Rebecca S. Ramsey's Blog, page 2

Why I Won’t Give Up on the USA

Today I raised my flag by the front door. It took a ladder and more gumption than I’ve needed in years past, but I did it because I’m an American. And I’m stubborn. I won’t give up on the flag, and I won’t give up on my country. My flagpole came with an eagle on top, just a little one, small enough for me to strangle with a single hand if I wanted to.

(Maybe you feel frustrated too?)

But I love my country, so last weekend we made a point to take our grandboys to see some of it, a really gorgeous part of western North Carolina where their Uncle Ben lives. Ben took us to Grandfather Mountain, home to stunning vistas and leafy trails and the s-curve Forrest Gump jogged up, plus bears and elk and real live eagles! The eagles mostly posed and strutted around. They didn’t say much, which was fine. Eagles have such weak, soft voices that movie makers tend to let hawks do their talking.

“That’s our national bird.” I told Josiah.

“Uh huh,” he said, leaning on the rail. “I think he’s on the one-dollar bill. Do you have one?”

I looked in my purse. No cash.

I was kind of glad.  Maybe it was the dreamy coolness of the morning, the beauty of the sun on the purple mountains, or the wooziness I felt looking at the mile-high swinging bridge, but I didn’t want to stand there, looking at money. I wanted to look at the rhododendron and the stray deer that wandered by. I wanted to wax poetic about how much I love our country. And I wanted the boys to know why.

Maybe I wanted the boys to feel about our country like I did when I was little.

Sure, back in 1976, I felt a little proud to stand on the stage with my fellow fifth graders and sing Fifty Nifty United States for the PTA. But what really took my breath away was to see those states for myself, on two cross-country summer trips for Daddy’s work. We parked our pop-up camper among noisy prairie dogs, in dry heat and shocking snow, in the shadow of Mount Rushmore, and the grand beauty of Yellowstone, where Daddy slept with an axe beside his cot, in case a grizzly bear confused us with a tasty midnight snack.

I wanted the boys to feel proud of this wild, beautiful place.

But I didn’t need a trip to feel proud of my country. I felt it every time my parents invited Daddy’s graduate students to our house for dinner. As an introvert kid, I’m sure I would’ve preferred a baloney sandwich in front of Gilligan’s Island, but those shared meals made themselves a little home in my heart. These young people (who seemed old to me) had left their families back in mysterious places like China, Nigeria, Israel, Egypt, and Italy just to learn from my dad and other agricultural engineering professors at NCSU. Then they’d take that knowledge home to help their country better manage their water resources and grow the food the people needed.

The United States said yes to students, and the world was better for it. I wanted the boys to feel proud of that.

One day I’ll tell them about what it was like for Todd to serve our country, back when we first got married. How the Air Force moved us to Denver for Todd’s training as an intelligence officer, then to Omaha, and finally to Washington DC. How we loved living where everything happened, where people from both sides tried to work together—at least occasionally. How Todd worked in a vault somewhere in the city, but I didn’t know where. We didn’t talk about it because he couldn’t. The military took secrecy seriously, knowing lives were at stake.

I wanted the boys to be proud of the hard, brave work of people who serve our country.

One day I’d tell them how proud I was to start work at the National Institute of Health, my first job in DC. In 1987, everyone was working their hearts out, racing to sequence the AIDS virus. Once it was sequenced, there was hope for treatment—and maybe the discovery of a cure. Unfortunately for me, the only discovery I made was that lab work made me miserable. But I switched from doing chemistry to teaching it and found happiness. I told my students about the work the NIH was doing just up the road in Bethesda, leading the world in improving public health, not just for us but for everyone.

I want the boys to be proud that our country leads the world in medical research. It saves lives and makes them better.

One day I’d tell them about the fun I had one summer in DC, leading a day camp for unhoused kids at Calvary Baptist with my friend Carol and a team of volunteers. I’d tell them how the city government worked with us, providing lunches each day, as well as a bus and a driver to take us back and forth from the shelter. This partnership seemed especially American to me, the city teaming up with volunteers to care for children in need.

I want the boys to know how powerful it can be when our government enables non-profits to do important work.

I’ve been lucky to live all over the country. When our kids were little, we lived four years in France. I loved it there. The bread! The pastries! The people! The countryside! The health care! But I missed home, too. That’s where I belonged.

I want the boys to travel the world someday, and still be in love with home.

I want them to be so in love with the USA, that they’ll want to know and understand the ugly parts. The serious ways we’ve failed to protect people. The ways we still fail. The people we’ve hurt. The people we’re hurting now.

I hope they’ll be patriots. People who love our country enough to make it better. People who’ll hold it to account.

So, back to eagles…

Ben Franklin once wrote to his daughter Sarah that he wasn’t so pleased with the choice of a bald eagle as a symbol of America. He described it as a bird who sits on a dead tree, waiting for a hard-working hawk to catch a fish and try to feed it to his young, so he can steal it away for himself. Ben suggested a better pick might be a turkey–or even a rattlesnake. I’m not crazy about rattlesnakes, but he made a good case. They’re fierce but honorable, they don’t attack unless provoked, and they don’t surrender until the fight is over. With no eyelids, they’re ever vigilant.

I still raise my flag with the eagle on top, his wings outstretched, ready to steal food (SNAP benefits?) out of the mouths of hungry babes. But as I do—and maybe you do too–let’s shake our rattles with a promise. Our eyes are watching. We will hold you to account.

We love you too much to do anything less.

The post Why I Won’t Give Up on the USA appeared first on beckyramsey.info.

Feeling Pained by the Mess of Our World? An Idea to Consider

I nearly missed seeing it.

We’d stopped on the way to the beach for gas. As Todd did the pumping, I watched the people. The woman yelling at a man, “YOU talk to her! She’s YOUR mother!” The entwined teenage couple gazing at each other so hungrily that they tripped over the curb. The dad shouting at the crying toddler, “I TOLD YOU, I’M NOT BUYING IT! GET YOUR BUTT IN THE CAR AND STOP WHINING!” The grandma walking the little girl inside, stopping by the door to kiss the top of her head.

I thought about this messy combo of people and our messy world and my messy self. We were on our way to spend the long weekend with Angie and Kevin at their beach house. I’ve known them for forty years but we’d never spent a weekend together. Three days was a long time–long enough for them to discover that I’m not as fun as they might’ve expected. I mean, I love myself, but I hate playing cards, I burst into tears without warning (even to myself) if I don’t get enough alone time, and, thanks to umpteen skin cancer removals, I can’t stay in the sun for long. The perfect beach guest, right?

But then Todd opened the door, handed me a pack of pistachios, and I noticed something interesting. No, not the hairy topless man lugging a twelve-pack, but what was happening above his head: a mother bird carrying a worm to the nest she’d built in the quick stop sign. Her babies were tucked within the u of refuel.

Was that really the best place to build a nest? In all that chaos, the yelling and the shouting, the tripping and the kissing, the gasoline fumes and the car exhaust?

A couple of weeks ago, I remembered the nest again. I was doing my Meals on Wheels route and pulled into Mr. Knighten’s* driveway.

What the heck? Not only was his driveway empty (what happened to his home health aide?) but there he was, leaning precariously over the porch railing, wielding a sharp pair of loppers! He had two metal walkers up there with him, one balanced half on the porch and half on the wheelchair ramp, and the other placed behind him. It was hot and his shirt was filthy. His pants hung low. His diaper sagged.

“Mr. Knighten, what are you doing out here? Where’s your aide?”

He licked at the sweat dripping into his mouth. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m cutting these damn weeds!”

The sun glinted off three more clippers set out on the railing.

“Sir, where’s your aide?”

“Hell if I know,” Mr. Knighten said. “They cut her hours back. She probably thought it wasn’t worth it.”

I tried to steady the walker.

“Don’t!” he said. “I got it just right.”

“Can I call someone to help you?” I asked. “Do you have family around?”

He shook his head. “Just a nephew over in Easley. He’s at work.”

“Why don’t you take a break? I brought your meals. The hot one is paprika chicken. It smells good.”

He frowned but put down the loppers. I tried to help him inside, but he waved me away.

“Sorry,” I said.

“It’s okay, little girl.” He shuffled, turning himself around. “I can do it. See?” A third walker was just inside. “Don’t you worry. I’m not dead yet.”

I’m sixty years old. Being called a little girl felt like a kiss on the top of my head.

 

A couple stops later, a truck blocked the Bakers’* driveway. Two men leaned on a shiny metal wheelchair ramp they’d just installed over the stairs. The men waved at me and said good morning.

“What a nice ramp,” I said as I walked through the weeds. I hesitated before stepping on it. “Is it okay for me to use it?”

“Sure!” said the man with the yellow cap. “You’re the first one!”

“Yeah,” said the man with the tool belt. “You can christen it!”

Mr. Baker must have heard us because he came to the door in his bathrobe, smiling as usual. He was thrilled with the ramp for his wife. He took his meals and thanked me and said what he always says, “Be careful out there in all that traffic.” (There isn’t any traffic, but it’s sweet of him to say it.) We said goodbye and he closed the door.

“The ramp works great,” I told the pair. “I didn’t fall through once.”

“That’s good.” said the tool belt man.

“But we’d be here to catch you if you did!” said the man with the cap.

I came home feeling absolutely buoyed. Like I’d been happily bobbing around in the ocean with people I love, covered with SPF 50, of course!

I thought of those four men and that nest again today when I reread a passage from Ferris, one of my favorite books by Kate DiCamillo. Have you read it? Life has gotten to be too much 10-year-old Ferris. Her favorite person in the world, her grandmother Charisse has a heart problem, there are raccoons in the attic which her father wants “to take care of,” and Pinky, her little sister and local terror, has just pulled out her two front teeth with a pair of pliers she stole from the hardware store as an “ecthperiment.” (It gives her a lisp.) Plus, her Uncle Ted keeps sending Ferris to spy on his beautician wife, Aunt Shirley, who recently left him. Unfortunately for Ferris’s hair, this results in a terrible perm. Uncle Ted knows all of this and yet tells her not to worry. “Go on, now,” he says. “Go out into the world.”

Maybe that’s the advice I need to keep hearing. Maybe we could all listen to it.

When we go out into the world and meet the chaos, person to person, (or person to mother bird) we get close enough to see the holiness that’s often tangled up within it. Sometimes there’s joy hidden in there too.

We can’t do everything. But we can do something. We can make our voices heard, we can make phone calls to people in charge, and we can get close to people who need our help.

It just might make us feel…refueled.

 

*All names from my Meals on Wheels clients have been changed.

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What Lala Spied in the Rear View Mirror

“It’s time to go,” I said as I looked for my purse. Josiah was ready by the door, wearing his backpack. Daniel was dawdling. “Where are your shoes?”

“Who knows.” Five-year-old Daniel shrugged. “It’s a mystery.”

I tried not to laugh.

How many hundreds of times in my life have I asked children to go find their shoes?

I’m lucky to still get to do it occasionally, thanks to the early work and school schedules of my daughter and son-in-law. I love living close enough to help them out when they need it. Even when it often involves searching for shoes.

I sent Daniel to look in my bedroom. Around 7:05 am, he and our dog Rosie had performed their traditional squealing/barking race through the house. It always ends on my bed, now a cyclone of covers and pillows.

Nope. No shoes there.

“Look!” I spotted them behind the bars of the open safety gate at the top of the stairs.

“They look like they’re in prison!”

They’ve had lots of questions about prison lately and I’ve been doing my best with the answers. (No, prisons don’t take children. Every kid makes bad choices from time to time. Like this morning when you fed Josiah that apple slice you found in our trash.)

“DON’T WORRY, SHOES!” Daniel said, reaching behind the bars. “I WILL FREE YOU TO NEW ADVENTURES ON MY FEET!”

Well, that was a positive thing to say. Especially considering I was about to drop him off at camp, where just yesterday Daniel saw his big brother from afar and shouted, “Can you please come hug me?”

“No,” Josiah shouted back. “I have to kick this ball.”

Daniel found a camp counselor and tugged on his shirt. “See those buses over there?” Daniel asked. “Could you please use one of those to drive me to my house?”

For the record, Josiah did manage to find time in his busy ball-kicking schedule to give his little brother a quick hug. “There. Now try to make friends, all right?”

Before the afternoon was over, Daniel had taken his advice to heart. He met a boy, they told each other their names, and voilà! Instant friends!

We finally got our shoes on, I found my purse, and I drove them to camp. As we inched through the drop-off line, Josiah climbed into the front seat so he wouldn’t have to wait on his brother. Daniel took a little longer to get his backpack on. “Have a great day, sweetie!” I said. “New adventures for your feet, right?!”

He gave me a sheepish grin, rolled his eyes like a miniature teenager, and shut the door. He didn’t look back. I watched, just in case.

All morning long, I wondered how it was going. Why didn’t I let him stay home with me?

But you need your writing time. Your project, remember? You’ve got to finish it!

This is good for him! He already has a friend, right? At least he knows the boy’s name.

 

I picked the boys up at 1pm.

“Lala, guess what!” Daniel said, buckling himself into his booster seat. “My friend remembered my name!”

“That’s great, honey!”

“I know it’s great. We’re real friends now. And that’s not all.” He showed me some sticky Starburst wrappers. “My counselors gave me candy so I’d be happy.”

“Nice!”

“HEY! You got candy? ” Josiah said. “That’s not fair!”

“Yeah,” Daniel said. “I remember I said it wasn’t fair when you got to go to Harry Potter Camp and I had to stay home with Lala.”

“Oh. Right.” Josiah reached over and patted his knee.

Daniel curled his lip into a smile. “But then she took me to the doughnut shop and I got a s’mores one. And you didn’t get to go. Sad for you.”

“Yeah,” Josiah said, looking out the window. “But I didn’t care. I was busy at Platform Nine and Three Quarters, boarding the Hogwarts Express.”

“Oh.” Daniel frowned at his sticky wrappers.

Josiah looked at him. “It wasn’t as great as it sounds,” he said. “It was just two couches they’d pushed together.”

A minute later, I looked in the rear view mirror and caught Josiah handing Daniel an old happy meal toy he couldn’t reach.

I headed to the nearest doughnut shop.

Friends are great and all, even when you know their names. But brothers are forever.

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These Moms Had Cindy’s Back—and They Have Yours Too!

I hadn’t meant to sit up front. I just picked a random picnic table in the cool shade of the shelter and guzzled my water, unsticking my shirt from my sweaty back as a breeze blew through. Our march from Unity Park through downtown Greenville was a couple miles long and I’d forgotten my hat. And my sunglasses. And my sunscreen. (So much for being an adult!) At least I remembered my orange shirt. I was there for Wear Orange Weekend, after all.

A woman I didn’t know sat opposite me. I’d heard someone call her Darlene.

I’m just beginning to get to know the people in our local Moms Demand Action group, hearing their stories about why common sense gun legislation is important to them. For me, I think of all the kids in my life, including my grandboys. I remember when Josiah started kindergarten and had to crowd into the bathroom with his class during drills. I remember the accident he had late one afternoon because he didn’t like going in there and tried to put it off as long as possible. I also think of Todd’s Uncle Harold, who was killed in a workplace shooting. That man was funny and smart and so kind to me.

I hadn’t heard Darlene’s story. Maybe I’d ask her next time.

Before the program even started, I knew the speakers would pull my heart strings. How could they not? In addition to a local mom, Cindy Bogan, Malcolm Graham was speaking. Malcolm’s sister, Cynthia Graham Hurd, was murdered by Dylann Roof, along with 8 others, while praying at a Bible study at Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston.

Cindy was up first. Thanks to my front row seat, I could see the large font of Cindy’s notes when Dorothy handed her the microphone. Whenever I have to talk to a group, I always print my notes in large font too.

I could also see her hands shaking a little. Mine do that too.

Cindy wasn’t new at this. No, it was clear she’d told the story many times. She told it powerfully. Beautifully. Like she had to tell it. Jeffery was her precious only child, and on New Year’s Day in 2019, someone shot him in the neck in a road rage incident, paralyzing him from the chest down. At twenty-three-years old, Jeffery’s life was changed forever.

It was obviously hard, telling the story of her broken heart and holding the microphone and all her papers. Dorothy noticed too. She stepped beside Cindy, took her papers, and held them up for her to see.

Cindy spoke so skillfully, helping us understand Jeffery’s experience and her experience. Some of our group knew about that kind of pain, having lost loved ones, children, even, to gun violence, and that’s why they marched. That’s why they carried signs, why they wore the orange shirts, why they answered the questions of curious people along the way. Cindy’s situation was different. Thank God it was different! She hadn’t lost her son. She could talk to him anytime she wanted, and he could talk to her! She wanted us to hear that she’s grateful. SO GRATEFUL that she has him on this earth, but her heart is still broken.

Cindy shared the brutal details of how tough it was for Jeffery to go from being a typical young adult to a prisoner in his own body–one who needs help in bathing, in toileting, in caring for his one-year-old son, for whom he has full custody. She told us about Jeffery’s battle with depression, how hard it was to hear him crying out at night. Loud. Desperate. As Cindy’s voice shook, my table-mate Darlene stood up.

What was she doing? Was this really the time to step in front of the speaker?

No. She was moving around behind them. What was happening?

As Cindy continued talking, Darlene positioned her body to serve as a wall that Cindy could lean against. Back to back, Cindy shared her deepest fears. What will happen to Jeffery after she’s gone? Will he be sent to a nursing home, surrounded by people so different from him, so much older by many decades, so many suffering with dementia? His mind is so sharp! Will he be alone?

Darlene stayed close, offering her back until the end.

After the event was over, I told Darlene what she did bowled me over. “It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen,” I said.

Darlene sort of shrugged. “I wanted her to know I had her back. So I gave her mine.”

I’m still kind of new to Moms Demand Action, but it seems to me that’s it right there, exactly how the movement works. It’s a bunch of moms—and dads and grandmas and grandpas and people who care–all kinds of people who are willing to have all our backs–and lend them along with their legs, as they walk through their communities and the halls of their legislators, to fight for public safety measures to keep our families safe.

I’m thankful for all of them.

 

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How I Signed Up to Help–And Got Served!

We bring dinner to the women the last Monday of every month. We stand in the kitchen,  one of them asks the blessing, and then we sit down together at a big table in a small room. We eat and talk. Then we go. It’s just an hour, no big deal. I don’t always sign up. Sometimes I give in to my introvert/hermit ways. But after what happened last week, I’ll go every chance I get.

Since Nancy was bringing ham, I brought sweet potato casserole. (They go great together. Plus, I love a vegetable that can double as dessert.) We also had a marinated vegetable salad, cookies and brownies, tea, (sweet and unsweet,) and coke, (diet and regular.) And Kathy made her sourdough bread.

Oh, that bread!

Kathy’s been making it for forty years, with the same starter! Thirty some years ago, when our kids were little, she gave me some, and for a year or two it bubbled and foamed in a jar on my kitchen counter, smelling like sweetness and beer. Like a pet, I had to feed it, and if I didn’t use it in bread or pancakes or cinnamon rolls, I’d have to pour some off so it wouldn’t take over my kitchen. Kathy made it with flour and water, but there were invisible things in there too—the wild yeast and bacteria naturally found in the flour, in the water, on our hands, and in the jar. Sourdough starter is a living thing!

Maybe I’m weird but I LOVE how its wild yeast and bacteria are happy partners. How they slurp up the flour, splitting it into little sugar molecules they can eat, making acid that gives the bread its tang and bubbles of carbon dioxide that make it rise, rise, rise. The yeast makes ethanol, too, in which the bacteria is happy to bathe as it pre-digests the gluten. Thanks, bacteria, for giving our intestines less work to do!

I did not share this talk of happy yeast and bathing bacteria and intestines with the women. They’d think I was strange or trying to teach them useless stuff. They’ve got more than enough to think about. Getting their kids back. Working hard at their jobs. Learning to budget. Going to Bible study. Doing chores around the house.

When we arrived with dinner, they seemed surprised to see us. “We didn’t know you were coming,” Amy* said. (*Not her real name.) “You know, being Memorial Day. We…we just thought you’d be with your own families, doing cookouts.” I tried not to glance at the window, at the steady stream of rain. Maybe we shouldn’t have come. Maybe they needed to laze around on a holiday. “Not that we don’t appreciate it,” she said. “This meal’s delicious!”

“How do you do all this?” Sharon* said. “When do you ladies get off work?”

We looked at each other. “We’re old,” someone said. “We’re retired.”

I felt a little embarrassed, admitting it. These women were working so hard, some over hot stoves in restaurants, some changing beds and scrubbing bathrooms in hotels. Several women had two jobs or more, trying to save enough to get their own place once they graduate from the program. To bring their children home—children they never stopped loving while they were incarcerated. They’d showed us pictures, babies toddling around, kids playing in sprinklers, young adults getting ready for prom.

The women were so worn out, they didn’t have much to say.

Sylvia* finally spoke up. “The flowers are pretty. Where’d they come from?” Cindy said she cut them from her yard. “Well, it looks like a fairy bouquet.” No one said anything for a while.

I am uncomfortable with silence.

“Speaking of fairies,” I said, which probably made everybody nervous. I got out my phone and showed them pictures of little girls dressed up like fairies. I’d taken the pics as I walked behind them downtown on Saturday. “They were heading to a parade,” I said. “I didn’t want to act like a creeper, taking photos of them from behind, but they were so beautiful, I couldn’t help it. I think they saw me, though.” I took a bite of ham. “And later, I accidentally ended up in the public bathroom with them before the parade started, so that was weird.” Why did I say that? I wanted to share a funny moment, and they laughed. Probably they were just being nice.

We left a little early so they could rest. I’d told them not to wash my dish, but someone sneaked in the kitchen and washed it anyway.

On Saturday, Eileen* threw a kitchen shower for Donna*. Eileen and Donna graduated from the program last year and Donna just got the keys to a rental home. Kathy and I were happy to attend. I’d always enjoyed Eileen. I remembered how a year ago, Eileen loved Kathy’s bread so much that Kathy gave her some starter and recipes, just like she’d done for me.

The shower was so fun. Eileen and her mom made a bunch of delicious food— pineapple and cream cheese sandwiches, pigs-in-blankets, chips and dip, a veggie tray, even a banana pudding. Two friends from the program came, along with three other women I didn’t know, excited to celebrate this big step in Donna’s life. We hung tinsel streamers over the door, so when you walked through, you felt like a star, and we laughed around the table about dogs and bad haircuts that make your head look like a Q-tip, and neighbors and the price of toilet paper. Donna got lots of things she needed, necessities like cleaning solution, paper products, boxed brownies and cornbread, kitchen linens, baskets, a casserole dish. But the gifts and the food weren’t even the best part.

The best part happened near the end, when Eileen stood in front of everyone and told Donna how proud she was of her. “I want to read some scripture that’s perfect for you. James 1:2-4.”

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trails of many kinds, because you know that testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

“Donna, your perseverance is amazing,” Eileen said. She turned to us. “It really is. Sure, sometimes after work she’d climb in the van and grumble a minute, but she never stayed like that. She was committed to staying positive, hanging in there, working hard. She knew she’d get there. And she did!”

After it was over, we took pictures. Donna hugged each of us, thanked us at least five times, and told us how much it meant to her that we came.

“What a beautiful shower,” I said to Eileen’s mother as we cleaned up the table.

She nodded and smiled. “I’m so proud of my daughter.” She grabbed Donna’s elbow. “And my other daughter.”

As I drove home, I felt like a big emotional lump of dough, joy bubbling up, making me rise rise rise! How lucky I was to get a taste of their stories–the wild yeast of their lives– and to share a little taste of mine. How fortunate to be served and buoyed and encouraged by those women, when I thought I was the one who’d come to serve.

Holy moments, for sure.

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Big Life Changes at Your House? 4 Survival Secrets from a Crab

I spotted her glittering in the water beside my bare toes and jumped back. (I’ve been pinched by a crab before.) But this one had no claws, no legs, no anything. Just the top shell, drifting with the tide. That shell had a name. I used to know it.

Carapace!

(Honestly, brain! You spent two hours yesterday trying to think of the word turnip, and now carapace dances in?)

I sent Mr. Google a photo. He recognized it right away: Arenaeus cribrarius, a speckled swimming crab. Its carapace was stunning, covered in golden bubbles like the fizz of a cream soda, with a fringe of hair and teeth at the mouth side and a slender bone rim at the back. Fashion industry, take note. Triple its size, add a back and a handle, and I’d carry that thing as a purse!

I asked Mr. Google more questions. Speckled swimming crabs shed their carapace at least eighteen times in a two-year life span. Eighteen times! If I lived to be 90 and marked each life stage as often as a crab, I’d change my carapace 810 times!

Also, get this. The word carapace may come from the Latin capa, for cape. Imagine that, a crab pulling off her soda fizz cape and tossing it to the sandy floor like a teen in a hurry. I love it!

Why couldn’t I stop thinking about this?

I finally figured it out.

I identify with that crab.

We spend our lives moving from one stage to another, from one role to another. So many job stages. So many falling-in-love stages. So many just being-a-person-in-this-world/this-country stages.

If you’re a woman, you’ve got some mighty big stages right there. Learning to love your body. Learning how your body changes as time passes. Then later, learning that your body and brain have gone wacko but that’s somehow totally normal. And then learning that your body has made it through most of the wacko period, but you still can’t come up with the word turnip. Learning that your body is vulnerable, like a crab without a carapace.

If you’re a mother, whoa. Talk about stages! You fall in love with this tiny person you grew or someone gifted to you and suddenly every person you meet used to be tiny and helpless like her. You have to let her toddle around and then walk around, her shell still soft, among other little sea creatures who are sometimes cruel. You watch her grow and find that your little crablet can be cruel too. But she can also be wise and generous and kind. You watch her wrestle with her own stages. Your heart hurts for her, but she has to learn and do it herself. She has to leave you. Isn’t that what you trained her to do?

The leaving—it’s such a painful/joyful/proud/awful stage! It’s a change for you too, figuring out a new way to mother. But you can do it and you will. The richness of it may take your breath away! It may also break you. You may envy the crab who doesn’t train them at all. Once they’re born, mom’s job is done. Good luck and see you later. But you’ll survive!

Some changes are easy and some aren’t. This last year or so has been tricky for me. I’m still trying to figure out what I want to do in this new stage, this new life of mine. Where I want to put my energy. It’s not what I expected. When you’re feeling a little lost, it’s hard not to look back at other stages and romanticize them.

But I’m not complaining! I can go to the beach with people I love! I can pick up dead crab shells and ruminate! I can learn survival skills from my crab sisters and brothers! Things like:

Before you shed your old shell, take a long look at it. Absorb all the good things. Remember that your shell won’t come off easily, even if it sometimes feels so confining that you’re ready to rip it off. Give yourself time. Drink lots of water. Seriously. You’ll balloon up so big, it’ll burst at the seams!When your carapace finally lifts like the lid of a jewelry box, you’ll still have work to do. Backing out can be hard. You’ve got to pull out your legs—all ten of them—but that’s not so tough. Try removing all the sensitive parts: the eye stalks, the antennae, the gills and the mouth parts. You may wonder, will I ever be able to see and feel and breathe and speak again?! You’ll have to push and pull these parts over and over until they give. It’s not exactly whipping off a cape.Once the stage is over and done with, take care of yourself! Your new shell will harden in a few days. Rest. Remember, you’ve done HUGE WORK, deep within your tissues. It’s not easy to synthesize a new shell at the same time you’re breaking down the old one. Be gentle. If you feel like it, nibble on the old shell a little. It’s fortifying.Before you paddle away into the wild ocean, take a good look at what you’re leaving behind. The parasites and barnacles you allowed, the bacteria that wasn’t good for you, all of your damaged parts. That leg the sea turtle bit off? You can grow a new one! You’ve got a fresh new start.

One last thing. In case you don’t know, crabs are particularly stupid in one important way. Crabs only get together when they want to make baby crablets. Community? Forget it.

Lucky for us, we have each other. We can talk each other through the stages. I can hold your claw and listen over coffee. You can tell me how my new carapace brings out the green in my eyes. We can share a charcuterie board of detritus and laugh about how our little crablets think they know everything and how we miss those days when they’d throw their capes on the floor. We can be a team, cheering each other on. I’ll pray for you—for that arthritis in your your chelaped—and you’ll pray for me, that I figure things out. You’ll cheer me on, and I’ll know that I will.

It’s just a life stage. I’m happy to have it.

 

 

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Treasures of Taking the Long Cut

It happens every time I take Daniel to preschool. We take the sidewalk, the door is in sight, and he says, “I’m gonna take the short cut.”

It’s actually the long cut, but I don’t need to correct him. We have plenty of time and he loves it.

Today he asked me to walk it with him. “If you do, I’ll show you something cool. Something important.”

“Sure,” I said. “You’ve made me curious!” But I knew what it was.

It was this:

The statue of the little boy with the loaves and the fishes.

“Nope,” Daniel laughed. “Silly Lala. That’s not it.”

Here’s what he showed me.

No, it’s not the bench.

It’s the mud.

“Look.” He tiptoed through it. “There’s all sorts of important stuff in this mud.” After we examined it, he showed me how to scuff my shoes through the wet grass. “It comes off clean!” Then he showed me some berries that the rain knocked off the bushes for the birds “for free,” as well as some beat-up flower blossoms (peonies.)  “They’re just about dead.” He touched one with his finger. The petals dropped to the ground. “Cool.”

It was cool.

After I walked him to his class, I left to do my Meals on Wheels route. Some days I have to rush from client to client, but today I had plenty of time. Like Daniel, I took the long cut.

I’m glad I did. There was a lot of important stuff along the way to examine and witness and treasure.

Like Mrs. Smith*, who has the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. Her neighbor’s dogs bark their heads off at me, which is fine. She can’t always hear the doorbell, but she can hear those dogs! As they kept yapping, I asked her how she was doing, and she said that she fell in the backyard last week. “But my daughter, she’s got cameras everywhere, so she saw me tumble into the grass and called 911. The doctor couldn’t find anything wrong. I guess I’m just weak. Thank you, honey, for the food,” she said as the dogs waited at the foot of the porch.

“Looks like they want to go home with me,” I said.

“Either that or they just want to eat you.”

She’s funny.

Mr. White* is a treasure too. I’d been worried because he’d been missing from my delivery list for nearly two months. I’d drive by his house and wonder what had happened. Had he gone into a nursing home? Had he died? His yard had always bothered me. It had clearly once been something he was proud of, but now everything was falling apart. A statue of a child was missing its head, the porch glider was broken, its embroidered pillow gray with mildew.

A new home health aide answered the door. As I handed her his meals, she asked me about my Mother’s Day. I told her it was nice and asked about hers. “Oh yes, it was wonderful,” she said. “My child’s been with the Lord a good while, but I have spiritual children that remember me and call. It’s nice not to be forgotten.” She called into the living room. “Mr. White, you have a visitor!” He was hard to understand, but his eyes brightened and he managed to say that he’d been in the hospital with anemia and was feeling better. On my way out I noticed a piano by the door. How had I never noticed the piano? There was a framed photo of him and his wife on the music stand. Had she embroidered the pillow? Had she placed the statue?

Janet* loves to talk and laugh so much that I can hardly get a word in, not that I mind. At every visit, she fills me in on the news about her neighbors. “I’m not one to gossip,” she always says, “I’m just telling you what other people told me.” 🙂 Today she talked about how much she loves to sit on the porch and watch the kids play across the street. “See that trampoline there? Sometimes the parents get on and jump with them! Oh they’re good parents, you can tell that. Even if one of them got arrested.” She told me all about her latest doctor’s appointments and how the police came down the street “WITH A SWAT TEAM so I went inside.” Then she told me about her bouts with the blues, how she misses her husband and her daughter that passed. “I find myself crying and crying. But the doctor says it’s good to get it out.”

I agree. It was good to get it out, all of it, from everyone on my route who felt like sharing– the laughter mixed with brokenness, the search for hope, the fear. It might have felt like a mess–like mud, even–but those moments held important stuff to examine and witness and treasure.

It felt holy to me. Definitely worth the long cut.

 

* Names were changed to protect their privacy.

 

 

 

”

 

 

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Josiah’s (Not So) Sick Day Memories

The call came while I was still in my pajamas. “Josiah threw up at school.”

What? We’d just seen him at 7:15 when Paul brought Daniel over. Josiah was fine then, even giggling when he sneaked an orange slice candy.

Paul was headed out of town, Sarah was at work. Could we pick him up? Todd and I looked at each other and said, “Strawberry Pop-tart.”

The last time Josiah had a throw-up incident, he said the cafeteria ladies must have served him a bad Pop-tart.

I put on some clothes, grabbed a bowl, and Daniel and I headed for school.

“All I had was an orange juice,” Josiah said as I traded him the bowl for his backpack. “And that candy. I think I had too much orange.”

I was glad I brought the bowl.

I’ve always had nice sick day memories. How my mother would wheel in the little cart with our small black and white television. How I’d eat saltines and drink ginger ale and watch The Price Is Right. Maybe Josiah and I could make some sick day memories too.

Once we got home and I tucked him into my bed, he made a remarkable recovery.

Within a half hour, he was organizing his Pokemon notebook.

After that, I caught him lifting my weights.

Then he ate a cup of applesauce, “just to test out my stomach.” His stomach was fine. He ate two more cups.

At ten-thirty he said, “I’m ready for lunch.” I brought in a tray: one peanut-butter and jelly sandwich, a cut-up mango, and milk. NO ORANGE JUICE.

After lunch he found the remote and turned on his favorite thing, something I CANNOT STAND: a video of someone playing a video game. Some young person once tried to explain this to me. (Maybe it was his father?) Whoever it was said, “You know how people like to watch other people play football? Well, it’s like that.”

It made sense, but sorry. No.

I made Josiah a deal. If he’d turn off the television, we could go in my office and I’d read him whatever he wanted. He went right to my old Golden Treasury of Children’s Literature, and picked something out.

“There’s a small part of The Hobbit in here!”

“GREAT!” I said, “Let’s read that!”

Friends, the small part was 23 pages long, single-spaced—and he wanted to spin around in my office chair while I read.

“Honey, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said, “unless you want the bowl back.” He stopped spinning.

Fourteen pages in (after he’d explained the part about the mark on Baggin’s door and taught me how to pronounce “Smaug”) he wandered off, returning to say, “I’m curious about the little bowls in your refrigerator and what is in them.” It was chocolate mousse. He ate one of those, too.

By the time Todd came home from work, he’d used my ruler and scissors to make teeny tiny bits of paper, he’d eaten several handfuls of peanuts, and we’d printed out images of Godzilla and a dragon we found on the internet. Josiah was ready to help Todd with the rewiring project in our bedroom. (“Lucky I’m here. I can hand you the tools.”) When Todd pulled the attic steps down, he offered to go.

“Sorry, buddy,” Todd said. “But that’s too dangerous.”

“That’s okay,” Josiah said. “I’m kind of hungry anyway.”

He requested a BL sandwich, adding, “I’m not really a tomato guy.” We were out of bread and only had one piece of bacon in the fridge, but he only needed one piece. A hotdog bun would work just fine.

“Thanks, Lala. That was great.” Josiah handed me the buns. “I’ll have an L sandwich, please. Just a touch of mayo will do the trick.”

It was a sick day memory. How could I say no?

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Observations of Life (and Death) from a Walk to School

Lately, I’ve been walking Daniel to school a few times a week. I figure we better do it now, before South Carolina turns into a giant frying pan and scorches every living thing, including my interest in breathing outside.

I’m happy to hang out with him. He’s a fun walking partner, and it helps his parents out. Plus, it’s proved to give us plenty of teaching moments–from him, not me. I’ve learned so much!

He’s shown me how the curb is like a balance beam, but better. (If you fall off, it’s a short way down.) He’s introduced me to the secret passageway under my neighbor’s Carolina Hemlock. And he’s taught me that Faris Road sometimes gives out cool stuff for free. Rocks and ripe mulberries, for example. And yesterday, a naked cabbage patch doll somebody tossed from their car.

He’s even inspired me to make my own observations. “See those stumps, all covered with ivy?” I said. “They used to be trees! You know, before Hurricane Helene blew them down.” He patted my arm as if to say, Nice try, but that’s a bummer, Lala.

I’m trying to do better.

This morning, we walked again. I was feeling sad, though I didn’t mention it to Daniel. I’d heard about the passing of my friend, Mary Barr, a beautiful lady whose eyes always sparkled with humor and kindness. Daniel ran through his secret passage, jumped over cracks in the sidewalk, and took my hand as he walked on the balance beam. “Lala,” he asked when we were almost up the hill, “when does the world end?”

Wow. That was a big dose of darkness right there.

“Hmm,” I said. “What do you think?”

He rubbed his chin. “I think when a person dies, the world stops for them.”

“What about heaven?” I asked. “What do you think of that?”

“I’m not talking about heaven,” he said. “I mean this place.” He stopped to rub the toe of his tennis shoe on the sidewalk. “Here.”

“Oh, okay,” I said. “So when people die, life here ends.”

“Yep,” he said, “But there is a good thing. You can still love them. God made it that way. You can look around, and you know what you see?”

“What?”

“More people you can love,” he said. “Loving helps you feel better. And there’s my favorite part!”

“The loving?”

“No!” He laughed. “I’m talking about that.” He pointed at the light pole at the top of the hill. “The button you push to cross the street! I LOVE that thing!”

And so he pushed it. And we crossed.

 

 

 

 

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Moving Out of the Whirlwind

Todd’s been cleaning out his desk at home, which means he takes all the junk out of each drawer and, piece by piece, stacks it on my nightstand. Not that I mind that much—most of it is sentimental stuff that I probably would have tossed long ago. He’s always been a big-hearted squirrel, hiding away little acorns to gnaw on later, while I’m a …I don’t know what I am. Whatever animal likes to throw stuff away.

The first acorn to land was the card from the spring of 1987 celebrating our ten-month wedding anniversary. One line confused me, the one that said, “I promise I’ll take you out of Omaha soon.”

“Why’d you write that?” I yelled from our room. “I don’t remember hating Omaha.”

“Oh, you hated it,” he yelled back from his office.

“I didn’t hate it,” I said. “There were good things about it. That hibachi grill we had. How the town smelled like cornflakes.”

“You definitely hated it,” he said. “Don’t you remember? That’s when you told me we shouldn’t have gotten married.”

“Oh yeah.” I sat on the bed. “But I didn’t say that. I said we shouldn’t have gotten married so soon. We should’ve waited until your training was over.”

The card brought it all back, the never-ending canoe trip down the Platte River that landed me in a military hospital, where a nurse-trainee (who looked to be eleven) put in her first IV, turning my arm into a blood-spurting fountain.

Once that was cleaned up, a boy-man marched in with clipboard. He took down all my details. “Place of employment?” he asked.

“Uh…” I said, “I don’t have one right now.”

This was a sore subject. All my friends were in grad school or revving up their shiny new careers, and I was stuck in Omaha, so bored that I taught myself to make pita bread. “We’re just here for a couple months,” I told him. “Then we move to DC. I’ve been mailing out resumés.”

“Uh huh.” He wrote something down.

“I have a biochemistry degree,” I added.

“Okay… I’ll put housewife, then.”

I burst into tears and cried for two days.

Oh, memories.

Next on the nightstand? Two pieces of paper covered with handwriting, one in marker, the other in pen. Apparently, I’d given fourth-grade Ben and seventh-grade Sarah an assignment when they were FIGHTING ALL THE TIME AND MAKING ME CRAZY. (That did sound familiar.)

The assignment had three parts.

Part One: List all the things I do for them that they appreciate.

Part Two: Come up with four possible consequences for future fights.

Part Three: List four things they like about their sibling.

Ben appreciated that I made their beds every day. (What? Why the heck did I do that?) Sarah suggested we take her boom box if they fight. They both said their sibling was excellent at running. I could attest to that, given the amount of chasing in their fights.

“We had lots of fun times too,” I told Todd. “Isn’t there any cheerful stuff in there?”

He handed me a photo of my parents that made me so happy. Mom was leaning against Daddy and they were both laughing. Todd took it in 2005, when they were close to the age we are now, back when it wouldn’t occur to me to worry if they decided, hypothetically, to drive to Kentucky and Ohio and back. Back when they were cleaning out drawers and yelling to each other across the house. Back when their nest was delightfully empty and we were the ones in the middle of everything, our kids in three schools, our lives in a whirl.

We’re not in the middle anymore. We’re learning to be on the sidelines. We don’t plan the birthday parties. We just go.

It’s more restful, but it’s an adjustment. It has its own issues—and its own fun. The other day I asked Dr. Google why my left thumbnail has a vertical ridge. Surprise! It’s aging! It’s always aging!

Yesterday, I texted Sarah. It was her husband Paul’s birthday and since she was out of town, I wanted to deliver some goodies. Nothing big, just a balloon, some cake, a card. She checked his location. “He’s at Target,” she texted back. “He’s taking Daniel to spend his birthday money while Josiah’s at school.”

“What a sweet daddy,” I texted Paul. “Taking your boy birthday shopping ON YOUR BIRTHDAY!”

Paul texted me back a thank you—and the news that Daniel was now the thrilled owner of a bag of Cheetos, a cake pop, and some legos.

That’s life in the center of everything. A life I loved…and still love now, more from the sidelines than the center of the whirl.

I’m not complaining, just adjusting.

Hooray for the leaning and laughing to come!

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