Preserving Faith

My great grandma, known to the masses as simply Granny, was an Okie who moved up from the Dust Bowl in '32 to work in the fields in the Yakima Valley.  She miscarried four babies from malnutrition while digging for potatoes, but three, including my grandfather, survived.  I remember her large hands as white as chalk forming dough for blackberry pie, and the way her blue eyes looked at me when she was up to no good in a game of Double Solitaire.  She was from an era where children ate lard sandwiches if they were lucky, and nothing was wasted.  Nothing.  She made tea towels from flour sacks (in her day made of cotton) and up-cycled (before up-cycling was trendy) old issues of Reader's Digest into matching Mr. and Mrs. Santa Clause for Christmas gifts.  I watched her make noodles for chicken dumplings, and butcher a chicken for the same pot.  She tossed the head, the feet, and the innards to the cats at the barn, and used everything else, even the feathers (once cleaned) went into pillows.

So it was no wonder that her canning skills were top notch.  She would snap beans all summer long, canning batch after batch of beans to stock the shelves in her cellar.  I would go in to view the beautiful array of colors through glass quart jars, the red orbs of bing cherries or the perfect pink shade of strawberry rhubarb jam, the sunset colors of peaches and apricots, russet colored tomatoes, deep dark grape juice (the best I've ever tasted, ever), jellies of every kind imaginable, and pickles in bright green (she called "bread and butter pickles" but we know them as sweet), and other countless items that she had so carefully collected, processed, canned, labeled, and stocked.  She was keeping food for days when it would be needed, for those unavoidable thin days.  She had survived the Great Depression.  She knew what it meant to be hungry.  I've read somewhere that the raw, angry feeling of starvation never goes away, like a phantom it lingers in the mouth and mind.  Granny was sharp as whip.  She'd tell you so herself, as she cheated her way through a pleasant game of cards.  She knew that there would be a day when she would feel hungry again, and she was always getting ready for it.

I'm not sure how to be ready for this upcoming upheaval in our lives, how to stockpile our faith shelves for the road we're embarking on.  We've done it before, thrice to date, and each was before we were parents.  The first time we left our small town of Sunnyside to live in Seattle in 1996.  I had just graduated high school and was following a handsome young man that I had a crush on 300 miles away to the Big City.  Then again in 1999, after I married that handsome young man, we moved from Seattle to Ellensburg to complete our undergraduate degrees, mine in English, his in music.  In 2003 we moved from Ellensburg to Vancouver where we established ourselves as working adults, bought our first home, and had our beloved sons.  And now the tug of another educational pursuit turns our heads back to Seattle, uprooting our family to a new place for Raphie's preschool, Andres' elementary experience, our marriage, our home.

Our faith is challenged to move.  We know we can't stay where we are, and we know deep down it's a benefit to our boys to chase our dreams, passions and gifts, in the belief that this is what we were created to do.  Don't we want them to do the same when their times come?  To follow their bliss?  To chase down their dreams?  Right now my faith is strong.  I know this is the direction we've been called to move in.  But when faced with getting in that U-haul truck and walking away from this life and this season in our lives, will it be there?

Presently the verdict is still out as to whether Aaron will complete his masters at PSU then apply for the PhD in Musicology at UW, or just apply to the masters in Musicology as a masters transfer then apply to the PhD while there (which means the past year and half of grad level classes will be tossed out and need to be retaken at UW--grrrrrr).   All of this is of course banking on the pipe dream that he gets accepted at all, and I have the utmost belief (faith?) that someone as talented, skilled, committed and dedicated to his art will be, so I am preparing my heart and mind for the inevitable move.

Despite the initial excitement around moving to Seattle, there's sadness, too.  To leave our home of ten years, our friends who have grown into our family, the customs and traditions--indeed our small world--that we've created here, being removed from it and changing is depressing.  To take the boys away from their friends that they love like brothers and cousins is heartbreaking.  To be apart from our friends whom have become closer than sisters and brothers is painful.

This is big.  We've never lived together in one place longer than we've lived here.  Our boys have deepened the roots we've laid down, and it's hard to accept the idea of transplanting them, or expelling them from such a nurturing, loving nest in our community.  It won't be easy.  But I pray that it will be a blessing to each of us in many ways as we set out on this journey.

Will it be there?  I wonder.  Will my faith be there on those thin days when I feel my shelves are bear?

Great Grandparents: Raleigh and Zelda Heitzman in 1980.  Me with the pumpkin and my newly born brother Wade.