Making Pennies, or My Father’s Money

Posted on by under Money & Place

When I was a little girl, I thought my daddy made all the money. That’s because when I once asked him what he did at work, he told me, “I make pennies.”

I probably was too young to comprehend the complexities of managing a blast furnace for US Steel, which is how my father actually spent his days back then. But I like to think I might have been able to wrap my five-year-old brain around it to some extent. Instead, I spent quite some time believing that my father worked in a penny factory.

To be sure, he was compensated for his actual work with many, many pennies—and nickels, dimes, quarters, and dollars. Because of this, my life growing up was very different from his.

***

I remember my dad once telling me that, when he was a teenager, his greatest fear was that he would never make enough money to feed himself. For years, he never felt full. He was always hungry.

As the ninth of twelve children born to a Ukrainian immigrant coal miner, my father wore the hand-me-down clothes of his older brothers. He used to joke that his shoe size matched his age until he was 14. Unfortunately, he often had to wear shoes that were a size or two smaller than his feet; the bumps on his toes bore witness to that for the rest of his life.

In 1913, the 18-year-old boy who would one day be my grandfather left his home in a rural village in western Ukraine to cross an ocean to join his older brother in a strange land. After he arrived on Ellis Island, in full view of the Statue of Liberty, he had to wait for a stranger to bring him the $25 he needed to enter the country. Today, that would be approximately $610.

My father was born nearly 30 years after his father’s passage to the United States. In 1959, my dad graduated at the top of his high school class. He was awarded a football scholarship to the University of Pittsburgh, where he ultimately earned a degree in mathematical engineering.

After four years of college, my father was drafted by an NFL football team. After a single season as a rookie with the Kansas City Chiefs, he decided to finish his five-year engineering program at Pitt. He spent the next few decades working his way up the corporate ladder of the American steel industry, even when that industry was in danger of collapsing.

“I sure am glad my dad caught that boat.”

I can’t even begin to count the number of times I heard my father repeat those words.

***

penny_jar_for_web“Our money isn’t really ours in the first place,” I explained. “It belongs to God. Everything belongs to God. We’re just meant to take care of it and to use it well.”

I was sitting in the passenger seat of my boyfriend’s car, explaining to him the finer points of—and theological reasons for—support-raising. He was a first-year medical resident, trying to wrap his brain around why his girlfriend had chosen to work for a campus ministry organization where she was expected to raise a portion of her salary.

My father, who generously and fully financed all four years of my college education at a prestigious liberal arts college, was similarly puzzled by my decision. The philosophical and theological underpinnings of raising support were a mystery to him. He didn’t understand my counter-cultural choice of career, but he supported it.

My father continued to financially support me and my work until his death in 2013. Dad offered his support because he loved me. He supported my desire to use my gifts to do work that fulfills me and that makes a positive difference in the world. He never used the language of “blessing” or “stewardship,” but he embodied both with his generosity—to me, to my brothers, to everyone he met.

Because my grandpa caught that boat, and because my dad made all those pennies, I have been afforded opportunities that would never have occurred to either of them. And I am grateful.

***

Amy YAH bio

For When People Feel Like an Inconvenience

Posted on by under Money & Place

There is a man named Jim I see from time to time, shuffling down the sidewalk outside of our house on James Street, always carrying his laundry bag over his shoulder. He’s very soft around the middle, with gray hair and a few missing teeth. I don’t know if it’s his severe underbite or the simpleness in his eyes, but he has the smile of a child.

I always say hello and ask him where he’s going. He always has the same reply.

“It’s good to see you…now what was yo’ name? Shawn, that’s wight. I’m on my way to do my lawn-dwee. Wemembah? I just finished school last week and now I have a deg-wee in Psychowogy.”

We stand out in the cold and chat for a bit, then he swings his laundry bag over his shoulder and heads down the road, shuffling side to side.

* * * * *

A few weeks ago, at around 8pm, our doorbell rang. This is normal, not because we get a lot of nighttime visitors, but because our doorbell rings randomly, even when no one is there. Our next door neighbor passed away about a year ago, so when the doorbell rings at night I usually shout, “Paul’s ghost would like to come in.”

Even so, I still check to see if anyone is actually there.

And on that cold January night a few weeks ago, someone was there. It was Jim. He was bundled up and his eyes were watering from the freezing cold wind and he had his laundry bag over his shoulder.

“Hey, Jim,” I said. “How are you?”

“I’m good, I’m good,” he said. “Do you have a compootah I can use?”

* * * * *

IMG_1161I should interrupt this story to let you know I am not naturally a friendly person, especially when someone attempts to interrupt my normal routine. I’m not saying this to dissuade you from saying hello – I am cordial, after all. And I’m not mean, but I’d rather not be bothered. I try not to impose on people and I have an expectation that others not impose on me.

I’m working hard to overcome this.

I should also say that 8pm is the witching hour here at the house. We have five children, and it’s about that time when my wife and I are reminding them to get a bedtime snack, brush teeth, take showers, put on pajamas, DID YOU REMEMBER TO BRUSH YOUR TEETH?, and go to bed.

When I saw Jim standing there, I had the same feeling I had when a neighbor I hadn’t met asked me to take her two pitbulls for a walk. I knew I should say yes, I knew I should welcome him in, but I just didn’t feel like it.

* * * * *

I sighed.

“Sure, come on in, Jim.”

He walked in behind me and we went into the dining room. My computer was already there at the table where I had been trying to get some work done earlier in the day.

“What do you need?” I asked him.

“I’m fiwing out an appwication to work at Weis Mawkets,” he said. “But I don’t have a compootah. I always use the cowege compootahs.”

“Can’t you just go to the store and fill out an application?”

He shrugged. We called the supermarket. The only way to apply for a job is to fill out an online application. So we began. We didn’t get far.

“What’s your email address?” I asked Jim.

“I don’t have one.”

“You don’t have an email address?” I asked. I could hear my wife upstairs trying to get the kids in bed, something that is usually my job. She’s spends all day with them, and I know she appreciates when I can take over at night. This entire process was becoming more and more of an inconvenience.

“I do when I’m at school, but I can’t use those compootahs right now.”

We sat there staring blankly at the screen for a minute. He sighed.

“Just skip that part,” he said.

“You can’t skip it,” I said, kind of annoyed. “That’s how they’re going to get in touch with you to tell you whether or not you got the job.”

We sat there for a few more minutes.

“Can you put your email address in?” he asked me.

“Yeah, okay,” I said.

We spent the next hour filling out the application, trying to remember the address of where he worked two jobs ago, trying to think up various people he could use as referrals. We filled out the online job profile, answering a hundred questions about how he viewed theft, authority, and honesty.

Finally, we finished.

“Thank you, thank you,” he said over and over again, and I walked him to the door.

He’s a nice man. I know he’d be a hard worker, and I know he needs the money. His current, part-time job at $8.50 an hour makes it pretty much impossible for him to live a self-sufficient life. I really hoped he would get the job.

I watched him vanish into the cold night, and I knew I had done the right thing. I just wish it came easier. I wish I had a better attitude about it. I wish my initial response wasn’t to label people as “inconvenience.”

* * * * *

A few weeks later, I received the following email:

Dear Jim,

Thank you for taking the time to apply with Weis Markets for the position of Cashier.  At this time, we have chosen to pursue other candidates that more closely fit the position. We wish you the best in your employment search and future endeavors.

Respectfully,

Weis Markets Human Resources  

*****

shawn bio YAH

When I Was Your Age, We Went to the Bank

Posted on by under Money & Place

On Saturdays, we went to the bank with dad.

The Regency Savings Bank of Geneva, IL welcomed its patrons with platters covered in white paper doilies, piled high with a variety of butter cookies. Dad would fill one of the provided styrofoam cups with coffee from the percolator.

We started coming with Dad when I was a toddler, an era when my memories blur one into the other. In those early days, my older sister and I waited at the Playschool picnic table, laid out with coloring books and crayons. At this point any of our collected coins got plopped into Piggy Banks on our dressers. Soon enough we started to trail Dad to the bank counter, to watch the magic.

The tellers counted the cash onto the counter like tarot cards, experts at slipping paper across paper. They moved through their tasks without looking: stamping, signing, unlocking, typing on the number pad on the computer, and printing receipts by feeding a machine with a small slip of paper that got pulled into the machine to be stamped with account balances.

Bank Teller Counting Money for Customer --- Image by © Duncan Smith/Corbis

Bank Teller Counting Money for Customer — Image by © Duncan Smith/Corbis

At home, we imitated the movements of the tellers in elaborate games of pretend bank, using stacks of pocketed deposit slips and carbon copy return tickets from the local Venture department store. We idolized those women at the bank, second only to the grocery clerks at the supermarket who almost always had long acrylic nails that clicked across the keypad.

On  Saturday mornings, the bank hummed with the financial business of the town locals. I came to recognize the tellers and the bankers in suits who sat at glass enclosed cubicles. When not serving a customer, they popped out of their offices to circulate around the premises and greet account holders by name. We usually got greeted by the tall, lady banker with the short black hair, who seemed to be having a perpetually good day since the late ‘80s.

At the tall desks in the lobby, my Dad endorsed his stack of checks, a lefty with the characteristic curve in of his hand. He always came with his own blue, ballpoint pen since the ones chained to the desk had long run out of ink. Each week, my dad left the bank with a thin white envelope full of twenties that he placed up in the cabinet next to the fridge, so Mom could select a crisp bill or two and take them to the grocery store.

The tall smiley banker told my Dad that we could open our very own savings accounts, and Carolyn and I were each entrusted with a small grey book, monogrammed with the maroon initials of the bank. These very important books were housed in the roll top desk in the kitchen and kept in protective plastic sleeves.  We covered the plastic sleeves with stickers received from the teller for each deposit we made at the bank.

Each visit to the bank corresponded with a new entry in our passbooks. We took a portion of our newly implemented weekly allowance which we had sorted into styrofoam cups marked “savings,” “spending,” and “church.”

Photo Courtesy of Mario Rui on Flickr

Photo Courtesy of Mario Rui on Flickr

I imagine I had some sort of coin purse or hand me down wallet, but I mostly remember holding the coins in my fists till they grew warm and sweaty against my palms. When we handed over our coins and deposit slip, the teller put the coins into a coin sorter, taking  my precious book to feed into a machine that stamped the new balance of my account.

I tried to read over my account ledger with the seriousness the other patrons used as they carried out their banking. I followed the new entry line across the page with my finger to verify the deposit amount matched my handful of change. On birthdays and Christmas, we brought checks from our grandparents and carefully determined how much cash to take out and how much to entrust to the bank, which was very grownup  business.

After the bank, we ran a few other customary errands to the local Ace Hardware store and to Sally’s Sub House or McDonalds, where I couldn’t help but make the connection that the money dad got at the bank bought Happy Meals and packs of grape Bubblicious gum.

I watched my parents do things with cash, taking  it out of envelopes and carefully counting their pennies. I looked on as my mom put items back at the grocery store to match the amount of bills in her wallet. Both my parents were visible stewards of our money, physically placing it into the hands of others or the golden offering plate to save, spend, and give.

The Regency Savings Bank has long been bought up by other bank chains, changing names and buildings and cookie brands. Now our money zooms through cyberspace, teleporting from one account to another. We no longer have to tabulate our finances and I-owe-yous with paper and pen, but pay instantly from the latest app on our phones. Store clerks ask us if we want that useless piece of non-recyclable paper called a receipt, and we wave them off while only a few people still carefully pen their transactions into their checkbook.

But I think I miss touching money, holding it in my hands, and seeing that it is paper and metal. Perhaps I will start to go to the bank again on Saturdays and take out an envelope of crisp bills to bestow with care as my parents did.

***

Meredith-bio-YAH-1024x327

 

The cost of playing cowboy

Posted on by under Money & Place

“It’s like a resort for rich Christians who want to spend a week pretending to be cowboys.”

This was my standard explanation of Deer Valley Ranch when I told college friends where I had spent the summer working. There was really no better way to describe in a nutshell the wonderful yet bizarre place—especially from the perspective of someone like me, who had grown up solidly middle class, taking budget vacations that involved sleeping in a tent and eating Mom-made sandwiches at scenic overlooks.

My upbringing in the Midwest also fueled my fascination with Deer Valley Ranch. While several of my friends lived on farms and had horses, no one seemed particularly intent on embracing the romantic charade of playing cowboy. Maybe Michigan’s wooded trails and country roads just didn’t provide the sort of Wild West backdrop necessary for getting in the cowboy mood.

18908034673_9961758d39_bDeer Valley Ranch, near Buena Vista Colorado, definitely has the right backdrop. The ranch is nestled in a range of mountains known as “the fourteeners,” with Mt. Princeton’s Chalk Cliffs rising dramatically behind the lodge and horse stables. The whole setting suggests the work of a talented stage crew under the direction of God (with a very large budget). The actors in our theatre were the staff—the other Christian college students and I, in our Wranglers and cowboy boots and hats—and our drama relied on “breaking the third wall” by inviting  guests to participate in the action.

We took the cowboy narrative pretty far down the trail at Deer Valley. I quickly learned it was what the guests were paying for—good-clean-Christian-family-cowboy-fun. Each week started off with an all-ranch hymn-sing led by Cowboy Dave, an event that served to set the tone and to begin drawing guests together with their common beliefs (not to mention their shared vacation proclivities).

Those of us working as servers in the dining room completed our Wranglers-and-cowboy-boots costumes with a red or navy gingham checked shirt and a contrasting bandana around our necks. We carried large trays filled with plates of authentic Western food, like beef brisket and whole trout. (Sometimes the cook prepared the very fish that had been caught earlier in the day by the guests. You have to pay good money to catch your own dinner.)

Square dance nights on the deck called for full staff participation. It was our job to urge hesitant guests out onto the dance floor unders the sky to learn the line dance moves, or to succumb to the lively two-stepping spins of an eager old cowboy in need of a partner.

4812123590_c50fae710e_zBut the Cowboy Breakfast was the Deer Valley act that topped all others. A couple of times a week a handful of staff got up at the crack of dawn to travel off-road in an ancient pickup truck to our wilderness breakfast site. Once there, we started a cooking fire, letting it get nice and hot before adding cast iron skillets of bacon, to be joined later by scrambled eggs and grits. Big pots of “cowboy coffee” were added to the grate, ready to pour into tin cups when the guests arrived.

Even at the end of my summer at the ranch I still fought a bemused smile when Cowboy Dave and his crew came rounding the bend on their horses, each rider in full cowboy attire. We greeted them with a boisterous “Good mornin’!” as they dismounted and walked over on stiff bow-legs to grab a tin cup and load up a plate at the fire.

How could I not inwardly chuckle as I slopped grits on someone’s plate and Cowboy Dave swung his guitar around from its perch on his back to begin playing suitably-mournful cowboy songs? The guests were sore, cold, and sleepy after getting up before the sun to sit too long in the saddle. The plates I spooned grits onto weren’t those nice, speckled blue enamel sets you buy at camping stores—they were dented dull grey metal. And the coffee we served was full of grounds. As someone who had grown up roughing it on the cheap, I found plenty of irony in people spending significant sums on such an experience.

But there were those incredible mountains reaching up behind the guests as they crunched into another piece of bacon and their horses munched on some feed nearby.  And I had to admit, my feet felt good in my cowboy boots, and there was something energizing about a deep intake of that high-altitude air. I even began to understand that having things like shiny plates and gourmet coffee would ruin the charade these folks had paid good money for. And what’s any expensive vacation, after all, if not a charade to help us vacate reality for a handful of days?

*    *    *    *    *    *

Kristin bio YAH

Photo of Mt. Princeton’s Chalk Cliffs by Wongaboo. 

Cowboy and horse photo by Just Too Lazy. 

I Went to the Woods

Posted on by under Money & Place

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.” – Henry David Thoreau

“Put in a category for laundry money.”

“Done.”

“Ok, put in a category for candy!”

Dan looks at me sidewise. “Ok, done.” He types for a moment and voila, there it is, a category for candy.

“Just kidding,” I say.

“I know,” he says, already deleting it.

We nod at each other–the nod of agreement where we’re both saying ok, we are doing a budget. Not just any budget, but a balls-to-the-wall zero-based budget where every single dollar, cent, and haypenny needs accounting for. In other words, goodbye gum, nice lotion, and comic books–basically all stuff I buy on a whim. There’s no “Whim” category and if there was it wouldn’t be big enough. Hence our need for a budget.

We recently bought a monthly subscription to “You Need a Budget” or YNAB for short. And we’ll be taking Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University class starting this week. It’s our second time through.

You see, we’ve both got a little history with debt. Student loans, credit cards, mortgages: we are like most others in our age group in the present day. We have carried some debt of one form or another since we were eighteen.

Five years ago I lived in a cabin in the woods. It wasn’t strictly a cabin but it was in the woods near a lake. I’d been reading Walden and when the cabin fell into my lap, I said yes without hesitation. With Thoreau-ian enthusiasm for living deliberately, to “drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms,” I signed the lease. I wanted and needed to write alone. I was done with roommates (I thought) and their aggressive pint-sized dogs and the ensuing drama. Little did I realize that I had plenty of drama inside. A lot of it had to do with money. Not very Thoreau-like, I’m afraid.

cabin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I lived there a month and then calmed down a bit. I was lonely and a little stressed out. Especially when I saw the second month’s rent looming ahead. My paycheck, doled out weekly, couldn’t come fast enough.

“How have I already spent my paycheck before it’s in the bank?” I wondered one Wednesday afternoon. I counted out grocery money and rent and saw to my dismay that there was no way I’d be able to meet my friends for sushi that Friday night as planned.

I went anyway.

I paid my rent. Then to my surprise, my student loan was due the second week, which I’d forgotten about. I stood in the doorway of my cabin in the woods and surveyed my domain–my prohibitively expensive domain.

“What have I done?” I murmured. What would Thoreau have done? Here I was, slap up against my reality. I could not pay my rent and be a social animal, buying expensive lotion, candy, and comic books. I had already pulled out my credit card, dusty from disuse, to pay for fun extras. I wanted a Thoreau-ian existence of deliberate living, but what a cost. My mind went frantically between ideas of self-imposed isolation or doing as I liked and racking up debt.

In the end, I opened up a second checking account and divided my rent in quarters for each of the four paychecks in the month. It was the only way I knew how to insure the total amount. I was justifiably horrified at my credit card statements and chopped up my card the third month of cabin life and tried to live slim thereafter.

I couldn’t go to every concert or sushi date available. I stayed home and read, or walked down to the lake, or invited my friends over. I went on a few sushi dates of course, and sweated through the ensuing weeks til my rent was due. I soon learned I was not like Thoreau. Deliberate living was hard and I wanted and needed friends to soften it. My cabin became a retreat of sorts. My friends and I sat on the floor around the fireplace, talking and drinking cheap wine. I got very little writing done but it hardly mattered. At the time, nothing tasted so good as wine and friends around the fire.

I’m still a renter. I will be for a while yet. With the help of zero-budgeting and YNAB, Dan and I are (literally)  paying for our past debts, incurred both out of necessity and fun. But, we can pay our rent. The rest is hard work and sacrifice.

Elena bio YAH

It’s Just Money, Right?

Posted on by under Money & Place

I type in the web address, username and password. And then I cringe, panic, calm down, breathe.

“It’s just money,” I repeat as I wonder how to make it grow on trees, “It’s just money, and someday we’ll have more of it.”

Maybe. Someday. But not today. Today I have to pay the credit card bill. Tomorrow the mortgage; the next day the gas bill. Why did the price of internet go up? Every month is a scramble to make the numbers work, and sometimes I wonder if we’ll ever leave this place.

I would really like to leave this place, this financial ledge where our income and expenses are the same number. I would like a place to rest, somewhere we could breathe easy, but I can’t seem to find it. We’re too busy roping our family to the cliff every month.

****

There have been times that I have had a plan. The remnants of best-laid intentions litter my file cabinet–the bright pink budgeting folder I found at Target; the envelopes that held cash for entertainment, groceries, lattes. I create glorious systems that last, on average, for two to three months.

Then life happens. I stop collecting receipts. The car breaks down. I need new contact lenses the same month everyone gets strep throat. Christmas comes again.

And I wonder: does anyone stay on top of this? But, like most people, I don’t talk about money, except in the most generic terms. I just assume that everyone else has found a system that works for them, that they have way more discipline than we do, and that we are unique in our precarious–and somehow, deserved–position.   

****

Forget organization. The problem is either expenses or income–and since we hardly ever eat out  and buy our clothes at the Goodwill–my money (though not much of it) is on income.

It was only a few years back that I first heard the term “overeducated and underemployed,” and I immediately recognized myself and most of my close friends. At that time six of us–myself, my husband and our four closest neighbor-friends–held five master’s degrees and earned less than $100,000. Combined.

So, mostly, we were paying our student loans.

If I sound like I’m whining, I am. And I shouldn’t be–our salaries still made us some of the richest people on our block. We were not poor, and our predicament was not entirely an accident, rather, our choices had paved the way to an uneasy middle-class existence. We had stay-at-home moms and dads among our number who cleaned houses, pulled espresso shots, sold bikes, and shipped greeting cards to retain flexible schedules. All three of our “professional class” worked for nonprofits, which did not, let’s say, provide lucrative compensation packages.

We had made our cliff-ledges, and now we had to lie on them.

love people“Money isn’t everything” we said in our twenties as we chose the work that seemed most meaningful.

“We can make this work,” we said in our early thirties. Our kids were young then, and hand-me-downs abundant. Student loans went to forbearance. New couches were postponed. We bought each other socks and underwear for birthdays, cementing our identities as boring grown-ups.

“There are numbers that aren’t being counted,” we said, “like hours with our kids, the positive impact we are making on other people’s lives, the satisfaction… um, index… of an important job well done.”

And it’s all true. And it’s all worth it. But now somehow, as I tip toward my forties and realize that $3.62 doesn’t constitute a savings account, what seemed exciting and counter-cultural starts to feel irresponsible, and–well, exhausting.

I start to realize that financial instability is a place that I may never leave.

My husband says that this thought is completely depressing. “It’s not that hard,” he says, “We just get you a better job, and make some investments.” I give him an extended eye roll. Whatever–as if it’s that easy.

We’re in the kitchen, and he is shaking out peppercorns from a bulk container and chopping garlic from the backyard, preparing veal shanks that were cast-offs from our church’s foodbank. “I’m not sure how I feel about eating veal, even free veal,” I tell him, but it smells amazing. It’s Saturday morning and we have nowhere to go, the cats are posted by the woodstove, and the kids are outside playing in the snow.

Yesterday I cut our monthly expenses again, found a bit more freelance work, and directed some auto deposits to our savings account. Today I’m writing a story to meet a deadline for a blog that pays me nothing, and yet generates a different kind of abundance. It’s a balancing act I know well, and that’s a good thing–as I may be doing it for the next fifty years.

“Oh well,” I think as I prepare the hot chocolate that will soon be required. The rich smell of stew fills the bright kitchen. And we have everything we need.

At least there’s a nice view from this ledge.

* * * * *

jen bio YAH

A note about the photo: After I had finished this piece I was dropping my six-year-old off at school and saw this paper on her locker, a remnant of a MLK Day assignment. I asked her about the picture, and she said that it shows that love weighs more than money.

Next time I’ll let her write the post.  

 

A Fit of Adolescence

Posted on by under Laughter and Place

When I was twelve I began my confirmation into the church. In a class with eight other twelve-year-olds, we met on Tuesday afternoons for a couple of hours with the pastor. We stayed in a room decorated with mulberry, rust, and pine green accents. It was cold and always smelled of a craft store with its synthetic flowery stiffness, fake frosted berries in vases, and mini sepia portraits of past ministers. They sat in rigid chairs, unsmiling, staring at us from the past, some of them with a wife in a frilly blouses standing behind them. “Behold us,” their eyes seemed to say, “for we are the church.”

bible-study-1312533-1280x960The eight of us sat at a conference table directly under the overhead lights while Pastor Ahearn presided at the head. We read large portions of the Psalms each week, along with post-Reformation church history (no-one cared about pre-Reformation history for some reason), and learned rudimentary apologetics.

There were eight of us and one pastor in the low room behind the sanctuary. As very young aspiring members of the church, we were talked to regularly about our attitudes, our compulsive eye-rolling, and our desire to grow up too fast. One Sunday School teacher told me she liked that I was a soft-spoken young lady and the soft speech of women was a virtue in this day and age. I couldn’t for the life of me explain the ire that rose up in me.

“Thanks,” I said and gave her a tight smile. I ran off to the women’s bathroom with my friends so we could laugh our heads off at being “soft-spoken.”

It’s likely we deserved every talking-to that came our way.

Confirmation was always on the verge of a disaster. Our gentle and generally unflappable Pastor Ahearn was probably least suited to give lessons to a group of half-grown children who’d been equally preparing for adult faith and sarcasm.

As it was, we cracked.

* * * * *

After two and a half hours of Bible and church history on an afternoon in late January we stood up, stretched and rubbed our eyes, and went to stand in a circle with the other confirmands and Paster Ahearn. We bowed our heads as Pastor Ahearn extended his hands to a kid on either side of him. He motioned for the rest of us to do the same. We grasped each other’s hands and bowed our heads while the pastor began: “Gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you for…”

With that first sentence a strange thing happened. Someone snorted. There was a split second of silence. Pastor Ahearn resumed his prayer–”We thank You for each fine young woman and fine young man in this room”–but it was too late. The giggles had descended. After a few seconds I was horrified to find I couldn’t stop. None of us could. I opened my eyes and encountered the watery gaze of my peers, puffing and blowing to stop more giggles from erupting. I shut my eyes fast. The pastor went on relentlessly and so did we. “And we thank You for bringing each young person here to study every week in preparation for their confirmation…”

young-girl-4-1251377The praying went on.We giggled on. If the ground had opened up to swallow all of us, I would not have welcomed it more. Tears ran down my face. I opened one eye. My friends’ faces were teary and bloated. I sighed heavily through my giggles.

“Amen,” he intoned.

The giggles vanished. We dropped our hands and stared at one another with red-rimmed eyes. Pastor Ahearn smiled vaguely at us and wished us a good week and reminded us about our homework on Martin Luther’s 95 Theses.

Then we all filed out and into the dark parking lot where our parents were waiting in their cars for us. 

Elena bio YAH

The Apprentices

Posted on by under Laughter and Place

The peanut-gallery chatter was almost as entertaining as the 1970s-era slide show my dad was projecting on the wall. Not that I was surprised—I‘d expect nothing less when the Tennants and Sysyns got together.

Our two families have been spending time together since before my life began, but the regularity dipped considerably when us four kids grew up and started moving off on our own. Those stretches of years and miles made this particular reunion, in July 2015, especially epic: 14 of us from Illinois, Michigan, Arizona, and Oregon were gathered at a house on the Oregon coast. Our group represented three generations of two families: my dad’s and “Uncle” Pete’s, my dad’s best friend from college.

In preparation for the reunion, my dad—forever the obsessive photographer—had scanned five decades of slides to share. We watched the greatly-anticipated show our last night together.

photo 2 (2)The early 70s photos showcased my dad and Uncle Pete as beat-poet wannabes. Their weary faces suggested all-nighters spent drinking wine and listening to Miles Davis, scrawling verses in composition books and debating philosophy. But the scene around them tells the real story: four kids under the age of five, joining miniature forces to raise full-sized havoc. As adult versions of those kids, we laughed at the scene our little selves had created in the cramped apartment. Those poor beat poets had no idea what had hit them.

*  *  *  *  *

My beautiful picture

Pete (perhaps working on lyrics to the opera my dad scored).

Dad and Uncle Pete lived next door as college freshmen. Their love for the arts and their well-matched senses of humor sealed their friendship from the beginning, and they lost no time conjuring up the epic pranks they would one day tell their children about (again and again).

There was the time, for instance, when they changed the alarm clock of their dorm’s earliest riser, who had taken on the responsibility of pounding on everyone’s doors up and down the hall each morning to ensure no one overslept.

“You should have seen the guys all coming out of their rooms at three in the morning, ready to pummel poor George Lowe,” my Dad would say, hardly able to get through the telling of the story due to the laughter that erupted from within as he recalled the scene.

When my dad finds something really funny, he laughs in an extreme, choked up way, as if he’s on the verge of crying. My brother and I agree that watching Dad laugh is often more funny than whatever it is he’s laughing at.

The telling of the Alarm Clock Story was often paired with other classics, like the Co-ed Visiting Hours Story, about the time when my dad and a couple other guys on the floor managed to “lock” Pete alone in his dorm room during the university’s first ever co-ed open house.

“He missed the whole thing. We never heard the end of that,” Dad would say, his shaking shoulders indicating a level of laughter that was so extreme it was almost silent.

Not surprisingly, the hilarity at the core of Dad and Pete’s friendship inspired laughter and eye-rolling in the women who eventually married them, which later spilled over into our regular family gatherings each spring break, New Year’s Eve, and summer.

Soon us kids had a whole new generation of funny stories to recall together, from the dance routine we choreographed to the Xanadu album (one of my favorite gifts that Christmas), to the time our families met at a no-nonsense campground in Ohio late one night, unknowingly setting up our enormous shared tent terrifyingly close to train tracks. The rumbling and whistling of the train that woke us up in the dead of night set a new standard for a “rude awakening.”

*  *  *  *  *

The Epic Reunion slideshow continued, shifting from photos of busy toddlers and tired parents into a series of photos Dad and Pete staged for the singular purpose of annoying and alarming our mothers.

My beautiful picture

“Billy” on the brink of disaster.

“Look, there’s the time Billy almost fell into that canyon,” Uncle Pete said, pointing at the projected image of my brother’s eyes peeking over a stone ledge, apparently hanging on for dear life with his fingernails. “We were so relieved we made it back with him alive” Pete added in a stage whisper, ”We never would have heard the end of it from your mothers.”

Uncle Pete is the master of the elaborate aside, holding one hand flat along the edge of his mouth as if trying to keep what he’s saying from a select person or two. And my dad is the master of egging Pete on.

Together, they’re masters of laughter, and as the slideshow came to an end, I realized my brother and cousins and I have been their apprentices. I looked over at the faces of my own daughters—the third generation of this heritage of hilarity—and felt satisfied that our reunion week with the Sysyns had served as a solid orientation in their own schooling of stories and silliness. May they grow into adults who fully grasp the value of friendship, traditions, and pure, uncontrollable laughter.

 

Laughter Gives Life

Posted on by under Laughter and Place

On the day before my mother-in-law’s move to an assisted living facility, I had to meet the nurse supervisor to discuss details of the transfer. When I walked into the unit, a petite woman I’ll call Sallie approached me dressed in stretchy maroon pants and matching knit blouse, with perfect hair and deep maroon lips. Sallie took one of my hands and asked me my name. Then, she motioned me to lower my head and put my ear close. lrs1656In a conspiratorial, low tone of voice, she informed me that she runs the place, so come to her for anything I need. Sallie disappeared for about ten minutes, then returned, making a beeline for me, and repeated her introduction. “I run the place,” she said in a loud whisper.

The wait was long; the nurse was in a meeting. I sat on a sofa in the well-appointed gathering area. Across from me, a group of four women were sitting in a circle conversing—or at least one of them was. I waved—as I am liable to do to strangers—and the talkative one waved back and asked if I was moving in. She paused, looked at me again, and giggled.

In the meantime, a skinny-as-a-rail lady with pigtails, a crooked gait, one sneaker on and one off, approached the group of ladies and asked, with impaired but intelligible speech, if anyone could help her tie her shoes. Every one of them looked at her like she was crazy, except for the outgoing one, “Dorothy,” who said she would, but she didn’t think she could get down low enough to do it.

I called over to the lady with pigtails and told her I would be happy to help. She walked over, repeating: “You are so nice. You are so, so nice.” I wanted to tell her that my time is coming fast to have my shoes tied for me. I thought about Peter, and the Lord’s prediction about his old age: …when you are old you will stretch out your hands and someone else will dress you…

She plopped down on the couch; gravity robbed her of a slow, graceful descent. I got down on my knees, because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get up if I bent over. I stretched the shoe she didn’t have on yet and got it about halfway on her foot. This was no Cinderella fit. While encouraging her to push her foot, I slipped a finger in the heel of the shoe. I took a deep breath to hide the pain of her heel pressing against my finger and the shoe, cutting off the circulation. She pushed her foot and I wiggled the shoe, sliding my finger out at the same time, and we did it. We got it on. I looked up. Her face was so close, our foreheads almost touched. She said thank-you with her eyes.

After tightening and lacing her shoestrings, I straightened up. “There you are,” I said. I silently thanked God, because he knew after weeks of stress what would fill up my empty well: Kneeling. Tying shoes. Smiling.

Dorothy came up and began talking a blue streak. She moved into the place one month ago and was eager to give me the low-down. “The food is good,” Dorothy exclaimed. She patted her belly like Winnie the Pooh.

At least five times, Dorothy told me a wonderful story about her farm, which was eight miles due east. She described cattle and chickens and the house she lived in alone for many years.

Dorothy’s face radiated mischief and joy. She said her family tells her that her memory is failing. She laughed: “Well, what do you ‘spect ? I am 87!” She walked toward one of the hallways. “I hope I can remember which room is mine. I’ve only been here ’bout a month.”  5907960975_de4c3564c8_z

Diminished mental faculties and physical deficits have not stopped the laughter. Dorothy found lots to laugh about. The lady in pigtails whose altered fine motor skills kept her from tying her shoes—smiled. Sallie enjoyed her job as greeter—the doorkeeper who served with purpose.

Theologian Karl Barth said: “Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.” I saw it that day. I felt it. And I laughed—not at them, but with them.

*****

Top right photo via Google Image, Creative Commons License

Lower left photo by Colin Gray, via Flickr, Creative Commons License

Lisa bio YAH

The Road to Urban Chain Restaurants Is Broad and Our Youth Group Took It

Posted on by under Laughter and Place

I wish I’d caught the name of the worst youth conference I’ve ever attended. Perhaps overlooking the event’s name serves as a clue of just how forgettable it was.

In my second year as a youth ministry volunteer at a rural church, a group of friends and I accompanied our youth pastor and a pack of twenty-five high school teens for a huge youth conference in downtown Indianapolis. The flat, straight, and narrow roads of the country gave way to the flat, straight, and wide roads of the city as our church van rumbled down the highway.

Our teens were chomping at the bit, and I’m pretty sure it had something to do with escaping the confines of their tiny rural communities for the endless possibilities offered in the big city.

open-road-2-1446566-638x444After settling in our hotel, we mobbed the city streets, stopping by toy stores and candy shops in the downtown mall. Once outside the confines of the church van where they pumped ska music non-stop, the kidswere hanging off of street signs, hopping over parking meters, and buying prank gifts for each other. They were restless to the point of being squirrelly, loud, and always on the brink of breaking a law.

We no doubt had a social hierarchy in the youth group, but in the cause of finding junk food and raising mayhem in the big city, they worked together like a single organism. As we settled into our seats at the conference, I heaved a sigh of relief. At least for the next hour or two, they couldn’t climb anything and had to remain in their seats.

Mind you, they kicked each other, tried to flip their chairs backwards by “accident,” and were surely the rowdiest segment of the audience. Aren’t speakers meant to drown all of that out? I imagined that we’d at least get a little bit of peace once the worship band kicked things off.

As it turned out, we were just hopping onto the broad path to mayhem.

I don’t know how anyone chooses a worship band for a conference, but I suspect a top prerequisite would be effectively relating to teenagers. These guys were hardly qualified to do the music at a pre-school birthday party.

Maybe Christian camp songs in Indiana are the kinds of things that you had to be there to get. I don’t know. They launched their campfire-worthy worship set (if we dare pay it the compliment of calling it a “set)” with a song that had an off-key chorus with the following line, “So the BUFFALO said to his BROTHER…”  It even had a series of truly embarrassing hand motions that were either buffalo horns or an attempt to signing for help.

Our kids were joining right in—ironically, of course. They were buffalos, they were sincere worship ballad singers, and they were very, very rowdy teens “on fire for the Lord.” They giggled and wiggled and waved their arms around during the whole set, doing spot on impressions of the hapless worship leaders who were clearly out of their depth. Sitting a row behind our kids with friends who were also chaperoning the trip, we made our own wisecracks as the songs spiraled into oblivion.

After the worship team shuffled off the stage, the tall, lanky speaker ambled up to the microphone, snapped it from the holder, and paced back and forth—doing the sort of thing I imagine he assumed youth speakers are supposed to do.

“Oh, no…” I thought.

The jokes and snickers started immediately from our group. I reasoned that it was OK because they made them at a very tasteful volume, hardly audible outside of our little corner.

And this speaker was really asking for it.

“Do you know what Goliath was like?” he started. “He was huuuuuuuge! He ate like 70 Big Macs for dinner and carried a sword that was heavier than a car!” Throughout this he mimicked each action: eating multiple Big Macs, carrying a massive sword, etc.

The Biblical exposition actually spiraled downward from there.

The youth pastor at our church had signed us up for the most dysfunctional youth event in America. We could even hear someone in the hallway ranting to an alleged organizer that he would never bring his teens back to this event.

None of this mattered all that much to our teens. Sure, they were bored out of their minds, even with their own running commentary as they popped Mentos to each other and made plans to drink the hotel room coffee that evening so they could watch TV all night.

Soon enough, they were parading back out to the street to hunt down candy shops and buy dinner at another chain restaurant that served salty American fare while they jammed straws up their noses and wore french fries like fangs.

They were in the city with their friends and relatively relaxed college students serving as their chaperones. What could be better? An off-beat conference was a small price to pay for that.

The world was a huge, straight, hilarious road stretching onward forever with ska music, construction cones serving as megaphones, and “kick me” signs to place on our youth pastor’s back. The worst worship band and conference speakers in the state of Indiana were just a convenient backdrop.

 

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Ed bio YAH