The Newspaper Fairies Nextdoor

Shortly after I had knee replacement I decided I wanted to read the

paper. (Yes we still get the printed paper and yes it is a continued conversation in our house, but as my dear friend Ethan says about why he still gets it, "I like to hold it, and I like the way it smells." We are newspaper kindred spirits.) Anyway....

I wanted to read it, and I wanted to read it right then, not when there was a family member around to go out to the driveway and get it for me. (I'm kind of hard headed.) So I got my walker (stop laughing) and moved to the front door knowing full well getting down even those two steps was going to be hard and probably stupid. I opened the front door and lo and behold, there it was right smack dab in the middle of the door mat. All I had to do was bend down and pick it up. I was overjoyed!

The next morning when I moved to the front door, there it was again. And the next day, again the newspaper was there. "I wonder," I thought to myself, "Why the newspaper delivery person has started putting newspapers on our front porches? It doesn't always get right to the mat, but it's still there." I didn't think about it for long. First I was on painkillers so no thought lasted long or was logical, and second I was just thrilled I didn't have to maneuver the walker and my body down the stairs and across our desperately in need of fixing bricks broken front walk.

One morning as I moved to the front door I saw my beautiful young next door neighbor skipping up the walk swinging the paper in her hand (the daughter not the mother...although the mother is also beautiful and young). She tossed it on the mat and skipped back to the car to head off to school.
My eyes filled with tears as my heart filled with joy--and no it wasn't the pain medicine.

The next morning I watched again as the younger sister picked up the paper. She cautiously moved up our walk. She stopped about midway and with all her strength and a determined grimace on her face, threw the paper onto the porch. It didn't make the mat, but it cleared all the steps. I laughed out loud at the look on her face and the speed with which she turned and ran back to the car not looking back.

This became a daily source of joy for me--watching the girls get to the paper, figure out whose turn it was, and delivering the paper. Sometimes it looked like they were trying to do it covertly and sometimes they sang and skipped as they approached the porch--granted they are under double digits so perhaps they still thought they were being secretive.

One morning a friend of mine arrived early to take me to PT and brought me the paper. "No!" I shrieked, "Put it back." While he looked at me like I had lost my mind, he also took in the cane in my hand that I'm sure he realized I could use as a club if I so chose, so he hurriedly returned the paper to the end of the driveway. I explained to him why I had acted like a lunatic in that moment (he's still waiting for explanations for all the other times) sharing the joy it brought me each morning watching the girls from behind the curtains of my house. (Now you're picturing Mrs. Kravitz....)

Just to be fair to the story and also to permanently delete the picture in your head of two girls with rainbows over their heads and colorful stars shooting out from their heels as they skipped towards my house with halos over their heads and an hallelujah chorus echoing through the heavens, there were times they had obviously forgotten whose turn it was and there were some minor scuffles. There was also the time they held it between them, swinging it as they brought it together tossing it together. (The older one did then run up to make sure it was on the mat--typical first child!)

Once I was able to stand for a period of time, I baked a batch of cookies and took it next door to thank the girls. So now they know I know or maybe they've forgotten--they are young. I am now perfectly capable of walking to the end of the driveway without any fear to get the paper, but I don't. They still bring the paper to the porch each day. Now that it's summer, it's not always early in the morning. In fact, sometimes it's not until late afternoon, but I wait. And I insist everyone else does too. There are some days I have gone to work and probably already heard the news from NPR before the paper is delivered to my porch. But when I drive up and see it waiting there for me, I always smile and my heart sings (You are so lucky it's my heart singing and not my voice.) and I read it even already knowing most of the news.

Last night I sat reading the paper (even the obituaries which Caroline finds very creepy) and thought about all the negative news--the despair, the angst, the vitriol, the let's name it--evil and I thought about my newspaper fairies. Despite all the negative in the world, those two young girls and their gift to me reminds me of the goodness of people and it gives me hope.

I was reminded that in this world where there is so much brokenness and despair, but there is also goodness. These young girls reminded me to take a step back, to stop being overwhelmed and to live the words of Edward Everett Hale, an American author and Unitarian clergy man of the 19th century, "I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do."

There will come a day when the thrill of delivering the crazy lady next door's newspaper no longer exists--I mean I'm sure when they're 16 and leaving for school they'll be two bleary eyed--but I will never forget these months and the joy and hope it brought to me. I will never forget they did something, and so can I.

Isaiah 11:6b "and a little child shall lead them."

The Belt of Hope--Or Not

In the fall of 1996 I bought a needlepoint belt canvas--my first. It

was a U of L design, and I wanted to make it for Chris. This of course was BEFORE I knew he would root against UVA even though both his wife and daughter, not to mention multiple in-laws, attended UVA. (And may I add he did NOT attend U of L)

Anyway....

When I bought the belt Sarah Katherine was just over a year old, in no time at all, three more children  joined the family, and I decided I would rather spend my time smocking and making heirloom dresses and christening gowns while the children were still young enough to wear them. (They will argue it went on far too long, but that's an issue they can take up with a therapist.)

Also it's not fair to say I never worked on it. There were many Cousins Weekends when I would pull it out and stitch away--of course the next year I was in the same spot...whatever! It was a constant joke among us--so while Chris didn't get a belt, we all had great laughs. (Or maybe they were just laughing at me..)

Seventeen years later the belt was finished--there was great rejoicing from All Saints camp to the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. Since then I have made multiple belts, but that belt--that belt was special.

So back to the story.

In June Christopher borrowed that belt for a funeral. We haven't seen it since.

Yesterday was not a good day--not at all. I woke up with anger and hurt from an incident the day before with my girls. I was trying to write a sermon to be preached that afternoon at the funeral of an amazing man who died far too soon. A man who could make me laugh and who loved me despite my flaws--the greatest of which he believed was my love for Georgia football. I didn't want to write this sermon, preach this sermon, or frankly even be at the funeral. I didn't want to be out of bed...

I dilly dallied around finding all kinds of "important" tasks to do. The hands of the clock moved far too fast--mocking me. My stomach hurt--a pain I've had for weeks. I realized I was truly being Martha from Sunday's gospel--distracted by many things. I realized I was staying busy, bustling around to keep my feelings far away--all my feelings--feelings that have been building all summer and that I have successfully ignored. Before long, despite my valiant attempts to avoid the inevitable, the time came to get in the shower and get ready.

After I finished showering, I opened the shower door and yanked the towel of the towel rack, and then I froze. There was a belt hanging there, but it was not THE belt. I want THE belt--the first one I ever made, the one Chris loved the best, the one that was borrowed without permission, the one that was carelessly lost, the one that in that moment I believed could solve everything if I could just find it. It could take away all the pain of suicides and addictions and mental health and deaths that come too soon. If I just had THE belt it could fix everything--except I can't find it and even if I could I know it can't fix everything or really anything.

With no warning my body began to shake uncontrollably, I slid down the shower wall and began to howl like a trapped animal, sobs racking my body. Yes I was sad, a sadness that feels like it has taken up permanent residence in my soul, but I was also filled with rage--a rage that to be honest, scared me.

I don't know how long I sat there. When I thought I could cry no more, I stood up on still shaking legs, and I remembered the only other time I have cried that hard and with that much pain--it was 9 years ago (The Death and Resurrection of My Family). I smiled a little--smirked may be more like it--as I remembered. Because what I knew was, as painful as that time had been, as hard as it had been, now in its place is peace and love--with the typical family angst thrown in--just being real. Nonetheless, remembering that time and the resurrection that came, gives me hope for the present.

I remembered again as I celebrated the Eucharist at my friend's funeral--as I said the words "Do this in remembrance of me" I felt the hope--the hope of resurrection. Resurrection that comes from even the darkest most hard to reach places.

I'm not going to tie this up with pretty bow--I was still filled with rage and shaking (try putting on mascara with shaking hands) I am still angry, hurt, and scared. No rainbows suddenly appeared over our house. No small woodland animals flitted in to sing and help me dress--instead, there was my daily reading mocking me, a good friend attempting to comfort me but instead laughing at me (and I was okay with that), another good friend being introduced to the real me that I described as "a foul mouth, pearl wearing, monogram everything priest." (She messaged back she already knew that about me and likes me anyway.) I still had to bury my friend--and he will mock me forever as a ribbon from a floral arrangement on the casket has found a permanent home in my prayer book.

There were no rainbows and woodland animals, but there was the presence of God found in texts, and readings, and flowers and Piggly Wiggly peanut butter and babies and people and writing. Oh there is still anger and sorrow, and I desperately wish I knew how long this was going to last.

But nonetheless, there is hope--no matter how small--there is always hope.

And I still really really really want the belt back.

I Just Want My Stain Stick Back

I am the stain master--or rather I used to be.  

Got that white shirt completely spotless!

There wasn't a stain I couldn't get out. We lived on a cul-de-sac and I was known as the stain master. One Saturday before Easter, Sarah Katherine went with the neighbors to an Easter egg hunt. They were horrified at the red kool-aid down the front of her Easter bunny smocked dress. "No problem," I told them. And it wasn't--by the next afternoon the dress was washed, ironed and hanging back in the closet. The truth is it wasn't hard. Every night while the children played in the bath, I sat on the floor and rubbed stain stick on all the Georgia clay, red juice, grass stains, ketchup, mustard, chocolate--you get the picture. Then I'd toss the clothes in the hamper where they'd sit until I washed them.

For really tough stains I soaked them in a bucket with oxy clean sometimes for over a week. I never failed--NEVER.

Four weeks ago Caroline came home from her job at camp with some mud stains on her khaki shorts. No problem--now I was pretty sure I had to jump straight to the tough stain routine. I soaked them for 24 hours, washed and voila--or rather not voila--still stained. So I put them back in for another soak (without drying them...that would be a disaster) and let them sit for a week. Pulled them out, washed them, and---ugh! The stain was still there!

So off to Kroger I go. Clearly I should have followed the steps of the past--first the stain stick and THEN the oxy clean soak. I wandered up and down the laundry aisle. I could not believe my eyes--there was NO stain stick. None, nadda, nothing, nope, not there. There wasn't even a label where the round, green and red stain stick should be. I texted SK--"I don't think they make stain stick anymore." She replied, "OH NO!!" (She totally gets it--love that girl!) I am not exaggerating when I say I felt slightly sick to my stomach.

I got home and googled stain stick--you're not going to believe this, some rectangular thingy majig came up. Then I went to amazon. Surely they would have it. They said they did---YIPEE! Thank goodness for amazon prime--the next day I gleefully opened the package only to discover THEY LIED!! It was that rectangular thingy that said "Spray and Wash." And for the record, it doesn't work.

These shorts were ruined and my stain removal run was over--I could no longer guarantee I could keep my family's clothes stain free.

I really was sad, and then I started thinking. I can no longer keep all their clothes clean--I no longer have the tools I had, the tool of which I was in control. They are going to have clothes with stains on them and there's nothing I can do about it. I can no longer keep their world stain and wrinkle free.

It's a lot like rearing them. It used to be so easy to keep their world happy and carefree--no stains, no wrinkles. No permanent spots. I was in control. I made the decisions, and I got to erase the "mistakes" they made. That didn't last long...

Now I have to sit back and watch. I have to see them taking risks, trying new things, messing up sometimes and I can't stop it or fix it. I have to see that some choices they make could leave lasting stains--some things they may then discard and move on, but other stains may stay with them forever.

But here's something I do know, here's something that most days I can fully trust. "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." (Romans 8:28) In ALL things--the stainless and the stained. God doesn't cause the stains, but God can bring good through them. Even the toughest, ugliest, dirtiest stains can be made new through God.

The disciples asked Jesus, "Who then can be saved? Jesus looked at them and said, 'With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." (Matthew 19:25-26) 

I'm not in control--truth is I never was (shh don't say that too loudly I still like to live in my fantasy world sometimes), but God is.

But I do still miss my stain stick....