Dear Blog Readers of Mine,
I am sharing with you a personal letter I wrote to my kids a few years back. It will fill you in on some details of my life, who I am, and why I love the Father so much.
Blessings, taffy
Dear Jimmy, Rachel, Chris, Chat and Melody,
I know I’ve told you some of the stories in this compilation
umpteen times, but just in case you forget and want to remember at some point
who your mom is, and where she came from, and how she became who she is at this
point, I am putting these words to paper, or to computer memory to be more
accurate, so you can sit back and enjoy the journey with me.
I love you all!
Mom
The First Beginning
For the record, I was born on a hot summer day, July 12, 1952 to Doris Janofsky
Tucker, the 3rd child born to Robert and Doris Tucker, the 1st
girl child. Mom (Grandma Tucker) told me
a few stories regarding my entry into the Tucker family. One was that my dad had not wanted another
child and had tried to arrange for my illegal abortion, but my mom refused to
go through with it. My oldest brother,
Dave adored me, so my mother told me. Another
story she told me happened when I was a toddler. Dave walked me down the street to visit a
neighbor who offered Dave a quarter, a whole lot of money in those days, if he
would sell his little sister to her.
Dave agreed and took the quarter and the neighbor took me into her
house. Not long after that a tearful
Dave knocked on the door and offered back the quarter if he could just have his
little sister back again.
I have some very pleasant childhood memories, playing
“fingees” with my brothers, Brett and Dave, and my sister, Roberta. Fingees were people we made using our hands
and fingers for the legs. We created
whole cities in the living room of our Iselin home where
the fingees people lived, worked and played.
We even created little books and newspapers for the fingees.
When one of us four kids (Uncle Tim was not yet born) got
sick, we usually all got sick, since we slept together in bunk beds in one
bedroom. When we were sick, Mommy would
call the doctor, Dr. Paul and he would come to the house usually. If we needed medication, Mom would call the
drugstore to deliver it since she did not drive in those days. She would always ask the druggist to include
in the order 4 small toys and we would get to choose from them when the order
was delivered. It sure made getting sick
a lot more fun! One time the delivery
person brought a “deedely dum box” as my mother called it. It was the musical box that the old organ
grinders used to play while their little monkey collected coins from the
crowd. I chose that box and had such fun
turning the crank and making the music.
As an adult I was excited to spy a deedely dum box in an antique store
display. I had the store clerk open the
case and was delighted to find that the music still played when you turned the
crank. Twenty dollars bought that little
piece of my childhood back home and on display with my other antique toys.
We used to go to “church” when we lived in Iselin ,
at the Kingdom Hall for Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Sometimes after the meetings, we would play pretend and my brother, Dave
would be the preacher and we would sit and listen to him. Sometimes we kids went door to door with the
grown ups, as Jehovah’s Witnesses do, and sell the Watchtower magazine. I remember going door to door on Christmas
Day, since we could not celebrate that holiday according to that religion. I remember peeking around the lady at the
door and seeing the children and their Christmas tree and the presents.
I remember having a special verse of scripture that meant a
lot to me as a child in the Kingdom Hall, Isaiah 42:8. From memory it is something like “I am the
Lord, that is my name, and my glory I will not share with anyone”. I loved that verse, I think because it made
me feel like God was big and powerful and able to take care of me. But other doctrine of that religion was like
poison to my heart. I remember learning
that not all people, even all JW’s get to go to heaven, get to live after
death. As I recall, and I could of
course be wrong in what I remember, I was taught that if you did not make it as
one of the 144,000, you ceased to exist.
We later left the JW’s, but the fear of “ceasing to exist” stayed with
me for years to come. I was so afraid of
dying and not being anymore. It was not
something I could wrap my mind around, so not something that I could resolve,
and the cause of more than one bad dream and sleepless night. Another teaching I recall from being a JW was
the warning against what they called “vain repetition”, and specifically not to
be like those religions that constantly repeated the Lord’s Prayer. Only say it once and mean it was what I
thought was allowed. But it was the only
prayer I knew. Sometimes being outside
in nature I would so much want to talk to God, but only knowing one prayer, I
would ask God to disregard the last time I prayed it, and that this time I
really meant it, and I would pray it to him.
The Real Beginning of
My Life
As you probably know, my dad was not a very moral man and
had several affairs during his marriage to my mom. After 17 years she filed for divorce and even
tho he had never been very present in our home, the news of his infidelity and
the divorce was devastating to me. I was
thirteen, with all the swirling emotions and hormones that accompany that time
of life in most 13 year old girls, and felt like I was having a nervous
breakdown. Divorce was not common like
it is now, and I was in the minority to not have two parents in the home. My dad did not adequately support us after he
left, and Mom worried constantly about how to pay for the house, bills, food,
etc. I began to worry, too, but secretly
felt very bitter about it all. Why
should I, a little girl, I used to tell myself, have to worry about paying
bills? All the other little girls were
playing like kids should do, while I was left to deal with grown up issues. I hated my dad for it, but also craved his
attention the few times a year that he would visit. I craved male attention and became a flirt
whenever I could hoping that someone would love me and hold me close. I wanted to feel big, strong arms around me,
keeping me safe.
One night I was especially distraught. Relatives were over, helping Mom I guess, and
I was crying uncontrollably. I remember
hearing people talk about getting me some tranquilizers. That night I went crying to the window overlooking
the street up in one of the bedrooms. I
was alone, and I cried out to God. I
remember looking up into the dark, star studded sky and saying, “God, if there
is a God, if you are there please help me.”
That was it, my first real prayer from my own heart, when I was 13 years
old.
A short time after that night with money getting so tight,
Mom was reading the want ads for jobs in the local paper. She found an ad looking for someone to
babysit young children during the church service at a Baptist church nearby. She applied for the position, and got
it. As you may remember, Grandma Tucker
was Jewish. So picture the irony of it
all, a Jewish lady, a former JW, getting hired by a Christian church to watch,
AND TEACH, their little ones Sunday School lessons. Mom was not a believer, not a Christian. I always think of this as God using the
mistakes of a liberal church to work his plans.
As Mom began going off to church each week, we went with her from time
to time and met the pastor. He invited
us to his youth group which was fun, so we went, me and Roberta and Dave. Then we were invited us to go with the youth
group to a movie night at the local movie theatre. We were going to see a Billy Graham movie
called, “The Restless Ones”. It told the
story of some young people who found out that they needed Jesus. When the movie ended, a man went up on stage
and invited all of us in the theater to give our hearts to Jesus. I looked at Roberta, and Dave, and they were
both willing to go with me, so we all went forward. Roberta and I talked with a man with a very
funny name, Stanton Brandcamp. He led us
in a prayer and we asked Jesus to come into our hearts. That was May 9, 1966 , (yes, it is James’ birthday, too!) That was the day my life really began. Mr. Brandcamp hooked us up with the Billy
Graham Association who sent Roberta and me a bible study on the Book of
John. We read it and studied and took
the little quizzes and sent them in for grading. We started learning about God, and getting
some of the truths of his word into us.
We did not know it at the time, but the Billy Graham Association had
given our names to some of their supporters to pray for us. Some people in a Christian high school club
called Hi-B-A got our names and were praying for us. Then the pastor’s wife at our church started
telling us about a Christian club she used to go to in high school, Hi-B-A and
we got into contact with them and started attending their weekly meetings. A while later we learned that these were the
people praying for us by name before we knew them.
I want you to grasp these wonderful facts, that God’s hand
was orchestrating my life at that time, helping me to go in the right
directions, to avoid some possible downfalls, to keep me close to him. Hi-B-A became a wonderful part of my high school
life. I was a shy teenager, but in bible
club I came alive. I memorized 4 verses
of scripture every week, went to meetings, and retreats with my best friend, my
sister, Roberta at my side along the way.
Those verses of God’s Word in my heart are still helping me today, still
hidden there for God to pull them out when I need them. That’s what Jesus promised when he said that
the Holy Spirit would bring to our remembrance the words that Jesus spoke to
them. Just a quick example was one night
walking home after dark. I don’t know
what was frightening me, but I recited over and over again the verse from
Joshua, Be strong and of good courage, fear not nor be afraid of them, for the
Lord your God, he it is that doth go with thee.
(It was the King James Version back then!)
Another precious verse I learned in Hi-B-A which I have
prayed over you kids as you tried to find your way in life: “and thine ears
shall hear a word behind thee saying, this is the way, walk ye in it, when you
turn to the right or to the left.” You
can take that one right to the bank. Oh,
and by the way, I realized about a year after meeting Jesus, I was no longer
afraid of dying, of ceasing to be, since I knew, know that I will not perish,
but have eternal life in heaven. That
fear just went away, replaced with God’s truths.
I have learned so much about God over the years, through his
Word, through teaching, through life. I
learned a lot about him through you kids, learned a lot about how God loves his
kids, as I loved mine. I remember one
day after Mel was born. You kids were
still little, too, and you used to know that you could get away with some stuff
when Mom was sitting down to nurse the baby.
So I was nursing Mel and all the time sitting there yelling at Jimmy to
stop doing this, Rachel to stop doing that, Chris, and Charitie, stop, stop,
stop. Then I looked down at baby Melody
cradled in my arms. In the midst of all
the yelling she was peacefully nursing, looking straight into my eyes seemingly
without a care in the world. God spoke
to me right then and reminded me of several truths. One was that in the midst of the turmoil of
life I could look to him, like a babe at her mother’s breast, and be safe, be
satisfied. The verse also came to me, “the
eyes of all look to him and he provides for their needs”, and “you open your
hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing”. Melody was not affected by the loudness
around her; she was at peace, receiving her sustenance from the one who loved
her, satisfied to rest there and receive.
God wants me to be like that, like a babe trusting in my Daddy in the
midst of whatever life dishes out.
Another anecdote that comes to mind, sorry it is also about
Melody, was when we went to see Mel in her school play at Lanoka
Harbor School Lanoka Harbor
School
But anyway, back to my story. I want to remind you about Grandma Tucker and
the miraculous ways God took care of her.
You know that Grandma Tucker died of ovarian cancer. Chat was not quite a year old when Grandma
died, so it was June, 1984. My mom had
begun to have symptoms of her illness the previous year while she was in California
visiting Uncle Brett. She had been
several years past menopause, an early menopause like me, and while in CA she
started bleeding. She had no health
insurance, so she ignored it for a year until she was too sick to put off going
to the doctor. When the surgeon opened
her up to do a hysterectomy he found that her organs were covered with
cancer. He described it like someone had
poured rubber cement inside of her, and it was clinging to everything and
couldn’t be removed. The day we heard
this from the doctor felt to me like she had died that day. Uncle Brett insisted that Mommy come to California
for cancer treatment. His wife, Aunt
Flora is a doctor, a pediatrician, and they were in the medical Kaiser Plan out
there and could provide for her. I was
so frightened, thinking that Mommy was going to die, going to die out in California
away from me. She still did not know
Jesus and who would help her to know him before she died. But I had to let her go. We drove to the airport with Uncle Tim going
with her on the trip out there, Daddy and me seeing her off, not knowing if I
would ever see her again, even in heaven.
Mom did respond a bit to the chemo she had there, tho it made her so
very sick during the process. They
certainly did not have the anti-nausea meds that Chris has been so fortunate to
have during his chemo. But anyway, Mommy
wrote to me when she was at home with Brett and Flora in between hospital
stays. She told me that several lady
neighbors came to the house while Brett and Flora were at work, introduced
themselves and invited her to go to bible study with them. I can still recall the humbling thrill I got
hearing what happened, what God did, without any help from me!. God heard my prayers for my mom and provided
for her to learn about him 3000 miles away from me, without any input from
me. Mom became very close to these
ladies; they helped her with getting a wig when she lost her hair, and visited
with her at home and in the hospital.
Tim bought me a plane ticket so I could fly out to see Mom in May, 1984. We knew she was dying. I met the neighbor lady and asked her point
blank, does my mother know the Lord. I
so needed to know that she would be with me in heaven, that I would not lose
her forever. The lady, I can’t remember
her name now told me yes, that my mom did know Jesus now. Then we went to the hospital together and she
asked my mom right in front of me, Doris, did you ask Jesus to be your savior,
and my mother said yes. How precious to
me is the memory of God’s goodness in this instance. After I got home to NJ, I would call Mom once
a week at the hospital and I was reading the Book of Hebrews to her over the
phone. Hebrews was one of my favorite
books of the Bible, and I figured since Mom was Jewish, too, she would also
like it. So I was reading it aloud to
her. My brother, Dave was a missionary
in Irian Jaya at that time, and could not get home. I called him overseas and told him he needed
to come home soon, quickly, or he would not get to see her again. But it took some time and it wasn’t until the
first week of June or so that he finally got home, and flew right out to CA to
be with Mommy. She died in
mid-June. We think she needed to hang on
for those few weeks to see Dave, so Dave could see her. I called Dave a short time after Mommy’s
death. I was so upset, thinking that
maybe I was wrong, maybe she didn’t really get saved, maybe I wouldn’t really
see her in heaven, how could I know for sure.
I told Dave all of this, and then asked him to tell me what Mommy had
talked about in those days before she died.
Well, he said, she asked me to read her the Book of Hebrews. That was all I needed to hear, that was
enough confirmation that her heart was smitten by the Lord, she was his. That is why when Owen asks me where Grandma
Tucker is I say without hesitation that she is in heaven with Jesus, and he
will get to meet her someday. Please,
dear children, look at these wonderful facts of God’s obvious intervention in
my life, and understand who I am, why I am so in love with him today.
So maybe the next time you are upset with me that everything
is always about God, that I am “preaching” at you, please understand and
realize that God is at the center of everything. It was his wonderful power
that caught my attention as a little child in the JW’s. But then I came to know him when I was 13, so
vulnerable at that time, wanting so much to be loved by someone, anyone, think
how easily I could have fallen prey to any guy who looked my way, but God saved
me. And he has been teaching me through all
that occurs that he is not only all powerful, but also wise, and also crazy in
love with me, his kid. I am learning
that he is trustworthy, even when I cannot understand, he is always to be
trusted. You know how I would talk to
you when you were teenagers, when you accused me of hating you, of trying to
ruin your lives? At least you girls
should remember, I can’t recall Jimmy or Chris saying that to me. But anyway I would look into your eyes and
say, Look at me. Look, it’s me,
Mom. I love you. I am on your side. It’s me!
That is what I have learned that God is saying to me, too, when I say to
him, what the heck do you think you’re doing?!! Don’t you care? He says, Taffy look at me, It’s me,
Daddy. I love you and only want to bless
you, not harm you, to give you hope and a future. Look at me, and trust me. And I am learning to look, and to say, oh,
it’s you. O.K., so long as it’s you. O.K., I can trust you.
So that’s all that’s on my heart at this moment to tell you
all. I may send more stories, accounts
as I think of things that I want you to be able to remember through the years.
Or if there is some account that you would like to hear more about, like maybe
your birth, let me know and I’ll try to give you my take on that.
Love ya, Mom
