Grin and "Bare" It

My mother has decided that it is time to redecorate the bathroom. It may have been stylish in its time, robed in its teal and purple brilliance, but I would have to agree that it is time for the fishnet and multi-colored fish to be retired. What, you may be wondering, could follow such a resplendent decorating scheme? Yes, you guessed it. My mom has decided to bedeck the bathroom walls with---naked baby pictures of Erinn and Krista in the bathtub! She has already purchased the frame which will house said images. I'm not quite certain how I feel about this.

On one hand, the pictures are quite adorable, if I do say so myself. It's hard now to believe that my sister and I could once fit in our tiny bath tub together and still have room for an entourage of Barbies, rubber ducks, and wall paints. It brings back fond memories of the time that my sister poured a cup of scalding hot water over my head when my mom was on the phone with the Pastor. I screamed and screamed, causing much embarassment on the part of my parents. My sister followed the spectacle with her typical innocent-yet-devious look and the comment, "I just wanted to see if it was hot!" (Incidentally, she can still get away with that kind of thing...) On the other hand, aren't those the pictures that parents threaten to blackmail their kids with? It seems almost unfairly easy if the pictures are already a permanent wall fixture.

In the end, I'm fairly confident that this redecoration effort will in fact come to fruition. My mom is so adorably excited about this idea that I couldn't bear to squelch her plan. So for those of you who regularly visit the Danielson household, be prepared. You just might get an eyeful.

Grandma Irma

Last Friday at 6:40 p.m., our family got the call. "Grandma Irma" (as she was known not only by us but by all our friends as well) had passed away after a long battle with cancer and a shorter battle with the pneumonia that eventually weakened her to the point of death. It was not unexpected, although the end seemed to come more quickly than we had anticipated. It was a true blessing that we were all able to say our goodbyes, thank-yous, and final words just before she slipped into a state of unresponsiveness.

Although we had always known that Grandma Irma was a one-of-a-kind personality, it is only over the past couple of days that we have come to know how many lives she actually touched. We received cards and wonderful notes from her dental hygenist, her financial planner, children of her former patients, and most likely people she had met on the bus. (Not only did she make friends with people she met on the bus, but she likely had their address so she was poised to send them $10 on their birthdays by the end of the ride.) Support came pouring in from more corners of our world than we had ever imagined. I would be hard-pressed to adequately express my gratitude to everyone who has somehow impacted me over the past few days.

Grandma and I certainly never had a perfect relationship. In fact, as those of you know me fairly well would know, there were many times that she drove me absolutely crazy! Of course, it is those very things that irked me the most that will probably lead to my fondest memories of her. For instance, there were certain buzz words that simply could not be said in her presence without launching her into one of her famous stories, told hundreds of times over with the exact same verbiage. We couldn't mention a bad hair day without the admonition that "We should be grateful we have hair!" (And yes, Grandma, I'm also grateful that I have a butt...) She interrupted nearly every story we tried to tell with one of her own, usually involving someone who had died recently or would die soon. She needled me incessantly for my habit of being late and constantly reminded me that she used to get to her shift at work at least an hour early, if not more. Somehow none of these quirks seem quite so maddening now.

Despite her sometimes trying habits, she was incredibly devoted to my sister and I, her only grandchildren. She wrote to both of us every single day of our college careers! I have amassed nearly a thousand hand-written letters as well as just as many cartoons and cutouts from the Metro Lutheran, complete with explanations, just in case I didn't get the joke. Although she didn't drive, she was determined to get to every single one of our musical performances "by hook or crook." (This nearly always meant my dad had to pick her up.) She bragged about us to anyone who would listen, as I was made well aware of at her memorial service. She certainly was proud of us.

She also showed an incredible devotion to God, her church, and to service of others as well. She never ended a conversation without telling me that she was praying for me. She apparently logged over 4,000 hours of volunteer work at Ebenezer, the care center that was her heart and soul. I like to think that my passion for working with the elderly and long-term care came from her. She loved to tell me that she had been doing "quote, music therapy for years.'' "No you haven't!!!" I wanted to yell. "I have been in school for 6 years and I still can't call myself a music therapist!" Instead, I just smiled, and told her that I was sure her residents appreciated her music. I'm glad that I did.

I could probably fill several books with my "Grandma Irma stories" but I know that they will probably come up often in conversation as I remember her life. She had an undeniably huge impact on my world that I'm sure I will become even more clear to me as I mourn her loss. Although my constant references to song lyrics may be tiresome, I can not sum it up any better than with a quote from the song "For Good" from the musical "Wicked"-

So much of me is made of what I learned from you
You'll be with me like a handprint on my heart.

TIHL #13 How to Play the Electronic Keyboard (A short vignette)

It was Tuesday, August 1st, 9:30 am. Chapel on the 3rd floor of University Good Samaritan Center was off to a rockin' start. My supervisor was jamming on his guitar and I was dutifully trying to obey his order to "Give me some honky-tonk piano, Danielson!" (My version of honky-tonk piano probably sounded about as authentic as Eminem playing classical music on the 'cello, but I was certainly giving it my best effort.) We were a couple of notes into a chorus of "Soon and very soon we are going to see the king" when I noticed that my keyboard and my supervisor's guitar were painfully out of tune. I thought that perhaps I had caused something to go awry when I'd hit the transpose button, since we'd agreed to take the tune down a step. I pushed the button labeled "Tuning" a couple times whilst trying to just keep playing. The keyboard still sounded unbearably awful, so I was forced to pause for a minute. I fumbled with a few more buttons, including the one I'd been searching for in the first place, cleverly labeled "Transpose." Confident that I was finally in the same key as my guitar player, I struck a grandiose chord just in time for the verse "No more dyin' there..." Though I'd played an F major chord, the sound that ironically burst forth was "Bam, bam, bam, pow, pow, zap!" Evidently I'd inadvertently changed to the "gunshots" sound effect during my button pushing marathon. Everyone, including the very priestly be-robed intern running the service, completely lost it. I couldn't manage to squeak out even one word for the rest of the song. As my supervisor so helpfully pointed out, at least the gunshot sounds were finally in the right key!