beer boy

I can’t hold it any longer. I’ve never been good at secrets—but it’s certainly not a secret—yet I think the whole story is here, so I’m ready to tell.

It all started at a Super Bowl party.

"Oh, speaking of the Canadian flag; tell Natalie, Martin.”

“We have an errand for you."

“Okay…”

My dear friends then made a wonderfully joint effort to tell me about this catch of a twenty-one-year-old available boy they met at the brewery a few blocks down.

“You have to go see him during half-time. We told him to look for the girl with ear plugs,” (she was referencing my gauges, in case you were wondering).

Half-time came, and Martin accompanied me to the brewery. On the walk down, we both felt quite silly about the whole thing. What was I even supposed to say? “Hey, my friends said you’re great; let’s go on a date?” Minus the rhymes. Totally clueless, we passed the small crowd of tables and up to the bar, only to find that the boy had gone.

“To missed connections,” Martin raised his glass of Amber Ale that had some clever name that I entirely forget. I kept thinking what a bummer this was—it seems impossible to find a nice, Christian man outside of my church (not that there aren’t nice ones at my church; there just haven’t been any advances), and now this one chance was gone!

So I left him a note. I have no idea what I was thinking; do people even call people anymore? The last boy I connected with, we exchanged email addresses. So I left a note with both my phone number and email address and waited.

“How long is the appropriate waiting period before a random stranger responds to a note left by another random stranger? Do they respond? I would. I'm curious,” I asked Martin two days later over Facebook. His response? “5 days from the time the random stranger views said note, give or take 39 hours.” This provided a very accurate yet inaccurate calculation, as the next day, he called. CALLED.

I was in the hardware store when an unknown number called. “Hi, it’s ____ from the brewery. I think you left me a note on Super Bowl Sunday?” It took a minute to register that it was actually him on the other line. His voice sounded either extremely sweet and gentle or gay, which was slightly confusing. He asked a few questions about myself over the course of several dropped calls as I had to leave the store for service and said to text him about making plans.

I immediately called the list of people I had told about him, which was basically Martin and my mom. My mom’s advice? “Just take it slow.” My response? “Mom, we haven’t even met”.

Later that night, we were arranging to meet when my lack of transportation + the chaos of that day’s parade downtown prevented me from leaving the apartment. We became “friends” on Facebook—something I was extremely hesitant of before meeting because it allows him a warped insight into my life. You really cannot get to know someone on Facebook, but for whatever reason, many millenials think you can. Further, any correspondence from then out would be biased against what he saw on Facebook. What if he saw my picture and thought I was ugly or fat or not “whatever” enough for him? That’s a shit way to “meet” someone. Regardless, he had already given me his contact info, so of course I had browsed his profile; it would have been creepy for me not to add him.

Maybe this isn’t needless to say, but I haven’t heard from him since. A week later, I sent him a text asking if he still wanted to meet sometime. No response. Seriously? At least be polite enough to say no, damnit.

On Valentine’s Day, he made a Facebook post along the lines of, “Its better to be single with high standards, then in a relationship settling for less!” followed by hashtags about his dream woman. After a brief texting exchange with both Kim & Martin from their separate phones (they are definitely the cutest couple I know), we all agreed that my standards start with someone who can at least write an accurate sentence, concluding that, IT’S better to be single THAN to settle for someone with shitty grammar. #Ihavestandardstoo (Thanks for the encouragement, friends).

Here I am on this lamest of lovey-dovey holidays, date-less and cuddling with my dog. I called my mom to thank her for the valentine & cookies (yes, I got a valentine from my parents! No shame! There are lemon cookies involved!) and told her that I was out for a walk with my valentine. While she assumed without saying that I was referring to my dog, I had to awkwardly avoid referring to my valentine as “she”.

All that to say, we are no longer Facebook friends, this “beer boy” (as Martin so cleverly referred to him) and me, though the slightly hopeful part of me can’t bring myself to delete his number even though he’s clearly never calling back. It’s because I don’t ski. Seriously.

Anyways, after more encouragement, I wrote a song about beer boy. I figured it was only appropriate that it take place as a pseudo-voicemail. You can listen to it here. 

once you were not a people, but now you are God's people

Prologue

Welcome to my 100th blog post! Wow! This is exciting for a number of reasons: 1) it means that writing is happening; all is not lost, 2) it's a commemoration of some really awesome people, several of whom were ones who helped and inspired me to start, develop, and (finally) share this blog. I used to be afraid of writing, but I knew it was something I loved and had to do; I never imagined being blessed with boldness enough to share it with all of you.

1 Peter 2.9-10

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Tonight, I am so thankful for family. Family at Community—sharing what God has led us to in our lives and that we are all here, in Seattle, as a part of God’s plan, even through all of the storms in our lives. Family at our apartment—Pickle and me running into all of our friends in our building and talking out our weeks. Family from a distance—the people who have influenced me and guided me and loved me, blood-related or not.

Particularly though, Waynesburg is on my heart tonight. Not the Waynesburg where I went to school, but the Waynesburg where I learned to live afresh—the Waynesburg after graduation. These are the things I am thankful for and that I miss.

Was it really just last summer that I was there? That we were all there.

I remember “move-in” day, walking through the gate with my carry-on suitcase and unpacking in Merry’s room, sweet Merry who slept in her sister’s room so that I could have a bed upstairs with the family, as one of the family. We’d get up in the morning, and Kim and I would go around shutting the windows and turning off the fans to keep in the morning’s cool.

Walking down the creaky stairs (the best feature in any house, if you ask me), we’d meet in the kitchen for morning tea. I think you really know someone when you know how they like their tea. (Even more so when you know their favorite mug in your cupboard!) I loved that all throughout the day, we would put on the kettle and make tea for each other—morning to start the day, afternoon (if not wine), evening after the girls were in bed, as we unwound with laundry and Frasier.

It’s these simple routines that I hold dear, even though they weren’t even my own. And as my lovely friend Kim would call them, these rituals compose our lives. She wrote, “Ritual is different than routine. Routines are ways of doing things you fall into without thinking too much about them; they become rote, and often even tyrannical things that eventually disgust you. But to nurture Ritual requires careful forethought, an attention to space and time, and a tender attitude of love," and that has stuck with me. I love it. I go back to those words when I start falling into routine. (So pretend I said ritual to begin with, like Christopher McCandless quoting an author with which I am unfamiliar, “To call each thing by its right name.”)

So that summer, I adopted their rituals as they adopted me—they being all of Waynesburg that is sweet and kind and lives with that tender attitude of love.

I would walk to my wretched Chemistry class, late almost every day (as I was for my 8am class the previous fall: so worth it to have tea around the table to start the day), but with tea in-hand: armed. (Martin & Kim drink tea fresh off the kettle like it’s already cooled—something I still haven’t mastered; they’d be pouring seconds as I was still sipping the rim of a full cup—a sign that I have a lot of tea to drink to catch up!) So I’d take my cup to-go.

After class, I’d sometimes walk up to the library and visit with whoever was there, most often Noah or Jill or Pam—people whom (with the exception of Jill) I didn’t really know well until that summer. We’d talk about Noah’s book or Jill’s daughters or Pam’s peacocks—conversations that weaved warm summer days into a flipbook of tiny celebrations after (yet during) a period of trial and transition.

My first day after class (and many after), I came home to Martin & Kim in the garden. We did so much therapeutic weeding that I think I’m still gleaning peace out of the process of just ripping out weeds and laying down newspapers, building up sections of stone and brick. (You can piece together the symbolism for yourself.)

I miss meeting with Joonna for lunch, catching up on the what’s nexts and the uncertainty of the coming months and leaning on the support over the previous weeks.

Ahh and baking and cooking with Kim! We made a vegan chocolate cake for tea time with Joonna; we made pasta with fresh basil and oven-toasted bread for some dinners—herbs picked from right down the back patio.

My mother would tell you that I do not cook; I do not wash dishes, but I learned to love these things that summer, and I’ve realized that it’s something I missed out on growing up—I always saw it as a chore, something to be done, rather than an experience of friendship (wasn’t it just something my sister and I were supposed to fight over?).

One day, I got to drive with Sally & Kim to Mother Earth Farm at the top of the hill for the first time. We walked through the greenhouse, pointing out our favorites, selecting some for planting, some for porch décor. This place quickly went from unknown to sweet—I’d drop by on my way in or out of town to visit Rose.

Then there were evenings sitting in the yard with Ian and Julia, watching the fireflies over the hill sparkling in the dark like sun flickering on deep water. We’d talk about poetry and future schools and summer.

I’m not clearly articulating any of this, and as each instance pours in, it brings friends because that’s what this Waynesburg was—a nest of friendship.

Ice cream on the porch—Noah & Michelle’s, Sally & Kevin’s, Martin & Kim’s. Wine at the dinner table. Tea in the playroom/writing room/sun room. Tequila & egg-in-a-hole at the kitchen table. Cake & stories on the back patio. Walks everywhere with everyone. Family visits. The Trees of the Field will Clap their Hands. Prayers & piano-playing. Lunch at the arboretum. Visiting Jay & his family. The Mennonite church. Walks with Elesha’s dog. Dancing with the girls in the living room or catching lightning bugs (and Elspeth wanted to keep one and asked Papa what they eat so that she could take care of it) or pushing Bea on the swing or reading Strega Nona while we waited for noodle water to boil or going to the park to “play school” (we found a snake on the sidewalk) or walking to the honeysuckle bush to suck the nectar out of every bloom.

Was I really only there for two or three months?

So all of these things are flowing in and out of my mind as I rest 3,000 miles away, content on my mattress on the floor with my puppy sleeping beside me, a cool breeze through the window relieving this summer’s heat and StoryHill playing on-repeat, which is actually what brought all of this to mind in the first place.

I was listening to them and thought of that last Open Mic where Noah & Martin sang and played together and covered a StoryHill song, and the band stuck (though I can’t remember that particular song). I think that was the beginning of the Waynesburg I’ll remember, the Waynesburg I’ve shared just a slice of here.

It led me to think of the idea of breaking bread, the way that it ties us all together, sometimes with literal bread. Like sharing Chemistry-class raisin bread with Noah in the Writing Center, which led to a conversation that ended with a friend, my sister, and me staying at his brother’s house in New Jersey for a weekend. Like sharing loaves of banana bread for dessert, for breakfast, for afternoon snack in a red house with a family of five plus one. Like learning to eat and sleep and breathe again after the trying months of the initial storm and the aftershocks and the continued challenges and fears.

God brings us to these places, and we don’t know why or for what, but when we fully enjoy the people there, we learn to stop asking the questions we can’t answer (loving them [this may always be my favorite] like locked rooms, as Rilke writes), and we learn to live in the simplicity of rituals, of intentionality, of love.

Our church in downtown Seattle constantly reminds us that the church is a people and not a place. I am so grateful for the people of Waynesburg who lived this without saying it, so while I keep saying “Waynesburg” like it is a place, I really mean “the people whom I love who just happened to live/work/be in community there”. 

this contradicts what i said yesterday

I keep thinking back on a conversation I had with a couple who moved to Seattle around the same time I did. None of us are in places that are by any means permanent to our lives. We are renting. We are waiting. What is home? What does it feel like to be “home”?

I spent a lot of today moping, planning out what I want my life to be like. Where I want to live next. Where I’ll find space to make pottery and paint. Where I’ll be happy.

After some intense Jesus-talk and writing and taking space to finally clear out some of the heaviness, I walked to the end of the bridge. In that place, that one little strip of sidewalk overlooking the Sound, I feel at home.

In front of me, I see Sodo’s characteristic cranes; the lights of West Seattle, the more distant lights of the islands. A long cloud of light hangs over it all in the darkness. Waves push into the land with a comforting sigh. I smell salt.

Behind me, the Space Needle glows in its galactic awe, and downtown glimmers like the sun on the water. Cars hum; electricity whirs. I stand in the place where city meets sea.

Rain boots hug my toes, and puppy leash in-hand, Jesus thoughts in-heart, I feel a rare sense of content.

I don’t know what I want in my life. I thought I wanted to travel. I thought I wanted to live many places. But here I am--called to the city and happy. There is a street one block from me that has full maples with hanging leaves; I like to stand under them, smell the green, close my eyes, and pretend I am in the woods.

I come home to our stuffy apartment. Two walls of books enclose me. The critters I love most are constantly moving, like the second hand on a clock—the turtle’s clunky walk, the puppy’s clicking steps.

Here it is, folks: this is home. 

ticktick

I really don't know where to begin, but I'm exhausted.

Exhausted in the sense that trying to feel full will only leave you feeling more empty, more aware of all that is not filling the gaps. Like the poems that haven't been written. The music that hasn't been played. The blog that hasn't been written. 

I sit here with a glass of wine and tired, heavy eyes wondering what I am chasing. 

I get up and gogogo. I come home and gogogo. Constantly going: the complete opposite of my life not too long ago. I never have been very good at the whole balance thing.

I've been caught up in everything at once. I want to be, to do, to act, to think, to know, to learn, to believe it all. There is so much that I want and so much of that is intangible--I cannot hold faith intertwined with my fingers and think that it will not slip through like sand. I cannot grasp it at all. 

I find my time unevenly distributed between work and church and everything else. Like pie charts that we build at work, the last section can optionally be omitted because it's such a small portion that its contribution to the whole goes unrecognized. But some of the most significant side effects reside in that sliver. 

Is that all they are? Side effects? I have settled in to a life of work and sleep and food and a church that I can't wrap my head around and a god that I cannot meet and the rest of who I thought I brought with me when I packed my car and drove West: well, where is all of that? Did I drop a piece on the bus today? Did I lose it on the street? Has the city pulled me in its stopwatch rhythms of the double-time ticktickticktick that makes time feel fluid, coming and going in Puget Sound's constant pulse?

I think I so often search for contentment because of this imbalance. I want my glass to be just to the top--not too much or I will feel overwhelmed as life pours over the sides; not too little or I will feel a constant yearning and hunger. I think right now, I have a glass in each hand. My left is nearly empty, wanting more, wanting words, wanting color and song. My right is overflowing, never pausing, never slowing, never damming the stream of thought and act. 

I want to be a child. I want to sit down at a miniature table and feel like I belong because my toes just touch the floor. I want to grasp one cup with both hands and be glad when the water touches my lips and not the table. I want to not worry beyond the present moment--no fear of future or past.

I'm sure this is a lot to ask. 

I got a swig this weekend. The other side of the Sound feels like going to the unseen home. Woods, moss, and crispest air welcome me and my second family. 

Right away, the two littlest girls tumbled in the soggy fields. Assessing that it wasn't much to fret about, we continued on. Maybe five minutes later, I was running around with the girls when the ground left me, and I, too, found myself flat on my bum. Gosh did I need that.

I spent the day trying not to think about how cold and uncomfortable wet jeans feel. I was lucky that good company and god-made landscape pull away negative thoughts. 

We made our way along the paths, noticing the many sights the woods had to offer. We stopped at a raised, wooden platform overlooking a bog and sipped tea and munched. I have had Kenny Rogers stuck in my head ever since. 

We continued on to the Hood Canal. I know it's cliche, but nothing resounds serenity like water. Rhythm, wet, the echo of our heartbeats--the one thing on earth we can most connect to because we are that. 

We walked along the water, letting our shoes sink into the soggy sand of low tide. We picked our fingers at the critters that swirled in tide pools, poking the underbellies of sand dollars that lay scattered and stacked like church bulletins in a basket. 

As we started walking back towards the path, we walked by a large rock. 

"Alright, just one rock." It hadn't crossed my mind, but as soon as it was suggested, it became a must. 

After the initial rush of sand began to settle, we noticed the tiny crabs sliding sideways up the sand, in search of their familiar shelter. 

We picked them up. At first, I was afraid to. Sure we used to catch crayfish all the time, but I was never really afraid of them pinching. These little buggers seemed more intimidating. The crabs would wriggle their legs as if they could get hold of the air; they'd wave their claws like a symphonic conductor, but the tune was short. They soon gave in and decided to wait out the flight.

I learned so much from these few simple events.

That if you don't slow down, you'll surely fall, and even the bruise on your backside will remind you to take more careful strides.

That if you constantly fight the air, you'll find that you haven't even accomplished as much as walking on a treadmill: you can't always control the settings.

That if you don't accept your surroundings as the place that you call home, you will constantly feel unrest. 

And I'm still learning.

Yesterday I learned that it's really dumb to pour boiling water into a glass, no less a glass that is in your hand. 

Today I learned that even if you run to catch the bus, run to get to Community, run to make dinner, you will still be out of breath when you enter the race. 

So I'm not sure how I got to all of this. I tend to let the broccoli lead the way most days (thank you, Anne Lamott). But I know that I feel like a thousand sighs will not suffice. I know that I'm not sure how the days are supposed to fit together: it's like I've made each square of a quilt, but I don't know how to match them into a whole.

Phew, I also know that my metaphors are getting pretty out-there. 

There's just so much, and I can't seem to fit it all in just 10 hours of daylight or even 14 hours of night.  

Windows

I close my eyes, and I almost feel like I am home in the woods. I can block out the cars--the street is unusually busy for a Sunday night, though it might have something to do with the fireworks freckling the sky from the practice fields a few blocks away.

I can't help but wonder if I would be sitting in a lawn chair on a moderate July evening--thank God for this first evening where it's been under eighty degrees before eleven o'clock--had things been different. Would I be home taking care of Derek? Would I be preparing to return to WU in the fall? So many things happened so quickly. I know there's no use wondering where I would have been.

There's no reason for me to explain that one.

A few weeks ago, sitting around the kitchen table with some of the wonderful women of Waynesburg, we talked about the phrase, "When God closes a door, he opens a window." We said that it didn't make sense. A window?! It's something that I've been really struggling with: people telling me that something good will come from all of the bad. I've taken it so personally, getting upset because I felt like people were telling me that the bad thing happened just so that something better could come from it.

I'm suddenly realizing that's not how it works.

Shit happens. As cliche as it sounds, it is the truest thing I know, aside from a list of other cliche phrases like, "Change is the only constant." But life has fluxes and winding roads, and sometimes you have to pass through some dark alleys to get to the ice cream shop. Sometimes, you have to work through grief to get to wherever the road is leading, be it Seattle or Phoenix.

A year ago, if someone asked me where I would be today, I would say, "At home, taking care of Derek, getting ready to go into my last semester at WU." Clearly, I am as far from that as possible because our plans don't matter.

I really like the idea of God being outside of time. Sure, I have a hard time really grasping it, what, being in-time and all, but I think that knowing that there's someone out there who's got it together and knows what's up is the only real comfort when we don't know how to handle all that we've been given. I keep finding myself saying "This past year," and I've been saying that for months. I'm usually referring to since Derek died, but it hasn't been a year yet. I think I'm too busy pulling on the emergency break, trying to get my life into reverse, that the whole process feels slower. Days pass, one after the next, but as a whole, it's like this big glob of calendar months, and if it really has to flip to August, please, please be 2011.

When I think about "the past year," particularly since February, I'm reminded of how aware I have been of others' struggles. I'm not the only one who has lost a lot this year. During my whole "if things had been different" contemplation, I started wondering what it would be like if Martin hadn't lost his job, if a place where I put my trust, my loyalty, and my dedication hadn't completely turned on most everyone that I cared about there, if the magazine that I wanted to see succeed hadn't been unjustly discontinued due to illogical closed-mindedness and a greater want for money than cultural progress. Phew, it just keeps going. Anyways, a lot of people have been hurt by change.

Ever since I heard that Martin was denied tenure, all that I wanted to do was take it back. I wanted to protect everyone from all of the hateful vibes and sour feelings. I think one of the biggest realizations with that, was learning that even if we could have taken it back, there was still the initial blow, and that was enough such that things would never be the same.

But God's been opening windows like crazy.

Back inside, I sit on the couch for a nightly routine of Sleepytime tea and Frasier. Really getting in the spirit, I use Kim's Seattle mug (my favorite with the thumb-grip is in the wash), and I laugh at my own life, thinking about how in three weeks, I will be in Seattle. Who'd have guessed?

Without air conditioning, it's been pretty hot. We open the windows at night in hopes of it cooling off a bit. As much as I love this place, it's time to leave. I imagine myself literally crawling through a window in search of the next door. I've got a long drive ahead of me.

But the windows are open, and the breeze is not so bad.

Note: In some way, this was indirectly inspired by Wendell Berry's series of "Window Poems," which is why I have included this excerpt:

       15.
The sycamore gathers
out of the sky, white
in the glance that looks up to it
through the black crisscross
of the window. But it is not a glance
that it offers itself to.
It is no lightning stroke
caught in the eye. It stays,
an old holding in place.
And its white is not so pure
as a glance would have it,
but emerges partially,
the tree's renewal of itself,
among the mottled browns
and olives of the old bark.
Its dazzling comes into the sun
a little at a time
as though a god in it
is slowly revealing himself.
How often the man of the window
has studied its motley trunk,
the out-starting of its branches,
its smooth crotches,
its revelations of whiteness,
hoping to see beyond his glances,
the distorting geometry
of preconception and habit,
to know it beyond words.
All he has learned of it
does not add up to it.
There is a bird who nests in it
in the summer and seems to sing of it--
the quick lights among its leaves
--better than he can.
It is not by his imagining
its whiteness comes.
The world is greater than its words.
To speak of it the mind must bend.
From Openings, 1968

Family comes first

Every time I may begin to think that I have my life in some sort of order, I get pulled by the ankle and shaken, upside down. Someone out there does not want me to settle for "contentment."

There are so many things that I have been wanting to write about, but I can't seem to find the time or the motivation--Derek's birthday, the entire month of June, my last credits of my undergraduate degree, getting accepted to graduate school, ditching my plans for Arizona to move to Seattle, starting graduate classes, preparing the Cockroft house for sale, preparing my belonging to move cross-country; clearly, the list goes on and on.

So that's it. Just like that, a month passes, and life is completely different. Sometimes I wonder how so many months could have passed where I felt the same; I felt like I had some sort of control over the situations, and I was okay. Now, I can barely get through a week without feeling like everyday is some major life event.

Maybe that's the way that it should be--never boring, always busy. Is this "carpe diem"?

Derek's first tattoo spelled "carpe diem" in a curly font, written inside of a chartreuse ribbon, representing Muscular Dystrophy. He wanted to remind himself and others that we can and should "seize the day" despite the world's best efforts to bring us down--everyone has challenges that weigh on us and keep us from living out loud. For Derek, Muscular Dystrophy was that challenge, and he woke to meet it everyday.

As I was browsing through Barnes and Noble today, I fell into the Poetry section, of course. I was pretty disapointed to have not found it until probably an hour-and-a-half into our trip there, soon before we would be leaving. Regardless, I browsed the meager one shelf of books and found poems by Emerson, Frost, Elliot, Shakespeare--all of the well-knowns. Near the bottom, there was a series of crayon-colored books by Mattie J.T. Stepanek, a young man who died of Muscular Dystrophy very young, in the early 2000s. Derek had one of those Heartsongs books on his shelves.

Katlin, Derek, and I have been talking about getting matching tattoos for years. In August, we finally decided--Katlin and I would each get our own variations of "carpe diem" tattoos with Muscular Dystrophy ribbons to match Derek's; he wasn't feeling up to being inked again, but he wanted to at least be there. Our appointment was for September 2nd. Six days after Derek died, we still showed up for the appointment.

These thoughts are so scattered. Am I living my life to the fullest? I thought I learned in Italy to slow down; don't rush. What does it mean "to the fullest" anyhow? As if there were some capstone of "yes, my life is complete." Maybe that is it--striving for a sense of completeness, a sense of feeling accomplished at the end of the day.

Here I am at the end of yet another of the quickly passing days. This isn't any day though. This is the last night with the family that has really taken me in during the past year in the house that was my refuge this past fall. Though I'll be around for a little while longer, this house is not "home" without them here. Though the guitar still hangs on the wall in the room where we have sung and prayed; though the kitchen still shines in warm orange and yellow; though the bathrooms are freshly furnished with the sinks that we all worked on; though the garden still blooms over fresh mulch and lined with stones that we poured ourselves into; though I have been here for such a short time, it is just a house, and it is not complete without them here. I have learned so well that "family" goes further than blood-relation, further than daily encounters, further than walls. Family is loving the people you are with as though they were always going to be with you.

Tonight, Kim said we needed to break a glass in the leaving of the home. She held it at the stem, with a paper bag around it, and the girls each grasped the wooden spoon, gently beating at the glass like a pinata until we heard the shink of the pieces against one another. Kim said it's a tradition to do this because it shows that family and relationship means more than walls or possessions.

And this is why I need to move on. I can't bear to be near the walls that held Derek and I in for so many years; it's time for me to go--to not be here in Southwestern Pennsylvania where all of these things remind me of everything good and everything bad. I need to move on because I've got everything that I need within me--the spirit of God, the love of friends, the memories of a brother. These things will not go away, no matter how many miles there are between me and the walls that I was raised in.

I thought that was the end, but it's not. I once took part in a wall-raising. We were volunteering with Habitat for Humanity in Greensboro, North Carolina. All week, we built walls. Finally, we started assembling. Many people all in a line, pulling and lifting and shifting and placing these walls into what would soon be a family's home. It's not about the walls themselves; it's about the people that raise them, just as when I say "the walls that I was raised in," I mean the people that have raised me. Too often I rush to my bedroom and focus on the walls of home, when really, what I love about it is all of the people there.

Looking through Derek's facebook, I came across a photo of Katlin, Derek, and I on his 20th birthday. One of those survey questions was in the comment box. Derek had answered to, "What does this photo say about you?"

"Family comes first."

in time of dandelions

The sun glaring into my closed eyes reminds me that it is summer. When I open them again, the world looks faded like an old photograph, and I feel like I have been here before. Sure, I was here yesterday and the day before that, but my childhood was miles away in a wide, mostly flat field adorned with dandelions and a long, steep hill patched with clovers and chopped grass that stuck, like a scarecrow's, out the ends of my sleeves after I rolled down the hill.
I wonder what happened to the years since those days of hill-rolling and doing cartwheels in the field past dusk, when Mom would call me in at dark and beg me to take a bath or at least wash my feet, but I wouldn't because I liked the way they felt when the bottoms were grassy-green. I almost felt that yesterday. I pushed Bea on the swing under the fatherly maple, and I felt like I could be ten years old, pushing my sister skyward as afternoons were measured in laughter.

Days seemed dull as the seasons stack into piles of old calendars, but now, the flowers, the trees: it all seems vibrant. I wonder where I've been the past eleven years because I don't remember any days like this lately. I think of the past ten months; the journey has been long.

This colorful house was my safe-haven in the fall. I didn't realize then how much morning tea and a patchwork quilt could hold me together. They warmed my body to a semi-cohesive being, stitched from these simple tokens of Christian love after being picked from a sidewalk of grief where I was a fluff of dandelion popping through the cracks--pieces floating away with each tug of breeze.

Bea loves to pick flowers. She walks along finding the brightest hues and textured arrangements. She picks them short, just tall enough to fit in Kim's tiny vases that scatter the kitchen table and counters. She pulls a dandelion from the side of the road and adds it to her bouqet as we walk towards home.

Summer used to mean this for me: playing outside all day, running around pretending like we were adults because it was summer, so we answered to no one. We--Katlin, Derek, and me. Those days are long past, though, and my recent recollections of summer are working at the daycare, counting heads for ten hours a day and being too exhausted to venture beyond the kitchen after returning home. At least, that's what I'm sure it would be like if I were staying at my parents' house. My mind blocks the last four summers from resurfacing. If I were at home, I would be going to Derek's every night after work.

I keep having these moments where it hits me that he won't be there when I go back. These moments are painful in a way that I cannot grasp because the concept still baffles my mind. Last weekend, I sat over his grave in awe. Had he really been placed into this rectangle of ground? The grass is a solid green across the plot where a short, yellowed patch had sprouted in the fall. It all blends in now, smeared together by the season's first cutting, and I cannot be sure if he is really there because my memory of those months has blended too.

The town of Waynesburg is the only place here in Southwestern PA where I have no connective thoughts of, "I should be doing this with Derek right now." He's never been here, and phone calls were never enough anyways. When I opened my eyes to the sunlight, a rush of urgency flooded me; if I were home, I would be with him. No, I will not allow myself to go there. I am here; I am safe; I am living a life painted in purples and reds and three daughters, like sisters, when added together equal the age of my own, as if I am living with her at all stages of childhood again. Where is my brother?

This house greets me like an old home aftering my brief stay months ago. I feel part of this family, and I wonder what happened to this sensation in my own home where I spent my childhood. The kind faces that I'm spending my days with encourage me towards hope--in faith, in future, in family. The dandelions that Bea picked open petals of orange and yellow; home is sitting around a small table in mismatched chairs to sip the morning's prayer to the day.

I don't know what brought Derek to mind as I let the rays seap through me, but now as I listen, I hear him all around me. The birds chime to each other in a symphony of summers spent listening to Uncle Eltie talk crazy to them as he sat by the mailbox when Derek and I brisked by. The breeze trickles down the hanging pipes that sing to the touch of metal-on-metal--the only voice that answered during the days after he died. The dogs bark down the street the way Casey would when she saw me bounding down the hill as she peered through the open window. I even see him in the sequins of birch leaves, flicking like pages through a book. He is the breeze carrying the birds' tune, the dogs' bark, the leaves, the curtains by the window. His new voice speaks without words, only tiny clangs of soft-loud-echo.

"This feels like summer when I was a kid," I told Kim as we walked inside for supper. Bea and I prepared spaghetti, and I saw the green-stained balls of her feet as she tiptoed on a chair to stir the noodles. I peered under my own toes to find that they matched. She turned to me and smiled, probably proud of her noodle cooking, while I smiled back, wanting to hold on to green feet and children's laughter and bouqets of dandelions on the kitchen table.