Peanut Butter & Chocolate: The Taste of Love (and yes, there's a recipe)

For the impatient among you, here is the link to my previous post for the recipe for peanut butter balls, a Christmas season staple in my Dad's family.


sometime, somehow,
I know neither
a young woman
who was my grandma
got a recipe – or
maybe her husband
brought it home from
the plant – he did that
sometimes – and with
her strong hands and her
new receipt, she turned
chocolate chips and
peanut butter into
magic

and every year thereafter
come the cool times
when such things could
be stored without refrigeration
and there was enough money
she did it again and again

her oldest daughter at her side
it’s a two-woman operation,
you know, making all those
balls the size of walnuts

and the years passed and the
daughter became a mother
and aunt and grandmother
and down the slide of the years
her daughters and niece and
grand-daughters (do they yet?)
stepped into the fold and flow
of it all, the niece (me) calling

every year around this time
checking and rechecking the
recipe – too important to
family lore to get it wrong,
but mostly just to talk, to hear
the laughter, the warmth, the
love, across so many miles,
so many memories

and last night an e-mail comes
from my own mother – one of
the steps – daughter of
another father, linked across
time, wants the recipe – my uncle
yearns for a little taste of home
and Puerto Rico is far away
from old mountain receipts
that mix chocolate chips
and peanut butter into magic –

her magic in my imagining
having come from more
exotic, interesting, flavorful
places and spaces, and I write
down the recipe and pull out
a sheet of paper to write down
my shopping list – the air is cool
enough now it’s time –

and I and others along this family
trail of lines and dashes and dots
and memories, will travel to the
altar of memory encased in
chocolate and call it good.

Farewell to a Cat: The First & Last of Sidney

I inherited Sidney the Cat (whom I nicknamed Sidney, Mighty Huntress of the Night for her beautiful black coat and her stealth ways) when she was already middle-aged.  Our time together went something like this . . .

Ben calls, in tears, begging me to take on this cat with the words, “Ma, I know you’re not a cat person, but please take her.  We don’t have anyone else.  If you don’t take her, we’ll have to put her to sleep.”

Who can ignore the tearful pleas of one’s own child calling one to be a rescuing hero in the life of another creature?  Certainly not I.

We meet at one of our many half-way points and Ben hands me over this cat in her cage, along with litter box, food, and many, many, instructions, my favorite still being:

“You must let the water run all the time.  She only drinks running water.”  After a bit of a verbal tussle on this one, I (wisely) simply opted for silence.  About a week in to our new life together, Ben calls to check in on Sid.  He asks how I am doing (notice the emphasis) with the running water thing.  “Not a problem,” I cheerfully reply.  A wise and naturally suspicious child (at least when it comes to his mother), Ben digs deeper: “are you running the water?”  “Of course not.”  “Is she drinking?”  “She is now.”  “What does that mean?”  “It means that I am not leaving the water run 24 hours a day for the cat and that she’s figured that out.  It took her a few days, but she’s drinking from the bowl.”  Suspicious he: “how many days?”  “Oh, about 3.”  “You let my cat go without water for 3 days?!?”  “No, Ben.  I never let your cat go without water.  What I did was put it in a bowl.  She found it.  It took her awhile, but she found it.”  I’m not sure if he’s yet forgiven me for that one, but Sid and I had made our arrangement and Ben was largely beside the point.

Ben instructs me at that fateful exchange meeting that at first, I must restrict Sidney to one room in the house so that she can get accustomed to her new space.  I decide it will be my office.  I get her situated and then I go do some other things.  When I come back, I cannot find Sidney. . . anywhere.  I thoroughly scout the office – no Sid.  I then search the entirety of the house – no small feat – and still, no Sidney.  I call for her.  I listen for any meows.  I hear nothing.  I see nothing.  

I sit down at my office chair, in admitted defeat, pick up the phone to return Ben’s call.  He has left a message that beat us home to see how Sidney is doing.  I am going to have to tell him that I have lost his cat within minutes of our arrival at her new home.  It won’t be pretty.  As the phone is ringing, I sit and ponder, retracing all my own steps since bringing Sidney inside.  A thought enters my mind.  I dismiss it.  And then I act on it, opening the lower drawer where I had thrown my purse.  And there she was.  Apparently the gal had snuck in to the drawer just ahead of my tossing my purse in and there she crouched, silent, like the night.

Ben answers the phone, I tell him everything is fine and then confess the last hour’s horror of lostness.  All is forgiven for all is well.  I am so bucked up in my new confidence that I tease him about never having called to check to make sure that I made it home all right.  We laugh together.

***

I’ve written before about my tendency to Pollyanna things, to be the incurable optimist.  It has a price.

For some time, I had been thinking that Sidney was failing and that it might be time.  You know:  time to put her to sleep.* Yet I resisted, thinking that ‘nature’ should simply take its course.  It did not seem that she suffered, or if so, not much.  She wasn’t complaining.

But I had been thinking on it.

And then came yesterday morning.  When I got up, Sidney was already up, unusual these days.  She was walking in this odd sort of circle, when I realized that one of her back legs wasn’t working.  That leg served as a sort of anchor against which she tried in vain to navigate.  She finally broke the circling and managed to walk down the hall by leaning against the wall on the side of her problem leg.

Her prospects were becoming more clear, yet still I hesitated.  And called and talked to folk.  And read on the internet about geriatric cats.  And made the call – or more accurately had a friend who is a relative of the vet make the call.

Another friend had shared how she received confirmation in a comforting way during the dying process.

I too received confirmation.  But it wasn’t much comfort.  I’ve been there when another pet – a beloved dog, was put down, so I was familiar with the process, a bit different for cats, but not much.

This time, Sidney had lost so much weight that it took several attempts to find a vein for the injection.  There just wasn’t any there there anymore, for she was truly skin and bones.

And I had not noticed.  I noticed her slowing down.  I noticed she was thinner and eating less.  But somehow I failed to even notice that she had no fat, no flesh to her at all.

Ah Sidney, I owed you better than that, sure I did.

Perhaps now you reside in the land of perpetual fresh running water.  I sure hope so.



_________________
*How I do hate that euphemism.  And it is not how I think of it.  But I will spare you the language of my own internal dialogue on the matter.

A Far Country

I drive the 150 or so miles from home to home yesterday, traveling from where I now live to where I once did – to family and gatherings, to laughter and memories, to new rituals and old – whenever I take this drive, I am literally traveling into my own past – maybe that’s part of the problem – the present is not my past and thus cannot sustain my expectations, whatever they may be, for things are not the same nor should they be – I’m not so why would they be?  But maybe that’s the thing – that I am not the same cries out for something to remain unchanged and what better terrain than my past – already written and rewritten long ago – but of course, it is not my past into which I travel – that trick of mind simply will not do and each change in the lay of the land chants change . . . change . . . change . . . and it, if not all, is well and for today, that will do.

Things I Want to Remember

I listen to Nick Cave . . .  I believe in love . . . and behold the greening outside and I am overcome with a love and beauty that moves me to tears . . .

Last night, a friend tells me she’s watching a rainbow and I keep running outside and doing a 360 scan of the evening sky, all to no avail, for the rainbow does not settle where I can see . . . yet the sky and the clouds, the cattle settling in, dogs barking in the distance, houses fading into evening – all fill me with quietude as I turn back in for the night, richer for the rainbow I did not see . . .

A man sits at my table and tells me about the day he met his wife, unshed tears glistening in his eyes like memories too precious to lose to time . . . or loss . . .

Sidney the cat moseys over to the small square of sunlight on the Turkish rug and snuggles in to its warmth . . .

I study a picture of my grandson, caught in mid-stride, mid-smile, at a moment where I was not there and can only enjoy from this distance of time and memory, the boy he is mingling with the baby and tree-hugging toddler he was, so many firsts still before him . . .

I listen again to the Good Friday soundtrack* I created for the service and am again moved by the voices of others in ways my soul understands but my words cannot describe . . .

The tulips do their spring surprise – yesterday’s limp-melted sun-infused petals revitalized to attention by the cool evening air, looking, for a moment in time, like the youngsters they were just a day or so ago . . . back then when they had more life ahead than behind . . .

Nothing special, nothing earth-moving or history making, perhaps, but these, the moments, are the things I want to preserve, to remember, to call to mind in a cool spring day when such moments reach out and touch my heart and warm the room just a bit . . .


_______________
*This year’s Good Friday soundtrack:  Stay With Me, Taize Community.  Dust in the Wind, Kansas.  Ride, Nick Drake.  After the Storm, Mumford and Sons.  21 Guns, Green Day.  Anthem, Leonard Cohen.  Stand by Me, Sam Cooke.  Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood, Nina Simone.  The Far Road, Nick Cave & Warren Ellis.

I Miss . . .

Lupo’s hot dogs . . . sleeping in on weekends . . . the excitement of my kids when they were little and we were about to embark on an adventure . . . soccer games . . . Saturday morning cartoons . . . my hair when it was so long it wrapped around my arm in my sleep . . . how pretty I was back then and didn’t even know it . . . that being-pregnant glow . . . rolling in the grass at any excuse . . . chasing lightening bugs . . . being the age where every party I attended involved wearing a hat . . . summer days at the play ground . . . drive-in movies . . . cruising with no where to go just loving being on the move . . . all my firsts . . . the anticipation of a school dance . . . Easter Egg hunts when I wasn’t the one hiding the eggs . . . roasting hot dogs and marshmellows on a stick . . . being small enough to be thrown into the air and carried sleepily from the car at the end of a long day of sheer joy . . . believing in Santa and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy . . . getting a new outfit at Easter . . . the beginning of being a freshman and the ending of being a senior . . . being read to . . . when everything I needed was near enough to walk to . . . walking home after school with friends . . . giggling on the phone with friends after walking or driving past the house of the most recent boy crush hoping just to catch sight of him . . . hanging out at the swimming pool all day . . . the smell of Grandma’s cinnamon buns in the early morning . . . having a posse of parents and grandparents have my back no matter what . . . Grandmother Bertha chasing those bullies away with her cane and 1st grade teacher voice . . . 

I Missed the Better Metaphor

One picture is worth a thousand words.  So said, well, we’re not sure, but generally, the saying is attributed to an advertising guy in the early 1900's, who attributed it to an unnamed Japanese philosopher.

Today there’s an evocative photograph on the Weather Channel’s site from photographer Jonathan Pow.  I can’t find the picture anywhere else than on someone’s FB share, so I don’t know if it was genuinely a photograph of a found visual (as opposed to something created then photographed), but the photo is evocative.

It shows more than thirty unexploded ordinance lying on a beach on a sunny day.  The picture on FB, at least, was attached to a Weather Channel article on sightings of unexploded WWII bombs on British beaches in the wake of recent flooding there.

In the round of FB comments, one gentleman spoke eloquently from the Native American tradition of the unhealed memories these unexploded bombs probably represent to many who lived through those times, calling we younger ones to patient listening.

His reaction is so much gentler than my own as I behold this visual.

If this be a metaphor, the images that arise in my own mind are of the cost well into an unknown future of the bombs of all kinds we humans make . . . the literal bombs and land mines that explode unsuspecting children into history . . . the waste of war that is witnessed by its debris . . . the monuments to our colossal pride and foolishness that are the rusted leavings of an invading conqueror . . .

I missed the metaphor of healing entirely . . .

How grateful am I to be reminded that the intrusion of the past into the present, while potentially dangerous, can also be a healing place, that it remains entirely up to us to decide.

So for every gun, every bullet, kept in every old soldier’s dresser drawer . . . for every picture of comrades-in-arms long gone stowed away in a box of papers hidden from daily view . . . for every smoke-filled screen archived safely into a past waiting to be rediscovered . . . here’s praying we decide well, for decide, we do.

Good-bye Thelma Jane

Yesterday I attended the memorial for Thelma Jane Armstrong, 80+ years strong when she left this earth, a woman I never met this side of heaven, and for once, I was simply there, with no duties, able to listen and take in a bit of a life well-lived as shared by those she loved most.

And so I learned about her pet names, an unquenchable zest for knowledge and love of life, her warmth and welcome, the importance of the family circle and laughing talk into the summer nights, and am still left wondering why the mention of Florida makes everyone laugh.

Memories are the shape and meaning and texture of a life and Jane’s is a patchwork quilt of love and laughter and that famous Highland stoicism, not grim, but merely accepting, of the challenges life throws our way.

And I am minded of someone recently reminding me at a church meeting about the importance of geography.  I tend to be dismissive of the church building when thinking about our mission, our call, our work in the world.  But when we were doing some dreaming about the future, one fellow said, “I know the building isn’t the point, but Beth, geography matters.”

Bill is right: geography matters, as I was poignantly reminded yesterday when Jane’s brother Charlie stood to speak.

Slow-talking words freighted with the loss of a beloved sister and forced out through years of reticence in the way of the farmers here not accustomed to speaking before others, thoughtful, weighing each word as if it mattered (because it does when it costs so very much), Charlie spent much time and loving detail describing the family home he and Jane and the other kids grew up in.  I can see the bedrooms and the fireplaces, the barn and the fields now but a memory in Charlie’s minds’ eye.

Geography matters, and here was the geography of a childhood shared between brother and sister, navigated through one bedroom to get to the next, ringed in with the warmth of fire on cold winter nights, surrounded by the land, marked by a barn where childhood adventures and the hard work of farming come together as one, all bounded by the soundtrack of a life loved, a surprise of blues and jazz as the voices of Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World blend into Billie Holliday’s I’ll Be Seeing You finally sails softly into Kamakawiwo’ole’s gentling Over the Rainbow.

Good-bye Thelma Jane.

How I wish I had known you.

First Times

The best new thing (for me) just now happens to be hitRECord – wow.  I marvel at the creativity and community and the outcomes, like the making of a movie from the sharing of a young woman about the first time she saw the stars.  Moving from her story to the collaborative vision of that story from the hands, voices and hearts of thousands is moving from glory to glory.

Which led me to contemplate first times . . .

The first time I won something – when was it?

The first time I danced with a boy – I really don’t remember.

The first time I drove the car by myself – I stalled it on a hill and had to call my dad for rescue.

The first time I argued a case in court – strained by nervousness, my voice went so high I think it left the register of human hearing behind.

The first time I danced with a love in the London tube station – when the first time was probably the last too – ah, love.

The first time I cooked a Valentine’s meal – for my parents and my dad made a joke and 16-year-old me ran crying from the room, totally missing that teasing was how he showed his love.

The first time I made fudge without my dad – I don’t remember the time that was first, but they’ve all been sad for the missing.

The first time I rode my bike without help – dad then too – what a happy day.

The first time I wrecked that same bike – I don’t remember the first, but I do remember the wreck of wrecks – with ER visit and stitches and a milk shake reward for my bravery (aren’t parents generous?)

The first time I wrecked the car – well, someone wrecked into me and my mom was with me (isn’t it good to have your mom as your witness in court?)

The first and so far only time I said I do – even then I knew I probably shouldn’t.

The first time I lost a tooth, got my hair cut, cried, laughed, loved – all are lost in the fog of history to me.

The first time I saw my son walk, comforted him, sent him to the corner, hung his drawing on the frig, went to his school conference, watched him play soccer – they too are lost to conscious recall.

So many firsts constitute a life, most lost to memory, but most one of a whole series of moments remembered in a collage of living history.

I don’t really have a first-time story to share, but I’ve had more than my share of first times.

Grateful I am.

Wholly Holey Holy

It’s time and well past time to retire my favorite blue jeans, wholly holey holy as they are.  It’s not easy, this letting go, silly as it sounds, of some denim bits that have shrugged themselves around me as I stride though these moments of a life.

Today I will laugh with the ladies at the annual Christmas lunch, with a bittersweet remembering of Gloria, now gone from us, laughing herself silly over her bragging rights to having her  minister visit wearing her wholly holey holy jeans.

When I retire these jeans to the trash bin, I’ll recall other jeans, similar in texture, my mother tried to sneak and throw away when I was a teen, only to have me retrieve them and show up gleefully wearing them the next day to her long-suffering sighs.

Like a lot of things in life, it takes time to get the perfect jeans – the ones that just collapse onto your body, softened by our time together, worn in just the right ways for comfort, getting to the place where we just fit together.

Like love, being past their sell-by date is of no matter.

Like laughter, they invite unbidden a certain joy merely by their presence.

Is it silly for a grown woman to mourn the passing of an article of clothing?  Most likely.

But if you’ve ever had your own wholly holey holy jeans, you’ll understand.

Was It Today? Remembering Grandma Mary

Was it today?*  I can’t remember.  If not, it was close to today, the day my Grandma Mary died back in 2000.  I was in the process of winding down my part in the law practice, off to seminary and the grand adventure of becoming a pastor.

I never had to solve the conundrum of what to tell Grandma (staunch Church of Christ, women cannot, cannot, cannot, be pastors) I was up to.

She was 87 when she died, but it feels like we got caught in mid-conversation – an abrupt end it seems still.  Her hip, ailing her for years, finally gave way and she was to have surgery – the thing she had delayed and denied and angrily forged past for a very long time until there was no more time.  We talked on the phone and I was on my way there after work, but Grandma tricked us all – she was like that – and died before she could get to the operating table.  Mary had her way to the very end – no surgery for her.

If I told you that she was buried in a body bag – by prearrangement – you might intuit quite a bit about this bestower of genetic materials and cultural, moral and familial ways I lay claim to.  You’d know a lot, but you wouldn’t know it all.

You wouldn’t know that her life-long dream of singing at the Grand Ole’ Opry was never to be but still brought her great pleasure to think about.  You wouldn’t know that she loved to travel and flew like a bird any time someone, anyone, suggested a trip.  You wouldn’t know that this West Virginia gal from the back woods talked with her husband about joining the Peace Corps in their middle age.  She was a big dreamer, my Grandma.  I like that about her.  If you got to meet her, you would have too.

I miss her, but I don’t worry about her – she’s in some pretty good hands.

Happy birthday, Grandma.

Love, Beth


_________
Actually, it was November 30, 2000 when Grandma died.  Her 87th birthday would have been December 2 of that same year (or was it December 3?  My Grandma actually had two different birth certificates, so I’m sticking with the 2nd.  My mother will set me straight if I got it wrong).

Am I Who I Was?

Time passing inspires a bit of reflection on things and people gone by – it’s inevitable, isn’t it?

In my own case, I live in a slow land, so there’s a bit more time for reflecting.  And of late, I’ve reconnected with folks from various stages in my own past – e-mail, FB, lunch get-togethers on a recent trip back home and even the forgetting of my fellow high-school classmates (who didn’t invite me to the reunion, forgetting that even though I have moved quite a bit, my mother still lives in the same house I lived in way back in high school) – all these connections draw me back to different stages in my life, from high school through seminary.

Most days, I’m not much of a look-back kind of gal.  My kids remember details from our lives together that have long ago slipped my mind.

Me with Judge Handlan - early 1980's

So it’s a rare treat and challenge to look back and see myself in the eyes and hearts of others with whom I was so bound once upon a time.

The question arises: am I who I was?  And if not, who have I become?

Some answers are obvious; some obscure; some, I suspect, I’ll never know.

Some life lessons are apparent:

1. Nothing is forever.  All those times, those epochs of my life, seemed at the time to be the endless horizon of what my life would be – but horizons are tricky things and every thing does pass away, sometimes with startling suddenness, just as often like the proverbial thief in the night, but slip away they do.

2. Things and people actually do change.  We’re not the same – not as each other and not even as ourselves.  There’s enough resemblance to connect, but change is integral to the body human.

3. For my own part, I am nicer than I used to be.  Much.  Which is not to say that I am nice – far from it.  But it’s a journey and I’m good with that.

4. I wouldn’t go back even if I could.

5. It’s okay to be forgotten.  I’m just not that important.  And that too is okay with me.

Some lessons aren’t so obvious:

1. The child I was still inhabits this old-lady skin and she can take me by surprise sometimes – usually in a good way, but not always.

2. High school is nothing like real life.  Never was, never will be.

3. We are our families and yet we are not.  Mysterious, that.

4. Some people, as well as some things, are better left in the past.

5. The ever-shrinking list of those who were there, those with whom we share the memories, is, all by itself, a cause for sadness, as the ones who can know and understand the scrapbook of a life gets smaller and smaller.  Telling is not the same as remembering.  Sometimes you really did just have to be there.

Am I who I was?

Yes.

And no.

And that’s okay with me.

In the Frame 2

I love pictures – the capture of a moment in time that somehow looks nothing like the movement of the moment into the next and the next, but still catches something – elusive.  When I see other folks’ pictures, I often try to guess at what’s going on, like people watching at the airport and trying to guess what they’re about.

So here’s one for you.

There’s a woman on her knees with three dogs around her.  She smiles, holding a piece of paper in one hand and leashes in the other.  It’s a beautiful day of sunshine.  In the background are stacks of long weather-worn wooden planks, a couple of plastic lawn chairs, a fence.  On the other side of the fence stands another woman with a folded flag draped over her left arm, peering into the frame.

Write or imagine your own story about the picture.  Who are the women?  What is the woman doing with the dogs?  Why is there a piece of paper in her hand?  What are the wooden planks for?  And what of the woman on the other side of the fence?  Why is she on the other side?  Why is she holding a flag?  Why isn’t the other woman acknowledging her?

What on earth is going on here?

[Your imagining]

So here’s the story of the picture – it’s pretty prosaic, really.  But when I look at it, backing away from what I know, I am struck by the positioning of the two women with the fence between them.

On a warm October Saturday, Rhet was at the Post Office, filling in for Glenna, as is their Saturday custom.  It’s getting toward the end of her Saturday shift at mid-day and Rhet has come out and taken the flag down for the day.  Still carrying it, she walked across the parking lot of the Post Office and then across the only partly-mown field beside it to stand at the fence that separates my back yard from the field, flag still cradled in her arm.  

We are having our annual Animal Blessing Service and Dot Terry sits on the ground with some of her dog buddies, reading from a piece of paper I had given her earlier – a scripture, a reflection, on the blessings bestowed by God upon all creation.

It is a beautiful day and we have done this eight times now, but this year is different – we had a parade through town, which set a light-hearted tone to an already celebratory event – folks move about and Dot sits and frolics with the dogs and all is well.

What’s outside the frame are the other folks calling out to Rhet to come and join us and Rhet saying she can’t yet – her shift isn’t over.  What’s outside the frame is Rhet coming a while later into the church parking lot after most of the folks had already headed home, with a dog in her truck beside her to be blessed – this dog one she’s caring for as part of her new business venture.

Dog blessed, shift over, Rhet heads home, but not before she got captured in the frame, even from the other side of the fence.

It was a good day – might have been perfect, but Dot reminded us that the dogs were pretty upset that they didn’t get communion.

Next year.

Moon Shadow

It’s not quite right

‘moon shadow’

but I can’t erase it

Cat Stevens is just

too loud in my memory

But as I gaze upon the 

moon-lit sky last night

and move my gaze

from sky to land

lit so bright I could 

make my way by foot

across these fields

where hay rolls lay

indolent in the night

and see trees huddling

together pretending

impenetrability 

smiling into their

leafy hands at what

my eyes cannot see

moonlight or no

and notice the one

tree too slow or too

fiercely independent

to grow where others

are so firmly entrenched

and see its shadow cast

long across the field

longer than any day-light

shadow could hope to reach

I want to leave the cocoon

of the car and the talk of the

bridge game we old ladies

have just played and jump

into the field and dance

my own moon shadow

dance – a memorial to the 

girl who listened to Cat

Stevens with little thought

of the moon and its shadows

so long ago and so near to here

I want to, but I do not

for the other old ladies

always tenderly caring,

wait patiently to see me

safely into my house from

the safety of the car cocoon

and taking my time to dance

the moon light is to steal

her time and I cannot

Unboxed Memories

As I’ve written before, I am a woman meant to travel.  In spiritual terms, it’s called being a pilgrim.  We’re all pilgrims to one degree or another.  And this week, my pilgrimage was to that elusive place called home.  Home to West Virginia.  Home to old friends.  Home to the me I used to be.  Home to family.  Home.

I don’t know about you, but most times I bring back more than I took.  This time was no exception.  I left behind wonderful garden tomatoes – I am the greengrocer of good tomatoes, carrying what I did not grow from place to place like the abundance they are.  Tomatoes left, I bring back a storehouse of thoughts and new memories – treasures that require no box for safe-keeping.

My new unboxed memory treasures include the sublimely ridiculous as well as the merely sublime –

. . . listening to Jason Isbell on Terry Gross’ Fresh Air sing his heart and rediscover music in a way I haven’t heard in a very long time.  I’m definitely adding his new album Southeastern to my playlist

. . . family will always try to make the best of your worst failed recipe experiment and even offer to eat what’s left tomorrow – that’s love

. . . learning anew that a little boy’s heart is a tender thing and a little boy’s tears will break your heart

. . . friends of long ago and far away are treasures to rediscover

. . . my presence makes a difference and so does my absence

. . . Cuban pork sandwiches are pretty tasty

. . . family really is glad to see you even when you come empty handed (but you wouldn’t want to make a habit of it – the empty-handed thing)

. . . sometimes the things your kids didn’t tell you were really important

. . . it takes our children a really long time to figure out that our choices, our mistakes, are not their fault or their burden

. . . Seamus Heaney died and I remember hearing his voice, learning his words, at a poetry reading at Princeton years ago – the one I tell where I went to a poetry reading with Toni Morrison – I never really did – she was there as was I and that was it’s own warm feeling, this rubbing air with the good-famous – and now, in the obligatory lauding, Whatever You Say, Say Nothing is read and the words, I live here too . . . scream out of the radio landing into my soul and the words reverberate around and through and in me . . . I live here too . . . this place that is war – this always-has-been-always-will-be place where so many I’s live here too . . .

. . . and so it is that Seamus and a 6-year-old-boy-of-my-blood teach me anew that some people have perspective, whether age 6 or 60, and some never do – and I know which I am and I am humbled

. . . sometimes we’re just too busy enjoying life to go to the bathroom – and that’s okay

. . . Mumford & Sons are really cool even if I have no idea who the sons are (well, there aren’t any ‘sons’, are there?  And yes, Ian Brennan, they’re privileged – I think it’s a hoot that you think that’s worth remarking – just sayin’)

. . . little boys will always follow bigger boys – and that’s mostly how it should be

. . . family is a fluid thing and always has room for just one more

. . . sadness is contagious

. . . visiting is good

. . . things change

. . . and they don’t

. . . when you’re small you always know where you are in the picture

. . . and the bombing/invasion/attack/punishment – take your pick – of Syria is the rough backdrop to it all – invading my memories, my home, and I secretly resent it, this intrusion – can’t you just recess your warring ways for just a few days, just this once?  Can’t we have a break from caring so much just this once?  – heavy in import, with the river of Jason Isobell’s voice running through it, and it is not good.

But it is – because a better tomorrow is better than a wish . . . and family and friends matter . . . and little boys still show us the way.

Remembering Uncle Bob

I remember Uncle Bob, but I don’t.  He was the uncle I saw the least and knew the less.  Maybe that’s why in my child mind, he remains my favorite uncle.  Uncle Bob was like magic – red haired and fair skinned, he was so different from me, the clone of my Dad.  And he was tall.  In my child mind, he was a giant.  He could and did lift me up so my head touched the ceiling.  My Dad never did that.  (I think he was too short – or maybe he didn’t know how to have fun like Uncle Bob.  Or maybe lifting little girls up to the ceiling is the job of uncles.)  So I remember being a giddy girl seeing Uncle Bob coming into the house where Grandma and Grandpa lived.  Did I beg him to lift me up?  I think so.  And he always did.  With a twirl and a whirl the hair on my head gently grazed the ceiling and back down I went.

It was over too quickly, this intimate face-to-face lifting in joy moment of an uncle who would later die a painful and agonizing death in the remove of his bedroom where I never went for he did not want to see or be seen and where somehow that – the dying – became more real than the living.  How does that happen?  How does it happen that a moment, a breath, even months or years of a dying erases decades of a living?  Now I remember Uncle Bob the way I want to – the way he was when I was a little girl – and he is smiling again.  And it is good.

7 or 8 of My Most Memorable Birthdays

In no particular order of importance:

1. Turning 50 in Chicago while in training with Christian Peacemaker Teams, Mom coming out for a visit, taking in the city and being with new friends, having earlier walked some Appalachian Trail both alone and with my son as my own gift to myself.  Earlier, team mates shower me with green cards, wrapping their love in color (in the color scheme that is CPT, I am green and that’s not necessarily a good thing).

2. Turning 47 in Glacier National Park, receiving scads of bouncing balls in the mail from seminary friends (if you’ve never received a bouncing ball in the mail, you are truly missing one of life’s great and fun gifts) and being serenaded by co-workers at the park with their own rendition of Take Me Home, Country Roads (yes, I know all the words and yes, Virginians, it is about West Virginia.)

3. Getting a pinball machine and a party for my 40th birthday, accompanied by lots of laughter and lots of friends.

4. Turning 6 – my first birthday party with kids and cake and a dress with a pinafore that my Grandmother made for me.

5. The many months of Beth, where friends indulged my need, my desire, to celebrate me – the laughing and silly gifts, the shared meals and jokes, the good times.

6. My 16th birthday, when I thought I was getting the keys to the kingdom (translate, access to the family car) and what I got instead was a life insurance policy on my life payable to my Dad (he laughed about that one his whole life long).

7. My 18th birthday, which I do not remember much.  The Alamo, the friends, the ritual rite of passage in America – lots and lots of beer and, to my very savvy mother’s amusement, my first crying jag.

Here I am, 58 today (well, in a few hours, to be technical about it).  I want to not like this birthday – it is far too close to 60 to suit me.  But I awake to sunshine and cool breezes, a happy birthday singing message on the phone from an old friend, apple butter left on the back porch by a new friend, bedecked with those silly clapping hands (I love those things), and the sure and certain knowledge that I am loved.  Later I will pack up my new yellow purse (gift from Mom – the envy of all the gals here, who’ve even checked out the very cool lining) – I get to carry evidence of my Mom’s love and care wherever I go.  It is a good day – and who knows?  Maybe this is the most memorable birthday of all.

VBS Day 5

A little boy runs across the parking lot and gives me a hug, then runs back to the sidewalk and runs back and forth between me and the sidewalk hugging and running . . . a sheet filled with red hands as young and old alike learn to stand up and speak out against injustice – the injustice of children being used by adults around the world to fight their battles for them . . . grass everywhere – the combination of cut grass + a wet day + lots of little (and bit) feet coming in and out and in and out of he church – what a glorious sight . . . singing softly until we get to the parts everybody knows when shouts of joy and recognition emerge . . . same little boy handing out music sheets like a pro as we progress from song to song to song . . . babies sleeping on mom shoulders . . . activity sheets strewn everywhere . . . old friendships strengthened and new ones forged . . . VBS is over and it was good.

Painting Aunt Vivian

I imagine Aunt Vivian sitting down to the easel before her and wonder – did she take lessons?  When she painted this water color delight of pale pinks and greens, flowers resting upon a careless stack of books, was she alone or with a group of others equally intent on the subject before them?

I am the caretaker of this passed-along family treasure and it occupies pride of place above the mantle in my office, so much a part of my daily view I scarce notice it at all.  But when my eyes do stop there, it is Aunt Vivian I call to mind – gentle soul, ready smile, warm welcome.

I wonder that she never married, that she was the one to stay home and take care of the parents.  Was there no young man in uniform to sweep her off her feet?  Did the college-student boarders over the years serve the place of children?

I imagine Aunt Vivian’s life as a water color of pastels, soft and gentle.  And I wonder if she was given as much satisfaction and pleasure at the sight of her own creation as I now derive?  I hope so.

Remembering the 4ths of July

July 4, 2002  Pick up trucks gather in circle in a large field.

It is nighttime and it is late, for dark comes late to this northern preserve.

We have joined people of the Blackfoot Nation who gather in their own local celebration of this national day of revolution remembering.  They too, I am surprised to know, celebrate and do so with the same fireworks I know so well from back east.

The fireworks are set off by the volunteer fire department in the middle of the large circle of trucks as children run and play and elders sit and watch from their lawn chairs.

We are all huddled with heavy coats and scarves – this is July, this is Montana and we are on the Blackfeet Reservation, which surrounds Many Glacier Park where we spend our summer.

We are welcomed into the circle with smiles.

***

July 4, Adulthood   The family gathers itself up and heads to the City Park to lay on the grass and watch fireworks.  Year in, year out, it is the same, with only the changes in the kids marking the passage of time.  Then there was the year when one of the rockets didn’t go quite high enough and debris rained down on us – trust breached, that was the end of the trek to City Park.

***

July 4, Childhood   It was only once, I think – mostly inferred from my mother’s telling of the story – that we went into the District and observed the fireworks on the mall lawn with many thousands of our neighbors.  I think I was 5.  I remember lying in the grass.  I remember being impatient.  I remember the ooohs and aaaahs of the light show in the sky.  I remember feeling safe.  I remember not being afraid of the night.  I guess it took us hours to get there and back, but I don’t remember that part.  What I remember is the magic.  Childhood blessing.

***

I love fireworks.  I have seen them from above in an airplane over Turkey.  I have seen them in my aunt’s back yard and at the drive-in movies and at the Jersey shore.  And somehow, it is the fireworks that most symbolize July 4th to me – and it’s not the rockets’ red glare I call to mind, but the people I was with, the night skies I witnessed, the grass I smelled, the family I carry with me always.  Maybe that’s what country is, when you get right down to it.

I Came Too Late for Your Good Times

I hear you tell
of the good old
days – not so
long past that I
couldn’t have
been there myself . . .

the days when parties
were had and friends
were visited and lives
were touched and the
young were taught and
care was given and life
was good and

I realize
I missed it all
for I came too
late to all your
good times

and all you and I
are left with are
dreams of memories
past that we did not
share because I came
too late

***

Postscript: Written when I was particularly struck that I had missed the many good times the folks at the church I serve have experienced as part of their past.  Last night, a group of us played bridge together and I had to laugh as I thought there will come a day when we will say together, “Remember when we used to get together on Monday nights and play bridge?  Remember that time when . . .?”  Past might be prologue, but it’s also wrapped up in present and future.  And so it goes.