The Green Beans on My Shelf

I just put 24 jars of canned fresh green beans on my shelf today.  I love seeing all of the jars lined up with their various sizes and colors.  It's quite a mosaic, edible art, if you will.

My mom put up green beans every year.  I only got to can my own beans with her once before she died, but I remember helping her for years before that.  I hated it.

Dad always grew beans in his garden, and whenever she'd have enough to fill the canner, she'd put them up.  Sometimes, though, Dad would bring home a bushel from one of the Chevy dealers in the country or he'd go to Huber's and pick them, then we'd spend a sticky evening on the patio snapping green beans and swatting flies and mosquitos until the whole box was ready for the canner.  Once I remember Granny helping us, and that night was actually pretty cool.  The three generations sitting around, talking and snapping beans.  Still, I never really liked it, so I'm not sure why I CHOOSE to do it now, but I do.

Whenever I put the weight on the vent pipe of the pressure cooker, and it starts rocking with the steam, I have flashbacks of being in Mom's orange and yellow kitchen, jars everywhere, beans soaking in the sink, a pan of hot lids on the stove.  Mom was militant when she canned, as I wrote about in my post "Snapping Beans."  I was canning by myself for the first time this year, and while I wasn't too militant, I did make sure the kids stayed out of the kitchen as much as possible and away from the stove at all costs.  They hated the SSSS SSSS SSSS SSSS sound of the canner as much as I did when I was there age.

I wonder if any of them will ever put up food.  If they do, I hope I am here to help teach them and revel in their wonder at what they have painted.

July 19, 2011

There are days in your life when everything changes.  Pivotal days when something happens, and you are never, ever the same...the day you meet your future spouse or the day you learn you are pregnant or the day you find out someone you love has cancer.  Sometimes these changes come easy and are welcome and, looking back, make you smile to think how different your life is now.

Sometimes they come at you like a brick through your window and land in your lap, bringing shattered glass and splinters, and no matter how much time has passed, you still have the scars and the sliver of wood under your skin that just won't go away.

Today is that day for me.

Today is a day that is seared in my brain like a hot brand on leather.  I can't tell you anything about earlier in the day, but I remember vividly pulling in the driveway about 6 p.m. and seeing Kirk talking to neighbors, inviting them in to continue the conversation, and then answering the phone a few minutes later.  It was Mr. Kresse from St. X.  Kyle was on a mission trip to Appalachia, and the first thought that came to mind was that he had broken something and I was going to have to go get him.  Would that it had been that simple.

I remember Mr. Kresse's voice on the other end, measured, quiet, saying, "There has been an accident at Glenmary.  All of the boys from St. X are okay, but one of the students from another school has drowned..."

I remember the waves of relief that washed over me in that split second...first, that Kyle was okay, and second that all of the St. X boys were okay.  Then I felt the anguish of the parents who were getting the phone call that it was THEIR child who had died.  I remember thinking, "How would you make that phone call?"

Mr. Kresse said that some of the St. X boys had witnessed the drowning, but he didn't know who, and I prayed, prayed, that Kyle had not been there, even though I somehow knew it in my heart that Kyle had seen it.

The boys were coming home tonight, he said, and we were to meet them about 11 at the school.  A sick sense of dread washed over me. My ears began to ring; my skin to crawl.  My heart began beating in my throat.  I was singularly focused on fixing it so that Kyle had not seen anything.  I started praying, "Please, God, don't let Kyle have been there.  Please, God, don't let Kyle have been there.  Please, God, don't let Kyle have been there..."  And because we had 4 hours or more until they arrived, I went back, explained the situation, and finished the conversation with the neighbors, screaming silently, "Would you please go the hell home???"

About 10, Kyle called from the road.  "Hi Mom," he said.

I cried silently with relief, "Hi Buddy.  How ya doing?"

"Umm, yeah, okay," he replied.

"Were you there?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said, "I was there."

"I am so sorry, Kyle.  I have been praying you weren't.  Are you okay?"

"Not really," he answered.  "I can't really talk now.  I'm in a car with the other guys.  I'll tell you when I get home. Okay?"

"Sure. No problem.  I'll see you in a bit," I said, and when I hung up the phone, I just sobbed.

I drove to St. X early in case they arrived before 11.  It was pouring down rain.  Lightning.  Thunder.  Wind.  Awful, awful storm that mirrored my anxiety.  I waited in the parking lot, praying, praying, praying, watching for them to arrive.  I drove from one side of the school to the other not sure which lot they would go to.  I ran into Mr. Kresse who said they were actually going to meet over at the Speedway across the street for the shelter from the rain, so I drove over there and waited.  I saw other anxious parents waiting in their cars, and we gave each other wan smiles as if to say, "Thank God it wasn't us."

The boys pulled in about midnight, delayed by the rain and the wind.  They were all exhausted and hyped at the same time.  I hugged Kyle, but not too much, and we loaded his things into the van and headed for home.  He didn't talk much.  He only wanted to tell the story once, so we waited until we were in the family room with Kirk, and then he broke down and sobbed, telling us the story through his tears.  Details would continue to come out over the course of the next year, but we heard enough to know that this day would have a profound effect on us.  And it was then that Finoy Lukose entered our lives and changed us forever.

4 July 2005

Arriving at the Magic Kingdom.

It was a very hot and very sticky July 4.  We were in Disney World and had spent the very early morning and well into the afternoon standing in line, peeling our legs off of the seats of rides wet with other people's sweat, and spraying ourselves with our fan spritzers looking for some relief.  About 2 o'clock, we decided to hang it up and spend the rest of the day at the pool, just "chilling" in the 88 degree water.

We headed back to the room, and it was cool and dark, and the beds were so inviting that we all laid down and immediately fell asleep for about an hour.  Around 4, we put on our swimsuits and made our way through the labyrinth of sidewalks to the pool, where everybody was leaving to get ready to go to the Magic Kingdom for the fireworks display.  I knew it was the 4th of July and that the fireworks would be especially glorious because it was the 4th, but I also knew that it is traditionally one of the most crowded days of the year at Disney World, and it was really, really hot, and I was happy to just hang out in the water with the kids and relax.

About an hour later, Kyle said, "Mom, can we go to the fireworks too?"

I said, "Well, if you want to, we can think about it, but it is going to be REALLY crowded and we'd have to get out and get ready and take the bus over to the Magic Kingdom and we'd have to get out pretty much right now in order to make it in time..." trying my best to come up with every good reason to stay cool and calm and relaxed right where I was.

"Okay!"  he replied.  "I don't care!  Let's do it..."

And then he uttered the words that made me move, "...because when are we ever going to be at Disney World on the 4th of July again?"

I looked at Kirk, and he shrugged like "what can I say to that?" And since he's always game for anything, I dragged myself out of the pool, and we made our way back to the room where we dried off and got ready and made our way back over to the Magic Kingdom.

I was wrong when I said it was going to REALLY crowded.  It was REALLY, REALLY, REALLY crowded, but we were lucky enough to be able to find a small piece of sidewalk to park ourselves and wait until dark.  Emily was 3 1/2 at the time, and while she was very, very good, she got bored and she didn't want to sit any longer.  I had to think of a way to occupy her, so I started doing "See, See My Playmate" with her.  Then we did it again.  And again.  And again.  Then I got Claire and Emily to play with each other.  Claire taught Emily another hand game and that worked for awhile, but soon they were bored, and it was still pretty light outside.  So I started singing to them, quietly at first, and they joined in.

We sang "Grand Old Flag" and "God Bless America" and "My Old Kentucky Home" and "Yankee Doodle" and "My Country Tis of Thee" and every other old timey song I could think of.  Then we sang them again and again.  Pretty soon, some people around us joined in, and the singing spread, and we found ourselves on Main Street U.S.A. in front of Cinderella's Castle singing patriotic songs with total strangers on the 4th of July while waiting for the fireworks to start.  Talk about magic!  And I thought to myself, "Thank you, Kyle, for pushing us to come tonight because when are we ever going to be at Disney World on the 4th of July again?"

I wonder if there is anybody else out there who still remembers a desperate lady trying to entertain her little girls who moved a crowd to sing as one.

Sometimes It's the Little Things

Sometimes it's the little things that get to me.  Everyday things that you wouldn't think would mean anything, that you would pass by without a second glance, that knock the wind out of me and bring me to my knees.

Today it was my dad's shoe brush.  An old, wooden handled, well-worn, hog bristle brush that I can't get rid of.

I took it when we cleaned out his house after he died.  It lived in a red wooly mitt along with a well-worn and deeply stained toothbrush, strips of old tee shirts, and various shades of black, brown, and ox blood shoe polish.  Ox blood.  I always found that curiously morbid and pictured bowls of blood being reduced into shoe polish and deposited in metal cans and ending up on the end of that toothbrush as my dad slathered it on his shoes of an evening.  That wooly red bag of shoe care sat in the floor of the right side of my dad's closet.  Sat there for as long as I remember, coming out once in awhile when my dad polished his wing tips.

I was always excited when Dad would get out his shoe kit.  I loved watching him polish his shoes.  He'd twist the top of the Kiwi can so that the lid popped off and then he'd take that toothbrush and swirl it around in the polish.  The toothbrush allowed him to get in every nook and cranny of the shoes where he would clean off the dirt and scuffs.  Then he would set the shoes on a newspaper on the hearth to rest for a bit before he got out the brush.

Once the polish had had a chance to soak in, Dad would put his hand up in the shoe, with the palm of his hand against the inside bottom of the shoe and begin brushing.  SWOOSH, swoosh, SWOOSH, swoosh, SWOOSH, swoosh.  I can hear the brush as it went back and forth against the leather.  SWOOSH, swoosh.  Back and forth until Dad was satisfied the shoes had been brushed clean.  Then he would take a strip of old tee shirt and polish the shoes to a high gloss.  Usually he'd let me put my hand inside the mitt, which he rarely used, and "help."  I was always disappointed that the inside of that polyester wool wasn't soft at all, but I loved to smooth around the curves of Dad's shoes and watch them glow.

By the time my dad had moved three years ago, it had been a long time since he had polished his shoes.  It had been a long time since he had worn wing tips with any regularity.  He was mostly a tennis shoe guy by then.  Same pair in various stages of wear sat in his closet and on the floor of the garage, but the wing tips had fallen dusty under the bed, and he rarely got them out anymore.

Still, we packed the polishing kit and moved it with him, and put it on the floor of his new closet, where it sat, unused, until he died.  Then when we were packing up, I took the brush.  The red wool bag was in a terrible state of disrepair, and the toothbrush was falling apart.  The cans of polish had long since dried up, but the brush was still in tact, a rich patina on the handle from so many polishes.  I put it in my utility closet where it sat until today, when I saw it again, and traveled back 40 years in time to my family room floor.

SWOOSH, swoosh, SWOOSH, swoosh, SWOOSH, swoosh...

The World Is Too Much With Us

I don't remember bad things happening to people when I was a kid.  Did they still, and I just didn't know it?  I don't think my parents sheltered me from much, or maybe it didn't register, but I just don't remember the tragedies that have occurred within my children's circles of life.

When I was a kid, I didn't really know anybody who died young.  I only personally knew one man who died of cancer, and he was old and unmarried and lived with his mother.  All my friends still had their grandparents mostly, and if they didn't the grandparents had died long ago, and the ones they did have were still pretty young and hung around throughout our formative years.  My best friend's dad had died when she was four, two years before I met her in first grade, so he was just this person who was.  I don't even think I ever saw a picture of him.  Another classmate lost his dad when we were in second grade.  My mom took me to the funeral mass, and I felt very small.  Several months later when we were in third grade, and I remember it like it was yesterday, the boy turned around when we were in line waiting for lunch, and said, "Thank you for coming to my dad's funeral."  I wondered how long he had wanted to say that.

But nothing, nothing happened to me like what my children have experienced.  Is life just more now?

Our tragedies started with the death of my mom from cancer when my kids were 9, 6, and 3.  She had had her first surgery for cancer (whose mom had cancer in our day?) when my son was born.  She lived well with it until the last couple of years when it "woke up" and made her life miserable.  When she died that sunny September Saturday, it began a sequence of sad events that have tagged along behind us like a pesky dog that won't go away.

My middle child, Claire, was introduced to loss three times during her first grade year.  First with my mom, then with her teacher, who she loved, who died suddenly of an asthma attack that February.  Then over Spring Break that year, one of the sweet little girls in her class and on her soccer team died from the flu after going in for surgery for recurring cancer (and what kid did you ever know who had cancer?).

Claire was clingy and sad and a Mama's girl for a long time after that, when she realized that death is real.  That it can claim you if you are sick or healthy or young or old.  It didn't matter.  Nobody was safe, and that was hard for her to get her mind around.

A year or so later, my husband's 37 year old sister, our kids' sweet Aunt Krissy, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer.  She had surgery and despite all of the doctors' best efforts, Krissy died two years later.  We made the best of the time we had with her, going to visit, spending time at their cabin, going on a dream trip to Disney World, but she still died, leaving two children my kids' ages behind, once again, reinforcing that death can call at will.

In 2008, my dad was diagnosed with Parkinson's Syndrome and began his slow decline.  My children watched him loose his independence, his house, his ability to drive, his will to live.

The week before he died, my son, then 15, was on a mission trip in Appalachia and watched a healthy, athletic 17-year-old boy drown in front of his eyes, never dreaming that what he was seeing was actually happening.  By the time he realized that the boy was not coming back up, it was too late, and he was gone, my son wracked with guilt that he watched somebody die and couldn't do anything to help.

Three days later, my dad ended up in the emergency room in respiratory distress after aspirating intestinal fluid that had backed up in his stomach, causing him to vomit uncontrollably.  Five days later, he died.

Two of my daughters' friends have inoperable brain tumors.  We know two sets of parents who have lost 20 year old daughters in car accidents within the past year.  My children have witnessed at various ages and stages of understanding:  hijacked planes fly into buildings, destroying our collective sense of security; multiple mass shootings in schools, movie theaters, and shopping malls; major earthquakes; a tsunami; hurricanes; tornadoes; war.

And it's all there, all the time, always.  Amplified in 24-hour news cycles and Facebook and texts and emails sent to our iPhones that we keep on so that we never miss a thing.

The world is too much with us.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

                                        ---William Wordsworth

Today my dad would have been 81. It is hard to think of him as that old. He will always be the man in my profile picture, young and smiling and adoring his girls. We could not have had a better father. Our dad was a kind and loving man, generous to a fault, strong in his convictions and always, always a gentleman. Even when he grew feeble with his Parkinson's, he put us first. We knew he loved us and supported us and thought we could do anything.

When I moved away, my parents outfitted me with all that I could need: pots, pans, the living room suit out of an estate sale, bath towels...and it's silly, but I will never forget my dad pulling me aside one evening and handing me a bag with some nails, duct tape, pliers, a screw driver, and the little hammer that was always my favorite. There was also a toilet bowl brush, something I hadn't thought to purchase. "I thought you might need these," he said. I still have the hammer, but the toilet bowl brush, while long gone, has stayed like a smile in my memory as I imagine my sweet daddy thinking I might need that one day.

Kyle drives Dads/Mom's car now. He doesn't love it (it's a gold 2001 Malibu!), but he's left Mom's sunglasses and Dad's cd's in the glovebox. I'm glad. Reminds me of the song, "I Drive Your Truck." And sometimes when I see a little gold pick up truck like the one Dad had cruising down the road, I imagine my dad is still here, and I just haven't seen him for awhile. It's easier that way, because if I let myself think about the fact that both of the people who loved me best are gone, I get overwhelmed and sad and feel really, really alone.

So here's to my dad, who loved lemon meringue pie and ice cream and French onion soup. Who had a fantastic little garden and grew tomatoes and green beans and zucchini. Who went to church every Sunday, even on vacation, and worked the polls on election day and bought groceries for a poor family at Christmas. Who served his country, talked like a bloke, and often found himself "40,000 feet above the ground with no parachute." Who loved his wife and his girls, and who is desperately missed.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Catholic Schools Week 2013

Last week, I was asked to share my thoughts with St. X on why I think Catholic education is important.  I taped a segment to put on WSTX.  This is what I said:

Good morning.  My name is Sharron Hilbrecht.  My son, Kyle, is a junior here at St. X, and I have two daughters at Holy Trinity.  I would like to speak on behalf of parents on why I think Catholic education is important.

By the time our youngest child graduates from high school, my husband, Kirk, and I will have spent almost a quarter of a million dollars on Catholic education.  And that does not include college.  A quarter of a million dollars.  Think of what that could buy.  A bigger house.  Fancy cars.  A suite at the Yum Center.  A vacation home in Florida…We choose Catholic education instead.

Some of my non-Catholic friends have asked me why Kirk and I are willing to spend this kind of money on education when the best public schools in Jefferson County are within walking distance of our house.  They point out that there are a few teachings of the Catholic Church with which I strongly disagree.  Why, they ask, are you willing to spend that kind of money to send your kids to Catholic schools?

I’ll tell you why.

What this money has bought is not only the best book education out there, but the best spiritual one as well.  Our children are surrounded by people living the Gospel of Christ in their every day lives and helping our kids to be the best version of themselves.   

The teachers and administrators of our children’s schools have been living examples of people of faith.  They have prayed FOR and WITH our children during difficult times in their lives.  Like when my husband, who is in the military, was in Afghanistan, one of the coaches here at St. X prayed for him everyday before practice. Whether there has been joy or sadness in our lives, our school family has been there for us, and our children have learned that as the Body of Christ, we share in each other’s joy and suffer with each other’s pain.

What this money has bought are schools that teach our children about the value of giving, of serving the neediest among us the way Jesus taught us to do.  Through their schools, my children have fed the hungry through Dare to Care and given drink to the thirsty through Edge Outreach.  They have clothed the naked through collections for the Schuhmann Center and visited the lonely at the Masonic Home.  They have lived the Gospel at their schools, making the world a better place for everyone. 

We may be at different levels on our journey as people of faith, but in our Catholic schools, we are all moving in the same direction:  Towards Christ.  Towards becoming the people God meant for us to be.  Towards being that shining light on the hill calling others to join us and share in the community that is the Catholic Faith. 

And that is worth every, single penny.

A reading from the Gospel according to Matthew.

“You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lamp stand, where it gives light to all in the house. Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father."

Let us pray:

Heavenly Father, Your light shines brightly in your children. You have inspired us to do good deeds in your name. Bless this school and all who work to make your will known in the world. We ask this in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.