Category Archives: Soul Care

Happy Holiday Tour 2009

22 Sunday Nov 2009

Posted by in Life at Home, Mesta Park, Soul Care

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When tour home doors  open the first weekend of December, it will be our great hope to  live up to  Perle Mesta’s reputation as  the “Hostest with the Mostest.”

This year’s five homes  — the stars of Mesta Park’s 32nd Holiday Home Tour — congregate in the west-end of the historic district — just a few hops, skips and a jump from one another …especially the two who are ‘shouting neighbors.’

For the physically able, the weekend will offer a great opportunity to see  the USA neighborhood in their Chevrolegs.  Or if that sales pitch isn’t convincing,  how about this one:? — Just like Nancy Sinatra’s go-go boots, this old neighborhood was made for walking so seeing it by foot is the absolute best way.  That is, as long as the weather plays nice.

There’s no better place to see examples of Oklahoma City’s oldest historic housing.  While it’s true Mesta Park homes share a similar vintage to Heritage Hills, Mesta Park’s unique appeal is that its homes are — well how do I put this?   —  well, they’re just a bit more historical.

Our district is still being “gentrified”;  many homes are still in need of a caring owner who will bring it back to its former splendor.  This year’s tour features two tour homes that have undergone that painstaking transformation.    I’ve discovered some  homes off -tour still have their original kitchen layout and cabinetry, though of course the appliances have changed with the times.  So my point is this:  since Mesta Park homes have undergone less updates over the years, much more of what “tourists” are likely to see is what  the home’s first tenants actually saw and used.

Take my own home for instance, which appeared on the tour three years ago.   All our upstairs bath fixtures are original with few exceptions.  If you pull up the lid of the back of our potty’s water tank, it’s date stamped “1928.”  Our house has some original light fixtures, original door hardware and the original wavy window glass in most of our panes.    Most  tour home kitchens (like mine) are modern.  But the rest of the best will be historical, from the bottom of the original wood floors to the top of the ornate wood and crown moldings.  I speculate that, at least in the spirit of interior historical preservation, it pays to be the poor cousin of the neighborhood.

Most Mesta Park homes are modest in comparison to Heritage Hills.  But Mesta Park has its shares of mansions, with Perle Mesta’s home, sitting at the corner of Northwest 16th and Lee being its most famous.  Most of Mesta Park’s mansions sit within easy walking distance to the “boulevard” — that little stretch of road where the streetcar once traveled up Shartel Avenue before it rounded the corner to head west on 18th Street.  Three of this year’s tour homes rest on the old boulevard streetcar route — with the other two just steps away.

Here’s a sneak preview of this year’s tour homes.  Exterior shots only.  But doesn’t it make you want to peek inside?

We who live in and love our historic homes recognize our place as our home’s temporary caretakers.  I look forward to meeting each to see how the years have treated them, and as I walk through the rooms, I will wonder about the families that once called it home..

Whether we own or rent, it doesn’t really matter; living in a historic home reminds us that we are all travelers — tourists really — just passing through; and that these old homes on this patch of earth will outlive us all.

And by candlelight on the first Saturday evening in December, they will outshine us all too.

801 Northwest 17th Street - Built 1910

905 Northwest 16th Street -- Built 1914

1006 Northwest 18th Street - Built 1918

1009 Northwest 18th Street - Built 1910

924 Northwest 20th Street - Built 1914

“Go, go, go said the bird…”

19 Thursday Nov 2009

Posted by in Far Away Places, In the Garden, Life at Home, Soul Care, The Great Outdoors

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There is promise hovering in the cold Oklahoma air that may soon carry us south.

I have been longing for the sight and taste of a place I called home for twenty years.  This morning, after two months of wishing, I picked up the phone-cum-magic wand to make my dream come true.  

My husband and I are not traditional ‘snowbirds, what coastal Texans fondly (and not-so-fondly) call migratories of the human kind who descend south for a winter perch.  Instead, our stay will be the barest of interludes.   We hope to steal away for a few days in Advent, during that lesser known liturgical season preceding Christmas on the church calendar.  Our arrival at Surfside Beach within this prayerful season of holy anticipation and waiting seems entirely appropriate, given that the word Advent  — which derives from the Latin word adventus  —  means “arrival” or “coming.”  

I have come to regard a certain white cottage that graces the eastside ocean front as our home away from home.  Like all beach front property, the house is built on stilt-like pilings, which makes for spacious views.  In the dark morning hours, I watch the fireball of the faraway sun shoot out of the ocean to break fast over darkness.  A little later, I watch the graceful gulls and pelicans skim the ocean surface to break fast in their own way.

I understand their taste for seafood — except for breakfast and a few pilgrimages to The Dairy Bar in nearby Lake Jackson —  it will be a seafood diet for me.  Hopefully, we’ll bring back some lovely Gulf Coast Shrimp as souvenirs.

 

There are other souvenirs to pick up and gather.  Like any familiar place that holds precious memories, a new trip to Surfside allows us to reconnect past dots of everyday life — memories of our children playing in the sand, a few sandy family picnics and even my husband’s proposal of marriage under a starry sky as we searched for Haley’s Comet.  The beach reminds me of walks on the jetty with my friend Terri, as it reminds me of all my friends in and around Lake Jackson.  Some I pray to visit.

Surfside is in the rhythm of our lives in the same way that the sun comes up  and goes down, in the way that the waves sweep in and roll out and in the way that we breathe in and breathe out life itself.  Even now I can taste salt air on my tongue and my mouth waters in anticipation. 

Surfside invites me to encounter life beyond what I can truly know, beyond the wide blue sometimes brown sea yonder.  At Surfside, I descend to the deep, where life below the surface is Real, no longer just an attractive shimmer on the surface.

It’s a good perch to watch and ponder life.  To look back and forward and in and out.  To stay still until I’m filled and it’s time to fly back home.  

“Go, go, go, said the bird:  human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.”   – T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton

Life Amongst the Saints

18 Wednesday Nov 2009

Posted by in Life at Home, Prayer, Soul Care

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I was greeted with a sonic boom of thanks yesterday, as I stepped into the nursing home for my regular Tuesday visit with Daddy.  Glenda, the nursing home recreational director, always talks loud.  Maybe it’s a hazard of spending your days with the hard-of-hearing.

“I want you to know that those dresses you brought really were appreciated.”
“What dresses?” 

I had no idea what Glenda was referring to.  Already forgotten was last week’s discussion in my parents closet, when my sister spoke of taking Mom’s dresses to the nursing home. 

“I didn’t bring any dresses.” 

Christi & Me -- As Different As Can Be

Walking toward me, Glenda realized her mistake.  Once again, she had confused me for my sister.   The case of mistaken identity between Christi and I is something that happens frequently amongst all nursing home personnel.  For me to be confused for my saintly sister is no problem at all.  She, on the other hand, may have an entirely different perspective.  But don’t we all have our crosses to bear?  

“Ohhhhh.  That was your sister that brought the dresses.  I just wanted you all to know how appreciated your Mother’ dresses are — four are being worn today.  See, there’s one right there.”

With memory now in place, I followed the direction of Glenda’s pointed finger to the lady seated in the wheel chair.  Seeing the familiar curved spine with head tucked down toward her chest, my heart filled with joy. 

“Oh, Miss Alpha got some of Mother’s dresses.  That’s wonderful!  Thanks for letting us know.  I needed some good news today.” 
“Oh yeah.  She needed them baaad.  Can you believe she didn’t have any dresses?”

This bit of news was surprising.  That Miss Alpha should be in such dire need for Mom’s hand-me-down dresses when she, in better days, was the proprietor of Seminole’s finest women’s clothing store is one of life’s little ironies.  (And just between us, I don’t imagine she would have been caught dead wearing one of Mom’s still good but everyday house-dresses back in those finer days.)  But in the quiet days of nursing home life, these leftover dresses from my mother’s life seem to suit Miss Alpha just fine.

Miss Alpha , you may remember, once kept Daddy company at the dinner table —  what with much affection and admiration I called The Quiet Supper Club  —  in those early days of nursing home life when Dad still took nourishment by mouth.  I went  over to check on Miss Alpha to see how life was treating her, since it had been a good while since she and I had last visited.  It was good to find some things don’t change — Miss Alpha still has nothing to complain about —  but then, what woman isn’t doing fine when she’s wearing some new duds?

But before I headed toward Miss Alpha, I leaned down to a different wheel chair to greet my father.   Daddy had been waiting for my brother and I in the gathering area.  I drew close to Daddy’s shrunken face to see his big shiny eyes and gorgeous smile.   “I love you Daddy.”  Then my father did something totally out of character.  He reached out to take my hand.  Then gracefully, he carried my hand all the way to his lips.   And then ever so tenderly, Daddy kissed my hand.

For my daddy to offer me his best self — on the day I learned of another father committing the worst toward his child —  brought peace to my soul.  I didn’t deserve such tenderness.  Nor, of course, did that young boy deserve what he received at the hands of his father. 

That life doesn’t always give us what we deserve is the human experience.  But sometimes, we receive just what we need and peace settles in around us.  The gift received is so perfect that it seems to bear a touch of the holy.  It was a holy difference that clothed Miss Alpha yesterday; and it was a holy difference in my father than covered my own aching heart.

Both Miss Alpha and I were covered by another’s love.  And this… well this is humanity at its best.   It’s what life amongst the saints should be, a passing of the peace beyond any I’ve experienced before. 

And how I long for this peace to be passed to all.   It’s all of our business isn’t it, this peace-passing work of the saints? 

“To take each moment
 and live each moment
In peace eternally.
Let there be peace on earth
And let it begin with me.”