learning all the time

I am a firm believer in the theory of trickle-down education. As my homeschooling career has progressed, or regressed, over the years I have found I spend less time with my younger children than I did with their older siblings at a similar age. Much less. It's a problem I share with every other homeschooling mother I have ever met. The younger children have to pick up a lot more on their own since their parents are too busy driving older kids to sports, music lessons, jobs, drivers ed, etc. We all, to a woman, feel guilty over this situation, and worry that our later children will fulfill every NEA prophecy and turn into the village idiots.

So, I am ever so happy to se any evidence of precocity on the part of my five year old, although I know she owes little of it to me. Watching and listening to her older siblings she has picked up an amazing amount of information, most of it actually useful. One day when her little friends wanted to do a play of Peter Pan, a respectable classic in its own right, my five year old was agitating for the legend of Icarus and Daedalus instead. When she arrived at the pond beach another day she rushed over to her dam-building friend, brandishing a shovel and shouting, "Do you need assistance??" Today when I was running out to the grocery store I told her which of her older siblings was in charge. Wishing to cover all her bases she asked about the next child in the pecking order, "Does M have authority over me while you are gone?" Have authority over me??

What else trickles down at our house? Taste in movies, for one. Although our eldest children never saw anything more frightening than Beauty and the Beast until they were 9 or 10, our younger children are fans of Ocean's Eleven, The Patriot and AirForce One. My five year old loves old I Love Lucy shows and can even appreciate much of Hogan's Heroes though the humor is aimed at adults. She will even watch Monty Python in a pinch.

Taste in music seems to trickle down, too. Our youngest sings songs from The Phantom of the Opera and Wicked as often as she regales us with Raffi or Sharon, Lois and Bram tunes. She recognizes Santana playing at the grocery store and will happily listen to old Beatles music in the back seat. I have been glad to see that good taste in clothing seems to be catching as well. Playing the SkyBreeze online dressup game today she rejected several articles of teenage clothing as "not very modest." I doubt if she could define the concept, but she knows it when she sees it, (don't we all!).

But seriously, it is reassuring to see that what I have always spouted as the homeschooling company line, that children learn all the time, still appears to be true. Though Miss Independent doesn't want to practice her handwriting when I finally do guiltily drag out a workbook, she has decided she likes to copy words off the globe; today she presented me with a page reading "Botswana" and "Namibia" and asked what she had written. She's gotten pretty good at finidng Malaysia, as well. When my eldest was her age we were earnestly beginning piano AND violin lessons, but the baby of the family has not taken a music lesson. She has, however, learned how to play the melody of the old country song "I'm Not Lisa" on the piano. No, it's not Mozart, but it is recognizable.

So amidst the moving boxes, doctor's visits, trips to the airport, phone calls from Dad, constant visitors, and drives to ballet she continues to learn. I'm not spoonfeeding anymore; some days I just leave the brain food lying around the house, but somehow it finds its way into her inquisitive little mind. Will wonders never cease.

a prayer

"Grant, O Lord my God, that I may never fall away in success or in failure; that I may not be prideful in prosperity nor dejected in adversity. Let me rejoice only in what unites us and sorrow only in what separates us. May I strive to please no one or fear to displease anyone except Yourself. May I seek always the things that are eternal and never those that are only temporal. May I shun any joy that is without You and never seek any that is beside You. O Lord, may I delight in any work I do for You and tire of any rest that is apart from You. My God, let me direct my heart towards You, and in my failings, always repent with a purpose of amendment."
--St. Thomas Aquinas

gratitude

I love my church; I love The Church, the body of Christ. Although I know many people have been injured and harmed by individual groups calling themselves a church, I cannot imagine my life outside the bounds of the lovely body of Christ.

This morning I was renewed again by the beauty of our worship service, baptisms and sharing the Lord's supper together. Through the week my vision had grown blurred; I was tempted to focus on and yearn after things which can never really satisfy the longings of my heart. I was like the Psalmist, my feet had almost slipped, but this morning I felt as if cool clear water was splashed in my face to wake me from a stupor. And it happened in our small, small-time, small-town gathering of the members of the body of Christ.

This morning seven people chose to be baptised in a public affirmation of the change of heart they had already experienced. A more varied group would be hard to find. Two women in their 70's and 80's, another perhaps 60, a 40ish divorced and remarried career woman and mother of four, a sweet, shy woman in her 30's who could hardly speak without crying, a newly-wed couple, he, burly and tattooed, she shy of the microphone nervous about being in front of people but glowing with anticipation.

I wrote that entry a week ago, but yesterday was equally moving for me. My eldest son, the one we named before we were even married, the one who taught himself to read at age four, who used to creep down the stairs at night after his sisters were asleep and sweetly ask if he could stay up and do some math pages, the one who was so excited the night we brought home the trundle bed that he lay down in it, pulled up the covers and said, "Now push me in." - that son stood up in front of our congregation and told briefly of his plans for a five month backpacking and discipleship program in NZ. He is leaving the day after tomorrow on his own, flying from Boston to LA to Sydney to Christchurch. He'll miss his first Christmas at home in 17 years.

So of course, I will miss him tremendously, heartbreakingly, if that is even a word. But I was reminded yesterday that I am not the only one. After he spoke our pastor prayed over Ransom and many "Amens" were heard from the congregation. Then at greeting time and after church men shook his hand and clapped him on the back, women hugged him and wiped tears from their eyes. Nearly everyone I encountered commented on how much they would miss him, and teared up again. Our children have grown up the last ten years in this cradle of love, this web of encouragement and care. They have been praised, teased, fed, loved, encouraged, taught, admonished and cherished by this extended family who have never failed to be there when we needed them.

I am certain my children would not be who they are today without this part of the lovely Body of Christ. Parents can only do so much; there are so many other influences that combine to shape our children, for good or for ill. The predominant influence in my childrens' lives has been this matchless group of people who seem to love my family almost as much as I do. I really don't know how to begin to be grateful enough. My children don't know how rare their experience has been, but they soon will. What they have taken for granted as "the way things are" will seem like a fantasy world when they hit the "real world."

I think of Paul's description of the church, how God called not many mighty, not many powerful in the estimation of the world, and that describes our church. No doctors, no lawyers, a handful of graduate degrees, but many who never went to college at all. Our wise, godly elder board contains a farmer, an electrician, a groundskeeper, a camp director, a forest ranger. But these men are CEOs in the economy of the kingdom; men who know how to lead by serving, just like Jesus did. The rest of the body has been shaped by their example.

Soon after Ransom leaves the rest of our family will be moving on, also. God has called us to Malaysia for two years, though I do not know just why. It breaks my heart to think of leaving our church family here, but I am encouraged to think that we can find brothers and sisters on the other side of the globe waiting to welcome us into their fellowship and share their lives with us. I couldn't go if I did not have that hope. When I was a child I could not imagine Heaven would be very enjoyable. One long church service for all eternity without anyone to pass out Lifesavers midway seemed unthinkable. But now I can't wait because I have known a little taste of heaven here in Windsor, VT.

newspaper envy

I just learned that a friend of mine reads newspapers for a living. Granted, that's not all he does, but apparently it's a significant part of his job. I mean no disrespect at all for this public servant, but this strikes me as a little like drinking coffee for a living. I mean, I can think of nothing I'd rather be obligated to do each morning, unless it's drink coffee. How nice not to have to rush through the paper in a guilty fashion, so I can get to my real work. How heavenly not to even have to choose which paper to read; I gather he has to read several, poor guy.

I, on the other hand, often agonize over which paper to spend my dime and my time on. I sometimes spend five minutes in front of the newspaper rack picking up first one, then another paper, comparing headlines, weighing the thicknesses, debating between the .50, .75 and 1.00 options. I find myself asking,"Is there anything worth reading in the Valley News today (or a feature on one of my children's activities), or can I skip it and pick up the Boston Globe" - meatier and better-written, with some regional news, but heavy on the metro Boston area which I'm not really interested in. USA Today often gets my vote, though I think it's kind of a lightweight when it comes to the news - sort of the People Magazine of the newstand. Once in a great while I buy The Eagle Times which features front page headlines like "Wolf-dog hybrids get loose" and "Women's pottery supports animals."

I sometimes bring The WallStreet Journal home with me because I like the editorials and the writing is good, though the business slant is not my cup of tea. Once in a while I have to get the Manchester Union Leader though I find its tone a bit rabid; occasionally there's some state news I just can't pass up. The New York Times has the strongest appeal, though I abjure its liberal bias. The wide-ranging interest of its stories, excellent journalism and depth of reporting often coax me to lay down a full dollar for a sheaf of newprint that will end up in the recycling bin by the next morning - if I even have time to read it.

If this sounds a bit neurotic, I want to point out that have made a lot of progress in regard to newspapers over the years. I can think back to the time when the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal was a daily necessity for me. We lived in a huge, gray stone rowhouse in a small, mid-Atlantic city with our growing brood of babes and toddlers. We tried subscribing to the paper for a while, but in those days of lots of diapers and little money we could never seem to come up with 18.00 when the paper boy was at the door to collect. So we cancelled our subscription (or maybe it was cancelled for us; I can't remember.)

Besides, we didn't need to subscribe because right in front of our house was a bus stop and a newspaper box. The bus stop was peopled by various regulars and exotics who sat on our stone wall while waiting for the bus. One was heavily tattooed before tattoos were mainstream, and usually arrived with a boa (live, not feathered) draped about his neck. Another suffered from some kind of delusion that he was a secret agent. He looked like a leaner version of Arnold Schwarzenegger and carried a large radio around on his shoulder into which he frequently spoke. He often ran several laps around the block before arriving warily at the bus stop. My children were fascinated by the bus patrons and their wildlife, but I was fixated on the newspaper dispenser.

The Intelligencer Journal was .35 a copy. Any combination of nickels, dimes and quarters would do, though the machine gave no change. Like any self-respecting addict I did not plan ahead; I never kept a stash of coins for the express purpose of feeding the machine; I deceived myself into thinking I did not need my newspaper fix - I could get through the day without it. But every morning after my husband left for work and the kids finished their Cheerios I began hunting for the requisite coins. I usually checked my husband's pants pockets first, especially the little coin pockets in his Levis. Then there was the tray on his dresser where he sometimes emptied his pockets. My purse usually was next. I have been known to look under chair and sofa cushions as well with varying degrees of success.

My last resort was always a huge glass water cooler jug that sat in the corner in our bedroom collecting loose change. We had begun filling it with pennies years before; it weighed maybe 20 lbs and was about half full. When it was full we were going to do something special with the money. Though it was known as 'the penny jar" we occasionally dropped other coins in. As a last resort I would dump the pennies out on the faded blue carpet, sorting through them for that last nickel or dime I needed to send my pre-schooler out to the paper box.

When I finally found the right combination of silver I would entrust one of my older children (they were all under six) with the precious coins and the responsibility of getting the paper for Mommy. Sometimes by the time I sent them out the dispenser would already be empty and my hopes were dashed. It could really wreck my morning! Other times, though not often, the heavy, spring-loaded door would get away from my four-year old and slam shut before he got the paper out! I was always understanding, but keenly disappointed.

So, I think I have made a lot of progress in my newpaper habit. I often go two or three days a week without touching one. It helps that the local papers where we live now are not nearly as good as the Intelligencer Journal. . . I may also have a bit more of a life, but I'm still intrigued by the idea of finding some way to get paid to read the news.

another all-time favorite poem

As the Ruin Falls

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.
Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love --a scholar's parrot may talk Greek--
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.
Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.
For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.

-C. S. Lewis

when yes means no

I read a passage from Paul Tournier today with a sentence that jumped out at me: "Sadness and joy kiss at every moment." It captured exactly what I am feeling right now - in so many parts of my life.

There is my children's increasing independence and imminent leave-takings - exactly what we have been training them for these 18 years. They are ready to fly, literally, and I can see it so clearly. I am proud of them, excited for them, jealous of them. . . but I know I'll ache when they really go. I welcome the busyness of preparation in the same way that I welcomed the mediocre artwork on the walls of the phlebotomy lab today; anything to look at instead of the vial filling with my blood.

Then, too, there is an upcoming reunion with friends who were once exceedingly dear to me, with whom I have only recently reconnected after a long absence. The thought of spending time with them is wonderful, but poignant, too, fraught as it is with the reminders of the decades gone by, and the way life has changed us all.

And of course there is our upcoming move, which is in many ways a dream come true. We have always wanted to travel with our kids but never been able to afford to. We have always wanted to live and work in another culture. (Dare I say we have always wanted a dishwasher??) But now that the tickets are bought and our house is rented and the boxes are piling up in the breezeway I am so very sad to be saying so many goodbyes - to friends, to our house, to our way of life, to our present selves, who will be forever changed by this move.

I have a cowardly streak running through my heart; I am tempted so often to avoid even joy because of the sadness that inevitably accompanies it - or to suspect joy because of the inevitable sadness that travels with it. I wish I were not so careful to protect myself sometimes - still so afraid to feel, because there are always two sides to the coin of happiness.

I have known all my life that every "yes" is also a "no" - or a thousand "no's." I have recognized the terrible power of a single "yes" to outweigh an infinite number of other possibilities. I can never forget that every choice is also an abnegation of the not-chosen. I can't seem to help a certain regret for the things I have said "no" to - even when the "yes" is good and right.

Has there ever been unalloyed happiness in a choice in this life?? Can there be? Tournier thinks not, and I agree. I cried at my own wedding for heaven's sake because of all the "Now I never wills" that I silently said when I said the words, "I do." Sadness and joy kissed at the same moment as the bride and groom.

Tournier's consolation is the hope of heaven, and I hope he is right - that one day we can know pure joy without a tinge of sorrow, that our "yes" can be all "yes," unencumbered by any sadness. That when God wipes away all tears from our eyes we will never again see sadness and joy kiss each other. But today they are as close as they could be.

Penitent

"Penitent"

Once I stood alone so proud

held myself above the crowd

now i am low on the ground.

From here i look around to see

what avenues belong to me

I can't tell what ive found.

Now what would You have me do

i ask you please?

I wait to hear.

The mother, and the matador,

the mystic, all were here before,

like me, to stare You down.

You appear without a face,

disappear, but leave your trace,

i feel your unseen frown.

Now what would you have me do

I ask you please?

i wait to hear

your voice,

the word,

you say.

i wait to see your sign

would i obey?

I look for you in heathered moor,

the desert, and the ocean floor

how low does one heart go.

looking for your fingerprints

i find them in coincidence,

and make my faith to grow.

Forgive me all my blindnesses

my weakness and unkindnesses

as yet unbending still.

struggling so hard to see

my fist against eternity

and will you break my will?

Now what would you have me do

i ask you please?

i wait to hear

your voice,

the word

you say

i wait to see your sign

could i obey?

-Suzanne Vega

First impressions

Well, I am finally over my jet lag. Yesterday was the first day since we've been in Malaysia that I made it past 4:00 PM (Malaysia time) without feeling like I needed to either throw up or fall asleep. Then I actually slept 5 hours in row last night. I have two more nights before I head home to do it in reverse.

So, things look a bit brighter today in spite of the haze which hangs over Kuala Lumpur from the burning rainforests in Indonesia.

This morning we left our hotel room, executing, as usual, the traveler's macarena - touching evey pocket top and bottom, right and left, front and back, to make sure the necessary documents, keys and wallets are in their appointed places. After a while it takes on a little rhythm of its own though it's still not foolproof and you have to make yur own music.

KL is about as different from New Hampshire as it could be. Densely populated, tropical, urban, ethnically diverse and chock full of shopping malls! The only thing people here like to do more than shop is eat. By their own confession, Malaysians live to eat. One older gentleman cheerfully told us, "That's all we do. That's all we talk about!" Hardly anyone here is obese, but they put away enormous amounts of food - round the clock, I'm told! So while there is no real weather to make small talk about, there's always food - Balinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Japanese, Korean, North Indian, South Indian, Malaysian and more. Two nights ago we had dinner in a tiny open air Italian restaurant, with a real Italian chef!

We're starting to pick up on some of the local idioms; an overpass is a "flyover," food ordered to go is "take away," and a parking garage is a "car park." We're also getting used to the local fashions - full length black burkhas don't startle me any longer, even when they are worn in the wave pool of the resort! Burkhas aren't all that common, but nearly half the women here wear head scarves covering their hair and necks.

There are desperately poor people in Malaysia, some living in virtual servitude, but there are many very wealthy ones. I can hardly believe how much money there is around here. Some of the houses we have looked at to rent would cost close to a million dollars near where we live. Today we visited three "Smart Houses" in a new development. Lights, fans, power, etc. can all be controlled with a cellphone! But most houses still do not have hot water in the kitchen. They all have a bathroom for every single bedroom (including the maid's room), but hardly anyone has a clothes dryer. Just very different than what we are used to. But I don't think we'll be suffering here!

I have already run the gamut of emotions - I hate it, I love it, I can't stand this, I love that, I'm homesick, I'm fascinated by everything new. I can imagine the next two years will be the same way - lots of ups and downs. Right now the driving seems to be the biggest challenge for me. The roads here are so random; no exit numbers or route numbers on the highways, just signs saying where you can get to from the exit. There are so many ways to get to the same place that you see the same destinations on the signs over and over again. Which to take? They LOVE U-turns here. A lot of them are built-in to the system. Just beacuse you see the building you want to get to on the left doesn't mean you should get in the left-hand lane. It's as likely that you are expected to exit right and drive till you get to a U-turn. Then the joke around here is that "All roads lead to Ipoh" since you constantly see signs for it, whether you are traveling north, south, east or west!

The most terrifying part of driving for me (I have not gotten behind the wheel once, though I keep opening the driver's side door by mistake since it's on the right!) is the "hell-drivers" - the millions of motor-scooters that weave in and out of traffic, passing on both sides, sharing lanes with cars, seemingly coming out of nowhere to zip in front of your car. They are everywhere. They all drive to the front of the pack at every traffic light or jam. I am sure I will kill at least one of them in the two years we are here. Then I read in the newspaper about an accident between an SUV and a taxi where the taxi driver was killed. The incident was treated as a hit and run because the people in the SUV fled on foot after witnesses to the accident pulled them out of their car and began beating them. The witnesses were not charged with anything. Apparently righteous indignation is an acceptable motive. Fortunately "teksis" are cheap. I plan to live in them.

Well, those are enough first impressions. We are about to sign an agreement on a house today, probably in a country club (sigh). It has a lovely guest room (nudge, nudge knowwhatImean?)overlooking the pool. I hope it gets well-used!

getting tough on crime

I held my brother's hand in the prison visiting room last night. His long, slender fingers were very pale and smooth. My husband's hand, resting on the table across from us, was calloused from yard work, the fingernails chipped and darkened in places from working on the car. My husband's hands lay motionless on the table, but my brother's hands were never still, fidgeting, playing with the coins on the table, illustrating what he was saying with small, quick gestures.

My brother used to keep his family's cars running, too. He renovated several houses for them, painting, plastering, refinishing antique woodwork. He used to coax gorgeous floods of perennials from the rocky new England soil and chop wood to stoke the kitchen woodstove. His hands used to heal, as well. His gentle touch and kind, humorous manner made him a beloved family physician for many years. His hands delivered babies, stitched up wounds, administered healing medicines, made dyng patients more comfortable while they lingered in hospice care.

But those hands have been idle for seven years now - never motionless, but idle nonetheless. He can still paint the pictures which have hung in many exhibits, he can still write the poetry which has won awards more than once, he can still play the guitar beautifully in prison worship services and sing in the tiny Catholic choir , but he can do nothing to help his family, or to make any kind of restitution for the crime which landed him here. He has been sentenced to ten years of idleness.

I look around the visiting room and wonder how many of the men I see playing with their children, chatting with their parents, trying desperately to be cheerful for their wives are really such a danger to society that they need to be locked up in a cage, because that's what prison is. I know a small percentage of the 1500 men at this state "correctional" facility do need to be isloated from society, but many, if not most, could repay whatever debt they owe by actually doing something productive rather than rotting in a cell for years and years till they come to believe they really are as worthless as the lives they lead behind bars.

They could work for non-profit agencies, they could care for AIDS patients and the indigent elderly; they could renovate low-income housing, they could work at animal shelters. They could do real work for a real paycheck so their families would not need to live on public assistance, which vastly increases the cost of incarceration. Here in NH they used to be able to teach college classes inside the prison walls, but the warden vetoed that because it gave inmates too much power (read "self-esteem") so no one can teach any longer, and no one else can learn. By locking people up behind bars for years we not only insure they can do no more harm; we insure they can do no more good.

Many of the punishments that our enlightened society would consider "cruel and unusual" are far less cruel than the system of lengthy imprisonment that we have come to use as a "one-size-fits-all" punishment for any crime. Many of these men languishing in prison for years would far rather have had a hand cut off or an eye gouged out and go through life with a physical handicap than to have their spirits destroyed through years of enforced worthlessness and humiliation. Most would much rather work for years to make restitution to a victim than to be condemned to sit idle for years with no way to act upon the remorse they may genuinely feel. Most would choose a public flogging any day over the thousands of naked body searches and daily humiliation from guards who call them losers, and much worse, and treat them like so many unruly animals they can order about as they please.

I wonder if there were a reality TV show about daily life in prison whether we might see some changes. But there never will be one, because the whole system can only continue out of sight. No one knows what life is like behind the bars except the families of the men there, and they are the least able to agitate for any change. They have all they can do to pay legal bills, make ends meet without the primary breadwinner, drive hundreds of mile to visit their loved ones as often as possible and pay exorbitant phone charges so they can keep in touch. They have no time or money to put into an unpopular crusade to educate their neighbors who keep voting for the "get tough on crime" candidates.

It seems pretty hopeless to me. I can only imagine how it seems to my brother.

in my own words

All that each person is, and experiences, and shall ever experience, in body and mind, all these things are differing expressions of himself and of one root, and are identical: and not one of these things nor one of these persons is ever quite to be duplicated, nor replaced nor has it ever quite had precedent; but each is a new and incommunicably tender life, wounded in every breath and almost as hardly killed as easily wounded: sustaining, for a while, without defense, the enormous assaults of the universe."
-James Agee

I did a lot of reading on vacation - not the books I took with me but "found words." I am one of those people who can hardly be without reading material, and can hardly be around words without reading them. So although I took a stack of books with me to Gooney Lodge this week, I ended up discovering The Claremont Review of Books, several copies of which were in an old crock used as a magazine holder. In that publication I read reviews of many more books I want to get my hands on before we leave for Malaysia - a collection of the writings of Samuel Johnson, a new critical biography of W. H Auden whose poetry I have always loved but whose life I know nothing of, a study of the idea of Evil in its manifestations "from Beelzebub to Bin Laden."

But I also found myself despairing over how little I have read, how little time I have to read, how narrow my perspective is, how pedestrian my own thoughts are compared to the wealth of words penned by others. I wondered if I should ever bother write at all, if my time would not be better spent in reading, contemplating the words and thoughts of better minds than my own. This week, for example, I came across W. H. Auden's comments on the essential loneliness of man and also his thoughts on the superiority of marriage over a passionate affair, and was incredibly moved by both. I, too, spend a lot of time thinking about loneliness and about marriage, but I wondered if I should be "quick to hear and slow to speak," if I should "let my words be few" in the presence of poets and philsophers wiser than I.

Then I read the quotation above by James Agee and stepped back to ponder it. I believe it is true that I (like each of us) am indeed unique in the universe, in all of time. While the issues of life have been considered and discussed for thousands of years, while lovers since Eden have felt similar longings and heartaches, while marriages- happy and unhappy- have always shared certain elements, while mothers and daughters have loved and fought and cried and separated in similar ways; no one in all of time has ever lived my life, or ever will. No one else will ever live the exact life I have lived, with the precise combination of influences, with the same DNA, with the same soul. Although there is much that is shared by all humanity, there is as much or more in each of us which is utterly unique, never known before and never to be experienced in exactly this way again. So it is possible that I might have something to say that is unique to my voice, my heart.

I thought, too, about John Updike's poem, Perfection Wasted in which he likens each of our lives to a stage performance with a sympathetic audience. I don't like the poem; it's tone is all wrong for me, but I do appreciate the metaphor. Each of us has his own audience made up of people whose place in space and time intersects our own in sometimes mundane and sometimes dramatic ways. The chemistry between each of us and our respective audience members is not reproduceable. It will not happen again. Ever.

I thought about some of the implications of that truth. Although I am not the best mother in all time - what a laughable thought - I am the only mother seven people will ever know. While I may not be the wife of every (any?) man's dreams, I am the only wife my husband has. My thoughts and words may be feeble, awkward, inelegant or stumbling, but they still have an audience and a venue no other voice shares.

The author John Gardiner reassures aspiring writers that even if a thought, a metaphor, a word choice is not absolutely unique (could there still be "virgin metaphor" after thousands of years of human thought and experience?) a writer may yet be original in the sense that he finds his own words, "never before thought of as far as he knows."

As far as he knows. . . which is about as far as any of us can go. His own words . . . earned through hardship, purchased by experience, lived and cried and suffered for, etched upon the one soul which is different from all others for all time and eternity. If we speak from our hearts none of us need fear committing plagiarism or unoriginality. So I guess I'll write some more.

_____________________________________________________
*"In every man there is a loneliness, an inner chamber of peculiar life into which God only can enter." W. H. Auden

"Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is more interesting and significant than any romance, however passionate." W. H Auden

serpents and doves

My dancer daughter spent our week of vacation braiding her long, blond hair into tiny braids - around 75 she says. She had recently come back from a pilgrimage to the home of Bob Marley (actually it was a missions trip) exclaiming how beautiful the Jamaican people are; since I exercised my parental veto over dreadlocks, she did the next best thing and covered her head with miniature snakes. My husband calls her his little black child, pale as she is!

We have lived a pretty monochromatic life here in northern New England. (Which is one of the disadvantages of living here.) My children know exactly four persons of color in our town. This has had a curious effect upon them; they are intrigued by people who are different than they are. They have no preconceived ideas or prejudices, but they also do not have any of the politically correct caution about noticing (and commenting on) the ways in which people differ. They don't pretend everyone is "just like us," but they don't feel the need to make value judgments about the differences.

On vacation we saw more "people of color" than we do at home, and my five year old was fascinated. We passed two black women and their children in a store who were having a lively, friendly conversation. When we were hardly out of ear shot my daughter exclaimed, "Mommy, did you HEAR how those black people were talking?"
"Yes, honey," I muttered, hurrying her along before she said whatever was coming next!
"They talk different!"
"Well, yes, they do. . . " I began, thinking I would give her a little socio-linguistic lecture about cultural differences, but she was way ahead of me.
"Maybe I could make friends with them. That little girl looked nice. . . but they didn't really notice us, did they?" she said with a disappointed sigh.

My fifteen year old has not had much more experience with cultural diversity. After her two weeks in Jamaica, she attended Earl Mosely's Summer Dance Intensive. Mr Mosely is an incredibly talented black choreographer and dance teacher. Most of the students were from the NYC area, with the exception of C and two other students from northern New England. (They were in the highest level ballet class, but when it came to hip-hop they were pretty much pre-K! ) Nearly all the dancers were black or Hispanic.

One of her friends found the atmosphere at the camp a little initimidating; she felt like the other dancers resented them, even "hated" them. She felt excluded, ignored and shunned. C, however, refused to take offense. She wasn't sure she even felt what M was talking about, but if she did, she was certain it was just a misunderstanding. She could not imagine that anyone meant ill by things that were said or done. She kept reassuring her friend, "They just do things differently than we do, that's all. Besides, how do we seem to them?" She chose to describe her feelings as "shy" rather than "intimidated."

Sometimes I worry that someday her guilessness will get C in trouble; that perhaps she'd be better off a little more suspicious, a little more guarded. But I know I am dead wrong. She is not stupid, but she is generous. She is not a pushover (well, maybe she is. . . ) but she thinks the best of people. She approaches the world with open hands and an open heart and expects that people will treat her the same way. She disarms them so thoroughly they usually do.

I don't know what C will be when she grows up, but when I grow up I want to be more like her and her little sister. No matter how old we are, the Scripture still exhorts us to grow, and even to grow up. Perhaps what we need to be growing into, however, is best exemplified by children. Jesus himself pointed to children as our example in the matter of humility.

As look at my children I realize that so much of what I have learned as a "grown-up" inclines me to be judgmental, mistrusting, sometimes even cynical. I may not discriminate on the basis of race, but discriminate I do. My heart is often guarded rather than open; I am probably more practiced at rejecting than accepting others. I am a master at snap judgments (I call it "the gift of discernment"). I find it so difficult to be that strange creature who possesses the head of serpent but the heart of a dove, to be at once wise and innocent. Maybe I have as much to unlearn as to learn because Jesus was not fooling around when He said, "Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 18:3-4)

aunt jemima pancakes without the syrup . . .

Fall clothes are in the stores. I LOVE fall clothes. It has always felt like my season. I feel most like myself in velvet, plaid, wine colors, deep hues, sweaters, wool coats, and layers. I love forest green and sage rather than lime; claret and rose instead of pink; navy and royal rather than aqua and ice; true chocolate brown, not tan or khaki.

The reminders are everywhere: cool and crisp are out - soft, warm and fur-lined are in. Pique and seersucker have given way to flannel, plaid and corduroy. There are jackets everywhere - great little cropped ones this year. Sweaters, the comfort food of the fashion industry, are replacing halters and t-shirts on the racks. Sandals are languishing on the clearance shelves looking insubstantial and dated while gorgeous boots are on display everywhere.

I can still remember some of the full page fashion spreads in SEVENTEEN magazine from the early 70's. It is always the fall and Christmas issues I remember - beautiful girls with long, glossy dark hair - the blond summer models were back in mothballs - wearing velvet and lace, cute short skirts with tall, cozy, knee high socks and fabulous tall boots. Football games, fall foliage, Christmas trees, fireplaces and candles provided the perfect backdrops.


For the first time in my fashion memory I can't enjoy the annual renaissance of fall fashion, the dispalys stocked with sweaters and scarves. I have to wistfully pass them by and scour the racks in the corners for the clearance-priced summer clothes which look pale, thin, flimsy, passe by comparison. Compared to the robust fall clothes they lack substance and even significance. I wasn't especially excited by them when they were novel and newly displayed; now they hold no appeal for me. I feel as if I am shopping for limp vegetables surrounded by luscious dessert carts.

Because, as I have repeated ad nauseum, "We're moving to Malaysia this fall." A land of no seasons and perpetual humidity. I am baffled by how life even goes on in the tropics. I was rasied on the metaphors of a northern clime; I remember to this day singing in college choir, "Spring turns to summer/Summer to fall/ Autumn brings winter/ Then death comes to call." Every fall I contemplate the brevity of life as the fall leaves crackle underfoot; every spring I take hope from the way the world bursts into life again from the hopeless remains of winter. So I wonder, are there seasons of life in Malaysia? If not, what is there?? I have read there is not much Malay poetry written. Perhps the lack of seasons is why. What can you say about endless summer? What can you hope for?

I wonder, how DO people age in Malaysia? Do they shrivel up in the sun? Do they rot like an overripe mango? So much of life is understood by metaphor; I have always felt that getting the right metaphor is vital. I never feel I know how to be until I know how to think. I believe I could endure almost anything with the right metaphorical construct through which to understand my experience. But right now I am clueless.

So, I am trying to stay out of the stores, think happy thoughts about hot places (without entertaining the comparison to the ultimate Hot Place), and look at my summer clothes in a new light. I am consoling myself with the thought that I will have the perfect excuse to shop for ALL NEW fall clothes in 2008! Yes!

August 15, 2006

Our little girls left today. With the rap of a gavel they were transferred from our home to the care of a lovely family who have worked for months to see this day come about. It was the exact answer to our prayers but it was a bittersweet day nonetheless.

We had only a day to prepare the girls; once Vermont DCF was involved things moved very rapidly. We had been told the court would rule on their case mid-week, but we got a call Monday afternoon saying they had to be tranferred to foster care that very night. We scrambled to explain to the girls why they had to leave our home so abruptly, doling out little scraps of information a piece at a time over the course of the afternoon. "You know we are moving. . . . you will be staying with the B's when we move (this move is still two months away). . . school is starting soon and you need to move to the place where you will be going to school. . . " Anything to avoid saying "Judge, court, foster care, not coming back."

Then we learned that they would have to appear in court today - without us or any familiar grown-ups. Just two scared little girls with a judge in a black robe and a group of adults they have never laid eyes on. How would we explain that to them??

But there are harder things to explain. Like why the Daddy who used to tuck them in at night with the reassurance that, "Nobody's going to get my girls" disappeared and never came back to get his girls. Like why so many children's books and songs are about Mommies and Daddies who always come back for their babies but their Mommy and Daddy seemd to have forgotten about them.

Today we arrived at court in separate cars. J and S came with their new foster parents, I came alone. The girls were immediately nervous when we entered the building through the security clearance. They kept asking what the guard was looking for, and what would he do if we did have a gun? They exhibited their usual anxiety when a police officer walked past; "Is someone going to get arrested?"

We went up to the tiny playroom with cheap, bad artwork on the walls and a shelf of old, dog-eared, unattractive books in order to wait. I saw the look of recognition on J's face when the social worker walked in. She was the same young woman who was at her apartment "when the police took my Mommy away." She was accompanied by the weird sisters, the three of them filling the doorway of the tiny room, smiling strangely down at us as we sat on the low, sagging couch. They clutched their clipboards, looking every inch the part of aging feminists out to save women and children from bad men.

The girls squirmed uncomfortably at their awkward, perky self-introductions. "Hi, I'm ----. I'm your guardian ad litem. My job is to make sure you are taken care of." The girls shrank back into the sofa, clinging to my arms. "Isn't that what I have been doing for the last six months?", I thought.

"Hi, my name is ____."continued the other woman. "I'm your attorney. Do you know what a lawyer does? Have you seen lawyers on TV?" (This to a 5 and 6 year old who can barely sit through an episode of Scooby-Doo, never mind court TV). "I'm on the J and S team!" with forced enthusiasm. "I'm here to work for you!" The girls have no idea what she is saying, or why she knows their names and is acting so familiar.

My husband quips to the little girls that maybe they can get her to wash their dishes for them. She does not find this amusing, especially from a man.

I resume reading the 1968 version of "The Country Mouse and the Town Mouse" to the girls and the women drift out of the room. We wait. We play made-up games using the baby toys in the room for props, read another few books and wait some more. Finally the social worker reappears and tells the girls the judge "wants to say Hi" to them. They beg me to come in with them and she agrees since "the hearing is really over."

We enter the cavernous court room where five women are turned in their chairs staring at us as we enter. No one, in fact, seems to be doing anything but staring at us. The judge, a friendly- looking man in black robes booms out from the far end of the room, "Hi. Which one of you is J?" Under the scrutiny of so many adults both girls blush and dip their heads. The well-meaning man talking loudly from his elevated seat goes through a little performance meant to put children at ease, bringing out his "friends," two large, dingy stuffed animals that look like they are glued onto uncomfortable seats. He puts them on the railing in front of his bench and makes some joke about the bear falling asleep in the last hearing and getting slapped. This time I am the one who fails to see the humor.

So finally, in order to humor the judge, we take the girls up to his bench where he offers J the gavel, which she declines to take, hiding her face on my shoulder. Mercifully, the hearing is really over. He raps the gavel and announces the court is adjourned. Everyone rises and he sweeps out the door. The girls heave a sigh of relief.

Outside they play happily, though in a rather subdued fashion with their new brothers and sister. Although we know they understand something big has happened, they are careful not to ask any questions. I suspect they don't want to hear the answers. One of them says she misses my five year old with whom she has shared a bedroom the past half year. Later she confides in me shyly that she would "like to have a playdate with the girl with the blue bag" who happens to be the social worker. I think she represents some tie to her Mommy and Daddy and her past life.

We hug the girls who are wearing oak seed pods on their noses and ears, decorated by their new foster sister. I hug their foster mom, giving her my blessing and aching to think how much more grace she will need than she knows yet. We wave goodbye to the family in the silver van as they drive off, five kids under nine years old packed into booster seats. It is a good ending; perhaps the best we could ever hope for. Pehaps the kindest thing the girls' father ever did for them was to leave them in good hands and disappear. But my eyes are still wet as I walk to my car.

Angelina Jolie, Grace Kelly and me

I just could not resist including this in my blog, as the mother of five daughters and two sons. . . . finally, a news article I could feel good about!!!


Attractive parents 'have more daughters'
By Amy Iggulden
(Filed: 31/07/2006)

Beautiful people not only seem to get richer, live longer and float through life with greater ease than the less visually blessed, they are also changing the face of the world.

Researchers have established that very attractive people are 36 per cent more likely to have daughters than sons and that the world's females are becoming better-looking than men as a result.

The report, from the London School of Economics, may provide an insight into the biological forces that lead the most striking people to produce first-born daughters.
It postulates that differing "evolutionary strategies" lead parents to produce the sex that would most benefit from their own characteristics
.
So while the children of aggressive, scientific parents tend to be boys, who can outwit their competitors when it comes to finding a mate, the children of beautiful, empathic parents tend to be girls, who can take their pick from the gene pool and then hang on to their man
.
"These may be stereotypes but they are also fact," said Dr Satoshi Kanazawa, the evolutionary psychologist who led the research.

"We have shown that beautiful parents have more daughters than ugly parents because physical attractiveness is heritable and because daughters benefit from this more than sons."

The findings are not short of famous examples, including Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, the actors who named their daughter Shiloh Nouvel and can now claim a family waxwork at Madame Tussaud's and Grace Kelly, whose firstborn with Prince Rainier of Monaco was the beautiful Princess Caroline.

out in the Styx

Yesterday we paid a river outfitter $130 to let us float down the River Styx for 4 hours. The only thing missing was Charron, the boatman, but we did meet Trace, the guy who drove the rickety old blue schoolbus from hell down the narrow, bumpy road to the river. (Being from New England as I am, I didn't know there were real people named Trace.)

We had just signed our lives away in the air-conditioned office, never bothering to read the fine print in the contract. If we had paid attention we might have seen the warning signs, recognized the oracles like the shirtless guy at the concrete block grocery store who hopped out of his ancient car long enough to shout, "Hey" to us. "Hot, in' it?" he chuckled before he roared off the down the road. We blindly followed.

After handing over our money we were sent out on the porch to wait for Trace who arrived soon. A small, sinewy character in his mid-fifties, he was sweating as much as the rest of us as he climbed out of the bus. He wore wrap-around extreme sport sunglasses with purple/blue reflective lenses so we could not see his eyes. His knee-high athletic socks were rolled down many times to make thick, neat cuffs around his ankles, just above his white, high-top Reeboks.

Before we even started down the road to perdition he began making his hackneyed jokes, the first about "Type A personalities." The whole outfit, in fact, seemed to have a personal animus against "Type-A personalities," as if the innermost circle of hell was reserved for them. Signs everywhere warned them and ridiculed them. I think he mistook my engineer husband for a "Type A" because he asked an innocent question about where the tubes were (there were none on the bus), so we got off to a bad start with Trace.

As we jerked and rattled down the narrow, washed out road to the river our conductor continued his practiced, mildly caustic humor. Jokes about dyslexics ("your other left hand, if you're dyslexic"), about cows who wander into the river ("Shenandoah river hippos"), about the perils of thunderstorms on the river. It's been a long time since I heard a grown man use the word "tush" that many times in five minutes, but he worked it in. To his credit, he warned us to use lots of sunscreen on the river lest we burn to a crisp, but he did not warn us to repent of our sins before it was too late. Somehow I missed the "Abandon hope all ye who enter here" sign on the outside of the bus.

After the bus jerked to a stop Trace dropped us off at what was, we would learn, the only shady spot along the river bank, waited only long enough to make sure everyone had a tube and clattered away in the old blue box, presumably to pick up more unsuspecting mortals.

The first half-mile or so was deceptive. While it was nothing like our last family river trip in North Carolina, on a chilly, rushing river which was over far too soon, it was pleasant enough. The current moved along at a moderate pace if you found the right spot and the water felt cool next to the 102 degree air. But that all changed.

The water moved more and more slowly and grew uncomfortably warm. Dragonflies, most of them in curiously conjoined pairs (were they really doing what first comes to mind?) kept landing on our knees and arms. Soon we were floating so slowly we could only detect movement by watching the river bottom; staring at the shore we couldn't tell if we were moving at all.

The sun grew hotter and hotter but there was no shade near either bank. I began to long for the trip to be over, but there was no way to hurry things along. At one point we actually got out of the tubes and trudged through the knee deep, tepid water, since walking was faster than floating. When we finally saw the old barn and silo Trace has told us to look for as the final mile marker our journey had become like some bad dream that never ends. It took us 15 minutes to float past the barn; every time I opened my eyes to check our progress, it was still there. Mute, white-faced cows standing in the warm water stared at us as we floated past to oblivion.

Finally we spied the bridge which was the end-point of our journey. At that point I didn't care what waited on the other side; I just wanted to get off the river. Anything would have been a relief.

We crawled out of the river and dragged our tubes up the hill to the same office building from which we had begun our odyssey. It was still hot as hell, but our own purple Dodge oven looked heavenly after that river. We never saw Trace again. Perhaps in this life we never will.

Are we there yet?

We're in Virginia this week. Not so far south that you see many Confederate flags, but far enough that the highway is named for Stonewall Jackson. We're probably less than 100 miles from Gettysburg, but we've stepped through the looking glass; "victory" and "defeat" at a particular battlefield mean the opposite of what they do up north. It's evident the hometeam has changed.

We are not so far South that absolutely every building is air conditioned, but far enough south to wish they were. To be fair, it's as hot in Boston today as it is here. . .

We are actually just west of Washington, DC, technically mid-Atlantic, not South. We're really in Appalachia, not Flannery O'Connor-land, but there are subtle signs that we're not in Kansas anymore. We have passed signboards advertising "Revivals" at tiny Baptist churches; the NASCAR scores are reported hourly, it seems, on nearly every radio station. I encountered a wiry, older man in a 100-degree parking lot who chivalrously chased after the red onion that went bouncing out of my grocery cart, executing an entertaining little two-step in the process. He not only returned the onion, but carefully closed up all the rest of my bags so nothing else would fall out. A real Southern gentleman this far north!

We are definitely far enough South to suit my husband, though not nearly far enough for me. I would have kept driving another couple hundred miles if my family had been willing. As it is, I have to content myself with the occasional "Y'all," the Krispy Kreme doughnuts in the super market and the heat. Maybe next vacation. . .

one man in his time plays many parts

In Shakespeare's vision All the world's a stage,And all the men and women merely players:

They have their exits and their entrances;And one man in his time plays many parts,
meaning that he plays many parts in his own life story. But it is also true that one man, or woman, plays many parts in others' productions. Some wittingly and some unwittingly.

It is curious to me to think of the roles we play in one another's lives - often without realizing it. We all have our own life story, peopled with characters we both know and construe. There are the main actors, outside of oneself, of course, who play large parts, and then there are all the supporting roles and bit parts, often played by people who never auditioned to be in our lives at all. We all play some big roles in other people's life stories: mother, daughter, sister, friend, counselor, teacher, boss, etc. And then we all moonlight (sleepwalk??) in other dramas, either without knowing it or without realizing the importance of our role.

Let me illustrate. I remember a time when I really offended someone without knowing it. The funny thing was, before someone told me how I had slighted this person, I had no idea I was even capable of slighting her- that I was even a person of interest in her life. She was only a walk-on in my script. . . but I had been elevated to a much larger role in her drama. Funny how that can happen without our even knowing.

I think about some of the actors in my life story who may not know the parts they play. There is the woman who plays the part of the fashionista; the one whose style I always study because she always looks so good. There is the woman who performs a near perfect balancing act between her role as a mother and her creative pursuits. There is the well-read individual and the self-absorbed teenager. There is the runner who makes me feel guilty and the runner who is still my best friend. Probably most of these individuals would be surprised at how I have cast them. But these are the roles they play on my stage.

In one of my all-time favorite movies, About a Boy, the protagonist discovers, to his surprise and discomfort, that he is on center stage in someone else's life. He becomes angry when he is accused of not taking responsibility for his influence in another's life, not realizing that he was part of more people's lives than his own. The point of this very funny movie is that life IS an ensemble drama, like it or not. "No man is an island," a quote attributed to Jon Bon Jovi, provides the theme of the movie.

Sometime after Shakespeare wrote, Robert Burns wished, "O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us An foolish notion," but I'm not sure I'd really want that gift. It would be helpful sometimes to be able to identify our foibles and blemishes, but I think it would feel like too heavy a responsibility to bear. To worry about the quality of our work in dramas we have not asked to join, to realize we may loom large in the life stories of people we feel we hardly know or barely notice would wear us out. How can we play a part well when we've never seen the script? How can we get the stage business down when we are in so many dramas at the same time?

In I Thessalonians the apostle Paul prays that the Lord will "cause you to increase and abound in love for one another and for all men. . ." and I think that's the best direction. If we are always striving to do what is best for all men we may hope to execute any part we play honorably and with integrity. Our desire should be that our entrances and exits will carry with them the sweet aroma of Christ that will linger even after we have left the stage. That alone will make our performances truly memorable.

last resort

My husband thinks we should buy a fly swatter. We have been carefully raising five beautiful hot house flowers and the bees have begun to swarm about them. He came up with the flyswatter idea last week in church after glancing back at the balcony where our daughter HAD been sitting alone a minute before. . . .

Then there's the tall, blond surfer from the Outer Banks of NC who went on a mission trip with our tall, blond dancer and now calls her several times a week. There's the guy from work who slips notes in our eldest daughter's lunch bag. There's the guy raised-in-a-Christian-home who has been into Buddhism the last few years and all of a sudden is a regular attender at church since he's begun a correspondence with our strawberry blond. Or the young man who was too shy to play games at our son's 8 year old birthday party, but in the intervening nine years has summoned up enough courage to park his cute little red pick-up in our driveway and pick up our cute little daughter.

It's a whole new ballgame at our house, and, as my husband reminded me, we have the next fifteen years to enjoy it, since our youngest daughter is only five! (I even have mothers of five year old boys eyeing her!) We have put off this day for years, having strongly discouraged dating for our high school aged children. Now that our eldest has graduated it seems the dam has broken, and not just for her. All of a sudden boys have begun to hover around the edges of our lives; it seems every time we turn around we bump into one; they are always present in our peripheral vision, our phone (our girls do not have cellphones for a reason. . . ) rings even more often. It's like they were all out there waiting for some secret signal - maybe one of those tones that ears over 40 can't detect??

The fly swatter is probably not practical; the convent is not really an option since the girls were all raised as Protestants. We've decided our only option is to move to Malaysia.

looking for home

We always set our bedroom clock radio for 5 AM when the BBC news program comes on. I love the reporters' questions - they are so much blunter than the American reporters who often dance around an issue, trying to pretend they are impartial even when their questions drip with innuendo. The Brits just say what they are really thinking.

I never plan to actually get up before 6:30 so I catch about half that's said on the news and doze through the rest, often incorporating it into my waking dreams. Some mornings I have to ask my husband over my first cup of coffee, "Did such and such really happen in Iraq or was it just part of my dream?" Which of course gives him the opportunity to feed me all kinds of bizarre misinformation if he wants to.

Lately I have been waking up to anxious thoughts about all that I need to do in the next month, and then the next three months (they are two separate timetables in my mind.) As soon as I come out of sleep I feel the weight of all the unfinished tasks. This morning I actually found myself puzzling over the situation in the Middle East which dominated the fuzzy news reports floating around in my sleepy brain. It was such a relief to gradually realize that the situation in Lebanon, at least, was not my responsibility!

My relief was short-lived, however. While savoring the last few minutes in bed I heard a feature story that woke me up completely. It was about "trailing families" - a term that calls to mind either something lovely like wisteria or something pathetic like stragglers at the end of a race. In the news story it referred to families of diplomats who follow them overseas. The feature was about the challenges of living in a completely foreign place as an appendage to a gainfully employed individual.

The most frightening thing to me was the comment made by one wife, "When my husband gets up in the morning he goes to the office to work. No matter where we live he goes to the office to work. Just like he does in Washington. I, however, have to figure out where to get food, how to find the Western style market if there is one or the local market, how to cook, how to get around the city, how to take my children where they need to go. When we lived in Korea I got lost every day the first year we lived there."

All of a sudden I didn''t even want to get out of bed. I didn't want to leave my house. I wanted to stay right here, with the straggling, weedy perennial beds I could see out the bedroom window. I wanted to never leave the old apple tree I could glimpse on the north edge of our property. I wanted to wake every morning to the big maple out front and the sound of the brook and the sight of the sagging clothesline in the backyard. I didn't want to become part of a trailing family; I wanted to be firmly rooted in the rocky New England soil. I wanted to be from somewhere, not in transit; a patriot, not an expatriate.

Even though we never lived outside the US (unless you count Canada, which Americans never do), I have always struggled with the question , "Where are you from?" - meaning, where did you grow up, where are your roots. My husband has the same problem, but he can always preface his remarks with, "My father was in the military," which everyone immediately understands. Then he just lists the several bases where they lived - Omaha, North Carolina, Germany, Okinawa, and finally Dayton, Ohio. People understand a military family.

I, on the other hand, have no such familiar rubric into which to fit my family's nomadic history. I have condensed my saga to , "Well, I grew up on the East Coast." It's easier than saying, I was born in New Brunswick, Canada, but I only lived there for six months, so I'm not really Canadian. Then we lived two different places in New Hampshire, I went to elementary school in Massachusetss (two different school districts), then two different places in Pennsylvania and then high school in South Carolina. After that I became completely rootless through college and graduate school as my parents moved to Pennsylvania, (three different houses while I was in college), Michigan (two different communities), and finally Canada , (three different places), before settling in Nova Scotia. By that time I had been married for several years and established my own household. "So, " I always conclude when asked, "I'm not really from anywhere in particular. . . "

Maybe that nomadic upbringing is what caused the temporary lapse of judgment, which allowed me to say "yes" to moving to Southeast Asia as a trailing spouse for two years as I approach my 50th birthday, even though I have brought my own children up in only two different houses - both of which we have owned for ten years. They have not been just houses but homes which have given my children a strong sense of place and continuity, which I am about to disrupt, though I hope not destroy. I am scared by what we are about to do.

I know that our real core as a family is not a place, but our relationships. I know that in a very real sense we carry our home with us; that we may be even more closely knit in a bungalow in Petaling Jaya than we are in our comfy old Colonial, but I also know that culture and place are important to human beings - that we all want to have a place that feels like ours, people we fit with, customs that are predictable. I know that physical locations can in some mysterious way house memories, or at least unlock them. I know that in middle age I still long for that place to come home to; that I envy intensely my friends who have either always lived in the same area, or come "back home" after many years away. I have never felt like I really knew where Home was.

So now I hold my children's memories in my hands. I don't want them to grow up feeling rootless; I want them to know where they are from. I'd like them to feel they have a place to go home to. At the same time I know they will grow immeasurably from this experience and will probably be better, wiser adults because of it. I also know that 90% of employees who take overseas assignments do not come back to the same company when they return home, and I wonder if we will ever live here again, even though we are only renting our house, not selling it.

I know, too, that the real home I long for is probably a heavenly one, that I only mistake it for an earthly home because I don't know any better. One day all of our dreams of Home will come true.

the tortoise and the hare

"Friendship is a plant of slow growth and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation. " George Washington

I have a friend who is a runner; I would consider her a "serious" runner. The fact of our almost 10 year friendship still amazes me, because I am the kind of person runners look down their tanned noses at.

I am more than a little soft in the middle; I feel like an Olympic athlete when I finish my daily 3 mile walk, (and she pats me on the back for it), but she runs twice that far on a slow day. She has an enormous wardrobe of race T-shirts; I have a lot of nightgowns. She frets over injuries which sideline her for a week or two (she has to use her rowing machine those days), I fret over not enough time to read. But she apparently likes me anyway, even if she can't respect me!

Last week at our children's swim lessons, (during which she faithfully goads me to swim across the pond with her), she confided that the one good thing she could think of about turning the big five-o is that she would be in a new age class and her times would automatically look better. She told me how fortunate I am that I don't have her "performance issues" to deal with, the unspoken script being "because you have never performed in the first place." Another day she told me my upper arms would "not look so bad" if I got a little sun.

So, what is it I love about this friendship, this friend? I mean, with friends like this. . . Well, this woman has stuck with me through thick and thin (an unfortunate metaphor considering the two of us). Several years ago I went through a very difficult time in my family and when other people scattered like cockroaches when the light is turned on, (alright, another unfortunate metaphor, though curiously apt), she hung around, endured the glare; she let me know she could not be scared away that easily. She exhibits the same tenacity in friendship as she does on the road. Neither rain, nor sleet nor gloom of night keep her from pounding the pavement every morning. Neither gossip nor innunendo nor the embarrassment of associating with someone whose family name hit the evening news more than once could kept her from sitting beside me when everyone else was clustered at the other end of the bleachers.

So, I can easily excuse her if the words "flabby" or "slow" occasionally slip into our conversations. I don't really mind hearing about blisters and toenail issues that might cause some people to blanch. I can handle her grousing about how baggy this or that particular brand of tiny size 10 jeans are. She has earned the privilege as far as I'm concerned. She is entitled to the appellation, "friend."

summer love

I have a long history of falling in love with authors. I remember playing the Authors children’s card game and hoping against hope that I would end up with the set of Nathaniel Hawthorne or Robert Louis Stevenson (whom my children irreverently refer to as Bob Louie Steve). The golden hair and moustache of the first and the soulful eyes of the latter thrilled my heart at the time, as their books did in later years.

I remember finishing the Chronicles of Narnia with a sigh when I was a bit older, closing my eyes and saying, “I want to marry the man who wrote this.” I did not know at the time that Lewis was 1) already dead, and 2) scholarly, stodgy and balding. I’m not sure which of those would have presented the greater obstacle to my 11 year old mind. I suspect the latter.

I have recently fallen in love again. Today’s author is also somewhat scholarly, balding (if you can believe the picture on his website, though the picture on the first dust jacket I saw looked completely different!) But the reader that I am today is much more forgiving of a few more pounds and a little less hair, and “scholarly” sounds rather attractive. The only real problem I can see is that (I only know this, also, from the dust jacket), he is married and has two children. (I am also married and quite a bit more committed in the way of children.) And while he is the man who speaks my innermost thoughts and lays bare the angst I wake with in the middle of the night, I am, alas, only one of millions of book club groupies. He probably wouldn’t give my dust jacket a second glance, if I even had one.

Seriously, though, while I’m not about to run off to Louisiana tomorrow, I was so moved by the first book I read by this guy that I immediately went to Amazon and bought five more of his works. I have not been disappointed yet. The first book I read was actually written in the first person by a female narrator who is close to forty as the book begins and she is perfect, she KNOWS things I would not have believed a man could know. And, it takes place in the deep South and all the terms of endearment are ones I remember from my brief but happy years spent below the Mason-Dixon line!

The other two books I have read so far focus more on the husbands’ characters, but they are all about marriage and what happens between two people who spend long years together in the same enterprise – parenthood. They illustrate the huge amount of unknowing that exists in even the most intimate relationships, but also the unbreakable ties between people who have shared a life and created new lives together. They remind the reader that the physical tangle of bodies and bedclothes is really just a metaphor for the tangle of hearts and histories that follows.

The books have caused me to reflect on the troubled but unbreakable bonds I’ve seen between some of my married friends; the ways in which children have seemed to bless some relationships and doom others; the chasm which exists between me, who have never lost a child, and friends who have walked through that dark valley; the ways that my own children have forged a stronger bond between my husband and I than either vows or feelings could. They have caused me to cherish each day with my children who are growing up and away from me as surely as tomorrow follows today.

So, although I am spending long, summer days with my new favorite guy, relishing his every word picture and description, ducking into his books every chance I get, what he keeps whispering in my ear is to look at my marriage and my children with fresh eyes, to hold them close, to remember that what matters at the end of life is how faithfully we have loved the people God has given us to love.

life on the cosmic stage

My son recently read a book of Urban Legends - many of which I remembered with a fond mixture of horror and fascination from my own adolescence. (My personal favorite is the caller on the upstairs phone.) Many of them have to do with close calls - the narrowly averted meeting with the serial killer, the ax murderer we nearly invited home.

We all love stories about close calls - the person who did not get on the Titanic, or who missed her flight on September 11. Most of us probably have a story or two from our own lives about a near disaster, a barely averted calamity which leave us thanking God, or our lucky stars, depending upon our understanding of the universe, and perhaps dealing with the curiously named "survivor guilt."

I wonder often how many close calls we have every day and never realize? Once in a great while God gives us a glimpse of how He has protected us, how His angels have lifted us up so we did not dash our feet upon the stones, but most often we don't know about the near misses in our lives, the deadly pestilence that did not come nigh our tents.

We do often discuss how "it could have been much worse;"
"Thank God this happened right after we left home and not in the middle of our trip."
"Just think if this had happened in the middle of the night."
"I can't believe he had the exact part we needed!"
"If I had not chosen to take this particular route today . . . "
These are all variations on the theme of the bullet we dodged and we find them fascinating and comforting.

We may wonder too, about potential calamities. Does it have eternal significance whether I take Rt 120 or 12A to get to Lebanon today? Is there, perhaps, a drunk driver or a log truck with failing brakes on one or the other? Or, on a different scale, is my daughter more likely to get AIDS working in a third world orphanage than she is to be in a fatal car crash on her way to college in Boston? (If you know Boston drivers you know how the odds stand.) I can go on this way ad nauseum, but eventually I have to conclude with Kip Dynamite, " Like anyone could even know that."

What can anyone know? Much of what we know about "how things work" is revealed in the book of Job. I am amazed when I consider that it is perhaps the earliest book of the Scriptures written - because what God showed us when He lifted the curtain on the heavenly backstage is huge - events are not random, even though they may not follow our notions of cause and effect. There are purposes we know nothing of; we only have some of the pieces of the puzzle; we are actually on display here on earth and it matters greatly how we live our lives.

In the book of Job God lets us see that events here on earth may well be part of a much larger story; that the calamities or blessings which come into our lives are entirely under the control of God, and He may choose to use our lives here on earth as proving grounds or even real life lessons for other conscious beings. He shows us that the calamities that we meet or avoid may not have anything to do with the goodness or rightness of our choices, but rather with His unknowable purposes. He teaches us that our responsibility is chiefly to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, trusting that He will lift us up in His time.

So what does this have to do with close calls and fortuitous choices? How does it help us make sense of events which may seem both random and weirdly preordained? It reminds us that love and fidelity to God are our first duty, combined with unswerving trust in His ways. It cautions us that we see only part of the picture, so it may not make sense to us. It comforts us with the knowledge that we do not need to agonize over what might have been if only we had made different choices or booked different flights. It reassures us that in a paradoxical way our responses to life matter greatly - they are on cosmic display, even though our obedience or disobedience may not gain its reward this side of the grave.

"Why" is a question God seldom answers, except in an ultimate sense. We will probably never know why one bridge washed out and another held. We will probably never understand why one child died in the car crash while another survived. We may never know which celestial beings are watching us as we wrestle with heartache and loss, and decide whether to rail against God or trust Him. We may never even understand how He receives any glory from our responses. But the book of Job assures us that He does.

Arthur Ashe, the tennis great who died of AIDS contracted through a blood transfusion made peace with the seemingly capricious nature of God's will when it is viewed through a purely earthly lens. Ashe, was a kind, noble humanitarian; certainly not a man who deserved to have his life cut short. R eflecting on his diagnosis he wrote, "If I were to say 'God, why me?' about the bad things, then I should have said 'God, why me?' about the good things that happened in my life." Both are past finding out under the sun.

the best mirror

"The best mirror is an old friend." --George Herbert

The best and the kindest! Last month I had the joy of spending a brief 36 hours with two old friends and their four beautiful children. We had been very close during those magic years when babies are being born, first houses are bought, life is full of birthday cakes and playgrounds, anxious calls to the pediatrician, sleepless nights with crying infants, sticky toddlers and first words. We vacationed together, prayed together, renovated old houses together, and pretty much lived in each others' pockets for several years. Last month we laughed over old memories, caught up on news, told outrageous stories and remembered why we were such famous friends.

I have come to believe that the closest thing to time travel that has ever been discovered is a reunion with old friends. While Ron and Rhonda probably looked like any mid-forties couple to the man on the street, to me they looked exactly like they did 17 years ago the summer we first met. Although almost every circumstance of our lives had changed, nothing had changed about our friendship.

Our children renewed their friendships differently; they have changed much more than their parents. Kids who used to have Legos and Barbies in common found they had very different interests as adolescents. They found enough shared interests to have a good time, but one of the unanticipated pleasures of our visit for me was watching my older children get to know my friends as adults, not as the "grown-ups" they used to be. I loved the feeling of introducing some of my favorite people to each other. It was great to hear my 18 year old pronounce Ron, "one of the funniest people I have ever met."

I find aging a puzzling and disconcerting process. External things about me keep changing, and the prognosis for my condition, humanity, is not good. But there is a core - I guess it's what theologians call the soul - that stays the same. I feel a separateness from my "outside man", in the words of the dear old King James. My inner man is renewed daily, and I am at some untouchable center the same person who gave that high school commencement speech, who taught that first freshman speech class with fear and trepidation, who gave birth to that first baby one afternoon almost 19 years ago.

Nothing underscores that continuity like a reunion with old friends. Yes, that forty five year old across the table is the same guy I prayed with so many times years ago!! Yes, that is my dear old friend with whom I engaged in so many friendly competitions, and if we each had a baby today we'd be fiercely comparing which one weighed more, who smiled first, who slept through the night first, who got more compliments from strangers at the grocery store!!! What a joy to find that, indeed some things never change!

James Boswell wrote that, "A companion loves some agreeable qualities which a man may possess, but a friend loves the man himself." I know that to be true, and I also find that nothing reveals "the man himself" like the mirror of an old friend.

handy-man

My husband is upstairs trying to catch a bat. Once or twice a year one gets into our living quarters from the eaves or the attic and causes quite a stir. His attempts at trapping the unhappy animal have turned into a spectator sport tonight. S just arrived down reporting that the bat has flown into Anna's room and Kevin can't catch it until the light is turned on. He has to go into the room to get to the light and he "is going in with a sheet over his head and he is screaming. Did you hear that screaming?" I did, in fact, hear some screaming, but it sounded distinctly young and female.

I suspect my husband is enjoying the drama a bit too much! But I can't blame him! If you end up with the unpleasant job of catching the bat (or the rat or the mice or the raccoons in the garage) you might as well enjoy it! Last week he rescued a baby robin from the dog's mouth and made it a make-shift nest in a box in the fork of a maple tree. For days we watched the parents fly in several times a day to feed the baby. My husband checked it every morning and it seemed hearty and energetic, but yesterday a weasel (or a house cat. . . ) found the box and the tiny bird met its Maker, despite Kevin's heroic resuce from the poodle.

My husband and sons not only have to act as animal control officers for our own house, but they service the neighborhood. We live across the street from a fierce feminist, a full professor at an Ivy League school who is just returned from an international round-table at Oxford on the Rights of Women. But she still calls my husband when a rat drowns in her toilet or a bat appears upstairs in her ancient house! We never rag her about it, but we do always smile. Some things you still need a man for.

not so raw confesssions

This morning a banner ad popped up for a site called, "Raw Confessions". The ad encouraged people to "confess anonymously to billions." Hmm, I wondered, what is the appeal of that invitation?? I did click on the address, and ended up with the options of "Confess" or "Browse Confessions." Thinking this was probably a site I should add to my filter's "Not Allowed" list, I chose "Browse Confessions."

What a shock! Dana anonymously confessed she had finally cracked and yelled at a cyclist on an "no-cycling" footpath! Shelly confessed that her mother could not get good medical care and she was sick and tired of it; ("Sorry" commented that she could not believe Shelly's account and Shelly retorted she was sorry that "Sorry" was "not a caring person." ) Well, if I had hoped for a 2006 version of the old "True Confessions" magazines I used to ogle at the checkout counter in the '70's, I was sorely disappointed.

Then I pondered what Raw Confessions I might make, of the same "bare-all" variety I had read. I might confess I had left an open Tupperware with cantaloupe in it on my kitchen counter when I went to bed last night and it was covered with tiny flies this morning when I woke up! Or that I have on more than one occasion pretended to be a bona fide customer in order to use a "Customers Only" restroom. (Please don't tell anyone.) I have never stooped so low as to take home a roll of toilet paper from a public bathroom when I knew I was about to run out at home and was running too late to stop at the store, but the thought has crossed my mind. I don't know if that would count on Raw Confessions.

On a more risky, personal level, I might confess that I have (not very often, of course) lied to someone about making a phone call I had promised to make when I just have not gotten around to it. I have more than once lied about my weight on some form that requests that somehow pertinent information. I have even lied to myself about my weight!!

I have told an ostensibly needy person that I didn't have any change, when I knew if I looked I could find plenty. Once I drove through the "correct change only" lane of a toll booth when I did not have the right amount. I didn't wait for the "Thank You" light but just kept going. I never looked back. I have told my children the chocolate was all gone when I was really just waiting for them to go to bed so I could have it with a cup of coffee and five minutes peace.

These kind of confessions are easy to make and they do have a certain appeal for the confessors, I think, though they are pretty disappointing for the salacious among us (not me) who want to read something really juicy. Confession is good for the soul, if it is genuine and not half-hearted. But we can twist even the lovely grace of confession by dissimulation and minimizing. I read a hilarious spoof at the fake Christian news site, LarkNews, about a man who had to find a different fellowship group since he was obviously too sinful for his current group. He had confessed to a problem with lust and pornography and found no one else in the all-male group could relate to him at all. He was the only one with a problem.

Haven't we all been there? Maybe we never actually make the confession, we only imagine making it, and we just know that no one else we know struggles with the particular sins we do and that we would be shunned and shamed if we admitted them. So we all make sure our Raw Confessions are pretty tame; we sound disclosing, but we are really hiding. We all spend our lives showing our best selves to one another, tossing the pile of dirty laundry behind the shower curtain when company comes, lighting the scented candles to cover the odor of the catbox- which- hasn't- been- emptied- for- days, sucking in our stomachs when we walk past the mirror, preferring to undress in candlelight rather than flourescence (this is a really good idea, incidentally.)

You get the point. And no, I am not about to make any really raw confessions here. But I need to make sure I make tham before the Almighty; that I don't make the easy ones but figure He'd be too shocked if He knew what I was really like. And I need to practice making some relatively raw confessions to my friends as well, for their sakes as well as mine. Not because misery loves company but because we all need to know we are not alone and we can be forgiven. We need to allow our friends to minister the absolution, "Your sins are forgiven" to us, and to free them to make their own raw confessions.

I still may go back to that site and tell the anonymous billions about that time when I thought no one was looking and I . . . .

Happy Birthday

Today is my husband's birthday. As I poured him his second cup of coffee from the pot he made while I was still in bed (he always gets up before me), I thought, as I do so often, about the grace upon grace God has poured out on me. I handed him the mug as he sat on the front porch of our 210 year old clapboard house - the kind I always wanted to live in. He was sitting on the porch reading his Bible; several cats loitered nearby. I can't help but remember walking through a neighborhood of old homes during our courting days, choosing which ones we'd like to own and singing, "Our house is a very, very very fine house. With two cats in the yard. Life used to be so hard. Now everything is easy cause of you." And here we are, 22 years later, in a very, very, very fine house. And a very, very, very fine life.

Is everything easy? Not by a long shot. Is my marriage everything I thought marriage would be? Not hardly! But it is still very, very, very fine. And this morning I am very, very grateful.

one man's trash

I spent the last week visiting my elderly parents in the tiny North Atlantic fishing village where they live. By a stroke of fortune, the week we were there the tide happened to be low around 7 or 8 AM, so that I was able every morning to walk the full length of three white sand crescent beaches at the end of their dead end road. Although the seabirds were numerous and raucous, I was often the only person on the beach, free to reminisce, ponder and dream in perfect solitude.

I did a lot of reminiscing. I grew up spending my summers at the beach in New Hampshire where the water is nearly as cold and the sealife the same. I remember so well the pungent almost sufurous smell of the salt marshes - the thrill we felt after hours in the oven of our station wagon and the smell of the burning tar pots that marked the constant road construction north of Boston, when we could finally lean out the windows and smell the beach. I remember days walking the beach with my brother, hunting for treasure, making up stories about pirates and shipwrecks, trying out harmonies and learning to blend our voices over the lapping and breaking of the waves.

I did not come to know this particular Maritime beach with it's numbing cold water until the summer I was twelve, and did not frequent it regularly until I was married. When my children were young we spent weeks every summer here hunting for shells and the hundreds of sand dollars that the tides washed in, building sand castles next to the icy water and watching the waves lap them up as the tide encroached. We walked the beaches for hours, giving a wide berth to marooned jelly fish, watching seabirds dive for fish, chasing sand pipers across the dunes and leaving endless footprints in the wet sand. None of those footprints remain, of course, anywhere but in my memory.

I found myself thinking about mortality and death far more than I wanted to this week. I wanted to think joyful, carefree thoughts on the silvery windswept beach, but I could not escape the fact that the visit I had come to make might be the last time I would see my father alive, that I was already ten years older than my mother was the first time I remember walking this beach. The reminders were everywhere from my father's stooped, unsteady walk to my mother's deeply furrowed cheeks. While I still had a daughter with me who giggled at the way the sand slipped away under her heels when a wave washed out, I had another who was discussing her plans for an upcoming semester in India.

I combed the sand, as one must, for things washed up and abandoned by the tide. What I was most drawn to was the occasional piece of seaglass, clear or green or brown which glowed on the wet sand, unlike the dull, chalky white of the bony sand dollars or shells. I carefully picked up each one I saw and tucked it away in a pocket. I loved the feel of the thick, dull edges under my thumb; edges which at one time would have cut and drawn blood, but were now smooth and safe.

I wondered as I passed over the shells, searching for one more piece of glass, why I was drawn to the man-made, the unnatural items on the beach. Wasn't the natural creation the real wonder and beauty of the beach? What could I find appealing in fragments of broken beer bottles - the detritus left by careless fishermen? Why should I pass over the shells and choose the glass?

The transformation of the broken shards was the real fascination. Pieces which were sharp, dangerous, not to be touched lest they make you bleed had, by the pounding of the surf and the rocking of the waves, the pressure of the deep, the very weight of the water become friendly, safe to the touch, dulled, but also tamed. They still gleamed in the sun, though the patina was definitely softer and they had lost the clarity and sparkle of new glass. But now they could be picked up by even a child, stowed in a pocket, fingered and caressed.

Once discarded as useless, thrown away, cracked and broken, they had become like gems lying on the beach. Not useful anymore, they became beautiful instead, no longer common, they became rare. Not sharp, but soothing; not threatening but somehow comforting. I filled a pocket each day with them and carefully laid them out on a sunny windowsill where they could catch the light and grow warm to the touch.

I love the thought of the change wrought in the remains of old bottles; the inevitability of the softening, the time it must have taken - who knows how many weeks, months or years the pieces endured the action of the ocean before they were gently washed ashore on the beach? Who knows how far they travelled; whether they were tossed from a fishing boat in this very bay or traveled hundreds of miles before landing here. There seems to be no intent on the part of the ocean to file and buff the fierce corners and edges, but given enough time it will always succeed.

Is there a metaphor for life here? My mind, of course, runs that way - to think that time and tide, pressure and pounding, weight and waves can beautify the commonplace, soften the harsh, smooth the rough edges of us all. And they can, but I know that old, broken fragments of humanity are not as predictable as sea glass. We can choose to let time and experience soften and gentle us, or we can fight to stay the same. We can become like seaglass - older, wiser, softer, kinder, less brilliant but more luminous; but the transformation is not inevitable.

As I watch my father and several elderly friends move toward the ends of their earthly journeys I am impressed by the vastly different ways they have weathered the storms of their lives. Some are like old glass, polished and buffed to a lovely glow, their sharp corners mellowed and smoothed by time and trial. Others remain sharp and cutting still, full of hurt and anger, ready to wound any who come too close. They have not allowed the time and tides of their lives to do their softening work.

I suspect we have much more choice about our future shapes than the broken debris tossed into the ocean. We can respond to the waves that toss us in any number of ways. I'd like to end up soft to the touch, comforting, definitely weather-beaten, but not worse for the wear. When the glint and sparkle of my younger days is gone, I'd like to gain the winsome glow of the seaglass , the small treasure that catches your eye as you walk the beach. God grant me that grace.