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.

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.

To be smooching on the Eiffel Tower or to not be

It begins in the throat:sandpaper. Then the shoulders try to shrug but the sinews feel butter-coated, sloshed. Then the nose tries to enlist like a nasty conformist weakling, and, suddenly, one has an active crawling bug on the week of her trip to Europe.


However, it hasn't overtaken me. I'm drinking Airborne water, popping JuicePlus pills, swallowing zinc and C's. I will overcome and will not even kiss my sweetie to give it to him (he needs to be in good form since romance demands so).


Yet one must think . . . will we be spared from something if we get left behind? Hmmm . . . to be sick or not to be sick, that is the question. I'll do my part to be healthy unless some other force whacks me on my back.

Life's musings, death notices

My third post in one day. I must truly be procrastinating my grammar decisions and my 9th grade fiction decisions, although grammar will be more innovative than imagined, and multi-tiered for the parents who desire the advanced treatment and for those who rebel and accept the basic package. A car wash approach. But, now, I want the 9th graders to hone their short story writing skills (the 2nd annual writing competition) and read The Hobbit and the obligatory Lord of the Flies all in the fall semester. And with three school days a week, time runs out quickly. Despair! I can't assign layers upon layers upon heads. Dismay!


On the Personal Front:


1. Kevin and I leave for France on Thursday.
2. I can't wait to smooch him on the Eiffel Tower.
3. Cody is going to the school where I teach.
4. I am scared to death for his success.
5. My purple phox is all a-lit outside my window.
6. I'm supposed to be planning for my course instead of blogging.
7. I ate three granola bars in a row.
8. I'm reading the book called "The Book Thief."
9. My husband just knocked on the glass door and told me a neighbor's husband just died; the husband in the house right beside them died about a month ago. I hope this isn't making its way down the street.




Au revoir!

There she is, tossing bread upwards, skittishly, delightedly, upon her favorite beach in Destin, Florida, where her family goes periodically. Like her other childhood photos, she can peer (or glare) into the moments that comprise her life, and she can wonder who she is in relationship to it all. Particularly in relation to that restless body of water behind her which always churns, always cycles, always invites, threatens. From tranquil to tumult within twenty-four hours. She within knows the wave types.

She can wonder particularly in relation to the mother who holds the camera, focusing upon her always, desiring her to be captured in a placid moment of unreasonable, safe joy. Perhaps so she can then be captured in writing under a photo, a yearning pressed out; a frayed hope of points and light, which may be illusory. She doesn't know.

However, inevitably, she will look at the photo which frames her, caught, always beside the sea, always with the forty three year old mother who may one day appear full of love, praying, hoping, behind the camera which records a moment with the seagulls in Destin one August evening in 2007.

Will she see?

That was last week, prior to the ice and snowfall again here in Missouri. It was an interesting trip. It was miraculous to be on the beach in the warmth. It was intriguing to walk along the Playa del Carmen avenue with the calling vendors and the Canadians and Europeans and South Americans, everyone babbling their languages. It was enlightening and sad to see the poverty in the Mexican countryside. It was interesting to see the ancient ruins and to contemplate the Mayan spiritual expression through temples, writings, sacrifices, attention. The spiritual consciousness being universal. I wondered if a Mayan woman wished that there were no rites, no consciousness to abide by, more freedom for the spirit. Did she think that way? Did she walk on the same path I stood on, wondering similar things? She probably worried for her children. She probably cared about her relations with others. She knew she was getting older.

As we were flying over Louisville, KY, on the return trip, I looked down and the city was beautiful, sparkly; the curvaceous Ohio river outlined the lights, the markers of abundance. We landed in St. Louis and the smell was good; the water could be chugged without severity (as we experienced down South). We took our tan skin into the freezing long term parking lot and reunited with our auto. We drove home, and I wondered if the futile quest for perfection would resume again in our daily lives.
But, for a little while, my 15 year commited husband and I were able to break from it, and to enjoy one another apart from it. That was essential and good.