It was a cold, rainy, Wednesday evening in February in New Jersey. I had a sitter for my two boys, one my newborn son who was my unexpected pregnancy at age 38. The team who had come to speak at our Presbyterian church had set out about fifteen chairs and there were three or four guest speakers, to hopefully enlighten and drum up enthusiasm for our church to be a part of the launch of a new pregnancy center opening in a nearby town.

As the time neared for the meeting to begin, there were still about fourteen empty chairs. I had taken my seat, center of the front row, as I was very interested in learning more about something that might have made my own recent experience quite a bit easier. I could sense their sadness, as it began to be clear that no one else was coming. After an uncomfortable foot shuffling time for the speakers, I took a moment to speak to them from my audience of one. I basically said I know this seems like a disappointing turnout to you, but if you knew how deeply this matters to me, and how I will be able to encourage others to join me because of that, you would realize that the audience you want to be present is here. Please continue as if the room is full, because you do not have to get other people on board. I’m here and I am supposed to be. I didn’t come to listen, I came to be a vital part of this ministry.

And that was the beginning of my 30 year journey with pregnancy centers all over this country. I helped to start that one and became a counselor. I later moved to upstate New York and helped launch one from our church there. I became a part of one in southern California. And later in St Petersburg, Florida, I helped draw our church members into a struggling one in the heart of the city, although not in their neighborhood. The most needed and busy ones were often located in the parts of town many church members were not familiar with. Those centers were also the very grateful recipients of their more available contributions of both time and money and the briefly worn infants’ clothing that was passed their way. I later attended conferences as centers formed alliances to keep them open and current with federal and local laws; efforts to shut them down and protests against them continued over the decades, until Roe vs. Wade was overturned as a federal law returned to the states. I was there as centers raised money for ultrasound machines and hired nurses to perform those amazing visual signs of early life that would change so many hearts and minds. And of course I was there in a counseling room, coming alongside many young women who were struggling to make a decision that would forever change their life and those of everyone around her, in one way or another.

I was always impressed with the volunteers who had been on both sides, actually all three sides, of the issue, as many had been adopted as babies and not raised by the one who gave birth to them; they were so grateful for the chance they had been given to experience a wonderful childhood and family. All who had experienced this situation themselves were among the most humble and effective counselors, as they had a heart for each woman surpassing the desire to save a baby at all costs. It always hurt me to hear the phrase I saved a baby today, as I always wanted to follow up with and how is that woman doing? The opposite was often true across the street from one center where there was a Planned Parenthood. I was the only one who ever thought we actually had something in common, because my heart was always for the mom making that final decision, and I knew from meeting many women over the years who volunteered there that their hearts were toward the woman as well. I experienced many church women who felt they were definitely doing God’s work saving a baby from abortion, as indeed they were, but they sometimes failed to realize it went so much deeper than that. They often were extremely disappointed if the woman chose abortion after their counseling about all options available to them, and they seemed to feel it a personal failure; whereas the women like me, who had experienced the agony of the decision-making themselves, were much more likely to form a bond with that woman that often drew her back to the center, even after her abortion choice, to participate in a totally anonymous, loving, post-abortion counseling series done with peers and facilitators who had also once chosen that similar path.

The last thing anyone needs in that situation is harsh judgement from anyone representing God’s love. Of course God loves that tiny life then forming, but He has also loved that precious woman for a very long time and His heart is breaking for her as well. He will not abandon her, no matter what path she chooses. And just like my response to the leaders who gave the pep talk at my church that cold evening years before, she did find her way to the center to listen and learn. God’s timing is a part of her journey, whether she knows it at the time or not. The center and counseling are but another part of her path. We don’t know where that decision will lead in her life, but we do know Jesus told the parable about the lost sheep. He said the good shepherd always went after the one who strayed and left the 99 obedient ones behind to do just that. This ministry was never only about the babies, as much as so many of us want to protect and save them. In my experience, if the mother can actually feel God’s love and acceptance, if she can truly envision a path for herself and that baby, she is much more likely to choose to carry it to term, and that is where choice really comes into it. Condemnation, in my experience, particularly veiled Christian judgement, rarely saves either of them.

I think that’s a good thing. I think it means when I’m done I’ll go fast. Maybe I’ll die the way that I lived, constantly on the move, hopefully not in a car crash or anything painful for a long time. My mantra of my last act has been ‘God, please use me up then take me home fast, if possible’. I do think that may happen. So I’m always a little prepared to be on my best behavior with everyone just in case. I’d rather leave them laughing, or at least not mad at me. It’s pretty easy, actually, as I’m moving a lot more slowly than I did in the past. I don’t have as much to say and these days I’m very grateful to have this little note thing on my phone so I can wake up in the middle of the night and talk to it, just so I don’t lose track of any story I wanted to remember.

I’ve had one heart attack, but I didn’t even know I was having one exactly. Maybe the hospital didn’t either. I didn’t find out until years later when they did a test where they ran dye through my veins and somehow saw my heart like the center of a tree; it had rings in it that somehow showed them that I’ve had a fairly sizable past heart attack. Well, there was that time I drove myself to the emergency room at two in the morning, afraid that my dog wouldn’t know what to do if I keeled over. Then he might die of hunger because nobody checked on me every day and I lived on a very quiet road and didn’t know my neighbors very well; I could easily have gone unnoticed for maybe even a week and I didn’t want to do that to my dog, who had been nothing but faithful. He didn’t deserve that.

I got up and googled it and found I had at least four signs of a possible heart attack. My Dad, his mom, both had several heart attacks before their deaths at ages I was now reaching. I drove myself to the nearest emergency room. They of course put me on treadmills and did all kinds of stupid stuff, keeping me in the ER all night, then sending me home in the morning with an acid reflux pill; only for me to find out five years later that probably was the heart attack now showing up in the rings. Oh well, at least I was home to feed the dog by noon the next day.

A three year old’s response to my saying No to his “I want……” request for goldfish crackers at 9 am. I try to explain once again that his want is not a need, nor is it a request that I will always honor. His reply to that is a quick “Please I may have goldfish” as though throwing in all the ‘good’ words I love to hear, all at the same time, will magically change this scene in his favor and I will grant his request. As any other parent or grandparent knows, that sudden scrambled vocabulary cuteness often does change our hearts to give in, at least the first two or three times we hear it.

It’s the equivalent of pretty please with sugar on top, but turned upside down or backwards in a way we want more of because it tickles us so. Soon all their words will be tidily said in perfect sequence, but how we love the mix ups while they happen! I think it saves many a cross reply, as we often have to turn our faces to hide a smile even when we are being stern. He is so good with words and manipulation of the kill her with kindness variety vs meltdowns, that he is totally confident the right words will get him exactly what he wants. He isn’t in the least bit pleading when he rephrases his request, which I call a soft demand. The insecure child in me is so “impwessed” as my granddaughter used to say, that it often works. And even when I say no, he just smiles and turns back to his play of the moment, knowing full well it will probably still work the next time he tries it. I often think of how we sometimes try the same thing with God, sweetening the prayer requests just a little if they are just a bit self centered, hoping he may be swayed by our momentary cuteness, maybe just one more time.

Said little Raleigh to me when we were going out for a ride on his balance bike, circling around the little Mr. Roger’s neighborhood I live in. Staying on the sidewalk. Wearing a helmet. Watching out for cars when we crossed the street together. Strange dogs on leashes. Wandering ducks from the pond looking for food.

A strange request? Perhaps. Probably just a thing he said in passing, with no deeper meaning involved. I could and did answer “Yes, honey”; of course, I meant only while he was in my care, but of course we didn’t talk about that. The simplest answer is the easiest with a three year old. As most all grandparents who have had both the blessing and the curse of remembering too much from their own child-rearing years, I know keeping a child safe is a huge duty and an overwhelming responsibility. There are so many possible ways for a child to be hurt; physically certainly, but emotionally often even worse. Because you never saw it coming.

Years later we will learn from our children, their therapists or their spouses, where we had in fact not kept our children safe. Where they had been harmed, usually unintentionally and often unknown for years, in ways we never realized were even possible, in part because we had yet to sort out our own emotions concerning our upbringing and our binding family ties. There isn’t enough time to do it all and keep on track with everything that is happening at lightning daily speeds while raising kids. As parents we do the best we can with what we know at the time. Unfortunately at first we only seem to know either how to instinctively repeat what we learned from our parents or to attempt the completely opposite approach, having learned as adults that what we absorbed as a child was not always beneficial, so perhaps the opposite of it would be better? Unfortunately the opposite usually was not better, just swinging the emotional pendulum to the other wrong side, rushing past the centered balance we wanted but had no way of recognizing. From unnoticed to hovered over. From neglected to spoiled. From discounted emotions to always being allowed very big feelings, both seeming unacceptable to us, but the unknown norm also somehow unattainable. Balance seemed very distance when viewed now from the other side. Where do we turn for guidance, and how will we recognize the center if we have never experienced it?

The things we most need to learn to embrace our best life are never really taught to the young, except perhaps in the school of hard knocks. We enter parenting with highest hopes, but it is the most complicated mess of responsibilities and job titles we will ever encounter, especially if we are picking up the slack for another parent, one either emotionally absent, physically or sometimes both. I used to think I was reparenting myself as fast as I could, while trying to navigate the potholes that may well show up in my children’s lives if I am not successful. It seemed like a wild race against time, and I often failed to be one step ahead of where they needed me to be.

We can only improve the gene pool little by little if we really pay attention and try harder and harder in the fog in which we often find ourselves. From dysfunctional to mis functional to what…normal? At the ripe age of 80, I can say I have yet to meet anyone coming from a ‘normal’ family, as everyone has ways they have had to make adjustments. Yet seeing those small positive gains made by my children as they parent are huge in our family legacy. I am always noticing those ever so slight increases and crediting them to the balance column in our generational inheritance. It isn’t easy. Yay team!!

My youngest son had just been relocated to the fifth new home of his six years on earth. He adjusted very well every time, but in this one he also started school. He was quite self assured and already dressed in a style that showed his flair for being comfortable in his own clothing choices, even if he stood out from his peers. I was raised to be very conscious of both fitting in and being properly appropriate in my choices of attire. In self esteem I drew a short stick; it was extremely important to me that I not somehow hand that on to my children, even though I had no idea how to project its opposite.

I used to buzz cut my boys hair, at least until they began to notice girls around age 12. Soon after he started school, it was time for a buzz cut for my youngest. We put a kitchen stool in their bathroom and he sat down facing the big mirror. The stool put him at just the right height for me to work around his whole head and stay even. I did something different this particular time. I buzzed the right side front to back but stopped an inch onto the top. Then I did the same for the left side, stopping at the same place. I wasn’t finished but I stopped to look in the mirror at his reflection. He had one solid strip of hair up the middle, perfectly done and because it was growing out a previous buzz, all the hair was neatly the same length. I saw his eyes looked amazingly large all of a sudden, too and I asked him, “You know that mohawk you been asking me for years, do you still want one?”

Those big eyes got even larger and he said “Yes Mom!” He had no reservations, but I of course had to follow up with “What if people laugh at you?” He spun around and looked me straight in my eyes and said “Mom, if they laugh at me, that’s their problem.” I guess I didn’t hand it on after all, in spite of myself.

I am reading a book in which this particular writer’s mission and gift is to encourage others to find their voice writing. I was reading this morning about how we may associate a particular smell with our deepest memories.
I was telling several friends recently about the smell of coffee and how I loved waking up early when I am visiting my son and his family, so that I can share a cup of coffee with my daughter-in-love in their kitchen as she gets ready for the day ahead and meals needed, starting with breakfast. It is perhaps my favorite part of my trip out west. I love catching up on their world through her eyes, as she recounts recent adventures large and small, in the months just passed or the ones ahead. The love she has for each of them even in struggle moments is always most evident, and because I share that with her, I feel as though I am on their journey as well. The memories of those early morning hours come drifting back as I sit here months later with my coffee.
The times I shared with my Mom over coffee when we lived with them after I moved my tribe of three to Florida in the late 80s were also some of my favorites. The coffee my Mom drank was never the best and later, as we had so many better options, I wondered why she still drank the plain black Folgers she faithfully brewed each morning.
I know now that it wasn’t the coffee. It was the peaceful time to write, think, feel and process that was so special about starting her day that mattered.
I had a beloved grandmother who also wrote letters to her family each morning about six am, probably with a warm cup of coffee beside her. My Mom often started her day with her famous tiny yellow legal pad and black flair pen notes to our family and her wide circle of friends. I come from a long line of morning writers it appears, as I recount these memories. Embracing the smell of my early morning coffee is even nicer now as I think about my heritage.

I remember when my youngest was about five and he suddenly became sick to his stomach. He ran to the bathroom and quickly put his head over the toilet bowl. I got a clean wash cloth and ran it under the cold water and held it against his forehead while he emptied his stomach into the bowl in fits and starts. When he was nearly finished he turned his little head toward me and said “Were you trained for this?”

I thought of all the ways a Mom, even a brand new one, all of sudden seems to acquire an entirely new skill set, somewhat resembling a grandmother/nurse. The fact that it seemed odd to my son made me think about how amazing it is. After a flash, or many flashes, of intense labor and delivery pain, a selfish teen turned irrational twenty something incredibly becomes a protective, caring parent for a small infant, without taking any courses or getting some type of license. Things that our Mom or grandmother used to do come flying out of our memories exactly the moment they are needed. Somehow the next generation manages to get enough healing solutions to their smallest problems to carry them forward into adolescence, where they can begin caring for themselves. This moment made me think how special all that generationally passed on healthcare truly is. Our glycerin on boo boos to make them stop pulsing, mud on bee stings, calamine lotion on almost everything that itches, and hydrogen peroxide on any cut that needed cleaning….. because we couldn’t google anything in those days. You had to be confident, so you were! Maybe not so bad a solution.

Several years after my divorce from the father of my son, I had a brief romantic reunion with someone I had dated prior to my marriage. He was also divorced many years by that time and we were reintroduced by mutual friends. I was busy running/owning a gift store in New Jersey and raising my five year old son as a single mom. I rarely dated, but I really loved the friends who put us back together. Neither of us were great relationship material at that time, but we did enjoy each other’s company a couple weekends when my son visited his dad and new wife, as we now lived in different states.

Anyway, the result of those brief encounters was an unexpected pregnancy that threw me into a rapid decision making process. Having already borne a child, I knew the fetal development and how quickly the baby was forming. After that, one can’t easily think its a baby when they want it and only a mass of cells when they don’t. I quickly realized, in the fifth year after Roe vs Wade became legal, that many of my friends were self-avowed feminists at that time. Assume that, as a divorced woman, most of my close friends now were single, divorced, or unhappily married. It was the way one got sorted after a divorce in those days. I didn’t have a definite position then and was willing to see the pros and cons of each side in an individual’s life: I was wary of mere head knowledge and always preferred real life experience over wishful thinking. This was no longer hypothetical for me, so given a very short timespan to decide and because I didn’t want my developing fetus to have any more body parts than it had at that moment if I was considering termination, I quickly devised a test to use when seeking advice from my very few close friends or relatives. I asked them “have you ever had an abortion, a child out of wedlock or given a child up for adoption?” as those were the three not so great options I was facing. There were also no Crisis Pregnancy Centers that I was aware of in 1977.

The result of my test was I lost one friend who had an abortion that I had actually driven her to, who refused to talk when I called her asking about her feelings afterward; she hung up on me in tears. Most others didn’t pass the test and only could offer what they thought they would do in my place. Not helpful. My doctor had told me in a check up he didn’t know how I had ever conceived my one child, as my female parts seemed upside down and sideways. This wasn’t a birth control method I should have relied on. When I was back in his office for the pregnancy test six months later he handed me the name of a doctor who would take care of my ‘problem’. I was never in his office again for care or advice. My own father wrote me I was never going to have enough time, money or love beyond what I needed to raise my one child and owed it to my son not to have another. Also that no man would ever want to take that on in a future marriage. Feeling somewhat at a loss to make the right decision, I scheduled an appointment to terminate the pregnancy. The night before I called a friend in California, someone I had dated but we were coasts away; both divorced, crazy busy and again, neither of us the most stable at that point in our lives for solid relationships. I should add that I had also driven to the other state to get input from the father of this child, who was supporting his ex and their three children already. A heavy drinker and again, not a great candidate for long term solidity, though he did think I should not terminate, yet offered little else in the way of a path forward.

My phone call to the friend in California cast the final vote. Though as a man he had not had an abortion personally, his only natural child was aborted without him even being consulted and it had made an indelible impact on him. When I told him I said I really wanted to know how I was going to feel twenty years from that moment and make my decision based on that. His wise response to was “What are you doing the next nine months you couldn’t do pregnant?” I found myself laughing and crying on my end of the phone, suddenly surrounded by light standing in my dark basement at nine pm. I had just found my true north on this matter. I cancelled my appointment the next morning and went forward with the two choices I then had left. My friend had bought me grey time in a mostly black and white scenario. I went to talk to adoption agencies and then later, about the fourth month, I decided I would not only carry but raise that unborn child. When I shared the news with my wonderful five year old he said “Oh Mom! Remember when I threw that penny in the fountain at Bloomingdales? I wished I could be a brother!” While I didn’t blame him for this odd outcome of his penny request, I did love that he said he wanted to be a brother, not just to have a brother! Although he did get that wish too, if it was one. The two of us had the relationship, guts and grace to follow through with my decision and I have never had a moment of regret.

This is a story of a very well meaning Christian womens group that I was a part of many years ago. At the time I was myself a single mom raising two children and while the church was a big part of my life, I may have been extra sensitive in this case. You decide.

Our church group had taken on the responsibility of adopting, figuratively, a family of four who at the time lived in the same area where our sanctuary was located. When I joined the group they had been sponsoring this family for several years. The husband/father was in prison and we helped by remembering the children at Christmas and birthdays with cards and gifts. At other times we would regularly bring food items to our monthly meetings and someone would volunteer to drop them off and say hi to the family. While I was part of the group the family hit a snag and their rent was raised beyond their ability to cover it and they had several months to find another home. During this time, and it could also have been during a time we were on a summer break from meetings, but somehow they were unable to find a place nearby and had to move across town to a much less desirable neighborhood where working two jobs, Betty could afford the rent.

The next time we met and brought food to drop by there was a lack of enthusiasm about anyone driving to the area where they now lived. That hit me in a very visceral way, but I merely offered to drop off the food and later met Betty and her kids for an outing with my boys at the Zoo. During both those events I was able to see her new home and also spend time with her and her children. I took some pictures of them when we were at the zoo. On our way to the next monthly meeting, I stopped at Walmart and picked up the pictures from the roll of film I had dropped off earlier that week. I tucked the envelope in my purse and didn’t open it until later in the meeting. Someone brought up the idea that since the family had moved out of town, we should really break ties and find a new, closer family to support.

I had a lot to say about that. I proceeded to say that now more than ever the continuity of our care mattered to that family. She was now holding down two lousy part time jobs to make ends meet. Her kids came home to an empty house in a cramped, rundown area of town. While not necessarily unsafe, it had none of the trappings of the more affluent area from which they had moved. The schools were no longer A rated either. Those were ways in which they had been majorly affected. When speaking to the twenty-one women gathered that day for our church ladies group, I made the point that besides those things, it never occurred to me that Jesus was concerned with zip codes, when deciding who deserved his time or care. I finished with a slight admonishment that we had not offered to help them find a new place nearby so they could have stayed in the same schools, as well as continued to enjoy the safety of the area where we lived. It seemed to me we were placing our safety and comfort in doing good above the real need. I thought we should reconsider ‘getting a new family’, and at that time I opened my photo envelope from Walmart. I was going to pass them around for all to see, but I noticed instead of one of each that I had taken, there were 21 copies of the last one I took, the one of Betty and her children leaning against their car. I have no idea why there were as many copies as there were women present, but I offered that perhaps God wanted each of us to have a picture to put on our refrigerators as we prayed about what we should do concerning this family in the future. Needless to say, they did not vote to abandon this family, at least not while I was still a member of their group.

 Last week during lunch with a dear Christian friend of the past thirty years, as I was recounting yet another adventure from my past that she had never heard before, she remarked with a smile, ‘you tell all your stories with a sparkle in your eyes like you were on this adventure with a very present partner, as though God were your husband and always at your side’. 

My romantic nature has always found its true home in the presence of God. My ability to assimilate into the places I have landed, time after time, has been warmed by the company I keep and the knowledge that I am made for His purposes and those alone. And yes, I am a romantic.  I have observed in many other women over the years that the presence of an actual flesh-covered, air breathing male person is a necessity for them for even the possibility of a happy life and if they lose one, for any reason, they will very quickly acquire another to replace him. I seem made of either stronger or less lonely stuff, with perhaps higher requirements for my life companion.

Many of my memories it seems, are of times spent with someone who was sharing my delight or my anguish. I seem to have a running conversation with a partner that few notice is with me. I found this to be kind of funny at church last weekend where someone I do not know was talking to a friend of mine, and she kept sharing how one (implied older aged woman) could meet men talking about bananas at Whole Foods. While I found this somewhat entertaining, I was in no way tempted to turn in my very present, if not obvious, partner for one I might find in a search for the perfect banana. It made me smile for the rest of the day, as I had really only seen a glimpse of how that woman felt she had to find someone soon in order to feel less lonely. Increasingly as I age I am feeling the presence of a soul mate rather than their absence, which I have to admit feeling over the first half of my life. There is a contentment that has taken me a long time to recognize, and I won’t be searching for anyone else among the bananas.