GrandMae's Dictionary . . .

Recently I met a woman on her ONE HUNDRED AND THIRD birthday!  103.  That is a big number.  She was beautiful and gentle and had a quiet wisdom that matched perfectly with her spunky personality.  I'm glad to have met her, and I couldn't resist asking her (what, to me, was) the obvious question.  I had to ask.

What's the secret?  What's the trick?  Someone who lives one hundred and three years must have the manual for a secret formula.

Her lips curled up in a sneaky smile, she clapped her soft hands together and peered over at me - Secret?  What's the secret?  Oh, there's no secret.  I wish I had had a few more moments with her, though, because the child-like, sly smirk on her face made me think she had more to say.  She had some secrets.  I hope we get to talk again.

That conversation has had me thinking.  From time to time, I find myself pondering my own question - wondering to myself what the secrets are.  We probably all know them somewhere deep inside.  I guess the secret is allowing yourself to get to them, to burst through all of the busyness and flotsam and jetsam of these crazy lives of ours to see the obvious.

One secret keeps burbling up in my mind; and for me, it is symbolized by the picture of a great big dictionary in a warm home I used to know well.  I believe - no, I think I KNOW - that one of the secrets is to stay curious, to keep wondering and I hold in my mind the clear picture of someone I've known who wondered and asked until her last days.

Once we had the sweetest of neighbors.  Her name was Mae and she was married to Jimmy and years ago we luckily landed next door to them.  As we started a family, they quickly became Grandmae and GrandJimmy and they were delights.  Our lives are better for having known them.  I could write post after post about them, about what they taught me, but today I remember Grandmae's dictionary and consider how it was one of the physical manifestations of a life well-lived for a long, long time.  It was living proof of one of her secrets, I just know.

The dictionary was one of those great, big, chunky ones; the kind you see in the library, always opened to a page close to the middle so the chance to find something new is always awaiting the right person.  There were signs on the book's edges that were evidence that once each page was framed in gold and its pages were curled in just the right amount, to let you know that each and every page had been attended to, had been studied.  It sat on Mae's 'porch', a bright room at the back of her house that had long ago been a porch but years ago had been converted to a comfy den.  The dictionary laid atop a table at the perfect height, just under a great big window to the back yard and its old hardwoods and memories.

Just having the book was not her secret.  The book was grand and majestic in its own right, to be sure, but it was its aid to a life lived out that made it special.  It was its role in her days that I remember, that I draw on when I'm being truly alive.  It was how she used it that made it special.  

I doubt there was ever a time I spent in her home when she didn't refer to the grand ole' book.  I can see her now, jumping up from her perch to look up the meaning of a word, to figure out how to explain something in our conversation.  That was one of her secrets, I believe.  She kept wondering, asking and jumping up to find the answers.  I'd love to know the number of times her sweet hands held that book, the times that great mind was filled a bit more with some new, juicy bit of knowledge.  That would be  a big number, to be sure.

I won't see her grasp those worn, metallic-edged pages again, but I've got a perfectly clear picture in my head.  I carry it with me wherever I go, and I remember to keep wondering.  That has to be one of the secrets.  I just know it.

Have a pancake race and party on . . .

Shrove Tuesday greetings to you all, friends.  For those of us observing the Christian calendar, today is the day to go wild, to pull out all the stops.  This is the day to grab all of the glutenous ingredients you see in the pantry and bake something delicious (like pancakes), something that you might abstain from in the coming forty days. 

Lent begins tomorrow and folks all over this great earth are partying today.  I've got friends at Mardis Gras in New Orleans, Carnival is going strong in Brazil; how will you party today? 

Why should we party?  What's the point?  What about if times are tough or the sky is cloudy or we just got bad news?  What if our loved ones are suffering or there isn't any money?  What if we don't live in New Orleans or we hate pancakes?  Why should we party? 

I suggest that we should party in spite of all of that.  We should party because the Christian tradition gives us the gift of trying again and again.  We get the gift of the over and over.  Every year we get to try it all again.  We get to keep practicing - and I appreciate that especially in a year when things aren't perfect.  We can prepare for lent today and then we have more than a month set aside to take a good, long look at how we're doing.  And then next year, we get a whole new chance. 

I appreciate that I'm supposed to party today!  I have to party, to get ready for what we'll do during lent.  It's time to throw caution to the wind, and I plan to complete this assignment. 

You might say I'm crazy or you might even say I'm cruising for a bruising (as my Mom used to say, though no bruising followed), but tonight my family will have a force-feeding of Shrove Tuesday.  Tonight we'll celebrate the eighth birthday of my son.  Maybe we're really, really late with the celebration (his birthday was Dec. 10) or maybe it's just all working out the way it should be.  Either way, the party is headed our way!

We'll eat pancakes tonight, I'm ready with the goods for the traditional pancake race, we're going to make a mess and there will be screaming!  Tonight I'll be surrounded by beings whose main objective is the party, the fun.  These guys will have no trouble letting it all hang out tonight, even if everything in the world around them is not perfect.  That's not how it is with them.  They will laugh and yell and play their hearts out.  They'll make a mess and eat too much and run til they fall down in a heap. 

They'll help me remember what today is about, and I'm sure that they'll help tire me into realizing what begins tomorrow.  Tomorrow I'm given yet another chance to take a long look at me and my life and what God and I are doing together.  I'll have forty days and nights to look and listen and think and concentrate and pray.  I get that chance again every year; for that I am eternally grateful.

Tonight, though, it's our homework to party.  It's our task to clean out the pantries of our kitchens, our minds and our houses; to bring out all of the 'good' stuff and play hard.  Mission accepted!  We'll do that and the crew of precious, crazy, noisy, funny boys will help us.