The Lilacs

{hanging hearts for healthcare workers}

 "Right now I want a word that describes the feeling that you get--a cold sick feeling, deep down inside--when you know something is happening that will change you, and you don't want it to, but you can't stop it. And you know, for the first time, for the very first time, that there will now be a before and an after, a was and a will be. And that you will never again quite be the same person you were."

— Jennifer Donnelly

When I was little, I remember the lilacs. They were growing against the side of our dilapidated, old garage, with large purple blooms that carried the most intense, beautiful scent my five year old self had ever experienced. I remember a feeling of intoxication with spring, with the flowers that towered over me, with the blue sky beyond them. My senses overwhelmed, it was all bigger than life and my smallness only made it all the more beautiful. Though so many parts of my childhood- ones that I thought were so significant, and would mark me forever- have long faded, that memory lingers still.

A few evenings ago, we walked through spotted sunlight on the sidewalk, tulips and flowering trees as our guide. Showers of sweet pink petals fluttered upon our worried heads, lining the street like a wedding aisle. The sun was beginning to fade, and laughs from the kids running ahead of us shone in the warm glow. It would all be so perfect if the world was not on fire.

{stores: empty}

All I keep wondering is this: what could they possibly think now? In fifty years, I won't want to read the stories from other adults about what happened in the year 2020. I'll want to know what they think, these little heart with so much change swirling around them. And yet, I'm afraid to ask.

I have written so much here, only to feel my hands give up typing before I can share what I feel. I want to say something worthy of it all. I want to write something that my children can read someday, and know my thoughts in this moment. But all that seems to come out just adds to the noise of politicians and TV channels. All that breathes out is anger, and shock, and bone-weary tiredness, and a discouragement unlike anything before. Every morning, I wake up, remember, and feel my heart drop. I don't know how to write about this. I don't know.

I can't make sense of this life. Nothing is right. The same way these masks are hiding mouths and disguising so much emotion and expression, I feel as if society has changed too much for me to recognize anymore. It's been over two months since quarantine started- quarantine, a word too quaint for our modern world, and now is discussed hourly, obsessively. And yet, just in March, I was sitting in an arena with Sky and thousands of people, shoulder to shoulder, laughing at a comedian and buying beer and pretzels from a snack bar. The next day, they closed it down, and not a single show since. Am I lucky for that? Cursed? Did I escape a terrible reality, or am I living it now? Where am I?

{a food pantry sign that was posted in our neighborhood}

In 1918, the great flu pandemic took away the vibrancy of vision. It became a strange, telltale symptom of a quick and lethal disease. Colors lacked intensity and meaning. Everything was faded, saddened, as if life itself had fallen into a miserable depression while the whole world shook with a frightened pause. It feels the same today. Some people seem to almost rejoice in their open schedule, their cancelled plans, their forced rest. But I don't feel that rest. It's not just the fact that our home life hasn't changed much (something that I am ultimately grateful for, especially that we already homeschooled). It is that all those little things- sitting in a cheery cafe with the boys while Millie has a Spanish lesson, waiting for the piano teacher to knock on the door before suppertime, and even trying on ten shirts at the thrift shop only to put them all back- that gave life more meaning than I gave them credit for, and what felt frivolous before now feels like an essential part of the framework of life.

I have always been one for tradition. I am sentimental beyond all reason. But this year, there is to be no sentimentality because the traditions are gone. Swimming at the pool and getting snacks that melt all over our hands, startling, bright fireworks and noisy parades on the 4th of July, watching the Kentucky Derby for those few and swift thrilling minutes- the bookends of summer that held together the beauty of community and normalcy, the proof of a celebrated moment- disappeared. I have tried and tried to think differently about it, but it stings in a way I can't explain.

How is it possible that I disagree with both political parties and so many leaders? How is it that I can get angry at a stranger on Facebook? How can I feel frustrated with friends and family who are doing things we're told not to for the sake of others, or confused that it's supposed to be safe for them in one state, but not here in Illinois? How am I supposed to tell my kids that people are very sick, and so many more have lost their jobs, and that even the grown ups don't know what they're doing? We're supposed to be the voice of reason, but I feel like I've lost my voice completely.

{still can't believe how emotional this sight makes me}

When I was little, my worries felt big. Really, though, they were how far around the block I was allowed to ride my bike, and how I could talk my parents into letting me spend the night at a friend's house. I didn't have to worry about what surfaces I touched, or how close I stood to someone else, or why a park was closed. My parents didn't keep the news off because of the incessant briefings proclaiming loudly what the politicians still didn't know. And when I look at the faces of these three small people I'm entrusted with, my heart hurts terribly. My prayer is that they will never look at this kind of a life as normal.

Spring, of all times, is supposed to give us the grace of hope. I know, just like the scary parts of our history on this earth, that this will eventually fade. I know that something that will mark our generation in the deepest of ways will be forgotten in a few decades' time by many. I worry, I guess, about how long it will take to get to the luxury of forgetting. The unknown is the hardest part of all.

Until it becomes a memory, I have to do the small things that insist life is normal in some ways- tuck Millie and Walter in at night. Nurse Harry and watch him learn new things every day. Plan ways to celebrate three summer birthdays somehow. Tell Sky that I'm too tired to cook dinner. Sit on the front steps, looking at his baby toes. Look for a bicycle to take the kids on a neighborhood ride. Open my Bible to search for passages about joy in trouble. Take walks in the evening under beautiful dogwoods and cherry blossoms.

And I hope, in it all, that they don't remember the confusion, the panic, and sadness of what was lost. I hope they only remember the lilacs.

Hope of a Harvest

 

"Love.

Because of you, in gardens of blossoming

Flowers I ache from the perfumes of spring.

I have forgotten your face, I no longer

Remember your hands; how did your lips

Feel on mine? [...]

I have forgotten your voice, your happy voice;

I have forgotten your eyes.

Like a flower to its perfume, I am bound to

My vague memory of you. [...]

I have forgotten your love, yet I seem to

Glimpse you in every window."

— Pablo Neruda

The crop sprayer, looking like a overgrown bug ready to devour little cars, moved slowly down the street, and we dutifully took note as Illinoisans should. John Deere green seems to sprout up everywhere this time of year. Without a thought, I remarked to anyone listening how noble it is to be a farmer. How hard working they are, with dirt under their nails, calloused hands, beat up bib overalls, and a hat advertising some insecticide brand. How they never really know, from year to year, what the end result will be. Their entire profession is based on faith and hope. If heavy rains or sudden drought destroy half their fields, then that corn or those soybeans they expected to glean is lost. Other years, they may have an abundant harvest, with shimmering golds thrown high into the combine and poured into tall, lonely silos. Millie said, "It must be sad to be a farmer." "No," I told her, "Some years are good and some are not, but they have one of the most important jobs." I listed off a dozen ways we all benefit from their work, and both kids chimed in with more examples. We saw a rusty tractor bumping through some acreage after that, and watched in quiet reverence.

A few days before, I glanced out at the endless miles of farmland flickering past our car. We were on the way home from an afternoon out and a McDonald's dinner. At the shop, a lady smiled and told me she loved my lipstick, a light berry shade to contrast with the black I'm always drawn to wear. For the briefest moment, I wondered if I should tell her. Should I describe the four hours it took me to move from my bed to the closet, the overwhelming feeling of picking out a shirt, or the fact that I halfheartedly reached for the closest lip pencil and mascara, and prayed no one I knew would see me? The last few weeks have taken all of my strength, and the fragments that are left are not worth much. I pulled out my debit card, thanked her, and silently resolved to compliment people more often, because it might be the only anchor that holds them to a good moment that day.

I spent this afternoon readying our balcony for all the newness that spring ushers in; moving the potted hens and chickens to our little table, pinching off the crumbing brown leaves to make room for bight green buds. I added a bit of soil to them, showered them in cool water, and peered closely at them as if they would grow before my eyes. There are trees bursting into bloom everywhere in town, the breeze carrying their sugary scents through the air. The daffodils have appeared already, and the grass is looking lush- so many signs that spring is here. We're confident enough, even here in the Midwest, to put up our snow boots and wool coats, trade them in for trenches and rain jackets, and walk the fine line between scarves and sandals. It's a back and forth dance every day, but everything is thawing, getting brighter, and becoming alive.

This spring is different for me. I hold my breath wait for the smallest green dots of cornstalks to appear in rows in the tilled brown-black earth, because I know they'll still be there when he gets home, and they'll be taller than all of us. He and I have a few fond memories of those fields from what seems like ages ago, zooming through old country roads in the little red car he bought when he came home from Afghanistan, both of us intoxicated with the new life we had together, still young enough to feel careless and have a million stories to tell without repeating anything. (If you had told us we'd be introduced to a little girl named Millie a year from those rides, we'd never have believed you.)

The three of us here at home are getting weary. The days have been getting longer, the nights peppered with wake-ups and melt-downs, and easy tasks feel monumental at times. The depression that follows me through life, sometimes walking several paces behind, has caught up now and nearly matches me step for step at times. Millie and Walter ask more questions, about dates and plans and all things unanswerable. Millie cries because he'll likely miss her birthday, and writes him somber letters. We've spent some evenings, long past bedtime, sitting side by side on the floor in my room, backs against the wall. I've stroked her curls as she tells me her heart, and I try to make her believe what I can't. Walter recently carried around a picture of our family most of a day, sitting with me and studying it for a while before asking, "Can Daddy see me looking at him?" The teddy bear he plays every night has some background noise from the store we recorded it in, and he once wondered aloud if his daddy actually sounded like that, or if he sounds like we do. Memories are getting hazy, time is stretching, twisting, and turning, and we are tired.

But spring is insistent. The sun warms our bodies and sweeps us along through the calendar's pages. Soon, there will be swim lessons, popsicles, sidewalk chalk, sweat, and sweet tea. Walter's blonde hair will look even blonder against his skinny tan body, and a few more pretty freckles will be sprinkled over Millie's nose and cheeks. The hope that we have forgotten will climb over our hearts in tall, winding, overgrown vines, until we can't see anything else. Maybe this will have all been a bad dream in the end. We will sprint through vivid daylight, through the firefly laden evenings, through the perfect sunsets over nearly-ripe fields and the deep, damp nights with cicadas calling. We'll run and leave the heartache, the time lost, and the trials in the dust, and wait breathlessly until an airplane touches the tarmac amid blinking lights and tears. We'll wait until he rounds the corner and the fuzzy memories become crystal clear, tangible, kissable, and so sweet. We'll load welcome home signs and heavy green bags into the trunk.

And on the way home, at least one of us is bound to remark, "Isn't the corn so tall now? It's already nearly time for the harvest."

You Would Have Loved It

 "The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember with. It felt like losing your co-rememberer meant losing the memory itself, 

as if the things we'd done were less real and important [...]" 

— John Green

It's a little silly to feel broken over a bumblebee purse. Things like this always sneak up on me.

Millie has a bright red, sequined frame bag on a chain. It's a little purse that is usually involved in any dress up endeavors (both with her and with Walter). But one day at an overpriced children's clothing store at the mall, she found a denim one with lace or sparkles, maybe unicorns. She begged and pleaded. But a six year old doesn't need a purse, in my opinion, so we left the store without it, her girl's heart bruised from mourning what she would never have. And then, the next day, while she was busy at her homeschool group, I stopped by a resale shop, saw a little patent leather bag with a daisy, and decided it was worth the dollar price tag. When she opened the door and saw it, she clasped it to her chest, took it with her everywhere, and was quite the fancy lady. That was, until Walter scribbled all over her prized possession with a ballpoint pen.

Then, tonight, we browsed the Goodwill aisles when I spotted it- a bumblebee purse. It couldn't have been cuter. Bursting with more excitement than most adults should have over a bumblebee bag, I proudly presented it to Millie. "Look," I gushed to her, "Isn't this the best? You could fit twice as many things in this one! And it's just right for summer! You could even bring it to church!" (Why she would need to, I had no idea. The words were spilling out.) She looked at me skeptically. "It's okay," she began, "but...I don't know. It's for a little kid."I stared at her in shock. Never mind that I didn't want her to have one at all. Suddenly, I needed her to have this one. $2.99 to preserve a smidgen of childhood? Absolutely. And whether it was for her or for myself (okay, we all know it was for me), she finally consented that we should probably take it home. 

I thought about it all evening, and why I was so manic and insistent about something so ridiculous. I realized that I was slightly scared. Any day now, she wouldn't agree to take that bag home even if it did mean something to me. Sometimes I forget, in the quiet day in and day out of our small lives, she and Walter are growing up. Every second is farther away from the littleness, and closer to big kids who don't have time for silly things like a bee shaped purse. 

Ah. There it is. Just when I think I've managed to be angry and sad about every part of this deployment, I find another layer. Another reason he should be here, not there. Another small way to grieve.

They were both sad and confused when I had to let them know he will miss their birthdays this year. And really, he will never much know Millie, the six year old and Walter, the three year old. They will mostly exist in photos and grainy video calls, these parts of their stories and personalities witnessed only by me. When he's home later, I know I'll begin laughing at a memory only to realize it's one we don't share. He and I will have aged a year's time, but it will matter little- maybe another wrinkle here or there. Yet a year of their very few years feels like all the time in the world. They've outgrown so many shoes and pairs of jeans, and we keep etching new marks on the growth chart on the wall. Millie no longer stumbling on the bigger words in her stories, and reads to Walter with ease, and he has new habits and loves and fears. Sky will meet new people when he returns, people who didn't exist when he left.

It's such an odd ache, desperately wanting time to move forward to the day he comes home, but hoping it will slow down so they stay small a little longer. There is no way to balance it, so there's a constant battle in my heart. If only it was the end of summer. And if only summer would take longer to get here, because they're already so much bigger than when he left.

We took a short walk after naptime, soaking in the sunshine and pondering when the dandelions would return. At the little creek down the road, we saw that the tall, brown cattails we've passed every day had turned white, and were ripe for the picking. Millie cautiously stepped down to the edge of where grass meets mud, and snapped off a few reeds, one for each of us. I watched as they stroked the velvet soft outside before pinching a part of fluff and watching it sail into the air all around them. The bits of feathery whiteness floated up into the blue, slowly and then suddenly gone, as if they had never existed upright and still in the water moments before.

Sometimes, the proof we have of the past is just as tangible. Maybe it's merely to say, "It's not here anymore. But when it was, it was beautiful. The breeze danced away with it all, and now there's not a trace. And I wish I could describe how that looked. 

You would have loved it."

The Good In It All

{photo by kdarling photography}

"I believe that words are strong, 

that they can overwhelm what we fear 

when fear seems more awful than life is good." 
— Andrew Solomon 

I thought writing would come easier to me once he left, but it hasn't. I've focused a lot on the feelings that hurt. And maybe that's just because there are a lot of those. When Millie crept into my room crying after I'd been away for only a couple of hours, it's one of a million reminders that life right now isn't normal. It's a lot more fragile, with a lot more grace needed and a lot more hope required.

I never imagined I would be an Army wife. I've never even been overly patriotic, really- I do think our country is so blessed, but it's also very flawed. Lately, though? Seeing a flag gently waving in someone's yard is akin to having them play our song. Politicians love to talk, but the real, tangible support comes from Betty at the post office, who stamps my customs forms every week. It comes from people at church and at our homeschooling group who have offered to babysit if I need a break. It comes from my mom, who lets me cry, and hung a blue star flag in her window all the way in the mountains of Oregon. It comes from my dad, who keeps me laughing and watches the kids on a weekly basis, so I can clean the house and lug groceries up the stairs.

A few weeks ago, the head librarian in the next town over called, excitedly telling me that Millie and Walter were in the little weekly paper there. We had visited a Veterans Day presentation; a man looked at the kids and said, "Do you know the hardest thing your Daddy has to do? He has to go to bed every night without giving your mother a kiss. But he does it because he loves you and he loves this country." And so she texted me the page. She told me to let her know if we needed anything. Then she confided that her brother had served in Iraq and Afghanistan. So many people tell me that now. It's like a secret code of, "I understand." And they do, better than most people.

The real support doesn't just come from a military wife or family member, though. I'm learning that it comes from everyone who has been good to our family. Friends of mine who have never even met Sky are sending him care packages. It's so humbling to me. Family members have emailed or texted to check on us. Military spouses who are dealing with their own husbands being away have prayed for us. A new friend has a husband with a civilian job that constantly takes him overseas, and she prefaced her words with, "Of course, it's nothing like what you are going through." But it is- so much so. Because the pain of missing someone is something nearly everyone has felt, whether it's for a few days or the rest of life on this earth.

Today, I had a stranger (via the internet, of course) tell me to "be an adult, suck it up, buttercup", etc. when I commented on an article about the negative effects of deployments on families. Never mind that it was a scientific study and not someone's random opinion. What bothered me, on an already low day, was that someone I don't even know thought it was okay to chastise me for being sad because my husband is gone. I think one of the ugliest, worst things a human being can do is dismiss someone else's sadness, to downplay their experience and their emotions, or even go so far as to lecture them for it. But I guess on the internet, it doesn't matter if it's a deployment, or cancer, or losing a loved one- anything is fair game for a vicious attack.

Yet on this same morning of discouragement, I opened my door and found a package from an amazing milspouse friend on the other side of the country. She has quietly sent kindness after kindness to our mailbox over the years, with all sorts of great hand-me-downs for the kids and notes for me. Minutes after reading those words full of hate, I was able to open her card and read words of love. Words that soothed and put things in perspective. Words that actually matter. 

I've had more than one Starbucks card show up for me since Sky left, a sugary and caffeinated balm for those days that it's hard to keep going (praise the Lord for Starbucks, amen). I have had countless people remind me that they are praying for him and for all of us. I've been grateful to our sweet photographer friend who snapped shots of just us three for our Christmas card this year. We attended Sky's unit Christmas party last week, and the commander, leaders, and their wives shook my hand, and told me they're always there if we need anything. The outpouring of empathy has been nothing less than God-sent. When someone simply acknowledges that it's hard- hard for him to be away, and hard for us to miss him- they are really saying thank you. They're saying they appreciate what he is doing.

Some days, that makes it feel a little more worth it. But even on the days it doesn't feel very worth it at all, those kindnesses, large and small, help me get through this for one more hour, one more day, one more week, one more month. I look at the deployment calendar every night on my phone, hoping somehow that fifty days have gone by since I last checked. It's still a day at a time. The good in it all is what makes it possible to wake up the next morning and begin again.

The Moon

"And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, 

They danced by the light of the moon." 
— Edward Lear

It was the last flight. I was on my way home from spending seventy two hours with Sky before he would board a plane for a different hemisphere. The trip was somewhat of a surprise, something that we were aware of at our last goodbye, but doubtful to actually happen. We filled those seventy two hours with lots of good food, a couple trips to the movies, zooming around that Texas town in our rental Corolla, shopping and laughing and trying to forget. He looked so handsome in his new uniform, and it felt like a rare and holy privilege to see my husband, to hold his hand. We didn't do anything monumental- there is no dramatic Romeo and Juliet story to tell. But we went to bed and woke up next to each other a few more times. We talked more about the deployment, though we had no more information than we did before. And we were mostly able to push the inevitable away until the drive to the airport. Then we said goodbye again, knowing it was the last time we'd lay eyes on each other until this deployment ends.

The plane took off late, and it was dusk by the time we reached altitude. Dallas looked like a breathtaking, deep navy gown, with a hundred thousand sequins of silver, of gold, of unnatural oranges and shiny blues. I never cared much for Texas, but every city is a different kind of lady at night, and all of them beautiful, even as the lights blurred with the tears I held back. I watched as they scattered, growing farther and farther apart, until the ground was enveloped in darkness. I sighed and looked around me, the dim cabin bulbs giving glimpses of the passengers nearby.

A middle aged man on the other side of the aisle was grading math tests and reading through papers, while the man sitting beside me watched a movie, using headphones to dull the sound of the roaring engine of our plane. Two white-haired men in front of me, one with some sort of heavy accent, were talking loudly, having intellectual conversations full of complexities, when one of them turned his head to the window and let out a soft "ahh". "It's quite a sight," he said of the full moon, glowing brightly as we seemed to follow it through the sky. The other man, still itching for something scientific to say, replied that it is a psychological affect, an optical illusion- that when the moon is near the horizon, we have something to compare it to, like the skyline, and it is so large, it feels like it could collide with the earth. But high above, it is alone, and therefore looks smaller. I smiled to myself a little at the poetry of what he had said. It seemed like a beautiful metaphor for something, but I was too tried to think of what it was, and my thoughts were occupied with other things.

Only a few hours before, I was in Sky's arms, and now, I was alone again. It was a different sort of goodbye in a different town. Soldiers were everywhere we went- the military had infiltrated every part of it decades ago. The post itself was a little like another world. A world with rules, with flag poles and helicopters, with customs and traditions, with pride, and with so many farewells.

And ours was one of them. Wives and girlfriends hugged the ones they came to see, and went through security with red eyes, all of us saying similar things to the men who were leaving, most crying openly like I did. One small child cried "daddy!" as they were separated in the TSA line. A woman nearby remarked how awful it was. I had nothing to say. Sky was already gone, and I couldn't pretend for another second that he would be coming home soon. 

It's hard to reconcile being by his side just a short time ago, when I'm back into my regular life here, and he's back into his there. He's in his uniform again, with the new boots he bought to replace to ones he wore as he walked through Afghanistan's sandy valleys. I am home with Millie and Walter, falling into the same routine as always, and staying up until the early hours of the morning because it hurts too much to go to sleep. I still think about the deployment every minute of every day. I think about Christmas a lot. And I think about how many days we have, how many cycles of this waking up and going to bed I will have to do, how insurmountable it feels to spend so long without our normal life.

I don't know how we can do this year. I don't want to do it, and he doesn't either. And I wish there was a way to be together tonight. But the only way I've ever found to get through the most difficult times is simply to do so because there is no other choice; it frightens me and comforts me at the same time. The necessity of the things that have to be done, the kids that need me, the house that needs cleaned- there is no running away, no alternative. Emerson said, "Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could." That, I think, is how we will get by in these days to come.

The emotions, worries, and tears were overwhelming last night. I closed my eyes, and I thought about Sky, and I thought about new sandy places his new boots will tread upon. And then I thought about the moon, and poetry, and metaphors. I thought about how maybe it was a picture for how small I feel, and how large and looming this pain can be. But maybe, I thought (or more accurately, hoped), this deployment looks so enormous next to the landscape of my life, and the quiet daily bits that make it up. If I can hold it up to the night, though, and tell myself that the sun will come back again, maybe it will shrink to a size I can carry. Maybe someday, there will be a gentle glow around what was once harsh and sharp.

And maybe, when he and I next stand with our fingers entwined, watching Millie and Walter and talking of these days in the past tense, the moon will be just the right size again, and beautiful, and the world will be right again, too.

Day In and Day Out

"And when they ask us what we're doing, you can say, We're remembering. 

That's where we'll win out in the long run."  

— Ray Bradbury

When I heard the alarm that morning, and saw him roll to turn it off, my heart sank. We looked into each other's eyes for a minute, saying nothing because there was nothing that could be said. I watched him gather his bags and put on that familiar uniform, and he watched me put my makeup on as if it wouldn't be ruined by tears soon. It's an indescribable moment when we closed the front door, knowing he wouldn't cross the threshold again for months, knowing that I would open that door an hour later feeling more lonely than I ever have in my entire life.

The airport is within view of our home, so the drive there took mere seconds. The violent pinks and reds of the sunrise competed with the hazy glow of the terminal lights. He carried his heavy luggage to security, and we stood near the escalators, holding each other. All I could think to say was, "I don't want to do this." We hugged as long as we could, and I tried to memorize the way it felt to wrap my arms around his shoulders, to soak up the scent of his cologne, to brush my hand over his hair that was cut shorter than usual. I reached for his hand one last time, and felt the warm metal of his wedding ring. And then he had to turn away and go. That split second held more heartbreak than I could have ever imagined. I stood there, feeling paralyzed and ill. A lady who had been behind us at the ticket counter approached me and asked if I needed a hug. "I'll be praying for him," she said gently. In a matter of minutes, he stood on the other side of security, metal detectors and TSA agents and walls of glass separating us. I saw him sink into a chair, looking defeated.

Finally, I had to leave. The plane, visible from the car, began to sound its loud engines. A weight settled on my shoulders, and a kind of panic was washing over me in waves. I turned my head to stare into the blinding sunlight peeking over the cornfields, the rest of the sky still believing it was night, and gathered a breath. It was hard to accept it all as reality, and hard to think that this happens all over the country every day. Tears were rolling down my cheeks before I had a chance to stop them.

Suddenly, I remembered every detail of that early morning eight years ago, when I watched my brother tie his boots in the hotel room. We drove in the dark to where the buses were waiting, where a few families were still saying their goodbyes, where dozens of soldiers (including Sky, although I was unaware then) loaded their duffels below and climbed aboard the bus. I remember staring at their silhouettes, so similar and yet so different, feeling such tenseness, such ache, such hope. As the buses left the smoke behind and turned onto the next street, then the next, then the highway, I wondered how my feet were standing still when I wanted nothing more than to chase them the whole way, to stop them somehow. There was a sickness in my heart that didn't leave for a whole year, until I saw those buses drive through the summer heat and park next to a high school football field, worn soldiers and dirty bags spilling out, my brother and Sky home safe and sound.

Those days were so long. These few have been so long, too. I get stuck in the smallest of decisions. I hesitated, if for only a moment, to throw away his half empty pop can left in the car. I opened the glove box and his sunglasses tumbled out, and it felt like I'd been punched in the gut over something so small. Every song, every couple walking by, every time that Millie and Walter bring him up- all of it is a sort of sensory overload that cripples me. These are the times I think of civilian families. I wonder if they think about the last load of laundry we do with their clothes, or how we hesitate to wash that sweatshirt that still smells like them. Do they think about how quiet it is at night, or what it feels like to know it's unlikely we're able to talk to our spouse when we want to or need to? Do they think about how the kids feel? Do they think about what it's like to get ready for church on Sundays alone, to have to think about cooking meals for the kids when the instinct is to ball up on the couch and cry, to spend the days and nights in a house that looks essentially the same, but no longer feels like home?

When he texted me on his last day of work and told me he was on his way, I cried knowing that I wouldn't hear that again in a very long time. It's strange to be so connected to someone and suddenly know nothing about where they are, what they're doing, who they meet, or what they see. Our days are so separate, so different now. The common things that we would normally discuss or laugh over fade away, and they're replaced by questions. It's a split screen life; while he texts me about his flight, while I see pictures of my husband with ACUs and a weapon, I'm sitting in the congregation at church, and they're singing. How do I pull my mind to my here and now when all I can think of is his?

These days will be survived. Some of them will be easier than this day, and some of them will be harder, but we'll live through each one of them until the next one begins, and do that over and over until deployment finally ends. Until then, I'll be living my life in halves. Half of me in the present, doing what needs to be done, making breakfast, helping with schoolwork, singing Christmas carols with a lump in my throat.

And the other half remembering. The the sound of the door opening at five thirty. The protection from rain when he held an umbrella over my head. What it felt like to be at this certain place with him, to eat here, to shop there. The late night laughter. The easy weekends. The day in and day out of he and I, together.

The Questions

"There are years that ask questions and years that answer." 

— Zora Neale Hurston

Nearly every night, as I tuck Walter into his bed and say a quiet prayer with him, I see his lip trembling in the murky glow from his nightlight on the wall. His voice begins to shake and then he asks me. "Is Daddy coming home tomorrow?" I reassure him that he is, and that he'll be home for dinner as usual. "But I miss him," he says, his tiny murmur breaking a little. Every time, the same. He's not leaving just yet, love. He'll be home tomorrow. But I'm running out of days I can promise that.

People have asked the questions even before I was his wife. He's coming home soon, though? He doesn't have to deploy at all, because he's not active duty? Or, he doesn't have to deploy again because he's already been to Afghanistan, right? As if there is an Army punch card like the kind they hand out at a smoothie shop, and once you've checked that box of deployment, it's just counting the days until retirement and easiness. 

He has been away most of this summer, partly due to pre-deployment, and partly for "regular" military training. During the last time, as we talked in the car, Millie said she missed him, but she was getting used to him being gone. My heart sank. She told me the Army makes her sad because he has to go places a lot, and all I could do is nod from the front seat, and try to let her know I agree without crying in front of her. The night after he came home, Walter asked, "You don't have to go back to Georgia for a while, do you?" He needed that reassurance, even at three years old. And we had to break the news about the deployment the next day.

But it's their questions, the most innocent questions, that break me. Where is Daddy's toothbrush? Why is his car here? Is he on an airplane? Where is Georgia? Where is Virginia? Where is Afghanistan? Did Daddy fight people? Can Daddy fix this toy when he gets back? What chair is the one Daddy sits in- I forget? Where is he going this time? Where is that country? Why does he have to go?

For someone who usually finds respite and refuge in words, I'm suddenly without them. 

He probably won't get leave to visit us halfway through and make it a little easier. I can't dress that up to make it prettier. I can't shrink the distance, or improve the wifi signal for Skype, or change the time zone there to match ours. Instead, we'll sleep as he wakes, and he'll go to bed as we're getting up. He'll be doing his job in the heat of the day while we are quiet in our beds, and when he rests, we will be busy with school, and errands, and life that has to continue to be lived in Illinois.

We took a small trip to St. Louis last weekend. I desperately wanted the kids to have a large, shining memory of our family and our time with him before he leaves, and it was just that. We laughed, and ate too much, and visited family. Most of the time, I could push the deployment towards the back of my mind, and while never completely gone, I felt the weight drop from my shoulders a little. Now, as we return back to every day life for a brief amount of time, all I can do is look at the calendar with dread. The tears are back, and it's turned from a bitter rage to a choking panic. We talk about it late at night, and he lets me cry and say all the things I need to say until I'm able to catch my breath.

I am running out of questions to ask, because no matter the details, I know he simply won't be home with us. So instead, I try to answer theirs. I tell them we'll send boxes because he'll miss the holidays. I encourage them to go on a walk with him or read an extra story at bedtime. I assure them he will be safe. I set my jaw so that I can answer all the questions without worrying them.

But then, when it's just the two of us, I ask him over and over- do you have to go? Then I close my eyes and hope that the answer will be different than all the nights before, and hug him tight while I still can.   

Strange and Breathless Days

{photos by kdarling photography}

 "The first week of August hangs at the very top of the summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color. Often at night there is lightning, but it quivers all alone. There is no thunder, no relieving rain. These are strange and breathless days." 

— Natalie Babbitt

Every summer, I wait. Impatiently and with expectation, I live through the heat and sweat until that first crisp, cool day, when the air smells faintly of cinnamon and apples and the leaves begin to turn. Fall has always been my most favorite season, and I revel in pulling out plaid shirts and cozy scarves. This year, I think I'll feel the cold even more without the warmth of his hand in mine.

The night he told me, he was states away for drill with his new unit. He told me over the phone, and I kept it together until we hung up. Then, in the dark, I felt my way through the hall and into the living room. I switched the light on and held up our tiny globe, tracing a line from Illinois across the blue ocean, all the way to the other side of the world, letting my fingers land in that country as I took a breath. It's too far. He'll be too far.

I didn't go to bed until four the next morning. All night, my mind raced with what this would mean for us. A few days later, I had to take his will to the safe deposit box. I followed the cheerful bank clerk down the stairs as he made small talk, folding the will in half so he wouldn't see what I held, and it was about that moment when it began to sink in that my husband really is leaving.

There are days that this swallows me whole. I am so terrified, so heartbroken thinking about the dark cloud looming over the next year, that I sometimes cannot breathe. And instead of being able to calm my racing heart, it's reminding me that this panic won't be for the future what ifs, but for the reality of day in and day out until he is home. It often feels grueling to live for the moment when I see a wild tornado spinning on the horizon.

So this is what it's like. I have been an emotional wreck in between the normal. I can usually hold it together for about an hour before reality insists on being felt, and I have to run to my room to wipe the tears away. I want to cling to Sky every second, and at the same time, put up walls in the hope that I won't miss him as much that way. I rehearse where and when and how we'll tell Millie and Walter that they won't see their dad until next year. I stop thumbing through a rack of clothes because there's a sad country song playing, and what's the point in buying something he's not even going to see me wear anyway? I've stopped picking him up much from the store, because what would he be able to use in 130 degree heat and sand? I want to talk about the deployment every five minutes (hence this blog post) because it is all I can think about, and because the planner in me wants to micromanage every second of his absence. I ask him to make me promise after promise. And despite all of this, a very tiny part of me still has a hope that this is all a giant misunderstanding, that they won't need him after all, that this isn't happening

Soon, he'll be gone for training, and then home for a just a little while before he's officially in deployment mode. The time feels so short. We're trying to plan a trip away, a last hurrah, because the military didn't give enough notice to be able to send us to their weekend of information and bonding. I've felt so utterly alone when it comes to getting support from the Army, which is made more frustrating by the fact that we are a Reserve family, living no where near a base or anyone who could help. It's so strange that my husband is being sent to the other half of the earth and no one will breathe a word to me, and barely to him. We are having to plan and decide and gather completely on our own, and going from our normal life to a temporary active duty family is the biggest adjustment and challenge.

I am hoping, maybe after a month or two into deployment, that I'll find my strength, leave some of the sadness behind, and feel confident and calm about being here while he's there. For now, this is what I'm capable of, and I can't apologize for it. I've tried to come up with metaphors to describe it in non-military ways, but they all sound overly dramatic and probably silly. So I will just say this- it hurts, and it's confusing, and I am trying to cherish our remaining days.

When Millie's tooth came out the night before her birthday, I sat in the other room and looked up, whispering a prayer of thanks that he was home. It is one less thing he'll miss in an ocean of those moments. He was here for their birthdays this year, even if he may miss the next ones. And though it is part of what makes the timing of this especially crushing, I am so glad that we are happy. So many years of struggle went before, but we have spent these last months in true happiness. It devastates me to finally reach this place only to have it taken from us, but it also makes me so grateful that our parting will be one of love and hope. Our next anniversary won't be spent together, but it will be one of the hardest, sweetest, and most meaningful.

So this year, autumn will be chilly long before I sip a hot cider. I'll have to learn how to love it in different ways, and learn how to love it despite what it will be taking away from me. I will have to feel the snap of confetti-colored leaves beneath my feet, lift my face to the harvest moon, and know that, by next autumn, I'll feel his warmth beside me again.

Until then, I'll carry these last searing days we have together like hot coals, watching them glow, feeling every last ember in my hands until the leaves turn yet again.

Saving the World

 

"It's funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools - friendships, prayer, conscience, honesty - and said 'do the best you can with these, they will have to do'. And mostly, against all odds, they do." 
— Anne Lamott

As I poured a second cup of coffee, swirling the cream around with my spoon, it suddenly occurred to me that it's already mid-November. I looked out the window at the rain coming down in sheets, loud and insistent, at the leaves covering the ground in mix of bright yellows and dull browns. It's nearly the end of the year, and like every year, I wonder how we got here so quickly.

Immediately after those thoughts, another thought came: Paris. I keep coming back to it, like so many others. Somehow, I'm still a little surprised each time things like this happen. I've been reading profiles of the victims, imaging the families who lost someone, trying to make sense of something that will never be fathomable to sane people. Tragedy after tragedy we jump, from one breaking news story to the next.

The end of the year is upon us, and it is too easy for me to look at those stories and sum it all up in a defeated sigh. It's been a hard year in many other ways, too. A friend I've known since I was 5 years old had twin baby girls born prematurely, and while one is still in the NICU, I attended the memorial service for the other. As I sat in the wooden church pew, looking at her sweet picture, my tears fell as much as in anger as in sadness, because something like that isn't fair, and shouldn't happen. Paris shouldn't have happened, nor should the hundreds of other mass shootings this year, every year. My health has been a bit of a mess lately, and it pales in comparison to what others I know are struggling with right now. Our state is six months into the fiscal year without a budget, without heating/electricity assistance for the poor, with people losing jobs, with no help for disabled and elderly people. As all these thoughts circled in my mind, I had to put my mug of coffee down and wipe my eyes. None of this makes sense. It doesn't even feel like a reality.

I looked up at Millie and Walter. Someone is dancing and singing on Sesame Street, and they're giggling and paging through books, oblivious to all I'm worried about this morning. I'm constantly astonished at how beautiful they are, and how beautiful people like them can even exist in this kind of world. Sometimes it feels like God is reminding me of what I have to be grateful for, because their light shines through the bleakest times.

At age 31, I have so much yet to learn. One thing I am learning, perhaps the hard way, is that I have to count my blessings where I can. Not in a blindly optimistic, Pollyanna way, but in a deeply grateful, even reverent way. In a way that clings to everything I've been graciously given because those things are little life rafts from God in a wildly stormy sea. Because I think that's the only act of defiance I have, and maybe how good wins in the end. To sing "It is Well" despite it all.

So here I am, clinging to the life rafts of those two little souls, of a husband who lets me order pizza when I feel bad, of this small miracle of warm coffee held close to my chest, of Sunday sermons, of good books. I'm clinging to the last flowers of the year my dad gave me from his garden, a big bunch of green with yellow and orange blooms. I'm clinging to the visit from my mom soon, and how we'll laugh until we cry next to the glow of a mismatched, multicolored Christmas tree with an angel looking over the whole room. I'm clinging to Walter's hugs and whispers of "you're my sweetheart" from this blonde little boy with the widest blue eyes I've ever seen. I'm clinging to Millie's excitement after choir practice, and how smart she is, how it blows me away sometimes. I'm clinging to the sight of her shaking an elderly man's hand and thanking him for his service in the military, and a beautiful song that I can't stop playing. I'm clinging to the smallest of things, like the soothing, sweet smell of a candle burning steadily, and how smooth my sheets feel when I finally wrap up in them at night, and the dance party that's happening in my living room right now.

Will dance parties and soft sheets and flowers save the world? No. Not really.

But maybe, just a little. Maybe it's enough grace for the day.

And when I slow my breathing and inhale the good for just a moment, I realize that grace for one day at a time is really all any of us need. One day after one day after one day at a time, the world is saved.

Uneasy

"Remember this also: it’s always easy to look back and see what we were, yesterday, ten years ago. 

It is hard to see what we are." 

— Harper Lee (Go Set a Watchman)

If I could sum up this summer in one word, it would be just that- uneasy. Or uncomfortable. The kind of nervous, slightly sad feeling in the pit of your stomach when something- or in this case, many things- just seems off. Like the summer cold we all seem to have, I'm bundled up in bed in my sweatshirt even though I should be chasing Millie and Walter at a park. It isn't supposed to be like this.

There has been good in these June, July, and now August days. Everyone in the family has had a birthday (except me), and it is always fun to share cake and see the joy over presents and balloons. Millie had a milestone birthday, turning 5, and a 5th birthday is its own sort of magic. She and I will start her kindergarten year in September, and we're busy preparing for it. Sky and I have been doing noticeably better, and it's a relief to feel that again. And though Walter has had a few moments of definite two year old actions, he's still as cuddly and sweet as ever.

But circumstances beyond my control have made my heart a little weary, a little unsure. It's like the tornado sirens the city tested this morning; the day is cool and sunny, quite perfect for July, but that ominous sound is hard to shake. It feels wrong.

The most glaringly obvious disruption to our lives has been, of all things, my beloved Illinois. The politics in this state are much less beloved, however, and the state government has been shut down since the end of June. While I won't bore you with pages of my thoughts on the matter, it boils down to a lot of hardship on a lot of people, the poorest people who most need help. And because Sky is a state employee of sorts (also too complicated to explain), we've been left wondering every two weeks whether his paycheck will arrive. After being told to stay home for a whole week, he is back working, but the budget crisis is far from over. I've been spending my nights writing to representatives, no doubt in vain.

A friend moved away this morning. She posted a photo of a Champaign country road, cracked and probably lined with dots of white Queen Anne's Lace and blue chicory, and now she's gone. We've known each other for years but only developed a closer friendship over the last year or so, and that alone makes me sad, because we could have had more time. I shared a lot of common interests with her, more than I have with someone in a long time, and while she's moving on with her life in necessary ways, it's still hard to say goodbye.

And, maybe laughably to some, it's been hard to say goodbye to another friend. Sidnie, one of the few blog friends I have who truly gets me, surprised me with Go Set a Watchman a couple weeks back. I won't spoil the book for anyone, but most people know that Maycomb has changed, Atticus has changed, and even Scout has changed. To Kill a Mockingbird is one of my favorites, and it took root in my own childhood, reading it for school, and then again on a family camping trip. I vividly remember being caught up in Tom Robinson's trial as I sat on a dusty chair by a fire pit in the woods. The new book shakes up what I thought I knew about that Alabama town, and left me unsettled. Harper Lee must have known what my summer would be like when she wrote it, and it matched my mood perfectly.

Earlier, I said that I wanted to write when life had smoothed over into calm again, and I could tell the story from the other side. But like most stories, as some parts resolve, others swiftly change, and so it's best to write as it happens. The unease of the summer of 2015 will melt into sweeter autumn, crisp caramel apples, pencil cases and notebooks, and my favorite part of the year. I am ready to trade the sticky, worried days of August for the promise of golden leaves and lighter hearts.

Twilight

"It was the time of year, the time of day, for a small insistent sadness to pass into the texture of things." 

— Don DeLillo

He was clutching his stuffed mouse, cradled in my arms, and I carried him through the hallways to his room. I turned the doorknob slowly until it clicked, and waited for another cry, but he was too tired now. I stood in the deep, eerie purple of twilight that shifted into blue, tinting the walls, the daisies on my table, and the dishes I was too tired to put away. It was silent and serene, waiting there in the almost-dark for nothing. The movement of night-blackened trees through the window caught my eye, and reminded me there were hours left in the day despite the moon's sheen. I'm not afraid of the dark anymore. I'm used to it.

When her auburn curls are tousled on a flowery pink pillow, and an airplane mobile barely flutters over his blonde head, I tell myself that this is all I need. I lay sideways on the bed and press play on an old black and white movie. (Right now, it's anything with Barbara Stanwyck.) Was it better then? If I had the right kind of hat to wear with my coat, and lipstick to match my high heels, would everything feel settled? Would it all wrap up neatly the way it tends to do in an hour and a half of romance, confusion, love letters, and resolution?

I keep wondering how I got here. In the span of a few years, life has changed many times over. I remember the girl I was five or ten years ago. She wasn't sure of herself, but she was sure of the world- a strange place to be. She hoped and trusted, and she believed in happy endings to the darkest stories. I laugh at her, pity her, and want to be her all over again. There may be a secret to a soft heart after heartache, but I haven't found it yet. It seems more knowledge only brings more to defend against. Sometimes at night, I think about the ones who have told me their secrets and sorrows, and wonder if they're still awake, too.

I've been exchanging letters with someone who is in his late eighties. He tells me about his childhood and early adulthood, and I marvel at it. There are twists and turns in his story so painful, I catch my breath as I read. So much tragedy for someone that young. But he tells me these things because they are a part of his story now, and, I think, he accepts them. And while I wonder if he would change them if he had the chance, I also wonder if he's thought of it that way. I'm still looking for an escape, and he's content. Among the sadness, he vividly remembers the good, the foolish, and the details of many events like they were yesterday.

I wonder what I will have to write about in another fifty years. If the good triumphs by then, and I can feel my heart beating beneath my hand and know that I have lived fully. Life is forever a back and forth, round and round motion. Much of the good is hard to get in focus. Sometimes it means holding it very close to see it well. And other times, it means standing at a distance, and surveying all I have.

There are gifts here, I remind myself, if I can breathe and wait long enough for the light to see them clearly.

A Legacy of Moments

"It's no good trying to get rid of your own aloneness. You've got to stick to it all your life. 

Only at times, at times, the gap will be filled in. At times! But you have to wait for the times. 

Accept your own aloneness and stick to it, all your life. And then accept the times when the gap is filled in, when they come. But they've got to come. You can't force them." 
— D.H. Lawrence

I should be practicing my math problems tonight. I have a test soon, then another in abnormal psychology, then quizzes and papers in film, and the week after spring break lets loose a deluge of homework which I'm bobbing up and down in with the swirling water. But some nights are for writing. Like this one.

This afternoon, I went to my school and ordered my cap and gown. I wrote my name out on a whiteboard, then held it up as they made me speak into the recorder so it will be announced correctly. They asked me if I wanted to buy the extra yellow cords because I am graduating with honors.The girls behind the messy desk, probably eight or ten years my juniors, looked at me blankly, as if the three of us knew it was only community college, after all. And it is. And I bought those cords and told them I needed to. I needed to.

Because when relatively big things happen in my very small life, I have to grab hold of them with everything I have. When something joyful approaches, I want to take it by the hand for as long as it's there. I'm not wise, but I am smart enough to understand that some of my depression is caused by whatever chemical, hereditary, biological pieces inside me. The rest is caused by choices that I've made, and the consequences of making those choices.

So I grasp the good, when I'm handed a nice evening for a walk, or a silly joke emailed from my mom. When I have a moment to meet a friend at Starbucks, or an invite for pie with my dad. When I run my fingers over a pretty, new dress at the store, or have a chance to buy ten dollar cords for a graduation gown simply to tell the world I tried so very hard at this college student thing, I have to grasp it and run with it until I have no energy left to run.

Depression is not something that will let go of me. I've had too many years of the ebbs and flows to know any other way. But when there is a chance at a blessing, big or small, I hold it to my chest in thanksgiving. The biggest of these blessings are the arms of two little souls who call me mama.

Millie and Walter won't be there six weeks from now, when I hear my name called and move my tassel from one side to the other. The graduation ceremony is very late in the evening, and they will both be sleeping peacefully in their beds while I'm across town with my heels and sweaty palms. And yet, they are the ones who will be with me most of all. I tell myself that I have worked to get this silly associate degree for me, for my happiness- but really, it is for that hope of making them proud in some small way. The hope of spurring them on to do better things with their lives than I have done.

Sometimes, I have to remind myself that the loneliness will come and go. Sometimes, I can't write a blog post that will be able to explain why things hurt or why I'm sad. Yet I have a little girl and a little boy that God gave me, and I can grab on to their joy. I can encourage it, even, and do my best to cultivate it. Life as an adult is harder than any of us dreamed when we were children. But, oh, these children of mine have so much happiness, and in such simple things.

We'll chase those things together, with my left hand holding hers and my right hand holding his. We'll find the secret and the sweet and the silly together. My lonely will get chased away in those moments.

And when life slows as the decades pass, I'll have countless stories to remind myself of, and to tell them when they get weary, too. The legacy of these moments is where my heart hopes to store up treasures.