for the beauty of the park
to not-so-wild geese
congregating in the grass
the walkers and joggers intent
on not making eye contact
flanked by smiling dogs
the cool summer air
of this mile-high morning
makes my grateful hymn
of praise for sidewalks
that know my name
for eyes that smile back and
the love which from our birth
remembers we are all
walking home
By the time I got to worship yesterday morning, I had already run a couple of errands, made sure the DVR was recording the World Cup match, made plans to spend part of the afternoon at the Food Truck Fiesta at the Durham Farmers’ Market Pavilion, and sketched out a bit of a plan for what the week ahead might look like. We begin a strange sort of familial migration this week as we prepare to make room for Ginger’s parents to move in with us. Her father’s Alzheimer’s is digressing (I find it hard to say, “progressing”) to the point where her mother cannot care for him alone, so we are all going to do this together. “This” involves selling their house in Birmingham and our current house here in Durham and buying another house with the room we need.
I sat down in a pew by myself, surrounded by all that was swirling around me, and was caught, once again, by the serendipitous intersection of lectionary and life as I heard one sentence from Luke 9 in particular: “"Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." The words jumped out of context, out of nowhere, and out at me, offering a moment of challenge and comfort.
If I think of my life in themes, I can identify one quickly: I am a moving target. I have moved most all of my life. What stability I have known has come only since Ginger and I married in 1990, and even then we have lived in five houses (soon to be six) in twenty years. I am halfway through my fifty-fourth year and moving into residence number forty-something: I know from moving, trust me. I can look back at my life and see how I learned to be resilient and even extroverted to survive year after year of new addresses and acquaintances, how I became someone whose allegiance is somewhat scattered geographically and someone who can find a way to land most anywhere. And I also see how I have grown with stunted roots that still struggle to sink deep wherever I am.
When Jesus said those words, he had “set his face towards Jerusalem,” as the King James says, becoming increasingly aware of the darkening horizon that heralded his death. He could see how the dominoes were beginning to fall and he was done with small talk and negotiations. It was time, period.
Our first domino falls this week as we move out of our home for the last two years in our Old West Durham neighborhood that we have come to love and schlep all our stuff two miles to Old North Durham and what will become our new home. In a week or so, we will leave this place for someone else to inhabit and then move Ginger’s folks at the end of the month. The stakes are not as high as they were for Jesus and they are life-altering at the same time. As I heard the verses, I began to write furiously in the little notebook I keep with me. I will quote directly:
I am moving two miles.
I’m putting down deeper roots.
I’m learning what family means in new ways –
and I’m moving.
For the first time in my life, moving is a way to rootedness because I’m moving to make room for my family. I am moving – we are moving to make a home for those we love, those who are leaving their home of forty-five years and the city they have lived in their entire lives because of this insidious disease that is erasing my father-in-law one swipe at a time. In all my moves, this is the first time I have moved to make room, to make a place for someone. We have know idea what will happen next, but we do know it will happen to us together. As much as I detest the packing and unpacking, I am doing a different thing this time though the motions are much the same.
As Ginger unpacked the text in her sermon, she made a statement that caught me off guard. “We must remember,” she said, “that grieving is somewhat of a luxury.” I’m sure my head turned like our Schnauzers when they hear an unusual sound. I had never heard that sentence before, yet it rang with resonance in both my head and heart. She was speaking the kind of deep truth rooted in the wisdom of Ecclesiastes: there is a time for grieving and a time for moving, for doing the task at hand. She went on to say grieving was also a necessity and I heard yet another of the creative tensions of faith within which we are called to live: the necessity and the luxury of grief. We see it as we come to the Communion Table together where we both remember Christ’s death and we feed one another. The grief is as real as the needs around us; we must attend to both.
One of the joys I am finding in these days is the almost continuous reminder that we are not alone in our sojourning. Friends, church members, those we have hired to help us do different things, and even people we don’t know have been gracious and helpful in ways that remind me this is not a solo performance. Our new home feels destined to be a place full of hope and voices simply based on all the folks who are helping us get there. I stand inside and the house seems to beg for people to be eating and talking around the table, or singing on the porch, chasing fireflies in the backyard as often as we can arrange it. We are moving to make room. What I am beginning to see is the call is to make room for more than just our family.
The whole scene arrived in the middle of a week when the story of the Prodigal Son is the lectionary passage, about as gift wrapped as a sermon illustration could be. Nomar Garciaparra, longtime and well-loved shortstop for the Boston Red Sox who was traded away, came home day before last, to retire. Though the terms under which he left in the summer of 1974 were not good at all, and it was the October that followed – and perhaps, in part, because of the trade – that the Red Sox won the World Series for the first time in eighty-six years.
He has traveled to California and Chicago and back to California, trying to find his place. I must also say, for the record, that the Sox haven’t had a steady shortstop since. Every time Nomar came back to Boston, regardless of the colors he was wearing, the Fenway Faithful gave him a long standing ovation. We loved Nomar, even from afar. Besides, he was the only player we ever had whose name rhymed with homer, as in, “Come in Nomar, hit a homer.” (It has to be done in a heavy Boston accent – “Come on, Nomah, hit a homah” – and it rhymes the same way country singers think rain rhymes with string.)
Nomar knew it was time to retire and he also wished he could retire in his Red Sox uniform. Spring training is in full swing, and he is not playing for anyone. So the Sox offered him a contract: a one day, minor league contract that allowed him to become a part of the organization once again, and then he retired, at home. He’s happy and all those folks (like Ginger) who still have their Garciaparra t-shirts can wear them again. Nomar belongs to us. Period.
"The dream to play baseball in the big leagues started here," he said at his news conference held at City of Palms Park before the Red Sox played a spring training game. "I really wanted to have that be the last uniform I ever put on.”
As I was walking home tonight from the restaurant, I found myself humming a soundtrack to my thoughts about Nomar’s last homestand:
and I see your true colors shining through I see your true colors and that’s why I love you so don’t be afraid to let them show you true colors true colors are beautiful like the rainbow
In the King James version of the story in Luke, it says the prodigal son “came to himself” as he was feeding the pigs and realized it was time to go home for good. He realized he was prodigal, as in wastefully extravagant, and he had used himself all up, along with his possessions. The dictionary offers a second definition for prodigal: “giving in abundance; lavish or profuse.” We might also use the same adjective for the father, who welcomed his son home with extravagant forgiveness and a barbeque to boot. They shared a propensity for extravagance; the father, however, knew how to spend himself in love. Such were his true colors.
Yes, I’m a Sox fan and I know I might be stretching the story a bit here, still I’m willing to stretch because one of ours that got lost has come home. He was humble enough to ask and the Red Sox ownership were generous enough to find a way to make it work. What it means for Red Sox Nation is, when we tell our stories (and we do tell stories), we can say he is one of us. Whatever happened between 2004 and now is what happened, but the real story is he came home. And my guess is it was no different at the Prodigal Household in the parable. As they bit into the brisket, they told stories, too, of how the boy had run away, and how the father had pined at the front door day after day. “And then you came home,” someone said. And they laughed and cried and told the story again, talking, I’m sure, with their mouths full.
We are at our best with our arms wide open. It’s true for both Bible and baseball.
As we prepare to observe Martin Luther King, Jr. Day on Monday, many of us will also take time to make it a part of our worship services as well. I thought I might offer a soundtrack for the weekend, starting with "When the Ship Comes In" by Bob Dylan, which he sang at the March on Washington where King delivered "I Have a Dream."
The second song is a U2 standard: Pride(In the Name of Love).
Patty Griffin's tribute song is called "Up to the Mountain."
James Taylor calls us to remember there are ties between us all in "Shed a Little Light."
Here's Bruce Springsteen's offering of "Eyes on the Prize."
I close with Mavis Staples singing "99 & 1/2."
May all the words we hear fall on fresh ears and open hearts.
I was reading Donald Miller’s blog – Part 2 of a great duo of posts on “Living a Memorable Life,” this one on making memorable scenes – and I was particularly struck by his discussion of the power of a detail: change a the power of a scene by changing the setting. Sometimes a seemingly small detail can alter the whole experience.
Ginger and I have owned three homes, and in each one the kitchen has played a central role. Well, let me rephrase that. In our two homes in Massachusetts, the kitchen was the central room to our story in many ways. Because of my work schedule in Durham, dinnertime has not been what we are accustomed to. Actually, for the most part, dinnertime has not been, and we both miss it severely and are determined it will not always be so. We like each other too much to not share our meals, and we like the home it creates and the people that gather around our table. But, because of life as it is right now, the kitchen in our home has not found its place, if you will, in our story. And then Ginger and her mother changed one detail: they gave me an under the cabinet CD player/radio for the room. Both our kitchens before had music, and I have missed it.
The unit was sold out over Christmas and was delivered today. Needless to say, I installed it today and then went scrounging through my CDs for some music to cook and eat by, since Duke has not resumed classes and I had the night off. I got to cook dinner for the two of us – and to sing along as I did. There’s hope for this little kitchen all because of one detail: we are going to create some memorable scenes here as well, I can feel it.
Tonight, I offer a music sampler of some of the soundtrack of our evening, hoping they help to tune your heart towards memory making.
First, Jackson Browne singing “These Days.”
Mary Chapin-Carpenter: “Why Walk When You Can Fly”
I love this guy’s voice: Ray Montagne’s “Trouble”
A dip back into the Eighties: Lone Justice singing “Shelter”
I’ll let Jackson close things out: “For a Dancer”
On this day of the Feast of Epiphany, I’ll close with a quote from Twelfth Night (which was last night): “If music be the food of love, play on.”
For the first time in a couple of years, I didn't have to work the day before Thanksgiving, which meant I got to return to one of my favorite personal traditions: Pie-a-palooza. For reasons I cannot completely explain, this particular holiday compels me to bake pies. Some are for our own enjoyment, and we share them as well. I managed to knock out nine of them today: two sweet potato, two pumpkin, two pecan, two brown sugar buttermilk, and one blueberry (Ginger's favorite). As I worked, I couldn't help but hum one of my favorite Patty Griffin songs, "Making Pies," about a woman who worked at the Tabletop Pie Company in Worcester, Massachusetts. May you have a joyful and thankful day.
A couple of weeks ago, I took a Friday morning to do an exercise from Julia Cameron’s The Right to Write, which was to construct a time line of my life. I left the house thinking I would be gone a couple of hours. Almost three hours later, I came home with one section done: from my birth to age five. I wrote about things I remembered and things that had been told to me so often I feel as though I remember them, looking back to my birth in Corpus Christi, Texas to moving to Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia to coming to Fort Worth, Texas for our first furlough from the mission field, using the vocabulary of those days.
As I began to write what specifics I could remember, my mind began to turn them into larger themes, giving me eyes to see the traces of melody in my early childhood that have continue to inform much of the soundtrack of my life. One of those themes is a sense of rootlessness. We were on a ship to Africa when I turned one year old, so Corpus was nothing more than a birthplace and I never went back there with any intentionality, either as a child or as an adult. When we returned to Africa, we didn’t go back to Bulawayo, but moved north to Lusaka, Northern Rhodesia because my parents saw greater opportunity there. I’ve never gone back to Bulawayo either. Fort Worth has some long standing connections for me, but those grew later rather than earlier in my life. I was married and faraway from both Africa and Texas before a place (Boston) ever became home. I’ve written before of Arnaldo, the Cuban dishwasher who works with me at the Duke restaurant. He is a wonderful and kind man who came to this country as a part of the Mirabel boat lift in 1980, after having fought in the Cuban army in Angola. Last week he asked if I could find someone to work for him on Tuesday night because he was graduating from his recovery program at Urban Ministries of Durham. (I feel comfortable sharing this with you because his picture was on the front page of the paper.) Though he has not been in Cuba for almost thirty years, Cuba is home to Arnaldo. I love to hear him talk about the country, the people, the food, and the music. On any given night, he will regale us with a Cuban song without much cajoling at all. And so, as a graduation present, I gave him a copy of Ry Cooder’s production masterpiece, The Buena Vista Social Club.
Last night, he came into work with his graduation certificate high above his head, and we cheered for him. “Arnaldo,” I said, “I have something for you,” and I gave him the CD, which he immediately unwrapped and put into the old boom box in the corner of the kitchen. He began singing along from Note One.
“I knew these guys,” he said. “I knew these guys.” And he, Abel (our Guatemalan cook), and I danced around the kitchen, except, in my case, danced is a euphemism.
“Thank you, Milton,” he said. “It’s the best thing you could have done for me.”
In the garden of life, I’m a potted plant, able to moved about as the need arises. I thrive fairly well, though I appear to need increasingly larger pots as I mature. Arnaldo is an old oak, even though he is far from the land where his heart took root. He has the dirt in his DNA. They may have shipped him off because he wouldn’t stay in the army, but he is Cuban to the core.
I have very little idea of how that feels, yet I did learn yesterday that even those of us who don’t know much about home can help someone else find their way there, which turns out to be an incredible gift for everyone involved.
I wish there were some way to cut a small slit in the wall and let the air, trapped since first construction, spill into the room and tell its stories.
I wonder who walked these floors in those first days, when the pin oak at the curb was smaller than the house and the street not so shaded.
I welcome those ghosts, the spirits that have seeped into the floors and sit next to us at dinner, whose luminance lights our house in the dark.
I remember I am only here as one who has called this house a home, worn the finish off the floors, and left the lights on in the kitchen.
I've spent two days this week with the folks from Bountiful Backyards working on turning our front yard, which is shaded by a hundred year old pin oak, from the scraped landscape it was
into something both beautiful and useful. They brought in edible, medicinal, sustainable, and native plants to give our yard a new look and new life.
Next week, the finish touch will be to inoculate the wood chips around the tree with oyster and golden mushroom spores to create a mushroom bed.
I'm tired of hauling wood chips and I'm very excited about what we have set in motion.
can it be on these nights when we are tucked in our home curled up on the couch with doughnuts of dogs at our feet, the kitchen still holding the aroma of the garlic I roasted this afternoon the way we are holding life close, with only a couple of lights burning
even the clouds have closed us in still – beyond them the stars shine small lights, from my view, lights like ours, crossing the sky constellations of community each one a household shining in the darkness; such is the stuff of which universes are made
when we go to bed each night we never turn off all the lights two lamps stay burning in the kitchen, both made from old fixtures; can it be some sailor on a sea we have yet to name finds his way because our light is shining, our kitchen light, our star?
When I walk into work everyday, I do so to the soundtrack of Spanish radio. And part of that soundtrack, which appears to be in heavy rotation, is this percussive-techno-yodeling thing that is infectious in that certain way only a percussive-techno-yodeling thing can be. Long after evening service has started and we’ve turned off the radio, I can hear Abel start laughing when I realize I’m still singing the damn song.
“What is that song?” I asked him today.
“I don’t know,” he answered. “Some Mexican thing.”
I’m haunted by a percussive-techno-Mexican yodeling-thing. And I’m haunted by two things I read by Stanley Hauerwas yesterday as he reflected on the L’Arche community.
I believe L’Arche is the place where God has made it possible for Christians to be hope in a world where there is no solution. (55)
and
I have said that Christians are called to nonviolence not because we believe nonviolence is a strategy to rid the world of war – though we certainly want to rid the world of war. Rather, as faithful followers of Christ in a world at war, we cannot imagine being anything other than nonviolent. Of course we want to make war less likely. But nonviolence is a sign of hope that there is an alternative to war. And that alternative is called church. (55)
I love to sing harmony. As a result, I love gospel music. On Sundays after church, when I lived in Houston, my brother and I would race home from church so we could watch Gospel Jubillee. Those of you who follow this blog know how easily I can get caught up chasing Gaither Family Gathering video clips on YouTube. And it’s why I love bluegrass music: gospel music that needs a guitar.
So many of those old songs talk about heaven and they talk about how we belong there more than here.
this world is not my home I’m just a passing through my treasure’s all laid up somewhere beyond the blue the angels beckon me from heaven’s open door and I can’t feel at home in this world anymore
I know these old songs grew out of times of hardship. And, as much as I love the harmonies, I have to wonder, in a world where there is no solution, why escape felt like the most hopeful choice. (I’ve worked on that last sentence for a good while now, trying not to sound harsh. I don’t feel harsh, I just don’t know another way to say it.) Whatever eternity looks like, I trust being in the unfiltered presence of God will be worth the trip and – not but – this world is my home and I think God expects more of me than to wish I were somewhere else, even if I sound good wishing it.
Wishing and hoping aren’t the same thing.
A world with no solution is a seedbed for violence. The reason I know that to be true is evidenced every time I have to call a customer service number and fight my way through all the “convenient” computer options until I finally get an actual human being on the phone who can’t actually help me. Violence is an easy choice for me in those situations because the voice on the other end is dismembered from any semblance of humanity and they can’t see me and I feel powerless so striking back, futile as it may be, is my all too familiar move.
Humaninzing the enemy is a lousy military strategy.
For all the resonance I found with Hauerwas’ statements, I shook my head and smiled when I read the last two sentences of the paragraph:
But nonviolence is a sign of hope that there is an alternative to war. And that alternative is called church.
“Stanley,” I thought, “you are one hell of a straight man. Don’t you realize the punch line (violent pun intended) you’re setting up?”
Yesterday at church I got to sing harmony with my friend, Donna May. Our song choice was also one written in difficult times, and one we felt had something to offer to our worship on the first Sunday in Lent and one where we were sharing Communion together.
let us pause in life’s pleasure and count its many tears as we all sup sorrow with the poor there’s a song that will linger forever in our ears oh, hard times come again no more
it’s a song the cry of the weary hard times hard times come again no more many days you have lingered around our cabin door oh, hard times come again no more
On this Sunday, we celebrated Communion by intinction, meaning folks came forward, took a piece of the bread, dipped it in the cup, and then ate both elements together. The practice took hold in American churches during the tuberculosis scare at the beginning of the last century. Churches didn’t want their members to be frightened to take Communion, so they found a way to allay their fears.
I couldn’t help but think , as I watched our little band of Pilgrims (that’s what we call ourselves at Pilgrim United Church of Christ) lined up for our meal together, how much we looked like one of those soup lines from the Depression Era photographs of people waiting for bread. In our sacred soup line stood some racked with grief so fresh they have a hard time sitting in worship, some with chronic pain, some with physical ailments, and a host of others whose injuries and heartache was not quite as apparent. And we stood in line with all the walking wounded of the faith who have come before us, and all those who will follow us, not because the Bread and the Cup offered a solution to the things we carry with us, but because we are not alone.
We are not alone. We belong here. We are in this together.
Humanizing one another is how peace is waged.
Peace, Milton
P. S. -- I couldn’t resist this find: Mavis Staples singing “Hard Times.”
I had a little time this morning before I left for church and I began reading the new issue of Harpers that arrived over the weekend. What caught my eye was a full page ad of new books from Harvard University Press, and, in particular, one title: Loneliness as a Way of Life by Thomas Dumm. The resonance of the title sent me looking for more about both the book and author, and I found this:
“What does it mean to be lonely?” Thomas Dumm asks. His inquiry, documented in this book, takes us beyond social circumstances and into the deeper forces that shape our very existence as modern individuals. The modern individual, Dumm suggests, is fundamentally a lonely self. Through reflections on philosophy, political theory, literature, and tragic drama, he proceeds to illuminate a hidden dimension of the human condition. His book shows how loneliness shapes the contemporary division between public and private, our inability to live with each other honestly and in comity, the estranged forms that our intimate relationships assume, and the weakness of our common bonds.
A reading of the relationship between Cordelia and her father in Shakespeare’s King Lear points to the most basic dynamic of modern loneliness—how it is a response to the problem of the “missing mother.” Dumm goes on to explore the most important dimensions of lonely experience—Being, Having, Loving, and Grieving. As the book unfolds, he juxtaposes new interpretations of iconic cultural texts—Moby-Dick, Death of a Salesman, the film Paris, Texas, Emerson’s “Experience,” to name a few—with his own experiences of loneliness, as a son, as a father, and as a grieving husband and widower.
Written with deceptive simplicity, Loneliness as a Way of Life is something rare—an intellectual study that is passionately personal. It challenges us, not to overcome our loneliness, but to learn how to re-inhabit it in a better way. To fail to do so, this book reveals, will only intensify the power that it holds over us.
But I need to back up for a minute. The journey my thoughts took today began yesterday when Choralgirl mentioned the movie Home for the Holidays in her post, which is one of our must-see-again movies during the holidays. Which is to say, I’ve been thinking about home. Seeing the book title this morning just pushed me farther down the road.
I got to church a little early, so I went into our newly renovated church library and, after a little browsing, picked up Frederick Buechner’s The Longing for Home (big surprise), a book I read many years ago but didn’t retain. Something about the days growing colder pulls me to Buechner. The mention of King Lear in the description of Dumm’s book was also a connector. The first Buechner book I ever read was Telling the Truth: The Gospel, as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale, in which he referenced one particular line from Lear:
The weight of these sad times we must obey, Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
Those words have never let go of me. At the risk of being overly quoteful, I want to pass along the words that grabbed me before I went into worship this morning.
In a novel called Treasure Hunt, which I wrote some years ago, there is a scene of homecoming. The narrator, a young man named Antonio Parr, has been away for some weeks and on his return finds that his small son and some other children have made a sign for him that reads WELCOME HONE with the last little leg of the m in home missing so that it turns it into a n. “It seemed oddly fitting,” Antonio Parr says when he first sees it. “It was good to get home, but it was home with something missing or out of whack about it. It wasn’t much, to be sure, just some minor stroke or serif, but even a minor stroke can make a major difference.” And then a little while later he remembers it a second time and goes on to add, “WELCOME HONE, the sign said, and I can’t help thinking again of Gideon and Barak, of Samson and David and all the rest of the crowd . . . who, because some small but crucial thing was missing, kept looking for it come hell or high water wherever they went till their eyes were dim and their arches fallen . . .In the long run I suppose it would be to think of everybody if you knew enough about them to think straight.” (17)
Buechner goes on to say Parr was referencing Hebrews 11:13, 14:
These all died in faith, not having received what was promised, but having seen it and greeted it from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth, for people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.
Strangers and exiles: those acquainted with loneliness; those who are always headed for, looking for, longing for home.
November, for me, is the clubhouse turn towards home. Thanksgiving means I go on a pie-baking binge and hand them out to the neighbors, wherever our neighborhood has been, and that we do our best to fill our table with those who need to be at home for the holidays. We don’t have our final count for this year, but the table is filling up. Thanksgiving is also the precursor for Advent, the season of longing that takes us home for the holidays in a more permanent sense. Though I’ve still got a couple of weeks, something about the words that found me let me know I’m heading home a little earlier than usual.
Bewteen Buechner and the boys holding up the misspelled sign, I found myself humming a homecoming song I haven’t thought about in awhile, but gives soundtrack to my feelings today.
please celebrate me home give me a number please celebrate me home play me one more song I can always remember and I can recall whenever I find myself too all alone I can sing me home
From Dumm to Buechner to Loggins and all of us in between, home is the place we long for and look for and occasionally stumble into. The address is often elusive, but we know it by the smells or the tastes or the melodies or the faces looking back at us when we walk in. And, if the song were playing, everyone from Samson and David to King Lear and Cordelia to Antoine Parr might sing:
well, I’m finally here but I’m bound to roam come on, celebrate me home
The opening scene of the movie, Big, (as I remember it, twenty years later) was of Josh and his friend, Billy, walking together down a tree-lined street singing,
The space goes down, down baby, down, down the roller coaster. Sweet, sweet baby, sweet, sweet, don't let me go. Shimmy, shimmy, cocoa pop. Shimmy, shimmy, rock. Shimmy, shimmy, cocoa pop. Shimmy, shimmy, rock. I met a girlfriend - a triscuit. She said, a triscuit - a biscuit. Ice cream, soda pop, vanilla on the top. Ooh, Shelly's out, walking down the street, ten times a week. I read it. I said it. I stole my momma's credit. I'm cool. I'm hot. Sock me in the stomach three more times.
OK, I didn’t remember their song; I found it here. But I do remember the street, lined with giant trees in their full autumn regalia, looking about as American as it gets. For a long time I wondered where those streets were, then I moved to Boston and found those streets, but I never got to live on one of them.
Until now.
Here is what our street looked like this morning when I turned to the left
and to the right.
Yup. I’m cool. I’m hot. I'm fortunate. Sock me in the stomach three more times.
Moving into our new home here on Iredell has been different than moves to Charlestown and Marshfield for any number of reasons, but one most significantly: we didn’t have to redo the house from top to bottom to get in it. The folks we bought it from did that for us. We have done some minor things (that aren’t so minor), namely building a closet, and have repainted a couple of things, but the place is pretty good as it is. Yesterday, however, I embarked on a small construction project to try and make the back yard more accessible to Ella without our having to leave the back door standing open. At the suggestion of Mark Cool, the musician who built our closet (how often do you get to use that phrase?), I installed a screen door that has a puppy door built into it, but the door was too high for the stairs and would have required Ella to become an Olympic gymnast to get in and out of the house. Therefore, I built a small deck yesterday, or, as I like to call it, Ella’s Landing.
It was my first attempt at such a structure. I got a good bit of help from the plans and advice I found online, some advice from the guy at Lowe’s when I was picking up materials, a little pick-me-up from the cold Harpoon IPA mid-afternooon, and – finally, this morning – the satisfaction of seeing our little dog go up and down the stairs. Sometimes, life is brightened by the smallest things.
Today is a significant day in the Brasher-Cunningham household, since it's the day we invented the Brasher- Cunningham household eighteen years ago (more about that later).
The importance of the day is enhanced because Dunkin' Donuts opened its doors this morning at 5 a.m. -- and we were the very first customers. I've got the cup to prove it.
We moved into the house today for real. For the first time in eight months, we don't have a Pod in our driveway. The new place is stacked full of boxes and furniture several wonderful folks helped us carry in. In a few minutes, I'm driving up to Greensboro to pick up one of my nephews who called and said he wanted to come hang out for a couple of days during his spring break. And, at the center of local news, the Duke and UNC men's basketball teams are playing tonight. (The women play tomorrow for the ACC championship.)
I'm happy. I'm hopeful. I'm exhausted. More tomorrow.
I’ve only crossed the threshold a half dozen times, sat on a folding chair in the dining room eating Krispy Kreme doughnuts once and yet it feels more like home already than this house we’ve occupied since we came to town last year.
Occupied is the right word, like an invading army occupies another country, or a passenger occupies an airplane restroom. We’ve been interlopers here, never once believing these walls were strong enough to hold our stories.
I can stand in the empty rooms of our new home and tell already it is more than a one-story house. I can hear the conversation of friends around our dining table, see the vegetables coming up in the back yard, hear Ginger coming in the front door
as Ella slides across the dark hardwood floors to greet her. And on a spring afternoon, several springs from now, I can see us sitting on the front porch, drinking sweet tea and Guinness respectively, as if it had always been that way.
