Pictures On the Wall.

 Pictures On the Wall.

 

Two poster boards hang above my desk here in the office. They are a record of our family—the beginnings and the extensions. A few critters have left their marks up there: Suzy, Lance’s first dog who helped him learn to walk. Baloo, the Chow Chow who loved Lewis stands behind the yard gate. Ruth, the Jersey milk cow stands quietly while Lance learned to milk a cow while his cousin Erin watched beside him. AnnaBeth sits quietly on the desk demanding the attention of a queen on her throne. A young buck lies on the ground behind Hanan’s truck—his only trophy. A silly dog rests its head on the diaper of Grayson while he learns to crawl on Jennifer’s kitchen floor. Strange, isn’t it, that our lives include some of the sweetest critters who love us. Our family history would never be the same without these animals.

 

Just as animals mark some of the history of a family, so do the backgrounds: the State of Texas tree the children wanted to climb, the beach in Key West, the tree on Smouldering Wood where Jennifer and Grayson hid, the rose gardens in Tyler where Hanan rested his feet, Rosslyn Chapel south of Edinburgh, Kilchurn castle in Scotland, a cow barn in Bonita, TX, a mesquite pasture near Lake Arrowhead, a basement parking garage where a motorcycle was parked in Santa Monica, the fairgrounds building in Duncan, OK, the back porch of an uncle’s house in Little Rock, Arkansas. Yes, these places mean something to our family.

 

In my memories, the family house in Petrolia still has a decent sized back yard for children and their swings, the old farm on 2332 still has a creek that runs through it and a rock-covered hill above it, and this old hill still has a huge elm tree and a metal water tower on it. Things in one’s memories never really change that much, but the realities are never quite the same. A trip back to the cemeteries in Byers and Oak Hill tell a different story of our family. Those stories are different from the ones we want to remember. The sweet parents and grandparents, the tiny little girl, the great-grandparents and their cousins, all these are memories now. Then the cross made from chisels in my front flower bed where ashes covered the petunias and another memory of the man for whom it was made and the son who created it for his dad. Some days these memories leak from my eyes.

 

Maybe it is just this silly weather that makes me feel that things have changed so drastically in life. It looks like rain again. May God protect us from more storms.

 

Rest well, my friends. You are loved.