Cancer has taken, among the many things, the holidays away from this boy and his family. There is no tree at his house, no presents, no stockings. There is no smell of sugar cookies and the feeling of anticipation that comes from the decorating and the celebrating and the joy. No, at this boy’s house there is a family holding their breath long enough to make it through Christmas. A family waiting for the inevitable. A family waiting for the strength to say goodbye.

In fact, the other day, the boy told me that this year, he is his family’s Santa. He told me that his dad will be dropping him off at Target, and he will be in charge of running the cart through the aisles, picking out presents, and wrapping them when he gets home. This year, he is Santa.

He laughed when he told me this story. He told me it’s a lot of responsibility for someone so young and skinny with the inability to grow facial hair. But he was up for it.  He had planned his list. He would take on the challenge of steering his red Target sleigh, and he would bring joy to his family. Before he left the conversation, he told me, “I’m going to make it rain Christmas!”

So. I went out and bought him a Santa hat.

I bought him a $2 Santa hat from the grocery store. It was red and bright and cheery and, if I wasn’tcareful with it, the high-quality fluff fell out of the ball at the end of the hat. It was a small gesture of hope, and one I wasn’t even sure he’d like. I didn’t want to make light of this very difficult Christmas in his life, but shoot, every Santa needs a hat.

So. Today, I gave him the hat.

I gave him the $2 grocery-store Santa hat with the tacky red velvet and the fluff that fell out of the ball.

You would have thought I gave him a puppy.

The boy’s eyes lit up. He couldn’t grab the hat out of my hand fast enough. He couldn’t settle down. He threw the hat on his head, adjusted it over his ears, and ran around the room yelling, “Merry Christmas!” to everyone he saw. He ran into the hall to show his friends. He ran back to high-five me. He beamed and he laughed and he spun around in circles over his grocery-store Santa hat.

He finally settled himself down and, after a few minutes, walked over to me. His eyes became glossy in the corners. He looked at his shoes and rubbed his foot over a piece of dirt. “Thank you,” he said as he looked up at me and nodded. He held my gaze and nodded again. Acceptance. Empathy. Compassion. They were unspoken emotions between us. An unspoken understanding about the power of the Santa hat. An unspoken acknowledgment that sometimes life is really hard, but these small moments give the courage to go on.

I believe in the magic of Santa this year. I believe in the power of his hat.

I believe it can return a boy to lost months of his childhood. I believe it can remind a person that they are cared for, and loved. I believe it can let a young boy know that he is not forgotten, he is still strong, and there are still moments of joy that are his for the taking. I believe Santa’s hat brings magic to those who wear it.

There will be days to come for this boy that are unbearable. There will be days when he can’t, or won’t, want to go on. There will be days without magic and luster and sparkle and shine.

But today was not one of those days. Today was a good day.

Today was a day for a Santa hat.

Hmm.

I have been reminiscing about my friend’s words that were spoken many years ago when I decided to stay on the East coast after college.  I have been remembering her encouragement, her positivity, and her voice in my head.  She wanted to remind me that I carry the spirit of “home” all the way from Colorado to the northeast tip of New England.  I remember her words. I remember them well.

They were nice words.  They were comforting words. But guess what I decided today?  Her words were wrong.

Home is a place.

Home is a place where there are purple mountains and fluffy snow and open space that stretches out for miles.

Home is a place where the skyline is not covered by trees, but open and exposed. A skyline that opens its arms out to you, as if heaven itself wanted to embrace you and invite you in.

Home is a place with a red kitchen, where my mom and sister and I move and chop and work and sauté.  It’s where my mom and I try new things and encourage my sister to just stick with what she knows (*wink).

Home is a place with a basement, where my brother will undoubtedly set up his new holiday tradition, where friends and neighbors and family members can just pack in and pack in and pack in.  At home, the basement never gets too full.

Home is where dogs run around and jump and lick and take up couch space.  Home is where you have to fight a lab for bed space, a seat in front of the fire, or a drool-less toilet seat.

Home is where we have to reset the internet because there’s too many computers for it to handle.

Home is where my bed is pushed up against a wall in such a way that my husband and I have to jump over the footboard to get into it.

Home is where we hang Grandma’s homemade hand-knit stockings, with each person’s name scripted in red or green yarn, and the frayed edges of Santa’s beard come off the side.

Home is where someone will always say something inappropriate at the dinner table.  Home is where we realize we are a family of over-sharers.

Home is the place where my insides soften, my oldest and best self comes onto the scene, and the inner turmoil and questions and over-analyzed east coast pace get stripped away.

Home is a place.

Home is physical.  It’s tactile.  It’s real and tangible and whole and moving.  Home is the bustling around of love.  Of bodies and smells and space that bring us back to reality over and over again.  Yes, home can be a feeling to bottle up and take with us.  But it’s the power of the place that makes the feeling.  It’s the power of the place that makes home something we can carry around in a purse or pocket or a plane seat.

Home is my place.

Home is my space.

Home is my family.

Home is my love.

Home is where I’m ready to be.

They are quietly talking, flipping through a packet of pages they received in class.  They point their fingers at their own papers, then criss-cross their arms to point out words on the other person’s page.  They underline.  They write.  They flip and turn and chatter.  Papers shuffle.  Fingers get all twisted.  Their voices get more animated.  I watch one boy’s eyes shift, left to right, as he scans the sentence his friend is telling him about.  He lights up when he sees the passage.  They stare at each other, and continue to talk quietly.  They continue like this for five more minutes.

Suddenly one calls me over.  They ask me to sit down with them, to discuss the story we read in class together.  I’m elated, and trying desperately to control the giddy teacher ready to burst out of me.

We sit and we talk.  Two teenage boys and me.  We talk about labels.  About identity.  About misperceptions and second chances and why people don’t stop to help out when they know they should.  We talk about how hard it is to bounce back from negative experiences.  We acknowledge that we’re not all as resilient as we’d like to think.

They’re young boys.

I’m older.

They wear baggy jeans and scuffed up sneakers that they draw on with Sharpies.

I am wearing black heels.

They have hair dangling in their eyes that neither bothers to wipe away.

My hair is back in a bun.

They ride skateboards and do trick jumps off of the bike racks in the front of our school.

I was never allowed on a skateboard.

They roll their eyes and smirk when they are told about something they “have to do.”

I am the girl who gets her work done before it’s due.

The boys and I couldn’t be more different.  We couldn’t be more opposite.  Our lives couldn’t be any more detached if we tried.

But here we sit.  Here we talk.  Here we make connections. Because kids are amazing.

Kids invite us to their table.  Kids risk vulnerability and insecurity and silly-ness and are bold enough to want to share and hear.  Kids teach me to stop and pause.  Kids teach me that there are still surprises left in life.  Just when I think I’m too old, or too teacher-esque – here are my students – asking me to come sit at their table.  Just when adults write them off and throw up our hands, they shock us with their poise.  With their maturity and innocence.  Here are my students – dispelling stereotypes and gender roles and prejudices, flipping eagerly through pages of a story and reflecting thoughtfully about what they’ve read.  Here are my students – two boys at the back of a classroom – discussing literature.  Their enthusiasm is almost palpable.  I can see their thoughts connecting like little wire ends being sparked together.  Their curiosity can’t be contained, and I feel like we could sit here all afternoon.

Every day does not always bring these unexpected moments.

Every day does not always remind me why I wanted to become a teacher.

But that’s what makes these days so special.

It is these days, these few and far between days, when I realize how truly remarkable these young minds are.

It is these days that I realize I am as much their student as I am their teacher.

My husband’s grandmother comes quietly into the kitchen, checking on her various Thanksgiving delicacies.  I watch the gentle gray wisps of her hair and her soft feathery hands as she works her loving magic over our meal.  My dish drying has slowed and I am watching her move, watching her tend to all the people and things she cares about most.  She catches my gaze, and does well to not make me feel silly.  She just smiles and rubs my arm.  ”I’m so glad you’re here,” she says.  And she is genuine, so incredibly genuine that I feel it spread all over my skin and curl under my toes and wrap me in a new lifetime of family and togetherness.  ”Me too,” I say back, and I place my hand on top of hers.

And there we are.  Someone else’s grandmother and someone else’s granddaughter and yet, she is mine and I am hers.  And I feel it.  I know it.  We’re joined together now.

Love can multiply.

Later in the weekend, we are at my husband’s parents’ house and I am talking to my mother-in-law in their kitchen.  We are talking about work and kids and education and I am suddenly overcome with a need to hug her.  So I do.  I let my arms go around her and my face bury itself into her shoulder and I’m so happy she’s here with me that I get a rim of tears in my eyes.  I feel her arms around me and I can smell her shampoo and I just never knew a mother-daughter love could exist like this.  I didn’t know family love could exist outside biological bounds.  I didn’t know her presence could nurture and rejuvenate me so much.  I didn’t know, standing there amongst the pots and the pans and the smell of gingerbread coffee, that I could find that kind of love.  Overwhelming, all-sustaining, come-as-you-are love.

I didn’t know love could multiply.

And then I’m back home, in my own house, and I’m looking at a picture of my sister’s pregnant belly.  It’s growing and she’s finally showing the world that there is a baby living inside her.  I am caught off guard by my tears.  I am caught off guard by the instantaneous joy.  She’s beautiful and the baby is beautiful and here comes this person who I will know for the rest of my entire life.

And this love, it just keeps multiplying.

Across homes and kitchens and car rides.

Across genetics and biology and blood lines.

Across states and airplanes and vacations that are never long enough.

Love multiplies.

It doubles and triples itself at the most opportune and surprising times.

It catches us in moments that take our breath away.

It finds us in ways we least expect it.

And when we think there isn’t enough, love keeps on growing.

Certainty about a job.

Certainty about my life’s calling.

Certainty about a place to live.

My apologies, college seniors who might be reading this.

I remember that feeling of stability in knowing that I was finally, finally going to get to go out into the world and do what I was made to do.  I was actually going to be the grown-up whose skin I’d been inhabiting since birth, and make my mark on the world.  It was more exciting for me than starting college. On that first morning drive to work, my adrenaline pumped faster than it had at any college parties or on any first dates.  I was so ready.  I was so certain.

But funny things happen along the way.  Certainty is an amazing gift, but the beauty of life is that we keep falling in love with it all over again.  And falling in love means changes and newness and antsy little wiggly feelings that get us excited and scared and nervous.  It sets us in motion.  It stares our certainty in the face, pushes it over like a schoolyard bully, and demands that we change our course of direction.  Falling in love with life means we are constantly seeing something new, something different, and we maneuver our way around in an awkward and strangely harmonious dance.  Falling in love isn’t boring.  So then, life is not meant to be boring.

Lately, I am watching my certainty get pushed around.  I am watching it get knocked over by new ideas and  a changing culture and the desire to keep growing.  I am wanting to leave stability behind.  I’m in a new season here, friends.  I am in unchartered territory.  My mind is playing games with me.  Dangerous, wild, destructively wonderful games about possibility and dreams and change.  My little blog makes me giggle inside.  My afternoons spent talking teenage drama with students makes me a tiny bit giddy.  Sitting on a sofa and having the opportunity to talk with college students brings my vocal range up a few notches.  Reading words, stunning life-altering words, and being able to talk about them – well, let’s just say I blush at the thought of it all.  There is so much to love.  I can’t possibly hold it in.

Where has my certainty gone?

Have my firmly fixtured feet lost their ground?

Do roots only come before wings?

I fall back on the still, small voice of one of the most beautiful literary characters I’ve ever met:

“There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient.”

Gilead,  Marilynne Robinson

I think I’m in the midst of discovering a new reason.

I don’t know what it is yet, but I hope it is sufficient.

Please Lord, may it be sufficient.

11.14.11

Dear Baby,

My house is quiet tonight.  It’s quiet, save for the gentle rhythmic rumble of stew on the stove and the tapping of my fingers on  the keys.  The stove light above my oven is the only thing turned on in the kitchen, and I’m sitting at the table, with a candle flickering, and thinking about you.  When the day fades away and everything gets put to rest, here I sit, daydreaming about what you will look like, the sound your voice will make, and who you will be.  I sit thinking about love and miracles and the way God breathes every bend of your fingers into existence.

I’m at my kitchen table with the soft light and warm candle-flame glow and I’m hoping that you’ll know one day that this is your home too.  I’m hoping one day, you’ll burst through my door without knocking, throw your backpack on the floor and grab a cookie from my jar without saying a word. I’m hoping you’ll kick off your elementary-school shoes and curl up on the couch with me, as if my couch was your couch and my home was your home.  I’m hoping you will recognize the feel of my floor beneath your socks, the smell of my “cuddle blankets,” and the power in knowing you belong to me too.

I hope the beat up scratches of my hand-me-down kitchen table have your marks too.  I’m hoping your crayons will slip onto its surface when we color together, your pencil shavings will get lodged into its grooves, and at some point you will write your name in permanent Sharpie under its surface.  I hope you brand yourself into this space, sweet little Baby, so that this place might be a haven for you too.

For now, the candle flame sways with just me at the table.  It flickers and dims, and every so often shines bright enough to illumine the handle on my front door.  The gold brass knob glows long enough for me to see your hand on that door, turning it slowly, about to peek your head through the crack in the opening.  I see you coming inside.  I see you smile.  I see the face of love I’ve been waiting so long to meet.

Oh, sweet little angel.  I’m so happy you’re here.

I love you, Baby.  I’m already praying for you.

Love,

Auntie L

She finally lets the heat fade from her face.  She looks at me and asks,

“why did you marry your husband?”

Oh.  Oh my, I think.  Why did I marry my husband?  There are ten thousand things and only one thing that come to mind at the same time.  There are a dozen reasons and yet only one.  Only one that really stands out, that brought me through a difficult first year of change, and into the wonderful calm of the second year.  There is one singular, precious truth that I continue to re-learn.  Why did I marry my husband?

Because I wanted to marry him every day.

When I come home from work and am grumpy and tired and feeling non-communicative – I’ll marry you.

When you forget to make the coffee in the morning like you said you would – I’ll marry you.

When you make me laugh just by giving me a look that only we know – I’ll marry you.

When you sit and listen to me talk about people and events you aren’t personally connected with – I’ll marry you.

When you have to try and work hard to articulate your own thoughts – I’ll marry you.

When you give me patience and grace when I really don’t deserve it – I’ll marry you.

When you forget to ask me the really important questions – I’ll marry you.

When you don’t think buying a rug is all that important in making our bedroom cozy – I’ll marry you.

When you make me stay on the east coast longer than I would like – I’ll marry you.

When you play your violin in the living room – I’ll marry you.

When you tell me I’m pretty and I feel embarrassed – I’ll marry you.

When you drive my car and the loss of control makes me feel really anxious – I’ll marry you.

When you remind me I’m smarter than I give myself credit for – I’ll marry you.

When you never forget to say you love me before I go to bed at night – I’ll marry you.

For this day, and for every day, I will learn and re-learn that love is a commitment, that love is a choice, that love reaches out and holds the hand of Grace in more ways than I ever thought possible.  Every day I will come to understand, even more, that the grass is only greener for those who don’t celebrate the amazing grass they’ve got.  No one spends time staring over the fence when their side has it all.  We love the one we’re with – it’s as simple as that.

Every day I’ll marry you.

I’ll say yes every time.

This day and every day, I choose you.

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,

Where your thoughts never think to wander,

This beginning has been quietly forming,

Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

~John O’Donohue~

(To Bless the Space Between Us)

In May 2012, my first niece or nephew will be born.  I have been writing letters to Baby.

10.4.11

Dear Baby,

I saw your picture for the first time today. Your mommy texted it to me, and so the first time I saw you was in the middle of my work day. It’s a good thing there weren’t any middle schoolers around because no teacher ever recovers from their students seeing them cry. And I cried.  For a while.

Your picture was a tiny little thing on a tiny little ultrasound that looked even smaller on my very tiny phone screen. You are a gray blur on an ultrasound screen, and it’s amazing what such a small little shape can do to the human heart. Mine is melting. I cry every time I look at your picture because I’m so overwhelmed that you’re going to be in my life. I did not know that you were missing until I realized you were going to be here. Your picture made that even more real for me, Baby. I can’t really imagine what your mommy and daddy were feeling today.

I’m sure right now you don’t have ears. You don’t hear sound or music or noises. And even if you did, you would probably just hear the sound of sloshing water from inside your momma’s belly. But just in case, just in case you can hear me, Baby, I wanted to tell you something special. Lean in close and focus really hard. Are you ready? Are you listening? I Love You. All the way across distance and states and plains and mountains – I love you. With goose-bumps and tears and hands stretched wide to tuck your fingers into mine – I love you.  Keep that with you and hold onto it while you grow. Let it wrap around you and keep you warm.  There will be more to give when you’re here.

Your uncle has a soccer game tonight. I hope you are cheering. I think you will grow up to like soccer.  And if I have anything to say about it, I think you’ll like poems too.

I love you, Baby.  I’m already praying for you.

Love,

Auntie L

*

The meeting begins.  I’m hopeful of what’s to come.  Colleagues mingle and shuffle and talk, and I’m eager to hear about the new direction we are moving in.  It’s a direction I’ve invested my time, energy, and emotion into, and it’s a direction that carries all of my professional passion with it.  I’m nervous for the response of my co-workers, but excited nonetheless.  If people like this idea, we’re starting something new.  It’s something I’ve had a hand in creating.  It’s something I’ve contributed to.  I feel like I’m about to make an impact.

The proposal is shared.  My ideas are discussed.  The response is mediocre – no one is adamantly for or against it.  It’s not a bad response.  It’s not a good response.  The room’s reaction is tepid.  Just lukewarm water, slowly dripping bead by bead from the faucet.

A friend asks me how it went afterward.  She gives me encouraging feedback, and it’s helpful.  It really is.  But I can’t come up with anything to say when she wants to know how I’m feeling.  I think there is a reaction buried somewhere in there, but I can’t find it.  Not yet.  It’s still waiting for me to dig a little deeper and find it, and I’m just not willing to do that today.  I don’t want to say anything.

*

Sometimes I forget my emotions are stacked on top of each other like Lego blocks.  I forget that the different pieces have different shapes and different colors.  I forget that not every peg has a hole to attach itself to.  I forget that sometimes my Lego tower gets put together in an imbalanced way, and is likely to tip over if I’m not careful with it.  I forget that it can’t always be deconstructed as quickly as it was built.

So today I’m choosing to just stare at my tower and not give it any feedback.  I’m just going to stare at the friends with the babies, the anxiety of the job, the fear and the uncertainty and the jealousy of it all, and give myself permission to not give it language.  I don’t want to talk today.  I don’t want to understand how I’m feeling.

I’d like, today, to turn off my phone and my television and my computer screen and close my eyes and rest.  I’d like to remember that God is God.  That God is good.  And there are days when it is okay to let His promises do the talking for me.

… have patience with everything unresolved in your heart
and to try to love the questions themselves
as if they were locked rooms or books written
in a very foreign language.
Don’t search for the answers,
which could not be given to you now,
because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is, to live everything.
Live the questions now.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

(Letters to a Young Poet, translated by Stephen Mitchell)

I’ve been asking tough questions lately.  Questions about love and faith and community and sharing God with others.  I’ve been asking questions about work and locations and exactly how long I will be living where I am.  I want to know how long it will take my greater church community to change their views on loving people.  I want to know when my husband and I will be able to move away from the East.  I want to know why my graduate work can’t move any faster.  And I want to know how I can spread my words wider than the margins of this blog.

The questions make me restless.  They make me restless because I can’t uncover the answers.  I have no definitive “yes” or “no” to fall back on, just a quiet and gentle prodding to continue what I am doing, where I am doing it.  This requires patience that I lack and a discipline I’m not always good at cultivating.

But this morning I got a little gift.  I was given a poem to read that put into perspective all of the things I am wrestling with and all of the unknowns I am trying to make knowable.

Live inside the questions.

Just live there.  Sit there.  Grab a blanket and hunker down on the sofa and let all the things I can’t explain or control take shape around me.  Forget the thought of forcing answers out of God and this life.  Forget the notion that those without answers are those without faith.  What is so scary about letting the questions exist with me, as a part of me?  If the questions aren’t going anywhere, and the answers have yet to be found, why don’t I just live inside of them for a little while?  Why don’t I grab my questions by the hand and take them with me on an afternoon run.  I can take them to work, I can take them to school, I can let my questions sit with me at the dinner table.  I do not always have to make them go away so soon.

In a quick-fix culture and a faith community that likes to have more answers than they do doubts, I am going to choose today to live inside my questions.  I will let them be, as they let me be.  Perhaps I will find answers some day, but perhaps not.  Perhaps faith is not always a journey of knowing God’s purpose, but chasing after His mystery.  Perhaps questions and doubts and unknowns are meant to be as powerful a part of life as the day we receive definitive answers.  Perhaps the growing occurs in the courage it takes to ask God  something…and simply just wait.

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