Rediscovering an old friend

This weekend, among other things, I went on a bike ride. I felt like I got an old friend back. Maybe it was my imagination but I felt like the bike was happy too, after being locked up in a dark storage unit for so long. I never realized how much I missed it. It’s kind of like low-level flying, and you can cover so much more ground gliding than walking.

Before long, I lost myself in the rhythm and bump of the tires going over the road, hitting the cracks in the sidewalk.

It’s kind of like meditation on wheels.

I rode around in the neighboring park…..it’s always good to see how the other part of the world lives.

I got some waves and some good mornings from people doing outside things, enjoying the morning air. I introduced myself to the neighborhood feral cat. I know he was feral because he watched me with interest but then hid behind a shrub when I got too close. I named him “Smudge” for the gray blotch he had right below his (or her) nose. I will watch for him next time I am over there.

As I relaxed into the rubber tire rhythm, memories washed over me of other rides I have taken throughout my life. We have a long history, bikes and I. They were part of our culture, back in the day. For a long time our family only had one car, so we got to know our bikes really well.

I learned on an ugly spray-painted hand-me-down that belonged to my cousin. Then, the magic year I turned 10, I got a bright blue Schwinn all my own. I still remember that first magic ride on Christmas morning. I have a picture somewhere, a side view of my snaggle-toothed smile as I cruised down the driveway, my new synthetic white fur coat with the silver buttons flapping in the cold air.

We were buddies that bike and I and I got to know every rattle and squeak intimately. I felt like it got to know me too.

When I was in Junior High I got a sleek, Gitane ten-speed. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I had chosen a brilliant metallic aqua-marine blue and when it glinted in the sun, it took my breath away. My friends and I rode in a herd, all over town. Most days I rode it to school. All the way into High School, in fact. (No, I didn’t have a car), most kids didn’t back then.

I could ride hands free on that bike, steering with a slight lean in whatever direction I wanted to go.

When I got that bike, my Mom inherited the blue Schwinn. Oftentimes, it was her only mode of transportation. I still remember her riding off to the store with her purse hanging from the handlebars, and every so often, one of the smaller kids she watched riding in the basket.

Don’t act so shocked. Times were different then, we didn’t wear helmets either.

We also took our bikes camping in Yosemite and even now when I ride, I can close my eyes and hear the echoeing cries of Stellar’s Jays as I breezed along, ducking for low hanging pines. I was always so excited for those tires to hit the ground, so I could explore and reintroduce myself to the trails I knew so well.

For those moments, I felt like God had given that particular stretch of earth to me as a gift.

When the mountain biking craze hit back in the early nineties, I got a special Birthday gift, a Raleigh cross- over mountain, cruising bike. And yes, I wore the geeky helmet and the padded bicycle shorts.

That’s the bike I took when E and I did the Tour Le San Francisco bike run. Now that was an adventure. There was every genre of rider and bike you can imagine, from old clunkers with boom-boxes bungied to the racks playing opera, to high-speed power racers who did the ride once to warm up and again just for fun.

And there were several people and groups in costume. It was San Francisco after all.

The serious racers whizzed by like greyhounds while the rest of us concentrated on not falling into each other and sucking air on the hills. They closed down part of the city for that race, and I’ll never forget riding through the winding streets of San Francisco and all those bikes spilling out onto the Pacific Coast Highway, the ocean opening up before us.

That view alone made laboring up all those hills worthwhile.

It’s that same bike I am riding all these years later. It has a few nicks and scars but to me it’s just as beautiful as the day I brought it home from the shop. And each time I ride it, whether it’s just to get the mail or around the block, all those other rides and memories come right along with me.

Friends forever.

See Me

A letter to our youth obsessed culture:

See me not as a “Senior” but as a person.

Don’t cast me aside as if I no longer have any value. Don’t look at me as having passed my expiration date. People don’t have those. There is life, and there is death, and while I have breath, I still have life. I still have opinions. I stll have feelings.

If you are a health care worker and you are looking after me? When I tell you I have to use the bathroom, don’t tell me when you can get to it. Can you imagine just for a moment how you would feel if you had to ask another person to help you do that? One of our most basic of human functions? Think of me the next time you are rushing to the bathroom when you think you can’t hold it anymore. I have been through a lot in my life, and I don’t deserve that.

Don’t see just my wrinkled skin, watery eyes, see the value of all my years added up.

There is much I can still teach you. Much you still have to learn.

I know it makes you uncomfortable to see me because I am a reminder that you too will be here someday. You will see the rights you once had slowly dwindling away and your friends and loved ones die one by one. You will remember your youth and how you felt, who you loved and how they loved you.

You will remember smooth glowing skin and strong legs that never got tired.

See me. See me with your heart and you will see the value of my soul which is priceless to God.

See that all of us equal here.

Because I have laced my days together with Gratitude, with a big “G” I can be at peace even here. I may look alone to you, but I’m not. I have the best company you can imagine because He dwells with me. Here.

Here in my sunny chair, in my little room, I take comfort in the God who saw me in my Mother’s womb. He sees me the way I was then, a newly born soul.

Soon, very soon I will be born once more and this time forever.

See me.

For you created my inmost being;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
    your works are wonderful,
    I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
    when I was made in the secret place,
    when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
    all the days ordained for me were written in your book
    before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts,^[a] God!
    How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them,
    they would outnumber the grains of sand—
    when I awake, I am still with you.

Psalm 139:13-18

photo: flickr by Nutch Bicer, some rights reserved

Letting Go

It’s been about 49 years and I can tell it is still one of his most cherished memories of our time together. It’s one of mine too.

As I called him last night, his Birthday night, he told me he loved the post I wrote and then he paused, thoughtful and said, “There is so much more…..” I said, “Yes, you could never fit all those memories into one post.”

And sounding younger even as he said it, “I still have that picture…..of you climbing Half Dome, and the other one, of me running behind you when I was teaching you how to ride a bike.”

And just like that……

All the years between now and then vanished and I was 6 again. I was hearing me say, “Dad……are you still holding on?” Gripping the bars, fighting my fear, afraid to fall, and doubting he had me.

And all these years later I heard “Yes, I am……I’ve got you Lori, you’re doing great!”

And this morning as I remembered, I fled to the bathroom squeezing my eyes shut, trying to staunch the tears that threatened to overflow. The whole memory has left me an emotional mess.

Because I know that even as he said he had me?

He had let go……even though he was afraid too.

The hardest thing about loving is letting go. And letting someone let go.

I think of the times my Father has told me the same thing……..”I’ve got you Lori, you’re doing great.” And the tears don’t seem to want to stop flowing here at my desk today.

His love is deep, His love is wide, and it covers us, His love is fierce, His love is strong, and it is furious………”Furious” lyrics by Jeremy Riddle

photo by carfreedays, flickr some rights reserved: carfreedays.com

Feeling like Mary today

I thought maybe the ocean had taken my words out with the waves, never to be brought back again, but I was wrong. I will always have more words, because there will always be more life.
I smile when I say this, because I get a vision of all the writers in Heaven going for that corner spot in the patio….quills in hand.

And I think of everyone else doing what each of them have been made to do each in their own bright respective corner.

In many ways I am still processing vacation……..still reliving moments that I know I will never forget, like that iridescent pearly residue left behind after the waves wash over the shore, some things remain. And sometimes I feel like Mary when she pondered in her heart all that the angel had told her, all that God was still telling her.

And in case I don’t, I have the evidence the ocean did not take back. It never gets old, walking for miles on the beach stooping to exclaim over treasure the sea leaves. “Now don’t show me yours until we get back and then we will compare” I said, feeling the wonder. Feeling like a kid.

As I picked up my new devotional book this morning, I remembered Mom saying, “I’ll buy that for you, I didn’t buy you a Birthday present.” As if she needs to, she has given me her whole life already, ever since I was born.

I remember the tears I cried that first sunset at the beach all alone, flipping back to all the events of the past week. How I wished everyone I loved could be sitting right there with me to see it.
And how the next night, E. turned to me and said, “Are you going to cry again?” And then I said, no and we laughed.

Finding that starfish on the shore and me feeling squeamish as a girl scooping enough sand around it so that I wouldn’t feel it move, and yet knowing I had to save it. Seeing the waves take it back…….

The feel of Lauryn’s hand in mine during Sesame Street live, what a gift when a child offers you a hand, it is something almost Holy. It means they trust you to keep them safe.

And everyday, God tells me to do the same. Live with my hand in His. And I do. It’s the best way I know how to live. Really, it’s the only way.

Sometimes the benefits of time off remain long after you get back.

It’s always the lone bird that gets me

This message was tacked on the cupboard in my parents’ kitchen, in my Dad’s writing. He is having a hard time right now. Macular degeneration is making reading difficult. He has always found solace in the written page, in books. It’s always been a big topic of our discussions. It’s hard trying to support your family from far away. I walk around with a certain amount of guilt on any given day. I don’t know anymore how it would be to live without it. I guess you can get used to anything, just like my Dad says you can get used to bad eyesight and hearing loss.

Vacation may be over, but I still hear the crashing of the waves, and the sound of those silly seals barking in the sun on that dock. I still feel the cool of the grass my niece insisted I lay in. I hesitated, knowing Tyler poops there, but as children will she insisted that I share the joy of the moment. And I did.

I had forgotten how the grass speaks if you listen. And it’s a language only children and God can hear and some adults who have not let go of the wonder.

I remembered how she clung to my hand during Sesame Street live, and how small my Mom felt when I hugged her, not wanting to let her go, and going to breakfast with her and sharing a plate. And I smiled when I remembered my Dad and I cleaning the fish tank, spilling water and trying to scoop fish that didn’t want to be caught. And feeding my brother ice in the emergency room.

I wonder at the strange twists and turns of life, how all of a sudden the big brother can be the weak one you be the strong one.

It’s hard to fight for your family from a distance. Hard to help when miles stretch out long, between us but I try.

But I thank God that His arms are long and they reach far and wide.

So many times it’s not the grand chorus that does me in, but the solo. The lone bird that sings, that one note ringing out when all else is silent. The one that insists that there is always hope because with God there always is. Everyone has stuff. But the key is knowing God has you and He won’t let you go.

God astounds me, because He knows when I need to know that He still has me.

He speaks in those quiet moments when we kneel in between life and everything else, when the bell tolls the hours that you may not even hear, but you can feel the weight of just the same. When we are feeling weak and crumpled and useless. And helpless.

He will never turn away from humility. “But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, “GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE.” James 4:6

For just a moment, I wanted to touch the last remaining embers of the time treasured. I wanted to hear the laughter, feel the peace, thank Him for the joy we felt, and how He was there with us all along.

As I sank to my knees, knowing there was not one thing I could do to hold time back, I touched Heaven instead.

It’s good to be home, and it will be good to go back next time. Until then, God keeps me. Keeps us all.

Another Texas Memory

For those of you who didn’t read my last one, you can read it here. I have been capturing some memories for Elaine from when she spent summers in Texas visiting her Grandparents (and other relatives). I thought it would be fun to put myself squarely in the memory myself and write it as she remembers it. I got her Grandparents mixed up last time but this one is historically accurate. So here goes.

When my Grandaddy on my Mama’s side met Granny she already had five kids. Then they had 5 together and one died so that left 9 kids all together. After that he left the family and married another woman named Lou who lived in the same town. Needless to say his leaving the family sparked some very hard feelings all around from his kids, generations on down the line.

Lou had two kids of her own when they met and they had four more after they married. Sounds kinda one of those story problems we used to get in math class.

All this happened before I was born. That’s a lot of emotional drama to be plunked down in the middle of, but the only thing I really remember about it was my Grandma telling me, “You better not be calling Lou, (or that woman) Grandma.”

To her credit, Lou accepted us Grandkids as her own and I always remember feeling welcomed at their house. She had a big square farmhouse kitchen and she really knew her way around it. We had many a meal around that big old table. Lou always fed us well.

Their house wasn’t nearly as important as what lay around it to us kids though. In fact, if they had lived next to the Land of Oz it wouldn’t have been much more impressive to us as that big green vast wonderland that was the football stadium and the adjoining baseball park outside the back door.

My Grandad managed a semi-pro team so they lived right on the stadium grounds. Think, “Field of Dreams.”

To those of you who aren’t familiar with how important sports are in Texas, especially football, let me tell you, it is everything. Small towns like San Angelo were built and centered around football and baseball games. His training methods though, were a little unconventional.

On many a bright summer day, I can still remember him saying, “C’mon Elaine, we are gonna lay some pipe today.” That meant training day for the team. I would ride on the back of the jeep while the guys he coached would run behind it. Then he would throw the pipe down as they went and they would lay it.

Sometimes they would drop from sheer exhaustion in the heat. I would say, “Grandad, he’s lying in the grass lookin’ up at the sky.” He would say, “Don’t worry, he’ll make it.” And we’d go onto the next place and drop the next guy off. On the way back around the field he’d go back and pick them up. By then they would have staggered to their feet and reconvered enough for the next challenge.

All those guys had legs like tree trunks.

In those days athletes weren’t pampered, but we did consider them the celebrities of our town. Provided they survived Granddaddy’s training practices, that is.

Photo from public domain images

A Story……

My Granddaddy on my Daddy’s side was a preacher. He wasn’t a preacher in the traditional sense, like in a proper church. He did his “testifyin” as he called it in a barn and his congregation were the migrant workers. I remember seeing a hat full of money, more money than I had ever seen in one place, full and overflowing. Sometimes they even passed it twice.

They loved him, that much was clear, that barn would be full to overflowing. I don’t know if they understood every word he said, but they understood passion. That’s understood in any language.

He used to warn my cousin and I against climbing up on the roof and yet sometimes I wonder if he didn’t leave that ladder out on purpose. As soon as he left, we’d slap that ladder against the side of that old house and scramble up there and tap-dance to our heart’s content. The music the heels of our Mary Jane’s made against that tin roof was something that was worth getting in trouble over.

Grandma was the one we were concerned with. She was bigger and had a bit of a mean streak. My brother and I used to watch her kill rattlesnakes from up there with one snap of her mighty wrists. She was strong enough to kill turkeys that way too. A turkey attacked me one day, bit me under the arm. We had that turkey for dinner that night. She didn’t mess around.

If my memories of those West Texas summers were woven into anything it would come out looking like a patchwork crazy quilt. Some parts terrifying some parts wonder. The time my Grandma locked me in the dark closet with the glow in the dark Jesus would fall under the terrifying category. I don’t know if Jesus was meant to comfort me or scare me but in the end fear won out.

The other thing that would fall in that category was when Grandma told about how she danced with the devil. She said he came into her bedroom wearing a dark suit and was the most handsome man she had ever seen. They waltzed.

She and my Grandpa had their own unique blend of religion. They believed in reincarnation but also went to the tabernacle for meetings where people who were slain in the spirit would do some very unnatural things like roll around on the floor and make weird noises. To us it was part of the entertainment. We thought they looked more possessed by the devil than anything else.

The wonder part of the memories were made at Grandpa’s baseball park where I was allowed to help out in the concession stand and make snow-cones. There were hot summer nights when chiggers bit ferocious, when the air was so full of damp my hair would mildew on the pillow overnight.

And there were those afternoons when the sky was cast in yellow and the air was eerily still and we waited for the sound of the tornado siren. Times where we all hustled down to the cool of the storm cellar, and other times where we watched those monsters roar in, wide-eyed and rooted where we stood.

That old farmhouse is long gone, taking with it a way of life that will never come again. Sometimes when I least expect it, some little thing will remind me.

The crack of a bat, the smell of hay, a dapper old man with a jaunty walk.

Otherwise they are tucked away in my heart for safe keeping. We fan those flames of memory and bring them back to life with our laughter and our stories.

Once again, I’m tap-dancing on a tin-roof.

images from google

Why Bach made me cry this morning

I heard the announcement for the Brandenburg concerto before it came on and I was glad. I was on my way to work, with all the people I care about swirling around in my head. Some of my best talks with God are on the way to work. I see the Ford F-150 I see everyday and I pray for my brother because that’s what He drives. I pray for my Mom and Dad who despite their advancing years, have little down time for themselves and so I pray for them too.

And I was praying for Elaine too. Today she has to deal yet again with the director of the care home her Mom will hopefully be going into soon. The truth came out yesterday after he hemmed and hawed and he said, “Well, I don’t really agree with the caseworkers’ Level 1 assessment…..and I really don’t deal with her anyway, I have my own……and actually we get less money from the state for Level 1 care…..” Really.

“Unless,” he said, “the family is willing to contribute monetarily.” So it seems it’s mainly about the money not the care, and that’s disheartening. And when I think of how much stress she is under already, I don’t know why she should have to put up with this as well.

The first strains of music started playing and I wasn’t prepared for the tears when they came. Mascara liquefied as I tried to staunch the flow. All of a sudden, I was 18 again. It was the fall after I had purchased my first stereo, bought with my own money. When I got a real job, it was the first thing on my list. It cost me either $179.00 or $79.00, the years and inflation have skewed my memory on that one.

It took up my whole closet with big tower speakers placed strategically apart on either side of the room. My first classical music album was borrowed from the public library. It was Vivaldi, but one of my first actual purchases was the Brandenburg concertos by Bach. That fall I listened to them over and over.

I would gaze out my bedroom window and watch the gold leaves fluttering in the wind as I listened to that music fill the room and those moments solidified in my mind. Anytime I remember fall back then that’s what I think of.

Right along with cracking walnuts on the garage floor, Halloween, crackling fires, flannel shirts and coconut rolls from the bakery on the corner.

My Mom would tell me to turn it off because it made her nervous. The fast parts anyway. And the slow parts she said made her sad. I think that was what sparked the tears this morning, thinking of her. And my tears fill all over again at my desk just now, because I love her and she is much too close to Heaven for my comfort level and so is my Dad.

And I just want to tell everyone I care about right now, how I wish everything could be easier and I wish I could make it that way for them. And just when I was feeling like one of those silly sentimental people who cry at the drop of a hat I looked across the street and the silly fountain on the corner seemed to be squirting right in time to the music.

It was a Grace moment.

I have learned that God does those things all the time. We just don’t notice all the time. But today I did. He always seems to find a way to make me smile, God does.

Brothers and sisters

My eyes graze over it, and then rest on it for a while. It’s the book my brother got me this past Christmas. I am taking down the last bit of decoration, the little tree that has graced my antique dresser for so many years. We adults stopped exchanging gifts years back, but he cheated this year. It was a book on digital photography because we both have the same camera. He also got me a Seinfeld T-shirt and two beautiful ornaments, hand painted cats from a local shop. He is a good gift-giver, my brother.

My memory traced a line back in time and it was tethered to a snapshot taken of us in the driveway, long ago.

When we were in school, he would always look out for me on the playground. He used to let me ride on the front bar of his bike, before I got my own, and never hesitated to hold my hand on the way to my classroom. I wanted to be like him when I was 4. I even insisted on my own pair of black high top sneakers and to my parents credit, they bought me a pair and let me wear them.

In middle school and high school we passed like two ships in the night, both at home and school. He was the popular jock, and I was the nerdy girl in choir. He teased me for leaving a permanent imprint on the couch and I got mad at him for eating my Taco Bell leftovers when he came in late. And yet, he came to my concerts and I went to his swim meets.

Then we went our separate ways. For years I think I was invisible to him. I wanted a relationship…….for him to see me as a person, not just a little sister, yet I always knew that if I needed him he would be there.

I remember the fender bender I had one year on Christmas Eve, how he was first to show up on the scene, driving in from a neighboring town.

Years later, thick in the battle of recovering from anorexia there came a letter from him. I can still see it resting, fluttering, on top of the bicycle basket where it rode on my way back to work……..tangible hope when I needed it most.

As years passed, every now and again I would get another letter and it would be pages long……..letting me know what was going on in his life. Somewhere I still have them.

And then there was that very worst of times. I still remember him having to climb 14 floors to reach me in the stifling heat of Mexico after my husband died. He was soaked with sweat and red in the face, but he was there. I was never so relieved to see anyone.

Nightmare Days passed with me in a fog. I would be okay and then with no warning I would collapse with grief. And one time he broke down, this big grown man sobbing tears I had never seen him cry, and in a voice choked with emotion he said, “All I wanted to do was take him fishing.”

That was June 1987. In February of 1998 he would face his own shadow of death when he would lose his wife of 12 years to ovarian cancer.

Years have flown by and its hard to believe they have been singing with the angels for so long already.

Life and grief has left its mark on both of us as it does everyone. No one gets out of this life without some battle scars. But we have emerged stronger, and it’s amazing but sometimes I think that pain and grief have a way of eclipsing differences in a way nothing else can.

As I sit here at the keyboard I get a text message…..the first one says, “Rsuctxjcwxvc” and it’s from my brother’s phone, and I smile.

The second one says simply, “Lauryn.” I smile again because what better way to punctuate the end of my story. She misses her Auntie.

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:37-39

My brother and me, (and Thunder) circa 1965 or so

Lori's Prayer Closet

"And when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done is secret, will reward you……"Matthew 6:6

Memories