Saturday, February 23, 2013

Tell me a story, daddy


By You I have been upheld from birth;
You are He who took me out of my mother’s womb... 
And to this day I declare Your wondrous works.
Now also when I am old and grayheaded,
O God, do not forsake me,
Until I declare Your strength to this generation,
Your power to everyone who is to come. Psalm 71:6,18

So we had one of those Voelkel dinner things last night, with a blazing, slightly smoking fire, a few lit candles and Pandora in the background.  The food was the regular suspects piled onto chipped plates: ribs, salad from Alan’s garden, asparagus-because-it-was-on-sale-from-Fry’s, and of course the bread.  

Mostly we marveled out of the corner of our collective eyes as Heather and Dustin stroked her very round very dropped beach ball belly and wondered at the little girl kicking inside.  By You I have been upheld from birth.  

Our dinner guests who had of course arrived with several nice Trader Joe’s bottles of wine in hand, told us tales of grandparenting– the joys and the heartaches– the whispered I-love-yous and the out-of-control frenzies– but mostly joys as they consider this generation.

Alan’s hair is grey, and my streaks are filling in.  And his gift to this new grandchild was a rocking chair.  In memory of the armfuls of little girls by the fireplace so many years ago, rocking back and forth, back and forth.  Tell me a story, daddy. Stories woven throughout with beauty and goodness and uncomfortable situations whose resolution required courage and creativity.  

And every late afternoon as the last reaches of sun sifted down into the cushions we would gather freshly bathed from the metal cup and the five-gallon bucket and work our way through the stacks of books by the fireplace.  Little Houses in Big Woods and Long Winters and Five Children and It and of course, there was the Wardrobe and The Silver Chair and The Last Battle.

And then the dinner table.  Wave after wave of students and motorhomed retirees and wandering souls would listen to the stories of a river trip and no food and a fire built just right with the gleaming coals and still no food and then a woman appeared from nowhere.  And stories of trembling prison walls and entire communities gathered round shouting and dancing and long nights on hospital floors and rising rivers and mountain roads and crashing airplanes. 

And the stories that happen now, today, this very afternoon, of beauty and goodness and uncomfortable situations whose resolution required courage and creativity.  Of soccer fields and goals bouncing in from the pole and old ladies remembering and emails from around the world and parking lot conversations and bright green stems poking up out of frozen death.  

O God, do not forsake us,
Until we declare Your strength to this generation,
Your power to everyone who is to come.
O God, who is like You?

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