Bunting Light

  for Susan and David                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           June 17, 2017

When spring gives way to summer,

the world spreads out before us.

Once quiet and dormant,

now verdant and vibrant,

sacramentally brilliant.

The air is filled with bird song

and wild honeysuckle.

Nuthatches and rose-breasted grosbeaks take to the trees;

red-winged blackbirds and thrushes dot the thickets.

And in June light,

burnt umber and crimson flash in the foliage.

But the indigo bunting hides,

its silhouette dark atop distant trees.

It takes just the right light,

a single ray that pierces the clouds

and filters the too-bright.

And then black gives way

to cerulean and aquamarine

in bunting light.

So it is with love,

which waits, cocooned in the heart.

Quiet yet perfect,

patient, ever expectant.

Until just the right light–

a single prayer that pierces the heart–

unwraps its cocoon.

Then prayer gives way to love

in bunting light.

And in this sacred space,

this sanctuary of light and grace,

two souls wed.

During the last few months, I finished two historical novels that profiled ordinary people in the French Resistance and Americans who, in desperation and without work, traveled to Russia during the Great Depression in search of better prospects promised by advertisements in The New York Times. Different times, people, and places, but I couldn’t help but be moved and burdened with the abject hunger that serves as perhaps the most significant protagonist of all. There were too many passages in both novels that chronicled the ques of hungry people waiting for hours for whatever they could buy that day. A quarter pound of butter, an onion or potato, a wedge of cheese. There was no shopping for what you needed or wanted; there was only waiting and hoping that the day’s ration would be something to fill their empty bellies. There were too many descriptions of the persistent wasting-away, of the lethargy and hopelessness that comes from weeks of subsisting on broth, of the living who were daily dying. Both novels left me with a literal pit in my stomach and images that I will not soon forget.

I recalled similar passages in other works I had read. Hunger is always a major character in Holocaust works. In Elie Wiesel’s Night, he writes:

Bread, soup – these were my whole life. I was a body. Perhaps less than that even: a starved stomach. The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time.

To be reduced to a body, a starved stomach. To trade your dignity for a piece of bread, your soul for soup. I cannot imagine the injuries that hunger inflicts on on body and soul, for I have never been so hungry that my next meal was my whole life. 

We want to feed the souls of those who hunger, and we acknowledge, as Pranab Mukherjee argues, that there is no humiliation more abusive than hunger. We understand, however, that we must first feed their stomachs. Mahatma Gandhi writes:

There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.

The truest missionaries bring God to the hungry in the form of bread or cassava root or corn. They truly see those who wear hunger draped over their shoulders, a dreary moth-ridden cassock to hide their skeletal forms. They work lovingly from the stomach to the soul. And they never underestimate or forget the miraculous ways God works through bread.

But so many are ravaged by seasons of hunger. During my trip to Nigeria, I saw children who could have benefited from some meat on their bones. Literally. Distended bellies, upper arms and legs you could close your hand around, and clothing that hung much too loosely from their frail frames. For three weeks, I was habitually hungry because I didn’t like Nigerian food and chose to eat little. But the Nigerians were habitually hungry because they didn’t have enough food to eat. I had access to food; they didn’t. I would return to America and order a cheeseburger and fries on my first night back; they would share want with their brothers and sisters most nights.

And yet, it was this very hunger that drove them to the maize fields outside their villages, to the river for clean water, to the market to barter for whatever they can get. This hunger drives parents to spend precious naira on uniforms that will admit their children to private schools where they will spend their days in open air classrooms equipped with crude wooden tables and a single chair for every two students, with teachers who painstakingly write all they know and wish to impart on cracked chalkboards that serve as the only textbooks their students will ever know. No electricity for lights or computers–just the pressing hope that these children will find a better life with three meals a day, modern conveniences, and access to quality health care that will save their children’s teeth and eyes and lives. In the face of unimaginable unemployment, governmental corruption, and the brutal terrorism of Boko Haram, this hunger drives their dreams and fuels their hope. This is a hunger that both haunts and blesses them.

Where is this hunger in our country? In Africa, it enveloped me and left indelible scars on my soul and psyche. And though I occasionally see it in my own schools and community, I have never see anything of the magnitude I saw in Africa. Here, we staff soup kitchens and missions, food pantries and backpack programs, open our churches, schools, and community centers for free meals. We feed people. I have no doubts that most of these folk are hungry, but as we feed their stomachs, I can’t help but wonder if they hunger for more.

Do they hunger for the dignity and financial security that comes from work, any type of work? Do they hunger for the privilege to be educated? Do they hunger for their children’s futures? Does their hunger both haunt and bless them as it does for others in third world countries?

Whereas most will not turn away a free meal, many may turn away from other opportunities, including educational opportunities. I recall being at a regional meeting during which a college official addressed the high school administrators in attendance by saying Just send us some kids–any kids–and we’ll get them through our technical programs. And so my high school did. The young men we sent ultimately stopped attending classes, did not get through, and almost did not graduate high school. They were handed a tremendous free opportunity by those who intended to get them through using whatever means they had to use. But when they stopped attending classes, even the well-intentioned college officials had no choice but to fail them. In the end, these young men were not hungry enough to eat what was given to them. I suppose they were holding out for a better meal served on china–not plastic.

Did my students hunger to learn, to prepare themselves for a life beyond school? As I ended my career, I found that the most hungry were often students whose parents and guardians hungered for them. These adults were those who invested time and energy into their children’s educations, who sacrificed greatly for their children’s futures, and who harnessed and used their own hunger for the benefit of their children’s bodies and souls. The hunger that had haunted their own past lives blessed their children’s future lives.

Clearly, if it were within my power, I would feed all those who are truly starving. Then I would provide the necessary training, education, infrastructure, and economic means for all able-bodied individuals who wish to work and feed themselves and their own families. And finally, I would feed their souls. This would take care of much of the world’s hunger.

And for my own country?Again, I would feed those who are truly hungry.  But then, if it were in my power, I would create a genuine hunger for the dignity of work, for true education, and for service to others. I would work so that more could experience the potential blessing of hunger and not just the curse.

Novelist George Eliot writes:

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are still alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger for them.

Many of our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world have not given up longing and wishing. They hunger for food, for better lives, for the beautiful and good. The fact that they hunger is both tragic and inspiring.

As I look around my community and country, I want all children’s bellies to be full. But I think we could do with some real hungering for the beautiful and good, as well as a keener appetite for educational opportunities, employment training, and generally improving one’s lot in life. This is the hunger that blesses, and we could really use some hunger of this sort.

Footnote:  Thousands of Americans migrated to Russia in 1931. Destitute and desperate for employment, housing, and benefits promised by Russian  advertisements in The New York Times, they left their homeland for a Worker’s Paradise. Once there, most were stripped of their passports and eventually accused of counter-revolutionary acts in Stalin’s totalitarian state. They worked and starved; they lived in fear and want.  Many were sent to prison or were executed. Antonio Garrido gives his account of this migration in his historical fiction novel, The Last Paradise. Through this novel, I learned of the terrible hunger that Americans suffered–hunger for food, for heat, for protection from the Russian secret police and Stalin’s regime, and finally for a safe return to America.

Disclaimer: I love dogs, pygmy goats, rabbits and horses, all creatures great and small. But I am decidedly and devotedly a cat person. Ask my family: I have yet to meet a cat I didn’t like. Short or long-haired, Siamese, Persian or Maine Coon, I love them all.

Two weeks ago, one of my outside cats (you know you’re a cat lover when you have inside AND outside cats!) had kittens. When I awakened that morning to find her in labor, I sat in the early morning chill, holding my breath and whispering push–push now as she gave birth to five kittens during the course of the morning. Cats are birthing machines, and I reveled in the relative ease and efficiency with which she birthed and after-birthed. What a woman, I thought as she nestled all five into her for their first feeding.

English Romantic poet Robert Southey wrote: A kitten is, in the animal world, what a rosebud is in the garden. Sitting on the floor of my screened-in porch, I was smitten with the five little rosebuds in front of me. I couldn’t wait to tell my granddaughter and grandson that we finally had kittens, for they had been coming over daily to check to see if there were babies yet. As the rosebuds wiggled and rolled into one compact gray and white mass, I couldn’t help but think What a great day this is!

Japanese haiku writer Kobayashi Issa is a cat lover after my own heart:

Arise from sleep, old cat,
And with great yawns and stretchings…
Amble out for love

This is one of the greatest things about cats: they amble out for love. No over-eager licking or jumping up or general pushiness for cats. They are amblers whose love is manifested in curling up and purring and general hanging out. And I like that very much.

British veterinarian and author James Herriot claims that cats are the connoisseurs of comfort. On a rainy day or a cold winter night, there is nothing like the sweet weight and warmth of a cat stretched out on your chest as you read or nap. This is comfort to rival the finest spa experience. Add a generous dose of purring, and this is heaven-come-to-earth.

As one who often turns off the radio as I drive, I value the quiet space in which I can think and dream. Cats afford a rare companionship in solitude. Mark Twain wrote that if animals could speak, the dog would be a blundering outspoken fellow; but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much. This rare grace of never saying a word too much is an attribute I admire, one to which most humans might aspire.

In the weeks to come, my grandchildren and I will set about naming the kittens. Just as naming my children was serious business, so, too, is naming my cats. As the kittens’ personalities emerge, we will try out names in pursuit of the best extension and reflection of each cat. One day’s name may be discarded in favor of a new, and hopefully more suitable, name the next day. Some kittens may receive people names, while others do not. Serious as this naming business is, it is not a science so much as a labor of love. I currently have a Pierre and a Phil, the fanciful French cat and the redneck Iowa cat. A wild stray who took me weeks to tame, a peanut of a cat, finally earned the name Birdie when it was clear that she would remain forever petite, eating more like a bird than a feline. Over the course of decades, I have had a Scamper and a Puff–regular cat names–as well as a Jade and a Darth–not-so-regular cat names. Poet T. S. Eliot understood the difficulty of finding just the right cat name:

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;

            .   .    .

When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

[Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats]

A name that both cannot be uttered, cannot be described in words AND one that can. This is the paradoxical task of naming cats, and I tell you,  it is not just one of your holiday games. After all, the kitten with the face that looks oddly like a monkey (according to my granddaughter) cannot continue to be called Monkey Boy. There is a dignity in this naming process, and both she and I understand that he deserves much better.

Each morning before I make coffee, I walk to the sliding door onto my screened-in porch to check on the five rosebuds. Often, they are contently gathered into their mother, one furry ball of sleep. Other times, they are trying on their new legs, wobbling to the edge of the cat bed, desperately focusing their new eyes on the shadow and shape that is their mother. Knowing that I can open the door, scoop them up, and take in the wonder of kittens? This is one of the best ways to start (and end) each day.

We have a dog, two bunnies, chickens, a fish, two adopted ducks at the pond, and cats. If it were up to me, we would have more of everything. Still, there is–and will always be–a special place in my heart and my home for cats. Though I haven’t yet told my husband, we will have kittens again in a couple weeks. Birdie-the-petite is not so petite these days. And this is great news for a cat lover like me who understands that the rosebuds will have cousins to play with this summer. What could be more glorious than a cozy clutch of kittens and their mothers who devotedly amble out for love?

It was the last day of school before Christmas vacation, and the afternoon dragged on as I watched the snow blanket the playground. As a fifth grader, I was counting the minutes until we were loosed from school and could begin the official countdown until Christmas.

At the final bell, my sisters and I bundled up for the five-minute walk home. By the time we reached the back door, snowflakes clung to our our eyelashes, and our mittens were damp. My mom was waiting for us in the kitchen as we unbuttoned, unbooted, shaking wet snow from our coats. I know it isn’t Christmas yet, but I have an early present for you girls. Come with me. 

We followed my mom into her sewing room and there it was in the corner: a two-story Barbie house that my mom had lovingly crafted from cardboard boxes and furnished with velvet-covered tin-can chairs, cereal box bed, and real curtains. It was magnificent! Speechless, we gathered around the house to take in every room and accessory.

For as long as I can remember, my mom has worked miracles on a limited budget. Barbie houses, prom dresses, bedroom makeovers came to life through my mom’s vision and skills. She learned to upholster and to refinish furniture, to decorate our home for every holiday with pieces she made in ceramics and to make sure that we had special clothes for special occasions. From my mom, I learned to shop at garage sales and thrift shops before this became fashionable. Under her tutelage, I learned what I would need to know when, years later, I would attempt to work miracles on a limited budget for my own family,

More than things, however, my mom created events. Friday nights were hamburgers and chips on TV trays and one glorious hour of Lost in Space. Sunday afternoons might find us driving country roads, scavenging old door knobs from abandoned farm houses and searching the ditches for milkweed pods and cattails. And then there were the old-shirt-it’s-time days. When my dad’s shirts became worn enough that my mom was never going to let my dad be seen wearing them in public, she gave us the go-ahead to literally rip the shirt off my dad’s body. As he feigned surprise and gave half-hearted attempts to evade us, we ran and ripped, ripped and ran. Until ribbons of plaid sport shirt hung from my dad’s shoulders. Until, squealed out, we lay breathless in the grass clutching fistfuls of fabric as trophies.

And on 4th of July? She created THE event of the summer. With coolers of eggs, bacon, and juice and boxes of donuts, we made the annual trip to Ft. Kearney Recreation Area for breakfast on the beach and swimming after. As years went by, neighbors, college friends, and assorted other guests attended the annual event. Eggs never tasted so good as they did on these mornings. Our fingers sticky from glazed donuts and sunscreen, we washed them in the swimming area and stretched out on our towels in the mid-morning sun. As kids, we never gave a second thought to the fact that as we were sunbathing, swimming and making sandcastles, my mom was cleaning the skillets, cleaning up the picnic site, and packing the remaining food in our coolers. We never once considered the planning, the packing, the preparing that made our 4th of July at Ft. Kearney a splendid reality, year after year. We had a mom who would put most event planners to shame.

Best of all, though, my mom created sanctuaries. In my sleepless hours of adolescence, my mom’s constant presence and assurance became a sanctuary I retreated to night after night.  I love the photo above because years before she would accompany me to high school track meets, it reveals the mom who would brave wind and sleet to sit for hours in the bleachers as one of very few spectators. In this photo, she wears a hooded coat at a college football game, but during track season, she wore a black garbage bag over her coat to protect herself and the entire team’s stash of snacks. When races did not go well, when you needed warm hands to rub out the cold, my mom was a sanctuary of comfort. As I grew and moved to different cities and states, I depended upon the sanctuary of my mom’s voice over the phone lines that spanned the miles between my mom and me. Even now in the moments before I sleep, it is this voice that sends me into the sanctuary of dream.

In the Sanctuary of my Mom, you will never go without. Before you realize you need something–a word of affirmation or guidance, a new coat or set of dishes–she has anticipated just what you need and presents it as if it is no big deal. I have lived a life of plenty, for I have never gone without my mom’s unfailing love and support. And this a a very big deal, indeed.

I have always wanted to grow up to be just like my mom. For my entire life, I have watched my mom advocate for those in need of help, befriend those who need a genuine friend, and open her house to countless visitors who need a place to stay. Gathered around my family dining room table, I am certain that these individuals can’t imagine a place they’d rather be. Truthfully, I can’t imagine a place I’d rather be than seated at this table with a great piece of pie and the promise of hours of conversation with my mom.

My siblings and I are remarkably blessed to live in the sanctuary of such a mother. In this sanctuary, I propose that every day should be Mother’s Day. Not the Hallmark, FTD kind of Mother’s Day, but the real deal complete with phone calling, letter writing, and visiting. Sentimental verse and flowers are sweet, but our own words and presence are so much sweeter. How do I know this? I learned this–and so much more–from my mother.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom–today and always.

photo by Collyn Ware

“The morning air was like a new dress. That made her feel the apron tied around her waist. She untied it and flung it on a low bush beside the road and walked on, picking flowers and making a bouquet… From now on until death she was going to have flower dust and springtime sprinkled over everything.”

Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

If I could leap into the spring air, flinging my back leg so joyously that my heel catches my wind-worthy hair, throwing my arms back with abandon, I would do it. Today, everything is like a new dress. Today is a day for flinging off aprons and malaise, for ordering up some flower dust and springtime sprinkled over everything. 

May is a flinging and sprinkling time, the finally-spring days between winter and summer. There are tadpoles in the pond, rose-breasted grosbeaks have returned, and peonies are full-to-bursting. Anything and everything seems possible.

When the morning air was like a new dress, Zora Neale Hurston’s Janie awakens to possibilities that previously only danced around the edges of her life. The circumstances for a poor, young black Southern woman had not changed. But Janie sees beyond these circumstances, beyond a life of servitude to others, to the men who would be her husbands, to heartache and striving. She flings her apron and calls upon love.

In this season of uncertainty where dark circumstances roll in around us, pressing their thunderous weight upon us, we would do well to follow Janie’s lead. As the nuclear testing continues, as oppressors persist in oppressing, as factions banter and fight, we might as well just fling off our aprons. If only for a day, a glorious May day. Or perhaps if only for a moment of pure, unadulterated springtime sprinkling. We were made for this, and lest we forget the beauty of flower dust and new dresses, we should go about leaping, gaining whatever height we can.

Pablo Neruda claimed that You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming. Daily, there are those who are bent on cutting the flowers, plucking their blossoms and shearing their stems to the ground. These are the hell-in-a-hand-basket folks. While the child down the lane loads her basket to the brim with violets, they persist in dragging their brittle baskets of solemnity and fear. They will not see that you cannot keep Spring from coming. Worse yet, when it comes, they will miss it all.

And there is so, so much to miss! In My Antonia, Willa Cather writes:

After that hard winter, one could not get enough of the nimble air. Every morning I wakened with a fresh consciousness that winter was over. There were none of the signs of spring for which I used to watch in Virginia, no budding woods or blooming gardens. There was only—spring itself; the throb of it, the light restlessness, the vital essence of it everywhere: in the sky, in the swift clouds, in the pale sunshine, and in the warm, high wind—rising suddenly, sinking suddenly, impulsive and playful like a big puppy that pawed you and then lay down to be petted. If I had been tossed down blindfold on that red prairie, I should have known that it was spring.

Cather understands that spring lives without budding woods or blooming gardens. There was only–spring itself. . . the vital essence of it everywhere. Even on the red prairie, blindfolded, she is certain that she would revel in the nimble air and know that it was spring. Reveling, flinging, sprinkling–it’s all good. Even the oldest, most stoved-up of us feels nimble enough in spring.

Nimble enough to kneel on the ground, trowel in hand, flats of petunias and impatiens and geraniums before us. Our fingers tremble at the sight of spring soil, and as Margaret Atwood writes, In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt. 

In Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie Mae Crawford’s first two marriages–one arranged, one chosen–had left her springless, suffocating, and stifled. After two decades, she awakens, flings off her aproned life, and runs to Florida with Teacake, a younger man who, she believes, offers her a final flinging of the weight and loss of her previous life. Hope and love spring eternal. She leaps into new possibilities with the confidence and certainty of one who still believes in flower dust. 

In a Season of Flinging and Sprinkling, our former hopes and plans may still be springless, the dried and withered essence of buds-never-bloomed. Such is life. But if we refuse to loosen our apron strings, we refuse a season of new germination. Japanese haiku writer, Matsuo Bashō writes:

Dead my old fine hopes
And dry my dreaming but still…
Iris, blue each spring

Like many, I have to remind myself, daily, that there will be Iris, blue each spring. I have to rise with expectation and plans for flinging. I pray to see my day through flower dust and with springtime sprinkled over everything. This seems like such easy, joyous work. And some days it is; other days, it is simply work. It is easier to cling than fling. Cling to impending gloom, listen to the voices of darkness and fear, double-knot my apron strings. These are days of doubting and dreading, followed by nights of dreamless sleep.

Still, dry dreams and dry bones can come to life in the Season of Flinging and Sprinkling. This, I will stake my apron on. And tonight, I will enter my home smelling of dirt and flower dust.

One of my “farm” cats is very pregnant, due to give birth any day now. Gracyn, Griffin, and I are waiting with baited breath. Last week, Griffin told me that he knew how baby kittens are born. This took me back to a similar conversation with my oldest daughter, Megan, when I was weeks away from giving birth to her sister, Collyn.

I know how this baby is going to get out of your tummy, Mom. You do? I asked. I know about that little hole. I had learned by this point in my parenting life to suspend judgment, indignation, and/or shock. So I held my breath and waited. Yup, I know about that hole in your tummy where the baby comes out. The little hole is my belly button? (This was going better than I’d hoped.) Yup, your belly button. I nodded knowingly, and she continued with newfound confidence. When the time comes, you will put on the magic birth belt, your belly button will get really, REALLY big–big enough for the baby to get out– the baby will plop out, and then you will take off the magic belt so your belly button will shrink back down to normal. That’s how it happens. 

Later when I was recalling the conversation to Paul, he asked how I responded to the entire story. I told him that I smiled and said, “That’s right!” At age 4, the mystery of childbirth was better founded in stories of magic birthing belts and expanding belly buttons. For mystery–any mystery–would be tragically fleeting when the ordinary ways of the world with all their common sense and biology and certitude crowded in with adult bluster.

Holocaust survivor and author, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, understood this all too well:

“The lack of mystery in our modern life is our downfall and our poverty. A human life is worth as much as the respect it holds for the mystery. We retain the child in us to the extent that we honor the mystery. Therefore, children have open, wide-awake eyes, because they know that they are surrounded by the mystery. They are not yet finished with this world; they still don’t know how to struggle along and avoid the mystery, as we do. We destroy the mystery because we sense that here we reach the boundary of our being, because we want to be lord over everything and have it at our disposal, and that’s just what we cannot do with the mystery…. Living without mystery means knowing nothing of the mystery of our own life, nothing of the mystery of another person, nothing of the mystery of the world; it means passing over our own hidden qualities and those of others and the world. It means remaining on the surface, taking the world seriously only to the extent that it can be calculated and exploited, and not going beyond the world of calculation and exploitation. Living without mystery means not seeing the crucial processes of life at all and even denying them.” [from God is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas]

Oh to have open, wide-awake eyes, to be surrounded by and immersed in mystery, to live as a child who is not yet finished with this world, and to try your hand at stories and explanations that make your world an even more wonderful place. In the Sanctuary of Mystery, the world is not yet finished, and possibilities, like many-colored balloons, float above and around you by the millions. All you have to do is grab the strings of the ones you particularly like, pull them close to you, and experience the wonder. Looking, feeling, tasting, and smelling deeply, you know that this other-worldly experience cannot be tamed or named; here are mysteries that defy these worldly attempts, and when you are reduced to single words–unbelievable, unreal–no one thinks less of you. The Sanctuary of Mystery forgives the inarticulate and applauds the expressive. Truthfully, no words are preferable. Mysteries invite participants to stand silently in sore amazement.

Bonhoeffer claims that as adults, we may destroy mystery because we sense that here we reach the boundary of our being, because we want to be lord over everything and have it at our disposal. Children are the teachers, the mentors and guides in the Sanctuary of Mystery. In the photo above, my son, Quinn stands, shoes in hand, with his good friend, John. Their friendship is, indeed, a mystery. Neither boy sees any boundary in their being–no black or white, no age, no IQ. Reading at age 3 (chapter books at age 5), John could have used his intellect to be lord over everything in their friendship. And if John had any sense of his potential power as a white male, he might have used this as well. Boundariless, both boys basked in the mystery of a friendship that took them to places that John had read about, and Quinn gratefully imagined through John’s retelling. His mother and I found them one Sunday during church fellowship time, escaped from the adult coffee-drinkers and lost in a serious reenactment of the Lusitania on the church balcony. Just as they were about to abandon the sinking ship, their little legs draped over the edge of the balcony, we intervened. Would they have jumped the 25 feet to the sanctuary floor below? Lost in the mystery of another time and place, the boundary between the real and the imagined stretched and blurred, I still believe that they might have. Time and again, John and Quinn honored the mystery that others, who would choose instead to live on the surface, who would take the world seriously only to the extent that it can be calculated and exploited, would forsake.

Each spring when my hosta sprouts break earth sending green spires skyward, I revel in the mystery. How can the soon-to-be thin, broad leaves wrap themselves so tightly, so perfectly and powerfully into needle-like points that break through the dense clay of southeast Iowa? And how do they know when the time is just right to emerge from the caves of winter to the fragrant expanse of spring? And why are such green wonders perennial, coming back to life again and again and again? There is only one true way to regard a hosta: as a child, in wonder.

Living without mystery means knowing nothing of the mystery of our own life, nothing of the mystery of another person, nothing of the mystery of the world; it means passing over our own hidden qualities and those of others and the world. As adults, we often let others name our qualities and define our world. Having removed the mystery from all of it, the namers and explainers work with dogged conviction, heads down, noses to the grindstone. They wouldn’t and couldn’t see mystery if it hit them right between the eyes. With their data and research reports and pie charts, they show us who we are. Your IQ test reveals, your aptitude inventory indicates, your leadership survey explains that. . . These namers and explainers begin their work with adolescents, testing them and showing them their prescribed paths forward. With certainty and zeal, they believe they are doing the work that needs to be done. You don’t even know what a community planner is or does? Not to worry, your counselor will schedule you into the right courses to pursue this career and advise the right university programs. But you always wanted to work in construction trades? Well, as a community planner, you will have lots of opportunities to consult with those in construction. 

When a person is called to a vocation, when a person uncovers a hidden quality or desire, when a person leaves a career after decades of service, moving towards a destination and position not yet identified, there is mystery. These decisions and acts defy rational, practical explanation. They defy worldly expectations. They fly in the face of calculations and prescriptions. While there are some who stand in sore amazement at such acts, there are more who cover their children’s eyes, clap their hands over their ears, and run away. Lest such inexplicable foolishness rub off on their offspring and lead them beyond the surface of the safe to mysteries unknown.

Years ago, a biology colleague held me captive for several hours in my office (he was sent by his department to school me) as he explained the scientific particulars of evolutionary biology. I listened, nodded to show agreement with those explanations and details with which I could agree, but asked the same question whenever he took a breath deep enough for me to get a word in: Can you explain First Cause to me? There was nothing, and then there was matter. What caused the matter to be? The first two or three times I asked this question, he reentered his dialogue as if I hadn’t spoken at all. Finally, as the supper hour had come and gone, I tried one final time. This time, he sighed, looked at me as a master looks upon an initiate and said: You just don’t understand. We don’t start there. I smiled, packed my computer and school work into my bag, grabbed my coat and thanked him for his time. He was glowing, puffed up with the victorious certainty of a job well done, convinced–I’m sure–that he had successfully initiated me into the fellowship of believers.

We don’t start there. How well I understood that they did not start there in the mystery of creation at the hands of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God. Of course not. Starting there would push the boundary of his scientific explanation. Starting there would–for the willing–force one to struggle along and confront the mystery. Starting there would provoke genuine awe and wonder that would dwarf the explanations and the accepted claims of his scientific faith. That would be life-changing at best, and life-shattering at worst. Mystery has that power, and those who accept this gratefully succumb to it. They understand that mystery and science/reason do not have to be mutually exclusive.

Like Bonhoeffer, I believe that living outside of the Sanctuary of Mystery is our downfall and our poverty. The good news? Mystery invites all to its banquet of wonders. Come as a child with open, wide-awake eyes. Come often and stay long. Bask in the fellowship of those who are not yet finished with this world. And be prepared to entertain all that you experience with sore amazement.

As we walked from our classroom through the hall to recess, I delivered the big news to my fellow sixth graders who surrounded me: Did you know that I am related to one of the witches who was hanged during the Salem Witch Trials? It’s true–my dad told me the whole story last night. I’m related to a woman who was accused of being a witch! On an ordinary sixth grade day in autumn, news of this sort was a genuine show-stopper. Literally. Sixth-graders clogged the traffic flow to the recess door when they stopped me to get the rest of the scoop.

You are joking, right? You aren’t really related to a witch–are you? How does your dad know this? She was hanged? You aren’t REALLY related to a witch. . . 

This was the stuff that childhood dreams are made of. I garnered instant celebrity status and was chosen by the captain of the kickball team who had “first pick” that day. Perhaps I had inherited powers that would catapult our team to victory. Perhaps I could read the other players’ minds, anticipating which way a player would kick the ball. Perhaps I was gifted in ways my classmates had never begun to imagine.

Or perhaps this was some sort of genetic justification of my own idiosyncrasies and propensity for the unusual. Come to think of it, I did have an odd sense of humor at times and a definite penchant for solitude, even as a child. Not to mention the fact that I rarely missed an episode of the television show Bewitched. 

According to Wikipedia (my second claim to fame–an ancestor that made Wikipedia!), Anne Greenslade Pudeator was a well-to-do septuagenarian widow who was accused of and convicted of witchcraft in the Salem Witch Trials  in colonial Massachusetts. She was executed by hanging. Anne married Thomas Greenslade and had five children before Thomas’s death in 1674. Having worked as a nurse and midwife, she was hired by Jacob Pudeator to care for his ailing, alcoholic wife who died in the following year. Anne then married Jacob who died in 1682 and left her with money and property.

Some have speculated that her status as a woman of means was reason enough for the afflicted girls of Salem and other villagers to target her as a witch. Her accusers cited the following offenses:

• forcing a girl to sign the Devil’s Book
• bewitching and causing a neighbor’s death
• appearing in spectral form to the afflicted girls
• having witchcraft materials in her home (grease, she claimed, for making soap)
• torturing others with pins and causing a man to fall from a tree
• killing Jacob Pudeator and his first wife
• turning herself into a bird and flying around the village

She was accused by two of the afflicted girls, Mary Warren and Ann Putnam Jr., as well as John Best Jr. and Sr. and Samuel Pickworth. On September 19, 1692, she was sentenced to death along with Alice Parker, Dorcas Hoar, Mary Bradbury, and Mary Easty. Then on October 2, she was hanged on Gallows Hill in Salem Town.

Eighteen years later, the General Court reversed the convictions of those victims whose families had advocated in their behalf. Anne’s conviction, however, was not reversed at this time. It wasn’t until 1957 that Anne was finally exonerated by the Massachusetts General Court. Her exoneration was due largely to the efforts of Lee Greenslit, a midwestern textbook publisher and my father’s relative. [My paternal grandmother was a Greenslit.]

In an article which appeared on September 11, 1954 in the New Yorker Magazine, Lee Greenslit explained that the name Greenslit was far more commonly known as Greenslade during colonial times. As an amateur genealogist, he hit the mother lode when he discovered this fact and was able to trace his lineage back to Anne Greenslade Pudeator and the Salem Witch Trials.

There are many theories about why these Salem girls–the afflicted ones–accused their family, friends, and neighbors of consorting with the Devil. These theories surrounding the girls’ fits and strange behavior range from stress, asthma, boredom, epilepsy, delusional psychosis, to convulsive ergotism, a disease from the ergot fungus that invades damp, warm rye grain. Regardless of the cause(s), the girls’ claims of witchery resulted in the deaths of 24 villagers: 19 were hanged, 1 was pressed to death, and 4 died during imprisonment.

According to USLEGAL.com, spectral evidence refers to a witness testimony that the accused person’s spirit or spectral shape appeared to him/her witness in a dream at the time the accused person’s physical body was at another location. It was accepted in the courts during the Salem Witch Trials. The evidence was accepted on the basis that the devil and his minions were powerful enough to send their spirits, or specters, to pure, religious people in order to lead them astray.

In spectral evidence, the admission of victims’ conjectures is governed only by the limits of their fears and imaginations, whether or not objectively proven facts are forthcoming to justify them. [State v. Dustin, 122 N.H. 544, 551 (N.H. 1982)]

 Spectral evidence was not only accepted in the courts but was often the only evidence provided in the trials of those accused of witchery. And it was more than enough to secure a conviction. You could simply claim that you saw the specter of another in a dream or vision and that the physical body of this individual was present at another place. You could claim that this specter flew, coerced someone to sign their name in the Devil’s Book, or caused another to harm him/herself or another. In truth, you could claim anything, and this claim–limited only by fear and imagination–would pass legal muster.

The Sanctuary of Spectral Evidence is a name-it-and-claim-it-safe-place. From the safety of your dedicated space, you can make claims–any claims–and sit back with a beverage of your choice to watch the fireworks. You don’t like your neighbor, your employer, your legislator, your teacher, your doctor, your parent, spouse or relative? Name an offense and let the accusation wound as it will. And if an individual is genuinely offenseless? Create an offense. The more outlandish, unbelievable, and unjustifiable, the better. Name it and claim it. It is just that simple–and just that deadly.

The Sanctuary of Spectral Evidence is an equal opportunity employer. You can be a libertarian or librarian. You can be a vegetarian or a veterinarian, a Parisian, a Philadelphian, or a Poughkeepsian. All are welcome, and qualifications are graciously waived. If you can accuse, if you seek to wound, you can work your accusational magic alongside other passionate employees. Health care and retirement packages are commensurate with your accusational prowess and experience.

Actually, spectral evidence has nothing to do with evidence, and everything to do with specters. If there is a ghost of a chance that the accused has said or done or felt something, one can face the judge and jury with confidence: Here is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So help me God. 

In the Sanctuary of Spectral Evidence today, social media reigns. One can launch accusations into cyberspace from the safety of home, office, or wherever a smart phone may travel. Where once we would have cried foul at such groundless accusations, today we may shrug and mutter But what can you do? Such is the way of the world now. 

But when a 13 year old in Missouri takes her life after weeks of public shaming through Facebook and Instagram, it is we who should be shamed for our careless acquiescence at such acts. Today, as in the past, spectral evidence kills. At best, it robs unsuspecting, undeserving individuals of hope and kills their faith in humanity; at worst, it robs the world of precious lives.

Years ago, a student told our class that he admired a coach because–in the coach’s words–he meant what he said, and said what he meant. When the rest of his class nodded approvingly, I asked: Is it admirable to simply say what you mean and mean what you say? Anything you say and anything you mean? Just say it with conviction and passion? So I could say that it is o.k. to steal my friend’s car, I could mean it, and this would be admirable?

Silence. The class just looked at me until I persisted: This would be admirable? This would be o.k.? Finally, a student admitted that she’d never thought about this perspective. Others looked on, the foundation of this smug aphorism crumbling before their very eyes. Where there is no logic, there is no value or truth.

Logic and sufficient, relevant evidence matter deeply. Yet, those who live in the Sanctuary of Spectral Evidence don’t know this. Or they simply don’t care. For them, there is no need for opening or closing arguments, for witnesses and cross-examinations. They don’t need to make their case, and there are no documents, depositions or photos to enter into evidence. The accused never take the stand, and judgment comes quickly and without contention. Name it and claim it, baby.

As much as we look back on the Salem Witch Trials with awe and horror, we should look first at the log in our own eyes. Spectral evidence of the modern sort abounds. We may not hang, press, or drown the accused today, but we punish and wound them nonetheless. We try them through social media, through the press, and through gossip. And the accused are left broken with their hearts in their hands, their reputations in tatters.

Anne Greenslade Pudeator was guilty of nothing but living during a period in which a group of afflicted girls held her fate in their hands. But in the Sanctuary of Spectral Evidence, those girls could confidently wield their power. When there is no need for evidence or logic, accusation rules in this vacuum.

As a descendant of Anne Greenslade Pudeator, I can take heart in Lee Greenslit’s resolve and ultimate success in clearing the family name. Though I can no longer blame my weird sense of humor on Anne nor claim any special mind-reading powers. My celebrity status was memorable but short-lived.

Still, witch hunts continue, and there are afflicted girls, boys, men, and women too countless to name. They take sanctuary in spectral evidence and the power it affords them. We need more Lee Greenslits who will doggedly pursue the truth, a truth founded in real evidence. The Anne Greenslade Pudeators of the world deserve no less.

In the days before Holy Week, I have found myself thinking about what might have been: a mother whose son outlived her; a teacher and friend whose days were just beginning; a Savior whose love and mercy would knit the unraveling world together. As it should have been and as it should continue to be, sacred stitch after sacred stitch.

I have found myself thinking about my own children who might have been. Conceived in love, knitted together in a mother’s womb, fearfully and wonderfully made. [Psalm 139: 13-16] I have found myself dreaming again of who these children may have grown to be and have imagined them seated at Easter dinner beside my other children, a cozy clutch of sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. And again, I have mourned their absence. Perfect-buds-yet-to-be returned to spirit.

In her novel, The Light Between Oceans, M. L Stedman gives us Isabel, a woman desperate to be a mother and destined to miscarry all of her children. Stedman writes:

[the] losing of children had always been a thing that had to be gone through. There had never been any guarantee that conception would lead to a live birth, or that birth would lead to a life of any great length.

This is the biological reality of it all: there has never been any guarantee that conception would lead to a live birth, or that birth would lead to a life of any great length. And the fact that countless women experience this thing that had to be gone through is cheap solace in a world of bubbling and bonneted babies. In truth, no guarantee lives too quietly alongside hope. It fails to be heard in the midst of life songs. And for a time, it ticks in the shadows in a dreadful and inevitable countdown to death.

Stedman profiles Isabel’s loss throughout several miscarriages. This passage, in particular, took me back to my own grief:

The old clock on the kitchen wall still clicked its minutes with fussy punctuality. A life had come and gone and nature had not paused a second for it. The machine of time and space grinds on, and people are fed through it like grist through the mill. Isabel had managed to sit up a little against the wall, and she sobbed at the sight of the diminutive form, which she had dared to imagine as bigger, as stronger – as a child of this world. ‘My baby my baby my baby my baby,’ she whispered like a magic incantation that might resuscitate him. The face of the creature was solemn, a monk in deep prayer, eyes closed, mouth sealed shut: already back in that world from which he had apparently been reluctant to stray. Still the officious hands of the clock tutted their way around. Half an hour had passed and Isabel had said nothing.

Daring to imagine your child as bigger, stronger–as a child of this world and not merely a child of your dreams is the courage of one who dares to thumb her nose at biology, striving, instead, towards love. For as Stedman writes: Once a child gets into your heart, there’s no right or wrong about it. There is just love and what might have been.

When a child who has lived solely in the heart and dreams of a mother dies, grief is often solitary and veiled in shame. Why did a body meant for child-bearing fail? What sins have manifested themselves in this death? How can one legitimately grieve in the overwhelming face of platitudes: You wouldn’t want a child to be born with such defects; You are young and can have more children; This is God’s will–who are we to question? 

When there is no tangible evidence of a life lived, grief is often swept away quickly. No child, no real reason to give yourself to the grief that is expected and acknowledged when a child has lived–if even for a day, an hour, a single moment. In the eyes of many, what might have been is a but a wisp of love and loss.

When there is no funeral, no memorializing of life, loss is silenced. Others too soon forget that you would have been a mother in five months, that the name you have held in your heart will go to another woman’s son or daughter, that an ultrasound picture is all you have to fill the empty pages of a baby book. You bear no stretch marks, and you wear your real jeans. Once again, you are a mother-in-waiting. You dread the visits to your OBGYN office where you are surrounded by beautiful, burgeoning bellies and smiling receptionists.

In her collection of poetry, Conquest, Zoe Brigley writes:

So many women come to me saying, “I have lost too,
and this one, and this one”. So many embryos retreat
to flesh: the live cell of the mother. Don’t tell me that it
will happen for me, when the only sure thing is a miracle:
the sperm nuzzling in its nest and the egg that opens, explodes.

In your world of brutal biology, when the only sure thing is a miracle, when so many embryos retreat to flesh, you drown in what might have been. It pulls you under just as surely as any loss. What might have been does not forgive the fact that your child was an embryo or a fetus–not a real child.

Still, as dark as Mary’s loss at Golgotha was, her child torn from the love and life that might have been, it gave way to life more glorious than she could ever have imagined. This is the promise of Easter: that death is overcome, and what might have been has come to be in life everlasting, in grace and peace beyond measure.

This is the promise that sustains all of us in the midst of pain and loss. And this is my prayer for others who grieve what might have been–children, dreams, loves and lives: that we never mistake the absence of the tangible for what is real and true and life-giving and that, each day, we claim Easter’s promise of what has come to be.

When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

from “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost

I am a child of metaphor, born from magic and genetic instinct so strong that it shatters the literal, sending shards of otherness into living space. And each shard is a sacred facet which holds its own, offering a way to grace, a path beyond the thing into a nether world of possibilities. This knocks my socks off every time.

American author Bernard Malamud writes: I love metaphor. It provides two loaves where there seems to be one. The Sanctuary of Metaphor is a bountiful one in which one can feed the multitudes with a single loaf. Not just choosing between two roads in the woods but taking the one less traveled by, choosing a life path that has made all the difference. [“The Road Not Taken,” Robert Frost] Not just fog but yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes. [“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” T. S. Eliot] Not just faces in the crowd but petals on a wet, black bough. [“In the Station of the Metro,” Ezra Pound] Not just the hands of a man and a woman but their locked hands a starfish leaping through the dark. [Rabbit Run, John Updike] Two loaves where there seems to be one. 

As a child, my play was grounded in metaphor. Nothing was ever as it was, as it seemed. Narratives spun naturally from rocks-turned-precious gems, boxes-turned-doll palaces, a single piece of rope-turned-tourniquet-for-battle wounds. Some may call it make-do-ness, but I prefer to think it was more magic than utility.

One particularly muddy morning in the park as I was working with a group of preschoolers in a city-sponsored program, I had to tell the kids that we couldn’t take the balls or jump ropes out that day. When they whined, I offered up a solution: We could pretend that the merry-go-round is our spaceship. Thirteen preschoolers said nothing but their faces said everything. You’re crazy, lady. There’s no spaceship here. I persisted: But we can pretend this is our spaceship. Still, no takers. So, I jumped aboard the merry-go-round and called out: We have to take off in two minutes! Two minutes until the storm hits! Let’s go everyone–take your places. Hurry! And that was all it took to double the loaf we had been dealt that muddy morning. We rode that merry-go-round-turned-spaceship until snack time, when I led a then reluctant and sweaty group of three and four-year olds to the shade for Kool-aid and graham crackers.

The metaphor is perhaps one of man’s most fruitful potentialities. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him. [Jose Ortega y Gasset, Spanish philosopher and statesman]

I do believe that metaphor is one of man’s most fruitful potentialities. It is, indeed, a tool for creation that transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary, the literal into the symbolic, the concrete into the abstract. There is little more magical than this transformation in a world gone soft from those who continually attempt to rescue us from all that is difficult. Well-intentioned as these folks may be, they are no lovers of metaphor.

The magic of metaphor requires investment, a willingness to see a thing for what it is and what it may be, to work with the writer or speaker to uncover the intended meaning. Metaphor asks for a willing suspension of disbelief: It is a field of lavender, but what else? What more? Seated before the magician, we wait expectantly for the rabbit to be pulled from the hat. We invest ourselves in the act. We hold fast to the truth of metaphor: one loaf will become two right before our very eyes. And when it does, there is no applause greater, no celebration more pure than that born of metaphorical magic.

Aristotle writes that The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor; it is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in the dissimilar. In his essay, “Education by Poetry,” Robert Frost claims that metaphor is all there is of thinking. It may not seem far for the mind to go, but it is the mind’s furthest. The richest accumulation of the ages is the noble metaphors we have rolled up.

To relish noble metaphors, to apprentice ourselves to the masters of metaphor, to train for the mind’s furthest–this is truly all there is of thinking. With apologies (somewhat sincere apologies) to ACT, SAT, and any other standardized intelligence tests, there should be but one true test for matriculation: that students successfully read, understand, and elaborate upon a noble metaphor. Give them a great poem, a literary or philosophical passage, and charge them with going the distance, probing and performing their magic on a thing until it becomes the intended other. Frost called this process ulteriority: saying (or seeing) one thing in terms of another. Ulteriority is not for sissies, and it literally separates the men from the boys, the women from the girls. It is more than sufficient to discern the genuine graduate from the pretentious pretender.

Writer Joseph Campbell says that If you want to change the world, change the metaphor. And just what metaphors will we change? America was once a melting pot that became a salad bowl. Finding these metaphors lacking, some argue that we must change the metaphor now. To what? Only time and the multicultural lobby will tell. But as Campbell claims, this metaphor will undoubtedly change the world.

And as much as I love a great metaphor, I admit to also loving really horrible ones. Like these that came from the Washington Post Style Invitational Bad Simile and Metaphor Contest:

1. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
2. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just
   before it throws up.
3. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry
   them in hot grease.
4. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East
   River.
5. McMurphy fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
6. It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.
7. She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.
8. He hung from his arms like a piñata, and Mary was the birthday-boy with the stick.

These student writers may not be ready to matriculate with their peers, but oh there is a place for them in this world! Metaphors-gone-wrong have sustained me through many lonely hours of paper-grading. Alone, after everyone else had gone to bed–or retired to more entertaining things–I laughed long and loud and, for years, kept a notebook of the hall-of-famers. What more can you say to a student who has just given you hailstones that leap like maggots when you fry them in hot grease but thank you! From the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU!

Years ago when our church van broke down at noon in a small Nigerian town, we were told that it would be hours until someone could make the repairs, and we could be on our way. When others saw defeat, I instinctively saw opportunity. I tore a single sheet of paper from my notebook, and muscle memory took over as my fingers folded, creased, and folded until an ordinary piece of paper became a sleek aircraft. I could feed the 5,000 (actually more like 25) with this. For an hour, this paper airplane–made precisely the way my dad had taught me–transported all of us from the oppressive noonday sun and the tedium of nowhere to go and nothing to do. We traveled to places we had only seen in picture books, exotic places of fairy tales and dreams. Until a well-meaning Nigerian gentleman shooed the children away when he thought they had worn out their welcome.

You see, I have lived with and trained under a metaphor master, my dad. His paper airplane-making skills were only the tip of his craft, though. He taught my siblings and me to see the ordinary objects of our world in terms of something else and to use language well so that we might take others with us as we transformed one loaf into two. In his composition handbook, A Shape A Writer Can Contain, he writes:

Let’s say you want to write, or try to write, or are asked by your teacher to write. You sit there in your desk. Throughout your elementary school years, you have sawed, squared, and planed that oak which is the English sentence. And you have stored those sentences in your mind. But now you don’t know what to do with the lumber in your attic. What you need is a blueprint, some shape you can contain while you go on and inward with your thinking.

This metaphor has sustained me throughout my life–as a teacher and an individual. It has served me well when I desperately needed a shape to contain my wonderings and wanderings and when I strove to lead others who also needed such a shape. I have lived as a two-loaf person, blessed among single loafers.

How do you begin to measure the worth of such an apprenticeship? Honestly, I’m not sure that you can. But I am convicted that you must share the wealth by apprenticing others in metaphor. There will be those who turn their backs and hold their noses, preferring anything and everything literal and one-dimensional. And then there will be those rare ones whose astonishment in the presence of a great metaphor is reward enough for your efforts.

In the Sanctuary of Metaphor, I think it best to let Robert Frost to have the last word here:

       Unless you are at home in the metaphor … you are not safe anywhere.

As I was blow-drying my hair one morning about 15 years ago, my son Quinn appeared at the bathroom door–fully dressed, backpack in hand–and announced, You need to get going, Mom. Remember, you have a faculty meeting this morning. And he was right. I was running late, and I did, indeed, have an early morning meeting. But when did he change from son to personal assistant? When did he willingly turn off early morning cartoons, pack his own backpack, and wait on me?

Several years later, my husband and I sat in our car in the mall parking lot behind the Air Force Recruiting Office where a bus traveling to Lackland AFB in San Antonio was soon to depart. We watched as our daughter, Marinne–all 95 soaking-wet pounds of her–lugged her gear to the bus, boarded without looking back, and left us for basic training. When did she get such resolve, such courage, such fierce confidence? And when, weeks later, we attended her graduation ceremony and heard her address adults as ma’am and sir, saw her stand at solemn attention in dress blues, somehow taller and older than the girl we had known, I turned to my husband and said, When did she become this woman? 

It was shortly after this that I joined my daughter, Megan, in Switzerland for a short European vacation. She had just finished a semester of study abroad in Spain and flew to Zurich to meet me. From there, we rented a car and drove through the country to Geneva. Megan drove, Megan handled the money, Megan ordered the food, Megan led. And I followed. I recall a moment in which, childlike, I opened my hands to reveal a palmful of euros and said What do you need? And when she suggested that we tandem para-glide in the Alps? I followed her lead, and we leapt off an alp into brisk, Swiss air, strapped to two guides who (thankfully) were veteran gliders and appeared to have all limbs still intact and no visible scars. When did she become the mother and I, the child? When did the strong-willed child become the fully competent adult?

A few years later, my daughter, Collyn, gave birth to my first grandchild, Gracyn. I stood at her hospital bedside, heard the doctor deliver the news that Gracyn was breach, and he had just ordered a c-section. And I watched her fear give way to the sacrificing love of motherhood. When did my baby become a woman who would bear a baby? When did the girl I had taken care of become a caretaker herself?

The past years have been a progression of transference, each year, each event giving way to another watershed moment of child-becoming-adult, of those who-needed-cared-for becoming those-who-care-for. Such is the progression of time and the natural order of release. But oh, how the years have flown! All parents say this. And cliched as it is, it is nonetheless a bittersweet truth.

It is this handing over of care-taking and decision-making that both amazes and scares the living hell out of me, though. For I know there will be a time when I am wholly dependent upon my children to check up on me, drive me, care for me. And as grateful as I am for my four glorious caretakers, I also lament the inevitable final transfer from mother to child.

In a season of transference, I don’t think it is much about power but, rather, about purpose. When you are the mother-in-charge, you have a clear purpose that guides your every moment. You go to bed thinking (obsessing?) over the parenting decisions you made–or failed to make–and you mentally run over the calendar of events and appointments that you must not forget. Lest one of your children doesn’t get a fluoride treatment or you miss the Muffins with Mom event at school or someone’s PE clothes aren’t washed and packed for the next day. Your purpose is to stay on top of things. One step ahead of the game, always. You are needed to run your family, for most mothers understand that most fathers will fall into bed and, within seconds, snore their way into oblivion. No mental calendaring for then. No siree.

This season requires deliberate repurposing. When your daughter calls to ensure that you have told everyone about upcoming Christmas plans and when your son asks you to text him when you arrive at your destination (to make sure you made it in one piece!), you repurpose. You have raised responsible, caring young adults, and your new purpose is to celebrate this. Some may whine about being relegated back into a kind of childhood, but not you. You relish the transfer. You wear a coat of many colors: joy, comfort, peace. Look at my children, the responsible ones! See how they care for me! 

The season of transference begins when we are often too busy, too preoccupied with the daily grind to notice. But it begins and inches forward, the tortoise in our world of hares. Its slow and steady feet move imperceptibly, but they move. And on that day, in that moment in which you catch sight of the tortoise, you blink hard, and your breath catches.

In “Letters to My Daughters,” poet Judith Minty writes:

I give you this to take with you:
Nothing remains as it was. If you know this, you can
begin again, with pure joy in the uprooting.

In a season of transference, there is joy in the uprooting, for nothing remains as it was. In many ways, I am an uprooted woman. My children are grown, my life’s work retired, I need transplanting, to begin again.

If tomorrow brings some sun, I will separate the hostas that have overgrown their bed and transplant them under the lilac bush in a spot where grass doesn’t grow. In this season of transference, I’m looking for a spot where grass fails to grow, where I might plant my uprooted self for repurposing.

And I will take much solace in the fact that my children-turned-caretakers will see that I’m regularly mulched, watered, and fertilized. Indeed, one could do worse.