Boys and Toys

From August 2016

Continued from Preparing for “Deployment”

Although Roma has been a resident of Heaven for over seven months(2016), there are a few stories I will share. Grief in the first year is notoriously challenging, at best, but God has made Himself REAL and close to me, and I am comforted by His presence. So I share, to HIS glory! Enjoy.

Roma was a natural athlete. He excelled in all sports. He loved to play sports, to watch sports, to talk about sports, and to read about sports.
 

The reading part often amused Bruce and me with some of Roma’s early pronunciations. Roma and Bruce would talk sports over breakfast, and Roma could surprisingly hold his own in the conversations. I marveled at his knowledge of so many games and teams and players. I remember the little fellow, reading to Bruce from the sports section, something about the “At-lant-na” Braves. From that moment on, Atlanta became Atlantna for me. (Interesting that Roma would spend some quality time in “Atlantna” many years later.) 

Last month, after more than seven months of backing out of the driveway past Roma’s solemn and silent basketball hoop, I decided it was finally time for someone else to enjoy the often used and much loved hoop. In my imagination I can still hear the ball bouncing outside. I don’t have to use my imagination to see the dents in the garage door.

Our neighborhood has its own yard sale site on Facebook. I started to post the beloved hoop for sale on that page. But suddenly I had a strong impulse to post in on the Mount Airy (Maryland) online yard sale site with a much wider audience. Why?, I asked myself. Wouldn’t it be easier to post within the neighborhood and have pick-up possibly involve no more than rolling it down the street. But I’ve learned to obey those nudges.  

I posted it on a Saturday morning, and an hour later, it was claimed. The woman, Angela, asked if it could be disassembled, for she had a small car. We had assembled it originally, I told her, so I assumed it could be disassembled. Bruce told me that it would be difficult to take it apart, so I told her she would need a truck. She reinforced that she wanted it, but couldn’t get it until Wednesday evening. I started thinking maybe this buyer wasn’t going to work out. But Bruce would be home on Wednesday, so he could help us get it into the back of a truck.

I didn’t hear back from Angela until Thursday morning. Bruce wasn’t home to help us as he would have been the evening before, as I had planned. I messaged her to ask if she had a helper. We had emptied the water out of the base, and it was laying on the ground. It was heavy. I knew because I had helped Bruce lower it to the ground slowly so it didn’t crash. It was too heavy for two women to hoist up on the back of a pickup truck, at least one in advancing years, and I don’t mean my new friend Angela! 

I messaged Roma’s friend in the neighborhood and I put a plea for help, explaining my need, on our neighborhood Facebook page. No one responded.  

By the time Angela arrived with a borrowed truck, I was outside pacing, waiting for an offer of assistance, even a passing car. She backed in and we had no option than to try it ourselves. My sometimes weak back had gone out the week before, so I was reluctant to try to lift it up to her as she stood in the truck  bed, pulling.
 

Surprisingly, we got it up onto the opened gate of the truck with little effort. We pushed it in horizontal, back against the cab. But it was too long. A third of it stuck out the back. So I climbed in, and we wrestled it upright and then I sat on the base. Without being filled with water, the base was not heavy enough to hold itself upright. There I sat on the base, securing the weight, wondering what to do.

I quickly came to the conclusion I had no choice but to ride in the back of the truck, sitting on the base, accompanying Roma’s basketball hoop to its new home.  Luckily Angela had told me she only lived five minutes away. Surely I could do this.

Then I had a sudden thought. “Are there many power lines across Main Street?” I asked Angela. We had both traveled Main Street many times, without considering the power lines overhead.

 “Not many . . . I think,” she answered, realizing she had never given it a thought before either.

“Just watch for them,” I requested as I gave the high pole beside me a nod. She agreed as she got into the truck and pulled out of my driveway, as the full height of the basketball hoop towered above me. As we passed cars, I realized it is probably against the law to ride in the back of a pickup truck. Being a rule-follower, I laid down to at least conceal the evidence. All I could see was the sky until we got onto Main Street. Then Angela slowed down to a stop, as we neared the first of too many power lines. She got out of the truck to gauge the inches from the tip on the pole of the hoop to the wire, and slowly inched forward.

From my vantage point, looking straight up a too-tall pole, it looked as if we would hit the wires above. I stiffened my body with each near contact. I  would raise my head up a little occasionally to see where we were, and how much farther we had to travel. When we finally veered right onto her short road, I could breathe again.

Once in front of her house, Angela got out of the truck apologizing for the wires that were both more plentiful than expected, and too low to transport a fully extended, regulation basketball hoop on the bed of a pickup truck! As we were lowering the precious cargo from the truck bed, I explained why I had mentioned the electric wires in the first place.

“I didn’t tell you why I thought of those wires, but my son died in December. He fell from a ladder after touching a power line.” 

The horror on Angela’s face immediately revealed her compassion. “Oh, I’m so sorry! I will pray for you.”

I thanked her, as we both returned to the truck cab for our five minute ride home.

After her mention of prayer, we begin chatting about churches, and Bible studies. Then, I don’t remember exactly what prompted it, but I said, “My son was adopted from Russia.” 

I heard her inhale gasp. And she said, a little louder than expected, “My son was adopted from Russia, too!” We talked fast the last couple of minutes of our ride, like two strangers who discovered a Secret together. We got out and I ran in to get her a copy of But the Greatest of These is Love. I’m curious if God worked on her like He did with me.  

She added that although her son was only about to turn six he was very good at basketball.

 Of course he is. Like Roma!

 If she had come Wednesday night, when Bruce was home, he would have maneuvered the unwieldy structure into the truck without help. If I had simply remembered the lever on the back of the pole, I could have easily lowered the whole backboard, reducing the height of the pole by almost half, my cool story would have dissolved. If a neighbor had come to our aid Thursday morning when Angela arrived, I might have never known the rest of the story. She would have retrieved the hoop with help, gone on her way, out of my life forever. If I had put it on our neighborhood yard sale site, like I started to, again, there would have been no shared connection, no evidence of God at work.

But as I rode in the back of a truck that morning, looking up at the clouds in a bright blue sky ,and power lines, and low hanging branches, something magical was brewing.  A little boy from Russia was about to have a birthday, and he wanted a full size, regulation basketball hoop.

And God knew exactly where a broken-in and well-loved and presently unused one could be found. He also knew how joyful I would be with this little Divine Encounter, just days before Roma’s first birthday in Heaven.

Angela and I were blessed that morning. I hope readers are blessed too.

 

Thank you, Lord, for comforting me, and reminding me You are never far. Neither is Roma, through the thin veil. Happy 22nd birthday, my precious boy! 

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

Psalm 34:18

Next, one more post before the final series of posts, meeting Roma’s first family. Welcome, Little One.