North Carolina in Bloom

I'll be posting my second meme soon, but I wanted to take another photo break. This time, I'm sharing some of the beauty of North Carolina spring. All of these images were taken in the last week here in the Triangle area.

These here are just a preview. The full set is here.

Oh yeah... and I got my hair cut. It's still long, but much more curly with layers. That was my last act in California before driving to the airport.

Meme, the first.

Okay, so I am really slow getting to them, but I have been tagged for two memes. This tag came first, so I am going to do it first. The other will come shortly. :D

1) One book that changed your life.

Grand Duchess Elizabeth of Russia - New Martyr of the Communist Yoke by Lubov Millar

I'd say this was life-changing because in this biography I saw a passionate love for Christ and other people in the amazing life of a woman of privilege who lost everything she loved and still forgave and loved and gave until her very last breath. There is something real and immediate about her that resonated deeply in me and made me believe that deep personal holiness isn't a thing of the distant past.

2) One book that you have read more than once.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
I don't know why, really, but this novel is one I must have read 20 times over the years. I must like it or something.

3) One book you would want on a desert island.

Remembrance of Things Past or In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
I enjoy both the appropriateness of the title given what I am likely to be obsessed with during my stay, and the fact that it ought to keep me busy for a good long time. Described as the "Longest conventionally-read novel." It contains nearly 1.5 million words and holds the Guinness record for the Longest Novel. I appreciate the practicality of people who choose books designed to aid survival or escape, but I would probably prefer to hunker down and wait for rescue. ;)

4) Two books that made you laugh.

1. Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss
What can I say? I'm an editor.

2. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach
I have to concur with Ashleigh on this one. I read it on a train to San Diego for the first time and laughed out loud, repeatedly. It was mildly embarrassing to draw attention of fellow passengers, but it was totally worth it because I couldn't put the book down.

5) One book that made you cry.

A Grief Observed, by C.S. Lewis
So heartbreaking and haunting... it sticks with me.

6) One book you wish you'd written.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
In spite of my answer to #3, I have a practical side. As one of the wealthiest people in the world, J.K. Rowling now has the luxury of writing whatever she wants without having to worry about her bottom line. That, I covet.

7) One book you wish had never been written.

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Perhaps this makes me some kind of monster, but I cannot remember ever having such a violently visceral reaction to a book as I had to this one. What many people seem to think of as a life-changing reflection on life and spirituality struck me as something, well... Let's just say I really didn't like it.

8) Two books you are currently reading.

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

Never Let a Fool Kiss You or a Kiss Fool You by Dr. Mardy Grothe
(It's a word-nerd book about Chiasmus, and quite silly fun... but more of a dribs and drabs read.)

9) One book you've been meaning to read.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Uh, yeah... just never quite got around to that. But I have watched the BBC miniseries at least 5 times a year for the last several years, so I think I really ought to break down and read it.

***
For the 1-2-3 meme, the directions are:
1) Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2) Open the book to page 123.
3) Find the fifth sentence.
4) Post the next three sentences.
5) Tag five people.

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

"That night, when the darkness was weighed down with singing crickets and Rosaleen was snoring right along with them, I had myself a good cry. I couldn't even say why. Just everything, I guess."

Tagged: Mom, Angie and Susan
I'm only tagging three. I've always been one to buck the rules!

The Bright Side of Life

The last couple of posts have been heavy, but, fortunately, that's not all there is to life.
Here's a selection of the photos from my trip to California.






















Of course, I have high-res copies for family members who may want them. :)

As a Thousand Years

I like to think that there are moments in life when God may give us a glimpse of his view of time. Those are the tiny eternities when it feels like so much gets crammed into an hour or a day or a week or a month that you could swear you have spent at least a year (or five) living it all.

I've had a couple of those weeks lately.

Just over two weeks ago my grandmother died. It was completely expected and completely unexpected. She had been suffering for a while, but she always managed to hang on. I think part of me half-way expected her to just go on hanging for another several years. That, however, by he grace of God, was not meant to be. Further surprising me -- I should add that I take great pains not to be surprised by planning for ever imaginable contingency -- was the fact that I had a strong, immediate urge to go back home for the services, and a much deeper emotional reaction than I had anticipated after waiting in what felt like limbo for her to pass from this life for so long. Lately, however, I think God has been reminding me in a variety of ways that there are things I simply can't plan for, anticipate and control. Thankfully He has also given me mercy to handle most of it somehow without coming entirely unhinged.

Two weeks ago Thursday I flew out to Southern California to be with my family for my grandmother's funeral. The family time was largely great. We sat over boxes of old photos for hours, ate at nostalgic places and saw extended family that I hadn't seen in years. Grandmother's service was small and respectful, and it was a labor of love for my dad, in particular. My sisters and I sang "Be Still My Soul" together, in what was, I think, our first appearance ever as a trio. Mom has had visions of that particular trio decades ago, so I imagine it was a particularly nice moment for her in the midst of the sadness and busyness that comes with the loss of a loved one.

We even managed to find times to laugh. Those of us in the house when Mom took a speaker-phone call from a telemarketer will not soon forget her comments: "Hi! We were just singing together. Would you like us to sing for you?" Or the way we subsequently sang for the bewildered caller. We'll especially not forget the way that Mom, just a little tired and overwhelmed, then proceeded to mixed her phrases and announce to the still more confused telemarketer that we were, at this "unusual family time" ... "celebrating a death." In all the laughter than ensued, we were clearly celebrating life.

The family weekend was sandwiched by work. I was asked to stay a few extra days at the office, so my return trip was delayed. Work itself was unusually heavy. Changes were made that meant saying goodbye to people we had known and loved, and other changes were made in company structure that meant some further unhappiness for a few who stayed. My own new position in the "org chart" is exciting, but it hasn't come without challenges, some of which I doubt my readiness to handle in my weaker moments. I came away feeling very positive, and exciting about the ways I have been invited to grow, but also absolutely sapped of energy.

The whole trip was made more difficult by the fact that I traveled alone. I missed Daniel's companionship and presence, and we kept up some sense of normalcy through frequent short phone calls.

Even the lighter moments of the trip were heavy in unexpected ways. Case in point, I went to a rehearsal for the choir we belonged to in Mission Viejo. That was wonderful and I really enjoyed it. However, that visit also brought me news that one of my friends in the choir -- someone close to me in age -- had died under mysterious circumstances just before Christmas. Nobody had thought to tell me at the time, so even though it was not fresh news, it was new to me. I knew enough about her situation to realize that she had probably taken her own life, which added to the pain of discovery.

There were definite highlights... such as the rental car company running out of mid-size cars and giving me a convertible Mustang for the same price, dinner with dear friends, a visit to In-and-Out Burger, and liturgy at St. John on Sunday in their new, larger space... but by the time I sat in the airport and waited for my flight home, I was, so to speak, out of gas.

Little did I know that the trip wasn't over yet, and I needed all the fumes that were left.

I made it to Atlanta without a problem, but once in Atlanta everything started to go just a tad wrong. First the flight attendants were late so we couldn't board the plane. Then they didn't show up at all, and new flight attendants were called in (from home, I presume). When the new attendants arrived and we got on the plane, we were delayed a bit because of a back-up on the runway due to earlier storms. Then the captain announced that the smell of exhaust coming in through the ventilation system was "somewhat normal" and that we shouldn't be alarmed. A few minutes later he announced that we were 4th in line and cleared to go when our turn came. However, he then turned off the engines and announced that we were no longer cleared to go until the storm that was currently pummeling Atlanta had moved on. Said storm would be the tornado that flattened part of downtown on Friday night.

When we finally did leave, the smell of exhaust was stronger, and my grasp on reality was slipping, between the fatigue and the heaviness I had been carrying. I determined that I would remain awake (unlike most of my fellow passengers), because I wasn't about to die of CO poisoning if I could help it after all that I had been through. I started to make contingency plans... like trying to figure out if the air in my half-empty water bottle could somehow be useful to me in the event of the worst. Meanwhile, the air was so turbulent that the flight attendants had to stop peanut service at the third row. I was, needless to say, further back than that, and rather crammed into my window seat as the two larger men next to me had opted not to use the armrests and were spilling into the seats in my direction. Starving by now, I found some pulverized Ritz crackers in my purse and washed them down with the water I had brought from the terminal. We were only two hours late getting in, but it was Saturday by the time we touched down.

Let's just say that I was very, very glad to get home. I was so glad, and so hungry, that I was even willing to eat from the only fast-food restaurant that is open 24 hours near us: McDonalds. Eeeew.

Further complicating matters, I had begun to get sick about mid-week, and by Saturday morning, I was truly ill. I have been enjoying what I can only think to call post-nasal ooze, and I slept the majority of the weekend, just trying to feel something like physically normal again. My first outing once home was on Saturday. Daniel and I went to get veggie burritos at a local Mexican place. As we were leaving, we got out onto a narrow highway that winds through about 10 or 15 minutes of nothing much -- no gas stations or restaurant or offices, for sure. As soon as we were on the road and stuck behind a car that wasn't moving very quickly, my nose began to bleed profusely. I quickly ran out of napkins and finally resorted to holding the clear plastic cup of ice left over from lunch up under my chin, but my white shirt didn't escape unharmed. It was one of those moments when I wanted Daniel to "do something" and there was precisely nothing (aside from offering me his shirt, which I refused) to do.

By yesterday, I was significantly less exhausted (and much less bloody), but still decidedly sick.

I had just decided that I could live with this nasty cold/infection, and that the semblance of normal life I had adopted since my return was good enough, when I got the call from my OB/GYN office. My pregnancy was molar (happening in about 1 of 1,000 to 1,500 pregnancies), which means, in short, that what developed in my womb had an extra set of chromosomes and was not capable of coming to term. The abnormal tissue either overcomes a normal embryo, if there was one, or it develops instead of a normal embryo. We're not sure which is true in my case, but either way it brings with it further worries. I had to start testing immediately. I must avoid pregnancy for at least 6 months, during which time I will be subject to further testing, because that abnormal tissue (essentially a tumor) can return (it does in 5-20% of cases), and it can sometimes become cancerous, as it did in the case of a loved one.

Best case, the surgery I already had will have done the job and in 6 months to a year, we can try to conceive again. Worse case, the tumor will return, requiring another surgery. Worst case, and the odds are slim, the tumor will become malignant and can spread outside the womb. In that case, I would require further surgery and chemotherapy, and could result in an inability to carry children in the future. I'm genuinely scared of that outcome, because both of the women I know who have had molar pregnancies were unable to have subsequent pregnancies.

The fact is that I don't know yet how it will work out. All I can do is wait and trust that God knows better than I do what I need and that his plan is bigger and better than mine. I feel like I have been handed a choice: go to pieces, or find peace outside myself. Thankfully, He genuinely does offer peace if we are willing to surrender the worries about the known and the unknown. I chatted with a my dear trooper of a friend whose own personal story has had more challenges than my own. She told me I had been ushered into a special sisterhood of women who have the opportunity to bear heavy things, and then to pass on our strength to others when their moments come. We are, she said, to be mother angels to each other. I can only hope that she is right. She usually is.

It's all very hard. I won't lie about that. I cried over onions in a pan on the stove one morning this week, and the onions were only partly to blame. My eyes are misting now as I write. I find it very difficult to trust God through the various twists and turns in the road without asking a whole lot of "why?". However, there's a part of me that remains firmly convinced that this, too, all has a purpose. He for whom a day like this is as a thousand years will see me through... even if it takes a thousand days like this one.

Airmail

Grandmother,

I can't find my favorite picture of you. Do you remember it? It's quite old and faded and black and white, and you kept it on display in the hallway of the Whittier house. You told me it was taken when you were 19. I think the photo was snapped in Arkansas, but I thought it might have been taken on a movie set, because to my childish eyes, none of the Hollywood starlets of your era had anything on your dark eyes and perfectly coiffed hair and beautiful smile. To me, you were much more than the Home-Ec. -studying daughter of a car dealer in the South. You were grace and beauty embodied. Granddaddy must have agreed, because he claimed your hand and your heart.

Before long the two of you had set up house in a quonset hut (in Texas, wasn't it?) with old army mattresses heaped up in different configurations to suggest a couch, a table, a bed... It certainly wasn't your dream house, and it wasn't worthy of your elegance, but you were loved, and in love, and when you talked about that time later with a hint of scorn, I could also detect a genuine fondness in your tone. You were so young and lovely, but your swelling belly suggested that the rest of your life was at the threshold. Soon, your two-days-long labor turned into decades of investment in those you loved.

I'm quite sure you lost your cool once in a while over the years. Three boys trying to make it to adulthood in one piece will do that to any woman. Dad tells me you once managed to break a broomstick on his backside trying to straighten him out. He couldn't tell the story without giggling. I can only imagine what you must have done at the time. For all your occasional prickles and gripes and gossip, you clearly loved your own, and that love was stronger than broomsticks or any of the troubles your family could cook up.
By the time I was born, you and granddaddy were ripe for the picking, much like the sweet, squishy apricots that littered your yard. I never felt anything but love and generosity from you, and some of my fondest memories are of times we all shared... holidays, a black-eyed pea picking expedition, family vacations, Christmas eves, lazy afternoons on your backyard swing.

You may have had sons, but you were every inch the lady--from your overstuffed closets and makeup drawers, to your manicured nails and salon hair. You had at least 3 sets of china and plenty of pretty trinkets. You wore your gold and diamonds regally, and you promised bits and baubles as part of our inheritance.

Perhaps what I remember most is the music of your home. Granddaddy didn't talk much... but he could play and sing. And he did... often. My wonder would multiply when Granddaddy's fiddle that his father made would be brought reverently from its case, and I would be permitted to touch it. Music made life full, beautiful... and it connected us to our past. Music is still one of my greatest joys, and it is one you helped to give to me.
As I grew, I hoped I would grow to be as beautiful as you were. I looked forward to every visit to your house that might mean the gift of some new shade of Estee Lauder lipstick that came free with purchase and didn't appeal to your sensibilities. I also looked forward to the food I knew would adorn the table--from pecan pies, black-eyed peas, and Granddaddy's secret recipe creamed corn to homemade jams and jellies and even the strawberry Jello salad with the Cool Whip topping I despised. If I was lucky, there would also be a box of See's candy somewhere in the house... it was just a matter of finding it and batting my eyelashes a bit.

Of course, you remember better than I do the car accident that injured you so badly when I was just a child. It scared me, perhaps more than it did you. They told me that your seatbelt had saved your life. I don't think it was just an argument to get me to wear mine, either. But you bounced back. You and Granddaddy were invincible. You were part of my life. You always would be.
Or so I thought at the time, but things changed. You would always be here, just not always in the way I would wish.

When Granddaddy went home for the last time, our world crumbled. He was the calm in the eye of our storm, and when he was gone, all that was left were the gales that scattered us. But you and I were thrust together for a month there, before we all gradually drifted apart. Thrust together in a loss we both felt so keenly in our own ways.

When I came to live with you so you wouldn't be alone in the house you had shared with him, I think I began to understand you for the first time... your depth of feeling, your history, your loss. I would lie awake in your huge king bed at night, while you would cry quietly in the guest room, and I would wonder how all of us had been reduced to sobbing and wishing and pleading and feeling that we had been torn from our roots and thrown to the wind. You were there, trying to be strong for my sake. And I longed to be strong for yours, but he was everywhere in our histories, in our lives, in that house. We each had to be strong for the other, though neither of us felt our own strength.Were we strong? I think so. We each made our ways through life without Granddaddy, and we were together again in your house the next time my world fell apart. When I felt more alone than ever, your doors opened to me again--the petulant teenager who had worn out her welcome at home.

You, against your protestations, even found love again. I remember my astonishment when I sat with you and Bob at the airport early in your courtship. The two of you were like a couple of teenagers--giggling, smiling, cooing. I couldn't help but giggle to watch you.

I found love, too... though I think some part of me looked for Granddaddy in every man I met. Mostly, I got it wrong. Except for the one I kept, none of them were worthy of his memory. His shoes were hard to fill.

I know you felt that way, too. I felt it keenly when you cried in your den as I sang for you "At Last," which you told me had been one of your favorite songs so long ago, and was one of my favorite big band songs to perform. You had found love, but you were always so careful to distinguish that your new love was never to be a dishonor to the old. True love is honor.

Clearly, we didn't always see eye to eye. For a while I was only welcome to come over if I would help with the dishes. Me? Help with the dishes? One would think you had asked me to build Rome in a day. But I knew you still loved me, and I think I have improved with age.

As the years went on, we didn't even see as much of each other. Both of us were busy for a while... making new connections, looking for happiness, finding our ways in life. Towards the end, I'm not sure if your wasted body and retreating mind still allowed you to know me at all when I would come to visit--your mind had wandered.

Sometimes I wondered where you were, and if you were happier there. Still, I looked at you and held your hand and told you I loved you. You told me you loved me too... and I knew it was true.

I started saying goodbye to you a couple of years ago. Sometimes it felt as though you were already gone, because what you had been reduced to in the end was not the Grandmother I had known--the woman too youthful and proud to be called "granny" or "grandma." It was "Grandmother," no discussion, while you were that woman. But that's not the woman who lay quietly in the nursing home where your own mother had spent her last years.

I think I knew in my heart that the last time I stood by your bedside before I moved thousands of miles away was our last visit on this earth--that goodbye was the last one I could utter to your face. Still, part of me clung to you, clings to you.... you as I remember you so many years ago: full of life, spunk, pride and immaculate beauty.

Now I know where you are. I can let go of the wasted frame, the depleted mind that were yours at the end. It's that other you that I don't want to let go of. I want to hold you here, to tell you one last time how much it meant to share with you some of the most painful and the most joyful moments of my life. To tell you that I loved you then, though I didn't show it as I ought to have done, and that I love you now. And, as I am sure you know, I'm not sure I quite know how to say this last goodbye.

I take some comfort knowing that you by now must know my heart. You surely know my regrets, and I am quite sure you'd wipe my tears away if you were here in body as I know you are in spirit. I take great joy to think that you are with granddaddy again, and that you are no longer suffering. I can't help be sad for myself, though... and for all of us who loved you and who would have chosen a different ending to our story together. Life is such an amazing gift, but its end is so wrenching, so hard to comprehend.

Give granddaddy a hug for me--give one to him and one to all of the others who have gathered beside you on that other shore, where, as each of you leave, more and more of my heart resides.

May you find mercy in your Savior's face, and rest in his strong, gentle arms. And ask him, if you would, to leave a door open for me--your loving, petulant grandchild, His unworthy child--when I have worn out my welcome on earth and want to run to my Grandmother's house... in our heavenly Father's Kingdom.

----------------------------------In Loving Memory of Charlene
+ March 1, 2008