This post originally appeared November 11, 2014. In August, Dr. Terry Mays commented on the post: “I’m the Squadron coordinator for the 419th NFS. “Marvelous” Marvin Walker is in the book I wrote on the squadron; “Night Hawks and Black Widows: 13th Air Force Nightfigters in the South and Southwest Pacific, 1943-1945”…One 419th NFS vet who would know him is still alive. The others joined the unit after Marvin went down. I knew and interviewed the squadron officer who investigated Marvin’s crash.” Dana and her family were thrilled to learn more about her great uncle. We honor Marvelous Marvin Walker and all his fellow Veterans on this Veteran’s Day 2015 and give thanks and prayers for your sacrifice.

Yesterday my daughters and I went to the Riverside National Cemetery, where my Grandpa Art is buried.  It’s only 4 miles from our house and on a drive by, we noticed that a small flag had been placed at every grave.  Every.  We just had to turn in. It was quite a sight to see.

But today, in honor of Veterans’ Day, I would like to tell the story of my great uncle, Marvin, who served his country faithfully during World War 2, to honor his sacrifice.

Marvin R. Walker was born in 1919, in a small farm town in Iowa. Marvin’s mother, Mildred, had divorced his father, Boyd, an uncommon occurrence in the early 1900s. On a day that Boyd had come to visit Marvin and his brother, Boyd Jr., then aged 3 and 2, he did something that is to the modern parent, unthinkable. He took the boys and moved to Canada. He left, without a trace. Mildred was heartbroken, but in 1921, women didn’t have the voice or the rights that we have today, and the children were lost to her. Boyd Jr. was lost forever as he died from influenza just a year later, unbeknownst to her.

Mildred got married again to a man who already had a daughter, Lenora, and had 3 more children, Betty, Mazie, and Jack.   Another divorce and the beginning of the Second World War found Mildred, Lenora, Betty, Mazie, and Jack off of the farm. Mildred continued her long time profession of teaching, while Lenora and Betty had moved to California and worked at Mc Donald Douglas aircraft, supporting the war effort.

Then suddenly, a miracle happened. Marvin found Mildred. He knew the town she lived in and wrote her a letter. He had enlisted in the Army’s Air Force division in a small town in Oregon and was stationed in Southern California, waiting for deployment. Mildred immediately wrote to Betty, and was soon on a train bound for California.  The reunion between mother and son was full of joy, elation, wonder, and excitement. Mildred was so proud of the man that Marvin had become.  He was kind, funny, sweet, incredibly handsome, and loved his mother dearly.  Betty and Marvin hit it off and were instantaneously best friends. Betty, now 92, recalls afternoons spent at the beach or the city pool, dinners together, and laughter. Lots of laughter.  “He would just grab me and go,” she told me in a recent conversation.  “He was so happy to have his kid sister.”

As many stories of The Greatest Generation go, the war soon separated this lovely, reunited family once again.  Mildred returned to Iowa, and Marvin went to a base in Arizona.  He begged Betty to move there with him.  She decided to stay in Long Beach, but they made plans, plans for his return… Then, tragedy. Marvin was sent to the Pacific front. He was a pilot, 2^nd Lieutenant in the 419^th Night Fighter Squadron. And on March 16^th, 1944, his plane went down. He was lost at sea. Lost again, forever.

Betty is my grandmother.  And I have heard her stories of the war my entire life. And to this day, the pain of losing her brother, her sweet, gentle, long-lost brother, still makes her cry. As a mother, I cannot imagine the ache in Mildred, my Nana’s heart, losing her boy not once, but twice. It just doesn’t make sense.

In 1959, Mildred published a book of poetry, including one for Marvin:

“The Depths”

So, it has come

The dreaded word, plunging

Straight into my heart;

Uprooting, tearing out

The hopes, the plans, the joy

Of looking toward your coming;

Making place for pain,

Hot tears, and cold despair.

So let it be.

Nor let anxiety abate;

Nor loneliness be comforted;

Let nothing ease the pain;

Let nothing compensate;

Let every aching nerve

Cry out its grief to every

Auditory sense

Of body, mind, and soul,

That I may know my loss.

And let me sip it, sip it,

Year by year by year,

As long as life shall last.

This sad story, however, does not end there.  Seventy years later, in the summer of 2014, came another “miracle,” the miracle of modern technology. In May of this year, my mom joined Ancestry.com to begin tracing our family tree. A fun hobby, we thought. Instantly we were overwhelmed with pictures, and family, and relatives, and DNA matches that we never knew existed. It’s amazing how much information there truly is and how easily it is all accessed. A click here, a click there, and suddenly a note in the inbox from a cousin containing a link to the website American War Graves.  This lovely website that contains the information of over 100,000 soldiers who were killed in action in World War I, World War 2, or the Korean War.

And there was his name. There was our Marvin.

I always imagined that since he was lost at sea, there is no burial site. However, under burial details, it says that our Marvin is memorialized on the Tablets of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery, Manila, Philippines. I’m not sure why seeing just his name there affected me the way that it did, but a wave of tears flooded down my face. His picture hangs on our wall, his gorgeous, infectious smile staring out at us from the past. And I can feel the love and the loss when I look at him.  After all of these years, it felt like we had found Marvin.

As luck, or fate, would have it, I have a friend from high school who lives in Manila. Jopet and another good friend of mine, Ray, who was traveling to Manila in September, graciously agreed to take the time to travel to the memorial and make a rubbing of his name.  They faced a few obstacles: finding that Marvin’s name is *just* out of reach, trying to find a ladder, getting help from the staff at the cemetery. But my friends were amazing and did this task for me.  And I am so grateful to them for bringing Marvin home to us.

As I run my fingers over the letters of his name, I can’t help but feel the gravity of his sacrifice.  I feel the sacrifice that my family made, all of them:  Nana, Grandma Betty, Aunt Mazie, Aunt Lee, and Uncle Jack, who still remembers seeing Marvin’s picture in his mother’s room and dreaming of the brother that he never met.  The heaviness of this loss never quite healed for any of them.

There is something quite healing though, knowing that he is memorialized somewhere, that he hasn’t been forgotten.  It feels like this loss isn’t our own.  Nana never knew about the Tablets of the Missing.  She never knew that there was a sacred place that honored her boy.  But I think it would have meant the world to her to know that America, too, felt her loss and honored him.

I know that our story is not unique.  I know that so, so many have braved this ultimate sacrifice for this great country of ours.  I know the sacrifice that their families endure, all to carry out the cry for liberty.  Veterans’ Day honors those who were willing to give their lives for the United States of America, and even if they do not give their full measure of devotion, they and their families give so much protecting us.   To the veterans reading this, to those currently serving our country in the military, to the family members of our soldiers, please accept our heartfelt thanks and please know that Jen and I honor you on this Veterans’ Day.

When I was a little girl, my parents would play a card game called Rook with my brother and his wife. It’s played with a special deck of cards and involves a trump suit, bidding on the hand that you’re given, hoping that your partner has a few cards of the trump suit, and that the holes will be filled in with what you pick up in the Kitty. If you know my dad, or have read about him here, you know that my dad did not like to lose… but he was also not afraid to take a risk. So at times, he would bid on hands that weren’t that strong, really hoping that his partner would come through in the end. Then the game would begin. He would be missing the high card of his trump. Tensions grew at the table as he collected his point cards, not quite making the bid. Who had the high card? The opposite team would win control of the round, throwing points into the pot that would cripple him. Then, from across the table, his partner would throw on the missing trump card! The round was saved; dad would make his bid. A wry smile always crossed his lips, a cackle of a laugh would explode out of his mouth, and he would say, “You can’t play without a partner!”

We are a very team-oriented family. We watched lots of baseball, basketball, football, volleyball. We played all those sports, too, always supporting one another’s efforts. In fact, I remember one time my brother was playing church league fast-pitch and I was arguing with the umpire from the stands behind home plate about a called strike, which clearly was a ball, while my brother was still at-bat. He was furious with me.  But we were partners, me and him. And if someone was doing my partner wrong, I wasn’t going to sit idly in the stands. You can’t play without a partner.

I took the idea of team with me into school sports, which I loved dearly. When I began playing volleyball at Long Beach State, I really took the idea of team to heart. It was obvious that we were only as strong as our weakest link. Sometimes our teammates didn’t like each other off the court, but one thing we knew was that we had each other’s backs on the court. We weren’t friends all the time. In fact, we weren’t afraid to get in each other’s face. But it was all in the name of the united goal, a Final Four win. We couldn’t do it just on the backs of a few “stars.” I remember being on the court in serve-receive, looking at the three other passers. We each had our job. I would take deep, my partner had short. If the ball came cross-court, my job changed, so did hers. We stuck to our roles. What I couldn’t get, she would. What she couldn’t get, you KNOW I would. You can’t play without a partner.

This summer has been a difficult one for me.  Those of you who read us regularly have noticed that I haven’t written, not a word, in months. And this isn’t my first hiatus. When my dad was sick and dying, I took a good chunk of time off, too. And do you know what has happened during both times I couldn’t get words onto page? My writing partner, my friend, Jen stepped up. Without frustration, without question, without hesitation, she has kept writing, week after week, so that our blog wouldn’t fade away. We both love this blog, but neither of us can do it alone. She has sustained us, once again. But that’s just the kind of woman she is. She sees a need and she fills it. She sees someone hurting and she helps. She sees her friend falling, and she picks her up, holds her hand, and helps her get back on her feet. You can’t play without a partner, and I am so grateful that Jen is mine.   Thank you.

Last weekend, when it was 68 degrees and still August, I needed some comfort food. So I drug out my dutch oven and made something hearty.

Jambalaya.

Jambalaya used to be something I only ate in a restaurant, like it was a giant Southern mystery food, to be made properly by folks trained in the art. Then my March 2011 issue of Bon Appetit recipe arrived touting a recipe for jambalaya on the cover and I thought Maybe I could…

I know people who reject recipes with more than 5 ingredients.

This one has 17. Four of them are meats, totaling just under four lbs.

The first time I made it, I used all the meat it called for, which was insane. The final product was meatastic and made vegetarians cry for a 20 mile radius.

I don’t make it that way anymore.

Instead, I stick to the bacon, chicken cutlets or thighs, one smoked or andouille sausage and shrimp. No meat or tofu would be good too.

There’s a lot of chopping to do with this recipe, so I employ my resident sous chef to help me out. I go large with the veggies, more than the recipe calls for: onions, celery, bell peppers, red, yellow, orange peppers, carrots, garlic.

I would like to point out that when the recipe calls for 3 10 oz cans of tomatoes and chiles, it means the cans where the tomatoes and chiles are combined.

NOT three 10 oz cans of tomatoes AND 3 10 oz cans of green chiles. Let me just say that would be a lot of chiles, if you happened to do it that way.

I also do not add the chili pepper or the cayenne because the girls and I like our taste buds to function. For those whose taste buds have been burned away from years of hot wings, I serve sriracha on the side.

Lastly, since we don’t eat white rice, I had to learn to simmer the pot for twenty minutes after adding the brown rice and before throwing it in the oven or the rice will be al dente. Or hard. Depends on your perspective, whether you’re the person who just spent three hours cooking it or the knows-too-much-for-his-own-good 9 year old sous chef in the house.

The recipe says 10 servings but it is way more than that for us. Everyone usually has seconds and then we eat it for lunch the next day too. It holds well in the pot, if you wanted to leave it there with a stack of bowls and some crusty bread, and let everyone help themselves. Perfect for lazy football Sundays.

All of this to say: Jambalaya—it’s not just for restaurants anymore.

Bon Appetit Chicken and Sausage Jambalaya (March, 2011)

12 oz applewood smoked bacon, diced

1 1/2 lbs smoked fully cooked sausage, cut into pieces

1 lb andouille sausage, cut into pieces

1/2 lb tasso or smoked ham, cut into cubes

1 1/2 lb onions, chopped (4 to 5 cups)

2 large celery stalks, chopped

1 8-10 oz green bell pepper, chopped

1 8-10 oz red bell pepper, chopped

6 large skinless boneless chicken breasts, cut into pieces

2 tablespoons paprika

1 tablespoon fresh thyme, chopped

1 tablespoon chili powder

1/4 teaspoon (or more) cayenne pepper

3 10 oz cans of tomatoes WITH green chiles

2 1/2 cups of broth (I use more like 3 1/2)

3 cups of rice

Preparation

Filed under the heading “It’s a marathon, not a sprint”

So it seems to be the thing here to send kids to summer camp.

After camp. After camp. After camp.

At first I was on board. And then I starting adding up the dollars. Ouch.

I would super rather travel.

For the last four or five years in So Cal, with the economic situation and all, we did Camp Mom. Everybody did Camp Mom. It was the thing to do. And, there were no parks and rec or community college camps anyway.

No money.

Somehow, Oregon has money for a robust parks and rec and community college summer camp community.

Cooking and hiking and forensics and basketball and swimming and church camp.

It’s tempting, but I’m not jumping in. The kids need to learn to just be.

To do their chores early before it gets really hot. To read a book on the patio and watch a movie in the afternoon. To play legos for hours in the cool air-conditioning. To ride their bikes down to the splash park and meet their friends at the pool. To eat homemade popsicles.

To help mom clean and pack the trailer for a weekend jaunt or three.

They are going to whine and fight and tell me they are bored twelve hundred million thousand times.

Assuming I can hold my marbles together long enough to avoid jumping off the balcony or tying them to a tree with a “Free to a good home” sign, I know I’ll be doing them a favor: teaching them that I am not responsible for their happiness.

Concerned for their happiness, sure. But that’s it.

The rest they have to figure out on their own. I’m giving them a chance to appreciate the small and quiet moments, the slow moments, the imaginative moments. Maybe even, please God, the naptime moments.

This lesson will not happen overnight. It will not happen without me sitting up, wild-eyed at 3 am in the middle of July, trolling for last minute camps in August. It will not happen without tears and talking back and time outs.

Which means it will also not happen without vodka.

But such are the trials of motherhood.

I refuse to feel guilty about our mostly camp free summer. I’m not getting sucked into the “summer homework meet-up” with some folks from school, either. The success or failure of my kids’ future lives is not going to turn on the social schedule of Summer 2015. So we’re going to chill. And camp. And travel. And chill some more.

In the meantime, it’s 9 am and my girls are laying on the couch in jammies and Gabe is still asleep.

That’s what I’m talking about. Welcome to Camp Happy.

Happy Thursday! We’re posting today as part of Suzie Eller’s #livefreethursdays! Her book The Mended Heart is the next Online Bible Study for Proverbs 31 Ministries. The studies are free and at your own pace–all you need is the book. I downloaded mine from Amazon.

The study starts Monday. We hope you’ll think about joining us!

In 2010, when our son was four and our daughter not quite two, I found the lump.

It was cancer.

This will sound crazy, but the cancer was not my biggest concern. My biggest concern was the child we didn’t yet have.

The cancer was probably not going to kill me. It’s the kind that requires initial treatment and then maintenance.

But the treatment—150 mcg of radioactive iodine—meat we had to delay pregnancy for a year to allow the radiation to clear my system. Then, assuming I could get pregnant, I would be 40 when I delivered.

Or I could forgo the radiation treatment. My tumor was small, just a hinch bigger than the recommended radiation threshold. My endocrinologist agreed to give me six months to get pregnant. Then after the baby was born, I could do the radiation. But I would only be able to nurse for three months.

This was not an easy decision.

When you are diagnosed with cancer you have to let so many things fly from your control. And I did. So. Many. Things. But I couldn’t let this one go. I always wanted three children. Three was our number from the first time we talked about kids. I am one of three. Three was the dream of my heart.

I would love to say that I laid the issue gracefully at God’s feet and waited patiently to be led.

But God had to meet me where I was to get His message through. And then He had to yell.

This is what He said: We’re halfway there! Living on a prayer! Take my hand and we’ll make it I swear!

Don’t laugh. When was the last time you heard that song four times in the same day?

The message was clear to me—I was supposed to get healthy and He would take care of the third baby. So I handed Him the dream of my heart—a whole and happy and healthy family—with three kids.

Then I did the radiation.

We waited a year.

My faith only faltered once, on the day that I found out I was pregnant after having been told it was impossible. The doctor was suspicious that it was a faulty pregnancy. As I raced to her office for a blood test and an ultrasound, I said to God “You promised me.” Not a reminder. An accusation.

And then.

We’re halfway there! Living on a prayer! Take my hand and we’ll make it I swear!

I called my husband, laughing crying yelling into the phone for him to turn on the radio.

And twenty minutes later, there she was, a tiny fluttery shadow on the ultrasound screen. My proof of life, the promise that was kept when I gave Him my heart.