Silver Linings

We have a broken downspout on the northwest corner of my home. It is missing the part that allows the water to move gently from the vertical pipe into the earth. The consequence is that the water free falling from the open downspout creates a lovely puddle every time it rains. This puddle was the sight where, many years ago, Rhys came up to me with a backside covered in mud and proudly announced that he was making snow angels. I am grateful for this puddle. Every night when I sleep, I open my window let fresh air in. As it rains, the water hitting the puddle makes the most enchanting sound – a cross between rain on a tin roof and the babble of a brook. It is a soothing lullaby that only God could provide.

Every morning I take a shower. I love feeling the heat from this waterfall of water cascading down my hair to my cold toes. I love feeling the water run over my eyes and face while I breathe cold air through my nose and mouth. I love how the water warms every inch of my flesh and washes it clean. The dirt, the germs, the aches, the pains and even the weariness of my soul go down the drain with the old water. Tears don't matter in the shower; my eyes are just another spigot from which water flows. On days when I am sad, lonely, tired, happy or sensuous, I revel in the water and let it dance in my cells. For a moment I am calm. I am restored.

On the top shelf of my closet I have stored a wolf pelt. This wolf pelt was my mother’s. It’s a dark, dark brown wolf. She had it tanned, for some reason, in the round, meaning that it does not lie flat on the ground, legs spread eagle, but instead looks very much like the animal without any muscles, bone or innards. She loved this pelt and thought it was gorgeous. The summer she died she made sure to show it to me and to her sisters who came to visit. I remember it lying at the foot of her bed. Every time she moved her feet, the pelt would stir. My daughter thought it was a doggy. We discussed how this was the very best kind of dog: it was beautiful; it would sit as still as could be for a petting session that only need last as long as I wanted it to; it required no food and therefore, no poop; it wouldn’t bite, bark, lick, pant, etc.. That summer I would place my arm up the tube of the body of the wolf ending with my hand in its head. The legs and tail would dangle down and I would animate the head much like a puppet, further convincing my daughter that this was indeed a dog. She loved her new puppy. Upon the death of my mother, the aunties all decided that this perfect pet was needed at my home. So it sits, at the top of my closet. Whenever I get a glimpse of that rich, dark pelt, I remember those perfect moments from that summer.

I love clean sheets. I zealously horde the pleasure of being the first person to lie upon the clean sheets on my bed. Rhys reads for about half an hour each night in my room so Quinn can sleep and Rhys can stay up and Mommy and Daddy can have quiet time. When I have clean sheets, however, Rhys doesn't get to snuggle beneath the covers. I need to be the first person to enjoy the soft, cool cleanliness.

There is a precious small moment in between sleep and waking; that very first moment I open my eyes and I lie awash in the new day God has made but I am free from any disturbing memories. In that moment, my mother is not dead, my family has not fallen apart, there is no stress or sadness, just a knowledge that this is a new, fresh day and I am alive in it. I can breathe. I can see the glory of life. For just a moment, there is pure joy.

I love the feel of our new kitten, her soft thick fur, strands of silk against my cheek. I love to listen to her purr as she lies upon my chest. I love the weight of her, a little ball of heat nestled at my side.

My daughter dances in her tiara, feather boa and fairy wings while singing "The beast and the fowl of the air, will all have their share, so God can prove that He is there." Rhys reads Gregor the Overlander to Quinn. Robert washes my dishes. The heater in my van works. Hot cocoa made with real chocolate chips and whole milk for breakfast. Wrangling puffles and playing mancala with my sister-in-law on Club Penguin. The feel of a new book. The color of fall leaves. Our lone fish bubbling to the surface of his ice cream bucket fish bowl begging for food every five minutes. A working pencil sharpener. A new episode of Grey's Anatomy. God's whisper that He is carrying me even now.

All silver linings.

Random thoughts far too early in the morning

Yes, the time is correct. I’ve been up, I think, since about 3:30am and have the oddest sensation of being completely well-rested and thoroughly exhausted at the same time. I’ve been reading Under the Tuscan Sun and find the writing at times verbose and at other times compelling – I want to move to Italy. How impractical would that be? I can’t imagine picking up and moving to Maine, much less across the pond. There would be no visits with cousins or grandparents, and yet, for a moment…

Ah, it is good to dream.

Reading, though, how she talks of this house makes me think of my own house: thoroughly lived in and chaotic bordering on complete madness. Is this me? If a home is a reflection of my inner person, what does my home say? My toilet is skanky – is my soul just as unwashed? The cobwebs, the dust, the permanent layer of dirt on my laminate flooring: I have no place; no one clean and uncluttered carved out piece of space in my home. Even my desk, my work space, is cluttered and occasionally cleaned. My home is littered about with things I will get to someday: books I will read, projects I will finish, paints I will someday let my children use. I’m anal and at the same time completely loosey goosey. I want to change, desperately, but I find the more I want to change, the more I want to cling to the person I am.

Today is the last day I have a three-year-old. This is a small death. My heart aches at the thought that I will never again smell my sweet baby’s breath or feel the pull of baby’s lips on my breast. I will never be fat and heavy with my child and feel her kicking inside – that secret moment that is mine alone unless I choose to share. I will miss the nightly feedings, diaper changes, the adorable outfits and each new development. When does that change – the enjoyment of development? When my babies were infants I looked forward to each new step, ready to mark it on a calendar and celebrate with pure joy. Now, while there is still a bit of joy and excitement, it is tinged with heavy grief – my babies are growing and becoming adults. Already in Rhys there is no little boy – he is boy becoming and puberty is walking up the steps to our home. Quinn is somewhere in between. Lulu is firmly entrenched in little girl-dom. She likes make-up, press-on nails, Barbie dolls and dress-up. Pink is her favorite color and she is her favorite princess. Where did my babies go? I rejoice in who they are now but feel such a sense of loss. Where will they be tomorrow and have I done everything I could to ensure a happy childhood and set them firmly on the path to being stable adults who are secure in the fact that they always have a home next to my heart?

I have begun to accomplish a few things again. Peppers are drying in the dehydrator and the house is resplendent with the smell. I keep waiting for my eyes to burn from the oils in the air but so far, we are good. I had to throw pounds and pounds of apples onto the compost heap, which will, I’m sure, be eaten by our dog before they can return to dirt. I put many more pounds into our refrigerators and that will have to be enough for now. I’m hoping that I can begin making applesauce with the apples that remain but, like everything else, I start with a manageable thought (a small pot of hand crushed chunky applesauce) and end up with the world (mixing all the apples together in a big pot, running them through my food mill and bottling the result, all in one day) and then feel so stressed and anxious at the thought of such a huge task that I do nothing and most likely will be adding more apples to the compost in a few more weeks. My thought is that next year, I just spend the $50 from buying apples on buying applesauce at the store: pre-mashed, pre-bottled, pre-worked and ready to eat.

Dad called last night. He and Cheri are planning to come down for Christmas. Does this mean they will be at my house for Christmas? I’m nervous and uncertain and with all things being equal, not sure I want them to come. I’m still hurting over last year’s visit. I need to let go but like I said above, the more desperately I want to let go and change the more desperately I hang on. Is everyone so perverse?

I am in a weird spot with God. We talk, frequently, but they are small conversations, momentary meetings with a sentence or two about where I am. I am trying to read my scriptures, beginning with the gospels as I need the strength that Jesus provides, but I feel disconnected. Sometimes I feel that in my attempts to make my devotions more consistent, they become less impassioned? There are moments my faith seems so strong and sure, my rock that secures me to existence, and other moments where I wonder if I am not just roaming this universe alone? I cannot deny my previous experiences with deity, just as I cannot ignore the promptings of the Holy Spirit, even now. Sunday I read Matthew 1 – I love how tender and gentle Joseph is – and as I read of the lineage of Christ and the foretelling of His life, I was filled with the gentle whisperings of the Spirit, firm and strong and compelling, that Jesus is real and that He is my Savior and that the Bible is true. How do I take moments like that and weave it into washing dishes and folding laundry and making applesauce?

In a similar vein, I have been thinking about mediocrity versus ordinariness. My life is ordinary and plain and simple and everyday, but does it have to be mediocre? There is such difference in the connotations of these words. I don’t know truly where I fall and I am uncertain as to the difference in the actual living as opposed to reading the words. I am also uncertain as to how to make that positive difference happen in my own life.

Of all the thing I miss . . .

Short term memory loss. It is a symptom of grief. It is a symptom of depression. It is a symptom of having children. I have it in spades.

Yesterday I went to WalMart to buy some yarn needles to finish my knitting projects (I needed to weave all the loose ends into the body of each piece). I purchased the needles. I came home to put them away. And now, less than 24 hours later, I have no idea where they are.

In October, I double booked our weekend. We were supposed to travel as a family to Seattle where we would see my older brother and his family as well as my Dad and Cheri (about a five hour drive). We had this planned for weeks. We also had the children's sacrament meeting program upcoming. All of my kids had parts and the boys had especially large talks to give (a few paragraphs as opposed to one line). The bishop even called and asked if I would offer the closing prayer. I cheerfully accepted. Then one of my friends called to ask if I would substitute teach her primary class for two weeks. I said that I could as long as it wasn't this coming Sunday as I was driving to Seattle. "What about the program?" she asks. Wow. I forgot. I didn't realize. How could I have double booked this weekend? I'd been talking about the two events in tandem failing to realize that the dates, Oct 19 -21, included the Sunday of the primary program. We ended up making the drive up Friday night and returning home at 12:30am on Sunday morning.

A few days ago I prepared our tithing envelope. Because of Stake Conference, I won't be able to turn it in this weekend. Also, the envelope has some cash in it so I didn't want to leave it lying in my purse for the next two weeks. I put it some place safe, some place that made sense. I remember being quite deliberate about it because of the cash. Now, I haven't the darndest clue as to where that envelope is. I've cleaned off my desk, I've looked through the piles on my dresser and even emptied my purse (though I'm quite certain that I remember that I didn't want to put it there). I can't find it.

Further, Robert gave me $100 cash to pay on our credit card. He gave it to me at dinner. I remember thinking of where to put the cash until I could deposit it. I forgot all about it and now, two days later, I can't remember where it is.

I didn't like Rhys' school pictures this year so we were going to get retakes. The retake day was announced as November 1st. I thought that I could make it through Halloween and then focus on the pictures. The evening on Halloween, it finally dawned on me that this was the last day of October, that retakes were the next day and my son had severely chapped lips and long hair because I hadn't scheduled a trip to the barber and that the shirt he wanted to wear wasn't clean. We kept the original photos.

I don't remember when I leave home if I turned the oven off or left it on. I am sure of the day planned only to discover there are meetings that I have forgotten or, yet again, double booked. I know there was another, perhaps even humorous, anecdote that I wanted to pass on, but I have forgotten that too. I thank God that someday I will be resurrected, all my brain cells will be returned and fully functioning and I will finally be able to remember what happened in the last minute.

Salty Rain

When I was a child, I loved the imagery of rain being the tears of angels. I suppose that now it stands as proof that I will never be an angel; God did promise never to flood the earth in its entirety every again.

I have been depressed. I have knitted a blanket and am now working on a scarf. Knitting and watching already run TV shows online, that is how I've been spending my days. Laundry stacks up, children run amok and I sit in self-imposed exile and denial -- valiantly solving complex murders while ignoring the reality of my state. It continues, however, to boggle my mind as to why I'm so depressed. Robert has been generous to a fault while I have struggled with my emotions. He has taken all three kids for the last two Saturdays giving me peace for a day. He has come home from work only to enmesh himself in the work of our home. All with no complaint. My children have been children, no better or worse than they normally are.

I went to see my therapist yesterday after not seeing her for six months. As I talked and talked and talked and cried and cried (more talking that actual crying -- yea!) for an hour and a half, I found myself talking at length about the family I was raised in and the dysfunction into which it has fallen. My family has always been my root, my strength, the place where I belonged and the place where I was accepted unconditionally. I find that since the passing of my mother this is no longer true. Each time I try to deal with the grief of losing my mother, I find that there is more grief to conquer: my father's new marriage and how to deal with a step-mother; my younger sister-in-law's bid for power and manipulations to affect that; my little brother's distance; my father's struggle to make his new marriage work; wondering if my little nuclear family will end up like the family I grew up in -- dysfunctional and distant with little communication. Am I raising children and pouring my love into them only to lose them completely in about fifteen to twenty years?

My fears and worries and sadness then make me question my faith: if I had enough of it, would I really be in this state? Why can't I just turn all of this over to God, who is really in control, and trust His hand? I try and I try but for every time I lay my burdens at Jesus' feet, I snatch them back. Do I want to be beyond His reach? Sometimes I feel like I do; I want to wrap my misery and sadness around me like a warm, wet blanket and feel the weight of its oppression. I want to be alone. If I'm alone and not loving anyone, there will be no further grief. If I don't love my children, I won't miss them when they decide they don't like me anymore. If I don't love my husband or family or friends, I won't grieve them when they die, as we all eventually will.

I don't know. I don't know. I feel a mess for all the convoluted thoughts I have. Every time I try to find a path through the fog, I feel diverted to another path and on and on it goes through the maze until I find myself back where I started. So while I know that Chuck didn't fake her death like Olive thinks but that she was brought back to life by the pie-maker; and that Addison and Pete make each other feel all tingly; and that Dan really does go back in time, not that his brother Jack would ever believe him; and that the riddle of who is Gormogan has not been settled yet, I don't know how to let go of my fears and my hurts and my sorrows and griefs. While I know that I miss my mother desperately and long for her advice, I don't know when I will feel her arms again. While I know what I want life to be, I don't know that God would agree.

So I sit and wonder and write and try to make the maze a straight path. I remember my mother and try to let her go even as I struggle to hold on to the memories that are becoming hazier. I try to let go of my expectations and dreams of who my family is and form new relationships, or even non-relationships, with the people they actually are. I try to find peace amid the emotions of my heart and focus on the fact that the greater the sorrow, the greater the eventual joy. And I try to trust God's hand as to the timing of that gift.