for Quinn and Lindsay

. . . believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

To say that I was smitten is the grandaddy of all understatements. I was wholly, unabashedly, wildly smitten. As they placed my new son in my arms and our eyes locked, I held the tangible love I’d only imagined in the weeks before our adoption. It goes without saying that I was smitten with all of my babies, but with Quinn, there was an urgency tinged with desperation that wormed itself through me. He would be the last baby I would ever have, the last late night feedings I’d ever give, the last baby baths and stroller rides, the last chest-to-chest rocking sessions.

I was no stranger to the changes that occur when babies become toddlers become children, for my three daughters had prepared me well for these transformations. As inevitable as these changes were, I admit that I wasn’t always crazy about them. Initially, that is. But then, like most parents, I learned the marvels of the next stage–and then the next. I learned that there was nothing wrong with briefly mourning the stage that was ending, but that I’d better buckle up quickly for the next stage. It was coming whether I liked it or not.

I was blessed to be able to work part-time until Quinn went to school. He went with me everywhere and unwittingly became an ambassador for adoption, as strangers stopped me to ask such questions as: Are you babysitting? Are you a foster parent? What does his father look like? Quinn let them touch his hair and make googly eyes at him, while I answered their questions. People were generally kind–just curious. So, from the time Quinn was a baby, he was becoming a people person, an individual who rarely met a person he couldn’t talk to and didn’t like.

When I was shopping one day, a clerk walked all the way across the store to ask me where my little buddy was. School, I said, he started kindergarten this year. She nodded knowingly but not before a look passed across her face, a look that reflected exactly what I was feeling: if only I could turn back time. Sometimes I can hear echoes of Power Rangers’ battles being played out from the backseat of my car, and I can still remember the feel of his hand in mine as we crossed the street.

Through each season of change, I learned more about myself as I learned more about him. I learned that when he carried the ball during football games, I would run–figuratively and sometimes literally–along with him. Once during a middle school game during which the spectators were standing on the sidelines, I broke free and would’ve crossed into the end zone with him, but blessedly I came to my senses. (Can you imaginethe headlines? Quinn Vesely and his Mom Score Final TD!) With every yard we (and I say “we” intentionally) pounded out, I learned that there was simply no way that I could be a passive bystander in my son’s life. For better or worse, I felt every victory and every loss–athletic and otherwise–almost as keenly as he did. I still do.

This week, Quinn will marry Lindsay, a wonderful partner who makes him very happy. And this change, of course, makes us very happy. Still, even though he hasn’t lived at home for years, there’s something particularly bittersweet about the fact that he never will again. But I take solace in poet Ranier Maria Rilke’s claim that there is a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, a love so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it. My children have given me an inheritance of great love, and it travels from Montana to Iowa to Pennsylvania surely and miraculously, traversing miles and months in a blink of an eye.

Change is in the air this week as we prepare to celebrate Quinn’s marriage to Lindsay. When two become one, the change is sacred and oh so wonderful.

Congratulations and all my love Quinn and Lindsay

photo by Collyn Ware

We’re made for the light of a cave and for twilight. Twilight is the time we see best. When we dim the light down, and the pupil opens, feeling comes out of the eye like touch. Then you really can feel color, and experience it.   ―James Turrell , American Artist

Twilight is often referred to as the golden hour, that magical transition from day to night, all the world bathed in lavender light. Even the word twilight sounds as lovely as it looks and feels. Artist James Turrell claims that this is the time during which we see best, that we can actually feel and experience color. Author Olivia Howard Dunbar writes that twilight is when the not yet darkened world seems infinitely greater—a moment when anything can happen, anything be believed in.

Twilight is both gloriously of this world and yet not. Perhaps its greatest attribute is that it gives us a glimpse of what’s beyond earth and life, a glimpse into the sacred. I’m convinced–like James Turrell–that there’s something truly other-worldly about twilight and that I can feel color in these moments. I may be twilight’s biggest fan.

Twilight

When twilight comes,
it falls first in a familiar trill through the trees,
a silhouette of a bunting on a fence post,
a sweet sliver of blue light
that taunts the dusk.

It comes as a nether world,
where every mystery flickers across
the iris of time,
across the grasses which give up 
the last breath of day and welcome 
the first breath of night,
across deer who will bed in the timber,
their heads drowsy with dew.

It comes as a herald of dreams
once hidden behind a silken scrim, 
but backlit now,
they emerge like fireflies, 
like galaxies in the lavender light.

It comes as a whisper
that grows finer and lighter, 
its filaments fusing into a single cloud 
of witnesses.

And when it comes,
you spread your arms under the old oaks
which have dropped their crowns towards earth;

you pull the corners of the day 
around the lilies and the yarrow,
around the moths in the meadow,

while magic burns gold and true
across the hills. 

In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it’s wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything

We live in a time when dropping the phrase the miraculous scope of human generosity into conversation may illicit responses that are anything but generous. You speak of human generosity as if you could really find this in the world today. Human generosity? In your dreams! Sadly, we’re becoming more accustomed to scarcity with supply chain issues, shortages, and recession rearing its ugly head. And in the face of scarcity, many–perhaps most–of us tend to batten down the hatches, fearing rougher waters ahead. Like baby formula (toilet paper, cleaning products, and now baby formula???), generosity is often in short supply.

And yet, the miraculous scope of human generosity continues to thrive. Several years ago when some friends and I visited Europe, we turned to each other multiple times a day and said, People are so good. We struggled hauling oversized suitcases (what were we thinking?), reading train schedules, deciphering directions. Time and time again, natives came to our rescue, most often even when we hadn’t asked. I’m sure we looked forlorn and utterly clueless, like a group of grandmas on holiday (which we were!) The generosity of these Italians, Swiss, and French was humbling. We were wholly at the mercy of strangers who loaded our monstrous suitcases onto trains, accompanied us to the places we needed to be to hail cabs and join tour groups. We willingly surrendered before their generosity and understood, even then, that a lifetime of thank yous wouldn’t be nearly enough.

Last month on my birthday, I was in the checkout line at HyVee when the young man at the register commented on the cake I was buying. I told him that it was my birthday, so I decided to pick out my own cake. As he was ringing up my last grocery items, he motioned to the rows of candy behind the register and said, If you had to choose one, which one would you choose? I scanned the rows and said, Snickers, it would have to be Snickers. He asked the employee sacking if he would take over the register, so that he could buy me a Snickers for my birthday. He pulled a Snickers off the shelf, then hesitated and said that he knew they had jumbo Snickers, which was what I should have for my birthday. On the top row, he finally located the jumbo variety and presented it to the temporary checker for purchase. Then he handed it to me and wished me a happy birthday. I pushed my cart into the parking lot wearing one of those goofy smiles plastered across my face. I might’ve even been singing as I loaded my groceries into my car. In Man of La Mancha, Dale Wasserman writes, I come in a world of iron…to make a world of gold. On June 11th, I entered a world of produce and canned goods, an ordinary world which a high school student generously transformed into a world of gold.

In The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, Steven Pinker writes:

People do more for their fellows than return favors and punish cheaters. They often perform generous acts without the slightest hope for payback ranging from leaving a tip in a restaurant they will never visit again to throwing themselves on a live grenade to save their brothers in arms. [Robert] Trivers together with the economists Robert Frank and Jack Hirshleifer has pointed out that pure magnanimity can evolve in an environment of people seeking to discriminate fair weather friends from loyal allies. Signs of heartfelt loyalty and generosity serve as guarantors of one’s promises reducing a partner’s worry that you will default on them. The best way to convince a skeptic that you are trustworthy and generous is to be trustworthy and generous.

We’ve all witnessed–or been the beneficiaries of–random acts of kindness: the driver ahead of you in the fast food restaurant line pays for your meal; a woman offers to hold your baby so you can tend to your screaming toddler; a man finds you stranded on the road with a flat tire and changes it for you; and a kid for whom $20 would buy the world runs after you to return the $20 bill you dropped at the concession stand. There are times when people demonstrate their generosity without the slightest hope or expectation for payback. And perhaps generosity does help us discriminate fair weather friends from loyal allies, as Trivers, Frank, and Hishleifer contend. Certainly we’re drawn to those whose generosity seems as natural as breathing. Good people, we say. salt of the earth kind of folk. These are the individuals who frequently become our best friends, the friends to whom we turn in times of joy and sorrow, the friends who anticipate what we need before we say a word. Their generosity is a hallmark of their devotion and care.

French writer Simone Weil argues that [a]ttention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. How generous is the individual who simply attends to your presence! To be noticed is remarkably generous. As clichéd as it may be, the gift of time and undivided attention is probably one of the most coveted gifts. In a world of self-professed multi-taskers, we long for someone to look us directly in the eyes and to assure us that we hold their attention. This kind of attention says you matter to me. This kind of attention is a generous oasis is a noisy, busy world.

We’ve all known truly generous people who open their homes and hearts without a thought. They’ll give the shirt off their own backs, their own beds (and take the sofa for themselves), their time, talents, and money to others. Simone de Beauvoir, a French philosopher, understands the spirit behind this kind of generosity. She writes: That’s what I consider true generosity: You give your all, and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing. Perhaps the essence of generosity is found in this paradox: giving all, offering, as novelist James Baldwin claims, what most people guard and keep and yet feeling as if this costs you nothing. This paradox also lives in Jesus’s words to his disciples: For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it (Matthew 16:25).

Generally speaking, many of us can be generous when it costs us little, when we find ourselves with an abundance–or at least with some to spare. But to be generous when it costs us much, to be generous when we find ourselves in survival mode, that is the miraculous scope of human generosity that Elizabeth Gilbert contends compels us to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices. To the young man who gifted me with a Snickers at the grocery store, to the multitude of European natives who made my trip so wonderful, to my family and friends who give so freely, and to the many strangers who’ve generously lent a helping hand, I offer my eternal and sincere thanks. I aim to keep thanking you for as long as I have voice.