Western Michigan Friends

Days 27-32--I (Lynn) had breakfast last week with Jayne, a childhood friend. She and I grew up "Dutch." We attended the same Christian Reformed Church, were classmates at nearby Christian schools, and attended the same catechism classes every Wednesday afternoon. We wore our Dutch costumes and marched in the Children's Day Parade of the annual Holland Tulip Festival.

In the fifth grade, we both joined the band, Jayne playing the flute, and me screeching with the clarinet. Our elementary school band marched every year in the Tulip Time parade as well.

Jayne and I still are friends. We celebrate each other's birthdays, just days apart in April. Jayne is often the first person to send me birthday greetings. Our mothers are still friends too. In fact, they used to play Skipbo together when they both could see better. 

One of the nights we we were in Grand Rapids, we stayed with our friends Jim and Mary. Our history with Jim and Mary is deep and rich. Mary and I first became friends when we were roommates on a choir tour with the Back to God Hour Radio Choir of the Christian Reformed Church when we were students at Calvin College. (On the previous year's choir tour, I became friends with one of the basses, and soon afterward started a dating relationship with Bas. The rest is history.) At the end of each of the choir's programs, we would sing the words from the Aaronic blessing: "The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord lift His countenance upon you. And give you peace. The Lord make His face to shine upon you. And be gracious unto you. Amen." 

During most evenings we visit with Jim and Mary, Mary will get out several hymnals, and the four of us will sing several hymns together, in four-part harmony. A foretaste of heaven. 

After Mary and I graduated from Calvin College's English Education department,we both taught English at Lexington Christian Academy in Lexington, Massachusetts. I taught grades nine and eleven, she grades tenand twelve. Then we also team-taught an Advanced Placement English class. Those were wonderful years.

Jim and I sang together in a semi-professional choral group in Lexington, and together we experienced what was the height of my choral experience: singing the St. Matthew Passion at a Bach festival in Harvard Square.

During our child-raising years, the four of us lived apart--we in Boston, they in Grand Rapids. We stayed in touch through letters, which Mary kept and recently shared with me. Now, when Bas and I visit family in Michigan, we always spend an evening with our "other" brother and sister, Jim and Mary.

When we left Jim and Mary's house, we had lunch with Al and Annetta. Bas first knew Annetta around fifty years ago when she was a teenager in Salt Lake City on a summer mission trip. Bas' parents hosted Annetta during her time in Salt Lake. Both Al and Annetta have had distinguished careers in education. They were outstanding, dedicated teachers who touched the lives of hundreds of students. Annetta is also an accomplished musician who plays the organ and piano for local churches and has a full schedule of piano students who come to her home.

For the past several years Annetta regularly visited Bas' mom in the care facility where she lived. At the end of each visit, Annetta would place her hands on mom's head and repeat the words of the Aaronic blessing: "The Lord bless you and keep you...." At Mom Vanderzalm's funeral in May, Annetta spoke lovingly of Mom and Dad.

Just before we left western Michigan, we had lunch with Susan at her lovely Lake Michigan home, which was built by her parents. Over homemade soup and corn salad, served from and on dishes that Susan had made in her pottery studio, we caught up on the news of our families' lives. 

Susan's husband, David, an old college friend, was not able to join us because he is in Ghana, leading a semester's course for Calvin College students. Susan has shared this experience with David several previous years, but due to her father' failing health, she opted to stay in the States for most of the semester.

Susan and David's home is filled not only with baskets and textiles from their many trips to various parts of the world, but also with original art pieces done by several art professors at Calvin College, where David also teaches. 

Susan shared with us a remarkable book her mother had created to trace a one-hundred-year history of a baptismal dress that had been worn by dozens of infants in Susan's family. The book includes the hymn that David composed for their daughter's baptism several decades ago. A rich heritage.