House and Keeping

He sipped the coffee I had handed him as we stood at the bay window of my new-to-me kitchen, marveling together over the enormous potential of such a big back yard. He had been my father-in-law for twelve years, and now that we were homeowners, he was insistent on building us a swing set for our four kids.

He stared at the pipe he had welded together that morning, “Let me tellya, Girl, this’ll be sturdy. Them kids won’t be able to tear nothin’ apart. I measured ‘n’ there's just enough room for me to put hooks for four swings! Ain’t none of them’ll have to share or take turns. Every kid can have their own swing. That’s how their PaPaw’s making it!”

I silently sipped my decaf and nervously smiled. How could I tell him what only Philip and I knew?

Four swings would be quite sufficient for about seven and a half more months. Oh boy. Or girl.

He finished the massive swing set, sunk it in about 4 feet of concrete (I'll tell you how I know that in just a minute), and then returned to his home.

A couple of months later when we shared our news of expectancy, the first thing he thought of was that swing set. “This ain't no problem! I'll come over and weld a piece off the end to hold another swing!”

Three years later, when we announced yet, another child, he decided he couldn't keep up. He made a joke about how if we were “gonna keep at it”, we'd just have to make the teenagers give the babies a turn, and that was that.

We lived in the house with the swing set for the rest of PaPaw’s life. For hours and hours, year after year, we enjoyed countless squeals to “push me higher!” Preschoolers slowly built their confidence while teens dared to leap midswing–until the toddlers grew into preteens and the teens to adults with kids of their own.

When we sold that house it was simply not an option to leave the swing set. So we endeavored to dig up the sturdy legs and haul it with a trailer down the highway to our new home. We labored diligently against PaPaw's deep-seated assumption that we would swing there til Jesus came back. So. Much. Concrete.

Determination, sweat, and teamwork … and a little bit more determination were all we needed. God bless PaPaw was all our weary souls could say.

We set the swings in the backyard of our new house and they served us well for years. When we moved this last time, it was thankfully just up a grassy hill past the line of trees. A mercifully brief tractor ride delivered the frame to our new backyard and all was well.

We cleaned it up, settled the legs in a conservative amount of concrete and [finally] painted over the raw red iron with industrial-strength, high-gloss black paint and ordered new heavy-duty swings to last the next twenty years.

Home is where the swingset is.

Simple, strong, secure and ready for a packet of great-grandkids PaPaw could have only imagined.

Preservation can be a pain. Restoration is hard work. But honor and legacy … worthy and worth the effort. Not only are we keeping memories alive, we're making new ones all the more.

Thank You, God, for Fred Johnson. For the life he lived and the love he shared. For the gifts both tangible and intangible that he left behind.

*excessive concrete notwithstanding.