The Sink

"Hey Mom, when can we order those coins?" Jack says -- the coin collector.

Sunday afternoon we each fix our own lunch, linger, relax, tidy up. Navy plaid and sleeves rolled to the elbows, Jack raises his eyebrows.

"I need you to clean the sink first," I say.

"I did clean the sink," he says.

"No, you have to actually CLEAN the sink," I say.

"Like what do you mean?" he says.

"Well, when you leave dishes sitting in there THAT long, since last night, everything gets all slimy so you have to CLEAN the sink."

"Well, I put all the dishes in the dishwasher," he says.

"Yup. Now clean the actual sink," I say.

Tears dribble out his unblinking eyes. "Well, I didn't know," he says.

"I think we might have to wait on ordering those coins for you," I say.

"Why?!"

"I'm not sure you have a right relationship with them if you cry when I ask you to do things."

"What do you mean?"

"When you act like I shouldn't have to do THIS, or She's just giving me more and more and MORE stuff -- this is so UN-FAIR. You don't have a right attitude."

"Oh."

"Let's just get this taken care of," I say.

"Ok," he sags his shoulders, grabs the baking soda and sprinkles the sink.

A steady spirit ensues. Bit by intentional bit, he wields his will. Something manlike comes over him.

"Your work looks good. How's your attitude?" I say.

"Good." Cheerful, the genuine article, he scrubs the gritty soda into stains.

"Alright," I say.

"Can you come check if this is good?" he looks up, a pleasant half-smile.

"Sure," we trace the remnants of stains. Revisit the dirty parts. "Looks great," I say.

He nods, almost shrugs. "I just was wanting to order the coins sooner because I thought maybe then they would get here before Tuesday," he says.

"Oh," I say.

"Well, we can talk about it tomorrow," I say.

"Ok," he says.

I note his correctable spirit. Submission to authority is a difficult skill. And yet, it's the opus magnum of the truly great leaders.

Gratitude:

5800. A dear friend sends us a package. Blessing unfurls. Smiles encircle the living room. Love from a distance, such a sweet thing.

5801. Turmeric, the golden spice, it makes everything yellow and delicious.

5802. Our super-scraper-pot-cleaner, the kitchen's MVP.

5803. A red basket for yarn. Red. I rearrange the whole yarn stash.

5804. Daily, I till the grounds of responsibility. Grueling toll. Like breadcrumbs on the path, I find small encouragements. Moments open up and I see, there it is, the truth: you reap what you sow.

5805. We work each day to sow habits and small obediences that make a life good in the long run.

5806. And in the process we know each other. Knowing, isn't that the point of everything? Maybe the long run is longer than we thought.

Permission

"Hey Momma, do you think I'll be enough responsible by Saturday?" Jack says.

Snuggled cheek to cheek, I turn, look into his azure eyes. Me there at the bunk ladder, him reclined on top bunk, our eyes mingle. "'Cause I'm gonna do the same thing as today," he says, "cleaning and stuff."

I picture the sierra of dishes he excavated from the sink, the ridge of laundry off the couch, the spindrift of Legos and Lincoln Logs, the bluff of snow pants and hats washed in the back door, all unearthed and quarried into drawers and baskets, put away.

"Probably," I say. "I have to see it happen first." Cookies. He wants permission to make cookies. Half-smile, his arm a warm bandanna curved around my neck, the moment eases in legatto cadence, that slow birth of responsibility there before us.

"Ok," he says, his eyes content.

"Sleep good." I kiss his forehead, wiry reddish hair brushes my cheek. "Love you."

He squeezes me tight around the shoulders. I feel a reserve of strength, sinewy muscle, something man-ish and immovable.

"Love you, Momma." His voice soft and responsive like reigns on a stallion, he smiles tenderness into my eyes.

I replay the glasslike blue of his eyes, that mazarine resolve. I stare at that steadfastness, that defiance turned inside out. I marvel that this is strength. Obedience. Self-restraint.

He rises to the occasion and wields something better than permission to make cookies: the strength to be worthy.

Gratitude:

5177. I go to wake Joe Monday morning. He beams, buck naked, jammies and a poopy diaper discarded on the floor.

5178. Ceris and the boys come to sled. Arctic bliss, the children cataract down the sled run, snot icicles forgotten in the boyish romp.

5179. Cerissa and I chatter over coffee and the next steps of my patchwork quilt. We plan and scheme, and I settle on the perfect idea.

5180. Craig lets me shop the winter sales and update my wardrobe. Some dresses and skirts, I feel like a little girl playing dress-up again.

5181. We go to the latest gallery opening. The children amble by the artwork, enjoy the hors d'oeuvres, and linger. We actually linger as a family.

5182. I take Myra on a date. "My tummy probably hurts because I need more chocolate chips," she says.

5183. "The Holy Spirit is LIGHT," she tells me."Him looks like Jesus. And he loves us," she says.

5184. I go out with Lucy too. I ask what I can be praying about for her. "My eye," she says, "that's really the only thing."

5182. Myra tries her had at spelling and tags Joe with a new nickname: J-E-O. "J-E-O," she shouts. "Hi, J-E-O. That's J-E-O."

5183. She shows him how to eat popcorn with a spoon.

5184. "Why do you sound sort of upset?" Jack says as I all but stop down the hallway. "Ugh," I sigh, "'cause I'm being a pill. I'm actually really being a pill." Honesty wins the day.

5185. Jane, Jack, and Lu make apple crisp for the family. Swept up in my quilt and dinner prep, I offer no oversight. It turns out delicious.

5186. Jane and Jack pass my responsibility tests and then finally make peanut butter cookies. They polish the kitchen clean and hope upon hope they get permission again.

5187. "There was a boy at church that said two plus two was FIVE," Lucy says. "I guess he's probably not a plus expert."

5188. "Jesus," Jane prays, "please help us when we do something wrong to be able to feel that it's wrong so that we don't keep on doing it. Amen."

5189. Yes, to feel that it's wrong, to feel that it's right, oh to be fine tuned in this. I pray my spirit heeds the slightest pull.

The Wallet

"Mom?" Jack taps my elbow. "Mom?" he punctures the factory line of tasks running through my mind. I stifle, Who left their breakfast bowl out? and instead swivel past freckled boy and shuffle an oatmeal canister into the cupboard, a bowl into another white bowl into the sink.

"Yeah?" I say and deliberately look away from the butter dish, the butter knife a tilting twig defying gravity, and the honey jar still on the counter.

His eyes roving spotlights of affections, he captures me. Tethered there between a fork and two knives propped on the sink and spindrift oatmeal on the floor, I fetter in the wind of rapport, that niggling thing of love there between us. The seesawing ocean of a day, and his eyes anchor us.

"I'm gonna need to bring THIS on my date with you," he says. He swaths the air with a khaki wallet, a kelly green stripe past the snap, the awkward arc as he jabs the air due to an enormous amount of change dumped in the credit card slots.

"Oh, good!"

We scurry the afternoon into a decent knot and head out.

We heave into the Dairy Queen parking lot, the whole suburban a sigh around us, the pavement radiant black under our tires.

I slip out of the front seat, pull his door open. "Ya ready?"

The seatbelt limp at his elbow, he palms that wallet, gunny-sack-brown. He leaps down over a teddy bear and Jane's green sweatshirt invisible there wedged next to a Noah's Ark color book on the floor mat.

"Mom, I need to get my wallet in my pocket," he reports, "so it will be a minute or two."

"Oh. Okay."

So I wait, there in the resplendent heat, his mannish features chiseled sharper than even a day ago, the sensibility of the wallet all obvious and ethereal. He grabs my hand;  we walk in.

With the tug of his hand I see it: his desire to provide, that seed of manhood, masculine, confident. I let him lead, that image of his father unmistakable like the cache of coins in his wallet.

Gratitude:

4543. "Mom?" Jack pounds on the bathroom door, piano practice temporarily stopped. "Mom, I wasn't doing music writing. I was doing worship."

4544. "I kind of regret putting on all the salsa," Jack comments on his burrito. "I'm putting on other stuff to try and change its personality."

4545. The Tuesday Girls pool questions and philosophy, theology and the everyday, and eat salad, cherry pecan green salad.

4546. I collapse under a migraine explosion. The children dismantle the plastic play-slide structure. They build a boat from the pieces and sail the back lawn while I sleep.

4547. Finally, I resurface, sit on the lead boat. "Mom, it's sort of hard to drive the boat when you're sitting there," Myra says.

4558. Jane and I alter clothes together.

4559. I mend one of Craig's dress shirts and a pair of his jeans.

4560. We break the news: raccoons broke in and ate all the adult chickens. The children nod like veteran farmers, sigh, move on. Craig does triage on the chicken yard.

4561. New dye! We prepare for another round of dying and refreshing.

4562. We celebrate my dad's and little brother's birthdays, steaks and the fresh retelling of their admirable qualities. We linger in the whirl of celebration, children gathered at our elbows.

4563. Iris roots, a whole bag of them waits for their new home in my garden.

4564. An old farm table. Pete and Rose let us keep their old table for them. We set it up in the schoolroom and the whole room orbits around it.

4565. Craig takes us to the park for a morning walk. I jangle through the ashtray for parking-meter-change. "I wish I would've brought my money," Jack leans over to Lucy, "so then I could help Mom."

4566. Craig and I celebrate our 13th wedding anniversary, every year terra firma under our feet.

4567. Father's Day. I reflect on the great happiness I have from the love and wisdom of my father and the great strength Craig has from his.

4568. I find afresh the familiar realization: happiness flows from belonging, that deep bedrock belonging, membership in the kingdom of God, and the unexpected pleasure that every moment is in place.

Smart

"Who is the smartest person you know?"

"Well, Jesus."

"Ok, well, besides Jesus."

Halfway around a little bistro table, Jack cocks his head. His elbows propped on the thumbnail-sized table, he leans a tiny bit and cobbles drinks and colored pencils. "Well Daddy IS really smart," he recovers, eyebrows arced over blue irises.

I ignore the clanked pencils still all corralled on the table. "Is he the smartest person you know?"

He pokes at the colors. Their enamel surfaces chink against each other. "I know who Logan and Thad think is the smartest person," he says. "Their dad."

He jaunts around the table, lucent green in hand, and sits down back at my elbow. "Maybe everyone thinks their dad is the smartest," I say.

He swishes green onto the bristol paper. "Yeah," he says. "'Cause their like, 'My dad is the smartest. He's an engineer, and he fixed the dishwasher.' And I'm like, 'No, My dad is.'"

"I thought your Daddy fixed the dishwasher."

He polishes the viridian on in bumpy strokes. "Their dad did too."

"Oh. Well, I guess fixing the dishwasher is a Dad job." He doesn't look up, just scritch-scratches more teal green out on the paper.

Still I weave the strands. We practices the moves. He orders his own caramel steamer, thanks the baristas, clears the table, throws away trash. He tells me who the smartest person in the world is. I watch a small masculine seed burgeon and grow, germinate, sprout.

Confidence and affection, I note his unfettered stride.





Gratitude:

4238. Jane tries to teach Myra how to throw a football. "Myra's sort of wearing off the smiles," she says.

4239. Jane confesses: she was up until 11:20pm reading.

4240. "One of the reasons that I like to read," she says, "is I think about the book and let it roll over my mind and think, Is it good or bad, and then I go to bed."

4241. The Tuesday Girls eat sweet potato soup, Irish tea, and chocolate at mom's.

4242. I discover the fast way to hard boil eggs: in muffin tins.

4243. "Dat is Jesus," Myra points to a red dot she drew. "I doo-ed a lot of those," she says.

4244. "Why you want Jane and Jack to work hard?" she asks. "Everyone's supposed to work hard," I tell her. "Do you?" She shakes her head, "No. Daddy doo-ed that for me."

4245. A friend and her one-year-old boy come over. The afternoon blustery and gray, we make a splendid walk to the park. We linger in conversation.

4246. Dad and Mom come for dinner. Cherry-pecan-feta salad carries the night.

4247. "I like cinnamon sugar," Myra says. "It gets on your mouf -- all the way on your cheeks." She holds up the remains of cinnamon sugar toast.

4248. Jane makes eggs for lunch. Everyone helps.

4249. We acquire more bookshelves for our library.

4250. We wade through more ancient myths. "This one's not really REAL," Lucy says, "'cause it started with ONCE UPON A TIME."

4251. I show Jack how to make up his own sheet of math computation. "Where you gonna be most of the time?" he asks, notebook under arm, "'cause I'm gonna be wherever you are doing math problems."

4252. Myra sees one of the hens relieve herself. "The chicken pooped on her fedder," she frowns. "I know, isn't that sad?" I say. "That's not SAD," Lucy pipes up, "It's not DEAD. That'd be WAY sadder."

4253. "When I was five I went to Jesus' house," Myra brags. She turns three in May.

4254. I start a sock monster.

4255. We make the semi-annual visit to a dentist we love.

4256. New shorts. I have a new pair of shorts for summer.

4257. I ask Jack who in the Bible really honored God. "Noah," he says, "because he gave God whatever he wanted. And Moses because he obeyed God in basically everything he said."

4258. "What do you think is the best age?" I ask him. "Forty," he says, "'cause Miss Lynne says it is."

4259. "What do you think is going to happen in the world?" I continue. "I hope something good," Jack remarks.

4260. And finally, "What do you think is the most important thing to teach in school?" I say. "Probably," he responds, "love your enemies."

4261. The whole clan gathers for another wrestling match weekend.

4262. Craig's mom takes Jane on a date. "Gramma teaches me to be generous," she says. "That was a fun time. It was spectacular. It's just so fun being with her."

4263. I putter around the kitchen. Jane traipses in. "I guess you didn't see this," she says and points to a scrap of brown paper bag hung on the fridge with a magnet. Please come have a party outside with us.

4264. We pray before bed and Jack closes, "And Jesus, thank-you that we don't live in a country where they burn up all the Bibles. Amen."

4265. We celebrate Andrew turning 10. Orange party streamers and balloons, family gathered, it's perfect.

4266. Jack bobbles into Myra. "OWIE," she protests. "Oh, are you ok?" he stops and gives her full attention. "Yeah," she quells and points to the owie, "KISS it."

A Job

"Mom, I want to work really, really hard and get a job," Jack begins, off-hand, fact-like, "so that I can buy a kid's bow and arrow and go turkey hunting with Daddy." Recumbent on bottom bunk, fingers laced behind his head, ankles criss-crossed, he chatters. "That way if Daddy doesn't shoot one at the turkey shoot, he can still have one."

He dreams of pruning the red twigged dogwood, the one out back, twining together a raft. He sketches and maps, pours over books. I suggest he prays for more wood. I tell him make a model first. I fold a white running shirt, black pants. He jabbers. I reconfigure pink tennis shoes and boots blooming out of the closet. He follows me, a yabbering puppy at my heel. "Or," he says all nodding and raised eyebrows, "or I could pray that God makes the boat float really well so it doesn't have to sink in the middle of the river, and I have to swim."

I tuck running clothes in my drawer, pluck an alabaster scarf from my dresser and swirl it around my neck. We trip-trop to the next task, boy dreams all a gust about our ankles.





Gratitude:

4015. I make Jane's least favorite soup. "Jesus thank-you that we have enough food to eat," she prays at dinner. "Thank-you for this soup," she pauses and then adds, "even thank-you for the meat. Amen."

4016. "Watch for cars," I tell her when she makes a delivery to Cerissa across the street. "Yep," she says, "I know. You tell me that every time 'cause you love me, and I'm like, I know that."

4017. The new year fresh in front of us, I pause for reflection. "Are you hopeful that we are going to prevail this next year?" I ask Craig. "I'm not hopeful," he responds, "I am confident." Confident. His words encircle the fresh year.

4018. A new hat, soft and celery green. An electric blue running shirt. A trivet in olive wood.

4019. My sweet nephew endures emergency surgery Christmas day to retrieve 26 cents lodged in his throat. He giggles and babbles on and on about the IV pokey mark on his arm.

4020. We spend New Year's Eve afternoon with cousins, coffee and peppermint bark popcorn for grown-ups and friendship deep and wide. The quiet and early evening rolls in silent, steady.

4021. And then it's back to school. "Come on!" Jane calls, "I want to hear some feet thundering." And they commence with Hark The Herald Angels Sing to the tromp of bare feet on hardwoods.

4022. The kids play Uno -- faster and faster. "Now we're getting some confidence under our feet," Jane cheers.

4023. I meet up with mom. We sift through the dust of this new year, compare notes, pray to honor our Lord and Savior.

4024. I trim Jane's fingernails, turn her hand palm up to find I LOVE MOM AND DAD written there.

4025. Cerissa and I compare soup recipes, improvise to no success, compare notes again and resurrect the results.

4026. Lucy gets a horse shirt and wears it every day. She wears a skirt, scarf, and boots to match me.

4027. We share a meal down on the farm: roast beef, salad, ice cream.

4028. Jane practices the alphabet in sign language so she can talk with her friend Josiah. "The kids gasped when I did the whole alphabet," she says and then starts training the other children every night before bed.

4029. The children start a jar of coins to save up for school books. They leave a sticky note on Craig's toothbrush with the total written on it.

4030. We smooth out a few bumps in this freshly fallen year I marvel again at the strength beneath our feet. Thank-you Jesus.