Yesterday, On West 1st Street (#SmallWonder Link-up)

Saturday morning our kids were all away at sleep-overs.  John got up early and brought two cups of coffee back to bed.  When I stirred from my nest of sheets and sun, he asked, “Are you ready to hear about what I saw this morning?”

I guess I must have been ready because he told me how he let the dog out the back door, then went to the living room and looked out the big front window.  Across the street, the field has gone from green to gold and on the porch, two cats - one black, the other calico - sat facing the field.

“Really?” I asked, interrupting.  

We have one cat, Blackie, who wanders outside, the other, Perfect, is skittish and  rarely ventures from her self-imposed seclusion in the second story of our house.  When she does manage to make it outside, she ends up hiding in the garage, pressed out flat on the shelf formed by the open garage door.  Most of her adventures end with me on a ladder, coaxing her down, then carrying her back inside. 

“Yes,” he said, “I think it was Perfect.”

Seeing the cats, he went to the porch door and opened it.  Then he saw one cat, trotting off calmly down the road and Blackie sat alone on the porch.  We puzzled for awhile over the cats.  He was certain it was Perfect he saw on the porch and the cat trotting away looked an awful lot like her too, but “trotting off calmly down the road” isn’t in her repertoire.  

The more questions I asked, the more his story started to fall apart.  Blackie spent the night outside, that much we knew for sure, but I thought I saw Perfect in the morning.  How did she get outside with the doors and windows locked tight all night?  Maybe a third cat was involved? 

“This story is starting to sound less and less believable,” I said. 

“It’s true,” he said, laughing. 

“Next you’re going to say, ‘Then, along came a tiger, wearing pants, riding a unicycle.’” I said.  “And then I saw an elephant playing a banjo,’” I mimicked.  “This is starting to sound like a Dr. Suess book.”

I worried about Perfect all morning.  I scanned the rooms upstairs and quietly circled the garage calling her name and listening for an answering mew.  John cut out a cabinet in the kitchen and I worried the deafening sound of the circular saw would terrify her.  I trimmed shrubs around the house, hoping to find her cowering in their cool shade.  When we went out to lunch, we left the screen-less window open and the mud room door, hoping she would ease her way back home.  After lunch I found her back inside on the upstairs landing, jumpy and out of sorts.  She’d clearly had an adventure. 

Later we decided to wash the dog.  After trying to coax her upstairs and tugging her on a leash, John gave in and carried her to the upstairs bathroom.  Coco loves to go upstairs, but refuses to because the black cat guards it with growls and hisses and razor sharp claws - the upstairs is Perfect’s Oasis and Blackie likes to keep it that way. 

John set Coco her down in the bathroom and I shut the door, then we trimmed her fur with the electric clippers, focusing largely on her tail and hindquarters.  I hugged her body, holding her still while John trimmed her heavy wool coat.  She didn’t like it and skirted away when she could, but we cooed and praised her and she was torn between her dislike of the clippers and enjoyment of the attention. 

Satisfied with her haircut, we turned on the hand-held shower and John lifted her into the tub.  She shrank as the water soaked her coat.  She raised a tentative paw and looked longingly over the side of the tub, but stayed put under a steady stream of warm water and praise.  “Good girl, good girl, Coco,” we chirped.  I drizzled shampoo down her back and John scrubbed, clucking and singing over her like a mama bird over her chick.  Then the rinsing began and we exulted in the streams of dirt pouring down the long white tub toward the drain.

Crouched there beside my husband on the bathroom floor I remembered the first baths with our babies, the blue plastic tubs set on the dining room table and filled just so with warm but not hot water.  John is the bath man at our house, taking the honors of those first tentative sponge baths then graduating to cups of water scooped and poured over waving legs and arms.  He cooed and clucked over our babies singing love in half-flat tones and they, much like Coco, endured the alarm of water on skin, pulled along by the attention that poured down from their father’s eyes, his words and hands.            

When the dirt was more or less done running down, we turned the water off and I threw a towel over Coco’s head.  John wrapped her and lifted her to the floor where she shimmied and shook with that silly all-over-wet feeling dogs get and we were happy and pleased. 

These are a few of the things that happened yesterday on West 1^st Street.  The cat got lost and found, the dog got washed and trimmed.  At the end of the day I shut the chickens in the coop and walked slowly back into the house, looking out over all the green glory of this place of goodness we’ve been given.  Then I stepped my bare foot in chicken poop in the mud room and the cool, wet shock of surprise on my foot, the down-to-earth reality of that moment, summed up the day quite well.

*   *   *   *

Only 16 spaces left!  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.   

Choosing Your Groove (#SmallWonder Link-up)

Reaching across the purple loveseat where we sat, I grabbed a hunk of my husband’s wildly overgrown hair and held it between my fingers.  “I have an idea,” I said, “Let’s hold Daddy down and cut his hair.”

The kids, sprawled around the room in various stages of candy consumption, cheered at the idea. 

My husband laughed and shrugged it off.

A second later Isaiah, returning at a run from the kitchen where the scissors are kept, ran up behind my husband and started snipping.

John lunged forward and spun around to face his attacker, panicked at the idea of a four-year-old hacking at his hair. 

It sounded like Isaiah had scissors, but he didn’t.  We all got a good laugh out of it and no one was happier than Isaiah.  His double dimples winked with delight at the trick he played. 

Standing behind John, the twins reenacted the prank over and over again and John followed along responding to every attack with a leap and shout.  It was like they were rehearsing parts in a play. 

Snip. Leap. Shout. Laugh.

They repeated the scene until their laughs were forced, a thin duplication of their initial joy.

Looking on, I was reminded how often little children repeat the things that give them joy.  Tasting a moment of delight, they demand “do it again”, savoring its sweetness, sucking joy down to its marrow. 

I’m far more likely to reenact the difficult moments in life, to stand over the kitchen sink come evening obsessively repeating a difficult conversation or the bumpiest parts of my day.  With the remembering comes the feelings and, in the middle of a perfectly fine day, I can find myself sunk in the shame or guilt of an incident that happened some fifteen or twenty years ago.

This is what I thought as I watched my boys running themselves round and around in that groove of delight.  Humans, young and old, learn through repetition and there they stood, giggling, earning a degree in joy. 

*   *   *

Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.

What if we chose to deliberately look for the 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.  

Back When I Was A Crumudgeon (#SmallWonder Link-Up)

(Photo Source)

The seminary's married housing sprawled in a series of low brick buildings some five miles from campus.  There the newly married, newly empty-nested and a few brave families with young children resided in dilapidated cinder-block two-story apartments. 

My husband and I cohabitated quietly in our first floor apartment with a school of saltwater fish, a frog and a cat.  Although our closest neighbor had two children and a couple upstairs added a baby before graduation, the sight and sound of children in the building was relatively rare.

This wasn’t the case however in the open courtyard and parking lots behind the buildings where children roved about in loud, unruly gangs.  A playground stood somewhere back there, one we never visited and kids seemed, to my uninitiated young ears, to be screaming there all. day. long. 

As a student, I frequently stayed up all hours of the night reading hundreds of pages of theology or writing and studying for exams.  In the afternoon I rode the campus bus home and slipped into our quiet bedroom with its big window and filmy yellow curtains.  

There I lay down for a nap.  The cat tucked in quietly beside me.

Beneath that window, though, was a small alcove in the building’s design.  Children gathered there in the otherwise quiet afternoons like mice in a sewer drain.  Squeaking, shouting, squealing.  I had yet to learn the ability to sleep anytime anywhere.  I didn’t yet know how to make myself sleep on command, how to tune out noise and distraction with the flick of an internal switch.

It made me furious.  The noise.  The indignity.  The gall of all those children, gathering beneath my window, running through my front yard, taking up space, making noise while I devoted my life to the steady, demanding work of thinking. 

//

A great sweeping oak tree grew in the front yard of our building.  Its branches hung down low.  One evening, studying after dinner with my books and papers sprawled on the table around me, I looked out our sliding glass door and saw a boy.  He was about seven or eight, the age of my oldest boy now.  Framed by the glass door, I watched him hang and swing, tugging on the old tree’s branches.  Another boy stood watching the first.

Whatever he was doing, it looked destructive.  In a fit of righteous rage I slid the glass door open and let loose a forceful, 

“Hey!”

The boy froze and looked at me, the branch still in hand. 

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

Still frozen, the boy replied, “I don’t know.”

“Are you trying to break that branch?” I asked, each word an accusation.

“Uh, I guess.” The boy stared at me with eyes like saucers.  His friend stared too at this seminarian standing back lit by her own apartment as evening fell. 

I was Wild and Fierce, Protector of Trees, Interrogator of Little Boys. 

“Then, cut it out!” I shouted, slamming the door shut.

The boys took off running. 

My husband and I exchanged a look.  Yes, he saw and heard it all.  

I’m sure I attempted to justify my outburst.  But later, we laughed.

We laughed at the boy’s look, at his sudden surprise.  Laughed at the way I must have looked, the way I did look and sound.  We repeated the scene over and over again between ourselves, the script of one of the funniest episodes we’d witnessed in a long time. 

Kids will do that to you.  I know that now.  

They get under your skin, pull and yank at your lower branches, until something in you breaks.  They tug you into the rough and tumble world of parking lot clubs that meet beneath open windows and oak tree branches strong enough to swing on.  Then, resting in bed on a sunny afternoon while your four-year-old twins rumble and tumble downstairs, as you try to distinguish between their cries and squeals of delight and the ones coming from the daycare next door, then you will remember the boys and the tree and the things you said.  

And you will smile and laugh all over again.    

*   *   *

Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.

What if we chose to deliberately look for the 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.  

  

He Danced (#SmallWonder Link-Up)

 

Photo Source

A community is only being created when its members accept that they are not going to achieve great things, that they are not going to be heroes, but simply live each day with new hope, like children, in wonderment as the sun rises and in thanksgiving as it sets . . . The beauty of humanity is in this fidelity to the wonder of each day. - Jean Vanier in Community and Growth

Twilight fell and the campfire flickered. 

A small, clear voice rose, “The floooo-wer grooooows, and the house, and the stooooop signs, and the caaaars.” He was just getting warmed up.

Later, his body twisted and turned, arms in the air, waving, then down at his sides.  His hips wiggled, feet stomped.  He spun, swooped, shook, with a far off look in his eye, his body responding intuitively, impulsively to the sounds of the singer, the acoustic guitar. 

Four year old Isaiah stole the show last night.

His twin brother, Levi, drifted off to sleep, tucked into the nest formed by my arms and legs, a fleece blanket pulled up tight around his cheeks.  Sleep hits him like a freight train come seven thirty.  Seated on the ground by the fire’s warmth, I swayed like a cradle and watched his eyelids drift.  Lifting his face, he said, “I’m going to sleep now for a little while.  Wake me up when they clap because that means it’s the end.”

Isaiah danced so long and so hard he finally flopped right down on the ground, huffing and puffing.  Then he was up again, moving and shaking and running over to his Daddy and I every minute or two, a desperate look on his tired little boy face.

“Is it almost done?” he asked.

Afterwards, he was proud.  

“Someone told me ‘Thankyou,’” he said, “and someone else patted me on the back.”

It was a big and important thing he did, that dancing.  He danced with serious abandon, every move an extension of his soul. 

Over fifty people came to hear John Francis perform in the lap of our great, wide yard, underneath the dark night and stars. 

Kids tore in every direction on wheels of every shape and size. 

Our dog, Coco, chased kids and chickens like it was her job. 

Donations were collected and we raised $400 to help provide hot, home-cooked, Thanksgiving meals for local families in need. 

We huddled close around the fire in the surprisingly cool night air.  We shivered and laughed, shrugged under blankets.  We sang along and clapped our hands and I felt the goodness of a frequent smile on my face. 

But the best part of it all, by far? 

My son – he danced.  

*   *   *

Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.

What if we chose to deliberately look for the 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.       

Not that Grumpy (#SmallWonder Link-Up)

“What do you think heaven’s like?”

Seated around the sticky kitchen island in the early morning humidity, my children and I wake up slowly.  I am on a second or third cup of reheated coffee.  They spill milk and cereal and crunch chocolate toast.  In a moment of quiet, my oldest son poses his question.

Still focused on my coffee, wrapped in a fog of sleepiness I’m reluctant to leave, I reply, “I’m not sure.  What do you think it’s like?”

Perched on a high wooden stool, he pontificates, and his picture of heaven includes the absence of bickering.

There’s been a lot of bickering this morning and every morning, especially now as summer begins its waning.  In fact, first thing that morning I scolded the boys for their non-stop verbal warfare. 

My sleepy brain picks up on the no-fighting thing and in my best grumpy old man voice, I growl out a version of God, “Hey, cut that out.  No fighting allowed in here.”

Wrapped in the joy of his own ideas, my son pauses and turns to give me a quizzical look.  Eyebrows arched, head cocked to the side, quick as a whip, he replies, “He’s not that grumpy.”

His correction causes a pause, then we both laugh, surprised by his nimble reply.  In four short words, my son defended his own understanding of the heart of God, God’s own disposition. 

I am grumpy.  

Especially in the early morning, when humidity is at 90% and little sweaty, sleepy people are squabbling all around me.  

But God is not.  

And the fact that my son not only sees, but defends the difference, is a great source of joy.

*   *   *

Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.

What if we chose to deliberately look for the 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.  

Laughter and Tears (for Mother's Day)

“We’re thinking about having another baby,” I said, keeping my hands at two and four on the steering wheel and glancing over at my mother who sat holding her purse in the passenger seat. 

We were a little over a month into her diagnosis and several weeks into chemo.  Instead of our annual birthday visit filled with fourth of July parades and fireworks, we were driving North, into unknown territory, following vague directions to a wig shop we hoped would be open.   

I explained how we would like our kids to be close in age and so were thinking about a second pregnancy soon and my Mom offered her blessing, but looking back, that wasn’t what I was really looking for. 

“I’m afraid I’m going to be nine months pregnant and you’ll be in the hospital somewhere and I won’t be able to be with you,” I said, asking without asking what I really needed to know – did she think she was going to be ok?  Was it safe to go on living life? 

The wig shop was closed but we stopped anyway, leaning and peering in the windows like children outside a candy store.  Wigs hung on the far wall of the darkened room, including a huge head of wildly curly hair several feet long that we joked about as we drove to the second shop on our list, Elvira’s.

Elvira’s was clearly an African-American hair salon, but we went in undaunted and Elvira herself served up the compassion we needed, showing us several styles of wigs and color swatches.  It was funny, the thought of my mother wearing a wig prepared by a woman named Elvira of all things and we laughed as we drove home, joking, because it was the only way to avoid crying. 

She told me you never know what’s going to happen in life, she could walk out in front of a truck tomorrow and be killed, any of us could.  She hoped she would survive, hoped the cancer would be cured, but she didn’t know and couldn’t know for sure. 

It was a true answer, truer and braver than the one I’d wanted. 

*   *   *   *

“Is she going to make it?” she asked in a stage whisper after my Mom left the room to use the bathroom. 

That same weekend we drove an hour to a "Look Good, Feel Better" session suggested by the oncology center.  We sat alone in the wide, empty parking lot of a large gray school building waiting for someone, anyone to arrive.  Disappointingly, there would be no class of women gathering together, bonding to fight cancer with beauty and self-esteem, just my mother and I and a middle-aged woman who showed up late and apologetic and, later, her friend.

We sat in a cramped dressing room that reminded me of my days in theater and a woman in tight, revealing clothes gave my mother a makeover – my mother who grew up in the conservative south and bought her first tube of lipstick late in life.  We both sat submissive, desperate, as this young stranger kept up a steady stream of chatter, applying layers of makeup while explaining the effects of chemo on skin and lips and hair. 

We practiced tying scarves to cover the hair-loss that was imminent and my Mom tried on a wig or two.  The stranger gave her scarves and hats and a complimentary make-up bag.

Her question left me speechless and I stared at her blankly before mumbling a diagnosis. 

“A lot of them don’t, you know,” she added, as if by way of explanation and I quickly arranged myself in a hopeful posture, coloring the situation beautiful even if it wasn’t. 

*   *   *   *

I shaved my mother's head on her birthday, as best as I can remember, though it may have been a day or two before or after.  Her hair dresser had offered to, but I convinced her to let my husband buy a set of clippers from the pharmacy and we shaved it in her upstairs bathroom. 

She sat on the old computer chair under the bright light and whirring fan.  She hadn't wanted me to cut her hair and when I asked her why she said she was afraid it would be too upsetting for me. 

There's no sparing the upset, though, when cancer's involved and I said I knew it might be upsetting, but that it was better than thinking of her getting it cut without me in the back room of a beauty parlor.  

This is what love does, I guess.  It travels with, even through the vallies of darkness and death, using laughter and tears to crack open and water these most dry and desolate lands.

We joked and cried our way through cancer and I did get pregnant and bore that baby on the same day my mother received the stem cell transplant that saved her life in a hospital some five hundred miles away.  April 12, 2008 we each lay in hospital beds in separate states nursing new life that had already been nurtured through laughter and tears.   

I didn’t know then what I do know now, that laughter is the seed of hope and tears the rain that nourishes the fragile seed.  If we will but wait, hope grows into a tree that bears us in its leafy shade through every moment of joy and sorrow.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom, You're one of the strongest and bravest women I know!  I'm so glad you "made it!"

My Mom, my daughter and I two years post transplant.

Linking with Laura and Jennifer.

Sarah's Laughter

I wrote an essay recently in which I described laughter as a form of prayer and this got me thinking about Sarah's laughter at the news that she was going to bear a son.  The following story is based, loosely on the story of God visiting Abraham and Sarah found in Genesis 18:1-15. I know that infertility is a very difficult and painful experience for many women and please know that my thoughts here are meant to reflect the overall arch of the story of Sarah and Abraham and in no way reflect an opinion about the reasons for or experience of infertility.

*   *   *   *   *

It came out sudden and sharp, more like a bark or a cough, surprising her as she knelt, crouched at the entrance to the tent.  Unwilled, unwelcome, the laughter split her dry lips open, cracking them, like parched ground. 

She felt a wave of shame at the sound as it escaped and the visitors turned in surprise.  Her husband turned too, that old fool, and she looked at him, helpless, feeling again powerless over her own body, unable to stop the sound once it broke free. 

She was afraid when she saw the visitor look toward the tent and her breath caught in her throat when she heard him question Abraham about the sound, “Why did Sarah laugh?” 

Again, as if by instinct, the denial rose and slithered out like a snake between her teeth, "I did not laugh." 

Her hand flew to her mouth, as if to catch her words and shove them back inside, but she was too slow and they shot out, arching through the air like an arrow aimed directly at the place where the man sat. 
 

He turned then and looked at her, full on, his eyes piercing despite the distance between them and Sarah felt a shiver of fear run down her spine.  She felt the flour and dough that clung to the under-side of her finger-nails, the dirt and dust that lined her sandaled feet. 

Under his gaze, she became aware of how dead she felt, how the life had drained slowly from her face and chest over the years as she crumbled inward upon herself like some craven creature.  Looking into those eyes she felt her own dryness and thirst, her bones that crackled and clicked with each movement, she felt the emptiness of her body, of her soul, as though nothing was left of her but a walking corpse.

This was her fear, of course, but as the man held her gaze the fire in his eyes softened until the gentleness there came to resemble something like the look of love she’d seen in Abraham’s eyes during those early hopeful years.  The softness there, the love, both heightened and quenched her thirst as it crossed the distance between them.   The love circled her and fell like a heavy rain, sudden and fierce, washing over her empty body.  His gaze was like a heavy downpour in the desert that runs in rivulets over the dry ground, seeking entrance into the depths of the earth.   

When she saw the love in his eyes her mouth opened involuntarily and something like a little gasp, a small rush of air escaped and at that moment his love entered in.  Pouring in past her lips and teeth and tongue where just moments before the lie had slithered out.  Love entered like summer rain and settled deep inside in the small crack the laugh had hollowed out. 

Sarah shut her mouth tight, quickly, when she realized what had happened, but the man’s eyes only softened further until they crinkled at the corners and twinkled with humor.  Then his mouth cracked too into a wide and generous smile like the sun as he said, “Oh yes, you did laugh.”        

She denied the laugh, but she couldn’t deny its effect, the way it opened her, split something deep within.  It started as a derisive sound, a reflexive rejection that rose from deep within her dried-up body at the mention of a child. But even that small hacking, choking sound broke something free within her. The laughter moved inside her like a fault-line as it made its way through, dividing and realigning as it took hold of her body.

When she would tell the story, years later, of their son and his long time coming, people would accept it all without so much as a blink until she came to the part where he smiled.  There was no question that God might walk up out of the blue for lunch, might open the womb of an old woman, but the part where the face of God cracked wide open, split in two by a smile, that, was more than they could accept and, so, over time, it was dropped from her story. 

Though it took years to come to pass, Sarah secretly credited the laugh for opening her womb, at least the smallest bit.  But who's to say whether it was the laughter that grew steadily over weeks and years or the tears that followed, springing from the same deep riven place within, either way life had come and it dwelt now within her.  After all, if the world can be created through words, then surely a womb can be opened through laughter, split wide like a seed when the sprout of new life unfurls.