Category Archives: Life at Home

“Go, go, go said the bird…”

19 Thursday Nov 2009

Posted by in Far Away Places, In the Garden, Life at Home, Soul Care, The Great Outdoors

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There is promise hovering in the cold Oklahoma air that may soon carry us south.

I have been longing for the sight and taste of a place I called home for twenty years.  This morning, after two months of wishing, I picked up the phone-cum-magic wand to make my dream come true.  

My husband and I are not traditional ‘snowbirds, what coastal Texans fondly (and not-so-fondly) call migratories of the human kind who descend south for a winter perch.  Instead, our stay will be the barest of interludes.   We hope to steal away for a few days in Advent, during that lesser known liturgical season preceding Christmas on the church calendar.  Our arrival at Surfside Beach within this prayerful season of holy anticipation and waiting seems entirely appropriate, given that the word Advent  — which derives from the Latin word adventus  —  means “arrival” or “coming.”  

I have come to regard a certain white cottage that graces the eastside ocean front as our home away from home.  Like all beach front property, the house is built on stilt-like pilings, which makes for spacious views.  In the dark morning hours, I watch the fireball of the faraway sun shoot out of the ocean to break fast over darkness.  A little later, I watch the graceful gulls and pelicans skim the ocean surface to break fast in their own way.

I understand their taste for seafood — except for breakfast and a few pilgrimages to The Dairy Bar in nearby Lake Jackson —  it will be a seafood diet for me.  Hopefully, we’ll bring back some lovely Gulf Coast Shrimp as souvenirs.

 

There are other souvenirs to pick up and gather.  Like any familiar place that holds precious memories, a new trip to Surfside allows us to reconnect past dots of everyday life — memories of our children playing in the sand, a few sandy family picnics and even my husband’s proposal of marriage under a starry sky as we searched for Haley’s Comet.  The beach reminds me of walks on the jetty with my friend Terri, as it reminds me of all my friends in and around Lake Jackson.  Some I pray to visit.

Surfside is in the rhythm of our lives in the same way that the sun comes up  and goes down, in the way that the waves sweep in and roll out and in the way that we breathe in and breathe out life itself.  Even now I can taste salt air on my tongue and my mouth waters in anticipation. 

Surfside invites me to encounter life beyond what I can truly know, beyond the wide blue sometimes brown sea yonder.  At Surfside, I descend to the deep, where life below the surface is Real, no longer just an attractive shimmer on the surface.

It’s a good perch to watch and ponder life.  To look back and forward and in and out.  To stay still until I’m filled and it’s time to fly back home.  

“Go, go, go, said the bird:  human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.”   – T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton

Life Amongst the Saints

18 Wednesday Nov 2009

Posted by in Life at Home, Prayer, Soul Care

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I was greeted with a sonic boom of thanks yesterday, as I stepped into the nursing home for my regular Tuesday visit with Daddy.  Glenda, the nursing home recreational director, always talks loud.  Maybe it’s a hazard of spending your days with the hard-of-hearing.

“I want you to know that those dresses you brought really were appreciated.”
“What dresses?” 

I had no idea what Glenda was referring to.  Already forgotten was last week’s discussion in my parents closet, when my sister spoke of taking Mom’s dresses to the nursing home. 

“I didn’t bring any dresses.” 

Christi & Me -- As Different As Can Be

Walking toward me, Glenda realized her mistake.  Once again, she had confused me for my sister.   The case of mistaken identity between Christi and I is something that happens frequently amongst all nursing home personnel.  For me to be confused for my saintly sister is no problem at all.  She, on the other hand, may have an entirely different perspective.  But don’t we all have our crosses to bear?  

“Ohhhhh.  That was your sister that brought the dresses.  I just wanted you all to know how appreciated your Mother’ dresses are — four are being worn today.  See, there’s one right there.”

With memory now in place, I followed the direction of Glenda’s pointed finger to the lady seated in the wheel chair.  Seeing the familiar curved spine with head tucked down toward her chest, my heart filled with joy. 

“Oh, Miss Alpha got some of Mother’s dresses.  That’s wonderful!  Thanks for letting us know.  I needed some good news today.” 
“Oh yeah.  She needed them baaad.  Can you believe she didn’t have any dresses?”

This bit of news was surprising.  That Miss Alpha should be in such dire need for Mom’s hand-me-down dresses when she, in better days, was the proprietor of Seminole’s finest women’s clothing store is one of life’s little ironies.  (And just between us, I don’t imagine she would have been caught dead wearing one of Mom’s still good but everyday house-dresses back in those finer days.)  But in the quiet days of nursing home life, these leftover dresses from my mother’s life seem to suit Miss Alpha just fine.

Miss Alpha , you may remember, once kept Daddy company at the dinner table —  what with much affection and admiration I called The Quiet Supper Club  —  in those early days of nursing home life when Dad still took nourishment by mouth.  I went  over to check on Miss Alpha to see how life was treating her, since it had been a good while since she and I had last visited.  It was good to find some things don’t change — Miss Alpha still has nothing to complain about —  but then, what woman isn’t doing fine when she’s wearing some new duds?

But before I headed toward Miss Alpha, I leaned down to a different wheel chair to greet my father.   Daddy had been waiting for my brother and I in the gathering area.  I drew close to Daddy’s shrunken face to see his big shiny eyes and gorgeous smile.   “I love you Daddy.”  Then my father did something totally out of character.  He reached out to take my hand.  Then gracefully, he carried my hand all the way to his lips.   And then ever so tenderly, Daddy kissed my hand.

For my daddy to offer me his best self — on the day I learned of another father committing the worst toward his child —  brought peace to my soul.  I didn’t deserve such tenderness.  Nor, of course, did that young boy deserve what he received at the hands of his father. 

That life doesn’t always give us what we deserve is the human experience.  But sometimes, we receive just what we need and peace settles in around us.  The gift received is so perfect that it seems to bear a touch of the holy.  It was a holy difference that clothed Miss Alpha yesterday; and it was a holy difference in my father than covered my own aching heart.

Both Miss Alpha and I were covered by another’s love.  And this… well this is humanity at its best.   It’s what life amongst the saints should be, a passing of the peace beyond any I’ve experienced before. 

And how I long for this peace to be passed to all.   It’s all of our business isn’t it, this peace-passing work of the saints? 

“To take each moment
 and live each moment
In peace eternally.
Let there be peace on earth
And let it begin with me.”

No More

17 Tuesday Nov 2009

Posted by in Life at Home

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Today’s newspaper headlines should glisten with unshed tears:  “NICHOLS HILLS DOCTOR….JAILED IN SON’S DEATH”.

Nichols Hills is where money lives and breeds here in central Oklahoma.  And after reading a few details — 9 years old boy, Mom bruised in attempts to protect her son  and allowing myself a mere glance at the photos of the dad and son — I can bring myself to read no more. 

Why God?  Tell me how such a thing like this could happen?  Would any answer matter?  A little boy is dead.  This young boy was alive on Sunday.  Maybe he was happy then.  I’d like to think so.  Yet, sometime between Sunday happiness and Tuesday news headline, all hell broke loose.  Something terrible went wrong in Nichols Hills.  And it’s all over but the crying.  And I am terribly sad.

I grieve the loss of this young boy I did not know.  And I wonder about the irony of one who can take the Hippocratic oath “to do no harm” and do the worst sort of bodily harm that can be done to another.  And to his own child?  I am not consoled by my belief that this child is “now in a better place”, even though I believe it is so.  How can I not, when I allow myself to skirt thoughts of the last scary seconds of this boy’s young life?

Some will ask — as I just have — why God allows such suffering to happen in the world?  Why does God grant us such freedom, such power over another’s life, that human kind (or in some cases, human evil) could play God and snuff out the life of some young child — or some old man — or some whoever.   Minds better than mine have written on this topic — Philip Yancey and C.S. Lewis are two.  I must leave such high places of thought where angels fear to tread.

But a response does come at me like a freight train; God gives us such power so that we can make the right choices, so that we can love as we all want and need to be loved, so that we can bring up each other in the way that we should go, as the old Proverb says.  God entrusts the needy to us, hoping that we will shower them with love rather than with bullets — that we will feed them when they are hungry, clothe them when they are naked and give them shelter when they are cold. 

I don’t know whether this young boy died by a bullet wound or in some other way.  I didn’t let myself get that deep into this real-life horror story that is worse than any horror flick ever made by Quentin Tarantino.

Forgive me Father God.  For I need to go bury my head, like a baby ostrich in the sandbox, not ready for the scary sands of primetime news stories.  I want to pretend that everyone lives happily ever after.  And as for this boy, who now lives in the happily ever after, there is no need for pretense.

I offer this gift of words to this little boy that is no more; a boy that is no longer here at least.

And I offer this boy a prayerful hymn to accompany him on his journey.  It’s a tune of Carly Simon’s, one I’ve told my son Kyle that I wish sung at my own funeral some day.  It’s a great unknown song — for a great unknown little boy — a song that talks about coming home.  This is the best and only way I can love this boy right now — to let Carly sing him home.