At Last

At 70, I am already thinking more about my last things, than my first. This is the last car I intend to buy (used, of course!). This is the last house, the last coffee maker, the last pair of jeans.

This is not meant to sound grim. I am actually happy to own things that will last (no pun intended) me for the rest of my life. I still wear clothes from 20 years ago. Of course, they are my favorites. My computer, which I bought in the early 2000s, still greets me every morning, despite not having the ability to shield me from modern viruses or spam ware. She accepts no new updates, and demands I wait between every click. 

But, despite this, and a sizable screen crack in her upper left-hand corner, she remains my constant ally. She introduced me to social media and saw me through strenuous times, helping me write every college essay. Some call her a dinosaur, but she continues to sing those few lovely opening notes as I awaken her in the morning. She holds all my important documents, musings, letters, family photos.

Recently I bought a new computer. With the help of wonderful family members, I was able to upload most of what my old computer holds. I am appreciative, but feel I am betraying her a little. 

Since even her recycling days are pretty much over, I keep the old girl running. I ease her off to sleep at night, only to awaken her in the morning with increasing creaks and groans. I have to click off all kinds of ominous notifications warning of non-updates, non this, and non that. 

I know how she likes to do things. She only asks me to be a bit more patient, as she searches through the sludge built up over the years. She is the last of a dying breed.

Call It a Day

 

"Call it dad." My oldest son, standing with his father in the damp grey morning air on the back deck commands. His dad looks around dramatically. "It's a magnificently beautiful day," he declares ceremoniously, as he does every day regardless of the weather. 

This was his mantra, his legacy.

My former husband died this past summer. He had a particularly aggressive cancer which whittled his usual robust self to a shadow. In his final days he continued to hold court to dozens of friends and family members. His children were by his side every step of the way.

We were married for 27 years, parented five wonderful kids, did crosswords, ran turkey trots, went on fun family vacations (we were a Motel 6 kind of family), and laughed about shared childhood memorabilia. He was a bushy red-headed boy, the male complement to me. When we met, the first thing I noticed was not his smile, or his banter, but the fact that his freckled arms looked just like mine.

A more likely match you would not find. Raised Irish Catholic, we could quote from the old Latin Mass, and, later, had a reverence for Enya music. Our kids felt the solid foundation we set for them, in secular and spiritual ways. We were a family full of children, of dogs, cats and various other pets, of friends over for pizza and Broadway songs. 

But, for both of us, something was missing. For me, it was the truth that I was not so straight, and for him that he was not so secular. It was our simultaneous undoing. We separated, he (the Ivy League lawyer) putting the blame squarely on me for cheating (with a woman no less) while he too was testing his own straying waters. When financial agreements were discussed, he became manipulative, cold, a bully I had never seen before. He moved out quickly, barely saying goodbye to his children.

We communicated in spurts in the ensuing years. I appreciated that he attended the funerals of my father and brother. I came to say my last goodbyes to our family dog who he had adopted as his own. Cordial, sometimes chilly, always at arm's length. His wife, more rigidly religious than he, was fake courteous, but I sensed she really wanted to erase me entirely from his life's story. 

Yet, this man, with all his volume and bravado, was a genuine light to many. His Sunday school class. The daughters on the annual 'Dads and Daughters" overnight hikes. The children of women widowed young who needed a trustworthy father figure. His university students who learned about the importance of the Constitution and legal ethics from him. His fellow believers who needed one ethical leader among a rabble of religious shams to give their lives a semblance of meaning.

A few weeks before he passed away, I traveled with the kids to visit him at his home. We all sat, encircling him, playing and singing his favorite songs. There were some tears and lots of laughter. His daughters held his hands.

At his funeral service, the kids told stories about their dad. At one point, our youngest got up and spoke. She had been his constant caregiver for the two years of his illness, driving countless hours to be by his side during his grueling hospital stays and at his home hospice bedside. She reminded everyone present of her dad's hopeful mantra. "I have a tattoo of it," she said sheepishly. "And if there is anything we can take from my dad's life, it is that every day contains beauty and promise.

Call it dad. It's a magnificently beautiful day.

Constant Companion

 I was young once. My hair was red, my face and arms freckled. I liked to play in the dirt, and I hated wearing skirts and dresses. I rode my bike without hands, even when turning to the next block. 

I picked up my father's guitar -- the one he never learned to play -- and ran with it. I played, and played, listening to the music I loved and learning it so well I could play the songs I loved note-for-note. When I was still young, my parents seemed to understand that playing the guitar was important to my life, and bought me my own.

I still have that same guitar. He has been my constant friend, even when he collects dust in the corner of my room. I talk to him sometimes, apologizing for not checking in, not changing old strings, not honoring his place in my world. Every now and then, especially when my sons come to visit (amazing guitar players in their own right) we pull him out, dust him off, and see what the old man can still do. 

He never disappoints. 

    

It Was Raining

It was raining

When we were small

Things cleared up and we stood tall

Walked the walk, and gave our all

We didn’t mind . . .

That it was raining.

It was raining

When we said farewell

They said we could come indoors

But we said, “no way in hell”

We walked the walk, and gave our all

We didn’t mind . . .

That it was raining.

It was raining

When we were no longer tall

No longer young, some, not there at all

But we walked the walk, and welcomed all

We didn’t mind . . .

That it was raining.

Unexpected Visitor

 He was older than me, a bit on the serious side, and was the potential new pastor for our church. As the chairperson of the Staff-Parish Council Committee, I was the one to lead his interview for the position of new pastor. 

As always, I came early. I was not secure in my abilities within my role, but I had my opinions, and was able to put on a brave face. When I arrived at church, a bearded man in a corduroy blazer, a Roman collar and a soft voice, came out of the sanctuary to greet me. He had been there for a while, he said, wanting to get a feel for the place.

We shook hands, and spoke for a very few minutes before going into the interview meeting. Our committee told about how our congregation had been through rough times, and were looking for a pastor who could unite, heal and lead us. He was soft spoken, and answered all our questions systematically and honestly. I believe this systematic honesty came from his basic goodness mixed with his academic background as an engineer.

Sometimes, congregations need an engineer at the helm. He was that. The antithesis of a smooth politician, he told it as he saw it. He was gruff, raw, and real. I loved him from the get-go.

He was hired, to mixed reviews, but he became one of my best friends and closest allies. He presided over the confirmations of all three of my daughters, and the wedding of my niece. He made an annual trek to the local animal shelter in full robed regalia to bless all the dogs waiting for adoption. He visited my father and brother in the hospital before each passed away even though they were not part of his congregation, never speaking about these visits to me. He listened when I came to him with personal problems, came to see me unannounced on his bicycle, carrying homemade yogurt, just to sit and chat. His brusque demeanor was antithesis to some, but it suited me fine. 

He is retired now, living a lovely rural life, growing tomatoes and making himself available for the occasional pastoral duties. 

If ever there was a man I trusted, it was him. Thank you pastor. 

Lisa the Great

 When I was three years old, I remember standing at the side of my house thinking, “I am only three years old, yet look how smart I am.” This is a real remembrance. While my older brother was suffering from chronic asthma, with my parents paying way more attention to him than me, I, for a moment, understood how smart, how awesome I was. Most of the time, my parents spent their time and attention on my older brother. I was the healthy afterthought. Now, As a mother of five very different children, I have a modicum of sympathy for my parents in this time, especially for my mother. All mothers spend the majority of their time worrying about their weakest child. Often, what attention remains for the healthy second is lacking.

When I grew up, I left home, searching for the familiar, yet new. 

I could not find my own trueness, so I settled for a facsimile of what I understood. 

I felt my way in this new world, looking for what I recognized as true. 

Eventually, after a number of years, I found it in my children. In the five I gave birth to, I rose. I rose to meet and greet them from before they were born. If there were ever moments I knew myself, it was these. I was a mother. I am a mother. 

Yet, after they grew up, I was left with a gaping chasm. Who am I now? Who was I ever?

How can there be more than one true room inside a single person? There has to be. There is. I am still struggling with this room, with how I live within it, with how I reconcile this room with the past, with children, with the future. 

I am closer to the end than to the beginning, yet, when fitful sleep comes, I still dream as if I was a confused child, seeing my lost baby brother, or an obedient mother, mortaring all the gaps between my children’s loose bricks. A frightened aging adult, wandering a maze of rooms that promise salvation, but lead nowhere. The children, the parents, the lost brother return over and over, screaming of my inadequacy. In these dark nights, I believe this voice. When I wake, I summon enough courage to get dressed, walk the dogs, move on.

Is this a way to live one’s last chapter? Sometimes I pretend to be confident in my opinions, but it often comes off more like belligerence. Where is the balance? How do I find myself, the one who, at age three, I understood to be awesome, but who gradually slipped away? 

The awesome three-year-old is still awesome. She has inserted herself into the world for the good, and she has offered up five wonderful humans in the process. She has faltered and failed. She has persevered and proven herself. She is smart, strong, mighty. There is music and magic in her walk, her work, her will. I know this in my soul. Yet I find it hard to believe it in my daytime self. The midnight voice admonishes, and sits, like a lurking shadow during the day, waiting for night’s sleepless paranoia to clock in. 

I search for the confident three-year-old. She is still there, I hear her voice, and see her standing at the side of the house. Now I need her at the side of my bed. I am only 68 years old, yet look how smart I am!

Remember the Titans

It was raining that first day in September. Nervous, damp-haired kids filtered through the halls, looking for familiar, or at least friendly faces among the throng, losing their bearings on the way to classes, and figuring out that rumors of a fourth floor pool were sadly untrue.

As days turned into years, these same kids found their friends, their mentors, their music. Teachers became confidantes and companions along their journey. The seasons changed, bringing fall football, winter basketball, spring track, summer beach expeditions. Proms, musicals, masses in the early mornings. Ski trips, class shows, religious retreats. Rings and yearbooks.

But it was not just the classes or the teams or the clubs or even the shows that made the magic happen. It was the music, always the music, drifting through the halls, echoing in their ears, pulling them so far into each other's souls that, finally, they could not pinpoint where one ended and the other began. 

It was the music.

It was raining that last day in June. Excited, damp-haired young women and men filtered out onto the field, looking for familiar faces amid the throng of proud parents and family members filling the bleachers. They were off, like feathers in the wind, off to make their marks on the world, finding new companions along the way, creating a new generation of nervous, excited young women and men who would then go off to find their own music, often returning home with their own babes in tow. An unbroken circle that would turn these weathered friends white and weary.

It was raining that weekend in October, fifty years later. Gray-haired women and men filtered into the school chapel, recognizing old friends -- often by name tags rather than faces. But no matter. Time fell away as friends reconnected. Then the music started. It echoed in their ears and spoke to their tired souls. They sang the old songs by heart, not needing to read the words on the pages. Some smiled, some cried, some did a little of both. The music held them . . . then released them, and, for a moment, they became young again.

The rain finally stopped. The friends slowly filtered out into the night, back to home and family, children, and grandchildren. One last hug, one last memory shared. Such an important piece of each of them had been tied up in the other that they knew they would never ever entirely separate. The day was done, and indeed, all was well.