Hooray!

I had always used my first laptop to post to this blog. That machine has forgotten how to access the Internet here at home. It knew my password for the site. I did not. Today, the Lord has been gracious and given me the time and space to remember this is what I needed to do, to remember my original username, and to see my way through the reset process. None of it was difficult. No, no, let me rephrase that. Today, none of it was difficult. And life begins anew. Today.

how did this happen?

At one point in time, my family starved during September and October. I was watching baseball at dinnertime. We lived on the West Coast and the games started early.

Now I don’t even know this is the week of the All-Star break.

I also probably don’t know any of the all-stars.

I grew up with a father who followed the St. Louis Cardinals. In a living room, dark after the summer’s late twilight, Dad would sit and listen each night to Harry Carey’s play-by-play. If it was an afternoon game, the radio could be heard at the back of his store. When I visited my grandfather in St. Louis, we went to Sportsman’s Park for a Cardinal game and he taught me how to keep score. I am certain Grandpa lived as long as he did because his team kept winning in October. We never owned any Cardinal memorabilia. It was a different kind of head and heart thing.

Baseball is a beautiful game. As an adult I loved it for reasons that sound really hokey. I watched the Orioles and their rookie, Cal Ripken, as I was ironing in Virginia and my oldest was doing his own play-by-play outside with a tennis ball thrown against a tennis playback net. I watched the As on sunny afternoons that are particular to Northern California. The children and I could get into games for $2 and a Sprite can. An empty one. We could walk into the team offices and touch their World Series trophies. That’s where we bought season tickets after my parents moved to the area. Dad always wanted to get to the game in time for the first pitch. Most of the time, he went with one of the boys to the games. I am certain he was as excited as they were with the anticipation of a win for their team.

Dad also said that baseball would break your heart. He was talking about the team you love not winning when you want them to or when they need to or when they should have won.

How is it that I can have lost that caring about a team? I am definitely on the injured/disabled fan list.

I can change that.  But Dad was right it might break my heart.

open space

She got up and left just now. It was like one of those times when you were revisiting a place you have been before but not quite certain you are at the exact place you remember. And then you turn a corner and there it is. The exact place. Since she has lived here for the past two years and especially this year, I have not had time on the porch by myself very often. And when I do, it is in the very early morning or late evening. Make no mistake, I still treasure the time sitting here with her. She shares her thoughts and opinions, reads from interesting articles in the times or reviews the book she is currently reading. Her 90-year-old mind is working.  But now that she is inside making her bed, I am alone in the mid-morning on the porch. It is the exact place I remember.

dark

It’s late. Or early. I want to be asleep, but I don’t want to go to sleep. There are nights when I lie in bed and think. Not consciously about bad things, just lots of things. My days don’t have idle brain time. I wrote about what I did yesterday. Looked as if I had plenty of time to cogitate, but there is an element of time that is not measured linearly. Time that has bookends has difficulty supporting thoughts and activities that do not always have a definitive beginning or end. So it’s 2 o’clock in the morning and I am more relaxed than I am a 2;30 in the afternoon. I am on the porch. I am so happy to be on the porch. It is a place where I can be alone surrounded by endless time. And two street lights. And crickets.

an American in Paris

my son. the seeker. the encourager. the dreamer. may the Lord bless and keep you. may your days be filled with wonder and your steps be guided with wisdom. and what else? God alone knows.

it’s a man’s world

I loved handing the telephone to my husband all day. It was Father’s Day and the children–and grandchildren–and a son-in-law–wanted to talk with the man, the papa, the dad, the father. I had bought a card and wrote a rabbling note on it. I went from saying he was a guiding light to having fun and laughing a lot to whatever. It was difficult to put my thoughts on paper. On the one hand, it is so very easy to see where he is challenged in domestic tasks. On the other hand, being a father is not easy. You go to work where you have some degree of control and know what you are doing. You come home and there is cooking and laundry and cleaning to be done. Each job requires a new vocabulary that is probably not used at work. New tools. Often not very manly tools. And someone else in the house seems to do these jobs very easily. And then, there are the children. More new vocabulary. And why aren’t they doing what you used to do to have fun? Why do they laugh when I call the vacuum a sweeper? And what is a wii?

The man deserved every good thing about today. He means the world to me.

what was I thinking?

In a photograph of 20 family members, what do you see? For years and perhaps for generations, people will look at that photo from Saturday night and what. Our inclination is to think they will try to identify everyone in the photo. Good. Not easy after a few decades and especially since we are not standing in neat rows like in school. What else? They will quickly identify it as the picture taken at Grandma Mueller’s 90th birthday weekend. It will appear on everyone’s mantle at some point or at least surface in everyone’s picture drawer.

What will not be seen are the sounds and synapses. They will not be able to hear the voices, the thunder of the storm outside, the nervous laughter at small jokes being quietly shared while we wait.  And then, click. Take another picture. Click, click.

The sounds are easily described. Synapses, thoughts are more difficult. In looking at the picture, I of course look at myself. Shouldn’t have been sitting on the stool. Too dominate in the picture. Does my scarf look okay? What about my hair? I like my shoes.

And then I look around. And like a Buddhist monk, everything becomes one. I don’t look at hair or clothes or shoes. As family pictures go, it is quite ordinary I think. Many people  take pictures. Most  have big family events. But I know these people around me and they know me. We are more than names on Christmas cards. We are writing the same story even though the chapters, the characters, the setting, and the plot differ.  Right now and perhaps for the years to come, because of this weekend and this captured moment, we will write the same story. Different chapters, characters, settings, and plots. But the same story.

I never thought that would happen.

So in the picture,

summertime

First day of summer is like Friday night. Plenty of time. Everything is possible. And then suddenly it is Sunday night or late August  and there is so much left to be done. There is something to be said for relaxing and not having a to-do list or a schedule, but there is also satisfaction in accomplishing tasks that have been put off over the winter, or even over the last year. This summer I want to write an essay each week. I will go to my classroom each week. I have paper details that hang around me and need to be attended to with prayer. Ah, that’s another thing. More prayer. Walking more. A little trip each week with Mother. Neighbors? A party sometime–have to ask if the Rago midsummer party is happening this year and if I must work around it. Church? Contact the literacy person as well as the Jeremiah’s table person. Sit on the porch. Sit on the back porch. Eat properly. Help Curtis eat properly. Date night with Curt each week and help him in the garden. Plan trip to St. Louis. Actually I have to do that today. Simplify house. More time in the Bible. More time following the Son.

summertime and the living is easy.

no waffles

She was just finishing her breakfast as I arrived. The Quality Inn dining room was mostly empty and she had just a bite or so of her waffle left on her plate. Bob was adjusting a recalcitrant television. I thought breakfast had begun at 6:30 and was hoping to sit and share a last meal with my sister and her husband before they left for the airport at 7. There was no, “I am so glad to see you again. Sit down, we’re early. Have a cup of coffee.” Bob was ready to go. She stood up, gave a hug, and off they went.

I almost felt a little foolish. I was the younger sister again. I don’t have a gift for details, my car is ordinary, my finances are less than ordinary, my fingernails are short, my hair is my hair.

How I miss Steve. He knew how to rejoice in life and would do more than give me a pat on the back with a thank you or a pat on the head and thank you for all you do. Where is the joy?

Make me an instrument of thy peace. Help me to choose joy and share it.

Even without breakfast.

61

I have an hour and a half before my birthday and a new year. I have glimpsed into the future and it is full of all that I have in my heart. I look back and wonder at the passing of this year. I know I have learned the depth of God’s love for me and His patience. He has allowed me to stumble through the days and months. I have tripped over my love of earthly pleasures and grasped in the fog of my inattention to important details. I have tarried in places that have made me late–too late–for more glorious spots made for me. Each day the air has been left replete with words and phrases that are waiting to be collected. People I do not know are waiting for me. Those I know and love stand as the greatest testimony of God’s movement in my life.

My friend Ellen Amen once told me that everyone should have one day in which she can do whatever she wants to do. I have done just that on several birthdays. I remember driving across the San Francisco Bay Bridge on a ever-so-beautiful-California day, sunroof open, singing as loud as I could as I headed toward Marin County for one May 24. Tomorrow will be a day of my design. Okay, I will have to go to school, but I get to plan the schedule, remember? Curt has a presentation on Tuesday and Wednesday, so we will celebrate another day. However, Mother thinks we are going out to dinner in Frederick and I will come home to eat chocolate cake with her. I will come home and have the cake, but what shall I do with my hidden few hours? I will leave that for God to lead me. He already knows what will feed my soul and restore my spirit.

For today, I ask only that God watches over His child, as my days increase, bless and guide me wherever I may be. May He strengthen me when I stand; comfort me when discouraged or sorrowful; raise me up if I fall; and in my heart may His peace which passeth understanding abide all the days of my life.