Punk Rock Grandma

harmonees
Originally uploaded by shamrox

The woman on the left is John's great grandma. To her face, we call her "Jin-jo Harmonee," meaning great grandma in Korean, as that is what she is to Baby Girl.

Behind her back, we refer to her as Punk Rock Grandma. She has purple hair. She rawks.

I've been afraid of PRG for a long time. She speaks in a sort of radio-show like squawk, very emphatic, very loud. She speaks to me in Korean as if by yelling 3 inches from my face, I might "get it." She told my husband, long long before we were married, to stay away from those crazy white girls. They'll drive you crazy.

Then I spent five days with her. And now I miss her. She came to America by way of Canada at the age of 57. Can you fathom it? Leaving everything you know to move to a country of crazy white girls at an age when most people are thinking about giving the old 401k piggy bank a good shake and calling it a day?

***

Punk Rock Grandma was complaining the other night how the Thai food take-out was too hot, how could we have done that to her, ordering such flaming hot food for an old woman like she?

I told my mother-in-law to tell PRG that we were trying to kill her but it didn't work.

Moments later I had never seen a purple-haired woman laugh so hard.

Withhold Not Good

The title of this post comes from Proverbs 3. I've been studying it in my devotions this week. Sometimes I just take it as face value, like it's some Robert Fulghum sagacity, when really iit's fit for taking your time to mine out all the wisdom and there are two verses I've been trying to really get an imprint of on my mind and heart this week. Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it. (Prov 3: 27

Paraphrased, we have it in our power to do good, so we should not even blink before doing it. Easy enough.

Also! Where it says "them to whom it is due," my translation tells me that the Hebrew translates to "the owners thereof." Do you get that? When we share goodness with others, we're not really sharing it. Do we share something that belongs to someone else? No, we give it back. It belongs to someone else. So when we do good, when we pass along goodness, this verse says it is because we are indebted to do so to our brothers. That is, when we fail to do good, when we are passive, or even worse, when we are destructive, we are ultimately only neglecting or hurting ourselves. And further, if we are bound to Christ, we owe to Him all praise, and how does He require that we praise Him? By doing good to "the least of his brothers."

***

I will continue with this reflection sometime soon.

In the meantime, Houston? We've got a ponytail sighting....

Ingenuity

"Lovey, I have some bad news. And it's about the car." "Okay..." his voice trailed off, wondering what was the damage to the car, since I didn't sound hysterical and therefore probably was uninjured myself.

I explained how the lock on the driver's side had malfunctioned and the car had been hot inside, so, while cranking open the door, the handle had snapped in half.

***

After assessing the damage in person, Lovey asked, once again, how it had all happened.

"I would have loved to see you cranking that handle with all your might," he said, sucking as much pleasure out of this mishap as possible, "But next time this happens, just open the window and unlock the car from the outside, okay?"

I'll leave you to amuse yourselves as to how long that idea might have taken me to figure out on my own.