The Laugh of the Month

The other day my mother and I were having lunch at the Olive Garden. The acoustics were terrible, made worse by the fact there was a huge party of female office workers just across from us. My mother complained to me, saying something about how one friend says that whenever gypsies show up at her favorite restaurant, they’re real loud like that, too.

So, we’re doing the best we can to communicate, my mother telling me the funny stories of the week. I ask her about two of her friends, recently divorced. My mother is quoting the husband this way: “You know how Richard talks crazy. He said, ‘I ain’t gonna be no man mistress!’”

Right at that moment our tall, dark, very handsome waiter walks up, obviously hearing my mother, who is 77, say, “I ain’t gonna be no man’s mistress!”

I know he thought that because he burst into laughter, which he quickly tried to contain. I looked up at him and started laughing myself, then looked at my mother who hadn’t missed a beat, and was also starting to laugh. The waiter high-tailed it out of there, my mother watching him go no doubt back to the kitchen to tell what he’d just heard.

For a few glorious minutes, my mother and I enjoyed together the kind of cleansing Niagara Falls laughter that makes you feel like you’ve been reborn. My mother was clutching her stomach, tears filling her eyes, saying, “Stop, it hurts.” Just when we’d begin to recover, we’d relive the ludicrosy of of a 77 year old woman saying that to her 51 year old daughter and we’d go into convulsions again.

To Emily on Her 24th

This is a week of birthday posts. My daughter Emily wrote a great tribute to her father on her blog. This reminded me of a letter I wrote two years ago to her, and as her birthday was just yesterday, I post this now. I’m aware that all this gushing back and forth might be nauseating to some; if so, I apologize and reason that on any given day you’ll read things that you don’t care for. That said, here goes my letter to my oldest daughter Emily on her 24th birthday, now 26.

Dear Emily,

To this day I can see you in your little bassinet that first week of your life. We proudly changed you from the hospital’s t-shirt into a little pale green outfit that fit perfectly, marking you as ours, different from all the rest. I couldn’t believe that several hours before, you’d been floating in that other-world of wet, dark warmth, but had emerged perfectly formed, with skin clear and pink as if it had known the kiss of the sun and the air from the beginning.

I watched you as you looked around the small, plain room in the British Military Hospital, taking it all in – the wall, the corners, the ceiling, every little thing. I began to see things with fresh eyes – your eyes, the eyes of a human being thrust into a world yet to be experienced. Later I learned that newborns can’t see that far, but I don’t care. The experience was wonderful and profound, and I think, in a way, foundational for how I’ve approached being a parent.

I was awed by your very existence. There was a person who hadn’t been there before, taking her place in history, breathing her share of oxygen, making her voice heard in a world that had never heard that voice before. With your birth, as with all births, entered into the world a universe of will, of possibility. Within weeks, your hands began to grasp at everything in sight, another metaphor for that human determination to make the world your own.

And the years would bear this out. From your refusal to stay in our arms once you could squirm out of them in order to explore, to your insistence on wearing a dress every day no matter how cold, to your asking me when I was going to teach you how to fly, you were indeed always “doing your own thing”, as the Sesame Street song goes.

Even in your teenage years, while the other girls chose princess-like literary characters to dress up as, you chose to be the whale in Moby Dick. That mass of wire and tape and bed sheets resembled an albino Barney, but the strategically placed GI-Joe dressed as Captain Ahab with a spear and make-believe blood made it clear…well, almost. We laughed so hard we cried.

As those granted fellowship with the One who made you, we were blessed as parents to be guided by Him, learning as we went how to care for you. There were times when we did it all wrong, but I know that His grace was always there. We have been and are a privileged people.

You’ve turned out so well. We are so proud of you and Brian. It’s so great to see you building your life together; so wonderful to see your marriage reflect the realities in heaven – a groom loving and caring for his bride; the bride desiring to please the one who is now her protector and leader.

The backdrop of this letter is a week of horror in our world, as a young man - about your age, seeing the world as his enemy, pulled a trigger countless times, ending the lives of 32 people, each of whom was a universe of possibility, too.

So, I guess I’m dumbstruck with gratitude that I could have a child who, for every single day of her life, has added light and beauty to this world. And I’m so grateful that on this Saturday after the killings at Virginia Tech, after more bombings in Iraq, I know you are safe in Jackson, MS, answering the phone, “Emily O’Dell, Bike Shop”, no doubt scanning the landscape for possible photographs, considering a new recipe, planning to worship the God of your parents tomorrow morning. How those who lost a loved one must be longing for an ordinary day to make an ordinary phone call to their loved one.

Any life can bless or curse, give or take, create or destroy. You, and now Brian with you, are lights on a hill. May God continue to bless you and keep you and reach out to others through you.
Happy Birthday, precious one.

The Gifts of Spring

While on my walk, my own heart lately sodden with cares began to thaw with these first gifts of spring. A daring squirrel had climbed to the farthest edge of the highest and flimsiest branch, defying gravity, the tenderest shoots no doubt worth the risk. I loved his gumption, felt proud of his moxey, if envious.

The redbud trees are blooming; impossibly purple and delicate. Their greeting here at the close of winter while most of the other trees are still barren is like some angelic visitation bringing good tidings. I stopped and stared and could hardly believe the beauty, repented of my wintery unbelief.

I found myself marveling at the fortitude of a half-spent dandelion, standing brave and tall, alone, sprung amidst rocks. I fancied myself like that saint of old who was struck by the love of God at the sight of a falling leaf.

Two ducks squawked overhead like some old couple bickering and I wondered what they were saying, thought about C.S. Lewis’ talking animals. I then thought about a story I’d heard a few nights ago.

Pat’s cousin and her husband have some land in Texas – a few horses, fifty head of cattle. Sadly, one of the aging horses had to be put down. Al hired some guys to bury him on their land; Carol Lynne couldn’t bear to watch. That night, after they had gone to sleep, the human mourners were wakened by the animal ones.

“It was the worst sound I’ve ever heard. A crying. A moaning. It was awful.” (Carol Lynn says lots of things are awful, but her shudder convinced me.) “We looked outside and all of them cows had made a circle around where the horse had been buried. And they just kept making that horrible sound.”

And so I wonder about God’s creation. Rocks can cry out. Stars have names. Diamonds are hidden in mountains. Cows grieve for a horse. The sky turns black in response to a man's last breath on a cross. The creation stands on tiptoe. All the collaboration of all the geniuses of all time couldn't have imagined a world as amazing as the one we awaken to each morning.

Not Even Univac Could Figure Her Out

Growing up, my sister and I knew when our mother was talking on the phone with Ann because she always took on Ann’s voice. Ann has this extraordinary speech pattern: Southern and therefore slow and deliberate with added syllables. (My mother’s name Joanne becomes Jo-ah-yuhn.) Unlike other Southerners, though, her voice is not rounded-out, soft, or gravelly, but a roller-coaster voice with peaks of sharp, but still pleasant intonation. Hers is a voice with constant excitement, emphasis, punctuated with laughter, a musical voice that never ceases to make you want to listen.

Friends since they were three years old, “running wild up and down Main Street, jumping from the rooftops of downtown buildings”, it wasn’t until they were in their teens that it occurred to my mother that Ann was “a little slow”. No matter. They’ve remained friends to this day, now in their eighth decade of life.

Ann gets words wrong. She could have been the prototype for Amelia Bedelia. As teenagers, she was so proud of the cashmere sweater she’d bought, calling my mother on the phone to celebrate her purchase. “Is it a cardigan?” my mother asked. “No, Joanne. I already told you it was a cashmere.”

Later in life she showed my mother her “varico” vein. “It’s variCOSE, Ann, not variCO.” Ann said with her customary stubbornness, “You don’t understand, Joanne. I only have ONE.”

My mother and her friends would spend hours sitting around our kitchen table, smoking, drinking, playing a little cards, philosophizing. One afternoon, lips loosened by drink, Mama and Martha got on the subject of Ann’s inscrutability, my mother saying, “Not even Univac could figure Ann out.”

The next day Ann was petulant and cold, yet ready to explain why when my mother asked what was wrong. “I don’t appreciate you talking about me behind my back. Whoever this Univac person is, he doesn’t even know me!”

John Adams

I’ve been living in two worlds – one where I sleep, shower, cook, correct, hug, kiss, sing, pray, write, smile, frown; i.e. live my life in the here and now, just as you do.

The other world is not my own, but one that I’ve nonetheless inhabited for the past three weeks, a world of letters and law, of kings and court, powdered hair and whale-bone corsets, politics and philosophy, treason and heroic patriotism, revolution and the establishment of what was to become by this the year 2009, the longest-standing government in the world.

David McCullough’s biography of John Adams, is, as they tell you on the front cover, “a masterwork of storytelling..” I’m no book reviewer, but what I’ll say is that for me it’s been a time-traveling machine, in which I’ve survived violent storms at sea - as John did, waited months for news about my husband and son - as Abigail did, buried sons, daughters and grandchildren – as they both did. I feel as if I’ve lived in what John Adams would call the greatest of times, in which

“It has been the will of Heaven that we should be thrown into existence
at a period when the greatest philosophers and lawgivers of antiquity
would have wished to live…a period when a coincidence of circumstances
without example has afforded to thirteen colonies…an opportunity of
beginning government anew from the foundation.”

Reading good books won’t make you good. But good books will, I believe, make your life better by weaving their truth and wisdom into your heart and mind, expanding and buttressing, correcting and broadening. Reading about the struggle to form a new nation, one like none other, which the rest of the world predicted would fail, is a necessary and fitting backdrop to the current news of the day. Following the lives of our founding fathers, appreciating their genius and sacrifice while not blind to their failings has been for me a rich privilege, made possible by the thousands of letters written during those years.

Within these pages, friendships, fortunes and reputations are made and lost. Monarchies are overthrown and reinstated, people cry for war one day and peace the next. Newspapers slander and libel, duels are fought.

Lest you think it’s one big history lesson, the pages are also filled with the details of domestic life here and abroad. While in France, Abigail grudgingly submits to French fashion by having her own hairdresser in residence. While traveling, John Adams shares a bed with Benjamin Franklin, who lectures him on the necessity of keeping the windows open all night. They raise a son who becomes a President, two others who are overcome by alcohol, faithful daughters whose husbands are wanting. Throughout the book, the love between Abigail and John, and their love for their country, do both them, America, and their God honor. May we learn from them and aspire to the same.

I'm sad to have finished the book, to have no more letters to read, to say goodbye to my new friends. At the same time, I was ready to see Abigail and John reach their well-deserved rest, glad to rejoice with them, they who looked forward to "a future state" with God who
"in his wisdom and benevolence could (not) make such a species as the human merely to live and die on this earth."

A Good Life...or a Godly One?

Three Sundays ago I was minding my own business, doing my part singing in the choir, as I do every week. I had a heart to worship, was looking forward to communion, but other than that wasn’t expecting anything out of the ordinary.

When out of nowhere a thought entered my head, seemingly without context, unprovoked, unrelated to anything in my life. But there it came, like something alive, with form and weight, and there it has stayed, setting up residence these fifteen days.

The thought was this: “What about becoming a foster parent?” Somewhere between the first song and communion these words slipped in, and instead of drying up and blowing away the way they came in, have stubbornly taken root, demanded my time and attention, refused to go away.

Before I could put up my defenses, I was flooded with thoughts in favor of such a thing. There’s such a need. You’ve been given so much. What about “being poured out”, doing things “unto the least of these”? And then during communion, “This is My body, broken for you…” and I’m not willing to set an extra plate at my abundantly supplied table?

Then Cole speaks about readiness and I think about how the need will only increase as the economy worsens and shouldn’t we as the church be ready to help, to be His light? Then he says those who desire to live a godly life will be persecuted, and I think how I’ve got my life so arranged that that’s very unlikely. His final haunting refrain, more words that I can’t escape, “We want a good life, not a Godly one.”

I think, “This idea is crazy.” Must be a hormone imbalance, a midlife crisis, a latent search for significance – something to explain this unwanted intrusion. It’ll go away by the morning. No need to tell Pat. If it is anything, God will tell him, too. That’ll be the fleece.

But it doesn’t go away. Monday morning I tell Pat who, ever the servant willing to say yes to the hardest and crummiest jobs, says, “We’ll have to look into it.” That afternoon I find myself googleing foster care; the kids see and ask what’s up. “I don’t know,” I say with tears, not sure whether they’re from self-pity, having been blindsided with this, for the hundreds of children needing a home, or just the joy from sensing God’s action in my life.

The next day I start reading my book club book, “The Glass Castle”, the memoir of a woman who grew up in a family so impoverished, so messed-up, that she at one point during her childhood, fantasizes that a beautiful foster family is coming to take her and her siblings away. While at the library getting that book, I check out “Hope’s Boy”, another memoir, but this one written by a boy who lived in foster care. If I’m wanting this idea to go away, I’m certainly not acting like it.

It’s a busy week, but I find time to ask Pat, “Are you still thinking about this?” “Yeah. And I keep coming up with objections. But they’re all just selfish.” I’d done the same thing, except I’d used the word “shallow”.

One afternoon, the smell of dinner cooking, listening to music playing on my newly refurbished stereo system, I look at Joanna,who is bent over her schoolbooks, happily studying, the sun shining through the window highlighting her hair. The scene is like a Dutch painting – a tranquil home, blessed with all that is good. I cry this time, overwhelmed with how much we have, how much we could share, that there should be enough love for someone else.

So I’ve gone from expecting the idea to go away, to distress that it hadn’t, to this current place of openness and even hope that we could actually do this some day. Mostly I’m humbled that God would consider me enough to speak to me, to get my attention, to nudge me to join my husband on his well-worn road of servanthood.

Whether we end up doing this or not, the question has left its mark on me, done its exploratory surgery, revealed that I had succumbed in great measure to desiring a good, safe life. I had managed to sew up tightly my life and lifestyle, content with lines that had fallen in pleasant places, resistant to things that might spell trouble, the down and dirty, sacrifice. I’ve discovered that I live in a family of servants: my own children and husband, who each so readily welcomed the idea of opening their hearts, sharing their home, following wherever Christ might lead. May I deserve to be in such company, to live a life worthy of Jesus' name, ready to go, ready to stay, willing to hold His people in my heart.

Kitchen Nightmares and a New Year's Prayer

Somewhere between Christmas and New Year's, I watched a reality show in which a master chef comes into a struggling restaurant and gives them the riot act. Apparently the owners asked for this even though surely they've seen the profanity-wielding chef humiliate and rant and rave, bringing hapless workers to tears.

Granted, it was a TV show, replete with stylized camera angles and shocking moments repeated over and over; and is probably just one step up from Jerry Springer on the evolutionary scale, but I watched it and am still thinking about it now three weeks later.

These poor owners had asked an expert to swoop in and tell them what they were doing wrong. They'd been in business for a while; they had customers, they thought they were doing okay, just wanted some pointers.

What they got was a full-scale condemnation of just about everything they were doing. When Chef Gordon Ramsay went into the back of the refrigerator and scooped up a wet handful of nastiness for a camera close-up, the owner protested that the kitchen was a lot cleaner than it was before he bought it. The more things Chef Ramsay found wrong, the more defensive the owner became, finally stomping off and declaring he'd rather shut the doors and walk away than put up with that kind of "worse than a dog" treatment.

Yes, yes, I know that it was possibly 98% staged, and my writing about it is not to give creedance to reality shows, but to relate how the premise of the show struck me the next morning as I lay in bed thinking about it.

What if I asked an expert in, say, marriage to come in and see all? To move the boxes out of the way, with his bare hand reach into long-neglected places and bring to light the refuse of years of accumulated grime? In the face of a glaring, tell-all camera, would I insist that my marriage (or work-ethic, parenting, citizenship, discipleship) was just fine, better than it used to be, not nearly so bad as the guy's-next-door?

When Chef Ramsay asked the cook, "So what's the deal with these potatoes in a box?" and she said sheepishly, "I mix in a little instant with the leftover potatoes from yesterday to stretch them", I pitied the girl. She must have thought it seemed like a good idea at the time, and surely would never have done it, much less told him, if she'd seen the dastardly deed through his eyes. His admonition, "We will serve nothing but FRESH food" was so simple, so pure, so basic, but had obviously been grossly forsaken.

I can't forget the Instant Potatoes Lesson. How often do I serve up worn-out leftovers, depending on the loyalty of yesterday's affections, assuming, albeit unconsciously, that even half-hearted tokens will suffice? Am I, like the poor cook, lacking in passion, just putting in my hours?

This year, for the first time in years I didn't make any New Year's resolutions. But I do have a New Year's prayer and I ask you to pray it with me. "Expert in all, Maker and Sustainer of all, please come on in. Tell me what you see. Show me the back of the refrigerator. Tell me how it ought to be."