The Story of Grace

It's been quite a weekend.

I learned how to make a mean lemon drop martini and found a little Grace. The story of the martini you can find on my other blog, The Suburban Roadshow. The story of Grace is a little longer, and a little more spectacular, so let's get to that first.

On Sunday, Moon and I like to take road trips when the weather's nice, and yesterday was gorgeous. We dropped Sam off with his great-aunt and his great-grandmother, and Max, Moon and I hit the open road (well, as open as it gets on the congested highways and byways of the metro Atlanta area).

We drove to Rockmart, GA, described on its website as "located in the heart of the Coosa Valley area of Northwest Georgia". We went there because it's on the Silver Comet Trail, a wonderful place to breathe a little fresh air and forget the congestion and traffic of day-to-day life in the suburbs. Below are some pix I snapped as we started down the bridge that led to the trail:

So, things were moving along swimmingly until we got about a mile or so down the path and heard the most ungodly noises. At first, I thought it might be kids hiding in the brush and trying to scare people as they walked by, the sounds were that odd. But it would have been impossible to hide along the path there, because along one side was a 10-foot high chain link fence with the old railway track passing beside it, with rusted-out trucks and abandoned-looking buildings sprouting up from the flat, yellow grasses around them. On the other side, the side closest to us, was a 30-40-foot drop down a sheer rock face to a rock-strewn creek bed.

We stopped to see if we could determine the origin of the sounds, and finally zeroed in on a tiny outcropping of rock about 40 feet below us.

The sounds were animal, but so strange we weren't sure if it was a dog, a coyote, or even a bear cub. Whatever it was, it sounded like it was in serious distress, and possibly in pain. We called the Rockmart police (how did out-of-towners find out things like the number for the local police before the advent of the BlackBerry?) and they promised to send an officer out to see what could be done. A family on bicycles rode by and stopped to see what the commotion was. They, too, quickly decided there was no safe way for anyone other than an experienced rock climber to make it down the sheer face of the cliff to the animal--and even if they did, what if it was wild, or so hurt it was impossible to move? They shrugged their shoulders apologetically and rode off. We kept waiting for the police to arrive. Max amused himself by standing on guard to alert us if the police were coming, and posing for pictures.

As we waited, we finally saw a little movement, and realized it was a dog down there, a cinnamon colored dog, and she was definitely in distress.

The police finally arrived after about a half an hour, a lone policeman riding a 4-wheeler. He quickly assessed the situation and told us there was no way he was risking his life for a dog, and animal control would probably say the same thing. There was nothing to be done. He was sorry.

This was about the point that Moon, who isn't the most patient or conforming of men in the first place, started to get a bit annoyed. He walked down the path a little way and found a place where the drop wasn't quite so steep, about a 100 yards down from where the dog was. He came back to where we were standing, and silently handed me his keys and BlackBerry.

"I'm going down," he said, and headed off.

The policeman waited with us, radioing dispatch and the animal control that Moon had gone down.

"Well," I said, "you won't go down for the dog, but if there's a human down there maybe you will, right?"

(Have I mentioned at this point I was a bit grumpy with the whole waiting and who-cares-about-a-dog attitude I was getting? I, too, an not the most patient of people.)

We waited, and the quiet was very loud. I was lying in the dirt on the edge of bank, craning for a glimpse of Moon and praying silently that he wouldn't break his fool neck and that the dog was okay. Finally, after what seemed like forever (but really was only about 10 minutes) I heard Moon call out right beneath me, "I made it".

I tossed him down my jacket to wrap his hand in in case the dog tried to bite him when he went in to get her. He caught it, carefully crossed the stream bed, and reached in to pull out...

...a little Chow mix puppy, terrified but seemingly intact.

He walked back upstream with her, back up the cliff carrying her in his arms, and I have to say it was one of the coolest things I have ever witnessed in my life. I would have married him again right then and there if he'd asked me. How many times in this modern day and age do you actually get to witness a physical act of courage like that? It was quite thrilling.

We walked back to the main road with her, and filled out a police report there by the side of the road. "No one wants her," the police guy told us, "so you can take her if you want."

So she rode back to Marietta cuddled in my lap, and we took her to the animal ER to make sure there were no broken bones or injuries

At the ER, we were told she was a 10-week-old Chow mix who was in relatively perfect health with only some fleas, ticks, and mud to show for her ordeal. They treated her for the fleas and ticks and we took her home. "Oh, by the way," they told us as were were leaving, "she's going to be HUGE."

Oh, goody.

But by then end of the night, I'd gone to Target and spent a fortune on doggie paraphernalia, and named her Grace.

Today, Gracie is curled up asleep in the house, and getting used to her new home. I am not a dog person by any means, but how many dogs drop into your life as dramatically as Gracie did? I can't help but think it was all for a reason. And I'll be the first to tell you we all need a little Grace in our lives. So far, she is a sweet, gentle little thing

So world, meet Gracie, the newest Moon family addition.

Ode to Joy 1: Sam discovers leaves

And one of Max on the same day, digging in the sand for the buried treasure he knows is there--how great a metaphor for prayer is that??!



It reminded me of a poem I wrote once when Max first discovered flowers--

Communion

My infant son squats
beside a starflower.
His blue-eyed stare
taking in each delicate detail--
white petals and yellow stamens dancing
with hands raised, singing
"holy holy"
in the stiff March wind.

He pulls hard on a fragile stem,
an innocent cruelty,
the blossom drops
wet, limp
curling like a whispered
prayer
cupped within his sweaty fist.

He reaches up and I bend
close,
thinking only of inhaling crushed
petals, but he pushes the flower
whole into my mouth.
I taste green and sweat, lemon
and mud, bittersweet spring alive on my tongue.

Building a mystery...

I've just spent the past half-hour Googling my high school classmates, and couldn't find a thing--not a tidbit on anyone. I know it's part and parcel of growing up in an itsy-bitsy small town, but c'mon--I'm starting to wonder about my own existence here! There's absolutely nothing, although I have a pretty rich memory of it all. Maybe it's a mythology I created in my own mind? Did I actually graduate from Cumberland Christian School, or is it all some nutball fantasy I've created for lack of anything better to do? (Trust me, there are times as a mom of very young children that making up fantasies of more interesting lives than one's own are all that get you through the day.)

I'm just feeling nostalgic tonight, but for what, and whom? Now I'm not so sure. In our info-saturated times it seems everything and everyone is on the Internet, but somehow Cumberland County, NJ is still off the grid. We always were about 15 years behind the times. But we had a great diner--the Presidential. It's gone now. It was one of those tired old diners with great breakfast specials available at midnight, with jukeboxes at every table, fluorescent lights making everyone and everything they shone on look slightly gray. Hot, salty, greasy scrambled eggs, chewy, gnarly bacon, endless cups of weak tea drowning in oily half and half...Heaven. I smoked back then. Badly. I was a terrible smoker, always smoked like a rookie and never actually enjoyed the experience enough to get addicted. I smoked really frou-frou girly cigarettes, too--Capris, I think they were called.

(Remind me to excise this bit of my history before my boys are old enough to read my blog. If they ever ask you about it, tell them their Mommy never smoked and it's a very nasty habit that will kill you. Thanks.)

Several years ago I wrote to the current pastor of the crazy church I grew up in. He was a new pastor, a couple pastors removed from the pastor who led the church while I was there--the one who wound up in prison. (Looooooooooooong story--look for the tell-all memoir I'll write somewhere between now and my grandchildren graduating college.) I was researching the whole scandal that erupted around that pastor (okay, brief synopsis: Crazy-evil fundamentalist loonies run a tiny independent church and school like a Jonesboro cult. Rampant child abuse of every imaginable description abounds. After oh, ten to twelve years of getting away with it and ruining a bunch of kids' lives, the pastor is finally busted and goes to a minimum-security prison for 6 months. His wifey, who at the least aided and abetted the whole nightmare, gets off scott-free. ) Anyways...

...researching the scandal. I sent the new pastor an email asking for info about the whole thing, because like so many parts of my history there were few primary resources to back me up--I was writing my history from the rather faulty resources of memory and emotion. He wrote me back a little note telling me God wanted me to just forget the whole thing.

mmmmhmmmm. sure. right. oooookaaaay....

So here I am, trying to find some information, some signposts that root me to the history that plays so often in my mind. And my history refuses to be Googled. If you don't exist on the Internet, do you exist in this day and age? Where I grew up, forgetfulness is somehow next to Godliness, and the past gets obliterated in the slow, plodding reality of the present.

So I blog tonight, in the absence of any other tangible signpost, to remind myself I was, once, a hick girl from NJ who grew up in the backwoods edging the Pine Barrens. Grew up in a crazy church, went to a crazy church school, had a half-assed education full of as much fire and brimstone as reading and writing, and went to sleep every night to the nightsounds of the pine trees and crickets, the moon shining like a neon sign through my bedroom window. Had up to 17 cats and dogs for pets, picked teacups full of wild strawberries and blackberries from my front yard, and graduated from the only Christian high school in the county in 1987. You won't find any documents to back up my story, but it's the only story I've got, so I keep writing it down, again and again, hoping someday my retelling of my memories of that history will be enough for me to believe it real.

I'm in a weird mood.

A poem from Denise Levertov that dropped into my mailbox earlier today, and had walked around the house with me ever since:

Talking to Grief

Ah, grief, I should not treat you

like a homeless dog

who comes to the back door

for a crust, for a meatless bone.

I should coax you

into the house and give you

your own corner,

a worn mat to lie on

your own water dish.

You think I don't know you've been living

under my porch.

You long for your real place to be readied

before winter comes. You need

your name,

your collar and tag. You need

the right to warn off intruders,

to consider

my house as your own

and me your person

and yourself

my own dog.

On a slightly happier note, my son has been talking to me a lot about God. Today he asked me if Jesus did magic. (Try answering that question in a theologically proper manner without confusing the heck out of your 4-year-old. Can't be done.) I think the final answer I came up with was "um, well...sorta..." and then tried to distract him with a chocolate chip cookie. In my fumbling for answers to his questions, I said:

"you sure are asking me a lot of questions about God today."

"yup," he said, "that's because God is my friend."

"Well great, hon," I enthused, "I'm so glad to hear that, because God is a good friend of mine, too."

Max just looked at me in a very superior way.

"Yes--well, he's a better friend to me".