Gold is Seldom All that Glitters

Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost

Son #1’s wife once described her life with him as if she were tied to a rope, bouncing along the rails behind him–the engine who is speeding down the tracks. I know the feeling. He was born in charge. Eighteen months younger than Daughter #1, he out-weighed her by several pounds before he was two. When he didn’t want to go where she inevitably was trying to drag him, he just pushed her over and sat on her. That generally stopped her cold.

At the time we lived in a mobile home park in Albuquerque not far from the state fair grounds which boasts a spectacular balloon festival every fall. One sunny morning, a multi-colored balloon landed on the asphalt right in front of our trailer. While the balloonist (is that what you call the pilot?) was trying to figure out how to solve his flight problem, Son #1 tried to sneak into the gondola and hijack a ride. He came very close.

Our mobile home park provided several nice amenities including a swimming pool. Son #1 would regularly slip away from his parents, jump into the water’s deep end, and wait on the bottom for someone to rescue him. No fear whatsoever. He liked “swimming” so much that one hot day, I heard some weird scratching noises, then a couple of bangs while I was cleaning the bathroom. I rushed in to find that Son #1 had put on his swimming trunks (backwards over his clothes), pulled a chair over to the outside door, and was trying to use a screwdriver to unbolt the screen door lock so he could head to the pool. (I’m not making this up!) Considerable screaming ensued when I deterred him and put him down for a nap

But his “I can solve any problem” attitude came in unexpected handy when we moved into our new house in Kearns. Old friends from Cedar City had recommended the builder to us, so we bought the lot across the street. Our friends offered their double garage to store our furniture, etc., until the house was finished. But by then, school had started, and my husband was occupied with trying to set up a high school auto shop and figure out how to teach teenagers to change their oil. The problem of transferring our household goods hadn’t really crossed his radar.

Son #1, born late in the fall, had missed the deadline to start kindergarten because of our transfer, so he had a whole year before he could go to school. He assured me that he and I could move the furniture by ourselves. He was as good as his word. He staggered across the street with drawers from dressers, boxes of clothes, small piles of books, and whatever treats he could sneak out of our friend’s kitchen. But when it came to our eight-foot couch, I was stymied.

The cushions were stacked next to the frame, so two-at-a-time, we ferried them to our new house. Then without even a word, Son #1—five years old—picked up one end of that couch, grinned at me and started dragging in forward. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s do this.” (I’m pretty sure he had been watching too much television!). But I lifted up the other end, and between us, we got the couch body across the street, up the split entry stairs, piled with cushions we sat down on. It wasn’t the last time that year, he stepped in and saved me when I had a problem.

In those days, builders of “starter” homes never even considered landscaping any part of the yard around a house they constructed. My husband was a teacher so there was no money to turn the dirt in the front of the house into grass and shrubs. Winter was coming and seeding wasn’t practical till the next spring. I couldn’t see how our budget would ever allow such an investment, hence I took my usual route to solving impossible problems, and I began to pray for the money we needed to buy sod. Because I had a six year-old, a five year-old, a two-year old, and I was pregnant with Son #3, I needed the combination of muck and mud–which I knew snow and frozen ground would bring–to be covered, or my children would be tracking sludge in every time they walked through the front door. If the Lord could bless us with just a little money, I was willing to do the work.

I got my miracle, and it was green, but not in the form I expected. A neighbor called one morning and said he’d been driving by a local turf farm; they were plowing up the edges of their fields in preparation for a spring planting. They were happy to dump a bunch of sod scraps into his truck. Did I want some? A couple hours later, he unloaded a pickup bed full of grass pieces each no bigger than 4 or 5 inches across onto my driveway.

Now I only had one problem. It was early December, freezing cold, and I was about six months pregnant. A very plump stomach was not conducive to moving sod. Once again, Son #1 came to the rescue. He brought out a piece of carpet left over from the home construction and had me sit on it. Then piece by piece, he carried over clumps of grass to me which I fitted into a jigsaw puzzle of a front yard. It took us several hours; but even 40 years later, when I drive by that former house, the front yard is still green and growing.

Son #1 is now the father of five kids. We held a wedding shower last night for his third child to marry. Most parents worry that their children might not be up to the job of having children of their own. I never did. Early on, it was pretty clear that Son #1 was equal to whatever problem was likely  to arise. That’s a powerful gift for a son to give his mother. Happy Father’s Day.