“With their seed shall
continually remain a good inheritance, and their children are
within the covenant.” Ecclesiasticus
44:11
For the last
two weeks, our life at the beautifully renovated Saint Francis rectory has been
pretty well hemmed in by cardboard boxes, packing tape and picture hangers. We’re delighted to be here, but not really
settled yet. Moving is a chore of many
agonies, as most of you will know well.
But
it has the advantage of forcing us to take stock, to declutter, to start again
with a little less baggage than we were carrying before. We pulled out some clothes that are too small
for Peter, our five-year-old. We figured
out which Tupperware pieces really didn’t have lids and which socks were never
to be matched again.
But we kept the cradle. Even though it gets underfoot in the guest
bedroom. Even though we don’t necessarily expect a third. Even though I’m
mildly nervous I might come home one day to find our poor dog bundled in
blankets inside it.
It was a gift from a kind, shy old
man, Bud Miner, a member of Saint Paul’s Church in Sharpsburg, Maryland, the
country parish where I first served as a rector. Bud made it out of walnut in the little shed
behind his house, polished it until it shone brightly and carved an M on the
outside of the footboard. It was
presented to us at the end of the shower given for us by the good ladies of the
ECW a few weeks before Philip was born. Bud
died years ago, not long after we sent him a picture of Peter being rocked in
it, as his brother had been before.
The cradle is beautiful on its own,
and it’s beautiful as a sign of the love extended to us by the people at Saint
Paul’s. It may not be practical, and I
expect the organizing gurus would tell us to snap a picture on the smartphone
and move on. But we keep it as a
reminder of the good things of the past and our hopes for the future.
