Remembering My Father

Fiorella's father was a hard worker out of necesssity. When he was thirteen months old, his father was killed in a coal mine accident, leaving his mother to support their three children. Times were tough until she and one of her sisters got the contract to clean the schoolhouse. Of course, Dad and his brother and sister were expected to help. One of Dad's most poignant memories was looking out the window while he was sweeping the floor and seeing the other children at play.

As he grew up, Dad picked up odd jobs around the neighborhood, like killing chickens and herding cattle down to the river and back. And after graduating from high school, he took the inevitable bus ride from Osceola Mills to Akron and scored a job with General Tire, eventually becoming a foreman, then being sent to Waco, Texas, to head up the biggest department in the plant.

Dad played as hard as he worked. A born athelete, he played basefball and football in high school, added golf, tennis and bowling when he hit Akron, and, in Waco, established a company golf league and bowling league. Fio remembers the rows of sports trophies lining the garage shelves.

But best of all, Dad was a sweet father. His eyes glowed with warmth when he looked at his children, and Fiorella always knew that she was loved.

Happy Father's Day, Dad. Rest in peace. May you bowl 300 in heaven.

Declaration of War

Fiorella is late today
Not that she has naught to say
Rather that she has far too much
About the state of the world and such--
She wants to rouse the countryside
She wants to echo the world wide
In seeming contradiction, to fight
For love and peace and what is right

Memoriam

Forella always has a long list of things to do, arranged on her tablet according to priority, but priorities change fast in the face of the inexorable.  Minnesota daughter-in law's father died on Wednesday evening as she and Son were driving to the hospital to be by his bedside. It had been a six-year-long battle, and her father sought God's peace.

Rest in eternal love, Garrie Munk.

Pill?

Fiorella needs a pill that will keep her happy at all times. It should also provide her with a steady stream of energy, patience, and forbearance. She also wants it to control her tongue and tone her voice. In short, she wants to live in her own peace.

Any suggestions?

Only Once

Fiorella was on a sailboat only once in her life, and she loved it.  The silence was total and complete. She was at peace.

Fiorella tried skiing only once in her life, but that was enough.  She had a horrible time trying to fit into the ski shoes, she nearly banged into the lodge when she was skiing down the bunny hill, and it took a couple of people to get the skis off of her because they were so tight.

Fiorella has had just one facelift, and that's the limit.  A perky young face on top of a decrepit old body would look sort of freakish.

Generational Change

Fiorella's parents grew up in a judgmental era, and her mother was was prone to anger--at people, objects, and fate.   She growled in disgust when Fiorella couldn't flap a bedsheet correctly, came after Fio with a yardstick if she said "Just a minute" once too often, resented the doctor giving her just six months to live while her one-year-older cousin was flying high, wide and handsome.

Fiorella prefers a more peaceful existence, dead or alive.

Peace in 2011

Brought up in a church that talked more about sin than grace, Fiorella always felt "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive others" hanging over her like a cloak of doom.

But the petition is really quite comforting if one thinks of it as a prayer that we all be forgiven our blunders and stupidities even as we forgive others theirs. It's a plea for peace.

Mother was good at that, living in peace. She grew up with her own mother's relatives not speaking to each other for various reasons, but, as an adult, refused to shun people herself, even ones she was mad at.

It's a matter of always leaving the door open. A matter of grace.