This Reminds Me

Archive for the ‘Way Back Machine’ Category

This week I shared a picture of myself with a co-worker I’ve never met.  After months of casual contact, we were getting better acquainted.

I shared one Rachel took Sunday of Julia and me in the church parking lot.

Rachel always takes better pictures than do I, even though I shoot a Nikon and she generally uses her iPod.  Sigh.

My co-worker’s comment on the picture?  “She (Julia) looks just like you.”

I didn’t tell her Julia was adopted.

I think as an adult, Julia is going to be what my grandmother called a “handsome woman.”  Not frilly, not fru-fru, but “handsome.”  She has the most incredibly beautiful tanned skin, dark brown hair with individual gold strands and a lithe athlete’s body.  Her eyes have a small slant that intrigues me.  I can’t take credit for a bit of that.

Rachel, Lois Hannah and I do look alike – or so I’ve been told.

Here are the girls on Easter Sunday -

Lois – 17; Hannah – 15; Rachel – 19; Julia – 11

And me at age 17 .  I’ve supplied half of the gene pool in which Rachel, Lois and Hannah swim.  Can you tell?

I was flattered my co-worker thinks Julia and I look alike.

But what I really want for my girls is not that anyone looks at them and sees me. I don’t want them to see impatience, fatigue and such limited understanding.

I want for them what the Apostle Paul spelled out in 2 Corinthians 3:18. I want people to look at my girls and see Jesus.

I want them to look like their real Maker.

Then I can try to look like them.

Seventeen-year-old Lois gave her first blood donation (at church) today, following a family tradition.  Keith’s donations are approaching 10 gallons*, and Rachel’s given three times.  When I was single, I gave platelets every three – four weeks, and was a regular blood donor until my irregular heart beat tom-tom’ed “No-No,  More-More, No-No, More-More.”

Interestingly – Lois has the same tiny veins that plagued my mother, and now me.  Three or four sticks is the norm, usually by more than one phlebotomist.   Unlike me, Lois is apparently a “squirter,” which accounted for her nickname today of “Squirtle.”   Step back!

What pleased me so about this donation:  Lois and I are transfusion recipients.   I got three units the day she was born prematurely, and she got red blood cells when she was about a month old.   That red blood cell transfusion enabled her oxygen saturation rate to climb enough to come home after 37 days in the NICU.

Christmas Eve 1993 – And preemie Lois 26 days old and still in the NICU.  I might look a little tired.  Sarah came over every evening to stay with two-year-old Rachel so Keith and I could visit the hospital.  We could gently rub her little stick legs, speak soothingly and watch her oxygen saturation rates climb.  No one else’s voice had the same effect. My mom often took me during the day for another visit, and I’d sing to Lois.  Keith joked she’d know the entire Baptist hymnal by the time she came home.

Blood donations are not only the gift of life, but also a gift from life.   There’s no substitute for whole blood, and it takes a human being to give it.  It’s a sacrifice, and one especially poignant in the Easter season.

I’ve long believed that what goes around, comes around – whether in this life, or the one to come.   And while some debts cannot be repaid exactly, they can be “paid forward.”

I pray my girls keep paying.

*Keith’s donor mug from the Blood Center in Houston caught my eye the first time I visited his house.  How refreshing it was to date a guy who wasn’t all about himself.  Single guys – Blood donations are chick magnets!

I’ve been fortunate to see a lot of beauty in my lifetime.

The Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia

My newborns

The Houston Azalea Trail

Woody’s Beach in Dominica

Ghandi’s Ashram in Maharastra, India

Fall in Indiana

And Julia’s most excellent long basket today. 

School has started – again.  It’s back to my daily disciplines of navigating more traffic, printing weekend schedules and making dinner nightly.

The obligatory first day of school photo – really, it’s required, it’s in the “Mothers’ Manual.”  (l-r) Lois – High School Junior.  Julia – 4th grade.  Rachel – College Sophomore.  Hannah – High School Freshman.

My obligatory first-day-of-school photos started August 19, 1996 with this kindergartner.

Rachel made a new friend – they talked all morning.  Her name?  “I have no idea.”

Lois is sitting at the kitchen table right now, marveling in the wonders of AP Calculus.  “They started us with ‘limits’ – the first day!”  I would offer to help her, of course, but then she’d never learn.

Hannah’s first high school history class was shared with some repeating sophomores and juniors.  “Mom – how do you fail history?”

Julia was the first in her fourth grade class to complete a “really hard” word search, earning her praise from the teacher.  The child loves word games – she is her mother’s daughter.

Even though the school year is often a grind – I simply cannot complain.  I am too thankful for the excellent schools were enjoy here.  Of all the blessings we received in moving from Houston to San Antonio, the schools are definitely first in my heart.  I look back at HISD and shudder.

In addition to all the School Zone signs – there’s another that caught my eye today.  It’s 101 degrees this evening, and a few languid back strokes sound mighty inviting.

Sigh

Guess I’ll go get out my clear return address labels and do paperwork instead.