The Wall

Microsoft has been at it again. Commandeering my laptop at night while I’m asleep and messing up all my open files. Rude. If I didn’t need the internet so badly, I’d shut this thing down every time I’m finished with it instead of leaving it to its own devices.  I remember well the simple years before the world wide web even existed. Now we’re all caught in it.

I put everything back in its cyber place and re-opened the row of documents I’ve been adding to for weeks. They’re my journals. All the pages where I process more of the grief that replaces itself every time I think I’ve cried it all off or written it all down. It’s a bottomless well. Or as experts describe it, a hole in my life that will never shrink. Instead, I will slowly learn to build a new life around it. A life I never asked for and never wanted.

I don’t know if exposing my thoughts on a public blog makes me a narcissist or an idiot. I don’t post all the things I write because I’m not sure how they’ll land with my audience. That’s a good way to go out of business as a writer, worrying about what other people think of the things you have to say. I’m working on that little confidence issue.

Three years ago. Unbelievable. I am now beginning the fourth year without Rob beside me. It hurts to even write that here. I am so tired. Tears still flow easily. Too easily. I wonder why I bother with mascara every day, although wearing it means I’ll pretend I’m fine and won’t look like I lost a fight with a three-year-old makeup artist.

I’m here again because I had another argument with God this week. It was a lot like the kind Rob and I used to have where I verbalized how I felt and he didn’t. One-sided, it left me feeling like I was talking to a wall. No explanations were given. All I accomplished was offloading more pain.

I could go all religious-speak here and chastise myself for not having enough faith to simply trust God, but He made me and knows me and never seems offended by my accusations or queries. I think deep thoughts and ask hard questions because holding all that in will only make me sick. Or explode. Ain’t nobody wants to get hit by Eula shrapnel.

Sometimes you don’t know what to question until your world blows up and sorrow fills the void.

I told The Wall that I don’t think our traditional concept of Heaven is fair. The need for such a place comes up quickly when someone’s life evaporates right before your eyes, stopping all forward movement in its tracks. Left behind as that train pulls away from the station, we find ourselves holding a bag filled with shattered dreams and confusion, shouldered with heavy responsibilities and tormenting regrets. We’re eyewitnesses to the broken hearts of our families, and unable to fix a thing while our loved one is sent “to his reward” and “a better place” where “there is no more suffering.”  By contrast, we’re still here, devoid of reward in a diminished place where we now endure enormous suffering.

This is so hard to articulate, but I know it’s natural to want to make sense out of something that is senseless. Last week I was shopping with my sister when the heart-wrenching voice of Michael Bolton flooded the room. I told her I had to leave because the words of his lament were tearing me up, but it was too late. They rang in my ears on the sidewalk outside and I cried anyway.

Tell me how am I supposed to live without you
Now that I've been lovin' you so long
How am I supposed to live without you
And how am I supposed to carry on
When all that I've been livin' for is gone

It didn’t matter that the song was about a different kind of rejection. It’s the question we ask in loss. It’s hard enough to stand by helplessly and watch the love of your life die without wondering if there's a reason he found relief and you lost your entire world. I’m wrestling here. Afraid to say what I’m really feeling. How dismissive it feels when a man is promoted to the spirit world while his wife is left behind and the situation is described as "better." There. I said it.

But there’s more. If when people die and go to heaven, they are protected from seeing the pain we still suffer here on earth, how much more abandoned can I possibly feel? How much more rejected? Or less than? It’s like I need to cry out, “Unclean!” I’m only human. We were in this together and now he is gone. I cannot help but feel that I am being punished for something I don’t even know I did. I know that’s not how God works, but that’s how grief and guilt do.

The why’s haunt me.

The Wall didn’t say anything. Just stood there listening. Very smart. So, I held the floor and kept verbalizing, sorting through my feelings, searching for words. Like right now. I don’t know if I’m making this complaint clear. Or, perhaps, it’s offensive. Fortunately, The Wall understands me and did not fall on me in judgment.

It will take years for me to learn to rebuild a life for myself that I never asked for and never wanted. Years. This isn’t everyone’s story. It’s not everyone’s perspective. It’s not even someone else’s complaint. It’s mine. The answers to why someone dies when they do are insufficient because they’re simplistic and one-size-fits-all. They’re also a guessing game.

Rob wasn’t trying to “go to his reward.” When he got sick, he called it the fight of his life. Until that happened, we were side by side in the middle of doing life together, 'flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone', settling into our new home. He was changing his passwords to ILMW—I Love My Wife. He loved his wife, he loved his life, he wasn’t suffering here until he got sick. Now we’re the ones suffering. It’s a life sentence.

So, I asked God about all of this, accusing Him of punishing me without probable cause. I challenged the accepted belief that when people go to heaven, they cannot see what’s going on here anymore. That they’re cut off from us and we’re cut off from them because there’s no bad news allowed when you live with God. We interpret Scripture to back up this point, referencing “no tears in heaven,” for example. But that’s not the context and to be honest, the Bible doesn’t give many literal details about heaven. I think God wants to surprise us when we get there.

I don’t think we understand death. We don’t understand grief. We don’t even understand God’s heart.

Here’s where I landed as I stood there talking to The Wall. Rob got sick and his body could not recover, but his spirit and soul are in perfect condition as always. More than that, he has the privilege now of seeing what’s going on here from the same perspective that God has. No longer does Rob have partial knowledge—First Corinthians 13* says that now Rob knows fully what’s going on. I’m pretty jealous of that. It means that Rob knows the answers to the questions that remain unanswered for me right now. No surprise there. He always knew more than I did.

Seeing what we’re dealing with here on this planet could not possibly bring tears to our loved ones in Heaven, because time does not exist there. There’s no guesswork anymore. No reason for prophecy. They don’t need hope. They don’t even have to walk by faith. They have perfect vision. Perspective is everything. They have the huge advantage of having stepped outside of time and this limited dimension and, in the presence of the All-Knowing One, they see what we only hope for right now.

Which is why I hope. Even when the tears cascade like a waterfall and my heart cramps in missing him and loneliness is both teacher and companion. Even when I pound my fists against The Wall. I hope. I endure. Maybe someday I will thrive.

I know Rob knows what I’m going through here without him. I know he prays for me and for our family, his family. I no longer believe he and all the others who love us are so removed from the connection we have that we are left on our own in the rubble. It’s just that he also knows that The Wall has my back, too, and that our separation is a temporary situation. Relatively speaking.

There’s a line in the movie, The Princess Bride, that comforts me. “Death cannot stop true love,” Westley told Buttercup. “All it can do is delay it for a while.” Then he took her in his arms and she stopped crying.

^*8 Love never fails. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. ¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

The Wall never falls because love never fails.  

With thanks to Michael Kogan for the use of the wall seen above. The original photo can be viewed by clicking on this link:

Avila | michael kogan | Flickr

Slam Dunk

I’m sitting here at my desk in front of the huge window I asked for two years ago when I built my home. Big windows were important because I wanted to always have plenty of sunshine streaming through the rooms. Every window in my house takes up half its wall and every bird within two blocks has slam-dunked itself into them not realizing the straight-through view to the back patio isn’t open space. It’s a house.

I often sit at this desk and write. Writing sets my soul free and sometimes the inspiration for what I write comes from my view at this window. Now that I’ve hung a hummingbird feeder above the fence in my front yard, for example, I watch them endlessly from here, which is the reason I hung it there. I also know, of the four I see regularly at the feeder, which one is the bully bird and which ones are the chickens. Poor little insecure things. They really ought to stand up and fight for their rights. But I don’t speak hummingbird, so they don’t listen to me.

I’m witness to a lot of life in this front row seat, gazing past my front yard to the road that separates it from the neighbor’s pasture. The goats across the street are an endless source of entertainment. You might think the brown one is a deer, but even she knows she’s not graceful enough to launch herself Bambi-style up and over the chain link fencing. She’s content to just be a goat. And the two black ones who love to rest on the ground side by side facing opposite directions blend together so well, I mistakenly think there’s a Pushmepullyou living over there.

Families stroll together past my house all the time, pausing to admire the livestock in the neighbor’s pasture and disappointing the Pushmepullyou’s who were expecting snacks from them. Dogs walk their people, always barking a surly “How’s it goin’?” to their incarcerated canine cousins. Kids ride their bikes and, most recently, pair up to sail by on electric scooters, posture impeccable, hair flowing out behind them like they’re posing for a shampoo ad. Just now, somebody’s dad did that, standing tall in his white dress shirt and black pants while his tie flew across his body in the breeze, hands holding on tight to his scooter. It made me laugh. Guess he gets good mileage riding to church that way.

Laughter is good. I was crying until he flew by, and just like that, my spirits lifted. Then a friend called with her own story of heartache. We talked through the details and then something made us both laugh and two hearts lifted together out of the pain for a while. Sometimes, in the middle of my tears, usually when someone catches me swimming in them, I shift gears and make a joke so I can stop crying. Tears come and go, like that well-dressed dad on his scooter. This I know.

It's been three years since I last saw my husband alive. Barely. But alive nevertheless. Three years ago today was the last time he mouthed the words, “I love you” to me. The last time I held his hand and felt him squeeze back his love for me. The last time. Three years. It’s a long time. And it was yesterday.

So, the tears are flowing all out of rhythm, punctuated by moments of much needed laughter. What a ride this grief experience is. I’ve been in my office a lot this week, glancing out my giant window, reading and printing off all the blog posts I’ve written about life since Rob died, one hundred thirty-six posts in all. Plus this one, one more. I need to empty the trash can on the floor beside me before it overflows with used tissues. It’s been emotional like that all week, leading up to this weekend’s painful remembrance. Maybe today is turning out to be harder than tomorrow will be. It's rougher than I expected, though tomorrow is the day I told him good-bye. I don't know. I don't know much of anything anymore.

A friend of mine, who will see the fourth anniversary of her own husband’s passing in April, calls this a Marker Day, and the days of dread leading up to it the Season of Sorrow. Maybe there will be relief on the other side when Day One of the fourth year begins for me. If not, there is always this big, sunny window where I can sit and wait for something to happen that makes me laugh. I desperately need the release in laughter.

And right on cue, Church Dad sailed by on his scooter again. I think I saw a Bible tucked into the back of his trousers.

I bet Rob is laughing, too.

When The Fog Lifts

Here it comes again. Here I go writing about it again. I wonder if people weary of this story that has no obvious ending. I weary of it, but I can’t do anything about it. I’m the protagonist in this “adventure.” Supposedly that makes me the heroine. I don’t feel very heroic today. Or very eloquent.

Tomorrow is the third anniversary of the day we found out Rob wasn’t going to survive. Sunday will be three years since I sat beside his hospital bed while Katy sat on the other side and Lee stayed with us long distance on his phone. And Monday, the nineteenth, it will be three years since there was a Welcome Home party to greet Rob, but which we weren’t invited to attend.

I’ve been living in dread of this weekend since the middle of January, remembering the whole nightmare when it began in 2021. Maybe next year will be different for me. I hope to God that it is.

For the past week, I’ve been re-reading and printing off every blog post I’ve published since Rob died. A few people have suggested that if I turn these writings into a book, it might comfort other broken hearts on this same path. I’ve never read them all like this before. So far I’ve made it through my twelfth box of tissue. Word to the wise—buy stock in Puff’s. There’s this heartbroken writer in Arizona who’s keeping them in business.

It probably sounds crazy for me to read again about all the agony I’ve lived through, but the important thing there is that I’ve lived through it. Against all odds, though I’m a terrible gambler, I am surviving. I spoke with Rob’s mother today and she asked how I’m doing, neither of us wanting to say out loud what the approach of this sad anniversary represents.

“Oh, you know,” I told her in answer to the question that has no answer.

“Surviving,” she filled in.

Yeah. Surviving. Yet, it’s not only my loss. It’s hers. It’s my daughter’s. My son’s. Their families’. Rob’s friends'. His sisters'. Their families'. My sister’s. Her family's. Our neighbors'. The hole Rob left in his departure is a deep one. We all grieve his absence.

That’s why I decided, since grief is inevitable, especially this week, to see where the journey took me over the last three years. The first year remains a blur to me with big blank spots and memory lapses but still I recorded its highlights. Or lowlights. Take your pick. It was The Year of the Fog. The emotional/mental kind aside, I usually love a good fog. It’s scary to drive in at times, but it’s romantic in its wispiness. It softens the edges of the everyday view. It makes you slow down and focus on what’s right in front of you.

That’s the part that resonates with me. I’ve had to slow down and focus on what’s here in front of me right now. Looking back is painful except when laughter is involved. Looking too far ahead is pointless because I can’t make out any details. Living in the right here/right now feels like a miracle of survival to me. Everyday tasks take twice as long as they used to. Sometimes just getting my weekly laundry done deserves a high five, especially when it sits in a basket in the living room for three days like it did this week, waiting for decontamination. Definitely cause for celebration when that happened.

In year two, as shock’s anesthesia wore off, throbbing pain replaced the numbness in my soul. Who knew brain fog was my body’s attempt to protect me the previous year. I thought getting through the Year of Firsts was all I had to do to get back on track and reclaim my life. But when Day 365 ended, Day One of the Second Year began, and I had to face all those difficult holidays and celebratory dates all over again, not to mention the continued waking up without Rob. I think that’s when the fog burned off—the day I realized this was the first day of every day of the rest of my life.

Now, year three is coming to a close in my own personal calendar of events. I’ve made it through three of everything from Valentine’s Day to our anniversaries to Christmas. Seems like quite an accomplishment if it weren’t so sad. And in a few days, February 19^th  will arrive again. In all those blogs I’ve read, 113 so far and I’m only at the end of 2022, I’ve noticed a lot of repetition in what I described.

Like how I live in Sadness now. That this is the slog of grief. How the only way through grief is through it. And especially, that this is going to take a long time. I agree. Of everything that comes into focus with the disappearing fog, what I recognize more than anything else is how long it’s going to take for me to adjust to the life I’ve been left with. Still, I’ve seen peace come in little pieces, both with God and with these unchangeable circumstances. I’ve seen my vision expand to include not only the things we can see but also the things that we can’t. I’ve watched hope rise from the dead, a welcome sight indeed.

But I’ve also noticed the continued fatigue and loneliness I experience and how they seem to be companions to my companion, Sadness. Megan Devine, in her book “It’s Ok That You’re Not Ok,” writes that the loss of your loved one leaves a hole that will never shrink or fill in. Instead, the life you are asked to live in the aftermath of tragedy grows around that hole. You learn to carry what cannot be fixed.

I was actually hoping for better news than that when this journey began.

Apparently, this is my new reality. I know from experience and from what I’ve shared in those blogs that Grief teaches you honesty as well as how to live a life that holds both sorrow and joy together at once. It’s an interesting bouquet.

In all of it, you have been an important participant with me. You have witnessed my pain, and that is more powerful than all the explanations any of us have ever come up with. Grief needs a witness and as hard as I know that is, you have risen to the occasion in my life.

Thank you for sharing this journey with me even when I repeated myself so often. Thank you for praying for me and my family through it all. For loving us and holding out hope for us and saying nothing when nothing can be said. For forgiving me when I have been too honest and pain-stricken to be tactful. Thank you for saying Rob’s name and keeping his memory alive with us. My one consolation is the knowledge that he is very much alive still and I will be with him again.

I still don’t know what I’m doing or where I’m going, but it’s good to survive. It's good to find hope. It’s even good to cry and sit with the Sadness. 

 And it's good when the fog lifts. 

With gratitude to Broo_am (Andy B) for permission to use the lovely photo seen above. The original can be viewed from this link: Fogged | Solo young tree in the park | Broo_am (Andy B) | Flickr

An Ode to Firehouse Subs - Who Once Saved My Life

Hospital food has seldom—no, never—been seen as anything more than punishment for getting sick. It’s one level beneath airplane food which, of late, has hit an all-time low with their limited options of peanuts or pretzels. Excuse me, but that is not food either. Bring me a ham sandwich.

Three years ago this week, I took up residence in a hospital in northern Arizona which asked what I wanted to eat for each of my three daily meals. On every single menu sheet I selected, “nutrition.” Actually, that was a write-in and I found out quickly that they did not accept off-menu suggestions.

I ordered their version of a Thanksgiving meal once, and I emphasize here once, during my nine-day stay. I was served a gray piece of boiled turkey. Boiled. It actually turned to powder when I cut into it. I’m not even exaggerating here. The next evening, I asked for a grilled cheese sandwich. The word “grilled” was part of their description but when it arrived all alone in an oversized styrofoam container, the tiny white bread triangles, sans butter or fat or grill marks of any kind, had come apart to reveal a piece of microwaved cheese food product masquerading as nourishment. I was not fooled. I was not filled.

And that was the night I ordered takeout to be brought in to my hospital room. Because typically one does not go to a hospital to die of starvation. One goes there to get well. Someone ought to mention that to the kitchen staff. It should come as a surprise to no one, especially hospitals, that our bodies require actual food for survival and recovery, and if it tastes good, we'll be more likely to eat it.

Of the handful of restaurants that worked with my DoorDash app, only Firehouse Subs was reliable, which is why every single day for a week and a half I ordered a hot sandwich from them. I’d lost fifteen pounds while I was sick at home. I was starving, and while the hospital considered food optional, Firehouse Subs was more than happy to feed my fever. No one questioned why a patient like me had to resort to outside food for sustenance. Perhaps because no one else ate at the hospital either.

And I got well. I came down off that mountain, back to the land of the living, and to this day I am privileged to be a huge fan of Firehouse Subs. I plan to order a Hook and Ladder from them in about fifteen minutes, give or take how long it takes me to get dressed. Hospitals let you eat in your pajamas, but there’s a tiny little bit of a dress code when you go out in public at my age.

Here’s the thing about this sandwich shop. There is a heart connection for me, as well as a hunger connection. Not only did they feed me while I was hospitalized, they also support first responders who save lives everywhere everyday across the country. Every time I spend money there, I have the option to donate a little extra which helps with the purchase of equipment for first responders in my community. Tax money, as we all know, doesn’t spread as far as politicians tell us it will. To date, Firehouse Subs Public Safety Foundation has donated eighty-one million dollars to hometown heroes in all fifty states and Puerto Rico. That’s a lot of bread.

I am the widow of a firefighter who spent thirty-eight years of his life saving the lives of people, both literally and through the education of firefighters and citizens alike, in Florida and also Arizona. Our children grew up climbing on firetrucks and hanging out in fire stations. When I walk into this sandwich shop with its fire department décor and themed sandwich choices, I feel at home. So, how ironic is it that this same restaurant once saved my life?

Keeping it real, there is only one thing I’ve ever complained about when it comes to my Hook and Ladder Sandwich. I despise pickles. Pickles offend me. I can smell one at twenty paces and if any pickle juice from a donated pickle puddles beside my food, I will soak it up with a napkin and discard both the culprit and its evidence. Firehouse Subs, as well as most of America, sees pickles differently than I do, and include one free pickle spear with every sandwich.

This is a problem.

Finally last week after several online and in-person orders where even my receipt specifies that I am anti-pickle and yet often I still wind up with the soggy, booger-green ex-cucumber atop my sandwich, I politely mentioned it. To the manager. Who knows my face, knows my sandwich, works hard to train her young staff, and gave me that day’s order free just for the inconvenience caused by my pickle phobia.

See? This, too, is why I support Firehouse Subs. They save local lives with their determination to financially support firefighters. They save me from making my own lunch. They care about making the customer happy even when they themselves have had a bad day (which she had.) They saved my life in the mountains. And they've saved a few unwanted pickles from dying a tragic death in the trash.

Firehouse Subs. Do yourself a favor, order a sandwich, support a firefighter.

The life they save may be yours. Or a pickle’s.

For The Birds

When my daughter was a toddler, she was terrorized by a bunch of mallards. It’s not unheard of. Lots of people have been left emotionally scarred by ducks. Just look at Huey, Louie, and Dewey. The triplets might have been angels if not for the bad-tempered influence of their uncles, Scrooge McDuck and Donald. I know the feeling. Once, when I was a kid, I tried to disguise a bad word by doing an imitation of Donald and I still got my mouth washed out with soap.  

Ducks have a dark side, like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. As long as they float around placidly in some unprotected public pond, everybody thinks they’re adorable. Moms stand their toddlers on the banks of that waterhole, taking pictures while their babies toss out breadcrumbs until the bag is empty. Giggling at the antics of the splashy little showboaters, people completely forget they’re only seeing one side of these birds. It’s easy to do. As long as you’re rewarding them with attention, they’ll put on one heck of a show. 

But when you’re all out of bread and the kiddos have run out of steam and you head to the car with your worn-out little munchkins, that’s when everything changes. Their SeaWorld imitation is over. Suddenly, an entire herd of Hydes will emerge from that black lagoon, and on tiny, impossibly strong and waterlogged legs, they will chase you down like they were lions on safari.

And that’s why my daughter still hates birds. As a two-year-old she was nearly pecked to pieces by wild, cranky ducks. Thank goodness we stopped laughing long enough to pick her up and rescue her. We’re just lucky she doesn’t hate us.

I think birds have the innate capacity to bring out both admiration and loathing in humans. We’re astonished at the way hundreds of them all fly in V formations as they head south for the winter, lacking both internet access and a roadmap. I wish I knew how they pull that off. I can’t even find my way out of a grocery store parking lot most of the time.

But every morning this summer as I opened the sliders to my back patio, arms laden with a steaming mug of cocoa, a plate of biscuits, my water bottle, a pair of reading glasses, and my cellphone, as I approached the glass table top—where I planned to set all of that down before I sat myself down—I found it covered in bird poop, deposited overnight by a bunch of selfish grackles homesteading in the ash tree overhead. Finally, after a week of this disgusting behavior, as I cleaned off their crap again, I yelled up into the massive branches where they were hiding, “The next time you do this I’m gonna get my gun and there will be Bird Soup for dinner! Tell your little friends!”

It was an empty threat, and they knew it. The truth is, if someone served me soup made from a bunch of poopy blackbirds, I’d throw up.

I don’t hate every bird. There’s a curious roadrunner who’s been visiting my house every day for months. He squeezes past the fence post into my enclosed back patio and stares at me through the sliding glass doors as if I’m the one behind bars. Or maybe he’s checking out his own reflection, hoping the female in the mirror thinks he’s good looking, too. The neighbors call him Rudy, but I named him Pete because everybody knows Pete is a better name for a roadrunner.

I like Pete. I like roadrunners. They’re not your ordinary bird. They eat bugs and overpower rattlesnakes. They’re primitive about it, kind of like Cro-Magnon man. Not having ten fingers with which to aim a rifle, instead they grab their prey with their beaks and smash the nasty vipers against a rock. That makes them a hero in my book, so having a roadrunner around is a great idea. It means there won’t be any rattlesnakes around. Also, I’m pretty sure Pete doesn’t poop. Not on my table, anyway. Pete has manners.

And then there are the comedian birds with lousy radar. They don’t fly south for the winter, I assume, because they have no sense of direction. Also the reason I don’t fly south for the winter. What these guys do instead is fly south into my front windows, nearly every afternoon, head first. My windows aren’t even clean, in part because there are feathered faceplants all over them, so they have no excuse for not seeing that there is a window attached to that house. They’re just not paying attention. While their inner voice is screaming, “Pull up! Pull up! For the love of God and all that is holy, pull up!” they flaunt their feathers instead and push ahead full throttle, convinced there’s no such thing as a glass barrier they can’t fly through.

So far, no birds have been harmed in the making of beaked imprints on my windows. Nor has their self-confidence been impaired. Tomorrow afternoon they’ll slam into them all over again, shake it off, and determine that if they keep on trying that glass ceiling will shatter for them. It won’t, because birds bounce, but they’ll forget that. Also, I now know where the term “bird brain” comes from.

So, what have we learned? Ducks are despicable and dangerous to two-year-olds. Grackles are as useless as roaches and have the manners of Gordon Ramsay. Roadrunners are our friends and I’d like them even better if they ate scorpions more of the time because there don’t seem to be any rattlesnakes around here. And finally, the reason I never wash my windows is not because I’m lazy. It’s because it’s pointless.

Tune in next time when I discuss the pros and cons of our politicians. Talk about bird brains.

With thanks to Nigel for snapping the stellar photo seen above. The original can be viewed with this link:  IMG_6070-4 | Wood Duck Attack ! | Nigel | Flickr

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Dusty. Noisy. A little on the chilly side. Their faces obscured in the dim light of evening, throngs of people clumped together, shivering. Wanderers in the night, they picked their way carefully across rough ground. Laughter and conversation melded together with the occasional bray of a donkey and cry of a baby, while the scent carried on the breeze was a blend of hot cider and manure. Not your typical Christmas cocktail. Fortunately, the food court was a safe distance away from the animal stalls.

High above the back lot of the Methodist Church, the Star of Bethlehem rose thirty feet in the air and, like everyone else, we followed it in search of the Christ Child.

It was a festival atmosphere where multiple churches came together in interfaith cooperation and provided an evening of free food and hot drinks, hayrides around the property, live music, a petting zoo, and a living nativity where we found Mary and Joseph and the rest of the cast squeezed tightly together inside a tented enclosure, suffering perhaps from a smidge of claustrophobia and a side of stage fright. It seemed authentic to me. I’ve always suspected that’s how it really was, considering the way Luke described the scene when the shepherds arrived. “And they came with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the babe lying in a manger.” It must have been crowded in that manger, just like the live nativity in front of us. But the little Lord Jesus, no crying he made.

We made our way over to a semi-circle of folding chairs where a man stood before a microphone reading the Christmas story. You’re still wondering about King James’ wording in Luke, right? Or the way I interpret things? I can’t help it. Things like that just stand out to me sometimes. Like the nugget I picked up listening to the reading of the scripture. Turns out, Gabriel and Michael aren’t the only angels named in the Bible. There’s at least one more, and Luke is the only one who gives him credit, right there in chapter two. If you ask me, it’s about time this one got some street cred for showing up. “And Lo, the angel of the Lord, came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid.”

It's not one you hear every day, but I predict it will soon become as trendy as Gabriel and Michael in next year’s list of most popular baby names. And when it does, remember you heard it here first. Lo. The angel who scared the shepherds.

Also, your grammar teacher was right. Commas matter.

By now my back was hurting and, as I settled onto one of the folding chairs, my daughter followed after her kids and their friends who wanted to hitch a ride on some hay bales that a John Deere tractor was busy pulling around the parking lot. As soon as the narrator finished speaking, he disappeared, and a woman set up her music at the electric keyboard facing us. The choir lined up in rows behind her and a teenaged boy snugged up to his cello where he sat beside the pianist. The choir director raised her arms, the accompaniment began, and thirty young people began to sing.

It was my favorite Christmas carol. And it seemed as if they were singing just for me—the lonely widow staring down the third Christmas without her darling, daring to let her heart experience a few of the traditions she enjoyed for years with a husband she still can’t believe is gone. 

The young vocalists sang their hearts out while stragglers wandered by, oblivious to the performance, busily chatting and drinking their cider, kicking up dirt and ignoring the concert. In the distance, the sound of a diesel engine with its load of delighted, noisy passengers added to the patchwork feel of the festival’s array of Christmas events, but a small audience grateful for a place to sit listened to the words of a song which had been running through my mind for weeks. The choir stood front and center through it all, backlit by all the dust in the air, as if a fog machine was cloaking them in ethereal billows of tan.

And I wondered if miracles are always overshadowed like this, sent out into a world that isn't sure what to believe, easily distracted by artificial lights and cotton candy and face paint. The choir sang the words, the pianist played her keys, but it was the mournful tones of the cello that captivated me. Amid the flurry of crowds of people on their way to experience something else, the cellist played haunting notes that spoke to us of a promise fulfilled and hope restored. And I sat there on my folding chair in the grimy darkness and wept. From my broken heart. For my broken dreams. And for this song which I longed to hear this Christmas.

“Oh, come, Oh, come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to Thee, O Israel.”

The cellist played every note a tempo while the pianist supported his interpretation. The passion imparted by the instrument was the same mosaic of longing created by the composer, and one that I feel in my soul every day since the moment Rob died. A desire for answers, for rescue, for reunion, for redemption. As my son often reminds me, it’s a yearning for God to make right everything that has gone wrong in His world. And, somehow, too, in mine.

The cellist drew his bow one last time across his instrument and as the haunting note faded, the spell was broken, and we headed home. Soon all the musicians and actors and animals would follow suit. Instruments packed up. The manger stored away for another year. Leftover food and beverages sent home with anyone willing to take some. Lights all shut down, the parking lot empty. There was no apparent reason for even an angel named Lo to hang back and hover, announcing to a weary world that God is with us in our troubles.

Except that I need that reminder. I needed to hear it that night. In the melancholy voice of a young man's cello I heard the echo of my own heart’s cry for Emmanuel, God With Us. I needed to know I am seen in the moments when I feel invisible. That I am heard though heaven is silent. In the middle of a dusty, noisy assortment of holiday entertainments, the cellist’s bow sang for me and all others for whom Christmas no longer feels like the most wonderful time of the year.

This is why Jesus came. To become one of us. To ransom the captives and set us free from all the broken places where life has taken us. He knows how we feel. He suffered here, too.

Oh come, Oh come, Emmanuel. To all of us who follow Bethlehem's star where it shines above the  back lot of the Methodist Church, directly into the face of the Christ Child.

The one who came to forever be With Us.

It Wasn't Me

Boy, is she in big trouble. 

I don’t know what got into her this week. Not only is there no excuse for her behavior (since she couldn’t give me one,) but if she doesn’t straighten up, she’s gonna be out of a job.

I gave her a task yesterday while I went into my office to write. I closed the door so she wouldn’t interrupt me, and we both went to work. By the time I was done, it was nearly dark. She’d already finished and returned home. I went to the living room windows to close the blinds and there, on the floor at my feet, lay my best houseplant, upside down, dumped in a heap, tendrils all twisted and broken, gasping for . . . whatever plants gasp for. Water and potting soil bled together when she fell, creating a miserable, muddy mess all over the floor. I have no idea how long this went unnoticed.

It’s not like I’m some kind of plant lady with mad gardening skills. Most of my plants are factory warranted. Those are my favorites. They don’t need water or food or fish gut juice, thank goodness. And gross. Their one weakness is they need to be dusted. In my opinion, that’s just asking too much. I prefer plants that thrive on neglect. I just don’t know where to get one of those.

But somewhere I read that if you can keep a hardy green plant alive, it'll reward you by absorbing toxins from the air and repurposing them into carbon dioxide or something. Don’t quote me. I may have that backwards, but it’s close enough. So, three little orphaned green things, which shall remain nameless because I have no idea what any of them are, sit in their own pots in my great room, waiting for me to remember to water them. Week after week after boring week. So, I do. I don’t like it, but it’s better than running out of carbon dioxide.

I don’t know if there was some kind of conflict that went down this week while I was busy writing my first famous and unbelievably successful future novel. There did appear to have been a struggle. I’ll admit, this plant is already something of a drama queen. Even though she lay at my feet looking sad and pathetic and possibly dead, it’s not the first time she’s been there. If I don’t water her once a week or notice when her foliage looks feeble, she tips over in a thirsty faint like she's Scarlett O'Hara and falls to the floor all by herself. She’s done that twice now. She did it night before last, in fact. But I swept her up like I was her personal Rhett Butler and carried her lifeless form to the kitchen where, right there at my farm sink, she miraculously resuscitated. So, there’s no need for you to go and turn me in to the local nursery or some antebellum neighborhood watch. She was drunk with water and happy as a lark the last time I saw her.

There was absolutely no reason for her to simply fall over yesterday afternoon, weighed down as she was by all the liquid she guzzled the night before. It was embarrassing how much she drank. All I could think as I stared at her twisted, lifeless form was she’d been thrown to the ground against her will, which couldn’t have been easy as bloated as she was. Oh, the humanity. But who was the perpetrator of this random act of violence? I sure didn't do it.

If I had to guess, it looked like the work of a family pet, but I don’t have one. I don’t even own a goldfish. Looking around the quiet space, my eyes finally came to rest on the only possible suspect who could be responsible for this crime. It was the silence that gave her away. There, in the corner, feigning innocence and refusing to make eye contact, she sat quietly at home, pretending she had no idea what had happened to my desecrated plant thing.

I leaned over to give her a performance review, smacked her with a rolled-up newspaper, and yelled, “Bad, bad Roomba!”

I knew it was her, the cranky little floor sucker. I've watched her race around the room doing figure eights like an ice skater, sailing to and fro between the baseboards until she bounces off the kitchen cabinets. Then she flies across the living room rug, circling the area in a pattern that can only be described as “two-year-old scribble.”  But this time she went too far. It all made sense. As she rounded the wall near my piano, she inhaled the long, formerly leafy vines that used to cascade elegantly from my houseplant to the floor, and chewed them up, yanking the entire plant down beside her.  

The glutton. No one told me she’s a vegetarian. I would definitely have opted for a different model if I’d known that. 

Perhaps I have myself to blame. I went through the room before I turned her loose on it, moving curtains and blanket corners out of the way, but I never once thought about my innocent little neurotic plant. In all these months since I welcomed Roomba into my home, she’s never before tried to eat it.

Until this week. I guess the honeymoon is over.

The frustrating part, though, is that I can’t prove a thing. There was no mud clinging to her exterior. No perlite pieces plugging her sensors. She wasn't even wet. My Ring doorbell could have videotaped the atrocity, but it only invades the privacy of visitors when they stop by. I haven’t even had the courage to empty her trash compartment yet to search for evidence. I don’t think I could stomach it.

So, what am I to do with this incorrigible machine? This purported time-saver that regularly costs me peace and creates aggravation. Vacuum my own floors? You must be kidding. Hire a real live housekeeper? How would I explain that to my accountant? Roomba didn't even flinch when I gave her a swat with my performance review. I think we all know who the real boss is here.

I'm out of options. I think the only answer is to take down my curtains, give away my throw blankets, and toss out all three plants. But if I die from a lack of carbon dioxide in my own home, promise me you’ll kick Roomba to the curb for me. And don’t let her make you feel guilty for doing it.

She had it coming.

With thanks to Thomas H. for capturing the innocent face of the cutie pie seen above who did not attack my house plant, and allowing me to use the photo here. Fooled you, didn't I? The original photo can be viewed at this site: 

Guilty | Thomas H | Flickr

Wild At Heart

Once upon a time, when we were young and made our own adventures, Rob and I used to camp. When the kids came along, we did it with diapers and bottles and baby walkers. We had energy back then. Strength and vitality and ignorance. Camping usually proved that in spades.

We needed a break one year but had no money, which was a common theme for young marrieds like us. So, Rob and I borrowed his parents fancy green tripped out travel van. I forget what kind and he’s not here to ask, so that’s all you get. But trust me. It was fancy. It seemed fancy to us, anyway. He had a few days off from work. Maybe it was just a weekend, forty-eight hours away from the fire department. But on weekends we were super busy, especially on Sundays, with church. Not this weekend. This time we needed a break and we planned for it.

We had a toddler on our hands, and we were both tired. And, as I said, broke. Hence, borrowing the fancy camper van. But we had camping stuff. Tents and tarps and sleeping bags. We even had a zip up ramada thing (again – Rob’s not here to give me the right words and I don’t feel like googling right now) to keep the bugs off and keep us dry in case it rained. Remember that part, about the rain. It was summer in Florida out in the woods. It rains.

We cleared our calendars. Found people to cover for us and our various responsibilities. And then with two heel clicks in the air, we hit the road with our eighteen month old son, Lee. We drove about an hour away to Osprey, Florida, to Oscar Scherer State Park. It had camping areas and bathroom facilities that made camping feel more civilized, especially with a toddler around. The day was warm and humid, but there was a breeze which made it pleasant while Rob set up the zipper ramada thing. Or, more accurately, while Rob attempted to set it up. I tried to help, but a toddler in the woods near a lake with alligators known to climb the low, no-climb fencing requires all of a mother’s attention.

The enclosure’s instructions were vague and we needed to position it ‘just so’ over the picnic table at our campsite. Poles didn’t line up. And when they did, he was only one man and I was MIA chasing down a giggly baby boy. While he tried in vain to control three sides of the enclosure, poles fell down, collapsing the netted structure, and Rob’s practically perfect phacade phailed.

There were very few times when I saw him lose his temper in all the years we were married. I could count them on one hand. Honestly. This was one of those times.

Remember the rain? We moved to my home state of Arizona ten years after we married, leaving the Sunshine State to raise our family in the desert instead. It never rains in the desert. I grew up here and I can attest to that. Of course, that’s not entirely true, but it feels true. Therefore, it must be true. To this day, whenever the weatherman predicts even a fifty per cent chance of rain, it means there’s a miniscule chance that half the state might get a shower. For the rest of us, if a drained-out thundercloud floats wearily across the sky, dripping the remnants of whatever it dumped somewhere else, we count the drops on our windshield and thank God that the drought is over.

That’s rain in the desert.

Rain in the tropics is different. Especially when one man singlehandedly attempts to erect a flimsy structure which straddles a large picnic table while dark, menacing, storm clouds gather from the west, which is the Gulf side of the state. There’s a lot of water in the Gulf. You could even say it’s a bottomless supply that a thunderstorm sucks up like a vacuum. When a summer shower is on the move, you might think you have plenty of time to set up camp and pull this miracle off. You don’t. You might think fifty per cent means the storm will slide to the south and baptize Naples instead of Osprey. It won’t. You might think the lightning flashes you notice are further away than the twenty miles of buffer you need right now. They aren’t.

Our camping spot was surrounded by mature pines a hundred fifteen feet tall that swayed in the wind like lightning rods. In no time at all, the distant storm clouds blew in over us, the sun disappeared, the zippered ramada thing betrayed us and fell down, and terrified animals raced by us, two by two. None of that was the problem.

Lightning. That was the problem.

As a bolt found its mark somewhere in the park, the ground shook and our ears hurt from the thunder’s shock wave. Rob dropped the metal pole he held and yelled, “Get in the truck with Lee, NOW!”

I didn’t even think of arguing. I told him to come with us, but he shook his head and kept fighting with the popup enclosure. Lee ran off, chasing a rabbit or something not green like an alligator. I raced after him, grabbed him around his scrawny little waist, and carried him crying and wiggling back to the fancy van. We jumped inside and, soaking wet, plopped down in the relative safety of its dry interior, watching Rob fight against failure, refusing to give in to the wind and heavy downpour. Soaked to the bone and backlit by explosive lightning and terrifying thunder, the man would not quit.

Here's another thing about Rob that most people didn’t know. His spiritual gift was stubbornness. He hated giving in. Hated losing at anything, especially playing Scrabble with me. Fortunately, he was also a really smart man who eventually admitted he was no match for a Florida thunderstorm in the woods. He threw down the soaking wet popup in disgust and raced over to where we sat inside the fancy van. He jumped in, slammed the door shut, steam rising off his head—not from the elements, but from his own anger.

Lee and I didn’t say a word. I’d never seen him mad like that before. There we all sat, in silence, waiting for him to cool off and say something. But he just looked out the windshield, soaking wet, sitting in the driver’s seat, with his thinning, curly hair plastered to his head.

And then, movement. A single drop of rain rolled slowly down his forehead and dripped off the end of his curved nose.

As God is my witness, I just couldn’t help myself. I put a hand to my face to try to stop it, but it was already in motion. Too late. I started laughing. Looking at me for his cue, Lee started laughing. Rob turned to glare at us but he couldn’t pull it off. His face turned tail, selling him out, and he dissolved into laughter, too, his shoulders shaking while he held his belly, he threw his head back and roared. There we sat, the three of us, dripping wet inside the fancy van, howling at the hilarious indignity Rob had just survived.

I’ve never met anyone who could laugh at himself the way Rob could.

When the storm blew by, the campsite was soaked, the popup was decimated and soggy, and we didn’t even think twice. In less than five minutes, we’d gathered up the survivors of our doomed expedition, threw the muddy mess into the back of the fancy van, and drove home. We pulled into the garage, closed the door, and never told a soul until Monday that we were there or how we’d created the original Stay-Cay by bailing on our camping trip and sleeping in our own warm, dry beds for the entire weekend.

It was glorious. There were no cell phones back then. No telephone answering machines. No one was expecting us at church or work or family anything. No one knew were home with the garage door closed, protecting our privacy. No one had any reason to call and interrupt our focus on our family. There, in the middle of civilization, in the aftermath of failure, we seized the moment and disconnected.

I was thinking about that trip last night. Every one of our camping trips was as miserable and memorable and laughable as that one. But that one, I think, has always been my favorite.

The weekend we cleared our calendars and just stayed home.

The Great Vay-Cay. Our unexpected disconnect. What a great idea.

With thanks to Dennis Church for permission to include the fabulous photo seen above. The original can be viewed by following this link: American Alligator | Six Mile Cypress Slough | Dennis Church | Flickr

Pickled Jalapenos

“What happened to your leg?” she asked, looking at its fresh scar as I tucked my feet into the warm water of the pedicure basin.

“Knife fight.”

Her eyes went wide, and she sat back in her low seat. “What?!”

I knew why she was surprised. In my blue jeans, pullover top, and sensible sandals I don’t look like the type to get into a bar brawl. I’m not. I don’t drink. And I wouldn’t want to ruin my nails.

“I was attacked by a dermatologist and she won,” I said. Skin cancers are my true enemies, not assailants in back alleys. Just to be safe, though, I try to avoid back alleys.

People underestimate me all the time. They size me up in half a glance and think they know me, sometimes writing me off in the process. Gray-blonde hair, probably a grandma. True. No wedding ring, must be a widow. Also true, although that one hurts. A lot. Squints at street signs, must need glasses. Seriously? Everyone my age squints. Sensible sandals, probably boring. Not true. My feet don’t typically get me in trouble. My mouth does.

Reconnecting at lunch with an old friend, she noticed something about me while I held the menu at arms’ length.

“Does that say the burgers come with jalapenos?” I asked her. “Cuz it kind of looks like they put pickles on them.”

“It says pickled jalapenos.”

“Oh. Maybe I’ll just have salad then. Pickles offend me.” I set the menu aside and picked up my coke.

“You have a tattoo,” she announced.

“I do?” I looked at my arm where a purple symbol smiled back at me. “I do!”

She laughed. “You don’t seem the type to have tattoos.”

“You have to watch out for the quiet ones,” I said. 

Warning people about quiet types usually makes them lean their heads to one side. They wonder what other secrets I'm hiding. What inside intel do I have that could make a salad appear more tantalizing than a pickled jalapeno burger?

I have two tattoos. Three, if you count the fact that I had the first one done twice. It hurt twice, so I’m counting it that way. The other one is on the inside of my foot which is one of the most painful places to let someone stab you with needles, so I’m counting that one twice, too. That gives me a grand total of four tattoos and a medal for bravery. Or idiocy. It’s a toss-up.

She was right, though. I don’t seem the type to do wild and crazy things. When I walk through a door, cloaked in insecurity as I am, I dress in a manner which allows me to blend in with the wallpaper. Although, I prefer to think of it as being stealthy. If no one notices me, it gives me plenty of time to size them up, too. I guess it works both ways.

It’s not like my Boring Badge is a new thing, though. I’ve had it since kindergarten when all the boys chased Brigitte Nelson across the playground because she was so perky while I watched from the top of the monkey bars because I was so sensible.  No way was I going to let a herd of five-year-olds tackle me in the grass. Do you know how hard it is to get grass stains out of a blue jumper?

Things were no better in high school. Instead of joining the yearbook committee with its cool staff advisor and after-school parties, I wrote articles for the school newspaper in a classroom where they never ordered in pizza during editing. Yearbooks are forever. Newspapers are for washing windows, if they even exist anymore, which I’m pretty sure they don’t.

Right after graduation, I married and went to work as a secretary for a law firm. Secretaries don’t exist anymore either because typewriters went the way of newspapers. Lawyers, however, have the same longevity as yearbooks. And the same after-school parties every Friday, only at the Five O’Clock Club. As fun as I know I am, I’m not as much fun as my also-married boss thought I should be.

One morning, he unexpectedly placed both hands on my desk, leaned in close and said, “I’d like to get you drunk some time and find out what you’re really like.”

I looked into his spectacled eyes where a slip of graying hair fell over the rim of his glasses and told him that would never happen.

“Why?” he asked. “Are you that good at keeping secrets?”

“No,” I told him. “I’m that good at staying sober.”

See, today we would call that sexual harassment. In 1977, I called it quits. I bet he never thought I’d expose him here in public for that. Surprise! Lucky for him, he’s probably dead by now and doesn’t care.

There are lots of ways to have fun that don’t involve hangovers or nasty extra-marital affairs. Actually, those two things don’t sound fun at all. They sound like a recipe for self-destruction and I’m too big a chicken to want to risk that.

I’m just saying, I think it’s fun to surprise people by not turning out to be the person they think you are. It’s kind of easy for me to do that to people because life keeps forcing me to change directions. I’m not turning out to be the person I thought I was, either. I’m discovering that some of my friends were right—I’m braver than I believed and stronger than I seem.

I’m toying with the idea of getting a third/fifth tattoo. Something delicate but bold, attractive but cautionary. Something that tells people who I am right off the bat so they can save time sizing me up or putting me down. A friend of mine has one of these. I bet she’d let me borrow it.

Fierce.   In twelve-point Lucida Sans Typewriter font. Just for old times’ sake. 

I don’t think it would scare off my dermatologist, though. I’ve got to stop meeting her in back alleys.