Tag Archives: Writing

Better Letters

28 Saturday Nov 2009

Posted by in Life at Home

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

Rather than writing next week’s Advent presentation or contemplative prayer practice, I’m twiddling  thoughts for this year’s Christmas letter.

I dropped one percolating thought right into Friday’s Food post on oatmeal cookies.  Remember this line? — Isn’t it ironic that we remember the times when certificates change hands —  like  for a marriage or the birth of a child or a college graduation — and forget that the best of real life is found sandwiched in between?

When I wrote that line, I was thinking of this year’s Christmas letter and how the contents of past letters, both sent and received, were not much more than a series of life punctuation points accompanied by certificates.

I want to write a better letter this year though I’m unsure of what ‘better’ will look like.  I’d like the letter to recognize the importance of the everyday.  But how do I do this in the age of no words please – in the age of twitters and texts and short-attention spans?  Longer will definitely not do;  and if longer is not better, this means the content must change.

Perhaps I need to write more than I need and then distill.  Cut, cut, cut.  I could even begin with my everyday thoughts on certificate days.

Thoughts on marriage:  It is in the  daily living rather than on the wedding day where two lives are joined together; where true knowledge of each other grows out of mere knowing about the other, where each learns, often the hard way, what brings the other joy or angst and where dreams and fears are shared and sometimes even heard.  On  good days, one partner may deftly read in-between the lines of a spouse’s spoken word, though not too often.  But  it is upon the smooth and rough seas of the everyday, where days of sameness collide together, that an unnoticed miracle will occur: a few threads of the mystery of each partner will gradually unravel to allow the loose threads to be woven into the others own.  The weaving  of lives together is not a pretty process or even a pretty result.  Nor does it happen overnight.  But thread by thread and day by day, two lives will become one, as long as they remember to stay loose and unravel every so often.

Thoughts on parenting: Parenting grows out of everyday care and the raising of  a child rather than in conception and delivery.  If most parents are like me, they haven’t a clue of what to expect when they bring their darling newborn infant home; no mere eighteen year commitment this, since love is sown deep to keep parents forever parents to a child, no matter how many wrinkles a child ultimately grows.  Parent boot camp consists of never-ending feedings and diaper changes and later the never-ending chauffering and coaching and all the sleep-deprived nights from sleepovers and sickness and forgetfulness of some teen- aged child who stays out  past curfew.. or forgets to come home.  Parents are made and not born.

Thoughts on graduation: It will be mixed bag of emotions (pride, joy, relief) to watch two adult children walk across the stage to receive their college diploma next May and walk off the stage and their father’s payroll.  But the celebratory moment would be hollow without awareness of  the hard work that preceded the certificate… and the hard work that will follow it.

Of course lessons in the classroom are important — but the lessons outside are the ones that birth character, as one of mine has recently discovered through a Shakespearean tragedy of errors where he became the unlucky scapegoat of the university student newspaper.  Helplessly, I have watched him suffer.  Thankfully, I am now seeing him pick up the pieces to carry on  life wiser and stronger.  He has been fortunate to attract two able mentors to see him through his ordeal. Perhaps, Hillary Clinton was right in saying that it takes a village to raise a child.   So yes, while there is pride, joy and relief, it has less to do with certificates than in the men they have become.

These thoughts will take some serious editing.  I guess shorter really makes for a better letter.  If so, perhaps this sweet tweet might just do?

This year we had one marriage, no births and two graduations.

All our best to you and the rest.

A Christmas Labor

23 Monday Nov 2009

Posted by in Life at Home, Prayer, Soul Care

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

This time every year, for the last seven anyway, I begin drafting a short letter to accompany our annual greeting card.

So why is it that every year’s writing grows harder than easier?  I think the 2003 edition took an hour to write, while last year’s model required untold hours spanning seven days of time.

Last year at this time I was procrastinating like crazy.  Where to start, how to say what I wanted to say; I longed  for words  —  to those I love “enough to send the very best”  —  to be more perfect than I could ever write them.

Eventually, I sat myself down in front of the computer and looked at the blank screen hoping something would come.  And then I looked out my window to see  that the 50 foot Pecan tree next door was raining down its yellow leaves in mass.  It was this  “long loving glance at the real” that nudged me to deliver my first sentence.

So here I sit again, another year and another Christmas letter later, with nothing to say.  Maybe I should just enclose a white sheet of paper and sign it.  Or maybe I should hold a white sheet of paper in my lap and lift it to God and then let the words fall where they may.  Just like those yellow leaves.  Amen and Amen.

But no. Either of the above approaches sounds more like my son Kyle’s way of writing than mine.  That son of mine writes as natural as breathing while I write like in the throes of natural childbirth.  Having three of my four children ‘naturally’ makes me quite expert on the subject — I’m told I cussed like a sailor during my first labor; but all I can clearly recall was wanting to call the whole thing off.

Breathe.  Relax.  Don’t fight it.  Just let the words slip into the world.  Then celebrate like crazy and pass out the bubble-gum cigars.  And as I write this, I think of that little soon-to-be Mother Mary in labor two thousand years ago as she delivered her Word.  One Word was enough; and I wonder whether Mary’s labor of a single Word was with or without pain?

Perhaps I should approach the writing of my Christmas letter as I would any act of prayer, where I sit empty before God waiting to be filled.  Yet.  While I’m waiting, I did think of a way ‘in’ to the Christmas writing  spirit that may actually pry open the writer’s block.

With nary a wince, I’m going to re-write my last six opening paragraphs without edit or commentary; it will be a fresh look at my best words and wishes of Christmas letters past.

2003: It’s difficult to believe that this year is almost gone.  Perhaps the year has gone by fast for you as well… but whether fast or slow, we pray the year has brought you and yours many precious times with friends and family.  Here are a few of our precious happenings.

2004: Our year was good in so many ways.  I celebrate the goodness that is the very fabric of our daily lives — good health, good food and good times with those we love.  I hope you, too enjoyed a good year.

2005: Change, like God, is in the very air we breathe these days, as Don & I prepare for “empty Nest-ness” and a change of residence.  We have busily spent the last three months getting our home ready for sale, in anticipation of an eventual relocation to Oklahoma.  Perhaps, next year, you will find us living in my dream home — a renovated historic house on the edge of downtown Oklahoma City.

2006: Winter arrived firmly on our doorstep last week, bringing us another change in a year full of changes.  After twenty-plus years of living near the Texas coast, we are once again Oklahomans, enjoying life in a renovated historic house on the edge of downtown Oklahoma City.

2007: With the year almost gone, we must soon begin ‘dressing’ our home for Christmas and ourselves for our youngest daughter’s late December wedding.  While neither will be easy, both dress-ups will be good, as old traditions and the celebration of new beginnings will help us begin a life without Mom.

2008:  On days of falling leaves and temperatures, I’m drawn to the kitchen with treasured recipes in hand.  Gathered across forty years, some are neatly typed on index cards and others are handwritten by the good cook themselves; but most are in my hand or Don’s — from the barely legible, scrawled on handy slips of scrap paper from busy days of four children at home — to those carefully preserved on notebook paper in early school-girl cursive.  Regardless of style, they all conjure up comfort — in the form of good food and good memories — and they all mysteriously bind present to past and future.  To see a recipe is to see the friend of family member who shared it, even when distance and death separate us.  To share a recipe is to share ourselves with the future, especially as they make homes with our children.

Wince away.  I did.  There’s nothing like a healthy dose of humility to bring a gal to her Christmas lettering senses.

These is no magnum opus there.  But I have them, oh do I have them.  Mine bear the names of my children.  And I bet Mother Mary thought the same thing about her’s. And if so, she was write.


No More

17 Tuesday Nov 2009

Posted by in Life at Home

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , ,

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.