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Believing Spring Will Come Again, Even When It’s Snowing

The sun shone beautifully, and it was only February, so we opened the windows and smelled the almost-spring and the end-of-winter and the first blue sky in a week. I had been in a fog this January. I felt like I had woken up in the middle of a lucid dream, and I couldn’t get my bearings in this new, dreary world. The gray skies were dragging me down. The long dark crept around the house, whispering to me.

Then came this February day, offering sun and fresh air and melting snow.

My older daughter scooped up her purse and a light jacket and proclaimed she was going to walk the city, take photographs, maybe visit Central Market and buy herself a smoothie. She walked outside, onto the sidewalk, and I remembered that feeling, that sense of invincibility, when all the world was there for me.

Later in the day I walked home with our two middle-aged kids. I walked in the front and they came along behind, straggling ducklings, and I heard them talk about friends and people they knew and stories they’d read.

I’ve been feeling the passing of time in sharp ways recently. The years keep turning, page after page. The height marks of our children creep ever upward on the laundry door. I am 42, and Maile and I will be married for 20 years in August. What is a life, besides years that speed by, and months that come and go, and days that last a moment?

Now, the street is dark. Leo stares up at me through his bedroom door, sucking on his finger, his large brown eyes heavy with sleep. I can hear some of the other kids in other parts of the house—Cade reading downstairs, Lucy in the bathroom, Sam sleeping on the floor because he never wants to sleep in his room. Abra pops her head around the door and asks to be woken up earlier than usual. Poppy calls out for “Mama!”

February is here now and even though more snow is coming, I can believe in spring again.

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When He was Still a Long Way Off

I sat on the porch in the afternoon and the air was heavy and the sun glared off the barber shop glass. Only a few people walked by, and those who did were weighed down by August. It’s a sullen month, a reluctant month. Even the cars eased their way through the heat, sweating, sighing. I stood and paced, sat back down, stood up and leaned over the iron rails, peered down the street as far as I could see. I sat back down.

My oldest son was coming home from high school, the kid who first made me a dad. My wife has homeschooled him for the last ten years, and it was his first day in public school since kindergarten.

The words from the parable of the prodigal son came to me, dropping into my mind from some long-ago Sunday School class: “When he was still a long way off, his father saw him…” I have never thought of it before, but I wonder now, if the father was in the habit of watching for the arrival of his youngest son. I wonder if he knew the highest points of his property and if he wandered to those places late in the day, staring far off down the road, looking for the old familiar gait, the way his son walked with his head down, the way he swung his arms. I wonder if the father watched until the sun set, and even after that, when he couldn’t see through the dark but would only stand there, staring.

I know I would. I would wait until morning, and then again, and then again. A father’s love for a son is a fierce, aching thing.

And there is God, always waiting for us, merciful, gracious, hoping for our return. If not today, someday. If not at this time, sometime.

* * * * *

While he was still a long way off, I saw him, his lime green shirt, his wild hair, his long, thin, newly-grown-up body that no longer fits in his twin bed. I hopped down the porch stairs, skipping a step, suddenly light, suddenly forgetting August. I walked fast over the cracked cement, the back alley that cuts our block in two, and there he was, crossing Queen, and when I met him I wrapped him in a bear hug, pushed him away, looked into his face, clapped him on the shoulder.

“Look at you,” I said, staring into his face, because he was different, grown, no longer mine, not entirely. We raise these children as best we can, and at some point we send them into the world a gift, taking, we hope, the best of us with them. There is a letting go, and if we don’t allow it to happen, our fingers will tear them, bruise them in the holding. But when we do let them go, what a marvelous and terrible departure! You won’t see another thing like it.

“Look at you,” I said again, laughing out loud.

He grinned a goofy grin, bashful. “Hey, Dad.”

“I’m proud of you,” I said. “I’m really proud of you.”

Will our children ever realize how long we would wait for them?

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“Daddy, what’s inside gum?” and Other Questions

Another 7:00 p.m. finds me in the same place, the same white chair in Leo and Sam’s third-floor bedroom, the dusky light glowing white, Leo sucking on his finger and reaching his foot up towards the ceiling. He barely napped in the truck today while we were going to pick up Lucy, but even a five minute snooze seems to add hours to his day.

“Daddy, why can’t I chew gum in bed?” Leo asks.

It’s nearly a month since my book The Edge of Over There wandered off into the wide world, trying to find its way. Next week Maile and I are driving 20 hours to Minnesota for a book event with my friend, Steve Wiens. When a book is a month old, well, it’s a strange time, because things can start to feel a little quiet. If you’d like to host a little reading in your house, and you think you can get 15 to 20 people there, let me know. I’d love to come hang out and talk about these books of mine.

“Daddy, what’s inside gum?”

Maile’s away tonight and I got Poppy down and once Leo’s down the rest of the night will be in front of me. The older kids can take care of themselves. I’ll get a little work done, maybe play around with the next novel idea I’m working on. Do a little reading. Try not to get to bed too late because early enough Poppy will be shouting from her bed or Leo will come wandering down, needing to use the bathroom. This is the humdrum passing of a life, these quiet days, these uneventful days, and as I get older, I’ve grown to love them, these days when nothing sensational is happening, these days one month after a book release.

“Daddy, why do I have to go to bed?”

Being a writer is such an emotional yo-yo. One week, I’m on top of the world. The next week, I’m wondering if writing is worth it. Worth what? I don’t even know. But I don’t think about it very long, because then another heady day arrives. It’s a constant back-and-forth: confident, doubtful, easy, hard, encouraging, despair, determination, ambivalence. (It took me five tries to type ambivalence before spell-check gave me the all-clear.)

“Daddy, how much longer until I will wake up?”

It’s a good life. Even with all the questions. Maybe because of all the questions. Leo’s. Mine. All of them. Leaning into the questions, the doubts, the wonderings, the curiosities, for me, makes life interesting.

This is Leo when he was much younger, shortly after I gave him the haircut that landed me in serious hot water with Maile. His hair is long again, and all is right with the world.
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Some Days are Days You’ll Never Forget

The older I get, the more I’m beginning to realize that most days, most moments, fade out of memory. The other day, Maile and I were talking about a vacation we went on eight or nine years ago and for the life of us couldn’t remember the other family we met up with at a museum. We know someone else was there with us; we simply can’t remember who. That’s a strange thing.

But there are also a handful of days, a group of moments, that fade very little as time passes, days that I have run over and over again in my mind so that the track is deep. One of these days is June 21, 2003.

When we woke up that morning, Maile was still pregnant, nine days overdue, and she still didn’t feel like she was going to have the baby. The previous day, we had eaten super-spicy curry from the local village and took a long walk through the English countryside. Still, nothing. We were all pretty discouraged, but later that morning, things started happening. Contractions started coming. They became more and more intense. I kept track of them on a sheet of paper, and as they got stronger, we went out into our small English garden and walked out into the tall grass, along the hedge, under the tree, and back to the house again. The sheep were in the neighboring meadow, bleating their normal morning conversations.

Because this was Maile’s first baby, we didn’t know when exactly to go to the hospital, so once the contractions were suitably difficult, we headed over. Maile’s mom was with us, and on that first drive to the hospital, she sat behind Maile in the car, braiding her hair. Maile practiced her breathing exercises. We got to the hospital, they checked Maile, and smiled kindly. You can go home, they told us. You’re not far enough along. It was said in the British equivalent to the southern statement, “Bless your heart.”

The second trip to the hospital took place three or four hours later and looked much different. There was no braiding of the hair. There were no gentle breathing exercises. Maile’s feet were up on the dash and she was nearly shouting through each contraction. There was panic and fear and courage in her eyes. After pushing for 2 1/2 hours, a little body emerged.

“It’s a boy,” I said, tears in my eyes. Maile was so tired. The midwife slid him up onto her chest, and there he was, our first.

I was 26 years old. I felt very unqualified. I was surprised when, the next day, we were allowed to leave with a new little human, just like that.

Fifteen years have come and gone, and there’s no way to describe their passing. They just come and go. There’s no slowing the years down when you want, and no speeding through the hard times – if anything, they seem to do the opposite. Years and months and weeks and days have a mind of their own, and there’s no use trying to hold onto them.

But we can hold tighter to the people we love, not in a way that suffocates them, but in a way that lets them know we love them, we trust them, and we will be there for them through the passing of all this time, no matter what. I’m learning how to do this with my children. I’ve not yet attained it, but I’m getting there.

For his birthday this year he asked for money to buy books. We must be doing something right.

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Finding My Courage

The hotel room is dark. Maile is asleep in the bed beside me. A short line of white light shines under the door on the other side of the room. The yellow street lights glow between the blinds. The air conditioner hums, and the room smells the way hotel rooms normally do: muffled, reused, artificially clean.

Maile and I spent the evening of Father’s Day at a restaurant, catching up on the things we rarely find time to talk about when our six children are around. We laughed. We gave each other parenting pep talks. We visited a bookstore and meandered through the aisles, picking up books, considering them, putting them down. Look at this one, we said. Read the back of this. Books have always been our love language. I bought two because buying books is my loveliest addiction.

We came back to the hotel, watched a movie, watched another. We held hands. She fell asleep. Now it’s just me awake, the day nearly done.

* * * * *

It’s been almost a month since I’ve been around these blogging parts. I’ve had to put the blog on the back burner, now that I’m finishing a manuscript, promoting The Edge of Over There, getting ready to spread the word about Once We Were Strangers. (You can preorder both of those by the way, and if you do I’ll love you forever.) But I miss blogging. I miss the casual nature of this place, the day-to-day sharing. I miss hearing from you.

Writing novels is what I have always wanted to do, and now I’m doing it, and it’s nothing like what I thought it would be. Maybe I’ll talk about that sometime, but not tonight. I’m too tired. Tonight, I want to tell you about a phone call we got while we were coming back to the hotel.

Maile talked to her mom and she told us Leo was learning to swim. Our brown-eyed, curly-haired boy had taken off his floaties and learned to stay above water on his own. It wasn’t that long ago he was scared of it all, sitting at the edge of the pool and kicking his feet. But now he’s jumping in, doggy-paddling his little heart out, lifting his chin and grinning and spitting out water. Clinging to the side, yes, but ready and willing to head back out.

A few weeks ago, we were at the Gulf of Mexico, and for the first few hours, he ran from the waves. He scampered along the shore, running in long arcs as the waves stretched up towards dry sand. He’d follow them back down, then turn and dart for safety when the next wave came.

But over the next few days, he found his courage, standing in the water as the undertow pulled the sand over his feet. He started wading in a little further, jumping up over the foam. By the end, he was sitting in the gulf, letting the waves crash into him.

Leo the lion had found his way, and the thing that once terrified him became the source of his enjoyment.

* * * * *

I confess: I am sometimes terrified of the vulnerability of publishing books. I am afraid the waves of writing will wash me away, carry me under. I am scared of what people will think, what I might think years from now when I read back on my first, early efforts. I wonder if I can keep doing this for years and years, even if I never have a bestseller, even if I go on being me and only me. As if being me-and-only-me is something to avoid, or overcome.

But I watch Leo, and he helps me find my courage. If a 3-year-old boy can face down the entire Gulf of Mexico and smile as the waves crash over him, I can write my best book and laugh at the waves that come, whatever they might bring.

So can you.

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Watching My Daughter and Her Grandfather and the 70 Years Between Them

She walks ahead of him. Now that he has agreed to follow her outside, she seems to have forgotten he is even there. She is only two, after all, and her sights moved rather quickly from getting someone to open the back door for her, to getting someone to go out with her, to getting someone to walk into the neighbor’s yard with her, and now she’s eyeing up the slide, the grass scratchy on her feet, the May sun hot, the May air humid.

Her grandfather walks quietly behind, hands at his side, staring at the grass and then at the fruit trees he planted and then at his granddaughter climbing the slide.

“You can do it, Poppy,” he says in a sing-song voice.

“Yep,” she says, because that is her answer to almost everything these days. Yep. She doesn’t have time for much else. She’s always on her way to the next thing.

So he stands there and watches her climb, this grandfather of hers. He is 70 years older than her. Think about that for a moment. 70 years. Seven decades. Seven long and large chunks of ten years each. He lived his own childhood, his own growing up years, lived with and left his own siblings, his own house. He came of age, got a job, married, had kids. Had a career. Lived through the death of friends and family members. Had his own tragedies, personal and public. Lost his own grandfather, his own father and mother. And now there he is, 72 years old, standing in the back yard of his North Carolina house, watching his granddaughter climb a slide. She loses her grip and slides down part of the way. Climbs back up.

She has all of those things ahead of her, the growing up and the leaving and the figuring things out, the birth and death of friends and family, the triumphs, the times that will make her weep with joy or sadness. But right now she is thinking only of the slide she is trying to climb, and the sky above her, and the heat that holds her. She is the center of the universe.

I watch them through the glass door, thinking of my own grandfathers, both of whom died before I was of the age when I could appreciate them fully. Both of them had lived lifetimes, and our paths crossed for such a short time, and I stare out the glass thinking of how our paths are always crossing, lifetimes between us. The old getting older, the young never catching up but old before they know it, looking down at brand new babies and wondering where all the time has gone.

I wonder that now myself. Often. Where has all the time gone?

“You can do it, Poppy,” he says again, and she turns at the top, and she smiles, and she lets go.