The Blue

"Joy has been a habit.

Now

Suddenly

This rain."

— Jack Gilbert

The four of us were stretched out on plastic lawn chairs at the swimming pool. The sun was warming our bodies and drying our swimsuits. Sky had one hand resting on my arm. The rest of them were facing the opposite direction, while I stared into the baby pool, sobbing silently behind my oversized sunglasses. And when my aunt texted me later in the evening and told me I'm strong, it felt difficult to believe it. Honestly, who cries at the pool?

We were planning the night before he told me. Sitting in bed, with my planner opened to August, we were discussing a date for Millie's birthday party, and hoping for a mini vacation to St. Louis before we began the school year. What I thought would be a quiet, perhaps even dull summer has instead been quite busy, and there was still so much we wanted to do.

The next evening, the night before Walter's birthday, he walked in the door with a strange look on his face. "I need to talk to you about something. Don't say no yet." I looked at him. "No," I joked, nervously. He told me there was an opportunity to deploy, and the air immediately left the room. We discussed the few little details he had, and he said they wanted to know the very next day. I cried about four times that night, and we talked for hours, discussing the pros and cons. In the morning, over breakfast, we talked a bit more, and he announced that he would tell the unit no.

But the information began to change hour by hour, as things often do when it comes to the military. The dates that sounded far away began inching closer and closer. What sounded like a possibility quickly became a certainty. What first sounded voluntary was clearly mandatory. And so we sat at the kitchen table, singing happy birthday to our little boy, with a stunned hush afterward because we'll have to tell them soon.

I look at the two of them and instantly feel tears welling up. They don't even know what is being asked of them, and once they do, they won't understand why. How could they when I can't? It will be the longest separation from Sky that they've had in their lives, by far. And when he was gone just for the month of June, it was hard. They missed him, they cried, and there was only so much I can do to soothe it. People always remark how great it is now compared to years ago, when there was no internet or Skype or even phone calls, when letters could take weeks to arrive. But all of those things (if they even are available) are such small comforts, especially to a little girl and little boy who can't hug their daddy for months at a time.

We don't even technically know the day he leaves or where he'll be yet (and I won't be able to discuss it here on the blog even when we do), but we do know that it most likely won't be in a dangerous place, and I can find some peace in that. I still vividly remember the feelings I had when my brother and Sky were deployed. I woke every morning terrified of what I might hear on the news that day, worried sick that someone would call me and give me bad news. That fear, and that crushing worry of missing people who could be hurt or killed by some awful enemy, turned me into someone who was always on the edge of furious. For that year they were gone, I had a much shorter fuse. I would be irritated at anyone who dare breathe a word about the war, or soldiers, or politics at all. When I would go out with friends and a man might approach me, I would seethe that he could think to do so while people's lives were in danger. I learned that when I get that sad- truly, deeply, maddeningly sad- it turns to rage.

This time, without the threat of a war zone, I am still angry at how quickly this all happened, and without any warning. But mostly, I am grieving already. I'm grieving the summer that was stolen from us, grieving the holidays and birthdays and special times that will be missed. I'm grieving the loss of date nights, of inside jokes missed, of holding hands, of parenting talks and decisions, of late trips out for ice cream or slushies, of laughing over something ridiculous before we sigh and kiss goodnight. I'm aching at knowing, quite soon, we will have to curl up with Millie and Walter on the couch, and explain to them that he'll be away for a very long time. (Yes, I'm technically telling you before I've told them, because it's easier to find the words here.) I am finding myself panicked and desperate to do all the fun, quality family time things that we can find to do before he goes, as if giving them a tiny bank of silly memories will help somehow. And maybe it will. But it doesn't feel like anything will help right now. It's just hard knowing that I can't 'protect' them from Sky's absence. I can't shorten the days he'll be gone, not by a single hour.

I planned to type out words about this deployment with facts, with timelines and maps and assurances that the four of us will be fine. And deep down in my heart, I know we will. But I just can't pretend that this is normal. Even though he enlisted all those years ago. Even though we've been apart so many times. Even though it's part of his job as a solider in the Army. Even though many military families have done this half a dozen times over. I know all that. I just can't resign myself to feeling that it's okay my husband won't be here. My mind can search for reasons and almost find them, but my heart cannot.

When Sky and my brother were overseas, I still lived my life. I went to work every day, shopped for groceries, went to garage sales with my dad, and called my mom. I woke up thinking about the boys, though, and went to bed every night the same way. And throughout it all, there was a somber haze over that year. There was plenty of good, plenty of growth, and some distractions, but always, that filmy shade of blue that tinted all I did and everywhere I went. I know that Millie, Walter, and I will be fine. I know we'll have good times, and even great ones. I know I'm capable, and that I have a great family to support me.

But I also know the blue will be there, quiet and insistent, weaving in and out of our days until he's home.

Yellow Fireflies & Green Corn

"those moments, so

many and so long ago, still come back, but briefly, like fireflies

in the perfumed heat of summer night." 

— Mark Strand

June is supposed to be a month when time slows. We sit on long front porches with glasses of sweet tea, talking a little more slowly, our posture a little more relaxed, with less to do and less to think. That's how it should be, in my mind. But instead, June has been a series of busy moments, of loud, brief thunderstorms, blinding sunlight, and humid nights beginning to glow with the gentle luminescence of fireflies looking wistfully at the stars.

So much has happened since I last wrote- none of it very important but to our little family. Still, there are milestones, memories, birthdays, and long stretches of time apart that compel me to stretch out on my bed and type for a while.

First, we recently wrapped up our beginning year of homeschooling, and more importantly, Millie's kindergarten year. It's strange to think that she was a newborn in my arms nearly six years ago, that those years have gone by like days, and that she will begin first grade in the fall. We spent a lot of time on reading, of course, and there is nothing that compares to witnessing that process. I watched her bloom into reading sentences after sounding out three letter words over and over again. Perhaps most amazing was seeing her handwriting that I've helped form, leaning with her over the lines and the curves until she's confident enough, after a few misspellings, to write "I love you Mommy" on a construction paper card, with magazine scraps cut out and glued to it. She also attended a homeschooling co-op, and it was wonderful to make friends who are learning the same way.

Walter, who still feels like my baby, will be three this month. The last two days, I've sold a dresser and rocking chair to make space in his room for a twin bed. They were both pieces- probably the only ones left- that we used when each baby came home from the hospital. I had a little cry after they were gone. Sky and I haven't completely shut the door to the notion of having one more child, but it's slowly creaking to a close and days like today remind me of that. I was never one to imagine my children, or to dream about how many I would have someday. But when I quickly learned just how fast they grow, my heart doesn't want to forget what it's like with a newborn on my chest, soft and warm and impossibly perfect. Thank goodness Walter still loves to snuggle with me.

{photos by Kristin of k darling photography}

Sky has been away all month, completing more training for his Army career. It's always interesting to see how the time apart will be, because every time he leaves means leaving kids of different ages than what they were the time before. I never exactly know what to expect, and this time was no exception. Millie, Walter, and I were really down when he first left. It's kind of a helpless, lost feeling. Thankfully, we planned swim lessons for Millie during two of the weeks he'd be gone, and that has helped us stay busy and entertained. She finished them up today, triumphant and elated that she can swim underwater now. Walter and I splashed in the baby pool, I got a slight tan and then a less-than-slight sunburn, and we were happy and thankful for the fresh air, albeit in 90 degrees.

The biggest differences with this time away are the quiet nights and subdued moments of the day, when I pause for a breath and remember my husband isn't here. So many times, earlier in our marriage, I would wonder if the only thing keeping us together was the forced time away from each other. But in the early morning hours after he drove to the airport, the tears rolled down my cheeks, and all I could do was whisper, "Thank you, God." I know that my heart needs his, and that is a gift and a miracle. The three of us here are so proud of him, and we're ready for him to come home.

The photos here were shot by someone who has not only been taking pictures for our family since Walter was in my belly, but by someone who has become a friend, too. She's been on much of the journey with us, and though we have had lots of beautiful pictures of the kids as they've grown, I couldn't help but stare at the one of our whole family that she took a couple days before Sky had to go. I love where we are now, and the hope of where we'll be. How blessed we are to be together.

So perhaps June hasn't been lazy and calm the way it is in stories. For us, it's been a time of growth, of beating sun and the smell of chlorine, of long distance phone calls and 'goodnight's from far away, and a time with two little people who seem to be a bit bigger and older every second. It's bittersweet, and it is filled with the broken and beautiful moments that string one day onto the next. The cornfields are so green and climbing high, and if the corn is good, it must be a good summer in Illinois.

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.