Flickers of joy

 I will try hard not to complain, but these last three weeks have been a comedy of the absurd. We never laughed in the midst of it all, not even once.

It’s all about getting older and the inevitable rebellion of body parts.

And it’s about my husband who has given permission for me to write about it.

Three weekends ago he came down with stomach/intestinal pain that seemed different from what he’s experienced before. So we did what we usually do in these circumstances. He took it easy, ate bland food, and we decided to wait it out. Most things get better in time without medical intervention. But after two days Hal told me to take him in to emergency. Enough was enough. I did and it turned out to be diverticulitis. Again. We were in time. The good doctor put him on a ten-day regimen of antibiotics with grim sounding names. We’ve met these fellows before and have not developed a friendship, I’m sorry to say.

Next, while still on medication, he felt a hernia begin bulging out of his intestines. A lump on his abdomen. Gross, no? So we got an appointment with our primary care doctor who miraculously agreed to see us right away. She wrote out a reference to an intestinal surgeon. We got an appointment a week away, and, in the meantime, a friend loaned us a belt that put pressure on the hernia, helping it stay in place. Great relief.

The relief didn’t last long. Hal began feeling pain in his neck and shoulders, something unusual for him. His back problems are located in the lower back. This was new. The pain grew with each day but we decided again to wait it out.

Our appointment with the intestinal surgeon was Friday morning. We got ready early and walked out to the car with enough time to make it to the doctor’s office. As I approached the car, I pressed the unlock button on the remote and wondered why the light didn’t blink. Too much sun, I figured. Hard to see. But we discovered it wasn’t the sun at all. The car was “dead.” Totally unresponsive. We called around and found a driver, but by then we knew we’d arrive late. I call the doctor’s office to tell them we were running a little late, and the receptionist told us the doctor was on a tight schedule and we’d have to reschedule, bulging hernia and all. Our appointment was now some ten days off. “God knows all this,” we told ourselves. “We’re in his hands.”

Hal called our auto repairman and he came over. Turns out it wasn’t just a recharge but a new battery we needed. The shop took care of it that day. (Some things run smoothly, thank God.)

At 2:00 a.m. Saturday morning, Hal woke me up, told me he couldn’t stand the neck pain any longer. We needed to go to the ER again. Turns out it was good we did. The doctor (a different one this time around) put him on a scary combination of morphine and cortical steroids and we went home, hoping this would be our last trip.

It was (so far) and Hal has been able to limit his intake of morphine. The pain is lessening, leaving us free to attend to the hernia. Our rescheduled appointment is still a week off. The story hasn’t ended.

We’re realizing that at our time of life, this show will likely keep going on and on, hopefully with some long intermissions.

Now for the good part. Saturday evening our son, daughter (both now in their fifties!), and two grandchildren came over to pray for Grandpa. We all gathered around him on the bed and laid hands (carefully) on him. We thanked God for his power and love, asked for physical and emotional healing, encouraged, and even gave some prophetic words about future ministry. Then the kids prayed for me and my chronic dizziness. The prayer meeting lasted over an hour. We were especially moved by our 18-year-old granddaughter’s insightful and impassioned prayers. It’s hard to describe what it feels like to be ministered to by your kids and grandkids. It’s good. We all felt that something real had been accomplished.

Hal woke up the next morning feeling good, although the pain returned by the evening, to a lesser degree. We know that, while some healings are instantaneous, God often heals in a gradual way. At least for us that seems to be the case. We feel that God is healing through the combination of prayer and medication. And possibly surgery.

Sunday afternoon we went to church online. One of our favorite places is Woodland Hills Church in Minneapolis. Greg Boyd has long been a favorite author, and his preaching is always rich, scholarly, but down-to-earth and anointed. He had just been through a grizzly three weeks, worse than ours, that involved five trips to the ER, including one for his wife who fell and broke her ankle in the middle of her husband’s trials. He preached from his home as he is not able to go out yet. But he was as articulate, funny, and profound as usual.

He told about his misadventures in detail, but focused on the lesson God was teaching him in all of this. It centered on the strange New Testament coming together of suffering and joy. Take the Apostle James’ strange counter-intuitive command to “consider it all joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds” (James 1:2). The various verses on “participating in the sufferings of Christ” came to his mind. At one point he had a vision (through his imagination) of Christ’s excruciating, but voluntary, suffering on the cross, and what a privilege it is to count our troubles as sharing in those sufferings.

Boyd told us that, while he didn’t exactly break out in laughter, he began feeling flickers of joy, laying there on the emergency room table. Joy in suffering is not natural or easy, but the experience of pain and trauma is the classroom for learning joy, he told us.

That sermon came at the right time for us and we, too, are sensing flickers of joy.

As I wrote above, this particular story is not yet over, but we’re heading into it with lighter hearts—thanks mainly to our family’s prayers, helped along by sound teaching from our brother, Greg Boyd.

It makes me think that joy is an excellent tool to carry with us into the challenges and potential traumas of growing older. I love it when old people laugh. I think I’ll join their ranks.

My four-year-old theology professor

When my grandson was four-years-old,
he explained the Trinity to me,

what he had gleaned from Sunday school
and the Bible stories his mother read to him.
He told me the Trinity meant
the Father, his Son, and Andy.
Who? Andy, he repeated.
Before the greatest mystery of theology,
this little boy was not confused,
now that he had the names.

I was confused. The Spirit
had always seemed the most elusive
member of the holy Threesome.
Dove. Wind. Breath. Water.
Hard to relate to.

Days later I overhead my grandson
singing one of the hymns
he had learned in that Sunday school.
As he sang the chorus in his still baby voice,
I finally got it. He sang,
“Andy walks with me. Andy talks with me.
Andy tells me I am his own.”

Of course. Spirit is God-up-close.
God who walks by my side.
Who tells me secrets.
Closer than a sister or brother.

I’ve never been drawn to call her Andy.
But in the early morning hours,
as I sit in my chair by the window,
I sometimes whisper, “Sister. Mother.
Best friend. Yes, yes, yes.”
Sometimes I call her Andrea.
I sense her smile.

Cute

 Some memories have a way of sticking around and tickling the brain for years after the event. Even little memories about inconsequential things. The following is one of those. It happened about ten years ago, during the almost-ready-for-retirement years when I highly suspected I was about to grow old.

Something strange happened to me in the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. Hal and I were on our way to a Miami meeting of the academic council of the program we worked with. We had a two-hour layover in Dallas right at lunch time. Although I try to eat healthy food, even on trips, I occasionally I get the urge for a hamburger, fries, and coke. (This is a confession.) I knew of a place in the airport that served gourmet burgers and I managed to talk Hal into it.

We found a table in the crowded mall and slowly ate our burgers, thoroughly enjoying this slightly sinful luxury. We were not too aware of the people around us, but as we got up to leave the restaurant, a young couple at a nearby table stopped us, and said, “You guys are so cute! How long have you been together?”

I managed to mumble, “Oh, about 50 years,” and Hal added, “We really like each other.” “We can tell,” the woman said, and we moved on.

I was stunned and not altogether pleased. It seemed like something one said to wrinkled people with white hair who hobble down the street holding hands. And who are, indeed, cute. I knew I was growing older, but I wasn’t quite ready for cute.

There was a time, of course, when cute mattered. I was a serious adolescent, a student, a reader of good books, a poet, and so on. But in my heart of hearts I longed to be a cheer leader, go steady, and be considered cute.

Thanks be to God, I outgrew it. As an adult cute ceased to occupy a place on my list of values (except for the time when, as a young mother, I was relieved that my babies were cute). I haven’t worried about cute in years, and I certainly don’t want to now.

I guess this is really about growing older and accepting this season in life. I’m not sure how I’m doing with this, even now. I need to admit that as soon as I got home from Miami, I bought some hair color, part of my anti-cute remedy. But this, of course, didn’t solve anything. I think I just need, once again, to confess my dis-ease (what I’m doing here), laugh about it, and focus on what matters.

So, what matters?  How about—“To do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God”? No age limits on that.

Sort of makes cute irrelevant.

Swimming blind

 Some kids used their canes to walk to the pool’s edge. I saw one little girl letting her seeing-eye dog lead her. They all got in the water, one guide by every kid, and waited for the on-your-mark-get set-go! Then off they went through the water on their float boards, most of them slowly, with lots of kicking and splashing. In the bleachers, I yelled encouragement along with the rest of the crowd of parents, grandparents, and friends.

It was the conclusion of the week-long Camp Spark, held on the campus of Linfield College. Sponsored by the Northwest Association for Blind Athletes (NWABA), this over-night camp “is tailored specifically to children, youth and young adults with multiple disabilities, in addition to being blind or visually impaired.” It aims to encourage self-confidence, leadership and friendship. In addition to swimming, the kids participate in tandem cycling, soccer, goalball (a sport especially for the visually impaired), and track, among other sports. Each kid has one guide for the whole week, some of them visually impaired young adults.

This was the first time I had ever attended a swim meet of blind and visually impaired children. It was amazing. I witnessed courage, confidence in the water, trust in their guides, and belief in themselves. The younger kids used float boards and kicked their legs. Their guide accompanied them in the water. The older kids (up to 14 years) swam unaccompanied, and some of them swam as fast and skillfully as sighted-people.

In every race, there were kids who got it and swam well, reaching the finish in good time. And there was at least one child in every race who flailed and splashed, advancing slowly by inches, while the guide encouraged. Even these kids all finished their races. As they reached the end of the pool, the audience cheered and hooted their congratulations, more so than for the actual “winners.” The kids all climbed out of the water beaming with pleasure. I understood that the goal was persistence, not competition.

We attended this event to cheer on our grandson, Peter, who is autistic as well as visually impaired. He’s an amazing kid (my grandmotherly objective assessment) and has learned to handle life almost like any other kid his age. When he first attended Camp Spark, several years ago, he was shy and held back from active participation. But this year showed his growth as a person who is going forward despite any “disability.” (I don’t like that word; it focuses on what a person can’t do, when there’s so much they can do. That’s what this camp is all about.)

Peter is now 14-years-old, one of the older kids, and he swam in two races: the crawl and the backstroke, both three-pool-length races. He surprised us; we didn’t realize how good he was, even though the family has a pool and all three kids are fish. He felt proud of how he did in the races. And we overheard him bragging to a friend about the people who had come to watch him: two parents, two grandparents, and an aunt and uncle. We wouldn’t have missed it.

When Grandpa Hal asked him how he managed to swim so straight, keeping right in his lane, Peter replied that he saw through his goggles a big dark line on the bottom of the pool, right in the middle of his lane. He just followed the line.

At the end of the meet, the campers and their families gathered for the official closing of the camp. The directors shared highlights of the week. No awards were presented because all the kids are considered winners. The director asked the graduating kids, those for whom this was their last time in camp because of age, to come up and tell how camp had helped them. My daughter encouraged Peter to go up, but Nope! He wasn’t having any of that. Two of his friends spoke, and then Peter, with a look of determination, walked to the front. Kristin gave me the victory sign. He spoke in typical Peter fashion, looking to the side rather than directly at the audience. He quickly mumbled a few sentences and quickly walked back to the family, accompanied by applause.

He is sad that this is his last time at Camp Spark, but one of the counselors told him he could come back next year as a guide. Again, Nope! Not me! There’s a strong likelihood he will change his mind by the time next summer rolls around.

I’m proud to live in a country (the Northwest part of it in particular) that offers so many resources for children with special challenges. Cheers for the Northwest Association of Blind Athletes! And thanks for all the other organizations and programs that help these kids accept themselves, know their strengths, develop new skills, and live active lives.

And, of course, I’m very proud of Peter.

                    After the race: Peter with Mom, Kristin (my daughter)

Rescue in the garden

 This year Hal and I became part of the garden group in our retirement community. We were assigned a 15 by 15 ft. lot in the community garden, part of a pattern of other lots held by some 40 individuals or couples. The lot is ours to do with as we wish, within the boundaries of the group’s by-laws.

(This is a well-organized group, complete with members and meetings. And by-laws. Or rather “garden guidelines,” guidelines such as keep your plot well-groomed, don’t put up a permanent structure without permission, avoid tall plants that block your neighbor’s plot from the sun, shut the garden gate when you leave (deer!), keep your garden shed bin in good order, and don’t pick your neighbor’s roses or sample their raspberries.)

And what do we wish to do with our plot? This is partly dictated by the generosity of the man who “owned” the plot before us. He was reluctantly giving it up because of health reasons, glad to have found someone (us) who seemed willing to cherish and care for it as he had. He offered, if we wanted, to leave behind his four rose bushes, three blueberry bushes, and two other flowering bushes: one peony and the other calla lilies. We wanted.

We’ve added several kinds of Oregon wildflowers. And, of course, vegetables: snap peas, green onions, carrots (always carrots!), cucumbers, three kinds of tomatoes, two kinds of squash, and beets. (I’ve never liked beets, but I might be persuaded to eats ones I planted myself.)

We began mulching the soil and planting the starts and seeds mid-spring. Now it’s mid-summer and we’re enjoying the results, results which, I admit, surprised me. (Things really do grow from seeds!) The blueberries are abundant and sweet and the roses spectacular (“Quaker Star,” pinkish orange and long-lasting after picked). While the snap pea vines appear to be withering (a bug, someone suggested), we have hopes for the maturing cukes and beets.

My surprise is evidence of my scant experience with gardening. My parents were both teachers with little time to tend a garden. They watered the fruit trees on our Southern California acre of land (fig, orange, lemon, English walnut, plum and some others I can’t bring to mind). And once my mom had us three kids plant sweet-peas and experience the thrill (and surprise) of seeing them sprout and bloom. But vegetable gardens were not part of my experience. The fruit trees were apparently enough.

I’m learning at least two things from this community garden experience. 1.) It’s work. If we don’t put in the hours mulching, planting, weeding, spraying (when necessary), and deadheading (interesting word, “deadhead;” it’s likely to find its dead head sticking out of a poem in the near future), if we don’t do all of this, our garden won’t be happy and we won’t enjoy the fruits of our labor (none of which are fruit except the tomatoes which, honestly, behave more like vegetables than fruit). Work and continual vigilance. Are we up to it? The answer to that question is pending.

The other thing we’ve learned is 2.) the joy of community. All the gardeners in this group have become like family. We know we have the same values—love of the outdoors and of living, growing, green things—and the same willingness to do the work. We meet up with people every day in the garden and the camaraderie makes the work fun. Most of the plots are beautifully laid out and neatly kept up. But there doesn’t seem to be much competition, the sense of my-plot’s-better-than-your-plot. Many of our more-experienced neighbors continue to offer us good advice.

But now on to the story of our “Garden Rescue.” Last week we were coming home from dinner at our son’s place and we decided to take a quick look at our garden before we went indoors. We noticed motion at the bottom of our blueberry net and discovered that a bird had gotten trapped and was fighting to escape. A closer look revealed him to be intricately tangled with no way to get free. He looked large and had a long pointed beak.

Hal carefully picked him up, avoiding beak and claws, and began to unwind the strands of the net. I ran to the garden shed for scissors and we then began snipping, careful not to cut feathers. We prayed for the bird and I told it in a soft voice, “Be calm. We won’t hurt you.”

It took about 15 minutes, working slowly, and at last Hal held him close in both hands. We walked to an open area, near a friendly garden plot, and set him on the grass. He immediately took off hobbling to the garden and managed to hide. We were hoping he would fly away, but he was obviously traumatized.

A friend nearby (it was her garden plot he hid in) told us it was a young flicker, a type of woodpecker (thus the long pointed beak), a bird that grows to be quite large. Looking up flicker, we learned that they commonly forage for ants on the ground. So maybe that’s what he was doing. Maybe he wasn’t after our blueberries at all.

At any rate we wish him (or her) well. I hope he lived, and flew away.

Now, back to the garden. I’ve work to do.

Another look at my dangerous books

 Last year I wrote a blog on some of the books I am keeping, even as I’m on a campaign to get rid of much of our large collection. There’s not room in this small apartment. In that blog I referred to someone who said that women who love books and were born in the month of September are dangerous (author unknown). Well, that’s me. I certainly love books and I have no doubts as to my September birthday. I’m not sure about the dangerous part.

It’s probably the books that are dangerous, not me. Books take me away to far lands in other times. They fill my brain with ideas. They can wring me with beauty. Or make me angry. And most of them put up a big fight when I try to give them away.

I’ve made strides in downsizing our book collection since that blog last year. I parted with some dear friends. It wasn’t easy. But I’ve discovered that the library here in the retirement community or the town’s local library often has the same titles, should I need to read the book again. Or check out a new book.

And while there is considerable pleasure in holding a real book, smelling the leather and printer’s ink, turning the pages, feeling its heft, even though all that is true, I’ve taken to buying books on my Kindle. It’s not the same as a “real” book, but this medium is useful and doesn’t take up space.

In the first getting-rid-of-and-keeping-books blog, I shared a list of some of my keepers, books I won’t give away just yet. These are books I’ve read several times and will probably read again. They’re friends and I like to have them around.

I’m going to add to the list of keepers that I started last year.

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott (1994): Like other writers, I find encouragement and instruction in books on writing, especially if they’re by people who are themselves good writers. Not only does Lamott give valuable advice, she’s very clever, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny.

The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris (1996). This book contains the reflections of Kathleen Norris (a Protestant) who became a Benedictine oblate and spent two nine-month periods living in a monastery. Among other things, I learned that my birthday, September 29, is the feast-day of the archangels in the liturgical calendar. Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and I have been celebrating together ever since.

Stories that Could Be True: New and Collected Poem by William Stafford (1977). This book was my discovery of the poems of William Stafford, who became one of my favorite poets. The book was personally signed by Stafford on the morning I spent in his house sharing poetry. (That’s another story.) The binding is broken and it’s now held together with rubber bands. It’s like the Velveteen Rabbit, scraggly but real.

Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1605). This is another old book, with my parents’ names in the front. They bought it when they were newly married. Some of my favorite people are Don Quijote, Sancho Panza, and Dulcinea. I love the humor and the dance between idealism and realism. And the example of how love transforms. As I write this, I’m realizing that it’s been years since I read it. It’s time to read it again.

One Hundred Poems from the Japanese translated and edited by Kenneth Rexroth (1964). I have personal history with this book. I was a college junior and had applied for a Fullbright scholarship to study drama in Guatemala. I had traveled to San Francisco for the final interview. I was more than nervous and, consequently, flunked the interview. (I froze and couldn’t remember my own name.) As a consolation prize, I let myself enter the sanctum of a bookstore (of which there were hundreds on the streets of San Francisco) with the goal of buying one book. It was this one. I love the concise simple beauty of these poems. I’ve long recovered from the trauma of that interview, but my joy in these poems lives on.

Markings by Dag Hammarskjold (1964). This book was a gift from my father when I was a teenager. It’s underlined with my teenage observations written in the margins. Hammarskjold, Secretary General of the UN in the 1950s, kept a secret journal which he left to be published after his death. It reveals a man with a rich spirituality, held in humility. One of my favorite passages contains a simple prayer I’ve tried to make my own: “For all that has been, thanks; for all that shall be, yes.”

River Teeth: Stories and Writings by David James Duncan (1995). This is another of my books signed by the author whom I met at a writers conference. Duncan is a writer from the Pacific Northwest; the geography and culture of this region permeate his novels and essays. This book contains one of my favorite short stories, “The Garbage Man’s Daughter.” I tear up every time I read it.

Antología Poética, Vol. 1 and 2 by Pablo Neruda. Wow, could that man write! He was prolific; I’m continually discovering new (to me) poems. My favorite is “Oda a la claridad” (Ode to Clarity). I’ve tried translating it, but am not yet satisfied.

Well, that’s probably enough for now. I’d love to meet some of your friends, your list of keepers, your dangerous books. Send me a title or two.

On growing up

 A few years ago (quite a few years!), my eight-year-old son asked me, “Mommy, what are you going to be when you grow up?” I don’t remember my answer, but I do remember thinking how perceptive his question was.

I recall as a child standing in a forest of legs and looking up in wonder at those tall, strong, all-knowing creatures above me. Or sitting, largely ignored, in a room of conversing adults, recognizing some of the words, but not having the slightest idea what they were talking about. It was as though they were all members of an exclusive club with its own private language and passwords. They all seemed to know who they were and what to do at all times. I, only a child, didn’t have a clue.

But even then, I believed that someday I would be one of Them. Someday I would cross the magic line into adulthood, and then I’d be able to stay up as late as I wanted, drink coffee, know which fork to use, be my own boss, and have my own kids. I’d understand the language and, finally, know what it was they were laughing about.

Time passed, as time has a habit of doing. I finally made it to 40, but I never did sense the crossing of a line into adulthood. I continued to wonder if I was a genuine member of the Club. Oh, yes, I could now stay up very late if I wanted (which I usually didn’t), and enjoy my coffee every morning. I learned the language somewhat, so, in a sense I was IN. But not very far in. I still had unanswered questions, insecurities, even, at times, fears. Different fears to be sure. Grown-up fears. But the feelings were surprisingly similar to the childish ones. I still liked poetry, flying kites, and licking the bowl after baking cookies. 

Again, time passed and I found myself approaching another line. The magic line from adulthood to old age. I realized that old people were still adults, but adults of a different kind. Modified adults. As we passed through our 60s and early 70s, Hal and I would often ask ourselves, “Are we old yet?” Mostly our answer was “Not yet.” Or “Not quite.”

We no longer ask that question, although I have no memory of crossing a magic line.

But here we are. We’ve arrived. I find that I like poetry more than ever, could stay up late if I wanted (which I still don’t), struggle to limit the cups of coffee I drink every morning, don’t care about which fork, and am content with using the words I’ve been given.

I’m happy to announce that there is no official language called Old. There are stereotypical issues older people seem to discuss. I’ve heard it said that when two or more senior citizens get together, they harmonize in giving an organ concert. I guess it’s natural that we talk about age-specific concerns which involve the kinds of physical deterioration we face, the health care we receive, and the end-of-life arrangements we need to make.

But that’s not all. In the past week I’ve participated in long conversations on how best to plant marigolds, reforestation in the Olympic National Forest, a comparison between free verse and traditional rhyming poems, and how God makes our suffering holy. I especially love drawing out the life stories of my neighbors, discovering what remarkable lives they’ve lived and the contributions they’ve made. Stimulating conversation is alive and well in this community.

In many ways I’m still a child. It’s been a while since I’ve flown a kite, but I think I would still enjoy it (as long as I didn’t have to run). I know that I’ve still got a lot to learn, and I thrive in the search. I still have a lot of unanswered questions, but I’ve learned to love the questions and to keep asking in faith that one day I will know.

Jesus tells us that in order to enter the Kingdom of God, we need to become as little children. I love that. The Apostle Peter also tells us to keep growing up in grace and knowledge. I guess it’s a life time prospect. Simultaneously being a child and growing up.

But I still cherish the hope that someday I will at last know that I’m doing.