Birthdays are big at my house

Birthdays are big at my house. When your day comes along you are king or queen for a day, week, or maybe a whole month depending on your age. Month-long celebrations are for important events, like becoming a teenager or the change of a decade.
I think this all started when I was a kid growing up on a wheat farm in eastern Colorado. I had five sisters, both parents and Grandma down the road, and since there were so many of us, we were treated to wondrous things on each birthday.
My mother would spend time figuring out what to give as a gift, and then she would create it from her own handiwork. (She was a superb seamstress, often winning the champion sewing ribbon at the Kit Carson County fair.) Most memorable for me were the Native American clothing she came up with.
The most treasured one I received was a chief’s feathered headdress. I don’t know where she got a pattern for that one, but it was something! A red band held individual white turkey feathers that flowed around my head and down the back. Silver buttons were at my temples, and strips of real leather hung from them. I thought I had died and gone to heaven, and I must have worn it to shreds because one day it just disappeared. I suspect Mom removed it from our house while I was asleep.
Hand-decorated birthday cakes were part of the celebration, too. She would ask us what we wanted, and there was no disappointment, because our wish was her command. I always chose chocolate and loved to watch her decorate it. She could create all kinds of decorative ornaments with a silver decorating tube. First, she would mix up a bunch of white frosting and divide it into little bowls. Then came the tiny bottles of food coloring. “What color do want the flowers?” she would ask. Often, my answer was yellow because I think yellow looks great on brown icing. Of course, there was green for the leaves, and maybe one bowl left white for some ribbons. She would fit the flower head on the tube and fill it with the yellow frosting before the plunger was screwed on the bottom. Then, poised over the cake, I would watch as flower after flower appeared on the chocolate palette before us. On she would go, changing the head of the tube from flowers to leaves to ribbons, and ending with a grand flourish of spectacular ribbons around the bottom and top.
Candles. Song. Wish. Blow. Gifts. Queen for a day.
Yep, birthdays are important at my house.    

At his request, I made a strawberry pie for Dwight's birthday. 

Old films

I am working on turning old family films into an edited video. The first few days, when I was sorting the information on the computer into different files, I cried more than once. It hurt. Do you remember the play Our Town by Thorton Wilder? In the third act, one of the lead characters dies in childbirth and you see her sitting among the dead onstage. There is a point at which she realizes that she can go back into the living at anytime she wants, but she is warned by those around her that it really isn't a good idea. She still wants to go, so they suggest that if she must, she should go back on an unimportant day, one that won't hurt too much. She chooses her 12th birthday.

During the next scene, she goes back. She sees her and her family moving through time in everyday actions--her mother in her apron, for example. As an observer, she is appalled about how they each are taking the moments for granted; they don't really look at each other and marvel at how beautiful they are. She returns to the cemetery and the audience knows she will not return to the living again. That is how I felt looking at the films. I saw us all moving through time, lovely, moments spinning by, ordinary moments that are extraordinary.

Nancy Nurse, My Sister

In pictures, eyes of serious intent
look into the camera's aperture--
A world glimpsed from inside out and bent
on straightening the path to health with fervor.
"Kind, but firm," say her respectful patients
"with a nurse like that you're self-directed."
No funny business--its importance
is clear if you are to be perfected.
Knowledge of academia meets with
knowledge of human heart and emotion.
Life depends not on medicine alone;
instead, she teaches that life comes from One
that joins hands with you and urges along.

Sharon Lakey, June 27, 2005
On Nancy's 50th birthday

Recent photo of Hildur and daughters

Back row, left to right, Nancy VanEtten, Claudia Stallings, Waynette Yarmer, Sharon Lakey, and Kathy Thorson. Front, Harriet Warren and Hildur Schiffner

Gap Man

The Gap—Store 2529
7301 South Santa Fe Drive
Littleton, CO 80120

RE: Wonderful Service—Cashier 1536999 & Crew

To the Management & Staff:

Just after 5:00 PM on Saturday evening, July 2nd, I found myself standing outside of the Aspen Grove Starbucks drenched in Earl Grey tea and a wedding to attend within the hour. Looking left and right, I spotted the Gap sign and ran to the door.

The staff on duty sensed my dilemma and rushed to my service. “The shirt should be easy; you look like a large.” After matching the shirt to my belt and shoes, one of the crew rushed it off to be steamed. The chinos were next, “Pleated or flat? Cuff or none?” If I hadn’t been vain and tried for one waist size too small, that step would have been as quick as the shirt. I walked out of the dressing room—one crew member snipped tags off my new pants and took my credit card, a second stood with my newly-pressed shirt and a third held out a bag for my old clothes. “You fold; I’ll sign,” I said as I strided toward the register, buttoning the crisp, steam-warm shirt.

Only when seated among the beautiful Hudson Gardens, listening to the violin play the processionals in anticipation of the bride did I sneak a fearful peek at the slip I’d signed for my new clothes and found a pleasant surprise—a discount to boot!

What a wonderful experience and what a sales crew! My faith in the young adults of our time was reinforced twice that evening: by the cheerful professionalism of the sales crew at the Gap and by the charming, intimate smiles of the bride and groom as they danced on their wedding night.

Sorry I didn’t get your names gang, but my gratitude is just as sincere,


Dwight Lakey

Left behind

Several years ago, I got into scrapbooking. My first book is about me, about growing up on the farm in Burlington, school days, college, marriage... But, it's those first years of memory that have a golden glow about them. Is it the the constant sun of the place, the wheat, or just the beginning of life that was so golden?

When Mama was closing the house and buildings after the auction, Dwight and I happened to be there for our summer vacation. It felt strange at the lawyer's office as the daughters stood in support of Mama as she was instructed through the pile of legal papers. The lawyer and realtor seemed callous, all paper and no heart. We watched somberly as she put the final pen to paper. When we opened the door to leave the office, Burlington had never looked so bereft.

We rode out to the farm in a somber mood and took our goodbyes. Near sunset, the yard was quiet except for the wind in the trees. Weeds had grown up in the corral and around the carport. Inside the house, we walked one last circle through the rooms, only the fading sun sifting through the windows to give us light.

It was in the middle of the living room where I saw a small, dark form against the carpet. What is here, I wondered, reaching down and lifting it. Soft feathers on a lifeless bird, a sparrow caught inside somehow in the bustle of the auction. I set its holiness back down.