going gray

I have this sprinkling of gray hairs dotting along my forehead.  Mostly, I don’t even know they’re there.  My natural hair color tends somewhere between strawberry blonde and auburn, and it’s easy to see how these could blend in.  But they catch me by surprise when I am close enough to a mirror to see them.  Mostly, I don’t feel that I could possibly be old enough for gray hairs.  Mostly, I feel as though I’m just playing at this house thing, and that I’m still sixteen and dreaming big.  Mostly, I just think those hairs are nothing but a little highlight from the sun.  But really, these hairs are not just a little lightened.  Really, they are gray.  And when I see those gray hairs, I’m jolted back to reality.  I am not sixteen — I am twice that.

We had workers in our house for a few days installing our new furnace and air-conditioning.  They were courteous guys, good natured and understanding when my kids asked questions about their work.  And then when they needed to tell me something, there it came: “Ma’am? I’d like to show you how to use your new thermostat.”  Ma’am?  Me?   I guess so.  I still feel like I should get carded for buying a bottle of wine.  But instead, I am burping a babe on my shoulder, dragging around a toddler wrapped around my leg, following this work man into the hallway to listen to him explain our new thermostat.  Yes, I guess ma’am fits.

It can surprise me, too, when so many of the professional people I deal with during a day happen to be my age, too.  The insurance agent, the representative from the bank.  The dental hygienist, the teachers at school.  We are leading our communities, we are contributing in meaningful ways to our world.  This work is no longer done by those of a distant generation, but now it is my generation at the helm.  Instead of looking up to those who are older, I see now that somehow I am old enough to shoulder this responsibility.  I am trusted.

Some days it is hard to believe that I’m old enough to be called an adult; that I bear the responsibility of a 30 year fixed rate mortgage, a car that needs regular oil changes and three tiny people that call me “Mommy.”  Somewhere along the way I went from imagining what that adult life would be like to actually living this grown-up life.  It creeps up on you, doesn’t it?  There is a bumper sticker I’ve seen, usually fixed on a minivan full of kids driven by a parent my age, that reads “I used to be cool.”  Now, I’m not sure if I ever embodied cool, but the sentiment is still the same: I am no longer that which I once was.  And in so many ways, that is a good thing.  I no longer wear mismatched socks; I no longer think my voice needs to be the loudest to be heard. I might not know the cool songs on the radio any more, but I have learned that that’s ok.  I have learned the grace of an apology, and the value of good, hard listening. These are things that I have gained through the years.

And I bear these well–earned years in my body, too. The gray hairs at my temples.  The crows feet (or dare we call them laugh lines?) at the crinkly corners of my eyes.  The bags under my eyes.  I can’t say that I wear it all well, but it is a badge of honor to recognize the work of these years.  Yes, I am tired.  Tired like I could never have understood at the age of sixteen.  Do you remember being a teenager and sleeping until noon?  I do.  But this kind of tired I have now is hard earned, and when my head does finally hit the pillow at night, I can close my eyes satisfied at the work of my days.

I know that these gray hairs will multiply, and eventually I’ll have to decide what to do about them.  I won’t be able to tuck them behind my ear forever. For now, though, I’ll  casually refer to them as my natural highlights.

 

life, unexpected

Facing full into the force of the wind-wave of life, unexpected the staccato movements of ordinary are swept up, and with it our tidy anticipation of things to come.

***

It was a routine service check-up for our furnace.  But when the technician with the rough hands and the darkened fingernails told us of the crack, the leak, and with concern for our Littles, pulled the plug on our heat, we gave thanks for the sun and the rare March warmth.  75* and windows flung wide gave heat enough to our home, and days passed as we looked this unexpected in the eye.  Naive of us, maybe, we knew that our system was old, but we had trusted it to noisily chug on for almost forever.  People talk of “emergency money” and “reserves” for just this thing, of course, but our reality has much more to do with groceries and school bills, new clothes for the always growing Littles and our life has been full of little emergencies.  So it is that life, unexpected again is at our feet, and we choose how we respond.  We sign the dotted line, take our two-years interest free, and hope this warmth lasts until they can get it done.

The leaves, dry and brittle, whip against the window.  The air cuts through the cracks between window glass and aged wood, whistling in to my space.  Last week I peeled off layers of clothing, checking my calendar against the sweat and the sun.  The unexpected warmth sent me scrambling.  I pitched baskets of clothing in strong attempts to unearth a t-shirt or two for Littles, cursing my unorganized self and again bewildered by the sudden growth of these babes. I shrugged my shoulders at the realization that no thin cotton pajamas in this house would fit these long limbed bodies.  Today, though, I force sweatshirts over shoulders, fleece blankets wrapped tight to ward off the chill of the wind. Though it is brisk, it is familiar and expected as March shakes its lion’s mane.  And today, I am thankful for those workmen, Rob and Tom, banging and clanging in my basement, replacing that sixty year old furnace and creating heat once again for my babes.  Tonight, the weatherman predicts 28*.

***

Sunday sighed weary towards Monday, and I resigned to the unknown ups and downs and around the bends of Mark’s working schedule this week.  We had pizza with wine, catching the news from friends missed while little ones wore each other weary.  We said our g’nights too late, and piled drowsy bodies into the station wagon, headed home.  Home, though, was dark and quiet, no electric hum  to illuminate our path.  Life, unexpected, and with no clear explanation of a storm or accident, our house stood still, without power.  Strangely, too, we had no way of even getting into our house: garage door can’t budge, chains lock our front door from within and an odd assortment of the wrong sorts of keys can’t open the back.  We turned back, u-turned to tuck tired babes into bed with friends, brainstorming our next move.

***

I claimed another number to my years, and I became 32 with barely a voice, my throat scratched and parched, my head feeling the vice’s pinch.  Life, unexpected - who wants to be sick on their birthday? My only wish was to sleep, to stay in bed and not get out.  And thus it was granted, and my 22 year-old self would have laughed, but I snuggled in deep.  And though it was quiet, I was celebrated with homemade birthday cards, tender kisses, and these Blessings with two feet and runny noses, laughter contagious and silly faces.

Sometimes the best memories come at us in moments of unexpectation: the mind-photo I now have of the Eldest and Middlest, tucked into one big bed, her legs thrown over his body, and then being midnight-scooped up to head back to our home, our dog.  Upside down days filled with daytime Daddy-play.  The unexpected life carries moments to trust in the provision of God, and loved ones.

This life, unexpected, trains us to bend to the pressure of the wind, the cold, the necessary, so that we don’t snap.  We practice staying agile so as not to grow brittle and break.

{this moment}

{this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. ~inspired by SouleMama

this {my story}

Today started all wrong.  It looked right — the little ones all slept pretty well, relatively.  Aided by the overcast sky and the darkened morning, the bigger kids even slept longer.  Mark, home for the morning because of his night shift work beginning tonight, graciously let me sleep an extra hour.  But sometimes even when it looks right, it adds up wrong.

All morning our rhythm didn’t match; callously bumping into one another, stepping on toes that seemed to appear out of nowhere, voices silenced by inefficient ears.  It took till naptime to uncover my ills: I was, of course, stressed about working my own night shift without Mark’s help.  We did talk it out, patch things up, but the damage was done: the morning was gone.

None of this is very significant.  Our day was no more dramatic, no less daily, because of the mess that we made of it.  But these are the glasses I put on today; this is the way I saw it.  While the grand swoop of the story of my life may look wide and deep by the end of it all, it is merely this: lego-stacked minutes, the daily commune, shifted and built higher and stronger.

This, though – this extra hour of morning grace, this warm oatmeal breakfast, this Hess truck filled with toy trains pushed hard through doorways, this mama snuggle of warm breath and skin. This command to get dressed! Use your words! Say please! This walk in misty rain down sidewalks, one more store, chain of hands stretched person to person.  This play-doh mess of one more ball, one more blueberry pancake.  This voice, too loud and shrill, and one softer and still. This walking and bouncing and singing and tapping, this crying and crying and crying.  This smile! Oh, this smile.  This is all it is, and everything it is.  And sometimes, when it looks all wrong, it adds up right. 

we’re sisters; we share

My younger sister and I are just shy of two years apart in age.  My love for her is fierce and refined by years of sisterly struggles: we are oh-so-different and still so  much the same.  Being close in age has had great benefits.  We shared clothes, cars and friends. We were, and are still, built-in playmates, and though drama could always be just around the corner, my stronger memories are those of laughter and friendship.

We each had our own bedroom in my parents’ house growing up.  They were side by side in the square-shaped upstairs hallway, each with tall windows looking out into the backyard with the creek and the woods beyond.  There was a time, maybe when I was around 12 years old or so, when our beds shared a wall, each butted up from within our private spaces.  This shared wall became our sacred space, a space of friendship. That paper thin layer of drywall and spackle was just a thin veil between us, and her presence just a few inches from me was palpable.

My favorite part of this arrangement was our intricate knocking code.  It didn’t take long before one of us would tap on the wall trying to get the other’s attention.  But we would still have to breach the boundary, clamber into the hallway to be further understood.  We couldn’t spend our time shouting at each other through closed doors, trying to be heard.  We needed a system, a way send a message, and even better if could be covert.  Little by little our knocking code grew.  One knock to say “hello.”  Two knocks to say “goodnight.”  Six knocks to say “Turn on the radio!”  A hand scribbled list was taped on the wall by my pillow with each number clearly documenting a corresponding message.  The list grew as we thought of more things that we wanted to say: this list is iconic of the things that were important to our preteen selves.  Number 22: “help!”  This became a joke as we grew older, laughing at both our naive placement of this message, and the difficulty that we could have counting twenty two knocks — wait, was that 21 or 22?  She might just be telling me that the phone is for me.

Another message that developed for us a few years later was “We’re sisters; we share.”  I know that this line came out of a family vacation, but I’ve since lost track of it’s particular origin (TSC, do you remember?) This, though, has stuck around, quoted on birthday cards and thank you notes, and it’s one of the things that I find to be most true about sisterhood.  Of course even siblings have different experiences within family, both because we are different people and because we were at different stages of life with each family episode.  But we each, alone, were there for those episodes, together.  We shared those experiences.

Even though Mark might be familiar with the well-worn folkloric stories of my childhood, it is all just second hand to him.  With my sister, it is part of her story, too.  We are woven so deeply into the making of ourselves.  My sister is the one who is witness to my history: she was there when my jelly-shoe fell off my child-foot, sailing down the creek, and one of the neighbor boys saved it for me.  Together we sang and danced in countless basement shows for our parents.  We both carry the guilt of dressing up our cats and parading them around in baby  doll strollers.  These stories add up to mark my history, an arrow pointing towards my life now. My sister shares in this narrative that anchors my life. We continue to share a wall, knocking into this sacred space of each other’s lives.

“We’re sisters; we share.”
p.s. i love you.