2013 or 1974

     In our month with Marley this summer, I stayed on the go almost every day. In that time, we went to the beach in Galveston, to the Museum of Natural Science downtown, to the Blue Bell creamery an hour away, to the grocery store and the swimming pool and the neighborhood park and the mall and numerous other daily trips and errands. We played Wii games and Go Fish and Harry Potter Uno and colored and cut-out and  pasted and glued. Stacey even taught her some wool-spinning basics and helped her make a crocheted potholder. 

     We were busy. Chasing around after a 6 year old keeps you on your toes. How ever would we have coped if there were MORE THAN ONE of her? Don't know how we would have found enough hours in the day to do everything that needed to be done. Much less cook and clean and pay bills and keep the house together. Whew.

    In 1974, the year I turned 7, my parents got divorced. My brothers and I went to live with our grandparents from sometime in spring until December, when Mom got back on her feet financially and we moved back in with her. I was 6,  Adam was 2, and Shawn was less than a year old. 

   My grandparents were around 60. Taking care of three young boys, two of them still in diapers.

    Having Marley with us is always exhilarating, fulfilling, enlightening-and exhausting. After a month with her, spending my days at the pool or the park and my nights picking up toys and clothes and discussing the plotlines of Disney channel TV shows, I marvel at the devotion and energy and love my grandparents lived by enthusiastically taking us to raise 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

     How many days this month was I exhausted at the end of the day? And I only had one of her to keep up with. My grandmother had three of us, and she was 15 years older than I am now when we came to stay. And I dealt only with a single month instead of an indefinite interim that stretched all through a long drowsy summer and almost until the next year. 

      How did she do that? How did she keep that smile on her face that I remember so well?

      Through my life I have been conscious of several breathtaking instances of grace, of God's love in action here and working in my life. Of gifts and blessings and love being showered upon me through certainly no merit of mine but simply through those mysterious bonds which surround and strengthen me.

      I am so grateful for the grace shown in the love and devotion of my grandparents who took us in as if we were giving them a wonderful gift by our presence with them, who made every day of that year feel like my birthday, who never let on that their feet hurt or their backs were tired from airplane spins. I am overwhelmed and aching with the memories of how much I was loved and so thankful that I can be a part of the eternal chain of passing on such grace and love to my own grandchild. 

     Oh, Marley, that you may feel about my home the way I felt about my grandparents' home.......