Month: April 2014

Rotten Eggs

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“You hard-boiled a carton of eggs,” he says as if we’re in the opening act of a 90’s sitcom.

“Yeah.” I want to smile so badly at what’s coming, but refrain in the off chance I’m wrong.

“I went to crack one open and I was like, ‘Whoa, this egg is rotten.'”

Can you see it? The underneath of a pat of butter starting to melt and slide across the warm pan. His anticipation of all the ingredients coming together in a sizzle. The salivating and hunger pains. And then the repulsion, maybe even a hint of worry that one he’s chosen should have ended up at the local country store under a heat lamp instead of our fridge.

Well, it is the day before Easter, dear.
The smile comes. Because I was right, and it is so delicious.

“Keep Back Nothing”

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“Your real, new self (which is Christ’s and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him.

Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality  will ever be original whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

The principle runs through all life from top to bottom, Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay.

But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”  -C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

There is nothing for me to add except to say…brilliant. And also, maybe that we should incorporate “twopence” back into our common conversations.

The Twitter Bird Looks Innocent Enough

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So, I suck at Lent.

The Twitter bird who looks innocently like it belongs in a baby nursery, ensconced in a sky-blue background, the one I had allowed to grip me with talons until I couldn’t see the loneliness of life. The status bar of Facebook consuming my every spare moment, and all the tough parenting I wanted to escape.

The goal was to release these things that had begun to choke out my capacity for what played right in front of me.

Oh, but then someone stole the blanket that someone else used the week before and had apparently claimed for all eternity. And someone small is getting her own opinions so that the slightest injustice warrants every octave of screams while she rolls around her chocolate brown bedding. Still someone is stressed by taking over a new business and needs, needs my support to pick up the slack at home.

Save me, columns of recipes with various cheese, and witty comments of friends. Fill, you blogs about love that I will repost so I and my list of contacts will know I mean well. Just do not require me to actually change my life. Let me read about good mothers while I have everyone in timeout. Draw me out of my reality while they draw blood.

I count my “likes,” check who notices my updates, write another so that attention will tell me my value.

And forever, I come up empty.

Frankly, what is up with social media? Why do we love it? Why do we always, always keep checking? What makes us obsessed to the point we are dropping a line about how we found lint in our belly button (Ew.), or saw a man with three heads (I hope not.)?  We want to be funny, we want to be clever, smart. But more than anything we want to be known. I understand that some of you hang in the shadows, never posting and constantly browsing. We know you’re out there with your tentative “likes,” and your quiet online wanderings. We feel your presence and deep down, I think you also want connection.

I started to research this question. As it turns out there is a physiological response to telling the world about our constipated poodle. (Again, ew.)

“Through a series of experiments, the researchers at Harvard University learned through a study that the act of disclosing information about oneself activates the same part of the brain that is associated with the sensation of pleasure, the same pleasure that we get from eating food, getting money, or even having sex.” -Lance Brown, WTWH

Well. That helps explain a few things.

And like food, money, or sex, social media can become unhealthy when not moderated or used in context. Lovely. (Me, over here. My scrolling is out of control.) 

I started to scramble to the computer with fervor, ready to wipe out all my accounts when I countered my own thought. What if I approached social media differently? What if some lonely soul out there needs to know they aren’t isolated in their belly lint predicaments? Or what if, as I posted this week, we did more I see you instead of I need you to see me? What if social media is our opportunity for good and not just a place to gain self-esteem. As if that ever works anyway.

“MRI studies have revealed that when we perform an act of kindness, the brain’s reward center is aroused and we experience feelings of pleasure.” -curiosity.discovery.com

 Huh.

And hear me, there is nothing wrong with posting ridiculousness. I happen to have deep, and reverent appreciation for goof. I’m just thinking about my own heart. My own sense of loneliness, how my worth plays into this, what I can do to offer versus what I can do to feel better. I think we all have a personal journey to question when it comes to what we write, post, or comment. So much I have regretted, so much I have learned.

How much more good I could do if I choose.
Kids, timeout is over. Let’s go play outside.

Love Beatings and Face Squeezes

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Her colorless complexion is the first thing I notice when we enter.
My youngest daughter is leading me, her supplies of books and colors and printed pages of princesses and her purse all scrambled about coated arms. She’s every bit of girly I wasn’t. Sure, I could appreciate a red-headed Mermaid, the haunting songs of a beautiful blonde who touched a spinning wheel at sixteen. I liked pink, enough. But this girl I get to raise, the one who tries to boss me around, she goes far beyond whatever capacity I had for priss at her age. It’s fantastic fun.  

“Hi Grandma,” I say on behalf of both of us.
“Oh hi, Sweetheart.” Her voice swells and dips in the timbre she reserves for her family. If she wasn’t in a hospital bed she’d be heading straight for my kidneys, patting them until they were loose pinballs lighting up points. She’s known for this gesture. I may have even blogged about it before. You’re “in,” if Grandma makes your organs sore.

We settle. Well, the little one unloads her suitcase of “at-all-times-needed items” and I put my purse out of the way.

“How are you?” As the words come out I put an easy hand on her shin, a mound beneath blankets.
“I’m mad.” And I chuckle. It’s just so Grandma.
“Yeah, why?” She’s chuckling too, one of her greatest qualities. Laughing at herself. I take a second to make a mental note to be so spunky in my old age.
“They just came in a did a test and said I might not go home. And this morning I got up and showered, put together my things, because they said I would go home.” 

Her shoes sit parallel on the couch as if the second the nurses turn their heads the shoes will be running, with her in them.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” 
Crooked fingers comb the top of her head. “I guess there’s still fluid around my heart, but that’s what they’ve been working on.” The fingers fly out and her words end in a bite. “I don’t understand why they can’t figure it out.”
“Ugh, that is frustrating.” 

“It’s snowing!” my daughter yells through bites of cheese. Her snack was in the purse.

For the next hour we visit. I take the occasional break to hear comments from the pee-wee peanut gallery about varying shades of purple, or to quiet feet that need to tap.
I ask about family news, knowing that will brighten even her worst of days.

At one point she stops in exasperation. “I mean I’m almost 83.” As in, enough already. Time to get on with the whole dying thing because she doesn’t have any patience for the hospital scene.

Please, God, when I’m hooked to drip bag and I’m nearing a century, let me sass like that. I beg of You.

“Hopefully if you have to stay tonight it will be your last.” (I probably should have been more precise in meaning that she wouldn’t have to be in a hospital, not last night..ever.)  

“Yes, that’s right.” Her Christian upbringing and vintage values tell her to be grateful. I hear the way she’s forcing it. But she’s adorably still ticked off.  

One word begins to connect to the next. In this room that is as shadowed as the parking lot out her window, I see a nap reaching for her. It’s more than a nap, though. She’s weary, this woman whom we forget to call, who comes to our football parties content to watch us more than the sport and sip a Diet Coke. Her time is about done while we keep busying ourselves with all the things that will also discard us when we get old.

A loud, relentless thought grabs me in that moment: she needs to be hugged, touched by another. How her arms likely ache to wrap around a fellow soul. How her cheek might want to brush another cheek. How long it’s been since she’s bruised our sides with her love beatings.
No longer does her husband, his body tucked in a grave next to her plot, come home with a kiss.
Much less often, and with weak knees, does she steal an embrace from one of her grandbabies.
For the rest of her days, she’ll sleep alone.

The fistful of crayons that are the “chosen” few are thrown back into the bag. We bundle up for the cold. We gather the stacks of papers that sneak to the floor as Little One chatters and sings and chatters.

I wonder if she wonders as the goodbye is nearing, if we’ll do more than say it. If we’ll show it.

“By Grandma. Love you.” I squeeze her face against mine. “Take care of you.”
“Thanks for coming, Sweetheart.” She loves so much, even those of us who simply married into her big brood. “Tell Chase hi. Love you.”

Hours later I am looking both ways and beginning to merge onto the street where we live when my phone beeps for me.
“Hi Grandma.”
“I just had to tell you that another doctor came in and said I could go home.”

I cheer. With abandon.