Category Archives: Travel

Showers of Blessing? September 1998

15 Wednesday Nov 2017

Posted by in Church, Faith, Growing up, Nature, Prayer, rafting, Seasons, Travel

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Milford 2  The church youth group was on its way from Burlington, Iowa, to Colorado for some camping, rafting, horseback riding, and other mountain-loving activities cherished by flatlanders. We stopped to camp on our first night at Milford State Park in central Kansas and set up on a gentle slope overlooking the lake. During the night a five-inch deluge left our campground looking like stacks of cast-off clothing after a flood. One of our teenage campers was heard saying, “If I had a bus ticket I’d be on my way home now.” Old hands at camping, of which we had only a few, said, “There, there, now, in a day or two, when we’ve had a chance to dry out, everything will look brighter.”
We had rain every day except one. Mostly we got used to it and adapted, using coin-operated laundries when necessary, and learning how to set up tents so the contents would stay dry…mostly. Every major activity that we planned, including the rafting, we got to enjoy without the rain’s interference. When rafting, the first thing we learn anyway is that we get wet. We read Psalms each morning and evening, and several passages claimed that God was in charge of the clouds and the rain. That made us wonder a bit about the messages we were getting.
We also read Ezekiel 34:26 about the “showers of blessing” God brings. The Gospel song of course came to mind. The trip proceeded as smoothly as any we had planned, either for service or for fellowship. No vehicles broke down. Everyone cooperated with few moments of tension. We kept the schedule of reservations and plans for each day. We covered 2500 miles in nine days. The showers kept us on our toes, depending on God to provide, which God did, as far as we were concerned. Getting wet unintentionally and getting wet purposely didn’t make much difference after a while.
When we got home to Iowa we found that Iowa was dry as a bone. Until the end of August it remained so. Somehow the field crops continued to grow, with just enough moisture to keep going. One of the congregation’s farmers, Don Thie, came dripping wet into the first fall choir rehearsal, and he said, “Since I prayed for rain, I guess I should learn to carry an umbrella.”
We also found that, while we were on the road, one of the church members, Chuck Murray, had installed a shower in our basement restroom, so that our overnighters, drop-in-travelers, service project workers, runners, and any other sweaty folks would have a convenient place to clean up.
So we began the fall season that year with dozens of plans that we hoped would recharge and enhance the life of our community, and we sang the old song with renewed hope, “Showers of blessing; showers of blessings we need; mercy drops ‘round us are falling, but for the showers we plead.”

Corporate Efficiency

13 Monday Nov 2017

Posted by in Learning from mistakes, Life along the River, People, rafting, Travel

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New River WVA   Several years ago on a lovely summer evening several of us sat on the wooded banks of the New River in West Virginia, relaxing and enjoying the quiet after the first of our planned two days of rafting. During that day we had floated a relatively smooth portion of the river. We had visited some of the ruins of the old riverside mining towns that played a part in the struggle between management and miners in the formative days of the unions that finally succeeded in improving the conditions that workers and their families faced. The rafting outfitters had prepared for us a delicious steak dinner on their portable grills, they had erected tents for us, furnished a blazing campfire, and one of them was warming up on the guitar for some singing. We looked forward to the next day when the rough and tumble part of the river would show us why the New River is a popular rafting destination. We needed our rest to prepare for it.
Across the river ran the railroad tracks that had served the New River Valley since early coal mining days, and, sure enough, along came a train with cars full of coal headed north, filling the world with roar and rumble. We supposed correctly that the trains we had not noticed during the day of rafting would make some unpleasant appearances during the night, interrupting the restful sleep we craved.
About thirty minutes later another train rounded the bend, with its coal cars also loaded, headed south. It was not enough that the peace of that lovely ancient valley would be interrupted regularly by noisy trains, whose places of origin had to be separated by many miles in either direction. They were both carrying the same commodity in opposite directions!
Hold on. Wait a minute. What’s going on here, we asked. What sense does it make that coal mined far north would pass coal mined in the far south to get to places in the far north and the far south? Who organized that? They need some help. Keep the coal mined in the north in the north. Keep the coal mined in the south in the south. Forget hauling all this heavy stuff through this long meandering valley, where we want to rest and sleep and enjoy the beauty of nature.
There may be, possibly is, a reasonable and legitimate explanation somewhere, but it sticks in my mind as an example of human efficiency, planning, and cooperation. Carrying the same commodity, passing in the night, going in opposite directions, carrying resources to places they already exist, people expend their energies. A variation of the Greek myth of Sisyphus seemed to be replaying before our eyes. Does God have a sense of humor, or what?

The Dog Who Drove

07 Tuesday Nov 2017

Posted by in Faith, Gullibility, Travel, Vehicles

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Needels Highway   In our first trip through the Black Hills back in 1976, Jan decided to take the wheel, since it was nerve-wracking for her when I tried to drive through the mountains and sightsee at the same time. I took the passenger seat where I could look to my heart’s content and take all the photographs that I wanted. The evidence shows up in our photo album from that year.
There in that album is the picture that I had taken of a dog happily driving a convertible down a mountain highway. I took it while we passed this car that had no passengers except the dog who was driving. The dog seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself. His paws were on the steering wheel. His mouth was open in a wide grin, his tongue hanging out. His head was swaying in the wind that was also whipping his long hair. All the dog needed was a pair of goggles.
I wanted to stop our cars and ask to see his driver’s license. But he was a large unidentifiable mixed breed, probably weighing as much as I did, and I knew I was no match for him.
Not seen in the picture was the large motor home which preceded the car and to which the car was firmly attached. I wondered how the drivers of the motor home had discovered how much their dog enjoyed the experience of driving the car. Perhaps the car was pushing the RV instead of the other way around? The dog did look like he knew what he was doing. As we passed the RV, I wasn’t so sure about the person in the driver’s seat of that vehicle. I could not actually see anyone there.
It is a matter of faith I suppose. There are a lot of unseen connections, a lot more unseen controls than we are aware of as we travel along. There are more actors that are not obvious to our eyes, and our eyes are often tricked or misled by the way things appear. There is intelligence and compassion in charge, even beyond what we contain in our canine skins, isn’t there? Isn’t there? We just about have to assume so and believe so if we are going to enjoy the ride.

Sunday Evening on the Road Home, October 22, 2017

24 Tuesday Oct 2017

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sunset 2
We were driving through rain, rain that had filled two hours of the afternoon, on I-74 toward Galesburg, when we began to see the bright band of open sky on the western horizon. The contrast with the blue and gray bands of the sky above was stark. We welcomed the prospect of turning west toward Burlington. As sunset was approaching and the sun would soon be edging into that bright space, the open sky brightened into solid yellow, then startling gold. Soon the sun spread its blinding light under the blue clouds, sending golden rays shimmering across the whole landscape, highlighting the deeply scalloped row of clouds above the horizon, and fanning the bands of light in angles against the varying blue and gray tones of the clouds above.
I thought, “God’s grandeur…while all other arguments for God fail or come up short, the beauty of the earth still makes the case.”
The intensity of the gold light against the blue bands of sky increased, far surpassing any goldsmith’s skill, on a scale of magnitude infinitely greater in the whole gold bowl of the firmament. Then it grew even brighter. Our eyes had been fully occupied with the drama in the west. We were turning east into the cloverleaf onto US 34 when we saw the full rainbow spread across the eastern sky against a dark blue background. Before a moment’s thought I heard myself ask, “Who needs a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow when we have a sky full of it?”
It had been years since I had remembered that favorite poem of Gerard Manley Hopkins, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness….”

We faced the western sunset, as the top edge of the sun slipped below the horizon, and the fan of colors shining across the clouds out of that white blue band of open sky on the horizon began to soften gradually from blinding gold into yellow, pink, mauve, red, and burgundy against the cloud ridges of blues, purples and grays. A bright reflection of the sun’s orb appeared on the western sky above the point where the sun itself had disappeared, and remained for several minutes mirrored on the distant clouds. While the ceiling of clouds darkened overhead, the silhouettes of trees and land stood black against the western brightness.
As the colors in that band of light shaded into intensely deep yellow and red, the sky appeared to flame behind the sharp silhouettes, as if the fires on the Californian coast had finally reached and filled our midwestern skies, yet they did not alarm. They impressed with overpowering awe.
Gradually, as we approached Gladstone and Burlington, the lights above dimmed into the blackness of clouds. The clouds were still overhead, no stars could shine through, and the bright band of light blue still appeared distant, although it stretched across the whole length of the western horizon as we took in the steepled lights of Burlington’s downtown.
“And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast with ah! bright wings”

Churches Against Torture and Impoverishment

06 Thursday Apr 2017

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Reaching a sabbatical year in 1987, while serving St Paul UCC in Minonk, Jan and I planned a trip to Europe that coincided with our daughter Alicia’s Spanish Club trip. Jan, Nathan, and I flew to London for a week, traveled to Amsterdam by train and ferry, and then met Alicia in Paris on Bastille Day, while she came from Madrid; we stayed in Paris for a week, traveled to Geneva for a few days and then to Frankfurt—these destinations by train. We rented an automobile for the two weeks in Germany, beginning and ending in Frankfurt. All in all it was a month, using $25 a day tour guides and a tight budget.

Western Illinois University provided a course adaptable to my sabbatical plan, which was to study church-state relationships, with a faculty consultation in Paris and Frankfurt. I made contacts for interviews in the cities we visited, mostly making appointments after arriving in the cities. My family were good sports as we moved from church to church, office to office, and museum to museum.  I surrendered a few times to their desire for McDonalds, KFC, and pizza, but we did find that the definition of pizza was often as adventurous as other local cuisine, as peas, broccoli, tuna, and squid found their way onto our pizza orders.

The vitality of churches and the means of support for church budgets and buildings varied substantially. We found worshiping groups in all sizes, in traditional and non-traditional settings, and enjoyed facilities that were as new as a Methodist Church in Chelsea that finally rebuilt and opened in 1986 after being destroyed by bombs in the Second World War, and as old as the EKU (United Protestant Church) in Trier that met in a Fourth Century Roman basilica.

Some congregations derived much of their support from state church tax formulas, that for the most part maintained traditional buildings—great cathedrals such as St. Paul’s in London and Notre Dame in Paris, and historic buildings such as Calvin’s church in Geneva. The Kirchentag met in Frankfurt and hundreds of young people from across Germany and many international guests gathered, mostly paying their own way, for a week of worship, lectures, workshops, and service opportunities. Some buildings were supported by international contributions, such as the Synagogue at Worms, where a small Hebrew congregation gathered in honor and memory of the centuries of congregational life before the Holocaust. Some places seemed to be full of worshipers every day, such as Sacre-Coeur in Paris, and others closed even on Sunday, such as the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam. Some congregations were entirely self-supporting, refusing even the offers of voluntary tax-channeled donations, in their traditions of independence.

Often we were noticed as guests and invited to join in meals, as was customary at the Third Order of Saint Francis Hospitality House and the “Pilgrim Church” in Amsterdam, and in many of the places that we visited.

Another thing that we noticed everywhere, whether it was in the active announcements in the services or the bulletin boards of buildings that we visited, even when we were not there during events, was common support for organizations and movements that oppose torture. Also, there were humanitarian efforts for community and international development, food, and disaster relief that we occasionally saw in the United States, but the opposition to torture and political imprisonment worldwide was remarkable, since at the time there was so little evidence of that kind of involvement in American churches. The support was evident in Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish congregations, in settings that otherwise appeared apolitical, conservative and liberal in their creeds.

Far from finding a lifeless church uninvolved in the issues facing people in the world, we found faithful communities actively concerned about the well-being of people throughout the world. If this was the evidence of the “post-Christian era” in Europe, then it held some lessons for self-congratulating religious life in the United States.

Where Was Chicken Trotter and When?

24 Friday Feb 2017

Posted by in Books by Gary Chapman, Cherokee history, Citizenship, Death, Events, Learning from mistakes, People, Racial Prejudice, Small town life, Suffering, Travel

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OLOP Cover Photo 3

Recently I was presenting Our Land! Our People! at the Talbot Library and Museum in Colcord, Oklahoma. I did not expect to find much in the little town of Colcord, Oklahoma, but I was wrong. Talbot publishes some significant works on Cherokee history, and their facsimile editions of the 1843 Claims were illuminating on the John Bell family in several respects. For the first time I could actually see the English and Cherokee handwriting of four key family members—John Bell, the father, and three of his Bell sons—John Adair, David Henry, and Devereaux Jarrett (better known as Chicken Trotter).

The 1843 Claims record unreimbursed losses prior to the Cherokee Removal in 1838-39, usually due to thefts or confiscations of property by non-Cherokee white men. They were submitted to recover those losses, and they had to be witnessed by at least two other reputable citizens. The Bells served as reporters of their own claims, witnesses to others, and, in the case of Chicken Trotter, an official recorder of several dozen claims by others.

Chicken Trotter’s reports are some of the clearest and most beautifully written in all of the volumes. Deciphering other writing was sometimes impossible, but “D. J. Bell” provided some of the best. That surprised me, because in other places he is recorded by the simple notation “his mark,” and I never found evidence that he had attended any of the Cherokee schools. It is no wonder that he didn’t sign his work “Devereaux Jarrett” but “D. J. Bell” works well, and there is no competitor for the use of those initials among the Bell family. David Henry Bell would be “D. H.” and he just signed as “David Bell.” As these claims were recorded in the first few months of the year, there was enough time for Chicken Trotter to get back to Texas in order to work with Governor Sam Houston to conclude the Treaty of Bird’s Fort on September 29, 1843, which ended the four years of conflict between the Texas government and several tribes. Conflict followed the second Texas governor, Mirabeau Lamar’s attempt to eradicate the native population. Sam Houston, the first governor, an official Cherokee himself,  had tried to grant reservation status to the Cherokees among others. From one administration to the next, the policies reversed from welcoming people of different cultures to trying to destroy them, and back again.

Chicken Trotter, according to the records of the Texas Cherokee population, had come to Texas during the mid-1830’s, when Chief Duwali (or Bowle, as he was also known), led the tribe. They were and continue to be located in Rusk, Cherokee and Smith Counties, as the areas are known today. When in 1839 Governor Lamar and the Texas militia killed Duwali and at least half of the tribe in a genocidal attack, Chicken Trotter soon became one of the remaining leaders.

Because of the Texas Cherokee account I rewrote Our Land! Our People! removing Chicken Trotter from Alabama, where his father lived, and from the Bell Detachment on the Trail of Tears, and putting him in Texas through the late 1830’s. After publishing, I found evidence that Chicken Trotter served his brothers in the Bell Detachment as a treasurer paying bills along the route. If he accompanied the group the whole way, he was travelling to Indian Territory from September 1838 through early January 1839, before returning to Texas in time to be in danger during the massacre of Duwali and the Cherokees in July.

When a group of Cherokees, including John Adair Bell and David Bell travelled to Texas in September and October of 1845, accompanied by the diarist and newspaper reporter William Quesenbury, they visited the northeast Texas Cherokee settlement, and Chicken Trotter was there leading the group, having established a community farm, including watermelons and pumpkins as Quesenbury notes, because some of their horses got loose and tore up the patch.

In 1848, Chicken Trotter was again in Indian Territory, joining his brother Sam and other Cherokees planning a journey to California to prospect for gold. Sam died on the way but Chicken Trotter and his wife Juliette got there before returning to their people in Texas a year or so later. There is no record about his success or failure in finding gold.

Chicken Trotter was a busy man, travelling back and forth quickly in days when travel was difficult. Maybe that is how he acquired his name.

Plunging Into Detroit, 1966

30 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by in Church, Citizenship, Events, Faith, Growing up, Gullibility, Innocence, People, Racial Prejudice, Travel

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In the late 1960’s the “urban plunge” was an experience recommended to those who had not lived in an urban area or who had lived in a privileged area and had no direct experience of how the “other half” lived. The Methodist Student Movement was sponsoring a conference in Detroit in the summer of 1966. I was president of the MSM chapter at Illinois Wesleyan University, a farm kid, and I decided to go to the conference and, unknown to my parents (I was 19 after all.), expand that experience with an urban plunge.

Central Methodist Church, located on Grand Circus Park, hosted the conference, and several local leaders—professors at Wayne State University, political leaders, corporate leaders, and the president of the United Auto Workers, Walter Reuther—spoke to us, addressing the urban issues of the day. Reuther was particularly impressive, laying out the challenges to the auto industry, fully integrating the workforce, and expanding the base of unions internationally; he predicted the eventual decline of domestic industry, the unions, and the urban centers in the face of global competition, since people were not preparing for it.

Outside of the conference some of us wandered around and lived on the streets of Detroit. Much of the housing in many neighborhoods sat empty and decrepit. The immense Ford Rouge Plant stood empty. Segregated housing was the rule, and public services for the older neighborhoods were often scarce. I always walked around with one or two other friends from the conference, and we slept on park benches or in abandoned houses, and went to soup kitchens and day labor hiring centers. I never had more than a few dollars on me and dressed like I didn’t have much, which, of course, I didn’t. It was one of the richest experiences of my life, meeting people on the street—the veterans who had lost their way, the guy with an armful of watches that he would sell me, the children who begged during the day and turned their money over to an adult at the end of the evening, alcoholics, drug addicts, musicians and street artists, philosophers, people of all kinds. Throughout the weeks there I perceived no threat, other than the rodents and dirt of the streets. People were friendly, curious about us (We were college students here for a few weeks of the summer just to learn what we could.), willing to talk about their own lives, frustrations, and hopes. I discovered that all of these people were a lot like me under the skin. I could learn from them, but I had little to teach. That was the summer before the Detroit riots of 1967, and I wondered how poor people managed to live in the city, knowing they had no other home to go to.

One day a female friend and I got cleaned up and dressed up and went to a new high-rise apartment building in the urban renewal area just north of the downtown. We pretended we were a newly married couple looking for an apartment. The apartments were plain, small, and uninviting, and we finally had to admit to the nice woman who showed us around that $1000 a month was above our means. I couldn’t see how or why anyone would afford such a rental. Obviously most of the people we were meeting could not. We ate that evening at a Greek restaurant, spending some of my money hard-earned from loading and unloading trucks for a couple of days. We sat and watched as people came and went, finding or leaving something hidden behind the refrigerator that sat just outside the kitchen, but not staying to eat a meal.

I searched for the church that Rev. Reinhold Niebuhr had served for 13 years that had ended forty years before—Bethel Evangelical Church, two miles west of the downtown on Grand Avenue. What would be left of the German working community he served? It had become an African-American working community, and the building continued to serve, renamed Mayflower Missionary Baptist Church. I didn’t imagine at the time that I would eventually serve old German Evangelical Churches that looked a lot like it.

It is still hard to say exactly how those days in Detroit changed me, but they did. I was humbler, needing much less, but also less confident in my own ability to find any kind of success on my own. Anything worth doing had to be done together.

The Youth Trip of a Lifetime

14 Thursday Jan 2016

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Last night I dreamed about a youth trip that didn’t turn out so well, but often I think about the scores of trips that I led (with the assistance of many helpers!!) that went better than I had any right to expect, and the first trip (led by others when I was seventeen) that set the stage for all of the rest. It was 1963, and a couple of Methodist minsters had a brainstorm that the Central Illinois Conference would send a bus-full of high school juniors and seniors to New York City and Washington, D.C., in January of 1964, to experience a seminar on religion and current events.  With their plan, they were braver than I ever became, but I was privileged to be on the bus. This was entirely due to the benevolence of my pastor at the time, Rev. Glen Sims, and a generous older member of my congregation at Paxton Methodist Church, Gladys White.  All of my expenses were paid.

Many of the teenagers on board that week knew each other from camps and youth fellowships, but we all got to know each other, and at least one became a friend for life. The bus travelled all day and night, and those couples who knew each other found not-so-quiet corners of the bus to expose their raging hormones during the long dark hours, but that was not me (or the aforementioned friend). I just noted the consternation of some of the adults who didn’t foresee this aspect of packing so many teens so closely together for so many hours.

We arrived in New York in time to attend worship and the site chosen was Marble Collegiate Church where Norman Vincent Peale was continuing to share his “power of positive thinking.” Peale’s center-stage style and the white-gloved, tuxedoed ushers made an impression.  There, too, some of the adults had preferences in other directions that were fulfilled when we visited Riverside Church and the Interchurch Center, headquarters at the time of the National Council of Churches and several denominational offices, and a Methodist Church in Manhattan that sponsored many outreach services to needy people.

The next two days saw us spending time at the United Nations and the Church Center for the United Nations, where we heard presentations and engaged in discussions about current affairs involving church interests, especially the Conventions on Human Rights that were in the process of development. We stayed in small crowded rooms in a hotel just off Broadway, and we must have eaten somewhere, but, surprisingly for me and my appetite, I do not remember any food. I do remember our exposure to Charles Wells, a Pennsylvania Quaker who posted a newsletter to which I promptly subscribed until he retired years later and my subscription transferred to his compatriot , I. F. Stone.

We again boarded the bus for the shorter trip to Washington, D.C., where our itinerary took us on a tour of the White House and several sights—the Lincoln Memorial, of course—and we listened to church lobbyists at the Methodist center across the street from both Capitol and the Supreme Court. Desegregation, plans for the war on poverty under the new president, Lyndon Johnson, and international affairs in the Cold War were high on the agenda. We went across the street for a meaningful discussion with Illinois Senator Paul Douglass, who supported the U.N. Conventions, but did not see a path for their early approval, and another but less meaningful meeting with Senator Everett Dirksen, whose memorable words focused on his sympathy for us being there in winter and missing the cherry blossoms in bloom. The Soviet Embassy provided an interesting stop, and I was impressed with the many publications in English and the ambassador’s efforts to impress us with how friendly and progressive Russians could be. In the light snow of a gray afternoon, we visited Arlington Cemetery, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers, and freshly turned earth and eternal flame of President John F. Kennedy, whose efforts I had just begun to appreciate when he was assassinated.

I did not realize at the time how much of my world shifted during that week, how much larger it became, how many of my thoughts about church, state, national and international concerns began. We talked for a while as the bus turned toward Illinois, but mostly we slept. We were very tired.

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An Incident on the High Road

23 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by in Miracles, Travel

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Gold Camp RoadWe were driving the high road from Cripple Creek to Colorado Springs, named the Gold Camp Road, nine miles following an old narrow gauge railroad bed. Actually Jan was driving, since she didn’t trust me to drive and sight-see at the same time. I do love the scenery, and it doesn’t get any better than the Gold Camp Road. It was a one way, one lane road beginning at Cripple Creek until a tunnel collapsed in 1988, and now it is a hiker and biker trail, so this event occurred before 1988.

The Alpine flowers were in multi-colored full bloom in mid-summer, the clouds were high and sparse for a rare rain-free July day, and the views of the mountain terrain and the distant foothills and high plains were forever. No one else was ahead or behind us for miles, and Jan was driving about 10 to 20 miles per hour on the loose gravel, since one side of the road was cut from the mountain rock, and other was a steep fall that had no visible bottom. Once in a while she would stop so that she could enjoy the scenery, take a break from a nervous hold on the steering wheel, and we could walk through the flowers.

In a few places the mountain rock was cut so that the single lane ran through a narrow canyon with rock on both sides. That would seem to be a secure place, but as we were driving through one of the longest of these narrow one –way passages, we saw a large dump truck barreling toward us at high speed. You could see the gravel dust billowing out behind the truck. It was not slowing down, although it was plain that there was not room for both the truck and our little Dodge Colt station wagon inside the defile at the same time. There was not time for Jan to back up, nor was there room on the shelf behind  us for two vehicles side-by-side.

Jan didn’t even have time to brake to a complete stop. The truck just kept coming at full speed.

This was one of those moments that seem to last a long time, because you know you’re going to die. You have time to review your whole pathetic  life in an instant.

Jan pulled the car against the right side until you could hear the panels scrape against the rock, and we both let out a loud groan in our prayers—not to become a can of sardines squished against the rocks by a truck that was large and heavy enough to destroy us without leaving so much as a dent on its bumper.

I don’t know how the truck managed to squeeze past us with just a scratch on our rear view mirror. I think it was divine intervention. We had some time left to mend our ways.

Jan identifies with her mother so much that…

01 Thursday Oct 2015

Posted by in Caring, Learning from mistakes, People, Travel

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dock at sunset

Three and a half weeks after her mother fell and broke her neck, nose, and three other compression fractures in her back, as well as badly bruised her face, her mother continues in therapy and in the care of staff in a nursing home. Jan spent twelve nights in all with her mother, attempting to work out the challenges of pain-relief and sleeping medications, staff responses, and keeping her neck brace in position without her mother removing it. Finally, a tentative stability achieved, Jan returned to her own life and got some rest.

One night her mother had spent several hours preparing for her first grade class of school children, identifying their individual needs, and strategizing how to meet those needs. Of course she retired nearly twenty-five years ago, but she had taught for more years than that, and it is easy for her mind to return to those years, even as she also slips back into the early years of motherhood, or childhood with her own mother. Jan could easily identify with each stage of her mother’s concerns.

Jan was nearly caught up with her rest, as we travelled to Lincoln, Nebraska, for an enjoyable day with Granddaughter Willow, a trip that we had postponed because of Mother’s needs. On the way back, we stopped at one of Missouri’s remaining rest areas. Gary took the Nguy family beagle, Odette, into the pet walking area. Odette had stayed with Willow for six weeks but worn out her welcome with her persistent demand to be outside when Willow needed to study. We volunteered to take Odette back to O’Fallon. Jan sat in the car, finishing a phone conversation.

When Jan got out to walk to the rest station, her toe caught on a parking barrier, and she fell face-first onto a concrete curb. Her face was bloodied, scraped, and bruised, but her glasses somehow escaped with just a bend in an earpiece. Gary came running when he saw Jan lying flat, put Odette in the car, and checked Jan out. She was bleeding profusely, but the two small facial cuts were closing quickly with pressure. Her nose was pouring, so we used Jan’s tried and true method of a small compress under her upper lip, and it began to slow, and finally stopped after five minutes.

A rest area worker came quickly when she saw us on the ground. She was so focused on Jan’s visible injuries that she stepped on the glasses, but she was so eager to be helpful that we could not fault her. A pediatrician and his wife were next to help. The doctor admitted that Jan was older than his usual patients, but the injuries looked familiar. He checked her over, said that one stitch or a butterfly bandage might be useful, made sure that she was not feeling pain anywhere else that might indicate a break, and discussed what to watch for in concussion symptoms, which were not appearing—no headache, vision or dilation effects, or confusion. The rest area worker helped Jan into the restroom to get cleaned up.

We made stops at Walgreens and CVS forty minutes later to get bandages, antibiotic cream, and antiseptics. We passed four hospital signs during the rest of the trip, checking with each other about the advisability of stopping, but we arrived at O’Fallon six hours later.

Jan had copied her mother’s accident, in facial injuries, but not in broken bones, fortunately. She had two seriously black eyes and a nasty abrasion on her forehead to alarm and impress Alicia, Au, and Symphony. Alicia had fallen down her stairway a few years ago and seriously damaged her knee. Jan could easily identify with her mother and her daughter in an even more intimate respect.