Self-portrait

We are all such complicated beings that if each of us were to create a new self-portrait each day for a month, what we would create might very well change dramatically from day to day.

One self-portraits I would make would look a little something like this:

Look closely.

A Money Making Opportunity!

When I was thirteen, my dad charged my brother and me with a daunting task: to clear our new home's horse pasture of thistles.  For each thistle bloom we collected, he offered us both a penny.

Bored and greedy, we accepted the challenge.

We clipped 900 thistle blooms that summer morning.  900.  And so, we each earned nine dollars for our efforts.

For years, I thought we had really pulled one over on Dad.  I figured he had figured we'd only collect about a hundred or so.  Boy was he fooled, I thought.

Then just a couple of years ago, it occurred to me that for a mere eighteen dollars, he managed both to occupy his bored children for a morning and to clear his pasture of thistles.

Well played, Dad.  Well played.

--------------------------

(Thanks to my creative friend, Jennifer at http://apoemlife.blogspot.com for the lovely thistle photo!)

Ebb

"We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships.  We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb.  We are afraid it will never return.  We insist on permanence, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity – in freedom in the sense that dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.  The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now."  – Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea.

I've been wanting to write about this quote for some time now.  I'd even planned to photograph a shoreline at low-tide during a late April trip to Florida with girlfriends.  Alas, my photography skills are sorely lacking, in part because I seldom get around to actually taking the pictures.

Interestingly, this quote appeared to me again as today's Celtic Daily Prayer reading.  This week, I am lamenting a new ebb.  Lamenting.  And trying to celebrate.  Relationships so rich and true  -->– such a high tide experience --> – naturally must ebb.  The sadness of the ebb highlights the absolute goodness of the flow.  The ebb aches because it should.  It was worth it.  

I've been here before, in the aftermath of rich experiences, wanting to cling to the memories and relationships.  Some relationships will continue, flourish, ebb and flow.  Some will not.  Over the years, I think I've learned to hold these relationships loosely, to give people space to engage or to drift away.  The holding loosely is unsettling, but the ongoing relationships are all the better for it.

Meanwhile, the ocean shore even now at low-tide, is still beautiful, uncertain, full.  Life continues in all its mundane routine and mustachioed-robin goodness, in its ebbs and flows.  Laundry to fold, toilets to clean, meals to plan.  Lego creations to admire, teenage dramas to hear, friends to laugh with.  Despite the lamenting, I am trying to be present here because here is good.  And because one day I will look back on this time which feels so much like an ebb and I will lament its passing as well.

For my brother

Oklahoma Land Run Song  -- to be sung to one's brother on April 22 each year, preferably with great enthusiasm, suppressed chuckles and lots of ironic vibrato.

It was April 22
In the Spring of '89
There were settlers by the thousand
They were gathered on the line
And they came from all directions
There were wagons by the score
To stake a claim out on the plain
Is what they waited for

To run, run run run
Oklahoma run
Fifty thousand people
Awaiting for the gun 

For land land land land
Oklahoma land
They came out here to the wild frontier
Across the Cimarron
To run....

There were near two thousand acres
Not enough to go around
If he had no transportation
A man's luck soon ran down

_______________
And that's all I can remember.  Usually I've cracked myself up by now.

Squeal

My daughter called me a pig last night.

But it's not as bad as it sounds.  

She unrolled the print of Michael Sowa's "Kholer's Pig" she'd found tucked away in a dark basement corner.
 

"Mom, you are this pig," she said.  "You've been pushed off the dock.  But you're going to land in that water and it's going to be really refreshing." 

She's right.  A lake lush with trees, reeds and lily pads.  Humidity softening the horizon.  It's gotta feel great in the water.  That pig's no fool.


Leave it God to use my love of whimsy, plus my tendency to procrastinate (never did get around to framing the print for my office), plus my teenage daughter's wise insight to speak a recurring theme to me.

Freedom.

I wrote about freedom here, but I'm feeling it more and more these days.  Maybe it's the early spring with new flowers emerging by the minute and grass so green it makes the heart ache.  Windows open, verdant evening air, coats left in closets.  The sheer pleasantness of it all.

Hope springs.  Possibilities sprout.  Enthusiasm flourishes.

My husband and I have mostly tried to buffer our kids from the recent painful events.  We've shared a few details with them, but not a lot.  They know we've been disappointed and sad, and they too have experienced transition pains.  But we've tried to shelter them from the brunt of it all.  We don't need them to carry the load for us, or even with us. 

Still, they're rooting for me.  Sweet, kind, encouraging comments.     Like calling me a pig.


It's true.  I am that pig.  I recognize the initial shock, fear, panic of the jump.  The increasing exuberance of flying through the air, weightless, worry-free for the moment.  The anticipation of entering the water, slightly anxious while also hoping to make a big glorious splash.  

Yes, the water is indeed refreshing.

And if you listen closely, you might just hear me suppressing a squeal.

Unexpected surprises

Someday, at the end of a school year, you might flip through your rough-and-tumble son's 4th grade math notebook and come across a few hidden surprises.  Like this:

And this:

And even this:

And you will cut out these unexpected gems and savor them.

Hike

Mountain-climbing imagery.  I've been noticing a lot of it lately. 

Is this truly a pattern to be noticed or is it merely coincidence or the result an over-active imagination?

Really, after the undeniably ubiquitous desert imagery, I am hoping I'm just imagining all the mountain-climbing imagery. After the desert, I want oasis.  Rest, refreshment, shade.  Not a hike, and definitely not one up a mountain.

My husband, king of the Mountain!  At Ptarmigan Pass in 1995

But I do love to hike... up mountains even.  When I was in my twenties (before children) and was spending several summer weeks taking seminary intensives in Colorado, I hiked a few fourteeners.  I even hiked three in one day.  (Actually four, but the dip to the saddle between one of these mountains and the others was not great enough for it to count as a true fourteener.  At the time, it definitely felt like it should count, but I digress...)

These mountains bear noble and slightly intimidating names: Lincoln, Democrat, Princeton, Quandary...  Names you want to work into conversation later.  "Well, when I was hiking Mt. Bross..."  

The reason I like hiking mountains is because it doesn't require a great deal of athleticism and skill.  (Some mountains do, of course, but not the ones I dare to scale.)  More than anything, it demands tenacity and patience and plenty of water.  Camaraderie also helps, as does a readiness to enjoy the journey, even the difficult stretches.

Hiking with small group friends near Breckenridge in 2008

Perhaps this is why I was so captured by Nathan Foster's depiction of hiking with his father in Wisdom Chaser (also mentioned here).  Foster scoffs when his dad speculates that if they hike slowly and steadily, they won't need to stop as often.  So though his father "moved his feet methodically, slow but steady," Nathan recounts:

I brushed off my father's wisdom and raced ahead up the mountain.  After about a half hour of hiking up a steep pitch, I noticed that, with all my painful stops, he was keeping up with me.  I felt exhausted.  Dad didn't stop even once, and he seemed to be gliding up the mountain. 

As is often the case in life, pain made me teachable. That day it was burning lungs and shaky legs.  My father had a lesson to teach about hard work, and I was ready to learn.  I gave Dad's theory a try and joined his ridiculously slow march.  I soon discovered that if I kept going slowly, it was easier not to stop.  I couldn't believe it....

Eventually we summited with grace and precision and a slow, steady pace.  The destination proved more remarkable than I had remembered from our last climb.... I took a bruised apple from my pack and bit in.  It tasted delicious.  (pp. 34-5)

A slow steady march up the mountain.  Eyes to see the surrounding, ever-changing beauty.  Patience as the journey unfolds.  Anticipation of even greater vistas to come.  And big gulps of water.


Okay,  I think I'm in.

Not a bad way to descend Mt. Bross after a long day of hiking -- 1995