Values What Remains
Do you remember how that movie ends?
In listening to a question and answer on YouTube the question was can a conservative and a liberal have an enduring relationship? Well, it was kind of the question in that the young man was interested in a young woman with the idea of a lasting relationship. The short answer was no…unless what are your values—your shared values?
Recently my Adorable Cousin and I were having a supper conversation. It does seem that our conversations happen in the afternoon and our topics on occasion turn to the subject of ‘what are you having for supper?’
Until Saturday this last week, my answer for over a year has been, ‘I don’t know. Whatever Old Fuzzy fixes’.
This is of course because I’ve been worthless since suffering a reaction to a medication. However, as Adorable and I are talking she asks me if I’ve ever made chocolate pudding with eggs and which pudding I prefer the one with eggs or the one without. But my pudding recipe only has eggs and unless it’s a box pudding mix I can’t think of a pudding without eggs…long story short I’m thinking about pudding. Not just pudding, but I’m thinking about chocolate pudding and I tell Adorable, I think I can even make a chocolate pudding.
Well, rise and shine Clementine, I do go out to make that pudding, and she asks what I’m going to have with my pudding.
I don’t know if any of ya’ll have ever read Winnie the Pooh, but I have a wonderful habit of Tiger moments. Someone asks me these questions such as this and my mind goes into a wonderful world of the past.
In my past life, I used to cook and bake. I used to sew, crochet, knit and embroider, paint? I did it all and created many wonderful things. Now I just think I can do these things. So, with my chocolate pudding, we were going to have tacos. Oh, how wonderful, Adorable says and she decides to have tacos as well. And she says, Chuck will be so happy, he just won’t know what to think…
I told that story because Adorable has been married for at least fifty years. Old Fuzzy and I have been together forty-nine years heading to fifty. Both Adorable and Chuck, Old Fuzzy, and I, we’ve seen ups and downs ins and outs, like they say the good times and the not so good times.
There’s been sickness in both of our families, and we just keep on going. And we keep going together. Recently in a discussion amongst my boys, we were talking about marriage and today’s marriageable young women.
So many young women are like the princess syndrome and relationships are ‘all about me’. But I see it on both sides, men and women with the ‘it’s all about me’ attitude. Sadly, I wonder that this generation primarily has been raised as an all about me generation.
I can tell anyone who wants to hear it if that’s the way we had started out it wouldn’t have lasted one year. Values, what did we value? I don’t think we knew in the beginning, what we valued.
Values, well, we were both Christians and that meant we valued life, but we were both traditional, so we valued liberty, family, love, and honesty. Back in the day, we put our names down as unto death do us part and by the grace of God we are here together today.
At any time in the last fifty years we could have gone our separate ways but what we’ve learned and gained in going through this three-legged life race is irreplaceable. That’s partly why Adorable is thinking of how happy her having supper ready when Chuck gets home will make him, and I’m thinking of how happy Old Fuzzy will be that I’ve made a chocolate pudding for supper (even if I timed out before I got tacos made and we had to make do with a left-over stew).
Did you ever see that… well, there’s a movie and the old brothers sit on the porch a lot and scare away salesmen. It’s back in the thirties maybe forties. And a niece brings her son to the farm where the two old geezers live because she needs somewhere for her son—he’s about ten I think. And the son gets them to find out what the salesmen have to sell and there’s a sick old lion…Adorable asks me.
Do you remember how that movie ends? I ask. I haven’t watched the whole movie because there’s ‘language’ in it, but maybe I should watch it because what I’ve watched didn’t have language and I enjoyed those little bits…
Yes, she said I do remember. The two old brothers try to fly their plane (I think it’s a biplane) through the alleyway in the barn…
That’s it. Buddy (that’s Young Fuzzy) says that’s you and me Adorable—I tell her.
What?! She says. Why would he say such a…that’s funny, she says. Is that because I’m always dragging you into places like that house we looked at and…
Yeah, I said I think that’s why—
Ecclesiastes 4:
8 There is one alone, and there is not a second; yea, he hath neither child nor brother: yet is there no end of all his labour; neither is his eye satisfied with riches; neither saith he, For whom do I labour, and bereave my soul of good? This is also vanity, yea, it is a sore travail.
9 Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour.
10 For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.
