I'm Gonna Miss That Boy

Tomorrow, they turn two and two weeks later my big boy will head off to kindergarten. 

We walked last night through the spritzing rain and I held his hand with the always dry, cracking skin while my husband pushed the big wide stroller brimming with little brothers.  I thought about the way he and I walked so much when the twins were little.  We walked to survive, walked so we could, for one brief part of the day, face in the same direction, side-by-side.  He who wanted to go-go-go and chatted me up like a friendly salesman and I, ever the introvert overwhelmed by the sea of humanity that filled our tiny bungalo. 

I would push those boys along out in front of me and they sailed smooth like a boat on a glassy sea save for the hand of their brother resting on the stroller handle.  That pressure, that hand, irked me, but he held on relentlessly, his hand like an umbilical cord holding us together, two castaways stranded on the island of twins. 

And now I will walk him to school with his older sister and turn and walk home alone behind the double-wide, no hand to hold, no gentle pressure on the handle.

The other day, he said to me, casually, at lunch, "So, mama, how are you enjoying adulthood?" 

I'm going to miss that boy.  

This post is linked with Five Minute Friday.  Click on the link to read more posts on the prompt "lonely."

The Weeping Cherry Tree

This spring, the branches
of the weeping cherry tree
across the street
hung low, heavy with beauty
and swirled around the trunk
like a woman's skirts,
shifted by the slightest breeze.

This too is how my children move,
teeming 'round my legs
as we set out for an evening stroll.
Shifting forward and back,
they whirl like an eddy at my feet
and it seems to me that I am not the center,
but simply caught up in their current. 

Photo source: HERE.

This post is linked with dVerse Poets Pub.

The Dutiful Son

He worked all day in the fields, starting when the dew shimmered on the cool grass and pausing only to drink a little water in the high heat of the midday sun.  Great, dark circles of sweat, dried now, stain his cloak and the blisters on his hands are open, oozing.  He’s spent, exhausted and under the exhaustion simmers a low-level frustration at all that remains to be done.  Looking up, he notices that slowly, one by one, the servants are dropping their tools and heading toward the house. 

Soon he’s alone in the field, the only one left. 

He finishes his row then stops to tidy up the poorly finished work of a hired hand.  Mumbling to himself, he thinks how nice it would be if they could hire someone as diligent, as neat in their work as him.  Someone who shows up on time and doesn’t quit til the job’s done and maybe even works an extra hour or two.  He smiles a wry smile, imagining a whole field full of workers, carbon copies of himself moving in lock-step to get the job done the right way. 

The image is quickly followed by the thought that just two of him would be enough and his smile fades as the memory of his brother returns.  With the memory comes a surge of anger that swells from somewhere deep in his gut, rising like bile before he quickly and automatically swallows it back down. 

He has a headache that’s made worse by the glare of the late setting sun and his shoulders are tight and stiff.  With a sigh, he turns toward the house. 

He walks slowly, dreading the quiet dinner with his father who too often sits staring into the distance.  When he’s not staring he talks longingly about old days when the two boys bustled through the house and fields together, tumbling along after their father like puppies, eager and excited.  Though shaded with joy and laughter, the stories are too familiar and from a past too distant to feel real and the most the older brother can muster in response is a sullen and sulky silence.  Every time he launches into his own story about a detail of the day's work he's haunted by the uneasy feeling that his father's isn't really listening.  Loosing confidence, he slows and lets the story hang unfinished over the table, like a question that has no answer. 

Climbing the small slope toward the house, he senses a hum of energy in the air, something like the pause before a long-awaited storm.  In the distance, the servants appear to bustle with excitement.  One runs past shouting and another runs in the opposite direction wearing a look of surprise and astonishment. 

With the excitement comes music, loud and cheerful, that gets louder with every step and grates on his already aching head.  The music is pierced with shouting and singing as though a party were in full swing. 

Grabbing the sleeve of a servant running by, he demands to know what’s going on. 

The startled servant’s look of joy vanishes as she stares into the older brother’s questioning eyes.  The feeling that she’s been caught doing something she shouldn’t is immediate, but she pushes it down, trying to regain her cheer.  Breathlessly, she explains, “Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.”

Her words don’t make sense. 

He stares at her, not comprehending. 

Taking advantage of the moment, the young girl runs off, back toward the house, visibly shrugging off the older brother’s dark look as she draws closer to the music and dancing.

Scraps of the servant’s words, “Your brother.”  “Your father.”  “The fatted calf.”  echo inside his head as he tries to make sense. 

When it finally dawns on him his back stiffens and he draws back, pulling himself up to full height as he looks toward the house.  His heart that was already brittle, stiff and sore turns to stone and sits heavy in his chest. 

“Your brother.”  “Your father.”  “The fatted calf.” 

The duty, the devotion that carried him through the long, aching day, gives way without warning to a deep rage.  He turns and strides off into the quickly falling darkness like a lost soul.  

He paces behind the house.  He can’t go home, yet he doesn’t know where else to go, so he broods like a storm cloud on the horizon. 

Then his father is there, his face full of apology and understanding and unspeakable joy at the younger brother’s return.  Had his father commanded him to join the party, he would have obeyed, but it’s the old man’s pleading, his unwillingness to just leave him alone in the cool darkness that forces open the cloud of furry that’s been growing older brother’s chest.  

His false motivations and his deep sense of being unloved come pouring out in a torrent of rage.  A deep complaint wells up from within his heart, “Listen!” he barks, raising his calloused hand, commanding the attention that's already his, “I’ve been working like a slave for you.”  His voice is high, sharp and piercing and spittle flies with his emphasis. 

His tirade continues, each sentence flying at the old man who stands with watery eyes, his hands hanging at his sides, palms up, as if in preparation for an embrace.  

The party continues, the music rising and dropping in the background as the son spews the anger and hurt that has been his companion in the years since his brother abandoned them both.   

Finally, embarrassed and sweating, he's done and stands, breathing heavily, eyes averted.  He's told his version of the story and waits empty-handed for his father to confirm or deny it. 

"I'll leave," he thinks, in the pause that comes after the fading of his words.  Desolate, he lifts his head briefly as if in challenge before turning his muscled body toward the night. 

Light as a feather, his father's wrinkled hand shoots out and catches his sleeve, holding it tight with the fierce strength of love as he speaks the only word he knows can break the darkness, "Son," the old man said, "son."   

This post is linked with Playdates with God and Hear it on Sunday, Use it on Monday.

Answers to Prayer

The realtor's car flew along green fields and over rolling hills.  Seated in the back seat, a small and simple prayer formed in my mind.

Looking up and out the wide, flat glass of the windshield, I glimpsed a cherry-red Cardinal lifting off from a large puddle in the middle of the road.  The timing was impeccable, as if he'd been waiting there, staged to arise in answer to my prayer.   

"Hmm . . . ," I thought to myself. 

Turning toward my husband who sat beside me, I caught sight of a single deer running through a golden field.

"Look," I said and "hmmm . . . ," I thought to myself.

Pulling into the driveway of the house we'd come to see, I kid you not, the sun that had been playing a day-long game of hide-and-seek shone down bright and clear right on us. 

"The sun came out," I said to my husband with a smile as we unfolded ourselves, up and out of the car.

*   *   *

My husband's text to a friend the night before read, "Kelly and I are sideways about a house.  Do you have time to talk?" 

When I saw it, I said, half-joking, "Sideways?  Head-to head is more like it." 

There was one house that was a maybe. It fit our short list of needs and I was ready to settle because the alternative - the dark, dingy, over-priced rentals we'd toured, the leases that bound us financially for a year - were more than I could face.

Our good friend texted back, "Sure, how 'bout tonight?" and showed up at our door shortly after the kids were in bed.

He listened, this great hulk of a man sprawled on our living room floor, and we talked and by the time we were done some of the dense fog of fear and pain had lifted and my husband and I shifted from foes to allies again, sitting side-by-side even in the painful unknown.   

*   *   *

Our earliest dates took place in diners where we sat in sticky booths considering one another over endless cups of coffee.  Returning back to campus one night, we stood under the street-lights, eyes searching eyes and it bubbled out of him, "I just want to make you happy."

That same boy turned man sat across from me at a diner the following day and I was able to see again the bond of love that spanned the table between us holding us in the booth; that cable that runs from heart to heart and forms a home for us and all the little loves we've spawned.   

"You're right," he said, as we ate, "I've been thinking about it all day long, I made a list of pros and cons and there are really only two things about that house that I don't like. And two isn't that many."

Slowly, carefully, we each relinquished the claims we'd been holding in exchange for holding each other.  Finishing our meals, we slid into the low, red, Volkswagen and chugged our way over to the realtor's office.

*   *   *

We walked through the house slowly, by ourselves.  Turning, talking, touching walls and switches, we tried that house on and turned slowly, each for the other, to see how it fit. 

Stepping onto the deck we heard loud and clear what we hadn't heard the first time through, the unmistakable roar of route 81 that passed nearby just out of sight.  It was loud, undulating, unceasing noise.  Continuing through the house, the walls reverberated with the sound of passing trucks. 


As the clouds rolled in, low and heavy and the wind picked up, it seemed that all of heaven and earth rearranged itself to carry the highway's sound to us.  It was the one thing we could both agree on, the noise of a nearby highway wasn't something we were willing to embrace. 

*   *   *

 

I prayed that we would know and we did.  We knew, together, that it wasn't the house for us.  But beyond that, we knew in all the little ways we could, that God was with us and that gave us the courage to walk away from what might have been an easy answer. 

That night our realtor offered us the key to a vacant rental he owned and suddenly, just like that, we had a place to live while we continued looking and waiting.  It wasn't the answer we wanted, but it was an answer to prayer.  Sometimes, when we're able to let go of whatever it is we want so badly, those unwanted answers can be enough, not because of what they "get" for us, but because of the way they remind us so clearly that God is with us. 


This post is linked with Playdates With God and #tellhisstory.

Broken (Five Minute Friday)

By the time we were scheduled to get phone and Internet service, two days after the MOVE, we had already spent one night curled backwards on the love seat watching "Frasier" and "Better Off Ted" on the laptop that sat percariously perched in the window.  The Deli across the street, aside from offering a host of fried foods and free delivery, also boasts a "guest" wireless line, so we logged on and vegged out for a few precious minutes before climbing the stairs to face the child who would. not. sleep.

Monday night came and we plugged in the phone, but there was no dial tone, so we crumpled, exhausted, onto the couch again, swapping snippets of conversation in the seconds that became minutes while the shows buffered and buffered some more. 

Tuesday night was spent on a cell phone, getting shuffled from voice to voice in search of a solution.  There was mention of an $80 dollar service fee if the problem lay within the house and they suggested we test the connection outside using a corded phone. 

But who knew WHERE the corded phone was?  As usual, I could remember seeing it on top of a basket at some point, somewhere, but the basket I pictured had already been unpacked minus the phone, so . . .

We curled again, backwards, and the sign from across the street illuminated our faces while we watched sitcom characters solve their problems in twenty minutes flat every. single. time.

This post is linked with Lisa-Jo's Five Minute Friday, although her blog is currently broken, so I can't actually insert the link.  Classic.

Leaving the Nest

In the spring of the year, nest-building is upper-most in a bird's mind: it is the most important thing there is. If she picks a good place, she stands a good chance of hatching her eggs and rearing her young. If she picks a poor place, she may fail to raise a family. The female swan knew this; she knew the decision she was making was extremely important. - in The Trumpet of the Swan

Morning sun climbs the valley cut between two houses and pours through filmy finger-printed windows leaving whole hands outlined with gold.  Common sense would shut the blinds, savoring the cool darkness but, like the plants lined up along the window-shelf, I am drinking in this light, soaking up this morning, our second to last in this house. 

We have drunk this light for nearly ten years now, every morning and I wonder aloud how my plants will survive the move, but really I'm thinking of myself.  The windows in the apartment we will rent are skinny, facing only North and South, so we'll miss the cheerful toast of sunlight greeting the sky each morning and the fond kisses farewell as she sinks off to sleep each night. 

The boards of this house, the scarred sub-floor we refinished, wail and moan as we cross them; every step a conversation.  Rocking our babies to sleep at night meant tip-toeing a well-worn path once they drifted off.  Place one foot here, lean, step carefully, and a second there, all to avoid the sounds that might lead to the need for more rocking.

This house, these windows and floors, what can I say, but that they've held us, like a nest and we have flourished in their confines. 

Friends, we are MOVING this Saturday, and we would love your prayers and encouragement as we continue to wait for a new "forever" home.  Thanks!

That Which Remains

. . . I return again to a remarkable story by Isak Dinesen form her years spent in Africa.  One day, out in the bush, she came upon a beautiful snake, its skin glistening with subtle, variegated colors.  She raved so much about that snakeskin that one of her servants killed the snake, skinned it, and made it into a belt for her.  To her great dismay, that once glistening skin was now just dull and gray.  For all along the beauty had lain not in the physical skin but in the quality of its aliveness. - Cynthia Bourgeault in The Wisdom Way of Knowing

A thick and wrinkled stack of papers sits just the way I remembered it, tucked into a nearly opaque plastic shopping bag.  I'd looked through three thumb drives and a backup hard drive before plowing through the filing cabinets tucked into an upstairs crawl space.  I was looking for a certain sermon from my days as a Chaplain at Hershey Medical Center and finally found it in a box full of files in a second crawl space.  The dull green folders slumped lifelessly together, with the last few still wrapped in that old grocery bag I used to carry them home. 

The contents of our crawl spaces document every vocational chapter of my life.  The seminary years are tucked neatly into still-bright primary-colored folders - so many accolades and so much potential filed for now.  Then there are the teaching files, twenty-four at least, folders filled with lectures and outlines, presentations I knit together to survive semester after semester of not really knowing what I was supposed to be doing.  There are church files too, from my year as a pastor, sermons in every shape and style as I did the difficult work of figuring out how to be with people from the pulpit. 

It was unsettling, all of that searching through former lives and in the end probably not worth it for the few lines of text I was seeking which didn't glimmer nearly so well on the paper in my hand as they had in my memory. It was as though the life had gone out of them the moment they left my lips.

I have a hard time shaking the feeling that something of me is left in all of those files, all of those letters lined up so neatly on a page, something intangible that may well be lost if I don't somehow keep them along with me through thick and thin. 

So the files continue to sit there like the skins of my former selves, surrounded by bin after bin of clothing for my children who continue to shed their skins too, shape-shifting from soft sweetness to gawky bundles of energy. 

I wonder, what is it that remains once all of this is shed - the roles and titles, that so easily come and go?  And how do I even now attend to that thing which lies behind and beneath every other thing, that which Jesus once described as the only necessary thing?