24 Hours

            Around one p.m. yesterday, my daughter Dana called with an update on her recovery from gall bladder surgery and a hesitant request:  “Mom, I’m pretty sure I won’t be ready to resume full care of Benjamin when Shawn goes back to work Monday.  Can you come?”

            Less than thirty minutes later, I hear the dogs bark as a red car pulls into our driveway.  Yes!  It’s Barb and Stosh, friends from Michigan.  (Barb and I met at music camp in 1970.) They are in the area to visit family and had arranged to spend an afternoon with us.  My brother’s cougars and his 4,000 square foot shop are mighty magnets for visitors.

            We do the cougar tour; then, Barb and I leave the guys for their shop talk and we go back to my house to visit with Mom.  After awhile, Stosh, Barb, and I go visit Meerkerk Gardens in the rain and then go for a drive down Double Bluff Road to the tidal flats, where it is near high tide and a lone parasailer surfs through the whitecaps.

            My phone rings after we get back home and are discussing dinner plans.  It’s my son Joseph with good news this time:  after some miscommunications and mix-ups, he is going to be paid for his first freelance web development project and is offered another small project.  I am ecstatic.

            After a lovely dinner at China City in Freeland, Barb and Stosh head off toward the mainland, and John, Mom, and I head home.  I spend all evening with my laptop:  making plane and shuttle reservations and emailing everyone who expected me to show up this week.  By 11:30, I’m in bed asleep.

            At 5:15 a.m., I hear Mom up and around.  Pretty soon she is standing at my bedroom door telling me she is bleeding.  I ask a lot of concerned questions as she goes back to the bathroom every few minutes.  I’m too groggy from my nightly Ambien to drive but alert enough to know she needs to go to the ER, so I call John before six.  He comes to fetch Mom and I go back to bed.

            They roll in at eight as I am getting up.  Mom has an acute urinary tract infection.  John goes back to his house, Mom sits down to another cup of coffee and a mini-cinnamon roll, and I get ready for the day.  On my morning list is practicing my flute, going to the pharmacy to get Mom’s prescriptions, and picking up some groceries.  By lunchtime, she has completely forgotten this morning’s trip to the ER and wonders why she has more pills to take than usual.

            Just before one p.m. I settle in for my nap.  Our calico cat Melody follows me into my bedroom and plops herself on my chest.  At least she isn’t grooming my chin this time.   Eventually, I doze off.

            But now I’m up again, ready to do the laundry that John so kindly brought over, pack, and take care of a good dozen details around the house so Mom and John are set up for the week.  In 24 hours I’ll be sitting at SeaTac, ready for the first leg of my ten dollar round trip.  Those Rapid Reward points sure come in handy at a time like this.

           

Out in the Cold

            It’s cold in Colorado Springs tonight.  Joseph decides to take the last bus of the day to visit the Thursday evening class at Charis Bible College—surely someone will give him a ride home--and to check the bulletin board to see if anyone is looking for a roommate.  His apartment lease ends in a month, and he is desperate to move.

            Unfortunately, the bus gets him to his destination 45 minutes before the class begins.  He goes to the main building and asks the security guard at the entrance if he can come inside to get out of the cold.  The guard refuses Joseph entrance:   though students can enter at six, visitors cannot enter until the class begins at 6:30 p.m. 

            Cold and frustrated, Joseph calls me on his cell phone to talk and pass the time.  As we talk, he decides to walk over and try the college’s administrative offices next door.  I can hear his request and the initial friendliness in the voice of the man who asks him, “Are you a student?”  With Joseph’s reply that he is not a student but a visitor, the man’s voice becomes guarded.  Our phone call ends.  I wish that Joseph had identified himself as a former student of the college, which he is.  Maybe that would make a difference.

            A few minutes pass.  The phone rings.  It is Joseph.  “Well, that didn’t work,” he says.  “The man wouldn’t let me stay inside because it is against the rules.”

            Anger and helplessness rise within me.  Surely, at a Bible college there should be an iota of compassion and hospitality.  I ache for my son. 

            “Joseph, I can’t remember the area well,” I say.  “Are there any businesses open where you could step inside?”

            We continue talking as he walks the stretch from Charis to the main road.  “Yes. I see some sort of shop where they sell woodcarvings,” he says.  I hear the tinkle of a bell and the background murmur of voices as he enters the store.  We continue to talk.  I am glad he is out of the cold.  After ten minutes or so, he decides to walk back toward the college.  He tells me he sees that the evening class students are arriving, so he should be able to go inside soon.   We say good-bye.

            Over an hour later, I am still angry, still aching for my son.  This is not the first time he has been left out in the cold, literally or figuratively.  The final verses of Matthew 25 echo in my heart:

            ‘Master, what are you talking about?  When did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or homeless or shivering or sick or in prison and didn’t help?’

            “He [the Master] will answer them, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth:  Whenever you failed to do one of these things to someone who was being overlooked or ignored, that was me—you failed to do it to me.’” (The Message)

My Second Childhood

            Perhaps I am living my second childhood, the one I missed the first time around.

            Maureen Murdock’s 2003 book, Unreliable Truth:  On Memoir and Memory, resonates with me on all sorts of levels.  She describes my experience with memory and with writing.  There is something satisfying about seeing one’s nonverbal perceptions put into prose.  And when she quotes from Annie Dillard--Shebang! I am struck with recognition and wonder:  “A child wakes up over and over again, and notices that she’s living.  A child dreams along, loving the exuberant life of the senses, in love with beauty and power, oblivious of herself, and then suddenly, bingo, she wakes up and feels herself alive.”

            Waking “over and over again” describes my life of memory in which each episode of the past slides away, replaced by the colorful present.  The first time I remember thinking about this was after our family moved from Grandville to Douglas when I was twelve.  One day, walking down the hallway at school, I “woke up” to my new reality.  Suddenly my previous eleven years of life seemed as a dream, as if they belonged to someone else, and there I stood as my new junior high self. 

            Since then I have “woken up” many times as new life experiences unfolded.  Some of the awakenings were of true nightmare quality, others like glimpses of heavenly dreams.  All that waking up consistently landed me smack dab in the middle of the present, whether I liked it or not.

            For three years now, I’ve been waking up in Washington, shedding the old fears of my old life as an old dream.  The present is full of color and music and words.  It is full of trees, of sky, of water and mountains.  It is filled with beauty.  

            The present is filled with friends and family both near and far.  It is filled with a deeper awareness of God and a new joy in living.  It is filled with faith, hope, and love.  This waking to the present moment has somehow clarified the past, bringing both painful and pleasant memories into perspective.   I understand that all our lives are stories to be shared.  My telling of my story heals me and helps others.

            Thus, I get to examine my life both past and present, this time with wonder instead of fear, amazed at the depth of grace God gives in our best dreams, our worst nightmares, and all of our awakenings. 

All Her Marbles

            As we cruise home from getting groceries in Freeland, Mom asks if she has sent her Christmas cards yet.

            “Not yet,” I answer.  “It’s only October 20.”

            “Do I even have a list still?”

            “Well, I usually just send out a card to each person who sends you one,” I reply.

            Mom muses:  “My list probably wouldn’t be very long anymore.  I’m of the age where I have outlived and . . . um . . . let’s just say out-intellectualized many people.  I mean, I have all my marbles, and I’m grateful for that.  It must be horrible to go around not knowing what you’re doing.”

            “It must,” I agree.

Food Stories

            At lunch, Mom spreads her slice of Western Hazelnut bread with the egg salad I prepared.  Seeing a deli container on the table, she decides to spread its contents on her bread, too.  This may be a history-making moment:  an egg salad and pistachio salad sandwich.  It certainly is colorful.

            Another day, at dinner, I serve the boxed brand of tomato soup we love so much along with celery sticks and cheese and garlic French bread.  Except for the soup, it looks like a finger food meal to me, so I only set out soup spoons.  Mom determinedly saws into her strip of cheesy bread with her spoon, refusing my offer of a knife and fork.

            The package of kitty treats disappears overnight. 

            Mom prefers half and half in her coffee and on her cereal.  I prefer French Vanilla creamer in my coffee.  I assume that the cat prefers neither.  This morning I discover the new creamer opened, missing more than a coffee cup would call for, and a bowlful of creamer on the bathroom floor for the cat, who evidently does not care for French Vanilla.