the year my father died

the year my father died, i graduated from whitman, took a road trip up the coast of california with my mom in a bright red convertible to try to celebrate life and then moved 3,000 miles away to alaska with people i'd never met before.
(except joel. hi joel, if you ever read this.)
i was following Jesus, and i thought he might be in alaska. i can't say i regret it, but i can't say i'd do it the same again. i would say that i'd follow Jesus wherever and however, so maybe i would do it again. hard to know, because that drive to anchorage was heart breaking. the woods and the moose and bear and alaska all looked like my father so very much. he was a hunter and a woodsman. he loved the land of the midnight sun.
on january 14th of that year, i walked deep into the woods by myself and wept and rocked myself while standing cold in the snow and talked to the trees and to my dad and told him that i would miss him forever. i walked so far off of the trail that i was sure no one could hear me, not that being near the trail would mean anyone would've heard me either. alaska is alaska...there's really no one around wherever you go.
i had a big breakfast that morning with maple syrup and pancakes, my dad's favorite since he was a new hampshirite, and then wrote him a long letter. when i headed off to the woods, i brought a framed picture of us and then put both the letter and our faces on a tall noble fir tree deep in that forest, covered in thick snow. before i walked away i dropped a rose that i bought down in town and headed back for the trail.
that was the first anniversary of his death; i remember feeling that i was leaving a huge heavy boulder of grief behind in the woods as i walked back to roads and cars and my apartment and job and life.
all the way home i looked around me in the woods and imagined my father walking along next to me, framed by a landscape that would have suited him so well.
i listened to him on a nearby hill yell across the valley to me that he loved me, he loved me.

a few years later my brother, his family, and my mom and her future husband and michael and me met in the tetons to spread my dad's ashes. i was pregnant with mozea at the time, and michael and i had made a long trip in our beat-up vanagon from portland to wyoming at the end of september, when the elk bugle, to cast my father to the wind. we spread his ashes on a hill overlooking the snake river and then poured on the ground a bottle of estes park sampson stout that he saved for a special occasion along with all of our prayers and tears. i think i sang a song, i can't remember. we were all dealing with the pain of the day in our own peculiar ways...my brother took a thousand photographs and his kids ran around and played with sticks while we spread dad's remains. my mom played a tape of elk bugling and cried desperately and i held michael's hand tight. the morning air was cold and quick, the morning air my father preferred. it was a perfect temperature for maple syrup and pancakes.
i remember everyone was being incredibly delicate with the ashes. they put on special gloves and were slow and demure as they spread them towards the snake river.
as i'm sure you can imagine, i did nothing of the sort.
i rolled up my sleeves and plunged my bare hands into my dad's remains and then closed my fists tight, as tight as i could, and held him for a long time before letting him go.
my dad's remains were sticky. they weren't like normal ash or dirt. they stayed with you.
it was windy that morning and the ashes blew all over us. it seemed like people felt kind of uncomfortable with dad blowing every-which-way, getting stuck in eyelashes and under shirt collars, but i liked having dad all over me. when no one was paying much attention, i put my hands in the urn a second time and rubbed his ashes all over my face and hair and neck and arms and then closed the lid and carried his box down the hill with me that contained the things he was carrying the morning he died (a 2$ bill, his glasses, some unopened chapstick, and a silver cross that he said he'd always have in his pocket just in case it was true).
michael and i drove to jenny lake after we watched some elk rut in the middle of a thorough fare and said goodbye to my family.
the sun was setting over the grand tetons and i caught a glimpse of myself in our vanagon's spotty side mirror. i had my father's grey remains all over me, my hair was a dingy shade and my skin and painting shirt looked silty. whenever i touched my hand to my mouth i could taste the dusty salt, my dad.
i grabbed michael's hand as we drove out of yellowstone in the late autumn light.
with my husband, our baby in my belly, and my father all over me we drove back to portland.
the year my father died i turned 21.
that year began the darkest and most desperate five years of my life.
those years ended with the birth of my daughter, mozea.
she came a few months after we gave my father to the wind.

mean mama

i was mean to my girls this morning.
and the show went down for all to see at the woodstock library.
it made me sick and feel like a low-life, but i was so angry and hormonal and freaky.
i couldn't stop, despite the audible pleading with the One who can clear these things up: "God, please help me be good to them. I need your help right now. Right now. Hurry up or it's gonna get bad."
it doesn't happen very often, thank God, because i am married to an amazing man who is a full partner with me in loving our girls. i would be a tragic single mom.
but today i was the twin one of those women you see at grocery stores or banks or other bad mom spots, where bad moms hang out and yell at their kids. bad moms who are exhausted but have to buy something to feed the noise. bad moms whose gut and thighs are bigger than their husband's and who can't do anything but have fried, split-ends and brown-coffee teeth. those people you shake your head at and want to deprive of the very air they are stealing from all of the good people in the room, like yourself.
even the librarian lowered her voice and asked me if i needed help with anything, and i could tell she meant "help" in more than a "can i help you find barney's best pals go to the bouncy castle?" kind of a way.
she packed my back pack for me upon checking out mozea's books and wished me well before she sent me out the door.
then things really got nuts.
i couldn't find the key to the van. ruah was screaming and pulling my hair. mozie was screaming and pulling ruah's hair. both of them were falling out of my arms and mozea's baby doll stroller was about to get thrown across the street and into the library parking lot if it didn't cooperate and stop falling out of my pinkie finger grasp.
we were a tumult. a writhing psycho circus with a giant bad mom clown fueling the craziness for the entire show, curtains and all.
i broke into our van and put the girls in their seats and then proceeded to bawl while i yelled at mozea that i was crying because i couldn't find the keys and what were we going to do now?! we have no other key! this is a volkswagen--you get your spare key from a shop in europe for $100 dollars! one-hundred-dollars!
while i went on with my bawling soliloquy, i got on all fours and started climbing under the van, looking under the tires, desperately hoping that God would show up and do something for this insane woman who didn't deserve anything but to be put in a very long time-out.
and then it came.
"mama, the keys in da napkim."
"mama, the napkim. the napkim."
mozea's little voice tried to bellow over my tragic hormonal state.
i felt a nudge to be quiet and listen, and so i listened to the only thing i could hear--mozea.
she had put the key in the wipes container and shut the lid to make a shaker, and then threw it to the outer reaches of the van's interior.
she was telling me she put the keys in with the napkins, and
there is no way i would have ever found it.
never.
we would have gotten second jobs to pay for the new key before that van would've moved from woodstock library.
i climbed up next to mozea, hugged her, sobbing, and asked her to forgive me.
i loved her, i loved her, i loved her.
"ok. it's ok. mama? upset?"
i just sobbed and mozea and ruah laughed and laughed, thinking it was just a funny face i was making to end the show, to draw the curtain on the circus from hell that had been our morning.
when i got into the driver's seat and put the key in the ignition i asked mozie to pray for me, because, as she could see, mama was having a very hard day.
"yeah. ok....pray God for mama...for van key...not upset. van key in da napkim."
what grace.
who deserves this immediate forgiveness and re-admittance into the good mom seats?
who deserves this from their child? their baby?
not me.

mozea in the morning

mozie woke up yesterday morning reading her bi-mart coupon book in bed at full voice.
michael was reading it to her before she went to bed: "99 cents, cascade liquid detergent. buy one get one free glade plug-ins. mr. coffee coffee filters, 3.99...."
i just laid in bed at the ripe ol' hour of 7:30 am and waited for her to read herself back to sleep.
around 7:40, she started 'crowing' at me: "mama! mama! cah cah! cah cah!"
her ears are all stinky in the morning. i love it. it's this little mozie stink cradled right between her fat cheeks and her ear lobe. it's the nights' drool, i'm sure. i tell her she has stinky ears and she says "i have stinky ears, mama!" in this awesome two-year old tiny voice.

this morning, after coming downstairs, she sat on the heater and nursed oscar the grouch. i could see his little silver garbage can sticking out from under her shirt.

ruah is all over me with love and affection. i'm not sure what to do with it, but receive it, which is a very hard thing to do when you're someone like me.
i love these girls. they've pushed out my hipbones to the point of no return, and they've radically jolted my life so i wake up at 6 am and then 7 am and sometimes 1 and 2 and 3 am and they crow at me and have stinky ears and they cry for me and want me. this love, this unspeakable love.
it's a little hard to take, but i'll keep praying my way....

some things, some people, some occurences from sunday

we'll see where this ramble takes me....

on the way home from church i saw a large white truck belly up to the curb on MLK and pick up a few day-laborers looking for work. they were latino, i would guess mexican from the little i know about the men who usually stand there. the man in the cab was large and white. the men ran to the door, all clamoring for a chance to work and only two were picked up and the rest cast back to the curb. i just finished reading "the tortilla curtain" saturday night. candido was always running to white trucks and looking for work from large, white men. meanwhile his bride sat in a canyon, pregnant and starving. it was so eerie to see it all go down just past my windshield yesterday. what do we do? pray for mexico. pray for something. michael said we could throw a big feast for them and host it on the sidewalk, ask them what they need, what their families need. would this seem patronizing? only if it was patronizing, i guess.
i know i need to remember that God is already at work, i just need to join God in whatever that work is.

i made this scarf at knitting night a few years ago. in julia's room at reed. it took me a semester of friday nights with these amazing women, talking about all kinds of all kinds, to finish it. it's cream-colored with a blue thread on the side; i ran out of cream yarn and needed to tie it off. it is crooked and catywompus in all the ways of a beginner. and a beginner who wasn't really paying attention to the knitting, but more just doing something with her hands while she hung out with her ladies and talked and listened and played with naomi's rat.
in short: the scarf is totally ugly.
jordan was at my house thursday night for a prayer gathering. he wore the sexiest outfit i've seen at a church "function"--tight leather pants and high heeled leather boots with a black leather shirt and a huge fur collar. jordan and jordan's fashion are two of my favorite things about The Well, my beautiful church. he saw my scarf lying on the floor and wanted it. and then he wore it to church on sunday.
it has never looked so good. my collection of friday nights and conversations and times with those beautiful women all wrapped around jordan's neck. it was a perfect coming together of the places, the people i love.

last night we went to powell park, the havenator tribe. there were some somalian children playing on the teeter-totters and mozea and i talked to asha, the eldest girl, for a little while. she wore a deep purple head scarf and rocked herself on the bright red plank of wood. her sisters wore yellow and red and blue and each one walked and played on the different pieces of wood, also yellow and red and blue. they were so beautiful. asha was noticeably surprised that we wanted to talk to her. i know the somalian refugees in the neighborhood are not always greeted with welcome and affection. i know this because i talk to my neighbors. my white, home-owning, non-refugee neighbors. i turned around and saw michael and ruah on a distant swing. they, too, wore bright colors against the evening light. michael ran back and forth in front of the swing and ruah zel laughed with completeness. it was whole laughter. nothing distracted or divided or shamed. just complete focus on the joy of her papi and the swinging motion and the cool night air. here we all are, i thought. somalians and anglos and latinos all wearing the colors of the world on our clothes and our skin. here we are, under the sun, beneath God's gaze. here we are, some of us with so much money and some of us with so little. some of us with means for shelter and food, others so little. not that any of us deserve it, the much or the little.
what do we do? we pray and we pray. we believe God is already at work and we join God in it, if we are attentive and mature enough to find out where God is and what work God is doing.
i know for sure that God is loving us. each one:
there is mozea and ruah and michael, my beautiful people, and me.
there is jordan.
there is The Well.
there is reed and the women of knitting night.
there is asha and her family and the hundreds of somalian families who live in the section 8 housing just off powell.
there is candido and his bride, albeit fictional, but live narratives of his life portrayed on MLK.
there is the large, white man in his truck.
there are the people who built the truck.
the people who pumped the oil for the truck.
the people who paved the road and built the sidewalk and the church and the teeter-totters.
the people who protested the paving of the road and the building of the sidewalk because it was their land first and someone took it away from them.
here we all are.
under the sun.
a mess. and yet so beautiful.
here we are.
and what is the work God is doing among us? how is God loving me and asha? where is Jesus in the section 8 housing development? is he on the swings? the teeter-totters? does he wear purple, too?
what is the work of God's love on the sidewalk of MLK? how can i join? where can i sign up?
there is so much pain, so much.
just inside of me alone.
and then, there is so much love.
for all of us.
there's more than enough for all of us under the sun.
there's more than enough love.
can i believe that for me, today? can i be so loved to give it all away?
i'll pray.
we'll see.
there's more than enough. more than enough. more than enough....

friends

tonight i prayed with the Quakers.
they pray in silence so they can listen to God.
and they call themselves "friends"
if they really are listening to God
and if they really are friends, as in deep love betwist and unity amongst
and absolute delight in one another,
then i think we'll hear some revolutionary stories now and on the other side of the sky
about these friends who gather and what sorts of wonders come from their communities.

my slimy and other thoughts

we played with a big kid puzzle on the floor yesterday afternoon.
mozea shoved the pieces together, pretending they would fit however she pleased, ruah stuffed them in her mouth, and i tried to convince myself that the puzzle was not too hard for me.
at one point mozie got a little p.o.ed at ruah and said: "sissy! NO! don't eat the puzzle!"
i told her that this was our family puzzle and that if ruah wanted to chew on some of the pieces, it was ok, and then i asked her to repeat to me "our family" to help her articulate the idea.
she kept saying "our slimy. our slimy", totally proud of herself that she was repeating successfully the words i asked her to say.
so there we were, my slimy, my beautiful slimy, pretending to put a puzzle together on the kitchen floor so we could be near michael, the slimy's papi and official mascot, while he made soup and rarebit. it rained a hard and cold rain and the dogwood beat against our front window as we listened to blue grass and were warm. it was our saturday afternoon and the lights in our house shed the perfect yellow.
as i'm writing this i'm thinking of lee, the homeless vet to whom i have a knack for bringing completely inedible food. he has no teeth and i seem to forget that he can't do apples. it can be a brutal time of year to live outside. no that i know this, but i can imagine. he lives up in the woods beyond barbur blvd. he "camps", he says. i'm never sure what to do with all of that except pray and offer a little of what i have. once i offered a lot of what i had, my home, to a homeless man in our park, and it didn't turn out so well. mostly because i ended up being mean to him and hating him, really. after 3 weeks, i just wanted him out of my house. i was sick of the cigarette smoke and the lethargy. i completely failed at doing the "good deed" i had set out to do. those sorts of things tend to fall apart--those "good deed" sorts of things. they're bullshit, really, because good deeds are always about my good deed and not so much about anyone else. as soon as a "good deed" gets complicated and people actually become people, not projects, the good deed bit flies right out the window pretty fast.
the terrible and wonderful thing about Jesus is that it's all about your heart.
that sucks if you have a heart that sucks at being all about itself in a way that's good for anybody else. which is me and maybe you.
i'm selfish and don't want to share my yellow-lit kitchen. and even if i did, would it do anything? i can't set anyone free from the things that cause homelessness, whatever those things might be. no way.
but praying. praying. praying to the One who can do something. and then praying that i'd want to also be an answer to some of those prayers. hoping that i would want it to cost me something, not so i could feel self-congratulatory and write about it on my blog, but so i could see beautiful things happen in my time. to people who need to be free, like lee and like me.
just some thoughts....

walking on lakum dukum

i took myself out for coffee this afternoon. well, me and jc.
we had a fine time of it.
took the same route that mozie and i took on sunday.
same tree-leaf-clomping-stomping-shuffling route. i was just as taken with the leaves as i was with mozea on sunday. i darted back and forth across the street to whichever part of the sidewalk had the most yellow and red piled up on it. i was full-on into my clomping and sloshing and yahooing about when i noticed that some primly dressed folks getting off the bus with pointy umbrellas were trying desperately not to look at me. if you've ever died your hair a color that you've seen on old women in grocery stores, you know that look.
i guess it was only ok to enjoy the leaves so dizzily when i had my 2 year old at my side.
(as an aside: good job for taking the bus to work and all, but how can you get all dressed up and get hired for very important jobs that provide you with the social wherewithal to even know how to carry one of those umbrellas and then completely miss the point?)
anyhoos--
once i reached gladstone coffee, i threw open the door, feeling just as blustery as the wind that carried me there and proceeded to order a hot chocolate with whip cream and sprinkles.
this was a mistake.
another grand social foible in the span of 10 minutes.
the extremely cool barista kind of jerked his head back into his neck a bit and said, "ok....do you want it lukewarm?" and it immediately became clear that i'd just ordered a kiddie drink.
i don't know how to go out without mozea, apparently.
i've completely forgotten how to pretend to be cool. i don't even know how to do my hair anymore. (although, i'm not sure i ever knew how to pull off a successful coiffure.)
after the "nice try, sweet heart" of a moment with the coffee king, i trundled off with my whip cream and sprinkles and mom sweats to the back yard so i could feel the wind and hang with God. i bumped a few tables on my way out with my ever-rising mom hips and then spilled a little cocoa on some extremely cool person's table. "oh, i got it" i said, and wiped it up with my sleeve.

about 8 years ago i stood at the edge of lakum dukum at whitman college in the land of two wallas for several hours in the very late evening of some winter night. i stood right at the very edge, convinced that i was going to try to walk on water. not like Christ. like peter. big difference. i stood and watched the duck crap float around the surface of the water, bumping into other duck crap, forming large continents and then just as quickly as the alliance was made a wind would come up and the masses would drift apart again.
duck poop pangeas.
for hours, i tell you, i watched this.
my dear friend jess called to me at one point with a small and pitying voice from behind some distant bushes: "good luck, sl! i love you!" she was on her way to the library and knew exactly what i was up to; i'd called her earlier in the day and spoke very quickly, breathy even:
"hey, i'm going to try to walk on lakum dukum. think of me."
(jess and i later ran naked across the platform in front of memorial building at midnight the night before graduation. i had a terrible case of incontinence back then and hysterically peed all over the long ramp where our classmates would stand the next day and get little papers that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars from a tall and believable president that said we were smart enough to feel ok now in the world.)
jess passed and the winds died down and the crickets went to sleep and it was then, after staring at this black cold mess of an opponent for hours and hours, that i just did it.
i stepped right on in--took the plunge, as they say.
duck poop and slimey silty cold water collected around the cowl of my sweater. other competing duck poops went up my nose. my bandanna dripped cold, stickying water down my face after i'd come up for air, just to punctuate the failed experience.
and i stood there for a bit, in the middle of it all.
pangeas splitting and forming around my giant head, gathering at my neck.
some sleeping ducks woke up and swam over to see if i was a loaf of bread.

"nice try, sweet heart" of a moment it was, indeed.
thus are my times with Jesus some afternoons and some very late winter evenings. trundling and whip creaming and sprinkling and dorking and leaf-shuffling and failed water-walking.
i must believe that it's all worth the try and that they really are "nice try"s, good tries. admirable tries, from a certain perspective. a very, very peculiar perspective ;)
the yahooing about and the mom sweats, the duck crap and the breathy calls included.
i must or it's to the land of pointy umbrellas i ought to go.