Saturday morning, Tim lit a fire in the woodstove.
It got hot as summer in here.
I like summer.
There was a ladybug on the window, and trying to capture her (or him), I first managed only to catch our new-unfurled maple leaves and the worn look under our house’s eaves.
But then the critter found the house alarm sensor, Tim’s protective insurance for our warm spot on earth, and I managed to focus.
I hope the fire didn’t involve the ladybug’s house or children.
Light. Lighter. Even though we drove the final miles in a downpour, the loads began to lighten on arrival. I had thought the story would begin here, but somehow this was the finale, or maybe the epilogue.
First, Waiting
I live these days with three boys. That’s not a complaint. They are, really, each of them, men, with things to do and places to be, and it’s good that I now have places to be more days a week than I used to, because, otherwise, I would wait around a lot for them.
One day last week, I waited for the boy who has been my man for many days of dark and light and crazy thrills and ordinariness. Looking back, I wonder how far would stretch, laid end to end (if such were possible), the amount of minutes I’ve spent waiting for him. Across the continent, the breadth of the sea?
But things have to be repaired. Gadgets don’t say to him, “Oh, so much time spent on me already! You go on home to the missus, I can get along till Monday.” A completely predictable thing in our existence together is his always on-call status that threatens my best laid plans.
I hopped and skipped through packing that day, even dragging my own overnight bag from the attic and avoiding bonking my head on a beam. Singing, smiling, I washed up dishes, changed the cat’s water. Figured the latest hour it might possibly be until he rode up on his bicycle. And then, he was there, in the truck in the driveway. Hours early. Hooray!
Oh, wait. He had the company truck. Meaning he wasn’t done for the day. Not by a long shot; merely heading up to Blanton Heights to get started. “I’ll be lucky if we finish by tomorrow.”
Boys of Neighborhoods Past
I remember bounding out the door with my two littler brothers, ready for games in the neighborhood. We always had boys to play with, or maybe it was most girls stayed indoors and dressed up their cats or something. I wanted to lead the army, conduct the band, write the script for all the kids screaming our terrible eagle cries as we wheeled and swooped over deep canyons.
I expected them to follow me, my imaginings. And bless their hearts, some fine evenings they did. They believed my theory that certain rocks were really aliens (their leader living on the moon: “If you squint just right, you can see him up there, look!”).
But most days, it pretty quickly became difficult. The boy over here thought eagles were stupid; the one who lived two blocks away said we had to fly to the ocean and kill seagulls and then drown ourselves. Soon we all fell back on standards like frozen tag and “I double dare ya!”
And yet, next chance after school, I was out there again releasing the magic in my thoughts for them for as long as they could glimpse it.
More Flurry, Less Fury
For marriage, at the wise old age of 19, I formed a plan:
Squelch the magic, do everything this boy’s way. Then I will always be secure. He will always love me.
I couldn’t imagine, 20-some years later, hearing, “I still love you, but I don’t always like you anymore.”
Only one of many fractured fairy tale moments, sure, but it stands out for me still. Because the moments started teaching me to listen, to take note.
He needed me to share my differentness. This boy, like others I had known, wanted a glimpse of how I see reality. Of what makes me tick. I was supposed to try and orchestrate eagles in the yard for him, too. And live with the resulting conflict, instead of exploding in frustration every other day. And make compromises. Risk waiting, risk letting things go.
Seaing is Belief
The gadgets up on Blanton finally released him last week. I figured a plan to pick him up at the station on the way out of town, leaving his bike to be wheeled home when we returned. Which was all good, because we made it to the Arch Rock Inn, as the clouds burst, a few minutes before their office closed. And we found our room with sherry in a decanter and the surf pounding out the window as the last light faded.
And the rest of our epilogue tasted sweet as a story.
Today one of my semi-regular guest blog posts is up at Relief. You may notice I tossed three blogger/writer friends’ links into the salad. A few sprouts, too; at least the mention of them. Here’s to pondering the end of the world as we know it.
For years now, I’ve known in a general way what I wanted to write. You know from this blog, the idea has involved my life, my history, my faith. Trying to capture something that might offer valuable bits to others, in a compelling way. A pleasing, entertaining way would be nice. This can be hard, when you’re a melancholy, prone-to-melodrama sort like me. Lately I have felt a nearness to some sort of passage through the log jam in my mind. But I have begun to wonder if it will take decades longer to discover what resource I might provide, what blessing, if you will, I might give.
I’m going to share a page from a little diary. Written in pencil, the entry is dated Saturday, August 3, 1974.
On Monday evening some friends from Illinois, the Hershisers, came to visit. There are four in their family; the parents, LeRoy and Gwen, and the kids Tim, 18 and Stephanie, 15. We had a great time with them on Tuesday, when we went to Pt. Defiance park for the day. Stephanie and Tim are funny and neat. Tim is great in electronics and knows all about electrical stuff. He fixed about everything that needed repairing around here, from our TV to our casset tape recorder. I’m afraid I sort of like him a little too much but he has a girlfriend back in Sterling, Illinois and I won’t be seeing him for probably many years, so I think I’ll get over him.
I was 14. A later entry that summer found me meeting a boy named Mike at a campground, talking with him late into the night (with my brother there. “Unfortunately,” I said), and then searching in vain for Mike the next day. Ah, those years. Amazing, still, to me, is how one piece of my continuing adolescent adventures returned in a meaningful way a few years later.
Tim came back to Tacoma. We started dating (his old girlfriend a bittersweet memory) when I was 17, my senior year.
I recall his sister saying, sometime after we married, that ours had been a fairy tale love story. Lately I jotted something related into my Moleskine writing notebook:
I’ve been a main character in a fractured fairy tale. I’ve also been the wife in a stable, committed relationship. Both my stories have played out with the same man.
Here’s the strange part: in both cases we have lived a broken love.
Although we find ourselves on a healing journey, the two of us remain morally tattered beings. And yet we have seen ourselves striving for better, wanting goodness.
If only God would give it to us.
The Bible’s word “depraved” brings up questions for me. Why, for one thing, doesn’t God give us moral “pravity”? Make us “praved”?
Is depravity like being declawed? Defenestrated?
Why don’t we get secondary pravity, like some say we get secondary virginity?
How can the command, “Go and sin no more” fit, if I’m to be ever depraved while walking this planet, while going?
I jotted these thoughts along with glimpses of answers I’ve been forming over the decades since I was that 14-year-old girl. Since that first glimmer of my fractured fairy tale. I had some fun with possibilities. Maybe I’m discovering the channel I can write in, on, betwixt.
Yesterday I received a gift in the mail from Fresca. Thanks, bloggy buddy! It’s a book of quotes titled A Writer’s Commonplace Book (British, eh, what?).
Leafing through pages this morning, I was reading aloud to Tim. Here’s something we both found interesting, by Margaret Mead:
Three different types of marriage. One for young people who just want to live together and have sex…another for couples who want to raise children. A third is for older people who want companionship.
Mead was married three times, and her sexual orientation apparently “evolved” later in life. Her fractured fairy tales obviously look different than my own, hetero-oriented, stormy story. But I like these ideas to explore, especially when thinking about writing for people, in marriage type 1, 2, or 3 (maybe with the same person), living along that vast and varied avenue of our reality which is characterized by believing in God and Jesus.
Plenty of us are fractured. How many sigh and groan, thinking most of the others they see are living happily ever after?
And what, pray tell, old chap, might it be like to climb back in the window, fenestrated, wearing a sprig of pravity in one’s hair?
A friend whose creative expressions mean a lot to me has agreed to allow her first cyberspace publication to happen here. I am honored to present Laura’s artful flash.
Mercy for Fil
Fil woke up in his usual world. It had been a life of twists and turns for sure, but being able to predict the beauty of the land he lived on, rain or shine, made it bearable. This was it: animals loving to see him, the same hills, fields, sounds, neighbors, and events.
Study of an Old Man's Profile, Galleria degli Uffizi, Firenze
One time, however, he knew that something was different. Close to ninety now, the noise of tiny children nearly finished, he thought he heard something else. He might have used the word silence, and maybe this was all there was to it. The moments seemed…friendly, a balanced and simultaneous mixture of remembering – and forgetting. All of his years of having to make up his mind, to always need to answer to someone, didn’t seem to matter. It was rather nice.
He didn’t know what he was doing next. Sometimes he thought his mind had forgotten to care, but he didn’t know for sure. Other times he spent hours wondering what else there was. There didn’t seem to be a straight answer, or the answer, being straight, wasn’t quite right.
He decided it would be best to forget to remember. He pulled on his clothes, laced up his boots, and returned to his fairly lonely, but safer, existence.
Picking up where I left off Friday.
Old Abe’s Acceptance
Unlike Captain Mal’s story, Abraham’s tale doesn’t present a new, horrific threat to mankind. But in context, the book of Genesis to this point has spread a canvas of a ‘verse where people screw up. From the start, they rebel against their creator, and then it’s off to the killing fields, human against human, of antiquity.
The thing God asks Abraham to believe, I have come to think, initiates an overarching narrative (maybe the narrative) in the biblical texts. Abraham accepts the idea that, even though he’s old as dirt, he will have a son. This is a big deal where he lives. He’s motivated enough, perhaps, to step out blindly, trusting because it serves his heart’s longing for an heir. But his “seed” becoming a blessing to all peoples of the earth is a big deal to Abraham, too, according to the writings. The details of what that blessing means sound obscure, if poetic. There’s a bit about his descendants being as numerous as stars in the sky. What seems to count and gets mentioned even in the New Testament, is that Abraham believes God. He hasn’t yet been circumsized, he isn’t part of any known religious tradition. He’s just a guy, saying, “Okay, I’ll take your word for it.”
Abraham’s belief doesn’t get tested for a long, long time.
Captain Mal’s Decision
Serenity crew and big decisions
He believes there’s a reason to try and make a difference, to get the truth out to the ‘verse. He will be satisfied if he loses everything in service to this cause, because, perhaps, that will be a blessing to the rest of humanity.
Results in Two ‘Verses
For Abraham over time, things go up and down. Cities explode, powerful kings threaten all his possessions, his wife is infertile, a plan involving getting his slave, Hagar, pregnant brings a son but also bad consequences. From a holy man he runs into–Melchizedek, King of Salem–he learns more about this god, this promiser, who has spoken to him. Melchizedek calls this deity God Most High and has apparently been sacrificing to him for ages. Another person besides Abraham has decided being involved with God is the right thing.
And then God predicts a son for barren, ninety-year-old Sarah, and the baby is conceived and born on schedule. Isaac (meaning “laughter”) is the promised, joyful heir to both of them. Yet he’s also the son God asks Abraham to sacrifice, high on a cold mountain.
Abraham, the guy who’s been through so much with God Most High, sets out to obey. Not blithely, I’m sure, but with confidence, perhaps, born of all the years where his “ship”–his life and security–have been repeatedly shown to be about something that will make a positive difference. Reasoning that his God can raise the dead, he figures God is capable of bringing Isaac back to life. God has to, or nothing to this point in Abraham’s life will have made sense.
Abraham decides, for the umpteenth time, that following God is right. He could be wrong, but based on experience he believes he is correct about the state of things. So he raises the knife over Isaac to kill him. And that is all God wants Abraham and the rest of history to see. Things turn out better than Abraham expected them to. God says, “Whoa. That’s good. Go sacrifice that ram over there, instead.”
At the end of Mal’s story, things also turn out better than they could have. His mission accomplished, he chooses to continue journeying on in his spaceship, even though an “albatross” remains with him. He has been tested by circumstances and has seen he was right to think he could be a blessing to others in the scheme of things. Whether spelled out or not, Mal will continue to believe his belief.
Maybe that’s what Shepherd Book urged for him to do, knowing that, whatever Mal called it, Mal got the believing thing right way back when. His test proved what was already real.
Lots goes into the reactions of people to their lives and times. Whether hippyish, middle-ages-ish, or thoroughly enlightened, each human existence involves an amalgamation of factors beyond DNA. Yet we continue seeking to relate to the ideas and adventures of those. Of these. Of them. Of her. Of him. I think that’s an okay thing, despite the pitfalls and the getting things wrong we’ll inevitably do. Getting things right can happen once in a while, like a pitch perfect story off the cuff.
I have thoughts to share on two people, one historical/biblical, and one fictional/futuristic. This will take more than one post, but I’ve written out my complete idea first, so I should be able to get the parts published in sequence this time, rather than spread out as were my first and second posts on belief, here and here. (Being all explainy ahead of time is good, right? If not, thanks for your patience.)
Abraham Called by God - portrait by Guy Rowe
Abraham, the man from Genesis who started out as Abram and became the father of the Arabs and the Jews, was a man shown something. An organic something, in my view, because this god came to him, and he understood gods.
Nothing says how this god appeared or spoke to Abraham, but Abraham, from a culture that considered gods to be behind the phenomena of their lives, recognized deity when he encountered one. Had any “other” god actually spoken to anyone? There’s no way to know, but I’m guessing they hadn’t. These gods were fables and epic stories, but their being around was accepted. What better way for the real, ultimate being to come across as plausible, than to show up and speak as a cultural god surely would, if one could?
We’re not told in Genesis whether Abraham was in general disillusioned or angry, just that he was a person. Fearfulness seems apparent in his story at some decision-making points. But there’s also his loyalty, courage, and loving care for others. He was a married man, a nomad, a rich guy after a while, and, finally, a father.
In the Bible story, Abraham somehow is given interaction with his particular deity at points in time throughout his life. He receives a summons to hope in stuff he can’t yet see. God asks him to believe, specifically, that his seed (offspring, heritage, followers-in-faith) will be a blessing to all peoples of the earth. This blessing is somehow a big deal. Not a hamburger franchise or the like. A truly significant something. And it will come, God tells him, through the lineage of his and his wife Sarah’s son, Isaac.
Capt. Mal
Malcolm Reynolds, the captain of a spaceship in Joss Whedon’s movie from the TV series Firefly, is a man shown something. A military man from a war gone wrong, he’s definitely disillusioned. Despite his anger, he comes across as a real person, loyal, courageous, caring. Trying to find his way through his ‘verse (universe) in a ship he found, with a crew who found him.
In a scene in the movie (not too different from the pivotal one for Neo in The Matrix), Mal discovers a jarring view of horror in reality that few others recognize or wish to see. This revelation happens after Mal has come across his dying Christian friend, Shepherd Book, who tells Mal, “I don’t care what you believe. Just believe it.”
I have pondered what Book is talking about. Does he want Mal to believe the horrible revelation? If so, that won’t be a challenge, because Mal’s crew will see it with him and have no reason to doubt its veracity. Or could it be that Book is summoning Mal to believe in something positive? Sort of a blessing, perhaps. In any case, I want to think that this story doesn’t hinge on the main character flexing his “belief muscles,” as Kung Fu Panda seemed to do. Because if Book merely wants Mal to believe so that reality, in its current horror, will change, then his call to Mal is merely a wish for sparkly, fake magic. If, however, there is some object, even a rational concept, for Mal to embrace, then I’m interested in what he ends up doing with his belief, same as I am with Abraham.
I will continue this thought. Soon. Thanks for reading.
Watching BBC news last night, I learned some of the story of Hair in Great Britain. I recalled listening to the musical’s LP at home with my parents in the 70s. The production was a groovy thing, I thought. I didn’t see it and would have been rather scandalized, I’m sure, if I had.
For me, those days in the late 60s pulsed with freedom. I saw the sanitized, variety-TV versions of what was going on. But I had known the restraints, I thought, that were now loosed: girls no longer had to wear dresses to school; boys could have hair cuts other than crew-length. And I liked guys in longer hair. Oh, yes.
I hadn’t come from the 50s or the 40s. Didn’t really get the first-hand anger of those older kids who’d felt repressed by previous generations’ rules that lacked meaning for them. The ground had shifted under everyone, because it somehow had to. The kids had broken free; their way was so cool. And yet, the world wasn’t everything it should be, still.
We new crop of teenagers just needed to dance wildly, swing our long hair and macrame accessories, and hope the draft would end soon.
Young adults today, at least the ones I’m closest to, tend to think the peace-out children of the sixties had the right ideas, in some ways, at least. But they’re not going to react the same vociferous ways in the public arena. Times now call for lower case typing online and movie-watching etiquette. Subtlety. They don’t wish to expose every body hair on stage. It’s been done. Disillusionment was, I suppose, unavoidable.
But hair’s still long, and for this gift, usually, I say, “Right on.”
Living the Unpredictable Life
By Emily Smucker
Spring was in the air, but you couldn’t tell by looking at my closet. I had plenty of sweaters and hoodies and knee socks, but not a single loose-fitting short-sleeved t-shirt. After all, it wasn’t t-shirt weather when I packed my bags in October to take a relatively short visit to Oregon to see my family. But I ended up going to a Bible Institute for six weeks first, and then when I finally got to Oregon I felt sick, all my plans were disrupted, and I ended up going to Virginia to live with my aunt.
That’s how I ended up t-shirt-less in April.
My life is full of confusing tales like this. I’m constantly shifting gears and moving from place to place, never quite sure where I’ll be in six months. Life is unpredictable, to say the least.
Little known fact: This is what I’ve always wanted.
For years I had one of the most predictable lives imaginable. The same tiny Mennonite church, the same tiny Mennonite church school, and the same friends, that is, people who went to my church and my school. But I always hoped and dreamed that someday I would have an exciting, unpredictable life, meeting new people and doing interesting things.
Then I got sick.
Being sick was boring and extremely predictable. This is what I knew:
Could there possibly be any more to the story? Oh how I hoped there was! I longed to be told that I not only had West Nile Fever, but that I was also allergic to Oregon. Thus, I would have to move, and I could get better and meet new people and have a glorious complicated life.
In the end, that’s exactly what happened.
A blood test showed that I was allergic to a mold which grew in western Oregon. So I moved to eastern Oregon temporarily, to see if the dryer climate would help me.
It did. That was the start of my adventures. I didn’t stay in eastern Oregon, though. I moved. Then I moved again. Then I moved again and again and again. Each time it was for a different reason. Here there was no community for me to interact with. There the house was so old it made me feel sick again. Oh, and I couldn’t stay in that other place because I had no job, nothing to do, so I was bored all day.
Finding a place to live has been complicated. Figuring out exactly what makes me sick has been complicated. But I have it now. The unpredictable complicated life I’ve always wanted.
An unpredictable life, it turns out, has its pros and cons.
Pro: An unpredictable life is exciting.
Con: And unpredictable life is confusing. “What exactly makes you sick?” “Where are you from?” “Are you in College?” Everyday questions like those take bucket loads of back-story and explaining. I try to condense it, but in the end, the person I’m talking to often doesn’t get it anyway.
Ever frustrating.
Pro: Despite the complicated answers to basic small-talk questions, I have met a lot of interesting new people. This is good news indeed, for the more people I meet, the better characters I can write.
Con: I keep making new friends, only to have to leave them again.
Pro: As I move around, experiencing this and that, I find greater and greater potential as an author. Before, the only thing I felt I could write about was a Mennonite girl growing up in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Now, I have piles of tiny experiences and settings which I could expand into stories, perhaps even books.
Con: The constant moving, and all the uncertainty, have really taken their toll on me.
Sometimes settling down is nice. You can get a job, support yourself, and be independent. You can stop, breathe, and figure out where you want to go in life. You can make friends, and keep them for a very long time.
Don’t you think it’s inevitable that, optimist though I am, I would struggle with depression from all the unpredictableness?
Fact: Being depressed is worse than being sick.
Another Fact: Depression is, thank God, much easier to treat and get rid of than sickness. At least in my case.
I really don’t know anyone else who leads a life as unpredictable as mine. Am I to be pitied for it? Envied, perhaps? There are pros, and there are cons. Excitement and pain. Joy and grief.
But you know, I’m an optimist. So I think I’ll focus on the good bits.
Congratulations to annji for winning my book giveaway! Emily is the story of facing illness and unpredictability during the year that was supposed to be Emily’s most exciting. As you’ve just read, she has been learning to improvise and look for silver linings, relying on family, friends, faith, and humor. Emily blogs here. Her publisher, HCI, has a page about her book here, which includes a video featuring Emily.
Thanks all of you who entered the contest. Tim drew the winning name from a hat, just before a glass candle holder broke and we enjoyed our morning excitement cleaning up melted wax while eating peanut butter. Happy, unpredictable Monday!
I don’t mean to drag this on, but here’s a reminder you could win a book (autographed, even):
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.
