Heirloom

Over the last couple of years I've lost my last remaining grandparents.  As the matriarchs of their respective families, their deaths have brought with them the tidying up of homes, categorization of shoebox pictures, exploration of trinkets and recipe cards, and the divvying up of all of the above. Homes and land were sold, and the piecemeal sediment of their lives has been buried, tossed or scattered to new caretakers in the family and beyond.

A few weeks ago I invited several dear girlfriends over for lunch for the purpose of hosting loved ones around a table decorated with some of those heirloom items.  I inherited my Great Aunt Maryann's china years ago and its delicate blue flowers have been packed away in yellowing newspaper dated for my 20th birthday (deep into the Bush-Gore Florida recount, for those curious). I paired the plates with the crystal I inherited from my Grandmother, goblets for water and sparkling dessert ware. I served tea sandwiches, crusts removed and cucumbers smeared with herbed butter, on milk glass from my Great-Grandmother.

The lunch was quiet and kind, littered with laughter, prayer, clinking of wine glasses, and soft tears. Loss was fresh and ongoing to several at the table, and sometimes that rawness was palpable. Not uncomfortable, but a sort of throbbing warning that hearts nearby are vulnerable, newly wounded. I don't doubt that has frequently been the case for those around my table, and that it will not be the last, but I was buoyed by the memories of the women who cherished these beautiful things, knowing the sisterhood inherent in the drying of tears over crackers and egg salad. It's a gentle and unconquerable love.

The lunch was planned early in the year, scheduled weeks before one loss and in the midst of the other. It was simply a date that worked for all, communal crossed fingers that the weather would not do us in. While chopping and toasting and plating our meal in the kitchen, the day felt tenuous, balanced perfectly on the edge of various seasons for each of us. I was struck by how deeply painful, how horribly unfair life could be sometimes, how frequently we walk around with our wounds fully exposed to the elements. But at the same time, these sweet moments together, unwrapping scarves, knocking snow from our boots, pouring wine, squeezing shoulders and hands, the gentleness of those gestures and the fervor with which we want so desperately to love each other through the messiness of every wound, that felt like God. God deeper than, and yet sensitive to, the ache in every heart.

And I think that's what makes these heirlooms, the ring I wear of Mamaw's, the crystal I use for special occasions, the china I unwrap from aging newspaper, so heavy with import for me. I do not know every heartache experienced by the women before me, but I know that they loved well, that they took care of their sisters, their friends, often at a table. I know that they prayed in the midst of loss, teased a smile out of heartache, and dried a million tears in their decades on Earth, and I like to think that some of that comfort, a lot of that laughter, occurred with these plates, these glasses, sitting on tables in Texas, South Carolina, Arkansas. They can carry the weight of life, and they can hold the memory of more tears, more joy, more laughter for years to come.

Between the Trees

Humans love to separate themselves.  We love to judge, define, draw circles around ourselves and those in our tribe, circles that say, "We are superior to You." Even in relationships, we easily find ourselves on islands of our own making, comfortable with our position and independence, at ease with the demarcation we've drawn to keep the World out.

While I believe all people are guilty of asserting their special apart-ness, Christians seem especially skilled at claiming superiority. Our faith traces its roots to the chosen people of Israel, after all, and we really like that mantle, like smiling with our faces to the cross, knowing we are now separate and distinct from those who cast their eyes elsewhere. Christians aren't great at remembering that all fall short and we conveniently forget the gift of grace was extended to every single soul.

Last weekend I traveled North with my husband and father-in-law to the small town where my father-in-law grew up, where both sides of his family raised their families since the 1800s.  A cavalcade of Norwegian names makes up the town historical record, the majority of which my husband is related to either by blood or marriage. There are thousands of such towns all over the world, towns where families built their histories, entrenched their stories.  My dad's side of the family has a similar shared homecoming every year in the mountains of East Tennessee.  Landscapes shape us, the stories follow us.

My husband's uncle showed us around the family churchyard, told stories of the folks buried there.  But it was the story of someone not buried there that was the focus of our visit. Years ago, in the early 1900s, a man in this town committed suicide. Suicide being an unpardonable sin, the man was buried outside the cemetery. It strikes me as the ultimate cruelty to punish a family in such a way. The deceased is no longer present to defend himself or his family, but the church decides his family deserves no marker at which to grieve.  It's a punishment of the living and a final cruelty to the dead.

One reason for our trip to the churchyard was a hunt. It was a search for where they placed that man, no marker, no indication of where they laid his body, our only clues a slightly sunken spot between the trees and the witchcraft-ish crossing of dowsing rods as we walked over the presumed spot. Chester's uncle plans to erect a marker, nothing grand, and likely not a marker many folks will ever notice, but an acknowledgment where one never stood before.

The family of the man is long dead.  Anyone who knew him or knew people who loved him has long since faded from memory.  His story is just a whisper now, and apart from the few who know what lies in the overgrown bramble beyond the cemetery line, his story has the ring of folktale. So there is no person alive to say, "thank you." There will likely be no visitors to this man's marker, no tearful prayers said to his memory, but I believe the carving of a new line matters, the opening of an imaginary gate, welcoming him into the graveyard of his kin.

It matters when we notice the lines we place between us.  And it matters when we, belatedly, erase them. It's what Christ did, bridging the chasm between damned and redeemed. Damnation, not so much that burning cartoon beneath the ground, but separation, from God and from each other, has always been man's deepest ache, deepest worry, deepest question.  Redemption is inclusive, it speaks to an invitation to all, it speaks to markers on unmarked graves, and the belated apology to a man between the trees.

What Beauty is Supposed to Be

Over the weekend my husband and I drove (well, he drove, I chose our podcasts) to Omaha to continue my admittedly nutty dream of running a half-marathon in every state. Chester signed up for the 5K, excited to have a goal of his own and a medal at the finish. We left on Saturday, ran Sunday morning, and made it home in time for a lazy frozen pizza dinner that evening. It was all perfect.

I remember road trips with my family.  When I was growing up we didn't fly often but piled instead into the van and trekked to whatever vacation destination or family was on the agenda.  We'd rotate the seating arrangements and at some point my teenage self would begrudgingly sit up front with a parent, usually my dad, even though I'd much rather be my moody, teenagery self in the back seat with my discman. We'd talk about school, grades, college plans, softball, but eventually we'd run out of topics and I'd be left to lean my head against the seat and stare out the window.  I could spend hours staring out windows, happily. But passenger seat windows have that pesky mirror.

I'm not sure when it started but at some point I became annoyed by, almost afraid of, my own reflection. Catching my reflection by surprise made me feel angry, vulnerable, so I made a habit, unbeknownst to anyone around me, of casing every single environment for mirrors and reflective surfaces.  My face, my body, my very self, they were all disappointments and it was only with advance preparation that I could manage a mirror without entering into a spiral of self-loathing.  Elevators were always a curse, one could never tell from the outside how many mirrors there might be. Hotels especially are notorious for mirrored elevators, all those ladies riding up and down who need to check their lipstick like normal ladies do. I still hate a hotel elevator.

All that is to say, passenger seats have historically been a joy (window! no driving responsibility!) and an anxiety (ugh, that damn mirror).  It's an emotional fight I hide well.  I can accept a glance in a mirror.  I can cushion the blow of disliking what I see with the 37 year old knowledge that it doesn't really matter, not the way it used to.  But that ancient bother is still there and I frequently find myself tilting my head at uncomfortable, but flattering, angles, sucking in my cheeks just enough to mimic an instantaneous weight loss.

Our races Sunday morning were hot. I slathered sunscreen on my freckled skin and lubed every seam of my pants and sports bra and still felt the wounds forming as sweat made a quick mess of friction between skin and lycra. By mile ten my right IT band, that lovely string of fire connecting hip and knee, was making itself known, not a surprise but also not welcome. At this point I've felt pretty much every ache available to runners and I have a good sense of what is cause for concern and what is just The Way Rachel's Body Aches When She Runs 13 Miles. An IT band ache is nothing special and I trudged along, a slower pace than I'd like but admirable given the heat.  By the time I crossed the finish line I was a sticky, sweaty wreck, strands of wet hair escaping from under my baseball cap, lips chapped because I forgot my chapstick, sunscreen streaked across my cheeks in a way I knew would invite a curious amalgamation of freckles.

By the time we walked back to the hotel after Chester's race I was a bit less rosy but no less messy. Throwing my baseball cap on the bed and tossing my wet clothes in a pile in the bathroom, I didn't hesitate to look in the mirror.  I checked the seams along my bra line, knowing I'd cut flesh. I untangled the rat's nest wrapped around my ponytail holder and looked myself in the eye.  The mirrors never bother me after runs.  For that period of time after great effort I am rewarded with complete acceptance of every freckle, flabby arm, lopsided eyelid (I see it, nobody else does), and that acceptance feels very close to pride. Very close to love.

That acceptance has tended to fade quickly.  It's a joy in those moments but soon I'm back in the skin I wish I didn't have, in the body I wish I didn't have.  But over the last year I've found those moments of acceptance extending for longer periods of time, which I credit to my husband.  There's something miraculous in someone loving all of you, finding beauty in all of you.  But it isn't just that mirrored beauty he sees, it's some underlying worth, something inherent and unwavering, as if the way he loves me sees the stuff of me, beneath my skin, within my breath, before it registers my red hair, my blue eyes, the curve of my hips. It feels the way beauty is supposed to be, seeing the ache of muscles after effort, the pride of goals accomplished, the sigh of rest, and letting that be all the beauty one needs.

I ride in the passenger seat of Chester's car.  And his is the only car in my adult memory in which I do shirk from the reflection of that pesky mirror.  His mirror is the only one I've ever stared at myself without preparation. It is a sign of love that I hadn't registered, hadn't realized existed, until I leaned my head against the glass somewhere in Iowa, caught sight of myself and smiled.

Kind of Poem

We've been home from our honeymoon for nearly a month.  All the bags are unpacked and we've settled into a rhythm of going to work, coming home, making dinner, tending to the garden, daydreaming. I used to write more about my trips, more detailed accounts perhaps, but with this trip I never expected to provide any kind of retelling of our road trip around the perimeter of Iceland. It feels a bit too holy to reduce to an itinerary.  But as is my habit, I did let little poems and snippets burrow into my skin.

He is a watcher out of windows,
a soul adding wonder to rocks and trees and earth
He is a wanderer of the purest sort,
walking without the burden of calculated exertion
but carrying only the questions of who walked here first, whether it might rain

We're very different people. He taps my forehead sometimes and makes a typewriter noise, his signal that he can see my brain racing, calculating, adjusting, weighing any number of combinations of cause and effect. He adds friction to that momentum in the best possible way, turns a spiral into an arrow, sometimes a pillow.

All my life I've written poems and missives in my head. Sometimes they're not even sentences, just snips of language that describe a moment. The description has always been important to me, as if a moment isn't quite real, quite concrete, unless I can put words to it. Words unpack me better than pictures or gestures or actions. And I think that's why I've found writing in the context of marriage so reorienting.  He makes my heart see pictures that I will never be able to describe and I find myself replacing poems with images in response. Not camera images, not snapshots of his head tilting out of the rain of a waterfall, not the way his eyes squint when he makes me laugh, but images of what love and care and hope feel like.

He was seated at our window this morning as I worked from home.  They're taking down an enormous tree across the street and he described what they were doing, the ropes among the branches, the fall of larger limbs. It had no comparison to Iceland, but it reminded me of our standing on a boat in some Northern fjord, poised and hopeful as we waited to spot the splash of a humpback whale. He was behind me then, his hand occasionally on my shoulder.  But the same picture came to me, my hands reaching into his chest and holding his heart, gently, like I was holding a kitten, a precious stone, a bomb.

I'll hold your heart forever, whatever the world around you provides, and whatever shape your heart takes. And I'll leave the descriptions to the rest of our lives, and trust that holding your heart can be its own kind of poem, written in heartbeats.

Next

There is no bravery in a love that knows what's next
How easy it would be to love
to linger
if we knew the bend and flex
of life's course

The prettiest of loves would crumble beside a hospital bed
had it not the courage of leaping
tear-stained and hopeful
from cozy field of flowers into the dark red
bloom of each delicate human pulse

The guts are never wrung for mere affection
No God-blessed desire checks its watch
counts the minutes
anticipates the reaction
with the comfort of a fortune teller

Love never knows how love will deepen
how easy it would be to love
to linger
if the depth of it did not so often cause the weeping
of tired eyes

Before we walked, love walked before us
wept in our footsteps
and promised us nothing but itself,
no plan, no fortune, but victorious
what is next

Dedicated to a dear friend who is spending time nursing her sister in the hospital. 

All the Things You Were Born to Be

My best friend, Megan, got engaged a week before my wedding. We've walked (trudged on occasion) the road of singleness together so to be able to share the joy of this season with her has been one of life's perfect gifts. As she plans and stresses and daydreams about her wedding, I'm happily on the other side of that Great Big Day, happily cheering her on with the hindsight of someone who is still waiting for her wedding photos to be edited.

On a recent phone call we were talking about houses.  She owns a small home about the same size as mine. It's not an absurdly small home, we've both been lucky in finding homes that fit our lives and budgets.  But they are each a wee bit on the tiny side for incorporating another human.  Another grown human.  With clothes. There are things to be thrown away. Things to be boxed and stored. Things to be stared at and then shoved under a bed.

For me, there was a terror and a joy in all that sorting and boxing and shuffling. Joy in knowing what I was making room for, a life together, my love. And terror in that it felt like the story I'd thus far written of myself had to be redrafted. It wasn't just the physical stuff I needed to get rid of, not just the books (so many books) and clothes and nobody-needs-this-many-pairs-of-shoes. It felt like I needed to discard some portions of myself, too, or if not discard, at least tuck them somewhere else so they wouldn't get in the way.  This love, this promise, this idea that for so long felt like it wasn't for me was suddenly (it seemed) holding my hand and vowing to love me forever.  And my concern was that I didn't quite have my shit together for that kind of thing. Still a bit of tidying up to do, babe, give me a second while I shove a few things under the bed...

When we got home after the wedding and began unwrapping presents, sorting clothes, digging up stones in the backyard, the home that felt impossibly small suddenly felt right-sized. All the shuffling and sorting and worrying about shuffling and sorting felt silly. Tidying up, literally and figuratively, had been lost in the hubbub of wedding planning, and that is as it should be. The little house, very clearly, was the perfect place to begin. Likewise, we were at the perfect place to begin. 37. 42. It's the perfect place, tidy or not.

I only know a month's worth of marriage. But a month's worth has provided one particular insight I wish I'd recognized as a singleton. You will never know all the things you were born to be. We're not promised loving parents, siblings, romantic love, adventure, travel, marriage, parenthood, career fulfillment, friendship. If we're lucky, we find ourselves as the recipient of some or all of those gifts in bits and pieces, an accumulation of heartaches and surprises and boredom and exuberant joys. And it is so easy to feel like Life only has enough room for so much Life. We try our best to shift and store and box away all of the things we feel need to be managed in order to ready ourselves for what comes next, but What Comes Next is so often perfectly sized for the life we already have. Because the heart stretches. Life expands. There is no "getting ready" for this kind of love.

We were born ready. And we will learn what else we were born to be, together.

My Name

I'm ten days away from changing my last name.  I've jokingly stated for years (decades) that I couldn't wait to get rid of the "Welch" moniker, not because of any distaste for my family, but due solely to the incessant reference to a certain movie star.  Raquel Welch has followed me around for as long as I can remember, though I don't recall it being a recurring joke until I had a driver's license.  When folks meet you as Rachel, without knowing the last name, they think less of the last name upon hearing it. They recognize the difference in the names, and only note the similarity to that gorgeous, auburn-haired bombshell in passing. It's different when strangers see the name on an ID, they immediately leap to the star, give me a wink and remind me that there are worse ladies with whom to share a name. 

After 37 years I'm pretty used to the joke, pretty used to throwing out the smile, pretty used to the irony of being compared to a movie star when I'm showing my ID at Walgreens so I can buy Sudafed for the head cold from hell. Sure, lady, movie star. That's me.  Please hand over the drugs.

Perhaps for this reason, I've never felt enormously attached to my name.  And as an English major and avid reader, I found myself frequently daydreaming of other names.  In my head I was frequently Anne, Charlotte, Eleanor. I would not go so far as to say I hated my name, but I never felt Rachel was a particularly beautiful name.  It sounded harsh in the ears, a bit like a sneeze, especially coupled with the double "ch" provided by my last name. So I enjoyed nicknames, loved acquiring the "Rae" nickname in Peace Corps, reveled in the brevity of that, the beauty of a being a ray of something. Sunshine maybe. Laser beams.

As is likely typical in any relationship with a foreign-born mate, Chester receives a lot of questions from me about how to say certain words.  My Portuguese is non-existent except for some terms of endearment, niceties. But one of the first words he said to me in Portuguese was my name.  Ha'kiel. The "R" is an "H" sound in Portuguese, so the roll of my name was replaced with something softer, breathier. It's the pronunciation I've loved most.

It did not dawn on me until we were in Brazil that "Ha'kiel" was not the pronunciation of Rachel but of Raquel. The story of Rachel and Jacob in the Bible is the story of Raquel and Jaco in Portuguese. The name I'd been avoiding for 37 years was, in a matter of months and with the pronunciation of one man, the name I loved best.

I don't fault my parents for the jokes.  In their minds, they named me Rachel. Named me for a story in the Bible. Named me something familiar and strong. And I'll always be a Welch, even if I file some papers stating I prefer a move up the alphabet. But it's not the change to my last name that feels monumental, in these days before we say our vows.

Beauty is an ephemeral thing, hard to grasp, slippery, but powerful in its sparkle. Love makes beauty feel a bit more dense, something you can hold in your arms, and for me Love made my name beautiful.  It made it a name I love.  It's a simple, small thing, maybe, to hear your name in a new way.  But it seems precious, too.  It will take time to get used to a new last name.  I'll scribble the wrong signature for months, I'm sure. But Raquel already feels mine, the name I was born to share with a movie star.

A Day Like Sunday

Sometimes a day feels impossibly heavy, like the heft of it might crush your next inhale. I woke up to a call on Sunday that my grandmother, my last grandparent to share the Earth with, had passed away. I cried for as long as time allowed as friends were hosting a sweet bridal brunch and puffy eyes are not how I choose to present myself to the world.

As my fiance drove me to the party, I looked at my eyes again in the side view mirror, checking for errant mascara smears, and remembered my 13 year old self, armed with my triplet of green eyeshadows, painting Grandmother's eyelids some summer. She liked the way I put the darker color in the crease, she said, and how the green looked with my eyes. They're her eyes, really, and I think that was the first moment I wondered if I'd look like her someday. Over the last decades I've seen hints of lines on my face that whisper at the depth of the ones she carried. And that deep left crease between the nose and mouth when we smile always reminded me that she is rooted in me, as powerful a marker as the mountain she drew us all to every summer.

The day passed slowly, with laughter and joy sipping mimosas among loving friends (not lost on me that Grandmother would not approve of that form of self-soothing) and with tenderness as Dad and I practiced our father-daughter dance, debated the merits of my song options. It struck me throughout the day, sometimes like a feather grazing against my arm, sometimes like a knife below my ear, that she wasn't here anymore. I wouldn't get to tell her the song we chose. I wouldn't get to tell her about the delicious cake at my shower, the sweet friends who made bacon and biscuits to celebrate with me. I wouldn't get to tell her that I wore a new dress that day, that there were stars on it, and the snow was finally packed down enough to make heeled boots less treacherous. These were all the things I'd share with her on our next call, all the things I'd mention as I shared my life with her from 800 miles away.

We'd spoken last a few days before, chatting about my wedding, discussing my plan to shorten her bridal gloves so that I could wear them with my dress. We talked a bit about the milk glass she'd sent for Christmas, how pretty it would be as a candy dish. I've never in life had a candy dish but she's right, it's perfect for a pile of sweets. We laughed about her getting straight As in physical therapy. We were kindred achievers, straight As were important.

I knew my brother headed to church with his family on Sunday, knew my sister had to teach yoga at noon that day.  I wondered how Katie, my cousin, would fill her day, how the hours would pass for her, the fourth of our small but mighty pack of grandchildren. And I wondered if they each felt the loss as I did, in jolts of memory, or if they settled into it better, felt the loss unfold like a blanket.

She was the eldest of her siblings and I am the first born of her first born. I always felt a certain kinship (and friction) there, the shared independence providing an easy bond and an easy cause for heated discussion. She was not meek, but she was generous and joyful even when life was harsh.  She was a doer, an achiever, an accomplisher of tasks great and small. I think we recognized that trait in one another often, both able to rattle off what we’d done and what we planned to do, a momentum couched in faith as much as birth order. And as the litany of things I'd never share with her piled up, it was that mixture of strength and DOING and joy that underscored the loss. Everyone needs a pair of blue eyes like hers, looking into you, reminding you of what you're capable of doing and the joys you're capable of experiencing. I needed those reminders often, whispers of that toughness, fortitude when life felt exhausting. She was so sure of herself, her place in the world, her place before God, and I envied that assurance. I will always envy it. And I will always be thankful that for 37 years I had her blue eyes looking into mine, her left smile crease mirroring my own, her strength providing all the guidance a girl could need for the burdens and joys of a day like Sunday.

Brazil

Whenever I'm in the midst of an intense experience, I always wonder what it is that I'll need to write about.  Most of my writing is reflective, a way to process the world and the people around me, my method to life's large and small madness. This year I've also gotten into the habit of writing more with pen and paper, started in January with the purchase of a perfectly pocket-sized notebook during a rainy day in New Orleans, and more recently due to a beautiful leather journal given to me by my fiance.  Paper is a bit more private and a bit more precious.

But sometimes my thoughts are broader than the poems and missives I jot in notebooks. Paragraphs are usually better suited for a keyboard.  The trouble with that is that I sit, well over 24 hours now back in the US after my latest adventure, and the moments of "I must write about this" blur in my mind. But I must give a few their due, so I'll begin...

Only a Year?
I sat on a plane to Brazil with my fiance five days after the one year anniversary of our first date. I've never been one to support the idea of proper romantic chronology (date for X amount before you're exclusive, be exclusive for X amount before you get serious, be together X amount before you get engaged, etc.).  I credit that flippancy with my mom's early marriage.  She married at 19 and I think it's natural for girls to imagine their lives as a kind of mirror or vague approximation of the timeline of their mothers.  Hitting 22, 27 (not to mention higher numbers) with no marriage on the horizon, it became clear to me that the timing that shaped my mother's life would not be the same for me.  There's a freedom in that, and a terror.  But it's the freedom I felt most strongly.

All that flippancy as to proper dating timelines aside, sitting next to a fiance on a trip out of the country with members of his family was not what I would have anticipated of my life a year ago. Surely that's a speedy leap. Not only do I feel overwhelmed by the love that has come to me, I'm overwhelmed at how easy it is to be taken care of, how natural it feels to want to take care of someone else. I always imagined it to be impossibly difficult, that level of care, but it seems to have bubbled up naturally alongside the love. To not only feel and want to give that care but to receive it, feels genuinely holy.

These Rocks Remind Me of Those Rocks
Walking on the rocks at one of the beaches we visited in Buzios, I was reminded by the rocks I piled on top of each other when I hiked the glacier trail in Zermatt, Switzerland.  In one location I was slathered in sunscreen and walking barefoot in a swimsuit on a crowded beach, and in the other I was bundled up and felt like I could hear my own heartbeat in the silence and solitude around me. But my brain still connected the two, saw the rocks, their shape and color, the tumble of little stones along the coast, and recalled the similar shapes on that hike and the peace I felt in laying on the cold ground in those mountains, stacking stones while I muttered prayers.

But it wasn't that connection that made the real impression.  What halted my step for a moment was the fact that I connected them at all.  To be walking in Brazil and be reminded of Switzerland, what kind of glorious existence have I been blessed with? To have both images alive in my experience, to hold both close enough to want to fit them into the puzzle of rocky landscapes of my life, it just makes me so overwhelmed with gratitude.

Home is Everything
In the middle of our trip we made our way to Campo Mourao, the small city where my fiance was born and raised. Specifically, he grew up on a small campus for training seminarians and providing orphanage care. We spent time at his childhood home and I could picture him running from one building to the next, picture the red dirt caked on his knees.  I saw him hug and laugh and tell stories with men and women who'd known him since childhood, people who'd known and loved his family, people who recognized the ring on my finger was worn by his mother. It was a home clearly steeped in love and devotion and he relaxed there in a way you can only relax in surroundings you fully understand and embrace.  And it struck me that that's one of the things any marriage would want to construct, a home that allows two people of vastly different backgrounds and experiences to relax, enjoy, embrace, and be comforted. A tiny portion of the world within which you can each be seen and heard and cherished, even if the heater is making noise or the laundry has piled up. Seems like a tricky thing, home-making. Tricky and exciting.

And finally...

No Wondering This Time
On every adventure since my first trip abroad to Russia at 14, I've wondered the same thing.  Is this the first and last time I ever see this place? Will I ever return? Is this moment once in a lifetime?  When I studied in England in college, my dad said something on the phone that always stuck with me.  I was (very dramatically) begging for money to travel to Ireland with classmates over a weekend and I used the phrase "once in a lifetime" probably a bit too heavily to the parents that were generously paying for me to study abroad in the first place.  My dad responded to my "once in a lifetime" plea with a short, "that's your choice." He went on to say something along the lines of it being my decision whether or not something would be a once in a lifetime experience, at least when it comes to travel.  If I wanted to go to Ireland someday, I would go (on my own dime). I know I must have been upset with that answer but it was actually very sound advice and a good reminder that while there are some experiences that may truly be of the once in a lifetime variety, many are not.  They are only "once" because we choose to make them so. We have the power to determine whether we want to experience something, whether it's worth our effort and investment. Life doesn't just happen to you.  You build it yourself. [Side note: I did go to Ireland, this year! On my own dime and with my own dear friend, Sandy, beside me. So Dad was clearly right.]

But that's a bit of a burden, too.  To know that I will choose to not return to places I've loved in favor of new adventures is a bit sad.  So that's what made the wondering so much more fun this time around.  Brazil (Brasil, for Chester) will be a part of my life for all my life, because it is home to my future husband.  We won't be able to go back every year but we have every hope of going back every few years to see friends and do more exploring.  We'll see places Chester has never seen, we'll fly to Argentina and Chile to get more stamps in our passport and finally spend time in Patagonia.  We'll likely stand in the same place at Iguacu Falls and take pictures again someday (see picture), soaked again by that massive storm of water. And that shifting of wonder, to a when, as opposed to an if, feels like a great gift.

And that's the sum of every thought about this trip, really.  It all feels like too great an experience to boil down into paragraphs here and into poems scratched in journals at the beach. It all feels like a gift, laden with farofa and sweat and bug spray and bad plumbing and grilled meat and mud and laughter and new freckles and love.

Counting Down

Over the weekend we celebrated our engagement with family and friends, successfully introducing the bridal party for the first time. My uncle surprised me in his characteristic Uncle Buck way, flying in for 24 hours to raise a glass to the pending nuptials.  It was a weekend full of family, hugs, love, surprises, bridesmaid dresses, and daydreams about how I should wear my hair with my mother's veil.

Counting down is equal parts intimidating and exciting. As a planner, I can feel the to-dos whispering with every day discarded. But I also have an overwhelming sense of "oh, hurry up, already" at times. Let's get crackin' on the rest of our lives! I don't care about flatware!

Counting down felt a bit holier when surrounded by family and the dearest of friends. It wasn't just a list of boxes to check, it was a taste of what that day will be, how it will feel.  Ches was largely in the kitchen, laughing and making sure our guests were well-hydrated. I floated in the living room and kitchen, catching up with friends I hadn't seen in awhile, introducing Little Debbie to her future in-laws. Occasionally Ches and I would stand still long enough to make introductions, tell a story, tease each other a bit, and then we'd each float back to our people.  I laughed a lot, and I heard Ches laughing, too.

These are some of the people that made him the man I love. And vice versa.

It's a count down to a life that involves them all. Some will be at the wedding, some will not. Some will come over for dinner often, others we'll see sporadically. We'll celebrate birthdays together, other weddings. We'll hold each others hands at funerals, loan each other sunglasses on vacation. We'll set some up on blind dates, we'll ask others for a lift when the car is in the shop. We're counting down to each being more than an introduction.  They'll belong to each of us, in some way.  And all of those little connections amaze me.  Those ties can feel tenuous, but in other moments they feel like some kind of cosmic glue, binding us to the people who teach us how to love and be loved.

Love feels a bit like gravity, a bit like standing on a cliff and hoping for flight, like a soap bubble and a rainbow and a bowl of soup, like a hammer, like a nail, like a law and a theory all rolled into one. I learned love from my people, those in the room on Saturday and those in my heart. I learned love in the reach of their arms and the depth of their laughter, in the fervency of their prayer. And I feel every definition of that love, counting down.

Couches

When I bought my house three years ago I was immediately overwhelmed by the space.  After six years in a 500 square foot apartment, my home's indulgent 890 square feet felt palatial.  I needed furniture and I acquired it in bits and pieces.  Some I ordered off various low cost websites (the twin bed I built from such a delivery has an unfortunate habit of falling apart if you're too violent a sleeper) and other pieces I grabbed at Target.

But I wanted a "grown up" couch. I wanted it to be new and perfect. I'm also fairly frugal so I opted for the Room and Board Outlet and left after my first trip with a receipt for a small grey canvas couch and a pale blue velvet swivel chair.  I was proud, happy, and impressed with the enthusiasm I could muster for decorating and getting things in order.

The couch has served me well.  It's the perfect snuggling size with my pup and it has been my landing spot after breakups, long runs, long days, and marathon viewings of Parks and Rec. It is not, perhaps, the perfect size for me, my pup, and my 6' hubby-to-be.  And so last weekend we went furniture shopping together.

Wedding planning is a weird thing.  In many ways it just feels like I'm planning the biggest party of my life. It's amorphous and fuzzy when I visualize it and only over time does it start to take shape. I waffle on colors and dress styles and hair options and whether or not I want the groom in a tux. And because my fiance is the Type B to my Type A, a lot of that waffling is met with a smile and a hug.  As long as he gets to marry me, Chester seems content with all options. The marriage is more important to me than the wedding, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't care about the details.

House planning makes marriage feel more real to me.  Perhaps it's because we both know the wedding is one day and that it will come and go quickly.  Discussing how we'll update my home to make it our home feels heavier, more laden with understanding that there will come a time when he doesn't leave. Someday he'll live here and this space will be his.  And we need a couch that makes room for him, for us.

And this is the part of planning I truly love.  Wedding planning is an exercise in addressing multiple inputs. You want your guests to feel welcome, you want to stay within a reasonable budget, you want your parents to be proud, you want your family to feel included, you want travelers to be happy they bought that plane ticket.  You review every detail with those desires in mind.

The wedding day belongs to many people. The couch only belongs to us. The house will be only ours. And because the "ours" is new to me, it feels precious. The decisions on leather vs canvas, grey vs. camel, are portentous. Holy.

The Rest of Your Life

You don't experience singleness in your thirties without toying with the idea that singleness is the mode in which you'll experience the rest of your life. You either grow comfortable with this idea or you fight it, wavering between acceptance and sadness.  And even if you grow comfortable with the idea of life-long singleness, you still have seasons of loneliness, evenings that end with more grey than you'd like.

I can't say that I ever felt comfortable with accepting singleness, but I had grown content in the day-to-day of it. Life can be full and joyous without a mate and I laughed infinitely more than I cried. As easy as it is to be thrilled and excited these days, his mother's ring on my finger, I've struggled to articulate this other feeling, this bittersweet look backwards.

The joy I hold in one hand is coupled with a smidge of melancholy in the other that I didn't love alone-ness more, that I didn't dig in and just rest in that season instead of so often hoping that the rest of my life had not yet begun. I didn't always remember that the rest of my life was already happening, that finding someone with whom to share some later season did not belittle the season I was in.

But that feels like a good lesson, one I hope to hold dear and precious, for whatever seasons are ahead. It is so easy to wrap all one's hopes and joys around some later moment, to sit on the lawn and stare heavenward, waiting for that next specific, life-changing firework, even when reeling from the firework before. He makes my heart burst and rest at the same time, makes joy feel easy. But I'm still quick to stare heavenward and wonder about the shape of our lives together, what thousands of tomorrows will look like, what fireworks are ahead.

We'll marry sometime early next year, and soon I'll know exactly when, know the date that will be etched on trinkets over the next 50 years. Soon I'll know what the dress looks like, and what the colors will be.  Soon I'll know who'll attend, what drinks they'll hold in their hands when they toast my new last name.  Soon some other season will unfold, lace and gold and figuring out whose turn it is to do laundry. Soon this season will be over, this short and beautiful season of almost and not-yet. I have learned the preciousness of the passage of time. I will cherish the rest of my life that is happening today, weight of a promise on my finger.

The Rocks We Lean Into

My dearest friend, Megan, is in the process of losing her dad. To say the season has not been easy seems trite. A few short months ago she lost her older brother and her current grief I can only imagine as some sort of heartrending whiplash. I picture a knot of silly putty, slowly stretched to its limit, tiny strands of translucent pinkness waiting to silently break.

We talk often these days, sometimes on the phone but often by text as she goes through the routine of work and having-a-life while simultaneously planning for something that must feel unplannable. And she has said that these days she simply does not feel like herself, which seems fair.  We get so used to ourselves in a known context, when that context changes violently, how do you recognize the face in the mirror? The self she knew six months ago was a self with three living brothers, a healthy dad. The self she wakes up to now has lost and is losing so much.

My parents have lost parents, my mom recently so. As dear as Mamaw was to me, it strikes me that for my mother, she is now a woman living in a world with no mom and dad. To be nurtured and loved and guided for so long, and then to find that presence gone must be jarring. You were once a grandmother with a mother to share in your joys and sorrows, a mother to watch and learn from and listen to.  Now you are a grandmother, you are the one to be watched and learned from and listened to.  Not an orphan, but alone in an important way.

I love a man who lost his mom a decade ago. I can't help but wonder who he was when she was alive, and how losing her changed him. There's a steadiness tied to parents and to lose them before you become a parent yourself seems so disorienting, like a star you planned to guide your ship by goes dark.

I've never lost a parent or a sibling so my world has never shifted, turned itself upside down, reordered itself around that new truth. There have been moments of brightness and sorrow that have rearranged my Self, made me more of what I am now and less of what I once was. But those moments provided periods of transition, months of growth, and their destabilizing force was always cushioned by the comfort of parents, siblings, those rocks we lean into out of the wind.

We have no choice but to grow into our new selves. And when we lose one rock, we must find another. For those who live lives of faith, like Megan and my mom and my love, they find comfort in one rock that never shifts, never changes, never weakens. And there's beauty in that dependence, that trust, that choice to root oneself in a Truth that never leaves. I pray I'd have the courage to stand that firm. Or, if lacking in courage, the gift to be surrounded by those who've leaned on the Rock before me.

The Little Things

For the last 18 months I've kept a running list on my phone of things I'm thankful for.  Sometimes I'm very dedicated to this list, adding a couple items a day.  But life gets busy and I'll forget the list for a couple weeks. What strikes me is that the moments of thankfulness that bring me back to the list are never big. They're almost always small. Very, very small.

I fell in love a few months ago.  Not really sure of the timing, honestly. All of the sudden it was just there, this person I'd been spending a lot of time with started feeling more important than expected. And I say "expected" because I'm 36 years old and it's impossible to reach your mid-30s as a single person and not have built an expectation around who might make you happy. It's a conglomerate of past hurts and past loves, a tallying of traits both beneficial and harmful, and question marks, things I assumed I needed in order to be Happy. I won't call it a checklist, because it never felt that way.  It felt like everything I've learned about love rolled into a vague idea as to what a greater Love might mean.

The man I fell in love with is not a vague idea. He's flesh and nerves and commitment, a bundle of curiosities and passions and preferences, some of which mirror my own and some of which feel completely foreign. We grew up in completely different environments, we share no common career arc or goal, but when I'm with him, he feels like a great big "of course." Of course it's you.

And it's those "of course" moments that spring up in tiny, heart-seizing ways. Moments so small they're almost unmemorable, they fleet in and grab and then float away, in favor of finding directions to the restaurant or getting the potatoes out of the oven. They're looks, and hands on shoulders, and unloading the silverware (because he knows I hate unloading silverware), they're using "we" when referencing the future, they're the questions born of figuring out someone else's family, all the worry generated by wanting to make someone else smile, the promises of prayer before big meetings, the comfort of knowing the person next to you plans to be next to you forever.

They're moments too big and too small to perfectly articulate on a list. But I will continue to try because it seems important to give the tiny moments their due. The grand gestures, first "I love you"s, and adventures get all the glory.  They're easier to document, proof that you laughed at this restaurant or explored a city, posted on any number of social media platforms. But it's the uncaptured moments that write the story, that give color and definition to the "of course" beside me.

Admitting love is a scary thing. Lovely, but unsettling, risky. I've written this post in my head a few times and have avoided publishing it because it feels very much like a tattoo of a lover's name on your arm. Like you're tempting the gods if you express love too vehemently, too sure, you're invariably going to have to cover up that tattoo eventually with a pretty flower. But "of course" has made me brave and thankfulness has helped me rest in the moment. Being courageous in the moment gets easier with practice, easier with company. And I've always loved tattoos.

:)

Mamaw

 When I was in elementary school we did not have a digital thermometer.  Glass thermometers full of mercury are a relic these days but they provided those of us in our mid-30s and above with the perfect tool for skipping school.  I'd feign some vague pains, mom would bring me the thermometer, and when she left the room I'd press the tip against the light bulb for a few seconds and then shake the scary 105 temp down to a reasonable 100 or so.

At the time, mom and dad both worked.  So being sick meant a trip to Mamaw and Papaw, which was really 90% of the reason for my sick day effort. Being sick in their home meant a cozy snuggle on the basement couch with cinnamon toast on command and an orange juice far superior in quality to whatever my mom bought. Being a doctor, Papaw was a bit wiser to my game than Mamaw, I think.  But he never gave me away. I was the first grandchild and I'm sure as a general rule I got away with a few ploys that the later generations did not. I'll get wrinkles first, so I feel like this is a fair trade. 

Sometimes I wasn't faking.  I spent a week at Mamaw and Papaw's when I had the chicken pox. I was an itchy, ornery mess but there was something magical about that cinnamon toast, something medicinal in the bright yellow of that smiley face cup. The wet washcloths on my forehead were cooler in that basement, the pillows softer. And a sick nerd loves nothing better than a pile of National Geographic and Encyclopedia Brittanica. 

My years of sick days with my grandparents were limited, something I can't blame on digital thermometers but must blame on distance when we moved away. While I spent less time convalescing on that basement couch, the years of Mamaw's cool, loving touch and soft kiss on my cheek continued for a total of 36 lucky years, through Papaw's death, the birth of additional grandchildren and great-grandchildren, a dear second grandfather in Onis, multiple moves and adventures, and an impressive number of hurricane evacuations on my part. 

I am the eldest of thirteen grandchildren and the span of years and distance between us has meant that while we've always prayed for and loved one another, we haven't always known each other incredibly well. But we all loved and were loved by Mamaw. We've all felt her hands on our back, we've all shared a Dove chocolate with her, felt her softest of kisses as we said goodbye. We've laughed with her, prayed with her, and heard her "I love you," complimented her lipstick or her scarf, drawn her a million pictures and sent her postcards from faraway lands, and in loving and knowing her, we've loved and known each other a little better. 

Families are full of so many different dreams and personalities and hills and valleys, it's easy to see how the connections of childhood can fade with the addition of years and new families, a new generation. But that's what makes that communal experience of a grandmother's love that much more precious and powerful. Because as the years go on, remembering what it felt like to set the table for Thanksgiving, to go to church together, to smell the cinnamon toast in the toaster oven, to pretend and climb mountains, to dig through drawers for old love letters, to marvel at faded pictures of our parents as children, to tell Mamaw what you wanted to be when you grew up, and listen as your cousin answered the same question, those are memories imprinted on our bones. They're the guts of what it means to be loved, to be a family that loves well, a family that looks heavenward and gives thanks when Mamaw goes Home.

We Drew a Map of the World

I cannot read maps. I get lost in malls. I suffer almost-panic when I'm called upon in the passenger seat to be the navigator. There is a disconnect in my brain between the world I see in front of me and the flat, impersonal scratches one sees in an atlas or by way of dear, helpful Google Maps. It's a mess for me and my mind experiences the prospect of unraveling that mess with a loathing that's hard to describe to the map savvy. I've always preferred directions in written form.  Turn left at the stop sign. Turn right when you take the exit. If you feel the need to draw a picture, you can assume I'll be late.

A common first project for Peace Corps volunteers, especially for those tasked with teaching, is the world map. You have a grid to work from and together with your students, their parents, any number of curious on-lookers, you slowly begin to sketch the world. In training, I was skeptical of my ability to spearhead anything resembling a map. And while I had a shiny new bachelor's degree, I worried I'd confuse the country names in some disastrous, offensive way. But I needed a project.  I needed a way to get messy with my students, connect with the boys in a silly way, and carve out time with my shyest girls, as we wondered how cold Antarctica must be.

This experience strikes me now with a rib-crunching blow. These were students whose families loved me when I was all alone in a country very different from my own. They always knew I was a Christian.  They knew I covered my hair out of respect, not out of any deep understanding of their religion. They knew I fasted for Ramadan out of curiosity, not devotion. They took care of me because of their innate goodness, the joy that permeated their homes, the warmth that made them quick to give and quick to smile, and their faith, which taught them to love and show kindness to strangers. This is what I know of Islam. This is what I know to be true.

When I think of Islam, I think of paint.  I think of a wall in a rundown youth center that slowly resembled the world. I think of tea and laughter. I think of friends who walked me home after a long day. I think of warm bread, mint, cumin, and heaps of golden couscous on Fridays. I think of cool hands on my hot forehead, when I was too sick to get out of bed. I think of babies held and kisses on cheeks and the gut-deep chuckle of old men. And I think of goodbyes.

The recent executive action against refugees, against Muslims, against immigrants in total, has me thinking of that map. How arbitrary those lines seemed once we sketched them on the wall. Some I knew to trace the line of a river, of a mountain range, some soft demarcation made by God. But most I knew to be the creation of men. As if the line built a home, built a place worth living, built space with some superior context. The lines felt unnecessarily powerful, and so unfair. Maybe I should forgive my mind for its inability to unwind that madness.  Maybe my mind fights the lines on purpose, maybe the confusion is a gift.

To see my country, my combination of lines, deepen those divides, draw them with such hatred, wrap them in religious and cultural superiority and call them "security," only strengthens the feeling I had 15 years ago that the lines must be among the darkest of God's heartbreaks. The God I believe in loves without any care of the lines we're born between. God drew the world, drew the color, drew the mountains and rivers full of life, drew the perfection of Eden and the wood of the cross, drew the people that would wander every inch of creation, drew faces of every shade, voices of every pitch, bodies of every strength, minds of every depth, drew love. We drew the map.

America

A little over a week ago I ran the New York City Marathon.  That's me in the blue shirt and strawberry blonde ponytail. The day was gorgeous, the experience perfect. In the week since I've had my share of exasperated conversations, texted with many bewildered loved ones, and bitten my tongue frequently. I know every election is difficult and polarizing.  I know that my beliefs differ from many people that I care for and admire. And I know that I care for and admire many people whose political views would offend my more conservative/liberal friends. The disdain and misinformation would go both ways, cut equally deep.

I count myself lucky.  Because the vast majority of folks feeling exhausted or scared or exasperated by this election did not have the opportunity to run or witness the NYC Marathon. It's probably a privileged and naive perspective, but I do not believe you can feel hopeless after witnessing or being a part of such a thing. Before the race I chatted with a dozen different folks, over half of which did not share my uber-Irish skin tone. As I waited at the start line, I got turned around and couldn't figure out where the water station was located. I asked the nearest volunteer and she replied, with a big smile and an accent that could have been Mexican (or any other accent that a non-Spanish speaking American would assume was a Mexican accent), "oh here, just take my water bottle, good luck" and she thrust it into my hand before jogging off to help another runner. As we waited for our wave to be called, I chatted on the grass with a young, black woman who was running NYC as her first marathon. I never caught her name. But I know that she is as emotionally attached to her Sauconys as I am to my Asics. I gave her one of my packs of gummy chews because I accidentally bought a lemon-lime flavor that she liked and I loathed. I hope she finished happy.

My name was written on my shirt and as I ran I heard my name yelled in multiple accents, some I could place and some I could not. Hearing shouts of encouragement from strangers is always helpful. But hearing my name shouted by folks who placed the emphasis in a quirky place or used a short "a" instead of a long struck me as infinitely more powerful. If Heaven is an actual, physical place, I believe it to be full of strangers who warmly welcome you in hundreds of accents.

I do not discount the distress many feel due to the election. I do not discount the distress that lead many to vote for someone I believe does not have their interests at heart. Fear is a mighty, often irrational thing and it has the ability to steer us both away from and towards violence, destruction, apathy. So I do not want my optimism to come across as ignorant or flippant. I only know that my experience two days before the election made me hopeful, and I have tried to remind myself of that feeling in the days that have followed.

Sometimes we are runners, and sometimes we are on the sidelines.  Sometimes we speak in a language that is immediately understood, and sometimes our perspective is accented, easily confused for threat or ignorance. Sometimes we experience danger, and sometimes we struggle to believe danger exists. I am as much at fault for my personal bubble and bias as those who voted differently from me. But I have heard my name spoken with joy and encouragement in accents far flung from my Southern and Midwestern roots and I am hopeful America will continue to be a place where we can fling encouragement as emphatically as insults. I have hope that the words we choose and the actions they underscore will strengthen our bonds more frequently than break them.  And I have hope that we are early in this race.  Early and pacing strong.

Godmother

I became godmother to Ava Ruth, my newest niece, a little over a week ago.  Baptists don't know much about godmothers so I will admit that my picture of such things was colored as much by Cinderella as it was by any understanding of the religious significance.

I am low on fairy dust, Ava Ru. I never had a godmother, so forgive me if I'm clumsy.

The night before I flew down to see you, I read the following in a book I'm reading (The Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything): "Seek grace in the smallest things, and you will also find grace to accomplish, to believe in, and to hope for the greatest things." It's a quote attributed to one of the first Jesuits. But it reminded me of a scratchy poem I wrote the first time I held you a few months ago.  We met on the family mountain, you'll grow up there, in pieces, and now seems as good a time as any to write it down.

Someday, when she is young but feeling old, I will tell her
I came to this mountain, our family mountain, laid her on my lap to look deep into her eyes, asked her for advice.
And I felt every itch and sway of my life in the pool of time,
wrapped in arms that carried me as a child.
I will tell her that I can wish no greater wish for her,
that when she lives in the curve of a question mark, she be steadied and windblown by
this blood,
that her fear be lessened by the gut deep din of these trees, these rocking chairs,
and that in her confusion
she find the flicker of a grill's hot coal, the warm weight of a baby,
a wink from God.
My blood is her blood
and these mountains know both of us.
We are mountains, both of us.

You're a gift, Ava Ru.  You are too young to express love, to provide encouragement, to lend a hand with the cooking. But you were everything I needed that day on the mountain. In a small, happy moment when you squirmed against my chest, threw up on my shoulder, your face was how God communicated grace to me. God is good, little love, and enormous. He is the mountain beneath us and the familiar creak of stairs and the blanket we reach for when the wind picks up. You can find him everywhere and you are loved, everywhere. As your godmother, I will do my best to show you how very big and very present he is, and I have no doubt you'll do the same for me.

"Seek grace in the smallest things, and you will also find grace to accomplish, to believe in, and to hope for the greatest things."

I Am A Woman Who Has Not Been Raped

I am a woman who has not been raped.

I am a woman who:

• walks to her car at night with her keys in the ready position (go for the eyes, they say) 
• checks beneath the car from a distance to make sure nobody is hiding underneath (they stab your ankles and throw you in the backseat)
• takes a look in the backseat before getting into the car
• runs a different route every damn day, not because she wants to, but because potential attackers could learn a habitual route
• had her bra unhooked by a jerk (still don't know who) in the crowded hall of her junior high
• has her ass slapped or grabbed by strangers at concert venues often enough to have lost count
• had a man grab her between her legs on a crowded street, and when she turned around, saw him wink at her, laughing and high fiving friends
• has accepted that some colleagues in her career will always look at her chest before her eyes, thems the breaks
• has been followed by a man on a dark, empty street long enough to cause her to start running
• texts friends before first dates with the location and fella's name, not because she's excited, but because someone should be aware "just in case"
• walks with confidence until the catcall comes, then her heart folds inwards
• was assaulted more than a decade ago and still she worries that it was her fault
• loves five dear women who have been raped 

I am a woman who has not been raped.  But sexual assault is a wound. Even on the days when living in the world as a woman feels like a gift, even on those days I walk to my car aware and ready for the pounce. It is a life lived on alert, and I am not special.  I am not unique in my anxiety on these points. These are the cuts, large and small, that bleed and scab over and leave a scar. 

I've never considered myself to be a particularly vocal feminist. Equal? Of course. But let them figure that out in their own time. I'll study hard, be a good lawyer, ignore the sexist slights along the way. But "locker room talk" isn't just sexist machismo. It trivializes every unwanted touch, every terrified moment, every rushed start of the engine because that man kept following you. It lessens the import of those slices of my life that I lost to fear, harassment, embarrassment. 

Women don't bring these things up often to the men in their lives.  We don't tell fathers or friends or brothers or husbands or boyfriends about the catcalls or the leers.  In part, it's because those occurrences aren't uncommon. But mostly, I think we often don't bring it up because we fear it makes us appear weak. We worry that a reckoning of the wounds will cause others to think of us as broken, overly sensitive, damaged. But the men we love should know, because the men we love know men who may have grabbed a woman in a bar, on a street, told her to "shake it" as she walked to work. 

The men I love should know that I am a woman that has not been raped.  And it was luck. 

Enjoying the Passage of Time

I spent the Memorial Day weekend on a road trip with my dog, a trip I'd had planned for a good while but wavered on committing to.  I made the first reservation late last fall, inspired in part by my 35th birthday.  It was an age I expected to feel momentous, maybe depressing, and instead it felt like wings. "I want to see the Badlands," I thought to myself. And thought almost immediately became action.  My little buddy of a dog just lucked out in being along for the ride.

I wavered on committing to this trip because for a period of time I thought perhaps I'd go with someone else, a boyfriend who is no longer a boyfriend. 35 year olds shouldn't have boyfriends, such a juvenile descriptor.  But guy-I'm-seeing-and-making-dinner-for-and-talking-about-important-forever-things-with is pretty clunky. It was an important relationship and for a little while, I hoped maybe I'd have someone (with two legs) beside me when I looked up at Mount Rushmore for the first time. So when that relationship ended several weeks ago, my feelings about the trip were muddled, confused. Would it feel sad? Would I be lonely? Would it feel like a trip he was supposed to be on?

The trip wasn't a life-changing, emotionally cataclysmic experience.  I always expect explosions when reality is so much quieter, more Roman candle-esque. The drive from Minneapolis to Rapid City, where I stayed, is dull as dirt for the first 6 hours.  No rolling hills, just flat, unending grassland and farm country. My dog largely slept, her head resting on my thigh from time to time. I listened to music, to podcasts, to nothing.  I talked to myself, to my dog, to everyone who'd ever wronged me, to everyone I felt the urge to apologize to.  But those conversations were short-lived and easily dismissed by a stop at a gas station, a new bag of beef jerky. I smiled at memories, cracked the window when my dog farted, and thanked God for cruise control.

I had two full days to explore and I wandered the Badlands (pictured), Black Hills, and many of their famous sites in a busy 48 hours. I was never unhappy to be alone, never embarrassed to say, "table for one," when I stopped at a restaurant. Cell reception was spotty and while occasional wi-fi allowed for photo uploads, texting with friends was largely impossible. My connection to home felt loosely tied.

I keep a list on my phone of things I'm thankful for, my running tally of gratitude. I added several things/moments over the course of the trip, little blessings and larger Roman candle bursts of emotion. I was thankful for sunshine on my shoulders, shade, the squish of mud, cheap wine, the opportunity to climb high enough to be just a little bit scared. I won't say that I never thought of being there with someone. We're relational creatures, bonds and shared experiences are gifts.  But I never wished for a shared experience instead of my solo adventure. If given the option for this trip, I'd choose solitude every time.

On the drive home I listened to a podcast, You Made it Weird with Pete Holmes, and for this episode the comedian was joined by Jimmy Kimmel. It was largely silly, a good way to pass a couple hours, listening to each of them talk about their early years, the difficulty of late night television, the pleasure and guilt associated with fortune. Near the end of the podcast Pete asked Jimmy about the meaning of life, and Jimmy referenced the James Taylor song as being the closest approximation of an answer. In the song James Taylor says that the meaning of life is "enjoying the passage of time," and in that moment I felt that was 100% accurate. Yes, there are greater, deeper meanings, love, connection, finding peace, embracing faith, seeking God.  But in all those things is also a recognition that time, for us, is finite. The minor mountain scrambles, the cool poke of a dog's nose on your hand, the juice of a peach you have to eat over the sink, the silence you find only in wilderness, enjoying those moments and the passing of them can be meaning, too. And that enjoyment is so personal, so intimately gifted by our Creator, that's what struck me on the drive home. Standing in the Badlands, sunshine beating on my shoulders, scraping my knee on one more tiny climb, I'd never be able to communicate what that felt like for me to anyone else. And for this weekend, I didn't need to try. Just feeling it was enough. Being me in that moment was enough.