I read Roger Ebert’s summer memoir and thought again of some of my own summers, growing up in Akron. So, on July 2nd, the heart of summer, a few of those gleanings.

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Norka is Akron spelled backwards, and Akron had its own summer soft drink, in several flavors. Mine was the Ginger Ale, best cold, and right out of the local grocery store’s cooler in the ice-cold bottle, with the bottle opener right on the side of the cooler. It went away as a brand sometime in the 1960s, and I miss it. That brings me to say that there was something summer and an ice-cold bottle of Norka or Royal Crown Cola or 7-Up that was different than opening up a can or 2-liter. The thereness and physical shape of it, the evaporating drops of coolness that you could see and touch, the guzzling down of the 12 ounces (they didn’t make 16 oz. bottles then) in maybe one swallow, this all somehow made you feel real and alive and hopeful. Yes, just a bottle of Norka could do that in 1959.

The last day of school before summer vacation was always wonderful–and I mean full of wonder. What would I do the next, the day after that, every day a weekend into itself? Sometimes we had a NYC trip on the horizon–but more about the path there, later, but NYC deserves its own entry. Remember I was an only child, so a “normal” summer day meant spending a fair amount of it by myself (before my mom quit work to stay home, 6th grade) or at least in my room or outdoors alone. I did not spend it watching TV; rather, I spent it either outdoors playing baseball (occasionally with some neighbor kids—wiffle ball) but more often, just throwing the rubber ball against the garage, or using the PitchBack with a real baseball, all the time doing play by play. When I couldn’t do that, I’d play a baseball board game (Strat-o-matic was best and easiest), and I keep all the stats, and wrote newspaper stories about the heroes of the day, of course, with box scores—which were very hard to line up in my portable, non-electric Smith-Corona typewriter.

Summer mornings were stuffed with anticipation from the moment I woke up, and I have never slept as well in my adult life as I did on those summer days. My radio would be tuned to WIXY 1260 or KYW 1100, and I would awake to a clock radio playing the Top 40 hits. Both of these stations were in faraway Cleveland (just 45 mi.!) but were preferable to the local WAKR 1590 or WHLO 640 that played little rock and roll hits, and a lot of more easy listening ballads. WAKR still had a “hymn for the day” at noon, usually a Tennessee Ernie Ford song that my dad might sing at night himself (”Jesus is Tenderly Calling You Home. . .”). Somehow the mornings seemed fresher, more exuberant, than they ever have since, just in terms of smell (only Wakiki, Galway, Bagara Beach, Ocean Beach, Willow, and Nairobi mornings can approximate the experience!)–but I slept with no air conditioners all through my youth, windows wide open, fans a blazing, and a nice breeze flowing. The safety and sense of freedom and possibility I felt was unparalleled and unsurpassed. Serious decisions about the course of one’s future life: bills, politics, insurance, retirement (!), these did not trouble my heart one minute. All I knew was, it was great to be alive, an Edwards, and in Akron. Oh, and that I wanted to get married some day and have children who could enjoy this kind of summer.

Summers to NYC. I am not sure when my parents and grandparents started going to NYC every summer. I believe my first trip was around 1959, in the backseat of a black and white Plymouth, seat-beltless. I got sick on long trips, so I got to keep the window open in case I might throw up (we had no A/C in a car until the late 1960s). I guess we stopped a lot. We usually drove 6 hrs. to Breezewood, PA, on the PA Turnpike, which is more than half way, and we usually stayed over night at the classily named: “Breezewood Motor Hotel.” (Not yet, “motel.”) Why Breezewood?–it’s the gateway to NYC and D.C., and was known as the “city of hotels.” And this route had the best tunnels; I remember passing through some very ominous tunnels along the way (“Drivers Must Turn On Headlights”), but most of all, the grassy fields around our motel rooms–we’d get two, one for Mom and Pop, and one for me, my dad and mom–and we’d bring our gloves and we played catch past dusk. (See everything returns to baseball.) We’d also eat at Howard Johnson’s restaurants at the mysterious turnpike pull offs known as “service plazas,” the only restaurant I ever knew that sold toy replicas of their own restaurant shape–which was an early stage of my nostalgia for collectible petroliana (gas station stuff). I could go on and on about that. But I won’t.

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More to come about spending summers in NYC.

This is something God woke me up to write one winter night in 1982 after we had moved to Bowling Green. I found this along with the previous poem in a folder I had not looked at in a long time, out in the garage.

The theme here is constant—a need to play with my children to express my love, and Matt as the central character. He had just turned seven. The change is, I was no longer a graduate student but a full-fledged college professor with more control over my time, and no excuses. From here on out, I would take my children everywhere, school, long trips, conferences: the only babysitters were grandpa and grandmom.

I am here in this poem/script/dream, as now, focused on the effects of my fatherhood on my children and their resiliency. Firstborns always have to deal with the consequences of their dad’s “experiments.” I myself was a first and last born only child. It is confessional as well as painful to reread my thoughts unraveled here. Our clan was now five in numer, Michael not arriving for two more years.

I hope I have lived up to my revelation here about Play. I really like the penultimate paragraph.

It’s still true.

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All the world’s a playground (with Apologies to Will Shakespeare)

16 February 1982 (somewhere around 2:45 AM)

[A letter in three acts, by Bruce Edwards, one of several Edwards family members]

ONE

I forbade Matthew to play tonight. With it, I was forbidding him to be a boy, banishing him to adulthood—a punishment both cruel and unjust. When a boy does something “wrong” (often a made up category, spontaneous, retroactive, capricious)—a “who’s-boss-around-here-I’m-bigger” posture), he, of course must be penalized.

But not on those terms, not by forbidding play, immediate confinement to bed, to sleep off a vitality, a childlikeness, a life. Not by that ideology. That’s criminal. No, don’t take away play.

Play is what it is all about (i.e., what matters most). Play is what Eden was about. What heaven was, is, will be about. What art, beauty, truth is about. What God is all about. Play. Freedom. Creativity. It is God’s work, it is what the Creator does, by goodness!, his dream, his reality. Heaven is play.

» » » Read the rest! » » »

In the summer of 1980, we had lived in Texas one whole year, since we had left Manhattan, KS so I could get my PhD. By late August, we were now living in the international apartments and had welcomed Justin into our family in March.

Now I had to prepare for a traumatic event: my son Matt going to school for the first time. The night before, I wrote a poem that captures both my sadness about this, and my own guilty feelings about wasted moments. You have all the time in the world, and then suddenly, you don’t.

On reflection, Matt turned out great, and continues to bless me and all who know him; and I guess he learned to love and forgive a dad in grad school. But I still feel deeply sentimental about all of my children and the precious times I had in their earliest years in playing with them at every possible moment and telling them stories.

I am grateful to God for each of them and their unique personality, talent, and calling. Most of all, I simply am in awe of what a responsibility it is to be a dad, and equally in awe of the joy for which being their dad is the source.

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On the Eve of My Boy’s First Day of School
26 August 1980

Here I am,
Tomorrow Show blaring,
1 AM, kids asleep,
Joan in bed. Alone; contemplating
A turning point.

Matthew’s going to school.
School? He’s only five-and-a-half.
Five-and-a-half?
Is he really five-and-a-half?
That pint-sized, bright-eyed,
Hyperactive, indefatigable
Little one?

Now leaving. Out the door.
Flashing that timid, nervous grin
He has when he’s about to do
Something somewhat ornery

Gone.

There was a time
(I mean the last five-and-a-half years)
When I could have spent all the time I wanted
With him. All the time I wanted; instead:
Squandered. Cast aside. A prodigal father
Turning him away with “Not right now” and
“In a minute” or
“After I finish this.”
Promises never kept, yet somehow
Faithfully trusted time after time.

He goes to bed early now
And gets up long before little boys
Ought to have to. And on to school
He takes a part of my life with him
That cannot be returned.
We’ve turned him over—7 hours a day—
To Strangers for an education or what
Passes for one these days.

Institutionalized, regimented, prescribed.
Folded hands and hushed silence; he will learn
“To be a good citizen.” And now they’ll
Let me have a few hours with him
Each evening, as I, hoping he can work me into
His revised schedule,
Count these hours by tears.

Today is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice in it. He made June 15th. That’s the day of the year (1929) that my dad was born to the Edwards Clan, Hudson, OH. It’s also the day that God joined Joseph Casey and Mary Elizabeth into holy matrimony. Next year at this time, June will also boast Mike and Shelby’s 1st anniversary. So June is Super. Special. Unique in the annals of time.

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I am not kidding or doing my usual dad’s/son’s overly-sentimental tribute. I am doing a Super, Special, Unique sentimental tribute. June 15th is unique, special, super because of events that have brought about the love, commitment, and contentment of June 15, 2009. Somehow, deep down, all of this history is in God’s hands, and, in God’s hands, the precognition of events, the events themselves, and the remembrance are connected. I believe we have some rootedness in all the events that have brought us together by birth, by marriage, by heritage. We feel the rightness of these connections.

And the sense of their inevitability—not in a calvinistic-deterministic sense, but in the sensation of a rich fulness and apprehension of appropriateness; we see because we believe, and we believe because we see. I was present in Adam; I was present in the birth of Bruce Lee Edwards, Sr. So was Matthew Bruce, Mary Elizabeth Edwards Sanford, and Sebo Sanford. And Justin Robert and Michael Ian. And so it goes in Lungstrum, Robertson geneologies, and the multiplicity of clans and coupling and commitments through time. We are connected. June 15th is significant beyond measure. Except God’s measure alone, as He reveals it to us. And we fathom that when we love, and are beloved.

And: There are no accidents. We are not products of chance. The mystery of free will woven into God’s fateless future. (Flannery O’Connor: “for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man, Freedom cannot be conceived simply.”) The romance of reason, faith, action, hope, choice, and the nostalgia for what we have left behind as well as the anticipation of what God has for us in this world, round the corner, and the world to come. All that is good, true, and beautiful. Memories themselves are actions, preserving and extending relationships in a timelessness that portends eternity.

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But it all starts somewhere, and my somewhere is In my dad’s birth (and then connected to my mom’s–but that’s a story for another day, in November). One of seven children born to James and Minnie Edwards, he had an unusual (unusual from our 21st century standpoint) childhood and adolescence—eventually running away one summer age 14 to work at a race track in Columbus, and returning home when he was (1) hungry; (2) sure he was not even missed that much. He was so hungry, he ate the horses’ carrots and apples when he had no money.
» » » Read the rest! » » »

When Sebo visits, we play certain games. One of them is called, Throw Everything Off the Couch That I Am No Longer Interested In.

When Sebo talks, he manipulates his tongue to make new, delectable words; one of these is, “srshhrrssrrrrsrhh.”

When Sebo is in town, all there is to do is wait for him to decide whether he will elect to play with us or share sweet potatoes. Everything else is anticipation.

When Sebo laughs, the whole world shakes with thunderous applause.

When Sebo winds up and throws, the ball itself stops to admire his pitch.

When Sebo sleeps, all creation waits for him to wake up so the world can start up again.

When Sebo looks at something, he analyzes it using his x-ray vision so that before it becomes tiresome, he knows exactly what it is and how it works.

When Sebo crawls or climbs the Earth’s center of gravity rises up to meet his.

When Sebo takes a bath, he enjoys it so much, water itself gets purified.

When Sebo is home, his grandpa and grandma are completely enthalled. And when Sebo is not home, life is only about waiting for the next time, and the next time, we will get to see him.

Dear ones,

Your day has come!

So many prayers, hopes, and dreams have gone into this moment. God’s tender care has protected and provided and prevailed. His amazing grace has given you two families to bring into one.

Treasure the day, cherish the hour, rejoice in the celebration. Years from now you may look back on the particulars of the day with fading memory, but the one enduring remembrance will be the look in each other’s eyes of delight and wonder as you walk down the aisle together, now as One.

His greatest blessings on you; you will always have our prayers and our desire to shower you with love and support.

The world will never be the same. And that is, as He said on the very first day,
Very Good.

Here it is: the day before. The day of anticipation yields to the date of fruition of all plans and dreams. The day before has excitements of its own! Anticipation is itself a God-ordained joy to be treasured in itself. You expect, you envision, you embrace. Then you enjoy.

Nothing is inevitable in His World–that’s what makes anticipation so glorious. It is part plan, part serendipity. This is God’s world, and is full of surprises. You have 24 hrs. each day. What will you do? What will happen? What will amuse, confuse, infuse the day with joy? Something will. Count on it. You have to plan, even if everything in the plan is subject to change, even little changes. But God is in the changes and the details.

Shelby and Mike, pause and take joy in this day as the preliminary, the inaugural, the anticipated. Revel in it. Rejoice in it. It will go so fast–and you will have so many memories your heart will register that the head can’t keep track of just yet. That’s what days to come will teach you.

We are going to enjoy all of this. Every second. Always. xoxoxoxoox.

You will have seen by now the Facebook photos from last weekend that depict my childhood houses, school, park, and favorite comic book/drug store. This is a different set of Akron stories, for those who cannot get enough Akron stories! Little snippets of memory while they last.

And their purpose is to name events and people and circumstances that are formative, the proof of which is, I still remember them! The sensory stimulation of being back in my old neighborhood and places that we went at various times of my life before leaving home for good (i.e., marrying and moving to Missouri) is involuntarily provoking a wistful longing to remember what was, just for its own sake.

(That and Shelby and Mike’s grand adventure, Sebo’s triumphal debut in Ohio, Justin’s return from Africa, Matt and Tracey’s reunion with all of our loved ones. The Lungstrums coming to town. The new Shelbyites!)

What are the other Akron stories? Little glimpses of life from 40-50 years ago, growing up an only child in an industrial town made up of ethnic neighborhoods, the soundtrack of one’s life being monophonic AM radio, the source of entertainment being three network channels of TV, but all in all, a magical time of carelessly doing whatever one wants as late as one wants in a safe environment.

One grows up thinking that this is how everyone experiences life. But then reality impinges. Not everyone has the wealth of goodness, aspiration, hope, the sense of mom-and-dad togetherness and instilled pride in being in this family and not a different one. Not everyone stays in one place for 18 years. And so, here are a few more vignettes, five placeholders for a longer work, someday.

• Akron has the Soap Box Derby. The big deal every year was the parade that was held downtown and my mom would take me down there to get a grilled cheese at Scott’s Dept, Store, and we would stand for hours as each of the contestants (mostly boys but girls could enter) would come from around the world, and each one would get driven in to be introduced in front of Polsky’s Dept. Store by motorcycle escort, and while their names were read aloud, I marveled at the announcement of the city and state (or country) they were from. Kokomo, IN. Grand Junction, CO. Needles, CA. Casper, WY. Bellefontaine, OH. Juneau, AK. and so on.

  Ah, the names of far away places, even far away in Ohio, created in me a sense of wanting to visit and see all those places. Was this the first time I dreamt of traveling Rt. 66?

• I remember, when my mom, Betty Lou, still worked as a bookkeeper at Akron Dime Bank (no computers, all ledgers and manual adding machines), got invited to attend an Indians game with her fellow workers. We would all ride a bus from Akron to downtown Cleveland to a night time game (when there weren’t that many, and I had never been to a night time baseball game). My dad had to work, so it was me and my mom, and her coworkers. On the bus were cases of cold pop (and beer) and all kinds of snacks. It was amazing to me.

  I thought and now remember two things: (1) how great it was to be Betty Lou’s son, and get to go out on a trip like this, and seeing how much they appreciated her and recognized her “sports acumen” (not “just a girl,” but someone who knew all the players and the standings and who was pitching that night); (2) how enchanting baseball could be, the amazement of a lighted field, the smell of beer, cigars, popcorn, hot dogs melding into a multisensory submersion into a shared experience of joy, whether or not the Indians won (they most certainly did not).

• My earliest memories involve (close your eyes) being given a bath in Mom and Pop’s house in a sink; crawling under the kitchen sink cabinet and eating handfuls of Comet cleanser; being rescued from the downstairs flooded cellar. The latter i have spoken of before but what I remember most about that experience is the sensation of being “whisked.”

  The scene is that I was on the steps peering down at the swirling mass of dirty water rising every second and so mesmerized that I had only the vaguest sense of danger—when my grandfather (who called me, with affection, “the baby” until i was at least 5 or 6; and so, “get the baby out of here!” i.e., to safety) picked me up with such great force I had only the awareness of sudden and decisive power, the power of rescue, palpable, serene, unrelenting. I will never forget that feeling—breathtaking and reassuring at the same time. I had but a slight sense of peril but a profound sense of salvation. That will ever and always be my metaphor for what Jesus does at just the right moment.

• My dad usually got home from work near dusk, sometime later: the truck driver’s life. That meant that when he did get home I was waiting, and hoping for a few groundballs, or some pitching practice. If Pop was home, he would play, and Betty Lou was a good baseball athlete. But my dad could hit ground balls that meant something—you know, not just an easy one-right-in-front-of-you-ball, but something trickier, bouncier, harder. And so, night after night, he would come home late, tired from lifting and packing and unloading (in those days truck drivers didn’t just drive—they loaded, unloaded, handled the paperwork—a one man crew), hungry.

  And yet, he never said No, too tired, too busy, too hungry. And out we would go into the backyard, or, if it was not too dark, we might even go up to Mason Park and we could use the real infield. But those nights were treasures and taught me there are more important things to do when you got home than rest or eat. Especially if you are ten years old and your dad just got home!

• There were mysteries of how extended families could or should relate. I got to see a lot of my uncles and cousins on my mom’s side. How could I not?—we lived right behind my maternal grandparents, and so if they came over, they were in our backyard. I was the first grandchild, and, by living behind Mom and Pop, i had special privileges and experiences that I suspect (more than I know) my cousins, Scott, Kyle, Tracey, Ann, and Erika probably resented. But before the other cousins came along, my uncles Pete and Bobby were like neighborhood friends who’d come by and play catch and talk baseball and come to my other events too. But my Edwards kin were “away.” They lived outside of Akron and therefore one had to plan, in advance, to get there.

  I am sure this grieved my dad, that his family were seen as outsiders, but we would get to go to some family picnics in Hudson and Chippewa Lake. The common denominator was that if we went to my other grandpa’s place, we’d get to play baseball (there’s that theme again), usually pretty good competition of whole Edwards clans playing against each other. Cousins I saw only once a year would emerge from the shadows with a glove and a bat. Real people. I am not sure now I can sort out who was who, but I do remember pride in being in a family that, even though they didn’t convene very often, knew what best to do when they did.

LAST Memorial Day Mary had arrived (with Sebo incognito) and we were anticipating all sorts of exciting events:

“Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Sanford arrived from her overnight flight from Anchorage AK yesterday morning and spent a relaxing and fashionable morning, afternoon, and evening, eating, sleeping, shopping online, watching movies, all gearing up for an action-packed Memorial Day weekend of tennis, boating, soccer, and country club sports. And talking babies.”

— New York Daily Fashion Post

It’s Mary weekend! And Mary Week! And Another Mary Weekend! The cats are excited and Mike and Shelby are excited, and mom and dad are excited. Yea! The sun is out, and Mr. Spots is on the horizon, along with trips to Ann Arbor, Cincinnati, Franklin Park, and a grandpa visit midweek, a baby Shower in Defiance, and smoothies. Not to mention Ticket to Ride. And word from Storm watch central in Willow.

But, Justin was in Nairobi, far, far away. And Matt and Tracey in San Diego. So this Memorial Day, we get to celebrate it with him, while our grand celebration of the great Shelby and Michael wedding brings everyone into reunion in less than 10 days!

Today’s plans are modest: resting, Sausages, Summer Ale, red Potato salad, a little Shrimp, and Catch.

For notes on other previous Memorial Day memories, check:

2007 here

2006 here

2005 here

2004 here.

Happy 2009 Memorial Day Everyone!

Since the Apostle Paul did not shy away from sports analogies in sacred scripture, perhaps you will indulge me this one for our communion setting this morning.

Friday evening something happened that may help finally erase from the collective memories of NE Ohio sports fans a series of nightmarish events known only by their perilous 2-word monikers that have plagued them for more than three decades.

Red-right 88. The shot. The drive. The fumble.

And now we have This Shot, #23, 23 feet away, no time on the clock, a hand in his face. An impossible 3-point shot.

It’s good. It’s good. Game over.

If you are an Akron native, as I am, you take pride in what you can take pride in. Lebron is from my hometown, and, vicariously, he took that shot for all of us. Yes, we are all witnesses.

I took note particularly of what coach Mike Brown said long after the game was over: “he took the game on his shoulders and decided to win it now.”

Sports and sports analogies like these leave some people cold. There’s always another game, another season, a different hero in another town. One audience leaves the arena with chills up their spine, while the others just leave with chills.

But, on a hill far away, long ago, but not that long ago, a real Hero, the only Hero, the original Hero, the only one worthy to be called the Archetypical Hero, took the world on his shoulders, our sins and yours, with a crown of thorns on his brow, and decided to win it now.

Not a game. Eternal life.

While Satan danced, and demons cheered, and angels turned their faces away, the Son honored the Father, and died a grisly death, so that we could live to play another day, and not just live, but live a life more abundantly.

This meal celebrates not a magical 3-pointer that only extends one temporal championship run a week longer, but an event takes our merely mortal lives and extends them into eternity, takes the perishable and makes it imperishable, and guarantees all future victories because the one key victory, the one worth celebrating and remembering, is the one Jesus secured by the cross and through empty tomb.

His life takes away not only the bad dreams and dreadful memories, He takes away the events themselves that caused them in the 1st place.

Eat and drink this victory meal with me today.