Lulie's New Tricks

Pouty lip.




Tidy nose. (Also doubles as, "Shhhh.")




Little sack of sugar.

For a Little While

"Herod is dead! HEROD is DEAD." Jack's hollering the morning in with a dramatic re-interpretation of the Christmas story. "He's dead! I killed him." All three-year-old gusto he thunders down the hallway. Our bedroom door rattles. None of this pansy Santa stuff.

Later Jane introduces Lulie to lipstick. It's the sort of affair that ends with jagged pouty lips, big smiles, and freak-out-Mom about the big stain on Lulie's sweater. Janie responds, "Well, at least I'm not killed, Momma."

The afternoon wears on. Jack assembles, dismantles, and reassembles two puzzles. Lulie colors a pictures, eats some green crayon, colors her ear. Jane tries to knit, rolls a tremendous ball of turquoise yarn. In the whirlwind she stops, "Momma, if I drank a bunch of water would I get a big hump on my back?"

After good night kisses, hugs, prayers, lights out, we slip back down the hall. Some nights they tallywagger over closing their door. Tonight no one gripes. Jane whispers, "Jack, do you want to close the door so we can talk to God?"

A quiet pause and, "Ok. For a little while."

Surgery

The Children's Hospital. They have fish everywhere. Murals, sculptures, aquariums, floor tiles. Fish. Every room has fish. Except the testing room. A vision test, a VEP brain test, computers, electrodes, one major breakdown-fit, and a lot of data.

At a time like that don't you just love graphs? I do. Plot the points and trace the curve. There's not a lot of guess work. The bad eye can't keep up. There's really only one answer.

Surgery. In January or February one of the best surgeons in our nation will remove the lens of a tiny eye, Lulie's. He won't replace it. Her eye is too small, still growing. In the months after we will teach a one-and-a-half-year-old to wear a contact lens. She'll patch until she's eight.

And then, perhaps perfect vision.





And after all isn't that what He's offering? Vision. What a gift.

The Good Life

Lulie likes my Bible.

Janie bursts into the sun-room. I'm playing piano. "Your music is so JOYFUL, Momma!" She grins. "It's fine when you don't play. But it is so joy filled when you do."





The table a jumble of color crayons and fat pencils, smudgy paper, Jack stops. "Momma, I love you so much, real bad." He says this every day. Today he adds, "'I love you real bad,' means I love you in the whole world what it means."

As the sun goes down I watch him stare through our back window. "You are the sweetest thing in the world, bud."

He hardly turns. "Yeah," he says, "God think so. That berry good."

Anemic

The doc called. I'm anemic. Boo-hoo. Although I should have guessed. I'm exhausted just looking at a load of laundry. Or dishes. Anything really.

Anyone have advice on iron supplements? A few years ago I took some and ah, well, if you've not taken them, they're a real bummer.

Educational Toys

"Why do you think I'm so strong, Momma?" After various promises to shoot me an elk or bear and make a rug with the head still on it, Jack dreams of being a man. He and Jane spend hours hunting game in the play room, out in the yard.

Last January we loaded all their toys into bins, even the new pop-guns. We meant to make an impression. And then they hardly noticed. Five bin-fulls. A few tears, then nothing.

Months went by, half a year, never did get around to giving the toys back.

It's dinner tonight, "My high today was playing in the playroom with Jane." It's always a game of high adventure; most times they nearly die. In the end one or another saves the day. Even Lulie knows the rules. Between stacks of books and wadded islands of blankets, high honor, valiant risk, our drab playroom transforms into a universe. They weave stories without thinking -- and play.

Isn't that where it all begins, there in the playroom without toys? They play. And almost without my noticing, a life-long thinker emerges, a playing child that moves on to words and numbers and long strands of ideas, literature, physics. They play, invent the whole world.

Sort of makes me afraid to buy them any toys.

Harvest

"If someone shoots you a 1000 times, then does your spirit die?" Her brow furrowed, she's perched on the couch arm.

I shift Lulie, "No. If you belong to Jesus, God breathes your breath-of-life into a new body in heaven."

"Oh." It's as if I've said, Honey, water is wet. She's already off skittering through the leggos. She's gathering details.

Later, "Did an animal give it's life for us to make this soup?"

"Yup."

"Did it want to?"

"Nope."

"Oh." Simple. She's plucked out a piece of the puzzle.






Later Jack interrupts his prayer and turns to sis, "Yeah Jane, you have to obey the REAL God."

And, "Jesus is REAL, you know," he arches his eyebrows. All of the sudden he makes a differentiation, the REAL God.






The day we harvest pole bean seeds the sun warms our backs. The children shed their shoes. Lulie eats a few black nuggets, spits them out. Jane and Jack cradle them in sweaty palms like pennies. Another piece in the puzzle.