On Setting the Table

I'm not sure how they got started, but I know cousin Eliza made them famous...THE PLACE CARDS.

At big family events, she made custom name plates for everyone coming to the meal.  The oldest and the newest members alike.  Each year was a different theme.  During our early years we swapped them all around so we could sit by a favorite.  When we were teenagers we teased her badly and rolled our eyes.  She kept up with them anyway.  And actually...we all saved them.

In the spirit of being Real Grown Up, I am hosting Thanksgiving.

And I made the dang place cards.

Looking back, these little placards were one of my first experiences of Grace.  There was always a place at the table just for me.  The chairs were mismatched and a few were wonky.  Two little cousins had to share the piano bench.  And the tallest took the chair that sat low.  There were highchairs.  And wheel chairs.  But there was a place saved.  For me.

No family is a perfect one..even if you have place cards and the chairs all match.  Family is a real, flawed machine made up of a bunch of screwed up humans.  Earthly families can't help but be like that.  They come with boundaries, black sheep, divorce, grudges, addiction, therapy, old wounds, and NOISE.  That is so we get to practice.  Mother Theresa said, "What can you do to promote world peace?  Go home and love your family."  So we gather together.  We keep showing up.  And we practice.

In the Methodist church, everyone in the congregation is welcomed to the communion table.  This is exactly how I believe God holds her banquet in heaven.  She wants us all there.  The ones who haven't called.  The ones who say the wrong thing.  The ones who drink too much.  The ones who are loud.  The ones who have nothing to bring.   She has already saved our spot.  So the place cards help me to remember that for no real good reason except Grace, I get to belong.

Happy holidays and good luck at practice!

Nancy

Crazy Koozie Lady

When you move, the ground feels a little unsteady.  You don't know where anything is...not even toilet paper and it's all very unsettling.  After six moves in eight years, I'm becoming more familiar with this shaky feeling.  And also better about packing toilet paper.  In the passenger seat.  Where I can see it.  And unpack it FIRST. 

A couple of moves ago, I was stumbling around the new commissary trying to find the Charmin. Navigating a new grocery store takes a lot out of me. And the commissary is no ordinary grocery store.  The thing about shopping at the commissary is that everyone in there has some sort of military connection.  When you walk in there, you are among family.  And in that same way, it can be a little disturbing but strangely comfortable.  There are usually a lot of women alone with tons of kids hanging off the buggy.  So even though this was a different store, the people seemed really familiar in that way that the little strands of DNA twist us all together and make us basically the same.

On this day, I happened upon an elderly woman searching for a certain item on aisle three.  I'm not sure what made me think I could help her find it, when I was still looking for basic TP, but I offered to assist.  I found what she needed on a bottom row and went tripping on my way.

Somewhere on aisle five I felt a pull on my elbow.  The little old lady was there.  And she said, "Do you like hot or cold drinks."  

Oh. No.  Not sure how to answer.  Was this a trick question?  Where was the nearest exit?  

So I said, "Yes."

And then she opened her bag.  Oh yikes!  I was really hoping she had a Starbucks coupon in there.  She pulled out what I could only see as a ziplock full of yarn.  And she said, "I knit these koozies for people who do a kindness for me.  And since you helped me, I want to let you pick one."  

So I picked a blue and pink koozie.  And all the little pieces were twisted together into something beautiful.


I wanted to tell this story because I think of her very often...the Crazy Koozie Lady  The woman was a military wife.  She had moved fifteen times and seen her husband leave and raised her babies and waited on letters.  And here she was, still so certain of finding goodness in the world that she was actually prepared to offer goodness right back. 

It reminded me of the Indian legend of the two wolves.  An elderly Indian tells his grandson that there are two wolves battling inside each of us.  One is goodness and mercy and forgiveness and joy.  The other is jealousy and rage and hate and evil.  The grandson asks, "Which one will win."  And the old Indian says, "The one that you feed."  

I don't think that the Crazy Koozie Lady's life was all that different from anyone else's.  I'm sure she had heartache and joy and all the ups and downs that make up all of our days, but she chose to look for goodness and even prepared to be blessed.  In turn, she went out into the broken world and found the light.  Doing my best to turn out like that.  

Nance


PS:  I had a picture of my koozie to add, but after three tries, I couldn't get it to load and then I quit on this story for a week.  Finally decided that I needed to move on and just TELL it before it was perfect or ready.  There will always be reasons NOT to write, so I couldn't let the lack of photo be one of them.

SPEAK INTO MY GOOD EAR

Husband can't hear out of one ear.  Something about a gun or rocket launcher going off by his head...(this is the part of his job I sort of tune out for my own sanity).  At night, if he lies down with his good ear down and bad ear up, he can basically hear nothing.  Not the baby's crying, not the big boys in and out with nightmares, not a squirrel in the attic, not a robber...nothing.  This is both amazing and terrifying to me.  A lot of things go down in the night that he is blissfully unaware of until I tell him.  (He says "yell."  I say "tell."  Same thing.)

At night, I whisper, "I love you," to him.  And get...NOTHING.

He DOES NOT HEAR me.

Good ear is down, bad ear is up...literally deaf.  There are many instances in military marriage where I have said/texted/emailed/thought/called "I love you" into the oblivion with no response.  For Days.  NOTHING.  This may be due to time zone differences, no reception in deserts, something about no phones in war.  All of these valid I'm sure.  But then!  Even, when lying side by side, I do not always get those four most magical words, "I love you too."  I am learning not to take this so personally anymore.  You see, I'm trying very hard to be grown up.  And when things start to happen in patterns, I've begun to look for messages.  Why do I say "I love you."  Do I say it only for reciprocation?  At my best, I say it for the sheer joy of saying it, with no thought of the return.  I can reach this place sometimes.  On the happiest days of friendship.  In the really good years of my marriage.  During sweet moments with my little ones (where the only return may very well be years and years of sleep torture).

If Love is just Love and it is unconditional, it is to be given without thought of receiving.  Absolutely.  But in this life, it just isn't.  The best of our human loves are not flawless.  I don't just want just the three little words, I want the big four.  I LOVE YOU TOO.  I want to be connected.  I am completely human and fail in both giving and receiving unconditional love.  I don't just need "friends" or "relations."  I need the "ship" and to be in that "ship" with others.  But in life, there are many times I am physically alone.  It was completely shocking to me as Beginner Grown Up, that I would be married and even then, still be alone!  Or sometimes, Husband is home, but I've moved far from friends or family.  Other times, I've bailed from "ships" because of storms.  Or others have bailed on me.  We are all flawed and mistaken.  And forgiven.



Grace is the best and only comforting news I know.  And because of that, I am loved every. single. new. moment.  Even when I feel most unlovable, completely isolated, my bad ear is up and I cannot hear it, God is still there whispering to me. "I love you."  Because of this, I can be alone and not lonely.  When there are no friends or relations, and when I've failed or others have failed me, I can be loved, forgiven, and held.  Being loved does not mean there will be no sadness or hardship.  It does not mean you will have companionship, or health, or prosperity.  In fact, best to anticipate that things may be complete crap.  But in the very darkest of nights, there will remain a still, small, golden, light-filled voice that whispers out to each of us.  If you cannot hear it, turn your head.  Listen with your God ear.  And if the silence remains, you must find the healers.  (All of my little people have seen the audiologist healer!)  The doctors, teachers, and preachers.  They will help you turn up the volume.  For today please hear this:  You Are Always, Always, Loved.  

New. Every. Single. Day.

Nance

FACE IT

Nancy:  Writer since TODAY

I'm beginning this now because I need something to be DONE, as in "finished" or "completed", at the end of this day.  When I was a student, I could complete the homework.  When I was a teacher, I could be finished with the class.  Now that I am a stay-at-home-mother, it seems that my work is constantly UNDONE.  The laundry is my best example of this.  It. never. ever. ends.  And some days that is fine.  But some days it feels personal.  

Some days I can see that laundry is just part of being human, everyone does it since the beginning of time, circle of life and all that.  But Some Days:  

I just cannot believe I struggle to achieve something as basic as clean clothes.  And then I am angry.  Could have saved myself the trouble and gnashing of teeth in college calculus.  Would have been better off taking some practical course.  (They really should offer COUPONING 101, because THAT my friends is a hard, important skill, one I would actually use in this lifetime.  Would have had a greater return on investment.)  What was the point of getting degrees and taking out loans?  Should have saved the money for a washer and dryer.  Seems like a trick to me.

But at the same time I was spending my early adulthood in college, I was also falling in hot love with this man: 

Love. Of. My. Life.

Some people would take this gift of a man and just roll with it, but I fight things...FATE is my favorite thing to fight.  Luckily the fight is becoming so familiar that it is beginning to look more like dancing.  In my defense, with this particular man came a different life than I had planned (again, me vs. fate).  Marrying this man meant I would be a Marine Wife.  More gnashing of teeth here.  I used to make sure that no one called me that.  Marine Wife.  I always insisted that I was married to a Marine...but that his job had nothing to do with the kind of wife I was.  But it did, does, and is.  I've faced it.  I'm a Marine Wife.  There.  Said it.  Only took me nine years.

Marine Wifedom is truly not that different from any other growing up story.  It means that I have done things alone that I never thought I would do.  And for this, I am fiercely proud, sometimes wounded,  much stronger,  and changed from the girl I was when I thought college calculus was my biggest challenge.  Some days laundry IS the biggest challenge.  Because doing the laundry is mind numbing.  Cooking is at least creative. And raising my CHILDREN is many things, but never boring.  Being a mother is separate from being a maid.  Yes, I want things cleaned up and the chores to be finished, but you cannot have a tidy, "done" house until the little people are all grown up.  And I adore the lives being lived out in this mess.  But I struggle.  With the housework, the Cinderella chores, the unnoticed necessaries.  I want very much to do something that is SEEN.

Evidence of The Struggle

The laundry room here is a HUGE step up from where I started as Marine Wife in a tiny apartment.  There we had a miniature stacked washer and dryer in a closet.  At our next home, I did laundry in a hotel common room for four months.  Then we moved into our first house where the laundry was in a roachy garage.  In the next house, the laundry closet was in the kitchen...two little boys got potty trained there.  SO. MUCH. LAUNDRY.  Then for this one blissful year we lived in a house that had a laundry SUITE...so big!  I had a table and chairs in there.  Plus I got these fancy machines (from the scratch and dent sale)!  But it still didn't change my attitude about the unseen, undone, drudgery of laundry.  And now...we live in a randomly assigned base house where the view from the laundry room is million dollar.  A river flows right through my back yard.  And I look at this...

FROM THE LAUNDRY ROOM!

The irony is not lost on me.


That river view is what my best friend calls a "love letter from God".   "Chin Up!" I hear Her. "I see you...dirty, naked, downing your coffee, sick with flu, crying over your kid's grades, laughing on the phone, drinking a beer, making out with your hubs, cussing, fussing...I love you.  And I see you." She says over and over, every day through that laundry room window.  And isn't that what we all desire most?  To be seen?  It's our hearts greatest desire...to be known and loved.  The world tells us we need to do big, loud, noisy things to be seen.  We must EARN it.  We must BE something in order to have love, respect, a place.  But the Spirit says no.  You are enough.  As you are.  Just Be.  Better yet, Be Still and Know.  Know that God put that river there, my house here, a laundry room window just so, for me.  God wants to be seen too...that's the second part.  Be still.  And then Know the one who created the universe so vast, still gives quite the damn about you and the very littlest things you do.  Like Laundry.

So today, I will fold the laundry.  And it will be undone as soon as it's done.  And we'll cook and eat and clean.  Wash. Rinse. Repeat.  But this part of my life, where I think and write and create will be COMPLETED.  And seen.  Maybe I will begin to know even more.   Laundry to fold...

Nance