Living It: Neighborhood Times and Grandma's House

 Living It : Neighborhood Times and Grandma’s House

I grew up in a neighborhood full of children … there was usually someone to play with. Our safety was ensured by the installation of sidewalks on our side of the street. No one cared if we road our bikes on them …it was really a child’s world. There were woods behind  our houses. We invented, our own world where we were the adults, but it was somewhat troubling to me. I was not ready to be in charge. The absence of parents of was troubling to me … I never played Barbies very much for the same reason.  My gullibility made me an easy target for practical jokes and left me with a deep sense of feeling unworthy and fearful.  I tried to buy in the adage that “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” However, words and cruelty even when done in childhood jest cut deep, because children don’t have the cognitive capacity to discern what is funny and what is not.   

One of the bright spots in those years was Grandma’s house.  The house itself is still standing and overlooks the  Gateway YWCA.  She had 10 children and over 20 grandchildren.  There was usually a cousin or two play with at her house. We generally got along pretty well … Grandma was by nature a peacemaker.  Her front porch itself was place of peace. There was a glider and porch swing on the front porch and swing set in the back yard beneath a spiraling oak tree.  If we got really bored we could walk to Mr. Willard’s store just as our mothers has when they were younger.  Grandma’s house had upstairs – something none of our houses had … our imaginations could run wild there, especially with a cedar chest full of clothes.  The steps yielded hours of a game called rock school.  It was best played with three cousins. Two cousins would be  students, and one would be the teacher.  We would begin by sitting on the lowest step. The teacher would hold a stone or button in her hand and we would ascend the steps by guessing correctly which hand the “teacher held the button/stone in.  The one to get to top first was declared the teacher for the next round --- not very exciting by today’s standards.  However, remember, we did not even know what a desktop computer looked like.  Color television had just  been affordably invented. There was one room, though, I usually avoided, and I that was Grandma’s bedroom.  It was dark and had an ominously ringing clock that frightened me, i.e. it sounded haunted in contrast to her house of peace.   Ironically, I had memorized many verses of Scripture about fear and trust, but somehow I had failed to apply the verses to my life. Memorization had been something I had done to get stickers and smiles, without a thought that I could actually use the Word of God in my everyday life.  Jesus said of the Pharisees in John 5, “You search the Scriptures for in them you think you have eternal life, but you have no dependence on Me … no real life … (para).”  I was already beginning the downward spiral into Pharisaical living, all the while keeping it hidden … but isn’t that what Christian Pharisees do?