That's what I kept telling myself as I blew on my hands and basked in the sun breaking through the patchy clouds.
The view was amazing though. the panorama doesn't give what's on the horizon credit. I't's about 20 years of my life down there in Eastern Oregon. Twenty years.... one quarter of the time that my grandmother was alive.
I didn't think it appropriate to take the kids to her funeral. They had only met her a two, maybe three times, and I felt it appropriate to shield them from even the shadow of grief. I loved my step-father's family, even to the point of legally taking his name even though he never adopted me. I remember grandma as .... constant, her smile lit up her whole face, wrinkles and all. I remember her being very practical, she would go along with whatever grandpa and dad had decided, but she would voice her opinion and smile and go along with what they said, even if she didn't agree with it. But you didn't cross grandma either. I found that out one day after school when a friend and I were trying to feed the horses apples. the horses were not exactly tame, but not wild either. One broke to bridle, and the other just not ridden in a long time. We had already thrown in the apples, but the horses were more interested in us, and were coming to the fence where we were stretched out to try to touch them.
"YOU LEAVE THOSE HORSES ALONE!!' the voice blasted from behind me....
I'm not sure if she told my friend to go home before or after she smacked me with her belt. All I knew was I didn't even have time to explain we were only being nice to the horses before I was trotting back towards the house with grandma's bright eyes boring holes in my back as I walked. ... I think I was in 4th grade.
I stopped again when I had gotten over the pass. by this time I was almost to the point I could not stop shivering. The weatherman had said it was supposed to be almost 10 degrees warmer. That's not a lot, unless you're on a bike without a screen, and gloves that cover your leather jacket cuffs. Even with chaps on, I was glad to have the snow behind me. Yup. Snow in late May.
I met with the family for breakfast. Some I had not seen for more than a year. It's sad that it took that to get us together. It's been a long time since that many of us were together, we even talked of the last time we had all been together, and it's been years ago. The service was short and sweet, my childhood pastor reading from Proverbs 31 and the virtues of a righteous women. My aunt read a native american poem. friends and family recounted things about her that they remembered fondly. All too soon I had to say my goodbyes and leave, the sitter had an engagement in the evening, and I had over a tank to ride.
I kept thinking as I rode back, through hills and forests that she must have been in as a child, of all the things she must have seen in her life. World War II, Vietnam. Korea. Her son was in the Gulf in the standoff with Lybia in the 80's. Watergate. Disco, TV, cellphones, computers... the list goes on.
A quarter of her life and half of mine down there, and that 20 years a fraction more than it's twin I've spent apart from the country stretched out before me. It got me thinking about God and kids and purpose and sovereignty and life and what I've seen..what God has walked me through.
Of course thinking of God made me think of the three years Jesus spent in ministry.
Of the short amount of time between the crucifixion and the death of the apostle Paul... less than the span of my grandmother and the face of the world changed.
It was kind of like having the rug pulled out from behind me.... the thought that sprung up just as I was reaching the outskirts of home.
I'm barely less than half my grandmother's age when she passed.
What will I see in my lifetime?
