Question Number Two

2. How many brothers and sisters do you have? What are their names and birthdates? What do you remember about them from growing up?

There are four of us siblings in my family. I have an older sister, an older brother and a younger brother. My mom had a miscarriage between myself and my younger brother. She told me she was about 5 months pregnant when she miscarried. I never discussed this with my mother, but I think it's interesting that my four children were born in the same pattern as my siblings and I. My firstborn is a girl, my second is a boy, my third is a girl, then I had a miscarriage, and my youngest is a boy. Of course they're all grown up now.

My siblings and I were all named with "S" names. My sister is Sarah, my older brother is Scott, and my younger brother is Seth. We had a babysitter who occasionally struggled with our names. She tripped over our first names because they began with the same letter. It was like a tongue-twister. And then there was the barber who could never remember my little brother's name. He called him "Sid" or "Stu".

We were all children of the 50's except for Seth. Seth's age is the easiest for me to remember. All I have to do is add the decades. (Or subtract four from my age, which is shorter.)

I shared a room with Sarah for a couple of years when I was 6 or 7. She would make up bedtime stories to get me to go to sleep after the lights were turned out. My favorite was about Moosely and Chumley, a moose and a squirrel who were friends and lived together. (I detected a strong Bullwinkle influence.) Everything about the town they lived in had the word "moose" in it. For example, they would go shopping for groceries at the Supermooseket. I would get the giggles and I don't think it helped me go to sleep much. I used to beg her to tell them again. Not long after, I moved in to a room with my little brother, and we shared a room for about 5 or 6 years. I remember trying to tell him bedtime stories, but nothing topped Moosely and Chumley.

My brother Scott had amazing timing as a child. When I was four years old, my family moved from the Midwest to California. We drove all the way in a station wagon with my baby brother in a bassinet. When we stopped at one of several toll booths along the way, the man in the booth commented on Seth who was sound asleep. He teased Scott by asking, "Can I have your baby brother?" to which Scott replied: "No, but you can have my little sister." Ba-dum-bum.

I was very impressed with Scott because he knew the Cuban Peanut Vendor song: "In Cuba, every merry maid/Wakes up to this serenade: "Pea-nuts" (bum-ba-dum-ba-dum)/"Pea-nuts" (bum-ba-dum-ba-dum)/If there's no ending to this song/A million monkeys can't go wrong."  That kind of talent can't be learned. You either have it or you don't.

Music was always a big part of our lives when we were kids. One time Sarah and Scott took a big empty appliance box and decorated the outside to look like a jukebox. They cut a little slot for coins, then put me inside and told me to sing "Blue Moon". First they had to teach me the song. Every good jukebox should know their songs.

My little brother Seth and I spent most of our childhood together, whether it was riding in the way-back of the family's station wagons, watching Saturday morning cartoons, or sharing bunk beds. When I was 10, the neighborhood kids got together and put on a couple of extremely amateur "theatrical" plays in our garage. (Very off-off-off Broadway.) We wrote the plays, made the costumes, and our parents even let us hang curtains so we could change scenes. The first play had a Frankenstein's monster theme, and the second play revolved around a day in the life of the Peanuts cartoon characters, which were hugely popular then. We put black paper spots on Seth's footy pajamas and sat him on a card table for a dog house. He gave a stellar performance as Snoopy. That kid could emote.

Question Number One

1. When and where were you born? Did your parents ever share their memories with you about the day you were born?

I was born on the first day of Spring in the 50's, in a small hospital in a small Midwestern town. I believe the name of the doctor who delivered me was Sauer. I was born at 5:05 p.m., which sounds to me like a good time to get on a train and go somewhere. It was a Wednesday. Wednesday's child is full of woe, according to the nursery rhyme. That would be either "woe" or "Whoah!!", depending on what kind of day I was having. (Just kidding.)

I don't remember my parents sharing any memories about the day I was born. I was their third baby, so maybe they were fresh out of memories by then. (Just kidding again.) I do remember my mom telling me that she was given a general anesthetic during labor, so she was either asleep or pretty groggy by the time I arrived on the scene. Maybe that's why I like naps so much.

I do have a memory that involves the birth of MY first baby and Dr. Sauer's granddaughter. (No, not kidding.) She and my older brother went to a formal dance in high school together. (The granddaughter, not my baby.) I think her name was Shelly. (Again, not my baby.) Anyway, Shelly lived locally at the time. When I was a junior in high school, I was in a musical production of Jesus Christ Superstar at an Episcopal church in San Marino, and the guy's last name who played Judas was Weinmann. (Trust me, this all comes together eventually.) I went on a few dates with him after the show ended. Fast forward to 1981, and I was in the hospital after the birth of my first child. A nurse came in to see me and introduced herself as Shelly Weinmann. We chatted about our families and how she had gone to a dance with my brother, and how her grandfather had been my family's doctor. She was very nice. Then she told me that her husband played Judas in the same amateur production of Superstar as I did, and she was dating him while he was in the show and went to see him and really enjoyed our performance. Not sure if we were all dating each other at the same time, but she did say her husband remembered me. (Now is when I start singing "The Circle of Life".)

The Beginning

I became a Christian when I was 15. I don't remember the date I made this decision, so I have chosen October of 1971 as a "guestimate". I have no idea if that's right or not, but I think it was in the Fall and it was definitely during my sophomore year in high school.

I grew up with my family attending Sunday School and going to church, but I never cracked open the Bibles I got from my Sunday School classes. You had to be in a certain grade in school to get a Bible. And at Christmas, we got a different piece of the Nativity scene each year. One year it was a sheep, the next it was a donkey, the next it was Mary, until you had the whole set. For me, the Bible was a reference book; something you were supposed to have but not actually read.

In my sophomore year of high school, I made friends with a girl named Ruth. We spent a lot of time together during the summer, going to the beach and hanging out. She brought her Bible with her to the beach one day, and I was surprised at how effortlessly she opened it and read from it. I was so intrigued. It was like a V8 Vegetable Juice moment. The Bible stories I was told when I was little, and the stories about Jesus, were treated like they were relevant for today. She invited me to the weekly high school youth group bible study at a church in Alhambra, and I followed. I had never heard Jesus or the Gospel preached like that before.

It was during the Jesus Movement of the late 60's and early 70's. Jesus felt so reachable. He looked like a hippie and he taught about peace. And he stood up against the Religious Establishment of his day. And he cared. He went to the cross for me and died for my sins. I was thrilled that the Jesus from my childhood who loved everybody was somebody I could now cling to. I bought a new Bible and wrote this phrase in it: "The only one who won't love somebody else more than you is Jesus." That was super important to me. I believed I was low man on the totem pole in life, at home and at school. Jesus understood. Finally somebody understood. I read the Bible and I tried to be "good".

I thought the high school youth group was supposed to be like Shangri-La (my exact thoughts), a perfect place where everybody accepted everybody else because, of course, Jesus accepted everybody. I thought nobody would care about my social status and my shy, awkward ways. What I didn't realize was that the high school church group was full of cliques and jocks and cheerleaders and wannabees, just like school was. Imperfect, immature people, just like me. And I got treated in the church group just like I got treated at school. Ruth was beautiful and outgoing, and the guys naturally gravitated towards her and ignored me, just like at school. Other girls seemed to want to get to know her and bypass me, just like at school. And I got tongue-tied around people and felt like an idiot, just like at school. Nothing was any different. My expectations that Christians would want to be nice to me and get to know me weren't met. I began to believe that I was better off with my non-Christian friends at school because at least they didn't pretend to be something they weren't.

Eventually I stopped going to youth group. I became very disenchanted with the whole Christian scene. Once, a group of us had piled in to the youth pastor's car to go somewhere, and the car wouldn't start, even after several attempts. So we all prayed. The car never started, so we got out and walked. Praying seemed pretty stupid to me if you weren't going to get any help. At the same time, Ruth had been dating another youth pastor, who began pressuring Ruth to have a more physical relationship with him. She left the group saying that Christians shouldn't act like that, especially pastors. And they shouldn't. But she decided she was never going back. I finally left, too. I decided that it was impossible to be a Christian, because Christianity asks too much. My exact thoughts were: "Being a Christian is a physical impossibility." No more youth group or Jesus Movement for me.

When I got to college, I was attending church weekly with my parents but leaving it at that, just in case someone would think I was one of those Jesus Freaks. I saw Christians at school who carried their Bibles around with them, and I felt sorry for them. I heard the things other people were saying about them behind their backs, and I was embarrassed for them. Been there, done that, never again.

One day I was at my friend Sue's apartment between school and show choir rehearsal and I didn't have my car with me. Sue said she had a Bible study to go to before rehearsal, and asked me to go with her. I was stuck. I didn't have a way to decline without missing rehearsal. So I went with her. It was a group of people from our show choir and a few other students. I felt like the elephant in the room - the tribal heathen in the midst of the missionaries. But something was different this time. They weren't trying to be cool, or showing off, they were real. They talked about how living for Christ was the most natural thing in the world because it's what we were created to do. It didn't have to feel like hard work or a struggle to be "good enough". It was a relationship with Him, and it made all other relationships possible. The biggest difference was that they were obviously in love with Jesus. They admitted that they weren't perfect and they couldn't do life alone. They needed the Savior. Instead of wondering if everyone was going being nice to me, and judging people from a self-centered perspective, I realized I missed Jesus so much, and that there was so much more to know about Him.

One of the sticking points for me in my Christian infancy was the concept that Jesus is God. I believed he was only a man, just like anyone else. I was bothered by this constantly. It became a deal breaker for me. Either he was God, which I couldn't accept, or he was a man.

One of the people in the room at that fateful Bible study that Sue dragged me to was my future husband, Don. We began dating and I began trying to learn as much about Jesus from the Bible as I could. One day Don was driving me home after a date, and I asked him, out of the blue: "Was Jesus really God?"

He paused for a second, and his answer was: "Yes. And he still is."

I continued studying the deity of Christ in the Bible, reading what he had to say about himself as well as what the apostles and other people said, and when the light bulb finally went on, the puzzle pieces began to fall into place. The Jesus I had put my faith in in high school, the one who loves everybody, loves peace and confronted the Religious Establishment, has the power to change my life, forgive my sins, clean me up and make me his own, because he is fully God and fully man. And it's still true: "The only one who won't love somebody else more than you (or me) is Jesus."

Scary

Two years ago, during the first semester of my first year in the Guidance Office at the high school, one of my Student Peers said to me (with a hint of a smile on his face): "Mrs. Anderson, you scare Chinese people." (Our District demographic is 68% Asian.)

Me: "What?? What do you mean, I scare Chinese people??"

Steven: "When parents walk in the office, you're too much. You are too enthusiastic. Your eyes get real big. You say, 'HI!! HOW ARE YOU?? CAN I HELP YOU??' They don't like that. You need to talk softer. You scare them."

Fortunately, Steven is Chinese. I decided to scare him every day after that. With the hint of a smile on my face, of course.

Earthquake

Last night there was a 5.7 aftershock in So Cal close to the Mexico border at about 9:35 p.m. Tiffany felt it and told me so at once, but it had escaped my notice. Rex, the cat, with his superior feline sensitivity, slept peacefully beside me throughout, apparently ignoring the fact that he was supposed to alert me to seismic occurances such as this. I was under the impression (misplaced, in this case) that animals have an innate ability to anticipate movement along the San Andreas Fault, causing them to exhibit bizarre behaviours before the onset of an earthquake, which would then result in the saving of many lives, their master's in particular.

Lassie, after all, did tell someone whenever Timmy was in the well, earthquake or not.

Seriously, Rex. You could have at least opened one eye and checked to make sure I was okay.

Every Day The Same

This is going to take a bit of back story.

When I was little we had a babysitter that we called Mrs. Hughes. Her name was Hazel and her husband was Charlie and they lived half a block walking distance from our house in San Gabriel. I was four years old when we moved to California and my baby brother Seth was just a few weeks old, and by the time he was about a year old he would cry every time he saw her because he knew that meant my parents were going somewhere.

My maternal grandparents lived back in Illinois and my paternal grandparents passed away before I was born, so Mrs. Hughes became kind of like my grandmother. To me it seemed like she spent an awful lot of time at our house, and to my baby brother it must have seemed like an eternity. She became like more of a family member than a babysitter. She would take care of us at night if my parents went out, and pretty soon she would be in the house after I came home from school doing the ironing or the dishes if my mom had appointments or shopping to do. The smell of ironing (that hot metal-on-cotton smell) still reminds me of her. She also baked a lot of banana bread. If I see bananas in the bowl becoming overripe, I think of Mrs. Hughes.

Mrs. Hughes taught me how to iron handkerchiefs and pillow cases (my personal chore) and how to embroider tea towels. She taught us kids how to play card games with strange names to the ears of a child who was used to "Go Fish" or "Crazy Eights" (like "Bikini", "Spit", and her favorite, "Canasta"), and then she thoroughly enjoyed playing with us, even when we grew old enough to start beating her. She was very competitive for and old lady. She loved the Dodgers and Roller Derby and if she was over at night while my parents were gone and the Roller Derby was on, she would tune in and watch. She loved those Thunderbirds. Mrs. Hughes was no wimp.

Mrs. Hughes always wore support stockings with the ropey-looking black seam up the back of the leg, and those chunky-heeled lace-up shoes that old ladies always seemed to wear back in those days. I rarely saw her wearing anything other than a flowery button-up house dress and a full-body kitchen apron with pockets. She carried a carpet-bag and always brought us suckers (either See's suckers or something smaller and slightly inferior called Dum-Dums). She wore glasses which always slid down her nose, and a hairnet. When I was little I thought her middle was made of concrete, because when you gave her a hug the corset she wore made her seem solid as a rock around the midriff.

Our relationship with Mrs. Hughes continued all through my growing up years, even when we moved to Goleta for three years. When my mom was in the hospital for surgery, my dad brought Mrs. Hughes up for a week or so to take care of us. By the time we moved back to San Gabriel, we were older, especially my older sister Sarah who could drive by then. She became Mrs. Hughes' chauffeur of sorts, because Mrs. Hughes didn't drive, and we were closer in proximity than her family for taking her to doctor's appointments or for running errands. Pretty soon my older brother Scott was taking her places too, and then as each of them grew up and moved out, it became my turn.

Taking Mrs. Hughes on an errand was an experience that made your insides crawl, especially for a teenager. I remember driving her to Perveller's Drug Store to pick up a few things, and being mortified when she asked the cute guy behind the counter to help her find the Kaopectate. As much as I loved Mrs. Hughes, my teenage priorities didn't align with being her taxi service, and I soon came to dread her frequent phone calls.

One afternoon before I turned 18, Mrs. Hughes called me for a ride to her doctor. She hadn't been feeling well lately, and he told her to come in. I had been asleep on the couch when her phone call woke me up. I told her no, I couldn't take her because I was taking a nap. She said that was okay, she would call someone else. She called back a few minutes later to tell me that she had found a ride and wouldn't need me. I said goodbye and hung up the phone and that was that. I felt slightly annoyed, and slightly guilty, but not enough to keep me from continuing my nap.

Mrs. Hughes was having heart problems and the doctor admitted her to the hospital. Over the next couple of days, I broke up with my boyfriend of two years, and was looking forward to telling Mrs. Hughes all about it when she got home. She had been telling me that he wasn't good enough for me and there were "other fish in the sea", so I knew she would be interested in hearing all about it. My birthday came and went, and maybe in my teenage selfishness I couldn't see what other people saw, because when Mrs. Hughes had a heart attack and passed away without ever coming home, it hit me as quite a surprise.

A couple of days after my birthday I received a birthday card in the mail from Mrs. Hughes. It was postmarked the day she died, so when it arrived she was already gone. Here she had been like a grandma to me, and had even been thinking of me in the hospital, and I couldn't even get up off of the couch and take her to the doctor. My last words to her had been that I wouldn't help her. It was pretty shattering, but I brushed it off. We attended her funeral and went to her graveside for her burial. I was kind of bewildered at the way I had treated her, and I didn't really want to think about it.

Fast-forward to the 1990's. Over the years I had collected my past failures and screw-ups and sins and built them up like little logs in a Jenga tower. I was under siege from spiritual warfare of major proportions and I was drowning in self-loathing. I was haunted by the idea that I should go to Mrs. Hughes' gravesite to talk to her and ask her for forgiveness. I was in counseling at the time, and was told that my notion was actually a helpful tool he thought could help break the log jam of unforgiveness in my life. I decided to give it a try and planned on the nearest holiday, Memorial Day, to make the pilgrimage.

The day came and I was sure I had made a mistake in judgement. It seemed the silliest idea ever. I was doing the dishes, very slowly - putting off the inevitable as long as possible - and listening to a Wynan's Brothers' tape. The song that was playing was "Every Day The Same" - a song about heaven.

"Every day the same
I'm going
To the city of the place
Called Heaven"

I eventually finished the dishes and, with much prodding from Don, left for Rose Hills cemetery. I had no idea where her plot was, and was hoping there would be someone there who could tell me. I stopped at the local grocery store first and went to their floral section to buy some roses - for some reason the only color they had was white. I bought the white roses and a small card and was off. On the way there, I prayed that I could have some privacy while I was doing what I intended to do. If there were people around, no way - I couldn't bring myself to talk to a grave marker all by myself like some nutter. I got off the 605 freeway, wound around to the cemetery entrance and pulled into the left-hand lane to turn up the drive, when directly across from me turning right into the same drive was the Channel 7 Eyewitness News Van. So much for my desire for privacy. Why had I picked Memorial Day?

I parked in the tiny parking lot at the Welcome Center and walked up a grassy incline to a small set-up with a few tables where people were waiting in a short line to talk to some Rose Hills associates. I got in line and when it was my turn I told the lady who I was looking for and the approximate date of her death. She picked up the phone in front of her and called in the information, wrote some instructions down on a cemetery map, and handed me the directions. I felt kind of numb, and must have looked like I was totally lost. I took the directions and made my way back to where my car was parked. I had to wait at a curb for a few cars to pass before I could get to mine, and as I waited a large, old, four-door Chevy with the windows rolled down pulled up and waited in the car line right in front of me. While I hovered there mulling over my strange task at hand, I heard music playing from the stereo inside the Chevy. I stood and listened, stunned.

"Every day the same
I'm going
To the city of the place
Called Heaven"

Do angels drive low-riders? I wanted to lean over and peek in the window to check the guy for wings. He eventually drove away and I moved in a dreamlike state to my car. There was no turning back now.

I followed the map and drove to the outlined location one more signal down Workman Mill Road, across to a stretch of the cemetery that continued below the hill. The narrow road continued around between expansive patches of green lawn, and I parked right at the edge of a grassy area and sat there, giving myself a pep talk. All I could remember from the day of her funeral was being outside the chapel after the service, and standing at the graveside, at a curve in a road with a few trees sparsely placed. I remembered that her plot was close-ish to the road, but that was it. I wasn't even sure if my memory was correct. I finally got out of the car and approached the area outlined on the map, wishing there was an "X" to mark the spot, when I spotted the trees and the curve in the road just as I had remembered them. I walked back and forth, up and down the aisles of grave markers in earnest, reading names and searching for hers. I couldn't find her name anywhere and started to get discouraged. I was sure that I had moved too far away from the road, and wondered if maybe she wasn't here after all. It was when I turned to head back to the car and leave that I found her.

Thankfully I was alone just as I had prayed. Her plot was right next to her beloved Charlie's. I sat down on the grass and brushed some leaves off her marker. It had her name written and dates of birth and death, and some inscription about always taking care of others. It wasn't hard to start talking to her; actually it was much easier than I thought. I sat cross-legged on the grass and told her everything - how sorry I was, how horrible I felt, how I wished I had been there for her. I thanked her for the birthday card. I told her about my husband and family, and that I wished she could meet them. I told her TONS of stuff. It felt like a few minutes, but it was really hours. I remembered there being a picture of Jesus in the hallway of her house - that famous portrait in brown tones of an Anglo-European Jesus with a sad face and long brown hair. I told her that I hoped that meant I would see her someday, too. I talked to her like she was there, but I knew she really wasn't. I cried a lot, too.

When I felt emotionally tired and like I couldn't cry another tear, I went to my car and got a magazine. I knew I should go home but I didn't want to leave. I sat under a nearby tree and read the magazine from cover to cover. It was a nice day and there was a cool breeze, and I was still pretty much all by myself so I didn't feel a need to hurry. Don told me to take as much time as I needed, and I was grateful for the opportunity to take total advantage of his generous offer.

Eventually I finished my magazine and felt the need to get back home. I got my white roses from the car and placed them on her marker. I was walking slowly back to my car when a light breeze kicked up and blew a white envelope across my path. It was the size of a greeting card and it tumbled end-to-end in a cartwheel for a few feet before it stopped. I hadn't seen it on the grass before. Curiosity got the better of me and I went and picked it up. On the outside was written "Grandma Hazel" in cursive.

Now, my mama taught me not to open other people's mail, but this was too much to resist. It was as if the card had tumbled from out of "nowhere", because it hadn't been near the marker that I could see and nobody had brought it while I was there. I opened the envelope and a Mother's Day card was inside. I opened it (again, sorry Mom) and saw the inside and back of the card covered in handwriting.

The writer wrote about how she was 17 and wished she had known Grandma Hazel and Grandpa Charlie, because everyone said how wonderful they were. She even mentioned wishing she could have played cards with Grandma Hazel. She said what a character everyone said Grandma was, and even though she didn't get to meet her, she wanted Grandma to know that she loved her. It was signed "Jenny".

I was dumbstruck. Again. With awe and reverence I placed the card back on Mrs. Hughes' marker next to my flowers. I got in my car and drove away, feeling amazingly blessed for having known Mrs. Hughes when her granddaughter hadn't even had the chance. Her granddaughter Jenny was the same age I had been when Mrs. Hughes died. It was too much to take in all at once.

I thought about my visit to Rose Hills almost constantly the week after that. The kids were relatively little at the time (Amanda was about 10 or 11). We had recently moved into my father-in-law's house, and still had a lot of things stored in the garage. The kids asked me if they could go out to the garage and each bring in a box of their toys to play with, and I said okay. I remember sitting on the edge of my bed when Amanda returned a few minutes later, carrying a large box. She brought it to me and said, "I think these things are yours."

I opened the box flaps and looked inside. On top of the contents was a large manila envelope filled with old papers and letters. There was a letter my dad had written to me when I was 15 and away at camp, and a letter Mrs. Hughes had written to me that same summer. But the one that was the most remarkable of all was an envelope with the postmark dated two days after my birthday, 1974. It was the birthday card from Mrs. Hughes.

I still keep it in my nightstand beside my bed.

That week was the beginning of the healing of many emotional scars. It was as if the first Jenga peg had been removed, and over the next few years the rest would be pulled one by one until the tower collapsed and the stronghold was broken. I realized that week that if God wanted to make the effort to touch someone like me, sending songs about Jesus playing from a Chevy stereo and messages from a granddaughter I'd never met who didn't know the impact her words would have on me, then I needed to give Him my baggage and trust Him. I guess he knows I'm a drama queen, and would appreciate the theatrics. But isn't He just so cool?

"Goodbye House, I'm going to . . . "

Our niece Abigail arrived this morning from Missouri! It's great to have her here. So of course the first place we had to take her, straight from the airport, was - Twohey's! I think it was a pretty selfish decision, actually. Other than the fact that my family grew up going to Twohey's for lunch almost every Sunday after church, and it's one of my favorite greasy spoon eateries, the restaurant itself is pretty unremarkable. (Except for their pancakes, hot fudge sundaes, onion rings and the Number 2 Hamburger with cheese, that is.) One gastronomical landmark down, many to go!

If we're not careful, this trip will turn into a week-long foodfest. We had In-N-Out burgers for dinner. Having a relative in town is lovely!!