Purloined Cakes

Ellie traced the outline of her name on the lined paper lying on her desk.  E-L-L-I-E. The morning bell had sounded.  The twitter of five-year-olds settling into morning kindergarten rose and fell from pockets of the room.

"Good, morning, children," welcomed Mrs. Alexander.  "Does anyone have a birthday today?"

"I do!" shouted Stephen.

"Me too!" said Ellie, impulsively.

"Are you sure, Ellie?"  Mrs. Alexander remembered vaguely Ellie's birthday celebration in the fall, six months earlier.

"Yes, really.  It is."  Ellie knew she was fibbing. She could feel the fib on her skin and in her tummy.  She didn't know to say, "I was only kidding, but I wish it were."  She hadn't learned yet how to squelch spontaneous outbursts for attention.

In Mrs. Alexander's class all birthdays were celebrated with pictures of cakes, colored and decorated by the children.  Ellie loved coloring and decorating her cake picture, but disliked having to give hers away to someone else, even if that was the reason for the drawing and coloring, to celebrate someone else.  If it could be her birthday, she could keep her picture.  

For Stephen she made chocolate cake with strawberries.  For herself, she made a lemon cake with red rose buds.   On the blackboard in the front of the room were Stephen's and her name.    S-T-E-P-H-E-N.   E-L-L-I-E.  She carefully copied Stephen's name in purple above his cake.  Her own name she wrote in green crayon.

Mrs. Alexander collected all the cake pictures.  She would give them to Stephen and Ellie before the dismissal bell.

As the day continued, premonitions of dread and embarrassment seeped into Ellie's thoughts.  How would she deal with twenty-six colored cake pictures?  What would she tell her mother when she got home?

Her classmates congratulated her.  "Wait 'til you see the cake I made for you!"  said Susan, her favorite classmate.  "I made a chocolate cake for you," said Peter who liked to ride bikes with her down Poppy Avenue.  "Happy Birthday," said shy Judy.

What would she say if her friends discovered her lie!  The fib on her skin creeped into her neck.  Her feet squirmed.  Her eyes avoided Mrs. Alexander's.

As she left school with the twenty-six cake pictures in a folder, she considered throwing them away, but she felt like everyone's eyes were on her in the school halls and playground.  I know, she thought, I'll throw them out on the way home.

The walk home followed a short meandering street, up a set of stone steps through a neighborhood park, across Hillview Drive to Helen Avenue.  The cake pictures grew heavier and heavier with each step.  How could she throw away all the pretty cakes?  But what could she say when she got home?  She decided she would throw all but hers away.  In the alley behind the houses on Helen Avenue were garbage cans.  She would go home in the alley and discard the pictures.

As she walked through the alley, dogs barked.  A neighbor was hanging out her wash on a line.  "Hi, Ellie! Have a good day at school?"  Ellie squeezed the birthday folder to her chest.    She came to the garbage can behind the Brown's garage.  She put the birthday folder on the ground. When she reached for the can's lid, the tin lid scraped and clattered.  Suddenly dogs erupted in cacophonous barking and howling.

Ellie snatched up the folder and took off running toward home.  She raced into her yard, threw open the basement door, and pounded upstairs and into the kitchen.

"Why, Ellie, what's wrong?" asked her mother, Ruth.

"I hate those dogs."

"You can have some butterscotch pudding after you change your clothes. Oh, what do you have here?"   Ruth reached for the folder.  The pictures fell onto the floor.

"Nothing, just some pictures we colored."  Ellie swept up the pictures with her hands.

"Birthday cakes?"

"We all got cakes today.  Everybody colored a cake for everyone so no one would be left out."

"How nice."  Ruth took the pictures out of the folder and lay them on the kitchen table.  "Look how pretty they are.  Which one did you do?"

"This one.  It's a lemon cake."

"That's lovely.  It looks delicious.  Well, better change your clothes, Sweetie.  Then come have some pudding."

Ellie couldn't shake free of the gnawing lies.  The pudding felt like mud in her throat.  She wanted to blurt out the truth but it remained stuck somewhere between her belly and her tongue. For years thereafter the memory stuck like a stone, colored with shame and embarrassment, a good curative for her partiality for exaggeration.

.....

Then when Ellie was seventy, she told someone the story, someone other than her husband, who had long ago become accustomed to Ellie's flights into confession.  After all, her husband had his own stories:  locking a brother up in a rabbit cage and target practicing in the kitchen.

The story at first seemed about shame, about seeking redemption, the child within the aging adult looking for absolution by finally telling the truth, which all sounded utterly ridiculous now that her own children had fibbed their way through childhood and adolescence and recovered to be adults.  One could only laugh at guilt howling like barking dogs in an alleyway.

What if the mother had known?  What if the story was not about teaching a child not to lie, but about loving someone so much a person got a free pass upon which to start anew?

Two versions:  shaming or loving.  Which one happened in this story?  And how would the outcome have differed if the mother had said, "Oh, Sweetie, don't lie.  You know better!  No one in our family lies! You take those pictures back tomorrow to Mrs. Alexander and tell the truth!  Wait 'til your father hears this!"

I venture to say, this is how love works.  Since we are all flawed, we can help one another be better people by going forward, not backward, not faulting, not blaming, and by feeding, kindly feeding and trusting that nourishment works better than punishment.

Peace Is Like What?

I got stuck on peace last week.  Unable to come up with my own pithy sentence about peace I googled "literary quotes about peace."

Of one hundred different statements about peace all agree in attitude: Peace is desirable; conflict is disturbing.  From one hundred quotations by influential leaders four stuck to me. (This was not easy to do.  It took me days to decide.)

“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”

Mother Teresa 

“Yes, we love peace, but we are not willing to take wounds for it, as we are for war.”

John Holmes 

“God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.”

C. S. Lewis 

“My therapist told me the way to achieve true inner peace is to finish what I start. So far today, I have finished 2 bags of M&M's and a chocolate cake. I feel better already.” 

― Dave Barry

Googling one hundred quotations about peace sounds a bit obsessive, doesn't it?  But let's not go there. I'd only defend myself by saying I was looking for antidotes to the clash of conflict in the news and on the street.  

My exercise began as a light diversion and ended in a maze.  Here's why.

I began with "Was peace a feeling or a behavior?"  Seeing disagreement among spiritual and social leaders, I shifted to How many categories of peace are there?  and then to Does anyone agree on what peace is? 

Maybe similes and metaphors would provide clues.  I googled this fragment: "Peace is like a..."

In 2001 Leif Enger wrote a best selling novel titled Peace Like a River, a title inspired by the hymn It is Well with my Soul.  The novel's ingredients for conflict include kidnapping, murder, and death in order to illustrate that no situation is beyond the miracle of redemption.

In 1971 Paul Simon wrote Peace Like a River during the era of Viet Nam protests.  The first line says "Peace ran through the city like a river." The lyrics speak of enduring beatings and waiting.  "I'm reconciled/ I'm gonna be up a while"

In 1873 Horatio G. Spafford wrote the lyrics for the hymn It is Well with My Soul.

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,

When sorrows like sea billows roll;

Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,

It is well, it is well, with my soul.

A group named Goospel Soul Children offers the African-American Spiritual recognized by its promising words "I've got peace like a river...I've got joy in my soul", which can be downloaded as a ring tone.  

A Ringtone!  Now we are getting somewhere.

Instead of "Ring, Ring, Ring, Someone's Calling" you can hear "I've got peace like a river; I've got joy in my soul."  The nuance would be entirely different, even if it were your estranged brother calling for a loan or your spouse calling to ask you where the hell you are.

I'd like to upload a few ringtones to some characters who have crossed my path.  How about these:  "Slow down, you've got to make the morning last" for the guy who cut you off on the parkway.   John Meyer's "Waiting on the World to Change" for the mattress salesman who just pulled a bait and switch.  Michael Buble's "It's a Beautiful Day" for the endless complainer at the gym.

A ringtone would be a silly approach to tragic, seemingly insurmountable conflicts.  The Egyptians are erupting in the streets (It's a Beautiful Day).  Senator Cruz wants to unfund our health care law (Slow Down, You've Got to Make the Morning Last).  Schools lack funds to open on time (Waiting on the World to Change).  

And then something horrible happened in the midst of my goggle diversions.  Syrians were dying from chemical attacks.  I lost heart.  Peace?  How?  

The African-American spiritual’s line "I've got peace like a river" isn't frivolous.  It emerged from the brutal fields of American slavery and resonates with scripture.

Oh that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments! then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea.  Isaiah 48:18.

Between Isaiah's warnings (8th century B.C.), the emancipation proclamation in 1863,  and today's headlines -- achieving peace, even identifying it, has proven to be illusive. It's the elephant in the room.

We usually must move along to keep up.  We don't have free hours to research thoughtful verses about peace.  We are lucky to sit still long enough to absorb a backyard view of flowers, birds, and shade trees, much less relax along the bank of a meandering river. 

We want peace, in any form, as a behavior, as a feeling, as a hope, for three seconds or forever.  We are advised:  peace begins within oneself and requires right choices; peace is not possible alone, without God, without communion with others, without love, without consideration.  

I'm thinking it might do to start small, maybe finish something.  I'm not a fan of m&ms and chocolate cake, but I could iron some shirts, grout the shower, and finish this post. We'll see how that goes.  

Then maybe I will be ready to move on to something more challenging, like not interrupting my husband while he's talking.  Listening to others without reacting -- don't think I saw a quote or ringtone about that one.  

Summer's Treasure

“Ol' man Simon, planted a diamond. Grew hisself a garden the likes of none. Sprouts all growin' comin' up glowin' Fruit of jewels all shinin' in the sun. Colors of the rainbow. See the sun and the rain grow sapphires and rubies on ivory vines, Grapes of jade, just ripenin' in the shade, just ready for the squeezin' into green jade wine. Pure gold corn there, Blowin' in the warm air. Ol' crow nibblin' on the amnythyst seeds. In between the diamonds, Ol' man Simon crawls about pullin' out platinum weeds. Pink pearl berries, all you can carry, put 'em in a bushel and haul 'em into town. Up in the tree there's opal nuts and gold pears- Hurry quick, grab a stick and shake some down. Take a silver tater, emerald tomater, fresh plump coral melons. Hangin' in reach. Ol' man Simon, diggin' in his diamonds, stops and rests and dreams about one... real... peach.” 

― Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends

Our friend was walking me through his miniature orchard on a ranchette near the Wyoming border.  "We lost our peaches in a late frost," he said sadly.  

At the same time last year, Bill had quietly handed me a peach and a knife.  "For me?"  I said as I greedily slipped a slice into my mouth. 

Amused, his wife watched me slurp and swallow what I soon learned to be their first peach of the season. If I hadn't been so happy, I would have been embarrassed. Our friend, the amateur orchardist had carefully pruned his trees and watched the buds swell from limbs above a blanket of snow, hopefully winter's last icy bite.  If a late frost nips peach blossoms, the trees won't bear fruit.

When I hear local peaches are ripe, I feel like dancing and singing.  It's love, all love.  

Think about it: what is the difference between telling your lover, "I left you a sandwich and an apple" versus "I left you a sandwich and a peach"?

An apple is as common as a sandwich, but a peach is extraordinary.  An apple is a hug; a peach is a kiss.

Two peaches rest on my kitchen counter top.  These two peaches are South Carolina peaches. They were a gift.  We are balancing our desire to eat these two peaches against a desire to appreciate them slowly.  Timing is important.  If we wait too long, they will ripen to mush.  But if we eat them right now, they will be gone.

In the refrigerator are four peaches remaining from my visit to a local orchard where I chose between two kinds of yellow freestones.  "Flaming Fury" won out over "Celebrity", mostly for the name but also for its tempting burgundy and golden orange skin, and thus imagined gustatory magic. 

People actually fight over peaches.  Georgia claims to be "the peach state." An iconic peach is on Georgia license plates and on its official state quarter.  A giant peach drops from a downtown Atlanta building every New Year's Eve.  Peachtree Avenue, Peachtree Presbyterian Church. Peachtree Road Race. Peachtree Publishers. Peachtree Gifts.  Peachtree -- everywhere.  However, according to a 2011 New York Times article*, South Carolina has rivaled Georgia peach production for years.

I grew up in Northern California where peach season lasts to October, which might account for California's ranking first among the top four states in peach production.  New Jersey, the original source of peach agriculture in the U.S., is ranked fourth.  Not that any of this rivalry makes a huge difference.  If we want to eat fresh peaches we will find them.  If the local peach crop fails, Georgia is only five hours away.

A peach has a scientific name -- Prunus Persica -- erroneously assigned by Europeans who believed peach trees originated in Persia.  Ancient Romans had called the fruit malum persicum, or Persian apple, which morphed to the French pêche.   In truth, peach cultivation originated in China, a fact supported by early Chinese writings and art, and confirmed by contemporary scientific analysis.  I hope Georgians won't be too disappointed to hear that China ranks number one in international peach production. 

Personally, I don't care who produces the most peaches as long as someone does. 

Here's what a peach awakens in my sensory memories. Pealing and pitting peaches with my mother.  Pulling a dusty quart jar of Elberta peaches from a basement shelf.  Making peach ice cream for a church social.  Driving down a Georgia highway off the beaten path in search of a Georgia peach and discovering a potter as well.   Returning from South Carolina with a box of peaches perfuming the station wagon.  Recalling how I could never convince a Vietnamese friend that a peach tasted better than a mango.  

A typical peach weighs 3.5 ounces.  When you eat a fresh peach, you consume 9.4g of carbohydrates, 8.39g of sugar, 1.5g of fiber, .25 gm of fat, and .91 gm of protein in addition to 20 vitamins and minerals.  More than 80 chemicals contribute to a peach's aroma. In comparison, a small apple weighs 4.8 oz and has 14g of carbs, 2.4g of dietary fiber, and 10.6g of sugar.  You need to heat an apple to appreciate its perfume.

If you want to boost your carbs and dietary fiber, eat an apple, not a peach.   If you want to savor an intoxicating aroma while sticky juice runs down your chin and eat the fruit believed by the Chinese to contribute to immortality and guard against evil, eat a peach.

I took a neighbor two peaches when I visited her this week.  I'd like to think she will continue to enjoy a good life, free of evil, and attain immortality.  No doubt her kind nature will reward her with a measure of immortality.  I'd like to think a peach or two -- the inspiration for a luscious poem by Li-Young Lee**; the subject of cultural lore and paintings by Manet, Monet, Renoir, and  Cezanne; the cause of interstate marketing rivalries; the favored fruit of kings and emperors; the source of twenty vitamins and minerals -- might also nourish her spiritually and physically.

Notes

* "Peach Rivalry Becomes War Between the Tastes" by Kim Severson.  New York Times. July 27, 2011.

** "From Blossoms" by Li-Young Lee, from Rose.  BOA Editions Ltd.  1986.  
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171754

"'Something is about to happen,' he told himself. 'Something peculiar is about to happen at any moment.' He hadn't the faintest idea what it might be, but he could feel it in his bones that something was going to happen soon. He could feel it in the air around him ... in the sudden stillness that had fallen upon the garden."

-Roald Dahl, James and the Giant Peach, which tells the tale of a giant peach growing from bean seeds then transporting James beyond the abuse of his childhood.  

Careful Cooking

I think careful cooking is love, don't you? The loveliest thing you can cook for someone who's close to you is about as nice a valentine as you can give. --Julia Child


Our youngest grandchildren, ages three and five, are cooking for us.  The three year old runs off to retrieve a  frisbee (his cake pan) and then fills it with rubber mulch from under the backyard playground set.  His sister, the five year old,  starts the main course, Stone Soup, in a bucket of water.

"This soup needs spices."  She adds sand.  "It needs salt and oregano."

"We need a pie," says her little brother.

"A cherry pie!"  Together they load another frisbee with sand and pebbles from their play area.  She carries the "pie" to a swing.

"This is our oven," explains her brother.

Herb asks if the soup is ready.  They serve us with sand shovels and dishes.

The sun hasn't set, the parents won't return for another hour, the outside air is fresh, so we make menu suggestions.

"How about a salad with blueberries?  Or chocolate mousse?"

A sandbox chocolate mousse is apparently a familiar recipe: water, sand, and pebble morsels mixed together, then allowed to thicken through evaporation.

Suddenly thunder sounds in the distance.  The child-cooks look up and listen.  Big sister  reassures little brother, "It's far off.  It's okay."

The sky darkens, the trees whip, the swings sway.  Thunder echoes against the distant mountains.  We feel rain drops.

"Quick, Jonah, we have to move the food so it doesn't get wet!"

An emergency is underway.  The pounding thunder nears.  They carefully move pie, cake, mousse, and soup under cover.

"Stay under the deck," advises big sister.

"I'm cold," complains little brother.

We suggest we go inside, but we must walk up outside steps to the upper deck and enter the house through the kitchen door.

"Hurry, Jonah.  It's dangerous!" says big sister.  "Hurry, Oma.  Hurry, Poppies!"

"It's dangerous, Poppies!" warns Jonah,  his little legs pumping, his eyes wide with concern.

We, the child watchers, the careful grand-parents, are guided to safety by little ones.

Gone Fishin'

Tucked into a cove on the lake stretching into yonder hills is my husband. Herb and his host are bait casting from a boat along the southern shore -- two men in a boat drifting across rippling water.

A dragon fly hovers above waves of oats and wild blackberries along a stone outcropping. Barren trees, stark and scrabbly, rise from the lake's southern shallows. Like olive puffballs on ochre pillows, hackberries, walnuts, and cedars cluster on the hills. Native bluestem grass softens the hill ridges. The horizon stretches in receding horizontal ribbons beneath an azure sky.

A breeze rustles nearby trees. Birds sing in the softened air. A cow bawls in the distance.

Cattle graze along an earthen dam. An abandoned pontoon boat, dry-landed, waits for high water, absent now for four years. In the distance Herb's fishing rod bends and trembles, then suddenly snaps backwards. A fish has broken free, a rubber worm and hook stuck in its lip.

We are in my husband's boyhood territory -- the Flint Hills of Kansas. Nearby is the Tall Grass Prairie National Park, formerly one of the largest ranches in the United States, the Z-Bar, now 13,000 conserved acres but once more than 80,000 acres.

This morning my husband is at peace with the world. The scene is utterly quieting.

The Tea Cup Collection

“Take some more tea," the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
"I've had nothing yet," Alice replied in an offended tone, "so I can't take more."
"You mean you can't take less," said the Hatter: "it's very easy to take more than nothing."
"Nobody asked your opinion," said Alice.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland


Today, I unwrapped ten cups of my mother's tea cup collection. The cups had been tucked away in wadded newspaper and in a cardboard box in our attic for nine years. In total there are eighteen vintage cups with saucers. Of these, eight favorites reside in my dining room corner cabinet. The remaining ten will soon be with my daughters.

In comparison to my husband who has collections of quarters, stamps, antique tools, and wooden toys, I am not a collector. I am a closet stuffer, an under-the-bed hider, and a procrastinator. I overbook everyday of my life. My home looks neat, but look out when you open a closet door. A gorilla might come bursting out just because I had planned to deal with it later.

Understand me here. I would have never, on my own volition, collected tea cups -- except for my mother and Mother's Day gifts.

Just before each Mother's Day, our father would take my brothers and me to a local department store where we would purchase a gift.  Our mother had started collecting bone china and porcelain tea cups in the 1940's, so Dad's shopping excursion was easy as long as we cooperated with his enthusiasm for Mom's collection.

Memory, or the lack thereof, requires a little imaginative arithmetic. We have eighteen cups. My parents had three children. Our mother died in 1954 when I was 12, when one brother was sixteen and the other brother was eleven. It's possible that for six years we each selected a cup for her on Mother's Day; however, my older brother remembers our buying her the tea cups together one at a time.

I recall standing on tiptoe to see over a glass case while a sales lady lifted cups down for us to view. Dad managed to create for us an air of magical anticipation and awe. We were to look only with our eyes.

My brothers and I could be rambunctious. One of our favorite activities was to careen in wagons down our steep driveway into the garage and fly through the basement until we coasted out an exit door into an adjoining alley. We climbed trees, rode bikes, played football in the street, and built forts. Bath time was a major scrubbing event.

But the tea cups -- these were for our gentle mother, who loved flowers, music, and art; for our mother whose eyes would flood when we disappointed her, whose devotion in the kitchen and the laundry had not escaped our attention. Our mother, who salved our oozing poison ivy eruptions, who taught us not to put our elbows on the table but allowed us to read surreptitiously at the table, who protected us from our father's unpredictable temper, and who advocated for us at school. Our mother, whose day rose and fell for us. Our quiet mother, who would rest from her chores by sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and looking out through a bougainvillea draped window.

And so, out of respect for and with recognition of her motherly ways, for a short spell we behaved. We chose a favorite pattern, had the tea cup and saucer wrapped, and carefully carried our gift home to her.

I unwrapped more than tea cups today. Had our mother imagined she might visit the scene in the Royal Albert pattern "Silver Birch"? Had she wished to serve a friend tea from her Gladstone china cup with its laurel blossom motif? Did she hope to have a tea party when life quieted?

In our innocence, we children could never have foreseen the endowment embedded in our gifts. To a seven-year-old, childhood is forever and adulthood is something that happens to grown ups. How could I perceive the faraway day when I would write my daughters about the tea cup collection and say, "Please make a space for them in your life, on a shelf somewhere...out of love for me and respect for the grandmother who would have doted on you had she lived."

Come In. The Door is Open.

Born into the Great Depression, Herb's first years testify to the tension between need and charity. Farm families in Kansas suffered.  Drought desiccated crops. Herb never went hungry but recalls repeated meals of steamed wheat and lard gravy. Surely his mother awoke each day aware of scarcity and hunger.

The family farm sat along US 50 and across from the Cottonwood River and the Atchison,Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway. In the thirties itinerant men rode the railways, some seeking work, some escaping arrest, all of them hungry.

Strangers would walk up the lane to the Simmons' back door and offer to work for food. Since there was little to offer in work, Anna Simmons would dip into the family's meal pot and hand a bowl of beans or stew or steamed wheat through the door to a grateful, hungry man.

In chapter 20 of Steinbeck's novel Grapes of Wrath, the Joad family sets up in Hooverville in Southern California.  Ma Joad feeds her family inside their tent away from the hungry stares of starving children drawn to the family's campsite by the smell of cooked beans. Imagine her dilemma of conscience, the tension between personal and community responsibility, the feeding of her own people and the sharing with others.  She cannot bear not sharing.  After ladling out food to her family of six, she tells the gathering crowd of hungry children to go get some bowls.  Her act of charity is sacrificial, stark, and poignant.

I don't know about you, but if my children were hungry and the larder low, I'd think twice before handing out food to a ragged but polite stranger at my back door or shorting my family to feed the children of others.   But what could I say?  "I'm sorry" wouldn't  ring true.  I'd be lying; dishonesty with a lack of charity would only compound my dilemma. "I'm out of food; we are starving too" wouldn't  exactly be honest either.  Could I bring myself to say, "I'm so afraid my children will starve, I'm willing to risk your starvation for their sakes."?

Afraid!  Afraid to love, afraid to trust, afraid of giving, afraid of loss. Fear is the great isolator of people, an infection in the soul, the poison to charity, the muddy sludge in our communities.

We don't have to have food shortages to experience guarded behaviors and a lack of charity.  Conservative social behavior can be uncharitable.

New neighbors move in next door while we check out their Acura MDX, Honda Accord, two children, and a fluffy dog.  Work men awaken us at 7am with their hammering.  "Mexican" painters go in and  out of the driveway.  The new neighbors are strangers with unknown histories.

We are busy.  We have azaleas to move, an antique car to repair, furniture to deliver to a son.  We have a business. We have social obligations.  We've been  entertaining out of town guests for two weeks and will be leaving for the Cape next week.

Still we go next door and introduce ourselves.  The new neighbors have names.  They are friendly, and they look haggard. The painters are behind schedule.  The moving van will arrive in two days.  The family has been going back and forth between hotel and house.  The only place to sit is on the floor or hearth.

We could walk away; we'd done our part -- the introductions.  "Let us know if we can help" is not a commitment, not a sincere offer.  Too vague.

Then we say,"Would you like to borrow our vacuum?"  Our new neighbor smiles and gushes with gratitude, which fuels our imagination.  We have a playhouse once enjoyed by our now grown children.  We say, "Your children will love our playhouse out back." And more:  "Your parents must stay in our guest suite when they come." And finally, inspired by the possibilities we say, "You will be so tired the night before moving day, please have supper with us.  We want so much to visit with you....Help yourself to any pots and pans you might need....Here are some paper plates and cups.  Take these strawberries with you..."

We tell our maid to prepare the guest suite.  We buy Stouffer's frozen lasagne and salad in a bag.  We pop popcorn, set out Brie and crackers, and pull cookies from the freezer.  We select a nice wine from the cellar. We allow the fluffy white dog in the guest suite.  We give our new neighbors a key to our home.

Because we could not honestly turn away.  We could not say, "We are too busy to care."  It just isn't who we want to be.



But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?  1 John 3:17-18


Note:  This post was inspired by two situations: family poverty during the thirties and the generosity of neighbors when a daughter and son-in-law moved to Atlanta.  Although I exercise creative license with some details, the events are essentially true, especially the kind generosity of next door neighbors in Atlanta.  The story of Anna Simmons' generosity during The Great Depression is part of family lore and matches all that I knew about her.