Upstairs, Downstairs

Ginny and I spent much of Mother’s Day talking about parenting, buying chairs, and searching for a missing goldfish..

Parenting: We did something right but we don’t know what it was.

Our grown children fill us with pride, but we take little credit for the way they turned out. Each is a unique person with blessings, talents and quirks.

Fred, my eldest is steady, steadfast, brilliant, troubled and a gourmet chef.

Johnny is mature, spiritual, practical, and a ballroom dancer.

Jennifer, our butterfly, remains convinced that as a baby princess, Gypsies stole her from the palace and dumped her with this odd poor family to raise till she can assume her rightful place.

Donald grew up to become the thoroughly most Christian man I have ever met.

Eve, nicknamed Smiley in school, became a level-headed businesswoman who sets realistic goals and achieves them.

Patricia, a woman of mystery and deep dreams, follows her own star towards brightness.

Ginny and I agree that God knew ahead of time that we lacked the talents and temperament to be good parents, so He gave us such fine and easy material to work with.

Our children bless us.

Buying Chairs: The twin recliner loveseat in our tv room sprang a spring, One side would not open; the other would not close. The thing warped our backs.

To get the huge out of the room, I had to saw it into four pieces (we’d removed a window to get it inside years ago and I did now want to go through that again).

For a time, we brought in lawn chairs to sit on while watching watch tv.

Not a good solution.

But we could not afford new furniture. So we managed.

Yesterday we saw an estate sale advertised. The building, three stories and a basement, was a single-family home but in 1898 was divided into 28 tiny apartments and used as an old folks home. New owners closed the facility and were selling off all the furniture at bargain prices (easy chairs, two for $25).

We prowled the maze seeking the kind of replacement chairs we wanted.

I spotted one.

Up on the third floor, I looked out a side window. From that high vantage point I could see over the hedge into the back yard of the house next door.

“I see the chair I’m interested in,” I told Ginny.

“Where”.

“Out the window here”.

She joined me looking outside. On the other side of the hedge a young woman in her bikini vigorously polished a white aluminum lawn chair.

If the kids ever put me in an old folks home, I want a room with a view like that.

Ginny prodded me into other apartments where we chose a wall-hugger recliner and a swivel-rocker, and an end table—All out of third-floor apartments.

I stumbled downstairs to pay. Merely managing all those stairs aggravated my arthritis into flaring pain and left me quivering.

Obviously, with my cane and age (70) I could not carry these heavy chairs down by myself. The estate sale lady felt so concerned for me that she forced me to sit in the lobby till I stopped shaking. It’s been years since I climbed more than six or eight stairs and here I’d been going back and forth between the third floor and the basement. The lady recruited two helpers to bring our purchases downstairs for us.

Back 40 years ago, Ginny and I drove a tractor-trailer moving furniture all over the country. We know how to do it. So it pained me greatly to see these two helpers who obviously had never handled furniture before, cart the chairs down those steep stairs.

Suggestions surged into my mind. But I kept my mouth shut.

The Scripture came to me, “Judge not that ye be not judged”.

Since I’m too weak and shaky and can not carry these chairs down from the third floor my self—then I have no right to supervise those young and strong enough to do the job. They will learn their trade; I should stick to doing things I can do and let others do things their way.

Maybe the bikini girl’s needs help with her aluminum lawn chair.

That one looked light enough for me to lift.

By the way, Ginny and I snaked our new/used chairs into the back room by ourselves with no trouble at all. We may not have the youth and strength but we still have the knack.

Missing Goldfish: Back home, we discovered that one of our gold fish has gone AWOL.

We searched and search for it. We have no idea where it is. We removed everything out of the ten-gallon aquarium to see if the fish were hiding under some decoration.

It’s not.

We checked inside the filter--No missing fish there.

The aquarium cover would prevent any fish from jumping out. The two remaining fish swim contently (Do goldfish eat other goldfish?)

Unable to find our missing fish, we speculated:

“I know what happened to it,” I said. “”Jesus took it. He had 2,500 unexpected guests to feed so He only took one fish.”

(You know about the feeding fo the 5,000, but do you know what He would do if He had to feed ten thousand people? He simply double the receipt).

Ginny said my idea is nonsense. She said our one goldfish was a Christian goldfish and that it had been raptured and the other goldfish left behind.

We talk about theology a lot when there’s nothing good on tv.