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“Not my president!” Now that Donald Trump is the President-Elect, the nearly 50% of the population that did not vote for him is either making snarky remarks on social media, or they are downright rioting in the streets. To you I say, “GROW UP!” Did you vote? If you did not, to you I say, “SHUT UP!” If you did, good for you. Sometimes our vote turns out the way we want, and sometimes it doesn’t. If Trump wasn’t your choice, guess what? Obama wasn’t my choice for the last eight excruciating years of watching him dismantle our constitution and our country. He was not my president, and yet he was. I was required to be a good citizen and follow policy and if necessary, be civilly disobedient. “CIVILLY” One can lament and say, what has happened to our country? But this is really nothing new. This last election cycle was a circus, to be sure. But history shows that man has not changed. However, his methods for getting his own way certainly have. An acquaintance asked me yesterday wh...

After Mom died on February 26 (2016), Diane had the job of going through most of Mom’s things until the rest of us could get there to help. She found duplicate copies of writings Mom had done for a class she participated in while living in Portland. Today’s blog post is a note she penned about David’s escapades shortly after he was adopted. Enjoy, David! [P.S. David is a Christian and successful IT security guy, husband, and father! Glad you are my brother!] One afternoon David did not come home from school. I asked the children in the neighborhood if they had seen him. They said he told them he was going to Korea. He had taken his little cloth bag, with 28 cents in it, to school that day. His friends all said they would help look for him. Many parents helped also, but no one could find him. I called my husband and the base police. David knew the base had airplanes, so that is probably where he would try to go, but that was a long way to walk and the road had no sidewalks. He...

This was the title of a chapter Mom (Joyce Nelson Sawyer) wrote in her booklet Take Care of My Child…for Awhile. It was forty years ago today that my little brother Ricky died of cancer at the age of 9. How could it be that long? This chapter is longer than most of the blog posts. Primarily for family members. …Then on July 11, at about four Sunday afternoon, Dale came into the living room and said Ricky’s eyes were rolling back and he was having convulsions. Dale was really shaken; it was terrible to watch and we knew death was close now. We planned to have Ricky die at home, but we realized we couldn’t handle this. He needed relief from pain and he couldn’t keep the pills down. He no longer had control of his bodily functions. He needed the help of a doctor and the hospital. Our doctor at McClellan [Air Force Base in northern Sacramento] had moved on Friday, so I called the doctors at Stanford Children’s. Dr. Wilbur was away at a convention and Dr. Long was on vacation. I f...

This particular entry from Mom (Joyce Nelson Sawyer) harkens back to when they were stationed at Hahn Air Force Base in Germany. That would have been the early 1980s. When we lived at Hahn AFB, Germany, I was a Red Cross volunteer, assigned to the hydro pool in the hospital. I manned the desk, emptied the tubs, cleaned them, and filled them again after each patient. One day an alarm went off and all the military personnel ran down the hall, put on protective clothing and gas masks. I asked my supervisor what I was supposed to do. He said I should get to the hospital emergency room and wait until the drill was over. I asked what the school children were doing. He said they all went to the basement of the school. I soon realized that I had nothing to worry about. If the alarm was for real, I would be dead in a short time. As you can see, I’m still here and we had one of those drills once a month. In fact, I got off easier than the military who had to put on heavy, hot gear and ga...

Over and over again I’ve felt the urge to call my mom. There are no phones in heaven, so I’m taking this as a prompt to pray for my dad, left behind and feeling more and more agitated as he loses control of his day-to-day activities. Reminds me of the Scripture in John 21:18 that says, “Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” Ouch! So, I decided to share some more of Mom’s musings today. First of all, I have to say that today’s addition was written in Mom’s handwriting on the back of an “Elfstrand blog” by Lara, talking about how Timmy had just hit a button on a developmental toy without assistance. Brought tears to my eyes. Hindsight, you know … In August of 1970, my husband came home from work and told the family we were not flying home to America [from Japan], but we were going on a cruise ship, ...

There’s a back story here; one that my mother told me when we lived in Conrad, Montana. You see, being a pastor of a very small church in a very small community, doesn’t earn a living that will support a family of five. So Dad used to joke that he would either become the mayor of the town or would join the Air Force. Following is Mom’s recollection of the transition. And in brackets at the end will be my take on it. At the end of 1964, my husband received a letter asking him to join the Air Force as a chaplain, with the rank of captain. I wasn’t too thrilled, since this was during the Vietnam war. Soon he got orders for Lackland AF base in Texas for training. I was left with the children and Christmas coming. Soon there were orders for Duluth, Minnesota. We would have to drive from Montana to Minnesota in the middle of winter. I thought, “I don’t think I like the Air Force.” I arranged for the movers and everything was packed. We arrived in Duluth with 9 feet of snow on the gro...

As I mentioned in the previous post, some terms have changed over the years. Also, I distinctly remember this particular event, and Mom’s timing is a little off. I was nine years old when “Clancy” came to live with us. She refers to having three children under the age of 5, but that was not the case. Our memories get morphed over time … While living in Montana, we were called by the chaplain at the Boys Reform School [in Wolf Point, Montana] asking us to take an Assiniboin Indian to raise. We told him we already had 3 children under 5 years of age, but he insisted this boy needed a home, not a reform school. His father had been crushed between two freight train cars and his mother had run away. The boy took a bike to find her, but could not. No one would take him, so they put him in the Reform School for stealing the bike. We said we would try. We had fixed up a bedroom in the basement of our house, only he wanted to be upstairs with the rest of the family. Because he only ...

I’ve been going over Mom Sawyer's notes and retyping them for the family and friends who are interested. Today’s blog (which refers to life in the mid 1960s) is a reminder that labels and acceptable terms change with the times. I have not interfered with her composition. With that in mind, Mom’s actual title for this entry was  Teaching Indian Children  50 [fifty] years ago, I was asked to teach a class of mentally challenged Indian children, at that time called “retarded.” Since I needed more education for that job, I packed up our children and went to Bellingham, Washington, to attend the college there for the summer. My parents lived there so Mom [Nelson] would care for the children while I was in school. In the fall, I started teaching. I soon realized that these children weren’t retarded, they had been given the wrong test. They had never seen the animals in the book, or the furniture, or the fruits and vegetables. They had no TV or books. I began bringing in...

More from Mom Sawyer’s notes on growing up with David. :-) One day David came in and pulled me outside to look at a skateboard sitting on our sidewalk. I asked where that had come from. He pointed across the street. I told him he couldn't just take things from other people’s yards, but of course he didn’t understand. In the orphanage, a child could play with anything in the yard. He told me, “Me, me, me!” He wanted a skateboard. I decided we could go to town and look for one. We went into several stores and finally found one that he liked. When we got home, he tried it out. He did just fine for a while and then he fell off. He began crying and he ran into his bedroom. He didn’t want supper, so we took him to the hospital for an x-ray. It turned out he had a broken arm. There was no way to explain the cast that was going to be put on, along with a sling. That was a difficult time. When it was time to have the cast removed, we had the interpreter explai...

have a cup of tea with Mom walk through a museum with Mom listen to piano music with Mom sing a duet with Mom have her tell me to sit up straight and not shuffle my feet have her tell me that tomorrow is another day have her tell me that every place has something good about it listen to a story about growing up in Bellingham tell her it was me who took that twenty out of her purse when I was 15 listen to her read me a story sew doll clothes with her appreciate her standing up for me with the biology teacher see her favorite decorations in every home she lived in listen to her say “this is your self-sacrificing mother” appreciate that she truly WAS a self-sacrificing mother honor her  tell her I love her one more time see her in heaven “Happy” Mother’s Day

It seemed appropriate for me to add this note from Mom Sawyer’s musings, since Ingrid and I took four kids to a working farm today.  While I was growing up, our family lived on a 2 acre farm. We had rows of strawberries, raspberries, corn, and beans. My sister and I received a penny a row for weeding the garden. During WWII, my folks added rabbits and chickens. I really didn’t like those chickens. They were noisy and messy and didn’t have enough sense to come in out of the rain. Then Dad brought home a little pig. He was so cute! We just loved him. We fed him before going to school [every day]. He always grunted enthusiastically. Of course, he got bigger and bigger. One day Dad said it was time to kill our pig. I couldn’t imagine such a thing, but when I got home from school, our pig was gone. From then on, whenever Mom put pork on the table, my sister and I turned into vegetarians.

(Another of Mom Sawyer’s notes about adopting David DaeKyo. I am making little to no edits, so that we get her words.) After about a week [of arriving in Oregon], David pulled me to the window and pointed to the school. We did a lot of pointing in those first weeks. He had seen the children in the neighborhood coming and going. I had already signed him up for the 1st grade. I knew he would be unhappy about being in the 1st grade when he was in the 3rd grade in Korea, but he had to learn English before advancing. The next Monday, I took him to school and sat next to him in class. I showed him the page number being used. Since he was embarrassed to have me in class with him, the teacher assigned a boy to sit next to him. During story time David became wiggly, since he didn't understand the story. I decided half day would be enough to start with. In a few weeks, he was advanced to 3rd grade for math. He was very good at that. The teacher drew illustrations on the board for...

(Another of Mom Sawyer’s notes about adopting David DaeKyo. I am making little to no edits, so that we get her words.) We adopted David Shim DaeKyo two years after our Japanese son died of cancer at age 9, but that is a different story. This is about David. He was born in Korea in 1970. His father was killed when he fell off of a garbage truck. David’s mother took him to the woods when he was 5 and left him there. She had no way to support him, his sister, and baby brother. After a while, the police found him and took him to a state orphanage in Seoul. He was 8 when we adopted him through Holt International Children’s Services. At this time, we were stationed at Klamath Falls, Oregon, by the Air Force. One summer day we decided to take David over to see the Giant Redwoods. Big mistake! When we got out of the car and began walking up the path, David started crying and screaming and then running back to the car. I wondered what was wrong with that child. Of course, we didn’t ...

(David, this is the first installment of Mom’s notes on your transition to the US. Some of it is hard to read, but it is real and it is family memory. Share as you wish.) David came to us via a long flight from Seoul, Korea. He and the other children and babies went through customs in Los Angeles and then flew to Eugene. We drove from Klamath Falls in order to meet his flight. Several little children and babies were met by prospective parents. Of course, none of these adoptees had ever seen their new parents, except in photos. We had sent several pictures ahead of time: some of us, our house and yard, and our sweet dog, who was a loving terrier-poo. When we saw David, he seemed small for an 8 year old. In fact, he took size 6 clothes. I gave him a cloth bag full of Hot Wheels. He liked those right away. He took them out and began running them across the floor. My husband, Dale, took David to the restroom. He was not too happy about being away from the other children. Then...

Based on what I can glean from these notes that my mom was writing, this particular one must have been written seven years ago, in 2009 perhaps. Also, based on contextual clues, it was probably written while living at Terwilliger Plaza in Portland, Oregon. It is titled, in her words: Diabetes I have been diabetic for 65 years. It hasn’t been easy. When I was young, there was only one kind of insulin to control sugar in the blood. Sometimes the insulin would peak in the middle of the night. My parents had to watch me closely. Mom worked as a cook at the school I attended to make sure I ate the right foods and didn’t pass out in the middle of the day. She also boiled my glass syringes and metal needles. Dad sharpened them with his razor blade. That was before disposable needles and syringes. Now the needs are very thin and don’t hurt unless a nerve is hit. In Jr. High, I couldn’t take gym because the exercise would cause my blood sugar to fall too low. That was before per...

Little by little, I’m transcribing some notes found while going through my mom’s things. This one is short. There is very little that connects the thoughts on the page. No date is on the page. So begins the stream: The ocean is constant and calming. Our daughter and son-in-law likes (sic)light houses and one is on the right. Now there is a haze over the water. I rest every day to protect my heart. I have done this since I was 7 years old with rheumatic fever. Dale helps me to see now, since I am losing my sight. He takes very good care of me, especially with my diabetic episodes.

Since I microblog on Facebook, it’s been a long time since I wrote anything of substance on this blog. Admittedly, this writing will not be my own, but my mother’s. Mom (Joyce Sawyer) died on February 26, 2016, in her sleep … just as she had always hoped. During her last few months, she was under the capable care of the local hospice team. These people are special, indeed. To see a person at their most vulnerable, with empathy, is something our family does not take for granted. Several years ago, Mom was a hospice volunteer. I suppose she had in the back of her mind that one day she might need the same service she was providing to those in need. You see, she was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes (insulin dependent) at the age of 10, and by the time of her death, had lived a precarious tight rope walk for 72 years. While living in Portland, Oregon, Mom addressed a group hoping to become volunteers with the hospice organization. This was probably written in the early 2000s, before the...