Merry X-mas (yes x, look up the etymology/symbolism fools!) Libretto

Another thing besides sporadic blogging that I like to do is make a playlist.  This is most certainly a vestige of my gen x youth during which I made, gave away, and received many a mix tape.  Oh memorex!  Usually I make a playlist for one of two reasons: the celebration of the birth of Christ and the death of someone's loved one.

So here we are December 22nd and I feel safe releasing this year's playlist to the world.  Some of the songs may take you back, others might educate you; some you may love and there are ones I guarantee you will hate.  Each song has made it onto this playlist for a special reason, and, as far as it is appropriate, I will let you in on those reasons.

1. Ave Maria-Christina Perri:  The closet Catholic in me loves the Ave Maria in all of its forms.  This year it is making a Christina Perri turn because I have a sneaking suspicion that 14 year old Mary would have sung in this kind of voice.  Mary is a perfect example of humility and submission through faith, yielding her will and her body and reputation along with it to the unfathomable plan of the Holy Spirit for our reconciliation to the Father.  Full, indeed, of grace, as grace itself dwelt within her for nine months, through the power of only grace.

2.  Mary Did You Know-C-Lo  Green:  The Prov Dance Troupe makes me cry every year, throw this song in the mix, sung by that crazy animal lovin' former Goodie Mobster and I'm just bawling my eyes out.  But really, Mary did you know?  As a mom, it's a legit question.

3.  Hark!  The Herald Angels Sing- Nat King Cole:  In the movie of my life, Nat King Cole is my grandfather and sings me sweet Christmas carols  like this one.  "Mild He lay His glory by, born that man no more must die." Gets me EVERY time.

4.  All I Want for Christmas is You-Mariah Carey:  Mom danced a wild hybrid jig/charleston with such abandon about the kitchen to this song. I am sad for all of those who never saw it.  I'm pretty sure my little brother relived this in leopard tights and a foxy shirt the year mom died, the last year we all christmas'd together.  This song holds the perfectly ironic mix of joy unspeakable and abject heartbreak for me.  Laugh 'til you cry.

5.  Mele Kalikimaka-Bing Crosby:  I have had a secret love affair with Bing Crosby since I was a very young child.  I suppose I first fell in love with his voice and then later with all those black and white movie musicals he was in.  Living in Florida is reminiscent of the sentiment in this song, especially today, at the beach.

6.  Silent Night-Sufjan Stevens:  I love that there are no lyrics sung in this version; it is properly silent.

7.  Christmas Day-Dido:  When I was younger and a good deal more naive and still believed in true love and that it was available for me, I loved this song, thinking I would in a single meeting fall in love with some knight of old and he would go off and promise to return to me on Christmas day, and that this would indeed come to fruition on that Christmas day when we would promptly get married.  Yes, after approximately 3 hours of knowing each other!  I failed to hear the key words in the last verse:  those were the last words she EVER heard him say.

8.  Happy Christmas-Maroon 5:  We all know and love the original.  But, I am currently in the midst of a very torrid and very REAL (imaginary) romance with Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine.  Grrrr...beard, plaid, singing, tats, hugging people on the voice.  Sometimes I get jealous of Blake Shelton.  And then later that night Adam phones me to say it's all just for ratings.

9.  Blue Christmas-Bright Eyes:  This version is just melancholie enough.  I don't know why, but there's always someone I can imaginate into this song, every year, without fail.

10.  Baby It's Cold Outside- James Taylor and Natalie Cole:  I actually dislike the arrangement, especially the instrumentals.  And while I love nat's voice, I am not a huge fan of natalie's.  But I love James Taylor, so I imagine a young James and Carly singing this in their innocence, before the marriage and fighting ruined the sweetness.

11.  You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch:  SERIOUSLY, I LOVE THIS SONG. "Given the choice between the two, I'd take the seasick crocodile!"

12.  Christmas Without You-OneRepublic:  Sometime you just need to get your Ryan Tedder on.

13.  Christmas Waltz-She & Him:  I like to think the disagreement between object and subject pronouns here is purposeful and adorable.  It's an adorable new Christmas song.  I love a new song.  Mix it up! Favorite line fragment: "in three quarter time."

14.  I Wonder as I Wander-Jewel:  Jewel really can disguise her voice.  No, really, is that ACTUALLY jewel?  Anyway the lyrics are grande.  Grande Latte.

15.  Oh Come All Ye Faithful-Phil Wickham:  His voice makes me think he really loves Jesus.  He really wants us to come and behold the king of angels with him.  Plus, I Love a Linus reading of the Christmas story!

16.  Oh Little Town of Bethlehem-Annie Lennox:  I am pretty sure Annie Lennox is ACTUALLY one of the Cherubim.  Does she or does she not appear to be (and sound like) a ferocious, fiery, angelic being dedicated to constant worship of God and the protection of His throne room from those who are not worthy to enter.  I don't always love when a songstress strays so far from the original tune, but Annie can do what she wants.  I love her voice. It is magic, angelic even.  Cherubic.  "Cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today...come to us, abide in us, our Lord, Emmanuel."

17.  Away in a Manger-Drew Holcomb:  I was introduced to Drew through Blood Water Mission and the 1,000 Well Project, during a different stretch of my life, when I was really passionate about being an instrument in saving the world from all its social ills.  This version of this song sings to me of that time.

18.  Hark! The Herald: Vienna Boys Choir..This is incorrectly labelled as in Handel's Messiah it is actually entitled "For Unto Us a Child is Born."  It matters not.  I absolutely love Handel's Messiah.  On a recent journey home from North Caroline I listened to the entire performance by the London Symphony Orchestra.  It was insane.  It tells the whole story.  No stone left unturned.  The goosebumps caused by chills that I get listening to it actually hurt.

19.  Comfort and Joy-Tori Amos:  Tori is some sort of woodland faerie and she has a very interesting take on some lines from an old classic.

20. Evergreen-Switchfoot:  This song has the angst of the old grunge era of my teen years.  It also has a few lines that I believe to be a reference to a Pink Floyd song.  I love songs that refer to songs of yesteryear.  I love switchfoot but you guys already know that.  I do really want to be alive all year long, and these years I feel less and less alive thanks to a cold breeze that has been chilling the fervor in my heart annum after annum so that now all I have is an icicle of a heart that barely wakens from its hibernation for a few moments every year, but doesn't have the energy to sustain it so falls back asleep in hopes for something miraculous to happen and really thaw it out permanently.

21.  Be Still-The Fray:  Everything about this song is just perfect.  I have been rereading Brennan Manning's Souvenirs of Solitude.  I am incapable of wrapping my mind around the idea of a lengthy, purposeful, silent retreat from all humans and other stimuli.  I have  a pretty serious case of adult ADHD so being still is impossible in my humanity.  "Be still, and know that I AM with you, and I will sing your name."  Beautiful.  It is a very real call on my heart.

22.  Beautiful Things-Gungor:  I really believe that next year is gonna be a beautiful year, in a practical, visceral, carnal, REAL, human way.  Not just spiritual.  But in my actual life, things are going to be really beautiful.  I am by nature a realist (read pessimist) but I am flippin the script this year.  Name it and claim it Jess is in effect.  Leggo, I'm finna take off! (Laura that was for you...shofar and all)

Merry CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!! Hands skyward, shoulder shrug, weird voice.

The Island

I have to take a break, which may be permanent, from blogging my novel. I will write it one day.  For now, here's a little something you might like to hear about.

There is an island I know like the island on Lost, only instead of floating in an actual ocean this island is suspended in the water above the land that separates the waters above and below, tethered to the time space continuum by a tattered thread that causes the island to spin and twist as the thread unravels. When I think about this island, I hear the song from Peter Pan, "it's not on any chart, you must find it with your heart" but sung by Union Station; and indeed there are aspects of it that are just like the island of lost boys.  You have to travel there under dark of night and think lovely thoughts and hold your breath as you pass through the waters.  You are ushered in by rows and rows of tall evergreens that are carefully manicured in a strangely germanic fashion - undergrowth and brush all cyclically burned away, leaving only the majestically tallest and strongest rooted in the ground, stretching through the sky.  The island itself is a small, quaint, quiet middle-class community of older homes made with natural materials hidden behind the contours of foliage that predates any human dwellers, and newer homes whose clean look and sparse landscaping speaks of an attempt at domestication of this feral terrain. The entire island is ensconced by immense guardian farms of storied landed gentry whose money is most certainly invested in keeping its secrets and protecting its inhabitants as much as they need protection or are willing to accept it.

When you get there you immediately feel the change.  The air is a bit cooler, crisper, and cleaner, and much heavier.  No the air is lighter and gravity is heavier, not so much heavier that it is crushing, but heavier enough to make you feel the earth beneath your feet a little more intimately.  I'm sure that compasses don't work there, due to some kind of ever changing spinning magnetic vortex.  Every time the tether to this earth makes a new pendulum swing, it changes the whole mood of the island and it takes some adjustment on your part as the visitor. As my sister would say, you have to get your sea legs.  Sometimes down is up, sometimes sideways is soup, and always winter is the hap-happiest season of all.  In real life, summer is the best season with its ocean and warmth and sun and tanned, fit, beach bodies and careless ease.  But that's when here there seems to be too much free time causing seriousness and summertime sadness that Lana del Rey sings about and while to me she is referring to the end of summertime to the island I know it is the actual summer itself.

The bite in the air the winter wind flies in with it wakes the island natives and draws new members of the pack in an attempt to prove their alpha status.  They become restless and wild, full of compliments and fire. Maybe no shave November plays a part turning the formerly clean shaven baby faces into refuges for a chorus of woodland creatures.  Maybe the increased gravity makes their muscles grow instantaneously and the winter husky is translated into chiseled bodies in contrast to the winter coat of hibernation insulation of the real world.  Maybe they're just on "that cycle" - finally.  Traps and lats and delts, triceps and biceps and even glutes are on prominent display. The uniform of the day is most obviously the shirts from that mystery flannel vintage etsy shop everyone keeps pinning.  The number and variety of shapes and sizes and softness and number of buttons that are undone (strangely it doesn't seem at all Miami vice of them to have 3 or even 4 unbuttoned buttons) invites a careful survey and cataloguing with margin notes that mimic the original intent of the facebook.  This winter shift turns mere mortals who might not normally even turn your head into the Thor-like hottest hottie mchottertons that ever hotted.

When I am old, I want to live part of the year in the no man's land between the island and the estates.  I want to buy a small shake shingle cottage with a wrap around porch in the woods.  It seems like the perfect place to write a book.  I can only take the island itself in short spurts.  A day, maybe two at the most, at a time.  I am not immune to believing that, like the Island on Lost, it is all real and it all matters and so I am susceptible to losing my bearing and an attachment to reality.  My actual life demands that I stay firmly planted on the land where I know in which direction north lies at all times.  But I can dip my toe in on a bi-monthly basis and drink from the fountain and let it keep me young for a little while longer.

Part 1c

John pulled the car to the patient pick up area near the main entrance of the hospital and an orderly rolled Wendy out to the curb in a wheelchair. Her mousy brown, medium length hair was scraggly and windswept and matted to the back of her head in a rat's nest of knots.  She wore no makeup.  She looked so frail to him, despite the 60 pounds she had packed on this last pregnancy, and woah had she packed 'em on this time.  She used to - for the first few pregnancies, anyway -  stay so fit and trim, playing tennis all the time and he supposed that being in her twenties didn't hurt the cause either. There was still that fierce glow in her eye, a lioness protecting her cubs, it made everyone else fade to a distant second.

Wendy looked at him from her chariot, and there are things that you aren't privy to as a child that run through your parents' heads and they ran through her head.

They headed down South Country Road in a pleasant silence somewhere in the vast gulf set between contempt and the mutual telepathy of beloveds wrought of their 22 year marriage and dad decided to "hoop" the dock.  A dim, setting November sun cast an icy glow over the bay from behind them.  The thin grey clouds hung low and seemed to claw at them and compel them not to return.  Stay here at the bay for a moment longer, forget the children at home and their inevitable questions and needs and constant demands. Get in a boat and sail away. Walk on water.

In the distance the whistle reported the arrival of the 5 o'clock train at Bellport Station.

"Pardon me Roy, is that the cat that chewed your new shoe,"  mom sang.  They laughed as they remembered the beef and cheese smelling, quite overweight, travelling song and dance man who had visited their church a while back, and shared that bit of musical humor in a nasally vaudevillian voice.

SELF-PITY, FIT-THROWING INTERMISSION HERE:  DISCIPLINED WRITING IS SO DIFFICULT!

I heard the sound of the pebble driveway crunching beneath the tires and ran to the door.  I can remember mom rising out of her door: clad in a hospital nightgown and shrouded by a raccoon fur coat, glowing and reflecting the radiance of the sun.  It was if she was the inspiration for both Galadriel and the Ice Queen from Narnia a quarter of a century in advance.  She walked into the house and we fell all over her with hugs and kisses and cries of how we had missed her.  I missed her most of all.  I was small enough to slip between the bigger kids and get really close to her, and old enough and aware enough to want her more than anyone else. Dad shooed us away and led her to the bedroom.

Of course, we all followed her.  She crawled under the covers, coat and all.  Dad removed his shoes and hung his pants and shirt on his mahogany silent butler, and slipped in next to her.  We all piled on the king sized bed, which back then seemed so much larger than the king sized beds of today.  I know they are still the same size and I have only gotten larger, but memories have a way of tricking into believing that perception really is reality.  The two parents and 7 present children all fit perfectly.  Christa, who had driven over five hours to arrive the night before, brought Ben in and laid him in mom's arms.

She sang in his ear, "lalaloo, lalaloo, oh my little star sweeper, I'll sweep the stardust for you," in her low rich voice, evoking a cello and Patsy Cline, or any of the altos of the past. "...and may love be your keeper, lalaloo, lalaooo, la. la. loo." (It seems as if the alto is a dying breed, everyone wants to sing up in the stratosphere these days.)  It strummed my heart strings, and would yours if you could hear it, and lulled Ben into an easy sleep.  Over the soft tones of her sometimes humming sometimes singing, Dad waxed poetic about the day I was born.  Through the years I have become hardened toward this story, and for a time it rang completely false for me.  A romantic notion that ill represented the actual feelings the man demonstrated for me, because he couldn't have, or failed to have, the ones he imagined he did.

"I drove home from the hospital that day, the angels were dancing on the bay, as the sun tickled the gentle waves the burning wind was whipping up on the no longer still bay.  The angels were singing! And I sang with them."  We all held our breath in lieu of covering our ears because he was about to break forth in his signature song, getting all the words wrong, and somehow escaping mom's correction driven by her strict adherence to pure song accuracy both melodic and lyrical. "HALLELUJAH, HALLELUJAH, let the hooooooooooooooly anthems rise!"  The next line was delivered with a fervor and a mixture of an irish brogue and an italian, operatic rolling of the "r", "AND the TERRRRRRRRRRRRORRRRRRRRR of the gibbet rise triumphant in the skies."  We would sing the song all wrong right along with him, his confidence signaling to us that these must most certainly be the right words, until in preparing for his funeral some 30 years later it turned out that he was stunningly 100% incorrect.

Part 1b

All that night, mom, who had just had her 9th child at the age of 42, laid in a tiny hospital bed at Brookhaven Memorial Hospital with an 18 gauge needle in her cephalic vein of her arm dripping someone else's A pos blood (11 someone elses' actually) into her nearly completely blood bare body.  What had actually transpired while I was having my dream, clearly induced by some peri-dream connection to reality, was that mom had given birth to a not quite bouncing baby boy and suffered a massive obstetric hemorrhage as the placenta failed to completely detach from her uterus.  The obstetrician from the hospital thought that she probably suffered from placenta accreta-basically the placenta invades and cannot separate from the uterine wall.  This is condition which often requires careful observation throughout the pregnancy and exquisite care  by skilled hands at the time of delivery and carries with it the threat of complications which are various and include maternal death.

"Well she's never had that problem before," barked John, feeling as if his doula powers were being called into question, "so why now?"

Dr. Jin fought back the urge to roll his eyes and raise his voice, and in his calmest best bedside manner fairly whispered, "There are several risk factors: advanced maternal age, multiparity-having a lot of kids..."

"I'm not an idiot, I am quite familiar with the English language!" Dad interrupted, in his not so best bedside manner voice.

"...And any damage to the uterine tissue itself during previous pregnancies or cesarean delivery."  He continued as if he had never been interrupted save for the long breath he took to allow Dad his outburst.  Rule number one of emergency obstetrics according to Dr. Jin: never get into a battle with a 6'5" irishman when his wife nearly died thanks to nine months and one insanely long night of rejecting western medicine.  That was actually more like rule #2403, made up, just then, on the fly...but it felt like number 1 from where all 5'4" of his bespectacled self stood currently.

"Well all of her deliveries have been completely natural, so there goes your cesarean theory."  Triumph mixed with white hot rage brought color up his neck and through his face.  And then a memory flashed through his brain.  Johnny or Tommy was it, I think it was one of the boys, had the doctor who had been impatient for the placenta to deliver.  I distinctly remember this jackanapes putting his hand where it didn't belong and yanking on the placenta.  Bet that loser scarred her with that move, hope he got to cocktail hour on time. Thanks for almost killing my wife, genius, guess that's why they pay you the big bucks. People are so lucky that I'm not litigious.

Mom awoke hours later, "Where's Ben?" she asked, barely enough energy to make a sound it came out like a scared whimper.  Her last memory was of a less than pink, too small, lacking muscle tone, barely moving baby being wrapped in towels as she slumped in the tub and told her namesake, "Wendy, I'm going to Jesus now."

"Oh, No. You. Don't." Cried Wendy the younger with all the strength she could summon, "You're not leaving me all along with that man," pointing to Dad, "and all THESE kids!" waving her arms in demonstration as if there were a crowd behind her.

"Ben's alright, he is at home," Dad assured her.

And with that Mom got up, got dressed and discharged herself from the hospital.  Her son needed her.  Of course the doctors had different ideas, so she was forced to stay for another day.  But she was back home as soon as she could get there, whipping up oatmeal shakes and downing them to make enough milk to get some meat on the bare bones of baby Ben.

Part 1

I'm thinking about writing a book.  A novel dressed up as memoirs of someone who resembles me, made slightly more interesting by fudging some of the details that have become blurry over the years, whether as an act of self preservation or just thanks to this sieve that is now my brain. So I've decided to start writing down snippets of what would be in the book, try to train myself to see if I am really up to the task.  This is a story about love.  It is your typical love story, which means it is like no story about love you've ever heard before.  It is a story about humanity and our individually infinite capacity for love in the midst of living out our very hate filled, dirty, messy lives.  It’s my story, some of it may be true, most of it isn't, at least not in a historical sense.  But you may see in it a reflection of your story, and in that way it is completely true.

I first met him when I was six years old.  He had a third 21^st chromosome and he was far more perfect than any of us who had only 46 chromosomes.  His name was Ben and I fell instantly in love.  He was magical. His complete infantile helplessness was mesmerizing and demanded all of your time and attention and you gave it gladly.  I met him a dark late November night, when he entered this world and almost took our mother out of it in one fell swoop. 

I was so young that it is now hard to tell what parts of these memories are made up,   convoluted or proper, but I remember things from at least four years earlier than this, so it is probably safe to view the account as fairly accurate.  I went to bed November 18, 1983 amidst whispers of older siblings and mom and dad about preparations for a birth.  I climbed the stairs across the foyer from my parents’ bedroom oh so slowly, so as to hear as much as possible without overtly disobeying the instruction to go to bed.  With each of the thirteen steps the wood planks creaked beneath my feet, betraying the fact that I was still on them, but no one would notice this time, they were too busy in the master bedroom. 

I could imagine the scene without being in there to see it.  The gigantic room was dimly lit by low wattage bulbs ensconced in bulbous amber lampshades, which lent an orange glow somewhere halfway between gloomy and romantic.  Though the windows were closed, there was a wicked winter wind blowing from the northeast and slipping through the panes eerily rippling through the diaphanous cream sheers across the front of the room while the floral heavy damask drapes stood their watch on either end.  There was still a crib in the front left corner of the room; although it probably hadn't been used since I was the baby and even then not very often.  Mom, an avid breast feeder and an “attachment” parenting trailblazer even before it had a name, let most of us snuggle up next to her for the better part of our first two years.  The wall was covered in alternating stripes and florals wallpaper with a coffee, cream and maybe a hint of mauve color scheme.  One set of bare feet walked across the plush beige carpet, a boiling pot of water in hand, followed by another with a gigantic “placenta bowl” which also doubled as the popcorn bowl when no babies were being born.

At the time, dad was “furloughed” from the airlines, seemed that he couldn't ever pick the right airline at the right time and just make a ton of money flying for united or delta.  No, he had a bit of bad luck about things like that.  When he was younger he'd squandered a small fortune in Atlantic City and had to get bailed out of some drunken brawl over not being allowed to play past when he went bust by his little brother and was kindly asked never to return to the boardwalk again.  He was currently employed in some adult gambling accepted by polite society, known better as day trading on Wall Street.  Apparently having the same streak of luck as he'd always had in regards to money he was losing far more than he was making to bring home to his family of already 8 children, with the ninth on the way. None of the family members were insured and there were no doctors who would come  to the house to do the delivery for a nominal fee (so they wouldn't have to pay the hospital fees-because those are the ones that will break you) for fear of opening themselves up to malpractice claims.

This fit hand in hand with the wild religious kick mom and dad were currently on, the which they would later blame the other for, but I'll tell you that both of them were all in from where I stood.  Mom was a religious zealot, a true believer in everything she ever believed, and dad could use that kind of fervor to his favor and jumped right on board.   You see, believing that God is omnipotent and still does miracles and that it is only a lack of faith that necessitated the modern conveniences of medicine and doctors fit right into their present need to steer clear of those very things because they were uninsured.  So mom had no prenatal care with this pregnancy, and it seemed to go rather smoothly, so perhaps it was completely unnecessary anyway.  And here she was preparing for her second home birth in less than three years.

Mom was laying in the middle of the king size, pine, four poster bed, with the covers turned down, in her white eyelet nightgown with towels spread under and around her.  I wondered then as I do now, why she wore that stark white dress for an event that is always bloody and would prove to be particularly so this time.  Another set of feet slipped and scratched across the carpet bringing a cup of ice and a pitcher of water.  Someone left and came back and brought with them the scissors that had been boiled in a pot of water and laid them on a towel on the side table.  She labored in near silence-but the quiet moans carried through the house and filled its occupants with a strange foreboding.  A chill ran down my spine as I reached the top of the stairs and heard dad say to the assembled crew, “Let’s get ready to have a baby.”

I was young, so I feel asleep rather quickly, and when you are young you dream vividly, and remember well.  I had one of the most memorable dreams of my life that night, I remember it like it happened last night, only I can't remember what I actually did dream last night.  I heard a scream coming from downstairs and it made me wake up.  I tiptoed to the top of the stairs and heard an argument between my father and a sister regarding whether or not to call 911.  There was no telling who won the argument, in fact I don't think either did, but another sister took advantage of the distraction to actually slip out to the kitchen and call the ambulance from there.  I went downstairs as the ambulance arrived with its male and female occupants.  He was tall and young, a caucasian with dirty blond hair, fit underneath a layer of comfortable fat, with a receding hairline that seemed out of synch with his round baby face.  She was short and somewhat older, stocky and voluptuous with a ton of gorgeous wavy black hair and she was telling her partner something in her Long Island/Puerto Rican accent. They entered the house and I followed them as they walked past the blood soaked carpet of the master bedroom, walked through the front hallway to the kitchen and grabbed something to eat.  They continued into the den and sat on the blue and gold peacock patterned sectional and began playing darts.  I found them to be interesting, which I knew was sinful and faithless.  And my interest invited them to read my thoughts somehow.  I didn't want them to take my mom away, even though that was their intended mission, so they gave me a shot of something that in my mind was most sinisterly intended to murder me and then made off with my mother in their truck.

I did not want to die in the dream, and quickly realized it was a dream, and shook myself awake. I woke up in a puddle of nightmarish sweat and heard only the whistling of the wind through the house.  No, there was something else, but instead of adding noise, it almost made the house seem more silent.  It was a low, lamb-like, weak, whimpering cry of a newborn, who didn't have enough energy to really let it rip. It was the sound of Ben, and it beckoned me to find it.  In a post nightmare, dream fog, I followed the sound, expecting to find my mother near its source, but finding only a tiny strange faced baby.  He had the face of an angel: a high round forehead, round wide set eyes with heavy folds pulling across them in almost an Asian way, ruby red lips and a tiny body wrapped in several towels.  He had been left there in the middle of the bed and I curled up next to him and as we breathed in concert with each other the little trembling bleating stopped and he fell asleep.  I looked down at him, lying on a bed that had no sheets and a huge bloodstain on it, beginning a trail that would lead to the carpet, then to the tiles in the bathroom and ultimately to what looked like the scene of a massacre in the bathtub.  I missed the signs that my mother almost died that night; at least in my conscious state I missed them, because I was so drawn in by this baby.  I couldn't take my eyes and thoughts off of him.  He wooed me and captured my heart and warmed me and I knew I would never let him go.  I was in love and in that love was a peace that didn't make any sense because later I would realize I should have been frightened that night.  But as I was lying there next to my last baby brother, the world felt perfect.  There were no angels singing or dancing their light off the early morning ripples of the bay, but an angelic love radiated from this baby.

Shuffling of feet in and out of the room and cleaning and whispering happened all night long.  It was as if it was happening in a different dimension and though I didn't sleep, I rested with my arm encircling Ben.  I wanted to savor every second of this night, I didn't  want to even close my eyes as if that might break the spell that he had weaved around us with his magic powers.  There was a sense that this wouldn't last forever but for as long as it could last, I would be completely present.

The Shock and Awe of Forgiveness

So, you think you know about forgiveness.  I do: I hear about it at church, I know it is good for my personal psychology, I practice forgiving people who have wronged me in my life.  I have got this forgiveness thing down.  I have had enough things done to me that should be apologized for that I should know a thing or two about forgiveness.  You think you know but you have no idea.

Like most things that are less cerebral and more emotionally based, there is no way to properly describe forgiveness until you experience it.  Even then, words are bound to fall short because human language is not equipped to elucidate matters that are divine, and yet, here I go...

I have always had a complicated relationship with my father.  Love mixed with hate.  Real hatred, born of real wounds, and real love that a child always has for her parents.  It is not the time to recount the specifics, but suffice it to say: the gripes were legitimate, and the pain was excruciating.  Over the years I had broached the subject of my upbringing with my father in an attempt to get some closure, hoping for an apology, longing for the perfect circle of forgiveness and reconciliation.  I never got that apology.  Not even remotely.  I never felt that forgiveness.  But I knew I must.  So I forgave, with my words.  I let go with my hands and mind, as often as i could, of the bitterness they clung to.  I prayed for a softened heart toward him.  In a practical sense, I forgave him seventy times seven as prescribed. The problem is that forgiveness is not practical.  I was practicing forgiveness like a piano song where the same passage gives you fits over and over again no matter how many times you rehearse it and your fingers still reach out for the discordant notes.  The sadness, madness, bitterness and feelings of abandonment always returned, in their sneaky way, at times and places where I wasn't prepared for them.

This weekend I returned to the "redrum" home of my last three years of high school.  I returned to what I view as the dark endroit to blame for being the scenery behind the painful memories so gloomily painted in my mind: 44 Tower Rd.  As I have chronicled in my pictures of the place, a picture can tell a very different story.  The place is like a cottage from a fairy tale now that it is finished (as it was under construction the years I lived there and several after that).  Deer bound and mice and squirrels abound and if you are lucky every once in awhile a skunk rears its tail and the smell lingers for a few sweet hours.

It was the last day of summer and sun shone and danced off the breeze driven branches of the oak, maple, elm and birch trees that still proudly wore their chlorophyll induced summer green glory.  The cottony wisps of clouds sailed by, propelled by the brisk breeze that hailed fall in its wake.  We sat in the cobblestone courtyard, which much to my dismay (and this is really my only aesthetic disappointment with the grand home in its current finely appointed state) was decorated by the same pink adirondack chairs that every idiot alpha male I know buys instead of spending a few more dollars to get gorgeous wooden ones that would so much more befit the setting.  Four cedar adirondacks would have completed the visual so much more eloquently, but I've chased that rabbit too far already.

Back to the subject at hand.  While we were sitting there in the courtyard hydrating ourselves, as I am the undisputed queen of hydration, I was overwhelmed by the shock and awe of the  ease of forgiveness.  Forgiveness wasn't what I had been practicing.  It was poured out all over me and flowed through me, unbidden and unrecognized.  I have no idea when it came, or how, it just was.  I loved that man who sat across from me, scheming a way to catch all the frogs that were running amok in his gardens, sipping his "good stuff" that I had just "topped off" for him.  I loved him like you love your child, unconditionally, the way you can only love an adult when they have become benjamin button and now express what they know in their vastly clever brain through the jumbled up free word association of a child who is unfettered by the rules of grammar and unhindered by the vernacular use of words.

The ridiculous things he said made me laugh, because as his child, I understood where they came from even though they would make sense to no one else.  We all laughed together because we knew that in that laugh there was only mirth and no derision.  We remembered Wendy as his amazingly fun, funny, clever, vivacious wife and our most amazing mother.  We shared stories, even though they were wildly fabricated and mostly had nothing to do with us, as if they were our own.

I did his bidding, looking for the mice (leaves that his cataract ridden eyes saw as furry brown mice as they skittered across the cobblestone) that were so trickily escaping under the outdoor furniture in an attempt to avoid his skillful detection.  I went on a fool's errand to find the frogs and the water that we would need in order to flood them out of their hiding place.  I cleaned his wounds when John vs. the barn door and kitty's decorations did not leave John the victor this time.  I patched him up and gave him his meds.

We spoke with a "bossy" hospice nurse with an Irish name (aren't they all bossy and Irish?) and gave her a little what for right back.  We hunkered down in his man cave for half stories about the days of old, until he realized he'd quite mistold an important part of the story, whistled at himself "heehoo" and declared it was not his day.  We realized that we were all professional gardeners and could, thanks to his instinct for detail, mow a lawn in straight lines.  Pro and mow, pro and mo.  He made clever number associations that at first just seemed like gibberish and then turned out to be some sort of scene straight out of a beautiful mind. We respected his pride and sense of privacy while helping him like Miriam and Aaron, one each at his sides.  A man who had in the past been eager to see his daughters go, asked, "What's this talk I hear about you leaving?  You don't have anything you need to do?  Who said you have to go?  Stay Here."  You can't know how nice it is to have your presence desired by your father at long last.   Inside, everyone is just a broken little kid looking for the validation of their daddy.

There aren't words to express the slow teeming surprise with which forgiveness welled up from the center of that courtyard.  I laid there in an unmitigated blanket of warmth toward my father and felt free.

Where is God in the Earthquake?

The constant chatter inside my mind has been at an all time high lately.

School started today-and lets be honest, divided by my little family of 5 that salary puts me well below the poverty level.  No offense to Prov...that's just the truth.

The above is made possible by the surprising (though it shouldn't be) fact that the ex isn't working anymore. Currently.  Maybe ever?

The very sweet youth pastor at church died this weekend.

My little mind reels with what seem like the big questions:

How can God just let things happen?
Why doesn't He intervene?
Why does He seemingly intervene in some things and not others?
Are you there God? it's me, jessica.
Why do things just seem to work out peachy for some people?
Why am I such a complaining baby when there are people going through real actual misery, loss, and carrying around massive unquenchable guilt and shame?
Where are You?  And why aren't You completely sold on my agenda?

The answer is Jesus.
And if the answer isn't Jesus, I'm asking all the wrong questions.
The real questions are:
How is that poor wife going to survive?
How will those little baby girls grow up without their daddy?
How is the whole family going to retain joy and faith?
What's going to get them through each bleedingly slow thick fog moment?
Only Jesus.

I get rewrapped up in myself, again and again.  I'm chasing down all the wrong choices (career, education, love) I've made (still make) in my life, blaming someone else for mind effing me into making them, knowing all along I could have chosen better at any point.  Breaking through that circle work of thought is a new meaningless treat of self blather praising the choices I did make and that have resulted in some pretty great kids.  Immediately in answer to that is the retort that certainly i could have had the children and made good career choices and not be boxed into a place where I can't handle my business financially even though  the talents I have been given would beg to be used in a way that ought to be quite successful. It is an Escher-esque labyrinth of inception-self induced and little jabs thrown in there purposefully and not by others, and there is no way out.  The thoughts, the questions, the self loathing, the feeling of superiority, the inadequacy, the trying and striving, desiring to be unique and amazing and failing, the delusions of grandeur, the threat of depression...these things twist and turn and unfold and retract and grow exponentially inside my brain.  The thoughts fill my mind until they are pressing against my skull (because that is biologically correct talk) and hurt my head.  My constant inner monologue becomes so mumbly jumbly incoherent that eventually the only real way to express them is to borrow an eloquent song lyric that weaves in and out of the nonsense, soundtracking my feelings.

And so I give you...one of my faves if we're going by this blog...Switchfoot:


 "Vice Verses"

Walking along the high tide line
Watching the pacific from the sidelines
Wonder what it means to live together?
Looking for more than just guidelines

Looking for signs in the night sky,
Wishing that I wasn’t such a nice guy
Wonder what it means to live forever?
Wonder what it means to die?


The wind could be my new obsession
The wind could be my new depression
The wind goes anywhere it wants to
Wishing that I learned my lesson

The ocean sounds like a garage band
Coming at me like a drunk man
The ocean tells me a thousand stories
None of them are lies


Let the pacific laugh
Be on my epitaph
With it's rising and falling
And after all, it's just water
And I am just soul
With a body of water and bones
Water and bones

Where is God in the night sky?
Where is God in the city light?
Where is God in the earthquake?
Where is God in the genocide?

Where are you in my broken heart?
Everything seems to fall apart
Everything feels rusted over
Tell me that you're there

I know that there's a meaning to it all
A little resurrection every time I fall
You got your babies, I got my hearses
Every blessing comes with a set of curses
I got my vices, I got my vice verses
These are my vice verses
These are my vice verses

Yeah
These are my vice verses

yer dear ol' dad

This one's for my dad.
Not because of anything he has done.
But because he is a son of God and maybe needs to know how loved he is.

It was middlemarch in Kittery Point Maine, but it may well have deep dark December for all the snow, sleet and sheer cold they were experiencing on Gerrish Island.  As he made his way, wending and winding down Tower Road (far too fast for anyone's taste, but thankfully none of "them" were there to nag him), he caught a glimpse of a young man.  Young only in his estimation, healthy and middle aged was a more correct description.

Healthy was a big deal to him now, addled by cancer that started in the lymph cells and  had metastasized  and  mutated ripping throughout his once formidable (or perhaps he was giving himself too much credit, but there is a bit of romance one is allowed in their own self narrative as they near the end) form, leaving him a weak, shell of a man.

Through the early morning cloak of fog, he saw himself walking out on the marshes-once some strange  source of dispute between himself and those environmentalist libs who just wanted their hands on more of his stuff, more recently a monet-esque backdrop to his bit of exercise and reflection.  Tall and strong, but not in the nouveau thick muscled way of the modern gym rat, just good irish genes strong, the man looked like a fisherman - salty and victorious from the day's catch.  He wore a classic ivory cableknit sweater (which if he were close enough would have smelled of oil and rancid saline from frequent wear and quite less frequent washing) atop high waters wide wale corduroys of some shade or another of mustard or rust or dishwater gray, no socks and bass boat mocs.  Yeah, for you teens who think you found something new (or even retro-cool) with your sperry topsiders, he was cool before you were born; Bass shoes are the boss.

But something about the way the sweater didn't hang loosely, and the way the cords stood a good two and a half inches above the boat mocs told him this was a wishful hallucination, created from his own memories of himself from only years prior-maybe even a decade.  Before his own private invaders had taken 40 pounds from him (honestly closer 60 if you count his winter husky).

He blinked his eyes and wiped the fog from the full length mirror in his bedroom.  Darn meds, they might not be doing anything to the cancer but they are certainly playing a number on his mind.  It had been like that for him for a few weeks.  There were chunks of time in which he would take a mini mental vacation, somewhere in the recesses of his brain mixing memory with fantasy.  He wasn't really sure what the point of these little jaunts was, he'd much rather vacation in Cabo or Cannes, but there he was in some parallel universe time loop with his own self, watching snippets of his mundane life (this wasn't even the good stuff) like they were a scene from a 007 flick.

Looking at his actual image, the one before his eyes presently, he thought to himself, "well I guess it beats this."  Gaunt and ghost-like, and about to return to bed after a long bath in which he had the fleeting thought to let his head slip under the water while he went on one of his mind journeys.  If he had the strength to put on the outfit of the 50 year old in the hallucination the pants would have required a belt three sizes smaller than any he had possessed since his twenties and they certainly wouldn't have been high waters.  He laughed at this.  For some reason other people didn't understand the jovial manliness of a good pair of pants that couldn't quite reach your ankles.  Their loss, he supposed.  Instead he left the navy and green terry cloth robe on and slipped beneath the covers.

He hated himself like this.  Hours bled into weeks and then months and all the while he couldn't imagine why he was consigned to this present purgatory.  A whisper, and this not from his own thought space, began to speak to him of someone who saw him differently.   It was so dim, and his ears, which hadn't been good since the days on the old Connie when he hadn't seen fit to always wear the proper protection in the prescribed manner, had suffered from both age and side effects from the cocktail of chemicals that he was sure were pulsing through his body in a greater concentration than his own blood.  At first all he heard was hissing.  Spspspspssssppssss.  But he had a feeling he ought to respond like Samuel, "speak Lord, for your servant hears."

The voice became clear.
And as the voice spoke, it wove an image for him...not a chemically induced hallucination...but one that was full, and bright, pixel by pixel building into a memory on steroids, or a prophetic vision of something glorious waiting just around a corner.

He sees you.  The One who made you.  He sees you, not as the worn, weary, weak, tired man you feel like. He sees you as a young boy running down the beach, high waisted navy blue swim shorts soaked in sand and sea water.  He sees you as a song he wrote from the beginning of time, with every breath, step, thought, adding to the melody and deepening the harmony.  He sees his own endless love, which has always been and always will be for you.  He sees the perfection of his own Son, the strength and splendor of His own glory, in which He has wrapped you by His own choice and grace.  He sees you as light and life that have obliterated sin, sadness and disease that you feel so weighed down by in your current state.  This cancer, each cell, each thieving invading life sapping lie were all nailed to a cross 2000 years ago along with every misstep and calculated act of overt disobedience.  They don't exist anymore.  They were dragged by Him, down to death, as he became those very things and in His dying blotted it all from eternal existence.  And then He, Alone, awoke and walked out of that grave, forever.  That is where he views you from-the longview of eternity   He is walking down that beach to that little boy with the shock of white hair atop a sunburned, freckled, gangly frame.  Arms and legs like spider appendages flailing with joyous abandon, not a care in the world.  He is calling you.  He is reminiscing with you.  Splashing in the water with you.  All the moments you've had together.  The first  moment you heard Him calling and agreed that yes, it is finished. The losses and wins He walked  with you through.  He loves you, all of you.

As  he laid in his bed, he was overwhelmed by a song that he could somehow see and feel like a wave crashing him and tumbling him and playing a symphony all around him.  He was alive like he had never been before, aware to the truth of the universe and his own place in eternity and how wildly more than he could have ever asked or imagine that LIFE really was. That love was too much, and just exactly enough all at the same time.  It pressed in from all sides, insisting on having him, it filled him so that it was as in him as it was all around him.  What a rest. It will bear him through the remainder of his difficult life in a way that defies logic.  But he is sure of it.

To Ab, because it's your birthday, and because sometimes, well, the check just isn't in the freakin mail

Today is the day after my little sister Abby's 27th birthday.  She looks 23.  Her hair is like spun gold; fine spun because it's so light in hue and so numerous in strands.  She's strong as an ox...please, if you had been through half the crap this girl has been through you'd have keeled over from the sheer insane heft of it all about 11 months ago...or even earlier, who knows.  If I don't mind saying so she is beautiful as all get out: ladies are jealous (believe me I've seen their eyes light on fire at catching a mere glimpse of her) and the men are stupid with love (STUPID..S-T-U-P--I---D).  The most insane thing about Ab is how insanely capable she is...there is not a thing that she cannot do.  There isn't a place she goes that she isn't coveted for her ability.  There isn't a person who works with her who doesn't think, "that brilliant woman is the most indispensably awesome part of this organization, hands down, and here's a scarf to prove it."

When Abigail and I were young, we were incredibly close.  We were best friends and worst brawlers.   We invented a language together.  We designed haute couture dresses that could rival Cristian Siriano's designs.  We endured a mutual misogyny at the hands of all close males who will deny it to this day, but, caused some deep scars that have required some serious working out.  At least for me.  

Because I only write for about 20-30 minutes at a time, I don't have the time or the discipline to tell you the millions of things that commend Abby over the past two decades.  What I'd like to focus on, is the serendipitous reforging of our friendship in the past two years, like the sword of Elendil into Anduril (yes, I'm a gigantic nerd).  

For whatever reason, WP vs. USAFA, husbands, children, sibling rivalry, apathy, superiority complexes...etc...we drifted apart after (or maybe even whilst in) Maine.  

My divorce and a year later her widowhood have left us the two old maids at the ball.  Or young maids if we are being honest.  Evidently, having had a first go at husbands and chidren (failed though it may have been for whatever reason) renders one a second class citizen.  Or so far and above the other classes of citizen that one is considered an untouchable.  Regardless of the manner in which life has chased us here, Abby and I have arrived  at a closer friendship than we have probably ever had before.  I hope for her it is the same as it is for me.  

For me, I see the open-hearted way in which she accepts the Peter Pan (which is even less tolerable in a lady than a man) period of life upon which I have embarked as a sign of real love.  I don't even like me in this place...and yet, she passes no judgement.  For the past year I felt like I was the one who was there for her in her time of need, but in recent months I have begun to see that the door swings both ways and she is most certainly someone I can lean on in my time of need.  I lost ten years of my life to an impossibly bad marriage to someone who was not my type, whom I may never have loved, whom I will likely never understand.  Sometimes it seems like she's the only one who understands that.  It also seems that though this time of need may have no determinable end, she is willing tostick it out with me.  All the while she has to endure her own widowhood, which is unending, with consequences one could never have foreseen.

I am so happy, and blessed (which seems church ladyish but is not intended in that way at all) to have renewed my friendship with her in these past few years.  I hope that we continue this manner.  I hope that we provide for each other a support like that of Aaron and Miriam back in exodus.  I hope that she feels about me the same way i feel about her.  I hope that I have provided her with some sort of comfort, or support or unconditional love that she can feel and hold onto when she is feeling low. 

Because sometimes the check is not in the mail.  Male.  Sometimes people fail us.  Fale.  Epic.  Fail.  Because fools rush in all headlong like they can handle the awesomeness, and then they buck out, in reverse, pedal to the floor.  Because you can't straight punch these jokers to the throat when they pull a 180 on you.  Because you can't legally knock a motherf--r out (or physically when they outweigh you by half a buck and out-testosterone you by a million) just because they see something and get scurred.  Because being the strongest most courageous lady most people have ever met doesn't get you much more than a high five and a dozen roses from someone who will never (and would never, and ps you would never want them to) like you like that.  

So happy birthday to you Ab.  Happy birthday.  And I love you.  And appreciate you.  And I get that recently, my childish behavior has not overtly said so, but I want to be there for you.  And I intend to be.  Happy freakin birthday.  

To those who failed (fail...will wail) to recognize.  Sucks to your asthmar, piggie.  big time.  

   

finished

On this ash Wednesday, wherein I have been rightly repeatedly reminded that I am dust (and what exactly is dust?), I look forward to the end of the Lenten season.  Yesterday, fat Tuesday that it was, I was visited by an echo of the words Christ spoke on his final mortal moment on earth, "it is finished."

Yesterday, I was divorced.  I signed a binding agreement that lacks only a judge's signature, stating my marriage was officially sundered on Feb 12, 2013.  I thought about sacrilegiously writing on my facebook wall "it is finished."  I opted for a less messianic "done."

But the more I think about it, the more I know that this is a part of the redemptive work done by Christ on the cross.  That my freedom from a terrible marriage that religious devotion to tradition espoused by my family had kept me in, was bought by the law-fulfilling, love drenched blood of Jesus Christ.  That, indeed, my marriage, my divorce, it is finished.  Rent like the veil in the temple.  It is small, and myopic, and egocentric, but amazingly, and of course ironically (paradoxically) it draws my attention to the cross.

Remember, you are dust, oh man, and to dust you shall return.  Remember that you are nothing but a collection of molecules, common to all living things, atoms present even in those things that are not alive, taken from the ground.  Remember that if not for the breath of God, breathed into your nostrils upon your molding you would never have been.  Remember that if not for His sustaining hand each and every moment of your vapor of a life, you would cease to be.  Remember that without the redemptive power of Jesus Christ and his sacrifice, physical and spiritual, temporal and eternal, you would remain unchanged, drowning in a sea of consequence of your own sins' making.  Remember that because He Is, you can, too, be whom you were truly meant to be.

Three years ago I was imprisoned in a marriage for a myriad of reasons.  The majority of them were fear centered. I was afraid of living the rest of my life alone. I was afraid of financial ruin.  I was afraid having been a few years out of the work force I would lack the ability, fortitude, skill set needed to return.  I was afraid of the lies that I knew my ex would tell about me. I was afraid that if I divorced, my family would reject me because I had done the one thing that "we just don't do."  I was afraid that without a partner, I would find out how truly incapable I am of raising my four sons.  I was afraid to move.  I was afraid to believe that God could carry me through, because, after all, didn't I really deserve what I had gotten myself into.

But somewhere in that darkness of fear, I heard a song.  It sang to me of freedom.  It sang to me of light.  It sang to me of life.  of Love.  It told me to move.  It told me to run.  It told me to stop believing the lies that played into my human weakness with a tendency toward fear.  I didn't stop.  I didn't look back. I didn't ask whence this song came.  I knew.  Perfect love casts out all fear.  The peace I was feeling, the knowing I was experiencing,  the light I could see at the end of the tunnel.  I knew it was He...the light of the world...Love...the beginning AND the END...He was calling me out of bondage, into freedom.  He was calling me with His sweet, undying love to leave fear and hate behind to truly follow Him.

Remember that thou art dust...and when I remember that, I know I don't have to do anything.  I am only dust.  I am just water and bone.  I am only clay thrown by the Master potter.  He is the breath.  He is the life.  He must do.

I never had to say a word in my defense.  (or very few words)  I never felt like the outcome was dependent on me (or at least not the majority of the time)  I never, even amid my doubts, forgot that it was God who was going to get me to the end of this marriage, and out of it...whole...

I have reentered the work force.  I do a good job at something I thought I would never do in my life.

I have, with the help of amazing people, built a comfortable home for my children.

I am poor.  In debt.

My kids are a bit of an emotional mess.  But they are strong.  And smart.  And so sweet.  And loved by many.

It is finished.  Standing at the beginning and end of time, the one who strides forth out of Bozrah in the greatness of His strength told me, "it is I, mighty to save,"  and brought me through all of this.  I would never have made it on my own.  In the mundanity of my divorce I find a most profound illustration of mystical truth that in my distress, He too, was distressed.  That as I wept, He wept with me.  And when we could take no more, He finished it.  And when the Son has set you free, you are free indeed.  In your circumstances, and despite them.  That is where I stand; though I walk through time-in a world that is still yet not completely redeemed, in a skin that retains its own desires to sin and err-though I linger here, I belong to eternity.  He will finish each moment in my life.  Each lent will end, with a glorious, eternal Easter.  Every mistake, sin, misery, and death is answered with a thunderous, unquenchable, eternal echo of it is finished.

You are dust.  He is not.