On Missing People

If there is one thing that surprises me about the grown-up person I am becoming, it is my tremendous capacity to miss people. Afterall. I'm a child of divorce, rendering me a seasoned household rotater, someone who knows the relationships you are supposed to be able to rely upon like bedrock can lose their solidity.  I have never been an overly sentimental person; I like an organized and tidy space and have no trouble purging little talismans.  I have a keen and sometimes incredible memory. I don't need the physical stubs from the movie tickets to remind me that you sat on my left at the Cedar Lee Theatre and rubbed the elbow of my sweater and we ate Altoids.

But as a person who pays her taxes and rotates her patio furniture inside during cold months and thinks heavily upon discipline and societal inequities: I am really quite surprised that I have become this grown-up person who misses people.  All the time.

I carry a dull ache around everyday, missing my parents 1000 miles away and missing the people that they were to me when we lived closer, steady and quiet and angry and complicated and proud.  I miss my sister and I miss my brother and I miss that I've missed so much of their rites of passage.  I just walked with them to the bus stop on Bradley Road (irritated the whole time that they were dawdling).  Did the bus come and pick those children up?  Who is this woman with the grown-up handbags and this man who shaves before he goes to work?

And my friends.  I miss the familiarity we once had and somehow all of the ways we connect over phone and web seem so artificial; they do not bridge the distance between us, and sometimes makes the disconnect seem even greater.   We broadcast updates in 140 characters to no one in particular. We log in to tune out; we look down to see what is coming our way.

I miss my husband when he is away and when he is home I miss the way that we used to live and I forget to be spontaneous because I am always reaching back to that time when we were once note-writers and bad movie-watchers and latenight snackers. I miss us and I know that I will further miss moments of my life in this blessed present that is the present if I keep on longing for what was.  But sometimes...

Pastor Angelo was preaching at Boston Temple a couple of weeks ago and he pointed to the illustration of John, the beloved apostle, who was already missing Jesus before He had even left the earth.  How he, John, a grown man, was resting his head on Jesus' chest because he knew that Jesus was going to have to leave soon.  And that is how I live my life.  Not only because I am 4'10" and I will only ever be able to rest my head in the crook of my beloved's arms or on a loving chest, but the grief that I feel for the missing that is to come sometimes floods my heart all too prematurely.

I am already missing the home that I have not left yet.  I am already missing my children who have not grown up and left the house that they will fill with laughter and crayon wrappers that I do not own yet.  I already do not make sense about that which has not even taken place to be sensible-sounding.

I am tidy, so tidy on the outside.  Purging and packing away. But on the inside, I know I am grief-stricken and looking for a chest into which I can bury my face.  But of course I'll keep my face pressed forward; I don't want to miss anything.

*** Dare I look back at this.  March 2008.  Oh, I miss her.

Season of Change

The encyclicals I could write about this photo. Not in the vain sense, no, not about how the light is catching the subject in such a way... This photo was taken the summer of 2004. I was in the Hamptons, at a writer's conference, headed up this mosquito-laden hill when my classmate Jay said, "Here, turn around, I'm going to take your picture and I want to catch the grass behind you." And little did Jay know but that I would forget his full name (he had a Jewish surname?) but I would return to this picture every so often to be reminded.

*** I found that conference difficult, even wrenching at times. I had dreamed about attending for years, all of my rockstar idol writers would be there, teaching, being accessible and debonair. I got a scholarship, I got permission from my boss to go. I took the crazy bus to Chinatown, hopped the Long Island Railroad, and took a cab to the campus. Then I walked across the street to a divey hotel and asked if I could borrow some toothpaste. Hotelier gave me his half-used tube. Goes to show. Show what? I don't know. That I was 24? That he was nice? That you never know what you may find at a divey hotel in the Hamptons? Maybe a toothpasteanthropist?

***

I was 24. I was so broke when this picture was taken. I had just gotten a second job to pay down some debt. I was behind on rent. Some of my personal relationships were in shambles, mostly because of my impetuousness. The one thing I had going for me, I felt, was that I could write. All along, even when the math quizzes came back FAIL, I would stroke the lucky rabbit's foot of writing skill, and be assured that all would be well.

Then I attended this conference of rockstars and I felt, well? Trampled in that grass. Like my poems were in a beauty pageant and I was told they had a nice personality.

I was bankrupt.

***

That whole two weeks, I just kept reading Nehemiah over and over. I didn't bring other books for pleasure. Maybe on purpose or maybe because of the circuitous travel I had to make with a rolley suitcase? But I just poured over Nehemiah, and marveled at how he led the skeptics, the underdogs, the unlikelies. I took note of how much rubble was in his way. He surmounted the rubble. The rubble was nothing. He built the wall anyway.

***

When I look at this picture, I see the lines around my eyes and I see the honesty of my skin, no make-up. I see the really bad dye job that I did in haphazard patches. I see my smile, in spite of it all.

A month later, I got baptized. Two months after that, Loverpants and I got engaged. I got out of debt. I patched up some relationships. I made it through the rubble and built a wall.

***

I found my early twenties to be a difficult season of life, but I learned so much about myself and the way that the Lord can work through a willing vessel. In this current season of life, I feel that I am back sifting through a lot of rubble. I've got a lot to purge before we can put our home on the market. I've got some personal relationships that I pray will be healed. I am no longer 24, behind a couple months in rent. I have heftier responsibilities and multiple little lives tethered to me.

My friend Laura told me recently that conflict is just an opportunity for growth, that it's just the tension that arises when some change is trying to break through and flourish.

I am walking up the hill again, undeterred by mosquitoes. Can't turn around for a picture right now. Gotta go build a wall.

Hope there's good climbing in...

Chattanooga, TN. Since that will be our home at this time next year.

I didn't get to witness firsthand the maiden voyage of Baby Girl on the rock wall. Little Man had four shots the day before Thanksgiving and subsequently woke up with a fevahhh of 102, bless his little bruised legs and feverish noggin. So I was hangin' with my febral little butterball while Loverpants and Baby Girl clipped in and rigged up and belayed on the wall. Fortunately Auntie Eunis took these pictures. When I saw these pics, my heart inflated and took flight like a hot air balloon, soaring over craggy rock walls. I know they say you cannot be in two places at once, but in that moment I saw our future and I saw our past. I saw distant tomorrows as a family of climbers, something I've always wanted, since growing up my family didn't really have a shared activity, unless you count eating together a gluttonous amount of ice cream. I also rewound the memory tape, back to Loverpants' and my first year of marriage and how we made weekly dates with Auntie Eunis to climb. I learned so much about our marriage from those climbs, about being a reliable anchor and a communicative climber and a good cheerleader. I haven't been on a wall since before I got pregnant with Little Man and I miss it so much, but these pictures raise my hopes that a return to the top of the mock mountain is in the cards very soon.