Tag Archives: Love

Mother’s Day

09 Saturday May 2009

Posted by in Life at Home, Prayer

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I’m not one to send out Mother’s Day cards. 

Oh, I have and have had the best of intentions.  But even when Mom was alive, I’d expressed my sentiments with flowers rather than Hallmark.  I’d buy a card and forget to send it.  Then it’d keep company with others in my large stockpile of forgotten and unsent cards.  Just the like the one I hold for my dear friend Ann.  I ran across ‘Ann’s’ card a few months ago when selecting a card for another and well… fell in love with it all over again and full of hope and new resolve I thought, this year I’ll get it sent.  But rats, I’ve missed the magical deadline again.  Perhaps next year?  Or maybe next week — with a sheepish smile?

You’d think a CPA who practiced in the tax field for twenty-some years would be able to meet a pesky deadline.  But no, that’s just not who I am, which may be why management took me out of compliance and assigned me to special projects.  I’m rarely on time to any event, even when I give myself cushion and a range.  Just last week I told my brother I’d pick him up between 2:15 and 2:30 and didn’t make it until 2:40 p.m.  Is this a sign of thoughtlessness, or to rob words from St. Paul, “not regarding others as better than myself?”  Perhaps.  Though much of  my lateness and inability to meet deadlines occurs while robbing ‘Peter’ to pay ‘Paul’. 

The way I best manage my flighty behavior is to avoid definite commitments – and by not setting precedents I know I can’t keep up with – like sending out Mother’s Day cards.  I’m helping my daughter Kara today so she and her husband Joe can go to Tulsa and ‘wine and dine’ his mom for Mother’s Day, without worrying about their dogs they needed to leave behind.  Last night, she asked me what time I’d be by for care and feed.  I offered up a big range – 4:00 to 6:00 pm I said – thinking surely, even I can fit into this spacious gap of time.  But what if I’m a little late?  Will the dogs tattle on me?  Will the dogs care?  No, dogs are so doggone forgiving; they never hold a grudge, even when you’ve not met their expectations.

So like the dog I am, I hold no expectations of Mother’s Day dinners or lunches or even cards, though by the grace of God, I’ve been invited to eat brunch with Kara tomorrow morning at my most favorite restaurant in all of OKC – Paseo Grill – which sits just a few blocks north of my Mesta Park home.  Kara is coming to pick me up, and I just love to be chauffeured around.  And if I don’t hear from my other three children…well, let’s just say I understand.  All too well…

Picking up the phone or sending flowers or a card is a lovely thing to do.  But really, can we just banish the official day, for those of us who beat to a different drum, who like to be spontaneous and not hemmed in by a single day?  I know my kids love me, whether or not they acknowledge their love tomorrow.  And I hope the four women in my life who sent me a card know how much I love them too.

To them, and to others like them, I say my heartfelt thanks and cheer you on from the sidelines.  I wish I could be more like you.  At one time, I pretended to be.  And maybe that’s what that card stockpile is all about.  But alas, I am who I am.  Not a thoughtless slug exactly.  But more like one who thinks too much, who expresses herself best in silence and unsent words and thoughts of love, who loves to pick up cards that express words that are true to her spirit, like these that rest on a Patience Brewster card hiding in my stack of unsent cards, but then forgets to send it:

“Through the Silence, I Send a Thousand Prayers…”

Name Calling

31 Tuesday Mar 2009

Posted by in Far Away Places, Life at Home, Soul Care

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What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

                                    –Shakespeare

 

I just spoke with a nice man named Chris at St. Francis of the Woods.  He took time to tell me about the retreat center and to offer me driving directions.  And then, ten minutes into our call, he surprised me by remembering my name.

 

How often do people actually take in your name when you try to give it?  I confess I’m not as good as Chris.  My crime is not so much forgetting a name–though I do this too—it’s more about not paying attention from the first.  After  introduced to someone by name, we’ll talk.  And then after a bit, I’ll say, “Now tell me your name again.” 

 

I look forward to meeting this place and this man, because it will grant me a better sense of each.  Their names will become weighted by personal experience so that they are not so easy to fly off the top of my head.  And as I write this, I see that it’s been this way since time began, because in a biblical sense, to know a person’s name is to know something about their character; and to go a step further…. to really know a person demands an everyday intimacy.

 

While there is a distinction between ‘knowing about’ and ‘knowing’, I wonder if these haven’t become homogenized.  For me, to say I know about something or someone can imply a whole range of knowledge: It may be a skimming of the surface – the barest of facts – or it can be deep layers of understanding that comes from digging down and getting my hands dirty.  Or, it can fall somewhere in between. 

 

But there is a single word in a single verse from the Gospel of Matthew that has marked a line in the sand for me on what it means ‘to know’. 

 

“Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife:  And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son… 

 

True ‘knowing’ transcends ‘knowing about’ when we decide to get naked with one another.  We hold nothing in reserve.  We bare our souls and then our bodies.  To do it in reverse may be an intention to never know.  It may mean something someday… or maybe nothing at all.     

 

But call the name of one you tuly know and see what it means.  Notice what rises to the surface.  Maybe it’s their wicked sense of humor, or the way they can read your unspoken thoughts, or maybe it’s the way they wear their pajamas all day on Sunday without apology.  Names change.  They may even soften into a nickname with familiarity.  But the deep down core of a person, once you get under the masks and the props –all the stuff that makes them a person– rarely if ever changes.     

 

I think this is sort of what Shakespeare had in mind, when he wrote these words for Juliet to speak to Romeo:  “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.”

Blue Moon

30 Monday Mar 2009

Posted by in Life at Home

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I use to be a fan of college sports, but OU football broke me of the habit, after one too many nail-biting, bowl losing games.  But since my husband enjoys it, I go once in a blue moon.   It’s a sacrifice.  And I go in the biblical way, like a lamb to the slaughter. 

 

Last night was blue moon time—we grabbed an Irma’s burger and drove down to the Ford Center to catch the first two games of the NCAA Women’s Basketball Regional.  Personally, I’d rather have cleaned all forty windows or picked up the neighborhood dog hockey.   

 

The first game was a sleeper, and not in a good way.  More tortoise than the hare, Purdue and Rutgers dribbled the ball sluggishly up and down court as if immersed in chest-high water.  Within five minutes of play, I’d decided this sport was a kissing cousin to synchronized swimming or cross-country skiing, where I’d learned the flip side of athleticism can be hypnoses.  So don’t rely on me for highlights.  I can only report, without knowing when and how, that Purdue managed to pull away to lead Rutgers by as much as sixteen points; And with a few minutes of play remaining, Rutgers eventually whittled the lead within two points, to lose by five.  Or was it three?  Yawn. 

 

The second game began late, shortly before bedtime.  But I was wide awake as soon as OU hit the court; perhaps it was the electricity in the air, or the familiar sounds of the OU fight song or just the contagious excitement of the players themselves.  Whatever it was, I found myself actually caring about these girls and the game’s outcome.

 

There was no place for tortoise shells in this mad dash between two hares.  The girls and the ball ricocheted so quickly around the wood court that it reminded me of a vintage pinball game being played by experts.  It was exciting to watch and a privilege to be there.  To really be present …rather than off in the land of nod.

 

Before last night, I knew next to nothing about OU women’s basketball—I knew Sherri Coale liked to wear Jimmy Choo heels; I’d heard some talk about the ‘the twins’; and after some prompting, I recalled my husband once telling me a story about a new freshmen girl who’d bested a NBA professional in a 3-point shooting match.  After last night, I now know a little more than nothing:  Sherri’s pant hem covers her expensive high heels; the twins have names – Courtney and Ashley – and the pro-besting girl wears the #25 jersey.  I don’t know her name.

 

But who cares about such details?  What matters is that these women, and a few more like them, had me cheering like a real OU fan.  The delusion lasted only until I rubbed the sleep from my eyes.  Because there I was, wearing the wrong school’s colors…. a blue moon in a sea of crimson and cream.