four days ago some good friends of ours had a beautiful baby boy - their first child...and yesterday a fourth grader from our kids' school died of a seizure - i attend a bible study with the mom whose home this happened at (the girl was visiting a friend, they were going to eat dinner and go to awana together. she was the only child of a single mother...)

the soaring, miraculous heights collide with the depths of human despair and pain this week in our little world.

life is charging by at an alarming pace for us these days...work, basketball for the boys, lucy's a flower girl in another wedding, mops, bible studies - one for me, one with the whole family, holidays, school field trips, correspondence, going to the y, friends having babies, church, choir for kansas, cooking, cleaning, shopping, my determination to make it to at least one cider mill this fall, kids making new friends and organizing times to play with them, remoldeling our basement, email, putting together shoeboxes for operation christmas child (a wonderful and worthwhile project we happily support) by the middle of november...the list goes on and on; much more than a calgon moment could make a dent in, daydreaming at stoplights only makes things worse, falling into bed exhausted at the end of long day after long day is my reprieve. even so, i don't think i would trade it...for the joy set before me i'll endure just about anything.

yesterday my little one year old ford focus wagon had to be towed away from an accident scene. Chad and Jesse (my almost six year old) were the only ones in the car when it was crashed into by a couple of high school kids on their way home from football practice, blowing off a stop sign at a country intersection. the only one who got hurt was the driver of the other car, who had to be hospitalized. strange to think of someone lying in a hospital bed from having smashed into my car...c and jesse are fine, not a scratch. two days ago another guy was killed in a car wreck on that very road...sure gives one pause. i really can't imagine getting a phone call with worse news than i got yesterday, and my loss there only entailed a piece of machinery. i stop, i shudder...i take a deep breath, i give solemn thanks to God, who doesn't miss a thing -not a sparrow, not a liquid grey family car on a collision course.

Sometimes it's all I can do to get the dishes and laundry maintained for the day. This morning I said "I'll clean the bathroom at least since I don't think I'll get to cleaning out the garage later." I actually did neither.
I went to see the old man. He had given up on getting out of bed - tired of trying to go on without her. Through my mind passed all of the things I was probably supposed to do and say...get him to the doctor, get him on antidepressants, get him to the dairy queen or out to the lake more often...but what I realized after that barrage, what I'd known really since the moment I'd walked in and seen him lying on his side under the covers at four thirty in the afternoon was that to deprive him of his grief in any way would be highway robbery, that his soul would not be pacified, that the hole in his heart could not be patched over with a flimsy band-aid. So I sat down in the yellow chair next to his bed. I just sat there with him, I opened myself to his pain, I let him give it to me...it wasn't a burden that could be passed on in it's entirety, though, so we shared it. Half of his heavy load lay in my lap, my head lay in my hand, my eyelids lay against my eyes. In silence we shared minutes, shared an hour, I didn't know how to leave. The room darkened, his breathing slowed, became heavy.
I crept out the door to my car, under the waxing moon I cried it out. Sometimes that's really all you can do.

grey patched glow white pebble high
surrounded by blue black inky night
driving down old cold country roads
feeling the bite as autumn arrives

sentimentality takes my mind
to childhood apple happy times
cider mill field trips hayrack rides
warm brown cinnamon donut smiles

wax paper crayon rubbings of leaves
stopping to smell the crisp earthy breeze
flying by black eyed susan sea
my ten speed raleigh my wings, my ease

so i come home from work the other night to the following account...jesse was reading a book to lucy, and she suddenly had to run to her room for something. she said to her brother, "can you pause?", ran there and back, and then commanded "ok, play!", sitting down to resume listening. toddlers in the technological age...

got a letter from a mother
mourning the choices of her daughter
made me wonder how you let go
altogether in the end
watched my three year old lucy
paint and play and ask and imagine
made me marvel at the thought i'd someday
have her for a grown up friend
just how much of our input
sticks forever in their psyches
forms their choices and opinions
revelations, nods and bends
what of all the timeless moments
strung together like round glass beads
entwining our overlapping lifetimes -
will we restore those things that slipped through the cracks,
the tears in the fabric - will they heal? will they mend?

"I haven't failed, I've found 10,000 ways that don't work."
- Thomas Edison

we have seen rainbows aplenty out here this last week. after a storm, or a day of drizzle, there one will appear in all it's watercolored glory for us to smile at, nudge each other over. we may not be able to see God face to face, but a sign of one of His everlasting covenants right there in the sky over my house is sure encouraging.

so...did anyone else catch simon and garfunkel on letterman last night? i've just always had a thing for those harmonies...

we had a busy weekend...kansas went to play at a friends farm, we went twice to see hot air balloons up close at the huff n puff rally out by lake shawnee, chad recorded a harmonica part for a friend's cd, jesse worked on learning to read, we watched strange brew - my #1 high school cult classic, went to church, had a picnic, saw a free bluegrass show at the library, napped, ate big salads, and helped lucy with many puzzles. and i'm just getting around to telling you all about it on tuesday...i guess we're having a busy week, too. life...

comments are back! celebrate away...

"You can't help but remember what Faulkner is alleged to have said when asked whether he wrote daily or only when the inspiration hit him. It's said he replied that he wrote only when the inspiration came, but that he made sure it came every morning at ten o'clock sharp when he sat down at his desk."
- Rick Bass

ah, the discipline of inspiration...a conundrum, to be sure, but a surer bet than winging it.

kids...

there they are, just
growing up
in front of God and everybody all
fits and scraped knees,
blown up red faced kickabilly
chewed green army men
pencils fingernails
spilled milk
grass stained and
bug bite itchy.

i think what they need from us
is time
space and
most of all really a whole lot of grace.

this morning, out early driving...there is such a glory to the beginning of the day, a glossy bright newness. that shiny blue sky, peach-grey tinged clouds sweeping by slowly on the crisp new breeze - i think it's a part of God's mercy that is new every morning...a visual for the spiritual reality that no matter how dark and late last night became, it's just a few hours to redemption.

kansas, my eight year old, asked me today - "mom, who are the starbucks?"

heh. would've made a great band name...

have you ever been out in public, like a concert or a store, or a kite flying show, and the feeling crept up on you that someone was standing a little too close? you looked around, and sure enough, someone had mistakenly backed a little too far into your comfort zone. you either stepped away, or they noticed and moved themselves...keeping that space free and clear of that feeling of a small violation. that's what lonliness feels like to me - a large, lurking presence, standing too close, taking up some of my air space, sometimes even making it a little hard to breathe. sometimes i can make it dissipate, but usually i just have to let the thing tag along, uncomfortable in it's clutches, but it is not polite and respectful of my personal space, and i don't know how to back away. I am a person that likes my solitude pretty often, but this is different...I don't choose when it comes or how long it stays.

c is gone for a few or more days to try to sort himself out. my kids, God bless 'em, are doing a good job of keeping me sane and in the day. it's just that other presence...i can't quite befriend.

are chain smokers
more likely to survive a house fire
more used to smoke inhalation
than those who don't and are
clubgoers
more likely to survive an earthquake
more used to gyrating moving shaking
than those who don't and are
roller coaster addicts
more likely to survive loving someone
more used to highs and lows
wrenching stomachs soaring hearts
than those who won't?

happy birthday to me! and in honor of the big event, i've gone and preordered over the rhine's new double album. can't wait to hear it, but i've got to, for a few more weeks...

top 5 requested car tunes from the barker kids this summer :
1-yellow submarine, beatles
2-good day sunshine, beatles
3-SOS, pegtop
4-pop goes the weasel, ella jenkins and some 3 and 4 year olds from the Lake Meadows Nursery School
and
5-never felt this way before, billions

(i just love watching jesse belt out the chorus to that last one...he's right there...)