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there is no time machine
Being at Allume a few weekends ago, being there around so many women, their conversations were peppered with what is true in their lives. Words like “And then I discussed this with my husband…” or “My husband told me I should …..” “And that’s when my husband looked and at me and suggested …” And I don’t know these people. I don’t know their stories. I don’t know if this is their sixteenth husband – or their first – I don’t know if they are truthful women or liars. I don’t know. It doesn’t even matter. But, if I am being honest, it hurt to hear all that talk. It…
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beautiful & terrible
Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. Frederick Buechner I live in a farmhouse that is over one hundred years old. Things fall apart. Ancient dirt rises from the splintery wooden floors. What starts out as white, seldom stays white. But in this dusty home abide five of the most interesting humans I have ever known. There is a six-year-old with his filthy boy feet resting right on top of my clean pillow. He stops me, mid-sentence, all the day long to profess his love for me. Not even an hour usually passes without kisses and hugs and back pats from my Wilde…
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dichotomy
I can hear them from where I sit. Downstairs. On my bed. I’m typing and tears are in my eyes. Carrying the heavy in my heart and across my wrinkled forehead and all alone in this bedroom made for two but only hosting one. Their laughter is sweet. Their game play is kind and momentarily all completely happy and universally enjoyable by all five of them. My heart aches from the sounds – the happy upstairs, the hurt downstairs. For all the goo and the gunk and the ugly and the dark, I think my kids are finding happy in this day. I couldn’t be more grateful. And I couldn’t…
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the sign for my forehead
And I want to say – I am not the person I used to be. I want it printed on a t-shirt – no, a sign on my forehead in Sharpie or something. (Maybe another tattoo Dad?) I want everyone to know. This life has changed me. The past year my life and emotions and thoughts and actions have shifted and sorted and been bruised and pushed down and spilled over and poured out and exploded and imploded and wrecked havoc and brought peace and in all ways and in all manners have left me a different human. I used to return e-mails on time. Or at all. And I…
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the fact that it passes
My hands shake sometimes when I type. They shake with the fears that still rise and fall with some of my heart beats. (But not all of them.) They shake when my phone lights up with a troublesome text or when I run into a person I haven’t seen in many months and their expression reminds me that they know more about me than I know about them. That’s where I am. That’s what happens. But it doesn’t last. You know? It’s a flash. And it fades. And the fact that it doesn’t last is grace enough for me right now.
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wait
I have never waited well. I am terrible at transitions. I abhor in-between. I want to be Here or There but I cannot abide Nowhere. And yet this season this season I wait. I sit still and I try not to pace but I feel my feet shuffling. I try not to fret but I feel my heart pounding. People ask me, “Are you praying? Are you talking to God?” And I say, “Yes. As I breathe in and out. As I drive and as I sit. I mean – I talk, except I’m not certain what words I’m saying.” “And what does He answer?” they ask. I shake my…
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Coming Home, Being Thankful
I drove to Virginia early last week with just the kids. It’s been a tradition for many years for the moms and the kids to gather the week before our annual July Fourth party and spend time prepping for the party, corralling small children and laughing at nonsensical things. The husbands generally join us later in the week as soon as their jobs make it possible. So it was this week. And for the ride home Riley is staying with Emma a few extra days and driving the car Kevin drove up home. Which is why we were driving home Sunday with six kids instead of one and two grown…
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reminded. again.
Some days I feel as if I am just about two steps away from some sort of mental breakdown. (Oh, and some days I kind of exaggerate.) I’m not exactly sure which is more true today though – the breakdown or the exaggeration. Our green car, a gem of a vehicle made in the memorable year 1993 and featuring both a dented side door and bullet hole stickers placed on said damaged door by my husband, is currently in the shop. And has been for over a week now. Which makes us a one car family with three drivers needing to be at distinctly separate locations at least three days…
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off the grid
It seems that for the past four days or so I have been unofficially “off the grid”. Mostly unintentionally. I think I first jumped off the internet waves Thursday morning because I was just plain old too busy to get online. I was too busy . . . sweeping the filthy crumb-encrusted floors of our house, running to the grocery store to be sure we had adequate supplies of milk, cereal and ice cream, piling laundry in and out of the washing machine in hopes that our children looked slightly less like ragamuffins than usual, and making lists of what I needed to get accomplished before 3 p.m. (I never…
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Ringin’ It In.
I write a lot of posts about little kids. Our little kids. Because we have a lot of them. A lot of little kids. But we have a teenager too. And I’ve already shared about why posts featuring her name are less frequent than others. But we try to embrace these years of fashion and funk, tears and drama, breaking away and holding on in the same manner we embrace the poop and the broken pickle jars. (With a laugh and a joke. At least – the next day.) This New Year’s Eve might have found you toasting the past and the future with your friends, holding a fluted little champagne…
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Is this funny yet?
This story I am about to share actually happened last week. I had to wait that long to tell this story so that I could find it funny. I don’t know if it’s been long enough yet for me to think this day was all that humorous – but I’ll give it a shot. The scene: Two or three days in to a week where Kev was at an out of state conference. The set up: 1. Two kids with a total combined savings of $11.00 and a burning desire to purchase a Webkinz. (Webkinz = Marketing scheme designed to rob parents of cash cleverly disguised as a cute stuffed…
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Date Night
Our lunch table. Any day of the week. Normal. Wilder crying about something. Anything. Conversation about Legos and puppies being tossed back and forth and requests for more milk and another sandwich and do I have to eat all of this banana? Kevin trying to finish a story about his morning at work. Me ignoring milk pooling up around my ankle from a leaky sippee cup or something. Kevin just stops talking, takes a bite, then sighs and looks me earnestly in the eyes, “I love date nights.” And I get up from my end of the table (why do we sit at the heads?) and I walk over and…
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If You Are What You Eat – Then I’m In Trouble
Sometimes I like to describe my day by sharing a ridiculous true-life incident. And sometimes I get a kick out of breaking down the day’s events into numbers. But today? Today I am going to cruise down a new avenue. I think I’ll chronicle my yesterday according to what food items I consumed. How do you like them apples? (Them apples? Get it? A food joke.) No time for breakfast on Tuesdays – Bible Study morning. Which means getting ready (and getting five kids ready) to leave the house by 9 a.m. (Sure, that doesn’t sound early to people employed outside of their homes. I know. But to people employed…
