The Problem of Gracie

Okay, I'm a little slow these days, but not stupid. I may be so caught up in the chaos of mommyness that I miss the thousands of nuances that proclaim God in the ordinary.

But I am not so stupid or busy that I missed the blinking neon sign that is Gracie. I just don't know what I'm supposed to do with this nippy, barky, jumpy mess of a blinking neon sign.

Huh? You're saying, what is this woman talking about?

Okay, here's the deal.

On Friday, October 19th I received a book of poems in the mail--Soul Food: Nourishing Poems for Starved Minds. One of the poems jumped out at me almost as soon as I opened the book, the poem by Denise Levertov I put on my blog about grief. I'll post it again so you can immediately get the glaring obviousness of what I'm about to point out:

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.

And 2 days later, walking along the Silver Comet Trail, Gracie makes her dramatic leap into our lives. A homeless dog. Into our lives. Just before winter.

I am NOT a dog person. I am a cat person. Cats are cuddly and self-contained and purr when you pet them and do not need endless bouts of walking/playing/housetraining/etc. like dogs do. Cats require a soft place to sleep, a litter box, and daily food and water. Other than that, they're good. Low maintenance. Dogs, on the other hand, are like kids--one constant need.

We have been trying and trying to find Gracie a home, but nothing comes of it. I am not a big believer in coincidence, since I am such a believer in God. So here it is, smacking me in the face: a house full of the ghosts of those we have so recently lost (Moon's mom and dad, 2 pregnancies we lost, my grandfather and grandmother), a poem about grief, and a dog named Gracie.

Okay, God, I get it. There's a message here. A story. Now--what is it, exactly?

Any chance I could learn it quickly and Gracie could find another place to live? Because this dog is seriously getting on my nerves. She is inconvenient, and smelly, and makes messes in my house at the most inconvenient times. She will not be ignored, or put off. She needs to be fed, walked, petted, watched. She insists we get up at the crack of dawn and take her for walks, and that she be the last thing we tend to before bed.

With 2 children under 4, I have no time for Gracie. But I have to make time, whether I want to or not. She will whine, whimper, wake the house up with her caterwauling if we don't. She'll make big smelly messes on my floor, and--as she has proved in the past--has no problem stripping the wallpaper from my walls and chewing on the walls if ignored.

And yes, I have been feeling my losses gnawing at the walls of my heart, too, and I have been angered that I feel it after spending so much time in the pit of despair this year, watching Mary die. I am sick of living with the pain of loss. I want it buried, deep, so it cannot rise again. But it comes, and I hear it calling for me, demanding my attention, nipping at my ankles. I get the glaring symbolism. I just don't want to.

And thus, the problem of Gracie. The problem of grief. Once they have entered your home, neither will be ignored.

Grace, according to my handy-dandy American Heritage dictionary, is "1. Seemingly effortless beauty or charm of movement, form or proportion. 2. A characteristic or quality pleasing for its charm or refinement. 3. A sense of fitness or propriety. 4. A disposition to be generous or helpful; goodwill. 5. A favor rendered by one who does not need to do so. 5. Mercy; clemency. 6. Divine love and protection bestowed freely on people {and dogs}." Grace, then, is a packed word.

We picked the name Gracie because we figured Someone had to be looking out for this poor creature if she sustained no injuries from her perilous journey down the ravine where we found her. She definitely is not an example of "effortless beauty or charm" with her clumsy, bowlegged gait and goofy antics. Definitely not refined, no sense of propriety whatsoever. But she is brimming with goodwill, and perhaps she is a favor, even if I don't usually see her that way. A gift from God, a reminder that there comes a time when grief requires us to invite it in, need and all, and take care of it, nurture it, give it a proper home. The writer of Ecclesiastes said "for everything there is a season...a time to weep, and a time to laugh/a time to mourn and a time to dance." Maybe God knew Moon and I were so caught up in the craziness of parenting small children and living in this suburban rat race that we needed a seriously blantant visual aid.

In her book Amazing Grace, Kathleen Norris writes in her chapter on grace that God

loves to look at us, and loves it when we will look back at him. Even when we try to run away from our troubles...God will find us, and bless us, even when we feel most alone, unsure if we'll survive the night. God will find a way to let us know that he is with us in this place, wherever we are.

The problem with grace is it, like the hope that lives at the bottom of Pandora's Box, requires darkness in order for it to come to light, and we humans hate that dark night of the soul. But should I curse the light simply because it shines best in the darkness, or view it as a blessing, a gift in the darkness?

I still don't know if we'll wind up keeping Gracie forever, or if this is just our season of Gracie. I can't even tell you that at the end of all this musing and moralizing I've come to some grand revelation, although I think I've garnered some comfort. What I can say is only this: I see it, God. I got the message. I'm listening. Not always happy with what I'm hearing, but I am listening. And I hope that is enough...

...oh, and if it's at all possible, could you get your blessing housetrained and sleeping through the night ASAP? I'd really appreciate it.

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".

New! Improved! The Blogger Returns from the Dead!

Howdy, all...

I'd apologize for not posting for oh, about a month and a half, but that seems to be how I start all my posts so let's just forget all the sniveling excuses, the mea culpas and all that, and move into something more interesting.

The Robin Family Saga

First of all, you'll remember I mentioned in my last post about the owl we heard the night Mary died. Well, immediately after her memorial service we discovered that a robin had built her nest in the holly tree next to our front door and directly in front of the room where Mary stayed when she was with us.

We noticed 4 bright blue eggs in the nest--although we lost one to a blue jay who dropped it onto our back patio.

Then, we had three transparent, fragile little alien-looking blobs, all mouths and peachy naked skin, gaping at us. We named them Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.

.

Soon, they were chirping constantly, glaring at us when we walked out the front door, and turning us into even more neurotic parents then we already are: my husband could be found loudly shooing a stray cat away from the foot of their tree at 6 in the morning, and then calling me during the day to check on "the babies". And I was out taking pictures of them like a besotted fool, so I was no better.

Finally, after a couple of weeks, they left us. We are officially empty nesters.



I thought when it happened we'd have less poopy diapers to change, but no such luck--the unpotty-trained 3-year-old and the 6-month-old are still around, keeping us busy.


Gabba-gabba-hey!!!


Speaking of 3-year-olds, Max has been thrilling my heart lately by showing a decided musical preference for the Ramones. He walks around the house singing "ba ba ba ba, ba ba ba ba ba, I wanna be todayyyyyyyy..." which is his version of "I Wanna Be Sedated". He even lines up his brother's stacking cups and accompanies himself on drums, using pencils for drumsticks.



He's also a fan of the Enkindels, Katrina and the Waves, techno music and the Imagination Movers, in no particular order. His preference is anything over 120 beats per minute, and LOUD. That's my boy. (proud sigh)


"And now for something COMPLETELY different..."

After one our many day trips into rural Georgia with "the fam", I've decided it's time to create a couple of new blogs linked to this one, because I got some stuff to say and it's all going to get discombobulated if I don't separate the words into their own nice, tidy compartments. I'm an organizer, you see, and a former cook (not hoity-toity enough to be a chef, sorry), and the first rule of restaurant cooking is keep your work space clean, or you're going to get screwed. (See Anthony Bourdain's books for facts to back this up.)

So, I'm going to make a space for food, and the wanderings we take to get to said food. First entries will feature our recent trips to Colonel Poole's BBQ in Ellijay, GA and Canoe in Vinings, GA. Both very different places, both exceptionally yummy in their own way. Stay tuned for that.

Then, to honor the mother in me, I'm starting a wee, itty-bitty blog for moms like me, specifically those in the East Cobb, GA area but there will be stuff more nationally related, too, where moms can go to find who's doing what as far as kids' activities (especially if it's free!), trends and idea in parenting, reviews of good gadgets to make mom's life easier and where to buy them, etc., etc., etc. Lots and lots and lots of links, I promise!

Meanwhile, this spot will remain my space for all the unwieldy little bits and pieces that won't fit anywhere else; namely philosophical and theological ramblings on suburbia, the environment, God, the Devil, and everyone in between. I keep it broad so I don't feel too claustrophobic.

Stay tuned. I'm back and gettin' busy.

Through a Veil, Darkly...

3AM. First time I've had a chance to write in a while. It's been a hell of a month--I mean that literally.

Rich Mullins, a singer/songwriter who died too soon, has a song where he mentions that even though we all want to go to Heaven, to stand there and stare death in the face "takes some grace". For the past month, that's what I've been doing.

I've mentioned in past posts a family member who was very sick. It was my mother-in-law, and the sickness was breast cancer that had metastasized to her lung. Since Christmas, we noticed her deterioration was more pronounced, though she continued to work full-time and there was little change in her crisp, cool, intimidating self. Then a month ago we went to run some errands for her and picked up some prescriptions. The prescriptions were for drugs so strong we knew she was far, far sicker than she had been letting on. Over the next week or so, we began taking care of her.

The past month our care increased daily as her condition worsened daily, and in the last week hourly. Cancer is one of those diseases that is so evil because it takes someone away in increments, in inches, in ounces until suddenly they collapse in on themselves, and the devastation is complete. It robs one of dignity and sound mind and strength, it takes all of the things we consider good about out humanity. It is a thief of the worst kind. I have seen those inspirational "What Cancer Cannot Take" posters and I think if someone tried to hand me something like that today I would break it over their head. The words are so empty when you are staring into the yawning, black maw of the disease.

Anyway, there is too much that is ugly and raw and bloody and private about that right now for me to write about in any clear manner. It is why I haven't written here in so long--any words that came to me were too painful to be written.

So let me say this: Mary passed away on Friday, April 13th. Hours before she passed, Moon and I woke to the lonely mourning of an owl outside our window, an owl I have never heard before or since in our wildlife-deprived, overly-developed neighborhood. The past few days have been filled with people coming in and out of our house, the funeral home, and later today Mary's church, telling us their version of Mary; giving us bits of stories we might have never heard. Reminding us her life mattered--which it did, and does, and will.

Standing in the presence of death does take grace, a grace I do not have within myself. Caregiving, the sort of hardcore caregiving Mary required toward the end of her life, required a grace I did not have. It required God, belief in God. It sounds crazy, but each time I have stood there before death--too often in the past year and a half--it reaffirmed my belief in God, my hope in God. For one thing, death seems to thin the veil between this life and the next. There is a verse in the New Testament sying something to the effect of "but now we see darkly, as through a veil..." and I remembered that as I stood by Mary's hospice bed. She would say things, see things, that seemed as if she were peeking around the edges of that veil, seeing the enormity of the things we could not see with our earthbound, lifebound eyes. When death stops for you, and you are riding in that carriage squeezed between death and immortality...I don't know. It's as if I hear a whisper in my ear, lower than low, like a thrumming in my blood that there is more, that there is more to this life, that this is but a temporary stopping point.

I do not feel the aching loss, the sense of drowning in grief I felt when death first started visiting me a few years ago. The more it visits, the less afraid I am of its return. I can't say I welcome it, and I certainly want it far, far away from my doors for a long time to come: Temporary or no, I love this life. I love my family, my children and my husband. I love the feel of life throbbing in my veins. But it no longer seems the bringer of evil it once was. (Cancer, on the other hand, is a demon straight from Hell. Don't let anyone tell you differently.) Death simply is a part of life. It is part of this life process. And God is there, even in death--maybe especially in death.

Anyway, it's way too late for me to be up writing, and I'm running on too much caffeine and not enough food, so I'm not writing the words I really want to say. It's the curse of the writer, to think in random passing the deep, profound truths that escape you immediately upon finding any way to record such thoughts.

Here is what I know: in this life, the questions matter. Mystery matters. And the day when I saw my baby son propped up against Mary in her hospital bed, watched Sam wriggle and kick against her wasted body, watched her smile down on him and saw him look at her in that new glaze of wonder and awe with which he looks at everything, I knew I was seeing the best of life and the worst of death in that moment. And I knew, I know, that life wins. Life wins.

To you, Mary, and the legacy you left behind. I am forever grateful for it, and everything you life and death taught me. See you beyond the veil.

Isolated Musings...

It's too late to be writing anything. I should be in bed--after all, Sam will be up in a few hours for his middle-of-the-night bottle, which he still cherishes. But it's quiet now, quiet like it rarely is anymore in the chaos of my life.

One weird thing about suburbia is how isolating it is, despite being surrounded by people. At least that's how it is in my version of suburbia, anyway. When my husband grew up here, it was--for the most part--a community of people who had connections to this area, roots. Now it's a commuter stopover for metro Atlanta, and the people who are moving in to the million-dollar homes that are being built on every square inch of land around us have no ties here, no memories buried in the red clay soil they build their houses on, no sense of history to connect them to the towering pine trees they clear-cut to make room for one more ornate box with an oversized media room and no yard. We're always being challenged to take care of the earth, to make our carbon footprint smaller, reduce, reuse, recycle. But you can't force someone to care about things that have no connection to them. The people who live around me--and many times, I confess, the same is true for me--are only connected to their house, their immediate family. There is no sense of place, and that lack, that isolation, makes us selfish. It makes our lives impossibly small.

When you look at it that way, it's not the greatest place to raise kids, huh?

Maybe it's lack of sleep that's making me morbid and melancholy. Or the isolation. It's amazing how many people I see every day, but they are all strangers to me. Even at my son's preschool, I see the same people every day, smile at them and say "hello", but they are still strangers.

(And did I mention the traffic was so insane this morning it took me 10 minutes to get to Max's preschool , which is literally around the corner from our house?)

Growing up in the small-town, crazy church I did was mostly a pretty bad experience. And when I say pretty bad, I mean the pastor going to prison bad. It was scary fundamentalist, very scary--very cult-like. We were cut off from our extended family, our neighbors--anything or anyone outside of that church. I went to school there and spent my recreation hours there. It was its own weird and terrifying microcosm.

But even in the midst of all of that, you knew you belonged. You knew there were people who would be happy to see you when you walked through the door, people who knew you and your family and the intimate, mundane details of your life and would ask you about them.

In the book Spirit and Flesh: Life in a Fundamentalist Baptist Church author and sociologist James M. Ault, Jr. notices this in the congregation that is the focus of his book. He writes:

Virtually all the conservatives I met...spent their formative years into adulthood involved in a circle of relatives and family friends on whom they relied to meet day-to-day needs...extended-family ties [a term Ault is using to describe the relationships in the church congregation he is studying] were the building blocks of church life...

Though a life of mutual dependence within a family circle was commonplace among members...I met, it was foreign to people I knew in academia and the New Left, as well as to other educated professionals I knew. Most of us were prepared, from the moment we left home for college, to leave family dependencies behind and learn to live as self-governing individuals...In the process, we learned to piece together a meaningful life with new friends and colleagues alongside old ones. Our material security did not rest on a stream of daily reciprocities within a family-based circle of people...

Next to this in the book I have written in pencil "one of the hardest things for me to adjust to was the loss of family." And it was--it is. To this day, I still feel like I am looking for a place to belong to, a place to call home that is bigger than simply my little family. I have never again found that sense of a belonging in a church, no matter the denomination or size. I wonder sometimes if it is not why I always end up profoundly disappointed in any church I attend--I always feel like a stranger among strangers, all of us unknown to each other but with this mutual friend in common we gather once a week to commemorate. It's a feeling that's impossible to explain to those who have not experienced it. When we left the crazy church--a necessary choice, and one I am grateful my parents made--it was nevertheless a death for me of this family I once had and never would again (anyone who left the church was immediately excommunicated, and no contact of any sort was allowed by those still within the church.)

I'm aware that such conditional love made any sense of community I had illusory, but I still seek it wherever I go. The feeling of coming home, of being known. Here in these overcrowded, over-rich suburbs full of SUV's with anonymous faces hid behind tinted glass there is no silence, but so much isolation.

And for me, there is only the memory of what I once believed was real community. I still believe it exists, or at least that it should exist, but I've yet to find it again. Is that what this blog is about--another search for community? Perhaps. Probably, at least in part.

So, is community illusory? Does anyone else out there have that place where, like the song says "everybody knows your name"? Are we all strangers to each other? Is all of this the wild musings of an overtired, burned-out mother?

Comments welcome--if only to remind me I am not alone on this big blue marble.

Hello? Is Anyone Still Here?

Yes, I know--it's been a while. A long while. In cyberspace, probably the eqivalent of a lifespan plus a couple reincarnations, if one believed in that sort of thing. But I have a reason, really. A good reason:

His name is Samuel. Samuel Gregory, to be precise. Born November 30, 2006 at 5:27PM and weighing in at an impressive 8 pounds, 6 ounces. Here he is, newly minted and about to leave the hospital to venture into his new home in the suburbs. No wonder he's praying...

Immediately after coming home and commencing with his waking-every-two-hours-to-eat schedule, he proceeded to come down with a nasty illness called RSV. For the uninformed, this is an ugly little viral infection that attacks the upper respiratory system and is particularly awful for babies, especially premature babies. Sam wasn't premature, thank God, but he was still very, very sick. He got bronchiolitis from the RSV, had to have breathing treatments, and was gasping for breath, unable to eat much at a feeding due to all the congestion in his tiny, little nose and lungs. His every-two-hour feedings changed to every-15-minutes feedings, and my husband and I basically didn't sleep at all for about a month. There was a time when my prayer life consisted of me paraphrasing the poet Stevie Smith: "Dear God, help me--I am not waving, but drowning!"

Suffice it to say, I am still alive, it is now March, the willow tree in our back yard is sprouting chartreuse shoots from its dry branches, and I am only beginning to recover from the whole process of giving birth. Sam is now fine, fat, and healthy--and has blessed us with a move to an every-four-hour feeding schedule, which is very civilized of him, I think. Here's the most current pic:

Cute, I know. Those dimples break my heart. (sigh...)

So anyway, when I left you it was the end of August and I was pregnant with this little guy, as big as a house. The last trimester of pregnancy leaves you in a stupor--at least that's how it affects me. I was lurching about the house like the ungraceful behomoth I was, stuffing all available food into my mouth, clutching my aching back, and spending all my creative energies grumbling about heartburn. I thought I should spare whatever readership I have from such alarming rants as might come forth from such a person.

Pregnancy and motherhood as a whole are something I have ever done gracefully, for that matter. I am no earth mother, no fertility goddess. Pregnancy is no fun, believe me. The only good part is the baby that comes at the end. And while I feel more at ease with motherhood than pregnancy, it isn't easy or even natural for me. In fact, it can often seem downright unnatural for me. I crave silence, long swaths of uninterrupted time in which to think. I love order, serenity, peace. Chaos and stress makes me break out in hives (literally). Motherhood is the antithesis of all things comfortable for me--dirty diapers, screaming, dirty laundry, dirty house, dirty kids (note the "dirt" theme here), constant interruptions. In fact, I've already stopped writing this blog twice--to put my preschooler down for a nap and to feed, change, and burp his baby brother. It is not a writer's life by any means.

Yet I keep having children...Why is that?

I remember when I was much younger (and even more clueless than I am now) sitting in a McDonald's with my then-boyfriend and the two of us snorting in derision over those foolish couples who simply must have children. "How selfish," we decided. We could not possibly think of a positive reason to have children. Adopt, yes, because then you would be giving a home to a child in need. But not the whole going through pregnancy to have your own biological child thing. We concluded that the need to do so must be the result of one's desire to either a) life their life over vicariously through their children, or b) replicate themselves so the glory of their children reflects back on them. These were the only reasons we could think of then.

Fast forward 15 years, and I still can't really give you a great reason to have children. But then, I can't give you a reasoned explanation for love, either. There is some primal element to it, some need beyond reason. Something. It's as close as I've ever gotten to seeing a small tear in the veil between the known and the unknown, Heaven and earth. Giving birth is a strange mixture of realer-than-real and mysticism bordering on the miraculous. It's blood and prayer, sweat and spirit.

Like marriage, motherhood is hard for me. And just as necessary. It's as simple--and complex--as that. Both have changed me, honed me, made me better than I was. To love in such close quarters--in marriage, as a parent--such love requires you to plunge in, deeper than deep, to hold your breath and keep going, even when it feels like drowning.

So...welcome Samuel, whose name means "God has heard our prayers". Thank you for joining the cast of characters in my life.

And thanks to all of you who are still reading this blog, despite my dreadfully long silence. I've missed being here.

Another Perspective

This is what my husband wrote about his experience. Thought I would share it, too:

On Saturday evening August 26, I was in the Lexington, Kentucky airport returning to Atlanta. My fellow travelers and I learned our flight, the last one out, was cancelled. We were given a choice of 6:00 am of 9:00 am flights the next morning. I wanted to hurry home to see my family, but I hesitated and decided on the later, 9:00 am flight. As I arrived the next morning, I was denied entry to the terminal by what was an unexpected and alarming number of emergency personnel. Then the news--the 6:00 am flight was Delta-Comair 5191 that crashed upon takeoff killing 49 onboard.

Thinking back, had this been a business day, I normally would have taken the early flight. I then remembered the man in line ahead of me who asked for the 6:00 am ticket--he lost his life. I didn’t know his name, but I remember his face. All day Sunday, it really didn’t sink in. But over the two days since, I’ve gone over it a thousand times. What would have been? My last conversation with my spouse the night before would have been a silly discussion about movies we wanted to see. I would not have seen her or my son again. I would not have seen the birth of my second child expected in December. Who would care for my mother who is ill, I thought?

I came to the realization this week that we can only tangibly affect the present. Sure, we can strive to do good work, choose to raise children and instill ideals that might outlive us into the future. But, it’s really the day to day life, the present tense where have the most impact. What would your last conversation of Saturday August 26 have been about? What would your actions on that day been spent toward?

I am not overjoyed. I am thankful for the days I have had since Saturday, but I am very sad for those who lost their lives, many due to a simple choice of two plane tickets. In honor of those lost in the crash, I would challenge each of us to consider every moment more carefully. We should choose more carefully the way we treat others and speak to them, just in case those are the last words and actions we’re remembered by. We should strive to contribute work in the office and in the community that has lasting quality. We should try to be a positive influence on others. If we do these things, no matter how many days each of us has on Earth, they will add up to a life worth living.


When I read this for the first time, I had no idea the guy ahead of him chose the 6:00 flight. Gave me chills to read it.

A few friends and family have mentioned to us that God spared Moon's life for a reason, that there is an unfulfilled purpose in Moon's life, something he must do, and this was made more obvious when his life was spared.

While I certainly don't believe in random fate pushing us all about the stage of life like so many dust bunnies swept up by some clown with a cosmic broom, I wonder about that statement. I wonder if the fact that he's here with the living today and the guy ahead of him in line is not means more than that. Surely my husband wasn't the only one in line God was looking out for, or the only one God cared about. Surely my husband wasn't the only one with unfulfilled dreams and purpose standing in that line at the airport, trying to get home to Atlanta.

One of my personal catchphrases over the past few years has become "life sucks, but God is good". In this world, people die too young and too soon. Bad things happen to good people. Bad people get away with doing horrible things. There is no perfection, no utopia, no protection from the reality of evil and good co-existing side by side. It is why, like Saint Augustine, I believe "our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God". It is why I believe in Heaven.

Maybe my husband's life was spared because there is some great unfulfilled plan for him that still must unfold. Or maybe it was just not his day to die. Ultimately, I think he sums it up well in his assessment of the whole thing--we can only tangibly affect the present. This minute is really all we have. I read a quote yesterday from Lawrence Scupoli from his work The Spiritual Combat: "God has granted you the morning, but he does not promise the evening. Spend each day as if it were your last."

What would our lives look like if we really took that to heart? How would I live this day differently if I thought it were my last?

This day. This minute. It's really all I know I have.

A little brush with mortality...

This past Saturday, my husband had a 50-50 chance of survival. No joke. And I was completely oblivious.

Here's the deal:

He flew down Friday to Lexington, KY to help his sister get settled in her new digs there, with plans to fly back Saturday night. I was okay with this, although not thoroughly thrilled--I am NOT a fan of spending nights alone, mainly because I'm ridiculously afraid of the dark for a thirtysomething mother. But it was cool. I had Monk and Psychic to get me through the darker hours before bedtime, and a new mystery novel. Of course, Max chooses this particular weekend to come down with a mysterious virus complete with fever and vomiting and staying awake all night, but that, I've learned, is part of the Murphy's Law of mothering--the worst events with your children will occur when you are sans spouse.

So Friday night passes in a haze of USA Network programming, whodunits and vomit cleaning. I survived.

Then Moon, my spousal unit, calls me Saturday evening around the time he should be boarding his plane and tells me that due to a plane malfunction his flight has been canceled and he has to reschedule for the next morning. He was offered a choice of the 6:00 or 9:00 flight back. He chose 9:00AM.

I was not a happy camper, as I now faced another night alone with a sick baby and a raging case of cabin fever from having been locked in the house all day with said sick baby. But this is life, and I must deal. Sunday it is.

"I'll see you around 12:30 or so," he tells me.

Max and I spent another sleepless night, broken only by a 2-hour respite he offered me while he slept through my watching of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle on cable TV. (yeah, yeah, yeah, make fun if you wish, but sleep deprivation and intellectually stimulating movies do not mix.) I am REALLY looking forward to Moon's homecoming, if only for the chance of sleep it might provide.

At 7:00AM Sunday morning, he calls me again.

"Hey," he says, "are you watching the news?"

"No, I'm watching Dora the Explorer with Max while brain cells trickle out of my ears," I tell him. I am running on about 2 hours sleep total, and my hugely pregnant state does not allow me to consume massive amounts of caffeine to compensate. As a result, I am not in the best of moods.

"Well, I won't make my flight. There's been a crash and the airport's closed."

"WHAT???" I said, stupidly.

"That's all I know," he said. "Except that I think the plane that crashed was the plane I was supposed to be on at 9:00."

The impact of all this didn't hit until around 9:30, when the news networks picked up the story and every major Atlanta channel was carrying the story of Comair Flight 5191. My knees went rubbery as I sat there watching the whole story unfold--the crash itself, the fact that all but one person on the flight died. One of the passengers was a dad who had been visiting family in Lexington and took the earlier flight because he wanted to see his kids. Moon came within a hair's breadth of being on that plane. "Do you want the 6:00 or the 9:00 flight?" he'd been asked, and had a 50-50 chance of living or dying in the answer he gave.

When he finally got home around 7PM that night, I was never so glad to see him.

It's funny how quickly our life settled back into the grooves of, well, life--you think that when you brush against death's veil that closely you would take some time to ponder the whole profundity of the thing. But by now Max was recovering from his virus, and had his own case of severe cabin fever that he exhibited by screaming at the top of his lungs and running around the house in circles like a rabid dog. One of our cats had been bitten by a spider the night before and had to be taken to the kitty ER because the allergic response to the spider bite was causing it to try and scratch its face off, and he was getting blood all over my carpet. One of us had to take dinner over to a sick family member. We were out of diapers. That sort of thing. Life just shoved itself into the cracks too quickly to allow us to ponder the cracks in the first place.

I thanked God, of course, but it was a weird sort of thank you. How do you say thanks for the preservation of one life in the midst of the loss of 49 others? "Thanks that such a horrible thing didn't happen to us" seems a selfish sort of prayer. I'm profoundly grateful my husband will get to see the face of his unborn child, which he almost didn't. But what of the newlywed couple just starting a brand new life who were on that plane?

So, I'm grateful and sad and relieved all at the same time. Death seems to have been dogging our family for a few years now with the loss of both of my grandparents and Moon's dad, so it's nice to see us get bypassed this time, even if I'm still reeling a bit from the way the Grim Reaper's black robes brushed a little too closely against my husband's ankles. And as in-your-face a reminder as it was, it was still a reminder that after 11 years, I am still crazy about my husband, and have no idea how to even contemplate a full life without him.

So here we are on Tuesday, all of us still alive, Max fully recovered, cat in one of those awful conehead things and healing, Moon back at work, me blogging, fetus kicking the snot out of me, diapers bought, life moving on. Our biggest concern today is who we can get to babysit Max this Thursday while we go to an Earth, Wind and Fire concert (not my first choice, but the tix are free and Moon is a huge 70s music fan. I would have preferred the recent John Prine/Patty Griffin show, but that is neither here nor there). But somewhere out there are 49 families whose lives have been totally blown apart, and my heart and prayers are still with them, because I came this close to joining their ranks. If you get a chance today, you might want to offer up a prayer/good thought as well. The Valley of the Shadow of Death is a pretty horrible place to be.

Confessions of a Housewife

Just checked to see when I last posted something--over a month ago. Who was it that said "life is what happens when you're making other plans"? I'm finding that particularly apt right now.

Since my last posting, there's been a lot of life--tinged with the shadow of death--around here. My baby boy turned three years old. Some close family family members are moving to start a new chapter of their life in Kentucky. My sister-in-law is dealing with a cancer diagnosis just passed down to her mother. A close member of our extended family (who, being proud and disinclined to enjoy having minutae about his/her life paraded across the Internet, shall remain nameless) is sick, very sick. We've been doing a lot of caregiving over the past month, wondering what the final out come of all this sickness will be. It's been reminding me of the vigils we kept last year at my father-in-law's bedside just before he passed away, and the time my grandfather lived with my husband and me after my grandmother passed on.

Caregiving. It seems to come with the territory of family, those who are bound to you through blood and marriage. At least, that's how it's seemed in my life. I've been spending a lot of time this past month babysitting so other relatives can visit at the hospital, preparing meals, running errands. Doesn't leave a lot of time to write.

The thing about being a stay-at-home mother/housewife in this day and age is that, well, we're a bit of a dying breed. There just doesn't seem to be a lot of underscheduled people in the world. There's not a lot of options for spur-of-the-moment babysitters, meal cookers, errand runners. (Believe me--I've been looking for a spur-of-the-moment babysitter for three years.) And I've been a little proud of the fact that my life has room for emergencies, room for unscheduled stops and u-turns. I'm grateful for it. It makes me remember why I wanted to do this in the first place--to have time for my family, not just my immediate family, but my extended family as well. To have a life that has space in it.

I've found myself drifting a lot this summer, watching time float by. I've been restless and resentful of these large blocks of unscheduled time that seem only able to be filled with the relentless constancy of tedious chores--the same dishes, the same diapers, the same laundry, the same dirty carpets and empty cat bowls. I've felt invisible and useless. But this past month I have remembered the blessing of being able to say "yes" when someone desperately needed a chunk of my time. I forget sometimes, holed up inside this house, that in this insanely overstuffed, multitasking world that the gift of time is a very great gift indeed.

It'sa delicate business, being a housewife in the modern age. Most of us stick with the "stay-at-home mom" label, and I usually do, too. It makes what you do seem noble enough that the modern world at least pays lip service to your sacrifice, even if they don't really mean it. You are sacrificing your career potential to stay at home for your children, to give them the best you can possibly give.

But there's more to it. I'm not just a stay-at-home mom. I'm a housewife, too. Some stay-at-home moms may be just that, with housekeepers or maids to take care of the housewifery so they can solely be mothers. I can't speak for them. (I can't afford regular maid service.) So I'm a housewife, too. And boy, is that an unappreciated job. No one even bothers to pay lip service to that one--in fact, the term 'housewife' is suspect, as if you're a Stepford Wife Clone in a 50s housedress and apron. In our culture, housework is reviled. It is not something to take pride in, it is something to be foisted on to someone else at the earliest possible economic opportunity. When speaking of housekeeping, it is only respected or admired if one is discussing it in the way of Martha Stewart or Real Simple magazine--if one is speaking of making a home beautiful, decorating it, organizing it with $5,000 worth of cunning little bins from the Container Store.

But meanwhile, someone's got to clean the toilets, vacuum the crumbs off the carpet, wash the fingerprints off the windows and iron the laundry. Someone's got to change the sheets, wipe down the sticky railing, pick up the toys and cook dinner. Every day. Again and again and again and again. And the main thought that runs through your head as you pick up the same stupid dump truck off the same stupid playroom floor for the 50th time that day is THIS IS NOT THE REASON I EARNED A MASTER'S DEGREE. You can finesse a little glory and prestige out of staying home to raise children. You can massage some respect out of serving as your home's interior designer and organizer. But to stay home to be the maid? C'mon. It's pretty humiliating in this day and age.

But housewifery is what takes up the bulk of my day. The running of a home is a colossal, constant unchecked "to do" list. There is always a chore to be done. I am as much housewife as mother. Right now, as a I write, the living room is covered in toys, the kitchen is full of dishes (and then there's that sticky place where Max spilled his juice this morning), a washer full of damp clothes to dry, and a list of errands that need running.

I just finished To Hell With All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife by Caitlin Flanagan. And it speaks to this issue (although Ms. Flanagan speaks as one who has both housekeeper and nanny and a full-time stay-at-home dream job with paying writing gigs, so I took some of her words with a grain of salt.) I went looking for answers but didn't find many. It's a good book, though, and one that provacatively addresses these issues. In the chapter "Drudges and Celebrities" she writes:

There was a time when the measure of a home was found in the woman who ran it--who was there all day long, who understood that certain aspects of 'hominess' had less to do with spit and polish than with continuity and permanence. As these old standards wane, a new one has emerged, and it is [Martha] Stewart's...But almost any project she cooks up is less daunting than the one it is meant to replace: keeping a family together, under one roof, home.

Sometimes I feel caught between generations, between cultural shifts. I'm grateful for the women's rights movement of the 1970s, because it opened up a world of options I never would have dreamed of otherwise. I also feel a little defensive reading Betty Freidan, or some of the newer feminist writers, who make me feel that my life choices are somehow a smack in the face of feminism, a retreat. I also find myself at times getting a little cross-eyed with boredom in the world of stay-at-home mothers, wishing that sometimes we could find something to talk about besides our children. (Don't even get me started on those weird suburban "Moms Night Out" evenings I've been invited to involving houseware or makeup parties or worse, that weird Bunco game.)

I care about my family, passionately, and I refuse to apologize to anyone for that. I honestly believe it is important that my kids grow up with a readily available mom, and that if my husband is working 10-12 hours a day to give me that privilege, the least I can do is make things
neat and tidy and maybe have some semblence of a home-cooked meal on the table when he comes home at night. I have grown to appreciate the calm and peace that comes from a clean, well-ordered home, and I'm willing to scrub a toilet or two for that calm. Maybe when my kids are older, I'll say "to hell with all this" and jump into some new endeavor--and here is where I respectfully doff my hat to feminism, because without the activists of that movement, I might not have the option to do so. But I'm not going to apologize for being a housewife, either.

I have written before about Buddhist monks who create these beautifully-colored, intricate mandalas from sand, sometimes taking all day to do so, only to wipe it away and begin fresh the next day. In our society, a pointless exercise in futility. Yet to them the point is the activity--the meditative and spiritually open state that comes only through the banality and tedium of the task. I've seen this, too, in the writings of Catholic Benedictine monks who see an intrinsic link between their mundane tasks of keeping up the abbey and the cycles of their prayer. I believe my housework is my mandala, my liturgy of the hours. (At least, I believe this on my best days, when I'm not grumbling under my breath about the pointlessness and futility of it all.)

After all, my early immersion into punk rock taught me that just because something is considered right or wrong by societal norms does not in any fashion make that right or wrong. One hundred million people have been wrong before. So sue me--I'm a housewife. You got a problem with that?

Confessions of a Suburban Miser

I just finished a book: Around the House and in the Garden: A Memoir of Heartbreak, Healing, and Home Improvement by Dominique Browning. It was good, in a wealthy, suburban sort of way. Browning writes about the home improvements she made to her home--in essence, the re-creation of her home--after her divorce. And it really is a lovely book. But it was hard for me to relate to Browning's re-creation of home, which involved thousands of dollars of new furniture and home improvements, and the purchase of a second home, a summer cottage in Rhode Island.

With a toddler in tow and another on the way, our family's idea of home improvement has become mowing the lawn. We'd love to do all sorts of things--replace our mission-style furniture in the family room, for instance. We bought it before we had kids, and never realized that the sharply-angled corners of our oversized, solid wood coffee table would pose hazardous to careening babies approaching it at eye level. It worked beautifully in the front room of our Victorian monstrosity in Kentucky, but seems out of place and awkward in our white-on-white new-ish house in Georgia. I'd love to replace our furniture with big, comfy, highly-washable sofas and leather ottomans, hang some sort of curtain that would work to cover our windows that soar 3/4 of the way up our 20-foot ceiling. I'd love to buy some big, colorful pieces of art to hang on our bare walls. Our house, even on the best day, is rather drab and tired-looking, sort of like a dependable yet boring hotel. With cheap, stained carpet and fingerprints on the glass.

So reading about Browning's angst as she repairs her life and her home didn't really touch me the way I think it was supposed to touch me. I kept thinking that the ability to buy out Pottery Barn and Williams-Sonoma might go a long way towards easing my troubled soul. Who couldn't create beauty and order out of those kind of resources?

Yeah, so I'm a little jealous.

I grew up poor. Not dirt poor, but poor nonetheless. I remember days when dinner consisted of canned beef gravy poured over white bread because that was all we had. Of paper grocery bags of staples left on our doorstep by generous friends who knew of our plight, or the Christmas that only happened because some some friends of my parents left a bag of toys and clothes on our front stoop one winter. I remember my mom crying over the monthly bookkeeping, trying to make two impossibly short ends meet. There was never quite enough money to go around, even in times when our financial circumstances grew brighter. There was never quite enough.

In my early 20s, when I moved out on my own, I was still poor. I lived in a 3-room shotgun apartment with holes in the walls. I used my first tip money from my waitressing job to buy the largest container of boric acid I could find to stuff in every nook and cranny of my kitchen, to combat the roach problem I inherited with the apartment. I lived on ramen noodles and the free food I got at the restaurant where I worked. I was a connoiseur of thrift shops and bargain bins. I occasionally dated just for the free dinner. I cried over the monthly bookkeeping.

Then I married a man who grew up in the suburbs, and had always been solidly, staunchly middle class. His parents had been able to afford braces for him when he was young, and health insurance. He shopped in department stores and owned a driveable, dependable car (in fact, one of the first incredibly sweet presents he gave me when we were dating was to ransom my undriveable, non-dependable car from the garage where it was being held hostage until I could pay for the repairs.) He's careful with money and talks about retirement funds and dream houses. Now, 11 years into our marriage, I live uncomfortably in his world. At 37, I'm finally getting the braces I always wanted as a kid. We are solidly, staunchly middle class couple. But still, I'm uncomfortable around money. I still crave it, dream about what I would buy if I had it--just the way I did when I was kid. When I do have it, I tend to spend it quickly, still believing it will disappear, dry up--that money is a feast or famine sort of thing. I careen between gluttony and starvation when it comes to money. I roll my eyes at the comfortably rich and some secret, ugly part of me wants to hate them, to feel nothing but contempt for them for having more than I have--the same part that envies them their wealth and comfort.

In the suburbs, I feel the pull even more to acquire, to have more. It isn't good for me to drive down streets laden with strip malls, with little grassy strips by the curb filled with colorful signs screaming BUY BUY BUY. My husband is completely oblivious to it, but I am not.

I am realizing, slowly, that growing up poor left me with a miser's soul. I begrudge every financial generosity, fearing I might be giving away more than I can afford. I am afraid of waking up with nothing, and it is a binding fear, one that keeps me from truly enjoying what I have.

The question is: how do I get from the fear and this poverty-stricken soul to a place of true contentment and generosity? And how do I get there in the consumption-mad suburbs, which for me is like putting a compulsive overeater to work in a chocolate factory? And finally, why is it that every one of those books on "Simple Abundance" and creating a beautiful life from the ordinary ultimately requires you to PURCHASE SOMETHING?

I'm at a loss. Comments on my predicament are welcome.

Face to Face with the Human Condition

Tuesday I had to get some blood drawn for some routine pregnancy tests. I went over to my friendly neighborhood lab to have the work done. It's a depressingly gray one-story building with the best lab techs I've ever known--they never have to stick me more than once, and every other lab I've ever been to usually has at least one false start before finding a good vein. (Do you care about any of this? Of course not. But since I have, for better or worse, fallen into the category of "high-risk pregnancy" I have become a human pin cushion, so for me good lab techs are right up there with ice-cold Coke and finding an extra buck in my pocket in the "good things" category.)

So here I am in the depressing lab, signing in and passing over my insurance card to be copied. It's a busy day in the lab--the reception room is full of people sitting in chairs, waiting to be called. Pregnant women flipping through American Baby magazines. A large African-American woman slumped over across 2 chairs, sleeping. An elderly couple sitting close together, stiffly upright and looking suspiciously over at the colorful assortment of people around them. And next to me, to my left, sits a Hispanic woman--little more than a girl, really. She looks barely out of her teens. She has long, curly black hair and a white tank top on. She's about as pregnant as I am--maybe 5 or 6 months at the most. She is waiting alone.

When you're pregnant, you can scope out other pregnant women as if you've got radar. Without even knowing them, you know you're in the same club. You eye them from the belly up. When you catch each other's eye you smile. But this girl wasn't looking at anyone or anything in particular. It was as if an invisible barrier stood between her and the rest of the room.

Well, maybe not that invisible. It was hard to ignore her grossly swollen upper lip, even as she tried to cover it with her fluttering bird-hands. Or the vaguely sinister purple markings that showed around her cheekbone and nose. It was obvious that someone, very recently, had beaten the crap out of her pretty face. This young, pregnant girl, waiting alone in a room full of people.

What do you do when you see this? When you see someone in horrible trouble for a split second in a waiting room and know there is no way, no time, to offer any help? Her body language made it clear she was not open to conversation. I got the feeling that if I asked her what happened, I would have been told she tripped and fell into a door, not some loved one's fist.

I've wondered about her for the past two days. I've prayed for her a lot--prayed for protection for her and that unborn baby. In the area of town where the lab is, there are a lot of Hispanic immigrants, and I wonder if she is one of them. I wonder if she even spoke English, and if she lived in one of the run-down rental houses a few blocks down, those houses with graffiti sprayed across the peeling siding, with windows broken out and curtains for doors where so many of the day laborers who wind up in this area live. Or maybe she lives a few miles out in the suburbs like me, in a nice house with a nice yard in a nice neighborhood. I've learned over the years that things like abuse are not limited to the poor, run-down areas of town. They're everywhere. They're sitting right next to me.

You get isolated in the suburbs. It's not intentional, it just happens. Your life becomes smaller and smaller, focused on your house, your family. It's easy to forget there's a world outside of the little life you have constructed, easy to let the details of your busy life crowd in, to shield yourself from life's darker side in your comfortable house or driving down the interstate in your comfortable, air-conditioned car. I know I've fallen victim to this. In the city, the darker side of life was right next to me, right next door. The house next to ours was owned by a church, and homeless men would often be allowed to camp out on their front porch overnight. They would occasionally stumble over to our front porch, singing some song off-key, staggering a little, telling us stories and begging for change. One guy tried to break in to our newborn baby's nursery while he was blind drunk, thinking he was at his grandmother's house--this was about when we decided to move to the suburbs.

In the city, I felt like the human condition, the good and the bad, was always laid out in front of me. Here in the suburbs, I confess I sometimes forget the bad stuff. Until the beaten face of a too-young pregnant girl brings it back to me. And then I remember that the darkness, like poverty, is always with us. It is important to always remember, to occasionally have it sit next to you.

If you get a chance, offer up a prayer or some good thought for that girl and her baby tonight. God knows she probably could use it. I know I will.

No Such Thing as Happiness and Other Joyful Thoughts, Part II

I've been avoiding writing about this part of my happy/joy treatise because, quite frankly, I'm still working my way through it. And I do so hate to write about things I don't know well. I much prefer always sounding like an expert, the one who has all the answers, who has spent all of her time Thinking Great Thoughts. Much preferred over letting you know who I really am, a blind woman stumbling in the dark, a dark that scares her to death.

I grew up in a seriously strict, seriously fundamentalist, seriously fire-and-brimstone and God-loves-you-so-much-he-pretty-much-hates-you church and school. (Oh trust me, there will be LOTS on this throughout!!)I was taught God is not a fan of failure or weakness. God won't tolerate it. God will beat it right out of you any way possible. So even now--when I know this teaching to be a lie, and thoroughly anti-God, I struggle with seeming imperfect, struggling, lost. So I've been avoiding saying anything about joy. Especially because joy, for me, is intrinsically bound up with God, flowing from God. I can't write about one without writing about the other.

In truth, we are all lost, blind, struggling. It's the human condition. To quote one of my favorite songwriters, the late great Mark Heard, we are all "soot-covered urchins, running wild and unshod"...So from one urchin to another, here's what's been coming to mind about the whole joy thing, so far...

Joy is real, far more real and lasting than happiness. And a lot harder to come by and keep, too. Joy is a choice, a determination, a deliberate state of mind and heart. It has more to do with an outward focus than an inward focus, less to do with feeling than will--at least at first. The feelings seem to be a result of the willingness to be joyful. I'm starting to believe joy has much in common with words like "rejoice", "hope", "gratitude", "service" and "worship". And it has a lot to do with pain, too.

During the darkness of my past year, I first came upon an inkling of joy in a book on mourning, Michael Card's A Sacred Sorrow: Reaching Out to God in the Lost Language of Lament. In the book, Card looks at the Biblical story of Job, which is a good one to look at if you want to look at sorrow and grief.

It's the anti-happy book. Wealthy, religious, happy and healthy Job with his big family, good health, houses and herds and lands loses everything in one fell swoop to a series of calamities and natural disasters--fires, earthquakes, thieves, illness. He winds up in rags, covered in ash, covered in festering sores and prostrate with grief. His friends come and pat him on the back and say "Man, you must have really screwed up big time for God to punish you like this." (Nice friends--for the record, in situations like this, the proper response is to envelop the griever in a huge hug and cry with them. A big ol' casserole with lots of fat and cheese would not go amiss, either.) His wife comes to him and lovingly says, "Babe, curse God and die." (I can't be too hard on her, though--she had just lost all of her children. She was in a pretty black hole of despair herself.)

And Job's response to all of this?

The Bible says "he fell to the ground in worship."

Now, I'd read this before. I'd always had a problem with it, really. If I were Job, I would've taken his wife's advice and killed myself, not fallen to the ground in worship. His response seemed to me to be too Christian, too...inhuman. The spontaneous, instinctual human response to suffering is not joy, or worship. I saw him as one of those goody two-shoes who was so blinded by his fundamentalist zeal for his faith that he deliberately refused to see the reality of his situation.

But Card's take on it blindsided me, and woke me up to the possibility that Job's response was, while certainly heroic, still definitely human. He says...

"Job is the sort of man who will simply not let go of God. To him, this is what worship means. He will stubbornly cry out in the groanings of this lament, which is worship until God answers...Job had the audacity to worship God in the midst of such indescribable pain."

Worship, obviously, is different from joy, and means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. But the two are tied up together for me. To me, worship is recognizing some aspect of God's goodness and meditating on that aspect, focusing on it and recognizing it for the awe-inspiring thing it is. It can be as obvious and overt as singing along with a chorus in a church, or as subtle and personal as finding a tiny piece of cobalt sea glass on the beach, its edges rounded by the great, gray ocean. It is something that leads as if by instinct to joy.

Worship as it is too often done in the Christian church has left me cold, especially in the midst of all my loss. Too often last year I was not able to sing along with some chorus or hymn because tears were choking me, running down my cheeks. When I looked around my congregation, people were smiling and lifting their hands in the air, and bringing my grief into that sanctuary felt too much like being the embarrassing, drunken, blubbering killjoy at someone's birthday party that everyone wishes would just shut up and go home.

But here in Job I found out that God never asked me to go to church and sing happy, happy songs with upbeat rhythms. Coming from me, at the place I was in, that wasn't worship because it wasn't authentic. Where I was in my life--which felt a lot like Job's at the time--worship simply meant showing up and saying, "Why?" Because by asking "why", it showed I still believed God could answer the question. It showed that I had the audacity to believe that God and all the good things that flow from God were still real, still available, despite death, despite pain, despite grief. That I believed that pain and suffering were not the end all and be all of existence, that there might be more.

The ancient Greek myth about Pandora and her box is one of my favorites. Pandora has a box that is given to her by the gods and it contains all suffering, illness, and evil. She is told never to open the box, but curiousity gets the better of her and she does open it. The sufferings and evils go flying out to infect the world forever with their darkness, but underneath them all was one miraculous discovery that remained: hope.

Joy starts there, with hope. And hope is, by necessity, a resident with the dark things of this world. Why would we need hope, if we had no suffering, no grief, no illness or evil? What purpose would it serve? What need for faith, which the Bible defines as "the substance of things hoped for", if pain was not shouting its very real existence every day?

So here is one thing I know for sure: Joy is real. I believe that to be true. God is real. I believe that to be true. And right now, as I come blinking and raw into the sunlight after a very long night of the soul, my statement of joy is as simple as this: I believe. Still.

A Quick Aside, and the Discovery of a Theme...

First, let me apologize for my silence--my son, Max, got sick on Friday with one of those mysterious viruses that knock one flat but seem impossible to truly diagnose, and my weekend was spent nursing him. He's back to his old tricks today: watching too much TV, eating butterfly-shaped peanut butter sandwiches and asking me four million questions about everything from my prediction of what the next TV show is to why one cannot repair a balloon that has lost its air ("the batteries," he patiently points out as he holds up the bottom of the balloon to my face, "go here, mommy!").

That being said, I picked up Alexandra Stoddard's Living a Beautiful Life from the library this weekend and have been skimming through it. When I'm feeling blah or in need of a lift, I enjoying skimming through her books because they're full of delightful suggestions--some useful and reasonable, some the ridiculously "simple" suggestions that can only come from the very spoiled or very rich--about improving the quality of one's home life, and as much as I chafe against suburban living, I am a passionate believer in the home, in home-making as a beneficial and necessary part of successful family life. I may not have June Cleaver's take on the whole thing, but there's a lot to be said for creating an environment of peace, beauty and order for one's self and one's family. Right now, in my family, I'm the one with the time, passion, and ability for the job, so I try to take home-making as seriously as I take mothering, because for this moment, they are my profession and calling as much as writing is.

~End of (slightly defensive-sounding) soapbox rant~

Back to Ms. Stoddard.

While reading the first chapter, I came upon a passage she quotes from Maria Ranier Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, which is one of my Top Ten Most Influential Books of All Time. As I read the passage, I realized it summed up exactly what I wanted to do with this blog, and so let me quote it here to give you a theme of sorts for what will come:

"...So rescue yourself from these general themes and write about what your everyday life offers you: describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty--describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no poor, indifferent place."

As you might have guessed, I am NOT a fan of suburban life. Not only do I feel it to be an isolating environment that too easily leads to self-absorption, but I feel it encourages a lifestyle of mass consumption and waste, is too often damaging to the natural world around us, and--at least for me--offers up a lot of difficulties when trying to live a life that I think Christ would have me lead. However, due to finances and the needs of our extended family and a host of other reasons, this is where I and my family are right now, and where it looks like we're going to be for a while. Attempts to escape over the past year or two have proved futile, so I'm led to believe that for whatever reason, this is where I am supposed to be.

To simply snarl and criticize and grouse about my surroundings would be easy, but not very useful. How much better to realize the dangers and pitfalls of suburban life, look at them honestly, but recognize too the offerings of this everyday life of mine, and honor them as well? What if I see it not as poor, but rich in its complexity?

So I take Rilke's challenge, and am determined to prove myself a poet worthy of my current theme.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.