The Puzzle in Easter

At 5:30 on Easter morning, my cell phone's alarm stirred me from a dream.  I was not going to miss this year's sunrise service, where I was to be one of the women at the tomb, in this case, a real tomb in a historic cemetery.  

I have always puzzled at the oddity of Easter with its declaration of resurrection, its mix of bunnies and eggs, its costumes and customs.  To admit this is not to reveal a lack of faith but to admit the certainty of contradictions.  People I love dearly may not grasp why I might consent to re-enacting the scene at the tomb of Jesus.  For them "He is risen" is explained away as sheer chicanery, a public relations scam, hallucinations, death denial.  Dead is dead.  

Would I rise for a sunrise service, just because I was asked to play a part?  I might.  I don't voluntarily walk about to see the sun replace the moon.

I parked in the Napa Auto Parts parking lot, crossed the street, and took a service bulletin from my friend Tom.  Walking along the winding path through the cemetery, I noted how grave sites dipped and grandfather trees gripped the earth.  Water and age had erased names and dates from limestone markers.  My companions and I wondered which tomb to approach; there were so many that matched the description, "It's the one toward the fence on the right."

I was thinking, It's odd to be walking among worn grave markers looking for some sign of what is called Lapsley's tomb, where it is said, the first Presbyterian church was established in my city.  I wasn't attending to where my feet might stray when suddenly my right foot slipped off the sidewalk's high edge, and I went plowing forward into the muddy grass.  Covered by a long black raincoat, my Easter outfit was spared.  I looked around to see who had witnessed my indignant fall. Using the service bulletin, I wiped away the mud on my hands.  I wasn't hurt.  I had fallen in a graveyard, in a garden of stones beneath oak and maple trees--me, the one who avoids cemeteries in general, the one who relishes a lazy two cups of morning coffee, the one who eschews attention.

During some wait time when I could have been praying or remembering hymns,  I intentionally tried to escape from a mental collage of contrary images.  On one hand, a celebratory pageant unfolded before me, and on the other, flashes of odd Easter memories competed with the given moment.

***

I was eight years old in a yellow Easter dress and hat. After church, my family had arrived at my Aunt Meryl's place where my father's family planned an Easter picnic, the old fashioned kind in the yard, blankets on the lawn, a potluck of fried chicken, baked beans, potato salad, deviled eggs, cole slaw, pickles, and cherry pie.  The apricot trees were blooming and the blue wisteria hung over the pergola. My aunt hugged me while I secretly squirmed.  "How nice you look in your Easter outfit. You are so pretty when you wear a dress.  I don't think jeans are becoming on girls."  She lifted my hat.  "What a lovely hat."  She ran her fingers through my hair.  "I don't like your hair short like this.  You must ask your mother to allow it to grow longer."  

I was nine.  It was early.  I was waiting for breakfast and thinking about our planned Easter egg hunt.  I heard a strange scream, not quite human.  Our second story breakfast room had wrap around windows that overlooked a lawn that fell away to a terraced garden filled with spring flowers.  Looking through the windows, I searched through the apple tree's leaves for the cause of the eerie scream.  Our beloved dog, a spaniel mix, had in its mouth my pet rabbit Snowball and was shaking the life out of it.  Red splattered snowball's white fur.  "Mommeeeee!"   I cried.  

I was thirteen.  My mother had been dead six months.  For Easter my father had bought me a navy and pink cotton dress and my first heels.  We waited in the car for my brothers to reluctantly emerge from the house in sports coats and ties. They hated dressing up and church bored them.  Daddy was sad but determined.  This was the first Easter following our mother's death in an airline crash.  To feminize me and soften the day, Daddy had enlisted a motherly friend.  And mostly it worked though the lilies gave me a headache and I worried over resurrections and struggled with life after death fears and wishes.  My brothers looked miserable but behaved.  It was the best we could do.

My children were young, my son just a toddler, my daughters three and five.  My friend Mildred had made smocked Easter dresses for my girls.  The girls jockeyed for Easter eggs hidden in the grass and ate chocolate eggs for breakfast.  We laughed because our cocker spaniel had sat among the daffodils and sniffed them.  The Easter service resonated love and hope.  We held our own picnic in the sunshine of our backyard.  I felt lifted, surrounded by love and life.  That week I painted our cocker sniffing the daffodils.  The painting is still a family favorite.

Life played out. I divorced.  The girls went to universities.  My son was waiting for scholarship offers.  Herb Simmons and I were dating.  On Easter Herb and I went to an outdoor sunrise service, the day began brightly and grew warm.  I had learned to live as they say "in the moment."  I had no idea what lay ahead but had accepted God's constant presence.  "Do not be afraid. I will always be with you."  This is what I heard in my head as Herb and I walked hand in hand that morning.

***

And now, here I was standing before Lapsley's tomb while waiting on our pastor to arrive, and again I was aware --"Lo, I will be with you, always." -- even though my thoughts were split.

I suppressed an urge to laugh: our pastor in his flowing white robe had suddenly retreated to his car and driven away. He had forgotten the copies of songs for the service.  And now we waited, Lapsley's concrete vault before us, our cold hands in our pockets, our shoes wet with dew.

Later, over coffee at church a friend from my previous life introduced me to her husband as Diane Eison.  Standing with us was a mutual friend who at church has known me only as Diane Simmons.  "You're Diane Eison!?"  As in the Diane Eison.  Well, sometimes, it's best not to ask too many questions, so I did finally laugh at that truth and all the rest, the absurd contradictions and the absolute certainties.

 

Agendas

I have an agenda.  Everyday.  I go to bed with one and I wake up to it.  

This morning my agenda points me to this writing, a doctor's appointment, a visit with a friend, and a meeting.  

I have agendas within agendas.  Today's agenda is within a weekly agenda, within a monthly agenda, within a yearly agenda, within a life agenda.  Doesn't everybody?

Apparently not.  "We want people without agendas."  What does that mean?  Fence riders, indecisive types, unbiased leaders, followers, innovators, risk takers?  It could mean we want people whose agendas we haven't discovered yet.  Hmmm.  Would it be helpful not to know what people believe or desire if you wanted them to join a team for problem solving?

If the candidate supports universal health care, I want to hear about it. I don't want to discover later that he or she quietly wished to undermine the program.  So you see, not only do I make my views known but I wish others to speak up as well.  I don't want to be blind sided by, guess what, hidden agendas.

Tricky word, agendas.  

My husband makes a to do list and puts it out where I can see it.  I see he plans to start some caladiums in the greenhouse today.  I know not to interfere with his plans.  I also know he likes to be home at night, not go out too much or have people in.  So he has agendas around which I maneuver.  It's helpful to understand people for the sake of cooperation and respect.

People without known agendas are difficult to trust.  You wonder what they might do or how to work with them.

I once worked with a man whose agenda was driven by security.  Everything had to be tightened down under his control.  He feared circumstances might get away from him and he wouldn't be able to solve the problem.  I, on the other hand, wished to take risks, to learn how to do things I'd never before tried.  We had to find a way to work together or we weren't going to accomplish anything.  Over time we found avenues of trust.  Since our shared arena required access to technologies and passwords, I was careful not to make mistakes that would elevate his suspicious nature.  He learned he could use me to experiment with programs he didn't have time to explore.  He couldn't advertise for innovations, but I could.  It wasn't easy, but it was doable.  It had to be.

As a teacher, I learned that arranging people in groups to solve problems requires finesse.  A handsome, muscular blonde seventeen year old student experienced a change in attitude when I put him in a group with a feisty dark skinned girl with kinky hair, a girl he had openly disdained for her assertive and saucy stance.  The situation was electric with racial and gender bias.  Their task was to uncover evidence of bias in some documents we were studying.  Before long, he was speaking her language and joining her tune. She had discovered how easy it was to work with him.  And here's the point, they knew their task and they each understood each others' points of view.  Their arguments were lively and productive.

Give me people with agendas.  I want all the news out on the table.  I already know people don't  agree on everything. Isn't that a healthy thing?  Isn't that how change happens?

The Day the Sea Could Have Swallowed Me

Waves rolled over blackened rock ledges.  Seaweed, salty and bulbous, swayed in tide pools.  A strong breeze stirred my hair.  Sand squished under foot.  Gray clouds traded with sunshine.   My friends and I, warmed by summer and sand, faced the waves.

We waded in the tide pools and, like lizards, basked on the soft sand.  The scene offered enough entertainment without challenging any unseen forces, without risking our lives.  We were, by any reckoning, already winners.  After all, we had convinced our parents we were capable of managing a getaway to the beach, that we would be careful during the one hour drive to and from the coast.  Our parents, although probably wary, hated to discourage our independence and adventurous spirits.  Teenagers, yes , but also a stellar group of excellent students and responsible youth -- we could almost taste our freedom in the salt air.

Gritty sand mixed with our lotions and flew onto our blankets.  Our sand castles sprawled along the tide's edge.  Our footprints trailed toward sand dunes and cliff caves.   A rhythm of undertow and rolling surface, a swirl of reality and imagination stirred us.

Aware of the pull of parental caution -- sand gets in your sandwiches, sand fleas bite, sun burns skin, undertow kills -- youthful curiosity lured me to wonder if I could climb the cliffs or how it would feel to sleep all night on the sand.

My friends and I were challenging the surf, sometimes body surfing.  A confident swimmer, I began swimming out further and further, waves crashing over me, currents tugging at me.  This is all memory: dark water and foam, the receding shoreline, my suspension of fear when I should have been terrified.  With what fate was I toying?

And then, I decided to return.  Here was the struggle I had not imagined.  I could swim and float but not so easily determine my direction.  The currents delivered me toward shore and then drug me deeper into the sea.  Desperation's bile rose in my throat.  I swallowed sea water.  Fear chilled my limbs.  I rolled onto my back to rest.  A wave crashed over me, flipped me, and pulled me under.  I fought to the surface, coughing and spitting.

If I use the currents, I can make it, I thought.  I rolled onto my stomach and cut diagonally toward a point to the south.  My limbs ached; my lungs burned.  Finally, my toes touched a sand bar. My lungs sucked in the salty air.  I waded against the surf to a rocky shelf and lifted myself up to safety.

As I walked around the point, the waves hushed, the gulls floated overhead, and my heart beat steadied.   I could see my friends sorting shells and munching on potato chips.

"Hey!  I made it."

They looked up. "Hey.  Where ya been?"

"Swimming."

That was it.  I made it.

What was this about me, this odd suspension of self and circumstance, this challenge of dark and deep boundaries of fate?  It's a question for which I have no answer.  An indelible memory of verve, struggle, and escape -- the event could easily have taken me with it.


“for whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea.”
― E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems

In the deeps are the violence and terror of which psychology has warned us. But if you ride these monsters deeper down, if you drop with them farther over the world's rim, you find what our sciences cannot locate or name, the substrate, the ocean or matrix or ether which buoys the rest, which gives goodness its power for good, and evil its power for evil, the unified field: our complex and inexplicable caring for each other, and for our life together here. This is given. It is not learned.”
― Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters

   

The Taste of Hope

A week before Christmas, Diane helped purchase food for 30 Angel Tree families:  5 cases of precooked hams, 80 pounds of oranges, 60 pounds of sweet potatoes, 8 pounds of butter, 6 cases of canned vegetables and fruit.  In Sam's parking lot, a man offered, "May we help you?  Those look heavy."  Indeed, each case of ham weighed 40 pounds.

On Saturday before Christmas, church youth will deliver gifts and meals to the Angel Tree families. The surface of this charitable event looks simple enough.  Pluck a paper angel from a tree.  Read the names.  Shop.  Wrap up the gifts and  deliver them to the church office.

For a family to land on an Angel Tree, it must qualify as "needing help."  Imagine what needing help might mean:  alcoholism, health disabilities, lay offs, divorce, abandonment.  These very terms imply complexity and confusion or desperation, and more significantly, children at risk.

As a teacher Diane witnessed impoverished adolescents raising themselves.  One young man fell behind in his studies because he was caring for little sisters, dressing them for school, feeding and bathing them, putting them to bed.  He was sixteen; the girls, five and six.  The mother was in and out, mostly out.  Teachers sometimes drove the boy to the grocery store.

A recent article in The New York Times featured a New Jersey family on the edge of losing their home.  A company had pink slipped the father when he reached the eighth year qualification for pension benefits. The mother worked for the IRS, which provided health insurance.  The father worked any jobs he could find: pizza delivery, school janitor, Quick Stop clerk, part-time low wage jobs, two or three at a time.  A car's transmission went out.  A child became ill.  A local food pantry plugged the creeping gaps of hunger.

The face of need isn't always easily recognized.  The home may be in a nice neighborhood, the kids playing in the yard, the mom washing the car.  The mom, a divorcee, pays the bills but has trimmed out vacations, air-conditioning, and roast beef.  The ham in an unexpected care box of food will be the family's holiday meal instead of a hamburger casserole.

Born in 1932, Herb knows how steamed wheat and lard gravy can quiet rumbling bellies.  Today he will eat anything put in front of him.  After Diane's father graduated from high school in 1932, he worked on farms for shelter and food. At 21 years old, he weighed only 115 pounds.

The refrigerator might be low on food in our family households, but probably because Mom didn't have time to go to Kroger.  Our grandchildren might have soup for dinner tonight but baked salmon tomorrow.  They thrive on scrambled eggs, hamburgers, grilled chicken, salad, pizza, smoothies, ice cream and cookies.  For this we are grateful, but we also don't forget how hunger robs the spirit of hope, how difficult it is to weigh more than 115 pounds when crops fail and chickens die, how delicious an orange from a church care box tastes on Christmas Eve after a week of steamed wheat and gravy, how comforting a stranger's assistance was for Diane and her children one lonely, hungry night in Mono, California.

Love came down at Christmas.  This isn't a belief; it's a life.  Here, here is love, in a box of food for your family.  Eat and know you are loved.

Postscript:  Today after writing this holiday essay, Diane met friends at church to bag donated rice, which comes in 50 lb. bags.  The women attempted to drag the heavy bags from a pantry closet, across a lobby floor, to the fellowship hall where they planned to measure and pour the rice into small bags.  A disheveled man clad in soiled winter wear and resting in a lobby chair, looked up.  "Let me do that for you."  He didn't look like he had enough energy to stand, much less hoist a 50 lb. bag over his shoulder, but that's exactly what he did, as if it were no heavier than a feather. His smile revealed missing and rotted teeth, his greasy hair needed washing, but he didn't hesitate to do what he could do, lift heavy bags.  This holiday essay seems quite appropriate in the light of that simple act.

December 18, 2014.

A Simple Truth

"I just wanna say, now that you're  old enough to know the truth," I said to a grandson early in the day before we all sat down to turkey and dressing. 

"What?" As in, What outrageous detail are you going to insert into my head this time?  Sam barely looked at me. He had that look a teenager gets when he knows you are up to something, eyebrows cocked, chin lowered, eyes focused on a possible incoming text message, tuned to two realities, there and here.  

I continued. "Those pilgrims weren't exactly saints.  They were starving.  They stole food from the Indians, from their cache of food, during the starving time.  And Squanto was an opportunist..."

"Oma!"  Said a granddaughter as if they hadn't heard all this before.  "Sam's not old enough to hear this."

And so it began...Thanksgiving Day.

The house filled with familiar fragrances: a roasting turkey, boiling potatoes, lingering coffee, and...nail polish.  You probably didn't know that Thanksgiving isn't a proper holiday in some places without the fragrance of nail polish.  In the 'K' home, nail polish means the oldest daughter is home from Kansas University and is perched on a stool at the kitchen bar and doing her nails while plotting her Black Friday foray.

"Just remember. You're on a budget," said her mama.  Her dad sang out, "She's on a budget, a budget, a budget.  She's on a bu-uh-uh-uh-uh-get..."

At the very least, to prepare a thanksgiving celebration takes two days and a proclamation by George Washington.  But this rite of gratitude, as we know, has become colored with mythic oral histories and generations of family brush strokes.  Corn pudding.  Cranberry salad.  Pumpkin pie.  A football game buzzing in the background.  An unfinished scrabble game.  A dog alert to crumbs falling from the counter.  From over the river and through the woods to over the continent and through baggage claim.

William Bradford didn't have football games and TV in mind when he established the Plymouth settlement in December 1620.  In 1789 George Washington couldn't have foreseen today's luxurious living, its electric ovens, espresso machines, and trips to Whole Foods in automobiles.  To tell the truth, Squanto was looking for an advantage when he befriended the pilgrims, so he definitely wasn't thinking about us, couldn't have imagined how we could google the truth about his tribal difficulties.  I'm just sayin' -- Something about the proportion of myth to cumulative, epic celebration reveals how challenging simplicity can be. 

Nevertheless, President Washington understood this much when he proclaimed on Thursday the 26th of November in 1789: we would have a day of “public thanksgiving and prayer” devoted to “the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be.”   We would feast and remind ourselves to be grateful.  Which is exactly what happens.  Churches and families invite strangers to tables.  Families reunite and friends gather. Repeatedly. Historically.  Faithfully. 

Here, we Presbyterians and Catholics took our places, said a blessing, crossed ourselves.  "Father, son, and Holy Spirit."

Pass the mashed potatoes and gravy...Mom, is there more dressing?...  Have some more turkey...

Then...The finishing touch. Going around the table so everyone could say what they were grateful for.

"I'm grateful for family," said the dad.

"I'm grateful for how KU is going to beat UK in basketball this year," said the KU coed.

"No way!" said the dad, a UK grad.  "Not a chance!"

"I'm grateful for my brother."

"I'm  grateful for my sister."

"I'm grateful for all of us being together," said the mom.

And the grandmother (that's me, the irony queen):  "I'm grateful that no one reminded me of the time I backed your van into a mailbox, shattered the rear window and destroyed the rear door, glass spilling around the kids in the rear seat."  

"And she took us to Mellow Mushroom afterwards and asked us not to tell you when you called!"

"Mom!  Really!?"

"Well....they were hungry. You deserved a good night's sleep and daylight to recover from the bad news."

"I'm grateful she only hit a mailbox," said the grandfather, my succinct husband, a man of few words.    

My son-in-law grinned. He was probably remembering the cost of leaving his children with us, his in-laws, for a week four years ago while he and my daughter went house hunting in Omaha:  $4000 out of pocket to avoid an increase in his auto insurance.

"You kids clean up and then we'll watch a movie and have dessert."  The mom settled back to visit with her parents.  

The kids scattered after clearing the table.  We could heard them upstairs behaving like cavorting puppies.  Pans and dishes clanked and clattered in the kitchen.

"Jim?"

"Never-mind.  I'll do the dishes," said the dad.  Let 'em be."  Like Squanto, Jim is a man who recognizes how to gain an advantage.  Sometimes, love is just that simple.  

Still Growing, Still Here

There is a difference between aging and growing. Aging is what we see in the mirror; growing is the vital ingredient mirrors don't show:  the saucy verve, the sculpture, the adjustments.

Growing up is what my seven year old grand daughter is doing.  She tells me about reading books and drawing pictures.  She wants me to know she's bigger, smarter, and faster than her little brother whom she adores but must surpass  as it is her responsibility to him, to lead, and teach and boss around.

Once upon a time I grew taller and taller and finally stopped at five foot five.  I've shrunk;  gravity has had its way with me.  All that pounding on my joints from walking around on this ol' earth has ground down my softer skeletal tissues.  No matter how much I hold  in my tummy or stretch to the skies, I am today five foot four.

Once upon a time I also had a little brother to boss around and teach.  What a bogus exercise is lording it over a sibling.   Today the man, my little brother, is six feet tall, a father, a husband, a business man, and one of those respected individuals none of us would wish to be without.

Sometimes I grow too much.  I am not a dieter.  I eat, usually three times a day.  I also enjoy wine.  So I carry at least ten or fifteen pounds more than my imaginary image of myself.  I can weigh between 135 pounds and 150 pounds any given year depending upon whether I drink wine once a week or twice a day, or eat sandwiches or half a salad for lunch or skip desserts altogether or indulge in a chocolate cherry cheesecake on my birthday, everyone else's birthday, or for breakfast.

My skin grows -- actively, vitally, egregiously-- reminding me I'm still very much alive with hundreds of skin tags and a host of subcutaneous keratosis, brown crusts mixed with soft freckles. My bones are growing: bunions and calcifications of tendons.  I also have a growth with a fancy name on my left hand and which I am told will eventually prevent my hand from making a fist.  I think my ears are bigger.  My nose seems longer as well.  There is this loose flap developing under my chin.  I'm a little afraid of what might happen to me around thanksgiving.  I might be misunderstood as fowl.  And sometimes when I go to brush away a hair from my lapel I find it is attached to my chin and must excuse myself from polite company in order to pull it out with pliers.

So you see I am very much alive and well for all to see-- and hear.

Behind my friendly smile and kindly ways, I have strong opinions.  Just get me started.  I'm against all manner of things:  intrusive noises like the torso thumping bass from passing cars or my neighbor's mind numbing, after midnight hard rock; I am against cities without sufficient sidewalks and bike paths, like my own city;  cable TV monopolies; unqualified political candidates; greedy wealth; dirty clothes and messy rooms; stacks of paper; weedy yards; waste; inefficiency; war; gluttony; meanness; and opinionated people, like myself, so I try to be quiet.  It's not easy.  I am known to some of my friends as "Bossy Pants," a nickname truly and proudly earned.

I can't believe I am seventy-two.  Inside me is a silly child who loves ice cream and bright colors, striped socks and bling; who enjoys snuggling and teasing; who feels like running on the wind across a ridge, picking flowers in a meadow, and splashing across rocks over a stream. All the roles I imagined as a child, those unaccomplished ones -- flying like a bird, being an orchestra, painting like Mary Cassatt, or winning a Pulitzer Prize -- I still aspire to despite the obvious futility.

Yesterday I hacked away at the soil with a spade, pruned rose bushes, divided perennials.  I told myself not to talk to myself as I worked.  That's what old people do, talk to themselves while they garden.  Don't be old, I say.  I had two hours, three at best, before my right foot would give out and I'd need to head in for a shower, an ice bag on my ankle, and a snack with Naproxen.

In the evening I dressed for dinner, in slimming black and a dotted pink silky blouse and pink crystal and gold jewelry.  Not too bad, for seventy-two, still upright, still stepping out, still growing.  Just be kind, I reminded myself.  Not too bossy.  Not too caught up in yourself.  Your problems are nothin, Honey.  Not yet, not today, not tonight.

Forward Ho!

On August 24th at 3:20am, an earthquake struck Napa, California.  Cabinet doors flew open.  Bottles and glasses tumbled onto tile floors.  Containers of  leftovers jumped from refrigerator shelves onto floors.  Outdoor sculptures walked.  Bricks fell from a chimney injuring a sleeping boy.

The currency of injury in a disaster is commonly calculated in dollars, that is, millions of dollars.  The soft calculation of human vulnerability eludes quantification.

I'm currently in Napa, fourteen days post-earthquake, in my friends' great room.  Their broken glass and sticky food mess is now a tale for dinner conversations.  The gas fireplace in the corner, although twenty inches from its proper perch, looks solid, the only evidence of its displacement a gouged hickory floor.  Fruit trees, vineyards, and soft hills stretch northward and disappear.

We feel safe, on solid ground.  We hike.  Our conversations weave through travel tales, recipes, grandchildren antics.  Yet, the effects of the earthquake show in the Napa Register feature articles, the portable water tank in the driveway, and a repairman's arrival -- like flies at the table.

I hate to say it, or even think it, but an earthquake event does reveal how annoying are flies at a picnic table, how frustrating are cancelled flights, and how worrisome are droughts, not to mention the awful results of betrayals and vitriolic outbursts out of the mouths of people with whom we share space -- on airplanes, in grocery lines, at family tables.

"I just can't go there," says a favorite friend.  Exactly.  Why walk through a chasm when you can walk along a clear path?  "What's done is done," says my brother.  "I stick to now."

Forward, my friends.  Let's go forward, I say.

"If you fall on your face, you're still moving forward."  -- Victor Kiam.