sense of place

Friday we loaded our van with three guns, two boys, six electronic devices and one frozen fish on board for his last ride to a taxidermist. We headed west then south to the land of my childhood - the Mississippi Delta. As we descended the last hill for miles, I rolled down my windows to smell the Delta and involuntarily my body danced to “Pride and Joy.” Stevie Ray Vaughn heralded our arrival home at sunset. 

As the blue moon rose over the flattest place on earth, I snapped photos of the landscape, cotton crops white in the fields and, of course, the moon. It felt like a blue moon since I had last put my feet on this flat ground of home. 

The first time I heard the phrase “sense of place,” I mopped sweat and took notes furiously in a southern studies class. Barnard Observatory at Ole Miss must have been the last classroom at the university to get air conditioning. I listened mesmerized for a semester as my professor told me things in words that my soul already understood. 

 Rarely does an academic truth ring so true in your bones. 

Yesterday as Sam and I rolled into the dove field on the gator driven by my step-brother Justin, these words came back to me and my soul testified. We motored by the house where I grew up and I was 5 again watching the cotton pickers from my playhouse window. We bumped along the banks of the Sunflower River on the dirt turn row where I practiced my long jump and took second place in fifth grade. A turn row is a dirt road where the tractors turn around. I pointed to the spot to show Sam where I had seen the alligator. He’s heard the story a hundred times. Now he could add the texture of geography to it.

We turned west away from the river and snaked through a labyrinth of dead sunflowers.  Row after row covered the terrain and called to the doves. My daddy had lovingly and meticulously prepared the field. Turn rows divided the dove field into plots. Hunters stationed at each plot sat above their kill on camouflaged stools and chairs. We rounded the corner, and I could hardly make out Joshua, 12. He mixed right in with the dead sunflowers. He and Matt had been hunting since sunrise. 

Something like satisfaction filled me up seeing my son and his daddy hunting so close to where I roamed as a child. We were nearly on the exact spot of my one and only duck hunt. My sisters and I had pestered my daddy so much that he finally took us. When we complained of being cold, my daddy had us sit on the dead ducks for warmth. We wished for the Schnapps that kept the men warm. We were cold enough to comply and tentatively placed our rumps on those poor ole birds. It worked, but we never asked to go again. 

In contrast, on this day we would’ve traded an arm for a cool breeze. The sun beat down and the doves skated in and out of the sunflowers playing a deadly game of hide and seek. When Justin came back with the gator, his daughter Ann Lamar had the wheel. I won’t divulge her age and tempt law officials to issue a warning. What age gives you the right to drive a gator? We piled back in and headed across the street from where I spent the first 17 years of my life. 

I lingered in the sunset playing with labrador pups and taking my children to see the river. The bridge in the distance saluted and I told them again of the shenanigans of my youth. Watching through the cracks in the bridge for the pigeons’ nests full of eggs. Riding bikes fast as we could by the fisherman. Playing in the abandoned house right across the bridge.

As I snapped the last photo of the day, I looked westward and noticed that the clouds seemed to form a path. My future awaits. Stories yet untold.

wait

Large hazel eyes searched anxiously our faces, the faces she had birthed. 

“Has she talked to y’all yet?” she asked as she grabbed hold of the rail on the hospital bed. 

“Mama, the computer froze. We don’t have the answers.” I stammered through quivering lips.

Jodi, my youngest sister, and I had waited for hours  while the doctor used Star Trek technology to get a look at the nodule growing in Mama’s lung. Today, we thought, we will have answers. Drama unfolded all around us. People waiting. Nurses calling families back and giving them their futures in less than eight words. 

When the doctor came back for us, she walked quickly with a white face. I judged her body language and facial expressions and braced for the worst. When she explained that the computer had failed her while Mama waited under anesthesia, my body relaxed in relief. Not good news. But not the worst news either. It was an odd and visceral reaction. Then, I realized we would have to tell Mama that the entire procedure had been in vein.

We learned later that 5.5 cm separated the tube with the ultrasound camera from the mass. 5.5 cm is the length of my pinky finger.

I told Jodi: Sometimes I am flabbergasted at the lengths the Lord goes to in order to show me my lack of control. 

But this is about more than a lesson in powerlessness. In the midst of putting one foot in front of the other and leaning on each other for strength, we look to Him. Our hands are empty. We depend on Him. We have a lot of questions and few answers.

We wait.

I am reminded that we don’t just wait on the bronchoscope computer to be repaired. We wait on the Lord. Who likes to wait?

The Hebrew word for wait is qavah. It has both a figurative meaning and a literal. Literally, qavah means to bind together as in forming a rope from smaller strings. This picture reminds me that we can be strengthened as we wait. 

In fact, Isaiah 40:31 says, “But those who wait (qavah) upon God get fresh strength. They spread their wings and soar like eagles, They run and don't get tired, they walk and don't lag behind.”

I can tell you this: While I waited on that doctor and that stupid and frail bronchoscope computer, I was drained of energy. All of us were. 

Today I am reminded that my hope is in the Lord. I wait for Him, the one who gathered (qavah) the heavens in one place on the third day (Genesis 1:9).

Mama is heading home to Mississippi even as I write this. She is feeling better and still has no symptoms. She will surely get some TLC from Fred, my stepfather, her extended family there, and treasured friends. She will build some strength and stamina back. When they call us and say the computer is repaired, we will do it all over again.

Meanwhile, we wait (qavah). 

mama

I stood at the sink washing dishes wearing rain-boots when I began to mentally recount the day with my mama. 

We found the rain-boots at Costco hidden behind men’s athletic shoes. I’ve been looking for three years for rain-boots. We bought soap and salmon, steak and raspberries that opened at the check-out and rolled all over the floor.

Before Costco we ordered the exact same spinach salad at 55 South. Then we paraded up and down Main Street in downtown Franklin. We remembered the Christmas parade 23 years ago one of our first outings here. In Avec Moi, I talked her into buying six gorgeous wine glasses. She had bargained with the owner to sell her four. “When do you ever just need four wine glasses?” I said. She acquiesced and I asked the owner for a commission. 

Just another day with Mama.

I am learning that nothing is guaranteed. I have no idea what I will walk into tomorrow. I want to open my arms to today and receive the gifts. 

In June this notion blinded me like a disco light from the 80s. Mama had gone in for a chest xray and wa diagnosed with pneumonia. A SPN - that’s single pulmonary nodule in medical speak - showed up as an “incidental finding.” My sisters, my stepfather, my aunts and a multitude of friends held our collective breath while we waited for results. We got the news days before leaving for the beach that it was BENIGN. 

Never have we danced on lighter feet than that week. Rosemary Beach may never be the same. My sisters and 8 of our children celebrated and milked the most from seven days of togetherness.

Saturday we learned that the nodule is growing. The doctors don’t really know what it is.  They are running more tests. 

And again we wait.

Meanwhile, we fight to enjoy every moment without letting fear and our imaginations get the best of us. I don’t want to take anything for granted. Rain-boots at Costco. Gorgeous new wine glasses. Lengthy conversations about books we are reading. 

Lord, please help me not to let this fear rob from me the present. Amen.

33. a day of play with Mama

resilient

Few parents would argue that raising kids changes your life. 

I am student to each one of my sons. The lessons continue unfolding daily. But today I am thinking of Joshua. He is seen pictured above eating breakfast on his 12th birthday. Yes, it's birthday cake.

As I muse what Joshua is teaching me, I can sum it up in one word. 

Resilience. 

It’s a $50 word that simply means the ability to endure even thrive. Academics in social work and psychology write 5,000 word papers describing and dissecting what makes one child survive while others seem to whither in the face of hardship. 

At 45 with peri-menopause, joint pain and faltering memory already pressing in on all sides, I don’t feel so resilient. Yet, as I study the topic, I am reminded of how God has used trials to mold me, shape me and change me. 

I learned to believe that because I desire it so earnestly for my children. I am desperate to believe the trials they face will be used for good by God. If I don’t believe that for myself, I cannot truly believe it for them. 

Often it is our hopes for our children that force us to look at our own crushed dreams. And as we give space to grieving those dreams, God moves in and re-frames our traumas. Our children more than any others usher us into the throne room. There we are invited to worship in God’s Presence. It is impossible to remain unaffected. 

“Resilient people do have emotional and psychological scars that they carry from their experience. They indeed struggle, but they keep going, staying engaged with life and continue to function as a part of the world. Resilience is not the ability to escape unharmed. It is the ability to thrive in spite of the odds” Tian Dayton, Ph.D. in Emotional Sobriety

33. 12 years of Joshua

twenty one

Twenty one years ago today in the wee hours of the morning, I gave Matt the elbow and woke him up to fatherhood. This is the part he had been preparing for, the drive to the hospital with me in labor. He ran every red light and drove like Mario Andretti. 

Many hours later our first son entered the world, and our lives changed forever.  

The firsttime I saw his face blazes in my memory. Although breathtaking and beautiful, his color was grayish. His first APGAR score was 2. A score below 3 requires medical attention. The nurses and doctors hovered over him for more time than I liked. By 5 minutes his score raised to 7. Miracle. 

They brought him to me. A bundle of blanket and love. Too quickly Matt took him for the famous walk to the nursery through the waiting room of desperate grandparents and even a great grandmother. 

After they sewed me up, they wheeled me through the nursery so I could see him again.  He was in the NICU and my time with him was limited. They put a hallway a mile long between us. The first time I stood up after the cesarean, I cried. But pain was not to keep me from him and I walked that hall so that I could hold him. 

His first word: ball. His first bike ride. His first loose tooth. His first broken heart. 

When he was ten, we moved to Costa Rica. He fell on a nail at the playground after we had been there only six weeks. The nail stuck in his knee, deep. Someone took us to the hospital recommended to us by the language school we attended. The doctor spoke no English. I spoke no Spanish. He came at Matthew’s knee with a needle. And even though I kept yelling, he did not stop. Body language speaks every time and I got between that crazy doctor and the needle. “You don’t do anything before you tell me what you are doing,” I said to deaf ears.

They call it a Mama Bear for a reason.

Mothers fight. Mothers fight for their children. Mothers fight for their children on their knees.

Today he turns 21. He is a man. He is a man I am proud to know. His heart, his character, his sense of humor: all of this I love.

This morning I woke up before anyone else and sat with silence and a full heart. I remembered. Moments packed in a full life. Pearls strung together on a priceless necklace called motherhood. My heart overflows with gratitude and joy streams from my eyes.

31. 21 years of Matthew