Month: December 2013

Not Enough Spit

Posted by

0

Earthy, a mixture of grass and dirt and sun and let’s face it, manure. That’s what I smell when I’m near a farm. It awakens my senses and pulls me alive. If someone could formulate this into a wax, I would wear galoshes and burn it. I would.

I think horses smell delightful as well.

Did camels? In the dust and sweat of the desert thousands of years ago, did camels emanate this kind of aroma?
I love their lips, horses and camels alike. They are soft in a way that no baby bottom can compare. I’ve run my fingers along their noses, felt the warm exhale as they breathe. It is a risk, this petting of 6 foot, 1,000 pound beasts. Camels bite.

Steel is quite a contrast to this. In early centuries it would have been bone or wood. I’m talking about sewing needles. (Can I pause and just mention that whittling something so small out of bone is incredible. A work ethic unknown in our day.) Now they range from a couple inches to half the length of a ruler. The eye, that stupid opening where a slobbery piece of thread never fits, can be as large as 6 mm. Or 0.23622 inches. I don’t know what this means except to say, teeny.

My feet are propped on a folding chair that doesn’t belong to a table. The wreath on my auburn front door is twingling in the glare of sunshine because it’s mid-morning and I haven’t taken time to unplug it. Debris from Christmas still abounds, and I’m letting cartoons play much too long. Because my heart is landing in the sands of the Holy Land.

“Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

– Matthew 19:24 NASB

It can’t happen. One thousand pounds, fitted through six millimeters. All the spitting in the world wouldn’t get that thing slick enough to slide into a hole like that. It’s hopeless. 

But I just need the new model of the 4Runner because if we’re spending that kind of money and keeping it forever, I certainly don’t want to start out with an older body style. 
And my decorations are looking their age because all that we got after our vows is telling a decade-old story and I do not want get stuck in a rut.
Oh, and that bank statement needs higher numbers in the balance column without sacrificing my addiction to overpriced, delicious, so-worth-it coffee. 

“Gimme, gimme, gimme. I need, I need, I need.”

– Bill Murray, What About Bob  

It’s the mantra of America. And I’m guilty of it too.

I write in my journal questions I’d rather not answer. It’s painful to go here.
What is my camel? My eye? What feels like an overwhelming impossibility? 

-finishing a book that seems so beyond my capability
-walking back into relationships that seem dangerous, where heartache has not been absent
-a country that is truly free
-a garden, a shed, a house with a walk-around porch, and kids throwing footballs and sarcastic slurs with their daddy on acreage that is enough to stretch out but still close to town
-telling my personal story
-holding hands with a woman who has recently found a safe place to sleep and a warm meal, and wants someone to shed tears with her
-accepting my deteriorating body, my outdated clothes, my less-than-modern “stuffs” as my youngest says

If He asked me to give things up, could I?
If He asked me to go after it all with abandon, would I?
Am I willing either way?

“And looking at them Jesus said to them, ‘With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.'”

-Matthew 19:26 NASB

Giddyup.

 

 

 

Sex? You Won’t Believe It. Worth the Wait.

Posted by

0

Every speaker of the car, in every row, is singing carols. I’m even gladly enduring The Carpenters who start to wear on me after 23 days of jolly. But we’re on break for the holidays and there’s a freedom I can’t escape.

“Say whoop, whoop if you’re excited for Christmas!”
“Me! I am the most!” they all say.

Except for my oldest who is being blasé with lips around a drinkable applesauce.

“Let’s try that again.”
With glorious fist-bumps I repeat it.
“Me! I am the most! Me.”

Fine.

We are bobbing our heads, I am speeding a little.

“Mom?” asks my son.
“Yeah?”
“Do you know how to French kiss?”

I may have swerved. It’s a bit of a blur.

“Yeah buddy, I do. How did you hear about it?”
“A kid at school told me.”
“Oh? What is it?”
“When you stick your tongue in someone’s mouth.”

Keep. Calm. Remember to use an even tone. And breathe.
I mean, I probably knew about this at six. Did I?
He’s six!

“Yep, you’re right.”
“They said they knew how.”

Is that right?

“A kid in your class has done this?”
“No, they just know how.”

I can begin to see the lines on the road once more. Consciousness is returning.

“I’ve only done that with Daddy. It’s something you do when you’re older.” Like on your 50th birthday. Maybe. “You’ll love it. When you’re older.” Did I mention to him that he’ll need to be older?

Chase and I have made it a point to remove any shame with matters like these.
Your body? It’s wonderful. Save it like a present.
Sex? You won’t believe it. Worth the wait.
French kissing? You’ll be amazed at how long you can do this activity when it’s new. Be very selective.

It’s probably a good thing he’s in the seat behind me, his face blocked by my headrest. He’s my blusher, my giggler.

Dear boy, keep being bashful. Stay innocent for as long as you can.

How Foolish to Think I Didn’t Want This

Posted by

0

This 3 a.m. snack was not planned. But when arms full of blankie and sippy cup need tucking back into bed, there are reevaluations of the schedule.

So here I am next to a pile of tangerine peelings. A thin shadow mimics all the strokes I make in my journal because of the glow from our Christmas tree. This most sacred of symbols is a collage of hot glue and stickers, things I swore I’d never let hang in the branches. I can see through wide gaps of fake needles, straight to a trunk that is smaller in circumference than the body of our floor lamp. (On a side note, do designers of artificial trees think that the wrapping of garland in candy cane fashion actually disguises the pole?) Wooden and leaning, our star sits in vintage style at the peak.

When we were first married I liked the idea of uniform, of ornaments that would flow together and compliment each other. I wanted ribbon to accent perfectly and everything spaced just so. I wanted any future, gaudy adornments cast out and burned.

My kids, they have changed me.

There’s a little bear with a stocking cap and a polka dot number “2”. Glitter and a picture of my youngest dressed as a star at her preschool. Three blocks covered in mod podge and sanded on the edges with three faces I will someday grieve not being here during this season. One green footprint askew a glossy ball, a reminder that small was here once but doesn’t last.
Some of them are clustered together and all on the bottom row of limbs. “HOPE” is actually hanging as “EPOH” and “PEACE”  as “ECAEP.” A select candy cane also near the floor, has been handled. It is broken and pulled through the plastic packaging in great attempt to just smell the sweetness but not taste. Yet.

How foolish to think I didn’t want this.

Welcome homemade decorations, you are like pages in a book. And I’m a sucker for a good story.

You Are Gold

Posted by

0

Tissue paper brighter than a Christmas tree at night is spilling out the gift bag. Her youngest cries and reaches high, and her first grader would be in school if pinkeye wasn’t threatening to make a girl out of his eyelids.

I’m standing across the hall from her trying to empathize with how tiring it is to chaperone a field trip like her husband did yesterday. I would be tired, if I ever showed up on the right day. (See archives. Yeah, I did that.)
But what’s actually on my mind is that I’ve dropped the ball again. I have no bags, no gift cards, no bows or ribbons. No teacher presents. It is the last day before break at our preschool and my hands are empty.

I, am empty.

By the time I’m signing out in the little box marked Phone Number to Reach You, I’m angry. And I have a few good reasons why buying teachers anything at Christmas is insanity.

1. We are so ridiculously commercialized.
2. If it weren’t for me, my kid, and that check I write every month, you wouldn’t be a teacher. With an income.
3. YOU can thank ME for number 2.
4. I think I just feel guilty, and feel like I shouldn’t feel guilty, and I’ll get them something really nice at the end of the year which I never forget.
5. The point is, I am empty, not that teachers don’t deserve gifts. They deserve all manner of appreciation.

I pour out and run ragged in the name of fun. In the name of nostalgia. Even in the name of Jesus. And when I open my hands in a season that is all about giving, there’s nothing there.

But what if empty is good?

Legend tells of a man who was wealthy in every way. He had a woman by his side, countless employees, his health, lots of commodities, best friends and plenty of children with their own families. He lived, like a king.
Until his sons and daughters were kidnapped and his employees stabbed. Until a fire burned through his commodities. Until those kidnapped children were trapped and killed inside a crumbling building. Until his skin was so sore that he was in pain around the clock. Until his best friends told him it was all his fault.

What do you offer when you are void of everything? When the holidays aren’t jolly and you just want to crawl into a quiet cave and eat all Santa’s cookies yourself? When the New Year reminds you of the last one: arduous, lonely, unexpected?

“When He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold.”

-Job 23: 10

My emptiness, is my gift.
What can I offer you this year? I don’t have it all together. I forget teacher gifts, sometimes deliberately. I carry loneliness on a weekly basis.
There are days my hair is greasy, I yell about jeans hanging lopsided on footboards, my marriage isn’t always a fairy tail, and that shopping list is just too long with a bank account a bit too short.
All this life, this difficult, desolate life is refining something precious.

“Then, opening their treasures, they presented to Him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.”

-Matthew 2:11

What happened to the man in the story? He got it all back, twofold.

My Puzzler Is Sore Too

Posted by

0

Sometimes, I just have to go back to the classics and really see the words.

“And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow,

Stood puzzling and puzzling: ‘How could it be so?

‘It came without ribbons! It came without tags!

‘It came without packages, boxes, or bags!’

And he puzzled three hours, till his puzzler was sore.

Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before!

‘Maybe Christmas,’ he thought, ‘doesn’t come from a store.

‘Maybe Christmas…perhaps…means a little bit more!'”

                                                                -Dr. Suess

Angelic Nudists

Posted by

0

Down two flights of stairs and into the living room, she is completely unfazed by her own nudity.

“I can’t find jammies.” She is whining and sprawling and we are blushing at our own offspring. And laughing.

I often ask my kids, “What if Dad and I acted the way you are acting right now?”

I’m here to tell you, if Chase were to do this every time he was frustrated, he’d get whatever he wanted just so the act of disgrace would end.

How are kids so unashamedly comfortable in their own skin?

I suppose nudist colonies would be similar. But where would the personal boundaries start and stop? How does one determine what is appropriate and what isn’t? I don’t think I’d survive long in one, assuming I could ever get past my own moral code. Which I can’t.

It makes me wonder about the trusting, free nature of children. And about “faith like a child.” Humanity began in nudity. Unashamed, free, out there nudity. And it was beautiful.

I wonder if we’ll just be a bunch of undressed innocents in heaven. It might be worth the surrender to get there, just to find out.

 

12 Years Married

Posted by

0

wedding photo
A humble Christmas tree, my bare feet. Our parents, his sisters, and a marriage license.

Today is my 12th wedding anniversary.

If you are doing the math you know that I am still 29 years old…and that means yes, I was 17 when I spoke my vows and signed my name. My new name.
I can tell you what led to this unconventional decision, except I don’t think it’s all that important. Nope, I wasn’t knocked up as I’m sure plenty of our friends at our tiny college suspected. Honestly, how many of you reading this were waiting for the bump?

I’d like to write the line: I said yes and never looked back. But that would be a lie. I have indeed looked back. Was I too young? Too naïve? Too ignorant or immature? Eh, perhaps. Did I really know what I was committing to?
Do any of us?

Twelve years is long enough to have some fights. Ones that feel like you are both communicating with a glass on your mouth so that you can’t get your point across nor hear what your partner is saying.
Twelve years is long enough to like each other, despise each other, and like each other again several dozen times.
Twelve years is long enough to make mistakes, memories, and history.

Previews blared inside a dark theater the weekend we got married. Our first movie as husband and wife. I looked back thinking, I will never, ever do this with another man (well, boy).
Packing boxes, a one-year old, and a six-month ripe belly holding our second child, and I looked back wondering, will I know myself apart from these roles?
Tears cut down our cheeks like rivers and I looked back to question if I’d chosen wrong.

I’ve loved every good and bad movie with him since.
This house that was supposed to be a rental investment has been the home where we’ve raised our children and grown as a couple.
Those tears have hurt us and healed us.

If I never look back, I would never have to answer my own question. Is this what I want, truly?
Every time, I do.

Why This Day Matters

Posted by

0

Yesterday, December 5th, is as gone as the life of a pig farmer who nearly changed my life.

Brown, plaid, and in every house in America in the 80’s was the chair where I clung to my mom and tried to understand why my daddy wasn’t coming back. It is my earliest memory, and the start of my changing family.

My dad remarried and we became a split unit of four with weekends divvied up and holidays traded.
This was my worldview until about fourth grade. The year a flame-haired boy brought a condom to school and showed all of us aghast and giggling 10-year olds in the back of the room by the books what they actually looked like: gross. The year my best friend in class got glasses and I became recklessly jealous to the point of lying at my eye exam soon after. The year I first became self-conscious about my growling stomach before lunch, especially sitting next to Flame-Hair who seemed eons ahead in all things worldly and mature.

But it was also the year my mom did something quite unlike my mom. She feathered and sprayed her bangs, gathered her courage, and went on a blind date. With a farmer. A, PIG farmer. 

This, of course, is my version. And this is what I know of the events.

He wasn’t what I expected, probably because he wasn’t my dad and yet was a man allowed to hold hands with my mom in the gleam of the car dashboard, kiss her around the corner far from where they thought I was standing, and with the power to bring a stock of Pepsi and Nutty Bars to our cabinets. Which wasn’t allowed ever. EVER. It was a strange series of transitions. One that scared and excited me.

I remember his moustache and how fast his mouth moved when he auctioned. I remember how he sang Garth Brooks and knew his way around a farm like a worm in the dirt. I remember fall, and driving around rural Missouri for leaves of every species on my science project list that were then sealed between old picture album pages.

I got real, authentic ropers (hick talk for boots), and a short whip for showing hogs at fair. I got sisters, and new cousins who lived just a house down the road. I got a trampoline (a moment of silence here) that I apparently knew less about than he. It only took one instance of his perfectly timed jumping to catapult me like a broken arrow straight in the air, and have me pleading for my life. I got more family.

Almost.

After school one day in December, I walked in my house to find a tissue, and my mom’s face smushed behind it. Beside her were two or three very close friends. My gut rocked and I wanted nothing more than to find an empty house with only pretzels and mustard for snacks and consecutive reruns of Save By The Bell and Full House until my mom got off work. Please, can we just do that day instead of this one?

We didn’t know he was sick. We didn’t know he’d stopped taking his medication. We didn’t know he was a prisoner of his own thoughts and that his greatest idea for relief would be a tower of hay bales and a rope. We didn’t know.

The months that followed were difficult to say the least. Books with titles like, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, started showing up around her dresser. Apples and peanut butter went on hold while she closed her hollow wooden doors and sobbed choking cries, her wedding dress limp and empty on a hanger in the closet.

No child should have to hear that. And no mother should have to be that heartbroken.

I talked to her today, nineteen years later. I’d forgotten details, she’d forgotten it was the 5th until it was already the 6th.

We are here. We did survive it. And although I don’t know what the plan would have been, or should have been, I know that I may not have had as many weekends hunting, golfing, fishing, and lazing with my dad if she’d remarried. I may not have ever gone to college at sixteen. I may never have met the one freshman student who took my breath away. I may have not changed my last name or had three kids or lived in my favorite place in the world. She may not have come on that journey with me.

So whatever the plan was, we’re okay with the new one now.

Duty Can Adulterate Passion

Posted by

2

More than one Christmas decoration sits on the floor waiting to grace our mantle, our front door, and our everyday decorations are piled together to be stored until January. I think of dinner and wonder if it would be outlandish to have a Hot and Ready pizza for the second night in a row. Quickly, I talk myself out of it though I am not above it.

It’s becoming clear why I’ve often heard from veteran mothers, “Put yourself on the list.” This Christmas schedule thing? I don’t think I’m doing it well.

Cards. Tons of cards. With snowflake borders and smiles that show only the pleasant and none of the frustration.
Fake tree needles. Everywhere on the floor.
Strands of light bulbs breaking from small shoes, not glowing after their performance last year.
A preschool program requiring something other than pajamas. Dang it. 
Croup at 1 a.m. and an unplanned ER trip with my son, contributing to the comatose-like stare I’ve carried since Thanksgiving afternoon when I ate that second helping of green bean casserole. So unhealthy, so worth it.
Bath towels becoming superhero capes well after bedtime.
Carols, which I assume are beautiful and nostalgic but I never hear above the arguing over who stole whose breakfast seat. When those familiar melodies are the backdrop to chaos, they just sound…chaotic.

Seriously disconnected from myself I curl up on the couch, my legs pulled in like a grasshopper’s. Milk turned chocolate from cereal is coagulating in the bottom of bowls on the table while warehouse-sized boxes of the food we eat in a two week period clutter the kitchen floor. And I. Don’t. Care. I’m taking this hour or I’ll never survive the next one. 

I love Christmas. Even more this year because last year it seemed too short. I love keeping Shutterfly in business, writing a recap letter, and baking homemade cookies for teachers. I love getting things for my kids because we hardly buy them anything the rest of the year. I love puzzles after waffles at my mom’s, and picture calendars for all the grandparents, and a hole-in-the-wall playhouse with actors who write their own material and have perfected the art of improv (especially when a balding man be present). I love it all.

Except I’m realizing duty can adulterate passion. And when it’s just about getting it all done, I lose what I love about this season.
So Bah, and Humbug. I’m having cocoa, a movie involving an elf who does the splits on an escalator, and perhaps a tickle fight. 
The cards? Maybe for New Years.