On a drifty day

With snowflakes as big as my thumb falling and a soft downy cover over my garden, I remember California.  People have been asking me excitedly, "SO.  How was your trip to California?!"  You'd think I'd have a lot to say.  We were there for an entire month!  We did so many fun things, visited interesting places, saw people we don't see very often.  But mostly my answer is, "It was good."  And somehow I feel like I should apologize for that brief answer.  So as an explanation . . .

We were in California long enough to get into a groove of our own; long enough to feel comfortable enough that we could daydream about living there.  We did fun things, and saw people we don't normally see, but mostly we just pretended like we lived there.  We took advantage of having my parents at our fingertips.  Dad made salads and BBQd, Mom went to work and we took evening trips to Bakersfield, I went out to the grocery store and left the baby with his grandpa, Luke and grandpa flew balsa wood airplanes and grandpa told the story of putting together a plane with his Dad and just when they tossed it into the air for the first time, a dust devil came by and the plane went up and up and up . . . and they never saw it again.  We held starfish and jumped rope with seaweed and painted our faces with wet stones and walked among the giant sequoias and fed the giraffes and played blocks and dinosaurs and marbles at great-grandma Judy's house.  We walked in the almond orchard and fed the neighbor's calf malva weeds through the fence.  We had a fire in the grotto, photographed old junk in the yard, mowed the lawn and ate cold chicken while sitting in the grass after a morning's yard work.  We picked cotton and got an ice cream cone and wrote words in the leaves piled on the grass and picked lemons and threw the rotten lemons at the pampas grass to see the birds shoot into the air. We had a slumber party with Auntie Lissa and danced to her rap music at Brookside over biscuits and gravy.  We walked to the park and walked to the museum and walked around the block to visit an old friend and walked around town to look at Christmas lights and when we heard the sheep braying down the way, we walked to find them.  We happened upon people we knew and met up with the old men at the donut shop.  We sang songs in the car and did yoga before bed and watched funny sitcoms in between conversations about theology and Life.  It was home again, for a while.  

And that is why I say "It was good."  Because there's not much more to say.  It was. So. Good.

Here are my favorite photos from our trip - sorry if it takes a long time to load; I didn't skimp out!  It's so hard for me to choose favorites from a file full of photos of my favorite people and places.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dearly Departed

I write today to celebrate the bond that's grown between our families.  To celebrate the little pieces of your souls that match pieces of our own.

Greg, Beth, Cordell and baby:
    You shake the dust from your shoes and move to a new phase of life, but you cannot shake our affections for you.  We applaud your bravery; the courage it takes to turn down an unknown road with children in tow, and hope.  You hope for inspiration, for knowledge, for health, and for discount prices on baby clothes.  We hope for you to be healthy, content, to feel affirmed in your vocation, and for the U-Haul truck to finally arrive.

    Your friendship has encouraged us in a place where we were unsure we would find sympathetic hearts.  We were surprised and have been delighted to recognize in you shared passions for books, for theological discussion, for delicious food, for bargain prices, and for family and friends.  When Derek and I first met, he was surprised that I knew the rhyme "I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream", since we'd grown up 2,000 miles apart.  Somehow, realizing that we had a silly little rhyme in common made us feel like partners right from the start - a mutual empathy.  We feel that with you.

    We are sad to see you go, but tell ourselves it's only for a time so that the tears don't overtake us.  My dream is to live on a circular plot of land with all my friends and their children, with our individual houses on the edge furthest from the center and in the middle will be a park where, whether the sky rains or scorches, we and our children will eat and play and pray together.  We will go home at night and be with our children and as we put ourselves to bed, we know that we are not alone as parents, or as children, but are part of a greater circle.  People who are excited to share a recipe, who are enthusiastic about our children's achievements, who are praying for us when we're feeling crappy, who will share their books and insights, who will come and look for us if we don't show up for a gathering, who will take their turn to clean up the dishes, who won't judge us when we answer the door in our pajamas at 2 in the afternoon, and who love to hear our stories,and feed us when we're too tired to make a peanut butter sandwich.

    For a short while, we got to be part of the same circle.  It was my pleasure to haul boxes up from the basement, and be "taken for a walk" to induce my labor with baby #2, and to dump sand out of our boy's underwear after an evening spent visiting in the shade eating BBQ.  If you stayed, we would have many more days to learn about you, to meet your new baby, to get so deep into conversation that we lose track of the time, to learn (ahem) how to glue handles back onto coffee mugs, and to drag our children on long walks so that they sleep and sleep and sleep while we finish off the bottle of wine (we didn't do that one yet, did we?).  But you must go, and though we grieve, we understand.

    We celebrate the time we had with you, and look forward to a day when we can share life with you again - whenever that may be.

    Dear friends, you, your lives, and the life we had together, will be missed.