Like a Locked Room

This quote comes my way in rounds, once every 5 or 6 years from a poet I have loved since the day I read his poem about an anemone and wondered how a man could understand so much about yielding.  At the time, it seemed like something only women did, something only a woman could understand.  Now I see that peace only comes with yielding, taking in, taking on, holding, listening, not acting so much--just...being there, and this is available to everyone.  I guess that was a tangent of sorts.  But friends, it is late, and I am tired, the candle burning late and early because I'm searching and can't afford to waste the clues left by the sunrise or those that are whispered from one star to the next.  So, this post will be like I feel tonight:  a bit worn down.  (And something in me knows this is a symptom of self-reliance, that American curse.  Yield, I said.  Yield.  He didn't make me to do it alone.)

Oh, the quote:

Be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Homesick

Lynn, the landlord farmer who grew up in this house, stopped by today with one of his famous fruitcakes.  It was in a tiny paper bag with Nora's name and a happy face drawn on it.  Nora was so sweet about it: "Oh, thank you so much for thinking of me.  I'll put this away right away."  She proceeded to remove it from the paper bag, peel off the saran wrap, shaking it off her hand down onto the floor while placing the fruitcake carefully into the fridge.  These are not the kind of fruitcakes you want to use in the annual Fruitcake Toss competition.  Lynn makes really good fruitcakes.

I wonder what it must feel like for him to walk into his house and see my pictures, books, Christmas Tree, Nora's toys thrown to the wind...all of it in the places where he remembers seeing his own train set, Hardy Boys books, 4-H ribbons.  I feel self-conscious as he stands in the kitchen, which is simultaneously Ila's kitchen and my kitchen.  Each of us has a strong love for this place, and it is this love that keeps the roof shingled, the floor swept, the air living and breathing.

I was just reading about homesickness last night--the kind of homesickness you feel because you understand deep inside you, in that place where God dwells, that this earth is not really where you belong.  You yearn for something you've only vaguely recognized.  I suppose it works like a homing device or like E.T.'s heart.  It groans with longing when it is far from what it knows.  It responds autonomically with joy when it is in close proximity to those things it recognizes as being part of our real Home.  It leaps.  It flips.  It swoops.  It falls in love.  It is love, and it opens the front door, the one you'll only walk through once.  Inside us is that key.  I want to know Him, to make a home for Him here within until He takes me through to see what I only saw as through a glass darkly.  A part made perfect.

Carrots

Saturday, Nora and I were carrot-diggers, pulling the row that had grown sugary sweet with the extended season.  (The longer you leave them in, the better they get.  Plus, they "keep" in the ground.   If you want to preserve carrots for an extended period of time, put them in your basement covered in sand in a 5 gallon bucket.  I can already count how many of you are jumping out of bed right now to start your own carrot sandbox.  Anyway...)  The ground was partially frozen, but the sun was warm and the three-pronged shovel Mom and Mike bought me was working great--err, it's like the spork of shovels--sort of a shovel and a pitchfork but with only half a handle--I should learn its name.  Anyway, we dug the whole row out in about 15 minutes while pretending to be rabbits.   Last year I used a small garden spade and it took so long to do I about banned carrots from the garden party forever.  I think I understand why Scarlett O'Hara stood up with a single carrot clasped in one hand after hours of digging and declared she'd "never go hungry again."  She had plans to get one of those shovel sporks, too.

Six months ago, these carrots were nothing but a seed packet of hardened, miniature dreams.  Next season, I plan to learn how to preserve some of my own (seeds, not dreams--though that would be nice, too.)  This seems like essential knowledge to me, right up there with hand washing, bread baking, spare tire changing, and kid hugging.

So, in my refrigerator are 15 pounds of the most delicious and oddly shaped carrots you'll ever meet.  I planted "Rainbow Carrots" and they turned out purple, pink, orange and white.  Each color has a slightly different flavor.  I feel like a kid looking through the Sears Christmas catalog searching for carrot recipes. (Do ya'll have a copy of The Joy of Cooking? Mmmm....)  Cream of Carrot Soup with ginger and orange juice...Spicy Peppercorn Carrot Pickles...Roasted Carrots with Butter and Honey...Carrot Cake...

I hope my life can be full of these small adventures--that I will someday learn how to make the crocheted, beaded snowflakes without looking down once like my Grandma and Aunt Dottie do while watching different versions of Jane Eyre just to compare notes on the various Mr. Rochesters.  The cookie recipe I know by heart.  The song that always finds the notes as it comes out of my throat.

The vision of Nora galloping on tip toes through the house wherever she's going--this is the kind of joy I mean.  Something new and small each day...something you can learn by heart because your soul was made for loving it.

Mad Libs, Houseplants, and Care

A trip to Et. Cetera (absolutely AMAZING second hand shop in town) yields a 200-page book called "Success with Houseplants."  Who knew it was that complicated?  I mean, should I offer to buy them a drink and how often?  Ask their sign or whether they prefer partial or full-sun exposure?  Is that too forward of me?  Do I mention any unsightly mealy worm fuzz between their leaves on our first date?  When is it safe to tell them that I think I love them?  What if we argue?  What if we don't argue?  I just want them to like me.  I like them.  I think it can work.  Don't you?  I have faith this book holds the answers.  I mean, there are books about cooking, sex, the fall of the Roman empire, and the meaning of life with fewer pages than this.  

Let's take a closer look here.  Page one:  "Variety.  Diversity.  Change.  These words and what they stand for are at the heart of the world of house plants.  A potted plant is not a dainty, objet d'art.  It is a fascinating organism, which will respond dynamically to all the appreciative care you can give it."  

Whoa.  Is this book talking about house plants or is it talking about...all of us?  I mean, try substituting your name here:

Variety.  Diversity.  Change.  These words and what they stand for are at the heart of the world of [your name here].  [Your name] is not a dainty, objet d'art.  [He/she] is a fascinating organism, which will respond dynamically to all the appreciative care you can give [him/her.]

Yeah.  You might be thinking what I'm thinking here.  This is an empowering book, not just for house plants but for all of us who are in the caregiving profession (and that's all of us, folks.)

Now substitute your partner's name, your child's name, your pet's name.  The name of a country.  The name of your pastor.  Your teacher.  Your student.  The name of your president.  The name of your mother.  Your father.  Your sisters and brothers.  Your enemy.  Yes, even that.

200 pages.  Indeed.

A Still House

(To be quiet.  Watchful.  Working with hands.  Responding in love.  Kindness and guidance.)

This still house tonight is the house
He has made for me
out of all the different possibilities,
the different configurations of houses
and occupants.  This still house
tonight is the house He has made
for me.  Let me not desire another.
Because He knows exactly what I need
better than I do.  Because I trust Him
more than I trust myself.  This still
house tonight is the house He has
made for me.  And this must be
exactly what I needed
despite how stillness aches.
This still house is good and
fills with sound tomorrow.  But
what is tomorrow when the house
is still tonight?

(He must have heard something I couldn't make out.  A pattern in the silence.  The deepest call of this heart bouncing like a mute ball, silently down the hallway.)

Thrown but not caught.  Resounding.  Throw it again, Sam.

My mom's stuffing is better than your mom's stuffing.

Well, there might be a little room for a close second, but, seriously.  My mom makes the best stuffing in the world.  So much butter.  So much bread.  So much butter and bread condensed into a single mouthful.  Even one spoonful, I'm sure, has the density of a black hole if you could compare calories to atoms.  In fact, Stephen Hawkings warns us against attempting to put too much stuffing in our mouths at a single time or we'll will warp the space/calorie continuum.  But when it comes to my mom's stuffing, I live on the edge.  And that edge is my belt.  But I figure that's why they made belts with more than one hole.  Am I right?

And just a little tip for all you folks out there who still need to remove the crust from sandwiches:  I have been saving every crust from every PB and J that I made Nora this year in a bag in my freezer, and that's what we used today.  Yes, it has taken up some room in the freezer that I could have used for Totino's pizzas, but it was worth it to see something I would have just thrown away being used today.  It really is true:  one step at a time, one crust at a time, one bite at a time, and you'll get there.

In this sense, I'm thankful for the abundance of very little because very little eventually makes a whole lot of stuffing.  And that's a blessing indeed.

37

1992.  I was turning 18, my senior year, living above a bar in downtown Rifle, Colorado called The Red Lion Pub.  Writing in my journal on the floor of that studio apartment, the one that always smelled of Hamburger Helper despite the fact I never cooked the stuff, in blue ink "You are getting too old."   

1982.  Rasa, my youngest sister, makes shoes, hats, coats and pants entirely out of tin foil for my toy poodle.  Such a sweet present.

2003.  The big 3-0.  We play a live radio show that night, covers of Johnny Cash, 20 bucks woven between the strings of an old acoustic guitar strummed like you can hear that train a comin': ccchhhhk, chkuh. cchhhk.  For my birthday, Jason at the Flicker Bar mixes me something called a "Jackie O."  It has umbrellas, sunglasses, suitcases, scarves, sadnesses.  

2010.  Nora and I in the guest room at mom's house.  Thankful for time, how it passes, how much healing is done from one year to the next.

1983.  My first slumber party.  We pretend we're in a band from Scotland and lip sync to "We're Coming to America" by Neil Diamond at least 4,374 times.

1973.  The doctor asks my mom if she can wait a little bit longer to have me so he can catch the Thanksgiving game, so I wait.  Back home, Mom and Dad watch Saturday Night Live and time the contractions.