Jane

"When I'm seven," Janie says, "I'm gonna love it, I just know it." She flops a soft-back reader on to one leg, runs her fingers over the words. "'Cause I'm studyin' to love it," she says then furrows her brow and pokes at the next sentence.

She unravels the words, one line to the next, adds commentary at the commas and periods. I draw circles on her shoulder with the tip of my finger. "Uh huh," I say, "Good job."

Lulie wriggles herself onto my lap, curls up like a kitty. Jane stops, squeezes sister's soft cheek, "Do you want to hear a story, honey?"

They giggle back and forth like a birdie in a badminton tournament until, "Okay, okay, read, Janie," and she opens her mouth and the words come out. From page, to brain, to little mouth, she's making story out of black squiggles on a page. Studyin' to love it.





Later at dinner she dresses a third baked potato in butter and cheddar and spills all over the brown table. I wipe her fragments into a pile. We bump elbows. "I made most of the mess," she comments.

"Was that you?"

"Yeah."

I kiss the top of her head.

She looks up, "All you are is just a chunk of love," she says. "To me, you are just love. If I were gonna draw you, I would just draw love." Our eyes smile at each other.

"I love you, too."

I polish potato streaks out of the table and soak in the love.

Home

"And some day," I say, "you'll grow up and leave home." I smile to Jack, "And, I'll come over, and pick up your kids, and hug them, and hold them, and say, 'Oh, you are co cute!'" He opens his blue eyes wide like plums.

Janie smashes her dinner roll flat like a tortilla. "And someday when YOU leave home," I say. She smiles back, passes a deflated roll over for butter. I smear butter to the edges with the back of a baby spoon and finish with, "I'll hug them and hold them and say, 'Oh, you are co cute!'"

Lulie grins and pounds the table, "And when YOU grow up and leave home," I say. She giggles. The words come out like a Christmas jingle. Then, I sing to Rosie too, and the girls chortle and bump elbows.

"All right now," I say just as Janie almost drags her hair through baked potato soup. "All right," I turn to Jack. Wide blue eyes blink, "Are you okay?" He blinks again and blanches right before my eyes, all splotchy red. "Honey?"

A lip quiver. I furrow my brow. "Oh," I tilt my head. "Oh honey, are you afraid you'll have to leave HOME?"

With that little boy dissolves into a sprinkler of tears. "Uh, huh," he sobs. His little four-year-old hands wrap python-style around my neck. He rubs his face in my ear.

"Oh, honey, you don't have to leave. You don't have to leave." He snuffs. "That's just when you're a grown-up. A GROWN-UP." He squeezes tighter.

Finally, he snuffs and slips into my lap. His little boy head bobs and bumps my chin, an anchor in my arms.








Gratitude:

322. Little boy who calls to screaming Rosie, "Hold on baby, I have to do my job," and scrapes onion scraps into the garbage.

323. Janie who tells Jack, "I'm being my name. Jane means God is gracious," and ignores his boy-pokes.

324. Lulie decked out in striped stretch pants and white shorts for bed when she can't find jammies.

325. Rosie smilin' and smilin' and smilin' all blissed-out at daddy.

326. A haul of carrots and potatoes with Craig's mom, good food and even better company.

327. The boxes of books Momma and I wrestle down stairs, the years of love that spille out as I trundle each spine to a new home on our shelves.

328. Dad spry and chipper after surgery -- makes recovery look simple.

329. Baked potato soup (thanks for the recipe, Ceris) and all the guests we share it with -- lots and lots and MORE yet.

330. Twin boys growing and nursing like champs for a dear friend.

331. A sweet, SWEET girl to be born on Wednesday. My NIECE!

332. Her brave momma steeled for a c-section if she stays breech by then.

333. Homemade ice cream made with homemade vanilla.

334. Gingersnaps with cayenne.

335. A fireplace and Mt. Everest of wood stacked husband-straight.

336. Jungle Book, 1894 original story.

337. Compliments from Craig.

338. A late night puzzling with my grown up little brother while Craig snores on the couch.

339. Packing and planning and writing lists for Thanksgiving.

340. A big hard back book of World War II that Jack pours over in search of The Battle of the Bulge.

341. A box spilling with fabric, remnants of a wedding shop, and the friend who brought it.

342. Banana bread, the kind with 5 bananas in it and no eggs, magnificent.

343. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and the raucous cousin-filled house that devoured them.

344. Coffee and conversation with their momma.

345. Lucy's eyesight and how she told me twice in one day when the contact popped out and how we found it both times.

346. Lucy.potty.trained.

Girl Talk

"Your daddy is so good to me," I say. I hand the chocolate jar to the backseat. Janie tips it sideways, fishes out a chocolate chunk. "I hope you marry someone like your daddy, Jane."

She sucks the chocolate down warm and soft. "I'm not gonna choose just anyone," she says. "I'm gonna spend some time choosin'."

"That's a good idea." I crunch a rectangle of chocolate, watch Janie in the rear-view mirror.

"I'm not gonna pick the one that is the handsomest," she rolls the glass chocolate jar to one side. Chocolates tumble. "I'm gonna pick the one that is the best for me." She watches a truck with ladders on the back pass in the left lane.

"Sounds like you'll pick a good one," I say.

We settle into the quiet rhythm of conversation. It weaves through traffic with us. She passes me chocolates; I let her hold the old mason jar. I ease into a parking spot; she spins the lid back on.

"I have not been eating chocolate at all," she says as she passes it back up front. "I've just been sitting here listening to you talk."

She grabs her wallet. I balance packages and swing the car door shut. Listening to me talk. Listening. to. me. Wow. Always on stage.








Gratitude:

304. Crisp grapes.

305. Almond sugar cookies.

306. Books -- a whole library full, lined spine to spine in the basement.

307. Jane's listening ear and how she says the hard things probably happen because God wants to keep me humble.

308. Our children's wide eyes when I read Where the Red Fern Grows at night.

309. How Janie leaps out of the couch and demands that Little Ann LIVE when the small hound almost drowns in the winter-cold stream.

310. My tight throat and bleary tears and how everyone piles on us while we read.

311. How Lulie takes care of all the baby dolls in the house. Even Janie's.

312. Her incredulous frown when I suggest we just shake the pretend poo-poo out of the dolly diaper.

313. Whispering, "You are special," into the children's ears at night before bed.

314. New hair trimmers to tame little boy hair.

315. Jack's insistence that I cut off his girl hair.

316. An estate sale with lots and lots of books. Classics. Old.

317. Dates with each of the kids. Chocolate or lifesavers. The talk and play.

318. Rosie splashing my sleeves wet in the bath.

319. The almost-tidy-house, the almost-banana-bread still in the fruit basket, and the almost-frustrating night that ended in crunchy grapes and a puzzle instead.

320. Husband. A good, good husband -- ceaseless joking, irrepressible humor, funniness in every moment.

321. Another week. Another whole week.

God

"This is something that a lot of people question among themselves," Janie says one day at lunch, "how is God made?" She leans on an elbow, bites into her sandwich.

"That's a good question." I slide onto the table bench. "What do you think?"

"I. don't. know." She chomps each word and then whispers, "How did God get made?"

I scoop salsa onto a chip, "No one made Him."

"How did He get there?"

"He's always been there."

"Interesting," she furrows her brow. I watch her look out the window into the yard.

"That's why he's worth worshiping," I say. If you knew how He got there He wouldn't really be worth worshiping."

"Why?"

I look at her sideways, "He wouldn't really be much bigger than you."

"Oh." She takes another bite of sandwich, looks back at me, "Do you think when we get to heaven we'll know how God got made?"

"I don't know."

Jack turns to us, "God might tell us," he says.

Indomitable Spirit

She almost electrocuted herself this week that after she pinned herself under a printing press. This one seems poised for action.




Gratitude:

290. The moon-shaped bruise on Lulie's chin -- all that's left after Janie muscled the press off her sister.

291. Jane's careful blink-blink at me when I tell her, "You're earning trust, honey."

292. Jack's nuzzle in my face when I say I'm not mad, puzzle pieces forgotten.

293. The smudgy outfit Myra wore to church.

294. The crew of kids that pulled me past breakfast bowls and into the car this morning, drippy nose and head cold not withstanding.

295. The carpet husband unfurled in the basement for me, the re-roll and cut to fit part included.

296. His gravity defying will to keep doing nice things for me.

297. Our warm fire and popcorn-picnic.

298. How the children cheered when I suggested dilly beans.

299. Another puzzle. Yup. 500 pieces of the Rocky Mountains reflected in a mountain stream.

300. How the children find puzzle pieces for each other to put in. "Here Lulie, you can push this one in."

301. Sudafed. The real stuff.

302. Baby who nurses well and can say a whole sentence in an eye-blink.

303. A good, good life full of all the important things. The way good things make you feel rested inside even when you're exhausted.

Grampa

"My dad kept his Model-T's in the garage. I must have been two."

His first memory. "What color were they?"

"Black. All the Model-T's were black," he says. "They didn't make colors until the Model-A." I see his little boy hands stuffed in pockets, bare feet in the garage.






The depression. "Kids wore canvas shoes back then. Converse. The girls wore pink ones, the boys, black." We trundle up a back path, dog and kids in tow. Lulie thumps by, pink converse laced up to the ankle. I picture Grampa's ten-year-old hands lacing up black ones.






Back in the cabin we settle in. Wide arm-chairs, a cup of coffee, "I drove her to her appointments," he says. His mother. Breast cancer.

"So it was pretty big when it came back?" Grampa was 21. I see his hands there on the steering wheel taking Momma to the city.

"It's not the size," he says.

"Just how far along it was?"

He strokes Paddy-dog. "The stage." Paddy closes her eyes. Afternoon sun warms her black coat and Grampa's hands. Doctor hands. "When I was practicing," he says, "sometimes we'd see something called a spontaneous remission. Never could explain it." Paddy nuzzles his hand, "Unless someone upstairs, was lookin' out for ya."

Upstairs. It hangs in the air. Someone upstairs. "Yup." Wish I could have met his mother.

Later he says Great-Uncle Alan went to the war, took a bullet at the Battle of the Bulge -- shattered his arm, wrist to elbow. A year later, he left the hospital, one arm forever shorter. He never played the clarinet or the piano again.






Grampa picks up rocks for the kids to try and skip. He rubs the dirt off, holds Paddy's leash, leans into the pistol holster across his shoulder. "Here you go, Jack." Little boy kerplunks it in the deep water.

Paddy-dog pulls us home, to the mountain cabin.






The days leaf by. A month away now, I miss Grampa. Wish we could sprawl the table with three games of solitaire and see who wins more. I'm hungry for more stories.

A good man is hard to find.

Boy Talk

"Watch ya thinking?" I ask.

Jack pops a pretzel in his mouth, crunches it. "Nuffin."

"Wow. Nothing?" I raise my eyebrows, "HOW do you do THAT?"

"I dunno. Just," he shakes his head, opens both eyes wide, "like this," little boy stares at a plant across the room, crunches another pretzel.

"That's all? Just like that?"

He pauses, cocks his head, "Momma," he says, "ya have to not talk."

A smile tugs at the corners of my mouth, "Oh."

I pass him another pretzel, pick one with lots of salt. We crunch them together and watch my house plant grow.