I was awake earlier than I needed to be on this Sunday morning but I was ok with that.  It gave me a chance to talk, this new day and I, to our common Creator.  I moved slowly in my kitchen, the year-long white Christmas lights strung around the ceiling simmering warm hues.  The girl slept upstairs.  The snap of the glass carafe told me the water was heated and I poured it over my coffee and breathed in the steam.  I have my grandfather’s chair in a corner of my kitchen.  I got it for him at a yard sale in his neighborhood in Illinois years ago when I was visiting him.  He replaced it with the one he already had in his living room because it was easier for him to get out of, his arthritis making his thin frame stiff and uncooperative.  It sat in the same spot for years.  I have a picture of my two oldest children, one still in diapers, sitting on it.  When he died, it was the one thing of his I wanted.  There is not a single time I sit in that chair that I don’t think of him.  Not one.  This morning was no different.  I sat in silent memories, content with the sound of silence, grateful for the heritage I have in grandpa.

Right about then, I heard a sound that I couldn’t recognize outside and I pulled the curtain aside.  My eyes surveyed the yard.  Nothing to see.  Curtain dropped.  Then, there it was again.  I peered beyond the curtain again and saw a black choreographed whoosh of black in the sky and grabbed my camera and ran for the front door.

I stood in the center of my yard, overwhelmed by the symphony of birds in every tree I could see playing tag, swiring and dancing in the sky, calling to one another and, it felt like, to me to join in.  The noise level rose as other flew in to join them on posts and pillars.  And then the Conductor of it all stepped up to the podium to usher in the magnificent crescendo.  The sun illuminated the clouds with cotton candy colors and the bells in the church steeple down the street began to gong, gong, gong……!  I felt like Cinderella at the ball.  I tore myself away to run in the house and up the stairs to tell my sleeping girl to wake up, wake up, wake up!  I didn’t want her to miss it!  LOOK!  LOOK! I gasped to her as she came to the door, half awake and nodding compliantly before she turned and crawled back under the covers.  I felt disappointed.  I wanted her to seize the moment,  this moment that would never come again, to get that, really get it and hug it hard so she could remember later when this morning’s creation performance is long gone and she may be sitting in my grandpa’s chair remembering one day without me and smile.  But, she’s a brand new 19 and sifts things through youth and hormones and morning sleepiness and seemingly endless days.  She hasn’t fully grasped the gratitude moments like sprinkles on ice cream.  She hasn’t seen the first scrapings of the bottom of the dish yet that tell her to savor it slower and more intentionally.

The girl goes back to bed and I go back outside and the sky’s canvas was waiting on me.  It had another parting gift before the day took hold.  I stood and looked, the colors and clouds forming a visual surround sound.  Coram Deo, I said out loud to the Lover of my soul;  living before the face of God.

I was wearing mint green “baby doll” pajamas, the kind that have the matching shorts and flowy, crepey short top that shows them off.  They were popular then, like the Brady Bunch and harvest gold kitchen appliances and shag carpet were popular.  I was 5 days into being 11, all gangly legs and cats eye glasses and still growing into my teeth.  Crystal Blue Persuasion by Tommy James was number one on the radio.  I knew that because my babysitter loved it and I always wondered what those words meant and thought they sounded very grown up and mysterious.  And love was the answer.

We were at my grandparents in Springfield, IL celebrating a family birthday trifecta; mine, my mother’s and my grandfather’s.  We did it most every year.  I was an only child so I loved the feeling of being more surrounded by family than usual.  My grandparents’ house was simple, earned from the hard, steady work of my 6th grade educated grandfather and his wife.  Every summer I’d walk behind my grandpa as he tended to the small garden beside his house.  I can still smell the tomatoes and the soil and see his gnarled up hands from arthritis reach out for the smallest of weeds.  It reminded him of his early days, a husband and a father, working on another man’s farm to make money.  These summer visits, I’d sit under the big tree in his yard on the cheerful colored metal lawn chairs that felt cold on my skin.  I’d listen to his stories and run my toes through the thick grass that felt like carpet and wonder how he got it that way.  And I’d imagine what he was telling me in pictures in my mind.  The screen door of the kitchen hissed open and shut as my grandma came out to join us, tucking her ever present kleenex in her house dress pocket.  These times felt like childhood and it filled me up full.

July 20th was on a Sunday.  We’d been to church that day and I sat next to grandpa and listened to his shakey voice belt out the hymns he loved.  We’d had relatives over in the afternoon.  I went to bed that evening content.  And only marginally aware of what else was going on in the world.  At 10:00 p.m.  my daddy burst into the room to wake me up.  The first man on the moon was about to step out of the lunar module and he wanted me to see it as it happened.  I went into the living room, chilly from crawling out from under the covers and curled up sleepy on the couch.  My dad was so jazzed, so excited, so present in the world.  He stood amazed at life.  I barely remember going back to bed or if I fell asleep and was carried back.  But I woke up the next morning and smelled sausage and coffee and looked forward to the day.  And the beat went on.

Yesterday, I took my daughter to see First Man; the movie telling the story of Neil Armstrong.  We gripped each others’ hands tight and thought we couldn’t breathe when things went wrong in the rocket.  We learned that Mr. Armstrong had lost a little girl a few years before, and he thought of her as he stood in the moon dust.  And as I sat in that dark movie theatre, a wave of emotion washed itself up onto my shore and I was surprised by my tears.  The memories flashed and disappeared into the next with that whooshing sound from the movies when things warp by in your mind too fast to hold onto.  My July 20th, 1969 collided with Neil Armstrong and a silent snapshot abruptly halted my mind.  It’s my dad, standing in front of the t.v., dressed in his black pants and white undershirt, turning from me to the t.v. screen and back again, excited to share the man on the moon with me.  And I suddenly realized what a treasure that night was for us all.

Thank you,  Mr. Armstrong.  Thank you, dad, for waking me up for that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fz01MkVczjY

I spent the better part of this afternoon with a friend; we ciphered out 21 years we’ve seen each other through now.  All kinds of turns unexpected; sometimes the road has gotten pretty pock marked and the wheels under us needed new shocks.  But we’ve made it this far.  I got back in the car after our visit and turned on the radio already  tuned to Guy Raz, Ted Radio Hour on NPR.  He was interviewing someone on the effects of shifting time.  “You reach a certain point in life,” said the radio lady , “where you don’t meet new old friends because there just isn’t enough time to make them that.”  I smile to myself and my heart agrees.  I’ve just been with an old friend and I whisper a thank you to my heavenly Father for the gift of enough days piled up like rich soil to see the strong roots.

“As we get older, it turns out through a study done, we get measurably happier,” she continued, her voice obviously counted as one “older”.  She talked about speaking on the topic at a conference . Age puts a certain spin on things that makes the golden light glint off of life more keenly, the edges of things more outlined, focused. The “tear in the eye moments” when a new good beginning requires the ending of something before it….  the new job that takes away the financial pressure and a look back over the shoulder as you step through the door of your future suddenly makes the lean days take on a special nostalgia?  The thing is, as birthdays add up, the tear makes the ripness of the life fruit sweeter than the harsh bitterness of the fear and effect of the bruises.  You can just let go easier.  You decide to be here because you realize the “theres” will rob you if you let them.  “Here” is where life is happening.

I just this week drove the seven hours there and back to visit my daughter and her little family. My muscles draw up tighter than they used to  when the car holds me hostage for long hours and I have to walk slowly at first when I get out until my legs find their function again.   I look up and see my girl holding her girl waiting for me on their porch.   My granddaughter has reached the age where she knows who I am and what I am; her Nana.  I see her eyes light up with recognition.  Were my legs stiff?  I couldn’t remember anymore.  It didn’t matter.

The days spent with my girl, her man and little girl zoomed by slowly;  actual days on the calendar were faster than the moments I savored; my age affords me to move slower in my mind than the clock hands on the wall.  Leaving was hard.  It was the first time Little Bea registered that Nana had to leave.  Her whimper at the news threatened to take me down.  As I drove away, waving one last time at the faces in the window, I swallowed hard.

I didn’t want to leave.  It was the end of the sweet snuggles in person for awhile.  There was a tear in the corner of my eye as I looked away towards the road.  But, as I drove down the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the miles between us mounting up, I warmed myself at what I took with me.  My 59 years had  wrapped up the simple times like little presents to put under my remembering tree.   I can  taste the seasoned squash slathered over my girls’ homemade sourdough bread and the treasure of shared food, all of us together, around their table.  I can hear the murmur of the voices between her and her man in the front seat as I sit in the back with Bea, comforted at the love being nurtured between them.  I can smell the heavenly scent of a just bathed toddler as she waddles from room to room, her naked little self wrapped up in a towel dragging behind her.   I can savor the memory of the setting sun over a corn field enjoying an evening drive to get ice cream.  I can sit on their back porch and listen to the crickets while I watched the day end drinking my iced tea and whispering a thank you to the God that loves them;  that He is watching over this little family.

I can let go of mistakes I made raising this girl of mine and know that all is well in spite of it; that we can forgive and love and seize the moment by the hand and walk on.  I realize I’ve stopped listening to the podcast on the radio until the last sentence.  The radio lady had finished her talk and a young man approached her afterwards.  “Is there anyway to get older quicker so I can be in that place you spoke about now ??”  I laughed out loud and nodded my head.  This getting older thing?  It’s no so bad after all, even with stiffer muscles.  I love the brighter outlines that light up the moments.

There’s no time to do anything but slow down.