I Am Nothing

I stutter when I try to speak the language of life
I want to shout out loud but I just cry inside
Sometimes it feels so holy sometimes so absurd
So who am I to try and put that into words

I am nothing
But the angels sometimes whisper in my ear
Yeah, they tell me things and then they disappear
Though I am nothing I sometimes like to make believe I hear

I stumble when I try to walk the straight and narrow
I have heard it said God's eye is on the lowly sparrow
Who in spite of everything will sing for all he's worth
You know sometimes I feel exactly like that bird

I am nothing
But the angels sometimes whisper in my ear
Yeah, they tell me things and then they disappear
Though I am nothing I sometimes like to make believe I hear

-Pierce Pettis

Peeling carrots in an old house.

I am standing in front of an open window peeling carrots, listening to the whistle of the 6 o'clock train crossing the Connecticut River from NH to VT. The trestle is about a mile from my house though it sounds as if it were much closer. The air tonight is fresh and comfortably cool, the first dry leaves of the fall are scattered across the yard. I am wondering how many women have stood here in September, preparing dinner for their families in this very kitchen. Tonight's meal is humble - carrots from our garden, potatoes and applesauce made from apples we picked last Sunday when it was still hot and summery. Probably many a housewife before me has combined these three late summer vegetables and fruit in this same New England house.

I love living in an old house. I often find myself thinking about the dozens of people who have lived their lives here before me - for whom these rooms have been "home," who have been born and grown up, married and borne children, and died in the rooms I think of as my own. Several years ago our family volunteered at a colonial fort, dressing in period clothing as reenactors. I would stare hard at my children as they played on the front yard in their knickers and muslin dresses, trying to imagine the house as it looked when children dressed just so actually lived here. I could never do it - I could never make the present fade away even in my own mind, but I liked to try.

In the first fifteen years of my marriage we lived in two other well-worn dwellings. Our eldest child was born in the tiny second floor room of a log cabin. She took her first breath in a bed wedged beneath the steeply sloping roof of a house built nearly 220 years earlier. When my midwife first visited our home she stood in the room thoughtfully, feeling the history there and pronounced it a good place to give birth. We had no idea how many babies had entered the world in that single, upstairs chamber, but there must have been many.

Our next children were born in a newer house - a Mansard-roofed Victorian rowhouse with a stone facade. There our bed was in a huge, high-ceilinged room with and arched doorway, tall windows and a balcony. That room later became our playroom where our children played make-believe and built forts and block castles. Sometimes when I passed through the dark hall at night to check on a sleeping baby or adjust the blankets of a restless toddler I wondered what mothers and children had lived here before me and what, if anything, of themselves they had left in the house. My daughter left a small, handwritten note under a loose floorboard when we moved away.

Here our last two babies were born in what was probably the parlor; they may have been the first of the dozens of babies born here in 200 years to emerge in the best room of the house! We have no record of who entered life in this house, though many of the former owners are buried in the colonial-era cemetery just up the hill. We know our house was built by the Comings family, and we can find their names carved on old slate slabs in the back part of the graveyard. The woman we purchased the house from is also buried there, next to her husband whom we never met. Sometimes I wonder if my name will be on a stone there as well.

Life in an old house makes me feel often the brevity of my life - to remember the Scriptural image of my life as a blade of grass that once withered, will be remembered by few. The King James version says, "It's place remembers it no more." The wind will continue to blow across the wheatfield and the grass will quickly close over the place where that one blade grew. Consumed with the big events of my own life - children's weddings taking the place of their births - I can feel more important than I really am. One day another woman will stand at this window who knows nothing about me; this will be her house and all traces of my life will be gone. It is already so in the other houses that were such a part of my life. No one but my husband, and maybe the midwife, has any memory at all of the birth-days that changed the world for me. No one else remembers the weather on those days, how hot one day was, how gray and chilly another, how the stars were so brilliant that night or how the sun gradually brightened the east-facing room as we waited for the child to be born. One day someone else will tend my lilac bushes and call them her own, will listen to the waterfall through the open window and never think of me.

lost and found life

After months - no, years - of talking and praying about adoption we have finally taken the step, written the check and, it feels, reached the point of no return. Three days ago I stopped at the bank to get the certified check to send with our acceptance documents. As I waited for the check to be printed I felt like I was going to throw up. Really. It was not at all because this was by far the largest check I've ever written in my life, but because I was reeling from the days of indecision, the nights without sleep, the fears without end of how our lives might be changed by this moment.

I could no longer remember why we had begun the process of adoption, why we wanted to prolong our already lengthy parenting stage, why we thought it was a good idea to uproot some children on the other side of the world and try to make them part of our white, middle-class American family. I could not fathom why I should not just send this generous amount of money to an orphanage in Ethiopia and feel good about all the food and medicine it would provide. I had completely lost the train of thought or good intentions that had brought me to this place. I just wanted to go home and have things be like they have always been in our lovely, happy home. I certainly did not want to take a chance on these children I have never met.

This was a hard week in other ways. On Tuesday I said goodbye to my beautiful 19 year old daughter for at least six months. She was headed to Boston in a compact, heavily-packed, low-riding car with a cousin who was also leaving home, though the cousin was only traveling as far as Baltimore. C was catching a flight to Thailand. She took so little with her - only a backpack for the whole time even though I reminded her often that she was allowed two large suitcases on an international flight. She was wearing the same pants my older daughter had travelled around Thailand in three years ago, her money tucked away in a tiny inside pocket A had stitched by hand for that purpose. She had cut her long, wavy blond hair for the trip, so she'd be cooler and less encumbered. Everyone thought she looked darling, but I couldn't help but feel as if she were a little, shorn sheep in her tiny t-shirt and Chacos sandals. I didn't help at all with her packing over the last several weeks; I couldn't watch her empty her shelves and drawers. I surreptitiously went through the bags of paper and trash she kept bringing downstairs, saving an old scrapbook from 10 years ago, some old letters from her sister. Maybe she didn't need them any longer, but I did.

The same morning our smallest cat delivered a litter of four lovely orange kittens. I had worried that she might be too young or too small to give birth, but the kittens were large and healthy looking. Two days later we found one dead in the corner of the box, and the next day another died. I was so sad I could hardly bear to think about it - which seemed a little strange to me since I've officiated at many pet funerals over the years. I kept wondering why this hit me so hard, but my emotions were already like a cup filled to the brim. The slightest unsteadiness would cause them to spill over the rim. I felt overwhelmed by change which felt like loss.

I realize as I think about my daughters - the one who just left, the two who have not yet arrived, as well as the three upstairs asleep - that what I really want to do is to save my life. I want to keep things the way they are. I've had a picture postcard life, and I don't want to lose it. But that is exactly what Jesus warned his disciples about. The surest way to lose your life is to try to save it. The only hope for saving one's life is to lose it - on purpose. Young's literal translation of Matthew 16:25 reads, "for whoever may will to save his life, shall lose it, and whoever may lose his life for my sake shall find it." For me, at least, that means I have to let C go to care for orphans in Thailand, and open my nice home and my not-so-nice heart to these two little orphans if I hope to find true life in the end. And I do hope to. I do hope. I do.

North of Concord

I wrote this in June - the vegetation is different today than it was then, but the road is the same.

One of the things I’ve grown to love about living in the Upper Valley is the road home. It seems that most often when we have been away we end up returning on Interstate 89. Last weekend we went to Boston for a graduation party and returned in the late afternoon of a perfect spring day. I remembered my first visit to the area almost fifteen years ago up the same highway. Wondrously, nothing has changed.

The road slopes upward from Concord. You don’t notice the other changes at first. There are seven cars heading north with us at Hopkinton where the mountains start peeking out above the trees. At first you only catch glimpses of them and then they slip back behind the trees. If you are not looking, you can miss them at first.

Five cars exit toward Henniker, leaving us and only one other car in sight. The highway suddenly feels different. We round a bend and the land falls away, exposing a wide vista, a range of low mountain peaks you can’t miss, though they are soon hidden behind the trees again. This section of the highway always makes me feel as if I’ve crossed a border, as if I’ve entered a different region. Though the peaks are not visible again until exit 6 for Contoocook, I know they are there and I feel as if I have left the cities and the suburbs and the trafficked places behind.

Road signs tick off the miles in increments of two tenths of a mile. North 89, 13.8 is followed by North 89, 14. The bridges are all carefully numbered as well; bridge 29 occurs at mile 27.2. In this well-watered region there is a bridge almost every mile. Signs indicate the mileage to Warner, New London, Sutton, Bradford, Grantham, Springfield, Kearsarge, Sunapee - old English names interspersed with names created from Native American languages. Exits are few and usually look like country roads. There is only one fast food restaurant on the 60 mile highway between Concord and Lebanon and no billboards, of course. We pass only two trucks, one a lumber truck carrying roofbeams and one an Atlas moving van.

Further north, Kearsarge Mountain becomes visible. As the road curves the mountain seems to move, now to the right of the highway, now to the left. The forested hillside is mottled with a dozen shades of green, patchy with sun and cloud-shadow. The bright new greens of the leafy trees contrast sharply with the gray-green needles of the pines . The occasional fragile birch flutters its yellowy leaves lightly. A cell phone tower, badly disguised as a fir tree, rises awkwardly above the natural treetops, but little else disturbs the pristine landscape. Moose crossing signs replace the deer crossing signs we saw near Concord. There are no moose today though we pass a dead porcupine on the shoulder of the road, an unfortunate, spiky mound.

The sky is big today, not like a Mid Western sky with its low horizon, but bright blue and filled with cirro-cumulus clouds that try to tower but become wispy and distracted at the edges and drift apart. For long stretches the dense forests on the sides of the highway turn the road into a corridor, a tunnel with the roof lifted off. The occasional breaks in the trees most often are filled with water. There are bogs punctuated with dead trees, gray and straight as telephone poles growing multiple knobby arms, lakes dotted with small piney islands, small rivers and brooks that disappear under the roadway.

I think every time I drive this stretch that living in northern New England is like living on a cul-de-sac. Few people come here except those who belong here. We are not, like Dayton or Indianapolis, on the way to anywhere, unless you count the Canadian border. People come here to vacation then turn around and go back or they come here to stay like we did.

The last major landmark before home is a rest area on a granite outcropping above the highway. Then the exits begin to become more frequent again as we pass the tiny Whaleback Ski Area, the Upper Valley Humane Society. Signs for exit 16 display the name "Purmort", a made-up name taken from the name of an early settler in order to meet naming conventions for interstate exits. The only Purmort on the map is a family cemetery. The next exit is Methodist Hill which we use in good weather. We cross over the interstate, down a road that looks like a wrong turn to nowhere and begin the steep climb up the country road that will take us over the hill into Plainfield and then home. It’s good to be back.

Up-Hill

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day's journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?
A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when 'ust in sight?
They will not keep you standing at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labor you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.
-Christina Rossetti

I am sitting alone in the early morning trying to just be quiet. My husband has left for work and my children are not stirring yet. Only the dog and the restless pregnant cat are awake. I find it very difficult to quiet my heart - I can never seem to be really still.

The coffee maker coughs politely in the kitchen. The antique clock never stops counting the seconds, somewhere there is the very small sound of trickling water - the shower drain?? Birds chirp in the woods across the street, their chittering, high, voices sound urgent and rushed. A jay's sharp voice interrupts in warning or complaint. I don't know which. The dog sighs in his sleep.

Even if I hold myself completely still, the room is never still. The pendulum swings in its case, its tarnished brass face reflecting the light of my reading lamp, the open door into the next room. Outside the windows leaves are fluttering in the lilacs that brush the two front panes. A single wisteria bough from the vine that wreathes the kitchen door reaches out in front of the window next to the busy clock. It bobs lightly in the breeze, buoyed by some invisible force. Through the same window I can see the restless wood across the street. Leaves flutter silently, then are still for a time, but begin to stir again when the wind returns, as if they are passing secrets to each other in whispers which can be seen but not heard.

The clock strikes the half hour with a mellow, predictable note. It is usually a background noise, but just now, when I am seeking for quiet, it is loud. I hear steps on the stairs. The quiet hour is gone.

summer surprise

My teenage daughters sleep on the fornt porch most summer nights. It's not really a porch - more of a stoop - a raised wooden platform big enough for two, maybe three girls and a cat. The four corners are bounded by large flower pots, some painted,some plain clay.

They are there this morning when I open the old screen door to let the dog out. He'll have to use the kitchen door since I don't want to disturb them - ever. I want them to always be there on cool, damp late summer mornings.

A single toe sticks out of the blankets, a jumble of mismatched textiles. An old, faded quilt with a fraying jade green border is ripped in several places, some of it's 1950's vintage squares are just shreds. The corner of a paisley, Indian sheet shows beneath a burnt orange, woven bedspread, also of Asian origin. A rust colored, silk basket-weave afghan is tangled with the old quilt, and under the heap are a pale yellow comforter and a folded green sleeping bag for padding.

A very old, lumpy black and white cat with a smudgy nose sleeps between the two girls, mostly on the orange pillow, his head nestled against some touseld golden hair that is not attached to anything visible.

They could be a bundle of blankets - ragged ones at that - left out on the porch after a picnic or little girls' tea party. They do leave their blankets there most days after they climb languidly out, making the porch seem messy and unkempt. But I don't mind. They've been sleeping there off and on all summer, but it is still always a surprise to me to open the front door in the morningand find there are girls in the jumble of quilts and blankets - as if they magically appeared in the summer night while I was sleeping. So I never disturb them. I want them to stay on my porch as long as they will.

heavy heart

No one told me that

when they removed the weight from my womb

they implanted another in my heart.

A tiny, nearly imperceptible pebble

that was alive

and would grow.

It must have been placed there

while I was anesthetized with joy

giddy with relief

mesmerized by the weight in my arms

I did not notice the subtle slice into my heart.

It waxes and wanes

fueled by fevers and tears

by loneliness and fears

which are not my own.

Still they hurt my heart.

My condition feels acute

but I know it is chronic.

I will not die of it.

It will not show up on the autopsy report

but it is incurable.

Some days I forget the mass is there

it shrinks so small, so light

I am sure it is gone -

I am cured.

But not for long.

Meditation on a toothache

This morning I woke up with the words to the song "I am a flower quickly fading, here today and gone tomorrow" running through my mind. How true- the reminders are everywhere including the crumpled, damp teabag in a plastic cup atop the stack of hopeful books on my nightstand. For some reason teabags help to relieve the pain of gum injuries, so I'd fallen asleep with one wedged in my mouth. All week I've been afflicted by a painful tooth abscess in a molar that sports an expensive gold crown. I've lain in bed wondering if the crown will have to come off to repair the root, and, if so, will they give me the gold and what will I do with it? I've read macabre stories of stealing gold from the mouths of dead bodies, so presumably it is valuable, but I've never read what they do with it. Ebay?

Then I've spent some of the painful night watches wondering whose fault this is - mine or the dentist's. I always feel that blame must be assigned, though I don't always know where to deposit it. I suspect the dentist did not do his job when I paid him the $1700.00 to repair a single tooth, but I am sure he will not admit to it; then I might not pay him another $2000.00 to fix my current, painful problem. But even if the original decay were my fault - for not brushing my teeth after every meal, for not flossing every day of my life, for growing up before water was routinely flouridated, for generally not being perfect, he was supposed to have fixed it - didn't I really pay him so I would have one less thing to worry about?

Of course, I know there is not enough money printed by the US government, not enough diamonds mined by unscrupulous men, not enough gold in all the mouths that have ever trusted dentists for relief to remedy the creeping decay I live with, to remove the curse under which I was born. Floss, flouride, sugar-free gum can only retard the process which causes us to fade like the late summer blooms in my garden. The lovely red spikes have nearly all fallen off the proud bee balm that the hummingbirds adored, the few bright orange lilies which we did not eat in a wonderful salad last week are shriveling, their once satin-smooth petals are puckered and distorted. Jesus encouraged his disciples to consider the lilies of the field in their prime - more glorious than Solomon in his riches, but Isaiah also reminds us that after their brief glory they fade, and then disappear. Even the place where they bloomed so brightly remembers them no more. They are simply gone. Withered hath grass, faded the flower, For the Spirit of Jehovah blew upon it, Surely the people is grass reads Young's literal translation of Ecclesiastes.

Still, I will wend my hopeful way to the endodontist next week for another temporary fix. But I won't expect too much. I know it's only a matter of time.

Is anybody still out there?

It's been a long time since I wrote anything. I'm not sure why. I would like to become a more disciplined writer, writing whether I feel like it or not, but I'm clearly not there. For some reason my muse departed last year and hasn't been seen in quite a while.

I plan to start writing again, though perhaps in a different vein. I've chosen a new template color to mark this new episode. Kevin and I are in the last stages of a homestudy in preparation to adopt a sibling group from Ethiopia. Adoption is something we've talked and prayed about for years, but never seemed to be in the right place for, either because of our finances or our life situation. Finally we feel like we have a green light. Strangely, it comes when we have three kids in college. Our finances are still stretched very tight, and our kids have had to give up the private college educations we dreamed about for years - they are at UNH and River Valley Community College, not Wheaton or Boston College. But God has given us the money to begin the process, and we finally have some free bedroom space in the house!

So, I want to chronicle the process as we walk through it, and keep anyone who cares to read about it informed. I actually began my blogging today by trying to add a Paypal button to my sidebar so anyone who cared a lot could help with the cost of bringing two or three orphans to our waiting home, but I was not able to make it work. I had mixed feelings about asking for financial help, anyway, so maybe I'll pursue that elusive button, and maybe I won't!