A Christmas post has been on my mind, ever since we returned from a week-plus in Seattle, visiting family and friends, staying in my brother’s cool house. Richard and Manny live beside the light rail station, from whence you can whoosh toward downtown, where interesting sights abound.

Since we came home, though, I haven’t had time to goof off on the Internet in normal fashion. (I pop in and “stalk” folks on Facebook — as my activity has been described, though I prefer to say I “lurk”.) This can be seen as positive, especially when fullness of heart and soul are the cause. Lovely developments in our lives continue. Messy processes, too, as is normal fashion for reality. But mostly much to brighten the season.

One evening last week I sat down to clickety-click a few bloggy words, but then the doorbell rang. Through a dark living room I groped, finding the front door, while another insistent dingering sounded. My surprise knew no bounds at the sight on our step — Uncle Timmy!

...and my hubby says I can't talk without gesturing...

He sent himself this year, from Ohio, as an in-person Christmas card. I love that he did. We went out to Sizzler. Salad bar, a few engineers “partying”, and the two Tims catching up. What could be nicer?

Now’s the time to send Greetings of the Season, and so I offer good wishes to each of you from my heart. I hold in thought a mama we saw up north, who is great with child and pondering Advent in ways I well remember, from 26 and 22 years ago.

I count it all joy to have the love and respect of the people who raised me, and of those whom I raised.

There are those who put up with me with great, forbearing love. This is the way of our Messiah, who is our King and our God, become Man for our sakes.

What could be nicer?

I was always curious about him, this writer with whom Dad shared many adventures, most involving trout. Now I have realized a fun dream and put a piece of Dad’s history out there. Rosebud is a journal I bought copies of over the years, enjoying stories, wishing something of my crafting might end up within its pages.

Thanks, Dad, for letting that happen.

Thanks, Richard Brautigan, wherever you are, for giving Dad fishing lessons once upon a time.

Dad’s friend Richard moved to Eugene during high school. They met in 1951 playing church basketball. Richard went to First Baptist, Dad to First Christian. The night of their initial match-up Dad’s team groaned ahead of time, thinking their winning streak over. First B’s team boasted twins who each stood 6’ 3”, and Richard topped them at 6’ 4”.

Dad’s first thought when he saw Richard was that Ichabod Crane had come to life with sandy hair. Guarding Richard under the basket was easy. All Dad had to do was give him a hip, and Richard lost his balance. First Christian won the game.

The whole story starts on pg. 76 of Rosebud #51.

Jim used to have a famous neighbor: the celebrated author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Do you know him? His bus traveled the country in the 60s.

Jim didn’t so much know the famous author as visit with him occasionally in a neighborly fashion. Howdying over fence or across narrow road, while movements of cattle stirred flies in afternoon air.

The weekend before this last, Tim and I flew to Colorado for his Aunt Judy’s wedding. No psychedelic memories at this gig.
Just a very cute couple.

We enjoyed them and other relatives at a Rocky Mountain home.

And what a wonderful reacquaintance. The sky. So close. So very, very blue.

At 8:00 we headed south. My music played, and Kimi in the back seat said she liked it. That’s something an old gal loves to hear, even while navigating a road nearly dis-graded by winter’s length and breadth. Not to be run down by pickups of insatiable power-lust, that was my prime directive. Steer in the clear around those curves, past the barriers. Catch glimpses of shining water, in Odell Lake, on faces of rock rising. Sense the solemness of trees.

Snow Zone signs abounded. Larger ones appeared regarding fines for unintended vehicles. At least, my eye first caught those words, and I grinned. Of course the signs actually warned against leaving unattended vehicles.

I drove an Escape I hadn’t intended. The car and the trip matched my recent notions of life as an unexpected avenue. No safety guaranteed. But surprises. Those always approaching, just the other side of a bumpity curve.

James is looking at his 21st birthday soon; he’s therefore at a prime age to catch mono and have a hard time recovering. I’m learning more about related medical terms than I really was wanting. The good news today is he feels a lot better. He’s still very tired. When can he return to work? No one knows yet. When will I relax? Oh, maybe next year. After we’ve paid off the bills for extensive tests (the first, “regular” mono blood test showed negative, but James is special and went for the super-sized version, getting a positive for the Epstein Barr virus).

Right now James is receiving a transfusion of nano silver, an alternative treatment here but apparently a traditional medicine in other parts of the world. I won’t expand on my ignorance further, but I’m trusting our doctor and his methods. Someday I may interview him, an M.D. who believes in trying other methods than just treating symptoms. Well, it’s all a long story. Did I mention I’m tired? Not coherent much today.

But I’m grateful for many things. If I didn’t have my job, part-time though it be, I’d be much more stressed over medicinal issues. If my family wasn’t all under one roof again for a while, I would no doubt be fragmented between my place and my son’s. If he lived across country, as I did when I had major surgery at 19 in South Carolina, there would have been a rush trip for me, like the one my mom made in early 1980 to be at my bedside. (Have I told you how much I appreciated that, Mom?)

It’s also been nice this week to meet a couple small writing deadlines. The posts I wrote for Relief Journal are up, here and here. The latest one gives my thoughts on writing very personal essays. Though drafting these gave me more to do this week, I was glad for the diversion. Maybe they came out coherently, even, unlike certain personal blog entries.

And here we are in December. Christmas time beckons with a soft smile and logs sputtering in the woodstove. I’ll go pick up James soon at the doctor’s, and we’ll see how much more valuable he feels, infused with silver.

happy when my mind is free, when I hear the old, old stories gritty. Pedestrian, if you will. When I see harsh sun reflect off the Sea, taste dust, and move weary feet. Finally, resting on a cushion in the home of old friends, straining to hear his words to her. I want to embrace her expectant interest, her loving gaze.

“Are you saying,” she asks, “it’s not about taking over? I always thought…”

And he smiles. “We have a small role to play,” he says. “Like the tiniest seed in your garden. Insignificant. At least, that’s how it will appear. But think of those who came before you. Was David always on the throne?”

She shakes her head, eyes bright. “He was the youngest. No one considered him worthy of anointing…Then he was hunted.”

He nods.

“Oh,” she says. Her fingers twist her robe’s hem. “I see.”

“Waiting,” he says. “You will wait a long time. On the run. Misunderstood. But you’ll always have what’s here and now. No one can take it from you.”

***

Here is where others land:

whole selves embrace the morning, wriggling one might guess, if one hadn’t any reference. But the stylized movements are cryptically ethnic, patterns of bowing, prostration, hand to head, to belly, one shoulder, the other. The painted, haloed visage on the stand is kissed by some with weary faces, with lines from suffered years, in which the eyes are tender.

Their minds release care through words like well-worn beads. The chanting tone, the repetition. Glorification believed. Holy God. Holy mighty. Yet woven with echoes of long centuries hunted; waiting: “Lord have mercy.”

They recall his teaching, the stories are tradition. Mystical the elements they grasp. They rise above the gritty world, the prisons and beatings and tearing of the lions’ jaws.

***

I tell Victoria it was good for me to visit St. John’s again, to visualize meanings in the liturgy. And love. My, but there are ancient seeds of love beneath this ground.

“Oh, I’m calm,” she said. “I’ve helped him practice so often, I know this will be wonderful.”

She indeed looked composed, while I sat like a loaded arrow, my fingers twisting in my lap. Fortunately, Tim had found his seat on the other side of James, our son. When Tim is beside me and lights go down, he tends to tickle my knee. Shrieking and launching five feet in the air wouldn’t be the way I hoped to support Dad at his concert.

The room looked nearly full.

Mom said, “In all these years, I don’t think your dad or I ever spoke in a church this large.”

I swallowed and continued aiming for composure. The lights dimmed. Someone up front introduced the spring concert of the Gleemen, a local all-male singing group Dad joined some months ago. For several seasons Tim’s dad urged my dad to be part of their choir, and finally Dad agreed to try it. Watching all the men file onto the stage, I couldn’t decide if I should thank or scold my father-in-law.

Now Dad was up there, in his black tuxedo in the back row. There was Tim’s dad, smiling, across the risers. I was glad Tim’s dad had brought this about, though no one had foreseen that my father would end up trying out for the solo now scheduled at the concert’s end.

How would I survive through all the tunes on the program until then?

Strangely, a week before I had managed fine at the production my son was in of Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors. A little tense beforehand, I had waited for the show’s beginning in confidence that seeing James on stage expressing his art would relax me. At every one of his plays I have reacted the same way. This one last week proved no exception. The players took frenetic inspiration from the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup.

(Photos courtesy of Jessamyn VandenElzen. Click on them to “embiggen.”)

They were masterful. I had fun.

But this night watching Dad on stage, I wasn’t doing so well. Even while the concert opened with upbeat numbers from America’s past, and even while appreciating the informative introductions to each song, my nerves continued skittering the same way James’s troupe had acted out their characters.

What was my problem? Why did I feel like I held Dad up with my stomach muscles? He’s doing great, I told myself. But, my brain responded, what if he slips stepping down for his solo? What if his voice cracks? What if the sound guy messes up and the choir drowns him out?

Clearly, I could have used some form of psychological counseling. Someone to tell me how these extreme feelings might stem from growing up a preacher’s kid, watching Dad “perform” behind the pulpit every Sunday for critical congregants. Maybe that was the problem.

I knew, however, that Mom beside me was a preacher’s daughter, too. She was okay with this. Of course, her dad answered the ministerial call later in life. Grandpa wasn’t even assigned a usual, preaching pastorate until he neared retirement. And then, well, duh, Dad is her husband. She’s been a preacher’s wife all these years. She found her methods of separating from him. She dealt with these things as an adult.

But I’m still a child when I see Dad on stage. The kid in me worries. Maybe, a psychologist might counsel, I took on too much those years ago, imagining I needed to alleviate stress for my parents in their chosen religious service. Now I need to find ways to separate more: me from them, past from present, church from art.

The moment came, finally, for the last concert number. The presenter explained how this song, Ol’ Man River, became an expression of hardship not just for African Americans, but for all of us living life that can be tragic and confusing. Circumstances can be like a river, continually rolling along, not seeming to care. But life keeps happening.

I thought about Dad, growing up poor. He’s had experiences I can’t understand. He is a good singer, as each church he served learned, but moreso Dad is an individual with depth because of what he has been through. He was the perfect choice for this solo about the ol’ man river.

And then, Dad sang it. On and on the arrangement flowed, the choir behind him. Dad belted out the rich notes, from low to high, over and over. The lyrics were his, for the moment. He knew how to deliver.

My vision obscured by tears, I watched and listened in awe. At the end, I turned to Mom. Applause resounded. “Look behind us,” I whispered. “People are standing.”

On the way out, I listened to strangers saying the last song gave them chills. I told a few people, “That’s my daddy.”

I don’t know why, but to say so felt like something more. As if there had been a slight shift. I’m going to see how it goes from here. While I turn into whatever I will be these golden years, maybe a more healthy daughterhood will begin. It might just keep rolling along.

We sat in the dentist’s waiting room. Actually, it was an endodontist’s waiting room. The three of us were at ease, Mom and Dad having nearly made it through a week filled with medical appointments while maintaining their senses of humor and grace.

Mom made sure the receptionist understood that though I was interviewing Dad, we could release him the moment the endodontist required him. She tends to let people know I’m a writer any way she can.

I said to Dad, “You’re right. This makes it sound like you called Richard a day later, when really it might have been months. I’ve written it this way to make things flow better, but I can change it.”

“It’s fine,” he said, “since I don’t even remember how soon I made the call.”

“That reminds me,” Mom said, “we watched an interview of the real people from The Blind Side.”

“Yeah, the way it really happened, the young guy loved football all his life.” Dad and Mom went on discussing the based-on-a-true-story film we all saw recently, comparing their new knowledge with Hollywood’s version. I agreed with them that this time the movie-makers seemed to have gotten the important things right. Doesn’t always happen, of course.

I asked a question or two more before the endodontic assistant called Dad back. A little while later, the assistant ushered Mom and me into the small space where Dad’s exam was taking place. “I want you and Deanna here, Carol,” Dad said. To the endodontist he went on, “I’ll never remember everything you tell me, and they’ll grill me with a thousand questions.” The doctor said he had no problem with our presence.

I learned more than I hope I’ll ever need to know about root canals, specifically the history of this procedure since 1965, when Dad first underwent one in Oklahoma. Forty-five years later, it needs to be redone. After hearing the dental specialist’s evaluation, Mom and I felt we could trust him with Dad’s mouth.

I guess this sort of faith is essential to maintaining connected lives. These explanations of “how it happened” or “how it will happen” are, I suppose, unavoidably cobbled together to some extent. Fictionalized, if only slightly. Smooth communication from brain to mouth to a hearer’s mind requires editing. Rather amazingly, we can take in information and construct our individual views, and in most cases what’s lost in translation doesn’t cause a problem. The nature of truth is it’s malleable to a degree.

Yet something inside me tends to listen and watch for that off bit. You know it, or your instincts alert you, or something. When the tone of story becomes too convenient. I made sure to ask the endodontist if what he meant about the crown on Dad’s tooth was it might break when he redoes the root canal, no matter how secure he thinks it looks today. The doctor admitted he won’t know for sure about the crown until he does the procedure.

If someone asks me sometime — assuming my essay about Dad and Richard Brautigan gets published — whether or not Dad really phoned Richard as immediately as my story makes it sound, I’ll need to tell them I don’t know, don’t even think so. But I’m basing the story on truth, on what happened in a broad sense, and there’s enough factual meaning in there to be worth chewing on.

You trust me, right?

Just comment or email me tonight, and you’ll be in a drawing. I decided, since my first commenter last post guessed who tomorrow’s guest blogger will be, that I’ll pick a random winner. There are two with chances right now–pretty good odds–but anyone else feel free.

I’m fiddling around, even though my instrument is the flute. Fun futzing is what I’m up to. We got a Mac yesterday. Not that I stayed up till midnight playing with it or anything…

Yesterday was a day of fullness. Daughter came over, computer arrived, daughter filed her taxes using new computer, friends came in the evening, son’s friend moved into daughter’s old room (living here for a month or so to get ready for his next step in life). In the midst of everything, I tried to catch up on laundry and the few other things my son hadn’t done for me while I was sick. Then there was the bathtub drain, which, well, wasn’t.

It’s fun to hear men taking on a project like a stuck drain. Wanting to muscle out the clog with hangars, tools, plungers. My back felt very rested while I listened to them from the other room. I kind of knew how it would turn out, when one said, “Now it’s filling up more.” After a while the other said, “The clog must have moved farther down the pipe.” I expected then to be part of the project, since I knew where the Liquid Plumber was.

Anyway, clogs and old computers are pretty much cleared away around here now. Not much left to do except wait for tomorrow’s interesting words in the blogosphere and go to church to play my fiddle, er, flute.

Emily’s Last Day

On the trip to Emily’s house, Neil rode beside his brother Ben, who drove. Passing Harrisburg, Neil reached into his ear and pulled out what looked like a small wad of Playdough. He tapped the minuscule antenna. “I got hearing aids.”

“Good for you, Neil. About time.”

Neil grinned. “When you and I go out to the lake in April, I’ll notice the birds. If a trout splashes, I’ll hear it.”

“I’ll have to get a better reel,” Ben said.

Neil settled comfortably into his seat, glad to talk fishing. He decided if Emily had been with them she’d likely have commented, “Enjoy the day, boys. No long faces.”

At last they parked in front of her house. Their other sisters and their nieces hugged them at the door. Beyond everyone, Emily lay in a hospital bed, her eyes closed. She lay on her back, the family nose aimed at the ceiling. The cancer had ravaged her frame, and the blankets tucked to her chin couldn’t soften her emaciated form.

“Emily,” Neil said. “You snore like I do.”

She closed her mouth.

“Hey, she heard me!”

The women nodded. “She’s aware of us.”

They went to the kitchen for food. There were orange wedges, triangle sandwiches, and paper plates. Then they sat in the living room, balancing the plates on their laps, surrounded by Emily’s knick-knacks and paintings. The orange tasted sour.

Emily had never married. She had worked all her life, and her coworkers stopped by to pay respects. With his new hearing aids, Neil listened to soft conversations humming. Finally people began to drift away in the late afternoon. His sisters, who’d been caring for Emily for weeks, looked weary. A hospice nurse would be in later to stay the night.

Neil lingered at Emily’s bedside, wishing she’d open her eyes.

“Let’s sing a hymn,” Ben said. The family grasped hands and almost encircled the bed. Neil didn’t know all the words to Amazing Grace, but he listened intently to the haunting song. In the silence afterward, he bent to hug Emily’s wasted shoulders.

“I’ll never forget,” he whispered, “how you saved me from Billy Hanson when he had me down that day in second grade.”

Neil kissed Emily’s cheek and her face twitched. “I couldn’t beat anyone,” he said. “So you did. I saw his bloody nose. Good punch.”

Emily’s breathing shifted slightly. He knew she’d heard him.

“Thanks, Sis. I love you.” Neil kissed his sister again and let go of her hand.

A few minutes later, the brothers said their goodbyes and stepped into the evening air, where Neil stood on the porch for a moment, listening. He could hear sparrows singing hymns in the trees.