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On Days When Spring is Near

Leo still laughs at me when I make funny faces.

I walk out onto the porch with Poppy and Leo on a Sunday afternoon, the kind that convinces us spring still exists and is, in fact, not that far off. There are tiny mounds of snow in the shadowy places of the world, but the sky is blue and people walk by on James Street wearing light jackets–not the heavy, winter coats I’ve seen going past for the last three or four months.

“Let’s say where the cars are going,” 4-year-old Leo says, his voice also bearing hints of the coming season. I think I know what he means. I wait for the next car to approach. It is an old, gray Honda.

“That car’s going to the place where we get hair cuts,” he says. Another car approaches. “That car’s going to the movies.”

As each car passes, Leo makes up an imaginary destination. The library. Penny’s Ice Cream shop. The mall.

“Maybe we should give Poppy a turn,” I say, and he agrees. We have to wait a bit, but when the next car comes by, we both turn our eyes towards her with expectation.

“That car’s going to a house,” she says in her raspy, high-pitched, 2-year-old voice, grinning a Cheshire grin and looking at us with questions in her eyes, wondering if she did it right.

“Mimi’s house?” I ask. She nods.

“Nice one, Poppy,” I say, and we stand there, getting colder as the afternoon passes. Maile comes out, stands there in her coat, still wearing her house slippers. And the cars go by.

* * * * *

Sunday night, three in the morning, and a small hand pats my blankets. A small voice whispers, “Dad, I’m scared.”

“Of what?” I ask, not sure what time it is, not sure what planet I’m on.

“I’m just scared.”

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” I whisper, my voice hoarse. I cough.

“I’m scared,” Leo insists. I sigh.

“Want to sleep with me on the floor?” I ask. I know if I bring him into bed, none of us will get any sleep. He nods in the dark. I grab a few pillows, a few blankets, and we make a bed on the floor.

I fall asleep, his tiny hand on my shoulder.

* * * * *

A few days later I am working at Prince Street Cafe when Maile comes in with the kids. Leo is very pleased to see me sitting at one of the high tables, and he climbs up, perches there, staring at my computer.

“Are you working?”

“Yes, I am.”

He looks at the large glass windows. “Those windows look like you could put your hand through them, like a waterfall,” he observes. And he is right. The glass is clean. The day is clear.

I lean towards him.

“I like when you come to visit me,” I say.

He smiles.

 

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A Book You Need to Know About

Quite a few number of years ago, my wife and I and a few friends were standing up to leave an Over the Rhine concert in Philadelphia when I started talking with a kind young woman behind me. It turned out that this was none other than Christie Purifoy–the two of us both wrote for the same online blog (Deeper Story, how I miss you!), so we knew of each other but had never met. Serendipity!

Ever since then, we’ve crossed paths at various writers conferences, our families have gotten together a few times, and she helped me launch The Day the Angels Fell back in the fall of 2017 by having a carnival-themed book party, equipped with corn dogs and popcorn. She shared her friends with us, her husband Jonathan is one of the really good guys in the universe, and her kids are wonderful.

Can I tell you what I love about Christie? She is a writer. She is the real deal. She can string together words in an incredible way. Her first book, Roots and Sky: A Journey Home in Four Seasons, reminded me so much of Madeline L’Engle’s nonfiction. Something along the lines of A Circle of Quiet or Walking on Water.

And today her second book is going out into the big wide world. It’s called Placemaker: Cultivating Places of Comfort, Beauty, and Peace.

In Placemaker, Christie Purifoy invites us to notice our soul’s desire for beauty, our need to create and to be created again and again. As she reflects on the joys and sorrows of two decades as a placemaker and her recent years living in and restoring a Pennsylvania farmhouse, Christie shows us that we are all gardeners. No matter our vocation, we spend much of our lives tending, keeping, and caring. In each act of creation, we reflect the image of God. In each moment of making beauty, we realize that beauty is a mystery to receive.

Did I mention that when I launch my new novel in the summer, Christie is coming to the party to do a little reading from Placemaker?!

Do yourself a favor and go order Christie’s beautiful new book, wherever books are sold.

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Regarding a Weekend We Won’t Soon Forget (and Exciting News About My Next Book)

We sat on sofas and on the floor. We tried to catch up on each other’s lives in a few short days. We ate and we laughed and listened. Some of their written words read out loud made me cry.

There were late nights over hot tea and a game that had us shouting and laughing all over again. There was a wood fire in the fireplace. There were quiet walks on an empty street.

There was this sense that, while I write alone, I am not alone. This realization felt like bread and wine.

We hugged outside the restaurant, knowing another long year awaited. But it felt like it might be okay.

* * * * *

Maile and I drove away early, heading towards our home, 500 miles away. The snow came down, and the roads were covered. We advanced slowly, followed the tracks of the car in front of us. The world was coated in white, and the road felt tenuous, unpredictable, like it might tire of us at any moment and toss us aside.

We passed four accidents within a mile of each other, cars spun off onto the shoulder. Hoods smashed in. They faced the wrong direction, as if lost. One car was burnt to a crisp.

At dusk, as we passed the exit that went to the college where we had met, Maile pointed.

“Did you see that?”

“See what?”

“Five deer,” she said, awe in her voice, and a bit of sadness, “standing at the edge of the wood, in the blowing snow.”

* * * * *

We picked up the kids at my parents’ house, loaded their belongings in the back of the truck, the snow settling on us like a light blessing. We drove slowly home, unloaded, and entered the house. It was a whirlwind of children and suitcases, snow clothes and snacks, wet floors and the repeated command that turned to a plea, “Go to bed!” The radiators were already hot. Out front, James Street was quiet, covered in a layer of snow.

In the mail that had been waiting for us, I saw a manila envelope, and I tore it open. Inside, the designed pages for my new novel, Light from Distant Stars. There it was: the title page, the dedication, the first line.

“Cohen Marah clears his throat quietly, more out of discomfort than the presence of any particular thing that needs clearing, and attempts to step over the body for a second time.”

As Maile had said as we drove slowly along the snow-filled highway, “Well, this is a weekend we won’t soon forget.”

* * * * *

To find out more about Light from Distant Stars, or to find links to preorder (and basically make me the happiest person on the planet), click HERE.

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I Confess that I Painted the Green Table

I must confess
I painted the green table
and the yellow chairs,
the ones
we bought when we were first married
fifteen years ago
when my stomach was flat
and we didn’t shy from starting movies
(and other things) after 11.
When sleep was commonplace, like mis-
matched socks,
and silence was everywhere in the house
so thick you could trip on it
or get lost in it.

Of course,
you asked me to paint the table
and the chairs
but I didn’t
think it would take so many coats to cover
all the gashes
and scars
left by a thousand Scrabble games
hot pans of Rice Crispy Treats
four years in storage while we lived
in England
unsecured trips in moving vans
then teething children gnawing and racing
their matchbox cars past bowls
of cereal that left little pale rings
like the wispy ones that circle planets.
And then there were the permanent markers
that bleed through sheets
of multi-colored paper
or the demanding bang of miniature
forks and spoons chipping away.

But the new red paint will never cover
over the way we sat on those chairs,
elbows on the table,
and cried
after two miscarriages. Or the lost
friends. Or the pain
and joy
of moving on
to new places.

There are some things paint cannot cover.

Like conversations unfolding from
“Now
what do we do?”
or
“How could you say that?”
or
“I’m not doing well.
Not well at all.”
But also
“I’m pregnant,”
or
“I got the contract,”
or
“I couldn’t do this without you.”

Someone already scratched the table
despite my many warnings of the incredible
wrath that would fall from this
August sky
but when I saw in the middle of the new
scratch that the original dark green
was still there
under the red paint
all those years
just a thin skin away
I must confess.
I was relieved.

Because these years of ours
may look like a pock-marked tabletop
scarred and scraped,
but they can never be covered over.
And that is one thing in this world
that is exactly as it should be.

* * * * *
Did you know I have a book of poems you can get in an ebook for free? It’s called We Might Never Die, and it’s a free download over at Noisetrade.

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The First Time I Read Charlotte’s Web to Leo, It Ended With Tears…So Naturally We’re Reading it Again

About six months ago, I read Charlotte’s Web to Leo for the first time. We read one chapter every night, and he fell in love with Charlotte immediately. When we got to the last page of the chapter when Charlotte dies, he demanded that I stop reading.

“Leo, we have to finish the chapter,” I said. “We’re almost there.”

He kept protesting. It was unlike him. I couldn’t tell if he was entirely serious or not, so I finished the chapter. As soon as I read the last sentence–“No one was with her when she died”–he burst into tears.

But, in the last few months, he has recovered, and he asked if we could read it again. As someone who appreciates good literature, loves Charlotte’s Web, and isn’t always completely enthralled with his bedtime stories, I readily agreed.

We’re about halfway through, and last night we reached the chapter where Mrs. Arable, Fern’s mother, becomes so concerned with Fern’s behavior that she goes to visit the doctor. They end up talking about the mysterious appearance of the messages in Charlotte’s web.

“…Still, I don’t understand how those words got into the web. I don’t understand it, and I don’t like what I can’t understand.”

“None of us do,” said Dr. Dorian, sighing. “I’m a doctor. Doctors are supposed to understand everything. But I don’t understand everything, and I don’t intend to let it worry me.”

Mrs. Arable fidgeted. “Fern says the animals talk to each other. Dr. Dorian, do you believe animals talk?”

“I never heard one say anything,” he replied. “But that proves nothing. It is quite possible that an animal has spoken civilly to me and that I didn’t catch the remark because I wasn’t paying attention. Children pay better attention than grownups. If Fern says that the animals in Zuckerman’s barn talk, I’m quite ready to believe her. Perhaps if people talked less, animals would talk more. People are incessant talkers–I can give you my word on that.”

What a beautiful way to view the world. What are you having trouble understanding right now? Would talking less allow you to hear what’s really being said?

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What I Found in the Basement (or, how 30 years passed in a moment)

I went down into the basement this week to return something, a wrench or a hammer or some other tool that’s been floating around the upstairs like a loitering teenager. I navigated the rickety basement stairs and walked into the part of the basement we’ve managed to fix up into something that resembles a living room. That’s when I saw it.

It was an old printer paper box, it’s bottom cut out, somehow fastened to the stone wall–a homemade basketball net that Sam and Cade had made. I had heard them earlier that day, shouting and laughing and talking trash to each other. Protests of “foul” and “what a shot” and “nooooo!”

And it was strange, seeing it there, because it put me in a time machine, back to when I was 11 or 12 and playing basketball in my basement bedroom with a tennis ball and a plastic, one-gallon ice cream container, the bottom cut out. It was that cheap ice cream, but I didn’t know any better back then. I loved it.

30 years later, another hoop. Time is a circle.

* * * * *

Our oldest daughter went to Florida for a week with my parents to visit her cousins and her aunts and uncle and great-grandmother. Her leaving sparked an unexpected bout of emotion, as Maile and I navigated what our life will look like in not too many years. These children of ours, who we’ve fed and watered and clothed and nudged along life’s path, are not all that far from jumping out of the nest. Visions of baby birds plummeting through the air, spreading their shaky wings, gathering air under them, and coasting to a hopefully safe landing on a faraway beach come to mind.

With Lucy gone, there was one fewer place to set at the dining room table each night. One less opinion on various things. One less voice up late with Cade and me, after the younger kids are in bed. Even though it was only one less person, it felt like we were missing more than that. It felt like we were missing a vital part, one we couldn’t go on for much longer without.

I thought of my friends who recently lost children, some to accidents, some to cancer, some to suicide. I don’t know how to even imagine making my way along that kind of path. I guess that space would never be filled.

I waited up on the night my parents were driving back with her from Florida. I suppose I could have gone to bed and woke up when they called to let me know they were on our street, but to be honest, I couldn’t sleep. She was on her way home. I couldn’t wait to see her. When they got here, just after midnight, I walked out onto James Street in my socks, out into the freezing cold weather, and I hugged her and helped her carry her things.

We are all here again, under one roof. For now. The days keep passing. In another minute, or another thirty years, one of my kids will walk down into the basement of their own home and find a tentative basketball net stuck to a wall. This is how time passes. This is how one day melts into the next.