Held tight

Sunday afternoon. A fir tree is in the stand relaxing its branches and filling the living room with so much fresh pine resin I’m almost comatose. We ran out to a tree lot after church and I chose the second one we banged on the ground. Walked around it and I said, that’s it. I usually take so long looking at so many and I get so tense and confused by this silly little decision that I give up and grab the next one and don’t even notice it is worm-eaten on one side, with a broken tip and crooked trunk. But this one is perfect. The Vikings are kicking Chicago. And so, ya, I complained loudly last August when He signed. Being a capricious, adulterous fan, I now consider Favre my own. I can’t even remember, did he play for the Packers? Anita and I have put candles in all the windows. Denis is unusually chatty. A good day.

In all, a good weekend. We drove those eight hours north to the Canadian border and spent Thanksgiving with our son and daughter-in-law. Love them and their little house bursting with color, canned goods, and the sounds of children. (True, the sounds could be a collapse of desperate howling as easily as laughing. Not unique, hey?) They have a new little one – Ava Lou. She’s only two months old but already knows the most important maxim of life – it is much nicer to be held close in someone’s arms for hours on end than to lie cold and unprotected in a crib. Much nicer.

On Wednesday night we arrived in time to watch Anson at hockey practice, which is serious business up there. Although he can’t manage an upright side-scrape stop, (falling down and hitting the boards works for now) he skates with such fierce enthusiasm

it’s scary.

We didn’t eat the turkey on the big day. The only turkeys were the decorated cupcakes Micah made for the kids. It was pig and fish for us. Jerem deep-fried fresh walleye – nothing like it - and grilled a porketta roast. It’s an odd thing that the few Italians who settled up there long ago and are almost extinct now left behind a tradition of deboning and rolling a pork roast in so much garlic and spice you could smell my breath from the far end of the Metrodome. Micah made the rest of the meal – all good, but her bread. Give her flour and yeast and she will turn it to gold. I guess I did do the apple cranberry pie. Oh. And Denis did the olive cheese plate. All good.

Got home last night and we plan to stay put forever. Not leaving home again. Ever.

Where am I

Past three weeks. For five years Marsena’s been caring for The Great Aunt, almost 89, and she can’t do it anymore. Her margins are gone. Plus she needs to find work. Denis and I have been here now almost a month. Helping make decisions. We’re so grateful there’s a beautiful memory care place The Aunt loves – she’s been there for respite care and can’t say enough good about it. The food! The comfort! The staff! Alzheimer’s makes you look at someone you know and love and even though you tell yourself this is not the person she used to be, nor is it the person she will be someday, you still get heart-sick, worried, even annoyed and you hate like anything to get drawn into petty arguments and corrections about whatever and yet you do. Or at least, I have. In my head, anyway, I’ve told her off. Sorry.

Day before yesterday. It’s time to move to assisted care. AR is angry and terrified. Any kind of change has always been a phobic catalyst. In these later stages of Alzheimer’s it’s worse. She’s lost the ground of who she is and what she can do. She’s saying dreadful things about Marsena. Doesn’t want to see her again. Threatening to have her “agents” on the east coast rescue her. She wants to go back to Mass. She HATES Autumn Leaves. She doesn’t want to see anyone. Her heart is broken, ours, too. We haven’t found ways to comfort her. Sorting through the remainder of her things is sad. The accumulation of possessions – how they’re too much at the end of life. But perhaps this is inevitable even when you clarify and eliminate, there’s still stuff. The staff at Autumn Leaves are saying give time, give time. Transition sometimes takes a few weeks. We hope so, we hope so.

Yesterday. Watching the Vikings play. Ah, love that Brett. Denis is under an afghan and drinking coffee. Marsena is downstairs doing a little work on the apartment, it helps her to be busy. We’ll be helping with more of that tomorrow. Denis is feeling worse today, sadder. I’m better, so that’s good.

Today. When I’m sick with a bad cold I drown in hot lemon tea with honey, so soothing. Today Psalm 103 is lemon honey. God’s love: forgives, heals, redeems, crowns with love and compassion, satisfies, works righteousness, justice, is great, from everlasting to everlasting. Praise for the soul. Praise for God. Haven’t seen The Aunt for three days, the staff advised letting her settle in first. We pray and pray.

Later. I went for the first visit. I'm scared. I observed her a moment, watching her in a comfy chair, her feet up, watching TV with others, (something none of us could do all day, which annoyed her no end). I saw her laugh. When I touched her, she looked up and beamed, “I was praying someone would come by to cheer me, and here you are! Where’s Marsena?!”

Port Grim, Tasmania

I was deeply interested by the contrasts in this BBC news report, and the inexplicable, unpredictable response of humans. It seems there is a question to be asked: what explains or predicts human happiness? Can one be “happy” in a poisonous environment? Obviously, yes. I love clean air and pure water and think I can’t live without it, but perhaps we need exuberance, human laughter, shared community more than a perfect atmosphere?

Leaving. Leafing?

After days of rain and gray and even a day in which four inches of snow fell last week, (it’s all melted now) the sun has made the trees on our street blaze with glory. In a strange letting go the above maple tree often drops all its leaves at once. On a windless day in less than three hours it can cover everything beneath it with a layer of radiant yellow. I marvel every time and Denis and I yell at each other to COME LOOK! Then the tree recedes to gray to dead black for winter. Until one day in March, or maybe April, we will waken and notice what didn’t seem to be there just the day before, the faintest haze of color, a sort of burgundy from thousands of buds that wakened while we slept, and then we realize they were sneaking up on us, resting, growing all the while.

Denis has been in Lake Zurich for a week staying with our daughter and Aunt Ruth. I’m going to them tomorrow, hoping to bring a bit of “home” with me. It’s been a hard week with unwelcome sorrows for them. What am I saying? Is sorrow ever welcome? It’s during such times, even though I reject the prosperity gospel, I’m most tempted to pray that God will bring health, wealth, and personal happiness to our immediate family and everyone I love. But in countless ways I’ve found this to be not the pattern or desire God has in mind for us. Again and again, God comes to us in the wilderness, when things look dead or dying, when we are without hope or a way forward, he comes saying, I am your “hiding place from the wind, a shelter from the storm, like streams of water in a dry place.” And as if all this comfort is not enough, and in case we don’t really GET it: He ends with, to you I’ll be “like the shade of a great rock in a weary land.” (Is. 32:2) It fascinates me that each of these scenes represent precarious, uncertain, life-sucking, unwelcoming places. So we turn to Him certain, that in our own sinful and saddened dispositions we will find shelter and hope, and it may not be the kind of shelter or rescue we expect, but we keep reminding ourselves that one day, one day, everything will be restored to the glory God intended for it to have. Just like that maple tree that is fiercely blazing its heart out my window today. Only, it’ll be forever. I like that.

Insect invasion

Thanks everyone for tips on getting rid of fruit flies. We tried the plastic bag with mashed fruit, but the flies didn’t want to get in there. The overturned slightly propped up glass dish with a bit of bait underneath attracted a few, but transferring the flies to a killing field without losing them was too much for me. Obviously, the funnel and jar was a bust. Someone suggested a can of cheap beer mixed with detergent - the soap breaks the surface tension so when their little feet hit the liquid they are just sucked right in and quickly drown. That was the trigger. I’ve seen how they love red wine, the little drunken sots. So instead of beer, I just poured the wine in a glass, added a squirt of detergent, and it worked. I sent dozens and dozens of flies to their graves. It’s over now, anyway. The weather is cold and they have disappeared.

It’s probably some other kind of cosmic justice that made me feel a tickle under the sleeve of my shirt the other day. Thinking my nerve ends were a little jumpy, I scratched. A few seconds later, again, a sensation like tiny feet running up my arm. Then something pinched me hard. That's when I knew it was no nerve end. A bug was crawling around inside my sleeve. Screaming, I threw my shirt off in the living room, not caring about anything except salvation from the creepy thing that was biting me. I know Denis thinks I’m totally crazy, and was glad it was only the two of us. I ran upstairs and shook out my shirt over the bathtub and an EARWIG fell out. It BIT me with its ugly dangerous pincers. I KNEW it. I forced myself to pick it up in a tissue, squeeze it to death and I took it back to show Denis. I made him look because even though he said he believed me, I knew he didn’t. And there it was.

I’m glad I don’t know any state secrets, cuz if threatened with earwigs, cockroaches or centipedes I would tell all and not be sorry.

"The Scent of Slow"

Today this arrived in my inbox. I'd almost forgotten that I'd written it and when it came, I read it again almost as if I didn't know the author or remember that fine quote from C.S. Lewis. Comment is a weekly on-line (and print) magazine aimed at this generation of students, but appreciated by a much wider audience. It is published by Cardus, a Canadian think tank. Go here to figure out why they'd include my voice among artists, scholars, and professionals of one sort or another. Perhaps I fit their desire to "integrate the broad wisdom of the biblical narrative of brokenness and restoration." If so, I'm humbled and honored to be among them and to dialogue with this generation of college and graduate students.

Infested

Fall is really here. I know because this week the population of fruit flies in our kitchen has multiplied to desert sandstorm levels. I can’t approach the sink unless I have a kerchief tied around my face to keep from breathing the little devils. Denis is really aroused by them and has been trying to erect little killing stations. Last night he had an inch of red wine (why not since they’ve been diving in and drowning themselves in droves) in a wine glass covered with a piece of press and stick plastic wrap with a tiny hole punched in the top. On my last check before bed I noted they weren’t finding their way in so I set up a trap with an old kitchen funnel. That didn’t work either because the aluminum funnel was dinged and bent from years of banging around in the utensil drawer. Why do I keep it? Well, you never know when you might need to pour a bottle of almond extract into a teeny jar. Okay. I don’t know! I threw away three garlic presses last year. Anyway, the funnel didn’t fit tight to the rim of the jar and they flew in, drank and laid eggs and did whatever fruit flies do and then crawled out. This morning there was only one fly floating in wine. Denis was again, quite agitated and sensing I might be embarrassed if some important person stopped by and choked on flies. He doesn’t seem to be aware that every one I know and respect doesn’t take out the garbage every other second or pour bleach down the disposal ten times a day or keep a toothbrush from air drying in the bathroom (that’s where they hung out last year, and I agree it’s a little sick), well then if you’re like me in October you’re going to have fruit flies. But anyway, Denis was rigging up another system and this time he found a larger funnel made of plastic (no dings, still smooth, kept in case of need to siphon cider vinegar from bathtub to gallon jug) and decided he remembered I used mashed banana bait a long time ago. (I must have 20 frozen bananas in the freezer waiting for inspiration) So, banana mixed with red wine, a funnel, jar, plastic wrap. Last check: two drowned, one swimming, one crawling, one thousand sitting on sink, sill, and stove.