I tell this story every Easter.  I have new readers, so I'll tell it again. After your children are grown, when they get together, you find out all kinds of things that you never knew before.  I thought I had them under control when they were growing up. But obviously I didn't.

We had moved to California for five months, waiting on Ken to retire.  We were living on base at El Toro in officer's housing.  Which wasn't much.  Two bedrooms, one bath.  Adequate, but nothing luxurious.  Pat was in the fifth grade.  Becky in the third.  Scott had just turned five years old.

There was a big tree in our front yard and the street was pretty busy.  Easter was coming up, and Pat asked Scott, "Hey, you want to be Jesus?"  Whatever Pat and Becky thought up, Scott did; and unbeknownst to me, the girls got ropes and tied Scott to the tree with his arms out, fastened to a couple of branches like a cross.   "You're gonna be Jesus in our Easter pagent," they told him--and topped him off with a crown of thorns.  Probably from a rose bush.  But after a while,  the girls got tired, went in the house and left him there.   Tied to a tree.  Naked as a blue jay except for a tea towel wrapped around him in an appropriate position. The only bad thing was, after awhile, he lost his loin cloth. Their intentions were Christian.  It just didn't turn out that way.

 I don't know who cut him down.   I also don't know why I never heard about it until after they were grown.  You would have thought one of the neighbors would have told me.

At least the girls knew the true crucifixion story.  They didn't disobey.  I never told the girls not to crucify their brother.  If I had, I would have told them not to crucify him in the front yard on a main street.  "We finally remembered that he was still hanging out there and cut him down and gave him his clothes," Pat said.

     "They crucified me!  Scott said,  There I was, my arms tied to a tree, and my...."  (Unprintable.  You can fill in the blanks.) " Pat said:  "He was no worse for wear, and nobody reported a naked kid tied to  a tree."   Becky said: "I had nothing to do with it."  Knowing Becky, she probably thought it up.

They say the pipe organ survived.  Watching the fire, I find that almost impossible to believe.  But it is a blessing, because even if you are not Catholic, which I am not, music is the universal sound of praise.

Becky brought a young man over who helps her with clean up and set up for estate sales.  She called first and asked if I was up for a performance.  I fixed him a sandwich and played the marimba for him.  "Amazing Grace, Leaning on the Everlasting Arms, and Victory in Jesus."  I usually play Amazing Grace for people because the whole world recognizes it even if they are not Christians.

I'll be playing for a retirement community tomorrow.  Our senior choir does that once a month somewhere.  I keep a marimba in the trunk of my car and never take it out except to play somewhere.  My big one is here in the family room with me.  It has an extra octave below "C" that has a beautiful sound.  It can also be broken down and transported, but it is a mess to do it. 

I played for all the civic groups in Pryor growing up.  As well as churches.  I was a much better marimbist back then.  Youth has advantages.  But I thank God that I don't have arthritis in my fingers or hands so that I can still play.  

My mom was a stickler for seeing that I didn't just end up as a blob of humanity on earth.  Everything unusual that I do is a result of her insistence that my brother and I "Do Something Worthwhile."  (He was a missionary to China for 37 years and is a Doctor.)  Without her prodding, I would have wasted time with trivia because, as I have told you before, I have perfected the art of procrastination.  She was the disciplined one.

Now, I reap the joy of service, while she is in heaven and gets the glory.  I had a wonderful mother.  

The Notre Dame.  How many times I have walked through it and been amazed at the beauty of the building.  Of the stained glass windows.  Of the paintings.  It is a loss for the world.  A  building that stands as one of the greatest architectural landmarks that was remaining from an era.

Once, I was there when the church was hosting an organ recital by a renowned organist. The pipe organ was unequaled in the world.  8,000 pipes is what the press said. I can't begin to explain the sound of it.  Echoing through the massive walls.  Gone.  You can't replace something like that.

I am thankful that I heard that organ.   I am thankful that I saw the stories captured in the Notre Dame stained glass.  Gorgeous stained glass.  There is no way you can go back and recreate or recapture what has been lost. 

Things are lost through history.  And left to our memories alone.  The first time I went to Paris, Becky and Craig were living there, Steven was 18 months old and Becky was pregnant with David.  That was at least thirty years ago.  Later, I went back with Becky, and other friends, a number of times.  

We think we have antiques here in America.  We don't.  Paris is in itself an antique.  A monument to hand work in walnut, granite, marble and on and on.  Beautiful things done before mechanization, back when men did their work with their hand tools. 

I have two wall sconces that are hand carved walnut.  They came from an ancient Parisian church building that was lost to time.  Becky brought them to me from France.  I have a piece of Paris to remember.  The church is gone.  But God is alive.  He is not contained by walls or buildings.  We go to buildings to worship Him together, and remember.  Easter is this week.  He lives.   

One of my daughters tells me I live in the past.  Of course I do.  That's where everything happened to me.  That's how I got to where I am now.

It would be ridiculous to think that I have as many years ahead of me as there are years behind me.  There aren't.  But the years I have now are lived with the wisdom I acquired through my journey.  "Get wisdom, my child..."  

I wish I knew more young people who would like to have some of that wisdom--but in our world today, the young don't listen to the old.  They live in the moment with not much thought for tomorrow.  Old people are just old to them.

Sometimes, I wish I could go back to Beaufort.  I wish I could live those years over again and recognize how precious they were. They were awesome years--but at the time, I didn't recognize that.  I wish, but, they are behind me--not ahead of me. A wonderful memory, but You can't go back to Beaufort.  You can't go back anywhere.  Period.  You have to keep moving forward.  

So what is ahead of me?  I will keep writing.  I will keep telling stories.  And hope someone, somewhere out there is listening.

If you are young, and would like to know how to live a happy life and reach an old age with the satisfaction of a life well lived, I would give you one piece of advice after watching many, many people crash and burn.  Give your days to God.  Give your days to others.  Give.  Don't be a taker. 

Don't be stupid by following people who lead you down the road to disaster.  Find friends who are on the path of kindness.  As Ken always said when he taught Sociology:  "You become who you run with."  

Unless they are seeking God, you don't want to go there.  It isn't pretty.

Of course, since my azalea bloomed, I was tricked into thinking that spring was here.  But it is going to freeze tonight.  It's Oklahoma.  What else can you expect.  Except this time, I really thought the winter was behind us.  They said on the news that it could even snow on Sunday.  Go figure.

April 13, 2019.  Freezing weather.  

And we've already had a tornado scare week before last.  Hail the size of tennis balls.  All we need is an ice storm and we'll have every weather possibility covered except a flood or a dust storm.  

I planted the tomatoes.  I took all my potted succulents outside.  This time, the plants are all just going to tough it out.  I don't have the energy to get them all back inside.

I wore out a bottom sheet on my king size bed last winter and couldn't bring myself to throw it out because they are so expensive.  What in the world was I thinking!  You can't sleep on a sheet with holes in it.  Ta-dah!!  I found a purpose for it.  I covered up my plants with it to keep them from freezing. 

Now, as soon as it warms up again, I can throw the sheet out.  It found its intended second life.  

Ken's mom would patch the fitted sheet when it was worn.  Women in the thirties and forties  patched everything, darned socks, turned the collars and cuffs on shirts to get double wear.  People today toss everything and think things doing things like that are nuts.  They haven't been poor.  Everybody in those times were in the same boat.  They didn't think they were poor.  People today don't have a clue what you can do without.

First the daffodils, then the forsythia, Bradford pears, redbuds and now the bright pink creeping phlox.  God is waking up Oklahoma with flowers.  Dogwoods are next.  My azaleas are about to burst into bloom.  Which makes me very happy.

Azaleas are nostalgic.  I spent my first six months--after Ken and I got married in 1956--in Pensacola, Florida.  I had never seen an azalea before that.  Down south, in Florida, Alabama, Louisiana and Georgia, they grow like weeds.   Blooms are everywhere.  The bushes are humongous.  Flowers bank the walls of almost all the houses.  

In Oklahoma, you have to work at it to get that kind of blooms from azaleas.  But in the last sixty years, they have perfected cultivars of azaleas for Oklahoma that can make it through the winter.

At NEO, where I taught math for twenty years, the building South of the cafeteria had a wall of ten foot tall lavender azaleas that bloomed every spring.  Just gorgeous   I've never seen that anywhere else in Oklahoma.  They may exist, but I don't remember seeing lavender azaleas at all. 

In a week or two, it will be time to go to Muskogee and see the Azalea Gardens. It isn't Florida or Alabama, but it certainly is a testament to the Oklahoma spirit to keep trying.  Check to see when they will be in full bloom this year.  It's definitely worth the drive.  My neighbors, Jean and Dean went last year and brought me back a red azalea.  It's going to burst open today or tomorrow.

Spring is God's way of saying, "I haven't given up on you yet."  Shelley said, O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?

Finally.  I planted the tomatoes.  Even though they say we will have frost this week.  I'll cover them with something if that happens.  Scott sent me a dozen "Jet Stars."  They don't have the taste of a Big Boy, or Better Boy, but they will produce ten to twenty times the tomatoes.  Don't get me wrong, they are good tasting tomatoes, I just wish heritage tomatoes didn't have so many problems.

I'm splitting the dozen with Ann.  She's the only other gardener around here besides me.  She got me to plant potatoes which I had never done.  They are popping through the ground and I am covering them with more dirt as they come through.  That way I'll have potatoes all the way down the stem.

It seems to me that every flower, plant and tree are for the good of mankind.  I think God knew what he was doing.  He made the world for us.  Then put us here.  Designed the oxygen we breathe.  The water we drink.  The sun that makes it all grow along with the rain.  All of it for our good.

I wonder how long it is going to take us to finish ruining it.  The oceans are the key to life.  And plastic is showing up in the stomachs of whales and other sea life.  Tons of plastic.  There are entire islands of trash and plastic in the oceans now.  I wonder when we will finally get a clue about saving our planet.  We need biodegradable plastic along with biodegradable everything else.  It costs money, and nobody wants to spend a nickel more than they have to.

We used to think that none of that mattered because the world was so big it would absorb it all.  The world isn't that big.  And it becomes smaller every time we add a million more people.  We are smothering the earth with our trash.

I wonder what God is thinking?