Most Likely to Succeed

     Under my photo in the high school yearbook is the caption “Most Likely to Succeed.”  With a title like that to live up to, you may expect I would be a bit anxious about my 25 year reunion.  Given the dictionary definition of the word success, “the prosperous termination of endeavors; the attainment of wealth or position,” I’m well aware that I’m not successful.  And I’m not going to pretty up the definition by interpreting it to mean I’m prosperous in the emotional rewards of my career or wealthy in the love of my family, both of which are true but cheating;  We all know the yearbook meant success just like the dictionary states it.
     So why wasn’t I compelled to polish up my life for show-and-tell?  It didn’t occur to me because I love those people.  I mean my classmates, I just love them!  I enjoyed every moment (well, okay there was one moment…but I’ll get to that) of our reunion.  And the best part was that I didn’t merely get to step back in time for the usual remember-whens, but I also had a here-and-now opportunity to learn three important lessons.
     First, the strands that weave your life together with your classmates’ lives, through the hours and the days, the work and the play, the laughter and the tears of that growing and learning time we call school can, believe it or not, be stretched over 25 years without breaking.  One of my classmates recalled lying on a bench sobbing after our graduation ceremony, not for fear of what was ahead but for loss of the blanket of friendship we had knit, which couldn’t wrap us together anymore.  She remembers another classmate hugging her, telling her “Don’t cry, we’ll always be close.” 
     He was wrong, and he was so right. We went in different directions because we had grown-up life to do.  But we all headed out to do it from the same starting point, with shared experiences standing strong behind us.  When we came back to the starting point together it felt like a comfortable place to talk about the world for a safe little while with people we belong to.  And so Reunion Lesson Number One:  If we take a moment to tighten the strands of the connections we are given throughout life, they make good places to rest along the way.
     Reunion Lesson Number Two involved the above mentioned moment I didn’t enjoy.  I do love my classmates, all 16 of them.  I’m able to love them because love has so many degrees of depth and meaning.  Some of them I love because I know them and they’re among the very best people I know, and some of them I love for things I see they’ve become, that I would like to know more about. Some of them I simply love nostalgically, because of our shared memories. 
     I share a lot of memories with the classmate others would say was my best friend, but if she and I each told you the same memory, it would sound like two different stories.  We never did see things the same way.  The others would say we didn’t disagree often, and that would be because I wasn’t good at expressing my opinion, while she did it quite loudly and well. If it was an issue I was emotional about, I would eventually have a heated and inarticulate outburst followed by tears, then we would be distant for a couple days at the most, and things would drift back to normal.  I still wouldn’t agree, definitely wouldn’t understand, but I wanted peace.
     Near the end of our reunion the conversation drifted to a topic about which she and I have made opposite choices.  Since it seems some things never change, she was able to express her opinion boldly and clearly, with everyone around us knowing full well that I, sitting next to her, was miles away from agreeing.  Her certainty made it sound as though I had made an uninformed and incomprehensible decision.  She turned to me and said “no offense,” and because some things never change, I was completely silent, which just punctuated her statements. 
     On the way home I cried, saying aloud to the empty dark truck all the things I might have said to her.   Then through my anger it occurred to me I was forgetting something I strive for in my adult life, open-mindedness and empathy.  I made the right choice for my family; But given the circumstances and people involved, she probably made the right decision for her family as well.  And so lesson two:  Some things never change.  Unless you change them; To be true friends with someone you don’t repress opinions and ignore differences, you share opinions and respect difference.
     The third lesson was more like a gift.  After a pre-reunion dinner with close friends, we talked quietly into the evening about our lives.  “If I could change it,” said one with clear-eyed certainty, “I wouldn’t.”  He blessed me with this statement shortly after a very bad day during which I questioned everything that led me to where I was.  I was feeling sorry for myself, disappointed in myself, discontent with my life.  The beauty of his words lies in the fact that he hasn’t had a charmed life either. Each of us made decisions that caused us to struggled and soar, feel panic and calm, grieve and rejoice to degrees much higher than we could have imagined in school.  And not a moment of it can we go back and change, and yet we ask the question, “What would I have done differently?”  If you know without a doubt that the answer is “Nothing,” what a great relief that is! 
     That’s not to say we should just stop trying for improvement.  My wise friend works with juveniles and is raising a new baby, and using what he’s lived rather than wishing he could change it.  I said I wasn’t successful.  To rectify that, I need the “prosperous termination” of an “endeavor,” and I don’t think I knew before what exactly to try for. I do now, it’s Reunion Lesson Number Three:  Endeavor to be content with your life to this point, knowing each experience has given you something to make use of in shaping the future.  
     It made me feel good, all those years ago, to have a vote of my classmates endow me with the Most Likely to Succeed title.  What I didn’t realize was that in order to succeed, I needed them.  I needed the time we spent learning together, I needed the time apart, and most of all I needed a reunion.

The Treasure Hunt Experience

On a Spring Break daycare day, I was busy doing things appropriate to my title as Grown-Up-In-Charge. Some of them, I’m sure, were necessary and useful. Some of them were just an annoying compulsion caused by the chronic condition known as Adulthood—things like sweeping the entryway even though continual comings and goings ensure that the same task will need repeated again in ten minutes. In any case, I was definitely busy, when I was pressed into service by the Small People.

“Here. Just hold this and stand by the door,” the Leader panted breathlessly, pressing a piece of carefully folded paper into my hand as he slid out the door followed by the Big Kids, one, two, three.

Right behind them came the Littler Kids. One of them stopped directly in front of me, blinked up at me, big brown eyes behind round glasses, and said brightly “Hi!”

“Hi,” I answered uncertainly.

“Hi!” chimed the others, one, two.

I just stood there, blinking back down at them in confusion. “You’re supposed to give us the paper now.” This from Brown Eyes in a whisper. Apparently “Hi” was the password. He was convincing, so I handed it over.

Huddled together, the Littlers unfolded the message printed at a slant in green marker, “Turn on the fan,” read Smart Girl. A discussion followed in which they identified the ceiling fan as the only fan in the area, but were unable to figure out how to reach it in order to turn it on. I have a soft spot for the Littlers (and besides, by this point I was thoroughly curious) so I pointed out the switch on the wall. They bounced over, flipped on the switch and began to “Oooo, Aaaah” as another folded paper drifted down to their outstretched fingers.

Now, I do indeed suffer from Adulthood. But it seems floating folded paper has healthy benefits, because I forgot for a moment to worry about what potentially dangerous methods allowed the Big Kids to place the paper up on the ceiling fan. “Cool!” I said, in enchanted agreement with the Littlers. For just a moment, by virtue of my knowledge about the working of ceiling fans, I was a member of the team. But then they were gone, following the written message out to “where the wagons are parked,” leaving me alone with my broom.

Alone, but smiling. All afternoon they darted around me in a delighted and determined search for The Treasure, taking turns being the team to devise difficult hiding spots and devious messages. Each time the treasure was found, there was much exclaiming over the clever clues, and noisy congratulations to those who cracked the case. And then the re-hiding began.

I put aside the broom to watch, finding myself slightly in awe of these lively creatures in my care. It wasn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last, which is why my job is a blessing. How many of us afflicted by chronic Adulthood have the pureness of mind to put out such effort and actually enjoy it? Instead, we over-think it. Why do I need to do this? Does it take too long? Is the end result worth the effort? Is it cost effective? Should I be doing something more important? If so, then what??

At the end of the day, in the quiet entryway with my broom back in my hand, I asked myself, as the Grown-Up-In-Charge, did I do the right thing letting them run around like that all afternoon? Could I have involved them in some “learning activities,” or pulled off a “refrigerator art” project? As I pondered, it occurred to me that I never found out what The Treasure actually was. And there was my answer! They weren’t running around all afternoon on a pointless treasure hunt; They were thinking, laughing, writing, running, cooperating. Experiencing. The treasure didn’t matter at all, it was the joy of the search that inspired them. The Small People do indeed set an example to aspire to. The next time I am faced with a questionable task, or an uncertain opportunity, rather than over-think it, I believe I’ll just do it. If it’s approached with joy, treasure will lie in the Experience.

Creating Childhood

This morning I attended the funeral of a child, a 10 year old boy who died in a tragic accident. I am shaken, my own heart hurting in a way that leaves me entirely unable to fathom the pain of his mother. All day I’ve been reaching for something I can grasp that could possibly be a comfort to her. It was a Christian service, filled with the assurance that this child is in Heaven, that his life is eternal, that we will see him again. I believe, and I know his mother does too. But the graveside portion of the service was private and as I imagine her there I know in my heart, the heart of a mother, that her faith is frozen by the agony of her loss. I keep asking myself what could ever possibly warm her.


When I close my eyes though, what plays through my mind are images from the slide show at the service and I realize she may already have what she needs, if only she can see it shining through her tears. What she has is childhood. As adults, childhood is a collection of pictures in the mind, blurry around the edges, certain ones shimmering in full color, with scents and sounds woven around them. Sometimes one comes into focus and floods us with pure joy. This mother created childhood for her son, and it’s his forever gift right back to her.

Seashells and cowboy hats, Santa’s lap and Sunday clothes. School pictures, family portraits, snapshots of vacations and celebrations. Childhood created with infinite love and captured click by click was displayed for us today, and it was perfect in the way that only childhood can be. Each photo of an adventure, a milestone, an ordinary moment, a vibrant grin, was part of the complete picture, and the complete picture was Love. God gave this boy a mother, and with His love she crafted the picture piece by piece. In the midst of the messy, doubt-inducing, exhausting job of mothering, she couldn’t help but have felt the potent, life-affirming magic of the childhood she was giving to her son.

Childhood is life’s most forgiving time, when the mischief that tries a mother’s patience transforms in moments to the story that makes us laugh; when grass-stained knees and report card C’s are made all better by clean pajamas and a carefully printed “I love you Mommy;” when our home and our arms are the center of the world. It doesn’t last forever. I have a grown daughter and a teenage son quickly traveling towards independence. My youngest son just turned 12, that in-between age where childhood tugs as the teenage years beckon. Gone is my time to create childhood. As each new stage in the lives of my children unfolds, it becomes more difficult to call clearly to mind the stage before. The precious moments of their childhood mingle with memories of my own, sweet but elusive.

As this mother mourns for her son, with the heartbreaking knowledge that she will never see him grow up, what I see waiting to be polished into a glow that warms her is the gift of childhood. This dear child was her baby, the youngest of five sons. I trust the others will lead full lives, taking her on journeys she hasn’t yet imagined. She will become a trusted advisor, a proud supporter, a safe harbor, and each new experience will take center stage, placing the memories of their younger days in the wings. But her baby has given her eternal childhood, those memories not eclipsed. He is captured there in that perfect place she and God created for him, big blue eyes, silly endearing smile, warm little arms wrapped around her heart. If she can look at these gathered moments and feel his arms there, know the joy she gave him, I pray her faith will burn bright.

Fifteen Crickets

Fifteen crickets , five pairs of little eyes. Turning to me, blinking big behind magnifying glasses and then bending to gaze into the temporary world, watching crickets scittering around in the grass, nibbling sunny carrot shavings.


In Brazil, I tell them, a green cricket is cause for hope. In China a cricket, given respect and a home in his own little cage, will bring you luck. Generations of children know Jiminy’s wisdom never fails.

Five pairs of eyes, fifteen crickets. Delighting us with their freedom, hopping joyfully into the tiny garden outside my bedroom door, becoming hope, luck, wisdom. Long late hours after the children have gone home, they compose the music of my dreams.

Swing

  Kiss me down by the broken tree house

Swing me upon it's hanging tire

Bring, bring, bring your flowered hat

We'll take the trail marked on your father's map

Oh, kiss me beneath the milky twilight

Lead me out on the moonlit floor

Lift your open hand

Strike up the band and make the fireflies dance

Silver moon's sparkling

So kiss me

From the song Kiss Me, by Sixpence None-the-Richer

That summer we were midway down a playground slide, slipping toward the bottom, where homelessness was waiting in the sand. I was exhausted and euphoric after the most difficult of my pregnancies. I wanted only to rest, and to endlessly hold our new baby boy.

Like most young couples, when we first got married we spent a few delighted months playing house, and then a few years learning that we were engaged in the most challenging of all games. Weeds grow and neighbors don’t like it, hot water heaters run cold when you most need them hot; children arrive and take up your abundant space. Life is not always a playground. And now our home of twelve years was in danger of foreclosure.

Ironically, it seemed we had finally gained our balance as homeowners. Weeds were conquered, the bathroom was sponge-painted in pale ocean colors and had seashell shower curtain rings, the garage was converted to an office with crown molding and a deep magenta ceiling. But our balance in other areas was tipped and as the sliding began, we held tight by turning the backyard, inside its safe cedar fence, into our haven.

That summer.  Kiss Me played on the radio; Holly flounced around in a bubble of pre-teen chatter, usually wearing a swimming suit and blond tumbling curls; Three-year -old Devin wore an over-sized helmet and zipped around the backyard in his battery-powered jeep. Tom was building a pond with a waterfall and a tiny gurgling stream. I planted lush grass beside it and urged purple alyssum and silver-green lamb’s ear to spread between the stones along its edge. In the cool hours, so sweet after a hot summer day, a cheerful fire in our new fire pit forced panic to remain outside the circle of it’s light.

That summer I had a tired smile. Maybe that’s why Tom built the swing. Warming a 2:00 am bottle, I would see him working, moving in and out of the glowing patch made by a light on a long yellow extension cord snaking through the night-damp grass. Night after night until one night it was finished and he invited me outside and pushed me high in the moonlight.

Tall and strong, stretching to the stars like a real one in a schoolyard, with shiny fittings and a chunky chain carefully covered with hose so it wouldn’t hurt my hands. He’d painted it royal blue. It was easily the best gift I’d ever been given.

That summer. Soaring high, peeking into the backyards around me. Leaning back to see our yard a swirl of green and brown hurtling toward me, my hair skimming the grass. Laughing freely into the breeze. In the midst of fatigue and confusion, fear-held-at-bay and desperate hope, I’d been given uncomplicated joy.

Summer ended. I had to place the baby in the arms of our sitter, loved and trusted, but mostly envied because she held him when I couldn’t. Before another summer had come and gone, we lost the house, found our possessions and our family in a pile locked forever outside that cedar fence.

The swing was disassembled, and it waited. We struggled, and we loved and we hoped and we prayed. And we set the swing up in a new yard, with a tire swing hanging from it for the baby, now turned four, but it never really fit like it did that summer. So just a few days ago we gifted the swing to some friends of ours, grandparents to three little boys who will swing high in the shade of a large country yard.

It remains among the best gifts I’ve ever been given. It was made under the moonlight with nervous, uncertain energy, and given with love. It was grasped like a lifeline. It taught me a lesson. Life is not always a playground, but sometimes, even in the midst of chaos and pain, it is. And when it is, you should play.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PewVqV5QV0E

God and Teenagers

     Years ago, in an attempt to prepare for parenting my stepdaughter, I learned in a parenting class that teenagers are self-focused and completely in the moment. Tonight I wish I was one.
     My son came home yesterday and asked me to find out what was wrong with his friend Kyle—said he was in the hospital. I left a couple of cyber messages for other moms and a return message this morning asked me to call, it wasn’t something to write about. My hands shook while I dialed.
     Kyle is the only child of a wonderful couple. He is the sunniest young man I’ve ever met, and one of the first friends Devin made when we moved back to my hometown eight years ago. Though as teens they’re very different people and don’t always hang out together, childhood friendships that grow up in a small town are forever. That’s how it is. Today Kyle has cancer.
     From the moms I have the facts. Not embellished or stretched like everyday gossip, but given straight and with a sober and solid determination to stay positive. From the school counselor Devin has the same facts. Kyle has Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, which is a cancer with a high cure rate. Tests have come back showing the cancer is isolated in one spot, around his heart and one lung. Surgery to install a port. Chemo soon. Very treatable.
     My younger son, Treyson, everyone’s Little Brother, says to Devin and I over PB & J’s before bed, “Are you scared about Kyle?”
     Devin says, “Kyle will be fine.”
     “Are you sure.”
     “Yes,” spoken without hesitation or doubt, “Kyle’s strong.” Devin is self-focused and Kyle is his friend and his friend will be fine. Devin is in the moment and the moment is two days before summer vacation, spring football practice tomorrow and Prince of Persia at the movies on Friday night.
     My first feeling was disappointment in what seemed a lack of depth in his reaction. Until he told me, “I sent a text to Kyle. His mom sent a text back and I told her I was praying.” What a blessing being a teenager is, if being self-focused means you know who you are, and living in the moment means giving things that are beyond you up to God with such confidence.
     I’m not doing quite so well tonight. I suspect the other moms aren’t either. We flip hamburgers in the PTO concession stand with this couple, cheer next to them at football games, share photos with them on facebook. Our connection is these children we are raising together; Halloween costumes, field trips, birthday parties, first day of Kindergarten, last day of Jr. High. We never imagined surgery and chemotherapy on the list, but since it’s there, well…we have to do it together.
     Only this is their child, and no matter how I ache for them, I can’t really help. I feel gratitude that my son is healthy. I feel panic, because maybe he won’t always be. It’s beyond me.  And what I need to do is learn from my teenager and give it up to God.

She Calls Me Grandma

     I am thinking of my grandma tonight.  I knew when she died I would miss her, but I had this sweet children's storybook idea of her smiling down on me.  And I know she is.  She waited by the door of the care center the evening before she died.  "I got a call," she told the nurse, "they're coming for me."   From my birth until her death she was a part of every milestone in my life, and thus she left imprints all over to sustain me.  And yet what I didn't understand was how I would miss her presense in each ordinary moment.   
     I wasn't at her funeral, haven't been to the cemetary since she passed last summer, and in my family tradition, that's just not how we do it.  I've promised my mother I will go with her this weekend to plant a red rose, a companion to the yellow one I planted for my grandpa a few years ago.  I find myself lacking emotional strength, and suprised that it's so hard.  Because she's on my mind this evening and in my heart always, I'm posting something I wrote shortly before she died, which ended up being read at her funeral in my absense.

She Calls Me Grandma

     She calls me Grandma. She’s just a little thing, 15 months old, and it doesn’t quite sound like “grandma,” but it’s definitely her word for me. She says it over and over to me, like a question, and my heart smiles. I wonder what that word means to her now; I imagine what it will mean to her in the years to come.
     I know what “grandma” means to me. My grandma. A tiny, plump Italian lady with a smile seldom absent for long. The one person I never doubted would make instant time for me. A person who required hugs and kisses, and who never told me goodnight without also saying “God bless I love you,” the words touching together like a secret phrase that would keep me forever from harm.
     She was the perfect companion for a little girl, the one who colored endless pictures with me, taught me how to play Jacks and amazed me with her ability to do “baskets,” held my hand on summer afternoon strolls, bought me Zots at Bud’s and a Little Golden Book every time we went to town.
     When I was older, and the stresses of teenage life got me down, I found I would still wander to her house to curl up in a chair in the tiny living room, where the radio played low and cheerful. She always had a drawer full of miniature snickers bars and a bowl of peanut clusters. She was always bustling about, a five a.m. riser who didn’t slow down until after the 10:00 p.m. news, but chances are she would come to sit still in the other chair, to keep me company. I don’t remember if I even talked to her at those times, but she’s a warm, safe presence in my memory nonetheless.
     As a young adult, I was aware that I was more adult than she. I drove her to the store and took charge of the shopping list. I knew when I didn’t see eye to eye with the rest of the world, she would agree with me without question. I could count on her to give me her last dime, which I sometimes found I needed to take. Less selfish than anyone I’ve ever known, nothing made her happier than to make me happy. When I opened my daycare she scrubbed dishes, swept floors, and restacked the red, yellow and blue blocks on their shelf a thousand times. With childlike concentration she joined in our art projects, with warmth and comfort she welcomed each child into her arms and onto her lap. In the rare quiet times, we chatted together companionably about small things.
     She sits now in a chair by the window at Canyon West Rest Center. I planned to see her twice a week and didn’t think for a minute that I would fail. But my days go by quickly, filled with the coming and going of children, overstuffed laundry hampers and overgrown flowerbeds, watching Devin burst across the goal line for a touch down, reading to Trey as he drifts to sleep, smiling with Holly as she experiences motherhood. The reasons I am here and Grandma is there are many, but her empty sunflower coffee cup makes me lonely.
     As life flows from one stage into the next, Makiah calls me grandma and I begin to create one for her, out of the best pieces of me. My own beloved grandma taught me how. If my granddaughter looks back over 40 years of her life and finds sweet memories of time we spent together, I will have made a connection across generations, to pass forward the precious gift I was given.