Great-Grandma Hazel
Stories
Contents
“Great-Grandma Hazel” by David O. Bales
“With You” by David O. Bales
Great-Grandma Hazel
by David O. Bales
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
It shouldn’t be this hard Kayly thought. Seemed simple when Mr. Harmon assigned it to his college prep English class: “‘I did not get here by myself.’ Each of you,” he said, “is the living fringe of a long genealogy. Certainly you have received some disabilities from your family,” to which most students chuckled. “No family’s perfect. What I want you to write about is that you’re just the wave as it meets the shore. Your life energy started way out to sea — generations ago.”
The assignment was to interview a current family member about an older family member already dead and write how a generation in the past affects those living today. “If you’re adopted,” he said, “you can use your adoptive parents to tell you about someone who’s gone before you. If you don’t seem to have any relatives in the world, talk to me. I’ll hook you up with some friends of mine who’ll be your surrogate parents for a while. But don’t ask to borrow the car keys for prom night.”
Why the resistance? First time Kayly mentioned it to her mother she watched her mother’s lips thin. She didn’t consider interviewing her father. Her parents were divorced and she seldom saw him. “It’s about your grandma, Mom. Just tell me some things about her, especially what she handed on to you.”
Both times Kayly brought it up again her mother’s face tightened. The best Kayly could get from her was, “Why don’t you talk to your Uncle Zach? He’s a year and a half older than me. I was only eleven when Grandma died.”
“But you lived in the same town and saw her a lot, didn’t you?”
Her mother spoke while facing away from Kayly, “Get Zach in on this.”
That evening Kayly phoned her Uncle Zach and left him little time to think as she explained her assignment, saying her mom was willing — which was not exactly true — to help if Uncle Zach would join. For his usually being bright and ready to jump into anything that included his nieces and nephews, there was a long pause on the phone. Kayly almost had to beg him. She wheedled him into coming to their home on Saturday afternoon.
Whenever Kayly’s mom and uncle got together, the noise level rose and Kayly almost had to raise her hand or step between them to get into their conversation. Today she sat silently with the two in the living room and again reported the assignment, reading word for word from her tablet. She soon pictured herself as a dentist trying to pull teeth. All she could extract from them about their grandmother was: “She was a nice person… Yeah, but we were pretty young… Took real good care of her kids… For the first years of your grandpa’s business she worked on the books at the shop on Friday and Saturday nights.”
Kayly was frustrated. “What else?” she said with force. “As a human being, what else? What do you most remember about her?”
“Well, she was charitable,” Zach said as he shook his head slightly while glancing at his sister. Her mother’s face muscles tightened. Kayly peered at her and waited. Finally, as her mother looked squarely at Zach, she said, “She was very charitable. Grandpa’s electronics shop became a financial success. Your uncle and I have benefited from that business. Wouldn’t you agree Zach?”
Kayly had always felt that her mother and uncle were wonderful people. What was going on here? Did they bury Great-Grandma Hazel under the garage or something? The sister and brother sat beside one another looking down. Kayly realized that she was gaping at them. Then her mother nodded to Zach and said, “Yeah. Tell her.”
Zach blew out through his nose as he grimaced, and, speaking to his lap, he said, “Grandpa, your great-grandpa, had died when your mom was in kindergarten. Grandma, your great-grandma, was almost beyond charitable. She lived to give money away. We knew that as kids and, even after she was dead, our parents talked about her giving.
“The one thing Grandma told us every Christmas — as she told our parents before us — was about when she was a child in Oklahoma in the 1930s. She called them ‘the dirty thirties.’ Dust bowl, the truly great depression. She was old enough to know what was going on. She said most farms were already repossessed by the bank. Some people had given up and surrendered to life on the county poor farm. A few men had hopped freight trains heading west in hope of a job to send money home. Her family had sold their last milk cow. That money was gone and by December there wasn’t a potato left in the root cellar. At every meal in December her father repeated that he couldn’t stand his family’s going on relief. All five of the children knew there’d be no Christmas presents. Then word came that a Salvation Army truck would arrive in town. Grandma Hazel didn’t remember exactly how the Salvation Army provisioned her family, but they did, at least for a while. And she remembered their giving her a rag doll she kept for years.
“So every Christmas when we were children, Grandma Hazel led the family in giving to the Salvation Army. She helped us and our brother and sister to save money for the Salvation Army ‘pail,’ she called it. And she gave us money to go with her to put in the pail. Up to a couple Christmases before she died she still came with us. When she wasn’t able anymore to leave her house, she gave us the money and sent us.”
He looked to his sister. She nodded, “Go on.”
“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, Kayly, about your mom and me, I mean.”
Kayly couldn’t figure out what he was talking about but she faced them attentively.
“It was even in her will for Dad and his brothers and sisters, the request that, since they were receiving a great deal of money from that little business on second street that was the first in town to sell transistor radios, they should be grateful and give to others, especially the Salvation Army at Christmas.” He paused, looked at his sister next to him, then began speaking again focusing over Kayly’s head, as if addressing someone behind her. “Of Dad’s generation, one of his brothers and one sister lived by Grandma Hazel’s example and advice. Two other siblings didn’t. They didn’t have to. It was just Grandma’s request in her will. And, as you can surmise, in our generation your mother and I haven’t either.”
“We’ve talked about it,” her mother said quickly. “We just never got around to it. We’ve enjoyed the inheritance that came to us when we reached 21. But by that time we’d pretty well forgotten Grandma.” Tears formed in her eyes. “But,” she said. “It’s been a long time… but I’m going to start now. Don’t you dare write what we told you about us. But I’m going to start today with a check to the Salvation Army. Zach?” She looked at him sternly.
“Me too,” he said. “It’s a relief. Maybe sometime, as Grandma said, it will become a joy.”
Kayly fiddled with the tablet, upon which she’d written nothing, and looked back and forth at her mother and uncle. She wanted to say something to assure her mother and uncle that she loved them. But the event was so out of the ordinary that she just said what she’d heard on television, “Thank you for the interview. I’ll only write about my grateful great-grandmother and me. That’s more than enough.”
Preaching point: Directing gratitude.
* * *
With You
by David O. Bales
Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16
“The room isn’t moving, Mom. It’s you.”
Emma looked at her daughter, not sure what she’d said.
“It’s you, Mom. You’re shaking.”
Emma blinked quickly. “I’m wobbling, maybe, but not shaking. Let me sit down a minute,” she said to her daughter, waving longingly toward the row of seats across from the airline’s check-in counter. She’d been to an airport before, but she’d never flown and she admitted she was “a little nervous.”
Patty hustled her to a chair, black plastic with chrome frame.
“You’ll be alright,” Patty said as she glanced over her shoulder looking for Nigel. He emailed that he’d meet them at check-in. Patty assumed she’d recognize him, though she’d met him only once a dozen years ago, half her lifetime ago.
With her chin on her chest Emma breathed deeply a few times then looked up with a pleading smile, “I don’t think I can do this.”
Passengers were arriving at shorter intervals, the crowd buzz grew, and the line at the check-in lengthened toward where Emma sat. Her elderly aunt’s funeral awaited her in Chicago and she was the only one of her siblings able to attend. At the moment she didn’t feel very able.
“They’re expecting you, Mom.” Patty said. “You don’t want to disappoint them. And it’s non-stop. Three hours and you’ll be there.”
“Hi, hi, hi.” Nigel bounded up with his large feet slapping. How did Patty think she wouldn’t recognize him? He looked like a tall skinny bobble head. “Sorry I didn’t get here earlier. Long drive, the traffic and the parking you know. All set there cousin Emma?” He was puffing hard as he sat down his suitcase and gazed at Emma. His expression changed as he perceived that something was wrong and that the young lady bending over Emma must be her daughter, Patty.
Patty helped him in his confusion. “I’m Patty.”
“Oh sure, oh sure, should have noticed. Well, well, Emma dear, we going to check in and swoop off into the sky?” He chuckled, his head swaying side to side.
Patty laid her hand on her mother’s shoulder. “Mom’s having a hard time. She’s never flown before.”
“Nothing to it,” Nigel said. “You pop in and waddle to your seat. Wonderful people helping you all the way. No jet noise inside, not very loud I mean. All you do is plant yourself and the next thing you know, why, it’s Chicago.” He laughed then turned to look at the growing line for check-in.
Emma tilted her head up to look at Nigel. Now he realized that Emma was seriously anxious. “Well, well, what’s the issue, Emma? Afraid of the confinement or a crash?” He threw out his arms, “Commercial jets don’t crash anymore. Why, years go by before…. As easy as sitting in this chair,” he bent down and tapped his knuckles on the arm of Emma’s chair.
The check-in line now extended to the chairs and bent back toward the doors. Two teenaged girls shuffled past the three relatives. As they glanced at Emma, one said to the other, “There’s no one home behind her eyes,” and they looked away in embarrassment.
“I know this is hard, Mom, but if you don’t go, you’ll regret it.”
“Sure,” Nigel said with a lilt, “got to join the old folks at home.” He looked nervously toward the check-in line.
Emma smiled weakly.
“Sooo,” Nigel reached down with his hand under Emma’s elbow and lifted, “here we go.”
Emma yielded to his arm and Patty reached her from the other side. “You can do this. Others do it and you can too. And here,” she pulled out Emma’s ticket and flopped it twice. “Right here’s your seat number. You’ll be sitting by Nigel. Made the reservations myself. Right Nigel?”
“Yes. Quite. Numbers are … 22A and 22B. One’s by the window and one’s in the middle. You can choose which. How pleasant.”
The two remained at Emma’s side as the line inched toward check-in. Emma, as though trying to convince herself to be brave, stood up straight and looked directly ahead. When she was the next up, she slumped into Patty, “I can’t do this.”
Patty was carrying her mother’s suitcase. She set it down. “Mom, all my life, no matter my self-doubts, you shooed me out the door and told me I could face anything, ‘Head up, eyes open, straight ahead’ you said. Now you do it.” She grabbed her mother’s hand and Nigel’s hand. She pulled the two together. “There. Grab hold.” The two did as told, clutching one another’s hand. “Nigel, will you hold Mom’s hand during the flight?” He nodded. She said, “There you go. He’ll be with you.” She turned to Nigel, “You won’t let go of her hand throughout the flight?” He stretched his head back, took an obvious breath and stammered “I do solemnly swear —”
“Next,” the counter person addressed the three of them. Patty handed over Emma’s ticket and driver’s license, kissed her mother’s cheek, turned and did not look back as she left the terminal. Nigel stood looking around with a foolish grin.
When the plane landed at O’Hare Emma and Nigel were nearly the last off the plane. Their hands were bound in a tight red cross between them. Nigel was trying to pry their cramped fingers one by one to get them apart.
“Emma dear, I’m still with you,” Nigel said. “You can let go now and open your eyes.”
Preaching point: God is with us.
*****************************************
StoryShare, March 10, 2019 issue.
Copyright 2019 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
“Great-Grandma Hazel” by David O. Bales
“With You” by David O. Bales
Great-Grandma Hazel
by David O. Bales
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
It shouldn’t be this hard Kayly thought. Seemed simple when Mr. Harmon assigned it to his college prep English class: “‘I did not get here by myself.’ Each of you,” he said, “is the living fringe of a long genealogy. Certainly you have received some disabilities from your family,” to which most students chuckled. “No family’s perfect. What I want you to write about is that you’re just the wave as it meets the shore. Your life energy started way out to sea — generations ago.”
The assignment was to interview a current family member about an older family member already dead and write how a generation in the past affects those living today. “If you’re adopted,” he said, “you can use your adoptive parents to tell you about someone who’s gone before you. If you don’t seem to have any relatives in the world, talk to me. I’ll hook you up with some friends of mine who’ll be your surrogate parents for a while. But don’t ask to borrow the car keys for prom night.”
Why the resistance? First time Kayly mentioned it to her mother she watched her mother’s lips thin. She didn’t consider interviewing her father. Her parents were divorced and she seldom saw him. “It’s about your grandma, Mom. Just tell me some things about her, especially what she handed on to you.”
Both times Kayly brought it up again her mother’s face tightened. The best Kayly could get from her was, “Why don’t you talk to your Uncle Zach? He’s a year and a half older than me. I was only eleven when Grandma died.”
“But you lived in the same town and saw her a lot, didn’t you?”
Her mother spoke while facing away from Kayly, “Get Zach in on this.”
That evening Kayly phoned her Uncle Zach and left him little time to think as she explained her assignment, saying her mom was willing — which was not exactly true — to help if Uncle Zach would join. For his usually being bright and ready to jump into anything that included his nieces and nephews, there was a long pause on the phone. Kayly almost had to beg him. She wheedled him into coming to their home on Saturday afternoon.
Whenever Kayly’s mom and uncle got together, the noise level rose and Kayly almost had to raise her hand or step between them to get into their conversation. Today she sat silently with the two in the living room and again reported the assignment, reading word for word from her tablet. She soon pictured herself as a dentist trying to pull teeth. All she could extract from them about their grandmother was: “She was a nice person… Yeah, but we were pretty young… Took real good care of her kids… For the first years of your grandpa’s business she worked on the books at the shop on Friday and Saturday nights.”
Kayly was frustrated. “What else?” she said with force. “As a human being, what else? What do you most remember about her?”
“Well, she was charitable,” Zach said as he shook his head slightly while glancing at his sister. Her mother’s face muscles tightened. Kayly peered at her and waited. Finally, as her mother looked squarely at Zach, she said, “She was very charitable. Grandpa’s electronics shop became a financial success. Your uncle and I have benefited from that business. Wouldn’t you agree Zach?”
Kayly had always felt that her mother and uncle were wonderful people. What was going on here? Did they bury Great-Grandma Hazel under the garage or something? The sister and brother sat beside one another looking down. Kayly realized that she was gaping at them. Then her mother nodded to Zach and said, “Yeah. Tell her.”
Zach blew out through his nose as he grimaced, and, speaking to his lap, he said, “Grandpa, your great-grandpa, had died when your mom was in kindergarten. Grandma, your great-grandma, was almost beyond charitable. She lived to give money away. We knew that as kids and, even after she was dead, our parents talked about her giving.
“The one thing Grandma told us every Christmas — as she told our parents before us — was about when she was a child in Oklahoma in the 1930s. She called them ‘the dirty thirties.’ Dust bowl, the truly great depression. She was old enough to know what was going on. She said most farms were already repossessed by the bank. Some people had given up and surrendered to life on the county poor farm. A few men had hopped freight trains heading west in hope of a job to send money home. Her family had sold their last milk cow. That money was gone and by December there wasn’t a potato left in the root cellar. At every meal in December her father repeated that he couldn’t stand his family’s going on relief. All five of the children knew there’d be no Christmas presents. Then word came that a Salvation Army truck would arrive in town. Grandma Hazel didn’t remember exactly how the Salvation Army provisioned her family, but they did, at least for a while. And she remembered their giving her a rag doll she kept for years.
“So every Christmas when we were children, Grandma Hazel led the family in giving to the Salvation Army. She helped us and our brother and sister to save money for the Salvation Army ‘pail,’ she called it. And she gave us money to go with her to put in the pail. Up to a couple Christmases before she died she still came with us. When she wasn’t able anymore to leave her house, she gave us the money and sent us.”
He looked to his sister. She nodded, “Go on.”
“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, Kayly, about your mom and me, I mean.”
Kayly couldn’t figure out what he was talking about but she faced them attentively.
“It was even in her will for Dad and his brothers and sisters, the request that, since they were receiving a great deal of money from that little business on second street that was the first in town to sell transistor radios, they should be grateful and give to others, especially the Salvation Army at Christmas.” He paused, looked at his sister next to him, then began speaking again focusing over Kayly’s head, as if addressing someone behind her. “Of Dad’s generation, one of his brothers and one sister lived by Grandma Hazel’s example and advice. Two other siblings didn’t. They didn’t have to. It was just Grandma’s request in her will. And, as you can surmise, in our generation your mother and I haven’t either.”
“We’ve talked about it,” her mother said quickly. “We just never got around to it. We’ve enjoyed the inheritance that came to us when we reached 21. But by that time we’d pretty well forgotten Grandma.” Tears formed in her eyes. “But,” she said. “It’s been a long time… but I’m going to start now. Don’t you dare write what we told you about us. But I’m going to start today with a check to the Salvation Army. Zach?” She looked at him sternly.
“Me too,” he said. “It’s a relief. Maybe sometime, as Grandma said, it will become a joy.”
Kayly fiddled with the tablet, upon which she’d written nothing, and looked back and forth at her mother and uncle. She wanted to say something to assure her mother and uncle that she loved them. But the event was so out of the ordinary that she just said what she’d heard on television, “Thank you for the interview. I’ll only write about my grateful great-grandmother and me. That’s more than enough.”
Preaching point: Directing gratitude.
* * *
With You
by David O. Bales
Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16
“The room isn’t moving, Mom. It’s you.”
Emma looked at her daughter, not sure what she’d said.
“It’s you, Mom. You’re shaking.”
Emma blinked quickly. “I’m wobbling, maybe, but not shaking. Let me sit down a minute,” she said to her daughter, waving longingly toward the row of seats across from the airline’s check-in counter. She’d been to an airport before, but she’d never flown and she admitted she was “a little nervous.”
Patty hustled her to a chair, black plastic with chrome frame.
“You’ll be alright,” Patty said as she glanced over her shoulder looking for Nigel. He emailed that he’d meet them at check-in. Patty assumed she’d recognize him, though she’d met him only once a dozen years ago, half her lifetime ago.
With her chin on her chest Emma breathed deeply a few times then looked up with a pleading smile, “I don’t think I can do this.”
Passengers were arriving at shorter intervals, the crowd buzz grew, and the line at the check-in lengthened toward where Emma sat. Her elderly aunt’s funeral awaited her in Chicago and she was the only one of her siblings able to attend. At the moment she didn’t feel very able.
“They’re expecting you, Mom.” Patty said. “You don’t want to disappoint them. And it’s non-stop. Three hours and you’ll be there.”
“Hi, hi, hi.” Nigel bounded up with his large feet slapping. How did Patty think she wouldn’t recognize him? He looked like a tall skinny bobble head. “Sorry I didn’t get here earlier. Long drive, the traffic and the parking you know. All set there cousin Emma?” He was puffing hard as he sat down his suitcase and gazed at Emma. His expression changed as he perceived that something was wrong and that the young lady bending over Emma must be her daughter, Patty.
Patty helped him in his confusion. “I’m Patty.”
“Oh sure, oh sure, should have noticed. Well, well, Emma dear, we going to check in and swoop off into the sky?” He chuckled, his head swaying side to side.
Patty laid her hand on her mother’s shoulder. “Mom’s having a hard time. She’s never flown before.”
“Nothing to it,” Nigel said. “You pop in and waddle to your seat. Wonderful people helping you all the way. No jet noise inside, not very loud I mean. All you do is plant yourself and the next thing you know, why, it’s Chicago.” He laughed then turned to look at the growing line for check-in.
Emma tilted her head up to look at Nigel. Now he realized that Emma was seriously anxious. “Well, well, what’s the issue, Emma? Afraid of the confinement or a crash?” He threw out his arms, “Commercial jets don’t crash anymore. Why, years go by before…. As easy as sitting in this chair,” he bent down and tapped his knuckles on the arm of Emma’s chair.
The check-in line now extended to the chairs and bent back toward the doors. Two teenaged girls shuffled past the three relatives. As they glanced at Emma, one said to the other, “There’s no one home behind her eyes,” and they looked away in embarrassment.
“I know this is hard, Mom, but if you don’t go, you’ll regret it.”
“Sure,” Nigel said with a lilt, “got to join the old folks at home.” He looked nervously toward the check-in line.
Emma smiled weakly.
“Sooo,” Nigel reached down with his hand under Emma’s elbow and lifted, “here we go.”
Emma yielded to his arm and Patty reached her from the other side. “You can do this. Others do it and you can too. And here,” she pulled out Emma’s ticket and flopped it twice. “Right here’s your seat number. You’ll be sitting by Nigel. Made the reservations myself. Right Nigel?”
“Yes. Quite. Numbers are … 22A and 22B. One’s by the window and one’s in the middle. You can choose which. How pleasant.”
The two remained at Emma’s side as the line inched toward check-in. Emma, as though trying to convince herself to be brave, stood up straight and looked directly ahead. When she was the next up, she slumped into Patty, “I can’t do this.”
Patty was carrying her mother’s suitcase. She set it down. “Mom, all my life, no matter my self-doubts, you shooed me out the door and told me I could face anything, ‘Head up, eyes open, straight ahead’ you said. Now you do it.” She grabbed her mother’s hand and Nigel’s hand. She pulled the two together. “There. Grab hold.” The two did as told, clutching one another’s hand. “Nigel, will you hold Mom’s hand during the flight?” He nodded. She said, “There you go. He’ll be with you.” She turned to Nigel, “You won’t let go of her hand throughout the flight?” He stretched his head back, took an obvious breath and stammered “I do solemnly swear —”
“Next,” the counter person addressed the three of them. Patty handed over Emma’s ticket and driver’s license, kissed her mother’s cheek, turned and did not look back as she left the terminal. Nigel stood looking around with a foolish grin.
When the plane landed at O’Hare Emma and Nigel were nearly the last off the plane. Their hands were bound in a tight red cross between them. Nigel was trying to pry their cramped fingers one by one to get them apart.
“Emma dear, I’m still with you,” Nigel said. “You can let go now and open your eyes.”
Preaching point: God is with us.
*****************************************
StoryShare, March 10, 2019 issue.
Copyright 2019 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
