Ramble
Psalm 19 (KJV)
1 The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.
2 Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.
3 There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.
4 Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun,
5 Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race.
6 His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.
7 The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.
8 The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.
9 The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
10 More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.
11 Moreover by them is thy servant warned: and in keeping of them there is great reward.
12 Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults.
13 Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression.
14 Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer.
Growing up we make assumptions, don’t we, including that everybody lives in the same home with the same parents and all the children, brothers and sisters, live in the same family together, experiencing the same life and everybody experiencing life the same way. When Gina was born I was two years and four months old; Walt was born eighteen months later. We all three arrived between September 1935 and July 1939, so except for a very few specific flashes such as my startling recall of my tonsillectomy when I was two years old, I have no memory of life before or without them, we were always a family. It never occurred to me that anyone was experiencing life other than as I experienced life in the family.
Looking back, there was always sibling tension of which I was largely oblivious, but coming my way. My brother and sister always seemed like a team and I was odd-one-out, which was the way it was and never a problem. In my childhood I don’t recall ever being jealous of my siblings, though in retrospect maybe there was reason for that, I always got my two pieces of fried chicken (the back with the “tickets”), I got my seat in the car, I was the one who got to sit up front with parents and listen to the conversation riding home from Pensacola many dark nights, ... Not only was I not jealous, but in fact all my growing up years I wanted, and begged for, another baby sister even if we had to adopt her.
The closest I got was keeping first cousins, baby daughters of our mother’s sisters, often for weeks at a time starting when I was twelve and thirteen, and I got to be a primary caretaker, which I loved, and which no doubt brought about my adoration of little girls. Aside, a painful early memory in that regard is coming home from Bay High one afternoon to find my mother resting in her bed and at the foot of the bed a crib in which lay sleeping a tiny baby girl. I asked, “Is that Suellen?” (newest daughter of my mother’s sister Mildred). My mother said, “No, she’s ours.” My heart jumped, and with rising excitement I said, “Really?” And my mother said yes, she’s ours. As I rushed over to the crib my mother could see what she had done and said, no, it’s Suellen. It was an experience of incredibly sharp pain and disappointment edging on grief, that took me days to get through and over, and that, sadly, dulled my total trust somewhat.
For anyone who has hung on this long, including myself, how did this post start and where is it going, and did the psalm evaporate or disappear in the dust?
The psalm for this coming Sunday, one of the most beautiful (at least in KJV English), is one that my mother encouraged me to learn when I was growing up, and I memorized it and still have it as a treasure in my mind today. One morning nearly two years ago after mama had fallen at home for the last time and shattered bones and we had her first in hospital then at a rehab center nursing home for care, Gina and I happened to be visiting her at the same time. As we left, we stood outside the front door and talked for a long time. It was there, then, that I found out that we had not grown up in the same family with the same mother, that in fact we had not had “the same mother” at all. It had never occurred to me. Of the three of us, only I had been taught and encouraged to memorize Bible verses. When our father was away during World War II, I was the one that summer of 1944 who traveled with mama by train to Montgomery and Washington and New London, Connecticut to visit him while he was in officer training; and the stopover in Washington, DC to visit EG and all the sights and the national zoo, while they were left in Pensacola with grandparents. That while our father was away at sea during the war, I had somehow become in their view the father of the household instead of just the older brother, and treated as such, the one close to the mother; apparently not a good experience for my sister and brother. And there were other instances of different treatment that had never occurred to me, that I had never noticed, of which for nearly three-quarters of a century I had been, until that morning standing in the driveway in front of the nursing home where our mother was dying, unaware.
Psalm 19 isn’t ruined for me, but it stirs all that up this morning. Siblings, brothers and sisters, do not grow up in the same family with the same parents; our parents are different for each of us. It isn’t that we are different, the parent is different. And we, as parents are undoubtedly a different person for each of our children. That this is true is so subtle, but in retrospect so obvious.
The psalm will never be the same for me.
Tom