A new day

Good Friday! Many morning obligations roll like thunder for my attention, yet here I sit once more. The mood has definitely struck. Today, we drive down the winding road to the South where my parents stillwait for our visit. Sadly, the time dwindles for that lifelong luxury, I'm sure. I must get the boy going, I must prepare some for school, I must clean, I must yield to Christ and schedule and live a life worthy. I must remember the Tigers, playing tonight. I must find some kind of food for lunch. I must straighten my thick, resistant hair.

But, now, a moment in the morning. Coffee. Letters. Time. A remembrance of Love given. A relaxation of shoulders. A look around at sun outlining leaves. Amen to His interaction. Grateful. Opened.

Onward.

Time

I believe it's confirmed. If my husband was not in my life, my environment wold be in shambles around me as I played with the written word. He's gone, and I type, and express ecstatically. I think he would enjoy me this way, yet I tend to behave differently and act more responsibly like him when he's here, and take care of things, which he's especially good at, and I am blessed by. Yet. I think I need to go away on a writer's retreat with a girlfriend. That thought came to me tonight. I would like to enter into the room of concentrated care and return to those pinpainted expressionistic times. Like now. At home. in the quiet and nonexpectant moments. The kitchen is not so clean. Papers cover. Yet, I am looking away to have a reminiscent word retreat.

News of a young suicide

soft rain and sad news. together stay.
you cry in sound for him who cried into his grave.
his parents wail and pour and pound and wish
their birth had not been born. soft rain and
sad news. a boy forlorn and torn.


why him? why us? why let the rain let on?
oh god, we tried. we trusted in you, our son.
soft rain turn hail, striking us down, incensed.
we welcome your smashing pellets
into our dual-death soft-templed despondence.

Respite received

Our Europe trip was amazing. I have multiple photos of Kevin and me snuggling up like we're Siamese twins on the Alps, on the Tower, in front of Verona's arena. I cried due to God's tender care at Chamonix, France. The village at the foot of Mont Blanc spilled over with God's beauty and care and I felt like the BigHeartedSpirit was granting us Respite. Tender respite with beautiful flowers, a silver creek, a fairy-tale village, a glaciered peak to soothe our souls and to thank us for all efforts spent on parenting, marriage, faith-holding. I cried at His generous insistence. It was a designed place for us to rest and beauty-gape and recognize the trails of His majestic kindness.

A staff

This evening I ran past driveways and utility boxes, and a girl with a fiddle and a small boy sitting on a chair with a guitar. What fills the air when you have strong associations with one image? Much. It is wide, the sweep into childhood, into all those who have played instruments before you, generations preceding, generations present-tense, generations proceeding. I feel time flow at times. Tonight, that. And, my son plays his guitar as well; he can flatpick two songs, and feel the strings and make them modulate the air around one's ears and into one's brain and thoughts and memories and untouched connections. And, I am glad and feel happy to have produced yet another player which flows time onward into one musical stream where we may sit beside and dream.