Keep Showing Up

I found myself in a bit of a funk last night. After mowing the front lawn, I sneaked into my office to pray for awhile. It helped. And then I saw my daughter outside and decided to join her because the hot humid day had finally turned cool and breezy. We road our bikes in lazy circles on the driveway and I noticed, again, the red roses blooming like fireworks along the side of the little house. I realized the Queen Anne's Lace was in full bloom too. After I parked my bike, I ran in for a vase and scissors and Sophia and I cut the first bouquets of the season. I felt immeasurably better then, I felt returned to my home, my self.

I painted this little plaque last year, based on a note I had taped above my painting station, "Keep showing up." My kids asked what it meant, and I said, "It means keep trying, keep being willing to be where you are, to start again in whatever moment you find yourself in."

I think that's part of what happened last night. Thanks to prayer and a cool breeze, I stopped worrying about what comes next and showed up to what was right in front of me - a riot of flowers, a lovely daughter to share the task of cutting the season's first bouquets.

In her book, An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor says, “No one longs for what he or she already has, and yet the accumulated insight of those wise about the spiritual life suggests that the reason so many of us cannot see the red X that marks the spot is because we are standing on it. The treasure we seek requires no lengthy expedition, no expensive equipment, no superior aptitude or special company. All we lack is the willingness to imagine that we already have everything we need. The only thing missing is our consent to be where we are.”

Today, friends, keep showing up, consent to be where you are, in whatever you are in. And, when you do, I hope you find flowers, or a friend, or even just a moment's peace and quiet that helps you move gently, hopefully, into the next moment and the moment after that.

The Wandering Hen

She stood still, and silent as stone, under the garage’s small overhang.  I had to look twice to even tell it was a hen.  Her gray coloring and curved outline made her look more like a bowling pin.  The yard and driveway were coated in a layer of February’s mixed snow and ice.  The eaves protected her from a steady rain as she stared out across the driveway.

“Is that Brownie?” I asked my husband, while peering out the kitchen window.

“Yeah,” he said, “earlier, she was perfectly centered between the two trash cans.”

“She’s so strange,” I said in a tone of awe and admiration.

Since we fenced in our flock of chickens a few months back, Brownie has been one of the only birds to persistently escape.  She’s one of our oldest hens, one of the handful of chicks we bought in 2015.  A gray, speckled, Araucana (easter-egger), she lived in our small, a-frame coop for two and a half years before being forced to integrate with our much larger garage flock.  She’s also the only hen we have who sports a real and genuine beard of feathers. 

I don’t know how much a chicken thinks, but her persistent solitude and wandering captivate my imagination.  I like to think of her as something like a Desert Mother or a John the Baptist type, led by an unrelenting urge to be alone, exposed, in the wilds of our two-acre yard.

Outside of the flock, she has no protection, no direct access to food or water.  She scrounges for seeds under the wild bird feeder and drinks from the driveway puddles.  When the garage is open, she wanders it too, but I wonder if she doesn’t sometimes sleep in the old a-frame coop where she was raised.  The other day, I found her sitting, happily feasting in the open corn bin in the garage.  Clearly, she has developed a certain level of ‘street smarts.’

My oldest son and I have put her back in the pen time and time again.  Solomon corners and herds her in through the wide fence gate.  I have done the same, but the other day I lured her close with a pretzel, then bent and grabbed her by the tail feathers.  She squawked and lunged immediately, and a few seconds of battle ensued while I struggled to get my hands around her wings.  Once her wings were tucked, she calmed, and I carried her under my arm and deposited her unceremoniously in the coop.  I was surprised by the fierceness of her fight.  She was out again the next day.

I don’t know what that hen has to tell me, to teach me, but I continue to watch her with admiration as she persists in holding steady, defining her own way of being in this large and lovely world.   

Love Big, Love Wide

My twin boys, now six, are still little enough to let me sneak a snuggle. 

So, I do, as often as I can. 

I tuck their sleep-warmed bodies close in the morning and press my aging cheek to their soft skinned faces.  I drink in the profile of their noses and eyelashes, still boyishly soft, perfection.  I ask for monkey-hugs after school and end the day with bedtime kisses on cheeks, hair and foreheads.

It was during one such snuggle session, with my heart full-to-bursting, I told Levi, “My love for you is so big.  It’s as big as this whole room!”

He turned in my embrace and eyed me with a look of serious appraisal.  “You mean, the whole house?” he asked.    

I paused, afraid my expansive expression of love might not measure up.  “Yes,” I said.

But, he caught my hesitation and asked further, “Is that what you meant?”

Found out, I replied, “Well, I meant this room.”

Quickly, he added, “And the whole galaxy?”

“Yes,” I said.

“That’s how it is for me too,” he concluded, then turned and settled back into my lap.  

I felt my heart expand, my love grew ten sizes larger, returning to a size somewhat closer to what it must have been when I too was a child of six, still willing to seek a snuggle. 

Children love on an epic scale, maybe this is why Christ tells us to turn and return again to a child-like heart.  Here's hoping your heart grows a little larger today, too.  

I (Still) Hate Skittles

(Re-posting this story, originally written when the twins had just turned four, because every year I dread the CANDY, CANDY, CANDY of Halloween and, every year, my kids' joy and excitement help lead me through.)

I hate Skittles. 

I do not want to, as the slogan suggests, "Taste the rainbow."

If a Skittle accidentally fell into my mouth, I would spit it out.  This is how I feel about most candy, except for Sour Patch Kids.

My twin boys, though, like every other four-year-old on earth, LOVE Skittles. 

And M&Ms.  

And Blow Pops. 

And all the other crack-in-a-wrapper kids get at Halloween. 

//

The candy-consumption-negotiations began bright and early the morning after a late night of Trick-or-Treating.  Isaiah came out of his room with his bag of candy slung over his shoulder, like a little Santa's sack.  He stumbled down the stairs, focused on navigating the precious bag, as though it was worth its weight in gold.  

Before I knew what had happened, he deftly negotiated the potential consumption of one piece of candy after lunch.  He then proceeded to remind me of our deal before breakfast, after breakfast, before preschool, after preschool, before lunch, etc.  

The candy of choice?  A full size bag of Skittles. 

He and his twin brother waited all morning for their agreed-upon candy.  This, for a four-year-old with candy on his mind, is like waiting a lifetime.     

Finally, a lifetime passed, and the candy was distributed in the few minutes we had to spare before leaving to watch their brother's school parade.  Isaiah tore into his bag in the blink of an eye and before I could get a handle on the situation, it was half-eaten, then spilled and picked-up, twice.  

Foreseeing the potential for a disastrous candy spill at the parade, I turned to get a zip-lock bag for both boys so I could pour their candy into separate preschooler-compatible packaging.  I sat Levi's candy on the counter, hoping to open it for him and avoid a repeat of Isaiah's spill-and-pick-up performance. 

I forgot, though, that a four-year-old tears into a candy-wrapper like a squirrel attacking a plastic feeder full of sunflower seeds.  Place a thin layer of plastic between a toddler and a handful of sugar and stand back – all sorts of destruction is sure to ensue.

During the brief moment my back was turned, I heard Levi’s bag of Skittles explode.  A rainbow of sugar shot all over the kitchen floor.  I spun around and discovered that he'd ripped open one whole side of his bag with one swift, semi-miraculous, yank.  Skittles rained down, and scattered (or would that be “skittled”?) under the island, across the rug, and behind the heavy iron radiator. 

This was a crisis of epic proportions.  Children hunt spilled candy like the women hunting her one lost coin in Luke's gospel; kids hunt lost candy with the kind of determination and passion that God’s hunts lost souls.

Levi immediately started crying while Isaiah quickly began grabbing and eating every one of his brother's Skittles he could find.   

This was less than twenty-four hours after Trick or Treat and I had already had it Up To Here with sweets.  I wanted to explode like that bag of Skittles.  I wanted to hunt down the person who thought it was a good idea to give little people bags of candy bigger than their faces.  I wanted to scream and stomp on the candy in a fit of rage.

But, I didn't.  

I dug deep inside myself and caught a glimpse, for a brief moment, of the rainbow shining right in front of me.  I saw how every moment has a rainbow and - everyone knows -  rainbows lead to hidden treasure.  Rather than breaking the moment further, I somehow saw and embraced the invitation to be the hero  - I reached for the pot of gold.  

I knelt down beside the crying boy and the thieving boy and began gathering candy.  With due diligence, most of the loss was recovered.  We put the rainbow in a new bag and I zipped it tight.  Then, we ran out the door together, two boys clutching baggies of brightness and one Mama carrying a rainbow in her heart.

//

By the way, we did miss one red Skittle.  This, I know, because the dog found it . . . and spat it out. 

Even the dog knows better.          

How I Have Seen Men Treat My Daughter

(Sophia, happy as a clam, in her Daddy's pick up truck.)

A heavyset, gray-haired man, short and jovial, honed in on my cautious, serious daughter the moment she arrived.  She was eight or nine at the time.  He was a volunteer at Vacation Bible School that week, she was just entering a room full of kids she didn't know in a church we don't attend and her face reflected the concentrated reserve of an introvert confronted with a room full of strangers. 

“Smile!” he commanded before welcoming her or offering his name.  Reluctantly, awkwardly, she obeyed, he was in charge, after all.

Standing nearby, I felt a strong desire to whack that man in the face.  Maybe not exactly, but mostly.  The mama-bear in me recognized, immediately, the inappropriateness of his command and, in it, I heard the echoes of all the men who've commanded me to smile over the years. 

I too was a quiet, serious girl.  I cannot tell you the number of times men, mostly in passing, reminded me to smile. 

“Smile!” they demanded, as they passed me in the mall, in the lunch line where I worked, or walking down the street with my friends.  "You're too serious," they would sometimes add, "you'd be prettier if you smiled." 

Sometimes it felt like a harmless flirtation, a backward compliment of sorts.  At least I had a chance at being pretty, if only I would be less, well, less me.  I didn't realize then that these comments and complaints had nothing to do with me.  Nothing.  I didn't understand they reflected masculine insecurity, the desire for me to be easier, but not, of course, too easy. 

Over time, I got the message that it wasn’t ok to be me.  To be a woman, young or old, who rests serene in her own quiet seriousness is to shirk cultural expectations of the bubbly, giggly girl who lights up the world around her, flashing her pearly whites.  In tending to my own internal fires, I was letting down the male egos in the room, those expansive egos so often in need of continual support.

//

About a month later, I took my daughter to the pediatrician. She was suffering from a baffling array of symptoms and we had no idea what was going on.  Was it allergies, a cold, a stomach bug?   

She sat alone on the high examining table wrapped in a paper gown, while one of our favorite pediatricians, a gentle, thoughtful man, tried to puzzle things out.  My daughter was inordinately worried about the possibility of needing a strep test.  She fears and dreads the test, gagging every time and occasionally vomiting on whoever administers it. 

Finally, reaching for the large q-tip in its white paper packaging, the doctor announced that he wanted to test for strep.  My daughter's eyes grew wide in fear and, seeing her anxiety, the pediatrician offered a few simple tricks to help endure the swab.  Then, he asked whether she wanted to sit on the exam table or in my lap. 

She climbed down from the paper-clad bench, hopped into my lap, and I wrapped my arms around her.  Pulling up a chair, the doctor leaned in with the swab, but my daughter held out her small hand and stopped him mid-motion with a clear and simple request.  

“Can you wait until I’m ready?” she asked.   

“Yes,” he said and sat back, waiting for her command.

She paused, gathering courage, then blurted a quick, “OK.”  She gagged a little, but then it was done, and while we waited for the results, I sat there marveling at this girl of mine.

I was amazed at her centeredness, the way she drew from her own deep well to tell the doctor to pause, to make the space necessary to do difficult things on her own terms and in her own time.  

Reflecting on the situation now, I can see how the pediatrician helped protect and reinforce my daughter's sense of strength and autonomy in a vulnerable situation.  He took her concerns seriously and then helped to allay them by offering concrete strategies for dealing with the awkward swab.  

He was not offended by her fear; not belittling or dismissive.  With his ego completely off the table, he didn't feel the need to chide her into compliance or, worse, to barge ahead with the swab (as I've seen other pediatricians do).  He made space for her to connect with her own resources - sitting in her mama's lap, setting her own timing - and, in the end, my daughter was empowered by the experience. 

This, I want to tell her, is how it works.  This, I want to remind myself, is how it should be.  This is how two people interact with grace and respect, how a healthy man doesn't ask you to weaken yourself to fortify his own ego, but rather lends his strength to create a safe space for you to be who you are - loud or quiet, smiling or not.        

The Road is Wide, The Rain is Falling

Cold rain turned his thin, white t-shirt translucent as he bent his body, like an umbrella, over the double stroller.  The newborn baby cried and he cradled it against his chest with one hand while rooting in a diaper bag with the other.  The girl, a big sister at three or four years old, sat quietly in the stroller - her brown eyes wide, her dark hair and pierced ears glinting in the early morning light.  

Hundreds of strangers had lined up throughout the morning, eager to bargain hunt at the annual thrift sale benefiting United Way.  A friend of mine, a veteran shopper of the sale, had arrived at the door by six thirty.  Among the first in line, she had staked out a coveted position as the best deals went very, very quickly. 

I rolled in a few minutes after seven, with a mug of coffee in hand, and took my place thirty to forty people behind my friend.  I waited behind a young Hispanic man with two children in a stroller and in front of an old-timer who'd brought a plastic crate to sit on.  The line stretched out, single-file, across the parking lot, growing steadily as we waited for the doors to open at eight.  

Time passed slowly.  The old-timer held my spot for me while I went to find a toilet.  The newborn in the stroller woke and cried and was jiggled back to sleep again.  Pleasantries were exchanged in that guarded but polite Central Pennsylvania way.  

The old-timer behind me carried on a long conversation with a woman two people ahead of me, bemoaning his no-good sons-in-law who couldn't keep a job, couldn't even change a tire.  The woman, in exchange, revealed she'd recently been laid off after twenty years on a job.  "Ain't nobody wants to hire you when you're my age," she said.  "Believe me, I know."  The general consensus between them seemed to be that young people weren't worth much these days.  The Hispanic man and I, both younger by far, exchanged uncomfortable glances.

By 7:30, the sky was growing darker, not lighter, and the forecast of possible rain turned certain.  I ran back to the truck and grabbed my rain coat when the first drops started and my friend, still stationed at the front of the line, brought me her extra umbrella.  

Scattered drops turned steady and an icy wind picked up.  About fifteen feet away, the building we were waiting to enter offered a small triangular overhang.  The old-timer was the first to take cover, leaving his plastic crate to hold his place in line.  The father followed soon after as the wind forced rain past the double stroller's shabby shades and the baby woke again, crying and hungry.  

He pushed the stroller the ten steps to the overhang and sidled it as close as he could against the wall.  The old-timer scooted over to make room in the tiny triangle of shelter.  The rest of us in line, some with rain coats and umbrellas, watched this father without a coat, trying to protect his children while also mixing a bottle of formula.  We were rooted in place, rubberneckers, observing one small family's drama unfold. 

//

I can't name the force that held us in line, that kept us from offering to help or heading, en masse, to wait under a large catering tent nearby.  Whatever it was - fear, longing, desire - the feeling was palpable, like a force-field keeping us all apart, causing us each to suffer the storm in isolation, single-file in the passing cold and rain.  This force, I believe, thought I can't put my finger on its exact shape or name, is one of, if not the signature evil of our times.  Under its sway, as Naomi Shihab Nye predicts in her poem, 'Shoulders,' "the road will only be wide, the rain will never stop falling."

Somehow, we must kindle the courage, the imagination, necessary to enact an alternative to our chosen isolation.  What will it take for us to break out, to break through, to one another?

//

It was the way he curved his body over the stroller, the rounded defenselessness of his back as he leaned, rooting in the diaper bag; it was the way he sheltered them that caused my feet to move, that broke me out of line.  My feet moved, of their own accord, and then I was there, behind him, my body blocking him from the wind, my friend's umbrella held high at an angle over the two children and their dad.  

He turned, slightly, at my approach, acknowledged me with a nod, and carried on preparing the bottle, then feeding his infant son.  We stood close, awkwardly close in the small space, and didn't speak a word.  I smiled at the solemnly shy little girl with her deep brown eyes that drank in the world.

The rain passed, the sun peaked out, and we moved back into line.  The old-timer caught my eye.  "That was a nice thing you did," he said, "real nice."

//

Somehow, we must kindle the courage, the imagination, necessary to enact an alternative to our chosen isolation.  What will it take for us to break out, to break through, to one another?

Seeing Better (#SmallWonder Link-Up)

"I could die tomorrow,” I told her.  “Without ever having pink glasses.”

The sales associate looked at me with her head cocked, eyebrows raised and conceded the point. 

I’ve had the same small, brown glasses frames since 2011. I chose them not long before the twins were born in that end-of-pregnancy flurry of getting everything done before life changes irrevocably.  Dentist? Check.  Glasses? Check. 

In the exam room the optometrist looked up, surprised, from his chart.  “This says I haven’t seen you since 2013?” he asks. 

“Yep.” I reply.

“And you bought contacts then?  How often do you change them?  Do you have any left?”  He voice conveys incredulity.

“Well, yeah.  I don’t wear my contacts much.”  I fumble through my memory bank, drawing a blank.  “I don’t know,” I finally reply, “I had twins, so the last couple of years are a little blurry.” 

The answer seems to satisfy. 

In the sales room, a young woman follows me around among the frames.  I ask her what’s “in” these days and she tells me bigger plastic frames. 

“What are you looking for?” she asks, calm and detached behind her half-framed lenses of dark blue metal.  Her dark hair is long and perfectly straight. 

“I want something fun,” I said, “some color.”

What I really wanted, before I even walked in the door, was pink glasses.  I wanted happy glasses, but I wasn’t sure I dared get them.  What if I made a mistake?    

I feel like a failure when the optometrist pulls up letters I can’t read.  Blinking, I watch letters flip and wiggle like so many small black ants waving their legs.  I make random guesses, occasionally upping my odds by offering two answers at once.  “Um, I think it’s an E . . . or a P?”  One line I cannot read at all.  The exam room is so strangely intimate, dimly lit, with the optometrist scooting around on his rolling stool, peering into my eyes with a little light that he moves in circles like a magic wand.   

My left eye, weak as ever, has worsened again, but, good news, I’m not yet in need of bifocals. 

Back in the sale’s room, the associate hands me purple glasses and offers red.  But I don’t want purple glasses, purple glasses don’t make me happy and red glasses bring to mind Sally Jesse Raphael (please tell me I’m not the only one who remembers THAT).  Then she motions toward an almost translucent light pink pair, but before she can pick them up, I say, “I think I had those glasses in fourth grade and I don’t really want to go back to that.”

In the end, I whittle it down to two pairs, identical in shape, one navy blue and the other a cheery magenta.  Both frames have funky squiggly patterns in complementary colors along the temples.  Both pairs are cute, but the blue look better on me.

Still, I hem and haw.  A second associate is called over.  She put the glasses on her own face for me.  “See,” she says, “these blue ones kinda blend in but with the pink ones, the frames are all you see.”  I see what sees and know she's right.  Then she adds a third pair into the mix, shaped like the others, but in a deeper shade of purple.  "These make a nice compromise," she says.  But her well-intended suggestion only further confuses things for me.    

I circle the room, I sit again and slip frames off and on. 

“I’m turning forty in a year,” I tell the original associate, “maybe these will be my mid-life crisis glasses.”  I'm only half-joking.  Do I like the pink glasses or do I only like the ‘idea’ of pink glasses? 

“You’ll want to think about the clothes you wear too, not just what you have one today,” the second woman adds. 

“But pink goes with everything, right?” I ask, “Except for red?”

The younger woman agrees. “Pink goes with everything in my book,” she says.  I find her patience endearing.

I apologize for taking so long.  Then, finally, “I want the pink ones,” I say, scrunching my face up as if to offer an apology.

“I knew you did,” she says.  

(I knew I did too.)  

(Friends - it's my birthday this week!  Hop over to my facebook page to see a picture of me in my new glasses and, if you haven't done so already, LIKE MY PAGE.  I've been hovering near 600 page likes for a long time now and there's nothing I'd like more for my birthday than to finally cross that 600 mark.  Thanks!)
   

*   *   *   *

I'm super excited to be joining with Andi Cumbo-Floyd and Shawn Smucker to organize a weekend writer's retreat this summer at God's Whisper Farm in the beautiful mountains of Virginia.  Visit Andi's website for more info!

Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.  

What if we chose to deliberately look for small moments of wonder, the small sparks of presence, of delight or sorrow, of true humanity in which we meet God?  

That's my proposal - that we gather here each week to share one moment of Wonder from each of our days.  You're invited to link-up a brief post about a small moment of wonder.  Don't worry if your post is too long, too short, or not just right - you're welcome to come as you are.  

While you're here, please do take a look around and encourage at least one other blogger with a comment.   

Something Epic

He was a dead ringer for the kid from A Christmas Story.  A short, chubby boy with an overgrown buzz cut and thick, dark rimmed glasses.  Dressed in navy sweats from head to toe, he ran back and forth along the edge of the playground, arms pumping, breath huffing in out-of-shape bursts. 

On his third time past he stopped about twenty feet away from my husband and I, equidistant between us and the black plastic swings hanging on long metal chains.  Inspired, he turned toward us, the nearest available audience.

“I’m gonna do something EPIC,” he said.

Then he turned and ran, huffing and chuffing, arms swinging and threw himself belly first onto a swing.  To our watching eyes, it was decidedly un-epic.  The extended take-off added nothing to the quotidian talent of swinging on your stomach – something any little kid can do.  

But something in his confident declaration, his putting it all on the line approach was truly legendary.  And I loved him for believing it, for announcing it and following through.  

What he did wasn't epic.  

But the way he did it?  

Totally EPIC.   

Gratitude (the first day of shorts weather)

. . . for Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his. . . 

- Gerard Manly Hopkins

 

Long and leggy, doe-eyed, 

she walks with confidence, 

a gentle fawn, a young colt.

He is all angles, sharp protrusions, 

limbs like the branches

of a young tree.

They both wear socks 

pulled up high because 

they don't know any better.

 

And then there are the little ones.  

Isaiah with his gentle roundness - 

a gum drop, a plum, a dumpling, we say

searching for words to express.

Levi, bare-chested in the sun

his shoulders thrown back, goggles on,

he stands on the picnic table, "working."

These ones pad along on bare feet, 

toes like ripe berries,

soft and sweet, fresh.

 

It is the first day of shorts weather,

the beginning of shoe-less summer

and all around me limbs unveil 

earth's sweetness, lovely.  

This post is linked with Five Minute Fridays on the prompt "Grateful." Click over to read more posts.

Love that Carries (a Sketch)

He looks tall, to me, and burly, like someone who played football in high school.  Gray-haired, with some extra weight around the middle, he carries his daughter to school every day through the long winter months, wrapped in a blanket.

I saw him this morning, as I do most mornings, walking back toward home as I waited in line with my van-full of kids.  He walked down the sidewalk toward me with the now empty blanket draped casually over his shoulders.  It looked to be a quilt made of the sort of colors that bring to mind a Winnie the Pooh motif, a baby blanket, maybe.

Most days I've noticed him and most days I've thought, "Really, you carry her?"  There's part of me that still thinks it's a bit much - his daughter's in first grade at least - but today I saw it differently. 

Today I recognized the value - the depth - of a love that carries.

Grown men don't often walk around with baby quilts draped over their shoulders, but this one does, and as I write I'm reminded of those pictures of Christ the good shepherd walking with a lamb draped over his shoulders.  In those pictures that lamb is you, is me, is us - we who're being carried, wrapped in those incarnate arms of love.  

I often wonder whether she'll even remember the way she was carried each frosty, breath-catching morning.  Maybe she won't and certainly a day will come when she says, "No more."  But slow-dancing in the kitchen with one of my bitty-boys on my hip, his head tucked into my shoulder, I know the truth, that being held, being carried, shapes us deep within in ways that can never, ever, be forgotten.

This post is linked with #Tellhisstory.