Winter travel across the world

Snowflakes dusted the front walk during the night but no significant accumulation. Our ride to the airport shows up in good time and we’re off, checked in, and through security in record time. At the gate we connect with the four others heading to the same conference.

Then we sit.

Snow in Chicago has delayed the plane coming to take us back to Chicago. Snow showers blast the outside windows, but by the time we take off, there still is a mere skim of sweeping snow on the runways.

Not so Chicago. Landing we see a thick layer on the ground and the runway is rather slippery. We’re in a little regional jet so we are secure, but we still skitter some slowing down. Our dock is still filled with a 747 headed somewhere, and we wait on the tarmac for another lengthy spell before we’re allowed to dock. The takeoff runway is lined with planes waiting their turn.

When the plane stops, we unload, but have to wait on the jetway for our carry-on bags that wouldn’t fit in the little overhead bins. Snow blows sideways onto us. Bags finally in hand we dash up into the terminal and down ten gates arriving just as our names are called as the last two passengers on the plane to Hong Kong. Doors secured, the plane still waits another hour plus for de-icing and clearance to depart. At about ten thousand feet we break into sunlight and the winter is left behind.

The flight is textbook: crowded, long, and wearisome, but totally normal. Arriving in Hong Kong, later than expected, we meet our ride and head outside to the parking lot and a waiting van. The familiar smell of Hong Kong overtakes us – a mixture of tropical vegetation, even in winter, sea air mixed with a hint of diesel fuel. Definitely Hong Kong,

Arriving at the downtown hotel, we check in quickly and head out onto the streets. No arrival in Hong Kong is complete without a nighttime walk up Nathan Road. This time we head for McDonalds and a quick snack. Who would have thought that McDonalds could sell noodle soup with a poached egg and cheese in it? Only in Hong Kong.

A brisk walk is what we need to settle down for the night. It’s chillier than our usual visits and ski jackets feel good. There’s a damp fog brewing and light rain. Snow is left behind and we settle into the bone chilling raw of south China winter.

Definitely Hong Kong.

Don't take my Christmas

(Posted once a year!)

No, I am sorry, but you cannot have my Christmas. It is not available for comment or optional changes. Somewhere in the last 35 years of my life my Christmas has been slowly taken away, piece by piece.

I want it back.

My Christmas is a deeply spiritual experience. It is a time to stop and reflect on the stillness and silence of winter nights. To breathe certain scents and listen to particular types of music. It may come wrapped in cold snow or the clear midnight sky of the tropics. It is warm, homey and totally mine. I share it freely with family and friends, but it is not for sale.

It’s not about nostalgia or traditions though both are part of Christmas, but about the stark realization that God wrapped His only Son in flesh and laid him in the arms of a common peasant couple in Bethlehem. And because of that birth, Christmas exists, and I am able to see God face to face in the person of Jesus Christ. The wood of the manger was a shadow of the cross to come; salvation was wrapped in cloth, enveloped in the tender softness of a little child.

I will not be sending Happy Holiday cards, or Seasons Greetings, because they cheapen and diminish the intense wonder of why Christmas was or is ever celebrated. Santa is welcome to enrich the festivities, as long as he too bows at the manger, worships the Child and remembers his roots in St. Nicholas.

Excuse me if the crèche and angels and shepherds and wise men offend you. I am more offended by a general malaise in society that tells me none of these are or should be part of the “holidays.” If you take away the foundation of Christmas, there simply is nothing left to celebrate.

If I took away Hanukkah or Kwanza or Ramadan, I would be severely chastised for not being pluralistically sensitive. Fine, anyone who wants to celebrate those holidays is welcome to do so. In fact, I will celebrate with them, but don’t tell me I cannot celebrate Christmas as I choose.

I will continue to put out my little Nativity and touch the wooden pieces with warm memories and wonder. I will sing and play carols that speak, not of holidays, Santa and elves, but of the Christ child. I will read the Christmas story again and again from Matthew and Luke, Isaiah and Micah. The words of scripture will echo back into my corporate memory of candlelit services and bells and organ. I will meditate on the drama and glory of it all. I will bask in the blaze of angel brightness. My Christmas will be flagrantly Christian.

I will sit in solitude beside my tree and reflect on the deep green of life, the red of blood shed for my salvation and the pure white light of a soul cleansed from sin.

Don’t even think about taking my Christmas. This is not a once a year celebration. I do not put Christ back into Christmas. I simply recognize that if I deeply love my Lord, He is the foundation of every day of the year. Christmas is not a holiday. It is my life.

The Longhorns

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The Longhorns

The Longhorns live in a field just a stone’s throw from my home, a large meadow tucked in the middle of Midwest suburbia. Over the years I’ve watched them in all seasons. Right now they are shaggy and the snow sticks to their coarse coats as they huddle against the wind. In the spring the grass is a riot of green and calves bounce around the field. Summer mornings the light streams across the herd, catching their horns with gold. Autumn brings rusty colors to the field, and they are almost invisible.

I’ve never quite figured out why a herd of Longhorn cattle live in my neighborhood. There is a tiny farm tucked back in there, off a main road, and evidently the farmer likes cattle. Longhorns seem like an anachronism, a whisper of days long gone past. Today’s cattle usually have their horns docked early, but these old beasts carry the full rack and use them to prod each other around the field. Ugly, ungainly, wild, and beautiful.

In almost 30 years, I’ve passed them again and again, often several times in a day. I feel like they are friends. Not close friends, but at least good neighbors.

I’m going to miss the Longhorns.

Today as I drove by, there was a “for sale” sign posted at the road edge of the field. I see it as a sign of the end. End of an era, end of a way of life, end of the little rural patch of life stuck in the middle of suburbia. Forty years ago this entire part of the Midwest was farmland. Even thirty years ago, when we moved here, only one fourth of the township was settled. Now there are no working farms left. Subdivisions cover the landscape.

But the Longhorns have held on, or the man who owns them has held on to his meadow. Maybe he can’t hold on to it any longer. Times are tough and land is gold. But the economy stinks and who is going to buy that meadow right now?

I’m hoping that no one wants it but the Longhorns.

A Michigan Christmas

It seems to me that Christmas in Michigan, 2009, is a little dark. Typically the residential streets are alight with decorations and color, and somehow, the neighborhood is a bit sober this year. Perhaps the fact that unemployment is higher here than anywhere else in the nation is taking a toll. And perhaps it's the empty houses where the residents have fled for jobs elsewhere.

I remember moving here three decades ago when bumper stickers said, "Last one to leave Michigan, turn out the lights."

Did someone already turn out the lights around here? Or maybe they just left and didn't pay the electric bill, like all the foreclosure homes around here where angry owners have trashed the house before they fled.

Seems like a general malaise is in place. Gloom and doom. Maybe it's just me, but I think Michigan is skipping Christmas this year.

That could be a good thing. In fact, it would be a retro celebration. The first Christmas was a pretty sober one too. Taxes, imposed by the Romans, had everyone scrambling. Oppression was daily reality in Judea. I'm sure Joseph and Mary weren't at all thrilled to be ordered by the Emperor to take a long trip when she was expecting a baby. We sing blithely of "the babe in Bethlehem" and forget that Bethlehem was the last place Jesus' parents wanted to be right then.

The accommodations were pretty grim. The first visitors probably smelled like sheep and the great out-of-doors, and no recent baths. Yes, there were angels and bright lights, but that faded after the shepherds went to town, and no one but the shepherds seems to have noticed it. No one cared that another baby was born for a long while -- not till the wise men came and asked Herod where they could find "The one born king of the Jews." Now that raised a rumpus.

In fact, it was such an uproar that Mary and Joseph made yet another journey, a long one to Egypt, and they stayed there in exile till Herod died.

They didn't face foreclosure, but they faced grinding poverty. They didn't lose their jobs; they left the job behind in Nazareth. They were lonely, young, and probably frightened. They didn't ask to raise the son of God and they didn't get a choice in the assignment.

Yet, I don't read of their complaints. Mary kept all these things in her heart and pondered them. Joseph got his marching orders, twice, from angelic visitors in dreams, but he did what he was told. They managed to get to the temple and present their child as they were supposed to do, and they got the blessings of Simeon and Anna. They just went on living, one step at a time. And God richly blessed them. In fact, because of their obedience, we celebrate Christmas.

I can do without the lights and bustle and shopping. Give me quiet, carols, friends and family. I'm warmed and fed and well. In the midst of a sober Michigan Christmas, life is actually very good -- because God is good.

A hole

It’s the little things, Keren, that bring you back to my mind. A picture, a conversation, a story, a dress or shirt on one of your little sisters used to be yours, even a big syringe that is in the toy box in the corner.

Last night it was pictures of your sisters piling pine needles on your bronze plaque.

It’s more than nine months since you left us and now the grass is thick where we stood in the bitter cold and snow, setting a little box with your ashes into the ground. The large pine tree that stands overhead shades and covers the ground, and this time of year drops needles.

Your sisters danced and dashed across the wide space, enjoying the freedom of the empty field. Then they gathered pine needles and began to make little piles on the corners of your plaque.

You’d hardly know little Bug. Ten months ago at your service she was just beginning to string a few words together. Now she talks constantly and clearly. Her memories of you are slight, but she knows the history. You have influenced her more than she realizes.

Bear, in contrast, carries you close to her heart and often talks of you. She loves to visit your school and talk to your friends. She ponders, out loud, what you might be doing right now. She’s very proud of you, her older sister. Just the other night she was reminding her grandfather of something about you. Bossy and aggressive as she can be at times, she carries a tenderness to other children that she learned from living with you and caring for you. Your little brother will only know your pictures, but he too will absorb the sensitivity to children who are different.

Yes, the months have flown by. Winter will soon be here and the snow will fly. The pine tree over your plaque will hang with deep drifts. Snow will sweep across the empty field.

Maybe I’ll go back and walk in the snow and remember you. Tears will freeze on my cheeks. You’ve left a hole, little girl. The edges aren’t as rough as they were when you suddenly left us, but it is a hole that will never close. That is as it should be.

Your sisters pile autumn’s needles across the plaque. Their life goes on, but your place as the first child is secure.

The smell of home

What does home smell like? Fresh laundry, clean sheets, coffee, baked chicken in the oven. And so much more. Every home has a distinct smell, and perhaps because I have an oversensitive nose, I find the scent of home emotional.

Years ago when my dad did pastoral visits in the afternoon, my mom could tell him whose home he'd been to when he walked in their door for supper. I guess noses are hereditary.

More than smell, home feels like rest, even on the busiest day. Which today was not by choice. Sitting at the table this morning we simply watched the sun play games with the clouds across the yellow maple and red Bradford pear trees out back. The apple tree stands starkly naked and the forsythia are beginning to shed across the side. The tall blue spruce remains a sentinel to northern winters. The lilies and snapdragons are long dead and the pots of flowers drooping from the frost. Autumn, crisp and clear, fresh, and sweet smelling.

Driving across the middle of New England yesterday, stopping briefly to see my grandparents' home, we were surrounded with brilliant color and lovely views of mountains. But home, flat and middle of the country, is a welcome treat.

Little ones are playing in the cul-de-sac out front, not yet ready to don costumes and go door to door for Halloween. The grands want Poppa to come join them to traverse their neighborhood. The candy basket is ready on the front washstand. Another smell -- chocolate. Buy the candy you like yourself and you won't mind the leftovers...

Smell of home. Most of all it's a fragrance of contentment. That's the best smell in the world.

Roots hanging loose

Years ago, riding on a train across Poland, I wrote a poem called “Roots hanging loose” that described that out of body experience I tend to have when on the road. A call from the Driver this morning reminded me that once again, I am hanging loose with no roots. It’s been two weeks since I left home and there have been seven different beds with an average of two nights per bed. That’s seven different rooms, seven pack and unpacks, seven changes and hauling of suitcases, numerous loads of laundry on the fly in different machines.

Weariness sweeps over me. But beyond the weariness is a sense of not being connected anywhere except maybe to a keyboard.

That’s not to say that I am lonely. I’ve had wonderful conversations along the way with new and old friends. Lots of deep connections and rich encounters. And travel in the northeast in October can only be described as a feast for the senses. Crisp days, brilliant color, sweet smells especially when it rains and the leaves get ground to a golden slurry underfoot. We’ve seen frost and warmth, the ocean and lakes and rivers, woods and meadows and fields. Mist rising off rushing water, cows grazing in quiet fields, deer shyly dancing on the edges of the road. Despite a few traffic jams, travel has been fairly smooth.

And people. Eager students who want to talk about their spiritual walk. Hesitant students who have lots of questions. Faculty and administrators who share their hearts and lives and offices. Hosts who graciously open their homes and provide those beds. None of it do I take for granted.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to stay in the same place all the time. Would I get bored? Would I be able to maintain deep relationships with people I saw day after day, as deep as those I maintain in quick visits and phone calls and emails? I’m sure it would happen, but somehow it is so far out of my realm of experience that I have a hard time getting my mind into that way of life.

I wouldn’t miss the changes. I would welcome the personal space. But I would miss the people, oh the people, and the challenge. No former students dropping by for a theological debate. No fresh faced young men picking my brain on music and art. No gracious older men and women sharing the breakfast table or popcorn on a Sunday night. No young working women pouring out their dreams and ambitions and frustrations.

Maybe I wouldn’t be myself. Roots hanging loose.

Purse praying

You know those times when your purse gets too full and you can't find what you want? You fish and dive, but it your search comes up empty handed, or worse yet, with junk that you didn't want to remember.

So you take the whole purse and dump it out on the counter. For me, the exercise means straightening out the pieces, tossing the wrappers and odd grocery lists and pieces of paper, sorting out receipts and filing them away neatly in a drawer, tossing more trash, finding things I'd forgotten I had. The end result is satisfying, and I'm ready to live again.

Genuine, gut-wrenching prayer is rather like dumping your purse on the kitchen counter. Preachers offer a nice acronym that prayer should be ACTS -- Adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication, but as I read David's psalms of prayer, it seems like he starts at the other end.

He dumps. No other way to describe it. He dumps all he's feeling out on God and begins to sort through it, piece by piece. Some things get tossed as worthless. Other ideas are more important and get filed away for future reference. The good stuff gets put back in place.

By that time, he's moved through supplication -- aka the big dump or that technical word "imprecatory"-- and reached some thanksgiving. Often along the way he confesses his own wrongs and lays them out on the table too. Finally, he moves to adoration as he reflects that God, and only God, is above all and can do all.

I'm quite certain David didn't have a purse. He traveled light. But the purse of his heart and mind got overloaded and he liked to dump. The good news is that God seems not the least disturbed by his dumping and their relationship is the stronger because David felt free to throw it all on the counter.

The apple gatherers

Apple gathering and making applesauce has become our symbol of autumn. The Dreamer and I take off about ten in the morning with the Bear, the Bug, and little John-boy in their van, rain coming down in sheets. But, today is the appointed day so, rain or shine, we go gather.

The parents of one of the Dreamer’s friends have a smallish, well-tended orchard about ten miles north of us. We are invited yearly to gather fallen apples at no cost. Because they tend their orchard so dutifully, the drops tend to be perfectly beautiful apples but can’t be used in the cider mill or sold in their store.

Arriving at the orchard we navigate a muddy drive past the barn and make it to the rise without getting stuck in the deep mud. First conquest of the day! The Bug has fallen asleep in her seat beside John-boy so just Bear, the Dreamer, and I hop out, clad in slickers and mud boots. The rain is still coming down hard. The Dreamer and I fan out into the long rows, looking for the trees that have nicely dropped dozens of apples in the tall grass at their feet. Bear decides that dancing in the mud with her bright green smiley boots is far more fun than picking up wet, slippery apples.

In less than an hour we’ve picked up six bushels. Bug wakes up about halfway through and joins us gatherers, grumping and whining the whole time that she is WET! Duh! Nobody else is, of course. John-boy continues to sleep like a baby on a rainy dark day. We load the boxes into the van, make it back through the mud slide past the barn, and head for home. Opening the garage, we stow the boxes for tomorrow’s applesauce party, strip off our wet clothes in the laundry, and make hot soup.

Apple gathering brings sweet memories, each year different. One other rainy day my husband, the Dragon, and I did a similar one hour pick-up. Another time I took just Bear, a toddler, with me on a glorious warm day. The grass was so tall between the rows of trees that she kept falling into it, only to hop up laughing. Eventually she sat in her stroller watching me gather. One bright, warm September we just had Keren with us, a memory we’ll never repeat.

Last year the Dreamer, her sister-in-law, the Driver, a random Chinese student from Macau, and six pre-schoolers spent a lingering late October morning in the sunny orchard. It was so lovely that we gathered ten bushels and then had to process far more apples than we actually needed. Lesson learned: if the weather is lovely, watch out how many apples you gather!

In the rain today, there was no temptation to linger.

The applesauce somehow manages to last till the next autumn, a sweet reminder that it is till possible to make some things from scratch, simply and with little expense except our time. Tomorrow will be a long day of hard work, but the camaraderie in the kitchen simply adds value to the product.

There are so few opportunities in suburban American for this kind of experience. We’re already planning next year.

Life on foot – Virginia style

The Driver loves to walk. Last year on the other side of the ocean we covered every possible byway in the streets around their high-rise. Now, living in a townhouse in suburban DC, she’s still finding life on foot to her pleasure.

This morning we set out for the shopping center nearby. Boy Blue, not so little any more, is ensconced in his Combi stroller. Built for Japanese children, he’s swiftly outgrowing it. Purchased in Asia specifically to fit through train stiles and onto busses, it has served well on this side of the world as well, but the boy, well, he’s definitely isn’t Asian weight. The larger jogging stroller fits him better now but this one, so compact, maneuvers better in tight stores.

We leave the townhouse and walk up to the corner, keeping to the deep shade in the warmth of a late September midday. At the crosswalk we encounter three grandmothers sitting in the grass, chatting.

“Chinese?” I question, going by their faces since I can’t hear their conversation.
“Maybe, maybe not. We’ve got so many different Asians here. Maybe Korean.”
“There are your babysitters,” I venture, knowing how hard it is to find sitters when you are new to a neighborhood, and how much Boy Blue loves Asian grandmothers.
“Don’t I wish,” says the Driver. “But if they don’t speak any English and there was a problem, how would they call me?”

We cross when the white man comes on and head to the jewelry store to get our rings checked. A gracious Lebanese man greets us warmly, and talks as if we were old friends. He gives us a lesson on old mine cut diamonds we both wear.

Next is a run into CVS, ubiquitous in this country. We find foot cream, and then look for cards. This weekend would have been the 7th birthday of our little Keren, and we want to remember her, and her parents.

The next stop is the supermarket for fruit. Finishing there, we wander back across the street and take a different route home through the townhouse complex. On the way we pass various other ethnic neighbors in this typical DC neighborhood.

No big deal, perhaps, to walk to the store, but I realize that I tend to rush at home and not take the time to walk. A boy in a stroller makes a good excuse, but I need to remind myself that stroller or no, boy or not, I am better served by walking than by driving. The neighborhood here, or where I live, is not as fascinating as the one we left behind in Asia, but fascination or not, when one walks, one actually sees the neighborhood, meets the neighbors, and learns to appreciate the ups and downs of the topography.

Note to self. Walk more.

Loons in the wilderness

“Crazy is back,” Boon says as we’re loading the heavy old boat that will ferry us and our stuff to the Old Camp. “He’s got a wife too.”

“How do you know it’s Crazy?” I ask.

“Comes when you thump the dock. No other loon does that.” At 87, Boon knows this pond like I know my hands, and not a single loon escapes his notice. Loons define the pond, wild cries and laughter in the wilderness.

Yesterday we kayaked to the lower pond*, a mere hour of hard work away. That pond is remote, but with a look of civilization to the camps. Fresh paint, nice docks, some solar panels and wind generators showing enterprising attempts to civilize the lack of electricity out here. But our pond, the upper one, reeks of wildness. The few camps on the perimeter are old and hidden in the woods, scarcely showing till your kayak is almost on them. Boon’s Old Camp is close to 100 years old now, and the New Camp is past 50. New is relative in this part of the world.

This morning I’m sitting on the steps at seven am in the bright light, steaming coffee in my hand. A loon breaks from the cove to the right and sails across in front of me. Crazy? Perhaps, if loons live long lives. Crazy was tamed by Boon’s sister more than a decade ago. This one cruises across the lake just out from shore, a black frigate in the yellow mist of morning that rises from the pond surface in streamers. I watch him in silence, tamed again by the wilderness.

Later we take the kayaks again and head to the east end of Upper Pond, exploring as we go. Halfway across the pond we find two loons cruising, separated by about 100 yards. We quietly float between them listening to their cries and laughter. Are we being discussed and monitored? We linger between them enjoying their communication echoing off the mountains, till suddenly they dive, and we’re left alone, but with a feeling that we’re still being watched.

We explore all the brooks that feed water into this pond, finding beaver dams at the end of each. Hours later, we head back to the Old Camp, shoulders weary with paddling. As we pull the kayaks onto the dock and turn them over under the huge cedars, the loons cry again, wild and eerie in the total stillness.

Crazy.

*In New England, a lake is called a pond, and a ‘camp’ is what elsewhere would be called a cottage.

Between worlds

High above the Pacific, packed like cattle into a railroad car, it's hard to remember where I've been or where I am going. My mind runs to walking back to campus last night, warm moist air buffeting me as we crossed the flyover high above the wide ring road. Dazzling lights in all directions. People walking, talking, loud, busy and friendly. Crossing the wide road to the west gate, nodding to the guard, walking the wide fountain plaza in the dark with children buzzing by on wiggle boards and tiny scooters, wheels flashing neon light.

Across the campus, out the south gate, up the willow lined street, past the ubiquitious contruction work on the steam lines, up the ramp into the technology center, the cool dimness of the lobby, up the sleek elevator, down the hall to the suite, home for more than a month.

A long last day. Breakfast with the team of foreign teachers who've shared life so closely for four weeks. Lunch with three university deans, a double triangle of three each on two languages. Communication flowing freely even in the ambiguity of double cultures. Dinner at Outback, a unique island of the west deep in the east, followed by an acrobat show that was purely east. Goodbyes to dear friends who cross cultures well.

The next morning was early, on that side at least. Down to the lobby to load by six, gentle hugs from our favorite administrator, thin and spare, and a final gracious murmur of "come back, please." Asian to the core but flexing past his discomfort to touch these foreigners he's come to love and trust so deeply. Different, so different, we are, but trust and love flow both directions because we are so the same at the core of our beings.

The airport is a blurr, loading quickly onto the plane., finding seats, settling into the routine. Landing in Tokyo, pushing through security, queing up again and boarding. So many cattle, moving in herds, orderly, anonymous. By now, on the second flight, there are equal western and eastern faces, a jolt after living in a Chinese world.

In just a few hours I'll land in my other world. The streets are also wide, but curiously empty. We walk on white suburban pavement fringed with deep green grass. The parks are wide and open with few trees. Children play in their yards or the parks with no whizzing wiggle boards and no plaza. No grandmothers moving slowly behind little single toddlers, out for a stroll. the air, even when hot and humid, is crisp and clear compared to what I have left, and free of the smell of hot oil cooking and fruit at the street corners. People are gracious there too but emotions are out front and in the open, not held closely behind the face.

One is not beter than the other. Both are places where life is lived deeply and with intensity. The great difficulty is this limbo world between, and making the transition from one world to the next. For weeks my dreams will stay behind in the songs and smells I've left over there.

Once again, I think I've left my heart in Asia.

Catching the 408 bus

It's just a quick jog around the block, up and over the flyover across the busy city highway, and down the other side to catch the 408. The bus arrives and it's more than packed. We push on anyway, understanding that any bus in this city at this time of day will be equally packed. There's no waiting for one more empty because there won't be one.

Our multi-pass cards are in our wallets and we simply touch the keypad at the front of the bus to register our fare. All of 11 cents for two of us to ride five miles. We're stuck on the steps of the bus, right up by the driver, with about ten other people. The bus keeps stopping and more people push on. Not for the intrepid, these busses. Some people pass their card in for a swipe and then trot back to the middle to push on there. We keep getting hit in the shoulders every time they open and close.

Finally one of the little men beside us motions toward the back and we see that a miniscule amount of space has opened up. He leads the way and we get almost to the middle of the bus. By the time we reach our stop, some of the congestion has cleared, but there still are no seats available on the bus.

Coming home two hours later, we both get seats for the whole ride. Time makes a difference.

Why bother with a crowded bus? It's the sense of freedom that comes from having a multi-pass and a basic knowledge of public transportation. Free from the need to tell a taxi driver, in fractured Chinese, where we want to go. Free from the nightmare of driving ourselves, or the hassle that would come from trying to find a parking spot in a city where they come dear.

True, there are times when a car would be nice, such as when one has large packages, but that's rare. More times than not one is simply going from point A to point B with a small backpack or purse and umbrella.

Before long we'll leave the city of mass transit and head back to Motor City. There will be two cars in the drive and gasoline to purchase. We'll miss the life of ease in motion. No busses, no trams, no subways.

And of course, no where nearly the volume of people who make it possible to offer a ride across the city in busses back to back for a mere 11 cents.

Funny-silly uncles

The evening sunshine in the back yard dances across a gray haired man playing with two little blond girls -- suddenly I drop more than 30 years and see a yard hundreds of miles away. The little girls look much the same, but the man is far younger with thick black hair. The antics, the jokes, the fun. It's silly-funny uncle fun, but now he's the great-uncle and the little girls are the next generation of the original children.

I used to love watching the three originals back those more than 30 years. Sometimes they were on their feet with games and "pony rides" and other times they were flat on their bellies, all three of them, heads close together as they explored worms and bugs deep in the grass. Thanks to the silly-funny uncle, the little girls moved to Asia with absolutely NO fear of insects.

When the uncle married and had his own children, there was a slight hiccup of fear that maybe, just maybe, nieces wouldn't be important anymore. But that fear was never realized. The silly-funny uncle remained just as much of a treasure and the nieces happily took care of their little cousins. Their younger sister, the age of the cousins, took them on as brothers for life. Eventually she moved north to work for the silly-funny uncle and enjoyed adult conversation.

It's time to eat and the Bear announces that SHE will sit by HIM. Throughout dinner there are comparisons of menu choices, amounts of food in the mouth, and who's got the cleanest plate. Bear banters with this man she hardly knew an hour ago as if he was all hers, and so he is. At one point she scolds him for calling her grandfather his brother.

"He's not your brother," she says with certainty. "He's my Poppa."
"But your Poppa is my brother," says funny uncle, "My much older brother!"

Bear ponders this relationship. Can gray haired men be brothers?

When it's time for dessert funny uncle makes a big scene of eating the salad in front of him. "This is dessert," he tells Bear. Bear protests loudly. "No," he continues, "We're having salad for dessert. Don't you like salad." Well, yes, but not for dessert.

I'm making coffee inside the house when Bear comes and tugs at my back pockets. "Grammy, I want a different dessert."

"A different dessert?" I'm puzzled. "We're having brownies and ice cream. Oh wait, did you think your funny uncle was serious when he said we were having salad for dessert?"

There's a moment of hesitation as the child-who-trusts-her-adults wrestles with the child-who-loves-pretend, a final hard look, and then a low chuckle from the Bear.

"Naaah, he's just being silly....isn't he?"

Joy and sorrow shared

I was doing all right till I picked up the birthday balloon -- red and blue and yellow -- blazoned with Birthday Boy! A very much loved balloon that has been dragged all over the house, bounced and tossed, a bit of a Pooh balloon on the way to Eeyore.

In my mind I see a little towheaded boy with big blue eyes and a huge grin thumping his way across the floor to greet me. Or coming down the stairs in the morning with his mom, ready for breakfast, all smiles. Or holding fast to my finger, trudging across the thick green of the backyard.

What was never meant to be became a comfortable way of life. Boomerang, Shared space. Intergenerational living.

A year ago we descended into a large flat in Asia for a brief visit. Unexpectedly we fell in love with the neighborhood and the city, and the little boy blue, only to find at the end that we'd likely never return. The job that kept his dad there was gone, the expectations moved on.

Two months after that the little boy, with parents in tow, descended on my house. For a brief visit. Unexpectedly the visit turned into weeks, months, almost a year. The space stretched, the walls expanded, the noise level rose. And a rhythm and camraderie developed that was satisfying and rewarding. Everyone had roles, places, jobs, spaces. The machine ran smoothly.

And in the middle of the tornado was a little boy with huge blue eyes, growing daily.

Life happened in these months. Death came and visited and we mourned together. Held each other and handed out tissues. Worked through grief and loss and pain. Winter was long and bitterly cold. But birthdays came too and parties. Family time in huge heaps. Children in every corner. Sticky fingers, sticky cupboard knobs, and stickier floors.

I walk through the house and feel the silence.

There's a little green Fischer Price man on the bedroom floor, well chewed. A few toys scatter across the family room. Several wayward blueberries are hiding under the booster chair. How did the little fingers ever let those precious blueberries escape?

Tomorrow I'll wake and go on. Life is very full and I have promises to keep. People to see, work to accomplish, places to go. But now, before I sleep, I'll sit and count the losses and let the tears run down my cheeks.

Life is to be shared and that sharing is rich. Separation is painful and that pain runs deep. Both are there, two sides of the same coin, inextricably linked. Yet somehow the interchange is richer because we know separation will come, know we'll survive, and know we'll come together again. Another time, another city, another life.

Miles to go before we sleep.

Little Boy Blue

Happy birthday, Little Boy Blue. Twelve months ago you entered the world amid the smells and noise and bustle and heat of Hong Kong. In your first week you got a passport, rode taxis, trains, and vans, and then took a ferry across the bay to your home. Now you've traded my favorite 31st window seat for the green grass of an American backyard.

It's been a year of hard losses. First your dad lost his job. Then you lost your adopted country. When you boarded a plane and moved halfway around the world, you lost the wonderful international family that welcomed you into the world. With your parents, you lost a culture and a precious way of life.

In the winter you lost your oldest cousin. You won't have any recollection of her, but she will temper your family and your life. You lost your dad, too, in a sense, when he had to leave to take a job in another state.

Sometimes I wish we could roll back the calendar. We'd sneak away and catch a plane to Lantau, then get the ferry across the bay. Your dad would go find ice cream at McDonalds and your mom would find Mabel and Lynn and catch up on the news. Your poppa would shoot pictures till his heart was satisfied. You and I would walk the streets, and eat ginger candy, and listen to the babble of languages. We'd go find Mr. Wong and he'd stretch his arms wide at how big you are. We'd be home, Little Boy Blue.

But it would be a dream -- because life doesn't work that way -- and it shouldn't. Life moves forward, not backwards. Your roots will influence you forever, but each year will add new dimensions. Take it all and make it yours. Stand proud when someone snickers at where you were born, or asks why you use chopsticks to eat your rice. Call your cats mau mau, and wave tai jien when you go out the door. Don't live in the past, but don't forget it either.

You've lost much, but you've gained more. Two sets of grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins, and bundles of extended family and friends. You've charmed the ladies on this side of the ocean just as you did on the other side. You've found that dads can climb into computer screens and have dinner with you, even from another state.

Soon you and your mom will join your dad and build a new life in DC. The mau mau will dash up and down the four flights of the townhouse, and you'll be close behind. There will be neighbors and friends because your mom and dad always find neighbors and friends. You'll visit the capitol and the memorials, the museums and the zoo. You'll learn to eat crabcakes and grits and put honey on your biscuits. I'm sure you'll find the best Chinese restaurants, and Indian, and Lebanese and all the other ethnic wonders of a big city.

In God's timing, you'll see your birthplace again. Meanwhile, dig your little toes into the thick grass and chase the cottonwood puffs across the yard. It's your birthday, little guy, so celebrate all you have. For all you've lost, the priceless things are what remain.

United nations

The chill wind tugs at my fleece but the sun is still shining brightly at 8 PM. Poppies fly a brave orange over in one yard; bright red geraniums and petunia line a driveway. But it's the people that fascinate me when I ride. A bike trip through the neighborhoods is like a trip around the world.

a all orange turbaned Sikh walks with calm dignity down the sidewalk like a tall ship sailing into harbor. His wife saried in bright blue is a bobbing dinghy about eight steps behind him. Perhaps they've been to the Indian restaurant up the street, or maybe they are just out strolling. Two teen girls pass them, dark haired, chatting in Spanish.

We round a corner and an Indonesian man, white Muslim cap firm on his head, is playing tag with his little sons and a golden cocker. They laugh and wave us by, grabbing the little dog so she doesn't chase the bikes.

Another Indian woman is kneeling in her hard planting flowers. A Middle Eastern woman, head firmly covered, ambles down the sidewalk talking in Arabic on her cell phone. A Chinese couple are sitting on their deck.

The neighborhoods are looking settled these days. The trees have almost 30 years of growth behind them and they shade most of the yards. When we first came here the cornfields were still edging the western end of the subdivisions and our yards were only a few years out of those same fields. Trees were rare. Squirrels and birds didn't come for some time. Now the rabbits are rampant, nibbling the edges of well trimmed yards, and the birds and squirrels rule. Possums, coons, and the occasional deer or coyote still range the further neighborhoods and wooded areas.

So very Midwest, and yet so international. A contrast one every corner, in every block. I watch my international neighbors, knowing full well how different this is from their countries of origin. Yet here they are, settling into a new world as I often do in theirs.

We round the corner toward home and come up our circle. Our Hindu neighbor is bringing out his trash cans, baggy pajama bottoms flapping in the rising breeze. Our kids have gone through school together. He liked our kitchen remodel and improved the design into his house. We stop and chat for a few minutes.

India, China, Lebanon, Pakistan, and other peoples, all in one small block of the Midwest. Almost need a passport to go out on a bike. Little wonder that the local school field is busy every weekend night with scores of young men and a game of ... cricket!

Memorial stones

We begin the service with a loud gong. Then, a trumpet in the balcony pierces the silence and a flugelhorn answers from the platform. The guitars kick in with the drums and we’re off and running.

One song down, the organist picks up America the Beautiful and the old vets come in from the back, carrying flags. Year by year they come on Memorial Sunday, each year a few less than the year before. One woman is in a wheel chair this time. I note that Brad is shepherding them in, still young and erect in his Navy dress uniform. They march forward and slowly place flags on the platform. Brad steps up and leads the pledge.

Later, the familiar bars of “Eternal Father, Strong to Save” lift from the organ and we repeat a tradition. Each verse is designated for a different branch of the military and those who have served in the past are invited to come forward.

The navy leads out on “whose arm doth still the restless wave.” Men begin to move down the aisles, some with vigor, and others moving very slowly. I see old Jack off to the left, cautiously making his way, hand over pew, hand over pew.

Next the Army and Marines come forward on “hill and plain.” There’s Roger coming from the back. His dad was an WWII army man who left his heart in Japan. After college in the US, he packed his wife and kids back to Japan for several decades where he helped rebuild the youth of a broken country. Roger, an army cook, also cooks a mean Japanese dinner.

When the air force hear “the eagles flight” several women join the group up front. Don and Dottie, who met in the air force, come in from the far right. Debbie slips out of the seat next to us, trim and young in her crisp uniform. Unlike most of the vets, she and Brad still fit in theirs.

On “danger’s hour” the police, firefighters, EMT and other local services are honored. By this time there are probably 50 men and women stretched across the front. The standing ovation lasts several minutes.

As they break ranks to head back, I see Brad take his father’s arm. Chet is 91 now, and Brad gently guides him back to his pew and delivers him to Irene. Brad slips into his space across the aisle where his kids greet him with glowing faces. Local hero, at least in pew 27.

John takes the platform and speaks of memorial stones from Joshua 4. “Why do we put up stones for memorials? Why do we bother to remember? Why do we need to look back as we move forward?”

He reminds us that the people in Joshua 4 who cross the Jordan and place stones for their children, are the children who crossed the Red Sea before they were twenty. Their parents forgot the significance of their past and didn’t get to move forward. They get another chance to choose for themselves. It is a choice to let the significant sacrifice of the past mold our future. We can chose to remember and set up stones.

Or we can let it go. Our choice. Our consequence.

The Dragon and the Castle

Sunlight is picking out the gray stone on the face of the castle when we pull into the entrance drive. Through the years this castle has held a fascination. A childhood playground for me, a wedding venue for friends, a classroom for my mother and aunt picking up summer education credits.

Tonight it’s the Dragon’s turn to storm the castle.

This was the university she chose two years ago to pursue a Masters in English, and it has, for her, been an excellent choice. The gathering is the English grad students, each presenting a précis of their thesis. There’s much bustle as students and faculty, family and friends arrive and file into the ostentatiously ornate Rose Room off the main entrance.

Entering the castle for the first time is a step back into time. A huge staircase rises center stage to a second mezzanine, with yet another lofting above that. Deep mahogany paneling punctuates the vaulted ceiling high overhead and leaded glass windows glitter above the stairs out onto the back lawns.

Our guests are entranced. The older ladies have known this campus for decades, but also have not visited in many years. The young friend with us has never seen the campus, and particularly, never seen the castle. She’s ready to enroll -- except that she graduates next week with her own Masters so doesn’t need another degree right now.

The castle is the odd extravagance of a sugar baron plunked in suburban Philadelphia. Growing up down the street, I took the castle for granted. The legendary history was as common place as the red tiles of the carriage houses. Tonight I look at it anew and appreciate the beauty of the old building. Though the inside shows signs of the wear of academia, it still is a jewel.

The Dreamer, always building castles in her mind, would have loved to study here. The Driver might have found it a bit dramatic, but she too enjoys history. But to the Dragon, this was the place.

The Dragon’s thesis is stories from the past, history wound intricately with fiction, family legends laced with emotions that slowly catch your heart and take your breath away, ideas that are both a century old and somehow very much today. This is the right place for her to present her work.

Every castle needs a Dragon.

Barrel diving

There’s an old myth that missionaries get their clothes out of missionary barrels. It’s only partly true. They’re not picky about the kind of barrel.

Years ago, I knew a woman who had a collection of things people actually sent to her when she was working in Appalachia. Used tea bags were just one item. Used soap chips, shirts with the buttons removed, ancient bathing suits. It was hilarious. She loved showing it to women’s groups.

Growing up, second hand clothes were one of the great adventures of life. A consignment store nearby had the best wool suits and coats in town for a fraction of the retail price. Then there were the clothes handed down from older girls. My mother could barely thread a needle but other mothers did magic on the sewing machine, and eventually I reaped the benefit.

Raising my own three daughters, only the eldest had much chance of getting brand new clothes. After that, it was second or third hand passed down the line. People also gave us bags of clothes and we had huge laughs over the contents.You never had to keep anything you didn’t like, but when you found something you did like, you hadn’t spent a dime.

In Hong Kong we perfected the art of barrel diving. Why shop the pricey downtown shops when there were huge cardboard boxes of export clothing crammed little back alley shops? Tape measures hung from the ceiling. Dive in, pull out a silk shirt, check for damage, assess the value, and shell out 50 cents. Maybe you wear it only once, but it was cheap. Maybe it becomes a favorite and lasts for years. The goal was to pay as little as possible and only take the most expensive brands and fabrics.

Today the Driver and I had a “barrel” of fun. At breakfast a friend said her sister or cousin had given her bags and bags of clothes, all too small for her. “Anybody want them?” she asked. We volunteered, dropped by after lunch, and brought home three large bags.

It’s probably been ten years since we last dove into bags of clothing together. There’s a system. You pull out everything and sort it by type and piles of yes, maybe, and NO WAY. Of course, as you do this, you make many, many comments about what you pull out of the bag. You offer various pieces to each other, sometimes in jest, and sometimes in great seriousness.

Then you assess the piles and begin to pick up pieces of clothing and decide if they are worth the effort to try on. About ¼ make the grade to the actual try-on stage. More comments follow. “Nah, no shape." “Hey, looks good.” “Nasty, nasty color on you.”

In the end, we each salvaged an assortment for absolutely zero outlay of funds. Good looking jackets, shirts, skirts, pants, and some soft wooly pullovers for next winter. We even put aside a little pile for The Dreamer post-pregnancy. The leftovers, two bags full, go to charity next week.

The best part was the camaraderie of knowing we got a deal. No retail shopping could be this much fun.

Books

Beyond the treasured picture books of earliest childhood, my first significant books were blue, red, and orange. The red books were a set of encyclopedias, small enough for a child’s hand, archaic and not visually interesting, but an alphabetical world of their own. The blue were the Harvard Classics, row upon row of sleek, well bound beauty, chock full of great reading.

Initially, the red and the blue were large blocks to build cities on the edges of the two well-worn oriental rugs at the staircase end of the living room. The space between the rugs served as road, the blue and red books, pre-Lego, made buildings. But when play waned on a rainy afternoon, the blue books had stories that my older brother could read out loud long before I was able to decipher words.

The orange book was a heavy volume by Richard Haliburton. In later life I have read that he was something of a sensationalist, not all his stories to be believed. But to the beginning reader, Haliburton’s volume was a window into a whole world. The pyramids, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Himalayas, the steep Lhassa world of Tibet and the wonders of China. In a mere afternoon one could scale mountains, wander cities, and get totally lost.

Starting school was a huge disappointment. I returned from the first day hugely upset. The teacher did not teach me to read. In fact, the whole of first grade was filled with insipid see-and-say nonsense of “See Dick run, etc.” I already knew these books and their sequels. My brother had been sick at home some of his second grade year and we had his school readers. In fact, reading throughout elementary school was quite frustrating. Why would one read around the circle of reading group when one could launch out into the deep on ones own and not have to wait turns? School was to be tolerated, but home was where the real books lived. And the library, that wonderful world down the street from school, where with a buff colored card any book was available.

The issue was that home and library did not dictate or limit what or how long a child could read. School did. Stupid school!

A grandfather who worked successively with Dodd, Meade, and G&C Merriam made sure the home book shelves were full. A school teacher grandmother added more, as did parents, aunts, and family friends. Biographies, histories, fiction, adventure, theology. No book was unwelcome. A book-of-the month subscription was the treasured gift of my eighth birthday. Twelve whole months of glorious mail watching!

Before my teens my father began to hand me books he liked. Sometimes he’d add a warning that I “might not like all of it, but read on through till you do.” The next almost twenty years were a shared reading adventure. The last more than twenty years have been years of regret that the sharing stopped.

A college course in children’s literature was a summer personal treat and left me with a distinct and snobbish taste when I began to buy books for my own children. “A good children’s book is one that an adult can read and enjoy also.” “Examine the pictures – make sure the art is well done and enhances the story.” No Disney or Golden Book fluff for my girls.

Living outside the USA at times presented a challenge. No trip to the city was complete without a visit to the National Book Store where one could find excellent books from English speaking countries around the world. In another city, in one year, we read all the English books in the local library. Good we moved after that.

When the Dreamer was a pre-schooler, we launched two series I’d missed as a child, reading out loud at night: Laura Ingalls’ Little House books and C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series. Before first grade we’d read all of them out loud. Then the Driver arrived and we did it again. And then the Dragon needed her own run through the dozen or so volumes. By that time the Dreamer and Driver were mature personal readers, but somehow bedtime found them sprawled on the floor beside the little Dragon and me, quite willing for a repeat performance.

In the end, my childhood home was filled with books. Boxes and boxes were stacked in the attic while every possible shelf of the house was full upstairs and down. When it came time to sell the house, we all picked out our favorites in an orgy of self-expression and personal satisfaction. Friends came and asked for specific books or autographed copies on favorite topics. Boxes of fiction and history were handed to local libraries.

And still, like the loaves and fishes, there were over a hundred boxes of theological books left, a heritage of parents and grandparents who loved the Book of books, and who voraciously studied what others wrote. I loaded up a truck and ferried all hundred boxes to the university where my father had taught.

My own home groans with books. Old treasures read and reread many times, study volumes from generations past, new books hot off the press. Even with a continual weeding, re-gifting, and trips to the huge local library donation bin, they seem to grow like mushrooms in a wet woods. I vow to get rid of the books before my daughters have to deal with them, but time will tell if that actually happens.

Meanwhile, the Dreamer’s little ones are already deep into the Little House books. On a recent visit, they pulled The House on Plum Creek from their suitcase and settled in beside me, three plus and not yet two, fresh from their baths and ready for bed. “You can read more than one chapter, Grammy,” the older one instructed me. “Daddy does. He reads lots and lots.”

Bless his book-loving heart! He can’t even claim their heredity.

Bluster

Cedar Cove faces due east toward Georgian Bay. At 7 AM this time of year, the edge of the red sun peaks over the horizon straight out from the house and paints the rocks and trees a bright orange. In minutes it has cleared the water and sailed upward and the day is ripe and ready for action.

No rise this morning though. Clouds have socked in the gray and a wind blusters in every direction. Temps hover where the precipitation doesn’t know whether to be snow or rain. Lumps of wet fly by the wide open glass across the front.

From my upper deck view, the water is in turmoil. Breakers whip in from the northeast and crash on the rocks out from shore throwing great sprays of white into the air. Inside the cove, the ripples go the other direction and criss-cross the incoming waves where they meet.

The near beach is simply piles of fistsize rocks piebald with snow patches left from a hard winter. The further beach is large boulders of every shape, size and color, and one could walk among them for half a mile with water up to only the knees. The rime that coated our near boulders the first night seems to have slipped into the water and melted.

The right wing of the cove swings around to the south, a ring of rocky beach covered with scrub, edged with cedar forest. To the north I see only open water and a very rough sea. No Lakers have passed for several days.

The cedar just outside my deck, taller than the peak, whips in the wind. The birdfeeder hangs and a crazy angle and swings. Last night a black and white woodpecker hung onto the suet cage and feasted all during our dinner. Huge wild turkeys hunkered down underneath the tree in oblivion to our table just a few feet away behind the glass. Squirrels and a bevy of rabbits come in regularly.

The deer seem the most curious. They slip out of the woods to the back, cross the north side of the beach, and move in under the tree out front – three, four, five. They are small and look like yearlings. One is particularly interested in what’s happening inside. He positions himself at the extreme left front and peers in the window. If the TV were on, I think he’d stay for the news.

The house that Bob built endures the weather without a whimper. Hunkered down on this bleak beach, it’s barely noticeable from down the way. The brown of the roof and cedar exterior blend into the woods. Only the sheer expanse of glass catches the light if there is sun. The warm knotty pine of the interior glows in the evening lights and catches the gleam of the Swedish woodstove. A unique combination of extreme comfort coupled with extreme wilderness. Only a man who loves the wild could find a barren patch of land like this and bring it to life.

Destination, no deadlines

We pull out of the driveway about 2 PM, loaded with food for two weeks, piles of books and magazines, file boxes to be tackled in solitude. We have no deadline but we have a destination.

Michiganders speak of going “up north.” As far as I can tell, up north means anything north of Flint. I-75 is the primary corridor but there are other routes as well. We follow the expressway until we hit the Thumb area when we turn off and head north on smaller roads.

Stopping for a meal before we exit the highway we are greeted by a wait staff looking for customers. “Pretty slow today,” our waitress says. “Not many people going north this time of year.” Exactly why we are here. This restaurant is packed to confusion on a warm day or at peak of snow machine season, but March Mondays are not high on the priority list for travelers. Mud month in the north is to be avoided, except for those seeking solitude.

The sugar beet fields in the Thumb sweep in total flatness to the horizon, sodden with snowmelt, rough and fallow. Moving further north we hit the forests and the road begins to undulate gently like a silver ribbon, straight to the north.

We stop at a gas station before the final ascent to the top of the Mitten. Sunset is approaching. “Are the deer in the road?” we ask the girl behind the counter. Behind us a teen answers, “No, they’re in the fields this time of year.” We’ve seen herds on this highway in winter snow storms but moving north, we pass field after field with a sprinkling of deer picking through last summer’s stalks.

The final stretch takes us through towns with Polish monikers, named by settlers who found this land strangely like what they had left behind. The wide spaces, sparsely treed, and relative flatness look like the central Europe the Prussians, Russians, and Germans chose for centuries as their preferred battlefield. Polish towns with Roman steeples, but the waterways carry the French names the Canadian voyageurs left in the 18th century – Au Gres, Au Sable, and our destination, Presque Isle.

As darkness begins to fall we reach the final road into the “almost island” of Presque Isle. By now snow banks line the roadways, last bastions of a cold and precipitous winter. We reach the gate to the shore community and punch in our code. The gate rumbles open and we enter. A mile down the road and to the right, we spot the drive into Cedar Cove.

The outside floodlights are on the pole barn and the house is in shadow. Just beyond, the lake shines in the glowing dark, rimed with ice and boulders. Keying our way into the garage, we turn on the water, open the house and find the heat. The car is quickly unloaded, food stowed, offices created upstairs and down where the huge glass walls look out onto the wide expanse of Huron, and nothing, absolutely nothing, else. The rig lights of a Laker heading south twinkle on the far horizon. I take off my watch and set it on the dresser.

There are clocks in the house but we’ve reached our destination: no deadlines.

Recipe for sleeplessness

Invite 2 small girls, three and two, for a weekend to give their weary parents a total break.

Remove 1 adult male to a safe distance of 600 miles for most of the weekend.
Disable another 1 adult aunt with a sinus infection and the responsibility of yet 1 more small child.

Stir in trips to the playscape, the library, the grocery store.
Read at least 20 books. Out loud.

Put small girls in unfamiliar beds.
Add 2 curious cats.
Fold in 1,000,000 unanswerable “Why’s”
Toss in baths, hair washes, drinks.

Mix well and bake for 36 hours.

And the amazing thing is we actually made it to church on time and home for the Sunday gathering. The parents, looking very rested, then took the wiggly bodies home.

Now for a long nap!

The least of these

Old Village School serves the most severely multiply impaired children of western Wayne county. That’s a nice way of saying that OVS takes the kids that no other school is equipped to handle. For reasons of physical, emotional, and/or mental impairment, these kids are the bottom of the barrel.

Or, as their teachers and therapists would say, the cream.

Sitting around my table are the principal and six of the staff, all of whom have in some way been a part of granddaughter Keren’s life. We’ve served a meal that engenders conversation and interaction but they would have mingled well in any setting.

The first to arrive was Keren’s teacher for her first two years, a slender middled-aged woman with sharp features. She comes a little early to the door and says, “I’m early, but I just wanted to see everyone.” Everyone is the Dreamer and Engineer, their two little girls, the Driver, and her son. And us, the grandparents. This teacher ensconces herself in the middle of the chaos of small children and toys and parents and immediately engages. We learn quickly that she lost a son many years ago and that loss sent her back to teaching kids who other parents may lose.

Soon the whole group have arrived, talking, laughing, hugging us all, playing with the little ones and reading them books, asking questions about family pictures. We’ve invited them to honor their service and to say thank you for their hard work but they come eager to honor and enjoy Keren’s family. “She was our little star, you know,” one says. “She lit up the room.”

At the table we hear stories. “Our kids” is a common phrase, as if somehow they own the children they serve. These are teachers who change diapers on big children and clean up all sorts of messes. But that’s just the job, not the focus. Their focus is on learning and emotional health and making every day a joy.

“You know,” one woman says, “so many of our kids can’t talk but they have a depth of empathy that amazes me. If I’m down or not feeling well, I find a little hand slipping onto my arm or around my neck. There aren’t words, but I know that child senses my pain and, out of their own pain, they are handing me a piece of love.”

We ask them for Keren stories. The physical therapist talks about loving the squeals she’d get when she worked with Keren. Another woman remembers the white furry coat and red hai rbows. A third talks about lights and music and beating drums in time with the symphony. A fourth remembers Keren’s delight in the big dog that comes to visit the classes.
For a relatively small school, OVS gets the top of the line in entertainment – Redwing hockey stars, Chinese gymnasts, a Christmas party each year from a local Lions club that rivals Santa’s workshop.

One woman tells how a little boy with severe needs of his own pulled them into a circle the day after Keren’s death. He insisted that he needed to lead a “memorial service” for Keren, and set about to preside as priest and comforter for the class and the teachers. “And we were comforted,” she says, “and overwhelmed at his perception of what we all needed that day.”

The principal sits at the end of the table as proud of his teachers as a dad would be of his kids. “I walk the halls and pop in and out of every class,” he says. “These teachers do an amazing job and we’ve got happy kids.” He’s got happy teachers too who know their value is noted.

More than anything else, they pour love on the Dreamer and the Engineer in gallon doses. They ask concerned questions and listen to answers. They dish out hugs like there was no end to the parade. They invite us all to school over and over.

“Come and spend a day. Come and see my classroom. Come and we’ll give you a tour of everything.”

At evening’s end they linger in the entryway, savoring each other and the company of those who have some understanding of the children they teach. When they finally all straggle out the door we step back, spent. In setting out to say thank you, we have been richly rewarded by teachers who give far more than they get.

In the great economy of education in Michigan, OVS will not win awards for advanced placement, or Math Olympics, or the top soccer team. But if awards are to be given out, they should go to the teachers and therapists and aides who serve the least of these, the children who cannot take care of themselves.

They would say it’s only right. “Their kids” love them back unconditionally. It makes it worth getting up in the morning.


"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these… you did for me.'”
Matthew 24:40

Connections

Living near Metro airport is a deliberate choice that matches the life we lead.. Cruising down the highway on a rainy afternoon, we’re connecting with four friends. My cell phone rings as we exit telling me that Anne is already on the ground.

We slip the van into a spot in short term parking and hop a moving walk to the terminal. We grab an elevator down to baggage with a mom and daughters. Anne comes down the escalator and greets us with, “Did you hear that? They're announcing everything in Japanese.”

Of course. This is Metro. All announcements in Japanese, Mandarin, and then English. But the Japanese is what Ann hears. An ethnic Japanese herself, she was left on a doorstep as an infant, adopted by parents from the Netherlands, raised in Japan, and still lives there. In a comic twist of life, she married a good German Mennonite from Lancaster County. East meets West big time.

As we grab her bags and head down to the international arrival, we catch up on soccer camps, mentoring teens and children, all the things that she and her husband do best in Japan. We play the “who have you seen recently” game we all know well.

Sitting in international arrival we’re surrounded a buzz of Hindi, Urdu, Chinese, and Arabic. An elderly Sikh comes out with his baggage cart, followed by his wife in a bright sari. A bundle of burkas come next. A young Japanese girl is greeted by American in-laws. The mother and daughters from the elevator appear to have found a Russian father. A crew of Chinese businessmen bustle out the glass doors.

Then the doors open and we see Thomas. Solid, graying, and very German. We’re enveloped in hugs and handshakes to the older Chinese woman traveling with him.

Thomas, who opened his home to our daughter last summer when she had to be in Hong Kong three weeks before her baby was due. Thomas, whose wife fetched us well after midnight on a hot June night and, tucked us into cool, spotless beds. Thomas, who hosted a rooftop grill for more than 40 of us at summer’s end. Thomas, whose home looks out to the mountains, eagles swirling to the peaks, ocean in the distance across Sha Kok Mei village.

We grab the bags and find an elevator to our one last passenger. Debbie has just arrived from Spain via a quick stop in Chicago. We all troop out of the terminal, grab the moving walkway, and find our way back to the van. Bags stowed, people tucked in, we’re off. The three women have never met but share so much in common that they sound like magpies.

Thomas leans forward and says, “It’s very good to be here, you know.”

Twenty years melt away and I see a much younger man with fewer pounds and more hair. I’m standing at the turnstile in Hong Kong and he hands his little son over the bar for me to mind while he goes off to language school. I see his wife, young and blonde, standing in my kitchen, earnestly asking me to help her learn to live in Asia. Now they are the veterans who meet the newcomers.

Years pass, lives intertwine, we raise each other’s kids. This week he’ll come for dinner to see his honorary nephew. One generation mentors the next so that they in turn can be there for the following generation.

Airports are all about connections.

Fathers' grief

Perry, the "doorkeeper in the house of the Lord," greets me most Sunday mornings with a firm handshake. We banter about his ubiquitious cowboy hat and boots, or the weather, or something equally innocuous. But this bright January morning he takes my hand and doesn’t let go. A man of few words, they spill out.

“Just want you to know how much we’re thinking of you. We buried a child too, you know. It was 24 years ago…” I didn’t know. I know very little about Perry, but now I know his heart.

Bill writes my daughter. “I have never met you but I know your mom well. We’ve been trustees together for many years. I don’t get to meetings much now that I’m well into my eighties, but I had to write to say I know a little of what you are going through. Our only son died suddenly when he was just ten. He went into diabetic shock and was gone. It’s been 47 years but I still feel it. It’s always fresh.”

How many times have I talked with Bill? Good conversations about a wide range of topics. Warm, friendly interaction for years, but never a hint of the pain just beneath the surface of his mind.

The night after we lay Keren’s ashes in the ground, Ed writes of laying his little daughter to rest almost 40 years ago, “Very tough time ... and I remember burying Amy almost as if it were yesterday. Burned into my mind ... and it was another bone-chilling, wintry, wind-blown day. Cold beyond cold in mind and heart.”

Young Don has no words. He simply wraps me up in his long arms and won’t let go. “I wanted to come to the service, but one of us had to stay with the kids, and it was more important that my wife be there.” He’s not lost any of his children, but he’s come quite close, and I sense in his silence that he knows this could have been his pain.

Old Eddie calls from Maine. "You all come up here and stay on the island for a while." A huge offer from a grandfather who lost his little Liv, the sunshine of his island, two years ago. Vic writes, "Been there. Know how it feels." He too lost a granddaughter a few years ago.

Losing a child seems to sear the soul. While the women around me speak volubly, I find the deeper words come from men. I watch my son-in-law sit alone in a crowded room, silent, shrouded in grief. Perhaps fathers and grandfathers, ever our protectors, are wounded that death -- the unthinkable -- came on their watch.

As I move toward Good Friday, I ponder the Father who lost his only Son. Easter comes, yes, but only after mourning.

.

The Gathering

We linger at the table, afternoon sunshine streaking in the windows, coffee cups in hand. The little girls, hands washed, have left for play. The weekly "Gathering" at Sunday noon, a tradition of Sabbath, is waning.

Conversation wanders to our corporate loss, a month ago. Keren’s absence is palpable at this point when she would have lingered with us, unable to go and play alone. Tears are still close to the surface for her parents, the Dreamer and the Engineer.

They tell us of a letter they received this week from an older woman, an honorary auntie of the Engineer’s childhood. Over thirty years ago this woman stayed with the Engineer and his older brother in a time of family trouble. His dad and mom, due with her third child, had flown to the capital city for an emergency delivery. Word came back by radio to the remote Central African village that the little girl was stillborn. The adults mourned, but this “auntie” was asked to leave the telling to the little boys for their father and his return.

Three decades later the Dragon was caring for her nieces when she received word that their sister was gone. Like the auntie in Africa, she had to backpedal and keep the information to herself till their father came home to tell them.

In Africa, the auntie looked for a way to prepare the little boys without telling them. She took them on a walk around the center that included a postage stamp cemetery where another child had been buried. Carefully she talked about the little boy who had died and where he was.

A month ago the Dragon talked with her nieces about the house being prepared for them in Heaven, something they brought up and wanted to discuss. A house that their sister would go to first, but they didn’t yet know that.

The Engineer remembers his father coming home, relieving the auntie of her charges, and telling him about the little sister who would never come home. And he now speaks of coming home himself and telling his own children about their sister who would never come home.

Tears are close to the surface. For him. For all of us.

The Gathering is a tradition of many generations. A time to stop in the busyness of the week and sit back to eat and drink together, to talk. Though some weeks it doesn’t happen, it is still well worth the effort when it does. Sabbath is a lost convention. Conversation, a lost community. Sorrow and joy, something best shared face to face.

The Gathering will continue. The little ones will grow and stay longer at the table, punctuating the conversation with their ideas. Like their parents, they will someday become the adults, and perhaps, if they are wise, they will institute a Gathering of their own.

A time for tears and a time for laughter. A time for everything.

Good grief

Kevin calls it Good Grief. “Grieving is normal. Loss is painful. Grieve and grieve well.” Standing before a large assembly of family, friends and coworkers gathered for the funeral of 16 year old Andrew, he expects tears and mourning. He understands grief.

His grief is different. It is the grief of lost dreams and expectations. A brilliant young couple who took three children to Ukraine, learned the language well, were flourishing in teaching and music and relationships, cut off by sudden cancer. Kevin understands grief because he’s still in the middle of it.

Good grief is founded in hope. Kevin reads the words of Paul in 1 Thessalonians, “We do not want you to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope.” As Paul comforts the Thessalonians, Kevin comforted those gathered for Andrew’s family.

“Think of the Russian word for good-bye. It’s not final. Do svidanja– I will see you again.” That’s what we are saying to Andrew. Sixteen years is not long enough to live. His brother has captured his twinkle and spark in the pictures he lovingly matched to Andrew’s favorite music. He continues to live in our hearts, but we know he is also alive in God’s presence.

Then Kevin gives an illustration to pound home his point. He reminds Andrew’s father and brother of the day they moved Don’s old sofa. It was a disaster sofa, left in a flat on the fifth floor that Kevin and family were subletting from Don. But because furniture was dear, Don hesitated tossing it. Finally he says Kevin can get rid of it. Kevin calls Andrew’s father to help. The two men wrestle the huge monster down five flights of narrow cement stairs. Andrew’s brother comes behind picking up all the pieces that fall off on the way down. By now the assembled mourners are laughing with Kevin at his visual picture – many have climbed those dank cement stairs in cement apartment blocks of the former Soviet Union.

At the bottom of the stairs they are met by the “watch woman” – which, says Kevin, is Russian for “old Babushka who naps while people walk in and out of the building taking whatever they want.” She accosts them with a simple question. “You aren’t going to throw that away, are you?”

In a quick change of tone, Kevin says to all of us, “Don’t throw away this grief. It’s horrible, it’s ugly, it hurts, but don’t waste it.” As the old woman recycled the sofa to her own flat, we too can take the grief and turn it into something useful – character in ourselves and compassion for those who also mourn.

Good grief is the process that refines us. Lori hands me a Kleenex and passes one over to my husband. The whole row is dissolved in tears. We’re not going to throw away our grief.

Random thoughts on a February day

Weariness washes over me like the seeping gray of February thaw. Fingers of dampness seem to find their way into corners of my mind. It’s a day to detox.

I sit in meetings and watch the discussion, trying to get my mind to focus on the task at hand. Finding it too much effort, I doodle. Spurts of hard concentration produce reasonable work results but leave me unreasonably drained.

Too many weeks of life out of order.
A beach turns into a funeral.
A funeral becomes a celebration.
A celebration washed with tears.
Flowers cover the surfaces of my house, brightening the winter, and then wilt and fade.
The tyranny of schedule crashes into the midst of it all.
Travel is long and arduous. Too many planes, too many beds, too many days.
Presentations sparkle in the moment, but the effort drains every ounce of energy.
Relationships are rich and deep.
People, too many people.
Too many stories.

Lethargy.

And yet.
Twinkling delight in the clear blue eyes of a little boy in my kitchen.
Warmth in the comfort of two large cats settled on my knees.
Pleasure in the sweet smells of dinner cooked and ready on my arrival.
Cards and notes from around the world.
Huge hugs.
Companionship.
Comfort.
Camraderie.

Even in the winter of the soul there is deep understanding that the daffodils and tulips will come up in all their brilliance, splashing yellow and orange and red across my mind.

February is a short month.

Resting

Today we officially lay you to rest, but this is simply perfunctory. You have been at rest for a week now. It is we who now need to be at rest.

Your littlest sister looked at you -- so still -- at your memorial service and said simply, “Sissie, resting, sleeping. Jesus.” Profound words from someone not yet two.

Your middle sister had many more words. She was fascinated with your “zebrows” – those great bushy ones you had in life. Seeing not you, but your empty body, it was as if she saw them for the first time. She and I had a little talk about tents. How when we set up the tent and live in it it’s full of noise and laughter, but when we take it down it’s just a piece of cloth. She recognized that you were gone from your tent. She didn’t know how how many times I’ve read those 2 Corinthian verses in recent months. Perhaps in preparation.

The number of children at your service amazed me, but also warmed my heart. Families took time to bring their little ones of all ages who knew you and carefully explained that you were now at rest. Some of your classmates were particularly distressed, perhaps realizing that they too live in bodies that are somewhat broken. Your dad knelt by your best buddy in his wheelchair and stroked his head, hugged him for you, and helped him say goodbye.

My mind is seared with an image of your dear parents and your little sisters tucking a pink blanket around you, fluffing your wayward bangs, lightly kissing your forehead, and stepping back to let the box be closed. Young parents shouldn’t have to do this. Children bury parents, not the other way around. Yet, this is today’s reality.

Pastor J spoke of a broken world. You’ve left it behind.

Outside my window I can see your oak tree moving in the cold wind, brown against the white snow of today. This is your special tree, the one that always comes alive late, is a bit awkward in shape, and has a mind of it’s own. Definitely your tree.

Most of the trees will push their leaves in April, but I’ll be watching your oak tree. I suspect it will do the normal thing and not push leaves till almost Memorial Day. It will come alive, though, and of that I have no doubt.

As will you. As will I. As will all those who understand from whence they came and where they are going when they stop breathing.. This morning is perfunctory, just part of the journey. A little urn laid on top of your great grandfather. You definitely are not there.

Rest well, little girl. But take time to run and dance and laugh and sing. We’ll come as soon as we can.

Dear Keren

Written while flying across the Pacific, coming home for the funeral of my little granddaughter, Keren.

Dear Keren,

I first met you on a gray September afternoon six years ago. Your dad called me and said, “You have a granddaughter, Keren Elyse.” “How is she?” I asked. “She’s OK,” he said, and from the tension in his voice, I knew you were far from that.

My first glimpse of you was in the NICU of St. Joe’s, a tiny scrap of humanity stretched on a warming table, surrounded with doctors and nurses, dotted with probes, screaming bloody murder. A tiger. Those first weeks were tense but you hung on to life.

Your parents are my heroes - sweet, gentle and fiercely protective. Caring for you has never been easy but your parents are servants. Your mom comforts and soothes you and you dad, well, no task is beneath him or beyond his reach. You have been his little princess, his dance partner with him doing the steps and you the belly laughs.

I’ve learned much from you, little girl. Patience, for one. Your pushy sisters scream and yell if they are hungry, cold, or uncomfortable but you just sit and wait till someone remembers your needs. Because you couldn’t walk, you have taught me to sit still, not something I do well. Because you must be fed slowly, you have taught me that haste indeed makes waste, and things done slowly get done in due time. Because you have reached out in unconditional love to everyone around you and drawn them close, you have taught me to not be a respecter of persons.

Returning last summer after several months, your smallest sister was a little skittish of me. Your middle sister told it straight, “You’ve been gone long. It’s time you came home.” But you, my little one, just burst into sunlight grins and wrapped your arms around me. In my heart I heard you say, “Welcome home, Grammy. I knew you’d come.”

If you see me weeping, it is because I miss you, but don’t think I am sad for you. I have ached for your limitations and longed to have you tell me your thoughts. If your sisters talk too much, you were the balance, but always I knew you had much to say if you could have had words.

Yesterday I think your Heavenly Father reached down and said, “Come home, Keren. Leave that tight, stiff little body and come dance with me. I want to see you run and skip. I want you to pick flowers and hold water in your hands. I want you free.”

Your wheelchair sits in the corner. As wheelchairs go, it’s pretty slick. I love the big butterfly embroidered on the seat back in bright colors and your name, Keren - Strength, in blue.

It’s empty now. You don’t need it.

The Little People

Our family has always called them “The Little People.” The Little People are in fact, in truth, quite short. “Small in stature, mighty in valor” says a plaque in their kitchen. Also quite true. We first knew them as students over thirty years ago, then as young marrieds, then as young parents, then as parents of teens, and somewhere along the journey we all morphed into middle age.

Like many people whose lives have intertwined with ours, our children know each other from occasional visits. In the back of my mind is a dusky memory of a summer evening years ago at their home on the hill. Looking out front I saw all six of our respective offspring ranged along the curb, in age rank: tall, short, tall, short, tall, short. Great Danes do not have Pekinese puppies, and Pekes don’t have great Danes.

Our daughters, of course, never had a ghost of a chance to be short.

In recent years the home of The Little People has become our B&B when we are visiting a college campus near them. Their kids are grown and the upstairs is all ours. We can come and go in the comfortable friendship of years.

The Little People’s home is large, but everything is designed for those who are small of stature. Brushing my teeth at a basin I look like a giraffe at a watering hole. Mirrors show a great view of my neck. Beds built for short people long ago led us to commandeer two rooms upstairs for sleeping.

We laugh at the differences.

But we recognize that size has no bearing on friendship, and minds are matched not by stature but by common goals and interests. Rousing games of Settlers depend on a cross of wills, not swords. Relishing sushi demands only a love of Asian food. Chopsticks fit any size hand. Friends are whole people.

Last weekend our tallest daughter joined us with The Little People. Great conversation and games. After she left, their second son came by for a visit. More conversation and games. One generation enjoying the next and vice versa.

Their post college daughter was home over Christmas break. When her parents mentioned that we were coming to visit, she asked a simple question.

“Do they know that we call them The Tall People?”

White world

The first time it snows, you notice. Everyone runs to the supermarket and buys bread and milk. Just in case. And the next few times there’s talk of closing the office or schools. Then the reality sets in that this isn’t going to stop. Get used to it. Life can’t afford to stop.

This is a different winter.

No more wondering what the weather will be tomorrow. You know. No more waking in the middle of the night to see if the predicted snow really did come. You know. You know the drill. The stuff is deep and still coming.

You wake in the dark and get ready for work in the dark. Gortex jacket, gloves, scarf, hat. Some mornings the night’s dump is a light enough drift to use the broom, but most days it’s the blower and shovel. House to car in the garage is easy, but the minute you hit the drive you hear the squeaking crunch of tires on dry powder.

Too cold to be slippery. Too cold to freeze and thaw. Yet somehow, a dash to the mailbox or across the yard in shirt sleeves doesn’t feel all that bad.

Life takes on a rhythm of black and white. Black road surfaces, white drifts. Black tree limbs, white etching. Black pine boughs, white frosting on every branch.

Some days it’s all you can do to keep ahead of the piles. The Tech, a Michigander to the core, takes on the challenge. Mikey, retired next door, also rises to the task. The blowers hit the drives simultaneously in a race to see who can clean it up fastest. Then two hours later they are back at it. Cell phone communication keeps on through the day.

“What do you think? Hit it again or wait an hour?”
“Maybe wait.”
“I don’t know. I’m heading out before then. Can’t let it get too deep.”

The guys who plow for a living are making a killing. And dropping over with exhaustion.

Sunshine eventually peeks through the drifts at some point most days, turning the world to glitter. Clouds scud across a powder blue sky tinged with pink by evening. Dark closes in early, ending the day as it began. Comfort food beckons from the kitchen.

Time will come when the temps will rise and a mere 40 degrees will feel like summer. Lawns and streets and trees will emerge and take on shape. Gingerbread houses, eaves deeply frosted, will melt into normality. The sun will rise before eight.

But for now, it’s deep and white. Cold and dark. And totally delightful.

Generations

When I got word that the very elderly mom of friends had slipped into eternity, I realized there was no way we could attend her funeral six hundred miles away. But, I thought, the Driver is close by and maybe she’d go for us. After all, this is a family that has intertwined with ours for decades and she’d see people she enjoys from around the globe.

A phone call later I encountered skepticism. “But, I never even met the woman. How can I go to her funeral?”

“I’ll email you the details,” I countered. “Just think about it.”

The next day an email came back. “Yes, I think I will go. There are so many people coming that I know and they want me to bring family pictures.” The number of friends had been mentioned on the initial call, but funeral attendance is not the habit of 20-somethings.

The phone rang again yesterday with the Driver in fine form. “Oh, it was great. There were so many multiple parts of the family there. I caught up with the kids who are now in college, and with the old grandmother on the other side, and with all the family in from far away. They all send their love.”

“Funerals are not about the dead,” I said, “But about the living.”

“I know that,” she said. “But it seemed odd to go to the funeral of someone I don’t even know.”

“You do know her,” I pursued. “You’ve known her daughter and son all your life, you took care of her grandchildren in Hong Kong, her extended family through marriage are some of your favorite people in the world. You’ve been in their homes, sat at their tables, listened to their stories. These people are part of your essential fiber.”

Part of becoming a genuine adult is learning how to add up the pieces of life into a whole. Learning when it is appropriate to show up and be counted. Learning that a small effort one day pays huge rewards in life friendship on later days. Learning that people remember that you remembered and that they appreciate your presence far more than you can imagine.

Our funerals of late have been highly peopled with young people and children. It’s all about living and building the future.

Taking it down

Tradition tells me to leave the trappings of Christmas up till Three Kings’ Day on January 6, but the calendar and time available dictate that Christmas comes down on the first Saturday after New Year’s Day.

Taking it down is a bittersweet experience. The gifts are long unwrapped and put away. The bubbling excitement in the eyes of the children has tempered into experience. The family gatherings are finished. The chocolates are eaten. The feasting has ended. Even the lights are looking a little passé despite the still dark of midwinter.

Each year I carefully dismantle what a month ago was unpacked with delight. Each piece is examined and repacked. The tree ornaments are once more tucked away as deep memories flash by my mind at each touch. The red and green and gold are packed into boxes, the lights stowed, the cookie tins tucked away. The last to go are the crèche, each one carved of wood in some distant part of the world, each one reminding me of the timeless story of Christmas.

Choosing a Galway CD as background music brings the same sort of satisfaction of a light desert after a rich and overwhelming meal. Much as I enjoy the music of Christmas, I am sated with brass and bells. A simple flute suffices.

Taking down Christmas is as much a ritual as putting it up. The snow glitters outside and the chimneys across the way steam in the late day of early January. Sun sets on Christmas but dawns on opportunities.

Time to look forward. Time to begin new projects. Armed with the life brought by Christmas, the new year begins.