Our Girl in Cape Town

She is sleeping now, this daughter of mine with whom I wait in airports, holding hands and saying goodbye--tears and joy our now-familiar mix.  A world away in summer, in Africa, while I contemplate once again the gift of her life.

The breakup of a family means many things, most of them a grueling kind of sorrow.  Yet, like any trial by fire, what rises is lasting treasure, a gold refined to its very essence.  I see all of my children gleaming in the sunlight and brushing ashes from their hair and shoulders.  But right now, today, there is just one story to tell.

She is extraordinary, this one.  Her first grade soccer coach called her The Pit Bull and yet when she wasn't demolishing opponents she was picking daisies, skipping downfield and tending to scrapes on the sidelines.  Over and over we moved.  Changing schools like so many cardigan sweaters yet each time she managed to find her way to the dearest friends, attracting loyalty and kindness with a gentle nature anchored in steel.  Unknown at the beginning and beloved at the end, every single time.

How astonishing that such friendship would be mine as well.  Too cautious for my own good, I put up walls around my heart, fearful that my children would feel overly responsible for my joy and knowing that they were working hard enough to hang on to their own.  But at some point in her freshman year of college Mary Glen shared that she'd told someone I was her best friend and all I could think was, Me?  It was the first chink in my armor.  Piece by piece we tore down the walls of parent and child and rebuilt ancient ruins, cities long devastated, until what was between us was so dear I could not have imagined it to exist.  She is, as Kris says, the closest witness to my life, total honesty and intimate secrets sandwiched between the hilarity of daily life and the binding cement of a hard journey walked together.

She adores Friday Night Lights and old Alias, and Slings and Arrows.  She has loved and lost, and loved and loved, growing and maturing so that life does not carry the same mistakes back to her doorstep, but instead the best kind of man.  She keeps a list of quotes on her wall a la Franny and Zooey and every time I read them I feel the deepest kind of joy to know such a soul so intimately. And perhaps most amazing of all, she has not only opened up her life to me, but offered up her friends as well, willing us to know each other, pushing me past my reticence to an entirely new life.

She is the woman I always wanted to be.

But for the next three months, she is on the other side of the world.   And even in an age of technology, tonight it's just a bit too far.   I'm counting on gratitude traveling fast.

Batteries not included

For the past ten years I have lived in darkness of one kind or another.  Sometimes it was a total lack of understanding over what was going on in my life, that feeling of falling down the proverbial rabbit hole and finding that nothing makes sense, looks familiar, feels like home.  Other times it was the darkness of sorrow, like a weighty velvet curtain across my heart, suffocating my ability to bear witness to joy; the knowledge that it still existed, further insult to my shattered state.  There was illness and too much death, and then one day, I just didn’t turn the lights on at dusk, so comfortable had I grown in the dark.

Yesterday afternoon I was sitting at the computer, windows framing blue skies and sunshine, when the power just disappeared, like God blowing out a candle so softly you didn’t even hear the flame sizzle.  I waited for the inevitable power-up but it didn’t come, cursed the Facebook fascination that now rendered me egg-less, (and in that deprivation, all I could think was, Soft-boiled eggs--the food of the gods!). I began making preparation—called KCPL, took out the trash, and went for a walk/run believing with all my heart that when I walked down Briar Drive I would see it lit up like Christmas.

Well, half of it was.  The other half--my half, let’s call us the half-nots--lined up like sad little Olivers (musical theatre reference—google it) bereft and envious.  Darkness was falling and I knew that it would arrive before the power did.  I scavenged a flashlight (did ever a family have so many non-battery containing flashlights?  I feel this is a significant homemaker’s flaw on my record), hauled out the entertainment section, found the time and location for The Town, and was opening my car door when I thought, “What if the power is not back on when you return?  Will you want to sit with The Town in the darkness?”  Um, no.  What could I live with in the dark?  Scarlet Letter redux, Easy A--the only funny movie I know about right now (yeah let’s just say I’m not exactly UP on things).

The movie was all I imagined it would be and, surprisingly, more.  I tried to think positively as I drove home, but I knew what I would find.

It wasn’t that I was afraid.  Nor was I wishing for air conditioning or comfort.  No, as I lit a few candles, fished something (quickly! quickly!) out of the refrigerator, and pulled the newspapers out for recycling, I realized that with all of my heart, what I wanted was to see. 

My sister told me about a cave she and her family visited that contains ponds with fish; colorless and entirely blind, so long have they lived in darkness.  Painful as it is for me to admit, I knew this was what I had become.  I’d made my peace with the darkness in my life, a state, I believe, all grieving hearts must reach.  "Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it," Jesus said, and over the years, both fiercely clutching and with a free hand, piece by piece, I had let it go.

The problem was, I'd forgotten the rest of the sentence, "But whoever loses his life for My sake will find it."

Funny, the places we find lost things--car seats, coat pockets, the last place we used them.  For me, it was on a road in the middle of nowhere, which turned out to be the exact right spot on the map; a hand in the darkness striking a match.  This way.  As the days passed it returned—the right book at the right time, a song on the radio, a letter to a faraway land. How did it happen, this wind change in my heart? At what moment did I become like a watchman on a hill scanning the sky for that slip of a crescent, certain of its existence; faith like a tent revival springing up in a beaten town.

I sat in the darkness last night and knew there was a message for me.  This morning I awakened to electricity and sat down at the computer to find it. 

“Arise, shine, for your Light has come,” said the prophet Isaiah. 

I'm on my way.

Home is wherever I'm with You

“You see the way it works is, the train leaves, not the station”

A League of Their Own

I have spent a lifetime not being at a loss for words.  In person, at weddings, in prayer, and at bedtimes, consonants and vowels have waited for me to snatch them up by the handful like manna from heaven.

Yet now all I can think of is Marla Hooch standing at the train station, all bad hair, worse clothes and muted tongue, terrified at the thought of the unknown; the risks we take when we leave the house and start living the life for which we were created.

The sorrow of loss comes with its own paralysis, its immediacy as raw as its heartache.  We long for sympathetic ears and hands that guide us to cozy chairs and cups of tea, when what we really need is the grating voice of Jon Lovitz unsentimentally telling us the truth--Get your ass on the train because it is going somewhere better than this, and if you don’t hustle you will miss it.  And the rest of your life.  

Consider this my first postcard.

Things Done and Left Undone, Pt. 1

Out of the heart, the mouth speaks

Luke 6:45
...the words get in the way...
Gloria Estefan

I was supposed to write this post nearly two months ago, but you know how it is.  You have a houseful of family and bathrooms to clean, and a trip to see your daughter and a party the night you get back, and kids are home so there's competition for the computer, and then your sister gets married (see TDaLU, Pt. 2) and previously mentioned daughter comes home from college, and the next thing you know it is one month and twenty days after your son has graduated from high school.

All of the above things really did happen, but the reality is, those are excuses for the fact that my heart is so full, it feels like the Scrabble factory.

Rayner Andrew Fredrick had two speeds from the moment he was born--100 mph and Crash.  He climbed out of the bathtub as an infant, climbed out of his crib as a toddler, and climbed onto the roof  of the minivan before he was three.  Where do you go with a kid like that?  How many times do you yell at them, lose them, wonder if they will have memories of you without gray hair?

I'll tell you where you go.  To your knees and pronto, sister.

And if you can stay there and not try to be all, Hay You are Driving Me Crazy! Let Me Seize Control of that WILL of YOURS because I Know Best and NOT GOD (I am telling you this so you can learn from my mistakes) then what you will find on Graduation Day is that same child standing atop a mountain.  The one they've been practicing their whole life to climb.

No words can do justice to his achievements--the obstacles overcome, the choice of grace over anger, the road less traveled, generosity toward those who would delight to see him wounded.  No, you must trust me on this, that whatever you imagine when you read these words, it is only a pale imitation of the man himself.

Pictures aplenty we took on that night, and yet the one that lingers in my mind will forever exist only there.  Waiting on the sidewalk as the graduates rounded a curve, I saw him before he saw me, his tall frame and handsome face easy to spot in the crowd.  And then his eyes met mine, and in that glad recognition was all the life of our together-journey; the hearts that claim us, broken places where no one else sees the mending glue, road signs along the way and the songs that took us there.

Rayner Fredrick, you've given me the best seat in the house for 18 years; these words an insufficient teaspoon of thanks for an ocean of gratitude.  I see those mountains up ahead that you've got your eye on and I just want you to know--I packed a flag in your backpack for when you reach the top.

You're the best.

Love,
Mom

The Many. The Humbled. The Mothers.

This has been a Mother's Day for reflecting.  When you spend as many years as I have in a crowded boat, rowing with one hand and passing out food, lifejackets and warnings with the other, the day you find yourself no longer steering is a day of mixed emotions.  If everyone can swim, I could actually close my eyes and take a nap.  If everyone can swim, do they still need me in the boat?

My new vantage point affords me views of scenery I was previously too busy to notice; music I did not have ears to hear.  But the most extraordinary gift which has come from my place in the back of the boat is the ability to see my fellow travelers.  Some are still steering and passing out cookies, some have moved on to outright sunbathing and others, like me, are offering sporadic navigational tips and learning how to let someone else be in charge.  Each one a heroine, they offer inspiration no sunset can equal.

My friend Alicia Zurlo left a note and a pie on my doorstep in 1996.  I had five little children and she had just given birth to her third son.  Within two weeks we forged a relationship that felt like it had begun before we were born.  It probably had.  She brags about her friends' children, doesn't have a jealous bone in her body, and within two years of getting her realtor's license, was selling millions of dollars in homes...because she actually listened to people telling her what they needed.  She will be the friend I call if I am ever jailed in a foreign country because there will be NO STOPPING HER from figuring out what to do, and the way she practices her faith, the way the love of G_d infuses her being, is a gift that she gives to all around her.

Motherhood found me early, but it found my two sisters, Sally Otsuka and Rebecca Forristall (soon to be Arterburn) later, and oh, they have made up for lost time.  For years they loved my children like they were their own and when Kyle Otsuka arrived on the scene there was no question that he would be the brilliant, hilarious go-getter that he is.  On June 5 Becca will inherit a family--husband Todd and daughter Elyse and to see the way my career woman sister has stepped into this new role is to see that love really is the answer.  They are the most generous women I know, these two sisters who have carried me through dark days, and demonstrated over and over that sacrifice is a gift that can be given with grace and joy.

Laura Denison and Elaine Myers are the two women I think of when I hear the beatitude, "Blessed are the gentle for they will inherit the earth."  It is a frightening thought to consider falling into the hands of people suddenly bequeathed terra firma, but then I remember these two and I know everything will be all right.  They are listeners, peaceful warriors who managed somehow to raise incredibly different children in a way that gave each one freedom to assume their own lovely space in the universe.  Elaine makes you a cup of tea when you arrive and then offers you chocolate, and Laura takes you into her world so effortlessly that within twenty minutes you are not a guest, but a family member, opening the refrigerator and napping on her couch.

With six children, Kris Unruh is one of those women who has the loveliest boat on the river and yet says to people who are bailing water in rustbuckets, "Let me come over there and help you.  I'll just climb in for awhile until you're all ok."  And when you point out to her that your vessel of death is headed for white water rapids and she might want to get out now, she just goes on smiling and repairing boards and making you feel like your boat is just as nice as hers--or will be, because by God, she won't go anywhere until it is.

Almost three years ago Susan Satterlee practically held me by the hand for daily walks during some of the hardest days of my life.  "Sometimes you just have to walk out of the corner," she told me on the worst ones.  A lesson that served her well not long after when she learned that her son Andrew had a brain tumor.  We walked through speculation and MRIs and diagnoses; surgeries and chemo, radiation, and healing.  I watched her do the thing we mothers fear the most, with trembling steps, and then with bold faith.  "Will we accept good from His hand and not evil?" asked Job.  The answer, in her case, was a resounding yes to both, and a faith that grew into a mountain.

"And what more shall I say?" as the writer of the book of Hebrews wrote.  There is Gina Vescovi, whose life and home are like some exquisite art project; Irene Flannery who loved Jack Flannery with every fiber of her being in a way that gave "in sickness and in health" new meaning, and then raised their two beautiful children with hands that blessed God and served Him fearlessly.  I see La Donna Mabry who has gone on ahead, having bequeathed to the world a daughter who walks with the strength and intellect deserving of her mother's legacy.  And Ghana Fickling and Annie Presley who lost mothers at tender, tender ages; so much loss, so much too young.  Yet, the seeds those women planted--words that were whispered, prayers offered up, courage infused through hands no longer remembered--oh the pride those mothers would feel to see these two great women.

And then on this Mother's Day, there is my own mother, Sara Kate Forristall, who put in at the Wakenda Creek near Carrollton, Missouri and one day found herself in the Pacific Ocean.  She was a small town girl for 50 years, but when the going got tough, the tough got going.  She has seen hardships so hard, heard swearing so shocking, witnessed lives that she could not have imagined, and yet it has neither jaded her, nor caused her to turn her head away.  At an age when many have shifted into neutral, she is still growing, leaning into the sunshine, navigating her boat into uncharted territory.  There is no proverb greater than an example.

And no gift more precious than to know we are not alone.  The five passengers in my boat, Daniel, Hannah, Mary Glen, Rayner, and Matty, have been the greatest blessing I know.  To them, to my fellow travelers, and to the One who filled the river, I raise my glass.

Happy Birthday George Clooney. I agree with you about Up in the Air

I subscribe to a few blogs out there in internet-land.  I don't know these people, but I'll tell ya, they are REAL writers; people who are up and crackin every morning, probably at 5:00 am before they head out to their demanding day job where they ALSO write tappity tap tap.  Come quittin' time, they hustle their laptop and good ideas back home where they efficiently prepare a well-balanced meal while running through their mental rolodex for the next wonderful piece they will start working on just as soon as they get their children into bed.  These people are everywhere and sweet Jesus, do they try my patience.

Like virtual postmen, they fill my mailbox on a daily basis, cheerfully updating me with writing awards, side-splitting stories, and quirky family members who often have minor celebrity affiliations.

Meanwhile I have squinted at this blog like a coal miner on his first day at a recently cited hole in the ground, "It's real easy," say my fellow laborers, "Just start digging!  Oops, not there.  We've got a gas leak!  Try a little to the left.  Oh that's where the roof caved in!  Hey, there's a good spot.  Yeah, that two inch by two inch section right there!"

Needless to say, I'm not one of those folks who writes well through the pain and complications of life.  And so, today my eye landed on its harmless 2x2 square.  Happy birthday dear George.

I am a movie geek.  I raised my children on classics, foreign films, Shakespeare, war movies, and the occasionally child-appropriate indy.  I read movie reviews and energetically discuss what I've seen with equally passionate friends.  But I'm also an egalitarian.  I give two thumbs up to The Parent Trap and The Best Years of Their Lives; All About Eve and The Sandlot.  What I do not like, is hype.  And so, I saw Up in the Air somewhat reluctantly, on a recommendation from my movie geeky son, and because I truly did love Jason Reitman's delicious, Juno.


I adored Anna Kendrick.  Every twitch of her eyelid rang true.  And, unlike a lot of people, I liked the trip home for the wedding because when has Amy Morton not delivered?  But George Clooney in a one-bedroom that looked like my first apartment on its worst day?  Um, no.  Ricky Gervais maybe.  Richard Jenkins, maybe. But the reality of life is that people who look like George Clooney don't wind up in lives that look like that.

Which is why the ending (spoiler alert for the two people who haven't seen it) just totally pissed me off.  Vera Farmiga as a warm and wonderful potential girlfriend dispensing advice to clueless young career women?  You betcha.  Vera Farmiga as an unrepentantly cheating wife and mother, angrily chastising George (what was his name in that movie?) because SHE'S the grown-up?

I'm going to stop now and take a deep breath before I blogswear.

Which brings me to the ending--a thwarted George in that situation does one of two things.  He calmly burns her house down.  Or he turns on his heel and never once looks back or tells himself he cared.  But George just looked like he was searching for something, anything, in the recesses of his mind that felt like getting unceremoniously dumped.  He didn't find it.

And yet the critics couldn't get enough.  It was a confessional, they wrote breathlessly.  It was revealing, they flushed, right after leaving their interview with the man himself.  And all I could think was--the rest of us are not doing so well if we think that was George's true to life story and he really is heartbroken about being alone.

He didn't win the Oscar.  Jeff Bridges, in a performance that, even in memory is so painful it makes my skin hurt, won in a landslide that included George Clooney's vote.  You gotta appreciate a guy who knows when he's beat.

And yet.

On a flight to England, bored and twitchy out of my mind, I watched a movie for which I would never have bought a ticket--The Men Who Stare at Goats.  It is completely weird.  The story line is herky-jerky and the sarcastic friend who lives in my head just couldn't stop saying, "Really?  Are you kidding me?"

And then after all that weirdness, there's George.  Betrayed and betrayer.  And emanating from that man like radioactive waves is one of the greatest portrayals of heartbreak I have ever seen.  Even my sarcastic friend was silenced.

Life is funny.  We get on the highway looking for the next big thing and find ourselves in the desert for years.  Dismissing the gas station in a one-horse town, we stop to use the bathroom and come face to face with a truth that defines our destiny.    George and I will never meet, but it's nice to know we all have that in common.

And in today already walks tomorrow...

"So often do the spirits of great events stride on before the events. And in today already walks tomorrow."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge


I didn't intend to wait six weeks and one day before writing again.  My goal, when I started this blog, was to discipline myself into writing at least twice a week, and so, by that standard, the ensuing days are a fairly large FAIL.


And yet, there was life in those days.


I remember getting our first (and, now that I think about it, only) camcorder when the children were little.  Roughly the size of a small car, I would dutifully hoist it onto my shoulder in order to capture moments I didn't want to lose.  But I also remember experiencing a sense of dismay, that in the midst of capturing life I wasn't actually participating in it. Don't get me wrong--I'm grateful for those vhs tapes and all that they recall.  But there was a reason for not replacing that video recorder when it finally bit the dust.  It was time to get in the picture.

The weeks that piled, one atop another, have held some precious moments--and some indescribable pain.  How can we know what each day brings, the treasure of breath, the weight of loss, experience which becomes us like the rings of a tree--part of our dna and yet, so often invisible to the casual observer.  


In bleachers around the city, I watched high school basketball with people I barely knew four months ago and whom I now call friends.  Saw victory begat victory, young men play with purpose and a young coach rise to the occasion.  


One month ago exactly, I awakened to the sight of my youngest child, newly 16.  Our wait at the DMV was spent in the company of three women friends, one six months sober, taking steps at life with the joy of a child; getting a driver's license, a job, a purpose in the very middle of her days.  "This is a birthday present to you," I told my son with tears in my eyes,"her story is a gift from God."  He nodded slowly, understanding and that, to me was a gift.


My oldest child came home for a week and though we did not kill the fatted calf, oh we rejoiced in every minute of his company.  He hollered at the refs watching his brothers play basketball, did his laundry and treated us as his dearest friends.  He wept when he left and though his life is elsewhere, his heart still beats in time to his original home.  How can words do such love justice?


I watched my fourth child grow, in the space of one week, in such wisdom and stature that the mere thought of him reduced me to tears.  Honor and courage, in such short supply were his in abundance; heartbreak no match for the hand that reaches out to God and finds also, the shoulder of a brother in arms--'we few, we happy few."


And just like that, I found myself in a foreign land.  An airplane ride, a trip through customs, a jacket on a passing stranger that read, Grace.  Oxford University, once a concept, is now an actual place, a home for my beloved daughter, a greenhouse for great thoughts, for love, the life she lives so richly and happily shared.


Over my shoulder and across an ocean, I look back at that day and see how little I knew about what lay ahead, what courage would be needed, how many joys could co-exist with heartbreak; hope, against all odds, rising.  Life takes time, I think as I look to the door and hear tomorrow's knock.