All The Time

"How do you accidentally knock them off, Jack?" I frown at the 200 cookie avalanche. Danish butter cookies.

Jack's shoulders slump. Eyes round and ocean blue, a meniscus of tears, he blinks. "I, I," he stammers, all that cerulean love crestfallen down his cheeks.

"It's ok," I say, try to rewind, "stuff like this happens all the time." I speak and something like hope buoys us, something like walking on water. He grabs me around the waist, wipes tears on my sweater.

We eat the cookies.

And we read about the martyrs, the early church. Then on to chores, I wrestle the gangly landscape of a quilt through my machine.

"I might want to bring this with me if I can," Lucy says. I look up from the sewing machine. She tucks a mint green primer into her elbow, pats it. We Learn About God it says across the top.

"Where?" I say my shoulder pressed into the heaving heft of that quilt.

"Into jail." She nods, serious, cheerful.

"Oh." All that panorama of quilt and all I can see is her oval face, pleasant, purposed.

"So I can tell them about Adam and Eve and God if I can," she says. I feel it, the gathering of strength, the tracing of courage, the audacity of meekness.

I smile into the nucleus of her eyes, nod.

A rehearsal. She's planning the future.

That huge quilt sprawled over the dining room table, and still, I stare at that little girl.

Stuff like this happens all the time. My words come back to me. All the time, just below the surface, something strong and beautiful holds us.

Gratitude:

5019. Our thirteen year old popcorn maker falls apart. Craig brings us a new one.

5020. Mom helps me pin the layers of my quilt into place. We eat peppermint bark popcorn, sip coffee, let the afternoon drape over the folds of the quilt. It's the one I started when Jane was a baby.

5021. I join the ranks of women who have machine quilted a king size quilt. I even sewed a binding.

5022. To my radiant wife, the note begins. I find it on my coffeemaker when I awake.

5023. "Mom," Myra announces, "when you warm the butter up in your bread, pretty soon it will get really juicy. Last time I did it, and it was really juicy."

5024. My mom and her sister meet at Grampa's to decorate for Christmas.

5025. I get Jeremy and Kimberly Sorensen's Christmas Album.

5026. I catch a Friday morning coffee with a dear, dear friend. We spur each other on. Encouragement abounds.

5027. Our Christmas tree dies. Craig gets us a new one.

5028. Jane and I sneak away to buy gifts.

5029. We get our family pictures from Miss Rose Emily. Love!

5030. We hang the prints as part of Christmas decorating.

5031. We listen to A Christmas Carol unabridged while we decorate.

5032. We listen to A Pilgrim's Progress. I didn't know it was written from prison.

5033. Jane braids a necklace for me, a tiny butterfly at the bottom.

5034. I make two gallons of spaghetti sauce. For all the joy of eating spaghetti on the coast, I want it again. I haven't made it in ten years.

5035. We skim into the crest of a new week, expectant, content.

Soda Water

"What's soda water?" Jane chirps from the backseat.

"It's water that's fizzy," I say, "with no flavor. Doesn't that just sound like something I would like?" Marooned at a red, white, and blue gas station, the fifth or sixth so far, Craig runs in. Soda water, he's looking for soda water. We stay buckled in.

"One time I had Sprite," Jane says. I feel her lean forward. "Oh, this is a memory that I'm not gonna get out a my mind," she titters. "We were at Rocky Rococo's, and Daddy gave me a glass I thought was WATER, and I DRANK it and was like..." She trails into gurgles. They erupts into chortles.

"What's SPRITE?" Jack demands.

"It's a type," Jane recovers, "of SODA." She straightens, nods, anchored with importance.

And we wait. All strapped in and eager, we wait. The sun crystalline, the sky azure, we wait, momentum gathered and silent.

"Your daddy is so patient with me," I say. Elbow wheedled against passenger window, I stare at the sky, summer blue in November, the hush of the trip bonded between us.

"Oh," Jane says.

"You know, for about three years before he met me, he prayed for patience," I say. "The Lord gave him many difficult things to grow patience in him." I lean an elbow over my seat, the sun scattered across my face. "And it was one of the sweetest gifts he's ever given me," I say.

"Oh," Jack says. The windows portals of light, we stare at the sharp cityscape around oil stained lot.

"Ya know," I say, "the gifts that you can't wrap up and put a bow on, end up being the ones you treasure for a lifetime."

"Yep," Jane says.

Craig, lithe over the dingy blacktop lopes to the car. He strides, optimism like diesel.

"Did you find it?"

"Nope," he says. "Not yet." He turns the key, swivels the steering wheel, propels us to the next stop. Six, eight, nine, I don't know how many. I just know we left with soda water. And love.

Gratitude:

5009. "Ok, let's start this trip off RIGHT," Craig tackles Jack.

5010. We take a trip to the beach. A whole clutch of family gathers, prepares Thanksgiving, gives thanksgiving, lingers in the bond of family.

5011. My aunt and uncle have us all, all 21 of us, for a week of celebration. So accommodating, so gracious, so high class and hospitable, the weekend unfolds like a symphony.

5012. We feel it again: blood is thicker than water. Cousins play. Adults linger late into the night over board games and Canasta. Parents and children slow to look each other full in the face.

5013.  We collect agates, bags of them.

5014. We thrift shop in droves.

5015. And I run with my dad. We run and talk. It's the best. All that wisdom and life tied up in someone I respect so much, someone I just plain like. We run nine minute miles. I can hardly believe it. The time with Dad is such a highlight.

5016. Craig drives the whole journey there and back. We listen to This Present Darkness on audiobook and hang on every word.

5017. Craig teaches the kids how to play Settlers of Catan, and we spend a whole morning playing together.

5018. We unpack and reassemble the house. We settle into the folds of a new week.

Help

"I came in to help because I heard it was a big mess." Jack strides into the kitchen. That same on-the-ball-of-you-foot-stride of his father defines his countenance.

I shake a periwinkle rag into the sink. "I just finished," I say. "It was. It was a biscuit-crumbly-mess. I got down on my hand and knees to clean it up."

"Oh." He cocks his head, sandy red hair buzzed short and coarse. I shower the rag clean with the spray setting. "Thank-you for cleaning that up." His earnest blue eyes frame the moment.

Then it's Saturday. A long day of confrontation, redefining the clear boundaries of our home, a pool party, a tired crew, I find the long sigh of a day ends with me in the bathroom scrubbing mint green walls.

Jane trollies in to brush teeth. "Momma, how are you?" she chimes.

"Oh." I sigh. That personal conviction to always offer this child honesty, and I eddy. "Tired," I finally say. "Kind of worn out, like I'm giving and giving and not getting filled up." Somehow in the distance of a few words that female devotion to face-to-face conversation and both toothbrush and scouring rag have rallied to the peripheral.

"Momma, when you're having a moment where you feel like that we should go down into the library and read together." She furrows her eyebrows, the intensity of a physician. I slacken my forehead.

"That's a good idea," I say.

The moment spools on, but we just sort of stand there. And then, "Momma, when you give and give, it means other people are getting."

"Yep. And that's a good feeling. You never regret giving." I nod.

She half-nods, and then, "Except one time I did."

"Oh?"

Now seated coffee-shop style knee to knee, her on the step-stool, me on the toilet lid, she carries on. "One time," she says, "I gave Myra half my brownie and she didn't like it so she went and hid it. And then she showed it to me, so I kind of regretted that." Here we are again nodding in tandem like the swing pendulum of a vertical clock.

"Yeah," I agree, "I guess that shows how you should always be honest. That's another thing you never regret. I mean not like: YOU LOOK HORRIBLE TODAY, but honest like saying something even if it's bad news." I marvel at how we mimic each other's expressions, trace the emotions through mime. "Like with Myra," I say, "wouldn't you've rather she said: I DON"T REALLY LIKE IT?"

"Yeah." A simple exchange and suddenly we're each in possession of something new, something that was just a moment ago inside of the other person. Strength. It's the piecing together of a puzzle.

Another moment and toothbrush and scrub rag flutter back to motion. The evening carries on.

Gratitude:

4623. "Let's dance! Mom, let's dance," Myra titters. "That was fun. Let's do it again!" I try to make pancakes for lunch, but it keeps erupting into dance.

4624. "It DOES take patience," Lucy says as we sing the old hymns. "That's why I like this song." Me too.

4625. "I like casual," Jane begins. "I'm just like, why don't we just have a casual wedding where we wear clothes just a little bit fancier than church clothes instead of go out an buy like a $100 dress."

4626. Craig's mom brings us a little bowl of fresh strawberries. We make a strawberry cheesecake.

4627. Jane fries eggs. I make biscuits. "I enjoy doing this with you," she says.

4628. Cousins visit from Alaska. We have a swim day at Grammie's. The grown-ups eat turkey cranberry summer salad and recline in the shade next to watermelon and water fights, sidewalk chalk pulverized into paint.

4629. Cool summer dusk, a BBQ gone long, we linger with our small group.

4630. We start each day with a weed round-up in the garden. Lucy pulls 800 on Wednesday. Jack pulls 1000 on Thursday.

4631. I make harvest rolls as per Craig's mom's recipe. They perfectly encase BBQ fanfare.

4632. Feta salad with pecans and cranberries, Lay's potato crisps, another BBQ ambles and tarries into the evening. BBQs finally eclipse our winter soup pattern.

4633. Coconut ice cream, browned-butter chocolate sauce.

4634. By miracle I avert three migraines in one day a visual aura announcing each one.

4635. Lucy receies the dolly of her dreams: a baby boy. She names him JOE, swaddles him in a flannel blankie and brings him to sign language and chores. He hardly ever cries.

4636. Our ASL teacher returns from vacation.

4637. Friends join us at the pool. The kids and husbands swim. Wives visit. The night runs long and smooth like the sparkling sun on swimming water. We bask in the friendship.

4638. A friend lets us pick their strawberry patch clean while they vacation in Hawaii.

4639. "What are you thankful for lately?" I spur conversation while the kids and I wait in the Costco parking lot for Craig. "Everything," Jane pipes up. "Just everything." Everything. I marvel at the good fruits of confrontation and discipline: Everything. Thankful for EVERYTHING.

4640. A light headache still seasons the evening; still, I set my mind to do what is good -- what is right and good.

Lucy

"Do you know what is my favorite part?" Lucy scritch-scratches colors on a sheet of paper. She peels the cerulean blue a bit more.

"What?" I say.

"The part that is burning that God made for the Devil," she says. Sprawled tummy-down on the rug, a shoebox of crayons sidled up next to her, Lu rubs blues and reds into the lumpy soft paper, a smudge of yellow, a swipe of orange.

"Hell?" I frown. Settled into the old black couch, Joe under an arm, feet propped on the coffee table, I watch Lucy.

"Yeah." She scruffs out more flaxen yellow, scarlet, tangerine. They warble and twist, a collision of hues. I wonder about her bad dreams, the scary people that say they will cut off her toes, the ones that chase her until she wakes up and comes to me in the middle of the night -- to pray.

"I hope Great-Grampa turns to Jesus before we all go dead," she blurts. "Because when we die, Jesus will check our hearts to see if we love God, and if we don't, we are on the Devil's team."

I watch her stroke more blue onto that paper. "Yep." I wonder if she's remembering how I had said Hell is made for the Devil and his angels.

She pauses, glances at me from the corner of her eye. "Can you not be loud for a minute?"

Lost in my thoughts, I draw Joe a little closer, gaze at Lu. She tucks her chin, squeezes shut her eyes. Seconds unroll.

"Ok. You can be loud now. I was praying for someone to turn to God." She smooths on more cerulean. "For Great-Grampa." She bobbles her head, raises her brows, "Maybe God is talking to Great-Grampa. Right. Now."

I nod, picture Grampa back in Montana, middle of the morning, that big library of a house.

The soft rustle of crayons on paper on carpet lulls with each stroke. Shush-shush. Lucy holds the crayon all wrong, brushes on more apricot and golden sand yellow.  Shush-shush-shush. She cocks her head, chews her lip.

"Do you think I should cut out this part that is God and hug him?" She jab a corner of the paper.

Hug him. "Sure."

"Or the Bible?" she says and pokes another corner. She looks up, contemplates out the picture window, the miles of green, staccatos of orange zinnia, an old gray fence.

"You might hug the Bible," I say.

"Yeah." She nods, brushes her finger over the crayon wax. "Buh-Buh-Bible," she says and fiddles on more cerise.

Bible, God, Hell, it all weaves together. And so we talk theology and try to figure out how to hug God.

Gratitude:

3586. "Is there anything else I can do to please you now that I cleared the table?" Jane rings in the new week.

3587. "When you're done do you want to study the grasshopper?" Jack asks at breakfast.

3588. "My next grasshopper I want to call Grass Gordon," Jack chatters. "They're real eaters. They're mostly eating all the time. Lucy, what's 1 + 2? I need you to know 'cause that's how many grasshoppers we have."

3589. "I just like to feed them and hold them and take care of them," he says.

3590. "I have slepten with one of the grasshoppers," he confesses. "I just put him under the covers. That's how much I like them."

3591. Craig takes an afternoon golfing with my dad.

3592. A grasshopper escapes in the house. "I was just trying to hold him," Lucy explains.

3593. "Mom, are you an optimist or a pessimist?" Jack asks.

3594. "Wobber, wobber, I see the wobber," Myra shouts at a cat in the garden,"by the 'matoes."

3595. Tuesday at Mom's. The weekly rhythm. Taco soup and cheddar cheese, prayer. A fermata. We miss the girls that can't come.

3596. "Mommy, wanna know what we do?" Lucy asks. "We tell the truth, that's what we do."

3597. Lucy watches me put on mascara, "What does that do? Make your eyes smell good?"

3598. "Ugh. Myra spilled my coffee," I grouse. "Well, that will take the pee smell out of the house," Jane consoles.

3599. We gather in prayer for a dear friend in unending pain, a medical mystery. Craig prays. The children watch and copy, make paper airplane notes, and carry in their hearts the image of their father on bended knee.

3600. We enjoy the treat of family pictures. Up in the woods amongst vintage furniture, antique trunks, couches, an old pick-up truck, quilts, glassy pond, love unfurls, the life of our party. Rose captures the love.

3601. We carpool on the mini-roadtrip to our photo shoot. Chit-chat, pizza, Pepsi, and every seat of the suburban filled.

3602. Buckets in hand we plod home from the plum orchard, laden.

3603. Dinner on the farm topped off with swatsbin pie all anise sweet.

3604. I practice more lessons on patience -- poorly. I compare notes with Mom. We zero in on the antidote: prayer. Pray for more patience. So simple. And since love is patient, it's really like praying for love.

3605. "Laugh," Myra commands. "Mom, laugh. Ha-ha-ha," she demonstrates, "Mom laugh. Watch me." Joe stops nursing to watch the spectacle.

3606. Craig's brother brings over fresh deer sausage to share with us.

3607. "Since my grasshopper wasn't even moving at nap time today, that probably means he was napping," Lucy fills me in. "My little child, my grasshopper child," she says.

3608. My little child. I pray to nourish my little children this week. And I pray to bless and serve my husband.