and takes three years to get established below ground. During this time it sends out massive amounts of roots which send up new canes. Our new grandchild is growing at a rate of 1 to 2 inches per month, not quite as fast as bamboo, but his growing season is much longer than 60 days! Getting to marvel at his growth without being consumed by laundry, spit-up, spraying SHOUT and non-stop changes and diaper cream and … you know the list, allows grandparents to focus on and appreciate every little thing their grandchild is doing and becoming. We are not thinking about anything else, like when do I go back to work or how am I going to pay the bills? Grandparenting is a time of unique, singular focus. Maybe that’s one of the reasons it’s treasured.

And now a bit about the treasure himself. Despite being born a month early he is doing everything he is supposed to be doing! He looks exactly like his mother. I think our son is handsome but his mother is gorgeous so that’s better. He rarely cries – how can this be? He is eating on an every three hour schedule. Did our kids do this? His hair is starting to lighten and get wavy. He is already looking fuller and chubbier, especially his full tummy, which translates to even more adorable and better sleep for his parents.

Dear God keep me from being one of those grandparents who brags endlessly about how brilliant and supremely gifted our grandchild is. I know this is impossible, because he is already finding his fingers and sucking on them and this usually happens at four months old so he is brilliant and supremely gifted and gorgeous at three weeks. Oh dear, I’m already doing it, but look at him! We are so thankful for this tiny but mighty blessing. To all our friends who told us about how special the grandparent world is, all we can say is Bravo! You are indeed, right.

Our Own Expiration Date

February 8, 2023 by Margaret Philbrick 6 Comments

I think there are two kinds of people, those who watch expiration dates and throw out the ketchup and mustard as soon as the date arrives and those who don’t look at expiration dates or think about them. My dad died on January 24th, 2023 and he did not look at expiration dates or think about them, even when his own date was pending. This lifestyle is akin to lifting the top off a jar of pickles and with one nostril searing sniff you discover that the brine has turned bad and yet you place it back on the fridge door. When we were growing up dad told us that he would live to the ripe old age of 140, then he revised it to 120 and towards the end he revised it to 100. Never did he believe he would die before 100 years old. He was 87 on January 24th, 2023. Pickles shouldn’t expire. Dad believed he shouldn’t expire either.

During the last week of his life I was able to spend a good bit of time in the hospital by his side and it was clear that he’d given up. He refused to eat his meatloaf. He didn’t want to try to get up and walk around. He fell asleep during the Dallas Cowboys game right after getting worked up over the kicker missing three extra points, “Can you believe that! This doesn’t happen in professional football,” and then out like a light. He stopped showing an interest in taking care of his health and begged me to go get him a hot fudge sundae which he knew would send his blood sugar to the sky. Yet, he still talked about the last oil well he hoped to drill once he got out of bed.

Watching dad’s health decline over the last three years coupled with his blind hope in continuing to live like a 40 year old has caused me to rethink my view of expiration dates and how I live with mine approaching. The conversation in our house has routinely gone like this:

“Honey do you think this taco meat is still good?” (Husband is dying to eat it)

“Off course it’s still good, it’s been sitting in the refrigerator.” (Albeit for three weeks)

”I’m not sure, it smells funny. Come here and smell it.” (I go and smell it.)

“Smells okay to me, just heat it up well before you eat it.” (Husband heats and eats meat, he survives).

This shows a belief in how our world and American culture in particular provides us with something we can do to mitigate anything going bad: the refrigerator, the microwave, high heat. In dad’s case it was his devotion to taking vitamins and minerals and exercising with religious devotion. The last time we walked around the high school track together he was 86 and needed to sit down on the football bench at the halfway point of each lap to catch his breath. There comes a point when high heat, refrigeration, vitamins and minerals and exercise just don’t do it anymore. We recognize this and adjust or we stick it back in the fridge and it just sits there until someone else has to deal with it. How many times have you come home from a vacation and there is moldy food in your fridge which you leave alone hoping that someone else will take on the smell and pour the gross glop down the garbage disposal?

My husband and I have been the ones dealing with my dad’s denial. This involves lying to the person, “You will be able to drive again when you recover from these injuries you sustained in the car accident that totaled your car,” dealing with their household goods which they refused to believe they would no longer need (including 5 bottles of KING cologne), buying slippers because they can’t put on their shoes, negotiating with the healthcare world because they forgot to pay their Medicare overlay premiums… it is a long and arduous list, but someone’s gotta do it.

“All flesh that moved on the earth expired,” Genesis 7:21. This refers to Noah’s time when literally everything “expired.” We are guaranteed an expiration date. Abraham, Isaac, Moses, Jacob, Ishmael and the people of Israel are mentioned in the Bible alongside the word, “expired.” My dad’s refusal to submit to an expiration date has taught me to throw out the bad stuff before it goes bad and not leave it to our heirs to clean up the mess.

An important aside, I loved my dad dearly. He was like a mighty tree that refused to fall. His trunk bending long before the limbs started breaking. Counter to our cultural obsession with wrinkle free beauty, his face was gorgeous in the hospital just days before he died. Everything else looked long past it’s due date but his smiling, laughing face still twinkled with the best of his character. The last thing I saw him do as I left the hospital room was blow me a kiss and say, “I love you too.” This happened after I brushed and hairsprayed his still brown hair because the physical therapy girls were coming to evaluate him that afternoon and he said, “They’re cute young girls.” Gosh…really?

When a person whom you love dies you can’t help but wonder about your own mortality and how you will age — will you age gracefully or grudgingly? Realistically or in total denial? So go ahead, throw out that old ketchup, mustard and mayo and call your estate planner. When your kids come home from their restful vacation, they don’t want to throw out your moldy bread.

Grandma’s Painting is Finished!

November 11, 2022 by Margaret Philbrick Leave a Comment

Like Emma Toft before her, my Grandma Lehwald was one of Door County, Wisconsin’s early women entrepreneurs. In the 1960’s she told her husband she wanted to open a “hot dog stand” as a small hobby. We all know how “small hobbies” go. Today, almost 60 years later this humble hot dog stand is the the full service Summer Kitchen restaurant on highway 42 in Ephraim, WI.

My parents came to Door County on their honeymoon in 1961 and they stayed in some pretty swanky spots like Gordon Lodge and the White Gull Inn. When they returned home they raved about the gorgeous landscape and the magical beauty they experienced. In less than a year, grandma and grandpa were buying land and building their retirement project, originally called the Red Barn Restaurant because it stood right across the street from the big red barns, today the Island Lavender Company. This little hot dog stand served hamburgers, shakes and hot dogs through the window where you placed your order, but over the years it grew into a full service restaurant and cottages. Grandma ran the kitchen and cottages and Grandpa loved tending the driving range, especially riding his big mower to pick up golf balls.

The right side was the original Red Barn Drive-In, left side dining room added later.

I celebrated my first birthday here and our family gathered for holidays, especially Thanksgiving. There was an abandoned red barn way out back where me and my cousins “made” our own pies by smashing red berries (probably poisonous) into rusty found objects. Grandma let us sneak into the kitchen and dip our fingers into the always heated hot fudge pot. Clara Appel baked the pies and back in the day Grandma managed to always find the reliable help she needed. After several years they sold the business and built their dream house in Sister Bay right next to St. Rosalia’s cemetery. Our memorable holiday gatherings moved over to Maple Lane and we savored walking down the road to bowl at Sister Bay Bowl when we were old enough to go into town without adults.

Grandma Lehwald lived to a wise old 97 years of age. She painted with oils, kept a full candy drawer for her grandkids and great grandkids, attended art classes at The Clearing and became proficient in embroidery, cross stitch and tons of card games. She also cheated (or at least it seemed like it) on her strokes when we played “pee-wee golf” at The Red Putter.

When my father sold his house this year, I found one of Grandma’s unfinished oil paintings in his attic. The painting featured the Red Barn hot dog stand, roughed out on the canvas. My own mother was a proficient oil painter and I saved all her paints when she died. So I bubble wrapped the canvas and shipped it up to Baileys Harbor where I spent last few seasons finishing Grandma’s work.

Grandma’s finished Red Barn painting, her baptism portrait in background (from 1913)

The painting needed life. The colors were muted and she didn’t include any people in her composition. Long ago, I found a post card of her Red Barn restaurant in an antique store so I used that to convey authenticity in the building design. Her restaurant patio was covered in a pink corrugated roof which made all our food look pink no matter what we ordered. As a four year old girl this was a wonder work of beauty. I added my cousins playing hide and seek and grandma walking to the kitchen with her buckets of apples for Clara’s pies. I couldn’t resist painting their Lincoln Continental in the gravel parking lot and the little wooden train at the campground next door which we snuck over to play on when Grandma wasn’t watching.

I adored and respected my grandparents. They worked hard all their lives and how they loved us. They taught us to love and respect the land of Door County and the invaluable bonds of family. I’m so thankful that today their work continues at the Summer Kitchen restaurant in the capable hands of the Jauregui brothers who still serve homemade pies. If you’re up in Door County, stop by and walk into 60 plus years of serving home cooked food to residents and guests in need of a bowl of soup or a cup of coffee and a slice of apple pie on a crisp fall day. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Leftover Lace

August 16, 2022 by Margaret Philbrick 2 Comments

The Wedding is Over, Now What?

It was beautiful, but it wasn’t perfect. As I shared the post-wedding download chat over the phone with my dear friend we both concluded that life is “tainted.” Even in the moments of our greatest joy, something icky tries to steal it away.

My dad is 87 and I love him. We long ago determined that we were going to move heaven and earth to ensure that the only living grandparent made it to the wedding. This involved him doing physical therapy for months leading up to the event so that he would be strong enough to attend, buying him the Cadillac of walkers to get around (only to end up renting a wheelchair), flying he and his caregiver/escort up from Arkansas and finding them an “accessible” cabin … everything inched along on track until day 2 at our house when he started sneezing. “It’s just allergies,” he assured us. Our bride and groom cringed, we rolled the windows down in the car to air out his germs. Too late, this mother-of-the-bride caught his spewing nose inferno and I was the only blessed recipient of this gift come wedding day. Enter bottles of DayQuil, NyQuil, Airborne, Nettle drops in water, Zycam, Covid tests just to be sure (they were negative) — anything to get through the four day extravaganza of parties and people with a smile and some level of enjoyment.

It all happened. As we boarded the trolley bound for the reception I took my last large shot of DayQuil. French 75 cocktails, best-man and maid-of-honor toasts floated by in a fog. The evening I imagined dancing the night away turned into me stifling and submitting to coughing fits in the downstairs locker room, trying not to contaminate everyone else. Sadly, my repeating thought was, “Can I go home now?” Thank you to my sweet friends who took me home so I didn’t have to wait for the return trolley trip! Thank you to my beloved college roommate who grabbed me and my wheelchair bound father and helped get us on the dance floor, EARLY in the evening! Thank you to all our friends and bridal party who did have a blast and danced until they dropped!

We got him out there! photo credit: Paper Antler

Hey there tambourine man! Photo credit: Paper Antler

Now it’s over. The bride and groom returned from their honeymoon and drove their presents and their Persian cat (Smushie) back to St. Louis. The bridal bouquet is drying in the closet, the wedding dress back in dry-cleaner plastic. The question remains, “Was it worth it? Was my dad’s participation worth the cost of my health and enjoyment of the biggest day in our daughter’s life?” I honestly don’t know. We are called to honor our mother and father, but at what cost? We live by our choices in this life and hope for the best.

As I unpacked a zip-lock bag of leftover lace from the seamstress who remade my wedding dress into Jessie’s wedding dress, I thought of her reassuring words to our daughter, “If it doesn’t work out, you can always turn it into a christening gown for your first baby.” Well, it didn’t quite “work out” for me, but our daughter and her adorable groom said it was “the best day of their entire lives” and that was certainly the goal.

Life is a sacrament infused with the power of God. As long as we are breathing, there is another moment in life to celebrate. As long as the sun rises and sets, a jewel to behold.

For my friends who want the truly breathtaking photographer’s take on Jessie and Michael’s wedding, here’s the highlight reel with music. If you need a photographer for your family wedding you’ll see by this reel that there is no one like Paper Antler, www.paperantler.com Thank you to our dear friends Jonny and Michelle for seeing J + M’s wedding in a way that none of us and most especially me, could possibly have seen that day. Your photos are a huge gift to all of us. We love you and we hope everyone we know uses Paper Antler for their family wedding!

https://paperantler.pic-time.com/4KV7vWx9dD1TD

And… I’ve already moved on to thinking about that baby gown, wink-wink.

Maid of Honor Taylor and her “princess of the field.” Photo credit: Paper Antler

God’s Secret Trousseau

May 6, 2022 by Margaret Philbrick 3 Comments

For my flower obsessed friends, you probably already know this, but I’m just catching on. When it comes to all things beautiful God holds some pretty cool secrets that he waits for us to discover. For our part, we have to slow down and savor the details to find them.

For the last several months we’ve been deep into planning our daughter’s wedding. This is not a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants and wing-it wedding (is that even is a thing?). Oh no, this is a curated wedding that started the day she was born! Of course that sounds completely ridiculous, but in a way it’s true. My husband and I have invested countless hours praying for the future spouses of all of our children and when the first one finds the right one, life takes on a greener color. Dreams are thought through with an eye for relevance, romance and practicality, long tucked away boxes come out of the basement, creative juices of “lasting significance” flow. What can we make and contribute to the day that will carry meaning and joy across the span of their married life together?

When Jessie was born in Chicago, Charlie brought a dozen pink and red roses into our hospital room at Northwestern Memorial. Being a sentimental geek, I dried them and saved them for her wedding someday – as in 27 years later someday. Well, those dried roses are coming out of their little box, soon to be mixed with roses that her fiancé gave her. By God’s grace we will turn them into something magnificent. How did they not crumble into dust? Careful packing, a basement with just the right humidity and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s true statement, “God is in the details.” He is the grand curator, caring about everything, significant and insignificant to us.

While walking a pastoral lawn alongside Lake Michigan in the summer of 2020, Jessie told me that she thought she was going to marry Mr. Y. They had been dating for just over a year and to hear her say this was definitely a first. In a confident voice, reminiscent of Elizabeth Bennet she said to me, “I think I’d like marry him on this lawn, right here.” As we looked over “this lawn” wishes started popping into our eyes like stars, but just as our thoughts were about to fall off the cart-before-the-horse cliff, we noticed an antique key lying right between our feet in the grass. It felt like a God placed secret we randomly discovered, What was it for? What did it open? We picked it up and tried to unlock the nearby cabin door, nope. So we decided to keep it and pray over this key. Would she marry Mr. Y. on “this lawn” someday in the future? What secrets might this key hold?

Fast forward to her first bridal shower in her hometown. There we sat in our springtime print dresses on a grey sprinkling morning surrounded by bridesmaids and longtime friends. Nothing in my life can match the friendships of women who have raised all their children together in the same town, same school, somewhat the same church and practically as neighbors. We have cried at each others’ kitchen tables over the terrible things our kids have done, walked our dogs in forests, rejoiced at every graduation and all of life in-between. Our circle of blessing around this bride-to-be included meaningful, handmade gifts I couldn’t have imagined, practical gifts every bride and groom need to start their lives, and plenty of flowers, quiche and coffee. Our lovely hosts gave the M.O.B. (Mother of the Bride) and bride a bouquet to take home as we waltzed out the door laden with Crate and Barrel boxes.

I’m one week into cutting the stems shorter on that bouquet and refreshing the water and it looks just as new as on that April Shower day. When I pulled it apart to toss out some crinkling eucalyptus, I noticed an almost invisible flower that did not appear in the mass of white hydrangea, scabiosa, lisianthus, and roses. If you pry open the hydrangea bracts, hidden deep inside is a blue star flower! It looks nothing like the rest of the bodacious blooms. It reminds me of a miniature love-in-the-mist which I grew from seed for our perennial garden years ago. There is an antique, tested beauty across the ages of time quality to it. It screams, “I don’t care if you don’t see me, I’m content hiding my glory.” This flower within the flower is a counter-cultural hidden gem in a society that disposes of the less than perfect, the wilting. I might have missed it if I had thrown away the flowers when they began to fade. And this Blue Willow china blue color is the accent color for the wedding flowers, bridesmaids dresses…all the things.

Intricate, unseen treasure inside a flower

God has a gracious and abundant trousseau waiting for us to unpack and discover. We hide things away and we forget about them and sometimes it takes a key found in the grass to set a new day in motion and cause us to see things we’ve been missing or remember what we’ve been keeping away all our lives.

I wish all the mother’s that I know a blessed Mother’s Day, filled with the love of your children and God’s secrets uncovered in the unlikeliest of places.

Faith Deconstruction and Reconstruction

March 8, 2022 by Margaret Philbrick Leave a Comment

This article from The Redbud Post speaks to all of us engaged in a walk of faith who find ourselves tearing things down and rebuilding or sitting with friends who are paving this path, but aren’t we all to some degree?

The Reconstruction Choice

by Margaret Philbrick | Mar 1, 2022 | Faith and Culture | 2 comments

“The reason the Father loves Me is that I lay down My life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from My Father” (John 10:17-18, Berean Study Bible).

“We feel helpless to choose our own lives much less a common life or to see any overarching meaning in it all.” Richard Rohr, The Wisdom Pattern: Order, Disorder, Reorder

According to Village Church pastor Matt Chandler “deconstruction” is a “sexy” thing to do these days. Isn’t that funny? To tear down something is “sexy” in today’s culture. Honestly, I could think of a whole lot more sexy activities, but doesn’t this word already feel worn out, tired, and overused? Worn out, tired, and overused is traditionally not sexy. However, laying down one’s life because Jesus Christ calls us to do it, now that’s sexy—depending on how you define the word.

There is a tremendous tension between laying down our lives and choosing our own lives. As believers we know that Paul exhorts us to death to self (Romans 6:11-14) while our society calls us to take charge and “choose” the direction of our lives, to create and contribute meaning by charting our own course. The two things can feel in conflict with each other. How do we live both well and is this possible?

Pursuing the reams of possibilities that each side of this equation affords can create dissonance, real cognitive, emotional and behavioral dissonance, and so we quest. We lose our way. We pick ourselves back up and keep going. The ground shakes under our feet when all that we were taught growing up is invalidated or questioned. But if we are not questioning we are not “questing,” we cease learning and our lives stagnate into status quo. The irony of this is that in Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey, our hero begins and ends in Status Quo. Let’s resign ourselves to this notion that just getting through life on Earth makes us heroes and call it a day.

But we don’t believe this, do we? “Getting through it” is lame. And so we quest for meaning, for fruitfulness, for surrender, for joy. What are you questing after? Whether or not “deconstruction” is a sexy word, we are all on this pilgrim’s way in various stages and it is nothing new. The good news is we don’t have to be afraid of it, we can help each other along and deconstruction does not mean deconversion. When you remodel a house you work from what is in good enough shape to rebuild with, you don’t tear down the whole thing. That is demolition and that’s a different topic.

Don’t be afraid
The poetry of Scott Cairns walked into my heart in 2016 when a poem of his appeared in a Lenten anthology (see resources below) which also featured one of my poems. His opening line of the poem Evening Prayer asks the question, “And what would you pray in this the midst of our circular confusion save that the cup be taken away?” Jesus asked in Gethsemane that the cup be taken away. We dare say that he was afraid in his earthly being, yet immediately following this prayer he resigned himself to his Father’s will, “Yet not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). Questions, wonderings met by surrender to the will of the Father, is the way he models for us here. Thus, surrender must be a part of our deconstruction and reconstruction faith journey.

I met Scott Cairns in 2016 at Festival of Faith and Writing and heard some of his story, which included a long stop in the Greek monastery of Mount Athos, rebuilding his prayer life. Silence and listening shaped his experience and you can read about it in his memoir, Short Trip to the Edge. Creating space for silence and listening develops an aching for the Lord’s voice, think of it like a muscle which is silent while at work, but as we work it we grow stronger. When the muscle is aching we know it’s working.

Help each other along
We may no longer feel comfortable in our megachurches or our lifelong adult small groups, and that’s okay. These are not contractual obligations, there are new holy places and spaces to discover. What matters is that we honor the work of Christ with other believers, “All believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to the fellowship and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper) and to prayer” (Acts 2:42). We do these things in remembrance of him and in the footsteps of all who have paved the way for our deconstructing and reconstructing lives.

There are so many who are further down the road for us to learn from — in books, yes real paper books! ( plug for actual books is irresistible here.) When we hold a book in our flesh-covered hands and read vellum pages in silence, we are engaging with multiple spiritual disciplines. Richard Foster alluded to the danger of not doing this at the same Festival of Faith and Writing, 2016, “Words are being trivialized by the blogosphere (and the podcastosphere) and as that happens more and more we descend into the pandemonium of Babel,” and “Allow our words to be grounded in silence.”

The pandemic has kept us from spending time live with each other. We even delight in the reduced humanity of Zoom because we can “see” the other person. Let’s re-enflesh our relationships and go to someone else’s church or invite someone not in our sphere to dinner. Make a meal, talk about Jesus, share what you’re reading, drink some wine with real people and wear a mask if you must. Remember that the great sacramentalist Woody Allen is credited with saying, “80 percent of life is showing up.” Showing up and sharing what God is doing in our lives, in our reading, in our prayer life translates to helping each other along as we work though the questions and wrestlings of our faith life together.

Deconstruction does not mean deconversion
If we believe that Christ’s work on the cross was a saving gift to us, one we can’t give ourselves, then we pray for the gift of faith to believe it more fully and with greater surrender to its power. With respect for Father Rohr, the way of the cross is the way of eternal life, only Christ had the power to choose it for himself and only he has the power to give us a heart’s desire to make such a choice. We do not choose it. His Holy Spirit enables us to choose it for ourselves which is ultimately for him, and in that choice there is gentleness and compassion, grace and abounding steadfast love. It may not be the meaning we think we are questing for, but he is Immanuel — God with us. Wherever you are and wherever your friends are in this walk of deconstructing or reconstructing faith try your best to give what Jesus gave us, his gentleness and lowliness of heart, his silence in the face of accusers, his presence and listening wholeheartedness, his joy and touch. In these we will find rest unto our wandering souls.

Recommended Resources for Reconstruction:
Book of Mercy, contemporary psalms by Leonard Cohen
If it be Your Will, by Leonard Cohen, sung by the Webb Sisters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_XcMAGZjuY
Raising the Sparks, poems by Jennifer Wallace
To Shatter Glass, poems by Sister Sharon Hunter
Slow Pilgrim, poems by Scott Cairns
The Pilgrims Progress by John Bunyon
Short Trip to the Edge, A Pilgrimage to Prayer by Scott Cairns
Between Midnight and Dawn – A Literary Guide to Prayer for Lent, Holy Week and Eastertide, compiled by Sarah Arthur
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home by Richard Foster
Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster
The Generosity, poems by Luci Shaw
Gentle and Lowly by Dane Ortland
All paintings by Caravaggio
Always, the Bible.

Orchard Memories

July 10, 2021 by Margaret Philbrick Leave a Comment

This piece of short fiction pays homage to a simpler time when life in summer was spent playing tag in orchards and never once thinking about the time. Special thanks to Julie Lockard whose experiences growing up on a Michigan orchard informed this piece as well as blessed summer days alongside my grandma and grandpa in Door County, WI.

Like most things it started with one. Grandma could never throw anything out. Like every Grandma in America she grew up during the depression or the war or the oil embargo. Some hard time, harder than any other hard time in history when only Grandmothers knew the tricks of survival.

Lipprandt Landscaping began at the end of the driveway in a handcrafted wooden cart, with an asphalt roof. A few dried florals, Empire apple trees and freshly cut Bittersweet in sea glass blue jars filled our stand. We thought it was too pretty to pass up on Highway 57, but people blew by us. My little sister Riva and I played dress up in ridiculous looking prairie dresses and sunbonnets to attract customers. We’d sit out there on weekends, perched atop tall picker stools counting cars. Buick Skylarks. Delta 88s. Ford station wagons loaded down with “turkey” kids, bikes on the back whizzing north. “Turkeys!” Our code word for tourists, we screamed into the tart October air while staring down the license plates trying to figure out where all those turkeys came from. In one weekend we cleared $4.75.

“Olivia, why is no one buying these trees? Who wouldn’t want an apple tree to keep their family going?” Grandma wondered as we packed up the farm stand for the night. “Well, it’s the end of the season so girls, you get to help me plant ‘em.” Grandma handed each of us a Little Pal shovel and gazed out to the western stone boundary wall. By 6:30 p.m., after planting five trees, Lipprandt Landscaping became Lipprandt Orchard. It grew over the next twenty years to thirteen acres, and four varieties of apple trees. While I attended Marquette University, Grandma and Grandpa became experts in “orcharding.” Crabapple trees encircled their creation like a snowy wreath in springtime because bees love them and that speeds up pollination. It takes more than trees to be a successful orchard grower.

Our Apple Delight machine allowed visitors to smother their picked apples in caramel and a choice of crushed peanuts or hazelnuts. Cleaning up the concrete floor beneath this gooey apple coater put Grandpa in the Maritime Clinic twice for herniated discs. After a few years, apple themed knick-knacks littered the shelves. Folks bought the ugliest dried apple-faced cornhusk dolls, decked out in miniature calico aprons, sewn by Grandma on her Singer. Apple sauce, apple butter, apple fritters, apple pies, apple Christmas ornaments.

“Bess, how ‘bout an Apple Tilt-A- Whirl ride?” Grandpa asked. “No, we’re keeping this place natural. Nothing they can get in the city at Lipprandts.” Grandma shot back. One fall break I arrived in my little Pacer coupe and tried to pull up to the farmhouse, but a traffic cop in blaze orange shooed me over to an empty field parking lot across the road. Things were getting big and I wondered how Grandma and Grandpa could keep it going.

Every year, right before Halloween, we gathered around the dining room table for “Harvest Dinner.” This family tradition began when Grandma announced that cooking the Thanksgiving meal felt anti-climactic so long after harvest season closed. Now almost twenty, I’d graduated from the kids table to the adult circle expecting enticing conversation to twist along the lines of Nixon’s Watergate scandal and the upcoming bake sale at Saint Paul’s Lutheran. Instead, Grandpa, who rarely said a word while sawing through his Honey Baked ham, cleared his throat and picked up a toothpick.

“Kids, it’s gettin’ to be too much,” he said while working the toothpick around his canines. “The orchard is too much work for Bess and I to keep up so we’re inviting one of you to think about moving back home and helping out. Our hope being that one of your families would eventually take it over.”

Grandpa bit down hard on the toothpick and spit the wooden shards into his trembling hand. One by one adults set down their forks and sat up straighter. Their cigarettes extinguished hard into Green Bay Packer ashtrays.

Mom spoke first. “Dad, Jeff just started his new job in Neenah and we’re getting settled in. I’m thinking about taking a job as a paralegal now that Olivia is at Marquette.” Her sympathetic glance across the table forced me to look away.

I wanted to yell, “Mom, Riva and I planted those trees out there, how can you say no?” But, being new to the adult table I kept my mouth shut.

Uncle Bob, the oldest brother in the family, went next. “Dad, you can’t be serious. Leave my job with Ernst and Young, my partnership, to come up here and prune apple trees and clean up the Apple Delight machine? I can barely get up here for Harvest Dinner. The firm is really growing and I’m a big part of the success in my division.”

I saw Aunt Lois give his hand an appreciative squeeze under the table. We all waited for the one possible “yes.” The youngest of the three, my Uncle Pete.

Uncle Pete made it his own tradition to show up for Harvest Dinner dressed in full camo, counting the days until deer season. When he finished at Sevestapol High he took a job apprenticing for a local wood carver. He never wanted to leave the county.

We all suspected it was because of the loss of Benjamin, the baby in our family who was only three years younger than Pete. We still don’t know exactly how it happened. “When Pete’s ready to talk about it, he will.” Mom once told me. Aunt Lois whispered one Sunday afternoon while drying the dishes that the accident involved the tractor and the harrower. Arm chills crept over me just thinking about it because the harrower is covered in long, sharp spikes.

“What do ya think, Pete?” Grandpa asked.

Like most youngest, Pete leaned way back in his chair to the tipping point and grabbed hold of the brim of his hat. He took in a deep breath and rocked forward, pushing the china plate near the stacked apple centerpiece. Folding his hands deliberately, like he’s about to pray,

“I don’t think I can Dad. I’m sorry. Things are real busy down at the wood shop.” Uncle Bob, the accountant snorted in disbelief that a woodshed could actually be “real busy.” Uncle Pete shot him a dagger look.
“Well, we have our answer then. We’ll talk to Betty Wilsee about putting the orchard on the market tomorrow.” Grandma pushed away from the table, and cleared the dishes with an extra loud clatter. Grandpa picked up another toothpick.

After the orchard had been on the market for a year we came to believe that all the potential orchard owners were young couples in their early twenties with beards and braids tied in yarn ribbon at the ends. They wanted to leave behind the “rat race” and “live off the land,” but they didn’t know the difference between an Empire and a Johnny Gold. During the fall of my junior year at Marquette, I received an invitation from Grandma and Grandpa written in pristine green ink.

Join us at Lipprandt Orchard and help bring in the last crop.
All Apple Delights on us. October 21st, 1975.

Midterms presented a conflict, but my psychology professor granted an extension so I packed up the Pacer and spent three hours on the road wondering who bought the orchard.

Turning right onto Germantown Road I was surprised to see the empty parking field. Usually a few straggler pickers gleaned their way through the orchard before Halloween. A strong odor like burned apple pie juice on a cookie sheet wafted through my car vents as I pulled into the driveway. Half drawn bedroom shades covered the windows at 3:00 in the afternoon. Could Grandma be taking a nap? Somewhat relieved, I saw my sister’s car and the tractor alongside the barn, but where was everyone else?

As I climbed out of my car in the gravel circle behind the farmhouse, a path of black death stretched out before me extending all the way out to the boundary wall. Every tree stump, a charred tombstone, about the height of your hand. I breathed in the ashy air. Grandpa was the first one to come out.

“Well Olivia, there it is, twenty years of work. We wanted you and Riva to see it first because you planted the first trees. We couldn’t find a buyer. No one really wants to work an orchard these days. They just like the idea of owning one. The county environmental control told us to burn it or decaying trees might be overtaken by a fungus and kill off everything else. Whatever that means, I’m not so sure, but burning is clean and it allows everything to start over from scratch.”

I could feel the sharp wind burning my tears as I looked out on smoldering teepees of leftover trees. Grandma and Riva came down off the porch and joined us at the wall of what was the Granny Smith corner. When you plant a tree with another person there is a sacred, silent trust you share. Riva and I wove blossom necklaces, played hours of hide and seek in their shade. We gave several trees names from our favorite story characters: Dickon. Mary Lennox. Madeleine. Miss Clavel.

Bending over to grab a handful of charred ground, Riva crushed it between her polished fingertips. “Why didn’t you tell us? Olivia and I would have left school to come and help you on weekends.” Grandma reached out her hand and drew Riva’s sadness into her large aproned chest. Comfort blanketed us as the strong arms of our grandparents held our aching hearts. My baby sister knew and I knew that our orchard days and Harvest Dinners were over. College responsibilities called, applications for internships needed mailing.

With one more look to the western boundary wall, Grandma saw a hope that neither of us could see. It was her art, making something beautiful out of nothing. “We saved each of you a bag of the best Johnny Golds that we picked before the crowds came. Let’s go in and make a cobbler. Remember, don’t look back. It’s bad luck.”

Inside their cozy kitchen, Grandma handed me a flour sifter and Riva reached for the apple peeler coring machine that belonged to our great grandmother, June Rose. We took turns threading Johnny Golds onto the stem and turning the crank, forever marveling at the long twisted peel left behind. Once a necklace, today we let it fall to the ground.

Saying Goodbye to Snuggles

May 11, 2021 by Margaret Philbrick Leave a Comment

We tried to keep her going as indicated in my February post. When we left her for Spring Break in the capable hands of our caregiver she seemed stable, but texts and calls with this gal confirmed that she declined quickly while we were away. In true, valiant Snuggles fashion she waited for our return and died in our arms that night. Losing a beloved dog that has been a family member, defender, protector and my personal transition partner as we moved to an entirely new community two years ago is a gut wrenching experience. It took many reassurances from Charlie to come to terms with the fact that we didn’t kill her by leaving her for Spring Break. “She was diagnosed with kidney failure in December and she’d been declining since.” This is all true, but when we lose anything precious, words don’t ease the pain. Only time can heal. Since it’s been over a month, I needed to tell a few people in person. Friends who faithfully took care of Snuggles while we traveled. I drove to the home of this special family, bearing a pot of blooming ranunculus. Their four children hugged me as I shared the news. They also brought baskets of freshly picked violets “to eat.” I must have looked hungry. Those innocent smiles and bunched up, bent violets proved a healing balm to my frayed soul. I wrote this poem for them as a tribute to Snuggles and to their loving hearts. Thank you Livi, Ivy, Eli, Anna and your parents for always loving Snuggles.

walking in golden sunshine….

Violet – the Color of Morning

You left before white lilacs

before violets

before windows open.

You waited for us,

because you’re that kind of girl.

Eyes brown and deep as

grandma’s, waiting and knowing.

We picked you up off concrete squares

when modest uphill climbs overwhelmed.

We waited.

We denied.

Weeks after,

abandoning our route,

we searched out new pathways,

spying for green.

“April is the cruelest month,

breeding Lilacs out of the dead land,” Eliot tells us.

Emergent life traversing the edge

between frost and flourishing.

Particular friends

needed personal telling.

Their care and love

deserved ranunculus in

plastic pots accompanied by hugs.

Not really enough, if one spent time

calculating the cost of love,

of what you gave and what we deserved.

I crossed their lawn

and told the story,

“Of course dogs go to heaven.”

Childhood innocence climbed trees,

picked violets and told me,

“You can eat these!”

We prayed for what was coming.

We mourned what had been.

Livy and Ivy flounced in prairie dresses,

bearing violets to the end.

Wet Dog Food, Love and Prolonging Life

February 20, 2021 by Margaret Philbrick Leave a Comment

There are many things in life that we say we’ll never do. Serving wet dog food to our dog is definitely one of them. Alas, she is 16 and we are facing those dreadful declining dog years when we carry her down the stairs to go out in the morning. Sometimes we carry her back up, she only weighs ten pounds so this isn’t a big sacrifice, but wet dog food?

The home I grew up in had a “little kitchen” right off of the main kitchen, basically a pantry with a large white ceramic sink. When we skinned our knees, mom attended to our boo-boos in that sink and the blood dripping across the stark whiteness made me a little queasy — not as queasy as feeding the dog in this room. For most of her life “Duker,” our black lab ate dry dog food – simple, no smell, chunk it in the bowl and walk away. As she aged, my mom switched her to wet ALPO. Before the can opener dug into the metal I could smell it, a harsh combination of vomit and leftovers molting in the fridge. I held my breath the entire time I scooped it out and filled her dish. Often I couldn’t hold it long enough so I ran out of the room, took another deep breath and came back in. If the smell graced my nostrils I gagged or threw up. I swore then that if I ever had a dog I would NEVER feed it wet dog food scooped from a can. We all know the quote, “never say never.”

Fast forward to 16 year old Snuggles – roughly 112 in human years. Where do those doggie years go? I adore her, but I did not know that adoring dog owners should brush their dogs’ teeth. The groomer did it four times a year so I thought that I was absolved of this disgusting ritual, i.e. dog breath is always gross no matter how young or healthy the dog is. Now her teeth are in bad shape and it is time for easier to chew wet dog food. I scoured the store and came upon delectable varieties in the Ceaser Home Delights line which looked like something that I might eat for Sunday dinner and the dog on the front looks like ours, although Snuggles is cuter. This switch went well for me. The food does not smell disgusting and she loves it. Problem solved.

Grilled New York Strip flavor – delicious!

Fast forward to 16 and a half years. I decide to invest and I’m talking invest serious money in a professional vet cleaning of her teeth because my groomer tells me it is necessary if she is to “live out her full life.” Isn’t 16 and a half a full dog life? Before this can happen you need to pay for a chest X-ray and blood work to make sure your dog is healthy enough to survive the anesthesia needed for the vet to do the job, i.e. note – don’t neglect your dog’s teeth so that this does not happen to you. Several hundred dollars later I get the email, “I’m so sorry your dog is in stage 3 of kidney failure and she won’t be able to have her teeth cleaned until this is abated.” WHAT? Aside from taking more naps Snuggles does not act sick and she is pooping and popping along on her walks as usual. I am in a state of shock and guilt. Our guinea pig died because we quit feeding her alfalfa (it was already in her pellets), now this! We learn that there is special wet, canned food for kidney failure dogs and now I am flash-backed to the “little kitchen” of my nightmarish, bad smell event.

Friends, I am doing it! I am scooping gross smelling K/D healthy kidney stew out of a can. At this point I could launch into a diatribe about how American culture has gone off the deep end with their dogs because they are truly the only relationship we can handle due to the fact that they love us unconditionally and they don’t talk back to us, but I won’t. The bottom line motivation here is LOVE and my groomer’s “live out her full life” statement. Of course, we want her to live her best life, her full life. Our oldest son thinks that dog ownership is an enormous, inefficient waste of thousands of dollars. We who love dogs know this the farthest perspective from the truth. But the question remains, how far will we go? Should we give her a kidney transplant from the doggie organ donor bank – probably wouldn’t go that far. All this is to say that during this month of reckless love our dogs can teach us new things about the lengths of love. My engagement with wet dog food certainly speaks of the truth that “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13. Obviously, I’m not laying down my life, just my nose for man’s best friend and that change in behavior doesn’t seem like such a big deal in the grand scheme of our world today. What changes for the sake of love are you making this month? Long live Snuggles the dog!

Seeing With Freedom in 2021

January 5, 2021 by Margaret Philbrick Leave a Comment

As a writer I’m drawn to large projects that are years in the making. Yet, focused work on my current manuscript can feel limited: not all of life is contained in Renaissance Italy (hint, hint the manuscript for my new novel is done:)! For our anniversary, my husband gave me an iPod with the date of our wedding engraved on the back. This little blue baby allows me to take beautiful photographs instantly and capture the grandeur of God’s handiwork with clarity and presence. When I need a break from writing I wander the woods photographing moss or in this season, frozen fog.

Perhaps this might seem unproductive. Inefficient. Indulgent, even.

We so seldom take time to rest in the world around us, a world marked by isolation and fear in 2020. It’s time to fight against those Covid practices and get outside. When was the last time you collapsed and made a snow angel, plucked an icicle and felt it melt away in your exposed hand? This childlike endeavor requires a willingness to stop, sit and see.

STOP, SIT, AND SEE

These three actions may help us live a balanced life, but the Western ideal of success places no value on the virtues of stopping to take in what God may be wanting to show us. Instead, as author Anne Lamott describes it, our culture pursues “forward thrust, going forward, staying one step ahead of the abyss… and if we can’t stay ahead of the abyss then we go to IKEA and buy a throw rug.”

We buy a throw rug to cover up the abyss because we don’t want to see it. Outrunning the abyss of a meaningless, unproductive life drives us onward. After all, in our short few decades on earth we’ve been convinced by our parents, our schools, our families and friends that we’ve got to make a difference in this world. The endless pursuit of difference-making is exhausting. Could taking time to stop, sit and see bear fruit instead? Exploring the lives of poets, artists and prophets tells us unequivocally, “yes.”

I recently led a poetic journaling event with young moms desperately in need of a night away from their kids. Instead of hanging out drinking wine and talking incessantly about their kids, they were longing for a creative and restorative activity. I used the German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke as my subject for leading these women because he knew the value of investing slow and significant time to develop a creative work. He tells us that, “to be an artist means, not to compute or count; it means to ripen as the tree which does not force its sap, but stands unshaken in the storms of spring with no fear that summer might not follow.” Oh, to have the confidence of a tree who does not count its rings. Gathering rings, rendering sap and bearing fruit takes time and God is in no hurry. To access his light we need to cease our hurry and see the small things which are often overlooked, like the cracking open of milkweed pods or the ever-changing color of water.

FINDING GOD IN THE WILDERNESS

On a chilly spring evening I attended a lecture at a local college on the life of artist Lilias Trotter. I’d never heard of this gifted Victorian era artist who gave up a career as the first renowned female painter in England to pursue life as a missionary in Algeria. She devoted her life to loving Muslim people, especially women and their children. Similar to the work of moms today, her work was arduous— hand washing laundry in rivers, feeding numerous children and forging friendships with women in sewing circles while learning Arabic. Her calling could easily have overwhelmed her. Yet, she chose to find daily sacred space by wandering into the desert to capture images of God in highly detailed, painted landscapes in her journal— precise images as small as a matchbook due to the scarcity of art supplies. She learned to “hold back everything that would crowd our souls” in order to access God’s light and, in turn, give that light to others. Her commitment to separating herself from the rigors of work to see God in the wilderness inspired me to do the same. My lens of wonder in all his works needed time to focus and a deliberate attempt to “uncrowd” my soul allowed open spaces for his light to come in.

“The daisies have been talking again—the reason they spread out their leaves flat on the ground is because the flowers stretch out their little hands, as it were, to keep back the blades of grass that would shut out the sunlight. They speak so of the need of deliberately holding back everything that would crowd our souls and stifle the freedom of God’s light and air.” – Lilias Trotter, 1899

Which brings me back to my walks in the woods collecting moments (borrowing from Heinrich Boll here). Some of these images call for a quick poem, a little nugget of carefully crafted words to describe what speaks in creation. This gift forces me to slow down and look for beauty unfolding, then rest and reflect on what I’ve seen and take the next step, create! When we create we become more like God because we are made in the image of the author of all creation, and our grand author is not scrolling social media counting his followers.

As Rilke said, we don’t need to “compute or count” followers, likes on Instagram, page views, or friends. We need to ripen as the tree and wave with the freedom of tall grass. Make time for God, look for him in icy crystals, listen for him in the cracking of milkweed. Stop, sit and see, and if you are so inspired, give him back some of what he’s shown you.

Milkweed

Irresistible winter cracker

temptress for fifty years,

your milky silk

flowing through fingertips,

drifting where?

Unremarkable,

brown seed carried

on snowy thistledown,

to unseen kingdoms

where fairies ride

and race upon your

feathery seats

like charioteers,

monarchs in summer.

Milkweed— magic maker

earth’s clouds,

God’s laughter,

enticing hardened

grown-ups to play

jump, toil

and spin

in open fields again.

MARGARET PHILBRICK

This article has been amended from the original which appeared in Popel Women, 2019.

https://www.propelwomen.org/cmspage.php?intid=39&intversion=500