Entertainment Purposes Only

Because I am tired tonight – soooooo tired – I have decided not to think. Therefore, the following is for entertainment purposes only. Please note this post is in no way intended to reflect negatively on my brothers’ current levels of maturity.

*Titter!*

No, really – it’s not.

This is what happens when you give a 10-year-old girl a hot pink camera. You get classic sibling photos like this one:

Brother on the left:

I hate this.

This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. 

Approach any closer with that comb, Mom, and I will wither you where you stand with my searing glare.

I hate these stupid overalls. 

Brother on the right:

Yeah, that’s right – I’m awesome.

My grandpa sweater is awesome.

I look like a J. Crew model in this sweater.

My poofy bloomer pants are also awesome – so don’t mess with me.

I love these two little brothers of mine.

They’re not so little any more; in fact, they’re both over 6 feet tall. They’ve matured in many essential ways since this picture. For example, they can now brush their teeth without getting toothpaste on the ceiling. I think.

So, clearly, they’ve changed. But in many ways, they’re still the same to me.

Still cute, still hilarious.

And their clothing choices are still questionable.

Collin, if you’re reading this: that jacket you left in the dryer over Christmas, the one that makes you look like a giant yellow and black checkerboard?

It

Will.

Be.

Destroyed.

The End.

33 Years

33 years ago, the couple in the above photo got married.

Call me biased – they are my parents – but I think they are the cutest couple in the world. Seriously.

Growing up, I saw my parents as…well, a mom and dad whose history began with the birth of their first child – me. But their history as a couple started 7 years before me. What did they do during that golden time before my fragrant diapers punctuated every hour of the day? How did they fall in love?

First, of course, they met. At a church pizza party function. And, as in all good romantic comedies, it was a revelatory moment in which their eyes locked; the world stopped as the heat from their high-voltage attraction melted cheese globs off their pizza slices…

Woops. I forgot I’m not writing a romantic comedy.

When they first met, she didn’t really think anything because he was four years older, and she was with someone else. Their first date may have been when he took her to play racquetball (she had never played before!). Or it may have been when he and his friend passed her on the street and invited her along to donate blood, so she went (“and never again!”). Or it may have been their first fancy dinner in a renovated train car (“it was nice”).

Wait – it was “nice”? I’ve been conditioned to expect the swath of cotton candy fluff that Hollywood offers:

They had only known each other for 3 days when he proposed to her in the middle of a twinkle-lighted forest with a string quartet serenading from the branches…

No. They dated for a while, then he simply asked her, and she said yes.

If my parents’ story was a fireworks-sprinkled Hollywood creation, it would probably have ended long ago. But it’s not, and it didn’t.

As kids my brothers and I used to cry on the rare occasions we heard them fight. We’d ask them if they still loved each other, if they were going to stay together. We weren’t too little to imagine the pain of divorce that many of our friends were experiencing. In response, my dad would assure us as strongly as he could that he and mom would never, never, never, never, never stop loving each other, no matter what.

I don’t know the moment when my mom knew she loved my dad, or what attracted my dad to my mom, or what their favorite thing to do together was, or what my dad was thinking when he went to pick out the ring; but one thing I definitely know – they meant it when they said they loved each other and when they said they loved us. That commitment is the pith of true love, the spine of the story.

Thanks, Mom and Dad, for being the best parents I could have asked for. I wish you many more happy years of real romance: eating lunch together at the mall, taking evening walks, watching your shows, and arguing over things like the right way to cook eggs.

I love you!

Homesick…

 

You still fit me like skin, your memory so familiar I never feel you coming softly to my side. Why did I have to love you so much? You’re only a place…

I knew, I suppose, that I wouldn’t – couldn’t – have you forever, and I kept telling myself you were just a house and a yard and some trees…

I know I’ll move on and be all right. Don’t be so sentimental. Be realistic.

“Moving on,” the real thing to do. But other voices have taken my hand tonight, leading me back,whispering of how your walls watched my tears with eyeless sympathy, until they were painted blue to hide the pain. How laughter hung first like new artwork, then settled comfortably in the corners like dust.

How you were a place that knew me, where I could return to find pieces of my past still tumbling around in the drawers. And I could always take myself out again, to look and remember…

I stamped my hand print and wrote my name with a stick in the cement, when you were new.  This place is mine.

What happens now that you sit empty, and the trees we planted grow with no one to care about how big they’ve become over the years? What happens now that the willows have covered with leafy forgetfulness my secret hiding places and only in my mind can I still trace the line of purple-gray mountains at sunset, hear my family downstairs in the kitchen, feel the wash of cool air skimmed from the night river?

What happens now that I can’t go back to you?

You are only a place, but one where I knew who I was. Even in the darkness there was light in the windows, in my window. And you stayed the same even when you changed,  while you were mine…

Teach Me Your Way

From my journal:

Sunday August 8, 1999

Daddy usually prays before the service with some members of the congregation in the Mother’s Chapel. This morning, Mom asked him if anyone prayed with him anymore, and he said no. As we practiced for the singing, I noticed him go into the chapel alone. I couldn’t resist peeking in, and what I saw I truly pray never to forget. Dad was sitting by himself in a middle pew by the window, his head bowed over his folded hands. It was dark in the room, and only the filtered white light from the window illuminated his black curly hair and his hands. Sitting there, he looked just like a big teddy bear, humble before God. The song we were singing as I witnessed this was “Teach Me Your Way, O Lord”:

“Shine through the cloud and rain

Through sorrow, toil and pain

Please make my pathway plain

Teach me your way…

Until the race is won

Until the journey’s done

Until the crown is won

Teach me your way….”

Dad, for being a man of prayer, persevering through many storms, speaking the truth unafraid, for seeking humility instead of popularity and loving us unconditionally, for being the best I could ask for in a father and teaching me His way, I love you!

Happy Father’s Day!

Love, Your Dot

“Teach me your way, O Lord,  and I will walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name.” Psalm 86:11