Calling Mom on my birthday

I called my mom on my birthday, asked her if she remembered just what she was doing 60 years ago today.  Oh we shared some good laughs, and that question opened a door of memory to her own youth.  You see, my mom was very young when she had me, a new teenage bride.  I was born early and very small.  It was a difficult time.  As she recounted the memory, her voice grew soft.  She was so green, she said, so young.  She had no idea.  She told me that when she finally held me she thought I was the most beautiful baby she'd ever seen. 
Of course, I was warmed by her words, savoring the moment, when she rolled on with this..."Once you had grown a bit and we knew everything was okay, that is when folks started telling me you had been the ugliest baby!"  Oh, it was hilarious - we were laughing so hard we both had tears running down our cheeks (I know this even though we are thousands of miles apart).  Ours is a special bond. 

God-is-with-us

It's been quiet here online,

though raucous enough in my life through advent’s waiting

the loss of my husband’s sister, my friend, who was also mother and daughter-loss

the rough road of one of our own who is trying with all she’s got to change her life

preparing for my moms visit (a rare and difficult thing for her to do, given her health, but she is vigorous in spirit)

family

hope and ache, loss and gain all tossed into December’s mulled offerings

and then comes the feast

Incarnation...God with skin, love enfleshed

I feel it in the happy chaos of child-Angels plucking feathers from their wings and robe-clad Shepherds making haste to greet the Christ child in the manger at Christmas Mass

Feel it as Lucas wraps his arms around my neck and I can still feel him so

As Conor kisses my forehead and I am so small beside him with his arm wrapped around me, Merry Christmas mom

And Leslie speaks her thanks and I feel her breath carry tenderness to my ear, her smile, delight to my eyes

When Kate calls, anxious about many things while I hear her own babies in the background, and though apart, a grown child’s need and a mother’s reassurance bridge the gap

And Jessica catches me in the pantry, after taking the girls on 'the best day ever!', confiding her renewed perspective; later we linger while the house sleeps and I am grateful for this closeness

Watching Henry laughing at the glad welcome he receives, the family embrace is everywhere

With my Mom close by, watching me in the kitchen, later bragging about her girl, we sit and I hold her crooked hand

Catching Roger’s eyes across the room, conspiracy of grace, again and again he sees, every petal reads ‘he loves me’

With Kyla and her scooting close, childhoods joys

The door swings wide, again and again as family arrives.

We join hands to pray, feast on food and wine

there are quiet chats in corners, the grandmothers commiserate

while games & laughter drift in on the air

We gather crowded close to open our gifts

All advent I heard the whisper and as I sit back and watch, I hear it again under the playful exchange...

I am not coming...I am here

Reunion

I just returned from Indiana for our family's 50th reunion. 
We live 2000 miles away, so it was wonderful to reconnect, to feel the love and share the memories, to sit outside in the cool of the evening with late lingering talk, slow and easy.
But something else was happening as well.  It started when I saw my cousin, heard that voice so familiar though I hadn't heard it in eons...
Memory...
With amazing physical clarity, keenly sensate  (which is not the same as accuracy, mind you)
I remembered the feel of the air along the path behind Uncle Wes' that led through a wild field to adventure...
The hall's quiet captured light at Uncle Charlie's that led to Kathy's room, where we'd sit on the bed and talk in secret...
Uncle Daryl laughing affectionately with me beside his shining car, with his sparkling smiling eyes, standing in the driveway...
My hands on the edge of the counter, waiting to get an ice cream with Uncle Tony...
Danny's bike with the playing cards clothes-pinned to his back wheel...
The gravel crunch under my feet at Uncle Dickies car lot...
Grandma's old colander in my hands picking blueberries ...

The power of place, of objects, of things we pay no attention to in our youth, but find, as we grow older, how they have laid their claim on us none-the-less.  The gifts we receive unawares...

My Mom with two of her brother's, Danny & Daryl

 

Back home again...in Indiana

Uncle Tony

My Uncle Tony, Lord rest him, has gone to God. 

He was a gem of a man - the patriarch of the family (big brother to a dozen siblings, including my mom!) when his own father died. A man of good humor, constancy and a great appreciation for life! He is threaded through my childhood memories.
He taught me to value curiosity:
He worked in the steel mills and his garage/workshop was scattered with magnets - magic for any child.  We could search out magnetic bits in the dirt like treasure hunters!  He knew how to play, explore, wonder.  Introducing us to magnets was to make of us appreciative explorers of the mysteries before us.

He taught me how to pluck a chicken:
A sight and experience I recall, but not pleasantly, so I will spare you the details...
He taught me to while away an afternoon in a backyard hammock:
I must have complained of 'nothing to do' because he led me to the backyard with great sobriety, to a hammock on a stand in the shade, and he lay down with me beside him.  Will you look at those branches.  We chatted awhile, and he told me this was a good thing to do when I didn't know what to do, just to lie here and look, to think about anything or nothing at all.  Then he went back into the house.  But he took the time to teach me a valuable lesson firsthand.  And he got me out of his hair!
He taught me to hang out in the kitchen for the latest scoop:
He was always there.  Sitting at the kitchen table, or standing with a dishtowel in hand.  He'd quietly laugh at the things he heard, a good listener.  Unobtrusive, he got all the juicy details.  He'd watch me, watching him, chin on the table, let me stay until the conversation took some turn and he'd shoosh me out.  I always wondered what it was the grownups talked about that I couldn't hear.  But it didn't bother me.  I just headed out to the hammock...

Holy Ground

Went to visit family in Colorado over Easter.  This tree is across the street from my mom's.  And the town is full of such trees.  It was literally raining blossoms all week.  The street gutters full of fallen petals, lawns scattered with a softly speckled carpet of frangrant blooms.  It was enough to take my breath away.  Gorgeous.
As we get older and life draws to its conclusions, these visits have become ever more treasured, more translucent.  This Easter God rained down his tenderest mercies and I could not miss the sacred beauty that surrounded me.  Blossoms, yes, but also my brothers playful smile, mom's knowing hand placed on mine, a daughter's contentment, sitting close, girls laughing, gratitude expressed and received, train whistles and night stars, kindness, ourselves crowded around the table for the simple sake of being together and enjoying the good company of each.  Blessings too numerous to count, so many blown past me and gone, but I see the beautiful carpet at my feet, making up the very ground on which I stand.  I sat on the curb and slipped off my shoes.  Felt a bit of heaven under my feet.  Wiggled my toes in gratitude.

My Mother's Smile

My mom...far left with some of her siblings
Margie, Charlotte, Dickey, Daryl, Robert, Wes, Danny & Charlie

God comes to us disguised as our own life...Richard Rohr

I ordered roses for planting and immediately remembered my mothers  advice,

“Better start saving eggshells.”  Eggshells?

My daughter gave me a bird’s nest for Christmas with lovely blue speckled eggs
nestled within.  It’s shape and color greet me from the kitchen shelf where it rests in a basket.
I was captivated last spring by the eggs laid in nests in my garden, doves and hummingbirds.
And eggs for breakfast, soft boiled for our youngest who loves to crack the shell open and scoop out it’s creamy goodness.
Or the perfect shape and weight of an egg in the hand, before we crack it on the edge of a bowl and mix the dough.
We visit our friend and head out to the chicken coup to gather eggs there, warm and fresh for lunch.
Color eggs for Easter; symbol of the tomb, and the resurrection.
Visit the children’s zoo and you can’t miss the excitement of the crowd gathered around the incubator full of eggs, mystery hidden still in some, breaking out in others, and the baby chicks every hand reaches for.  Holding those loveliest of creatures thrills each, awestruck with wonder and delight. Little feet tickling our hands and softest down, golden yellow, gray, white...and that high persistent chirping that draws our heads close to hear.
All that from an egg.

But saving eggshells?

Eggshells are for the garbage; messy, stinky and sharp, no good.
Yet, they have sat, collecting in a bag on my counter and only as I shared this with my husband did he tell me how many times he nearly threw them out and wondered what I was up to (he thought maybe some craft project).

“Better start saving eggshells,” my mother taught.
“Crush them fine and put them in when you plant.
That’s how you get the sweetest smelling roses.”

I think of the things ‘long sitting on the counter’ in my life,
the things I am sometimes tempted to discard; messy, sharp and stinking, no good.
I carry them with me to mass
crush them as my meager offering,
plant them at the altar...
In their place I am given Christ,
crushed and buried too,
I swallow deep, taste the water with the wine
feel it seeping into the dark earth of me.

The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them,

and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.
Isaiah 35:1