Little Miracle

Today I was walking around the house, talking on the phone to the husband.  We were preparing to attack and conquer the grocery store and everyone was running around. I peeked into the caterpillar nursery and I saw this: 

Which made me scream into the phone "There's a monarch hatching! There's a monarch hatching! Girls, get in here!" Jason, understanding these things and exhibiting one of the 1001 reasons we are perfect together, just said "Ok. Bye." and hung up.

And indeed, there was a monarch hatching. I grabbed my camera and got some very bad pictures of the brand new butterfly emerging because everyone's heads kept getting in the way. But I did manage to snap a few of this amazing process.

 Just 20 seconds after emerging (it took me that long to position everyone to a satisfactory view).

 This is about one minute after hatching. See how swollen the buttefly's belly is? It has to pump all those fluids into it's wings quickly. Note the chrysalis that it is still hanging from.

 Thirteen minutes after emerging.

 We released the butterfly later that afternoon.

He (yes, the girls can tell the difference) easily flew across the yard and into a tree. We watched the little guy for a moment and then I ushered the girls back into the house before we witnessed the newly freed butterfly fly into traffic or take a horrific detour into the chicken run. Farewell little creature, may your journey be gentle!

Silly Old Bear

I have to give a shout out to "The Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh". It contains both "Winnie-the-Pooh" and "The House at Pooh Corner" (it really is complete). We have been reading this book as a family and I can declare it as our Number One Favorite Read-a-Loud (so far). It is incredibly funny. In nearly every chapter I have laughed hard enough to put the book the book down for a second. The older two girls usually get it but sometimes it's just the parents who catch onto the humor.

We have just two more chapters left before we start "The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew". I haven't read this book before but I know the story line so I've got a feeling that it's going to be quite a switch from gang that hangs in The Hundred Acre Wood.

Parable of the caterpillars

The monarch nursery has taken a turn for the disturbing. It seems that a mean old fly (it even has evil looking red eyes) called a "tachinid fly" likes to hunt down innocent caterpillars and inject its nasty little eggs into the caterpillar's body. The eggs hatch and feed on the caterpillar's insides. No one, apparently not even the caterpillar knows this has happened until the about the time the caterpillar gets to the chrysalis stage. Then, and this is the especially heartbreaking twist that is like that fly giving your hopeful kids the middle finger, right after everyone gets excited about the caterpillar being on its way to becoming a butterfly, Something Bad happens.

Someone walks by the insect cage and notices The Something: A white string appears from the hanging caterpillar (in the chrysalis or just hanging upside down). Weird, huh? Oh well, all is probably well.

Then you notice that a little something has used the string to exit the beautiful green chrysalis (or in some cases it can be the dangling, sleeping caterpillar).

It's a maggot. Yep. A MAGGOT.

A maggot that has just dashed the family's hopes of seeing a monarch butterfly emerge from the chrysalis in a few weeks.

Now here comes the sound of wailing children.

But wait! Teachable moment here!

The Lord impressed upon me that is the bug version of the parable of the sower (found in Matthew 13). Because only about five out of five hundred caterpillar eggs that are laid live to become a butterfly. There are just so many ways that a fragile little caterpillar can be killed: snatched away by a spider, poisoned, infected with a parasitic maggot, infected with fungus, squashed by a person traipsing thru a field, etc.

People are like the caterpillars. Many are snatched away by unbelief, false teaching, love of self/money/various idols,etc. They think they are fine, just like those infected caterpillars. And for many of them, by the time they realize they are not fine, it is too late (death). Jesus wasn't kidding when he said that "But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." (Matthew 7:14).

We have 10 chrysalises hanging right now; we started out with 25 caterpillars.  It remains to be seen how many will emerge as beautifully transformed butterflies. My constant prayer is that 100% of my own little caterpillars (kiddos) will become butterflies.

Caterpillar Obsession

If you see a white van pulled over on the side of the road next to a field and there's a woman bent over peering into a mound of flowers, don't worry: It's just me, one of the local crazies.

This week, we discovered milkweed.

And you know what eats milkweed?

Monarch Caterpillars.

And you know who loves to raise caterpillars?

My kids.

Me too. I love them just as much.

There is something incredible about watching a caterpillar transform into a butterfly. It's one of the mysteries of God's creation and it is incredibly interesting.

We found a few new types of caterpillars. "The Fuzzies"

I was afraid they were the stinging type so I wouldn't let the girls touch them until we had a chance to look them up. Turns out they are harmless. So the girls spent the afternoon playing with their new friends. There were countless caterpillar races with "The Fuzzies" who are quite fast!

This guy, The Royal Ugly Dude, was unidentifiable. So he had to sit out.

May 1988, Part Five

After learning of my dad's death I went on nine year old autopilot. I remember very little of that time and not much about the following year in general. I do recall being in a shoe store trying on shiny black dress shoes. Shoes I would be wearing to my father's funeral. I just could not believe that was all real. Normally I would have been excited to own such shiny new dress shoes but I all I could do was sit and stare at the pretty shoes while my mom helped Heather try on her pair.

I only remember a few things about my dad's wake. We (Heather, Jessica, and I ) played tag in the funeral home after most everyone had left. I recall running past my dad's grey casket. I was laughing but I was sad on the inside. Isn't that amazing? I still can't make any sense of it but I was just a kid and didn't know what I was supposed to do anyway. I had probably been sitting for hours by that point. My most poignant memory from the wake is seeing my dad's best friend, Pee-Wee on his knees in front of the casket, sobbing his eyes out.

The following day was the funeral. We got to ride in a limo. I thought that was pretty cool. What I did not think was cool was that I was not allowed to ride with my mother. Everywhere I went people told me to "Stop bothering your mother." Literally. I probably heard that phrase fifty times over that week. I couldn't get within ten feet of her without someone deflecting me. I know that our family was trying to help my mom but what an awful thing to do to two grieving little girls: tell them they can't be near their mother. Who else is going to be able to help them make sense of all of this? My memories of my father's funeral are full of instances of me trying to be close to my mom and my extended family pushing me away.

My sister and I rode with our grandparents, my mother's parents. Mom and other family members rode in another limo. We pulled up to the cemetery and stepped out of the limousines. I could not believe how many people were there. We were ushered through the nearly silent crowd and seated under a little green tent in front of my dad's casket which was heaped with flowers. I have no memory of what the minister, Frank Mullins (a dear friend of my parents--the missionary who lead my parents to The Lord), said during the ceremony. I just kept staring at that grey box and trying to picture my dad lying in there in a blue suit. I just sat there, with no desire to move or talk or think. At least I was sitting by my mom though.

I think this is where I"ll stop. I don't remember a lot after this point anyway.

I love and miss both my parents. Still having a hard time believing that they are both gone. They had their issues for sure but I loved them both very much. It pains me that my dad has missed so much. He never got the chance to know my brother Matthew. Dad had become a grandfather just two months before his death and he never even got to see his grandchild. Now, there are sixteen grandchildren.

That one event completely changed the course of everyone in my immediate family's lives. That is a positive thing for me but it might not be for the other members of my family; I can only speak for myself and offer a pitiful but whole hearted thank you to God (He has been so good to me and I do not deserve a bit of it). We all had a hard time adjusting after Dad's death but some of us had a more difficult time. Looking back I can see the twisty path that led me here. If the accident hadn't happened we would not have eventually moved back to our old house; I wouldn't have gone to a Christian school where I first realized my need for Jesus; our family would not have been split up and scattered just five years after the accident; I wouldn't have ended up in Texas at 16 years old really wondering "WHAT NOW?"; I wouldn't have met Jason four months after landing in the Lonestar State; and so on. There were some major redemptive life themes waiting for me.

But I did not know any of this in May, 1988.

New Name

I decided to change the name of my blog. It started out as "Three Times the Fun!" then it progressed to "Four Times the Fun!" I had thought I wouldn't need to change it again. We got a minivan about the time I changed the blog name to "Four Times the Fun!" We had been upsizing our car every 2 years or so and I figured the minivan would serve us for a long time.


Funny. Now we drive this:

 

"The Bro"

"The Bro" has room for five more passengers. I'm so happy that we won't have to upgrade to a larger vehicle (ok, at least not in two years. Most likely. But God does enjoy surprises. No quintuplets please though, Lord. Unless that's your will...which I'm politely asking that it not be).

ANYWAY.

And from now on I don't have to have to think of a new name for my blog either. Whew.

By the way, when you think of the blog name I don't want you to think of "These...are...the...days of our lives." I want you to think of it this way: "Theeeeeese arrrrrre the days...we'll remember." I love that 10,000 Maniacs song. I don't believe in luck but this song just makes me happy and makes me overwhelmingly grateful to God for His blessings that I just do not or ever could deserve.

These are the days

These are days you'll remember.
Never before and never since,
I promise, will the whole world be warm as this.
And as you feel it, you'll know it's true that you are blessed and lucky.
It's true that you are touched by something that will grow and bloom in you.

These are days you'll remember.
When May is rushing over you with desire to be part of the miracles you see in every hour. You'll know it's true that you are blessed and lucky.
It's true that you are touched by something that will grow and bloom in you.

These are days.
These are the days you might fill with laughter until you break.
These days you might feel a shaft of light make its way across your face.
And when you do you'll know how it was meant to be.
See the signs and know their meaning.
It's true, you'll know how it was meant to be.
Hear the signs and know they're speaking to you, to you.       

May 1988 Part Four

The next ten days were a weird blur. My sister and I continued to go to school. My mom pretty much lived at the hospital. My sister and I were encouraged to draw pictures for Dad and we also made voice recordings on cassette tapes for him. We (Heather and I) were told that he was burned but would be okay. We desperately wanted to see him and were profoundly offended that children were not allowed on the burn unit. My mom said that he couldn't talk because he had a tube in this throat to help him breathe. She said that he was aware of her being there and he wiggled one toe for "yes" and two toes for "no" and the toes on both feet for "I love you."

About a week or so after the explosion, we were playing in the empty lot across the street from Charlie's house. Jessica, Charlie's oldest daughter, had been my friend since before I could remember. She was one year older than me. We were running around playing some kid game and when we stopped and sat in the grass Jessica said to me "My mom said that your dad is probably going to die." Anger and denial washed over me and after returning her comment with something like " He is not! He's getting better!" I stormed back to the house. A feeling that I could not name at the time--doubt--began to make me anxious when I thought about my dad.

Sometime in the next few days I woke up and my mom was not at Charlie and Pee-Wee's (Charlie's husband) house. I was nonplussed and went to school like normal. I remember sitting in the field at recess, leaning against a telephone pole and feeling like the day was very strange. I shrugged it off.

My mom picked us up after school and said that we weren't going back to Charlie and Pee-Wee's just yet. We were going to The Hermitage, which is a historic home built in 1908 that was now a museum. It is surrounded on three sides by the Lynnhaven River which meant that whenever we'd go out on our boat we'd have to pass The Hermitage. It is one of the most beautiful "landmarks" of my childhood.

We got to The Hermitage and walked to a quiet seawall in one of favorite areas. I started my usual search for Interesting Things Washed Up on the Shore. Matthew slept peacefully in his stroller. My mom asked my sister and I to sit on the wall with her. We sat on either side of her. When she took my hand in hers, I knew.

My mom was on my right and I remember gazing to the left, looking up the wide, gray river. She said, "Girls..." and I murmured, "Dad's dead, right?" and she continued on like she hadn't heard me. "Girls, your dad died this morning."

I had known the minute that she had taken my hand that he was gone. But when I heard her say it, I whipped my head back toward her. In the second that it took me to turn toward her, a thousand thoughts flashed through my mind. It was a second that seemed like someone had hit the pause button while my mind grasped the news. The main theme of my thoughts was "How am I going to live through this?"

My sister was the first to collapse in tears, followed by my mom, and when I could breathe again I leaned into my mom's side and we just all sat there and cried our eyes out. Sprinkles of rain landed on our thighs and my mom said, "See? The angels are crying with us." And I think it might be true because I didn't see any signs of rain anywhere else though it was a cloudy afternoon.

Eventually we pulled ourselves together and trekked back to the car. I don't remember anything else about that day except that instead of going back to stay at our friends' house, we went and stayed with my dad's sister and her husband who lived in another part of our city.

I had not been aware of how severe my dad's injuries were until after he died. He was burned over 90% of his body. The is the story that I was told: He had been waiting on his friend, Pee-Wee, to come over and turn off the electricity to the boat since Pee-Wee was an electrician. While Dad's friends and my brother were off the boat and filling up the gas tanks of the cars in the parking lot, Dad had called Pee-Wee to see when he'd be over. Charlie had answered and after their conversation my dad hung up the phone. Which apparently set off a spark. Which ignited the fume saturated air in our boat. Which blew the boat sky high. Charlie had hung up the phone and, living only half a mile away, immediately heard the explosion. Apparently she realized or at least suspected what had happened and had taken off running to our place.

My Dad made his way to a window where my brother pulled him out. As expected, he was burned badly and my brother helped him down the pier and they sat down to wait for help. At this time, my dad, believing that the rest of the family was still on the boat, went back on the burning boat to get us and he sustained even more burns.

I was very angry for a long time about being deceived about my dad's condition. With all my heart I had believed that he was going to recover. But all the adults knew that he would not survive. I wish someone had told me straight from the beginning what he was up against.