The Island

It is the fourth of July.

I am sitting in the backyard at my in-laws house with green on every side. Life is teeming around me, burgeoning, crawling, bursting, making the most of summer. It is July and there is nothing to lose, see? David is reading next to me. The kids packed a picnic and went to the park. They know the way. They will come home sweaty and happy and smelling like grass and monkey bars.

Lake Huron gave Lake Michigan a run for its money this week. We spent two days on Mackinac Island (love those back-to-back silent consonants), biking and exploring and swimming and fudging and kiting. It was idyllic in every way. Even the sleeping was divine. We'd wake to find the children eleven hours later still breathing heavily, cheeks pink, limbs askew, childhood dreams and damp island air swirling around them, the deep, wide lake keeping watch from the window.

We rode our bikes for miles, around the island, along the rocky northern coast, past the spot where the British landed in 1812, down past Devil's Kitchen, and back into town. We got off and walked our bikes to the top of the island and screamed and laughed our way back down the steep, tree-lined trails to the water. We saw Skull Cave and Sugar Loaf and Arch Rock, which look exactly like they sound, though Ethan told me in confidence that Sugar Loaf doesn't taste like sugar.

Every afternoon we'd strip in the trees and cool off in the clear, cold lake, wading out past the rocks until we found Huron's sandy bottom. We'd swim until we were frozen, Ethan and I giving up before the others, and then drip dry on the warm white rocks.

There were a couple afternoon hours spent reading and dozing in the cutest library you've ever seen...it has a back patio with two adirondack chairs just on the edge of the lake, facing a red lighthouse, if you can believe it.

There are candy shops everywhere you go, and you can watch your children press their faces against the glass as men in pink aprons stir giant pots of fudge and pour them onto marble slabs. And you will be hard pressed to figure out which you want to eat more. If I licked my children they would taste like the last delicious bit of a melty ice cream cone and nectar and sunshine and cold lake water, and I would never be hungry again.

Tonight there will be fireworks and a brass band on the grass and John Phillips Sousa keeping time to it all.

It is July, and we are living life all out.

It is July, and we are living like we have nothing to lose.

The Stories My Camera Could Tell

We bayed at the full moon, the full moon almost as full as our hearts.

We ate birthday smores.

We waded upriver and tried to float back down.

We played football and chess and Bohnanza in the woods.

We sat around the campfire and told our favorite stories about Ethan.  Mine was about the time the principal called because he had beaten up a third grader. 

Just for the record, it was a glorious weekend in the wilderness. 

Who needs Eden? 

Why I Became a Mother

For moments like this one:

Last Sunday night David had meetings.  The dishes were done.  The house was quiet.  The kids were turning on lights and finding pajamas and pulling down the blinds in their rooms.  I suggested we all meet on my bed for a story.

We began reading a book Savannah received for her birthday, The Underneath by Kathi Appelt.

Every night since then, the kids have asked, "Can we read again tonight?"  It has been a lovely refuge in the storm of busy life.

Last night, the kids laughed out loud as I read.  I kept reading until we got to a good stopping place.  We had prayer.  Then Olivia begged for one more chapter.  I gave in.  But that chapter ended in suspense.  (Perish the thought!)  The children erupted,  "One more, one more, you can't leave it there!"

I gave in again.

The next couple of chapters ended in tragedy.  I started to cry while I was reading.  (Couldn't help myself.)  Ethan was tucked into my side and he looked up at me, worried.  I kept reading, trying to talk around the choking lump and struggling to see the swimming words.  Everyone was sober when I finished.  Some of us were crying.  I kissed them all and sent them to bed.

I lay there for twenty minutes or so and then Savannah came in.  Eyes, red-rimmed.

"Mom, I thought when you started reading again that something good was going to happen."

She wept on my chest while I put my fingers in her damp hair.

We stayed like that for a while, Savannah weeping silently, my shirt getting wetter, her hair slowly getting drier.

Oh, this is the good stuff.  It was one of those moments I live for.  My children snuggled around me, their hearts and minds full of story and the whole-hearted empathy that comes from good writing.  The room still, they all ears and breath, and me the voice to a story so good you have to weep, unabashedly. 

And especially the afterwards.  The openness, the tenderness, the vulnerability, the shared joy and the shared sorrow, the shuddering breaths, the steady beat of our broken hearts, the sighs, the satisfaction of being comfort, the quiet.

Be still my heart.  I am undone.

Erosion and Seduction

 

Tuesday afternoon, David and I were in a fight.  I think it was a fight about not fighting, though I can't be sure.

But this post is not about that.

By the time we went to bed on Tuesday, we had kissed and made up.  Boy did we.

But this post is not about that either.

(My brother, Christian, told me this summer over our family vacation that there is way to much information about stuff like that on my blog.  No more stories involving passionate necking, he said.)

This post is about between the two, when I had my change of heart.

About 5:30, while I was in the kitchen stacking slices of eggplant between mozzarella and marinara, the sky suddenly opened up and dropped a whole summer's-worth of rain on us.  The thunder was loud enough to make us all jump, and the power flickered on and off.

And then I heard the sirens.  Lots of them.  Shrieking past my house, towards the freeway David drives home on every day.  Up to my wrists in flour and egg and breadcrumbs, I said a silent, fervent prayer, and promised that if David made it home safely, I would repent and remember what a gift each day with him is.  And I would spend less time fighting about not fighting and more time passionately necking.  (Sorry Christian, it couldn't be helped.)

Wind and rain for softening my heart.  Thunder and lightening as cry for repentance. 

This summer David and I took a trip to Canada to see their version of the Rocky Mountains (they have us beat by a mile, by the way) and to celebrate fifteen years of marriage.  The scenery was spectacular.  I mean, have you ever SEEN Lake Victoria?  It is so bright blue it looks like paint.  Once I looked over at David, who was supposed to be driving us up the largest mountain either of us had ever seen.  His eyes were not on the road, they were out the window, his mouth slightly ajar.  I imagined that if he drove us off the edge, I would go right along with him and only say, "Oh, look at that!" on our way down.

While we were there, I thought a lot about creation and gale force winds and glaciers so powerful they can turn stone into flour.  And I thought a lot about our marriage, about where we had come from and what we had passed through, and the rubbing and the shaping that had occurred as the elements of life roared around us.  And I thought about what can be created in a marriage, over time, with a little wind and rain and a few perfectly-positioned, massive glaciers.

Stone turns to flour.

David and I got engaged under one of the finest displays of erosion the world has ever seen, unaware of the rubbing and shaping and elevating ahead of us.  Ignorant of the possibilities even.  We were charmed...what could go wrong?  And we made a covenant with very little thought about the storms and wind and glaciers and fault lines ahead. 

Real life has lots of erosion.  And sometimes on a Tuesday afternoon, when you're fighting about not fighting, you wonder what it's all for.

While we were in Banff, I saw a sign that quoted the first man to climb Castle Mountain, "A high mountain is always a seduction."  When I read it, I nearly started drooling and weeping at the same time.  (And not just because he used the word "seduction," which I think always makes a sentence better.)  But because, ultimately, that's what we're about here, in our marriage.  The high mountain is the seduction.  The chance to become something magnificent, together, as our stony hearts turn to flour.

Erosion is the seduction of married life.  The carving and shaping and melting and scraping and pounding and shearing, together, in order to become the high mountain.  Adam and Eve, who had front row seats to the creation, understood this.  There is no other way.

And so we take each other's hand on a Tuesday evening.  And the Tuesday after that.  And the one after that.  Fifteen years worth.  And an eternity after that. 

Come wind, come rain.  I am completely seduced.

And now, in case you don't believe me about the unbelievable glories of Canada, here are some views of erosion at its best.  (I realize that lately my blog has just become a forum for long, home-movie, picture montages and I apologize.  I am determined to remedy this in the immediate future with real posts at semi-regular intervals.  Oh well, we all know that this is really for David anyway.) 

For those of you who actually made it through that, a couple of comments:

1.  Yes, it really is that stunning.  I recommend you take your best camera and your best friend and go.

2.  And yes, you'll need a sweater.

2.  When Olivia saw the picture showing our bare shoulders she asked, "Were you at a spa?"  Exactly, darling.

Summer by the Numbers

[Editor's Note:  I wrote this post after the first half of our summer vacation, but never finished it.  I reread it again this morning and thought it was worth publishing for purely historical reasons (keeping the record and all that).  It is out-of-date and quite possibly of little interest to most of you.  I'm just sayin'.]

Last night I laid down on my own bed for the first time in 17 days.

The thermostat said 88.

The thermostat near the kids room said 91.  They slept in the family room with the fan on full blast.

We were home. 

Home from a cross-country trip of 5,280 miles

which adds up to about 86 hours sitting next to my husband while he drove me past country I've only read about in books.

On the way, somewhere in Indiana, our car quietly hit the 100,000 mile mark on the odometer and just kept going.  (Brilliant, Mr. Ford.)

We drove through 7 thunderstorms, the fiercest one in Birmingham, Alabama and enjoyed more gloriously sunny days than I can count.

I sat on the beaches of Michigan and Florida with my 4 brown children for 8 days and rubbed 10 bottles of sunscreen onto their gorgeous skin, over their bony shoulders, round bellies, and freckled noses.

I did 1 load of laundry every night.  Swim suits and towels only.

I filled 2 empty water bottles with sand, one with the grey, rocky sands of Lake Michigan, the other with the brilliant, white sugar of the Gulf of Mexico.  They are now sitting in my kitchen window as consolation.

On our way to the white sand beaches of Florida we passed Florida's highest hill at 345 feet above sea level.  I've never been anywhere so low to the ground as the gulf coast.  I imagined I was so low that I could hear the earth's heartbeat when I lay flat on the sugar sand with my ear to the ground.  It felt like I was back at the beginning, back at creation, when all there was was the slow, steady thump of the earth as it turned around its axis and the tides moving around and around to the beat.

And now some of the 941 pictures put to 2 songs in 1 movie.  My favorite line: "put the lonesome on the shelf."  My favorite part:  my kids dressed up like sugar donuts.  You can bet I tried to eat every one of them.

A Glorious Reprise

This morning after I finished my post about the glories of my summer, I went outside.  Savannah was in her grandparents' swing, pumping her legs in and out of the sunshine streaming through the maple leaves.  She was humming the chorus of "Angels We Have Heard on High," the glor-or-or-or-ia part.

I smiled deep.

And just a few minutes after that Olivia was making a "masterpiece" that looked remarkably similar to a ham sandwich.  When she closed the lid on the sandwich with the second piece of bread, she put it on a plate, held it high in the air and said to the room, "Look at my glory!"

David said, "Hallelujah."

Tonight in the last rays of a glorious gloaming, I floated behind my two youngest children and told them to hold on tight to the rope, to keep their elbows tucked in and their knees bent, and then I watched them take their first wobbly ski across a dark lake. 

And it was so glorious that I thought I could probably give those angels a run for their money.

Happy Glorious 4th

I don't know about you, but I am having a glorious summer.

The summer to end all summers.

I've been quiet about it, only because I've been lapping it up, stuffing my face with it, rolling around in it, sucking the marrow out of it.  Which leaves very little time for writing about it.  Really good revelling can be a full time job.

Can you believe the photo I got last night?

I've been bragging about it ever since I took it.  I especially like the light of the fireworks shining through Ethan's ears and off Savannah's hair. 

Glorious.  There is no other word for it.

For Love

By now, you've probably made it to the fifth stage of grief...and accepted the idea that there might never be another post on this blog again.

It has been a long couple of months. 

I have been so far underwater that I had to give a few things up.  Among these were blogging, homemaking, and being happy.  Do you know how much time and energy these things take?  For a few days I even gave up breathing and thinking and being likable.  All of them much too difficult given the pressure I have been under.

[Olivia gave me a card for my birthday a few weeks ago.  In an attempt to be encouraging, it said, "April Showers Bring May Flowers" and she had made little pop-ups.  My pop-up had my face in a thunder cloud complete with rain and lightning and all my children were little pop-up flowers.  She gave me an admonishing hug to go with it.  There have been days when I nearly die of shame seeing it.]

Anyway, the sun is finally coming out.  Thank heavens for that.

I talked to Barb on the phone on Sunday night.

She mentioned how I was clear down on her blog roll just above the private bloggers.  I sighed and changed the subject.  Because, as some of you know, I have a serious crush on Barb and it nearly killed me to know I had disappointed her.  (Gosh, I hope that was disappointment in her voice and not relief.)  The next day I nearly wrote a post because, like I said, this is a serious crush.  But even love could not overcome my debilitating list of obligations and a few more days passed.

Last night I went to the ballpark where two of my children were playing simultaneous games on different fields.  It was exactly like my current life, moving from field to field, catching glimpses of my children's lives as I try to be in three places as once.  And let me tell you, I'm not as good at that as you might think.

But eventually, Ethan's game ended and I sat on the bench with the rest of my family watching the end of Olivia's game.  Near the end of the game, David left to get Chinese food and Caleb nonchalantly got up from the bench and walked over to the fence.  There was a girl a few feet away talking to her friend, and now and then he would glance over at her and then turn and intently watch the game.

I was stunned.

This is one of those moments, I told myself.  A moment where all the moments after this one will be different.

He edged a bit closer but the game was nearly over, and I could see both his hesitation and his bravery in the hands he had shoved in his pockets.

And then, there was a serendipitous fly ball.  Everyone yelled, "Heads up!"  The ball landed behind them and it was enough for Caleb to catch her eye and start a conversation.

Last night in bed, David plied me for more details, "What did he say?"

"I don't know."

"What did they talk about?"

"I don't know."

He was frustrated by my lack of eavesdropping skills.

I told him, "Don't you see?  It's not what he said to her.  It's the thought of going to talk to her at all.  Can't you see what's happening?  He's leaving.  He's going to find a wife and build a house and a life and a covenant with her."  I tried to explain it--this quiet, roaring moment, this thing that had happened, that looked small but was actually as big as eternity, this leaving our bench to go to talk to a girl, even though he was unsure and nervous.

I was awed to find that this did not make me sad.  Not one little bit.  I felt happy and proud and amazed and reverent.  I felt like telling heaven to look, to look down and see the miracles in my life, to see the wonder of its creation.  I felt like I had swallowed the whole depth and breadth of eternity between the pitching counts of one batter at a little league softball game.  I felt like Rebekah. 

David had gone with Caleb that very afternoon to his sixth-grade maturation program at school and so he could only say, "I know." 

And then he kissed me.

And now, because you've been so good and patient, a small, subtle picture story about the beginning of the end.  I am only glad I was there to witness it myself.

 

From the Other End of Yesterday

Did you see the sunset last night?

Made the whole day worth it.

(I took a blurry picture of it for you.  Your welcome.)

By the other end of yesterday things had gotten better. 

The Amazon had been downgraded to a small overgrown garden, Savannah survived her first orthodontic visit, I vacuumed through the house and registered for a writing class at our local community college, and (joy of joys) everyone returned home.

After family home evening and kisses and tucks and warnings and finally threatenings, it was just David and me on the couch.  He was half-watching the Fiesta Bowl and half-cheering for both teams and half-telling me about his day.  I was half-listening and half-reading my book.  We kissed and put the day to bed.

And as I drifted off, a small begrudging thought from CIM acknowledged how good normal life can be.

And so now it is almost too late for this:  one last look back at the holiday.  Even worse, I'm sure it will only seem mawkishly indulgent to all of you who didn't actually live it with us.  Oh well.  You can just close your eyes and listen to Adele sing.  Even with your eyes closed it could be the best five minutes of your entire day.  That girl has brilliant vocal chords.

You will have to imagine the hours we spent around the table playing games, as somehow I forgot to film that part and also the hours David and I spent shopping together as we are not famous enough yet to have a documentary film crew follow us around.  (Maybe next year.  I have a good feeling about 2010.)  Those were a couple of my favorite parts. 

And now, our holiday set to Adele's live recording of Make You Feel My Love.  It was just about as magical as it looks.