December 1, 2007
Dear Friends and Family:
Our lives this past year might well be titled “Three Weddings and Two Funerals.” So
much has happened at such a pace that we end the year feeling a bit breathless and
overwhelmed. We observe that:
We can still party to the wee hours and we did so
at our son Ethan’s wedding. Ethan Smith and
Jessica Petty were married February 10, 2007,
probably the coldest night of the year, but our
hearts were warm with the joy of seeing their love
for each other and the love their friends and family
have for them. What a party it was at the Tavern
Club in downtown Chicago! Truth be told, the
reception went on many hours past the time we
retired, and it did take us about a week to rest up!
Today is Ethan’s 30th birthday and they will hold a
housewarming in their very first home, purchased
in October. Welcome to adulthood, kids!
Married life is better than wedding planning. Emily Smith
and Ray Gesiakowski married April 28, 2007, a beautiful
spring day in Chicago. We hold in our minds the picture of
a radiant Emily after the wedding, standing outside St.
Luke Church in the city, elegant in her simple gown,
smiling at Ray, holding a bouquet of yellow roses. But truth
be told, Emily is most happy to have the wedding over and
to be settled into the routine of their lives. An event planner
she is not, and the year-long demands of planning a
wedding were considerable for her. She is now pursuing an
MBA in non-profit management, working full time and
looking forward, with Ray, to getting a puppy.
Thanks to all of you who joined us for both of these happy
days!
Surprising events can intervene. On New Year’s Day, just as we were coming into the
year – and the final weeks before Ethan’s wedding, our second daughter Heather Milner
announced that she was engaged. Her boyfriend Andy Meyer had given her a ring on
New Year’s Eve. This was a complete surprise to us, and we felt bad about not giving
Heather our full joyful attention, since we were focused on Ethan’s wedding just five
weeks hence. Since then, we’ve come to know Andy better and we look forward to their
wedding March 15, 2008. Both Heather and Andy are working hard to shape their lives
together. Heather is teaching junior and senior high English and coaching speech in
Cambridge, Illinois, and Andy is working at Wal-Mart and the YMCA in Sterling,
Illinois.
Sometimes a good idea just doesn’t
work out. In mid-summer, Carol made
the decision to end her landscape design
partnership. It’s true, she was too busy
raising money for Resurrection Health
Care to devote the time to her
landscaping business. It’s probably also
true that she was surprised to find that
she still likes non-profit work, even
though she vowed to give it up 5 years
ago. But the real reason is – the constant
manual labor was too hard for her, the path to making a decent living at it was too long
given her age, and – finally – too many customers didn’t care about their gardens at all.
Anyway, she retains the business name Sage Advice and hopes to start a local and online
advisory service for people who do care about gardening. We’ll see. The first priority is
to spend more time in her own garden.
The best result is often the unexpected. Carol is surprised to learn that the best outcome
of her sojourn into horticultural studies and a landscape design business is second son
Eric Milner’s career path! Eric will graduate from Illinois State University in May 2008
with a degree is Agribusiness. He took to the landscaping from the day he helped Carol
with an installation when he was still in high school five years ago, and it seems he’s
never looked back. Last summer he did an internship with The Care of Trees, and his
boss said he could identify trees better than the regulars. He approaches graduation with a
real sense of his vocation and a passion for all he needs to know.
We need each other. In summer, it became clear that we needed to move Carol’s parents
Art and Betty Becker closer to one of the kids. Sister Laura Becker wanted them in
California, nearer to her family. Everyone, including cousins Kris and Bruce Adams, who
lived near them in Colorado, pitched in to plan and execute the move. It was a delicate
process since Mother has advanced Alzheimer’s and Dad has very bad knees and hates to
fly. In the end, cousin Kris and brother Ken Becker flew with them to Oakland where
Laura and her family met them and helped them move to Sunrise Senior Living just five
minutes from her home. We are so grateful for family members who worked together to
move parents “from loving hands to loving hands” in their frail old age.
“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley.” This is Robert Burns. He
was right. Just as we were about to buy tickets to visit England over Thanksgiving, we
learned that Paul’s Uncle Reg had died in Yorkshire. Reg Milner was a second Dad for
Paul, who lost his own father when he was just 27. Paul thus spent the last half of
October in England, attending the funeral and reconnecting with his 8 cousins, his mother
and two sisters. There was no other way to see so many important people in his life in a
short span of time. And there is no better way to gain perspective. When he got home and
Carol picked him up at the airport, he said, “I’m very thankful for my life here.”
A good life is often an ordinary one. We were at her bedside November 12, 2007 when
our friend Lois Cummings died. She was 85, single all her life and a wonderful friend
who had no family left to be her companions into old age. Paul met Lois back in the early
‘90’s (before we were married) when they both joined Carol’s church in the same new
member class. They became friends and, for the past five years, we have taken care of
her. In the summer of 2006 we moved Lois into Alzheimer’s care and just a few weeks
ago, Paul preached her funeral sermon. Lois lived a simple life with her parents until they
each died in turn. She worked her whole career as an executive secretary at Bell and
Howell. To look at her in her later years, one would never guess she was an avid
ballroom dancer and a charter member of the famous Aragon Ballroom in Chicago.
Sorting through her cases and cases of costume jewelry, one can imagine her on the
dance floor, and that’s how we like to think of her. We do miss her.
In the end, the stories tell who we are. Paul had
occasion to give a genealogy lecture just after
returning from his uncle’s funeral. Looking back on
our own lives this past year, he told the audience this:
When marriages take place, when new life begins,
when people die, we record the dates. So much of
genealogy is about the dates of life transitions. But
the stories behind the dates tell who we really are.
We are blessed to be a blessing. In My Antonia, a
novel about growing up on the Nebraska prairie a
century ago, Willa Cather tells a Christmas story that
reminds us all what we mean to each other. The
speaker is Jim, a young boy recently orphaned and
living with his grandparents.
“On the 21st of December, the snow began to fall.
The flakes came down so thickly that from the sitting room windows, I could not see
beyond the windmill . . .On the morning of the 22nd, grandfather announced at breakfast
that it would be impossible to go to Black Hawk for Christmas purchases. (Hired man)
Jake was sure he could get through on horseback and bring home our things in saddle
bags, but grandfather told him the roads would be obliterated . . . anyway, he would
never allow one of his horses to be put to such a strain. We decided to have a country
Christmas, without any help from town.”
On Christmas morning: “Grandfather came down wearing a white shirt and Sunday coat.
Morning prayers were longer than usual. He read the chapters from St. Matthew about the
birth of Christ, and as we listened, it all seemed like something that had happened lately,
and near at hand.”
Blessings on your holiday! May you be a blessing to those you love.
Paul Milner
paul.milner@att.net
Carol Becker
carol@sage-advice.net