oh this man...

Be still, my heart. This picture undoes me every time I look at it. This is Jay, just shy of one year ago, standing at the altar waiting for me. That is the face of a man who knows the weight of what he is about to promise, of what he has already devoted himself to.

I love that face, those eyes--those brown-green eyes that held so much light as I said my vows, like a river at high noon in summer, all the rocks and fish shuddering in watered sunlight. I could not stop smiling that day--the kind of smile that sprouts in the warm pit of the gut and does not stop growing until it's blooming all over your face. I can still feel his warm hand on my back as we had our first dance. All my dreams were--and still are--coming true.

Happy (almost) Anniversary, my love. I'd marry you again and again.

the first lily and fireflies

The first lily bloomed in our yard today. I've been waiting for days. Every day I would think, "Today's the day..." but that bud just wouldn't burst open. Kind of like waiting to go into labor.

About a week and a half before Tavish was born, every night before bed my husband would say, "Maybe tonight's the night..." The night he was born, I was putting on my nightgown, my husband said his thing, and I said in a huff, "No, tonight is NOT the night. It will NEVER be the night. Apparently, I'm never having this baby." I was one day past my due date. And, as it turns out, IN LABOR; I just didn't know it (Don't ask--that's a post for another day). Oh me of little faith.

So this lily...MAN, I thought it would NEVER bloom. But she did! And isn't she glorious?

So while I admired and photographed our first lily as the sun was going down on a perfectly perfect evening, Caleb dug for worms the garden next to me. It would have been nice if the mosquitos hadn't been flying up my pajama pants and biting me to death the whole time. And I could have done without a shovel-full of dirt flung in my hair. But all in all, what an exquisite evening. Just as we were gearing up to go inside for "night-nights", the fireflies came out. Just a few; the first of the season.

Caleb can't say "firefly" for some reason. He can say "fire" and he can say "fly," but for the love of God he can't put the two together, bless his little fat heart. "Ooooh, hiiii, ladybuuug!" he would say when he caught one. "Firefly," I'd say. "Ooooh, hiiii, butterfly," he'd say. "Firefly," I'd say. "Butterfly," he'd say. Oh well. We sure did have a grand ol' time watching those ladybugs and butterflies light up. And all of them survived. Caleb has the gentlest touch sometimes.

I can't decide which was my favotite: the long-awaited bloom of the lily or the surprise of fireflies. Actually, neither. My favorite was my boy, my firstborn, my long-awaited surprise running about in the twilight with the firelies.

spring around here

My yard is, I've decided, a place of healing. All those blooms and all that green are like a long lost friend fresh off a red eye flight from a frozen continent who shows up unexpectedly on your doorstep one desperate, dark morning bearing brightly-wrapped presents for no particular reason at all, except that it just seemed the thing to do.

I walk around barefoot in the damp and warmed grass these days--all around me: azure and violet and crimson and buttercup yellow hugged by the shiny ribbon of emerald leaves. I am amazed how everything that was held hostage underground all cold, dark winter-long now breaks the soil, easily as breathing and unravels like a finally-loosened braid, like the silky ribbon of a corset.

Every morning a new delight has appeared from the soil. "Look!" my husband whispers some mornings, "I think the gourds and sunflowers grew an inch overnight!" Meanwhile, the birds rediscover the feeder and its bounty of seeds--they chirp and squawk and light upon the fence and bushes and finally on the dangling feeder that swings with their weight. Whatever darkness that happened in winter evaporates now, rising along with the vegetable garden's dew to a new sky.

The tomato and pepper plants are flowering; the blueberry bushes and squash and cucumber, too. Soon enough, they'll hand over their treasures, letting us hold hope in our hands, teaching us what resurrection tastes like.

overheard...

So we're sitting on the porch the other day. Caleb is sitting next to this plant. Spontaneously he reaches out and ever so gently cups a grouping of leaves in his hand. I watch on, perplexed, as he wiggles his fingers and turns his hand this way and that in the leaves. Then he whispers, "It's okay...I'll hold your hand."

overheard...

So we're in the car. I've just strapped the boys in, fastened my seat belt and put the key in the ignition. And from the backseat I hear Caleb say:

On your mark!
Get sick!
Go!

A dream while napping one recent day

I am at a daycare/preschool picking up my eldest son. A little African American boy runs out of the door ahead of us as we are leaving. He is headed straight for a busy road and runs out of sight around a corner. I am so afraid for his safety; I am yelling and running furiously after him with my son.

As I turn the corner, I see an African American woman ushering him to safety. I am relieved and breathless. What would I have done without this woman? I take a second look at her and realize she is my favorite teacher of all time: Priscilla Green, my high school English teacher, who died much too early last year of cancer. I say, "Priscilla? Is that you?"

"Yes," she says, "I am here."

I throw my arms around her in a wild embrace and ask her: "Are you okay?"

"Oh, yes..." she says, "Let me show you." And she holds me very closely, which somehow allows me to feel with my whole mind and body what she shows me, which is this: ecstatic daffodils, new and upright, swaying and trembling in bright, Spring morning sun.

Godspeed

I unearthed "Godspeed" a couple of weeks ago and let it shower over Tavish, Caleb and me in my cheerful and cramped office one afternoon, happy tears springing from my eyes. Years ago, I used to listen to it alone in my car and cry tears of grief and depression and lost love, hoping beyond hope that I could one day be lucky enough, good enough, to have a baby of my own to sing this song to.

I had no idea how little it had to do with luck, and how good--perfectly good--I already was. I had no idea the beautiful plan God had for my life, the beautiful boys who would grow like miracles in my womb, take their first breaths on my wet and grateful breast, and become firmly rooted in and wrapped around my brave and worn heart. I had no idea how close my greatest happiness really was--close as a veil against my face.

I let the song and my tears rain deliciously down and marveled at bright-eyed Tavish perched contentedly on my hip and gorgeously curious Caleb standing on my office chair blowing out a candle. Gratitude spun like a thousand sunlit pinwheels in my chest.

The other day I found out that "Godspeed" was written by a father for his three year-old son whose mother was moving with the boy to France to be with her boyfriend. I know a little something about being the kid in a move like that. And now, as a parent, I glimpse the tower of pain my biological father must have lived in after my mother and I left. And in the faces of my little boys, I see how fragile and heartbreak-able I must have been.

Ten years ago, trying to find my way home in more ways than one, I took a strange and magnificent and important drive across the country and back. On the way out west, as I was crossing the state line into Colorado (my birthplace), "Landslide" came on the radio. The snow on the mountains was pink with sunset and the road ahead was turning purple with the coming dark. Weeping, speeding through the falling dark, I sung "Landslide" the way I always secretly have: to him, that daddy I had had to leave so many years before.

And so this evening when I found "Godspeed" and "Landslide" paired together in this YouTube clip, it seemed so appropriate. In a burst, my childhood drizzled like confetti behind my eyes and I felt the way seamen must when a wild storm brings them finally to shore.