Month: November 2013

Deeply Grateful

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For a husband who will sing loudly off-key along with the performers of the Macy’s parade, because he loves to make our kids laugh and engage them.

For scattered puzzle pieces that need a family of fingers to make sense of them.

For chives that add just a little something to potatoes.

For a spilled glass of water, because it means I have a little girl who will come tell me in her sweet, three-year-old voice what happened.

For the musical sounds of announcers and fans and helmets against helmets.

For laughter, the kind from the gut.

For hairy teeth, because it means I’ve eaten way too much sugar, and I’ve never really wanted for anything.

For exhaustion, because it means my day, my life is full.

For shoes on the floor and smears on the sliding glass door, because it means I have kids, and they’ll leave traces of themselves.

For lotion, because my hands get so dry this time of year.

For squiggly, fake spiders, because they challenge my son to be brave.

For a beard that makes me appreciate a smooth face.

For a pillow, every night, since the day I started using one.

For a group of people who stared persecution in the eye, who were ready to die for freedom, and who changed everything by seeking out this amazing country.

For a Savior that has given me what I do not deserve.

For all this and more, I am deeply grateful.

“When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.” 

                                                                               -G. K. Chesterton                                                                                       

               

  

Worth It

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Dizzy with anticipation, he drives the car under log beams that look as if they defined the word “lodge.”

There’s a lot of hype over a planned weekend away. We say goodbye to our normal routine and our little ones who will gorge themselves on grandparental spoils. For a few days we sleep. Actually sleep, until we cannot sleep anymore. We eat when we please, like breakfast at 10:30 a.m. and without dropping platefuls of food on restaurant floors; we speak full sentences in an absence of tugs on our pants or burps in our ears. We do, what we want. 

My cheeks were still cold from walking in. “Just two,” I told the long blonde hair in glasses at the counter. I wanted to add, Can I tell you we’ve left three of us at home, on purpose? 

“OK, I have you in a King, Mountain View, for two nights.”
Pinch. Me. “Yes.”

Our room key was an actual key and much more charming than the bright, blue, accordion ribbon attached as a bracelet. My knee-high boots clanked on hardwood through the lobby with a roaring fireplace and a view so other-worldly I couldn’t soak it in enough. It was the same view out the wood slatted shutters in our room.

“Where should we eat?”
Anywhere. Everywhere. Twice. “Let me check Tripadvisor,” I said, pulling out my phone with finger smudges. 

Oh, Tripadvisor. We have become quite close the two of us. You should really be named something much more honorable like, Salvation Reviews or, What Not to Eat or simply, My Precious Guide for not Picking the Jamaican Dive Who Will be Out of Business the Next Time I Visit that Serves Pasta (?) Under Green and Black and Yellow Lights and Sees the Same Two Patrons Every Night at the Bar. You know, something like that.

We wanted something a little more…digestive, if you will.

Deciding to opt out of Rasta Pasta, we picked a highly acclaimed burger place. Our hands reached out over a speckled concrete bar and we relaxed with a Tequila and cinnamon hot chocolate, which the waitress recommended and I, do not.

All was hunky dory. We were dancing, romancing, financing.

Later, when I ignored the clock and drifted to sleep I could feel cold hit my neck, so I pulled up the covers. I tossed and drifted and still, the chill. I grabbed the extra blanket and settled back in. But there it was again, sneaking it’s way to my core.
This stupid blanket, I thought. It isn’t cozy. It’s like Berber carpet. How am I supposed to wrap carpet around my shoulders?
I looked to the other side of the bed.
And how can he be sleeping so soundly in this icebox? Doesn’t he feel the wind as it literally whistles through the windows?
I warmed only with anger.

Fifty. Five. Degrees. That’s what the thermostat told us by morning.  

“Hey, has anyone ever complained about the heating in room One-Oh-Eight?” Chase asked the morning shift. So respectful. It was good that he was taking care of the situation. I wouldn’t have phrased things in quite the same manner. 
“Yes actually.” I think he was shaking a little. I felt sorry for him. A little. “The mechanic is on his way. We’re having trouble with the whole first floor system.” He looked out the front door more than once. Poor chap. 

Breakfast was cold. Brushing our teeth was cold. Dressing was cold. My heart was growing cold.

We spent the day like the tourists we were. We walked through homes from the 1800’s, learned the influence of a slave and a naturalist. We had lunch by a rowdy group of college students who knew everything, were phased by nothing, and talked like surfers. We ordered coffee, watched the sun slide behind ski runs, and compared the different snow suits we liked. Until it was time to head back to our room.

Please, for the sake of that dear, scared boy in the lobby, let the heat be on.

Fifty. Five. Degrees.

Oh. Oh my stars. And freaking garters.

The mechanic was called. “Well we got the heat working this morning but I’ll take a look,” he said. With his digital thermostat he checked the numbers by the floorboards. “Wow, it’s over a hundred degrees on this side. It’s working but sometimes these older systems take a while so give it about an hour and it should be better.” Old system, makes sense. I’m still skeptical. 

Two hours later, Fifty. Nine. Degrees.

I was marching at this point. Knees to my chest, jaw jutted, marching.

“Our room is at fifty-nine degrees and I want some serious compensation for this.”

If I were camping? No problem. I’d expect to be that cold. Colder, in fact. But for what we were paying, no. Nuh-uh.

“Absolutely. I can definitely get you one night comp’d if not two. For now, let me get you a couple space heaters.” 
“Thank you very much.” And they better work.

 This is marriage. We plan, we form expectations. We don’t just vow to love and cherish, we vow not to do marriage the way our parents did. We promise that no matter what, we’ll work it out. We anticipate that the years will hold arguments, hard days, sure. But nothing can break the bond we have formed. We’ll do it right.

Until the room gets cold and the repairs aren’t working. All of a sudden it’s not so hard to see why someone would want to move to another floor find a nicer hotel.

We woke up on the last morning warm. Hot, even. In our haste to have heat we had turned up the knobs a little much. 
We stayed until there was a solution. One that included an apology, a refund, and a will to try something else. Something, that worked. 

Our weekend didn’t go as we thought. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth it. And if we hadn’t stuck it out, we wouldn’t have known that it could get warm again.  
  

 

 

Old Stigmas Die Hard

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Artificial lemon scent threatens to make me gag. It’s like the cleaner I’d smell as I walked the sterile halls of grade school. Only it was orange then. And not freshly picked. More like freshly puked. I always knew when someone had because that’s when the air got pungent with citrus.

The Ford dealer’s lobby I’m in seems nearly as antiseptic, except there’s a concoction of oil and rubber with it. Which is better somehow. Less…vomit…y.
I don’t want to be here but I brought my bag of goodies, so I can endure. This leather chair is much more comfortable than the plastic one I chose at first. There’s greenery, plants and trees to fool me into thinking the cold tile environment is actually homey. It isn’t, I’m sorry to say. No inviting space has professional grade floor mats and silver auto shades hanging on their walls. I’m onto you.
The gray t-shirt with the Ford emblem isn’t even tempting me. In fact, I feel like I’m breaking a rule just by being here. Where I come from, make of vehicle is religion.

“You ain’t ever gonna park a Ford in my drive.”

Which is why my husband made it into the family. OK, he’s also incredibly likable, respectful, and was initially intimidated by my dad. But his white, lifted Chevy definitely earned him extra credit. Even with the tinted windows.

Chase and I buy Toyotas now. Exclusively. So we’re safe from the trenches of battle. Though honestly speaking, I think he’s grown; my dad that is. We gave him grandkids, and that just covers a multitude of sins.

My legs are crossed casually and through office calls and employee chatter I can hear country music. If I so desire I will tap into Wi-Fi and get a cup of burned decaf. I might consider the auto shade but the t-shirt is no temptation.
Old stigmas die hard. I guess Ford and I can be friends now. And friends don’t let other friends smell like lemon and bile. We can work through this.
Just don’t tell my dad yet. I’ll break it to him slowly.

Boy That Would Be Embarrassing

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My face is the color of a clown nose as I stand before a first-grade teacher who towers me with her black high heels. A seemingly odd choice for a day of field trip pandemonium to the local dump. I second-guess my flats, thinking perhaps I am being too cautious.
Nope. No I’m not. It’s trash. Loads of it. What is she thinking?

These mornings when I have to forgo the usual running shorts I don’t run in and mismatched ankle slippers I hide beneath the steering wheel of the carpool line, I perform my own circus act. I juggle Cheetos and freezer packs and vitamins and disciplines over wrestling matches and the long lost partner of more than one pair of Converse tennis shoes. 
So I’m feeling quite proud as I walk into the classroom with coffee and a go-get-’em attitude, on time.

A week earlier I had texted my mother-in-law.
“Hey, any chance you’re free next Wednesday to watch the little one?”
I give her the drop-off, pick-up, nap, and lunch rundown. The next day I’m texting again.
“Oh Renee. I have too many schedules. The field trip is Thursday. Are you free then?” 
Whew, that was close. How embarrassing it would have been to show up the wrong day.

With pride I’m reflecting, standing among the masses of dirty fingernails and all that is elementary. Not only am I a scarved goddess, I’ve gotten everything in it’s place. All the kids, all the brown bags with our names written in Sharpie, myself, and with minutes to spare. I can hear applause if I listen closely. 

Scanning the room I wonder who the lucky ones will be. I mean, when this day is over I will have made my son the cool kid. It’s a known fact through the third grade classes that I am a ringmaster when it comes to these kinds of things. Oh yes. I simply crack the whip of Simon Says, let them pick a team name for the day, and they become but sleepy lions in my hand.
Lions, nonetheless who ultimately will never be tamed on the bus ride back. Ah well, I do what I can. 

He comes up to me head first, tears right on the edge. I know this face, the one burrowed in my stomach. Sometimes it’s over a bad dream, other times it’s that someone we love has moved on to a better place. And sometimes it’s when he’s seen the calendar says the field trip is next Thursday.

You know those movies with the endings that play back all the clues you’ve been seeing yet missing for two hours to reveal a grand finale and final piece of the puzzle?
The black high heels, the absence of other chaperones, the slow cadence of her steps as she pushes her way through the incessant tellings of first grade innocence. Everything is rushing at me in a torrent and I can feel my complexion getting hotter. The scarf is much too much now.

“It’s not field trip day, is it?”

And in her mind she was probably saying, “What is she thinking?”

 

 

 

Here Goes Nothing, and Everything

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Come to me words.

Chapter one, first draft (a.k.a awful and little of it will remain).

Deep breaths, in and then out.

You over-50 Chatterboxes a table away, this is the quiet zone of the library and I have panic attacks to deal with. Shush.

Bibles and Rainbow Stickers

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We try to know what you know.

We watch Tom Hanks carry a rifle around sandbag barracks and Ben Affleck fly fighter jets with accuracy and passion. But it doesn’t tell the whole story. And we’re a little scared to think about it.  

What wet in the boots feels like as you lace them.
How lonely it is in the cold, lonely night of a different country with different smells and unfamiliar languages.
What you feel when you see the friend that is “closer than a brother” get hurt, or worse.
What it means to you to pin emblems on your chest, eat food you don’t like, live with a gun and a crew cut, wipe the tears of scared foreigners, and hold the word “freedom” as close to your heart as the picture of your loved ones at home.
The way you come back and nothing is the same, and you don’t know yourself in civility, and you can’t sleep without a knife under your pillow. 
How it is to experience the pride that you are part of squelching evil in the world and protecting us back here.

We know we can carry Bibles and rainbow stickers.
We know we can attend church, overstuff our grocery carts, walk down sidewalks at noon or jump in a leaf pile.
We know we can start businesses, shoot fireworks, plant gardens, drink beer, and say “Amen.”
We know the kind of worry that draws us to our knees for you while you’re gone.
We know the same, deep ache you feel while we’re apart.
We know greater good that’s at stake if you don’t go.

And all we can say is thank you. From the bottom of our self-indulgent latte cups, thank you.

Blood Red Stops the Dancing

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The empty rows behind me cause an uncontrollable dance in my shoulders. No one can interrupt me and so I am blaring guitar strums, fiddles, drums, the likes of Florida Georgia Line and Jason Aldean. I have roughly 40 minutes of whatever I want. It is hick-ish bliss and I am swept away in all sorts of undignified.

Until traffic stops. Unlike many who deal with this every day, I am excited. Something has happened. I may have to cancel my appointment or, like not arrive on time, and with a story.

In the cars next to me hands ball into fists and hold heads, people are on their phones. I am too (don’t tell my dad) because this is news. I attempt to sound lackadaisical in my texts.
“Yeah, I may not make it. The highway is STOPPED.”
As if it is such a bother.

Night quietly spills around me and soon I am in a sea of red, taillights everywhere blinking like signals at an intersection as we ebb and flow. Red, like blood that could be all over crunched metal ahead.

I remember going into labor with each of my kids. Pain that had me buckling on all fours at the top of my stairs, relief that I would actually be free of heartburn again. I remember the hospital and how it felt when our little ones arrived. Always a sterile room, lots of people, my husband giddy. The nurses, they became family, checking every couple of hours to see if I needed water, holding me steady while I tried to walk, getting eye to eye with me so that I knew their only job was to make sure I was good.
I also remember feeling like life was going on outside as normal. People were ordering coffee, meeting up for lunch dates, going to school, turning off their phones for their favorite Wednesday night T.V. shows…all while my life halted and I breathed in a new reality.  

Country music, the light of a phone reflecting on a young girl’s face checking Twitter, a semi trailing me with squeaky brakes and an engine like a jet, all the cars who were able to exit on the frontage road in time burning rubber like jailbirds, Toyotas and Fords and Chevys, and all of us who are going on with our lives. All of a sudden, I can’t dance.

Someone or their family is now breathing in a new reality.  

      

  

Feeling Squirrely

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Before the impressive computer animation my children assume has always been, there was drawing. Outlines of cartoon characters sketched over and over successively to create a “moving picture.” And there were squirrels. A blue one with a mustache and spectacles, a brown one, and two girl squirrels in love. The Sword in the Stone must be one of my favorite Disney movies. Let me give you some background if you haven’t seen it.

Set in medieval times, Marlin, a wizard, takes under his wing a scrawny orphan boy, Wart, who lives as a servant. Marlin teaches Wart all sorts scientific and life lessons through treacherous, hilarious adventures. There is a scene where they become squirrels. They roll over branches and jump limb to limb. Each of them attracts a female squirrel who grabs their cheeks and fluffs their tails. This is what I’m thinking as I lay cashews on our fencing out back.

We have a new “pet.” He has claimed our yard ever since the kids convinced me to put nuts out for him. Now he comes in the morning shaking his tail and hopping over grass in demand of what he knows we keep.

Picking up the horn shaped-treat in his little paws, he nibbles and examines before running back to his home, wherever that might be. We like to add voice-overs of what he’s saying in his head.
“Gimme, gimme, gimme!”

I wasn’t sure he’d take our offering since the kind of trail mixes we buy are usually salted. Now I think I’m responsible for his high LDL, or is it HDL, or VLDL, or HGTV? Oh LOL. Forget it.

 

Seamtress I Am Not

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Red, white, and blue, she brings me the scraps of material she’s haphazardly cut for her stuffed puppy.

“Mom, will you sew Heart Pup a dress?”

She has a long rectangular piece, two slivers for straps, and a shiny red strip for an accent belt. If this girl doesn’t grow up to do something in design I’ll be shocked.

My mother-in-law is a master seamstress. She could be the Betsy Ross of our time.

And I am just the opposite.

“I’m not promising anything, Sweets. If you want, you could take it to Nana.”
“Please, can we just try?”
“We’ll see.” My attempt to appease her and avoid any commitment for the time being. Which really means, based on my mood later it could as easily be a “yes” as it could a “no.” We. Will. See.

She caught me at a good time. Daddy took the boy with him while he played volleyball so it was us girls for the night. Dinner was cleaned up (it’s too bad the man who invented paper plates is dead because I’d kiss him), the house was moderately calm…”OK, sure. But don’t get your hopes up.”

“What does that mean, get my hopes up?”
“Like, don’t count on it being what you expect. It very well may not be. Like, it probably won’t.”
“Oh. Well, I’m still excited.”

I pull out the needles, dust them off, and find some thread. I don’t care the color. She won’t either. My only goal is to get these pieces to stick together and while I’m eyeballing the thread into that stupid, tiny hole I’m contemplating where the glue might be.
I loop, knot. It isn’t pretty but it’s working.

I remind her, “Even if I get it together, it may not stay.”
“That’s what I’m worried about.” When did she grow up so much?
I poke myself, get tangled in the loose lines, and will whoever is singing Kumbaya in my ear please stop.
The moment of truth comes when I try to slide this uneven, frayed, hot mess of a dress on my daughter’s dearest friend.

I’m happy to report, it fits, it’s hideous, she knows and still loves it, we didn’t have the stamina for the belt, and Nana will never see this. Ever.

I’m Avoiding Muffin Top

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Complete with the plaid vest he likes so much and the boots I can’t stop wearing, I walk up to a mirror.

The one in my bathroom, the one I’m peering into, deceives me. Daily. It has bad lighting, and on many occasions I am fooled to think I have a warmer complexion than I actually do or that I’ve gotten all those pesky eyebrow hairs when in fact, I have not because my car mirror tells the truth.
I check my hair, squeezing it at the crown of my head to give it volume that will evade by the time I come back later to take out my contacts. I gaze over my clothes to make sure there isn’t toilet paper hanging out the back of my jeans or apple juice on my shoulder from the kids. I’ve chosen gold, hoop earrings fit for a party I won’t attend and layers of shirts that avoid all resemblance of muffin top. I hope.

For well over a decade I have gone through this ritual. My husband and I have never stopped dating each other. And I don’t know that I could survive marriage or parenting without this night so sacredly carved from our weeks.
We’ve been met with everything from, “I can’t hear this. I don’t know the last time we had a date,” to, “Good for you. That’s so important.”

In a way I thought this one simple act would keep us from drifting, losing each other to life, would ward off anything bad happening. Now I realize it’s what gets us through the rough.

Standing at the sink to take a final glance I start to wonder about the way I have parted my hair on the same side since I was in middle school. I think about how I’ve cut it short, grown it long, and cut it again. The length has changed but the swoop it makes across my forehead, the ever-splitting ends, it’s framing against my cheeks has stayed constant.
It is me, and I begin to worry that he’ll get tired of it. Of me. How can one man love and devote to one woman for eventually more years than he’s done anything else? It stands to reason that when this body starts to wear out, so will he.

But then I turn it around. I remember that his hair still follows the curve of his head, short near his ears blending to long up top, like it has since I met him. His ears hold the same shape, his shoulders still fill out a medium sized shirt. He walks with his feet slightly inward, something I’ve always found charming, and when he speaks an “r” there is the faintest curl.

My gray strands mirror his and it’s in my own reflection that I begin to understand. This is how it works, this lifelong relationship thing. At the deep crevices of the wrinkles we are forming together is a history, a familiarity that cannot be touched. Not another person knows what it felt like the first time he kissed me in the freezing air by the college parking lot. No one else held my hand in the delivery room while we met each of our children for the first time. Those fears, disappointments, victories and sorrows we talk about when we can barely keep consciousness from the exhausting pace of three? That’s ours alone.

“Will you love me when I have turkey-neck?”
“Oh, I’ll love you even more.”

Let the sagging commence.