Author: Tamara Belanger (Page 10 of 74)

I love iced tea.  Straight up, no sugar, no lemon black iced tea; strong enough to make you sit up straighter.  I have a favorite place to get it, not far from where I live.  It’s worth it toget up off the couch and grab my keys and go through the drive through where I’ve been so often, I sometimes see a hand holding a giant cup out of the window, waiting for me to pull up.

My kids and I have this thing we do.  The day they get their license and we pull into the driveway, I get out and hand them the keys.  They grin at me proud.  It’s their first official voyage and they know just what to do.  It’s a short trip, one I can handle, and I act like I’m going in the house. But really?  I turn back and watch them drive away without me.   And they look forward, wearing freedom.  They’re soon back with tea I didn’t have to go get myself.   And they twirl the keys around their finger before they drop them in the dish by the door.   There’s always a swagger to their walk that wasn’t there when they left.  I take notice as they head up the stairs to their room a smile through a strange pang in my gut.

I’ve gone through this five other times so yesterday was familiar territory.  The girl passed nervous, having tried twice before.  She wanted me to drive home and talked all the way.  She could drop me off at work this summer instead of the other way around, she said.  I’d be the one waiting on the curb to be picked up at the end of the day.

We pulled into the drive way and I looked at her.                                                                                                                                                                “You know what this means.”                                                                                                                                                                                                           She smiled and I handed her the keys as I got out and started walking to the house.  That’s when it struck me.  I’d never have this first again. She was my youngest. “Wait!”, I called out to her.  I grabbed my phone and took a picture.  She drove off looking forward, wearing her freedom.  I leaned against the porch and swallowed hard.  It was the last first goodbye of it’s kind.

I have a friend.  She seeks me out at work just to check in and sift through the snapshots of our lives and see what’s there to grow from, think about, cry for, and together we look for the Lover of our souls working.  Her encounters warm me and remind me I’m not alone at the campfire.  Recently, she took the choral group from our school on a trip to New York City.  They were gone for four days and I watched eager for their pictures telegraphed home on social media, smiles wide, eyes sparkly, joy.  When my friend came back to school on the fifth day, we sat at my table in the bookstore, her telling me stories, me picturing them eager in my head.   This one, though, this “picture” story?  It knicked at my heart and left it sore and tender.  I can’t forget  what I “see”.

They’d been in Central Park that day.  The afternoon was setting in and cold sat heavy in the air.  They made their way across the street to a Starbucks to warm up with coffee.  A quick and easy fix.  No one needed to think twice about it.  It was there and they could get it.  Each student, at the beginning of the trip, had been given a “blessing bag” with some things in it a person with nowhere to go and nowhere to turn might want.  Small comforts.  They were told to look with eyes to see, to be watching for the person who they wanted to give their bag to.

As they walked out of Starbucks, the wind tapping them on the shoulder, one of the young ladies noticed someone sitting on the sidewalk a few paces away.  She was a tiny asian woman; older.  “I’ll be right back,” whispered the student to my friend, her teacher.  She kneeled down and smiled at the woman.  Her smile alone is a gift.  I’ve seen it myself in the hallways at school.  How bright, I think, that smile must’ve been to this tired woman, seasoned and slapped by a harsh street life, used to feeling invisible.  She handed her the bag and life spread across the woman’s face.  Hat, gloves, snacks.  Such simple things.  The group moved on down the sidewalk.  My friend turned back;  just a last glimpse.  The woman was hungrily shoving the package of crackers in her mouth; one right after the other.

I think of that scene and I feel it in my gut.  She is still out there somewhere, most likely.  I look over at my girl on the couch tonight wrapped in blankets, her belly full, the tap tap tapping of her knitting needles in the quiet of the room.   When we pass out crackers, a stomach is filled for a bit; maybe just enough hope for one more night; staving off despair I know nothing about.   When we pass out crackers,  we hear the wrapper rip open behind us and we see the world different and closer up. I long for that woman to know warmth and soft and fullness.  I pray for that student to carry what she saw with her.  I thank God for that teacher, my friend and her heart, who longs for the deeper things, and took her there to pass out crackers.

The girl and I packed up the week and left school today a little tired.  We had a big grocery shop to do for an elderly lady and her husband who have long since found it difficult to maneuver the aisles, their legs heavy and hurting from disease and age.  We’ve been doing that for going on 8 years now.  Eight Christmases we’ve pulled out their decorations from under the stairs, and helped tuck her snowman collection in nooks and crannies.  It feels like my own house, I know it so well.  She makes me taste her homemade cranberry sauce tonight before we go.  She knows I love it and has a small container ready for me to take some with me,  so much more the treasure since my own grandmother isn’t here anymore to make my custard and chocolate meringue pie.

We eat hungry at our favorite Chinese restaurant.  We like it because they give us so much food that we always have a squeaky styrofoam container full of leftovers to take home with us.  We drive home and I always insist that the girl notice.  The sky?  It is one of a kind, we’ll never see it exactly the same again, I tell her and she looks with perspective limited to her age.  I notice, as I get older, that I drink in the sight with a gulp more eager,  keenly aware the fleeting grace gift, that each small glimpse isn’t a given forever.

We come home and put on our new sweat pants, scored free because my friend at work thought to give me a coupon.  They somehow feel softer and cozier because of that.  Earlier last week another friend brought the girl a tiny bag to school, all green and pink and white,   doughnuts from a place called Paradise  just for her for no reason other than because.  These “becauses”, these little bags of paradise and coupons that make things free?   The sunsets from God’s paintbox and chicken fried rice more than enough?  Sorting out groceries and snowmen collections that mean memories to someone else?  These are the currency of blessings.  They wrap my heart up snug, the give and take, the cadence of walking steady when we are loved and love well.  They make the moments unsure of where to stand a little easier to take.  They wipe the sweat of figuring out how to live off our foreheads.

I tap out these words and my phone dings quiet.  It’s a picture of my older girl in her wedding dress fresh from the day’s mail delivery.  I look at it, and remember back to her wondering days when she was a young girl….where will I live?  What will I do?  Who will I marry?  Her answers are beginning to take shape and it snaps and crackles in my heart like fireworks  to hear her voice, incredulous joy at her own good fortune.  I think back to times disappointing to her.  “You watch.  You wait.  You’ll see,” I told her, a lump in my own throat, because I loved her so much.  I put my phone back down, tears catching at the corners of my eyes.

I glance over at the girl, wrapped in her gray and pink blanket, homework on her lap even on a Friday night because her school is important to her. There’s a quiet hum from the fireplace heater.  The washer in the other room rumbles clothes clean as it spins out water for the final spin.  I lay here on my couch thinking about my boys coming home soon for Christmas and how I will make poppy seed muffins because it’s Noah’s favorite….and how I haven’t made them in the two years since he left.

These small things?  They are my currency of grace from a place called Paradise.  And the ruler of it all looks down on me with love.