Early Fall

I remember when we painted these walls.  Going on four plus years now.  The room was littered with dry wall mud that had been carelessly splattered upon the old wooden floor boards.  The old trim around the windows was dark and archaic.  It seemed a relic from a distant era:  the time of horse-drawn carriages and grand oil paintings brought over from the old world.  

I really didn't want to spend my evenings painting this old house.  I was just getting settled in at the church, and after spending the days in town I wanted to be able to be home with my family.  The trouble was my family was living in the basement of my in-laws, a situation that was not sustainable for any of us.  And through some strange means of transference, it was made known to me that I would go in the evening to finish whatever needed to be done in order for my wife and two kids to move in with me come the spring time of 2009.  

I wore old Columbia hiking paints and thermal long-sleeve shirts as I worked, the bright lights of spotlights shining upon the walls.  To those passing by my nocturnal work, I surely must have seemed a deranged loner, or perhaps an eccentric artistic type.  I could care less what I looked like, though.  I worked in the audio isolation of my iPod, kept company by the great American voices rock and blues.  I fell in love with BB King during those nights, learning something of persistence and effort as I painstakingly first scrubbed the woodwork down with TSP, applied a primer coat of Killz and eventually went back with two coats of Graceful Willow.  Semi-gloss, of course, for the trim, and flat for the walls.

I'm ashamed to admit it now, but it was the first time in my life where I was truly having to work for something.  This house, whatever it was, would have to be made better by my work, my effort.  Some men seem born for such work, and embrace it wholly.  Not me.  From the first it seemed a burden, even a type of cursedness, as though God had relegated me to this new situation on account of my earlier failures and laziness.  But, I came to enjoy it and discovered in it some lessons about myself as well.

I learned, for one thing, the sense of honor a man can have in working for his family, I mean actually doing something practical and tangible that can house and benefit his spouse and children.  I remember many nights when the hours stretched on and on and my annoyance started to grow that I would focus on the quality of my work as a discipline of love.  I would paint the beautiful trim work with their hand-hewn accents and grooves with delicate care, and as I did so, I imagined doing my work with a chivalrous mind and devoted heart.  This hour I spent on the trim, I told myself, would be done for my wife, so that she could have and appreciate a bedroom that was carefully cut when it was painted.  Thankfully, I can look at the trim even now and see the care that was taken.  I am fairly surprised that I found calm enough within myself to do the job that well.

But, maybe more importantly, I learned that a man must work hard enough some times that he reaches a point of exhaustion and failure because that same exhaustion and failure can lead him beyond himself.  It was an unending task to paint this house, and even after I finished a room, it was clear that decades of use and deterioration were not going to be overcome by a few weeks of washing and painting.  No amount of effort would bring completion.  As I wrestled with the enormity of the task, I was driven to plead with God.  And I was humbled enough to ask for help from members of the church.  Sometimes help appeared even without my request, which always seemed like such obvious grace that I fought to hold back tears.

A friend of mine that I know speaks often of the value of work, how it gives a person self-confidence and worth.  Looking at the trim still shining from the lamp's light, I know he is right.  There is something of me in that work.  But, I'm aware enough to know that whatever improvements have been made to this home have come by more than just my American can-do attitude.  In the end, I was blessed with the awareness of family and community there to support me.  I can see it very tangibly in the bookshelves John Anderson masterfully built and installed in the corner of the room where I type.  And I can think of the folks who showed up when I had the sense to finally ask.  

Wes

The Elephant in the African Brush

With various stories floating around the last few weeks regarding President Obama's trip to South Africa, I've been reminiscing about our Wabash trip last fall.  I also discovered a poem I wrote on the plane ride back from South Africa.  I doubt much of it will translate, but hopefully the theme will come through.  I was inspired by the awesome experience of this elephant above appearing out of the brush in a wild game preserve.  This formidable animal came striding towards our open-top transport vehicle, stood in front of us a moment - just long enough to define our place.  Then the elephant moved on.  I was immediately struck by its silent determination and subtle yet profound strength.  It immediately became a symbol of the King and the Kingdom of God to me, something that would not be "denied or dismissed."  I was also impressed by the liquid sorrow of the elephant's eyes and the thousand-creased skin.  It's face seemed a representation of all the tragedy I had witnessed and heard of in the heart of South Africa.

The Bull Elephant in the African Brush

Out of the bush it strides,

     in mass and alone;

It twinges and stretches,

           its tusks turned and tilted,

           its almond eyes crying inside its

                 leather-patched, hardened hide.

The bull alerts itself and its predicament,

            fanning and fronting to its onward course,

    not to be deterred.

It strides past the seven-mile cesspool,

           walks its way through the saffron and dust

               of the stricken-street,

    Walks across the squalor and shambles,

        of zinc and tender dry

            sticks stacked as refuse and refuge,

    Across the further lands of Cape Town's mall,

      past the merriment and morbidity of the system

            the Xhosa serve,

      Of spinning wheel and

            hanging indulgence,

      of Waterfront and white.

It walks beyond the unspoken, unseen borders

      of every shantytown

          that mars and marks the African veld,

    Past the teeming tarnish,

The troubled and troubling

       Gehenna of Khayelitcha,

It sniffs the poisoned, polluted air -

      surveying, assessing.

      Wonders

         at its expanding and expansive tenement, baking

         in the valley beneath the dialectic

  of Stellenbosch,

    and soteriology, and sin,

Then turns its head

     towards its beckoning point,

     to its home-bound boundary

    Of which the whole creation waits and groans,

And strides again. 

Forward.

       Upward. 

       Onward.

It marches on past the tourists and the tribal troubadours,

    Past Zuma's cronies and capitalists,

    Past the Afrikaaners turned aristocrats.

    Past the twenty Rand trick,

         The sex-inducing blonde,

         The soul-worn umfundizi,

         The medicine man who stares out

              his Rustenburg shack

                  with his ailing eyes,

           Enchanting his inadequate summons of salve

     While his daughters' daughters wither and die.

It marches past the bishop holding his

    creamy, careful hands

     palm flat upon the screaming, scalding

       skin of another shanty girl -

     Riven and riddled by men and disease, raped by father

         and gold and market and

               the million greeds that yawn across the never closing market

           from corner to continent,

           from godless domains

               of powers and principalities

    Entrenched as postmodernism's modern gods.

Its eyes cry in silence - probing to the depths

    the degraded humiliation,

      the deplorable degrees of devastation,

And marches somehow onwards still. 

It pulses and pushes its Herculean

     Strength,

   not to be denied or dismissed,

     but persistent and proud.

So goes its will; its might,

    under the African sun and

     across the

         aching, ailing earth,

crying silently its

    Song,

Groaning for creation's renewal,

     which has been promised

        and foreseen.  

July

Anna is in the kitchen this lazy afternoon, and the sound of vegetables hissing in hot sesame oil just began.  She is dead-set on making an Asian dish she's had targeted for over a week now.  "Bound and determined" is how she described her intentions.

Through the open windows of our bedroom window, I can hear Wyatt and Elise running around the neighbor's yard, likely playing "guns" or "sneak game" with the two neighbor's grandchildren.  It has only been in the last few weeks that our kids have begun playing with the two boys when they come out to visit grandma and grandpa.  Anna and I have been grateful two new playmates have been found, especially as it affords us personal time.  It is no less satisfying for Wyatt and Elise, and they come home to dinner after an hour or so full of stories and flush faces.

We've celebrated our nation's independence largely with a relaxation in our individual scheduled activities.  Anna is done with swim lessons and practice, at least for this week anyhow.  The kids too are done with their weekday trips to the pool.  And, I have emerged from a week as a camp director for 32 Junior High kids down at Camp Pyoca in southern Indiana.  We were therefore more than grateful for two extra days off this week, and we've spent them mostly ordering our home as well as our rhythms in our home.  

I don't know how many times we've rearranged rooms and furniture in this old farmhouse, but it is up to at least a dozen times now as we try to find the perfect balance between our growing possessions and our finite space.  Ever the optimists, though, we feel we've finally found the best arrangement to date with the kids back in the room just off the living room.  We are also working to turn their old bedroom into a schoolroom for the coming year.  We don't know why we didn't try this layout earlier, but improvements only come by mistakes and many attempts.

Without the demands of coaching, church, and extracurricular activities for the kids, our days have been more stable, and we've been able to actually sit down to dinner several times in recent days.  We've also managed to get back to some good, although challenging rhythms of bed time routines.  Add that to our new "manner list" on the fridge, and we're slowly eeking out some order and normalcy in our home.  Well, as much order as one can expect for a family of four living in a century-old house with a huge dog, chickens, and eleven acres of lush, vibrant woods, lawn and garden.  Much of our efforts in this place go towards stemming the tide of chaos.  But, what else are our 30's supposed to look like?

Thankfully, our extended family chipped in on the Fourth of July, part of an agreement to band together once a month at one of our homes to check off old projects and tackle new ones.  Our list for the day included taking down a Locust tree near our garage, painting up some trim on the inside, and odds and ends that never got checked off my "honey-do" list.  Per usual, I decided to jump right into a job without applying much critical thinking, which nearly resulted in me dropping a fifty foot Locust tree on our house.  Thanks to Grandpa Joe, one Bobcat, and one steel cable the crisis was averted, and we ended the evening in good humor eating hamburgs, coconut cream cake, and watching modest fireworks exploding in the late day air.

Hopefully, the next couple weekends will give us the chance to get up and see my extended family.  It has been awhile since I've been able to see my mom & step-dad, my sister and her girls, as well as my step-mom and dad, and I'm excited to catch up with them.  It seems like these summer days are endless with darkness staying away until late in the evening, and yet the days themselves are just not numerous enough.

Wes

Fur Elise

Somewhere between Wyatt's birthday and today, Elise has grown.  I know this as fact.

On the other side of our garage, out near the old concrete pad that we use for composting and yard waste, I set up a zip-line about a year ago.  It starts about six feet up in one of the two remaining Chestnut trees and runs about twenty yards down to a lesser tree.  I built it in my typical fashion - hastily and in a moment of foolish determination.  I salvaged the runner chain we had used for Ada at one point in time, a thick, metal cable about the width of a drinking straw.  Then, in the late afternoon, I hacked away a few branches, pulled out a drill and bits and began burrowing holes into the meat of Chestnut flesh.  About fifteen minutes after Anna said dinner was on the table and about five minutes before the day lost the last of its light, I had managed to sink two hooks into the opposing trees and had made the metal cable a tight string of tension balancing above the ground.

The kids love the zip-line, and return to it fairly often - often enough to renew my sense of pride and fatherly satisfaction every other week or so.  When Elise made her first maiden voyage across the airy-expanse, she dangled and zipped the whole way, her feet never coming anywhere near the ground.  We had to improvise and arranged for a bucket to be placed on the other end, so that when she finally came to rest, she could tip-toe her way back down to earth, releasing the handles with a snap.  For the most part this worked, well enough at least.

Today, though, she didn't need the bucket.  Now that I think about it, she hasn't needed it for some time.  Not since Wyatt's birthday at least.  That's the last time I can remember her pointing her toes to the top of the bucket turned upside down - searching for a landing pad with her arms still stretched vertically, her body a dangling ornament.  Now, her legs float down to the ground and land softly on the grass near the other end.

But it's not just the zip-line that proves her growing.  For the last few days, Gramma Lis has been working on a nightgown for Elise, a garment she was constructing in her basement.  I knew of this project, but thought little of it.  It is not unusual for Gramma Lis to arrive late in the day with her own projects, although hers are better planned and not as hard on the body - typically new pajamas or dresses or shorts for the summer.  I thought this nightgown would be like the old pajamas, simple pieces sewn together from Anna's old t-shirts.  It was hardly that.

From her neck to the tops of her toes, Elise came out of her room dressed for bed in a soft, white gown with braided cuffs just past her shoulder, a braid of her pinned back to the right side of her head.  To top it off, she had put on a string of fake pearls around her neck.

She approached me in a manner that I can only describe as beloved and sure - walking towards me without saying a word and then standing assuredly as I lay on the couch, her chin just slightly turned up, her hands at her side, waiting to receive a gift.  It was a gift I freely gave.  "You look beautiful, sweetie.  Do you like your new nightgown?"

Still silent, she stood looking at me directly and smiled and nodded a yes.  I said, "Let me give you a hug before you go to bed."

Now, when she knows that she is lovable and feels special, she welcomes my offer and allows herself to be held much longer than is normal.  She is normally too busy or too distracted by some insect or drawing to sit long with me.  So, I treasured this hug - holding her in my arms and knowing that she was content to be held the same, knowing that life only gives such gifts for only the shortest season.

How many more years until I am a nuisance in her life?  How many more years until I become painfully human?  I care not.  That is for another time.  Today.  Well, today she knows that I love her, that she is loved by me not for her appearance but for being Elise.  She knows that she is lovable.  And it stabs me with joy and pain to know she knows that.  Don't we all want to know that?

What manner of man am I that my God is this good to me, that I might see blessedness sweep into the room and stand before me as I lay upon a couch?  Ah, I tremble.  I tremble.

Early Summer Vacation

My vacation ends today, a wonderful and much needed period of refreshment - including a great three day trip to Brown County, IN.  We spent most of it at home, though, working on little side projects and tending to the yard and garden.  We ate lots of ice cream; We enjoyed lots of fresh strawberries coming on strong in our garden.  Wyatt caught a few fish.  I put another 150 miles or so on my bike.  We spent about five cumulative hours in the indoor water park at Abe Martin Lodge located in Brown County State Park.  We bought both edible and inedible keepsakes from the tiny stores in Nashville:  peanut butter and Jack Daniels fudge; a double espresso and mocha creation known as the Sledgehammer; new belts and wristbands and barrettes of leather.  Anna and I built a see-saw for Elise's seventh birthday.  And we had two large family meals.  The first for Elise's birthday consisting of steaks marinated in rosemary and garlic as well as broccoli salad and completed by a white cake and white sugar frosting topped with more of those fresh strawberries.  The second on Memorial Day consisting of a full ham brined along with roasted cauliflower and fresh salad with pineapple, crystallized ginger and shaved almonds.  In other words, we lived bountifully and heartily.

Our trip to Brown County began on Wednesday, as we packed up Cooper's big suburban and wound our way down into the first hills and hollers of southern Indiana.  Last year, we made a similar trip around the same time of year: near the close of the school year but before the intensity of summer swim lessons and summer church programming picks up.  But last year we tried the hero's route:  camping the first two nights and finishing off the trip in a rustic cabin where we could finally shower and enjoy at least marginal air conditioning from a window unit that buzzed and hammered its meager production.  We learned our lesson from that experience, having arrived home even more exhausted than when we left and certainly at the point of getting on each other's nerves.  This year we choose the assurance of fixed accommodations and the easy entertainment of the water park in the lodge.  How much does peace of mind cost?  About $100 dollars more a night than tent camping is about where I would put it.

And so, even though the days were full, they were also tremendously enjoyable - giving ourselves over to only one thing at a time, moving from rest to recreation to work to feasting to rest again.  It is how I imagine life should be much of the time, and I am left wondering why mine is not more so.  The secret o' life, as Mr. Taylor says, "is in enjoying the passing of time," and that's what the greatest gift of this vacation was ... enjoying the gift of each day, singularly and simply.

Wes