A Left, a Right, and Four McDonalds

I turn left on Warner and then right on Beach.  From here, it will be a long, straight stretch.  Beach Blvd. for fifteen miles northward.  Through Huntington Beach, Westminster, Stanton, Garden Grove, Anaheim, Buena Park, southwest La Mirada, and then to my destination in La Habra.

I’m driving up to my old boss’s office to help her out with some things.  

The trip is 18 ½ miles, and all but one left and one right turn of it is a ‘straight’ stretch on Beach Blvd.

But the ‘short’ 18 miles trip takes the same 45 minutes that the 36-mile-long drive from Riverside used to take me when I made the trip daily back when I worked for her full time.  Gives me lots of time to think.

I think of my older sister now.

She can be so darn stubborn; my sister, Jenny.  She has lived alone most of her life. She was widowed two short years after being married, and sometimes I think she’s lived alone too long and can’t see past herself. 

Don’t get me wrong.  She’s not selfish.  She is very generous with family, and good-hearted, and spends time and money on various charities.

But there are times she just doesn’t think beyond herself.

I’ve been trying to convince her of the virtues of Facebook, but she just scoffs.  Why in the world would she want to know what everyone else is up to?

But I do care about what is happening in the lives of my friends and family.  It is very important to me.  I revel in their joys and their victories, and I grieve in their sorrows and their pains.   

I worried so when Jonathan was over in Japan when their earthquake hit, and so relieved to hear he was safe.  And so excited to hear when Gordon (a.k.a. Dr. Tan) returned from his trip to China!)

After this past week, I sent Jenny another invitation to join Facebook.  She missed out on so much this week alone!

My cousin, Steve, his wife, five grown children and first grandchild came back from a vacation in Cancun. 

 

By the looks of it, they had a very memorable time.  Now, even Jenny would have found joy in this!

I just adore Steve and Ellen. I’ve never met their children, but have watched them grow in photos over the years.  

And  I thrilled with them and the rest of the family over the recent birth of their first grandchild, little Elizabeth Marie.

I had so much fun sharing in their vacation photos, and enjoyed getting to know Chris a little through his great eye for photography and his obvious love for family through his lens. 

He’s studying to be a doctor like his father and grandfather before him.  I think that is so cool!

We’ve been able to get updates this week to let us know that Karolyn’s house has still managed to escape the horrific wildfires now raging through her canyon in Arizona, and to lift her up in prayer.  

It has burned over a half a million acres and destroyed at least 29 homes.  I pray for the hundreds of firefighters out battling this inferno in the heat of summer.

Now I drive past the first McDonalds along my journey, and my mind flashes back to my little Marlene - who graduated high school this week and shared photos on Facebook. 
She's the one who first called me "Auntie Liz."  I am so proud of her this week!

Then there is Josie (who was once my second-, or was it third- grade student?)  She just let us know this week that she got her nursing license.  And she’s expecting her second child.  What would I do without Facebook?!  Lord, please bless Josie and her growing family.  (She's in the lower left corner.)

My daughter, Erin, and her fiancé spent a week-long vacation in Maui and shared wonderful photos of it with all of us.  I wish Jenny could have seen them.  She'd have loved them!

“See what you are missing out on?” I ask Jenny, as I try to convince her one last time.

I wait at the stop light outside Knott’s Berry Farm and the roller coasters  make me think of the rambunctious hooligan that Noah was as a child.  And I thank God for his return from Afghanistan this week.  

The light changes and as I pass McDonalds #2, my mind wanders for the umpteenth time to our men and women serving oversees in Iraq and Afghanistan.  And I lift them up in prayer.

I step on the gas and continue on northward.  I pray for those who lead our military, and those to whom our military answer.

I change lanes and a blue mini van pulls up along side me with one of those “Baby On Board” signs in a window.  The ones that always make me wonder  if they think that is supposed to make us all drive any safer or something....


...and instantly my mind turns to my sweet little Gavin, the grandson I only get to see thanks to the wonders of Facebook. 

I long to smooch his baby pudge neck.  I pray for him and his parents, my daughter, Jen, and her husband, Travis, in Tennessee.

The speed limit slows to 35 where Anaheim and Buena Park meet and I cross the railroad tracks as I cross over the 5 Freeway and I pray for my loved ones who are traveling near and far this week.

I pass McDonalds #3 shortly after crossing over the 5 freeway, and continue on northward with my thoughts and my prayers for those dear to my heart.

Then traffic dips under an overpass and comes through into the more open spaces of the eastern expanses of La Mirada, and the speed limits opens up to 50.

I think of my friend, Uzoma, who lives in Nigeria.  We met when he was here in CA for back surgery and I wound up being his physical therapist during his recovery.   He was staying with a cousin of his, here in La Mirada.  

When he left to go back home I never dreamed I’d ever hear from him again.  But thanks for the wonders of Facebook, I have.  He looked me up!  

My wide open space quickly comes to an end.  I see the last landmark McDonalds of my drive approaching on the rise to the right as I near the busy shopping center at Imperial.

Traffic slows and I have to come back to earth at the stop light.  Bless them all, dear Lord, I pray, and hold them in your hands.  And I focus on the busy  traffic as I begin to gradually make my way to the right lane in preparation to pull over soon at the Dr.’s office.

I’ve sent the letter/request to Jenny.  She will receive it, and she will either get it, or she won’t.

But that is what relationships are to me.  Once you come into my life, the relationship is constant, regardless of time and space.  If I loved you twenty years ago when you were in my third grade class, I love you no less now. 

If you were my BFF when we were in third grade ourselves (Daisy!), then your name is still written on my heart forever.  The same for an old boyfriend, a teacher, a neighbor.

I do care about my friends and family, and I love to hear about what is going on in their lives - always.  And to pray with them, and for them in times of joy and in times of sorrow.

I guess it’s sort of like my drive up Beach Blvd.  Traveling from point A to point B, changing lanes, speeding up, slowing down, stopping and starting, I talk to God about the people in my heart.

That’s the way it should be.  I love that tiny little verse in the Bible that tells us to “pray continually.” 

Two simple words.   When I was young I couldn’t comprehend this directive.  But in my monotonous drive along Beach Blvd., it is second nature now in my wiser, slower, more wrinkled years.

I can talk to God throughout the day - at stop signs, changing lanes, walking through the day.  He wants us to talk to him like we do to our friends on Facebook.

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.  --  1 Thes. 5:16-18

Ghosts of Christmas Past

Christmas '78 or '79
Liz goofing off ing dorm room
La Sierra, CA

Christmas Day '79
(the glow-in-the-dark) Liz
trying to catch some rays...
Lucerne Valley, CA

Liz
Okay, this was March '82, but it's probably
the only time they got 5' of snow at
Camp Cedar Falls!!!

Christmas '81
Jenny and Liz
Camp Cedar Falls

Christmas '81
Liz and Eddie
Camp Cedar Falls

Christmas '83
Jenny and Nick
La Sierra, CA

Christmas '84
Liz, Nick and Eddie
Angelus Oaks, CA

Christmas '84
Nick
La Sierra, CA

Christmas '87
Nick and Jen
San Gabriel, CA

Christmas '88
Liz and Erin
Camp Cedar Falls

Christmas '88
Liz and Erin
Ojai, CA

Christmas '88
Liz, Erin, Nick and Jen
Ojai, CA

Christmas '88
Nick, Jen and Erin
Ojai, CA

Christmas '92
Temple City Church

Christmas '91

Jen, Erin and Santa
Rosemead, CA

Christmas '93
Erin and Jen

Rose Parade '96
Liz and Erin with Jen behind
Pasadena, CA

Christmas '97?
Liz, Nick, Erin and Jen

She Gave Me the Finger!

Aunt Louise, my dad’s only sister, was my favorite aunt as a child. She had grandchildren my age, but still always made time for us six Carson kids. In the summers she had us to the farm in shifts – the girls for one week, then the boys (or vice versa.) But either way, we all got a week with a trade-off trip in between where my folks would pick up one batch and drop off the next. (Here we are on the farmhouse steps in the summer of '62.)

Aunt Louise could do it all. She introduced us kids into Apple Jacks and cherry trees. She made the most marvelous applesauce from the apples she grew in the orchard on her farm, and buttered baby parsley-potatoes dug from her garden. She showed us how to draw fresh water in a bucket from the spring house and painted and sewed and knitted.

As much as I hated my middle name growing up, I felt honored to be named after her. She was amazing and invincible, but ever so warm-hearted and intuitive and kind. I longed to be like her.

It broke my heart when, in March of 1991, I flew back to visit my cousin (yes, the trip of the crystal dish bomb!) and went to see Aunt Louise in the nursing home. My heart ached to see her her marvelous mind now lost in a fog of incomprehension and unresponsiveness.

We sat with her for a while as I held her hand. We spoke to each other and to her as she sat in silence. Occasionally she would chime in with an observation or some childhood memory totally out of sync with what was going on around her; or speak to a childhood friend only she could see.

And as I sat there holding her hand, I noticed the slight imperfection of her middle fingers for the first time. Each middle finger rotated slightly outward so that the fingernail was on a different plane than the others. And each finger also bent outward slightly at the last digit, so the finger itself wasn’t straight.

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I turned to her daughter, Peggy Lou. “Have ever noticed her fingers?” I asked, perplexed and yet pleased.

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“Oh, it’s from the arthritis,” she told me.

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“No! It’s not!” I said excitedly as I held out my own hands, palms down.

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It took her a moment to understand what I was trying to show her. But she looked for a moment at each one, and then at her mother’s, then held her own fingers out as well. I realized for the first time that Aunt Louise and I shared something more than just the name Louise. I had her hands!

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If only my hands could be as amazingly creative as hers had been before time took her memory, I thought.

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On the plane ride home at the end of my way-too-short week’s visit, I contemplated my hands. I’d always been told I had my dad’s hands – long and slender – but never realized until that moment in the nursing home what that really meant.

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Growing up in various places around the world, I’d been denied the family connections that so many have. Though I had twenty-three cousins on my mother’s side and another eight on my father’s side, we grew up cousin-less. And moving around as we did, my parents didn’t have any family photos of cousins or ancestors hanging on the walls like so many folks do.

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So it never occurred to me that, other than having my father’s hands, I had family traits.

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My mother died when I was young, but I still remember the odd freckles on her forearms – the ‘normal’ brown freckles and the strange anti-freckles as I thought of them. Those white spots of no pigment that showed up only when she tanned. Then her arms were barely-tan with tiny brown and white spots confettied across the skin. I thought they were ugly. I also thought her legs would be prettier if she had smaller ankles and shapelier calves like other mothers had.

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Well, now that I am an old lady (well at least now that I’m almost ten years older than she was when she died), I have to smile. I have her both her anti-freckled arms and her “cankles” as I hear ankles like mine are called today - as they go straight from calf to ankle.

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My son always got joy out of comparing his summer tan to my freckled- and anti-freckled arms as a boy. And my daughters have both moaned and groaned over inheriting my “cankles," which will only get worse with age.

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Over the years, I’ve become very interested in genealogy and tracing my family tree. (Probably in part because of that dearth of relatives growing up.)

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And I’ve traced my family tree back to mid-1600 Germany, to King Edward I of England, King Philip I of France, William X of Aquitane (and his father, William IX of the Crusades), as well as numerous knights and barons and earls of Ireland, many of whom lost their lives (and their heads) in the Tower of London.

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But even more special to me are the many family ancestral photos I’ve been able to track down over the years.

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Through them, I’ve discovered that not only do I have my father’s hands and my mother’s anti-freckled arms (which all three of my children avoided thanks to their father’s Hispanic blood) but I was pleased to discover upon the brief reunion with my daughter Jen, in 2004 and 2005, that she also has the graceful Carson hands (and was slightly less enthusiastic to find she also has my massive rib cage and short waist.)

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I got my cheekbones and drooping eyes from my maternal grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Jane “Genevieve” (Maurer) Lee, who got them from her father, William.

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He apparently got them from his father, Johan Georg Maurer.

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(And I am forever grateful that I didn’t take after his mother, Libbie Bullinger - in the photo with her husband, above!)

But then, maybe the eyes came from her as well.

And I am glad that a small part of her devoutly spiritual nature (discovered in an old German letter from back in the 1840's) passed down through her offspring to me.

My non-existent waist line (my rib cage practically sits on my ilium – upper crest of my hips) may have come down from my Irish great-great-great-grandmother, Mary (McDonough) Golden (with her husband, Patrick Golden, left.)

She emigrated to America (via Quebec) in 1835 and actually met her husband-to-be while disembarking from that ship. (I’d have rather inherited my paternal grandmother’s famed 19-inch waist! Though I imagine that had to come with a corset, which makes it a lot less desirable.)

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I discovered that my brother, Tom, looks an awful lot like my maternal grandfather, Benedict Herman, who died before either of us was born.

And my beautiful cousin, Julie, is the spitting image of Grandmother Lee. (right)

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The lack of lateral incisors (the teeth between the front teeth and the pointed canine teeth) is apparently another family trait shared by many in the family.

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And my son, Nick got his tall good looks from my father and his father before him – minus their large noses (thank goodness!)

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And my daughter, Jen, has some of my mother’s stunning beauty. (left)

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I saw a photo of my younger daughter, Erin, recently and was startled by her comment about how she didn't like the way her pinkie finger always stands off to the side alone in photos. Mine does that too! (And I hate it just as much.)
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And it seems I come by my bent for educating from a long line of teachers. 

My mother Mary Catherine, her mother, Mary Elizabeth Jane (also known as Genevieve), and her mother’s mother, Mary Louise, were all teachers before me! Here’s my grandmother’s graduating class of teachers in 1910. (She's second from the right.)

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And yes, there is a point – other than the fact that I inherited my mother’s worst features and Aunt Louise's middle fingers, and am descended from royalty and lesser nobility.

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The point is that we are all recipients of so many gifts handed down to us from our fathers and their fathers back through generations. We all have qualities and traits that show we belong to them.

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The point is that as children of God the Father, we are all descendents of the King of Kings. And in His image were we all made. We've inherited so much from Him.
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He didn’t create us with anti-freckles or “cankles” or thick waists or droopy eyes or missing lateral incisors (and now wrinkles too.)

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He made us perfect, in His image. Sin has given us all the rest. And, short of braces and laser eye surgery and dental implants and plastic surgery, we are stuck with crooked or missing teeth, and other human flaws - at least for this lifetime.

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The point shines clearly in the moving lyrics of Dierks Bentley's song, My Last Name. He says it so well:

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...Passed down from generations, too far back to trace
I can see all my relations, when I look into my face
May never make it famous, but I'll never bring it shame
It's my last name....
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Daddy always told me, far back as I recall
Son you're part of something, you represent us all
So keep it how you got it, as solid as it came
It's my last name....

And it is encumbent upon us to "...keep it how we got it, and never bring it shame...His great name..."

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Liz Carson Rosas
20 Novermber 2009

"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him…" -- Genesis 1:27

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"...for in the image of God has God made man." -- Genesis 9:6

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“But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” -- Matthew 5:44, 45.

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