After sunrise, I drove to pick up my cousin and we took off for grandma's. I hadn't seen Grandma for a while. She looks older. Although I recognized her face less, her eyes are the same; as clear as July sky. We sat around her hand-crafted Swedish table, the one I put a two-inch wide scratch in the day after she had it assembled, and passed stories back and forth as we sipped coffee. Grandma's philosophy on coffee: 'I like to have a little bit of coffee in my milk.' According to Grandma, 'Grandpa was always making himself half a cup of coffee.' Sounds like me and my pa.
Francis is a storyteller. I could sit at the table for hours listening. In fact, that's what I did. I knew while I listened, that this was a precious time. This sitting so close, in a home filled with memories, listening. Listening to stories about my great-grandfather John who was raised in the mountains of Sweden, my great-grandmother Nettie and her gardens... reminiscences, sweetly and tenderly spoken. She'd tear up, recalling her children's first steps. She shared about the trials and joys of raising nine children, about saving her baby's life when it turned blue, about Grandpa saving their baby's life when it had a convulsive fever, about her best friend Gwenevieve and her cancer and death, about depression and how good it is for us to cry, about marriage and how it is about sacrifice and giving to the other, about parents who selflessly raised children of special needs, about suffering with diabetes, about Sweden, about the beauty of the simple things. I am proud to be her granddaughter.
As I scrubbed the kitchen floor while she napped and my cousin vacuumed, I couldn't help but cry to remember of all that I could: that kitchen floor my cousins and I tripped over each other on when we scattered outside to play in the woods or capture the flag, the kitchen floor I collected misplaced and fallen crayons off of after scribbling in Lion King coloring books, the kitchen floor my aunts did yoga on when one flew in from L.A.--a home so filled, so filled with family, so filled with memories that don't exist anymore, except for these glimpses.
She listened to us too. It was a good time. Good, as in, I won't forget it.
On the drive back, my cousin and I detoured on a side-road and for the first time, I drove my car on adventurous terrain. We basked in the pastel dusk over the lake until we became numbed by the biting November wind.
now to finish, Huxley's incredible Brave New World,
m
P.S. Have you ever showed up late for a surprise party on the wrong day? Imagine that. I don't think we'll live that one down, at least until dementia.
Scene 1. The moon had been out for hours. Moriah lies beside her sister, the dog between them. They had just fought over the fleece blanket with Dalmatian colors, Moriah had let Rebekah win. Rebekah lies perfectly still, but Moriah keeps tossing herself into different positions.
Moriah: Bekah, good night, please don't talk anymore I really need to sleep. And I really want to answer your question, but I need to sleep.
Rebekah: You'd be a single mom.
M: What--?! What does that even mean?
R: You know how Tobey McGuire only plays the nerds or the unpopular characters in movies, you'd always play a single mom.
M: I think I'm offended. And I really need to sleep--I can't sleep! Why on earth do you think that?
R: Because. It just fits you. You're independent and I can just imagine it.
M: No, I wouldn't ever want that. I'd want to be someone like Meg Ryan who owns quaint book shops and wears big coats. Someone quirky who falls in love with witty men.
R: ...I guess I can see that too.
M: Okay, now be quiet. I need to sleep. (She wiggles and pulls the blankets closer.) I can't sleep. O--! Here! I'll do what Carla would have us do before performance. Relax my legs. Good, now my head. Now, put my tongue to the back of my throat...
(A small sputter like water from a pump well spills into a laugh from Rebekah's lips.)
M: Oops. I said that wrong.
R: I'm imagining you putting your tongue to the back of your throat...
M: Okay ha ha. Now, let me sleep. (Three seconds of silence) Bekah, did you read that article on American Girl dolls?
R: No, but Mom told me about it. It's horrible.
M: I know! I am so angry about it.
R: You know how Kit was your favorite, well you're actually a lot like her. You have the same haircut, she lived in an attic, she spied on people, she helped Hobos.
M: And I can imagine you as Felicity. Would have run away to save that horse like she had?
R: Actually, I've thought about it, and I would in a heartbeat. You know--my favorite horse is the same coloring as Penny. Remember how you used to have such a crush on Ben?
M: Yeah, goodness, what a dork!
R: If you lived in Victorian times, you would have been Annabelle.
M: (Sarcastic) Thanks. Bekah, you actually could fit into that time period really well though.
R: Just like you would have fit into the Great Depression period.
M: Yeah, and I would have escaped from a jail through a bathroom window and crawled across a railroad track bridged over a gorge!
R: Remember what George said. We were put into the right time period to best know God.
M: Yeah, there's that, but also, if you had been in the Victorian Period, I wouldn't have fit in there. And if I had been in the Great Depression Period, you wouldn't have fit in there. So I'm glad we're both here. Goodnight. And for real this time, no more talking. (Ten seconds of silence) Do you really think I'd be a single mom?
Scene 2. Two friends sit in a coffee shop, facing a yellow house. Moriah sipping on a jar of red wine, while Holly nibbles on a sliver of banana bread.
Holly: And he's actually a hot one.
Moriah: Really?
H: Yep. Tall, black beard, brown eyes. I find him attractive.
M: So, then I probably wouldn't...?
H: No, you probably wouldn't. Our views in hot men are totally different. Like Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio.
M: Wait, I like Leonardo DiCaprio.
H: My point.
Scene 3. Two friends giggle over their days. Moriah rolls over with a new thought--breaking from the topic.
Moriah: I think I kissed six people today.
Holly: I could think a lot about that right now.
M: I did though.
H: Explain, please.
M: They were all shorter than me.
H: Kids! Thank God. The way you put that was just a little... odd.
M: No, no it wasn't.
H: Yeah. It was. And you counted.
M: I averaged.
Life is full of choices. Like making the choice to give yourself a haircut in the bathroom sink, 15 minutes before work.
I accidentally gave myself bangs, after being proud of the valiant progress I had made in growing them out too. For three seconds in disbelief, I stared into the mirror, abrasively accepting the fact, before I let myself laugh it out.
"What did you do--?" my sister enters, staring blankly, quite aghast.
"I could almost cry," Mom moans, "Don't you have to go to work? It's 3:40."
"Yeah, but I need to fix this." I lean against the counter into the mirror, scissors clicking and stumps of wet hair collecting around the sink.
"Moriah, you're just going to make it worse," my sister interjects.
"Not until I fix this--"
I made it worse.
"It sort of looks like Lady Gaga" or "the Beatles..." or "a small mammal" were compliments I received last evening.
While at the salon this morning, my hairdresser and I laughed, as she agreed that the back of my head did look like a football or a possum.
Consequently, the hair I was trying to grow out {in fact, I was pulling at it everyday, so that it would grow faster} is as short as ever. Back to a bob just below my ears. I'm not laughing anymore, I don't like my haircut one bit: I feel like a floppy eared Cocker Spaniel.
But the thing is, it's hair. Just hair. It'll grow back and when it does, I'll probably end up chopping it off again "accidentally".
Rebekah and I made a last minute decision to dress-up for Halloween: as our parents in their early 20s . Johnathan was good enough to take photos. Mom decorated our yard as tradition with warmth, light and a welcoming table of hot cider and chocolate for the parents of the trick-or-treaters. While Bekah and I walked a plate of pumpkin bars up the hill to the Soby's, two grown men morphed into "zombies", dragged their feet and moaned my name. I was startled.
Last night after work, I crashed Bekah's sleepover as they watched Pride and Prejudice. Man. I was a mess. The scene when Elizabeth refuses Darcy in the rain, when she reads the letter of his explanation, when she tours Pemberley and stumbles upon him with Georgiana, when they meet in the meadow at dawn, unified and embracing, and when he calls her Mrs. Darcy by the lake--I soaked a pillow with tears... emotional much?
I met again with a group of writers; my friends, in an a coffee shop as narrow as an alley with an x-ray illuminator screen propped onto the bathroom wall and coffee that put most to shame. We paired off to tell a dream in turn, then retold the dream of our friend in a story. They were humorous, glorious, and ridiculous. We wrote a narrative with no more than 3-word sentences. Later, we chose a song-lyric, a sentence or so, and free-wrote until the emotions related to the verse swooned from us into paragraphs. Such an enriching time and from that time, I have continued to write, almost obsessively... for two and a half days between sleep and work, hardly eating, typing, typing: releasing, my cage lifted, lifted until I was freed.
I have a story I'm writing. It won't be ready for another decade, but it is time to begin. I am ready. I have also thought of two children's stories recently! The first is about a car salesman who cannot sell cars and the other a wordless story of a leaf's adventure.
Friday was a sweetly spent morning with two little misters. As I held the littlest mister, listening to him experiment with his vocal range and coo, I noticed a sparkle of glee-like mischief behind his blue eyes before he belched and spat his milk up and down my legs. I had to laugh. He thought it was funny too.
At work, I met a couple whose beloved wiener dogs persuaded them to tattoo Picasso's drawing of wiener dogs onto their arms. They were precious.
Lately, I've had very strange dreams. Stranger even than Lewis Carroll's mind. Each night, somebody new enters and we create thousands of nonexistent, foreign memories, obscure and extreme. It's hard to wake up out of them, because I want to re-enter and create more.
As I walked from the Cathedral to Groundswell and Hamline Sunday afternoon, I was disappointed by how few people were out without ear-buds or running shoes and garb. Out of 100 people, there was only one man who passed me with a kindly smile and a book under his arm, clearly taking in the blustering wind that picked and tossed the golden, violet, scarlet, orange and soft teal leaves in a dance between the intellectual streets (Oxford, Milton, Chatsworth, etc).
The cast had its first read-through around a table for brunch on Saturday. We laughed and cried: so moved by the story and how it dipped into us, opening and turning our walls inside out. What a lively, caring and authentic bunch! I am excited for all that I will learn from these talented actresses and directors.
At a favorite coffeehouse, I researched the true story behind the script and learned that the character I play was real: her name was Susan Harling Robinson. She was best friends with her brother, Robert. When she died, Robert wanted her son to know what sort of woman she was, as he was very young when she died, so he wrote 'Steel Magnolias.' I feel honored to play her. I hope to do her memory justice.
Something golden: Each week, I increasingly become more and more thankful (if that's even possible!) for my small group, which is truly like family. We meet together on Sundays between sunset and dark to live life together... and I'm learning so much about Jesus--not only about him, but what he looks like, lived out in flesh, through these selfless people. They are light. They are beautiful to me.
I have been reading 1 John this week. And then again. It pierces softly like strong-summer grass beneath me when I lay under the sun.
abiding,
m
P.S. Re-discovered Mary Oliver; we see through eyes quite alike:
"Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift."
"Listen--are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?"
"I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable and beautiful and afraid of nothing as though I had wings."
“Ten times a day something happens to me like this - some strengthening throb of amazement - some good sweet empathic ping and swell. This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.”
"For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.”
“So every day, so every day, I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth of the ideas of God, one of which was you.”
"I held my breath as we do sometimes to stop time when something wonderful has touched us...”
“He is exactly the poem I wanted to write.”
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| Liekeland. |
P.S.S. I have an incurable crush on Ray LaMongtagne's voice.
P.S.S.S. Discovered the oddly adoring style of Dory Previn's. Her way of song-writing, the depth of feeling, is a kindred spirit: "The Christmas Crooked Star, '73"
P.S.S.S.S. Enraptured: Liekeland illustrations
P.S.S.S.S.S. Loveliness: Christopher Tignor - "Cathedral, Part 2"
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