The Sum

I sit and fidget as I wait to to stand and address my gorgeous grandmother at a 90th birthday celebration in her honor.  

She is sitting at the front, center stage, elegantly dressed in a cool celadon suit.  Blessed with Norwegian skies blue eyes, silver hair and flawless skin, she is breathtaking.

On the other hand, I am teary, splotchy, undone with gratitude and love for this extraordinary matriarch.  How best to honor such a life in a two-minute verbal tribute?   I fumble, stumble for the right words, which fail me.   It is daunting, completely impossible.  As usual, it's easier for me to write a poem.

The Sum

She has seen nine decades pass,

Ninety years of life.

Thirty two thousand eight hundred and seventy two sunsets

Flowing with prayer and a song every single day.

What will be the sum of my life when I’m ninety?

She has raised four children,

Fourteen grandchildren arranged like sparkling jewels in a crown.

Fresh-faced great-grandchildren abound,

Each one prayed for by name every single day.

What will be the sum of my life when I am ninety?

She was a plucky pioneer, plowing soil and souls in a foreign land.

“She’s a pistol I tell you!”  You don’t mess with grandma.

True in her words, with actions to match,

Persistent in song and prayer with her husband every single day.

What will be the sum of my life when I am ninety?

She is ready to go home when her Father calls her,

Her handsome love waits for her, singing, in heaven’s courts.

Both have run the race well,

She counts her blessings in prayer and song every single day.

What will be the sum of my life when I am ninety?

She is the rarest gift to those who come behind her,

We all know that prayer needn’t be fancy, but frequent.

A cloud of witnesses remains to testify
That Jesus loves you, and so do I, that’s why I pray for you every single day.

What will be the sum of my life when I am ninety?

Happiest of birthdays grandma!

If you could only harness it.

"Her vitality, if you could have harnessed it, would have supplied a whole town with electric light."

I love this line from Young Archidemes, a short story by Great Britain writer Aldous Huxley.  His  description makes me think of so many of the radiant, electric women I adore.

Next line.

"Enormous stores of vital energy accumulate in unemployed women of sanguine temperament, which vent themselves in ways that are generally deplorable: in interfering with other people's affairs, in working up emotional scenes, in thinking about love and making it, and in bothering men till they cannot get on with their work."

Mmmm.  This is like finding a bone in a mouthful of fish dinner--it will certainly prompt you to swallow the remaining bites of the meal with more care.  So one must read Huxley's tale gingerly, chewing the words slowly for sharp points, thinking and enjoying the whole meal, bones and all.  Good writers don't make things easy or safe, but it's always a feast.

That said, this is what a seven-page short story from a 1920's author made me consider today, and I pass it on to you...

Fabulous women, how do we harness the vitality that has been placed purposefully inside each of us?

How do we best provide light for loved ones, neighbors, even a whole city, without working up emotional scenes?

Where can we vent our God-given energies in ways that are generally not deplorable?

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things.

Front row seat

Today I observe my oldest man-son rest in the sea.  Where do sixteen-year-olds find solace these days?

Sitting solitary on his board, he is hardly alone.  

Gulls soar in formation overhead while ponderous pelicans scour for breakfast and plummet around him.  He has front row tickets to the majesty of Creation, reminded quietly and impressively throughout the show that he is not the Center of it.

Winds and waves shift inexplicably, the magic and mystery that rouses teenage bones from bed at dawn.

He needs only to rise, to be, to wait with patience, and enjoy.

Rounder where it counts.

"You look.." she looked at me deeply and then searched for the perfect word, "...rounder".

I had just returned home to Austin last summer after a few weeks away.  My friend welcomed me with a tall iced tea and plenty of space to have the conversation wander.

"Yep.  You look rounder."

Her eyes crinkled up in a laughing, happy smile.  This soul friend who knows me so well had not the slightest worry I would take this all the wrong way, despite the obvious five pounds I'd happily acquired in a short fortnight.  I understood what she was communicating in that choice of a word.  She knew that is exactly how I hoped to return to Austin, to life in the real lane.

And here I am again.  For over twenty years we have been coming to this familiar and beloved place.  A solitary, sanguine beach tucked away on the Atlantic ocean has become the salty landscape woven into layers of Hall family memories; David and I newly in love, newly married, newly parents, and now this year, newly able to sit and read while the children surf and swim.

I usually arrive flat, squeezed, brittle, breathless.  For the first few days I have trouble reading, writing, or sitting still.  I pace a bit.  But as the tides ebb and the afternoon storms roll in day after day, we all melt, exhale, expand.

I need this annual pilgrimage because I leave it better than when I stumble in.  Like the praying mantis who shares the inside of my new screened porch, I shed my wafer-thin, too-tight, crackly skin of the previous year and emerge, hopefully, greener.

I realize more each year that it's not really the place, but rather a place that I seek expectantly.


















How do I nurture a roundness to my soul?  How do I keep my smile ready, my edges soft, my gaze gracious and patience deep?  How can I keep open spaces for reading, for prayer and thought, for people and interruptions?

I don't know, exactly, but I like these questions much better than the ones I was asking before I arrived.

To remind myself

How To Be a Poet

BY WENDELL BERRY

(to remind myself)

i   

Make a place to sit down.   

Sit down. Be quiet.   

You must depend upon   

affection, reading, knowledge,   

skill—more of each   

than you have—inspiration,   

work, growing older, patience,   

for patience joins time   

to eternity. Any readers   

who like your poems,   

doubt their judgment.   

ii   

Breathe with unconditional breath   

the unconditioned air.   

Shun electric wire.   

Communicate slowly. Live   

a three-dimensioned life;   

stay away from screens.   

Stay away from anything   

that obscures the place it is in.   

There are no unsacred places;   

there are only sacred places   

and desecrated places.   

iii   

Accept what comes from silence.   

Make the best you can of it.   

Of the little words that come   

out of the silence, like prayers   

prayed back to the one who prays,   

make a poem that does not disturb   

the silence from which it came.

Wake up call

I need no wake-up alarm here at the farm.

At 5:59am every morning Larry peels up our gravel driveway in his rusty and not-so-trusty Ford and begins hammering, sawing, nail-gunning, scraping our porch.  All this carpentry commotion is merely backdrop to Larry's music hullabaloo, which also commences at 6am.  Country, rock, 80's dance pop (the style matters not ) is all played exceedingly loud.

And above all that din, Larry sings.  Every. Word.  Whether he knows the song or not.

Larry teaches the Hall boys how to properly scrape paint from the porch

We all appreciate Larry.  He is quirky, kind and works without ceasing.  A master carpenter who could not keep a steady job due to the bottle, Larry is now in a program for recovering alcoholics and has been sober for two years.  No matter the weather, he is usually shirtless by mid-morning and has a huge tattoo on his left chest that reads "God saved me".

Larry brings fresh farm eggs and blue ribbon summer squash from his garden.  He surprised Colvin with a rope swing so she could "swing above the ivy".  He can fix anything and knows something about everything.  Who knew that bleach helps poison ivy?  Mothballs keep snakes away?  The praying mantis eats horseflies?  The kids regale their father every evening with all their Larry learnings.

Last night, my sweet six year old was having a good boo-hoo over missing her best friend, Kate.  She released the floodgates with shuddering sobs that had built up in that little, brave body the last few weeks and we talked about friends.

"Larry is my only friend in Maryland", she sniffed.

"Mine, too, baby." I hold her tight.  "Mine too. But he's a good friend, isn't he?"

You say tomato. I say tomato.

A brave friend of mine recently sent me a letter regarding her life-long struggles with beauty and body image.   Here's one of her questions...

"How do you defend the statement, 'It's not about physical beauty, it's about inner beauty'?"  Such a good question and worth a thoughtful answer.

The desire to be beautiful haunts all women, regardless of age or race. It is our curse, from the days of Eve, none of us exempt.   Part of Eve's punishment for her sin of wanting to be like God was that she would forever "crave her husband" (Genesis 3:16).  Enough from him would never be enough for her.  

Beauty is our power.  When we are deemed beautiful, our husbands, and others, give us what we crave, which is complete, undivided attention.  When we feel inadequate in our beauty, we feel powerless, invisible, and not worthy of anyones (even God's) undivided attention and love. Elective plastic surgery, exercise addictions, eating compulsions, materialism, depression, discord, discontent and envy all spring from our constancy of wanting this power to draw and hold attention.  It's a losing battle.  Beauty does not bring life, it is the result of true life.  

It seems that there are two routes women take to deal with our problem.

1.  I will do anything and everything to maintain and create my beauty because I realize it's my power

2.  I will pretend that beauty is not really that important to me anyway. 

So, while we don't struggle in equal measure with every branch of this issue, the ROOT of this cursed tree is the same.  Just like Eve, enough is not enough for any of us.

These days I am eating mid-summer-just-picked-from-the-farm tomatoes each night.  This is real beauty and a great joy.  The fruit looks like a tomato, smells like a tomato, not perfect in form (kind of squat and ugly, actually) but tastes joyously like how a tomato should taste.  It's wholeness and wholesomeness gives great pleasure.  Before I slice into one of these tomatoes, I know exactly what I'm going to get.   

Put a fake, genetically engineered and pretty-on-the-outside grocery store tomato on the same china dish and I am left sorely disappointed.  Expecting one thing, I get so much less.  Chalk in the mouth.  Blech.

This is what I mean by inner beauty.  It delivers more when it is devoured.  When you meet and know a "farm tomato" woman, it is a feast.  She is beautiful to all the intuitive senses, not just sight, and she does not leave you feeling disenchanted.  She delivers more than what the eye can take in.  She might not look perfect on the windowsill, but she satisfies your deeper yearnings of real beauty, and real life.  

Our culture consistently settles for perfect, fake, tasteless tomatoes.  We've lost the taste for the real thing.   It's not men or the media driving this train wreck...it's us, sisters!  Fight it.  See it.  Reckon with it as you examine your own heart and deliver it  in to the hands of your loving and ever-attentive Maker.