Margaret Philbrick

Author. Gardener. Teacher. Planting seeds in hearts.

Author. Gardener. Teacher.

Planting seeds in hearts.
I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.   1 Corinthians 3:6
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Letters to My Mother During CoVid19

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March 30th, 2020

Dear Mom,

If you look on the wall to the right of your front door you’ll see a picture describing your Irish heritage. Featured in this picture are some important details about who you are and who we are. If your caregiver takes it down and brings it over to where you’re sitting on the couch you’ll see that your McGreevy family came from County Roscommon (I think, or was it County Clare?), in the middle of Ireland. The picture describes your family crest and the tartan pattern of the McGreevy clan. Did you know that the name McGreevy means, son of the red- haired youth? Thank you for making me part-Irish! Dad recently sent in his saliva to be analyzed and he found out that his ancestry is from Ireland, England, Germany and Sweden so both of you contributed to my Irish, “Where there’s a will there’s a way” nature. Frankly, dad was disappointed when he learned this. He thought for sure he was Jewish because his mother, Grandma Lehwald was adopted and Aunt Marge once told him that Grandma Lehwald’s parents were German Jews. My dad thinks of all Jewish people as the smartest people in the world so he intentionally grafted himself into their line, only to be disappointed.

When we were growing up, you made being Irish fun! We always looked for four-leaf clovers and pressed them in books You served us rowdy St. Patrick’s Day breakfasts, complete with trad-Irish music, green pancakes or my favorite, Lucky Charms cereal even on a school day. The kitchen looked like a birthday party with giant green cut-out shamrocks hanging from the light fixtures. Our front door decked out in some gaudy, shiny, overly metallic green thing you could spot while driving by on Batavia Ave. You read us the story of St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland and saving his people. Somehow you managed to make being Irish more than a badge of grit and steely character, you made it cool.

Every January when the two of us sit down together and make our goals for the year, one keeps recurring on your list— to go back to Ireland. Fortunately, in your later years we did make the trip, the two of us and our Irish lassie, Jessie went to Ireland in June of 2011. We arrived in Dublin and drove across to Galway that first morning. I was the appointed hauler of our giant suitcases and the driver on this trip which made for a harrowing arrival as we found ourselves cruising on the opposite side of the road before we barely had our eyes open. The tiny cottage in the town of Spiddal was our first stop, and legendary because there I drank my first pint of authentic Irish Guinness which caused me to actually cry in my beer—delicious to the point of tears. There is not a craft beer in America that holds a candle to Ireland’s Irish Guinness, but you don’t even like beer so let’s move on.

We picked up quartz speckled pink and green rocks in Galway Bay and shopped the alleyways of that lovely town. Brown Thomas was our favorite store and you bought one of my most beautiful dresses, the black linen dress with the vertical white ribbons—to die for! Stopping at the Cliffs of Mohr made us feel like we were stalking a gothic novel – so windy! By the time we arrived in Eenis the sun came out – for the rest of our trip. Blessed, so blessed to enjoy sun day after day in Ireland. When we came home you painted the painting hanging to the right of your TV which depicts the Irish landscape in its multi-layered green hues, but the addition of the purple tones and pinks is what gives that scene its true colors. I love that painting and I’m claiming it right now, when you die— oops, this letter is supposed to be about you, not me, sorry. 

We drove on to Killarney and Kinsale, the pastel town by the sea with the seahorse door knockers, through Dungarvan – every man wearing a lavender dress shirt long before it was trendy and then, Waterford for the crystal and the cute dog we met at our BnB. I snapped one of my favorite photos of you in your golden years standing along the Wicklow Way. Leaning on Goggie’s cane, looking into the golden light. Gazing toward heaven, you look like you know the path ahead. We finished in Dublin by eating the best steak of our lives at https://shanahans.ie Shanahan’s on the Green thanks to Uncle Jay.

O Come Ye Back To Ireland, you gave me this book long ago and I hope we get back. Thanks for being a loving Irish mum from a clan in the western suburbs who passed on her love affair with Ireland to me and to your Irish lassie girl, Jessie. If we don’t get back we can always go to the Irish Shoppe in Fish Creek and live out our fantasies there.

Ta gra agum duit (I love you in Gaelic),

Here’s a picture of your Irish granddaughter Jessie dancing:) Remember when were there, everyone thought she was from Ireland:) xo. 

Letters to My Mother During CoVid19

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March 27th, 2020

Dear Mom,

A poem by Amy Carmichael seems fitting for today. So many of the wonderful nurses down in memory care and in assisted living are working longer shifts and filling in for people who are sick to help you stay healthy. Please be kind to them, always. 

A Nurse’s Prayer

Let not routine make dull my quickened sense

Of Thee, Lord Jesus; give me reverence,

That in each wounded one I may see Thee,

My Lord, my Love, Savior of Calvary.

In dusty foot thorn-pierced, I would see Thine

Pierced by a nail for love of me and mine;

In each sore hand held out so piteously

I would see Thine, Redeemer, bruised for me.

For me be hallowed every common bed

Because Thou hadst not where to lay Thy head;

In common flesh, Lord Jesus, I would see

Thy sacred body laid upon the tree.

Should some I serve, unruly toss and fret,

And tire my patience, then, lest I forget

All that I owe to Thy agony,

Show me once more, my Lord, Thy Calvary.

You gave me the collection of her poems, Mountain Breezes back when our children were young. On the inside cover you wrote, “I hope you enjoy this amazing collection of poems by Amy Carmichael as I did her biography, A Chance to Die.” Love, Mother x Mother’s Day, 2001.

I just cracked open this collection last year, sorry it took me so long. I was leading a creative writing workshop around the theme of RELEASE and her poem, “To Higher Things” has a line, “Oh, lift our souls to higher things.” What is it that you would want to release to God today? (Caregivers, please write down her answer.)

Thank you forever for teaching me to love poetry! My bookshelves are filled with books by poets you taught us to memorize on our endless summer vacation car trips to the Olney, IL Holiday Inn and the ElDorado, AK Holiday Inn. Know that we didn’t care what motel we stayed in as long as it had a pool and if it had a pool with a slide we never wanted to leave.

Many of these poems you called out to us over the front seat while we played “car mountain” with our Hot Wheels. You’d say a line and we’d repeat it back and then you’d add on. I still know them. Once, I recited “Little Orphan Annie” by James Whitcomb Riley to my classes and terrified them to the point of almost tears so I had to apologize! I loved the scary mystery of his poem, “There were two big black things standing by her side.” What did those black things look like? Riley left it to our imagination, I’ve always pictured them as giant black hoods. 

We’d sit with Goggie and Jessie and Grandma Lehwald at our fancy Mother’s Day table and you’d recite “Somebody’s Mother” by Mary Dow Brine. This poem still makes me cry. How many little old ladies have I walked by and not helped across the street? Your oldest grandson Caleb, does the sweet things this poem talks about. On his birthday this year (March 15th), he bought breakfast at Suzettes Creperie for a homeless person. Your youngest grandson Nathaniel goes into memory care facilities in Nashville and leads worship and he says some people sing with him from their beds. He can hear them because the piano is in the center and the beds are arranged around it in a circle. Your granddaughter Jessie is part of a program in St. Louis called “Senior Embrace” where her dance company goes into retirement homes and care facilities and dances with the residents. Without knowing it, the legacy of this poem, caring for the elderly, is alive in your grandchildren.

One of my favorites by Emily Dickinson, “There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away, nor any coursers like a page of prancing poetry—This traverse even may the poorest take without oppress of toll—How frugal is the chariot that bears the human soul.”

This little gem demonstrates what you know and value, what you taught us. No matter how poor, our souls are carried, even buoyed by books and lines of poetry. Thank you. Thank you for reading to us, even when you were sad and didn’t want to…

“Caps for sale, 50 cents a cap, who will buy my caps?”

“The woman was old and ragged and grey, bent with the chill of a winters day.”

“We hear of the Easter bunny who comes each Easter Day before sunrise to bring eggs for boys and girls, so we think there is only one.”

“Baby’s boat’s a silver moon, sailing in the sky.”

“There was a crooked man and he went a crooked mile, he found a crooked sixpence against a crooked style.” 

“In Dublin’s fair city where the girls are so pretty…cockles and mussels, alive, alive oh.”

I know one line is enough to jog your memory and get you singing that last one. I miss Ireland. I miss you.

Much love to you today,

Letters to My Mother During CoVid19

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March 26th, 2020

Dear Mom,

As I mentioned in my first letter, I’m truly sorry that I can’t come and visit you. They’ve locked family members out of your retirement facility and are only allowing outside paid caregivers to come in and be with you. Since this change we’ve chosen to employ additional caregivers so that you have plenty of visitors.

I meant to tell your caregivers that you LOVE to sing songs from the musical “The Sound of Music” so if they want to try doing that —- go for it!  A funny one would be, “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?” Because your caregiver Maria isn’t a problem at all! They can pull these up on their iPhones and sing them with you in the apartment or while you two are walking the halls. “Edelweiss,” “The Hills are Alive,” “So Long Farewell,” “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria” are all great tunes that you could teach them, since you know all the words! When the weather warms up they can sing with you out in the courtyard under the blooming crabapple tree.

I’m not sure if you realize that blooming crabapple trees have followed us all our lives. A white blossoming baby tree grew tall off our flagstone patio at 935 Batavia Ave. and every spring morning for almost 30 years I’ve awakened to the sight of two mounded giants outside the dormer window of our bedroom, creating a jungle gym for our squirrel friends. You loved walking your neighborhood at 1945 Wexford Circle, wreathed in yellow locust petals in the fall and pear and crabapple snowy petals in the spring. Right around Mother’s Day, Caleb and Nathaniel could sit on the edge of their bed, look left and see their dormer window filled with fuchsia crabapple petals and look right, every pane filled with white crabapple petals which actually started out light pink and then turned to white. We learned over the years their official name, Snowdrift Crabapple. Even now, we drive down Shady Lane to take in the alternating quilt of pink and white petal patches.

Thank you for teaching me everything about plants, trees, shrubs and flowers which of course includes cultivated and wildflowers, both of equal value which is why you insisted I carry both in my wedding bouquet. What would a summer wedding be without Queen Annes Lace? You’ve taught me the value of dirty hands, aging fingers encrusted in dirt even after numerous before dinner hand washings. It’s a good gardening year when the dirt never completely escapes the crevices of my index finger. Your 1945 Wexford Circle home featured the perennial border on the west side with the most enormous English Munstead Lavender plants in front of your Rudebekia which we know better as Black Eyed Susans. When I transplanted a few of your Lavender plants to my own border they failed to return to their former size and vigor. My soil didn’t have the same type of drainage of your newer development clay— which you amended with the help of Mary LaBuddy, your gardening helper, each year. “My soil is terrible,” you would complain, but there are benefits to weaker soil and lavender is one of them. When we moved everything out of your garage I found shoe boxes FULL of dried lavender bundles. You trimmed them evenly across the bottom and tied each one with raffia and stacked them neatly in boxes. What were you saving those lavender bundles for? (Please write down her answer, I’d love to know.) Perhaps, Jessie’s wedding someday?

You taught me to stand in awe and reverence before the queen of perennials – delphinium, especially the delphinium of Door County. Remember the tallest and best inside the cedar hedge at the Blue Dolphin shop between Sister Bay and Ephraim? Sir Galahad, Black Knight, Guinevere, Blue Lace— I tried to grow all these delphinium varieties from seed and in some years succeeded, but they never wintered over. Far more delphiniums lost than gained in my garden which brings me to your appreciation of the seasons. Life indeed has it’s seasons and true, palette colors, “A time to reap and a time to sow.” Gardening is about gains and losses and seeing the beauty in fallow soil as well as a flora-abundant border.

Last fall when we walked through St. James Farm, you referred to the River Birch trees, “Look at that mustard yellow, just beautiful.” Mustard yellow, ochre, these colors from your paint palette still exist in the recesses of your cognition and trees inspire the release of those words. Can you guess what is the one word I hear you use more than any other, not counting the names of people, “beautiful.” Thank you for helping me see the beauty in soft landscapes, the weathered lines of aging faces, eyes locking over a handshake, snow laden pines “shagged with ice,” (stealing from Wallace Stevens there.) It’s visible in the seen and the unseen and we need to keep looking, even amidst the virus there is beauty everywhere. 

I love you my forever beautiful mother,

Letters to My Mother During CoVid19

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Dear Mom,

I’m sorry I can’t visit you. Your facility has locked down because of the Coronavirus and only outside, paid caregivers are allowed. This is unfair, but Aunt Mary always said, “Life isn’t fair.” Have you noticed how you can’t recognize anyone because of the colorful bandanas over their nose and mouth? That’s not weird, but intended to protect you from outside germs. So far there are no cases of the virus in your retirement home! This is a gift from God and demonstrates how hard everyone there is working to keep you all healthy. 

I woke up this morning from a dream where Miss Washington, the kids’ grade school gym teacher, approached me and said, “Your mother has no pulse.” Shocked and confused that this random person would be telling me such important news, I said, “What does that mean, is she dead?” She shook her head and responded, “I’m sorry.” Startled awake, I made coffee and walked the dog down our deserted street. Out by the lake, a mama robin flew by with bits of dried grass in her beak. I thought about this dream and how I might bridge the enforced gap of connection we are experiencing and I thought of the beautiful nest you’ve built for me over the course of my entire life. In an effort to bridge the gap, I’m writing you a letter every day.

One of the things I do in my haphazard writing life is curate a blog for a website called Patheos. I won’t try to explain what “curating a blog” means, just think of it as a piece of writing on the computer and I pick out what gets put on that website. I also won’t try to explain what a website is because in your 85th year, it doesn’t matter. A recent article I posted talked about a daughter’s estranged relationship with her mother and all the questions she wanted to ask her but didn’t get the chance to ask before she died. https://www.patheos.com/blogs/redbudwritersguild/2020/02/questionnaire-for-an-estranged-mother/

Sadly, the mother and daughter never reconciled their relationship. I’m thankful we are not in that situation! Instead, you’ve been the most wonderful and beautiful mother in the world. It’s important that you know before you die the legacy of love you will leave behind. If I think of questions that I need answers to, I’m asking your caregivers to read these letters and write down your answers. When I’m free to re-enter the front door of your facility, I’ll grab those precious answers from the drawer of your desk. In the meantime, enjoy these bits of memory. May these letters bless you and sparkle the remaining memories in your mind.

Margaret, Jessie and “Nana”

If you do die tomorrow, (hopefully, you will get my first letter and it will be after that) I need to thank you for the most important thing you’ve formed in me, faith. Although you are somewhat of an introverted artist, probably the most introverted person in our entire family and definitely a four on the enneagram, you’re a quiet evangelist. When we moved all the furniture out of your townhouse, some into your cozy apartment, some into storage and some to our kids’ apartments, we decided to keep the tall end-table with the middle drawer. You know the one that stood between your two checkered chairs facing the TV. I found one of your Bibles inside the tiny drawer, covered in pencil markings— underlined passages, questions, cross-references, quotations — a worked over King James. I knew you spent many hours sitting at the feet of Lilian Weaver as she conducted Bible studies, but I’ve never thought of you as a student of the Bible, until I opened this book. Thank you for forming my faith by teaching me the songs and stories when I was little — “Jesus Loves the Little Children.” The first vacation Bible school I remember attending was at the First Presbyterian Church in River Forest, the one you’ve always called “Dr. Ball’s church.” This is the same church where you led me by the hand into the sanctuary to see “Goggie’s window,” the stained-glass window on the your right as you enter from the back. Mounted beneath the glittering glass is a plaque with her name on it, Mary Jane McGreevy. How impressive to a five year old! She must be rich, I thought. But it was more than rich in money, both of my grandmothers overflowed with kingdom riches. I didn’t know what that meant back then. 

Thank you for forcing us to sit through Handel’s “Messiah” sung at Rockefeller Chapel every holiday season. Just so you know, we were bored out of our minds by this ritual of torture which felt like it lasted three days, but now the melodies are inked upon my soul. Thank you for making us do things we didn’t want to do. Hanging from my charm bracelet is a tiny church and when you peer through the window you can see the Lord’s Prayer. Either this charm came from the V.B.S. at “Dr. Ball’s church” or you and dad gave it to me. I still love it and wonder about this miracle. How can the Lord’s Prayer be visible all these years later in microscopic print, through a window less than a quarter of an inch in diameter? 

I know you hated renting our house on the river, but we loved it! Renting instead of buying a house means nothing to kids, but living in a house backed up to “real” woods on a river means everything! We sailed our bathtub boats in “the creek” and picked fistfuls of narcissus and “wild” tulips every spring. Thank you for making me go over to Mrs. Downs and apologize when I picked every “non-wild” tulip out of her garden to give to you on Mother’s Day. We met God in those woods amongst Lily of the Valley and the Stations of the Cross walk created by the brothers of the Sacred Heart. I thought everyone lived in a house with the Stations of the Cross in their backyard. Studying those bas relief plaques mounted at the center of each cross, my two hands stuffed full of periwinkle vinca, forced me to stop and think about suffering. I’m thankful that despite losing your memory, you are not suffering. 

You sang to us and you still know the words to every hymn—may I be so fortunate. After setting up our nativity set on the front hall stand of our 935 Batavia Ave. house, we would sing “Away in the Manger” in our pajamas as you lit the candles. Now, we do this as we set up our own nativity scene. Also, I want to remind you how incredibly cool and artsy it was that you and dad created your first nativity set out of plaster during the early years of your marriage. You painted one of the angels, but all the other figures were left a pure, white plaster, an art project unfinished. If this bothers you that you didn’t paint the rest of the figures, no worries, they look better all white.

And I can’t forget Honey Rock Camp! You sent us to “sleep-away camp” when we were probably too young, but I get it. Two weeks away from your kids in the summer to do what you want to do sounds like a good idea. Well, it wasn’t just good for you and dad. I thrived in that rustic space with my friend Stephanie. We tried new things (like sailing) failed miserably and laughed. I sang the song, “How Great Thou Art”  for the first time and never forgot it. We worshiped in Cathedral Pines and left with splinters in our bottoms from the rough pine benches. My counselor, “Q” showed me that you’re never too old to wear a bathing suit and make fun of yourself acting in ridiculous, campy skits. Thank you for trekking up to Family Day when our kids attended the same camp thirty years later. I know that sitting on a soggy log and eating cold fried chicken and watching your grandchildren fall down in the “ski show” isn’t the best way to spend a rainy summer day. You could have been getting your hair done. 

Faith is the greatest gift you can pass on to a child. When something like a virus comes along and has the power to strip everything away, it will be the last thing standing. I love you and I thank you!

Building 2020

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Often my husband and I walk our dog Snuggles and talk about the next thing we want to build, lately that conversation has centered around how our baby church plant is growing up, a new garage or filling the massive potholes where we park our car. Building is tangible, it takes vision and resources and you can touch it when it’s done. Yet, there is something satisfyingly intangible about this process. You can’t be entirely sure how it’s going to turn out and unplanned obstacles interfere along the journey, causing a shift in thinking and dollars. This requires flexibility and creativity on the part of the builders. “How could we value engineer this to get the same result, but not incur the significant up-charge?” A question forever plaguing and refining the building project.

When we built our home in northern Wisconsin the power generator established by the developer sat out on the road and it turned out we needed to add an (unplanned) new junction box closer to the house. The power was too far away since we chose to put the house in the back of the lot. This meant that the limestone apron we hoped to wrap around the entire base of the house got axed. The money for the stone now went to the new power source, an aesthetic sacrifice for a practical reality. Our creative minded general contractor said, “Let’s still put in the extra thick foundation and that way if you want to add the stone apron in the future, you can.” Problem solved, with an eye to the future solution.

My first experience with the joy of building things hit me in sixth grade at Jill Oddy’s slumber party. Jill lived in my favorite house in our neighborhood a couple of blocks from ours. Her parents gutted it, kept every rich historical detail and updated the color scheme with tons of Swedish blue and yellow florals, toile wallpaper, and painted tiles featuring peasant village scenes around the fireplace. Her birthday party occurred between the old wallpaper coming off and the new wallpaper going up and her parents let us write ALL OVER the stripped down walls. Profound quotes by Oscar Wilde, the Bible and Shakespeare would underlay their new decor. Just kidding, “I LOVE MICKEY AND MICKEY LOVES ME,” written inside giant hearts conveyed the sentiments of these pre-teen girls. Just as Snuggles marks her territory on our morning and evening walks, we long to do this as well.

When our church bought a 98,000 square foot warehouse to convert into a gorgeous, post-modern sanctuary, we held a candlelit assembly to worship in the emptiness and mark the old concrete floor and steel girders prior to renovation. We covered that decrepit Alcoa factory in Bible verses written in permanent ink Sharpies. Beneath today’s creamy, ceramic tile those unseen verses undergird the congregations’ walk with Christ. Twenty years after Jill Oddy’s slumber party we wallpapered our own dining room walls in floral yellow and blue and my husband and I wrote life-changing messages all over our own stripped down walls, “C.P. + M.P. – True Love 4-Ever.” 

All of this takes me to Nashville a couple of weeks ago. Our youngest son is about to graduate with a music degree from Belmont University and he is involved in a couple of bands who record at “The Basement Space” studios. This start-up began literally in the basement space of a home the brothers lived in during college and beyond. The business grew and they are about to christen their trendy looking, take-your-breath-away recording studio behind the house. We toured this work in progress and took in the writing on the walls…

The owner’s face beamed as he told us about how the builders, a father and son team had experienced a significant growth in their faith since working on the project and they also wanted to contribute messages to the walls. He talked about all the enhancements and expansions the new space will bring to their recording work and I could see energy and light wash over his face and our son’s smile as they contemplated future opportunities.

The new Basement Space Studio in Nashville

A dizzying amount of preparations take place prior to breaking ground and that is what Lent is all about. We are on the cusp of a season where the Lord wants to build new things in us prior to the celebration of Easter. When we submit to his desire to write on the walls of our hearts he builds new light and life into us, often by revealing the decaying darkness of our own hearts. Lent is a building work and it starts this Ash Wednesday. Come and break up some ground and prepare a room for him these next 40 days. The master builder is looking for people to take up his trowel and his towel.

This Angel…

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“What happened to your foster daughter?” We hear this question often, for many people knew and loved the Liberian princess who disappeared from our lives unexpectedly.

The short form of the story tells the facts, without the emotional toll. She returned to Boston in the summer of 2018 because that was the agreement we had with her Liberian step-family living there. In July, both of her brothers journeyed by car several hundred miles to retrieve her from her Liberian family and take her to a different home in the town next to ours, rather than bringing her back to us. Their motivation for doing so was their desire that she attend a more prestigious high school, the one where her older brother graduated. Sadly, we learned about this via a phone call from the high school she attended while living with us. They requested that her records be transferred to the more prestigious high school and they needed our permission to do so. We had no idea what was going on. Why did this happen? The whole affair blind-sided us. We thought she would happily live out her high school days in our home and we would help get her to college, but her brothers had different ideas. This is one of the painful realities of fostering a child, you have very little control.

Receiving her African Nativity set

Fast forward to sitting in the musical “Hamilton” this past December. I waited in line for six hours to get tickets and as the date approached, I began to grow skeptical that it could live up to the hype. When the evening rolled around to see it, I found myself exhausted and didn’t really want to go. Watching “Hamilton” felt like a self-inflicted cultural obligation, which left me feeling guilty. The money could have gone to much worthier causes. I fell asleep during the first act. It is entirely possible that I’m the first person in the world to doze off in their seat while witnessing this blockbuster. After a caffeine laden intermission, we headed in for the second act and alas, one of those unsolicited, transforming moments that can only happen in theatre came over me. It happened during the song, “It’s Quiet Uptown.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjEoOeXId1k The song is a poignant number in which Eliza Hamilton forgives Alexander of his marital infidelity. During the scene, the chorus narrates the event while we watch them stroll in an uptown park, and we see her take Alexander’s hand. In unison, the chorus sings the word, “forgiveness – can you imagine?” and Eliza extends herself in this simple, but significant gesture. When this music streamed into my heart, I realized that I needed to forgive our foster daughter and her brothers for their betrayal. It was time to emotionally move on, rather than hold onto the hurt. 

So, the Liberian princess now lives with her younger brother in a beautiful apartment which I visited shortly after seeing “Hamilton.” She invited me to help her with a project she’s working on for an entrepreneurial club she attends in the city. We sat together at the high top table, just outside of the recently cleaned kitchen discussing product benefits, target market, distribution vehicles and all those juicy aspects of launching something new. She showed me her drawings and designs and asked if she could call the product, “Margaret’s Child.” (Insert here – emojis of shock and awe and yes, how delightful!) I can’t say what the product is, but if she wins the competition she will get the funding to actually launch the product and then you’ll find out ALL the details. Please pray that she wins:)

She looked so grown up sitting at that table with her newly embraced natural hair and enormous smile. I gave her the Christmas present which I add to every year, another piece of the African nativity which is handmade by our neighbor, (see here for details of this beautiful business http://margaretphilbrick.com/your-artistic-corner/) When she toured me around her immaculate bedroom, I saw the zebra from this set on her desk. This year’s piece was an angel, because she is an angel whether she lives with us or not and forgiveness causes the angels to sing (or at least get their wings) not just at Christmas, but every day of the year. May we extend much grace and forgiveness during this election year — 2020 — to those who’ve hurt us and to those we’ve hurt as well. 

p.s. I know this post will probably come back and haunt me so if I’m being a jerk to you or you see me being a jerk to someone else, please remind me that back on a freezing cold, snow- laced January night I wrote this and that I need to keep leaning into forgiveness and get over myself. Thanks!

This is the final post in the four part series discussing the tangible and intangible aspects of life that last…”This Couch,” “This Bear,” “This Bed,” “This Angel.”

This Bed…

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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.

This Bear

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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.

This Couch

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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.

Thankful? Our New Life – Six Months Later

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We couldn’t wait to get here. A gale force wind seemed to blow us across the Illinois border. Everything fell into place, even our dog loved her new life on Langdon. What dog wouldn’t love finding discarded pizza slices lying on the ground with every morning walk? Today she trotted out a blueberry muffin between her jaws from beneath a tree. Our street, filled with sorority and fraternity houses a.k.a. party row is loud, which means Sunday and Monday are the only nights we don’t sleep with a fan cranked on high to drown out the street noise. We are definitely “not in Kansas anymore,” or “the Shire,” our nickname for our former home and town of 29 years. So how is it going? What have we learned in these short few months?

Snuggles

Adults get homesick – Returning to our condo after a blissful July vacation in the Northwoods, left me standing at midnight in our tiny linen closet searching for pajamas. With no working light, I fumbled around in the dark for the hooks and my familiar T.S. Eliot nightshirt. Nothing felt like it was in the right place, our new home didn’t smell like home. I’d forgotten where I’d put things and nothing owned a designated spot. Were the pajamas in the linen closet or in a box or in a drawer? A sick feeling of longing for familiar places and spaces overcame me. I wanted to see our Portuguese tile in the kitchen, listen to the creak of the stairs underfoot, stand in our tiny shared closet and know that my p.j’s hung on the same hook as my robe. All of our kids lived through homesickness at summer camp and now it was my turn, but this wasn’t camp and home sat on a corner 159 miles south of here. 

I don’t like flannel shirts – This city has a penchant for flannel in all seasons of the year. Some people like comfort food — these crunchy folks love comfort clothing. I imagine they sleep in flannel sheets and pad around in flannel slippers with badgers jutting out from their toes. Long ago I slept in my husband’s flannel shirts, but now menopausal Margaret melts just looking at the tried ‘n true plaid fabric. Our youngest son nicknamed me M.P. M.P. (meno pausal margaret philbrick) and my slightly fancy, artsy wardrobe is not in step with the sorority girl shredded black jeans and tied-at-the-midriff flannel shirts. I’ve never thought I looked old until I moved onto this street.

Deck gardening comes with benefits – Our Halloween forecast called for freezing cold and several inches of snow. Yet, our lovely deck continued to burst with red and white begonias and red hot pokers, channeling U.W. colors. My heart wasn’t ready to say goodbye to my little friends. It takes time to make new friends in a strange city, but plants extend a welcome handshake and smile, even when no one on our street makes eye contact as we pass by. So in about 30 minutes I’d carried all our pots inside and filled our kitchen with their life-giving oxygen, but also spiders. In late fall it used to take all day to cut down our garden and put it to bed, now numerous pots nestled throughout our condo in less than an hour.

Tending a baby (church) brings joy – My sweet husband often turns to me whenever we walk in the front door and says, “Welcome home.” The problem is, a place that feels like a European airbnb doesn’t resemble home. There is no history here, no roots. It’s like looking at the pretty  leaves without the rest of the tree. One Sunday he turned to me and said, “Welcome home” in church and I physically felt a secure, tangible sense of home seeping into my bones. Our barely one year old church plant feels more like home than any other place in this college town. Why? Jesus’s house is our home and when we are there we’re one step closer to our heavenly home. Most of our new friends for the most part attend this church as does our baby goddaughter, who is an angelic bundle of smiling fun. These people in this gymnasium form our communion. Serving this baby plant keeps us supple. Every Sunday we meet new people, every Sunday we bend in new ways.

My different to-do list – A good friend recently shared this illustration with me: “When I was in Rwanda, our guide said, ‘Africa will always be poor because the man who goes out into the country every morning to tend his field stops along the way to talk to a neighbor. They spend about an hour talking about his farm and family and then he walks on. After another mile he stops and talks to another neighbor. After an hour he moves on and arrives at his field about noon. He tills his soil for a few hours and heads back home. He stops and talks to several other neighbors along the way. For the African farmer, life is more about talking to his neighbor than tilling his field.’” As we sat by the fire, I thought to myself, this is my new to-do list…people along the road, not projects. God used this dear friend to illuminate for me the dramatic shift in my to-do list. I’ve been suffering from a dearth of what was normal, i.e. papers to grade, kids to drive, overgrown tomato and basil plants to harvest and turn into pesto and marinara sauce. My friends words brought fresh energy and perspective to the reality that this season in our new city is about people, not projects.

Yes, we are thankful for change and challenges. In the words of one of our favorite  worship bands, United Pursuit, “Though the seasons change. your love remains, your love remains.” Without his divine love, we can do nothing.