9 - 12

Here we are, on the day after the day of remembrance. We experienced some of the unity of that horrific, hallowed time, but now Americans will retire to our respective corners and pick up the war of words and insults and recriminations we have been aiming at each other lately. Or we’ll sit cowering in that corner because there are still those who hate our nation and would happily blow bits of it to pieces again.

Maybe we’re back in the corner driven there by guilt (how many people haven’t reminded us that America doesn’t have a record, past or current, that is spotless) or despair (atrocity will never end and we are powerless to stop it.)

I have a suggestion.

Let’s make 9-12 a day to lean.

You’ve seen those 9 - 11 symbols, haven’t you? Where the 11 is made to look like the twin towers?

Look at the ‘2’ in 9 – 12. If you squint a bit, doesn’t it seem to be bending, bowing, or maybe leaning or inclining?

2 can remind us that, in spite of the bickering and hostility which divides our nation, when someone outside the family attacks us we are united.

We can bend a bit, if not with our ideals and opinions, at least with our rhetoric when we deal with our American brothers and sisters.

We can bow our heads in soul searching. No one has the power to bring World Peace. Everyone has the power to, if possible, live at peace with all. It doesn’t count to just keep our mouths shut if we can’t say something nice. We better dig for words of healing and encouragement and love.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, at the end of 9-12, we  realize that we lean on the ONE. The ONE who holds the world, its past and its future. The one who doesn’t let a sparrow or an airplane or a tower fall without knowledge and compassion and purpose.
We can lean on the ONE who can and will bring about world peace when He beats swords into plowshares. He is the same one who will honor our feeble efforts to treat all people with dignity.

The One who saves is also, incredibly, the One who takes the position of a yielding number 2 when He inclines His ear to hear the faint, helpless cries for help and mercy.

Praise God He brings us past a 9-11 into a 9-12.

Oh, what a foretaste

Do you know what heaven will be like?

Me neither, but I surely hope it looks something like this:

Five Years

Time can gentle memories till there are no hard edges or rough smudges.

Sometimes.

Or it can, with each succeeding year, chisel certain events to such razor points that the mind is afraid to get too close for fear of the cut.

Autumn 2006.

Five years ago when calamity was stacked on affliction and coated with heartache, and I still wait for time to work its magic and soften the memories.

Funny. The only fuzzy event is the innocuous one. We made a September middle-of-the-night visit to the emergency room for my husband’s infected tooth, joking that our lives were uneventful enough to make the ER a highlight.

If we hadn’t joked, would things have been different? Do I believe in a cosmic satirist who takes thoughtless words of fragile humans and turns them against those same pieces of puny mortality?

No… I don’t.

But.

A few scant weeks later my husband went to our finished basement during the umpteenth deluge of the month to check the windows. He walked right down into six inches of raw sewage covering the entire level. A mere six inches not covered by homeowner’s insurance. Six inches that destroyed everything it touched.

The smell had barely been bleached out when I wakened one Sunday night in October to the sound of sirens and the realization that my son Kirk wasn’t home. He had been to Bible Study, brought his girlfriend home, and disappeared. He didn’t answer my increasingly frantic calls to his cell phone. I got in the car and followed the siren song to a host of sheriff cars surrounding an ambulance.

I prayed as only a mother can pray that my son wasn’t in the ambulance. The prayer was answered, but not without another satiric twist. My Kirk was in a police car, arrested for excessive speed and evading the deputy sheriff who couldn’t maneuver dark country roads with the dexterity of a panicked 18 year old. The deputy was in the ambulance heading to the hospital, while my son was on the way to spend 3 nights in jail, shut off from family and friends and a Bible, and facing the possibility of 6 years in prison.

A good attorney bought my son some time, but couldn’t do the same for my beloved mother. We brought my boy home from jail only to rush my mom to the hospital for emergency surgery. She fought so hard to recover and we lived at the hospital and the attorney’s office and prayed and cried without ceasing.

But her poor, damaged heart got the best of her indomitable spirit. Just before the year died, after 2 months– 2 months! – in the hospital, she left it for good to go to heaven.

Fall 2006 didn’t end till it figured we were beat. Our basement was stripped to the studs, our son was facing a prison sentence and the mother we still needed so badly had left us alone.

But.

Mom told us before she died that she had peace about her Kirk. She told us she was ready to go and she told us she loved us.

Five years later and those memories still have the power to wound.

But instead of a cosmic joker manipulating our memories against us, we have a merciful Father who works in and through them. He hasn’t eradicated the memories. Instead He has piled so many blessings  on top of them that I have to work my way down to the pain.

The basement is fine; Kirk is an amazing man of God, a wonderful husband and a delight to his family and friends, with a spotless police record to boot. 

My husband’s tooth has behaved admirably for five years.

But.

I have to be honest.  Mom, I miss you every day. I would take you back in a heartbeat, but you don't want to come back, do you? Can't blame you.

I know why the memory of Autumn 2006 still hurts. When the chisel hits off a vital bit of the heart, it  doesn't fully heal on this down side of heaven.

Metonymy, Metonyyou (Metonymy, MetonyYOUR?)

I own an original Ella

Those with heads for finance go to Wall Street, those with hearts enamored by performance love Hollywood, while those with a spirit of innovation and creation may head to Detroit.

And it seems that many of those in DC have neither head nor heart nor spirit.

OK folks, if someone just walked in off the street from ancient Babylon (assuming he could read 21^st century English) he would not immediately understand the significance behind Wall Street, Hollywood, Detroit and DC.

But you, bright folk that you are, have a firm grasp on the tail of METONYMY.

You know Wall Street is closely associated with big finance, Hollywood with film making, Detroit with the auto industry and DC with federal government.

Our Babylonian friend may also wonder why anything a White House says would carry import, and may even give pause at the thought of a talking house in the first place.

If he happened to wander to Great Britain he would learn that Downing Street has some opinions.

He may be surprised to know that one lone President (Nixon, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama) can bomb an entire nation (Cambodia, Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, Libya)

So you sit him down to try to explain how one part of something has come, in common usage, to represent the whole thing.

Yes, you acknowledge, finance takes place on streets other than Wall Street and movies are shot in other locations than Hollywood and cars are definitely engineered outside of Detroit.

But these are just shortcuts we use in language. We just… comprehend metonymy.

You take pity on his confusion.

You tell him to take a break.

You pull out your wallet and point to a photo of an adorable little girl in pigtails and a tutu.

‘That’s my daughter!’ you announce proudly.

‘She’s in dance! Julliard wants her!’

Babylonia wonders if he has lost his head or if you have.

Your daughter is a flat, two-dimensional piece of paper? Do other pieces of paper dance around her? And why would someone named Julliard want such a pathetic example of humanity?

You take pity and pat his arm.

‘Let me buy you some golden arches for lunch,’ you tell him and turn to put away your wallet. When you look back you see him hitching a ride with a Ford as he shouts,

“No question about it! The States are headed to the loony bin and if I stay here any longer I’ll be hitting the bottle!’

Babylonia may be correct, you muse. But then you stand tall, proud to be part of the crazy ol’ Red, White and Blue.

Put away your hanky.

Somewhere in a Hollywood ergonomically designed eco-friendly boardroom sits a group of carefully chosen representatives from every race, creed, color and dietary preference.

Their duty?

To ensure that each minority group, however small, is represented on some television show or movie.

Tough beautiful female cops, quirky mild male private detectives, psychotic CEO’s?

Check.

Forensic specialists/health care professionals with accents/limps/mother issues/eating disorders?

Check.

Children being raised by single parents, by 2 dads, by 2 moms, by one dad and several moms, by barnyard animals and with double digit numbers of siblings?

Check.

They agonize.

Has any subgroup been overlooked?

One relatively young, naïve board member timidly raises her hand.

She says she logged multiple hours noting which minority groups are represented and there is a glaring omission.

Impossible! She is told. We have everything covered!

(while they scramble to check if gypsy aliens who enter their toddlers in beauty pageants have a show)

Ms. Naïve stubbornly–if foolishly–sticks to her assertion.

There are no unmarried couples who wait till they are married before engaging in hanky panky.

The room is abuzz. There must be someone since The Partridge Family…

It seems she may be right. Unmarried couples who hanky and/or panky before the trip down the aisle are everywhere.

Belligerence sets in.

Hanky panky is everywhere! It is an accepted cultural norm! It is inconceivable that there could be any couples in the universe who aren’t hanky pankiers! This minority group can’t exist. It is a figment of the naïve board member’s imagination.

Nevertheless, anxiety ensues.

What if some odd, disparate non hankiers join with some quirky non pankiers and demand representation?

It could happen. 

But no one has a clue how to build a show around such a bizarre, socially deviant group.

It does, however, give them an idea for a new program:

Interventions for those who don’t hanky panky and giving them a fresh new start on a dance competition.

Are You Ready for some FOOTBALL?

These marker guys are ready

The refs are ready

The fans are ready

The coach is ready

The cheerleaders are ready

The visiting team is ready

The band is ready

The color guard is ready

The anthem is sung

The home team is pumped

Are you ready?

Pile on the fun this weekend

And go play!

Don't Blink

It was yesterday, no, maybe it was the day before that.

I was holding him on my lap, thinking he was the cleanest looking baby I had ever seen.
I kept gazing at him, but then–I had to blink.

And suddenly he was old enough to feed himself.

This time, I thought, I won't blink. But of course my eyes started to burn and I snuck in a quick one.
And he was getting dressed on his own.

 

So it went.  I would keep an eye on him, but it would only take a blink or two and he had turned into a party animal.

Blink. He could drive.

My eye would twitch shut for a split second and there he would be– babysitting,

feeding the family,

defending the family,

and whirling the bride around the dance floor.

But then–then– I swear I only looked away for a moment.
And there he stands in front of his new dorm.
What did you ask? Is there is something in my eye?
Oh, I'm just blinking.