Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is His reward.
As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth.
Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate. Psalm 127:4-6
I do not always do such a great job of biting my tongue. Quite often I bust out with some words that I would love to swallow, but no, they just lie there at my feet and fester.
However, I think I was pretty good at not asking about the grandchildren that were not coming. I didn’t want to be one of those sorts of mothers. But really, I thought to myself, what about my life would lead my children to think, as they very reasonably weighed college bills and graduate degrees and projections into the future, what about my life would lead you not to believe that the absolute greatest delight in my life, the blessed heritage of the LORD, are my children? For indeed they are.
And they are my arrows.
Potent. Powerful. Projectiles into the hitherlands.
As I consider my rather full bucket list, a little mournfully, folded bits of imaginary paper, I am very aware of my finiteness. So many hidden alleys unexplored, vistas unseen, thoughts unarticulated.
Paths unchosen.
And yet. May Alan and I plant our feet sturdily. Upon the shoulders of previous generations joined by twisting strands of DNA. So that our quiver may prove a firm foundation for planted feet aiming further and farther than we could even imagine.
Next week, Andrea finishes up her Master’s of Social Welfare at University of Chicago, an acceptance envelope I shelved to head off to the Dominican Republic. An arrow shot up high and higher, plopping into the Bronx to serve reconciliation to the brokenhearted and those without hope oh so far away.
And Heather is having an impact on the local church and the idea of Christian community in ways that I am stumbling behind her to emulate.
And Nicole has plunged into her identity and the finished work of the Cross and the powerful Finger of God while I dabble along the shoreline.
And the beat goes on. Squinting into the rising sun.
Christy Voelkel
Intertextual Collaboration draft 3
Twisting Strands of DNA
June 17, 2003
Our three daughters have heard the family stories and they know the inevitable twists that mark our family DNA. The adage that no one falls far from the apple tree has never been questioned. The future specifics are unimaginable and as broad as the entire world but they know that there will be strong resemblance once the tale is told. They’ve dabbled their toes in the orchard mud, volunteering chunks of time in an orphanage in Guatemala, prisons in Colombia, earthquake-torn Venezuela, or isolated isles off of Panama. Their poor boyfriends sit enthralled but wary by the fireplace and hear the stories spun and wait poised on the brink of stepping into the Voelkel orchard. There is no sidestepping the issue. The Voelkel girls’ eyes may sparkle and entice but there is no hiding their identity and their apple tree and the hope and change we as a family all long to effect on the world around us.
This invisible force propelled us, their parents, beyond our intentions and expectations. When we married, Alan’s dreams were of being a rock star and I really had no plans beyond that of “never being a missionary.” But when Bernabé Mañon, country director of Fundacíon Contra El Hambre Republica Dominicana sat behind his big gleaming desk and pressed his fingers together and said he needed a volunteer who was fluent in Spanish, majored in Anthropology and Journalism and was a certified teacher and a musician and an Eagle Scout and knew how to repair Volkswagen engines and another volunteer who was a nurse and had a degree in psychology and had at least five years experience working with children and spoke some Spanish and did arts and crafts and... we didn’t even blink or discuss or pause, we signed up on the dotted line for the ride of our life. Who can argue against whatever it is that links our family together?
Family stories of my husband’s forbearers trace this dominant trait. His great-grandparents Swallens were the very first missionaries to Korea and they too have a story. William, a simple Midwestern farmer, decided that Korea had the perfect climate for apples and everywhere he traveled and preached, he planted small orchards- and before the electronic explosion, apples were the number one export from Korea, according to the ancient but serviceable set of encyclopedias in my dining room- brought to Korea by an “unknown missionary.” You should have seen Hyo’s eyes tear up when she found out I was William Swallen’s great-great something or other. She borrowed our family photo album and letters to photocopy and take to her church. In Korea, ancestors are treated with a great deal of reverence, and when people convert to Christianity they revere their spiritual forefathers. An unexpected example of this was when my husband went to his grandfather Harold Voelkel’s funeral in Los Angeles. Harold had been a chaplain during the Korean War to tens of thousands of prisoners of war, but Alan was expecting to find only ten or fifteen old people dinking around in a dank church basement, so many miles and years away. But when his car drove up to a three-story cathedral in downtown Los Angeles, the building was filled to the seams to honor this ancestor, complete with banners and arm bands and red carpets and a huge photo of this trim Swiss German. Alan’s parents moved to Colombia where his dad was an English professor at the National University in Bogota during the middle of the Marxist awakening, and they started a University Student Movement in their living room that now has members in every country in South America. Alan has stories too, of airplanes crashing in the jungle, ministering angels with cans of Coke, mysterious shamen and gut-wrenching illnesses. Never a dull moment and life always has a clear sense of purpose.
My mother’s relatives also have a history of leaping out and grabbing life by the throat. The stories here have tangled up with myth and are a little shakily documented, but my momma always said her grandpa died one snowy night walking home from the local doctor who had bled him for a fever and the bandage got knocked off and he bled to death there in the Swedish forest between the villages for Eck and Berge. Her father and uncle went to work in a factory to support the family, but one dusky evening on their way home Ralph Arvid reached down in the gutter and found a lottery ticket, winning enough to buy passages for two to New York City. Somehow Ralph taught himself enough English to become captain of the high school debate team and got a scholarship to college. He began working as an engineer for this small, brand new company out of Rochester, New York and eventually became general manager of Eastman Kodak and a millionaire. He married Esther Reeves, a high school English teacher and proud Daughter of American Revolution whose family traced themselves back to a signer of the Mayflower Compact. Curious twists of hope and change and time.
My dad left his job at NASA during the middle of the cold war to run Camp Hy-Lake and teach calculus at a small college, but not before packing his family into the family station wagon every other weekend to help out a string of orphanages with food, shoes, clothing and my favorites: cleaning latrines and chopping off lice-infested hair. All four of our kids swore that we loathed Mexico and threadbare poverty especially when Dad gave Rose Park Orphanage our brand new Plymouth station wagon because “they needed it more that we” and we spent the next months as a family of six trundled into a black VW Beetle. Somehow we were still unaware of the family tree concept. Perhaps our hearts were too distracted with the outside world still. Culture, traditions and shared values meant nothing to us at this stage of life. Or maybe it was because we didn’t have a big enough picture of the world yet. Yet those invisible roots took hold on all four of us. Maybe it was the faithful example of my parents who “retired” thirty years ago to volunteer at a mission outreach sixty hours a week. My two brothers worked in refugee camps in Somalia and Kenya for a total of nine years, and my sister runs the education program at two homeless shelters in Tucson after living three years translating in Morocco. Funny thing about apple trees. All four kids teach and we married teachers too. It would seem stifling being relegated to the family business except that it isn’t–education is the one job that promises hope every single day–maybe today–will the moment in a child’s life.
The story unravels back to the source. Papa Coverdale was headmaster of Battle Ground Academy and running a boys’ camp in the summer. Those early years spent on the Caney Fork River sunk in deep and I witnessed the annual transformation time and time again of “boys becoming men.” Mama Gert, a theatre major at Vanderbilt, took storytelling to new heights and her repertoire included riding camels in Egypt and elephants in India. “Chief” of course told haunting stories of Bear Cat Cave in front of tumbling campfires wearing a full Indian headdress. The oral tradition had begun in earnest. His family had arrived early to Virginia, before the Revolutionary War and began a legacy of horseback doctors that lasted for generation after generation. When the Emancipation Proclamation was declared, Doc Coverdale split his land and possessions evenly between his two sons and his one slave. Winfield Scott joined the line here and is still considered a hero in Mexico in spite of his lacy fussiness because he treated surrendering generals with such respect. Finally the family moved to Tennessee and Jack Daniels added his regional lubricant. Coverdale, the family line traces back to Miles, Archbishop of Exeter, who was always threatened with losing his head in the tumultuous court of King Henry VIII because of his insistent plodding through translating the entire Bible into English so that God’s Word would be accessible to the commoner. Perhaps this is indeed where the strand ends. When the saga is said and done, perhaps this is the marker gene–a willingness to lose our heads, in order to find that they might be found.
Acknowledgement Page
My acknowledgements for this paper, and even this summer go much deeper than the simple quotes carefully torn from the offered pieces and sewn with small stitches into mine. The members of the writing group have had a delightful effect on my rather tumbled helter-skelter words. They have thoughtfully weighed and constructed and instructed me on the hefty considerations of audience and voice and clarity, and I am ever so grateful for this experience and their patient time. Thank you.
1. Michael Robinson. Word Wizard. “threadbare.” This word reaches beyond the simple beauty of itself, and brings in images of worn weariness and tawdriness and sliding out of high-born finery. Great word which captures our unspoken fears.
2. Jane Newton. Fellow mother. “Culture, traditions and shared values meant nothing to us at this stage of life.” Jane understands the second generation, because she is looking at them from across the years we share. When we gently shake our heads at our own childish follies, it is only because we can see them so clearly and presently in our own beloved darlings.
3. Carl Johanneson. Crafty master of the ironic understatement. “There is no sidestepping the issue.” This drive to affect and motivate the world around us is the big issue in our family that takes fierce determination and will to push aside. (Jon, Alan’s brother being the only exception, and he is overwhelmingly generous with his filthy lucre- that he made in advertising which in and of itself speaks to affect.) This issue is so glaring, that only the strength of understatement could underline it without sounding hysterical.
4. DeAnne Blea. Ever the Romantic. How romantic is it to take something and turn it upside down and shake it and hope something falls out? That was her suggestion, mightily seconded by Carl, and so I flipped the story. The flow might be a bit rougher, but hopefully some excess baggage was left in rapids.
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