Prayers and Patience

Sometimes I am my friends’ answer to prayer.  Most often, the prayer is for patience.

Take my friend Ellen, for instance. Ellen is a mother, a pastor and a chaplain – I’m sure she’s prayed for patience more than once.

Some time ago, Ellen and I were to meet for lunch. Knowing how busy she is, I made sure to leave on time. I even got to the restaurant a few minutes early. But as I pulled into a nice, shady parking space, a thought wandered into my mind and set up camp. Was this the right restaurant?

I reached into my purse to find my phone and check her text.  No phone.

I tried to visualize our text messages.  “Fish City” – but no, I wasn’t at Fish City, I was at Flying Fish.  Where was Fish City?  Maybe I could drive over there and look for her car. 

No phone meant no map.  Oh well, the area wasn’t that big. I could probably drive around and find it and only be a couple of minutes late.

About 10 minutes (and one helpful security guard) later, I found Fish City, parked in the only spot available and dashed in. No Ellen.  I drank a glass of water, watching the door, pleased that even with my mistake I had beat her to the restaurant.

After another 10 minutes and still no Ellen, I began to second-think my second-thought. 

The helpful server loaned me her phone and I called my son. “Please find my phone in my room...” I asked, and could almost see him wince at the thought of finding anything in my room, “and see where I’m supposed to be.”  As he walked across the house, the sound of my ringing cell phone got louder and louder.

It was Ellen.

My patient son held a phone to each ear and relayed messages back and forth, and I learned that Ellen was patiently waiting for me - back at Flying Fish.

This scenario came to mind as I considered our current political drama and the atmosphere of commotion du jour. It’s so easy to lose sight of each other in the midst of the turmoil. 

We think we’re connecting here, while our friend patiently waits to connect there.  We convince ourselves we know what they feel. They think we do, too. And we’re both wrong.  I don’t know about you, but all too often, I find myself operating on assumptions when what I really need to do is get up, go meet my friend wherever they are, and sit down together.  And if I find that I'm the answer to their prayer for patience or understanding, it is a humbling thought but comforting even so.

The other day, my calendar reminded me that I was to lunch with my friend Maria. Determined (as I always am) to be on time (which I’m often not), I got up from my desk a full half-hour before necessary.  I put on clothes that say, “I may work at home but I’m still a professional”. I even put on make-up. A few minutes before it was time to leave, I checked my email to be sure of the restaurant.  There was no email.  I sent a text.  Nothing.  Finally, I called her office.

And the minute she answered, I remembered – we’d changed the date for lunch. At my request.

Sometimes I’m just the reason my friends pray.

(c) Can Stock Photo / imissu2

Año Viejo*

Debris from fear and anger uncontrolled.
Leftover expectations misinvested,
   Hurts visited by others,
   and those that I provoked.
Bits of self-absorption unprotested.

I lay them in a pile: my might-have-beens.
One by one, I shape with them an effigy -
   my stunted best intentions,
   my must-begin-agains -
and in my imperfection write the elegy.

By choice I lay them down:
   my rightful unmet claims,
   the unfilled aspirations once held dear:
and watch the flames convert  
my año viejo sacrifice
into ash that sanctifies this coming year.

-cs 123116

*In Ecuador, an effigy is built of the Old Year (Año Viejo), then burnt on the stroke of midnight of December 31.

(c) Can Stock Photo / ragsac

Thank You for Your Service

It’s Veteran’s Day and I’ve been pondering. There’s a journey that lies behind every veteran we meet. They’ve done something. They’ve been somewhere beyond themselves. At some point in their lives, they stepped forward to serve and we rightly honor them.

It’s Veteran’s Day and I’m glad it comes after the harrowing race for power we’ve just been through. It wasn’t the bad toupees and pantsuits that got to me. It was the years of politicians and pundits and radio entertainers telling people to embrace their anger and fear, telling them that anger and fear would give them strength. It’s the months of watching candidates expertly tap into that same toxic well, leaving us with a country on the edge and a populace that is both angry and fearful.

We have children chanting in school about building walls. Signs taped over water fountains, one labeled “Whites only.”  The twin parasites of anger and fear consume their hosts and spill into the streets, and this country that our veterans have sought to protect against external threat is in turmoil from the inside out.

My father was a veteran. He was a man of service. After he took off his last uniform, he continued serving until his last breath. Thinking of Dad, and Veteran’s Day, and the pain this country is in, I'm thinking there's something we can all do. 

Serve.

Let’s each find ways to go beyond ourselves. Let’s stop posting angry or fearful messages about those who are angry and fearful and instead reach out to them with peace, even if we have to do it five or ten or a thousand times.

Let’s take down the signs over water fountains, hug an immigrant and, if we must, teach children songs about purple dinosaurs again. Let’s honor our men and women in uniform by taking our own journey of service.

To those of you who now or once wore the uniform, I wish you a Happy Veteran’s Day.

And to all of you - thank you for serving.

(c) Can Stock Photo / Qingwa

Scars

My life is a tapestry of scars.

When I was nearly eight, the top item on my birthday wish list was my very own pocket knife. We lived in the jungle. There were so very many things I could do with a knife in the jungle. My brothers had knives. I needed one. So I pleaded and begged and my birthday arrived and my parents gave me my perfect, silver pocket knife – and a caveat. If I cut myself, I had to give it up until they decided I could handle a knife properly.  

They had good cause for imposing that caveat. I have a long history of unwittingly inviting harm to my person. When I was three, my brother was using a machete to cut weeds in the yard. I thought it would be fun to sneak up and surprise him… barefoot. That scar is still faintly visible.

When I was five, my other brother’s pet monkey bit me. I was nearly six before I learned to crawl under a barbed-wire fence without tearing up my backside.

I was thinking about scars the other day (as I held my finger in the air, stanching the flow of blood). Embracing life is almost an invitation to accumulate scars, both inside and out.  I was thinking about free choice (as I rummaged for bandages), and how it means we get to choose our response to the things life throws our way. We can roll ourselves up in metaphorical bubblewrap, too frightened to walk out the front door. We can arm ourselves to the teeth – literally and figuratively – determined that we will get before we are gotten.

Or we can incorporate our scars and keep embracing life. Messy, painful, rewarding life.

On my eighth birthday. I took that beautiful, silver pocket knife and ran out to find something to carve. Less than two hours later, I tried unsuccessfully to sneak back into my room to hide the knife before Mom or Dad could see the trail of blood behind me.

Losing my knife didn’t stop me. There’s the scar from the chisel, from when Ruby and I tried to make wooden shoes (we couldn’t.) That’s next to the scar from the butcher knife, on the hand with the scars from sailing off my bike into a pile of sand and gravel. Dogs, plastic boxes, car doors, turtles: there was no malice and yet I bear the scars that prove our paths once crossed.

Scars create texture in our stories and I don’t regret my collection. I actually cherish a few of the ones you can’t see. Scars form when there’s healing, and I’m grateful for healing.

As I stood there wrapping my latest wound, I thought about my parents and how they could have only protected me from harm by keeping me from life. I’m grateful they didn’t.

My finger will soon sport a new scar. I must be slowing down, though. This time I cut myself on the soap dish.

[canstock csp21011106 / Milo827]

Toast to Tradition (sort of)

Tradition.

It allows us to dance in the streets at Mardi Gras and demands a sacrificial turkey at Thanksgiving. It reflects culture, history and our personal stories. And of late, it has been on my mind.

This particular chain of ruminations was sparked by a casual encounter in the bank lobby a week or two ago. I was seated, waiting on a bank officer, when three women walked in: two in traditional Middle Eastern garb and one not.  I waved at the seats near me, commenting, “You might prefer sitting over here – if you sit in those chairs (gesturing to the other side), you'll be in the sun.” The woman not wearing a hijab smiled, sat down next to me and countered, “But I’m from Kuwait. I’m used to being in the sun!” 

We laughed and fell into conversation. With one bank officer on duty and half-a-dozen customers waiting, there was plenty of time to chat.

My new acquaintance shared that she had come for the wedding of a nephew and was reveling in the chance to spend time with her sisters, whom she had not seen in a while. Then she said something profoundly gracious. “I love that my first visit to your country happened during your Christmas. As a Muslim, I respect Jesus highly and think your traditions celebrating his birth are beautiful.”

My first thought was that she must not have gotten stuck yet in the madness of a sale-induced frenzy at the mall.  

But on the heels of that thought was appreciation for the ease with which she let me know “This is who I am. I see who you are. I respect your story.”  

When the bank officer called my name, I kind of wished he’d delayed a little longer. There was a certain delight in that casual, unguarded encounter of two people from very different traditions.

Thus, my current line of reflection.

Tonight, our tradition dictates that we restart the clock. Over the past 12 months we have filled the stage of 2015 and tonight, on the stroke of midnight, we are supposed to let it go. In the tradition I grew up with, we set fire to the stage on which we have placed our memories of the unforgettable, missed chances to fix the unfixable, and the failed certainty that those 10 pounds would never find us again.

Tomorrow will rise from the ashes, a clean slate, complete with resolutions with which to fill 2016.

Except that I already made my resolution before Christmas. I even blogged about it.

And I don’t really want to let 2015 go up in smoke. Even the painful moments are part of my story.

So tonight, I’m bending tradition a little. Instead of letting go of the old, I’m learning something new. (Or will, as soon as I quit procrastinating. Honestly, the tutorial for my something new is 4 hours long!)

Not a fan of black-eyed peas, I generally opt for the Spanish tradition of eating 12 grapes. But I’m out of grapes and the grocery store was too busy for comfort, so I'm bending that tradition, too.

I'm thinking 4 grapes per glass of wine should be about right. 

Happy New Year, everyone!

Wishing you a very sticky Christmas

I know what Christmas smells like, and it isn’t pumpkin pie. It’s Scotch tape.

When I was a little girl, there were noises that meant Christmas - like the crowds and vendors in the streets and the bustle of the Tía department store in downtown Quito. There was the taste of ice cream in Aloag on our way back down the mountains. And finally, once we were home and scurried to our own little corners to wrap gifts, Dad would pull out the good tape. The Scotch tape with its own distinctive smell. 
 

Over the years, that smell came to mean home and family and excitement around the corner.

Over the more recent years, I have become a master at losing the tape.  Every Christmas I buy more, not because we use it up but because I’ve lost the tape purchased the year before. It simply disappears into the multitude of boxes and drawers of things “I’ll put away someday”.

As I’ve gotten caught up in the rush of work, of keeping up with friends and family, of always moving from one project to the next, one event to the next, the toe-tingling excitement of things around the corner is also often missing.

As my family has settled, each in our own pocket of the world, there’s no more dashing down a different stair in Tía so my brother won’t see what I bought him, or waiting till my sister leaves the room so I can wrap her present (which is in a super-top-secret hiding place under my bed). My children are grown and have their own lives, my parents have passed away.  

Someday, I want to sell my house and move to something a little less permanent.  I don’t like geographic roots. If you look around my house, you’ll find few pictures on the walls. There are several boxes that have never quite been unpacked. 

It occurred to me recently, though, that by never fully moving in I haven’t avoided roots; I’ve avoided a home. I’ve failed to truly live where I am.

So I’ve decided. In the spirit of Christmas and life renewed, this is my season to reset.  I’m emptying boxes, pulling out pictures to hang. Tomorrow, my kids and grandkids are all coming together for our Christmas celebration and excitement is starting to lap the edges of my toes. It’s time to make “home” a way of life, no matter where I live it.

And if inspiration to keep my reset on track is ever needed, all I have to do is look at the stacks of Scotch tape in my desk. I have Christmas in a drawer and plenty to share.

In fact, so far, I’ve found seven years’ worth.

(c) Can Stock Photo

Panic and a can of spray

Just call me Slayer.

Early this morning I was sitting at my desk when I saw a bug wander across the papers in front of me. It looked like a “kissing bug” – you know, the kind that spreads chagas disease. Unsure of its identity, short on sleep and even shorter on patience, I grabbed the bamboo backscratcher from its place by my desk and brought it down with a mighty whack.

I’d forgotten that the borrowed pugs were underneath my desk.

Instantly, the air was filled with the sound of panicked pugs. Stella scrambled out and barked into the air, uncertain where the threat was.  Jake started sliding on the wooden floor, his little paws frantically trying to gain traction. He twisted and turned until he somehow slid into a slow, backwards circle. Stella stopped barking to watch.

As I laughed, I was struck by how often we humans do the same thing.  The more vulnerable we feel, the more we bark at imagined bogeymen, trying to gain traction as we slide in hopeless circles.

Late this evening, I was back at my desk for a bit. The exhausted pugs were in their kennel in the other room.

Suddenly, movement caught the corner of my eye. I turned. Skittering across my floor was another bug. (I’m seeing more of them lately and the culprit is me. It just seems silly to close the door every time I let the dogs out.)

This bug, however, was a cockroach. A really big cockroach. The kind guaranteed to give me instant heebie-jeebies.

I glanced around me. No shoes, of course; not in my house. The only things in reach - that were hard enough - were my favorite law dictionary and my external hard drive. I went digital and lobbed the hard drive at the beast.

And missed. The cockroach had a few heart palpitations and skittered in a different direction. I picked up the hard drive and threw it again. Missed again. I forced myself to stop and actually think.

Bug spray! There was some under the kitchen sink. The can promised that it “kills on contact”, so I wrestled with the top, took aim and sprayed.

The cockroach ignored it. 

I sprayed again. This time the roach slowed just a smidge.  At the rate we were going, it was a toss-up as to whether the roach would make it to the vent or I would run out of spray first. So much for death on contact.

Or maybe not.

Grabbing the spray once again, I snuck up on the slowing monster. Taking careful aim, I slammed the can down on top of it. Twice.

And that’s another thing about us humans. Once we let go of panic, we can usually find a way to make things work.

Even if it takes a back scratcher and a spray can.