I gave the old man his moment in the sun! About 25 years in the making.

Deniese has been gone and like the move "It's a Wonderful Life" I've had a reminder of what life would be like without her. Right away I opened all the blinds in the bedroom (she likes it dark, I like it light) and turned OFF that noise-neutralizing fan in the bedroom. (I like to hear the house groan and creak and talk to me)

I got to learn things she probably knows but would like to ignore. For instance, there is a red squirrel that looks in the window from the porch now and then. It's not hard with the snow piled • 3 feet high out there. The dogs don't see it, because they are busy snoring away, something Deniese would probably like to never hear. The birds get up waaaay too early and start chittering out there. Oh and those evil turkeys are clucking and yelling and making a ruckus that I suppose even I could do without.

At first I didn't sleep well, partly because of the strangeness and partly because of the fact Deniese wasn't there, but eventually I came to callous myself to these sounds and sights. That's why I enjoyed the oddity things, like the gray squirrels that were wrestling in the snow in a hilarious way. That woke me bolt upright when the fight started outside one window and wound up in front of another and yet another as they tussled across the roof.

Now I know the sound of the furnace, the sound of the fireplace fan, the ice cube maker in the fridge, etc. I also discovered that its these nuisance things I start to appreciate and look forward to, and I listen for them. Funny how that is. I can hear every clock that chimes in the house, which is quite a symphony when they all go off at roughly the same time. Which got me thinking how sometimes the nuisance things are what make life most interesting.

People talk about a car they once owned and loved, and usually remember how you had to wiggle the knob just a certain way to make the wipers work. They tolerate this, and even become nostalgic for it, I think some call that "charm." Like in "It's a Wonderful Life", when he rushes home to the family and at the bottom of the stairs the rail top comes off in his hands - again - but this time instead of being angry at it he kisses it and puts it back. He's come to love his life, and even the warts that go with it, because things could be so much worse. And frankly, because it is so wonderful.

When I was nine my brother locked me out of the bathroom at my grandfathers house. He had something I wanted and ran in there to get away from me. In frustration I kicked the door and put my little foot right through it. My dad gave me a good whippin' for it and was going to replace the door but my grandfather wouldn't let him. Instead of a perfect, sterile boring door he had that "Randy hole" to remind him of an ornery boy that had a bad temper. He bragged that up to everyone all those years, until of course when I came to see the old guy for the last time he was alive and brought my wife and son. One of the first things he asked my then 8 year old son was "Did you see that hole in the bathroom door upstairs?" And this is a guy who had a hard life and was hard on his children, who softened with age (else I would have gotten a whippin' from him and my father both). He looked back at his life and you know, a little hole in a door is funny if you let it be.

Come on! When I was a kid we had a floorboard in the kitchen that if you stomped on right the cupboard across the room would pop open. We thought it was magic; it never once occurred to us that it was "broken." Kids get it that the world is awesome, why do parents forget?

The point is, even when we become Christians we know that life doesn't become perfect or painless. If we're short, we're still short. Annoying brothers are still annoying brothers. But when we realize the horror we have escaped, well, these things don't matter much. In fact the little nuisance things make life interesting, make it memorable, and when we think about it can make it wonderful. I'd rather go nuts from a baby's cry than never hear it at all.

Randy