Going Home

(Several years ago, I wrote the following as a favor to a friend to be used in a hospice service. I just recently read it and realized how much it describes my mom.)

I’m headed for Home.
I may not have thought I’d be going Home at this point in my life, but I’m on my way.
The word “Home” can mean so many things to different people.
Earthly home can be warm and welcoming, tense and chilly, cold and formal
Laughing and sharing, terrorizing and brutal, sad and dismal.
I’m going Home now and soon, I’ll know what it's like.
Robert Frost once said, “Home is where, when you have to go, they have to take you in.”
I hope that’s true of God.
I hope God has to take me in, despite my foibles and unkindnesses,
Despite my lack of faith at times.
Despite my sins of pride and sloth, lust and gluttony,
Wrath, envy and greed.
I’ve known them all but I tried to live kindly.
I hope God knows that I tried very hard to be loving
Going Home is fraught with uncertainty.
Will they still like me…will they take me in?
Will I shock them? Or maybe they’ll remember my jokes and laughter?
Will I trip going up the stairs and everyone will laugh and say “that’s just like you”?
Will I get into philosophical debates or discussions of current events?
Will it be like the Garden before the Fall?
They say that we won’t recognize our fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters there.
I hope that’s not true.
I hope my family will be there, taking me in, welcoming me Home.
I can’t imagine streets paved with gold.
I think someone made that up…God wouldn’t waste his time on gold streets.
Or making us all play harps…I’d hate that.
I hope I get a job as a guardian, watching over someone still out there
Still far away from Home.
I hope Home will be a garden for gardeners, lush and green and not a bug in sight.
I hope it’ll be a library for book-lovers and a museum for art lovers.
I hope it’ll be a golf course for golfers, with no traps.
Or a mountain for those who thrill to climb, ever higher and higher.
A roller coaster for those who like speed
The wind in hair, the sudden drops and terror
Only to come safely back to Home, breathless and loving life.
I’m going Home now.
God, please have to take me in.

The Great Green Stamp Caper

In the early '60's, a couple from Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) applied and were accepted to Ouachita Baptist University. Mary Makosholo was a school teacher and Mike was a minister. Both were in their 40's and had 5 children, making them "non-traditional" students in every category I can imagine.

Anyway, they came to Arkadelphia, moving into married student housing. The first Sunday, being good Baptists, they attended church. First Baptist Church was within walking distance of campus and most students didn't have cars, so the vast majority attended there, including the Makosholos.

Now, you have to understand, we had had foreign students there many times before. They were certainly welcome. As guests.

The Makosholos had, however, the audacity to request to become members. In our lily-white church, this was a first. Certainly the Blacks who lived in the "negro" section of town wouldn't have dreamed of attending, let alone becoming members of First Baptist.

Many heated meetings of the deacons and Sunday School classes ensued. In the Baptist Church, one is voted in by the membership. Usually, this is an automatic and somewhat routine voice vote as Yea or Nay at the end of the service. Not, sadly, in the Makosholos' case.

After a great deal of angst, it was decided to have a secret ballot. First and only time in any church I've ever heard of a secret ballot. Perhaps the congregants didn't have the intestinal fortitude to show publicly their racism. Perhaps the church elders felt that people could more comfortably vote in their favor if they didn't have to vote so publicly. Whatever.

The upshot was that First Baptist Church of Arkadelphia admitted Black people for the first time in its history. The first Sunday the Makosholos attended church as members, my mother invited them home to Sunday dinner. That wasn't the last time the Makosholos graced our table. Foreign students were always showing up, invited or uninvited, to share our fried chicken, our roast beef and gravy. We almost always had foreign students at Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, since they couldn't go home and the college cafeteria closed, leaving them to celebrate Christmas by cooking Campbell's soup on a hot plate.

Visiting over a pot roast, Mom found out that the Makosholos had left their five children at home in Rhodesia with Grandma and that they were resigned to living in the US for four years, never seeing their children. Airfare was just too dear for them to jet back and forth to home. I can almost see Mom's indignation at the thought. She had five children and she couldn't wrap her mind around not seeing us for four years.

In that day and time, gas stations and especially grocery stores gave out stamps, S & H Green Stamps being the most common. For every $x you spent at their store, you were given x stamps. When you'd collected enough stamps, there were catalogs and redemption centers where you could "buy", with books of stamps, tray tables and pots and pans and bathroom accessories and sporting equipment.

So the good ladies of First Baptist decided they were going to save enough green stamps to redeem for cash the amount of money it would take to buy a round-trip ticket for Mike and Mary to go home for the summer.

Many Arkadelphia families were involved in this project, not just church members. When Mom asked the manager of the Piggly Wiggly for some extra stamps to help their effort, he leaned on the dispensing button, emptying his stamp machines into a grocery bag.

But the stamps were required to be in books, both to redeem and to count. So Mom threw a stamp party, providing food and refreshment for a whole day to anyone who could come for a few hours and lick stamps and put them in books. (We discovered very early on that tongues can provide only so much moisture and soon resorted to wet dishcloths and sponges on small plates. Our fingers and tongues were green by mid-morning.)

At last, the collecting and mounting gave way to counting. Our dining room overflowed with sacks and stacks and boxes of books of S & H Green Stamps. Success! We had enough to send the Makosholos on their journey home and then return to their schooling.

Now I can't imagine that Mom was in any way threatening when she talked to merchants about donations. She probably didn't say she would remove her custom from the Piggly Wiggly should the manager not pony up. No, Mom's style was more "I'll be a faithful customer and my whole Sunday School class would be forever grateful." No threat, right?

This story is about race relations in the South, loving thy neighbor (even if the neighbor lives half a world away), the power of community to come together, the inventiveness of using whatever you had to accomplish a major goal. It isn't a story of good vs. evil...it is a story of merely good. Of doing the right thing. Of Christ's admonition that whatever you do for your fellow man, "you do it unto Me."

But I write it because it is quintessentially Mom. .