Legacies

Growing up, my dad talked often of legacies.  Simply put a legacy is what you will leave your children to carry on after you are gone.  Following the birth of our second and likely last child, and with the coming of Christmas, I have spent lots of time reflecting on the legacies with which my children will be left.

My grandparent's house - built in the late 1800s with our favorite dogwood tree in full bloom.

I have been blessed to grow up around my father's family, though his parents both passed away when I was young, but his mother's mother and sisters and their families were around, so I have grown up with my great-grandmother, great-aunts and uncles, 1st, 2nd, and third cousins, aunts, uncles, and all their in-laws.  Our family gatherings are large and loud.  My great-grandparents owned a farm outside of town and when we were little we used to collect eggs from the hen house, pick strawberries from the strawberry patch, and feed the chickens.  I remember my brother getting yelled at for walking on the bed with his shoes on, I remember the North Pole at Christmas, when my great-grandma would set out tables with gifts and let us pick what we wanted.  I remember Dad going golfing in the summers and leaving us with great-grandma, who would get down on the floor with us and play Chinese checkers.  I remember her funeral, and feeling cheated that she died so soon, even though she was 92 years old.  I had thought my children would grow up to know her.  I remember my great-aunt standing in for my grandmother at my wedding and then buying more of the wedding pictures than my parents did.  I love how, at every family gathering, we sing the doxology before eating instead of praying, because my great-grandfather used to do it, and after he died, they felt like no one should replace him.  I cherish how they all acted the first time they met my son - holding and loving him as if he were their own child.  And I love the family newsletter my great-aunt churns out at the first of every month, so that even those who have moved away can keep up with the family happenings.

I knew my mother's parents growing up.  My grandmother was tall, out-doorsy, quick-witted, and a fantastic writer.  I loved to write as a girl and I would give her my writings to read.  She would read them through and say, "Randi, my dear, you are an excellent writer.  Your ideas and imagination are limitless...but your spelling is atrocious."  True that.  She was also a woman of no nonsense.  I remember her spanking me once for calling my brother a bad name.  She got in my face and said, "Don't you dare treat your brother that way.  He is closer to you than anyone on the planet, and you'd better not forget it."  I haven't.  She loved to read and could read faster than anyone I knew.  She also wrote letters - had to be hundreds of them throughout her later years.  And she loved to be outside.  My brother and I would spend a week with them every summer and she and grandpa would take us kids on drives where we would take old dirt roads to the low-water bridges and throw rocks in or wander in fields and pick wildflowers, of which my grandmother knew all the scientific names.  When it was time for dinner, Alex and I would make a menu and pretend we were in a restaurant and they were our customers.  They could have their pick from peanut butter and jelly, scrambled eggs, or a ham sandwich.  They both always acted like they really were in a restaurant and they really did want peanut butter and jelly.  Likewise, my grandfather was very respected in the small town in which they lived.  He worked for the county and there wasn't a person around who didn't know his name.  He would take us to Casey's and get us any kind of candy we wanted, and then let us eat it whenever we wanted.  He would take us to the pool and the fair grounds.  He kept his lawn and flower beds immaculate and always hung his laundry on the line to dry.  He played cards with us and drove us wherever we wanted to go.  Together, they took us camping and fishing and we spent every Christmas at their beautiful 1800s Victorian house - lights off, candles and tree lit, and the story and songs of Christmas before a gift was ever opened.

My children will miss out on some of this.  They will never know their great-grandmothers, they will never wake up in the old Victorian house, and they may never pick strawberries from the strawberry patch.  But they will be loved by people who know what it is to love someone more than themselves.  They will watch as people demonstrate what it is to never give up, and they will grow up knowing that God loved them enough to send His Son to die for them.  For it is this act that motivated, that drove, that compelled those who came before us to love us so.

So thank you parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles - thank you for the legacy.