Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness around the world.

Jan 14, 2007

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Today’s Stories

~**~**~

Insistent Friends, Memorable Sons
(An Auld Lange Syne Reverie)

By Mary-Ellen Grisham

Recently, I got some after-Christmas mail, and I smiled.  It seems as if more and more folks are having trouble getting their cards out on time.  One of the cards was a new year mailing of a family photo taken at a recent holiday and delayed by the printer.  My smile spread across my face, and I chuckled.  I was looking at the picture of six grown sons, mom and dad, granny, and several of four grand-daughters.  What memories this picture card brought back to me!

When we were first married and living in a new community, we knew very few people and had no close friends.  As we began to make acquaintances at church and through work, two families became persistent, insistent friends--friends that would not let us go even through all life's testing and trouble.

The first family came to us through my husband's work experiences.  As a radio technician for aircraft, Lowell frequently helped train young men from a near-by college, and John and he struck up a good friendship.  We exchanged visits on weekends, shared meals at times, and occasionally ate out together.  While I was getting somewhat adept at keeping up with my active toddler, Patti was competently handling a growing group of boys who were active, spirited, and "all boy."

Their oldest boy was a big help and would play with and keep an eye on the others as year by year the team of boys grew larger.  With huge blue eyes and a serious expression, he became a little father to help his over-worked but always cheerful mom.  The one little character I remember best, though, as the visits continued to our house, was Simon.  He loved to tease, act out, and show off.  He was a little clown, and his mom frequently admonished him to quieter ways.

Now as I enjoyed this photo-card I laughed out loud.  Simon was the only one who still looked like himself--open, smiling, fun-loving, and friendly.  The others looked like serious males with patriarchal beards or sober expressions.  The little grand-daughters were delicate flowers in this band of men.  Even dad (now grand-dad) was sporting a grey-white moustache!

The second persistent but lovable family of friends we met through my husband's sport aviation group, and we have continued to exchange visits with them through the years. All the adventure of flying and building sport airplanes was part of this friendship, and the two husbands frequently exchanged expertise, tools, or materials and also shared building-together time.

We frequently visited them in their beautiful home on a hill-cliff in Eldred, where we also got to know their two sons, Allen and Michael.  Allen will always be special to me because he took time for my son David, recording his earliest words and speaking patterns and helping him to clear up his speech.  His artwork and sculptures, carved into the hill on the road up to their home, fascinated and delighted us with every visit.

Michael was in his dating years, and one time when he and his mom stopped by our house for a short visit, he was wearing a beautiful watch, which the girl he was steadily dating had given him.  It was an expensive watch and suggested to me that she had sacrificed her own needs to get this gift for him.  His mom had a few doubts about the relationship, but while I was outdoors with him, I suggested that a girl who gave a gift such as that must really love him and that good marriages were built on that kind of devotion.

As we visited with these friends last summer, before they left for Texas wintering, proud mom brought out the family photos.  There was Mike married to the gift-giving girl and they looked happy and healthy with their fine family of four children.  And Allen!...my goodness--there he was, with his lady-love wife and seven boys and girls, with an eighth on the way!  What a lot of love and sharing, sacrifice and caring, I thought, as I smiled in appreciation of the treasures the years had given.

While some folks get weather-weary and holiday sore in the dreary month of January, I think of old times, old friends, and all the opportunities for friendships that will not let us go.

(c)2007 Mary-Ellen Grisham
meginrose@charter.net

~**~**~

Good morning, Carol.  I thought I'd share my son Chris' latest work.  Warning...it's graphic and not a pretty picture.

Chris has to write a fictional essay in diary form on an historic figure or event.  He chose the  Wittlebau Dora concentration camp and wrote in my father's name.

April 11, 1945

The 104^th Infantry Division, we call ourselves the Timberwolf Tracks, went in to Mittlebau Dora in Central Germany today.

As we were going into the camps we saw thousands of bodies.  Some dead and some alive.  Some of my comrades were gasping in shock as they saw them all lying there, scattered, or stacked in piles.

We couldn't believe what we saw.  Some of the bodies on the bottom of the piles were still alive!  They were buried beneath the dead.

The smell was completely unbearable.  It was the smell of rotting corpses.  A smell that can never be forgotten.  It is a smell that will haunt you for the rest of your life.

Not even a second went by before we started to help those people.  One by one, we were carrying them out of the concentration camp and burying the dead on top of a hill near the camp.

Everyone was crying: we were, the prisoners were, the medics were.  I don't think I've ever cried so much.

We tried to do what we could for the living.  We fed them from our rations and the medics did what they could.

It’s hard to go to sleep.  I just can't stop thinking about what I've seen.  I think I will be scarred for life.  It was something that has changed my life. 

I have seen dead people on top of living people.  Why was this done to them?  What did they do wrong? Why were they treated like this?

Eddie Shiveley, Private First Class, 104 Division, Timberwolf Tracks

April 12, 1945

Today we found a tunnel 50 feet in width and in it we saw more corpses and we saw that the Germans had made the prisoners make V1 and V2 bombs.  V bombs are flying bombs that hone in on their target.

The factories were underground so that if a bomb exploded, only the prisoners would be killed.

In this underground hole the prisoners worked and starved.

I walked down the stairs into this dark, scary place.  When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I felt a hand clutch my pants leg.  I looked down, and a living skeleton was pleading with me in French.  I understood a little.  I had served in France.  It didn’t matter.  I knew what he needed. I picked him up and took him to the medics.

As I returned and again walked down the steps, I saw over 70 corpses.  The ones that were alive looked much older than they were.

These people had been starved, beaten and shot.    Some people who were still alive were lying along with the dead.  Maybe it was to keep warm.  Many of these people had been able to eat as long as they were working hard.  But many could not work hard because they were starving.

These people were put into these camps because many of them were Jews and Hitler did not like Jews.  So Hitler would tell his officers to capture the Jews and put them into the concentration camps.  He also didn’t like Catholics, the mentally retarded, the physically deformed and homosexuals.

Eddie

October 28, 1998

I am dying.   I think of all the people who have suffered worse than I.   I think of everything that has come and gone since Dora.  I have lots of nightmares.  All these people are walking around me.  I am giving food from my army jacket.  They grab it and eat it.  But I always run out of food.  They begin to claw at my coat and try to eat me.

I try my hardest not to walk over the dead people, but every time I step on someone’s hand or foot.  I hear them screaming “Help me!”  I see them struggling to get out.  I want to help them but somehow more and more dead pile up.

I dream about the smell.  It’s on my clothes, on my hair and I can’t get it out.  It smells like death.  It smells like Dora.

As I go to sleep, I pray that my dreams don’t come back.  My dreams rule my life.  Ever since the war my dreams control me.

I dream of heaven.  I dream of those people, healthy, happy and free.  I dream of them with their families.  I dream of them safe from the Nazis.  I dream of a world where there is no fear, no bigotry, no children sent to the gas chambers.

I dream of a world of peace, a world of love.  I hope for a future where all of God’s creatures are safe.

A white figure is coming to me; closer, closer to me. This is not a dream.  This is heaven.  I must go now.

Debra

Author of A Very Special Child - An Adoption Story - co-author Jesus Gandhi Oma Mae Adams ; scribe for Christopher Bullfrog Catcher http://www.whodathunk.org
 
I firmly believe that I have received the same child I was meant to receive whether I gave birth or adopted.  The same soul, the same entity was meant to be mine from the beginning of time. Debra Shiveley Welch "A Very Special Child"

~**~**~

 
A Brand New Year

Mary Carter Mizrany

Greetings for this brand~new year of 2007 in which
I pray many of God's wonderful surprises await you:-)

This will be a year of new beginnings . . . As with our
brother, St. Paul, let us say:

Brethren, I count not myself to to have
apprehended:
but this one thing I do,  forgetting
those things which are behind,
and reaching forth unto those things
which are before,
I  PRESS TOWARD THE MARK
FOR THE PRIZE OF THE HIGH CALLING
of GOD IN CHRIST JESUS.
Philippians 3:13~14

I don't know about you but sometimes I find it
very hard to "forget those things which are behind" . . .
whether it be the enemy like a magnet pulling my
mind back to  them or just self, I  am not sure.

All I DO know is when  I go back to the places
where God does not want me . . . I don't find PEACE,
but,  turmoil (sometimes even torment) !!!

I started this new year with an illness.    Isn't that just
like the enemy?    He would love for us to  become really
negative perhaps making life miserable not only for
ourselves, but for those around us.

I found myself complaining, grumpy and irritable,
a "doubting Thomas" attitude.   Poor me,  why do I have
to start this brand~new year off like this?

My lovely daughter brought me up short though when
she said ~ "MOM,  you are a Christian  ~ ~ ~ what about
praying and asking the Lord to heal you?"
I can tell you I felt ashamed!
I felt ashamed  of my behaviour and of being such
a poor witness for my faith in the Lord!

I did PRAY and the Lord and I had a wonderful time
of  sweet fellowship:-)    He bathed me in His precious
balm . . . that balm that never fails ~ PRAISE HIS NAME !!!
He reminded me that weeping may endure for a night,
but joy cometh in the morning.  Psalm 30:5   Perhaps
reading that entire Psalm will be of benefit to you as it
was to me:-)

I wish to extoll the Lord ~ to praise and worship HIM
not to give any CREDIT or time to our enemy !!!

This new year of 2007 the Lord inspired the following
poem I pray will speak to your hearts with uplifting.
Let it be a reminder that this is A L P H A ~ a
NEW BEGINNING.
Let us remember  only what the Lord would have us
remember of the past.    Most of all, let us thank and praise
Jesus Christ our ALPHA AND OMEGA . . . our
beginning and end.   It is HE to whom we give thanks
for restoring unto us the relationship with Father.

Mary Carter Mizrany

Musingbymary@aol.com

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