On brothers, birthdays and institutions.

   Today is my youngest brother's 50th birthday. We will have a party, and celebrate this milestone with him. But he will not have his wife, his children or their spouses here to celebrate with us.
   There are none.
   Jeff suffered carbon monoxide poisoning when he was seventeen years old. After being in a coma for months, it took him over a year to relearn how to walk, talk and do the most simple tasks.
   But it all didn't come back. He has an IQ in the mid sixties. Physically, he is as feeble as an eighty year old man. Perhaps the most devastating effects of his injury are the total inability to remember or think logically. He has lived with us for seven years (since our mother's death), but still comes down to the kitchen in the morning and opens several cabinets looking for his coffee cup, which has been in the same place since he came to us. When we suggest he fix a bowl of cereal, he will look through the cabinets until he finds the bowls, take it to the table, then go through more cabinets to find the cereal, take it to the table, come back and look in the freezer for the milk before opening the other door, and then prepare his bowl of cereal. Only after he has stared at the bowl for several moments will he realize he needs a spoon, which prompts another hunt through the drawers. Afterwards, unless we suggest he clean up, all will remain on the kitchen table. It is this way every day. 
   He will do anything we ask of him, but we must ask. And only one thing at a time.
   Needless to say, possibilities for work, even volunteer work, are non-existent. A well-meaning friend suggested being a "bagboy" at the local grocery. I explained that the ice cream would melt before being placed on top of the bread.
   Yet two things began to become obvious. One, Jeff needed an experience, or better yet an environment, that stimulated him more, that kept him busy. And two, I needed to do something else besides spend my day with him. I felt myself being slowed, becoming as lethargic and unmotivated as my charge. I felt guilty about not doing the former; and guilty for feeling the latter.
   So we began looking at alternatives. But the prospect was daunting, and not a little bit frightening. I had visions of some dark and dreary place where "undesirables" were shunted off to be barely kept alive. It used to be that way.  Laura Hillenbrand, in her book Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, describes such a time, not so long ago:

In the 1930s, America was infatuated with the pseudoscience of eugenics and its promise of strengthening the human race by culling the “unfit” from the genetic pool. Along with the “feebleminded,” insane, and criminal, those so classified included women who had sex out of wedlock (considered a mental illness), orphans, the disabled, the poor, the homeless, epileptics, masturbators, the blind and the deaf, alcoholics, and girls whose genitals exceeded certain measurements. Some eugenicists advocated euthanasia, and in mental hospitals, this was quietly carried out on scores of people through “lethal neglect” or outright murder. At one Illinois mental hospital, new patients were dosed with milk from cows infected with tuberculosis, in the belief that only the undesirable would perish. As many as four in ten of these patients died. A more popular tool of eugenics was forced sterilization, employed on a raft of lost souls who, through misbehavior or misfortune, fell into the hands of state governments.

   Not a pretty picture. Of course, insane asylums no longer exists, but there are nevertheless some frightening places still around. 
   But a serendipitous (i.e. God-inspired) comment from a new friend led us to just the perfect place. Annandale Village is a community in Suwanee, Georgia (45 minutes northeast of Atlanta) which offers a bucolic, community style setting for adults with developmental disabilities and traumatic brain injuries. After visiting, we allowed Jeff to stay a week. We were unsure of how he would react to the place (His first comment the first day: "Is this a nursing home?") but he thrived. He was led into a dizzying world of events, field trips, and a sheltered workshop. We told him this was no nursing home; it was more like perpetual summer camp.

   Jeff will soon be going back for his second week-long stay, and we are trying (along with my middle brother, Charles) to work out the financial arrangements for him to become a permanent resident. 
   We are grateful to be able to offer him the chance to be a more productive and self respecting man. And we don't feel like we are "institutionalizing" him at all. 
   Yet he will always be a part of the most important institution of all: our family.
Happy Birthday, Jeff.  

Days

20,455
days ago
I became the first child of John and Joyce,
the first grandchild of James and Mildred
and Croley and Hazel.

14,874
I found myself a sinner
in need of a Savior.

13,711
well over half my life
I have loved one above all others.
11,976
we started keeping house.

10,917
I became a father
(and again at 10,418, 9650 and 8424).

A mere 86 days ago
I became a grandfather.

And I count each day passed worthwhile
and the days to come
surely less than I wish
yet more than I deserve
as gifts.

So teach us to number our days,
That we may present to You a heart of wisdom.
Psalm 90:12.

The Color of Water

The Color of Water by James McBride. A book review.
   In one sense, it is a remarkable story about a mother who married two good men and raised twelve children, among them medical doctors, university professors, journalists and musicians. In another, it is a story of faith, as Ruth McBride goes on, with her husband, to co-found a Baptist church in New York. Yet it is made all the more noteworthy because Ruth was a white, Jewish woman, and both her husbands were black. In the ultimate sense, therefore, the most redemptive part of this story may be how God raised her above prejudice—Jew against gentile, white against black, black against white, even dark-skinned blacks versus light-skinned—and gave her, her twelve children, and her grandchildren a wonderful gift.
   Ruchel Dwara Zylska, the daughter of a failed itinerant Orthodox rabbi, fled her native Poland with her family in 1921 and settled in Suffolk, Virginia. Her father was a cruel man who abused his crippled wife and mistreated his daughter. Along with this harsh treatment, she and her family were ostracized in the South because they were not white, but “Jews.”
   Working long hours in her father’s mercantile store in a black community, she began to identify with the black children her age, also marginalized and discriminated against. Ruth Shilsky (her Americanized name) fled persecution once again when, at seventeen, she moved to New York. There she met Andrew Dennis McBride, a violinist from North Carolina studying music. He was a deacon and choir member at a Harlem church, where she began attending, and where something else happened:

   In 1942, Ruth said to Andrew Dennis McBride, “I want to accept Jesus Christ into my life and join the church.”
   Dennis said, “Are you sure you want to do this, Ruth? You know what this means?”
   I told him, “I’m sure.” I was totally sure.

When it became apparent that Ruth intended to marry Dennis, her Jewish family sat shiva for her, proclaiming her dead to them. From that moment on, her community was the black community of her husband and her soon-to-follow children.

   The author, James McBride, tells his own story beside hers. Her vivid recollections, dictated reluctantly at first, match perfectly James’s story of growing up with “the strange, middle-aged white lady riding her ancient bicycle.” In places the story is hard (both of Ruth’s husbands die, leaving her with eight and then twelve children to raise; James faces the hurdles of inner-city gangs and drugs), and finding their way was hard for both James and Ruth. Yet it is a powerful story of God’s grace. James became
a jazz musician, journalist and author, and Ruth earned a B.A. in Social Work at age 65.
   The evocative title comes from a conversation between mother and son:

[O]ne afternoon, on the way home from church, I asked her if God was black or white.
A deep sigh, “Oh boy…God’s not black. He’s not white. He’s a spirit.”
“Does he like black or white people better?”
“He loves all people. He’s a spirit.”
“What’s a spirit?”
“A spirit’s a spirit.”
“What color is God’s spirit?”

—Wayne Steadham

Welcome, Adeline Grace

    Our first grandchild entered the world today. Her name is Adeline Grace. Her nickname will be Addi, and her street name (so says her aunt) will be Addi-G. Her parents are my son, James, and his wife, Bernnie.  Adeline was born around 2 AM, weighs 7 pounds, 6 ounces, and is 20.25 inches long. Cheryl, the proud grandmother, was in the delivery room and said both James and Bernnie performed flawlessly.
    I have often said most newborns look like little red raisins with eyes, but I feel I must say this is a beautiful girl. And she has spent all of her life, so far, looking around, taking in her new world (and all these strange faces--mom, dad, aunt, uncle, great-uncle, both grandmothers, and me, Papa.).
    Thanks be to God for this wonderful gift.