Depends on the hotdog

Even with Alzheimers battling for supremacy in her mind, Evelyn perked up when I told her we were going out for hotdogs. Most of her time with me is spent in silence, unless I turn on the music. Then she sings along, or more often now, mumbles along. If I sing with her, her words become more certain, more clear, and she smiles back at me while singing.
Comer, her sweet husband who seems to be slowing a bit more each day I see him, patted her hand, "We used to love hotdogs."
"Do they ever make them here?" I asked, pointing at the Assisted Living Home.
"Yes, but they are terrible."
"Well, I have heard that the hotdogs at Sonic are great. Have you ever been there?"
"No! Sounds fun!"
"Evelyn," I said, "We are going to Sonic to get hotdogs. What do you like on your hotdog?"
She looked at me, and wrinkled her forehead in thought. Finally she said, "It depends on the hotdog."

We pulled out our rock and roll CD from the 50's. As the wopdebops started belting out of the speaker, Evelyn and Comer held hands and Evelyn didn't sing.
"Do you know this one?"
"No."
"It's kind of wild," I laughed.
"Wild...." she said.
Comer patted her hand, "We're having a wild time today."

As we drove, Comer mentioned he needed batteries for his TV remote.
"Do we pass a drug store? I could run in while you wait."
Of course, that running bit was metaphorical.
"Of course!" I said.
Asherel looked crestfallen. It was already 1:00 and she was hungry. However, she didn't say anything.
I pulled up to the drugstore.
"Do you want me to run in?" I asked.
"No," he said, "I'll just be a minute."
Twenty minutes later, I told Asherel perhaps she should look in on Comer.
"I can't go in there," she said, "You don't know what people think about teenagers."
I stared at her, "What do you mean? Just go!"
She very reluctantly went to the door, timidly glanced in and then came running back.
"He's third in line," she said, "But I am serious about that teenager thing. A policeman at the States Contest for Science Olympiad screamed at us for sitting on a wall."
"What else were you doing?" I asked, "Were you doing drugs?"
From the back seat, Evelyn chortled. Even Evelyn, with the marching deterioration of her mind with Alzheimers recognized the irony of that sweet, good girl being accused of drug abuse.
"No," said Asherel, "We were just sitting there. He thought we might fall over backwards off the edge and he wanted us to be careful."
Evelyn was still chuckling.

Finally Comer emerged and we went on for our hotdogs. I read the huge list of hotdog topping choices. They both listened carefully. This was their first good hotdog in a year and they wanted to get it right.
"Chilicheese dog!" declared Comer.
"I believe I will have chilicheese dog too," said Evelyn.
They both finished every bite of their chilicheese dog. I guess it was the right choice.

As I returned them to the Home, I wondered where we would go next week. I am running out of new adventures. We can't go too far, and we can't leave the car. I wish I could do more. Yet, every time I drive up, I see them through the window, sitting side by side. They are always leaning forward expectantly, holding hands, looking so anxious and excited for our outing.

When Asherel and I returned home, we finished the true story of Amos Fortune. Amos was a slave who bought his way to freedom, and then became a very successful and well off tanner. He bought 3 different women their freedom, and was throughout his life, a devoted Christian, and a humble, good man. He recognized the injustice of his position as a black man in the segregated society he entered, but he also refused to be enslaved again. He would not be enslaved to hatred. At the end of his life, he had amassed a small fortune. He brought it to the executor of his will, and told him that when he died, he wanted the money given to the church and to the school in town. Both those places had made life hard for Amos. He could not sit with the white folk at church. He and his family were relegated to the unheated, cold balcony at the far end. In school, his daughter was taunted, and ridiculed. He had to bribe the teacher to let another black child remain in the school.
"Why Amos?" asked the executor of the will, "I thought those places gave you some trouble."
"That's why," he said.
Later, when his wife asked him with all the many needs he could have assuaged with his money, and with all his life of helping others, "You'd set all the world free if you could, wouldn't you Amos?!"
I love his answer.
"Just the part of it that I could touch. That's all any man can do."

Just the part of the world I can touch. Touch that part. Evelyn was right. You can't get all the toppings. You get the right topping for the moment. It depends on the hotdog God puts on your plate.

Exodus 4:15
I will help both of you speak and will teach you what to do

Singing of Glory

It was the first blustery cold day of the season as Asherel and I headed off to the Civil War. If you get the chance to see the play, Civil War, I highly recommend it.  I don't know how anyone imagined they could pull off a play about so serious and sad a subject as the Civil War with nearly every line sung. It is a musical. Somehow musicals bring to mind subjects like Mary Poppins; not horrific subjects like slavery or the carnage of war. But it worked.  It was very sad, very moving, and while Asherel didn't learn any facts of the war she didn't already know, she perhaps experienced just a touch of the despair of those times.

I came home and was exhausted. I went to bed early. I was mourning for our country. For what we had done to Africans in enslaving them; for what we had done to each other in fighting the Civil War. And as a people, we had been able to justify all of it. Honestly, I don't know how God manages to hold His hand from wiping us all out once and for all, despite promises to Noah. Individually and collectively,  we have a lot to answer for. Before going to bed, I saw a picture from a friend on Facebook. It was of a tiny baby, oxygen and feeding tubes coming from his little form. He was covered with ant bites. The baby had been rescued from a dumpster.Depression was crouching at my door.

I cycle continually through the Bible. I am now back to the Old Testament, and just finished working my way through Leviticus. This is not the easiest book to read word by word. It is filled with laws, some very nit picky and tedious and some that no matter how I try, I cannot relate to my life (thou wilt not have sex with an animal). Oh really? Good thing there is a law against that! And the reward for slogging through Leviticus is you get to read Numbers. Numbers is filled with, yes, numbers. Numbers of all the tribes of Israel, of all the subsets of the tribes, and of all the animals, bowls, and cooking utensils of the tribes. I would have to say that Numbers is the dryest book of the Bible. But if I manage to faithfully stick with it, invariably I come across some buried nugget that makes the traumas of the day recede a little from the forefront of my mind.

In Numbers 14, The Israelites have just sent Caleb and Joshua along with ten other spies out to explore the Promised Land, which they are just on the verge of reaching. The ten other spies return to tell their people that the land is inhabited by giants, and they can never hope to enter the land God promised them. "We will all die in the wilderness," they moaned. Caleb and Joshua believed God, believed in the promises of God and told the people, "We can do this! Remember who fights with us!" But the pessimists won, and then comes the part that struck me. God tells them, (paraphrase) "Fine. You don't wish to follow my commands.I guess a few miracles like the sea opening up to swallow your enemies, or water from a rock, or manna from heaven, are just not enough proof that I am able. You think I have brought you out here to die in the wilderness. I will give you exactly what you claim I am doing to you.  I won't let you enter the land. You will die in the wilderness. I will let your kids in, because it's not their fault they are saddled with parents like you, and of course Joshua and Caleb, who believed and trusted in me, but you will die exactly the way you thought you would."

And so they wander forty years in the desert on a trip that normally would have taken a week.We are told none of those doubters entered the Promised Land. I hate to admit it, but I can relate to those grumbling, disillusioned, frightened, pessimistic Israelites. God reveals Himself time and time again to me, in miracles that I  have even written down (It will be my second book....), and yet, I continue to sink into despair when life doesn't seem to go the way I think it should. I find doubt and dismay a little too easy to fall back on. But God makes it very clear in the otherwise rather drab book of Numbers- God is not pleased with Pessimism.

The Civil War play ended with the whole cast singing about Glory. It was not the glory of victory, because the victory of the war brought about the reality of brothers having killed brothers, and a nation unified by law, but divided in spirit. It was the glory of a horrendous wrong made right, of a God-given right being restored- liberty to all.  It was the glory of optimism, of survival, of trusting in God when the whole world seemed to be bent only on evil.
"Did you learn anything new?" asked Asherel as we drove home.
"It is not so much that I learned anything," I said, "I think the point was to experience the horror of it."
But not to wallow in it, because after repentance and immense suffering, they sang of Glory.

Numbers 14:
²⁸ So tell them, ‘As surely as I live, declares the LORD, I will do to you the very thing I heard you say: ²⁹ In this wilderness your bodies will fall—every one of you twenty years old or more who was counted in the census and who has grumbled against me. ³⁰ Not one of you will enter the land I swore with uplifted hand to make your home, except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun.

Psalm 106:46-48

⁴⁶ He caused all who held them captive
   to show them mercy.
 ⁴⁷ Save us, LORD our God,
   and gather us from the nations,
that we may give thanks to your holy name
   and glory in your praise.