Wedding Surprise

A couple of months ago, I ran into a friend who introduced me to her fiancee. I didn't know she was dating anyone, so I asked the requisite questions such as How did you meet?, When did you get engaged?, and When is the big day?

The first two answers were somewhat predictable (went to high school together; over the holidays), but the third answer gave me fleeting pause (we're going to have an engagement party at the end of July and announce our wedding date then). I've never known of anyone doing that before but I quickly shrugged it off, mainly ' cause I'm not really hip, socially-speaking. Zelda and I got married in a pastor's office one morning before Sunday school without telling anyone, so it's not like anyone is beating on our door for successful wedding tips. I just do as I'm told, invitation-wise.

So in that spirit, we received our invitation a few weeks ago and calendared tonight for the engagement party.

As five o'clock rolled around, I dressed in my best silk Hawaiian shirt, beige cargo shorts and New Balance sneaks and drove toward the merriment. After a half-hour of manuevering through a crowd of many strangers (which bothers me somewhat), most of whom were dressed better than me (which doesn't), the happy couple interrupted the kickin' blues band to give the long-awaited announcement: the date of the wedding.

After some stalling by the groom-to-be for dramatic effect, the bride-to-be broadcast We're getting married tonight! and as the band cranked back up they ran off the stage to don their wedding togs. Ten minutes later (!), a procession of a groomsman, a maid-of-honor, the groom, the bride and her father met the pastor in the middle of the room and we had a wedding!

Congratulations to the newlyweds, and thanks for the surprise.

Hurricane Dora

Hurricane Dora hit Birmingham earlier this week. Well, it hit our house. OK, it hit Dora's bedroom. There were no casualties but the damage was extensive.

All of Dora's toys ended up in the floor along with most of her clothes, a couple of towels, and Dora's ever-present collection of sticks, rocks, and leaves. Dora's belongings spilled out into the hallway as she exercised eminent domain in a land-grab for more play space. Barbie dolls and plastic dinosaurs in the entry foyer were the last straw.

Get busy cleaning that room now, instructed a frazzled Zelda.

Ok, mama, chirped the little one.

Zelda set the kitchen timer for one hour and went about putting away her laundry, as did Lovett. When the timer went off, Zelda checked on Dora's progress.

Only there wasn't any. Zelda couldn't tell that a single item had been moved toward its proper place. She promptly grounded Dora from TV for the rest of the afternoon and restricted her to the main impact zone of the hurricane.

When I walked into the house, Dora tackled me with her usual Papa! and I asked her what she had done with her day.

I cleaned my room, she beamed.

You did! I exclaimed, surveying the damage like a FEMA inspector. Well I would hate to see what it would look like if you hadn't.

Then Zelda filled me in on the day's frustrations with quite a hint that my expected reply was to be more than Gee, Honey, what an exasperating day! So after dinner, on my way out to a meeting, I explained the situation to Dora:

When I get home from my meeting, everything that is still in your floor will be bagged up and taken to the attic. No whining, no complaining, no questions asked. Do you understand?

Yes, Papa, Dora fluttered.

Three hours later my meeting concluded and I began a dread-filled drive home. I walked into the house, peaked into Dora's room, and saw that not a thing had been picked up. She had called my bluff. I was Robert Conrad and Dora had knocked the battery off my shoulder.

So I walked into the pantry, grabbed a handful of garbage bags, and walked into her room. Zelda followed me and she picked up Dora's clothes while I went for the toys. Ten minutes and two trips up the attic stairs later, six garbage bags full of stuffed animals, plastic animals, rocks, doll clothes, toy kitchen utensils, hair bows, necklaces, etc. were stowed in Dora's corner of the attic. I came down the stairs, closed the attic door, and prepared for the protest.

But there wasn't one. No screaming. No tantrums. No whining. I called Dora into the foyer as I tried to analyze her response, or better yet, her lack of response.

I took all those toys up to the attic like I said I would.

Uh-huh.

Don't go up there after them.

OK.

You can play with the toys that are left, but when mama tells you to clean up your room again and you don't, I'll take those up there too. Do you understand?

Yep.

Do you have any questions?

Can I have some ice cream?

I was blown away. Perplexed is such an impotent word to describe my state of mind. I am not a particularly materialistic person, and I was ashamed and appalled by the amount of stuff I had to carry upstairs. Could it be that Dora couldn't cope with it either? That it overwhelmed her and shut her down? Or is she simply obstinate? And if she is, wouldn't she have protested, even a little bit?

I am stumped.

But I can see Dora's carpet now.

Between two pastures

Mama Bennett, feeling cramped last Thursday in her basement apartment, suggested we go outside and see the animals.

Aunt Ess got the golf cart and drove her to the barn. One of the livestock was way over her species' gestational average and they had been concerned about her. She was huge and uncomfortable, but spirits were high as she showed signs of the birth's imminence: restlessness, raised tail, wandering in circles. When she pulled away from the herd and headed for the privacy of the upper pasture, we were sure she was about to deliver.

We had been out for a good half-hour in the blazing sun, but Mama Bennett insisted on following the mother-to-be. I escorted her, hand at her elbow, along the fence line between the pastures to a front row seat for the big occasion, though there was no seat. I asked Mama B if she was ready to go back inside. No, I want to see the baby come.

So we waited. Gradually, a glistening, spindly leg appeared, with a snout not far behind. Papa Bennett was chomping at the bit to help the mother, but Mama Bennett yelled at him to leave her be. I could tell he was tiring of being ordered around, even by a sick, weak wife, but he stood firm between the mother and her pasture-mates who had wandered into her delivery area.

Then, as another leg appeared, the mother squatted down and with a tremendous push got the baby halfway out, his wet head soaking up its first rays of sunshine there between heaven and earth. Another squat, another push, and the baby landed in a heap at the mother's hind feet. Her ordeal was over.

Mama Bennett was enthralled, relieved for the success of the new mother and proud of her own baby's confidence as Aunt Bee rushed in with a towel and began drying off the newborn. Aunt Bee and Papa B stood guard as the baby struggled to find his legs. Time and again, he would get his front legs under him and be almost up on his back legs, being nudged by mama, but either his coordination or his strength failed him and he crumpled back into a tumbleweed on the high plains floor.

Suddenly, Mama Bennett swooned at my side. She'd been standing in the hot sun for some time, her first foray into the wild in several days, and her strength was sapped. Her stomach protruded in front of her as she tried to relieve her aching back. Oh sugar, she said to me, I should never have come out here.

I grabbed her right arm to steady her, shocked by its clammy thinness. She grabbed the top of the fence on the other side, and we shuffled back toward the barn.

We were passed in short order by Aunt Bee, who, concerned that the sun was too intense for the baby, had scooped him up and headed for the shade of the barn. And there I stood, flanked between an eighty-year-old woman in the grip of a terminal illness and a newborn creature not fifteen minutes old. Neither of them seemed to have mastery over their musculature. Both of them relied on the strength of others to protect them from the elements and get them to the safety of the barn. One had just been introduced to the pasture and his new home while the other was making one of her final visits as precious time slipped away. One was on a fast track to growth and development, while the other was on a fast track to atrophy and confinement.

Aunt Bee, the new baby, Mama Bennett, the cycle of life, and me, slow-waltzing between two pastures.

Mama Bennett

Indulge me this long post, since it has been so long since I last posted (and accept my apologies).

One Sunday in late May, I was on my way to worship, alone - Zelda was on a writing retreat with some friends, and Lovett and Dora spent the weekend with Mr. and Mrs. DePaul. I received a cell phone call from Aunt Bee, informing me that Mama Bennett been rushed to the hospital in the night with a severe bleeding problem (see "Cast of Characters" on the left side of the blog for a who's who of CoaE). Zelda was to return from her retreat that afternoon from the airport that serves Aunt Bee's community, and she immediately changed her flight to check on Mama Bennett.

A phone call from Zelda later in the afternoon confirmed our worst fears. Mama Bennett had undergone emergency surgery to patch a blood clot in her chest cavity, as well as cauterizing a duodenal ulcer, and that recuring problems with her liver weren't helping matters. I met Mr. and Mrs. DePaul with a heavy heart to pick up the kids. I would have to explain to them Mama Bennett's situation as I told them why mama wasn't coming home as expected. It was a tough night.

But Mama Bennett pulled through, and a week later she was back home in the apartment in Aunt Bee's house that she shares with Papa Bennett, her husband of sixty-three years. Mama Bennett slowly improved, and last Wednesday week I booked a plane ticket out out west for mid-July to spend some time with them all.

Then came Aunt Ess's phone call last Friday week.

Mama Bennett's internist called her in to reveal results from earlier testing. After giving her the results, he sent her home to "get her affairs in order," which is 21st century medical euphemism for "your condition is terminal, and we've done all that we can do."

Aunts Bee and Ess were understandably devastated. As were the DePauls, 1800 miles away. We broke it to the children and spent the next several nights crying and praying Dora to sleep. Lovett slipped into a quiet funk. Zelda began planning for the inevitable, a bit morbidly premature perhaps, but that's how she copes. I, on the other hand, was my usual cool self in a crisis, slowing to a glacial pace of life. I did have enough synapses firing, though, to realize that sticking with my planned visit in mid-July just might be too late.

So I flew out last Wednesday.

I wasn't quite prepared for what I encountered. Mama Bennett had gone down considerably since I left her last November. She is so frail, and forgetful, and weak. She is already a shell of the woman I knew as grandmother.

She has been diagnosed with non-alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver, caused by hepatitis-C she picked up on a mission trip probably thirty years ago. She will slowly bleed to death.

To talk with her and Papa Bennett is to wrestle with paradoxes. At times they are at peace with her passing, yet at times grasping for hoped healing. At times they are complimentary of her doctors, yet at times angry at them for undiagnosing her problem for so long and mis-medicating her. At times they are grateful for the phone calls from friends who have been informed of her condition, yet at times they bristle at the intrusions and displays of "premature" grief. At times they brag on the care Aunts Bee and Ess give them, yet at times they complain about their lack of privacy.

At times Mama Bennett reverted to her benevolent-controlling ways, yet at times she couldn't remember who she had just spoken with on the phone, or wanted to argue about whether she had taken her medicine. At times she giggled like a schoolgirl at her clumsiness and forgetfulness, yet at times she despaired as she struggled to remember a friend's name.

I was a paradox as well, oscillating from being frustrated at hearing the same stories for the hundredth time to being melancholy over her dementia. At times I was ready to return home to my world and its challenges until I realized that once I left that place and time it would be lost to me forever.

It would take a lifetime to explain to you what an impact Papa and Mama Bennett, Aunt Bee, and Aunt Ess have had on my life, both positively and negatively. Neither aunt has children. I am the first-born grandson and the only one that is still in contact with them. Neither can I express the relief I felt walking into the house last Wednesday to find Mama Bennett still alive. I had made it. On time. I got four good days with her. She may not remember them, but I will. I hope to get back to see her again before she goes, but if I don't, I know that I did my best, I did what I needed to do, I said my good-bye, and I will see her on the other side someday. I pray that I will mean to someone what she means to me.

Happy Independence Day, Mama Bennett.