Dull Roots and Spring Rain

"April [...], breeding
lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

memory and desire, stirring

dull roots with spring rain." 

— T.S. Eliot 

I didn't write in March. It's not my fault, of course- March is generally the most uninspiring month, full of unsteady, confused weather, too much to do, and not enough will to do it. It's the longest month when winter never ends, just like August draws summer out to an unbearable length. These two months probably shouldn't exist.

But April is a month of unrestrained hope. The wind smells like new flowers, and we gasp for it after so many days of seeing our breath in the air. There is so much possibility, even if we aren't quite sure what it's for. I can ignore the days of sunburns ahead and be present for today, the way the Millie and Walter run like foals daring to stand for the first time. Springtime, floating its blooms over my head and growing everything green under my feet, makes me want to celebrate for celebration's sake. It makes me want to play the piano, write poetry, blow soapy bubbles with the kids, eat al fresco on a date night with Sky, and have another baby to cuddle.

Now that this perfumed oxygen is filling my lungs, it feels better to write. It feels better to do just about everything. This Midwest life means I can't quite pack up my sweaters just yet, but it also means I can pull out a pair of sandals just in case. So I wear a cardigan over a t-shirt, and let the brand new wash over my heart while remembering the last ten or twenty Aprils I've had, savoring the good like wine and dropping the bad from my hands to flutter away.

And suddenly, I'm younger, reminiscing about the April I was missing Sky, when he was in a desert and I was praying desperate prayers that he and my brother would come home safely to see the green Illinois cornfields again. Or the Aprils when I watched my stomach get rounder, a kicking baby's foot pressing against my palm, before I knew their every feature but God already did. Maybe April is less hope than it is sheer gratefulness, come to think of it.

After March's dim light, I can put away the moodiness that often comes with a love of writing, and be content. Our family is in a season of being content, I think. We have dreams and plans, of course- we long for our first home, for things to feel more settled and secure- but we have had a long journey already, and we can look back with amazement. Our hearts have been tired and worn, but on April first, we can lift up our faces to the sunshine and leave that deep, swirling blue of stormclouds behind us. We have come so far.

I read a verse in Psalms today that I had forgotten- "[...] in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me" (Psalm 139:16b). And it surprised me, because I somehow seem to forget. Days were formed for me. Every April I'll ever have has been crafted and shaped perfectly, and though the days themselves might not seem perfect, I can rest in knowing the unknown is already written.

So today, in the hours that are left of it, I will drink in the crisp, sunny weather, do my dreaming and planning, and simply be happy for the beauty I've been given. How lovely it is.

The Sewing Machine

 "I know you're tired but come, this is the way." 

— Rumi

In December, my mama was here for a visit. One night, long after Millie and Walter were tucked into their beds, we brewed some tea and dug out my sewing machine. It was bought years ago and was primarily used for collecting dust. She made adjustments here and there, explained the mechanics, and promised to help me learn. And in my deep desire to make and to do and to be motherly, the idea thrilled me.

I have many memories of lingering near her sewing machine as she measured, cut, and stitched. I can still hear the sound from her room across the hall, even though she's on the other side of the country now. There was a red satin dress with pearl buttons and puffed sleeves that she made me for Christmas, a little doll with a flowered gown and bonnet, the green jumper I wore on St. Patrick's day, the pastel for Easter, and a few dozen more. That machine was always humming away.

The next morning, with the kids crowding around the table to play with scraps and measuring tapes, Mom showed me how to make a quick pillowcase. The technique made an easy idea even easier, and in just a few minutes, Millie was clutching her pink and purple flowered flannel, while Walter made joyful exclamations over his cotton train print. After Mom left, I set the sewing machine on the end of the kitchen table, determined to make a pillowcase on my own. That was nearly two months ago, and I haven't sewn a single stitch.

It used to be the same with reading, especially when I had to juggle schoolwork as well. While I've gotten better at working through books these days, it's still not at the pace I did at 10 or 20 years old. My days are so different now. I don't remember them being anything other than filled to the brim.

I'm tired. Most nights, my eyes are sore from it. I got a small taste of it in pregnancy. I expected the tiredness then, and the sleepless nights that would follow, but imagined life leveling off after the first year or so. During the second pregnancy, it hit even harder. Here I am with two little ones, and despite being able to sleep though the night (baring sickness or storms), the energy I used to have hasn't returned. I find myself daydreaming about a meal train and help with laundry for moms of children under 18- never mind new mothers. I still have to look up the recipe for lasagna, even though it barely needs one and I've made it one hundred times. I'm too tired for much memory.

It begins before I open my eyes and find pieces of light breaking through the blinds. I hear little voices talking, or singing, or calling for mama. I stumble through breakfast with decaf coffee, get them dressed and sometimes dress myself, and the day has started. It's full of school to teach, places to go, appointments and lunches and laundry and nap times that seem to flutter by too quickly.

I'm so sleepy that I can't make a pillowcase. Maybe tomorrow, I tell myself, when I have less to do, less to clean, an easier supper to cook or less errands to run. Their bedtimes stories leave little energy for some of my own. As the night grows dark and the baths are done, my plans change from reading a few chapters from one of the books in my towering stack, to flipping through a mindless magazine instead, to giving up completely and hoping Downton Abbey isn't a rerun. Mostly, I just wonder how my own parents managed, and how they had any energy left to unfold the newspaper after dinnertime.

And yet, there is an irony. People talk a lot about their truth, or a great touchstone in their lives, and this is mine; I find such sweet rest in those two little people who have the loveliest faces I've ever seen. In those hugs, the kind that wrap all the way around my neck as if they're holding on so not to be swept away in a wild current. In the sleepy sweat of their hair in the dark, when I check on them one more time and whisper things for them to hear in their dreams. In holding their small, soft hands as we cross the street on a walk. In watching as they sit side by side on the couch, turning pages in a book and exchanging outlandish thoughts in a way only a five year old and two year old could do.

I give them this part of me, this very strength I have to go through the day, because they somehow give it back tenfold in the smallest moments. We dance through this give and take, through the exhaustion and the exhilaration, because it is all we know and all we could ever hope for in life. And though the sewing machine may have to wait for a few more days, and then a few more after that, I know when the house is still, we have done what we could do that day. The rest that comes in this is more than enough.

Year Six

"A sacrament--like marriage--means living a life better 

than your natural instincts, so that you're modeling God. 

And God never gives up." 

— Jodi Picoult

We were so young, so very young, even though it was only six years ago.

Neither of us knew how to be married. You were foolish and reckless with my heart and left us with a pain that fused together bitterness and regret. I was inexperienced with being a good wife, and left us with a lot of burnt, processed freezer food and a beautiful new baby who cried approximately 23 hours each day. We were supposed to be in that newlywed bliss that we assumed would follow the tiny ceremony in our apartment's dining room with the creeky wooden floor, the breezy sheer curtains we hung for the occasion, and the windows that overlooked a brick, snowy Illinois Street. After we came back from an Italian dinner we could not well afford, we both thought the hard part was over.

Our relationship has been on the brink of breaking many times, and both of us know this well. Marriage is hard, but we have had it harder than many, I think. We've spent much of the time wondering how the bills would be paid, but they always were. We spent time wondering how God could fix our hearts, but He always has. We spent time wondering if we'd make it another year, but we always do. Most would look at six years as a drop in the bucket of marriage, but we know better, you and I.

And here we are, only a little way down the road of the journey. Since those rings were exchanged, we've named a little girl and a little boy, staying awake countless nights for them, learning with them, growing together not just as two, but as a family of four. We've changed jobs- you both in the civilian world and with your military promotions, and me from my secretary's cardigans and heels to a mother at home. You've learned how to fix the car that breaks every few months, and I've learned how to feed us all with recipes that are filling, albeit simple. You're a father who reads bedtime stories in silly voices, and I'm a mother who cries the night before every birthday they have. I barely recognize your baby face and my bleach blonde hair in the few photos we have from our wedding day. Every day is a step towards something better- not shiner, or more impressive, but tarnished with the age of experience and persistent hope. I'm proud that we didn't let go.

I don't think there will be an itch in year seven, because we've only just begun to be married. We've started over so many times that it seems more like our first anniversary. No one can truly say their vows with the full weight of their meaning, not really. It's in the every day that we learn those things-what it really is in the "for worse" part, and what it can really be in the "for better". No one can grasp the hurt that can occur, or the deep laughter, or the common experiences that sew everything together. The beauty of it is that these years, full or lean, cold or warm, crumbling or solid, have all sewn us together, even when we weren't aware.


One of my favorite quotes is this: "Love is a battlefield, love is a war, love is a growing up." (James Baldwin) Six months after you came home from a war, I married you. And six years later, here we are, still fighting for all things good, and growing up into the kind of people who never give up.

Hold Dear

 "Hold dear to your parents for it is a scary and confusing world without them." 

— Emily Dickinson

Remember that far back? When you were only 5 or 10? Your parents were still all-knowing, mostly without flaws, and you were pretty sure they didn't actually exist as people until you arrived- the thought of them having any other roles besides Mom and Dad was such a strange concept that it never crossed your mind. God put the two of them on this earth for the sole purpose of raising you, and maybe a sibling or two down the road, inconsequentially. You relied on them for everything you wanted or needed, but you dreamed of future independence.

You knew adulthood would be glorious. So much freedom. No answering to anyone. You'd have a fun job, a cool car, and spend your time eating ice cream at 2 am, staying up to watch David Letterman, or whatever it is parents do after your 8 o'clock bedtime. But you would never do things like them, or utter the words "because I said so", or even be corny enough to be a parent in the first place. You'd be your own person.

And then it happens. Parenthood lands in your lap with a thud, a wide-eyed, cooing baby looking at you the way you must have looked at your parents. Suddenly, you feel smaller, and maybe even more childish than before you met your own child. How is it that you are supposed to raise this little one for the next eighteen years and not make a complete mess of it all? Almost instantly, you understand your parents- everything they said to you, you want to repeat to this little child. Be careful driving in the rain- it's slick out. You're gorgeous on the inside, and that's the most important thing. Don't date that boy. Don't do something you'll regret. Clean your room.

Then you make phone calls for that Christmas cookie recipe, for ideas to soothe that baby crying in the middle of the night, for questions about your childhood. You realize that they really do know everything, or nearly, and that they are flawed because they're real people with deeply interesting stories- some that you've heard fifty times over, and some you've never heard in all your 31 years. You want them to tell about your story, but even more, you want to hear their own.

You realize they parented without Google and feel amazed that they were so capable, that they planned vacations with brochures and phone books, that you're actually jealous of that Pontiac station wagon with the faux wood paneling, and that, somehow, they didn't poison you even though they couldn't grab their phone and look up the correct dosage for children's Tylenol at 4 o'clock in the morning.

And if they don't live in the house next door, you miss them, though you tell them this about once for every thousand times the feeling passes through you, or maybe you never tell them at all. After all, you still put on a show about being an adult, when all along, you know that you may be able to fool some people, but never them.

We always think we'll outgrow our need for the people who brought us into the world. But the secret truth is that we need them always, and in some ways, even more than we did when we were 5.

Or maybe it's just me.

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.