It's all in the balance

There are lots of new things going on at our house. For one thing, as you may have read, I have a (sort of) new job. I also have a new bike! My first since I was about 10 years old.

Taking on the responsibilities of a news editor is both an exhilarating challenge for me and a bit of a hardship for our family. I will be staying in Marion to edit the Record while my husband and daughter move back to Kansas City where he has gotten a job. It’s not far. It won’t be forever, but it will likely be the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

The bike was purchased primarily to get me to work and back since Michael and Lyla will have our family car and to allow us to take family bike rides around town.

Before we settled on buying one for me, I rode my husband’s uber-fancy road bike to work a couple of days. I wanted to get back into the swing of balancing my whole body on the tiny surface area of two racing tires meeting the road and going pretty fast without being surrounded by a metal shell.

Needless to say, I started small. I hadn’t been on a bike in about 15 years.

It took me several attempts just to get the courage to do more than push it along with my feet. I eased my way into a jaunt down the block. After a few trips around the neighborhood I tried riding to work for my first day as a full-timer in a few years. Speeding down the hill convinced me I needed a heavier bike than the tiny featherweight thing my husband rides. Pushing back up the hill later that day in 103-degree heat along side grain trucks that can’t easily share the road convinced me I needed more practice.

The child seat my mom brought was the kicker — it didn’t fit Michael’s bike. It was time to get me one. So we did.

I’m getting the hang of (some) things, but I’ve got a long way to go. We’ve been taking bike rides at least once a day since I got it, usually after work. We strap Lyla safely onto the back of my bike with her Lightning McQueen helmet on and a juice in her hand, and Mike leads the way so I can focus on learning to mess with the gears and, most importantly, balancing.

Balancing may seem like a small thing to some, but the 30-some extra pounds I have strapped to the back of my bike makes it a major feat to me. Plus, I’m rusty. I’ve nearly fallen a couple of times. My body hurts as I’m getting used to riding on a small seat over bumpy roads, but, again, I know when I learn to be better balanced, I’ll relax a bit, and my muscles won’t be sore after every ride.

The process so far has been a lot like growing into my new job. Much like my bike riding, it’s been a while since I’ve worked full-time in a news room, but I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it soon. This past week I’ve had moments I was sure a paper wouldn’t go out — I’ve nearly fallen down on the job — but I didn’t. I’ll get better at that too.The key, of course, will be balance. I’ll have to learn to make good decisions more quickly and to account for the weight of all that’s riding on those decisions with me. As I learn to relax, to find the balance, I expect the rough roads will take less of a toll.

Last night we went for another family bike ride, and as we coasted past somebody mowing their lawn, I caught of whiff of fresh cut grass and gasoline — that strange combination that permeates summer. It’s been rare this year with so many lawns shriveling in the drought.

I sat back on my bike seat and took a deep breath.“Smell that?” I asked Michael. “It finally smells like summer.”I felt my shoulders drop and I slowed down to look around me instead of at the gears or the bumpy road. I saw people out in their yards and walking their dogs. I noticed my neighbors’ lawns and flowers starting to look more green and healthy like I’m used to. I saw people. I saw Marion. And I didn’t lose my balance.

Today has been a bigger challenge at the Record than I anticipated. But I know I’m up to it. I just need to remember to take deep breaths. To look up and see people, see Marion, and remember those things are why I love what I do.

As published in the Marion County Record, August 10, 2011.

It's all a matter of perspective

Last year was our first experience of Chingawassa Days. As parents of a 1-year-old, and considering the oppressive heat that weekend, we didn’t attempt to participate in much.

This year, we were ready for something a bit more exciting. Knowing our toddler, we still weren’t planning to spend the whole day at the festival, but we were just sure she’d be interested in enough things to make it worth the effort.

She’s really into bouncing lately, so I thought the inflatable attractions would be a hit. If nothing else, I knew she’d love to see and pet animals.

We planned ahead and blocked out a good chunk of time Saturday morning for the glee we were sure would ensue. I charged the camera battery and packed plenty of water. I dressed her in something I was sure was “bouncing friendly.”

Only five minutes behind schedule (which is like being early when you have a 2-year-old) we set off for the park. We urged her along the whole three blocks. She dawdled, and we kept assuring each other “if only she knew what awaits her, she’d hustle.”

When we arrived at the park I immediately started scanning for the animals before we’d even paid for admission. I figured we’d start there to warm her up to the sounds and people before the big reveal: the inflatables.

On our way to the petting zoo area we had to pass by one of the fountains that’s always on in the summer. I didn’t even think about something so mundane distracting us from our course toward total awesomeness, so of course she was several yards away from me, running full speed and squealing, before I noticed she was gone.

We turned and pursued our toddler who was careening through clusters of people without any consideration for who or what she ran into.

We caught up to her at the fountain at the far end of the park. She stood in awe as though she hadn’t seen it 800 times before.

As I approached her, she turned to me and screamed like a teeny-bopper at a boy-band concert, “Mommy! The fountain! They turn the water on!”

“I see that sweetie, that’s really cool,” I said, trying to affirm her, or so I thought. “But don’t you want to go pet some animals?” I asked.

“No, I just want to look at the fountain,” she said, her last words trailing as she was walking away from me so I couldn’t force her to leave.

I relented, briefly. But I’m ashamed to admit I kept trying to convince her.

Eventually we did make it over to the animals. And, as I predicted, she was delighted.

We moved from there to the first inflatable attraction. To her credit, she did remove her shoes and climb onto the thing without being coaxed — much. But that was as far as that train went.

I had prepared myself to accept whatever my cautious little girl was willing to risk, and after only a couple inquiries if she was sure she was done, I lifted her off and put her shoes back on.

And what did she beg to do after that? Look at the fountain some more.

In fact, that’s pretty much all she wanted to do the whole time we were there.

Her wonderful father lovingly sat beside it, walked around it, and expressed amazement right along with her, but I was truly bored.

I tried to fake it, but kids know fake when they hear it. She eventually stopped trying to engage me in her wonder and stuck with her dad. I’m sure she could hear me thinking, “We didn’t pay to stand around and stare at something we can see every day!”

In fact I think I was saying this out loud when it hit me — isn’t that what I love about her?

She has said something about the fountains being on or off almost every time we have driven past them since they turned them off in the fall.

When the fountains came back on a couple weeks ago she talked about it every time we got in the car. I should have seen it coming.

When I finally squatted down Saturday to hear what she was saying, I heard her talking about the water going in and out, about the sounds, the wetness, the shapes, the coldness of it.

And isn’t that one of the things I have so loved about being a parent? That she is consumed by wonder in things I barely even look at anymore, and this invites me to stop and enjoy some wonder of my own.

She has never been a risk taker or one to thrill at lots of noisy new things with lots of people around. That’s just not my kid.

But I can’t even count how many times something old has become new in our house by the mere fact that Lyla has discovered something new about the way it moves or how it relates to other things in her world.

She can see a universe of sensation and fascination in a fountain I hadn’t even dipped my fingers into maybe since the week we moved here — not until Saturday that is.

She was right, the water was moving very fast. It was cold and loud, but the cold was refreshing and the sound helped me tune out the world around me and tune in to the world of wonder at my fingertips.

As published in the Marion County Record, June 8, 2011

Share in our laughter

One of the joys of having a toddler is getting to hear the funny things they say. And I’m lucky enough to have a toddler who is both very verbal and very much a budding comedian. So, I thought for some laughs to kick off summer with a smile, I’d share some of the funnier things we’ve heard in recent months at our house that made me laugh or mass text my friends and family.

• Upon opening a box of clothing she was gifted at Christmas, Lyla exclaimed, “I found laundry!”
• After she guzzled a whole cup of juice one day I commented she must be a thirsty bear (a phrase used often in my family). She looked at me quizzically and asserted, “No, I a thirsty Lyla.”
• I call my husband by his first name often, which has resulted in Lyla calling him Michael as often is she calls him Daddy. I was trying to explain names one day and told her, “Daddy’s name is Michael. Mommy’s name is Amanda.” I asked if she knew Lyla’s name. She thought about it and answered after a thoughtful pause with her finger on her chin, “Well, it’s not Sponge Bob.” I was silent, mostly because she’s never seen the show as far as I know, but then she looked at me and cracked up. She was telling a joke.
• In yet another teaching moment turned comedic opportunity, I was talking to Lyla about different kinds of families. “Some families,” I told her “have a mommy and daddy just like yours. Some families have just a mommy with no daddy. Some have just a daddy with no mommy. Some families have two mommies. Some have two daddies.” At which point she chimed in with, “Some have two basketballs. Some have two toes,” and then began to giggle at her own hilarity.
• Prior to a recent trip to the zoo I asked Lyla if she wanted to feed the giraffes, like last time. She replied, “Probly not. I’mma feed a tiger!”
• “Excuse you car.” Directed at a car passing by our house as it revved its engine suddenly.
• “MOMMY! I WANNA SNUGGLE!” Yelled menacingly from her crib upon waking to tell me she’s ready to be done with her nap ... not the most enticing invitation I’ve had to snuggle.
• She’s clued in to the fact that if she asks only for ONE more, when we acquiesce she will only be getting ONE more of whatever she’s asking. So, now the request is “Mommy, I want FIVE more.”
• Sometimes in frustration, but also trying to keep things light, when she has started every sentence that day with “I want,” I will respond with, “Well I want a million dollars but we don’t always get what we want.” Not great parenting, I know. The other day when I went to get her up from a nap I asked what she wanted (I meant for a snack). She responded, “I want a million dollars.”
• In an equally impressive turn of the table on me, the next day as I woke her she asserted, “I want twenty dollars.” Apparently she figured out $20 was something I might actually have.
• Planting flowers the other day in the back yard, Lyla was digging with her special shovel in the dirt, her back turned to me. Suddenly she turned to me as if a thought had just occurred to her and asked, “Hey, you know Handy Manny, right?”

For every one of the hilarious things Lyla says there’s at least a dozen times I pull it out of my memory to lift my spirits on a bad day. I hope by sharing her words I can lift others as well. 

As published in the Marion County Record, June 1, 2011

Fear and wonder in Seattle

I took a much-needed trip recently to visit old friends. On my own. A chance to be a woman and friend and not so much a mom or wife for a few days.

I’m normally quite obsessive about making arrangements before heading in to any new venture. I’ve relaxed over the years and even made a point of doing so with this trip.

Still, when I left, I was relatively certain there wasn’t much that could happen I wouldn’t be able to take in stride. In fact, I thought, I might even enjoy the kind of challenge I used to encounter all the time as a young, single woman, figuring out the world. Maybe it would make me feel more connected to the woman I used to be and often find myself missing.

My first day I had planned to explore an unfamiliar city several hours on my own before meeting up with a friend I hadn’t seen in more than eight years.

I’ll spare you the details, but suffice it to say by the time I reached my friend I’d waited in a rental car office for three hours to prove I was who I said I was, lost a cell phone charger, missed a bunch of appointments, gotten lost and trapped in the center of an unfamiliar city, and then lost again when I got off the highway in the rural area where we were supposed to meet.

I called my friend to get help finding the location but my cell phone died (and, of course, the charger was missing). So, I was an hour late.

But despite all that I kept finding myself slowing down on the winding roads to look at a bird or barn or body of water in the rain.

Despite the challenges I faced up to that point, I was taking in the natural beauty as though I had never seen trees before.

The time with friends was so nourishing to me, and I definitely appreciated eating on actual plates at a table for every meal like I never did as a single gal — but the trip continued to hold irritating snafus every day.

There was even a point I faced the very real possibility of being unable to get back to Marion without hitchhiking or selling my organs.

In all my years as a single woman, making mistakes and learning, I had never encountered so horrific a series of events that challenged my abilities and resources and problem-solving skills.

At one point, driving from Portland to Seattle on the last fumes of fuel I had paid for with the last cent I had access to, floods of hot tears streaming, I realized something: I had done all I could to solve the problem. The only thing changing as I continued to wail was my soul, my spirit, my heart — the very things I went out there seeking to restore.

I had to accept I might run out of gas and be forced to thumb it to the nearest gas station where I was hoping my wit and charm might at least get me a free phone call.

I could keep freaking out about it. Or, I could accept that, just as I had survived everything in my life up to that point, I might survive that, too. And if I didn’t, well, what a shame it would have been to have spent the last hours of my life so focused on my troubles I was missing the trees outside the window or the beautiful dark clouds parting every now and then to let a determined ray of sunshine gild a spot on a lake.

The beauty of the natural world has always felt a bit like a love note from the universe to me and here I was missing some of the most spectacular natural beauty in the country, crying, in effect, over spilled milk — over things I could not change.

Days earlier, driving winding wet roads through the spectacularly lush beauty of the Pacific Northwest, I had been so totally distracted by the birds and sights I kept missing my turns. That’s part of why I was so late. Now, a few days later, I had run out of wonder in such a short time. The beauty around me hadn’t changed, I had. Or rather, I had let the changes in my circumstances change me.

A few days before I had been consumed by awe, and in such a state I saw a bald eagle, a blue heron inches from the car, fields of tulips, and on and on. I was, as Albert Camus describes it, “on the surface of myself.”

In one of my favorite Camus passages he writes, “What gives value to travel is fear. It breaks down a kind of inner structure we have.

“Far from our own people … stripped of all our props, deprived of our masks … we are completely on the surface of ourselves. But also, soul-sick, we restore to every being and every object its miraculous value … we are aware of every gift.”

I had been reading this passage as I sat in the rental car office the first day, and it came flooding back to me as I willed the car to make it the last 100 miles.

I did make it. And the rest of my trip held moments that continue to fill my heart. And I made it home thanks to the incredible support of loved ones.

And while the sight of rare birds and time with old friends was amazingly restorative, I think the biggest gift I took from that trip was knowledge of myself.

Being stripped of all comforts forced me to choose who I wanted to be in that situation independent of the circumstances. That lesson holds true even in the very familiar life I live every day. I know who I am and who I want to be and am now more determined than ever not to let circumstances change that.

As published in the Marion County Record, May 25, 2011

Creatures great and small

I like to think my 2-year-old has been instilled with a healthy respect for the awesome power of the natural world, animals in particular. We’re big respecters of all life in our house. As vegetarians, we have explained to Lyla that the food on our table comes from plants like the ones in our garden. We have also told her that some food comes from animals, including the milk, eggs, and cheese she and her father partake of. We were lucky enough to have a friend be the wonderful agent of an educational opportunity with eggs recently and Lyla can’t stop talking about it: “We took those eggs from the chickens!”

I explained to her the chickens let us have them and we should be sure to think of them when we say thanks for our food before we eat.We have explained that some families get their food from animals in ways that we don’t. We are careful to avoid making any kind of judgment and we certainly aren’t trying to indoctrinate her. All we do is explain this is how her dad and I have chosen to live. Anything more would be too much at this point.She has developed, completely on her own, a respect for bugs I promise she did not get from me. I, of course, encourage her to “leave them alone and they’ll leave you alone,” and she has seen me trap and release some creepy crawlies that somehow found their way inside our house, but she has also seen me squish more than a couple of spiders. I have my limits.But Lyla has gotten to the point where she steps over ants and says “excuse me bug” and lets them go on their merry way ... even in my kitchen!The other day she noticed one marching along a few feet away from where she was playing. She went over to it, greeted it, and ran off to get something. In her absence, I stealthily transplanted the critter back outdoors. When she returned and couldn’t find him, she wailed as if a longtime friend had been ripped from her arms. “I wanted to show him my puzzles!” she cried, hot tears streaming down her face.I explained to her that, as an ant, he really needed to keep doing his ant thing, gathering food for his family outside. I also ventured that he may not have been a very cooperative playmate for her because she looks very, very big to him and he might have been afraid.She seemed to ponder that, and I hugged her, deeply appreciating all that her mind was trying to grasp about the balance between love of nature, keeping a respectful distance, and her own desires.It’s a hard concept and an exceptionally difficult balance to strike. I struggle with it daily.There are principles I live by that come from a deep, thoughtful place within me that were formed many years ago when I first started trying to live a little lighter on this planet.But what happens when I can’t afford the sacrifices such principles require? I wish I could always read every word on every label of everything I buy and refuse to purchase if, say, I know some aspect of the production of that product perpetuates a system I feel depends on a lack of respect for some form of life, animal or human, that is so oppressed it cannot speak for itself. But I can’t.Sometimes, I don’t have the time. Sometimes, I don’t have the money. Sometimes, I don’t have any other option.Sometimes, my job is to do my mommy thing and be sure I’m not spending so much time researching greener options that I miss the chance to teach my kid why those principles are so important to me.Sometimes, there’s an intensely creepy spider the size of my fist making its way toward my child and I stomp that thing like a mama bear protecting her cub.Lyla sees the contradiction and asks about it.“Mommy, are you going to put the spider outside?”I answer honestly.“Honey, sometimes mommy can’t tell if it’s a good bug or a bug that hurts, and if I think it might hurt you, I squish it.” I share my own struggle for balance in an effort to be transparent and it gives her still-agile mind something to chew on. And maybe, in doing so, she’ll come up with some brilliant way to bridge that gap for her generation.Maybe she’ll reject vegetarianism but catch and release all spiders. Who knows? Either way I’ll know her choices are rooted in reflection about her place in the natural world that has already begun.
As published in the Marion County Record, May 11, 2011

The scent of a mother's love

My grandmother’s last Mother’s Day before she died of Alzheimer’s was my first Mother’s Day as a mom. This traditional day of celebration has a bitter-sweetness to it in our family. My grandpa lost his battle with cancer on Mother’s Day when I was still in pre-school. It is a cloud of loss that hangs behind the food and family and the heavy scent of lilacs every year around this time.

Growing up, I remember Grandma’s house in Iowa had huge lilac bushes that filled the entire block with their perfume this time of year. I’ve been told that, as a boy, my father used to cut bunches of lilacs from those bushes and give them to Grandma on Mother’s Day. She has always loved their smell, and the way she says the word “lilacs” sounds like she’s telling secrets of the universe — her voice like water tripping over small stones.

The day before her last Mother’s Day, Dad went in search of lilacs to give her. A cold snap got most of them that year. They were a little wilted, but the smell was good and fine and heavy. He knew the wilt wouldn’t matter to her, not at that point.

I was six months pregnant when she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. The doctors told us she was declining rapidly and would live only a few months. I confess that I prayed she would hang on long enough to hold my baby in her arms. All those years her body would not let her go, and when it finally started to look like her body would cooperate, it was my heart that remained stubborn.

For as long as I had been aware of her as her own woman I knew on some level that Grandma just wanted to be with her husband in heaven. In the 20-plus years since his death she had survived a long list of ailments with surprising strength. Her gentle nature and petite stature veiled her fierce ability to overcome and to thrive. I guess that’s why Grandma always seemed like a fact of life to me, like seasons that come and go but always return.

I’m ashamed to say it truly startled me when Dad had to remind her why the name my husband and I chose for our daughter seemed familiar to her. After all, we chose the name Lyla in honor of the two men she loved most in this life — Hershel Lyle and Donald Lyle, my grandpa and my dad.

Dad brought her the lilacs he had found that afternoon near the end, a small bunch, slightly brown around the edges. She breathed them in deeply and said, “Lilacs. It must be almost Mother’s Day.” Somehow that deeply sweet scent had reached into her clouding mind and touched something solid, something more than memory.

I can only guess what it was, but my guess is it was something like tradition that spoke to her heart so deeply no clouding could touch it — it was part of the shape of her mother’s heart, not a memory she struggled to hold. I picture my dad as a young boy bringing this sweet and simple offering to her, year after year, and I can see how it would have carved the almost ineffable love of a mother for her child into the grain of her soul. I watch my daughter in her dancing and play, practically a mirror image of my grandmother as a baby, and I feel that deep unparalleled love shaping me as well.

My grandmother did get to hold my baby girl and held on for several more months. We all traveled to Iowa for the funeral in July right before my husband and I moved to Marion. We said our sad good-byes and on the way out of town my sister and I took our young families to the playground where we had spent many afternoons as kids during our stays with Grandma. This time, it was our children squealing with delight as evening settled in the little park that smelled exactly as I remembered.

When we moved to Marion, there were a lot of mysterious (to me) plants to be dealt with and either trimmed or removed in our back yard. There’s one bush along the back hedgerow that is different from all the rest and I thought I recognized the leaves but couldn’t quite place it. I don’t know why it didn’t bloom last year, but a few weeks ago I was out pulling weeds when I smelled something deeply sweet and familiar. My nose took me to the back hedge, and there in glorious lavender bloom was a bush full of lilacs.

I cut a few and put them in the kitchen window, and my kitchen is now filled with the sweet scent of the love between a mother and child that transcends words and shapes a soul in ways time and tragedy cannot touch.

As published in the Marion County Record, May 4, 2011

Miracle happens

We recently renovated our lone full bathroom. The process of the renovation, like any project around the house, uncovered more issues needing to be resolved than I had planned on, which required more money to be put into the project than I had budgeted.

First, we found out we needed all new flooring. I was frustrated, but thankful that I knew the County Seat Decorating Center would do wonderful work.

The day a County Seat employee finished laying the floor, I walked into my bathroom and, to my surprise, started crying.

Having a floor I wasn’t afraid to walk on barefoot meant I could relax in my own bathroom, and maybe Lyla would relax enough to potty train better. Maybe it was the tears that set the next part in motion.

As I was thanking him, he ended up telling me the incredible story about the birth of his second son. It’s not my story to tell, but I stood in my dining room listening to this man tell the story of a miracle child and his own part in bringing that miracle into the world. I was speechless.

Here was this story that took my breath away just flowing out of him like a life-altering miracle was just an everyday occurrence.

I couldn’t help but remember the remarkably fortunate circumstances of my daughter’s birth. My story is nothing like his, but she’s an odds-beater. As he told his story I felt like part of me was nodding along, not with shock, but with understanding.

As much as that encounter alone could have taught me my lesson, something in the universe thought I really needed help getting this one. The next hitch in the renovation saga brought its own miracle story into my home.

My dad and husband blew a fuse trying to hang a light. The surge broke my dryer somehow (don’t ask me, I don’t get it, that’s why I called the repairman).

The man who came to fix it was very friendly, and in the course of chatting, I learned he has a son who, at age 2, was taken by Life-Flight to Colorado with congestive heart failure. His young boy’s life, too, is a miracle. For the second time in as many days, I stood listening to a story of the miracle of some child surviving against all odds.

Their stories are not mine to tell, but they reminded me of my own miracle child and I was ashamed as I began to realize how little I think about how lucky I got with my daughter anymore. It used to be all I thought about all the time.

Then came my third reminder, like the ghosts of “A Christmas Carol;” apparently big lessons come in threes.

I was getting things back where they belonged after all the work, when I uncovered something I couldn’t believe had become hidden.

It may sound morbid, but I have hung in a prominent place in my home a picture of a friend of mine who died in 2007. in a tragic plane crash at the age of 28. He had a 5-month-old son at the time, his first and only child, and the boy had been born with a deformity. His life, too, is a stunning miracle.

Somehow the photo had gotten covered, bit by bit. I can’t imagine how I didn’t notice; I am keenly aware of it when I walk past, even when I don’t look.

I’d placed it so it’s the first thing I see when I sit down at the end of the day with a cup of tea in my kitchen. Every time I see his face I stop and take one deep breath and say “thank you”.

I’m not thankful for his death, but I look at him and I know how ridiculously lucky I am. That sounds awful. But it’s true. Every time I look at my friend it’s all I can do not to rush in to Lyla’s room and squeeze her with all my strength.

And as I uncovered his face, all that thankfulness welled up within me.

I think I used to be afraid if I wasn’t vigilantly conscious of how undeserving I am of miracles, I’d lose the things I love the most. That’s why I kept that picture up there. But if listening to those men taught me anything, it’s that miracle happens, more often than we think and with no predictable pattern.

You can’t earn a miracle or work hard enough to prevent real tragedy. All you can do is be thankful every day for the day you have. It wasn’t owed to you, it’s worth its weight in gold, you might not get another one, but that doesn’t make the day at hand any less beautiful.

As published in the Marion County Record, April 20, 2011

The voice of silence

Those of you who know me (or have read anything I’ve written ever ... even a sticky note) know I am not one to struggle with finding enough words. In fact, if I can’t find the right ones, I sometimes I try them all just to see what feels right once it’s said — a practice that, by the way, works much better when drafting an e-mail or letter than in conversation.

My daughter, too, has the gift of being “highly verbal.” Just ask her. She’ll proceed to tell you, almost without stopping for breath for 20 minutes, anything and everything she has encountered in her brief 2 years that she thinks relates to the topic of conversation you’ve presented. And if you think you can simply sit and nod in response you haven’t met many verbal toddlers.

She will repeat key phrases, often at increasing volume or with growing urgency, until you respond in some way she deems sufficient.

“Mommy, you OK?” is a many-times-daily question in our house and if I don’t respond immediately with something longer than a “yup” this question becomes a shrill, panicked plea of “MOMMY, YOU OKAAAAAY?!?!?!”

“Yes Lyla, Mommy’s OK and Lyla’s OK and Daddy’s OK and the dogs are OK and everybody’s doing just fine.”

Add to this constant back-and-forth — which, yes, produces some of the most charmed moments of parenting for me, but also keeps me from being able to maintain any train of thought longer than 30 seconds — the frequent barking of my dogs, the beep of my cell phone with every e-mail and text message, the wail of an ambulance siren that sends all beings in my house under 3 feet tall into orbit, the buzz of my own mind thinking of all I have to get done that day, the voices in my head saying, “Stop that! You’re missing the good stuff!” and on and on, and the noise I deal with on a daily basis is nothing short of a torturous din.

So, imagine my delight when I learned that, following a recent dental procedure, talking would be a bit of a challenge the first 24 to 48 hours. Well, I thought, that will never do in my house, who else can holler above all the crazy? So, off the weebob went to Mimi’s house. And lo and behold I “forgot” to charge my cell phone Friday morning. And, somehow, the universe saw fit to bless me with two peaceful pups, napping away in the sunshine most of Friday.

It was then I encountered a dear, old, loving friend I have ached for for a couple of years now without being able to put my finger on what was missing — silence.

In college I had a wonderful soul-friend who introduced me to Frederick Buechner and read to me one evening some his thoughts on the importance of silence, which he has written about at great length.

I don’t remember the exact words she read that night, but I do remember I came away with a physical sensation of the weight, the gravity, of taking time for silence in one’s life.

Friday I awoke without an alarm to brilliant mid-morning sun on my bed and a breeze dancing in the curtains. True, it was some pretty serious dental pain that awoke me, but I was prepared.

I stayed in bed for a long time — listening. To the neighborhood. To the heartbeats of my own home (refrigerator, clock, etc.). To the birds and squirrels. To the wind breathing fresh air into my home. I inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly. It was the closest I’ve come to a meditation practice since my daughter was born.

Soon, the hour came when the birds were still, the passing cars were rare, and the appliances in the house were mum. True silence.

This was the friend I had missed. The kind of silence that is actively cultivated, the kind of nothing that fills a room with so much ... something. Space, but not in the way of lack of something, more like an abundance of opportunity for things that too easily hang in the background behind the daily din to emerge.

Usually what surfaces has a great deal more to do with what I actually need than whatever I’m busying my brain with, trying to keep life together.

In the days before motherhood (what we call B.C. — Before the Crazy) my heart almost didn’t know how to beat without this kind of time and space to listen.

Friday, I found a great deal of stillness, of quiet. I found room for things to move in my tired brain. And like air rushing to fill a great lung, I felt a great shhhhhh fill my person.

It is here my higher self finally has room to speak. Y’know, that part of you that is always there beneath the mishmash of trivialities that often bog us down? The part of you that sees down the corridor of years, knows the arc of your story, and is not shaken by circumstances. For me, it’s the part that has capacity for access to divine wisdom, which often presents in metaphor because the denotative meaning of everyday words cannot hold the truth it tries to speak.

I like to think of it as my inner Grandmother Willow and now you have proof, in print, that I’m a little nuts. The phrases I hear are not usually original to my own Grandmother Willow mind; they come from books I’ve read, music I’ve heard, advice of earth-bound saints, and other scraps of gold I’ve gathered throughout my life.

Friday, there was nothing. Not even a refrain or poem. Just the gentle sound of hush.

A lovely, quiet, peace. I bathed in it. Soaked it into my bones.

Until a lawn mower started up somewhere.

Later I pulled Buechner’s “Godric” from my shelf and found these words underlined in dark black ink:

“The voice of silence calls, ‘Be still and hear,’ poor dunce … The empty well within your heart calls too. It says, ‘Be full.’”

And full I was.

As published in the Marion County Record, April 13, 2011

Give truth a chance

I’ve written here before about my habit of staring out windows looking at stars. Apparently, my 2-year-old daughter either reads this column or is familiar with this habit of mine.

A few weeks ago we were in the car at night at a gas station and I was staring out the window. After a long silence, I heard her ask from the back seat, “Mommy, are you looking for stars?”

It was a simple question and I’m sure my answer made very little difference in her life, but I weighed several options before I spoke.

Before she was born I swore I would never be one of those parents who lied to their kids to keep some mystical fantasy childhood alive. If she asked if there was a Santa, I’d tell her the truth. Santa is an international symbol of the spirit of love and giving we celebrate at Christmastime.

Yeah, that didn’t last.

Still, I have tried to maintain as much of that original ideal as possible. I do think kids are lied to far more often than they need to be, because, I’ll admit, there are times it’s just easier. And most of the “lies” aren’t really malicious, they’re just the way we do things sometimes.

But somewhere back in my idealistic days I thought long and hard about it and decided, y’know, I think we don’t give kids enough credit. If we don’t at least give them the chance to understand the truth, how will we know what truths they are ready to hear? I think, in fact, there’s a pretty incredible failsafe in the fact that humans are wonderous creatures. If her little brain can’t wrap around something I’m telling her, it won’t and we’ll try a different approach. But if it can, how wonderful the things she might be able to contribute early on, when her brain is still flexible and firing all the time, if it’s not also trying to wrestle with (some) disillusionment.

All of this, of course, flashed through my brain much less eloquently as we sat at the gas station. I chose the simple, boring truth.

I hadn’t been looking for stars, I told her, but that sounded like a good idea and I asked her to join me.

In hindsight I wondered if I should have told her I had been. I think it’s perfectly lovely for her to believe any time we adults are staring off in the distance — zoning — we are looking for stars.

Then, this past week, I got another shot at it. On a particularly difficult day, her question resurfaced. She and I had locked horns all day and my husband was out of town. We sat at the dinner table and I stared out the window in our dining room, not touching my food, just ... thinking. Again my precious girl asked me, “Mommy, are you looking for stars?”

It was daylight out. There were no stars. But I didn’t take the time to explain all the technical blah blah of sunlight and the rotation of the earth, etc.

In fact, I told her “Yes, Lyla, I am.”

In some ways that was true. I was searching for points of light in an otherwise dark day so as to not feel discouraged. I knew we had a long evening ahead of us and I needed to reflect on the good things that had come my way that day if I was going get us back on course before bed.

“Do you like to look for stars?” I asked her.

She responded “Yeeeah. Mommy does, too!”

I smiled. “Yes, Mommy does too.”

That, also, is true in a deeper sense. I do like to look for stars. Much as my habit of searching for the points of light in the night sky is familiar practice for me, so is the habit of staring into the nothing and search for points of lightness, of hope, when darkness seems to be overshadowing my day. I have learned it is a good way to keep the darkness from having the final say in who I turn out to be.

So, maybe she doesn’t really grasp that deep deeperness of what I told her. She is, after all, only 2. But, now she has a solid foundation of truth for me to build on some day. When she’s ready.

By then I bet she’ll have become really good at finding stars in the night sky. The leap from there to the idea of always seeking points of light in times of darkness isn’t very far and I hope she’ll remember she has seen me do this her entire life. 

As published in the Marion County Record, April 6, 2011

Spring clean me

It’s spring cleaning time and, if you’re anything like me, force of habit is calling you to swap out winter clothes for warmer-weather attire and attack the dusty neglected corners with a powerful vacuum.

This time of year always has been one in which I feel the urge to prepare for a new beginning. It’s a natural response to what Mother Nature is doing outside my window.

However, this year, my life is demanding a more whole-sale cleansing than can be accomplished with a broom, a mop, and an open window to circulate fresh air.

This year, I feel the need to cleanse on a soul-deep level. To rid the “corners” within me of the dusty habits that no longer fit who I am and the schmutz of pursuits I give energy to that don’t really give to me in any sense.

As an outward manifestation of this “soul-scrubbing” we have begun a rather in-depth “detox” of our diet or “cleanse.”

It began with a week of eliminating all potential allergens and other toxic waste we humans so readily put into our bodies.

My husband and I are longtime vegetarians, occasional vegans, and we have done “cleanses” before. This, however, was something really different for us.

We traveled to three different cities and four grocery stores to obtain the necessary ingredients. I spent the weekend before the first day of our “diet detox” roasting vegetables and making smoothies, slicing cucumbers for pitchers of cucumber water, and chopping carrots and apples to have something fresh (not the homemade potato chips I’d convinced myself were “healthy”) to grab and eat during the week.

The first day was rough without my morning half-cup of coffee, but I sipped green tea and made do. My husband had a headache the whole day.

I awoke the second day feeling much like I think an angry bear who has been roused early from hibernation and poked with a stick might feel. My husband was irritatingly fine. I was a beast for most of the day. Ask anybody.

Day three the clouds began to clear a bit in my brain, but both of us were feeling constantly hungry. We’ve done liquid-only detoxes for a few days that left us feeling more full than this and yet we were eating much more than we usually eat.

I double-checked the plan. Yup, we were doing all we could. Drinking plenty, eating when we were hungry, resting, taking time to taste what we ate.

Still, our tummies grumbled.

Standing at my kitchen counter that evening chopping roasted beets while lentils steamed with fresh ginger, I heard my little girl wander in.

Her usual curiosity about what I’m doing in the kitchen lasts an average of 30 seconds before she begins to wail “I need a snuggle.” But the deep purple beets and funky-looking ginger root interested her and she stayed awhile to observe and ask questions. I let her see what I was doing and feel the ginger. She eventually was satisfied and went back to her play — calmly.

I turned back to my chopping and smiled, taking a deep, long breath.

Staring down at the elements of a meal I’d been preparing for two days, I felt something I hadn’t in a long time while cooking — I felt joy.

Cooking used to be one of my favorite things to do and always made me happy. I don’t know when that stopped, but I do know, nowadays, I’m usually frustrated with the knife for not magically doing the work for me when I chop vegetables. I don’t pause to take in the scents and textures like I used to, much less share them with my child.

Instead, I slam frozen pizzas into the oven at the end of long, exhausting days and flop down on the couch to close my eyes for a few minutes until a beep I secretly resent calls me to get off my duff and pull the less-than-ideal meal from the oven.

We sit at the table and ask about everybody’s day, but most of the time I’m only at the table a few minutes before something else screams for attention. I barely taste the food that later sits like a rock in my belly — hardly what I’d call “nourishment.”

Spending two days and three trips to prepare beets and lentils and such is hardly possible all the time, but as I stood preparing them mid-cleanse for the one week we’d set aside, I was filled with joy. The task was not a chore, it was a chance to explore flavors and smells and invite my family to experience it with me — all this while preparing a meal that would care for us and taste pretty awesome. It was a meal that nourished us whole people and it was much more like what I would do daily if I had all the money and time in the world.

I inhaled the earthy beet scent and the spicy warmth of fresh ginger and felt a little lighter — not because I’d lost any weight, but because the way I long to do things, ideally, is not so far away as it feels most days.

Sure, in this time of life, frozen pizzas are often the best I can do, but “this too shall pass.” In the meantime my detox showed me a few things I can integrate without more time or money invested than what I usually do, and they make me feel more whole. They fit who I am beneath the harried-mommy surface and remind me of who I want to be moving forward.

So, we are now all decaf in our house and drink more green tea than coffee. My sugary flavored water has been replaced with cucumber water (which I love) and I now have a “quinoa night” replacing rice and beans once a week or so. These changes are here to stay and that feels great! But “pizza night” is too, for now, and that’s OK too.

As published in the Marion County Record, March 23, 2011

Gone sleepin'

Parent sleep is a beautiful thing. Not new-parent sleep, which involves some extreme sensitivity to the slightest whimper from a newborn that defies laws of biology and the effects of most over-the-counter sleep aids.
I’m talking the kind of sleep that sets in when your body has learned what sounds from your child indicate actual distress, and these become the only thing capable of waking you before your body is darn well ready to be awakened.
It’s the sleep that can begin to claim you even in the middle of reading “Green Eggs and Ham” for the 80bajillionth time to your child and it allows you to continue reading (or at least making words that sound rhymey and have rhythm) for a few minutes before your child catches on and pokes you in the eye yelling, “Mommy, wake up!”
It’s sleep that senses when your partner is “on duty” and in such cases will not allow you to be roused unless somebody who cannot dial 911 is bleeding from the head.
It’s sleep from which you can, I’m told, encourage your toddler to take her medicine while your spouse pins her to the couch, your soothing voice in the background reassuring her how proud you are of her for doing something she doesn’t want to do. Again, this particular aspect of parent sleep I have only heard of second-hand but it seems highly plausible.
Parent sleep, in our house, has even produced some of the most memorable accounts in our family lore.
Such as Monday night’s events, which I can neither confirm nor deny. I can only re-tell them as they were told to me.
Following a week or more of almost no sleep, I reclined on the couch to read my daughter a book after dinner, and then … well, I have no idea what happened after this.
When I awoke at around 8 p.m., my half-naked toddler was crawling on me and giggling as only a toddler who is getting away with a no-no can giggle. I’m sure it’s the giggle that woke me, not her knee in my stomach.
But I was quickly reclaimed by parent sleep and stayed that way until around 10 p.m. when I slowly surfaced.
I’m told absolutely zero effort was made to protect my slumber as I lay in the middle of the end-of-day crazy at our house. I’m told I was crawled on by dependants — both two-legged and four-legged — and that I missed an intense session of “I’mma getchoo” involving a great deal of squealing and running in circles around the living room.
I’m told I was poked, repositioned, and even carried on a couple of short conversations. I’m told I missed a tantrum and toys being chucked in my vicinity. I’m told I missed my 2-year-old running from room to room screaming “Michael!” in distress because she didn’t see her daddy sitting quietly in the living room.
I remember none of this. I rose refreshed and completely unencumbered by guilt for having abandoned my family for an evening. After all, I had no control — it was parent sleep. Parent sleep rules all.
See? Beautiful.

As published in the Marion County Record, March 8, 2011.

Time to put on the big-girl pants

As a mother, the approaching end of the last vestiges of my daughter’s babyhood is a strange time. I see the swell and glow of pride as she drinks from a big-girl cup for a whole meal and I literally want to jump up and down with her. I know that feeling. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt it but I want her to enjoy every moment of that growing realization: I can!

I do look forward to even a few more moments to myself as we say good-bye to the last pacifier — no more moments of panic searching under car seats when we realize “passy” is missing. No more sinking dread if I happen to forget one on a trip. No more having one stashed in every purse and car compartment and spares at grandma’s house to be sure we can avoid trauma that brings life to a full stop until “passy” is found.

But, as she drifted off to sleep Saturday night whimpering only once for her beloved baby-cork, I went from a small sigh of relief to all-out sobbing.

I know, it’s the age-old conundrum. If you love something you must hold it gently or you risk crushing it, but still you must hold it or it may fly away.

This is motherhood, in a nutshell. And when children are young, parents are very much in the phase of more holding than letting go — probably something to do with our ancestors’ babies being carried off by wolves if they were left alone too long.

But, I know it’s a mistake to think letting go hasn’t been a part of this mothering gig already. The whole process begins with the child being physically separated from the mother, and as far as I can tell it’s all a process of incremental separation from there until she decides to go start her own life somewhere else or I kick her out (with love) and tell her she’s welcome back for temporary stays any time.

I know that the only thing standing between Lyla and the end of all signs of babyhood is learning to potty in the big-girl potty.

I wish I could say my only reaction is joy. It’s not. Part of me is heartbroken.

She is very likely the only baby I will ever have. There are so many things I would do completely differently if I had it to do over again, but that’s just my perfectionism talking.

Having absolutely nothing to do with my mothering skills, my daughter is pure light and joy. She wasn’t planned. She wasn’t well-timed. She wasn’t even supposed to be as healthy as she was. She is perfect.

She has opened a part of my heart I forgot existed and she won’t let it close, even when life hurts me so much I sometimes want to shut it off. She challenges me physically and emotionally, but not nearly as much as she blesses me and brings me joy.

I had a theory about parenting before she was born, that as long as you love with your whole being and don’t resist the way a child tugs at your soul to be vulnerable, you’ll do OK as a parent.

I still have that theory, but I extend myself quite a bit of grace in its application. Some days, I realize the vulnerability thing is secondary to, say, avoiding throwing myself on the floor and beating it with my fists, so I settle for keeping her alive and safe on those days. 

My sister gave me great advice early on that has helped me with the letting go.

“Don’t worry about trying to figure out who Lyla will need you to be at every point along the way,” she told me, “you only have to be the mommy of the kid she is right now. And the great thing about kids is you don’t have to wonder what they need or want, they’re very good at showing you.” She was so right.

I think I have a lot of regret about the things I messed up along the way in the baby years, but Lyla doesn’t remember that stuff. Come to think of it, it probably didn’t matter to her at the time.

And now, she’s asking me to let it all go.

The other morning I went into her room and greeted her as I have every morning of her life with “Good morning my sweet baby, how did you sleep?” She quickly and firmly replied with a furrowed brow, “Mommy, I not a baby.”

Oh, heart! She’s right. I’m not the mommy of a baby anymore. I am suddenly the mommy of a little girl.

“Well,” I told her “you’ll always be my baby.”

She resisted, “No, mommy, I not a baby.”

“OK. How ‘bout I call you my sweet girl?”

“Yes, OK mommy. I need some breakfast.”

Telling me what she needs, in so many ways. That’s my girl. Always has been. Always will be. And she needs me to let go of the baby phase and keep her fueled for the adventures of childhood. To put on my big-girl pants and step with her into the next exciting phase.

I can! And I will.

But I reserve the right to cry about it when we no longer need diapers and I fully expect to need copious amounts of chocolate and hugs on that day.

As published in the Marion County Record, February 23, 2011

Cleanliness is next to gifty-ness

Friday morning got off to a rocky start. For some reason, I thought it was Saturday. In my house this would mean it was my day to keep sleeping even after I heard breakfast sounds in the kitchen.

It wasn’t until my husband started to leave the house dressed for work that I realized my error.

I know it sounds childish but the disappointment I felt in that moment put me in a deep funk I had trouble shaking.

The morning went on, Lyla kept busy with her cereal and trains, and I pulled the blanket over my head in a bit of a pout.

I felt a crushing disappointment that was more than a simple case of day confusion deserved.

I tried to explain to my toddler why I wasn’t on the floor in the thick of things as usual.

“Lyla, I think I’m in a bad mood this morning. Sorry.”

“Yes, Mommy, I know it.” She sounded so grown up and looked like she was thinking hard about the information. Then her face lit up and she looked at me.

“It’s OK. I help you!” she exclaimed. She rushed over to where I was sitting and began to pick up the toys she’d dumped all over the couch, singing her cleanup song.

It made me wonder, what have I modeled for her that makes her think cleaning will put me in a better mood? Is that really something I want her to conclude about life? That the key to happiness is a tidy living room?

I was mulling all this as Friday continued to unravel. Then Saturday’s grocery trip turned into a daylong fiasco. Sunday began with a hefty dose of frustration as a series of plans with friends fell through and I saw the start of a new work week approaching without any bright spots from the weekend.

I’m ashamed to say it but I lost it. When Lyla went down for a nap I just started weeping and railing and feeling really sorry for myself.

Then something miraculous happened: I went into my bedroom to sulk and couldn’t get to the bed for all the laundry that needed to be put away. So I did it. Right that second. I slammed some drawers along the way but it got done.

With the baskets gone I noticed how much the floor needed to be mopped. So I did that. And mopped out into the living room where toys were hiding under tables and carpeting pathways around the room. So I started to put them away and decided to do a really thorough job of it; I made labels for all our toy bins with pictures of what’s inside so Lyla can learn to do it herself. I’ve been meaning to do that for months.

As I printed the labels and tied them to her bins with yarn in her favorite color, I thought about the toys that would go in each container. I thought about how much joy my little girl gets when she plays with them, how she engages with each item in a way that is teasing out bits and pieces of her little personality and I get to witness that.

Usually when I clean, I’ll admit it’s not with a heart of joy. My sister and I joke about the phenomenon of being an “angry cleaner.” By which we mean we often find ourselves getting angrier as we clean, as though it’s some sort of slight to us.

We joke about it because we both realize this isn’t true. Things get dirty. That’s life.

The time and effort I put into cleaning is actually some of the most rewarding time and effort I spend. Whatever I put into a household chore is exactly what I get out of it. With each swipe I make of the mop across the floor, more dirt is lifted. Not many things in life come with such a guarantee.

The toy bin labels kicked off what has been a days-long streak of organization and cleaning in my house.

I like a clean and tidy house as much as any normal person but the past few days have been more like a life overhaul.

Some of the things I’ve done have literally been on my list for more than a year. They have rubbed against my soul like sandpaper every day in some cases, and yet I felt that somehow stopping to do them was accepting some final insult.

As I have attended to each task I have felt light penetrating some bitter and dark corners of my soul. I am taking care of the things that care for me and my family. Each motion has a tangible effect and feels like a gift I am giving, both to my family and to myself.

Not a bad lesson for a toddler to learn. Not a bad one for a mommy either.

As published in the Marion County Record, February 9, 2011

The stuff of dreams

When I was a little girl, my dad used to take me on special outings, just him and me, to a place he didn’t take my mom or my sister. I remember feeling so special that these outings were just for us, and that he had picked me to help him with whatever he was working on — my dad took me to the hardware store.

I can’t have been very old when the tradition started. While cleaning out the basement at my parents’ house I found I card I made for dad at the age of 5 that said “Happy Father’s Day! Thanks for taking me to the hardware store.”

My memories of the trips to the store are quite vague, but the feeling of excitement I got as we approached the sliding glass doors is something that still flutters within me when I go in a hardware store.

I can remember standing in the aisle where the nails and screws were kept in bright plastic bulk bins and staring for what felt like hours, trying to imagine what kinds of projects people would be doing that would demand each particular kind of nail or screw or bolt. Of course the things I imagined were a great deal more elaborate than reality, but I think that’s what I liked about it. In those rows and rows of bins were the raw materials of infinite possibilities.

When we took Lyla on a trip to the hardware store recently, I was giddy as we drove, remembering how much I loved those trips with my dad.

We strapped her in the cart and made a mad dash for the things we absolutely had to get done, hoping her patience would hold out. It was stressful. It was busy. It was frustrating. Lyla was bored and tired and felt like she wasn’t getting near enough attention.

So I asked her to help. I gave her a special item to look for and held her hand and we walked along the aisles together. Suddenly this place we were in was not a torture chamber, it was a place of wonder.

She pointed to and exclaimed the name of literally every color we saw as though she had never imagined there could be that many shades of green in one place — and maybe she hadn’t.

At the entrance to every aisle she pointed and gasped as though she’d miraculously found the one I was looking for, the Shangri La of hardware —“It’s this one, Mommy!” she cried.

It took us a good 15 minutes to cross maybe 50 feet of floor. But it made me slow down and see all that she was seeing. To her, every aisle potentially held exactly what we needed. Having a specific part to play in the project we were undertaking transformed her surroundings to a world of possibilities.

That’s why you go to a hardware store, right? Anything you can think up that you want to build to make life better or fix a problem, you start at the hardware store. To me, as a kid, it was an actual store you could go to and literally find the things that dreams are made of.

I think that’s still why I get excited, particularly when I smell those familiar smells at the doorway: the fresh-cut lumber being sized just right, the paint being mixed to somebody’s ideal shade, the plants in the greenhouse that will soon fill somebody’s perfectly-planned garden or window box. All of it is on its way to taking the shape of somebody’s dream.

As published in the Marion County Record, February 2, 2011

Lost and Found

I believe I have mentioned in this column before my theory about things in life you just don’t ignore. Most of the things on my list have to do with being genuinely surprised by something that wells up within oneself.

I’ve had a phrase bumping around in my head for a couple weeks, almost without me noticing. Like I said, I’m a believer that these little surprises are actually weightier than they may at first appear — perhaps they are guideposts along our spiritual path or our connection to the divine. In my life they have always been things that teach me something about myself, my deeper self.

When I finally stopped long enough to hear the words, I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t readily recall their source (a book I read once a year) but it’s a phrase I have held tightly to for so many years it’s probably etched itself into my gray matter: “What’s lost is nothing to what’s found.”

It’s from the novel “Godric” by Frederick Buechner. If you haven’t read it I think you should. I’ve got a copy with your name on it.

This particular phrase, I think, speaks of promise. Of reason to hope. It points toward a greater good than we can imagine for ourselves, based only on what good we now know. It implies a reason, maybe, to believe that losing or a sense of loss is not the final word in our story, even though it sure feels like it sometimes when it first hits.

As I let the phrase come into focus in my mind, I was driving along in silence, which is actually pretty rare. Usually a little person in my charge is hollering or singing in the back seat.

The words were still on my mind Friday as I wrestled Lyla into the car, screaming, trying to get her to my parents’ for the weekend. We have a strict policy about not announcing we are heading to Mimi’s until we’re 5 minutes away. Trust me, a lot of suffering is prevented this way.

My parents had received 9 inches of snow the day before, which we also couldn’t tell her, but we knew it would mean a weekend like Lyla has never seen — snowmen, snow forts, sleds— things she could not possibly imagine as we’ve not experienced those things with her yet. We couldn’t tell her, because those words wouldn’t have made sense. All she knew as we loaded the car was that she was desperately upset we couldn’t bring her jewelry.

I hoped, as we drove away from her beloved “bwa-cets,” my decision as a parent was a compassionate one. When we picked her up Sunday oh! the stories we heard and the glee we saw on her face in pictures. But in the moments as we left Marion Friday I sure had my doubts.

I think this is a lot like what we go through as adults sometimes when we experience a particularly heavy loss. All we can imagine is based on what we’ve seen or heard of, and often a loss feels like it’s greater than the greatest good we can imagine.

It’s hard for me to believe, in times of big loss, that what I have lost will seem like nothing compared to what I will find as I keep going. When I experience loss, I can look a lot like my toddler did Friday, or at least my heart can. It kicks and screams and wretches with pain it doesn’t think it can bear.

I don’t know for sure yet, but I think my brain is trying to remind me there’s reason to believe that good I cannot conceive is just beyond the horizon for me. That actually I’m just beginning a journey toward more reasons for glee than I can imagine and if somebody tried to explain it to me the words wouldn’t make sense.

That in time I’ll look back and see it was just a short distance to a time filled with good unlike I’ve ever known.

As published in the Marion County Record, January 26, 2011