How to pick a life partner

I was thinking this weekend when I caught the worst barf bug in the history of barf bugs, Dang. I'm so lucky. I was reminded as I hinged at the waist over that porcelain portal, how once upon a time at 19 years of age, a college boy I was dating would hold my hair back when I was upchucking for other unseemly reasons. Did I think at the time that he would make a good life partner for this and other attributes? Probably? Did I also like to stare at the groove in his two front teeth and imagine kissing them for, like, hours? Entirely possible.

Fast forward 15 years and I am nearly ralphing out all of my organs on Saturday night, while on a work retreat in the Smoky Mountains. Our children, fast asleep in the bed next to ours in a cabin in the remote reaches of northeastern Tennessee. They were tired, their little limbs in frozen flail, because while their mama was tossing her cookies, their daddy had taken them on a latenight rendezvous into Pigeon Forge parts where go-karts and other amusements could be found. But there's more!  Their daddy was also among few--it has been reported--Asians for miles, in the face of a prolific supply of Confederate flags a-waving. That same good daddy also went on a reconnaissance mission for Gatorade the next early morning for his now-dehydrated and depleted wife.

Ladies and gentlemen, that's a good man. The same boy-man who once held my hair back as we sowed wild oats.

We said our vows ten years ago, in sickness and in health, in poverty and wealth, but we could never have envisioned how truly practical they would be. The equity and humility of it all, how it plays out in an endless day of babies and barf and bottles of purple Gatorade. I have no idea how I fortuned in to such an amazing partner, such a truly exceptional life mate who always seeks to make our lives better. I only know that this is what Grace looks like, walking around in spikey black hair and flip-flops, carrying sleeping children up a flight of stairs to their room in a lodge where I lay barfing. Grace is getting more than we deserve when all we can do is throw up all the other good things we've been given. Grace is showing up, waking up, carrying up a flight of stairs what is heavier than we think we are capable because we are more than just good deeds. Grace is about being more than we think we can be, Grace is about getting more than we give because so much has already been extended to us by a Perfect Love.

I'm so grateful for Lovey Loverpants, who shows me Grace. Amen.

photo credit: Garrett Nudd/Joy Nudd

Celebrating with a thick layer of Funfetti

I don't know why we celebrate the anniversary of our debuts on earth, except to the end that, Hey.We've come a long way, baby. The love of two people; the labor of two legs, or the toil of two forceps. That raisin-faced creature has emerged from her amniotic cocoon. Now she welcomes giftings and attentions on a date over which she had no choice or control.

I don't know why we celebrate the full lap we've made around the sun, when defying gravity was never an option nor planet-hopping in the realm of maybe-could-bes. Or was it? Maybe we all feel, crouching toward another candle on the Funfetti cupcake-- We've been pushing forward and upward from the magnet threatening always to hold us still. Laws of motion we memorized, thinking as they only applied to roller skates and tennis balls. Today I mark my 35th lap around the topographic track. I hope there is still air in my lungs sufficient to blow out those many tapers.

I am the sum total of all these cavities and misconceptions, tax deductions and torrid dreams. I am 35 years-young, eligible now to vote myself into the Oval Office, at-risk for every health malady, ashamed for having not read so much of Toni Morrison and Thomas Wolfe.  Perhaps I am already middle age, aged, an elder, older than I feel, mature, seasoned, in possession of a skincare regimen that is altogether age-defying.

I love getting older because the arbitrariness of aging--the very thing we don't do on purpose that we are yet hellbent on celebrating with a thick layer Funfetti as if we do--accompanies all the glory of things we do on purpose: sipping and spooning and cry-laughing; reading and writing and punching our tickets at the museum; sleeping in and reading until our eyes go googley late at night; dancing and singing and running our aging guts out. 

I did a great job in Miss Schlosser's class

You hold on to the pencil from your 6th grade teacher, the one she gave to everyone as a memento of your year in homeroom 6A where she hung curtains on the bookshelves to make the cinderblock room look more homey. "I DID A GREAT JOB IN MISS SCHLOSSER'S CLASS" it reads in gold letters on one thin panel of this wooden implement painted red. Because she loved you all so much, because she told you all how she prayed for each of you three minutes a piece one night, you all sort of believed it. You did a great job. Why would she have given you all this pencil if it had not been so? She lost her mother that year. You broke the obelisk on her desk that year.  She prayed for you and hung curtains and gave you a pencil.  You hold on to the pencil and decide not to sharpen it right away because it's a bit of a novelty item and there are plenty of other pedestrian pencils and erasable pens to jot down your rising 7th grade thoughts about sleepovers and boys whose voices jump whole octaves overnight. The eraser you use; it's a decent eraser and you make a lot of mistakes over the next few years, trusting too much in the correctness and permanence of the story you are writing. You pack the pencil from your 6th grade teacher into a wad of other writing instruments, rubberbanded and ported from dorm to apartment to condo to house, and every so often you consider how long that pencil has held up. Like so few other things that shine with their original glory, the message is unmarred and unmistakable. It is only once you become a teacher that you understand the point of view of that message in gold letters. The pencil is not, as it appears to an egoistic middle schooler, a brag flag to wave. No one cares whether one did a great or superlatively poor job in sixth grade, it turns out. Pencils, after all, are chosen by the user. Pencils are the tool of the essay writer, the math test-taker, the form filler-outer. The pencil does not guide you; you guide the pencil. More and more and more and more, the pencil obeys. As you file bills or rifle through a drawer of receipts, you look up to see a streak of red peaking from the back of your desk, and occasionally it touches you but sometimes it floods you--that you were loved enough and affirmed in gold letters once upon a time. You did a great job. In a room where books were hemmed in by curtains. By a teacher whose name you will not forget.