Turn Around

I can’t say I didn’t know this was coming. I started losing you the day you were born. But everything was still so new then. You had just arrived! Your leaving was the last thing on my mind. Besides, I had 6,700 days to prepare for you to go. I had all the time in the world.

Holding you as a newborn, I picked up those 6,700 days and looked at them like a telescope turned the wrong way, with your leaving a tiny dot that seemed a million years away. Now I turn the telescope around, and see our time in minutes, magnified up close.

I look at the calendar and have to blink a few times. “Move out day” is one of the tidy entries on the calendar 10 days from now, sandwiched between “vet appointment” and “payday.” There it is in regular black type.

How can it look so ordinary? It should be a foot tall, maybe in bold, red letters. A heavy slash between one day and the next. One day you will be here, and the next you will be gone. It's just the reverse of the day you were born. Within 24 hours, our lives change forever. Boom.

So. What do you say we rethink this moving thing, put it off a year? There’s no way I have taught you everything you should know before you leave home. I need more time to teach you how to sew on a button. Cook something besides burritos and frozen dinners. Budget your money. Read a bus schedule. Flirt. Check your oil.

Believe me, there’s so much you don’t know yet. I can make a list that goes on for pages. In fact, I'm thinking another year may not even cover it.

But no... That’s not how this works. I had my chances. It was just hard to remember on each of those 6,700 days that those chances were happening in every second. I know, some part of me realized that someday you'd leave and that every day that passed subtracted one off our time together. But still, I always thought there was plenty of time left to do all those things I meant to do.

So I guess you’ll have to figure out everything I didn’t teach you. Luckily the internet can show you how to do a lot of them! And don’t forget you can call your mom too!

What’s next for you? Your path is uniquely your own, so I can’t say for sure. But I am guessing that there will be times coming soon when your heart is so filled with joy that you’ll want to sing a jaunty Broadway song at the top of your lungs. Times when you are so stressed out that you’ll feel like your brain can't contain one more thing as you finish studying at 2 am. Times when you are sick and sad and wishing more than anything your mom could be there to stroke your head while you throw up. Times when your heart is breaking because someone you loved fell in love with someone else. Times when you desperately wish you could talk to somebody, but your parents don’t make that list anymore.

All of those and more incredible, hard, wonderful, stretching things are coming. You can almost see them from what feels like a million years away if you squint through that time telescope the wrong way. But turn it around and you can see what matters: today. A hint of tomorrow. Each day is a wonderful bundle of opportunity and learning and even joy, just waiting to be unwrapped.

There are 10 days until you move. So today, we go grocery shopping and compare prices of generic and brand name canned beans. We bought you a Crockpot, so I’ll teach you how to make Swiss steak. Then let’s check your tire pressure. Or iron a shirt.  Or even sit on the couch and watch PBS "Nova" together. We’ll keep spending our precious days, as always, one moment at a time.

I feel the weight of these measured minutes with you. As you come into my home office while I’m working, I’ll stop and look you in the eye every time. When you want to vent about work or school, I’ll listen for as long as you want. Or let's dance ridiculously in the kitchen, belting out "The Greatest Showman." In 11+ days I'll be so glad we made the most of this time.

Each of us gets 24 hours every day. How many days does anyone have left? 6,700 days. 10 days. Maybe 30,000 days. Who knows when a chapter will end—when those thick lines will come that separate a life into Before and After? If I taught you nothing else, I hope you’ll try to remember to cherish each precious, fleeting day. Don’t look back with regret. Every moment is a gift.

Turn around, my darling, and walk toward the sun.

P.S. This. ==>

I Pledge Allegiance

I know you know the words by heart:

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

I've been thinking a lot about America lately and what it means to me. I've said the Pledge of Allegiance truly countless times over my life. I've proudly displayed the flag that stands for one indivisible nation under God. I've taken my responsibility very seriously to teach school children and scouts the great heritage of this country and the meaning of and history behind the flag, national anthem, and Pledge.

I've considered myself a patriot, grateful for the freedoms we enjoy, honored by the sacrifices of the many who have served our country and even died for it. I have done my best to teach the next generation to love their country.

But the times, they are a-changing. There's a tumult in America that can't be ignored. This doesn't feel like the "land that I love" anymore. If I pledge my heart and my loyalty to someone or something, I need to mean it, or I shouldn't say it.

So I am asking myself the hard question: When I say the Pledge of Allegiance, what exactly am I swearing my loyalty to?

• Not the police who practice brutality instead of following due process 
• Not people who believe that some lives matter more than others or who create an environment of terror by retaliating against those sworn to protect us
• Not a broken two-party political system 
• Not the unrelenting campaign to secularize America and strip away its underpinning moral values
• Not an electoral college that discounts my vote since I live in an "unimportant" small state
• Not a 2016 presidential election where my only choices are a candidate who is a delusional bully and another who is a lying crook 
• Not those who shout that "some are more equal than others," and their beliefs are more important than others' freedom of religion
• Not elected officials who refuse to perform their lawful duties, including those who deny nominations of Supreme Court justices just because it's an election year
• Not endless, meaningless wars in the Middle East
• Not a country where mass killings are so common anymore that they often don't even make the front page
• Not a congress who is so divided it's deadlocked, who is quick to shut down the country instead of resolving issues, where officials are more concerned about covering themselves and getting reelected than making the difference they were elected to do
• Not the zillions of dollars in debt that citizens have been saddled with
• Not a country where there's so much senseless mob violence--even just over a sports game--that the teams have to play in an empty stadium to avoid the city being destroyed
• Not a land where our freedom of expression is denied, and the only allowable "truth" is what's defined and sanctioned by the government

So if that's what I don't believe in, where is the America that I have loved? Does it even exist anymore?

I'll be honest. It causes me great turmoil to say I don't know if I can pledge allegiance to what America stands for now. So, here's my "title of liberty"--similar to what an ancient prophet said when making his declaration--of what I can pledge.

I pledge allegiance to:

• God
• My religion and its leaders
• Our unalienable, God-given rights and constitutional freedoms
• My family
• The ideals behind America that our forefathers fought and died for: a land of liberty and justice for all

That is a pledge I can give with my whole heart. 

It pains me to witness the collapse of my once-wonderful country. I truly don't know if we can Make America Great Again unless there is a giant shift by all of us working together at once--like after 9-11, when so many of us felt unified as a nation. I pray that this once "sweet land of liberty" can rise from the dust. But if not, I know where my deeper allegiance lies.

Tradition

A small group of our friends that does a regular dinner and book club had been reading Strings Attached, and our presenter wanted to give us a little taste of "the mother country" since the subject of the book was Ukrainian. I had no idea there would be a demand for authentic Russian food in our very "white bread" area, but our host found a little Russian deli not too far away. We feasted on borscht, meat dumplings, a creamy potato/vegetable salad, Ukrainian bread, and cabbage rolls with meat and sour cream filling. I felt like I was eating a dinner of Russian comfort food even though many were delightful new flavors to me.

Why do we crave tradition--the familiar tastes, customs, music, culture, dress? When I moved away from my home state there were a few familiar things I constantly craved: Nielsen's custard, eclairs from Dick's bakery, pizza from Robintino's. I ached to recall the gorgeous rainbow of clouds as the setting sun reflected off the Great Salt Lake and then darkly dipped behind Antelope Island. I missed the familiar roads and views. Although these weren't necessarily traditions, they were customs and familiarities that I felt were a part of me.

Christmas is the time of year we seem to pull out all the traditions along with our boxes of stuff. One little treasure passed down to my family was a cd set of a radio play from 1937, "The Cinnamon Bear", that was a favorite of my mother-in-law as a child. She gave it to us when my kids were small, and every year after Thanksgiving we'd pull it out and listen to the cute and goofy stories of Jimmy and Judy bungling their efforts to find their Christmas tree's silver star in a magical fantasy land. We don't listen to it every year, but the little references have become part of our family's vocabulary, like a joke we all get while saying hardly anything.

I think women often seem to be the keeper of the hearth with passing down traditions. Growing up, our Christmas had a very reliable pattern. Christmas Eve was the dinner for baby Jesus, complete with an angel food "birthday" cake, a nice Thanksgiving-type meal, and a full day of grumbling kids having to polish the silver flatware and dishes--and then wash and wrap them back in tissue and plastic before bedtime. This is a tradition I've felt impressed to continue, even though often my husband and I are the only ones eating the angel food cake. And I won't make my kids polish the silver all day!

Christmas morning was a carefully choreographed event that I didn't appreciate for some years. While I didn't believe in Santa-the-big-red-guy, I also certainly didn't realize everything my parents were doing behind the scenes to pull off The Big Event. My mom would apparently stay up most of the night creating the perfect scene. It was one part interior design, two parts Las Vegas excess, one part controlled chaos.

We each had our own chair that was draped with gifts and a stocking. The room was created with the care of a lovely Christmas store window display. Even if we didn't really need something--even if she had to get stuff from a garage sale to fill in the cracks--what mattered was the perfect presentation that would elicit just the right "oohs" and "ahs" from us as we entered the living room that was softly illuminated by the tiny multi-color lights on the tree.

Thanks to her health-food kick at the time, we did not get to eat cold cereals of sugary goodness and crunchy little marshmallows until Christmas. But each year, we counted on finding in our stockings the little Kellogg's boxes of wonder that were treasured and traded and eaten with glee later on.

How do we decide what we pass down? Why is it important? Why does it matter if I give my children little boxes of cereal in their stockings each year? (And yes, I do!) How does that become part of our identity? Do I lose a link between generations if I don't pass down great-grandpa's this or that?

Over time, traditions change. Something my parents passed down may stop at me. (The window-dressed living room, for one.) But every year we put up the stockings, put each kids' collections of ornaments on the fake tree, eat the angel food cake on Christmas Eve. We keep enacting these rituals because these common experiences tie us together. And that is what we have--and who we are--in the end.

Why I Won't Do Black Friday Madness Anymore

The first time I shopped Black Friday was 11 years ago. We woke up at 5:30 a.m. and arrived at Wal-Mart just in time for the 6:00 a.m. opening. (How quaint!) The parking lot had fewer cars than on a normal shopping day, but quite a few started pulling in as the store opened.

Images from BlackFriday.com

The seasoned Black Friday shopper knows what came next: Feeling the fierce adrenaline rush. Dividing and conquering with a map of the store and an ad in hand. Pushing past the slow people wrestling a cart. Grabbing the $6 jeans off the already-messy display.  Feeling the electricity of this mad swarm.

I love bargains. My first Black Friday was a bit of a rush: I felt initiated. Crazy shopping for 20 minutes, standing in line to buy for an hour, and then home and back to bed for a lazy morning. O what fun it is to shop!

Having done it once, over the next several years it slipped into a bit of a tradition. You know, flip through the newspaper ads while the turkey is cooking. Find the thing we couldn't live without. Plan out how to best hit a few stores.

There Is No Try

Is a principle true or not? You must decide--and then act.

It's impossible for the answer to life's biggest questions to be, "That just doesn't work for me," or "I might try that sometime."

If you know something is real, then that knowledge should dictate everything you do and are. You become under obligation to live your life as a witness.

Author Bob Morehead tells the story of a young man from Rwanda in 1980 who was forced by his tribe to either renounce his faith in Christ or face certain death. He refused to renounce Christ, and he was killed on the spot. The night before he had written the following commitment, which was found in his room:

I am part of the fellowship of the unashamed. The dye has been cast. The decision has been made. I have stepped over the line. I won't look back, let up, slow down, or back away. My past is redeemed, my present makes sense, my future is secure. I'm finished with low living, sight walking, small planning, smooth knees, tamed visions, mundane talking, cheap giving and dwarfed goals. I no longer need pre-eminence, prosperity, position, promotions, plaudits, or popularity. I don't have to be right, first, tops, recognized, praised, regarded, rewarded. I now live by faith, lean on His presence, walk with patience, live by prayer and labor with power. My face is set, my gait is fast and my goal is Heaven, my road is narrow, my way is rough, my companions are few, my guide is reliable, my mission is clear. I can not be bought, compromised, detoured, lured away, turned back, deluded, or delayed. I will not flinch in the face of sacrifice, hesitate in the presence of the adversary, negotiate at the table of the enemy, ponder at the pool of popularity, or meander in the maze of mediocrity. I won't give up, shut up, let up, until I have stayed up, stored up, prayed up, paid up, spoken for the case of Christ. I am a disciple of Jesus Christ. I must go till He comes, give till I drop, preach till all know, and work till He stops me. My banner is clear. I am part of the fellowship of the unashamed.

THAT'S what it means to do or do not. I pray that I will show through my daily walk, through choices big and small, that I belong to the fellowship of the unashamed!

Newton's First Law

Since I first decided that my old bed frame was standing in the way of me and the life I was meant to live, it seems that I have become a body in motion...staying in motion. In just the last couple of months, I sold some furniture that was clogging my family room, bought a new couch that can be moved around in pieces for my awesome new entertaining lifestyle, and had a Star Wars-Shakespeare party in said fabulous family room!

I started a built-in bay window seat so I can finally use my front room AND have storage too. I sold two old dining tables for more money than I ever thought I'd get out of them, and I bought a lovely (used) dining table that is dresses up my whole house. Yay, kitchen!

I refinished a desk, planted a garden, and canned a bunch of strawberry and cherry syrup from the fruit from my yard. I made a new little free library, set it up in the front yard and filled it with books. I planted a bunch of perennials, made new flower beds on both sides of the house, and threw a 20-year wedding anniversary celebration in my now-lovely back yard.

This list is really for my own benefit, so I can remind myself all of the good things I have done, since by now the memory is fading!

What I've discovered these last several months is that once I can start the proverbial ball rolling, Newton's law comes into play: I keep doing stuff. I stay in motion! How easy it can be to just be satisfied with the status quo. I can tend to be a body at rest. Inertia has its way. But I don't have to be satisfied with that.

Sometimes it seems easier to just complain than take action. Recently, we were talking about doing an event as a family, and there was a lot of complaining. The parents said, "Deal with it. We are doing it anyway." Well, surprise, surprise, we all ended up having a good time.

On reflection, my takeaway for myself--and what I discussed with the children afterward--was:

Stop complaining and just DO something. 

Graduating

It's graduation season!

Graduation is always a poignant time for me, of endings as well as beginnings. This year has been, shall we say, full of growing opportunities--big ones, like that one of my kids is now a driver and another is graduating high school, my sister remarried, my mom died last August after a painful and long struggle, and now my dad is remarrying in a couple of weeks.

It feels like I keep having multiple 6.0 personal earthquakes. I'm trying to grab on to something or someone, desperate to keep pressing forward even as the ground heaves.

I thought of these major life changes, and especially my mom, when I heard "For Good" from Wicked sung by this week high schoolers and the lyrics (again) touched me powerfully. (The words are below, or you might like also to hear it sung beautifully by Idina Menzel and Kristen Chenoweth on Youtube by clicking play below.)

Good Timber Does Not Grow with Ease

Several years ago we got a landscape designer to come make sense of the jungle in our back yard. He drew up a detailed plan, and we set about spending thousands of dollars putting it into place. (Still spending, sadly.)

We built a large deck on the south-facing back of the house. The landscape plan called for four maple trees that would give some nice shade for the deck...some years down the road, since maples are very slow growers.

To get a jump start, we got the biggest trees we could afford on a fall clearance and even then paid about $200 apiece for trees that were a few measly inches in caliper.

Having spent so much, and taking the long view of what the trees would become, Mr. Jennifer wanted to really plant them right. He slaved for days with a pick in the heavy clay soil to dig four of the most beautiful holes I've ever seen, holes that would do justice to those giant burlapped root balls. He left loose soil at the bottom and planted the trees with dirt mixed with organic material. It was by the book. Our grandchildren were going to be climbing these babies in 25 years!

Over these years we have shaped them, given them regular deep waterings, and fertilized to encourage growth. The trunks seemed to grow imperceptibly. But finally, last year, the maples started sending up nice tall shoots.

Again this spring, my lovely trees began leafing out. Would we actually get some shade this year? All that money, all that care, all the time waiting would be worth it!


Well. Three leafed out beautifully. One did not. It sprouted a single branch of green leaves--while the rest of it appeared completely dead. I waited and watched. Surely it would leaf out! Finally we took a branch cutting to the nursery.

Introducing: verticillium wilt, my new mortal enemy.

What the heck is it?

"Verticillium wilt, caused by the fungus Verticillium albo-atrum ...  enters plants through the roots and spreads systemically throughout the water conducting vessels. This plugs the vascular system, resulting in the familiar wilt symptom. Depending upon how much of the root system is infected and where the fungus spreads in the tree, the disease may be very mild or it may kill the tree in one year."

Something I'd never even heard of and still don't completely understand is killing my tree.

How could I have known that verticillium fungus was present in the soil and silently attacking? That it was slowly poisoning the maple and cutting off its food supply, even as the tree looked so healthy and leafy in past years?

Never, Never, Never Give Up

These are interesting years now that my children are teens. For a long time I was able to run my home the way I wanted. I made a daily effort to teach my kids things that are important to me. We did lots of stuff together--the zoo, the park, field trips all over, playgroups. Dinner times might be crazy, but at least we were all together. I could teach manners even if they didn't use them! When a fight or argument got out of hand there was always the good old "time out."

Doesn't an A and F average out to C?

Being a mom is the best job in the world but also the hardest, because for each kid you have a different job description...and by the way, those descriptions change more than once a year. I'm in a constant state of flux. Am I doing everything right or wrong? Some days I feel like I earned an A and an F at the same time on my mommy report card.

These are the years when they don't want the lessons on manners--or any other boring lectures. When hanging out with friends is 10 to 1 preferable over a family activity. When they get big enough to start making Big Decisions that can have lifelong effects. When you hope they have internalized some self-regulating techniques, because there is no time out.

Choices become larger as kids grow, and success and failure are the only two sides of the coin. Nature gives a mother the fierce instinct to protect her children, including protecting them from making mistakes. But what drives the child is the desire for autonomy and independence.

Protecting my kids from their choices is the worst possible idea. And yet it is the only way to enable them to learn and hopefully grow up to be happy, productive members of society. My mom said that if you are a good parent, you work yourself out of a job by the time your child is 18. It's kind of sad but true.

Indebted

Last week I learned that my usual pharmacy was out of my medication and would be for a while. It was a little hassle, but after calling around, I found it at another store.

Changing gears for a second: a friend is moving. It is a difficult move, and this is a tough time for her in general. I wanted to give her tulips for her new home because we had connected over the story that sometimes life is like the trip to Italy you always planned...and you ended up in Holland instead.

"Door Country Tulips" by James Jordan

Who would have thought that finding a pot of forced tulips in March would be next to impossible? I went from store to store. I was elated to finally find some at the superstore where I was picking up my transferred prescription. Only thing is, it was going to cost more than I had hoped. Oh, well. I decided the friend was more important and I could massage the budget later.

At the pharmacy I was told in passing that I now had a $25 store credit thanks to my transferred prescription. I was so surprised! I went to the checkout line with the tulips as well as a few groceries even though I had run out of grocery money.

The cost of a good deed...actually paid me.

The thing is, I had to act first--I had to have the desire to serve, find the flowers, go to the store, put them in my cart, and THEN I was ready to receive the completely unexpected blessing.

This Is a Test

Everything in life is a test. I knew that already, but I guess I always hoped I was being graded on effort. Then I realized… every test is pass/fail.

What is most important for me to learn from the experiences of my life? Why do I go through these ups and downs that are tailored just for me? In every situation I have the choice to turn toward God or turn away from Him.

Where is my heart? Am I focused on God--or on myself or any of a billion other distractions that don't ultimately lead to Him? Pass or fail. It really is that simple. Every moment is our teacher.

• I react with impatience. Fail.
• I give a sucker to an exasperated mom stuck in the checkout line with a toddler who is having a tantrum. Pass.
• I complain and bring a negative energy to those around me. Fail.

Someone to Watch Over Me

One recent morning, I spent three or four hours straight emailing and calling lots of teachers and school counselors, playing secretary/advocate/cheerleader behind the scenes for my kids. I then spent the rest of the day cleaning, doing laundry, and cooking a nice dinner. Don't get me wrong, I love being able to stay at home.  And I love being my kids' biggest advocate and fan.

But I figured that at the end of the school day, the munchkins would probably barge through the door, grab a snack, and plop down in front of a screen without so much as a hello-mother-how-was-your-day. They would be totally unaware of all of the work I had done on their behalf, work that had an immediate, direct blessing on their lives.

As I pondered, the situation took on a greater meaning for me.

When that teacher called my kid aside after class and said, "I understand you're missing an assignment. You can turn it in tomorrow without a penalty," they may have thought, "Wow, that was lucky. It's like the teacher read my mind."

When the choir uniform just happened to show up on time and paid for, it was wonderful that it everything just feel together so neatly.

When those messy graduation credits somehow worked themselves out, and the counselor called someone down to their office to talk them through it, that was a great coincidence since it had really been a big stress.

How much is going on that we can't see, so we are completely oblivious of it? Who is helping us behind the scenes that we are totally unaware of? I think loved ones--mortal and immortal--are busy smoothing our path, easing our way, comforting and assisting us in ways we can't even imagine. What else would they want to be doing but helping God bring His children home?

The Parable of the Bed Frame

Mr. Jennifer and I were dissatisfied with our bed. It was creaky, so we propped it up on cinderblocks and lost all of the storage space underneath. It had a piece of moulding at the top that poked me in the head and made it impossible to sit in bed without hunching. It was pretty nicked from two moves and lots of kids and pets jumping on it over the years. We purchased this bed frame second-hand-in-the-first-place in 1999, so it had had a good, long life!

I guess over the years I became content to be discontent. It was easier to complain than do something about it. My frustration built up very gradually, but one day, I finally said, "Why am I putting up with this? Life is too short to spend 1/3 of my time in a bed I hate."

But new beds are expensive, right? Fear shuts down the desire for change before we even acknowledge the desire as a real thought.

I was brave. I pushed through the deprivation mentality:

• "I have to hold on to it, even if I'm unhappy, because at least I'll have something." 
• "What if what I want isn't out there?" 
• And even more scary: "What if I don't even know what I want?"

I knew I wanted change, even if I wasn't sure what that was yet. I looked on our local online ads. My exact bed frame was being sold by someone else--for $150! I said, "Well, no one would ever pay that for mine, but instead of hauling it to the dump, how about I throw it out there for $75?"

UnBlog My Heart

Blogs are dumb. Seriously.

Who has time to read them, let alone write one? I've had a secret snarky thought for years: If you have enough time to do a blog, maybe you should get a job, because you have too much time on your hands.

Blogging implies a certain vanity, that what "the big I" have to say is so important that loads of random people will want to hear it. There are all these super-achievers out there who post their amazing home remodel before-and-afters...cooks who post their awesome recipes...mommy bloggers who brag on their kids. It kind of makes me sick.

So why am I doing this? Yeah, it's probably hypocritical. And--say it!--I should probably get a job. I know.

Like everything, it's complicated. I guess it comes down to: I have been feeling more and more like I have a voice, and I want to use it.

I don't flatter myself to think that anyone will care to read this. I am not doing it to attract 2-D friends or sponsors. I am thinking of this project as my open journal, a virtual scrapbook where I can celebrate my favorite things and ponder and muse and maybe even post my fabulous brownies recipe or record something great about my kids.

It's my room. I can do whatever I want in it. That's a really liberating thought in a kind of scary way.

It's me shouting in the forest, singing at the top of my lungs, listening for the echo.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable.  I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
This is me sounding my barbaric yawp. Thanks, Walt, for giving me the words to express how I feel as I embark upon these empty pages.