There's a game I play on hopelessly lonely days . . . on the this isn't how it was supposed to be days . . . on my what have I done and this isn't my life days . . . it's a game I play only to get me through one day and into the next . . . when joy might come in the morning.

If this is not you, then stop reading (really . . . I know some of you and you're fabulous . . . carry on). For the rest of you, let's play. It's called The What Have I Lost Game . . .

First I do a brutal assessment . . .

I lost my keys when I was already late. I lost my courage and then I lost a friend when I found it again. I lost my child in a department store for five minutes and then forever when I lost my temper. I lost my phone in a toilet and my way in the darkness for a season. I lost my composure in a crowded room and my mind in the middle of July. I lost my own dare and my dignity and another damn job. I lost my innocence early and before I could recover it, I lost my youth. I lost years trying. I lost a dream or two . . . I lost opportunities to be who I might have been because I listened to lies . . . because I stayed to long and hoped too hard. I lost my will at the bottom of a pretty glass and my strength in the eighth mile. I am lost in a lifetime of failure and regret . . . and a million missed chances to make it right. I lost my voice when a scream might have saved me. I lost and I lost and I lost.

When I'm all done . . . When I've almost hung myself on the honesty (because it's my gift to myself) . . . I think about what I have left . . . I break it down.

I have today and the things the world can never take back . . . things I couldn't give away if I tried. Some things are impossible to lose.

I have lifted up a child in the darkness of a night . . . And many in the darkness of a world . . . I have led in love and have been loyal to the end. I have refused to look away from pain simply because it's uncomfortable. I have gone the extra mile when I was already tired. I have loved til it hurts . . . and loved the unlovable because true love isn't always easy love. I have done the hard things . . . taken the road less traveled. I have found my gift and used my words for good. I have prayed for the patience and compassion that don't come easy for me and I can own the wisdom of a very old woman that has followed me from a child on my better days. I can lift my chin and I can lift my hands with the promise that joy will roll me over when I least expect it.

I win the game. I get up. I am found. Every. Single. Time.

It's June . . . a blue June. We're only half-way through and I am coming undone . . . remembering how my year was supposed to go. I began it looking over the top of a mountain . . . in confident anticipation that I was more than ready for the journey down . . . and then spent the next three hours in a humble tumble to the bottom. I should have read the signs.

​At the end of December, we gathered at Keystone, Colorado -- my daughter, two sons-in-law, my husband and me -- and rode the gondola so high up into the sun that our lungs ached and we were dizzy.  And we were already a motley crew in terms of ski-ready. Three of us had never skied. Two of us imagined naively that a little experience thirty years ago might offset our age (one of us may have been slightly smug about it). We were in various stages of novice. A mish-mash of rented equipment. Ill-fitting apparatus. Not enough layers. One of my son-in-law's skis kept flying off. There had been no ski pants in stock that  fit me, so I wore two layers of running pants.

​Even so, the five of us spent the next five hours bonding and mastering the slopes. We found our ski legs . . . leaned into our happy places . . . perfected our S curves. We flew side by side, swooshing into the blue and squinting into the sun, exhilarated and impervious to the cold. We dared big  . . . flew mightily off the snow into the trees and laughed one another back on track. We ventured off on our own and gathered back together to glove high fives and share victories. We wanted to stay in that feeling forever.

Indeed, after four hours, we had conquered the bunny hill. 

Our ski instructor informed us then that, collectively, we were ready to advance to the gently inclined and easy winding slope that would lead us to our first lift and back around. We did this twice with no incident. We were rock stars. And then, with no warning, it ended. We looked towards the western sun sinking slowly behind the next mountain over as the instructor said good-by. She told us that her job was done and that this particular slope -- the very one that had turned us all into real skiers -- would be closing down. And also, she wouldn't recommend that we try anything else (cue the plunky-melodious sound of disbelief and disappointment -- but we were so good . . . weren't we?).

She took our picture and left. We stood there, the five of us, shuffling our skis, and looking sideways at each other. We were all thinking the same thought: we weren't done. It was my very own daughter who suggested it . . . it was one of my proudest moments . . . and there have been many . . . she pointed us toward a "green run" that ran parallel to the bunny slope. Green runs, we had learned, were the easiest. How hard could it be (even if the instructor, in her tutorial, had mentioned that there just might be a "few" blue sections involved)? United in our rebellion and lust for more adventure, we charged forward, ignoring the sign imploring us to think it over: Are You Ready?

​The thing about a giant slippery hill is that once you've stepped into it . . .  . . . you can't go back. Even if you haven't fully committed, but unwittingly put your body over the line to check out the terrain . . . it's too late. You can try to shuffle-claw your way back up, but ultimately you're only going to keep sliding back down in exhaustion. The journey down becomes your destiny. Looking back, I'm not sure any of us actually gave it that much thought. We just stepped off that ledge . . . one after another . . . like giddy sheep. It was probably better that way.

​Because it was beautiful . . . lovely. We were all as good as we'd imagined, rocking that first gentle cotton wave from side to side . . .  

for about a minute and a half.

I watched my daughter go down ahead of me . . . tumble tumble . . . and then my son-in-law . . . tumble . . . one ski flew off, sailing into oblivion. Poor things, I thought, just before I went pin-wheeling through the air towards them. As so it began. Ski Ski Tumble. Ski Tumble. Ski Tumble Tumble. For me, at least, my ratio of skiing to tumbling grew progressively worse. Stephen was doing considerably better than I was. Having had at least half a dozen ski experiences thirty years ago to my mere two, he was managing to stay upright most of the time. But being my husband and all (the children had long disappeared from sight, as children will), he was a dutiful hostage to my demise. The problem was that I simply didn't have the skills to sustain the speed that came with that green-blue slope that went down, down ever mercilessly for 3.5 miles. But it was too late. It was crash or ski. I crashed away!

​It's how I live my life. I tend to jump into things . . . hard things . . . sometimes dangerous things . . . without thinking them all the way through. I might be okay with that. Overthinking, I reason, tends to kill spontaneity. It might just kill me someday . . . but dying in a freefall and learning as I go is a much better prospect than dying on my couch. From this I cannot be dissuaded.
​​
​And so I went crashing down, down the mountain at the end of a December. At first, I was undeterred, popping back up into the beauty and exhilaration of the mountain and the moment. By and by, though, I realized that my upper body strength had not kept up with my running legs. Each time I went down, it became harder and harder to get back up. I could feel my strength waning in every struggle. I was not alone . . . that meant everything and nothing at all . . . everyone who knows anything knows that you're on your own when trying to upright yourself after you've gone over the side of a mountain. Anyone who tries to help you risks being pulled down with you. I began to question my decision to be where I was  . . . question my wisdom . . . my sanity. Until I got up again.

​Up was glorious. Up was powerful and beautiful and could make me forget. Over and over, in a mighty effort to Just. Stay. Up. I'd find myself splashed across the snow again.

​Once, as I managed to pull myself up and was well on my way to forgetting again . . . I heard a whoosh and a thud behind me. When I looked back, my husband was lying flat on his back where I had just been. He had been taken out, legs blasted right out from under him by a reckless snowboarder who come up over the last slope like a bat out of Hell frozen over. All because he wouldn't leave me. I was horrified. He lay there, eyes glazed over, staring up at the stars, the snowboarder peering over him, repeating Dude . . . Dude . . . You okay, man? and me unable to slide back up to him. Was he dead? I think we were all wondering. He was not.

I imagined that would be my lowest point until what happened a few minutes later when I skied sideways right into the netting that served as marker and barrier to the edge of the slope. And this time, my skis became tangled in the netting. In my thoroughly exhausted and recently traumatized state, I struggled mightily in what seemed like a hopeless endeavor. As soon as I would manage to extract one ski from the netting, I would foolishly and instinctively try using the other skied foot as leverage to kick the remaining foot free thereby tangling both skis  all over again. In my defense, it had been at least seven hours since I'd had anything to drink . . . longer since breakfast.  I was exhausted, dehydrated, and bordering on delirium. And here my lack of ski pants chose this exact moment to haunt me. I realized I could no longer feel my ass. 

And that's when it happened.

Like an angel of light, we heard first . . . and then watched the headlight of an ATV coming up over the ridge to illuminate the night. It was a four wheeler pulling a wagon . . . with a little boy happily riding inside. And as I watched from my vertical position and it slowly began to motor past us . . . descending almost as in slow motion (my brain was fuzzy) . . . it began to dawn on me  . . . THAT'S a rescue vehicle. And I need to be rescued! And it slowly came to a stop and I heard voices as if from inside a bubble. One said Everything okay? And the other said, Yeah, we're good. Just resting. And before I could gather my wits about me, I watched the back of that little boy's head . .. all safe and warm and happy and rested . . . chug away in that wagon and disappear around the next snowy bend in the road. You bastard! I screamed incredulously in my own head . . . I could have been safe and warm . . . resting . . . and headed down the mountain right next to that little boy . . . YOU BASTARD (I was LIVID in my head and would have screamed it out loud if I hadn't thought I had killed the traitor a few minutes before) . . . YOU LET HIM GET AWAY!

And then I came to my senses. I forgave him. I found my perspective . . . my resolve. I watched the lights of that four wheeler disappear around the next bend and I realized THAT was not the story I wanted to be telling on some distant December. THAT would not be my story. . . the safe path . . . the easy way. I was coming undone, but I was coming alive again. I untangled myself. Got up. And saved myself. I would do it as many times as I needed to climb down that mountain.

​And to be sure, there were moments of redemption in the deepest parts of the struggle . . . bliss, even. Stories I want to tell and moments that supercede the doubt, the exhaustion, the pain . . . In a moment of struggle bordering on sheer panic . . . Will I die up here? Freeze to death in the snow right at my husband's feet under a million stars and God? I heard a divine voice as close to anything audible I've ever heard.

Stop. He commanded. Just STOP. Be still. Look UP. Listen. I could do nothing else. I sat up, my skis askew, resting on my frozen ass, and I looked up. I hadn't noticed a mountain peak looming over the curved path just above me, purple-black and outlined against the distant celestial lights. It was so close I thought I might reach up and touch it. The throngs of skiers had long since thinned, stretched to create a desolation . . . a quiet serenity all around us. It was so still, I could hear the gentle winter at my ears. In my frantic struggle, I had been missing the most ethereal beauty. The snow beneath me glistened. The darkest hunter green of the pines crept to the very edges of the sea of white expanse to insulate the way down. The very sky above reached down descending in a Heavenly whisper. Everything suddenly felt safe. I heard it . . . breathed it in and felt my strength begin to renew. Be still and know that I am God.

​Around that curve, a final stretch of narrowed path glowed under green lights, throwing shadows of the majestic pines that reached upward to the moon. The run had plateaued to just a slight decline, and for the next fifteen minutes, I perfected a flowing S curve, my husband so close behind me I could almost hear him breathing. We glided along like that, together, silently, toward the lights of the ski village where our children waited for us.

​And just as we approached, me in breathless exultation and anticipation of the victory story I would tell . . . there was a dip that dropped down suddenly into an open expanse . . . and I went tumbling and crashing down again. When I got up, we made out under the stars just beyond the lights of the city.

​My daughter and I compared war stories a few minutes later . . . and we both agreed. Some sadistic bastard had built in that last dip on purpose. We're pretty sure there's a camera somewhere with a notched pole for tally marks.

In this blue June I will remember a day at the end of December when I climbed down a mountain and rescued myself. 

​ps I went back to Keystone a few days later with my brother and overheard a rumor that Schoolmarm is the longest ski run in the entire state of Colorado. Hey, I did that. Just saying;)

I wrote the following one day for a friend who had suffered a terrible tragedy . . . But I've kept it posted . . . first on my refrigerator, like a child's milestone of discovery . . . and then transferred to my vision board . . . Because it's who I want to become this year.

It's a reminder for me on those days . . . in those times when things fall apart in the microcosm of a single moment . . . when I imagine a catastrophe that's not  . . . when I've underestimated one that comes hurling back at me like a boomerang on a random Tuesday in June . . . or when there's just no mistaking the soulshatter . . .

​In the worst of these (and they're coming for all of us) I want to remember that being human is to open our hearts to the pain  . . . to agree to the suffering because we understand there is something better on the other side of it . . . to know that what we do with the pain might be the key to our own or someone else's heart and healing . . .

​And so I begged, stole, and borrowed to write . . .

Dearest Friend,

​On my very last day I found a note with this key waiting for me when I arrived home . . . As I pass it along to you, I'm reminded that it's not what happens to us that makes us brave, but what we do after . . . when the shock and grief and awe have the power to paralyze . . . and after, when it's only necessity that pushes us forward, and we find, like a discovery, that necessity is still important to us . . . and after . . . when we look for joy and purpose and other things that had lost their importance at a place in time . . .

​For your worst days . . .

​Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones, and when you have laboriously conquered your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.
~ Victor Hugo

​On your better days . . .

​"Go back?" he thought, "No good at all! Go sideways? Impossible! Go forward? Only thing to do! On we go!" So he got up and trotted along with his little sword held in front of him and one hand feeling the wall and his heart all of a pitter and a patter.
~J.R.R. Tolkien

​And on those days when your courage overtakes and exhilarates . . .

​I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had the courage to go forth into its expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils.
​~ Charlotte Bronte'

​My friend, I am inspired that you've arrived at this place. Go forth with adventure and a lion's heart.

​p.s. Keep the key. I have one for both of us.

In watching the annual TV coverage of the Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery this morning, I'm remembering how this place took hold of my soul a very long time ago . . .

​On a 7th grade class field trip to Washington DC, Arlington was a compulsory part of our educational itinerary . . . along with a tour of the White House, the Lincoln Memorial, the Smithsonian Institute, and a few  other vague and hazy stops. I remember the austere sterility of the White House, standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with friends and looking out over The Mall, and the incongruity of a pair of Ruby Red Slippers displayed behind glass in the Smithsonian (oh, the whimsy of American history) . . . but over the years and all these years later, Arlington National Cemetery is what I remember most with vivid clarity . . .

​There were neat rows  -- rows and rows of bone-white epitaphs stretching out in every direction . . . great lines of marbled, uniform tombstones , intertwined between pink cherry blossoms and stretched infinitely for miles and miles over hills and valleys.  Old soul that I was, even as a thirteen year old girl distracted by thirteen year old girl preoccupations (think bashfully holding hands with the thirteen year old boy beside me on the tour bus and pondering what I would wear for the hotel dance later),  I was able to disengage from the adolescent chatter to internalize the sobriety of where I was -- the significance.

It was terrible, beautiful, and tragic. These people died for me, I thought. Thousands and thousands . . . maybe millions of men died, sacrificed their lives, so that we -- I -- could be free and red, white, and blue.

It was a simple, noble, and enduring concept. I don't remember how quickly my thoughts turned back to the shy hand-holding, but those haunting rows of glory white sacrifice had become a part of me.

​On a different day in a different season . . . I had thought that the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier Ceremony had made a lesser impression. But when -- over three decades later -- we had opportunity to be in Washington DC to watch our daughter run the Marine Corps Marathon, I told my husband, an Air Force veteran with a patriotic soul "You have GOT to see this" . . . as if I'd been there yesterday . . .

​It was October 31st in 2011. The entire east coast had been blasted overnight out of quintessential Autumn and had awakened to a skyfall of snow. By late afternoon, it had turned to a cold onslaught of steady sleet. We stood under an umbrella, under the heavy patter and amidst the blowing leaves. It was cold . . . bitter, bone cold. But we stood in that sobering cold in reverent silence with a hundred other patriots and watched the faithful sentinels step in cadence without flinching, watched the soldier transfer his duties to the next soldier, listened to the haunting melody of Taps . . .

and have never been so moved to understand the sacrifices of the men that lay beneath those tombstones . . . have never since been so thankful and honored to brace ourselves against the cold.

​Since 1937, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier has been honored and guarded uninterrupted, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The dogwoods are blooming.

The lilacs, the redbuds, cherry and apple blossoms have burst onto our scene. Spring is in a full bloom of color and I'm chasing it like it might never happen again . . . trying not to miss it.

It's important to think this way. I learned this lesson some years back when I woke up one hapless late November morning and realized I had missed Autumn. Completely missed it. I had been slogging through the annual education grind of data analysis and reading assessments and equitable grouping and the training of new teachers. Then one morning the trees were bare and I wondered, When did that happen?

I had missed the first cooling breezes of a balmy Michigan summer for the late hours of an air conditioned office in Detroit. I had missed the magenta morning skies against flaming trees and ignored the wind-blasted, sideways gusts of golden poplar leaves across highways as I phoned home my guilty ETA. I had missed the comforting hush of dusky, waning fireplace evenings and the glow of a harvest moon for the rush of unforgiving deadlines. I had missed everything between the first dazzle of color and up to the November guests. I had missed the thankful . . . the joy.

I hated that I missed it. It had been the simplest, most glorious gift to overlook . . . It was like my soul was choking and I simply forgot to breathe.

Since then I have vowed never to forget . . . to remember the gifts of every season . . . to chase leaves and chase a full moon with free abandon. I chase barns all red and rustic telling the history of the humble and hardworking . . . and I chase sweet, blue-eyed babies across the country. I chase morning glories and mountain paths, waterfalls, and the glinted edges of wine glasses . . . up-close flower faces in bold colored vases . . scarlet sunsets . . . falling snow against twilight sky . . . ocean waves . . . the winding of rivers . . . and the holiness of Words . . .

I chase these things . . . freeze them for a sacred second in the cruelty of time . . . and offer them back to the world. Have you noticed how I chase?

If you've forgotten how to do it . . . or don't remember ever doing it . . . have lost your childlike wonder to the ravages of time and later . . . Later was yesterday . . .

Find something beautiful . . . something that tugs at your soul . . . Intentionally, unabashedly, unapologetically chase it down. Wait for it. Look for it. Or just stop when you accidentally stumble upon it. But when you find it --you'll know it because it used to be yours - - give it your full attention. Now look at it . . . and learn to play . . . like a grown-up. Honor its curves and its lines and its energy. Find its name (that beautiful lavender bush is actually a dogwood tree;). Give your pursuit of it a name . . . Like moonchasing or barnstalking . . . Dogwooding? Celebrate it every time it comes around. Memorize how the light plays off its color at different hours of the day. Angle yourself just right above or below it . . . as close as you can or from a reverent distance . . . but build a relationship with it . . . and remember it . . . trade your own importance for it and lose yourself in it.

It helps to have a friend or two willing to indulge your crazy . . . As in the case of my barnstalking whimsy last summer . . . Someone needed to be driving the getaway car when I may . . . or may not;) . . . have trespassed on private property to get that perfect shot of the antique barn over the bridge with the billowing clouds reflecting in the water. Someone needed to be tied to my innertube when the river slowed to a crawl and the only thing left to do was squint into the sun and kick up our feet against the loveliness of blue-green . . . and simply remember . . . Someone needed to witness the rare in the bluebird flitting among the low branches . . . the fleeting wonders of the running path . . . the one that got away before we could snap the memory . . . But it's there . . .

Friends don't let friends chase alone.

Find your dogwood . . . and a little joy this week . . . before the bloom gets away and you have to wait til next year. Next year is not a promise. Have a simple adventure. Feed your soul.

​Chase the dogwood.

​

​​My first daughter is a busy, harried mother of two blonde, blue-eyed angels -- a precocious second grader and a mischievous pre-schooler -- and she is about to give birth to my third Viking grandchild (presumably) . . . any minute . . . Really. Any. Second. But she took the time to send me a series of ecstatic texts last week . . . Not because she was going into labor (she is now) but because she is just on the edge of her first paid writing gig.

Something deep in our genetic coding takes precedence and compels us to put our words, our hearts, our purpose to page . . . as I am doing now as I wait.

She is me but with a more fully developed sanguine heart and with an energy that defies logic and makes the world a better place . . . Always bubbling over with plans and thoughts and words and stories that must go somewhere. She is brilliant and compassionate, wickedly funny and tenacious in her pursuit of all things life. She has a genuine love for the elderly that also manifests in her life's paid work . . . And a love for the hearts of other mommies who have experienced the same struggles that she has -- post-partum depression, grief, deep insecurities, the pain of rejection and overlook, and just plain woman-tired -- she writes to these women, indiscriminately.

She is real, my little girl turned Little Mountain Momma . . . again and again . . . and again . . . who showed up as the biggest surprise of my life over 31 years ago and turned my life right side up . . . when she was barely a thought . . . 

But considered a choice.

She is real . . . and she is good. I could see it from the day she was born . . . too good for me and where I was in life . . . Just barely 19 and broken . . . With walls built of grief, deep insecurities, the pain of rejection and overlook, and just plain woman-tired already. She was too good for me and I wasn't ready for her. I wasn't ready to give up the dream of the life I imagined. I wasn't ready for the financial responsibility. I wasn't ready to look after  someone else -- indefinitely -- when still trying to find myself. I wasn't ready for the battle of wills that ensued from a seven pound human being and extended well into adulthood (hers and mine;). . . 

​I wanted to sleep. She wanted me awake. I wanted to nurse her. She was diametrically opposed, preferring a bottle. I wanted her safe in a private school. She wanted to stay in public and hated me for a while. I said no boys. She found one from Indiana at summer camp when she was thirteen . . . and married him (not that day). She wanted me to get a flu shot and and a Whooping Cough vaccine before I held her new baby. I wanted . . . well . . . not to . . . 

But do you know what? Nobody is ever ready for the complete responsibility . . . the lifelong commitment . . . . of another human being. Babies have a way of making you while they're breaking you. She deserved better. I got better. She demanded it from the beginning. It was a formidable job for a newborn, but from the day she was born -- even before -- she began chipping away at those walls. On the day she was born, she blasted out a whole section . . . The one with the sign that said: It's all about me.

But in a second . . . in the time it takes to quell the flutter of a heartbeat . . . In a second it could have all been obliterated . . . And I would have never been changed . . . by the ocean blue of her newborn eyes . . . by the white-blonde tilt of her three year old head looking upward for Jesus in the clouds . . . by the compassion poured into the world in the wisdom of her words . . . by the Viking grandchildren she chases . . . the joy . . . the miracle of her  -- and them -- in the world . . .

because I had a choice in her.

And women march . . . not for what's real . . . but in righteous anger for fear of losing that choice. I should pray God forgive them for they know not what they do . . . but my own righteous anger flares because I don't really believe that. My human grace doesn't match God's . . . and maybe it shouldn't . . . maybe that's not my job here.  So here is what I want to tell them: 

March for what's real. March for equality. March for equal pay. March for family or freedom or better child care options. March for respect . . . for common sense . . . for choices that honor and protect all human life. March for open borders or stronger walls or healthcare that works. Save the rainforests. Save the whales. Save the dogs and cats to the melancholy beseeching of Sarah McLachlan . . . Shout til your hoarse and you're heard. Or fight in your own quiet way . . . On paper or on your knees in prayer.

But don't fight for your right to kill unborn children. 

To mature, discerning, educated minds, there are very few issues that don't have shades of gray complexities. This is not one of those issues.

For God's sake . . . For all that is decent and holy . . . Stop demanding . . . Stop celebrating . . . Your right to kill unborn babies. They are not a mass of cells. They have beating hearts and functioning brains with nerves that feel the pain of the needle . . . The knife . . . The machines . . . They hear voices from within the womb . . . And recognize and respond to their mother's . . . their father's . . . their big sister's and brother's . . the family dog's bark . . . after they are born. They turn to the light . . . And recoil from harsh sounds or pressure or pain. They move and roll beneath our seeking palms. They get hiccups. They are calmed and soothed by the same music played for them before they are born . . . and after. We can see them in us in ultrasound pictures They suck their thumbs and wiggle their toes . . . they are the same thumbs and toes before and after.

A hundred years ago . . . Or fifty . . . Or even a few decades ago, we didn't know a fraction of what we know now about how a baby develops. Now we have the technology to look into the womb months before they are born and study facial features to determine who they look like . . . To understand unequivocally that there's an actual person tucked safely within protective layers of maternal flesh and membrane . . . a separate and equal human being. It should bring a sense of shame to all complicit that we've actually been killing babies increasingly indiscriminately and in increasing numbers since Roe vs. Wade . . . Just because we can. . . Because someone told us we had a choice. Instead of feeling shame, though, we choose to ignore what we know -- yes, we know we're killing babies . . . It's long past the point of rational, reasonable argument -- we just call it something else . . . argue from a different podium. It's a woman's body. It's a woman's choice. Oppression. Injustice. Unfair! Inconvenient! Not "viable" 

No, it's not. It's a baby. A child. A person. I know it. You know it. We all know it.

February 1, 2017 .  . .

The photo on the left was taken of my brother and me last month high on a mountain in Colorado. There's no mistaking we're family. It's there in our cheekbones, the curve of our jaws, in the set of our mouths . . . and there's something in our eyes . . . But knowing who we look like has never stopped us from obsessing over who we are.  Our Southern grandmother was always quick and proud to tell us about our Cherokee Indian great-great grandmother . . . but we've checked all the Ancestry.com census records . . . and we can't find her anywhere. So for his birthday on the mountain, I gave my brother an Ancestry.com DNA test kit. He spit and now we're just waiting. It'll be fun to find out for sure. But while we're waiting to find out just exactly how that spit will define us, we're waiting on something else so much more important . . . something else . . . or someone else who will show us who we are . . . and more importantly, who we've become . . .

Any day now . . . any minute . . . my oldest daughter will give birth to her third child . . . my third grandchild. We don't know exactly who this child will be yet. We're not even sure if it's a boy or a girl. Collectively, we have a lot of conjecture, a lot of hopes, a lot of probablies . . . But the absolute certainty is that this child . . . along with its older sister and brother . . . represents a legacy of love.  He or she will be adored . . . safe . . . allowed the freedom to grow and thrive . . . with all the hopes and dreams of a family hanging on their every smile, every heartsong, every unique and God given gift they bring to this world. Those of us who have fought hardest for these simple things -- the way things should be -- feel the profoundest joy . . . and that is reflected in the words of this memory about a family come full circle . . 

I will rise above myself . . . my pain and my fear, my indignance and indulgence . . . to love myself and to love you through our fallen world. . . I will leave behind negativity and words that cultivate it . . . It’s not fair, I can’t, Who did this? and Why me?  will not be a part of my vocabulary. . . and I won’t listen if you say them to me. I will undo what happened to you by making something different happen . . . I’ll weigh the facts against your feelings . . . and then I’ll feel every bit of it and hold your hand while you cry. I will forgive you when you hurt me . . . and strive to understand the reasons . . . I promise not to be the reason and I will ask your forgiveness if I break that promise. I will understand if you can’t forgive me. Forgiveness only comes after grieving and some of us never stop. I will always love you. Never and Always are a set-up for failure and disappointment . . . I will add them to my possibility and make adjustments as needed. I apologize in advance . . . I will try, I will listen, I will rage, and I will die daily . . . and then I will give it to God and begin to love again. 

I was halfway down the mountain and on the very edge of a brand new year when the writer’s panic began to set in. Like a child holding too tight to a handful of sand that is slipping away. . . blowing back to the ocean on a breeze . . . I needed to hold onto the memories.  

But these are not grains of sand that wisp away . . . and not the blue expanse of ocean where waves of grief are carried back to shore over and over. These are bold stars over purple-black peaks with bursts of glory that I want to remember. I want to stay on the mountain this time. And so I write. . .
​
December 29, 2016:
​
Some traversed in quick infinitesimal flashes . . . some fizzled downward like wayward fireworks. . . Some hovered over an arc quickly and just long enough to evoke a sense of wonder. And then . . . there was the one . . .

Not unlike the last one when I wrote,

 “If I never see another one like it, it will be enough” . . .

This one was different, though.  We can never be out-surprised by God. This one hurtled from left to right . . . like words on a page hurtled through the cosmos in a straight line . . . like a declaration.  And there was no arc . . . and there were no resting places.  It hurtled forward . . . burning and glowing and taking my breath . . . and taking me with it.

And I knew this would be another one of those years.  Like 42 years ago to the day . . . and like 31 years ago . . . I would give birth to something beautiful and irrepressible to carry me in this new year . . . Not to a person this time, but to my soul and my destiny.

And I will not rest until -- with all the passion and intention of a divine comet -- I have burned myself out on the pain and the glory of my story . . .

This year.