Yesterday, we Reese’s participated in our long-standing family tradition. We gather dozens of eggs, boil them and decorate them in every imaginable color by dunking them, swirling them, and tie - dying them. All little egg artists present pass wax crayons for laying color, straws for blowing colors, baggies for rubbing color and glue for glittering color. They flourish the eggs with stickers, plastic wraps, and colored pipe cleaners. At times, the atmosphere becomes intense – each one wanting to create the best egg masterpiece of the year. I care much less about the eggs than I do my children and their cousins - all gathered around one table - together.
Returning from spending a week at Disney World, my cousin, her husband and 3 small children slowed to turn off the main highway, just thirty minutes from home. They survived the over seventeen hour long drive back to Oklahoma, and both kids and parents anticipated crawling into their own beds, satisfied from a week well spent together. The suitcases bulged with laundry to be washed, the trunk brimmed full of expensive souvenirs, and the car suffered wounds from too many snacks and drinks consumed on the long drive.
Relationships are like granola bars. Packed full of a variety of both meaningful and insignificant events, textured opinions and flavorful personalities that individually may not be so appealing – but stuck together and served with milk – they are fulfilling and nutritious. Not all granola bars are the same. Some are nutty, others dry and flavorless. All have the same basic principal at work – combining individual ingredients as one food item. Whether they are crunchy or chewy, plain or chocolate covered, the ingredients must merge together while remaining distinctly noticeable for their individual presence. They can be designed to suit preferred tastes and to accomplish specific nutritional goals, but a granola bar must have merged ingredients working together for a single culinary cause. However – if any of the ingredients attempt to go solo – they must relinquish their granola bar status.
The kids slumped sleeping over one another in a heap of arms, legs and stringy hair. My cousin knew the recovery from the week would be intense. Her eyes closed as they watched her husband drive. She doesn’t remember the other car speeding straight toward them. There wasn’t time to move out of its path – it veered so suddenly into their lane. However, my cousin’s husband had just enough time to turn the wheel so that his side of the car received the full force of the impact. My cousin and three children were severely injured. The doctors said it could have been fatal for all of them if he hadn’t turned the car at the slight angle that he did.
His instinctive reflexes came from a choice he made before the lights of another car headed straight at his family. It began when he met my cousin in Junior high school, it solidified when he proposed to her, it expanded coverage when he held each child in his arms for the first time ever, it intensified every first step and each sick and sleepless night, and it crested during that week in June, the last one he would spend with the family who compelled him to turn the wheel just in time.
Time erased any memory I may have ever had of my parent’s relationship. Our family barely lasted long enough for the one picture taken of the three of us. And it’s blurry. It was taken on Easter morning, 1974. It shows a white and maroon leisure suit garnished with an extremely wide tie on a tall, handsome man. It shows a pale green shirt and matching skirt on a much too pretty, and much too young mother. It shows a little pink frilly dress with white dots on a toddler whose just walking legs are covered in white tights. She has a shiny bracelet that almost disappears in the folds of her chubby wrist. Her white paten shoes and pink bow on her perfectly combed and parted dark sprout in the middle of her head complete the photo.
What cannot be seen in the poor quality photo is the strawberry banana patch pie splattered all over the floor of the green panel truck the family rode in just hours earlier. Nor can you see the two drunken farmers crying because they broke the eggs in the little toddlers Easter basket when they missed the stop sign and pulled out in front of the family in their three-quarter-ton truck. If the tall handsome man in the maroon leisure suit with the overly wide tie hadn’t been able to fix the green panel truck the night before, the family would have been driving their small Chevy Vega, which would have certainly slid right under the drunk farmers truck and the picture might not have ever been taken.
My mother and father both tell the same story of that Easter Sunday, of how altered their lives would have been that day if the green paneled truck didn’t work the one and only day it did. That fuzzy photo shows me a family I cannot remember having, a relationship where individuals decided they couldn’t be combined anymore.
All granola bars have to have one similar ingredient or none of the others make sense together. I guess that’s how the man in maroon suit and the young mother in pale green felt, like they didn’t make sense together. Both say that their immaturity greatly affected their inability to work through their relational issues. Neither of them knew that morning that so much more than eggs would be broken that year from an impact neither of them saw coming.
My cousin’s husband chose to commit his life completely to his family. Only he saw the impact coming and only he had the ability to save his family from it. But it cost him.
At his funeral his son stopped the funeral and asked to speak. He said very few words – and they were not to us, they were to his dad. He said, “Dad, I love you. You are the best dad in the whole world.” Emotion waved over me, over all of us and drowned us in the moment. It was grief – but something else weighed heavier. Looking at my cousin, her son and two daughters, one in a neck-brace, three of them in casts, and one in a wheel chair, the love that her husband and their father conferred on them engulfed every person in the room. We were face to face with the ones so precious, so valuable, yet so imperfect and fragile, the ones that he died to save.
Yesterday, as the last layer of color was carefully applied to the eggs, I took a photo of the children holding their eggs in their equally dyed hands. I remembered being the one barely able to reach the eggs and dye on the table. Suddenly as if overnight, here I had my own egg artists.
I wondered what kind of relationships my children would have with each other, with their cousins, with my husband and with me. Our granola is so good right now – all the right ingredients – all completely balanced and content to be a part of one single, unified relationship. There are so many unknowns though. So much that can happen to a family – to a relationship - in what seems like just a moment. Today – the worst thing that can happen is their basket of eggs being broken. But I know that at some point, somewhere - whether or not they see it coming – they will be impacted by something difficult, something hard, something potentially dangerous. When they see the headlights, I hope they will know that they are safe. That they have a dad in the car that loves them so much he will take the impact for them.
As we put the Easter eggs in their baskets I was engulfed with emotions much like I was at that funeral years ago. Grief over what it cost. Overwhelmed by the decision of love. What if that day, at my cousin’s husband funeral – in the midst of her son’s elegant eulogy – what if my cousin’s husband had walked in the room, embraced his injured family, and comforted them. What if when they realized he was back with them – their injuries disappeared? Surely, their mourning would have turned to the most joyous celebration any of us had ever witnessed. Surely the whole room would have gone wild with excitement. Certainly – all of us would have walked away forever changed. And his family would have walked away that day not only healed, not only joyous, but completely combined in one effort, reunited with the unifying ingredient that made sense of everything.
I smiled. For just a brief moment, I imagined a different picture taken on Easter day, a lot further back than 1974. It was a clear picture, not fuzzy at all. It showed a dad who took the impact. One who saved everyone else in the photo. I’m sure I saw myself there. It’s taken right when intense grief exploded into elation as he walked back in the room. He comforted. He healed. And he made sense - of everything.
Returning from spending a week at Disney World, my cousin, her husband and 3 small children slowed to turn off the main highway, just thirty minutes from home. They survived the over seventeen hour long drive back to Oklahoma, and both kids and parents anticipated crawling into their own beds, satisfied from a week well spent together. The suitcases bulged with laundry to be washed, the trunk brimmed full of expensive souvenirs, and the car suffered wounds from too many snacks and drinks consumed on the long drive.
Relationships are like granola bars. Packed full of a variety of both meaningful and insignificant events, textured opinions and flavorful personalities that individually may not be so appealing – but stuck together and served with milk – they are fulfilling and nutritious. Not all granola bars are the same. Some are nutty, others dry and flavorless. All have the same basic principal at work – combining individual ingredients as one food item. Whether they are crunchy or chewy, plain or chocolate covered, the ingredients must merge together while remaining distinctly noticeable for their individual presence. They can be designed to suit preferred tastes and to accomplish specific nutritional goals, but a granola bar must have merged ingredients working together for a single culinary cause. However – if any of the ingredients attempt to go solo – they must relinquish their granola bar status.
Being in a relationship is a decision – a choice. People do not randomly fall in love any more than the ingredients in the granola bar make a conscious choice to combine. Although relationships can be as varied as the kinds of granola bars, there are standards that define a relationship – or at least a good one.
During that long drive, my cousin and her husband had many long hours of reflection about their relationship with each other and their children –absorbing the euphoric torture of being confined in such a small space – together. They attempted to soak up every moment – the strained ones and the enchanted ones. Time passed quickly, the week went well. Gratefulness shrouded their tired bodies and full hearts.The kids slumped sleeping over one another in a heap of arms, legs and stringy hair. My cousin knew the recovery from the week would be intense. Her eyes closed as they watched her husband drive. She doesn’t remember the other car speeding straight toward them. There wasn’t time to move out of its path – it veered so suddenly into their lane. However, my cousin’s husband had just enough time to turn the wheel so that his side of the car received the full force of the impact. My cousin and three children were severely injured. The doctors said it could have been fatal for all of them if he hadn’t turned the car at the slight angle that he did.
His instinctive reflexes came from a choice he made before the lights of another car headed straight at his family. It began when he met my cousin in Junior high school, it solidified when he proposed to her, it expanded coverage when he held each child in his arms for the first time ever, it intensified every first step and each sick and sleepless night, and it crested during that week in June, the last one he would spend with the family who compelled him to turn the wheel just in time.
Time erased any memory I may have ever had of my parent’s relationship. Our family barely lasted long enough for the one picture taken of the three of us. And it’s blurry. It was taken on Easter morning, 1974. It shows a white and maroon leisure suit garnished with an extremely wide tie on a tall, handsome man. It shows a pale green shirt and matching skirt on a much too pretty, and much too young mother. It shows a little pink frilly dress with white dots on a toddler whose just walking legs are covered in white tights. She has a shiny bracelet that almost disappears in the folds of her chubby wrist. Her white paten shoes and pink bow on her perfectly combed and parted dark sprout in the middle of her head complete the photo.
What cannot be seen in the poor quality photo is the strawberry banana patch pie splattered all over the floor of the green panel truck the family rode in just hours earlier. Nor can you see the two drunken farmers crying because they broke the eggs in the little toddlers Easter basket when they missed the stop sign and pulled out in front of the family in their three-quarter-ton truck. If the tall handsome man in the maroon leisure suit with the overly wide tie hadn’t been able to fix the green panel truck the night before, the family would have been driving their small Chevy Vega, which would have certainly slid right under the drunk farmers truck and the picture might not have ever been taken.
My mother and father both tell the same story of that Easter Sunday, of how altered their lives would have been that day if the green paneled truck didn’t work the one and only day it did. That fuzzy photo shows me a family I cannot remember having, a relationship where individuals decided they couldn’t be combined anymore.
All granola bars have to have one similar ingredient or none of the others make sense together. I guess that’s how the man in maroon suit and the young mother in pale green felt, like they didn’t make sense together. Both say that their immaturity greatly affected their inability to work through their relational issues. Neither of them knew that morning that so much more than eggs would be broken that year from an impact neither of them saw coming.
My cousin’s husband chose to commit his life completely to his family. Only he saw the impact coming and only he had the ability to save his family from it. But it cost him.
At his funeral his son stopped the funeral and asked to speak. He said very few words – and they were not to us, they were to his dad. He said, “Dad, I love you. You are the best dad in the whole world.” Emotion waved over me, over all of us and drowned us in the moment. It was grief – but something else weighed heavier. Looking at my cousin, her son and two daughters, one in a neck-brace, three of them in casts, and one in a wheel chair, the love that her husband and their father conferred on them engulfed every person in the room. We were face to face with the ones so precious, so valuable, yet so imperfect and fragile, the ones that he died to save.
Yesterday, as the last layer of color was carefully applied to the eggs, I took a photo of the children holding their eggs in their equally dyed hands. I remembered being the one barely able to reach the eggs and dye on the table. Suddenly as if overnight, here I had my own egg artists.
I wondered what kind of relationships my children would have with each other, with their cousins, with my husband and with me. Our granola is so good right now – all the right ingredients – all completely balanced and content to be a part of one single, unified relationship. There are so many unknowns though. So much that can happen to a family – to a relationship - in what seems like just a moment. Today – the worst thing that can happen is their basket of eggs being broken. But I know that at some point, somewhere - whether or not they see it coming – they will be impacted by something difficult, something hard, something potentially dangerous. When they see the headlights, I hope they will know that they are safe. That they have a dad in the car that loves them so much he will take the impact for them.
As we put the Easter eggs in their baskets I was engulfed with emotions much like I was at that funeral years ago. Grief over what it cost. Overwhelmed by the decision of love. What if that day, at my cousin’s husband funeral – in the midst of her son’s elegant eulogy – what if my cousin’s husband had walked in the room, embraced his injured family, and comforted them. What if when they realized he was back with them – their injuries disappeared? Surely, their mourning would have turned to the most joyous celebration any of us had ever witnessed. Surely the whole room would have gone wild with excitement. Certainly – all of us would have walked away forever changed. And his family would have walked away that day not only healed, not only joyous, but completely combined in one effort, reunited with the unifying ingredient that made sense of everything.
I smiled. For just a brief moment, I imagined a different picture taken on Easter day, a lot further back than 1974. It was a clear picture, not fuzzy at all. It showed a dad who took the impact. One who saved everyone else in the photo. I’m sure I saw myself there. It’s taken right when intense grief exploded into elation as he walked back in the room. He comforted. He healed. And he made sense - of everything.
