My Sister, My Friend

I have written here before about my sister. She is five years younger than I am. I don't really remember clearly when she was born. I remember a time before she was there. I remember when she started being old enough to play with but not so much about her being a baby.

From the beginning, I was very protective of my sister. She shows up in my dreams more often than anyone else. Some of the earliest dreams I remember are of trying to help her find and go to the bathroom only to wake up and have to run for the bathroom myself. As I got a little older, if I had nightmare it usually involved someone chasing me and my sister and trying to help her run faster and to protect her.

I suppose partly because she is my only sibling, we have always been close but I think it is also because we are enough different and enough alike to be friends. I think too because I am the oldest and she is the youngest, our relationship has worked well. People were always surprised to hear that she was both the messy one and the stubborn one. I was obsessively neat and her room always looked like a bomb had hit it. Also, I am very stubborn myself and my sister tends to be more compliant but I learned very soon that if she decided to "lay her ears back and dig in her heels" about something, I may as well give in because there was no changing her mind.

She is also the smart and gifted one which has been a source of joy to me and never anything to be envious about at all. Her sixth grade teacher came to my parents after testing one year and told them what her IQ was. It was high evidently because my mother still shakes her head in amazement when she talks about it. Except for the trumpet, my sister has never picked up an instrument that she couldn't play after some practice. It has been a delight over the years to hear her play the piano, the violin, the flute, the guitar, the clarinet and she has a lovely singing voice too.

I don't want to give the impression that we never had our moments. From ages 10 to 13, I didn't want a little sister always hanging around me and my friends. We didn't really fight though. As our mother would say, "You were not ALLOWED to fight." We did have our little spats and we still occasionally drive each other a little nuts but mostly, we have had a very harmonious relationship.

We had seven wonderful years of living together when we were in our twenties. Now we are both wives and she is a mother. Thanks to instant messaging and the telephone, we talk often and still love each other very much. This weekend she and her family will be here for a visit. On July 20, she will celebrate her birthday and I will celebrate having her as my sister.

Memorial Day

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Oh, to be in England!

Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England - now!

This is the first stanza of my grandmother's favorite Robert Browning poem. I never tired of hearing her quote it. Later on, she never tired of hearing me read it to her. For the last few months of her life, she was in a nursing home. Every day on my way home from work, I would stop and see her for a few minutes and help feed her dinner when she got weaker. As her health worsened and conversation became more difficult, I began reading to her each evening.

We would both relax more and I would tend to stay longer after I started reading to her. I would always start with poetry because she loved it. Before I would read anything else, I would read Oh To Be in England by Browning and then the daffodil poem by Wordsworth. They became so familiar to me I could quote them almost as well as she could. After those were finished I would wander through the book reading whatever took her fancy. Even when I began to read her The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, I would still preface it with those two poems. The night she died, I read them to her and again at her memorial service I managed to struggle through both poems because I was reading them for her not for the people that were there.

Now, of course, both poems bring tears to my eyes when I hear them or read them as they will be forever connected with some very sweet memories of my gran. Recently, the daffodil poem was read aloud on NPR as I listened to my radio on my way home from work. I cried the whole way home. This year Oh To Be in England has plagued me for months. For in a few days, I will be in England in April.

My husband and I are going over for a family wedding. My grandmother was an Englishwoman by birth. She loved her adopted country and considered it her home but England held part of her heart always as it does my father's and mine as well. This will be my sixth trip but only mark the second time I have been in England in April just like the poem.

The Christmas Letter

Dear Family & Friends:

“How are you enjoying married life?” This seems to be the standard question people feel compelled to ask a newly married couple. Do you walk up to people that have been married 20 or 30 years and ask them “So, are you enjoying married life?” But, in case you were wondering, we are enjoying it very much!

We have had a good year. John’s birthday is in January and this year we celebrated with a trip to the Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI), dinner at Ivar’s Salmon House on Lake Union and a visit to the Sci-Fi Museum. In February, we took John’s brother, Jared and our friend, Zachary, on a trip to the Museum of Flight. We also added Rex to our family. He is a dappled miniature daschund and he seems to think the sun rises and sets on John.

John braved last season at the Seattle Opera with dad and I. We saw The Pearl Fishers, Bluebeard’s Castle and The Marriage of Figaro. John said that M of F was more what he expected opera to be like. Dad and I are going the new season alone. We started off in October with La Traviata which was excellent!

John and I took on the roll of youth group leaders at our church. In January, we did a progressive dinner to various church members’ houses and in March, the girls had a slumber party at our house. September, we had the kids over for homemade pizza and a movie and in November we took them to MOHAI for a photo scavenger hunt and dinner at Dick’s Drive-In on 45th. We are having a lot of fun and the kids seem to be too.

We did have some health related adventures this year. John’s stepfather, Gary, had hip replacement surgery in April and will have a second hip replacement surgery on the other side in December. John had shoulder surgery to remove bone spurs on his right AC joint in August. He is still recovering from it but continues to improve.

In April, we took a trip up to San Juan Island to celebrate our 1st anniversary. We had a very relaxing time at the Lonesome Cove Resort. In May, John took Jared to Walking with Dinosaurs for his birthday. We also went up to Snohomish for the annual variety show and a poke around the antique stores. Over Memorial Day weekend, we helped my folks host a 40th birthday party for my mother’s sister, Beth. June took us to Leavenworth for a little getaway. John took his first whack at fly fishing in the Icicle River.

We went down to Portland in July to visit our friends Bruce & Dawna. Dawna and her sister, Nancy, drove us out to the McMinnville Air Museum and we got to see the Spruce Goose. I also took John for his first visit to Powell’s Bookstore. July was also our church’s annual camp out and my mother and I hosted a baby shower for my cousin, Bethany. In addition to John’s surgery in August, my friend, Monica, visited from Minnesota on her way to her sister’s wedding in Oregon. It was so much fun to get to spend a few days with her. She was here for our annual church picnic as well.

We made it to three Mariners games this year. We took John’s mom and step-dad to a game in June for their anniversary and did the same for my folks in August for theirs. In September, our friends, Bruce & Dawna, came up and went to the Mariners/Yankees game with us. Also, we had a visit from my friend, Ana, from San Francisco who was in town to go to a wedding that same weekend. John had his first experience with the St. Demetrious Greek Festival in September. In October, we went to M____ R____ High School’s homecoming football game with John’s family.

In November, I was privileged to sing a solo for Pat N___'s memorial service. Her husband, Jim, is one of our church members. We also went to see Jeff Dunham at the Tacoma Dome. Thanksgiving was spent with my sister and her family in Chewelah. Dad, Mom, John and I made the long drive there and back without incident for which we are thankful. December promises to be busy with parties and other events.

I continue to enjoy going to book group, playing the piano for church and working for the Court of Appeals. John has taken up collecting fossils (besides his wife) and fly fishing. He is back doing light duty for Total Reclaim as he continues to heal from surgery. We trust you are happy and well. Feel free to call me some or John sometime or drop us an email if you get the chance!

With Much Love & Wishes for a Happy New Year,
John & Laurie

A Keeper

My husband is a keeper. I had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day yesterday. It started Sunday night with a migraine headache and a poor night’s sleep and just went downhill from there. I struggled through the day and was thoroughly despondent by the time I headed for home.

When I got home, there were a dozen peach colored roses in a vase on the table. He said he knew I had a bad day and he wanted to cheer me up. He had also put up the new racks we had bought to hang our coffee mugs on and greeted me with a kiss and a smile. By the time I had fixed and eaten dinner and sat in the hot tub with him for awhile, my whole frame of mind was back where it should be.

Today, I woke up feeling refreshed and in a much better state of mind. I am so thankful for John. What did I ever do without him?

The American Socialist Party

My dad told this story Sunday night as an illustration in his sermon. I’ve heard it before but it had been quite awhile since the last time he told it. When we lived on Beacon Hill in Seattle, we always shopped at the Safeway down on Rainier Avenue. The American Socialist Party had a semi-permanent booth outside the store and invariably there was some earnest young man or woman appealing to people to throw off the yoke of the oppressor and go join a union.

This particular day, the young man was particularly pressing and called to dad as he passed, “Sir, we workers need to unite against “the man” and form unions to establish a more equal society.” My father stopped and riposted, “Young man, I work for the best employer in the world and He has never wronged me.” It sucked the wind right out of the kid’s sails and the best he could come up with was “WHO do you work for?” Dad smiled at him and said “I am a minister of the gospel and I work for the Living God. He has never wronged me and it is my privilege to work for Him.” The boy was left speechless.

The Cornerstone of Marriage

When I first started out working in the legal field, I worked for a small two man law firm in a small town. They did a little bit of everything – lots of wills, estate planning stuff, some real estate contracts and “family” law. Family law was mainly divorce and custody battles. It gave me a distinct distaste for divorce which I have to this day.

As a little girl, divorce was still not that common. I had only one or two kids in my class whose parents were divorced. By the time I got to high school, divorce was becoming more of an everyday, ordinary experience. Several classmates had divorced parents or parents that were headed that direction. This was about as close as I ever got to the divorce experience.

After I started at the law firm, I had a lot to learn about everything to do with the law so the first few months were occupied with that. Once that was finished, I was able to devote more of my mental energies to our clients as they came and went. I like people and I am always interested in their stories and backgrounds. One man in particular I remember, he was older to me but I realize now he was probably only 35 or so and was going through a divorce. His wife had left him with some small children and more than once these were deposited with me to keep an eye on while he met with the attorney. He would spend his entire time with the attorney weeping over the end of his marriage. He always came in looking spent and left with red-rimmed eyes. It was very depressing for my attorney and I felt so heartily sorry for the man and his family.

I had not thought about him for many years but I recently saw him again. Well, it wasn’t the same man actually but it was the same look. I was lending a hand up at the front desk here at the court last week when a man came up to the window. At first I was a little suspicious that he was a felon because most people that come to the court are either a) attorneys, b) legal messengers, c) felons, d) other pro se individuals, e) private investigators or f) the press and each group have pretty distinct appearances.

This man clearly worked some kind of manual labor job because he was dusty and grubby. He also looked a little shifty at first which is what set off my felon alert. He had come to withdraw his appeal because he could not afford to pursue it. He was very worried because we had a set a court’s motions for dismissal or sanctions for failure to file something or other and he didn’t want to end up in trouble with the court so he had brought in the documentation to withdraw his appeal.

I found his case and realized that he was appealing some aspect of his divorce from the lower court. Then I looked more carefully at the man. His eyes were a little red-rimmed, he was fighting for his self control and he looked exhausted and beaten. I was very gentle with him as I finished taking his documents and reassured him that he would not be in any trouble with the court at all. As I watched him go, his shoulders sagging, I had an almost overwhelming urge to go after him and offer to buy him a cup of coffee. He looked like he needed a friend. I didn’t because it would not have been ethical or appropriate to do so but I did breathe a prayer for him and his family.

I know that there are times and situations when divorce is not just inevitable but imperative to protect one’s person or life or those of one’s children. I also know that divorce is part of our world today but I don’t have to like it. When John and I were moving toward getting married, we had some long hard talks about marriage and our expectations. One of the things important to him and to me was that we would not consider divorce an option that was open to us. If we married, it was to be the until-death-us-do-part kind of partnership. We had to think long and hard about that before we even got engaged. It was scary. It was difficult. In the end, it meant that we felt a mutual commitment to the life-long success of our marriage. Love is important in a marriage but commitment is its cornerstone.