So I’m officially an idiot. And you know something, I’m okay with it because neat things can happen when we embrace our inner idiot as I hope to display in this post. So my idot-ness begins with me misreading (numerous times) my flight itinerary to think that my departure time was really my arrival time as got ready to fly to Haiti to visit my beloved roommate John and his family (an amazing trip). So I ended up being four hours late for my flight. I stressed out a bit, made some phone calls and American Airlines came though, and soon booked me on the fastest route to Ft. Lauderdale, Flordia so I could possibly catch my plane leaving to Haiti. So I had a few hours to kill in the PDX airport and I ended up locking eyes with a senior citizen lady in a wheel chair. She said hello, how are you, and it was uncomfortable because she said it in a way as if she really meant it. Deciding to attempt to engage in a conversation with this nice old lady resulted in me busting out my tape recorder and getting a beautiful little inner view. Enter the world of 93 year old Marveline Eggison. She received the name from a heroine in a novel her mother was reading during her pregnancy with her.
Jesse: Hello it is January 1st, 2008 we are in the new year. I am here at the Portland Airport I just met some wonderful people. I met Marveline Eggison and she is… how many years old are you?
Marveline: 93
Jesse: she is 93 years old and she is very vivacious and full of life (laughter)
Marveline: and I love God
Jesse: and she loves God and she has already said ‘God bless you’ to me like ten times. And her daughter Judy , and son in law Aran, they are giving me there business cards here…good people here, cool man thank you, thank you. I’m gonna interview Marveline, she is a wonderful lady and I just want to ask you a few questions. So Marveline tell me from your perspective what are the most important things in life?
Marveline: Well the most important thing is Christ, that is most important, and living a life that is pleasing to him. And my mother always on Sunday, as big of a family as we had, always saw that we were dressed up in nice clothes and went to church; to Sunday school and church. So we always went.
Jesse: You already told me this but where are you from again?
Marveline: I’m from Portland, OR. Rancho Palace, California right now…
Jesse: and you grew up in…
Marveline: I grew in Nebraska in a sod house, I was born in a sod house.
Jesse: Looking back what are some of your most treasured memories from your childhood?
Marveline: Well, we played a lot of games. There was a lot of us kids, so we played a lot of games. The neighbor kids were three quarters of a mile or a mile away and they all liked to come to our place because we had so many kids, we all played games. We played Annie I Over.
Jesse: What’s that?
Marveline: it’s a ball game that is over the house.
Jesse: Really
Judy (her daughter): they played tricks on the company kids.
Marveline: what did she say?
Jesse: you played tricks on the company kids, is this true? (laughter)
Marveline: Yes we would have two chairs, we would have a chair here and a chair here, and we would put a blanket across and tell the visiting kids to sit on the blanket. So they would sit on the blanket and we would jump up and let them fall on the floor.
Jesse: your kidding.
Marveline: another time, another thing we would do is blindfold them and play Ruth and Jacob.
Jesse: Ruth and Jacob?
Marveline: uh-huh it was called Ruth and Jacob
Jesse: that’s the name of the game?
Marveline: Yea. So we would ask a question, and if the person didn’t answer we would throw a thimble of water on them. (laughter) Oh we were ornery.
Jesse: that’s awesome.
Marveline: We lived on a farm and in the summer time we wanted to save our pasture land and we would go and herd cattle along the road and save our pasture land for later. We had a lot of cattle and I milked a lot of cows.
Jesse: how many cows did you milk?
Marveline: we milked as many as eighteen in the morning and night. And we would separate the…you know what a separator is?
Jesse: No, I don’t know anything about the farm life.
Marveline: Anyway you have this big separator and you pour your milk into these big bowls and you have somebody cranking the machine so the milk goes one place and the cream to another place and so we would take, on a Saturday, we would take the cream into town because it was worth a lot of money. And my mother used to turn here own butter and oh that butter was so good. People in town would want to buy her butter.
Jesse: Best butter in town.
Marveline: Yea, oh we had a good life at that time. But we thought we were in bad shape because other kids had more stuff than we did, but God blessed us.
Jesse: Sounds like you made your own food.
Marveline: We made our own food. Mother baked her own bread. She baked seven or eight loaves every other day because it was such a big family, we were big bread eaters. We had a lot of good butter, good milk, good eggs. My mother raised a lot of chickens. We ate good.
Jesse: Today it seems we buy most of our stuff at grocery stores and we don’t know where our food comes from. What do you think about the change you’ve seen in your life span between eating habits and where we get our food from?
Marveline: Well I think our eating habits were much better because my mother baked her own bread and made lots of corn bread. And we had our own vegetables, because she had her own garden, and did a lot of canning. And we would go out in the summer when the corn was ready to can for roasting ears and take off the cob and can. We just enjoyed it. It was something.
Jesse: more and more in my spiritual walk it seems like there is a connection like… you see the miracles of God in seeing the vegetables grow, and seeing the cows provide milk. It seems like there is a spiritual dimension to that. And today in America we have such a fast pace. So you’ve come from a generation of farming to now its buying everything in stores…
Marveline: At Christmas time at our church, we’d have a big program you know, because we always went to church. And we would have a big program on Christmas eve so we would all. We didn’t have a car, so my dad would hook our horses up to the wagon, put hay on the bottom of the wagon and chair in there for my mother to sit on and us kids would sit on the hay and cover up with blankets and quilts because it was cold, boy was it cold out. And oh we just had a great time. We’d sing Christmas songs on the wagon.
Jesse: That’s beautiful.
Marveline: We had a lot of fun.
Jesse: Sounds like good times…so what are some words of wisdom or advice to younger people like me who are growing up wanting to… wanting to be like you, full of life and vivacious…Marveline: Well I think you have the Lord in you mind and heart and you should pray everyday day, several times a day. Just pray blessings for other people. I just think that it is wonderful that God has let me live this long, and I know I’m ornery. (laughter)
Jesse: well, thank you so much.
Marveline: God bless you.
Jesse: God bless you too.
Marveline: well he does. And I’m so glad that I go to talk to you (and she takes my hand and kisses it.) and your name again is…
Jesse: Jesse
Marveline: and your last name is…
Jesse: Gardner
It’s things like this that make the cut and dry parts of life so beautiful. Simplicity is precious.
we gotta play “Jacob & Ruth” at the house sometime.
ha ha!
Marveline says “It was a joy meeting Jesse, and God bless him. I am the one on the left side of the picture in the goat cart.”