There is a Time for Everything August 18, 2009

I have been struggling with this blog for awhile because I’m not posting with the same focus I had when I first started to write here.  When I first started this blog I was in a period of immediate, deep grief over the illness and then loss of my mom to cancer.  Along with that came the wonderful gift of gardening — something she had loved and I had just found — to carry me through some very, very hard days.  All of this poured into and fed the growth of my faith and a period of discovery about both myself and, more importantly, my God.

Solomon (not the Beetles) had his heart set in solid truth when he wrote Ecclesiastes 3:1-8:

¹ There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:

² a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,

³ a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,

⁴ a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,

⁵ a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,

⁶ a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,

⁷ a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,

⁸ a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

I think that this is part of why I’ve felt very unfocused in my writing here recently.  I have entered a new season of life.

This is not to say that grief is gone — I can’t think of a day that goes by without some thought or longing to be with my mom in heaven, worshipping our Creator.  Time has a way, though, of softening sharp edges and the Spirit has a way of using Christ’s redeeming power to take every sorrow and draw from it joy.  As this process has happened I have slowly shifted my focus to other needful things:  my marriage, my son, my home…

As a result, the gardening posts will likely be fewer (though I do have a new plot to sink my hands into at this late part of the growing season), my posts about my mother likely farther in between (though my life with her informs every part of life after her going home).  You’ll hear me talking dollars more than any girl who hates even thinking about money ought, and struggling through the fast-paced adventures of raising my little boy.  You’ll likely hear about a lot of apologies made to my husbad, though I hope those become fewer, too (out of peace, clearly, rather than a hardening of heart).  Cooking?  Well, I’ll never stop talking about that.  And my Savior?  As the old hymn tells us, “Lord I need thee every hour.”  And I do.

But yes, my focus has changed.  And having said just that, I feel more free to post the things I’m dealing with now.  I hope it’s interesting and helpful to you — because it’s interesting and helpful to me.  Indeed, there is a time for everything.

Seeing and Being Seen July 25, 2009

When she was a senior in high school, my mom was nominated for and then won the Miss Elsinore contest in the little town she grew up in.  She went on to get a runner-up slot in the Miss Riverside contest that same year.  I remember being agog at the fact that my very own, every day, utterly normal (only in a kid’s eyes!) mom was a beauty queen!  I would press her for all sorts of details and was constantly left a little disappointed because she seemed so completely uninterested in it all.  She would say things like, “Well, it wasn’t ME on that stage.  I had on 10 pounds of make-up!” and “Oh I hated that picture…but you know, I DID get to leave class one day for that photo shoot and that was pretty fun.”

The first time what she was saying to me really started to make sense was when I was a teen.  I’d brought the story up again and begged her to drag out the photos and she told me a few details of that week to make me happy.  “Mom, were you SO popular then?”  She laughed.  “Well, I had a date every day that next week!”  The thought of it made my toes positively curl with glee.  “And did any of them end up being your boyfriend?”  “Oh, love, NO.  No.  They didn’t want to go on a date with ME.  They wanted to go out on a date with Miss Elsinore.  To say they’d gone out to dinner with the local beauty queen.”

And there, plainly, was the crux of the matter.  Mom did not feel like, when she won that contest, it was based on real things.  She did not feel that she had been really seen.  She didn’t feel that it really had anything to do with who she really was at all.  Any real piece of her that had been there for judging had been slathered under pounds of stage makeup.

When I fell in love with my husband, I barely remembered how to put makeup on.  It was in 2001 at the tail end of my mother’s first bout with cancer.  It had been a grueling year and I felt stripped of artifice of any kind.  When we met I wasn’t looking for a relationship at all — I was utterly unprepared to be charming or beautiful or socially acceptable.  I was in a stage of my life where I grossed people out inadvertently by just explaining the day-to-day basics of our lives.  What we found funny at home other people in non-cancer world did not find funny.  When people asked, “How are you?” I couldn’t gracefully tell anymore whether they really wanted to know or if they were just asking because that was how conversation was supposed to go and the next line was supposed to be “Oh, fine thank you!  And you?”

I remember walking toward Ryan one night at a little dive we used to go to after coming out of the ladies room and realizing that for the first time of any that I could think of when he looked over and saw me and lit up with a smile, he was smiling at me.  All my cracks and dings and rawness were right there in front of him and he was delighted to have me coming over to slide back into the seat across from him.  As much as I loved him for so many wonderful things, I loved him for that.

There is something, I think, about being laid bare, recognized for who you are, and loved in the face of it all.

This is, in the end, what makes the love of my Savior so intoxicating and breathtaking when I stop in day-to-day business and ponder him.

Think about it:  There are stars in the sky so far away that our very strongest telescopes can only pick them out as specks of light in the vast distance.  Yet our physical beings are determined by 25,000 human genes that were not fully mapped until less than a decade ago and are contained in such microscopic detail that no human eye could ever decipher them without powerful aid.  Romans 1 declares that what can be known of God has been made plain to men and that His eternal power and divine nature are clearly seen in the things that have been made.  What creation tells us is that our God is unfathomable.  He is greater than we can even begin to comprehend.

With the greatest of care and imagination He knit each of us together in our mothers’ wombs.  He named us before we had names.  He knew us before we could be known by any other being and knew us more fully than we even know ourselves.  Every hidden dark place, every decision made wrong, every hatred, every cheat, every selfishness, every slight given was before his eyes when he then chose to love us with a deep, never-ending, fierce, perfect love.  He holds back nothing in that love.  Nothing at all was too great a sacrifice — not even the cross.

If, tonight, you are needing to feel love — ponder on this for awhile.  As unlovable as you may feel you are loved beyond what you can possibly imagine.  If you are God’s and springing to the front of your mind is “Yes but you don’t know what I…” — I can tell you that no matter how you finish that sentence, no matter how dark the ending, God knows and he loves you anyway.  If you acknowledge him, if you love him, if the darkness of the things you keep tight in your heart make you understand your need for the cross and, therefore, thankful for it then I can assure you that He knows and loves you still with a love that makes all things good and new.  He sees you and He has allowed himself to be seen.

I’m just a little bit agog about all of this tonight and so I thought I’d share.  Maybe now my brain will quiet down enough for me to sleep.

A Monument to Joy in Loss July 7, 2009

When we knew my mom was dying — really dying and soon — family began to pour in to see her at the hospital as we waited for hospice to be set up so she could come home.  We still thought that perhaps we had a few weeks with her but there was a certain urgency in my heart to say something to her.  To say…what?  I thought a lot about the things that people say in deathbed scenes in books and movies and on TV.  So many people feel the need to plead for forgiveness for that last wrong they thought of, that last hurt that had gone buried all those years, to confess, to clear the air, to leave no potential stone of regret unturned at the end.  I felt no need for any of that with my mom at her deathbed.

Throughout the Old Testament you read about the people of Israel raising monuments as reminders to themselves and all who observed them of the glorious things God had done for them and through them.  In the beginning of the book of Joshua, after 40 years in the wilderness, the people of Israel finally were able to cross the Jordan and enter into their promised land.  The first thing they did after crossing over the Jordan was take 12 stones, one for each tribe of the people, and build a monument with them.  Joshua instructed them to do this so that when their children asked what the stones meant, the people would be reminded to tell the children of God’s mighty work of stopping up the waters of the over-filled Jordan so that his people might pass safely on dry ground.

On the one hand, it’s sort of funny to think that a people would need a monument to remember a story like that.  You know?  HOW could you forget seeing the water piled up on itself as Scripture said it was, waiting for you to cross into the new home you’d been waiting your whole life to reach?  It’s preposterous!  Well, it’s funny and preposterous until you stop and take a good look at the frailty of your own memories and how they can be changed so easily and quickly sometimes.

We’re told later on that the people fell into sin and disarray almost immediately and that it was because they did not teach their children to remember the mighty ways of what God had done to deliver them.  They did not remember themselves.

And can’t you hear it?  Imagine, say, even fifteen years later, how the story might have been twisted at first.  “Daddy, really did God stop up the water?  Did it really pile up so high while you crossed over that it was taller than your head??” “Oh son, I was so young then and so small!  Why, I was shorter than you are now.  So perhaps the water seemed very high but…”  “Oh son, it was so long ago.  But the water was very shallow.  Perhaps it had been a dry season that year and we were so releaved to cross over that it seemed as if the very hand of God stopped the water and dried out the sand…”

But no.  No that was not how the story went at all.  And the people all together that first day lay those stones and all acknowedged the supernatural greatness of what had been done by their mighty God.  They acknowledged it together so that later together they could help each other remember how it really happened and so that they could continue to praise their mighty God and teach their children to praise him as well.

And so this is the monument I want to raise — a monument to the joy I was allowed while losing my mother, because of the God she loved and served and who I love and serve as well.  I nearly lost this memory, it very nearly got changed in the telling, and so I want to preserve it here now.

This was the last real conversation I had with my mom:

Sitting and holding her hand while my dear husband looked on, I was able to tell her thank you for her love and for the fact that I did not feel the need to beg forgiveness for anything.  It was not my own perfection that allowed me to feel this.  Rather, I felt no need to beg because I knew that forgiveness had been freely and openly given already and I rested in the peace of that — thankful, so very thankful that because of that forgiveness I could simply bask in her love and my own love for her.

I hurt my mother deeply through the 29 years of my life with her.  Sometimes I hurt her unintentionally and sometimes I did it very intentionally.  Sometimes I did not mean to be ugly and sometimes I was ugly just to feel the power of the effect it had on her.  I was, indeed, sometimes that kind of daughter.  And we did have wonderful, sweet times together — they far outnumbered the bad times.  But they did not make up for the bad times at all.  There was real and deep hurt there.  But Christ went deeper still.

And so sitting there wanting badly to say the right last things, the most important last things, I found that all there was in my heart was love and thanks and more love and more thanks and a whole lot of expectation for the time when, after I spend the whole rest of my earthly life missing her, I would get to see her again as we worshipped at Jesus’ throne.  And so that’s what I told her and she understood me perfectly.

You see, my mom knew herself before a perfectly righteous and just God.  She knew herself to be a sinner.  She didn’t think that, on her own merit, she would someday stand before His throne and hear “You did good, kid.  We’ll call it even.”  In fact she had a sense of her own sin that was so sincere that it seemed sometimes ridiculously out of proportion to the sweetness and the love we all knew from her.  But because she wasn’t comparing herself to the rest of the world but rather to her perfect Savior, she knew keenly that she fell short.  And that made the love and forgiveness she found at the foot of His cross so precious to her.  It was so precious, so powerful, so all-encompassing in its enormity that it changed her utterly and it made her like Him.  And because she was learning to be like Him I found in my mother love and forgiveness and tenderness and self-sacrifice all wrapped in real joy that taught me about Him, too.

And so, at the end of that confession of all that was in my heart to her, do you know what my mom said?  She didn’t deny that there were things that had had to be forgiven.  She acknowledged that all of what I’d said and known of her heart was true.  And then she told me that she was proud of me because she could see the fruit of Jesus’ love for me in my life and that other people had shared with her that they could see His work in me, too.  And she told me that she loved me.  And we cried — a lot.

It was the best deathbed confession I could have possibly come up with, only it wasn’t contrived.  It was what was in our hearts and it was real.

You might wonder why I’m writing about this now, almost a year and a half later.

Over the course of a few months this last year my memory of this time with my mom began to change a bit.  What I remembered were the parts of what I’d said to her about having no regrets to come to her with.  Somehow my memory changed and left out the parts that had to do with our mutual knowledge of God’s forgiveness in our lives.  I didn’t remember at all her response to me.  Rather, what remained in my mind became a picture of me blithely and somewhat insensitively refusing to acknowledge the full picture of our relationship together and insisting that it had been good enough for me to have no regrets.  I started to cringe at myself.  I no longer thought of that time with her at the end with peace in my heart and it started to color all of the other memories of that sweet and painful time of loss over the next few days before she went home.  Suddenly, where there had been none before, I had regret.

God is faithful where our memories are not and one day in my kitchen I paused over a counter I was scrubbing and was suddenly overwhelmed with the need to remember what she’d said to me.  WHAT had she said to me when I’d so calously informed her that I had nothing at all to be sorry for?  I paused and closed my eyes and forced myself to think through the hot shame that this partial memory brought and remember what she’d said in response to me…she said…that in me she could see the work of Jesus.

And the rest of it came flooding back.

Oh what relief to see that whole picture again!  Jesus!  He is mighty to save.  He is faithful to forgive.  He lives and pleads for me!  HE was the reason we had no regret.  HE was the reason losing her was suffused with joy.  HE was the reason, He was the topic, He is our mighty God.

When I read the story of Isreal and their monument at the Jordan I though to myself, “I must raise one of my own.”

Here it is.

God brought me over the trecherous river of my faulty memory safely and reminded me of the joy and peace only He could give.

Truly, He is my Rock and He is my salvation.

What Food Can Make Real for Us July 4, 2009

As I sat in our kitchen one day about two years ago, feeding my one-year-old son his lunch and eating my own, I began to think about food and how much I hoped that my son would grow up with a taste for foods from all over the world.  That led me to thinking that I just wanted him to know about all the different groups of people in the world, to understand what a great, diverse, and colorful place this world is. I want him to know how these things point to the greatness, creativity and glory of God, who has “measured the waters in the hollow of his hand,” and “with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens. Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket,” and “weighed the mountains on the scales and the hills in a balance.”  (Isaiah 40:12)

I grew up in a home of daily devotions around the dinner table during which my father would often pull out our copy of Operation World and allow my brothers and me to pick any country we liked.  Dad would read to us about the country, we would talk about any missionaries our family knew who might live there, and then we would pray together for the people and needs there.  On our kitchen wall we had a gigantic world map which was bordered on all four sides with pictures of loved ones and missionaries for whom my family prayed throughout the years.  Pins marked on the map the location of each person or family and I spent many hours in front of them considering the faces, work, and lives represented in each one.  I wish I could say that I sat patiently through our devotions and obediently and hungrily absorbed the things Dad was trying to teach us, but I’d be lying.  However, those Operation World lessons caught my attention and something about the thought of these different lands and different cultures excited me and made a lasting connection in my mind.

Along with devotions around the table, my mother served us many delicious meals there.  Often they were the favorites served at just about any table across our country then and now, but my mom also occasionally served us foods from other countries or with biblical significance.  One that I still serve in my home now was Jacob’s Pottage.  I can’t stir those lentils and rice, pour the lemon-paprika dressing that accompanies it, or take a delicious bite without thinking about Esau coming home ravenous from hunting, and understanding just a little bit, how he could have sold his birthright to his brother for the sake of that simple meal.  Something about the food brings the story close to home for me and I still remember giggling with delight when Mom told me that this meal we were eating could be very like the one in the Bible from so long ago.  It was history on the table right in front of me!  It made the story seem real and possible, rather than like some story from the past in some far away land with no connection to me and my life here.

And so, sitting with my son as he gleefully consumed fist-fulls of broccoli and cottage cheese, I pondered how to go about making those same connections for him.  A desire I have had since the moment I knew I was pregnant with him was to impart an understanding and love for the greatness of God and the love He holds for all of His people of every shape and size, every color and hue, and from every country.  I want the connections to be strong, the lessons to be colorful and interesting, and for him to appreciate and value the importance of the work that missionaries do in the world.  I believe that this is a desire with which any believing parent can identify.

That is going to be the goal of some of my upcoming posts over the next few months:  To give children food that nourishes their bodies, hearts and minds and that creates with each meal a picture of another place in this world.  I’d like to provide some recipes and information that brings into present focus the reality of the work missionary families are doing to spread the precious word of God around the world.  It is my hope that through this learning God will be glorified as our children begin to piece together an understanding of the greatness and mighty works of the God to whom we look for all things and to whom we owe all things.

Does this sound interesting to any of you at all?

My Mom’s Hands June 24, 2009

“Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her.”

This year, all of a sudden, my hands have begun to look like my mom’s.  And as they have taken on some of the look of hers, I have seen my hands doing things my mom used to do so skillfully.  She had a particular way of holding a tomato when she diced it in order to keep all the layers from slipping apart.  She was so particular, my mom.  She was an artist in the genes and in training and it came out in everything she did in our home:  the way she sprinkled paprika just so on the tops of deviled eggs (no haphazhard clusters there!), the way she used a crinkly-edged dough cutter for the tops of her mince tarts at Christmas and dusted them so beautifully with cinnamon sugar (was it just my imagination, or did she actually manage to place those sugar crystals in such a way that they’d catch extra light?), and perfectly folded under a wrong-sized table cloth on our dinner table so that every edge hung just right.

I, on the other hand, am a less precise person.  No matter how sincerely I believe that the pieces into which I am cutting a cake are uniform while I’m doing the cutting, they’re all, uh…wonderfully unique in the end.  Yes.  My table is rarely graced with a table cloth, but it’s been dyed lovely shades of eggshell pink, green and blue since Easter and we’re really growing quite fond of the patterns that were made that fateful morning when three separate bowls of egg dye got upset nearly all at once.  And my pie crusts, well, let’s just say my style is “rustic”.

My mom and I used to laugh at my failed attempts at decoration, precision and artistic form.  I just assumed I had no talents in those areas.  But another thing if I’m honest:  A lot of times I was just too scared to try.  I mentioned earlier in the week how I avoid hard things.  I think I just always assumed that, because my mom was naturally talented at so many things, she never had to try.  But in reflection on her, I know that’s not true.  My mom worked hard.  When I try to think of the woman who has come closest to the tireless, faithful, unceasing effort of the woman depicted in Proverbs 31, my mom comes to mind.  I know there are others but she’s the one I know by heart and memory.  If I search back into my memory now with my own understanding as a mother and a homemaker and wife, I see things that I didn’t see when I only had the eyes of a child (or a childish woman, for that matter).

Over this last year, finally, I have spent some serious time considering my roles as a wife, a mother, and a homemaker.  What I have realized is that my jobs will never be done.  They are not the types of jobs that should ever be done.  Just like the process of being sanctified, changed into the person God wants me to be, it won’t be done until I go home to be with Him.  In fact, my roles are a part of that process that He has so graciously provided for me.  Carolyn Mahaney over at Girl Talk wrote something quite awhile ago.  It struck me then and it’s coming to mind now as something my mom could have written, too:

“I got out of bed each morning so that I could do everything I did the day before.
I washed the dishes so they could be dirtied again.
I ironed the clothes so they could be worn and wrinkled again
I wiped noses so they could run again.
I picked up toys so they could be played with again.
I mopped the floor so mud could be tracked on it again.
I cooked meals so that I could go to the grocery store again.
I made beds so they could be slept in again.

Some days I wondered: if I do all I do, only to have it undone, am I really doing anything?”

Carolyn knew, and I know my mom knew, too, that the resounding answer to that question is, “Yes!”  And while she, with our dad, built our home and relationships and foundations for us she was being refined into something beautiful.

Tonight, in between paragraphs, my hands are caked in flour from rolling out pita bread dough. It’s what really made me think to write about this today in the first place.  I am wearing my mom’s ring on my right hand (it was my dad’s mother’s before that) and my hands have caloused and there are lines where flour has marked and highlighted their roughness.  It is my prayer that these rough hands of mine are a sign that I, too, am being refined, smoothed and shaped by my Redeemer into something beautiful.  Just like my mother was before me.

For the Kingdom of Heaven Belongs to Such As These July 9, 2008

Today I made pancakes for Eamonn and Ella as a treat because they have been such loves this week. They have fallen back into their easy pattern together: sharing more than arguing, hugging more than shoving, and running to each other and flinging their arms around each other dramatically every time we get to the condo.

On the way down the freeway, the closer we get to Ella’s house, Eamonn tells me with more and more frequency at every mile, “Mom? I luff Ellas. Mom? I luff Sy (his name for Josiah). Mom? I see Tata (his name for Crista, which we find hysterical)? Mom? I Ellas? I luff Ellas and Yon (my brother).” In between each of these sentences I am peppered with demands to go to “Ampa’s” house and told that “Dah-ee” is at work and that Dah-ee, too, is the object of his undying luff.

When we get to Ella’s, I hardly get the door open before they are running at each other, a tangle of 5-and-2-year-old hug in the entryway. “ELLAS!” my son cries. “OH EAMONN!! I’m SO GLAD you’re finally HERE!” Ella responds. “Hi, Sy!” Eamonn croons at Josiah in his exersaucer and then cries, “Won, Ellas! I play!” Leaving me to the baby, Ella and Eamonn run down the hall together to drag her play table and chairs into the living room while I get Josiah ready for breakfast. They sit across from each other while Eamonn sips “cossee” and Ella reads, like the oldest old married couple you ever did see — perfectly content in their pretend routine and comfortable in the given of the other’s love.

This makes my mornings good.

Because we’ve had a reign of peace this week, as I said, we celebrated this morning with blueberry pancakes. “Aunt Mary?” Ella asked as I whipped up the batter, “Are these blueberry pancakes going to have chocolate chips in them? Because that would just be my favorite.” I secretly designed to put chocolate chip smiley faces on them, but to no avail — we only just had blueberries.

Over breakfast Eamonn chattered and Ella asked for interpretations or interpreted his words to her own designs. “I think he is maybe asking if we can watch TV after breakfast Aunt Mary.” “Really, Ella?” I replied, “Because he just said something about vitamins.” “Oh! Vitamins?” she replied, “Well why would he ask about vitamins? I just thought maybe he likes Sesame Street. That’s what I was thinking.”

It is very hard not to laugh over breakfast.

And then she hit me with it.

“Aunt Mary?”

“Yes, love?”

“Even though Grandma is with Jesus now, could we still have a party for her? You know, when her birthday comes? She still has a birthday, right?”

“Yes. Yes she does, Ella. It’s in October.”

“So, we could maybe have a party for her, I was thinking? We could remember her even though she’s not here anymore?”

“I think that would be a great idea. We could remember all the things we love about her while we were together.”

I swallowed tears and choked down pancakes.

“Aunt Mary?”

“Yes, love?”

“What did Grandma give me? I mean, which of my toys did she give me that I could bring to the party? I am thinking maybe I would like to bring two things to talk about that she gave me.”

“I don’t know, love. We need to ask your Mommy about that. Like…Eamonn…he sleeps with his tiger from Grandma Wagner and his Dino from Grandma Kathy…I know she gave you toys too but I just can’t think which ones those are.”

“I know I have some,” she said. “I just cant think what they are. But she did give me things.”

“I’m sure she did, love. I’m just not sure which things.”

It’s amazing how quickly pancakes, butter and syrup can taste like cardboard. We ate to the track of Eamonn’s chatter.

“Aunt Mary!!”

“Yes, love?”

“I thought of it! I thought of what she gave me!”

I thought she meant a toy and asked, “You did? That’s great! What did she give you, Ella? What would you bring to the party?”

“Aunt Mary, she gave me all of her MEMORIES! That’s what Grandma gave me! All the things I remember. That’s what she gave me. I will have those with me for always!”

And so, for the umpteenth time, I did not make it through breakfast without weeping.

Just as many nights I end the same way.

Twice in the last week my son has been woken in the night, weeping. I go into him and immediately after I calm him he asks, “Mom, pray?” Always, I agree and we begin to pray. But inevitably he interrupts me, “Mommy…I pray Ampas.” “You want to pray for Grandpa, Eamonn?” “Yes,” he tells me, “Pray Ampas.” And so, we pray. We pray for all our hearts but on those nights we pray especially for Grandpa’s.

The Lord used my Mom to touch hearts and she certainly touched Ella’s…a kid with one of the softest hearts I’ve ever encountered. And I am so thankful to see how my Dad has touched Eamonn in some way that goes beyond the explainable, but gives me joy all the same. As my mother-in-law so aptly puts it regarding these children, “There are waters that run deep.”

It is so humbling when your faith is challenged by that of a child, but it is hard not to be challenged in the face of Ella’s faith and Eamonn’s instinctual desire for prayer. I go through so many days challenged, hurting, not thinking of the hope I possess so securely because of what Jesus has done for me.

I keep stopping here and not knowing what else to write tonight. How do you go beyond something like that? Tonight I cannot. It’s as far as my heart will go. And for now I am content to be led by the wisdom of a child…and I am thankful for the solace of prayer and my memories.

Such pals from the very beginning…Mom and Ella

Mom and Dad with Eamonn hours after his birth

Longing June 6, 2008

Eamonn woke up in the middle of the night shivering and crying and I’d brought him to bed with us for a little while so that he could calm back down and drink some water. I slept for a bit with my nose in his hair, remembering all the nights I clung to my mom when I was little, wishing that she could just stay the whole night with me. There are few aches like the aches we feel when we long for our mommies. I hold him a little closer when I feel like that and his poor, hot baby skin burned against mine while his fever did its work and he fell back to sleep.

I have been having strange dreams every night and last night was no exception. I keep dreaming I am with my mother and that she doesn’t know she’s dead and that it’s my job, somehow, to make her understand. I wonder what my heart is trying to process that makes me dream this over and over again?

When we woke up this morning, Eamonn and I were both a little the worse for wear. Since I was a little kid, a family remedy for morning blues was a trip to the local diner where all the waitresses know you. So I packed Eamonn up with promises of pancakes and we headed out to our nearest family-owned diner for breakfast.

My visits to this particular diner have been shaky at best since Mom died. It was a favorite of my mom’s and mine. It is where she, my mother-in-law, and I went for pie after seeing Eamonn on 4d ultrasound for the first time. We sat in awe with huge smiles and lots of tears, cooing to the waitresses about how clearly cute and talented my boy already was, even in the womb. We used to just sit there on rainy afternoons and laugh at Eamonn’s antics as he flirted with waitresses and old ladies who stopped by the table to say hi. It’s a busy place, but they never hesitate to pour you just one more cup of coffee over and over again when they know you. It’s the place mom took me for lunch to let me know that her cancer was back. She’s the only person I know who would buy you lunch to soften the news of her own cancer. Doesn’t it seem like cancer should be a free lunch ticket? But not to my mom.

On our visit to the Village Kitchen the week before last, I finally explained to Curtis, the owner’s son, why Eamonn and I had switched down from being a party of three to a party of two. It makes it a little easier to know that they know when I well up over my coffee, which seems unavoidable when I’m there these days. Today was no exception.

I ordered eggs, pancakes, and bacon for us. I always get cheese on my scrambled eggs and while Eamonn and I were eating we started to laugh as I pulled and pulled at a bite of cheddar and egg — the string of melted cheese was never-ending no matter how much I twirled my fork. Suddenly, like a loudspeaker had been turned on in my head, I heard my mom laughing. When Eamonn was about a year old we’d ordered him a grilled cheese sandwich and laughed over the very same melty cheese. “It’s longhorn cheddar!” she’d giggled, “What a dirty trick to play on a kid!” and we’d melted into hysterics while trying to help him manage his sandwich with such a little mouth and little hands.

Bam. Tears. That’s all it takes right now. Oh how I wanted her there.

Eamonn lasted beautifully through breakfast and then a trip to the hardware store for canning jars, but he was so tired when we got home. I put him down for his nap early and after listening to him cry for a little while he started to sob, “I lubbus, mommmm. Mommmmm, I lubbus!” His baby version of “I love you.” I couldn’t resist. I went and scooped him up and snuggled him against me in his rocker while he finally calmed down and slept. The smell of him, the weight of him, and the feel of his little hand on my neck — all of them made me ache.

This all got me to thinking about longing. I deal with a lot of longing right now. I shudder sometimes to think about the weight of the longing my father must feel without my mother there anymore. But in the midst of all of this longing, there is hope. And maybe this is why, though I long I do not fall apart the ways I expected to. And maybe this is why, too, I keep dreaming that my mother does not know that she’s dead. I’m trying to reconcile my earthly understanding of death and the seeming permanence of it with the faith I have that what we see here is not all there is.

Last night while I was cleaning, I unearthed the Christmas letter my mom wrote in 2006, only months before we found out that her cancer had returned. After all the family news was done, she mentioned that for the first time in years, we were all going up to spend Christmas with the extended family — her brothers and all of our cousins and our kids. She wrote:

“The whole bunch of us are going, and there’ll be lots of hilarity and reminiscing over old times, longing for others who won’t be able to be there, and remembering loved ones long gone. It will be a sweet time, and we can hardly wait.

There is another greater Family Gathering coming that we both find harder and harder to wait for with each passing year. That gathering will be what our Creator took on flesh for on that first Christmas and BURST into history to do battle to reclaim. It will be what He WON, on the cross, at the cost of His own life. It will be what He planned from the very beginning — His living in warm-hearted “family-ness” with His people — no more guilt on our part, no more fear, only perfect security and everlasting purpose and contentment. And it will be just as real as you standing there with this letter in your hand reading about it.”

Yes.

And so as I weep and ache and long, I do not despair. My mind is trying to grasp that while she is gone from here, she is alive and well. And all shall be well. All manner of things will be well. And it will be just as real as you sitting here in front of your monitor reading this blog.

Eat That Weed! – Purslane May 28, 2008

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I didn’t ever pay enough attention when my mom was talking about plants. And boy do I regret that. But something surprising I’ve been finding is how much miscellaneous information that I didn’t realize had registered at all is floating around in my brain just waiting to be discovered.

And this brings me to “the weed” I insisted not get pulled when Jocelyn came and helped me one day in the plots. The thing is, I didn’t have much of an explanation…she was weeding and I said, “Don’t pull that one! I mean…well…I think they might be edible or good or something…so…leave those.” Sweetly, which is the only way Joce ever responds to my requests, no matter how hair-brained they might be, she said, “Okayyyy…” and left them meticulously be.

A few days later, Juan was in his plot and I worked up the courage to go and ask him about the weeds. I say worked up the courage not because he is intimidating or unkind — this couldn’t be further from the truth. But I had already pestered him about my strawberries and he had offered to help me with those, and then I had pestered him about the tomatoes I had being swallowed up by my squash so he helped me with those, and then he had offered to help me re-cover my strawberries, too. I didn’t want to become the cringe-worthy neighbor who was never just saying hi and ONLY ever borrowing a cup of sugar. But I gathered up my courage and went and asked.

“Juan?”

“Hi Mary! How are your strawberries? I worry for them…”

“Oh, fine…they are beautiful. Thank you, Juan. I’ll have that new plastic soon.”

“How soon? They need the better plastic, Mary…”

“Thursday maybe?”

“Okay, Thursday I be here with plenty of time and we do it. I do it for you.”

I really love this guy. He is amazing and generous.

“Juan? Those things down there…” I pointed to the weeds he has like mine, which he seems to either cultivate or just let be. “Are those good or bad? I mean…okay my mom used to tell me that In Mexico they are a vegetable, not a weed.”

He laughed. “It is good. People eat it. We do eat it in Mexico. I? I don’t like it so much but you cook it and you eat it. I don’t know…It is not my favorite but it is good.”

It turns out we were discussing verdolaga. In the U.S. it’s commonly thought of as a weed and we call it purslane. In fact, when some of the other gardeners found out that I was going to try eating it, they wished me well, offered a memorial service and the always jovial Dick clutched me in a hug saying, “Well, it was nice knowing you. You’re a lovely girl! Can I have your zucchini?” Oh those gardeners.

But the thing is, after a little bit of research, I have begun to find some things out about purslane that maybe we Americans del Norte might want to pay some attention to. For instance, purslane is remarkably high in an Omega 3 fatty acid known as alpha lenolinic acid — very unusual in a food that is not fish (New England Journal of Medicine, 1986). According to the New York Times, it also contains surprising amounts of melatonin (which aids in sleep) and other beneficial nutrients. Surprisingly, a simple Google search of purslane showed multiple write-ups in the New York Times and the Washington Post. “Really?” I thought. “About a weed?”

But the idea of “weed” is really just ours. Apparently, purslane is eaten and relished all over the world — Mexico, Greece, Kuala Limpur, to name just a few places that think differently than we do in the U.S. But purslane is having something of a comeback here, too. This little, hardy succulent is beginning to be a hot item in farmer’s markets and chefs are using it more and more in top restaurants.

So last night I took the plunge. I heard from Juan that he and his daughter would be pulling out their purslane that day because it was choking out their bell peppers and so I came home with a huge bag of it, promising everyone who dubiously watched me leave that I’d return with a recipe if it was, indeed, good. Here is a picture of what I brought home. I was soaking to revive it after an hour in a hot car while I ran errands on the way home:

The recipe I used was for Greek Island Chickpea Salad With Purslane and Arugula from the Times. If you have the following in your kitchen, you can make the salad:

• arugula
• chickpeas
• purslane
• capers
• lemons or lemon juice
• garlic
• olive oil
• salt and pepper

This is how it turned out:

I have to say, it’s a rare day that I have pesto and pine nuts on my plate and something else interests me more. This was one of those days. Ryan and I purred our way through dinner and though the recipe allegedly made 4 servings of salad, we finished it between the two of us. And look! I’m still alive the next day!

So gardeners, think twice before you pull that weed. It might just be your next favorite vegetable.

Gosh, I’m glad I sort of listened to my mom sometimes, even without meaning to.

Simple Things May 24, 2008

On any given day, depending on the time, you could almost guarantee you’d find my mom eating and drinking certain things with the smallest margin of error possible. She was a lady of simple tastes for the most part. But let me tell you, she knew good.

Sweet cold tea with a ton of ice.
A buttery english muffin with avocado on top.
Fresh toasted bread with real butter and honey.
Good Earth tea.
Plain old Red Rose tea.
Vanilla ice cream with Hershey’s syrup.
Really good tomatoes with salt and pepper.
A milky cup of coffee.
Fresh corn on the cob.
Radish sandwiches.
Cantaloupe and watermelon in the middle of a hot afternoon.
Give that lady a pot of water and she could make delicious soup out of anything.

The first morning home with our son, my husband and I were greeted by my mother at the door with a pan of the best cinnamon rolls in town. She heated them in our oven and served them to us while we all stared, agog, at our new son. I’ll likely never eat one again without thinking of that.

When we were kids and storms from the desert would push their way over the foothills and rattle us with thunder and lightning, she’d make popcorn and hot chocolate. At my niece’s birthday party a few weeks ago I asked an old neighborhood friend if he remembered that. He got this look on his face and said, “You know, I hadn’t for a long time but just now when you said that? Man…I can TASTE it! I can taste it and almost smell the rain!” Her love was not lavished on only her own kids.

We grew up in a town that gets hotter than blazes in the summer and stays hot until well into October. We had no air conditioning and so keeping cool was always of prime importance on sweltering summer days. Mom used to turn the sprinkler on and over in the shade we’d see a watermelon hump under a wet towel waiting for supper time. I guess the serious dietitians out there might faint when I say this but, if it was hot enough, sometimes that cold watermelon was all we’d eat at dinner, grinning at each other over our rinds. She used to do the same thing when corn came to all the farm stands in town and you could buy ten ears for a dollar.

I am beginning to realize now how many tastes I have associated with my mother. What a heritage that is in its own way.

Tonight we are having a freak, cold rain storm in the end of May — unheard of here in Southern California. To fit with the mood of the day, I made a pot of ham, bean and barley soup and finally made good on my promise to myself to learn how to make a loaf of bread. As it baked in the oven and the soup simmered and all the yeasty, savory smells wafted out of the kitchen to our noses while my husband and I played with our son I wondered if she ever stopped the way I do now and thought, “oh…someday THIS is one of the things they will remember about growing up. THIS is one of the smells, one of the tastes, one of the days that will still feel warm years from now…”

Whether she did or not, I do. I do because there were just so many simple things she made precious with her love. And I benefit from it still. It’s why I’m smiling while I sit here eating homemade toast with honey, sip some tea, and write to all of you.

No More Normal May 23, 2008

I think the thing that has been most deceptive in this experience is my thought that I was understanding the permanence of the loss of my mom, when really I didn’t get it at all.

When a loved one dies and when you are as involved and as close as I was to my mom and her illness and death, it’s very easy to think that you understand what is happening, that you get how serious it all is, that you get the “big” in “the big picture.” But the thing is, you are operating so far outside of life’s norms up until that point that you really have no idea. I remember laughing a couple of times, quite gallows in style this humor was, when one of us would say, “Well, when things get back to normal…” Somewhere we knew that “normal” was going to take on a whole new meaning. And acknowledging it made us feel safe from the vastness of its reality. We all felt, I think, like we’d already encountered it and dealt with it. Which is just a sign of how naive at least I really was.

The thing is, immediately before and after a loss, you never get a chance to forget that it’s happening. When all you think about every single day and waking moment is about that person’s death, you never have a moment when you forget it all enough to be surprised and hurt by its reality. While it seems stark and awful at the time it really is a mercy in its way, this constant knowledge of loss.

But now, now as things take on the semblance of normal again, as I learn my life as it is now, things seem the same and I’m lulled into a sense of living in the normal “before”. As work has begun again, as my house has needed to be cleaned in earnest, as we have set about the day-to-day again, I have begun to forget at times that she is gone. I will be driving and think, “oh gosh I forgot to tell mom that…” I will wake up in the morning and in that lull between sleep and awake will think, “I wonder what mom is doing today — maybe she’ll have time for pancakes…” And then it sets in. That today, and tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that and on and on until it’s my turn to go home, too, she really will not be here.

It is not eloquent, my description of how this makes me feel: It makes me lonely, and it hurts, and I really, really, really miss my mom. For our family right now, there is no more normal.