Tag: moving

My Father-in-Law’s Ethics

D. Michl LoweLeave a comment

My father-in-law, Larry, is an interesting man. I have a significant amount of respect for him. Much like my own father, he comes from a background where he invested a lot of time, effort, and diligence into providing a stable and good life for his wife and kids. 

I hesitate to call him a self-made man, in that I assume many people assisted him throughout his life in achieving what he has, not the least of which would be his amazing wife, but still, I would say he is as close as they tend to come. 

Anyway, my mother and father-in-law are moving, and my wife and I abandoned two of our children to head up to Rochester, NY, to help them finish packing to be ready for the movers to load everything up and get their things into the new house in Columbus, OH. So for the past three days, my wife has been in the house, packing away items in boxes and wrapping them in paper to protect them. I have meanwhile been in the garage with Larry. 

At one point, we were finishing power washing some of the more oversized items in the garage when Larry announced he would go and till the garden with the rototiller. I was confused. To be fair, I am not a mechanical-minded person, and my father-in-law is a master-mechanically-minded person. So I will default to his expertise, but this didn’t make sense to me. So I told him, “Larry, why are you going to till the garden? This isn’t your house now; you aren’t going to plant in that garden”. 

In my mind, this was a waste of time. He was leaving this place, starting a new life. In many ways, it was going to be a better life. It brought him closer to many of his kids and grandkids; the new house would be better in nearly every way. So why waste time tilling a garden, he would never use? He looked at me and said, “It will look nicer for the new owner if it’s tilled.” 

And was no other explanation. I could have just taken it as is, but my mind wouldn’t let that explanation rest. Throughout my time helping Larry pack away his things to prepare for the move, we have been cleaning the garage as we go to the point of vacuuming the baseboards at the edge of the concrete floors. Now I wouldn’t leave a filthy house for someone to buy, but it’s a garage; to me, that’s a naturally dirty place expected to be a little dusty. 

But I think several ideals are in place in my father-in-law’s mind. He is a generally kind man who wants to do kind things for other people, even people he doesn’t really know; like those buying his home. The other ideal, though, I believe, goes a little deeper. He is proud of his home and the life it represents and for good reason. This home, in many ways, represents his and Carolyn’s success in raising a family and providing for them in the manner Christ has called parents to do. 

I have seen many parents who have failed at that calling. Because of drugs, alcohol, failed marriages, unresolved mental health issues, etc., they have failed in their calling to be good parents and spouses. I can’t tell you the number of kids raised by grandparents or single parents because one or both biological parents have failed to step up and do what needs to be done. In essence, to grow up. Now I realize many extenuating circumstances in many people’s lives have led them to where they are, many uncontrollable. 

However, I think I understand why my father-in-law tills the garden for the new owner of the house he is selling. He understands the value of what he is selling and wants to present it so that it shows the value it truly has. It is a memorial stone to a life well lived.

D. Michl Lowe

The Ninja Kitty And The Trailer

D. Michl LoweLeave a comment

Around the time I was seven years old, my mom and dad decided that we should move to a new house. They had purchased the land from Don Bloss and we would be moving to the other side of the Bloss girl’s house onto the land they had bought. However, the house had to actually be built. So, they started to build, but also put our little red house up for sale at the same time. As it happened, someone bought our house before the new house was done being built.

We were in the middle of the build for the new house and now had no house to live in while it was being finished. What could we do? Mom spoke with a friend of ours who agreed to allow us to rent a trailer down the road from Sissonville Elementary. It was a very small trailer! In fact, it was only two bedrooms and one of those bedrooms was packed floor to ceiling with our moving boxes. As it was, my bed was placed in a small walk-in closet.

When we first arrived at the trailer, we brought Samson (my dog) and BT, our kitty cat. I remember we got them down out of the car and Samson immediately began running around the small yard peeing on everything and BT ran off into the woods. We were a little concerned about BT, but she was an inside/outside cat, so she could take care of herself. Leaving her some food and water out on the porch, we waited to see if she would come back. When we woke up the next day, the food the water was gone, but there was still no sign of BT.

We left out another round of food and water and left for school and work. When we pulled up to the house from our day, we saw BT on the porch drinking some of the water we had left. However, the moment we got out of the car, she ran off again into the woods. This continued for a couple weeks. One day though, we got out of the car and the food and water were untouched; we didn’t see BT. We continued to leave fresh food and water, but each day that we came home, it was untouched.

This might sound like a really horrible situation, and it was, but in my seven-year-old brain, I created a scenario that made it easier to deal with. In my mind, I forced myself to believe that BT had decided to live out the remainder of her days in the woods hunting squirrels for her food as a Ninja Kitty. I often would imagine her hopping from limb to limb chasing down the squirrels; oddly enough, she was also wearing a Ninja Turtle Style mask on her head in these imaginings as well. We never saw BT again.

Sometime after that, we started to notice a smell coming from inside the trailer. It started off not that bad, just a mild sickly-sweet odor, but then it started to get worse. It became so bad that when we would open the door to go inside, we would have to turn back around and nearly punk off the porch. It was really bad! Dad decided that he would put on his overalls and crawl up under the trailer to see what was going on. When we got under there, he found a large hole in the flooring panels under the trailer, it looked like something had chewed the hole open.

Upon sticking his arm up into the hold, he felt something large and furry that wasn’t moving. Immediately, he thought “oh, no. BT has crawled up in this hole and died. Michl is going to be crushed.” But it wasn’t BT. When dad crawled back from under the trailer, he pulled out a river rat that was as large as BT from there. All told, it was nearly three feet long including the tail. We found out later that our neighbor had been putting out poison for the rats from the river just beyond his house and the poison was meant to make the rats want to drink a lot of water. So, they were supposed to go back to the river and die down there, but for some reason, this particular rat decided to come under our house to die.

Looking back on this time now, I am wondering if perhaps BT got into the poison, he had put out and that’s what really happened to her. I guess that’s a much more realistic explanation for what happened to her, but honestly, I like the seven-year-old explanation better. Sometimes, we encounter situations in young lives where it’s easier to believe the make-believe rather than the somewhat harsh reality of life. As a kid, I think my mind preferred to live within that fantasy instead of actually facing the death of a beloved pet.

We were in the trailer for nearly a year. Most of my memories there were of riding my bike along the flat blacktop road that led up to the house. I mentioned it was a small place and we were there during the Christmas holiday. There wasn’t enough room for an actual Christmas tree, so we settled on a little Charley Brown Christmas Tree that was set on top of our kitchen table. There was only one gift that I remember that year and it was a red microscope, complete with little slides that had sections of bugs, leaves, and other little things to see close up. For all the scrimping and saving our family was doing at the time, this was one of the best Christmas’ I can remember.

D. Michl Lowe