The Parade of Homes Inside a Whale

For what it's worth, this post has been published and unpublished a number of times now.  I still think it never quite got "there," but maybe that's the point.  Mercy.  Even for the badly-crafted post.

I had that dream again.

But first...I got up.  I pretended to make breakfast.  I read about Alma with my children, and then slurred my way through an explanation of how he was related to the people who crossed the Red Sea on dry land.  I knelt in a circle and prayed.  I put the hair up (no doubt it will be hot again today).  I put a private message on every body's lunch sack.  I sat next to Savannah and listened as she recited rhymes about the piano bass clef.  I stood by the door.  I double checked lunches and water bottles.  I kissed and well-wished.

And then I went back to bed.

David had already made it, but he told me to lay down anyway and take a nap.  At least half an hour he said.

Yesterday was a long day.  It started very early and ended very late and plus I was the star of the show most of the day.  Yeah, you read that right.  THE STAR of the show, I'm telling you.  It was all adrenalin and nerves most of the day, and then afterward it was driving across the dark desert in the middle of an Alabama-worthy rainstorm, which is a highly-technical coordination of brights and wipers and keeping my eyes on the yellow line.  (It is very wearing to be THE STAR with no personal driver.)  

And so this morning, I had that dream again.

The one where we live in that huge house we have to renovate.  And every time I have the dream there are more rooms in it...more rooms with walls as tall as cathedrals, all with peeling, atrocious paint.  Today I dreamed I was sleeping in this absolute mess of a house--different flooring in every room, peeling mauve paint on all the walls, black-grouted tile, decorations of carousel ponies in three of the living rooms--when the parade-of-homes people came by to decorate my house.  They were stunned at the state of things and started telling me all these things I was going to have to do to make the place acceptable.  I walked into the dining room and thought, "Okay, I could scrape these walls down and repaint in here today," and then I walked around the corner and I saw another room, and beyond that another room, and beyond that another room, and beyond that a whole other floor that I didn't even know existed.  I sat down.  Worn out by the thought of it.

If we ever have the chance to buy this house in real life, I'm totally going to think twice.

I only have this dream when I'm so exhausted and simultaneously so aware of my own failings and inadequacies, that all my mess gets translated into walls and flooring and bad paint as high and as deep as a mountain. 

Last night, as we were drifting off in the dark and the day was swirling around me, David said, "You know you're amazing, right?"  I didn't answer because the truth was choking me.  "Have you seen this room?"  I wanted to say.  "Have you seen this one?  And that's nothing.  There are rooms beyond those, and rooms beyond those, and whole floors beyond those."  No amount of amazing is ever going to cover all that territory.

Yesterday we nearly drowned with Jonah in Sunday School.  We swam the depths with him.  I felt myself swallowed whole with him, weeds encompassed about my head, buried as deep as the bottoms of the mountains.  At the moment of great alarm he remembered the Lord.  Alma had the exact same experience this morning in our family room, when he was in the gall of bitterness.  Apparently there's a lot of that going around.

Today I noticed that the very same word appears in both stories.  Mercy.

Mercy.

The truth is, I'm a dead ringer for Jonah.  Drowning.  In need of a whale.  (Send help.)  Slow to remember.  Even slower to extend the same mercy I receive to others. 

I heard a story about Elder Hanks as I was preparing my lesson.  He was speaking about a verse in Micah that says, "what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"  And then Elder Hanks said, "My specialty is mercy."

I wish my specialty was mercy.

My specialty is closer to hard-hearted, stiff-necked.  Slightly less desirable, no?

After yesterday, I've decided to make my specialty mercy. 

Note to heaven:  I may need a little help with that.  You may have to send another whale. 

Or two.

A Post With Too Many Asides

first-day-of-school, goodbye kiss

This morning I was encouraging the girls to move faster ("It's 7:27 and I still haven't heard any practicing," "Olivia, if I see you in just your bra one more time..." "Girls, do you know what time it is?"),  when I noticed Savannah's to-do list, hanging on her bulletin board.

It read:

spelling test

P.E. (tena shoes)

water bottel

[an aside: it's clear that those last two things do not bode well for the first thing] 

perseverance

[another aside: is it weird that she can spell "perseverance" but not "bottle"?]

Sigh. 

Last night as I was pulling the Wimmer Truc out from under my broiler and slicing it into sandwiches for dinner, I suddenly started crying.  I was suddenly so tired I couldn't do anything else but cry.  In the minute between the broiler and the table, I hit the wall.

This is officially our thirteenth day back at school.  Not that I'm counting.  And while I am trying my very best (our family theme this year: Be Your Best) to be happy and "enjoy the journey" and all that, I have to admit that I'm already wiped out.  I told David, who looked around the room utterly baffled (his mind whirring to figure out what tragedy happened between the oven and the table), "I've gone as far as I can go."

The trouble is, thirteen days is not very far.

Especially in comparison to the hundred and sixty-seven or so days still to go.

It's not just me either.  Savannah herself has cried her way out the door the last two mornings.  Which is, I imagine, why "perseverance" made it onto her list. 

Which almost makes me feel more sorry for her than I am for myself.  Almost.

[a final aside:  is this the BEST whining you've ever heard?  I thought so.  Be your best...at everything.]

Last night in bed, I asked David, "Do you think I'm going to make it?" 

"Sure."  A smile.

"Are you aware of everything I'm up against?"

Another smile.  He assured me that I have made him fully aware.

"Okay," I sighed, and he gave me a hug.

Perhaps that might have been a better tactic than the "change-your-attitude" speech I gave Savannah this morning.

Rats.

Oh, summer, how I miss you.  It was so much easier to be my best at the beach.

You know?

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.

Nice Work If You Can Get It

This morning I woke up to the sounds of industry.

My husband, already in his shirt and tie and smelling like aftershave and soap (delicious), leaned over me and nudged my shoulder with his lips, "Just so you know, the lawn crew is here."

I could hear the lawnmower and the trimmers going.  He was giving me fair warning: Don't walk outside naked this morning and also, ahem, it might be time to get up.

I heard him start his car and the sounds of the garage door going up and down.  I rolled over and tried to sleep.  But it is very hard to sleep to the sounds of industry.  Sounds of industry smell like guilt to me.  (Which I can smell a mile away.)

I am in the last week of summer and it is a little like purgatory.  Can't go backward.  Don't want to go forward.  Limbo in my head, dread in my stomach, sludge in my blood, terror in my heart. 

David keeps telling me, "You know we had an amazing summer, right?  I mean, you know, right?"  He's making sure I know how lucky I am, telling me that I have nothing to complain about, reminding me that in my wildest dreams I couldn't imagine a better summer.  (And don't forget, he says with his flirty eyebrows, I provided it.  Don't worry darling, I am very good at showing my appreciation.) 

The thing is, I know that.  I really do.  It was amazing.  But that didn't stop me from crying myself to sleep last night.  Because even though it was the summer to end all summers, it's still almost over.

Insert swear word here.

And yet, the sounds of industry are all around me, nudging me back to work, back to school, back to schedule, back to getting up before eight.  And the guilt is close behind, telling me I have to do more in a day than slather sunscreen on my children's gorgeous, growing bodies or braid the girls' hair or go boogie boarding with my boys and wash the sand out of our suits at night. 

A couple of days ago I spent the day at the mall with my girls.  I sat across from them, sharing an orange julius while they chattered excitedly about the new year and new teachers and piano lessons and the first chair seat in the viola section.  And I wished I could be as excited as them.

But I could only stare at their suntanned, freckled, beaming faces and wish that it was just the beginning of June.

Or at the very least, that they could take me with them.

In one week, this house is going to be very quiet.

RIM thinks I should get motivated, make a plan, write out a schedule, get busy and accomplish a few things.  CIM just stares at the wall, lost in thought, lost in space, lost again. 

Because the truth is, when my kids walk out that door in less than a week, there is a part of me that feels like my purpose will walk out with them. 

RIM thinks that's ridiculous.  CIM just shrugs.  Because ridiculous or not, it's also true.

I had a full-time job rubbing sunscreen on shoulders and cheeks and ears and the tender lines of scalp where the braids were parted.  It was a very good job.  And I was very good at it.  And have you ever seen me boogie board?  I am like a professional.  I really am.

And well, damn, I really hate job-hunting.

P.S.  The nice shot of my very fine cleavage is a just a bonus to this post.  You're welcome.