Painting Pictures of Egypt

I’ve been painting pictures of Egypt, and leaving out what it lacks
The future looks so hard and I want to go back
But the places that used to fit me cannot hold the things I’ve learned
And those roads were closed off to me when my back was turned.


When we left our church of 16 years this song by Sara Groves summed up how I felt. Just like the Hebrews were saved by God from the darkness of slavery, we were saved by God from a different kind of darkness. Yet, just as those Hebrews longed for the comfort of the familiar servitude they knew, I longed for the familiar comfort of the church that was no longer my home.

Two years later we moved from Tehachapi -- we fled and didn’t look back. No more million places to jog painful memories. No more small-town politics and small-mindedness of many of the people there. No more fighting snow, fog, ice covered steep hills to drive to work.

Tehachapi was a wonderful place to raise the kids. We bought our A-frame in the pine trees almost sight-unseen. An A-Frame was our dream home, and on clear days we had a six mountain view (one mountain range behind another, behind another). We grew comfortable with the wildlife – from bears to mountain lions, deer to bobcats. I delighted in the variety and colors of birds at our birdfeeders, and mourned any landscaping I attempted my first few years.



We did Cub Scouts, Girl Scouts, and were involved with the same church for sixteen years. The adults there watched our son grow from age two to age eighteen. I worked at the elementary school that the kids went to, and Marty taught at the middle school. We couldn’t go to a grocery store without running into people we knew.

If a neighbor ran into trouble on Deertrail we would help out with our Jeep & winch. If we ran into car trouble anywhere – even in Bakersfield – we knew someone would come help us out. When you live in a small town everybody knows your business, and everybody cares.

It was time for us to move on, after the kids were grown and gone. I had been driving to Palmdale from the mountaintop for ten years. We wanted convenience and easy to reach health care.

The woods weren’t just ours anymore. More full-time neighbors moved in. The rock castle fort (mountain boulders tumbled together by nature) that our kids played was now behind a fence.




Our house was packed full of memories of birthday parties, Christmases, cooking on the wood stove when the power was out, drying laundry on a clothesline in the loft when we had no drier, a herd of Malamute puppies tumbling after their mama, Quake. Calvin coming out of his bedroom, pretending he was a ghost, oooo, oooo, with a sheet over his head, walking straight for the stairs, where he tumbled down to hit the cement downstairs floor. I painted that cement floor in patterns of leaves and ferns.



Our house was a shell when we moved in, and full of lovingly made custom cabinetry and additions when we moved out. Marty built closets, cupboards and walls to make us a bedroom upstairs. We added on a bedroom above the dining room. Rhiannon painted her walls lavender, blue, and teal (splatter paint). When Calvin moved into that room later we didn’t let him paint it so he covered it up with Star Wars and Star Trek posters. We turned the two tiny bedrooms downstairs into a master bedroom and master bath.










After the puppies were done using the dining room as a whelping box Marty turned the dining room into a kitchen. He tore out the walk-through vacation cabin kitchenette, and in the process, beautified our living room. Our kitchen viewed the pine woods on three sides. Marty made every cabinet and convenience out of love for me. I do miss my kitchen. I also miss my closet. We actually added onto our house so that I could have a walk-in closet. Every shelf and rod was placed to order. It was beautiful. I didn’t get to use this creation from Marty long enough.

Although I miss some things about my house and the nature we lived in, there are many things about living here that make up for it. One of them is having walls! Walls to hang pictures and artwork on! Plenty of room for grandbaby pictures.

When we tell people we moved from Tehachapi people here think we’re nuts. Why are we living in the desert, with gang-infested schools, and temperatures over 100 in the summer? We’ve always said we don’t miss Tehachapi. Marty still teaches there, but we don’t miss living there. In fact, he loves it when he has a snow day in Tehachapi, because he doesn’t have to get me to work in Palmdale. Instead he can work on his airplane all day.

We like the convenience of stores being 5 minutes away, we love our lovely little neighborhood where we walk the dogs twice a day and we enjoy our grassy, shady backyard. Sure we had over an acre of pine woods, but pine woods mean dust and dirt in the house. It’s easier to keep things clean now. We have all the conveniences – air conditioning, central heating, and DSL!

The hardest part about leaving Tehachapi was leaving friends. But in a way we had already done it. Most of the friends we socialized with were with the church we had to leave. When events pushed me into a cloud of depression I couldn’t do much in the way of socializing, anyway. It took us awhile, but we have finally found a church family we love here in the Antelope Valley. I’ve been healing and improving. I find joy in the grandbabies, and I again find joy in the Lord.


…and the places I long for most are the places where I’ve been,
They’re calling out to me like a long lost friend
I’ve been painting pictures of Egypt, and leaving out what it lacks
The future looks so hard and I want to go back

Two incidents in the past few days made me “paint pictures of Egypt” or miss Tehachapi.

I spent 3 hours in the dentist chair yesterday. I like this dentist office – it took me awhile to find one I liked. This is my third visit so I’ve been going there for a year now. Very professional, friendly, thoughtful of the patient’s needs, beautifully decorated, nice music. I listened to the dental hygienist and the technician chat about weekend plans. The head dentist popped in to say hi, he said he met me at my first visit a year ago. And suddenly I missed Dr. Wells’ office with a pain in my stomach and tears in my eyes. I went to playgroup with Dr. Wells’ wife, and our kids grew up together. His twin daughters and my son both studied in France. We both have a love of sled dogs. If I was lucky I got one of the hygienists I was friends with – and we’d chat about our kids, Scouts, schools. If not, we still would chat about kids and school because I knew all the schools so well. Maybe their kid had Marty as a teacher. Or maybe I knew one of their teachers. (There are only 3 elementary schools in Tehachapi – I worked at one for years and student taught at the other two).

Marty still goes to Dr. Wells. I don’t want to drive to Tehachapi after work if I have a tooth problem or appointment. I like my new dentist. But OH I miss Dr. Wells and his office.

Our bible study leaders host many parties for church. Their swimming pool and spa is always very popular with the kids. On 100+ degree days we eye the pool with some lust, but it is usually full of splashing children. We learned from years of living in Bear Valley Springs that it’s hard to relax in a pool full of kids. We’d go to pool at the Country Club and kids would be climbing all over “Mr. Feehan.” Teaching in a small community for 18 years you get used to getting mauled at the neighborhood pools, and receiving special, respectful treatment by waiters who were goofballs back in 7th grade.

A couple days ago we went to our friends’ house for a party celebrating the end of a study. This time I was determined to get in that pool! There were about seven kids there, ranging in age from around 12 to 18. I enjoyed watching two friends goof around with their three teenagers. Marty and I were playing with a pool noodle. Bobbing around on it, bending it, talking about all the possibilities. A pool noodle had been the subject of the morning’s children sermon! At one point Marty splashed the daughter of our host with the noodle. Instead of laughing, or splashing back or anything, she gave him a look like “who are you, anyway?” I realized these teenagers don’t know us well enough to goof around with us. We weren’t there when they were little kids.

One of the things I grieved the most about leaving our previous church was leaving the kids that I had known and ministered to since they were babies. While “church-shopping” I had a tough time if the “children’s choir” did a song. I didn’t know any of the kids! I’m getting better by being involved in VBS the past two years. Also, I’ve had the pleasure to get reacquainted with some of the kids I had left behind in Tehachapi through FaceBook. However, last Sunday in the Balch’s pool I realized that there won’t be any kids playing with or attacking “Mr. Feehan” in the pool anymore. At least, not until we go swimming with the grandkids.

Thank you, Lord for our grandbabies and the joy they bring. Thank you, Lord, for the new ministries you are giving us. We’ll keep moving on, step by step.

But the places that used to fit me cannot hold the things I’ve learned
And those roads were closed off to me when my back was turned

Joy

Joy
Is holding a newborn baby for an hour while she snuggles like a roly poly bug. Sometimes I place Brielle on my lap so I can watch her new face squint against the light. Her eyes crack open and she darts glances one way, then another. She stares at the window and makes an O with her mouth. She yawns, so big, and sneezes. She sighs. When she begins to get sleepy her eyes twitch and her mouth goes through all the known expressions…. fearful frowns, curious grimaces, and the sweetest newborn smiles.

Most of the time I hold her against my shoulder. She likes Grandma’s cushiness – I’m built to cuddle babies. She squeaks. Once in awhile she squawks and starts rooting. If I need her to wait for a little while for Mama milk, I’ll let her suck on her little fist. She slurps and sucks, slurps and sucks. Or I’ll wear a tank top so she can lick and mouth my neck. Tiny newborn kisses searching for comfort and milk. I know how to keep a baby soothed long enough that she’s just squealing, not screaming, until Mama is there to offer the ever-ready milk.



Joy
Is having my 20-month old grandbaby look to me for comfort when she’s sick or sad. Eliora is having an ear infection, teething molars, and has been displaced as the “baby” all at the same time. Usually the happy-go-lucky smiley-face girl, she’s been crying in the morning or after nap. I pick her up, all drooley and slimey from mucous. She buries her head against my neck and I give up on that clean T-shirt. Her busy toddler body totally slumps and relaxes in my arms. She trusts me, even after I make her scream by wiping her nose. I give her medicine and juice and carry her until her coughing stops. Then her wide-eyed smile takes over and she starts her busy, flirty day.

She brings me two books at a time. She backs her diaper-padded bottom onto my lap. I read the short, rhyming cardboard books with drama and action. I’m confident in my reading… after all I was a school librarian who read to every class every week. I sing the songs and chant the rhymes. When we finish those two books she slides off my lap and trots to the bookcase to get two more. We can read twenty books in a row. Then a book will remind me of a game to try with her.

Eliora and I play a mean round of “Patty Cake.” I clap her hands together; I roll her hands to roll out the dough. She squeals with giggles when I write a “B” on her palm, and she laughs when I stretch her arms up for “Baby and me!!!!” Then she looks at me with big eyes and demands “Den!” I assume that means “again.” So we do patty-cake again, and again. We do patty-cake ten times in a row! I give up before she does. “Eliora, do you want to play in your room?” So we head to her room to play with the xylophone-alligator, or the kitchen, or the blocks.



Joy
Is knowing my four-year-old granddaughter so well, and having her know me well enough to laugh at me and tease me. “Grandma, you’re a silly goose!” Nayeli loves tradition so we do some things every visit… “I love you this much.” “No, I love you this much!” “I love you all the way to the sky.” “No, I love you all the way to the sky!” “I love you as big as the ocean….” Lately she’s been cheating. Out of the blue, “Grandma, I love you as big as the earth.” I scratch my brain trying to think how to top that. She throws her head back and laughs at me.

I always sang lullabyes to Nayeli as part of our bedtime routine. She’s now allowed “only two songs” because she knew she could always drag “just one more” out of this easy target. She’s grown past lullabyes. Just last visit she was still asking for her favorites, like “Horsie, Horsie.” On the way back from visiting Brielle in the hospital on Thursday, however, I sang one silly song after another. She knew she had hit a gold mine. Now when I tuck her in for nap or bedtime she asks for “two new songs.” My mind stretches back past school teaching days, through Girl Scouts, all the way back to the silly songs of my childhood. Every night we exchange “favorites”… “What was your favorite part of the day.” Every day since Brielle was born, the new baby has topped her list, but Sunday Nayeli said “my favorite thing was when you sang the Susanna song, and holding my new baby sister.”



Joy
Is watching my daughter mother my grandchildren. While exhausted from the demands of a newborn she understands the need for her other two to have Mommy time. She cuddles and reads books with Nayeli and Eliora. The most amazing/painful/joy came from watching her read Someday by Alison McGhee and Peter H. Reynolds. I had given this book to her, but it ended up with Nayeli’s books. As soon as Nayeli brought it out to read Rhiannon teared up and said “I don’t think I can read this right now.” She was already filled with stress and confusion and love as she tried to give time to her oldest daughter and middle baby; while dealing with contractions and newly filled breasts. “Don’t touch Mommy when I’m nursing, sweetie, it hurts too much,” falls on deaf four-year-old ears when Nayeli just wants to get close to her baby sister. Eliora is even more persistent, wanting to climb on Mommy’s lap even though there’s a baby in the way, a baby that needs to be shielded from Eliora’s dripping nose and persistent cough.

Rhiannon opens the books, and reads “One day I counted your fingers and kissed each one.” She’s okay during the first couple pages of babyhood and childhood milestones. Then she gets to, “Someday I will stand on this porch and watch your arms waving to me until I no longer see you.” Rhiannon starts sobbing. “Someday you will feel a small weight against your back.” Picture of a mommy with a child in a carrying pack. I’m tearing up now. Nayeli and Eliora look at their mommy, wondering why she’s crying and clutching them to her. Finally, “Someday, a long time from now, your hair will turn silver in the sun…and when that day comes, love, you will remember me.”