What I’d like to do is share why I was Saying Hello in this living room in Seattle. Maybe before Christmas the time for words and more pictures will present itself.

Meanwhile, may your days shine, or if they’re dullish, may there be reflections (which often hold more depth, longer, as the times of our goodbyes and griefs often do).

I say, “Wish I had my camera.”

He says, “You can use my phone.”

I get directions on how to use it. Then I capture him unloading odds and ends of foliage he has removed from someone’s yard (not a particularly electronic engineer thing to do, but he helps people and gets firewood sometimes in return).

I wait for him to finish. It’s warm out, up here. There is a hunk of butte (Spencer’s) near enough to almost touch, and I realize I haven’t climbed it yet this year. Did I last summer? Months run together.

I play around a little, capturing an image of myself, but not.
The me that trails the husband and the months and these ripening times.

Forty minutes later, the Tracfone lady who clearly understands a limited number of English phrases and I were still trying to correct the problem. I repeated a third time to her that I had to go now and start work, and she said, “Oh, I see,” and went through the hours they’re available and what number to call back and then corrected herself on how many days a week they’re open.

I considered huffing and giving her a taste of America — I don’t deserve this treatment, you less-than-capable foreigner.

I would love to tell you I refrained because I’ve been in a joyful space lately inside my soul.

Frankly, I knew simply following the Tracfone lady’s script along with her would get us done quicker.

Sometimes lately, though, the space inside this me has carried a reminder of a lighter, truer knowing than the too-often sense that I am right, I am deserving, misunderstood, or superior.

Pride and I can be such buddies.

The other day there happened a moment — stepping forward like I did at age seven when I stood in front of Daddy and he asked, softly and tenderly, Do you believe, with all your heart? — and it was somehow the right move to make over again, this time with oil dabbled on forehead, eyebrows, ears, feet, and hands, palms up and then palms down.

Yes, Daddy, I believe.

Today, in light of the coming reminder of the one anointed by spirit and truth who took the punishment I deserve, in a humble office on the phone to across the globe, it’s not important that I don’t get what I might be entitled to from the Tracfone lady.

His response: “So you’re the one who took the Falcon and trailer!”

Seems he had dreamed he was at a conference and had pulled a load of electronic parts in a trailer with the Falcon. They were meeting at a hotel, and when he went out to the parking lot, the car and trailer were gone, and he was upset.

Peanut butter jar in hand, I stared at him.

Tim’s 1966 Falcon sits in our garage beside my ’68 Mustang. He runs it very rarely anymore, because it needs rear body work we can’t afford. It’s the car he learned to drive in and bought from his dad. It’s not like we’ve had conversations about it lately.

We don’t usually tell each other our dreams.

I suppose, after 31 years together, things like this happen.

I asked him five times, “Really?” We shook our heads and smiled.

Tim said, “Tonight, I’m coming to get you.”

The year is waning, and the music is deep. Well, we don’t have snow, so I’m glad there can be depth of sound, rather than some of the kitsch I’ve sampled in search of the holiday.

For years my husband has sought tunes to listen to while he drives. Because the green world around here grows tall between cities, Tim carries out broadcast engineering on long, four-wheel-drive enhanced trips to transmitter sites and home again. He likes the New Age genre. I especially love it come December.

While I listen, I’m still filling my little Moleskine. The writing notebook’s almost ready to put to bed with the year. So I’m back with more random bits from a writer’s mind.

You’ll judge between kitsch and depth better than I:

6/7: Observe and consider. There’s elegance in the unmown grass.

6/14: If I forget to turn decorated t-shirts inside out before washing, will the laundry police come after me?

6/19: The startling sound behind me was a flapping of wings. A crow’s. Only an old crow. But a friend in the stillness wrapped in cloud on Mary’s Peak.

6/24: I like summer coming in under the door.

7/3: I’ve learned that the life of an engineer’s pants is not a pretty one.

7/12: Some writers write directly, and not explicitly. I think I write indirectly and explicitly.

7/15: Clever email spam: Cassanova’s Caplets

7/18: (daughter) Victoria: Our country’s present leaders were all raised on Sesame Street. That explains a few things.
Me: Wow, you’re right. A bit scary.

8/2: My first manuscript mailed to The Sun. Wow, that is far, far away.

8/13: Victoria: I am a multi-syllabic kind of person.

8/26: Our neighbor Harry: The difference between being involved and being committed is like ham and eggs. The chicken’s involved; the pig is committed.

9/12: Christian writing and teaching is overwhelmingly top-down, and the educated world wants, mostly, bottoms up.

9/14: There are books and books and books to be written close to home.

9/27: When a “broadminded” person reacts against an established group/ideal by calling it anti-(whatever), that implies “you are negative,” which implies “I am positive,” which implies “I am right and you are wrong.”

10/3: As opposed to listening in on many forms of conversation, I prefer the noise of a book.

10/6: It’s okay to just keep working in the wasteland of a first draft.

10/8: “It is much better to be tied to one wonderful thing than to allow a mere catalogue of wonderful things deprive you of the capacity to wonder.” ~G.K. Chesterton, “Lamp-posts,” from The Pedestrian, No. 1.

10/25: Man, it’s a wild, hot-flashy life.

10/31: “Why do I get the impression my generation will be known for its witty comebacks?” ~Victoria, after viewing photos by Sarah Culver of the Sanity/Fear rally in Washington D.C. (view here; they’re cool)

11/7: Sometimes when I keep quiet about something, I’m withholding permission from myself to grieve.

11/11: Yesterday I drove Highway 99 home inside an IMax sky.

11/21: Christians are going to be on the losing side of culture wars. Whenever they’re not, things get very bizarre.

11/22: The sacred. Hm. So close to the scared.

11/29: Out the window, nearsighted, at 4:30 a.m. — a little, winking planet or the moon.

I want to shift my mind. To return to that lovely field of option, where I felt in control. But no matter how often I page up and page down, there is no esc-ing my quandaries.

I admit, I’ve thought it more than I should: F1 through F15. Why’s my brain such a Num Lock? Why can’t I see clear?

Finally I have a day at home. Creative time in abundance. I never thought it would seem like the end.

This isn’t me, this quitter. Somehow an alternative has to appear; it will enter from the far right corner, beneath the plus and the minus of memory and lessons learned. It will. I know it. All will be well at last.

Oh, @#&*%^!!

At least once I hit delete no one will see this. I am fully in  command.

It looked rather like Texas. He couldn’t quite get it in the stove, as, you know, being Texas makes you large and dippy and gangly in some places.

I asked someone recently about her years in Texas. She was there as a little kid, and I had been a little kid in Oklahoma. I had mostly a most excellent time living in Moore, near Oklahoma City, but the person I asked about Texas hadn’t liked it. Bad things seemed to be everywhere: weather (hurricanes–she lived near the Gulf); creatures (rattlesnakes, in particular); industry (oil drilling rigs). She is happy to now live in Oregon.

I’m sure I would rather be here in hippie/forest land, too, but I don’t know for certain. It’s been so long since first grade and learning reading and tornado drills and monarch butterflies and tag across neighborhood lawns and lovely, lovely heat. Yesterday I asked Mom for her viewpoint. She gave birth while we lived in Moore and killed ugly spiders and tried to live up to impossible, preacher-wife standards. She was all too glad to move away.

Wikipedia tells that Moore was originally Verbeck, Oklahoma, but that a railroad worker in the new community put his last name, Moore, on a sign on his boxcar home so the postman wouldn’t miss him and then people started associating his name with the town and it stuck.

People still live in Moore, even after four significant tornadoes since 1998. I guess liking where you live, or not, is a matter of perspective.

This morning Tim took the slab of Texas away and returned a while later with a sawed-off piece of it, more like Nevada this time.

I told him he was burning Las Vegas. I guess some would mourn. Many wouldn’t cry, though, I suppose, if he did.

My notebook is the pocket Moleskine I bought in January. I have nearly filled it, with tentative blog posts, quotes, lists for work, and other stuff I wish to remember. Some of it I may also hope to forget, but here are a few random highlights:

1/26/10: A halo of empty sky.
Joints that quicken and will not sleep.

1/29: Plowing through many pieces of writing–pushing, mucking–yuck. I’ve done it; I’ve had to sometimes. But better to till the soil in calm deliberation and tend the shoots when they push up through. I can’t hurry them–I can only nurture and wait and work when the weeds appear.

2/2: “Xenophobia is a visceral response to unwelcome information about someone, such as their being gay. We shouldn’t be committed to xenophobia but should strive to overcome it.” ~Jack Crabtree

2/15: There’s so much to deal with in our little lives.

2/17: Writing is peanut butter stuck beneath the keyboard.

2/25: The statue of liberty is texting. [guy in costume outside tax preparer's office]

3/3: Writing is wearying work. Burnt out? A little.

3/13: I married a story-teller. It was a good move.

4/11: It’s occurring to me that to be associated with God is not to be associated with the most powerful force in the world.

4/23: Eyes of love, baby.

5/7: What do we do with sin? Deal with it and move on? Sit with it and wait? Bury it in the backyard? Conquer it?

5/9: It’s the heart in a flawed being that matters.

5/27: We work like the dickens so something can come along out of thin air. Maybe that’s like John Lennon’s: “Life is what happens when we’re making other plans.”

6/3: When it comes to welcome news, bits are as good as steamships.

Perhaps half the year is enough for now. I’ll add to these another day. And may your random thoughts be good ones.

Last night I picked her up after her shift. I wore shorts and no jacket, because the weather is the way it should have been in late June. Victoria buckled up and started musing that there are two different types of customers she meets–well, really three.

First, there are the much, much older people than she. The grandparent-types, and mostly they are sweet. They’re rooting for the Ducks in white-haired exuberance, or just moseying along, “Fair to middling,” as my grandma used to say.

Next–and these are the ones she has dealt with most over the summer–are people who roughly fit into my generation. The baby boomers, in whose group I’ve always counted myself (though, born in 1960, I was technically on the cusp). These people treat Victoria and her fellows fine, unless something is amiss. The sale did not apply to their chosen item. The light on a discounted whirligig failed to come on. Or, worst of possible scenarios, the store is selling gag toys that dis their political views.

At such times the boomer customers become in-your-face intense. This is so…unjust…untenable…wrong. If they don’t say it, their mannerisms project it well enough. You are messing with me, and that’s not fair. I won’t stand for this treatment!

The final customer type is the college age–Victoria’s group, though she has gained a little perspective on them in two years since graduation. Their manners are completely different from those of their parental units, and according to Victoria, there’s good and bad to this. The bad: they will be interacting with every imaginable gadget they can, rather than with the store personnel. They’re distracted to the max. Until you get their attention. Sorry (Victoria will tell them), you shouldn’t buy a power strip to plug into another power strip, because this will cause a fire, and, besides, it’s illegal.

In which case the current generation person looks her in the eye and is effusively grateful. Dude. Then I won’t do that.

Though she has to work harder for them to acknowledge her existence, they are much nicer to deal with when they do.

I agreed with my daughter. I’ve struggled to engage younger people. Their position seems beyond ignoring me; they act as though I’m no more alive than rocks on the driveway. But if I know the person’s name and ask specific questions, I’m treated to their spirit and subtle wit. I feel as though I have a place, even, in their existence.

Dealing with people around my age is at the same time easier and trickier. As my opinions about some things change, I feel obligated to be silent, be tactful, be invisible. I get it better with these folks, because they’re me. They notice me on the street or online, but I know it’s not safe, exactly, to reveal much to them. I’m sure I’ll keep analyzing why this is so.

Last night, long after the September sunset, we paused at a four-way stop where pedestrians darted in front of us in dark clothing. At this same place another night, Victoria had warned me of young people coming across. They were blithely not noticing our car. Last night the street crossers were older, wearing more bling. A lady with impeccable hair glared at me. She seemed to signal that her right to occupy this space was just. The only worthy cause of the evening.

“I found an onion in the garage,” he said. “It had sprouted, so I planted it.”Tim is allergic to onions. We never have them in meals, but last winter I bought some, and when I cooked stew in the crock pot I’d slice one in half and add it for flavor, taking it out afterward. Guess I forgot one.

What does an onion do?And what should we do with it?When we’re ready, I suppose we’ll dig it up and decide.