Surprise in the Back Seat

A friend invited me to her house today to talk about current events, bless her heart.  Things like the plans for seminars on healthy eating I’m leading at church in the fall, and the Advent luncheon to be held early in December. My daughter’s move many hundreds of miles away.  You know.  Things like that.

She is wise. Keep moving ahead on the church plans, she said. Grieve hard on the loss of the kids.  Don’t stuff it.  Write stories about the granddaughters.  It's your therapy, she said.

On the way home, I made a routine stop at the drug store to buy printer ink and poster board - supplies needed to promote the church functions.  Returning to our minivan, I nonchalantly opened the side door and gasped out loud.  There, still securely latched into its usual place, stood the littlest granddaughter’s car seat, gaping empty like some yawning hippopotamus mouth.  Why did I still have her seat? We used to play peek-a-boo with each other in the rear view mirror. But now she's gone.  To Texas. 

Everything seemed to spin a little bit, although I didn’t dare look around to make sure.  I just stood there in the Walgreen parking lot for what felt like a very long time but was probably 30 seconds, frozen in place with hot July sun pounding on my back, staring at peanuts and raisins and dried milk spilled on the buckle, 

I finally dared to pick up a child-sized orange comb lying on the seat.  A single long, white-blonde, curly hair floated from it like a strand of silk.  Her sister’s hair.

My friend’s voice replayed in my mind.  Grieve hard, she'd said.  I did.  And I didn’t care if the vacant-faced guy with no front teeth in the car next to me watched the alligator tears drip down my cheeks. 

And write stories, she'd said. Here I am, doing just that.

Small Graces

Today marks our 42^nd wedding anniversary.  My husband and I share a collective long-term history of ongoing change, and the evidence of God's grace and mercy that have accompanied us along the way.

In the current chapter of our life together, we’re turning new pages (again) and managing transitions (again) with an eye out for personal growth enabled by the grace of God (again).  Hope drives it all (again).  Nothing new, and yet it feels very new – the cutting edge of life is never dull.

Change can come softly or seem almost militant, a saber that slashes away at practiced realities to shred the norm into unrecognizable bits and pieces.  Every time this kind of aggressive, demanding change strikes it feels new all over again: we don’t get used to pain. And yet I’ve learned that accepting the siege is the way through it.  Resisting the inevitable is deadly to soul and spirit, and sometimes body as well.  Trusting the course of life - or rather trusting the One in charge of it - brings healing.

Another new, challenging phase is in full swing as we celebrate our 42 years together.  We're letting go of people we love, sending them off to a faraway land with pieces of our hearts attached.  

Meanwhile, small but meaningful graces abound, as usual.  Memories shout the shadow of their presence as sunshine glows like tongues of fire on the lake’s ripples.  A gentle breeze inspires renewal.  And a rose plant decides to show its first blossom of the year at just the right time, beauty resembling the face of the one who gave it to me, now gone.

“The best things are nearest: breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of God just before you.  Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life’s plain, common work as it comes – certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things of life.”  

-Robert Louis Stevenson

Two Days Down

Has it really only been two days, just forty-eight hours, since I buried my nose in her silky blonde curls and breathed in the heady, warm fragrance of childhood?  Since she sat in her car seat with those signature ringlets flopping over her face, pointing to the new movie screen mounted on the back of the front seat that would keep her occupied on the cross-country trek?   “Look, Nana!  Look what we have!”

It seems like eons ago rather than hours.  I miss her brightness, the light in her eyes, and I feel the 1,300 mile chasm between us. After living all of her three years within a few minutes of our house, she’s no longer here.  Gone. To Texas.

Farewell, my El Belle.

This morning I put away her prized cow puzzle, the one with pieces frayed from the countless times we worked it together. I folded her favored blue-striped beach towel that I wrapped around her after the final swim Saturday night. And I reviewed pictures…precious PICTURES!  Not long ago she nibbled a drippy ice cream sandwich on the deck while dressed in a wet swimsuit, a little icon of sunshine. I took that moment for granted.  Now I would give anything to relive it.

I’m mourning not only the loss of this little one, my bonded mini-partner who followed me like a shadow, but her sisters and parents as well.  I miss all of them: her precious mother who openly loved, honored, and respected me; her older sister who enlivened me with spirited creativity; her younger sister who charmed me with well-developed and intelligent, if wordless, communication; her father who adored his family with manly dedication. 

My lament is one of sadness that shadows everything with a sense of loss, sorrow that sheds weepy tears that refuse to stop. However, hope still cradles my heart with the truth: endings are also beginnings.  I want what is best for them. It will all be good,

In times of loss it is important to affirm truths.  Each new day is a gift wrapped in possibility, waiting to be embraced and lived.  I must grieve the loss of my loved ones - no use pretending the sadness away - and yet am resolved to live, to trust goodness to prevail for all of us.  I know it will.

Post-Birthday Ruminating

I was born on the 5^th of July in another era when Harry Truman was President and penny candy was the norm.  When I was very small, my parents used to tell me I was a 4^th of July firecracker that fizzled out, although I never quite understood what that meant.  At age 64, I’m still not sure. 

But here’s what I do know.  Birthdays matter, both to the birthday celebrity and the celebrators, because they invite us to collectively recognize God’s greatest gift, that of existence.  The gift of being, the gift of life.  The day of birth returns every year as a time to celebrate, but also a time to self-examine.  Am I living fully, in harmony with and for my Creator, or am I forcing agendas or just putting in my time? 

As I grow older, each birthday bids me to revisit practiced mindsets and consider my purpose on this earth.  I face a choice in these senior years: to withdraw in self-protection, or to worship God with my whole heart, my whole life, such that I receive His transforming love and am enabled to invest it in others.   

The Fourth

Independence Day is a hoppin’ holiday for our extended family.  Lake heritage and relational commitment pull all 18 of us together for several days of celebratory summer frivolity on and around each 4th of July.  Highlights include face painting, fireworks, swimming, water balloons (airborne toward the lake with a huge slingshot), water sports, corn hole, and traditional lip-smackin’ food. 

Today I’m recapping freshly made memories as the once-full hammock hangs empty and limp, and wet lifejackets lay crumpled on the deck after last evening’s farewell swim.  Our time together this year marked some big shifts: one family's move across country (they're in the car on an interstate as I type this) and another individual's potential change that could also necessitate a major move even farther away. I’m overwhelmed with gratitude for family members who encourage and support one another through ever-present changes and challenges, and also prioritize spending time together to play.  That, too, requires commitment.

The grandkids get it this. They watch, listen to conversation, and learn what it means to be committed, to enjoy each other and support each other, to belong to this family.  I am grateful for our ever-emerging legacy. We are blessed.

Old Joe

Old Joe, the blue heron, visits us periodically.  Sometimes he walks the length of our pier on stilt-legs, eyeing the water on either side for fish.  Other times he perches on the boat hoist’s canopy for a higher view.  He stopped by again yesterday after I’d known a night of sleeplessness and strange dreams, and I thought of Wendell Berry’s poem entitled The Peace of Wild Things.

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry

Rub-a-Dub-Scrub

“Use it or lose it,” the old saying goes.  Solve crossword puzzles, or lose the cognitive ability necessary to work them.  Bend and stretch your body, or expect it to stiffen like a board.  Use what you have, or be willing to give it up.

I’d like to tell a story to illustrate this.

It was been past time for the bi-annual cleaning of the hot tub.  I’d threatened to pass the tub-cleaning torch to some younger, more agile tub-cleaning fairy (who this might be, I don’t know), but the realities of that happening were slim.  So after dinner last night I sweet-talked myself (“You can do it…do it or lose it”) and set out to the deck with rags, a horrible citrus-smelling tub-cleaning solution, and determination.

This is a multi-stage project, an exercise in repeated body bending (think wrestler-type positions without a human opponent) while perched on tiptoes on the edges of the tub’s seats (balancing while squatting and twisting upside-down), then rub-a-dub-scrubbing in this position. Throw in some fingertip dexterity exercises (poking fingers into the openings of the jets) while crouched and knotted like a double half-hitch and you’ve got the picture.

It is acrobatic, time-consuming work, and seemed especially tedious since I was working in the evening with uninvited company: droves of mosquitoes.  Yes.  Frenzied.  Hungry.  Skeeters.

After what seemed an eternity, the sun finally dropped below the horizon and I eyed the empty, sparkling-clean tub through a buzzing cloud of blood-sucking insects.  Success! I groaned (literally), climbed out (creakily), and stretched (painfully) into an upright position.  Then I ran (swiftly) for shelter from the relentless Culicidae.  Done.

Today, while filling the tub with water and nursing a few sore muscles (I demand a water massage as retribution), I reminded myself sweetly that it is perfectly normal and usual, the standard thing, to have after-aches from contorting my body into a pretzel for over an hour.  This is what keeps me strong and able.  But more important than justification or inspiration, I’m feeling truly grateful for a body that still allows me to “use it” to perform this task at my age. 

Cleaning fairies?  Bah! Such an overrated luxury!  Although I’m not against keeping my antennae out just in case one happens by.