You arrived three days ago much to the delight of all of us! Now your brothers can marvel over the wonder of your tiny self , and your year-old cousin Massimo will appear as a giant next your tiny self... although he has not increased in size. :-) I am handing over your title with a slight alteration to his unseen but much awaited sibling, your cousin-in-waiting, for the duration.
But I slightly digress. :-) Auntie Amy does that. Sorry :-)
G'g'ma Ardie has had a long two weeks since I told you a story about her...we have worried, wondered, and witnessed to the great power of God's love, which you know right now as the strong arms of your mommy, daddy, grandparents and brothers. Being held as a child contains the essence of God's love, Safe, secure, embraced, marveled at. Someday you will learn interesting facts about how God made the world out of nothing ( some call that the Big Bang Theory) and caused plants to grow on barren lava fields on the mountains which came out of the water, and all of that. In the beginning, there was love, and in the end, there is love.
G'g'ma lets God hold her every minute of every day. She still prays for all of US, and talks to others about the love of the Lord. One lady who comes in to clean her room said she likes cleaning G'g'ma's room because she has such peace. :-)
One of your big cousins who also give really great hugs, Brett, has been home for the summer from college. He's getting ready to go back, and boxes and bags and bundles fill the garage and dining room ready to be packed. Remember the story of g'g'ma Ardie getting busted at college for playing baseball?
The year after that, she and her sisters went to another college near Chicago, called Wheaton. She and her twin shared a room so they didn't have to be with strangers in a strange place like most college kids do. Having a twin is handy that way, and also convenient when you need to write a paper and your sister goes to class for you that day, which sometimes happened at Wheaton College in those days. HA (One time when your g'g'pa came to pick up g'g'ma Ardie, her twin came downstairs first and g'g'pa Keith didn't know it wasn't his date. They had a lot of fun fooling people that way!)
Ardie Mitchell met Keith Bailor, your g'g'pa, at Wheaton College. Keith is your grandpa Kirk's daddy.
G'g'pa Keith's daddy was a state trooper, just like your daddy, but in Michigan.
Some friends of G'g'pa's told me stories about him, one which included him shooting himself in the foot. ( Side note: Esme, you may learn through out the years that shooting ourselves in the foot ended up being a family tradition, only with words and actions instead of guns. We're counting on you young ones to change that paradigm. :-) )
Yvonne and Keith and Barbara could walk to school every day, even in the snow, because it was two blocks down and one block over. There's a bank there now so you can't see where they sat in the classrooms, but if anyone ever tries to tell you that G'g'pa Keith walked uphill in the snow both ways to school as a boy, just look at them and blink. Twice. Ha
Blissfield has three bridges side by side, one over the River Raisin, which was named by French trappers who found grapes there ( raisin is French for grape, I know it IS confusing ) and two side-by-side over the train tracks, also crossing the river. Big huge farm fields stretch for miles and miles and miles, and you'll see big red barns looming up every now and then as you wind along the
Sergeant Bailor ( your g'g'g'pa) had an assignment in Blissfield until his son was in high school. They attended a United Brethren church on the other side of the block from the school, and their family life remained very strict with a policeman father and a United Brethren mother who was the choir director and also the pianist for the church services. They could NOT misbehave in church!!! HA
Oh, your g'g'g'ma could play so beautifully! When she played those hymns you could almost hear the angels singing along with her as she stroked the keys and pumped the pedals on the piano. Her favorite hymn was " I Come to the Garden Alone". I can still hear her playing and singing to her own music flowing out of the piano.
"I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses,
and the Voice I hear falling on my ear,the Son of God discloses
and He walks with me, and He talks with Me
and He tells me I am His own,
and the joy we share as we tarry there...none other has ever known."
She probably got lonesome sometimes living in Michigan. Her mother and daddy and all nine of her brothers and sisters lived in Indiana and Ohio, and letters took a week to get to people back then. (The Internet and cell phones didn't get invented until your mommy and daddy were young.) Calling long distance on the telephone was too expensive and only used in emergencies, so she wrote long letters home and waited for them to get written back, and in the meantime, the tall lady who loved bright red lipstick had three little children to raise, while G'g'g'pa drove a lot for his job.
She probably got a little sad sometimes, being by herself in a strange place.
But she pressed on, and before they moved to Hillsdale, Michigan, where G'g'pa would graduate from high school while working in a dairy after school to help the family, Keith got a summer job in Blissfield.
A merchant in town who ran a gas station and a freight business ( shipping things on trucks to other places) talked to Keith one day in the drugstore about helping out on the weekends. Everybody loved Keith! He was a football player and a really good Christian young man who had dreams of being a minister. He had bright blue eyes and a huge smile, and he worked hard at everything he did. The man hired him and ended up so please with Keith that he let him run the gas station AND the freight business for the summer, while the man went on vacation with his family.
G'g'pa Keith was 16 years old.
Nearly three years later, in the fall of 1950, Keith went off to college, like my Brett is again today. He went to Wheaton, where he helped pay for his college expenses by washing dishes in the school dining room every night.
G'g'ma Ardie and Arlene were already there, of course, and G'g'ma Ardie was one year ahead of him in school. Another boy had already had a crush on her and even asked her to marry him. (His name was Bill Bell, so if she had you would be Esme Bell instead of Esme Bailor, which sounds good but probably not as interesting as being a Bailor. HA)
Keith AND Ardie were each the class presidents for their graduating classes. He played football and basketball and baseball, and Ardie didn't get in trouble at Wheaton for playing sports -- because she majored in them and could play every day and get class credit!!
They got married after he graduated in 1954, and G'g'pa went to MORE college, called seminary, where he got ready to be the minister he always dreamed of. Ardie was ready, since she grew up being a minister's daughter. They lived in Pasadena, right around the corner from the street where the Rose Parade takes place ever year. On New Year's day they would get up, have their coffee and walk down to watch the parade!!!
After Keith graduated from Fuller Seminary, they moved to Riverside, Ca, where they launched a little high-school ministry called Young Life, and had a baby named Kirk, another one named Karen, and later on one named Amy ( that's me ) and another one named Alyson. While we grew up we heard so many stories about how kids would gather in people's homes instead of church, and play games and sing songs and hang out and hear about Jesus. Some of us went to Young Life club and Young Life camp when WE were teenagers! Lots of kids heard about Jesus from Keith, and lots of them will still tell you today that they loved him and will always be grateful to him for leading them to the Lord.
So see, Esme, and Jaedin and Ethan and Preston and Greyson and Massimo and the royal Raspberry-to-be, our family has long been held in the arms of Jesus. Safe, secure, loved, in the best hug ever.
Amen. So be it.
P.S. Love, Auntie Amy
