Tag Archives: marriage

True love travels

Posted on by under Travel & Place

My take on “true love” is this: You can’t be sure it’s true until you’ve traveled together.

When Jason and I were planning our honeymoon, months before we even got on the plane, I knew the two of us made a great match.

For instance, there was no argument about what should be our top priority in deciding which country to go to. Of course it would be cuisine.

After running a variety of potential honeymoon locations through the cuisine filter, we began discussing what we might want to do with our time besides cook and eat (and, um, sleep). Our second priority, we agreed, was being in a place where we could simultaneously relax and absorb culture. We wouldn’t have to leave a resort or cruise ship to go off in search of whatever it was that might make the place “ethnic” and unique. There wouldn’t be a checklist of “must-sees” to work through—no posing for pictures by each iconic sight to prove we had indeed been there. We wanted to simply be—to do everyday things we love to do at home, like read, sit outside at cafes and talk, cook together, take walks at sunset—but in a completely different place.

With healthy doses of self-control, that type of travel experience can be had just about anywhere, but we wanted to go someplace where we wouldn’t even feel lured into a trap of tourist rushing and doing, checking train schedules, packing our bags and moving from one hotel to another in an attempt to “see it all.” Our choice would completely eliminate the possibility of people later saying, “You went to [fill in the country] and you didn’t go see [fill in the artwork, cathedral, city, castle, etc.]???”

OiaviewClearly, that narrowed our list down to a very easy choice: to honeymoon on a small Greek island.

And on that small island, we chose a town high up on the cliffs—one without a port large enough to handle passing cruise ships, or roads wide enough for tourist buses.

And in that small town, we chose to stay in a small, kitchen-equipped apartment carved right into those cliffs (locally known as “cave houses”).

And there, in and around our small cave, overlooking the Caldera and the sea, we went about our everyday lives in a completely new way.

donkeysOia (pronounced ee-ah) on the island Santorini has the perfect mix of everything and nothing: winding, narrow lanes and walks with room only for pedestrians and the donkeys that transport loads too heavy for people; local craftspeople and shops, complete with the town’s collection of sweet stray dogs napping in the sun; markets selling local yogurt, figs, wine, honey, eggs, cheese, and olives; and views of the sea and sunsets that take your breath away.

What Oia doesn’t have was just as important to our experience there. It doesn’t have room for motor vehicles of any kind beyond the town perimeter—certainly not for any loud construction vehicles (which means there are no large hotels or multi-storied buildings). It didn’t (in 2007, at least) have wireless Internet (and the cell phones we had at the time were useless there). And it doesn’t have a list of must-see sights (unless you count the sun setting over the Caldera).

It was quiet. It was gorgeous. We could be at home there, yet it was very different from home.

kitchenetteIn the mornings we drank coffee and ate farm eggs, or yogurt and figs on our porch, still in our pajamas, idly talking about what we might want to do that day, if anything.

Later, we strolled through town, trying a local restaurant for lunch when our stomachs began to grumble, followed by, perhaps, a longer walk into the countryside, or time with books, coffee and sweets on the terrace. Often we napped in the cool, dimness of our honeymoon cave.

cookingdinnerThe only rule that seemed to guide us was more like an anti-rule: an unspoken agreement that we would make things up as we went along. Sometimes a trip to the market would inspire a dinner made in our kitchenette. Other times a restaurant we had discovered on a walk earlier that day would be tempting us by evening. Dinners were long and leisurely, and each day ended the same way: with the setting of the sun and the rising of the moon.

We have since taken other trips together—including some less leisurely and more scripted than our trip to Santorini. But the ease by which we plan and embark on travels together has continued to be a hallmark of the compatibility in our marriage—one that not only allows us to bond and feel refreshed by our travel experiences, but also spills over into how we travel together through life.

 

kiss

A brief personal history of an extrovert, alone

Posted on by under Alone in Place

I am nine, and I’m standing at the kitchen sink washing the dinner dishes, utterly alone.

The dishes are my job every other evening, which means every other evening I feel a sense of abandonment and despair—the most acute embodiment of “woe is me” that a middle class American child can experience.

It is fall and getting dark earlier, so when I stare mournfully out the kitchen window toward the backyard, hoping for a bit of beauty or distraction, only the vague silhouettes of bare trees and my own sad reflection are there to keep me company.

I’ve finished washing the glasses and silverware, but the piles of tomato-sauce-glazed plates and—worst of all—pots and pans still loom large. In the next room I hear my dad complain about a referee call in the game he’s watching on TV. I hear my mom cheerfully greet Sasha, our dog, as she lets her in from the back yard. My brother passes through purposefully on his way to get a schoolbook from his bedroom. And I am alone with these dishes.

Of course, I’m not really alone. The rest of my family is within reach, but they seem emotionally out of touch. So from an early age this becomes my definition of alone. And I hate it.

*   *   *   *

I am 16 and in the backyard reading Pride and Prejudice for the fourth or fifth time.

It’s spring break. My boyfriend is off on a trip to North Carolina with his best friend, and all of my closest girl friends are somewhere warm with their families. But surprisingly I don’t feel sorry for myself for being stuck at home with nothing to do. Instead, I’m getting a start on my tan, enjoying the rare early-April warmth and indulging in a week of reading books, old and new.

Suddenly it’s easy to remember why reading had been my favorite pastime as a younger child, before it had gotten lost in the mix of boyfriends, tennis practice, school clubs, and a part-time job. On this April day, I’m happily reacquainting myself with my love for books, and also with the warmth of the sun after a long Michigan winter.

I am completely alone but it doesn’t occur to me that I’m alone, because I am completely content.

*   *   *   *

I am 20, a junior in college, and I am falling in love with someone who seems, in at least one important way, to be not like me: I am falling in love with someone who loves to be alone.

He shares an apartment with a group of guys across the hall from where I live with my friends, and an open door policy has been established. As his roommates watch TV before dinner, I watch him take a cup of tea and a book out to the hammock he strung up on the balcony. As my friends and I talk and goof around before bed, I see him walking home alone after several hours in his painting studio.

Suddenly I am certain that “alone” is something I’m not good at, and I see that as a flaw—the result of insecurity and a sign of shallowness. It has not occurred to me that my love for being surrounded by people—for being in the thick of conversation and debates, silliness and laughter—is a product of who I am, how I’m wired.

Likewise, as I’m falling in love with him I see his ability to be alone as something admirable, deep, and brave—not as a product of who he is, how he’s wired.

I’m hopeful I can learn from him.

 *   *   *   *

I am 30 and married to the painter—for eight years already. Our toddler and infant are both tucked in their beds for the night, and I am sitting alone on the loveseat in my cozy sunroom, an issue of The New Yorker open on my lap.

As an exhausted young mother, this moment should feel more delicious than it does. The house is quiet, and within the realm of these walls I have the freedom to do whatever I want. But what I want most is companionship, conversation. A look of recognition and understanding, a dose of empathy for whatever small trials the day brought. Someone to help me laugh.

I flip to the magazine’s table of contents, hoping to find something with the right mix of intellect and heart—the sort of piece that engages both my mind and emotions the way a good conversation might.

It is fall, and mostly dark outside the row of tall windows to my right. But in the back corner of our yard a bright square of light shines from the old one-car garage, now a wood shop and studio where my husband works each night on an art project he is preparing for an upcoming show. After this show is installed, there will be another show to prepare.

A lover of logic, I turn to it, hoping to find comfort: My husband teaches all day and needs every hour he can spare to create the art that drives his career. I get that.

My head is able to reason out my aloneness, but that doesn’t make it feel OK anywhere else.

*   *   *   *

I am 34, and I am alone.

My two busy daughters, now four and six, are in bed for the night, their questions and negotiations, stories and songs silenced by sleep.

photo (4)I brew a cup of tea then sink gratefully into the sofa to work on a sweater I’m knitting. Remnants of the busy day are scattered here and there throughout the house—a Playmobil scene carefully arranged on the coffee table, too many pairs of shoes and rain boots by the front door, a small stack of dinner dishes in the kitchen sink. But it’s OK, I’ll get to them later.

Since my divorce, I’ve been able to let go of the unhelpful sense that it’s someone’s job to keep me company. I’ve also been able to quiet the inner nag insisting that it’s my job to keep the house clean. When you’re alone, the consequences of waking up to a messy kitchen are also yours alone. Maybe it’s time to teach the girls how to wash the dishes, I think, as I pick up my knitting.

For now, I’m just sitting on my sofa, alone, and it is good. It’s good because I’ve finally learned that alone and lonely are two different things. I’ve learned that being someone who derives energy and ideas from interactions with others is a part of me to embrace and nurture, not to fight. And I’ve learned that savoring time alone allows me to process and express all that I’ve soaked in from being with others.

Now I can see that “alone” has always been important to me, and I’ve even been good at it, in my own way. Finally I’m able to call it what it is—just “alone,” apart from lonely—and embrace it for what it is: a gift of respite and reflection, and nothing to fear.

*   *   *   *

Q&Sdishes

 (No one should ever do dishes alone.)

He’s My Partner 

Posted on by under Guest, Together in Place

When we’re young, labeling relationships is easy. This person is my friend, this person is my best friend, this person is my BEST best friend. When it’s a romantic relationship, it’s the same. You can be dating or going out. Someone is your boyfriend or girlfriend. When you’re young, finding a handy title for the people in your life isn’t that complicated.

But then  I became old and began a new romantic relationship. One day, I was on the phone, adding Rich to my car insurance. I finished updating the information that they already had on file about my vehicle, and then said that I needed to add another driver to the account.

“What’s his relationship to you?” the woman on the line asked.

And I froze.

When you’re nearing forty and you’re in a new romantic relationship, there aren’t any good terms for it. Calling him my boyfriend felt a little bit too infantile and flippant. Even though we knew that we would be married at the earliest possible time, calling him my fiancé felt too formal for the relationship that we were in right at that moment. I figured calling him my lover would probably be a little too much information for an insurance customer service rep, so I just blurted out, “He’s my partner!”

I had no idea how much that title would come to mean to me.

For much of my adult life, I had certain ideas about what marriage meant based on my first marriage, and most of them boiled down to each person having a role in the relationship. I didn’t believe that there were gender roles that only men or women were designed to have, but I did see marriage as a division of labor where each person had their job to do. It was never stated explicitly that anyone was completely bound to their job, but it was very rare that help was offered beyond the scope of our regular roles. There was always a sense of equality, but never one of togetherness.

11044523_10153016493296236_3952428309709335846_nIn this second round of marriage, both my husband and I are making a concerted effort to practice more togetherness. In some regards, this is easy. Rich works from home while I write and work around the house, and when we leave, we both work at the same music store giving private lessons. We attend church together, we eat meals together, we go to the gym together. It is rare that we have more than a few hours apart in a given week. Being physically together is something that happens most of every day.

But beyond that, we have built in the idea of partnership in our marriage. We have tried to eliminate the idea that there are his and her jobs at our house. There may be things that one of us does more often than the other, but we make it a point to make sure that no one feels like they are letting down the other, because we both do all of the chores at least occasionally.

I may prepare most of the meals because of the way our schedule works, but almost no weeks go by when Rich doesn’t order me to sit and relax while he cooks. Rich may be the one to do most of the trash removal, but if the garbage can is full and he’s busy, I take it out. When one of us wants to take a risk, we evaluate it together, and as often as we’re able, we encourage the other to leap.

Sometimes it can be trying, and old thought patterns can creep in. We will not trust that the other can handle our discomfort, so we stuff our feelings away rather than talking through our questions or sadness. Sometimes we’re just selfish and act out of our own self interests rather than striving to put the other first. But when that happens, we try to recognize the negative behaviors and work toward restoring the togetherness that is so important to us.

Some lists telling people how to have happy marriages will include items like, “Surprise your wife with a home cooked meal!” or “Treat your husband like he’s the king of the castle!” Those things can certainly be helpful when your life falls into a rut, when you are living parallel lives. But I’m finding more and more that the idea of having someone partner with you in all of your endeavors allows for greater creativity in the ways that you can exhibit generosity in your marriage. Togetherness can be manufactured, but it’s nice when it doesn’t have to be.

These days I have the nice, neat label of “husband” for Rich. But if you asked me, I’d still tell you that he’s my partner.

*   *   *   *   *

424033_10151308414006236_662319879_n“He’s My Partner” is by Alise Chaffins. Alise is a wife, a mother, an eater of soup, and a lover of Oxford commas. You can generally find her sitting behind a keyboard of some kind: playing or teaching the piano, writing at her laptop, or texting her friends a random movie quote. Alise lives in West Virginia and blogs at knittingsoul.com

 

 

Scarves & High Heels: The Layers of Personal Geography

Posted on by under Guest, Role & Place

I was fresh out of grad school and decided that if I just wore high heels and scarves I’d be taken seriously in the classroom. Because at 5’2″ and just a few years older than my college students, I needed something to communicate big words like “authority” and “stature” and “smart” and “serious.” I walked around that campus with the air of someone who knew what she was about, who knew her subject matter and who knew how to teach.

But I felt like I was playing a giant dress-up game called life.

And then real life happened, by which I mean, life in the dailyness of washing dishes, and learning how to love, and making the bed, and grocery shopping. Life full of the glorious mundane. And then there is the life that happens when you add lives to your own, and spend your hours changing diapers, and making dinner, and trying to make meaning from the crying, the napping, and developmental milestones.

So slowly, as we moved from Los Angeles, to San Diego, to Salt Lake City, and as I moved from student to professor to mother, this “game” of life took on a bedrock finality where I had to concede I was, in fact, grown up. I didn’t need high heels or tomes on my bookshelf. I had a mortgage and a minivan full of kids to prove it.

It just took me to my mid-thirties and seven moves—one international—to begin to feel at home in myself.

Each place has whittled me down based on who I am becoming in each place. As I turn the pages of my past selves, each place holds for me a tender space with an accompanying nostalgia akin to flipping through old photo albums. Each place gives a geography to the chapters of me.

Each place we’ve lived has shown me more of who I am and more of who God is. Each has evidenced a terrible beauty. The painful beauty of becoming. Every home has shown me how wide and deep the Kingdom of God is and that there are good gifts in each spot; that there are always people who need you and whom you can connect to one another. Each place has stripped me a bit bare.

Los Angeles laid claim to my know-it-all-ness, as I put on my grad school knowledge like a scarf and found it lacking. For all the learning in the world couldn’t tell me about marriage, and sacrifice, and how to balance work with new motherhood. San Diego showed me my idol of my self-sufficiency as I floundered with two children under two. I felt helpless and at sea, having left the pats-on-the-back of academia and instead, spent my days pushing a double stroller up and down hills at the zoo.

And now, in what many consider the conservative capital of the US, I have been given bravery in Salt Lake City. It’s a city dominated by the LDS temple, the center point around which the city’s grid system is based. And yet, there are other factions which orbit that hub—factions that challenge, and augment, and move gracefully around the dominant religious culture. It’s made being a Christian here something exotic; and even with the pressures of four children, a college ministry and a dominant religious culture of which I’m not a part, Salt Lake City has birthed my voice.

Places do that. They push and pull at who we think we are and stretch us into who we are becoming.

Places, if we let them, usher us into a multi-orbed story, where in each new place we carry our past layers, have the freedom to shed some old ones, and to don new ones.

Places finally take up residence in our souls, not for their amenities and attractions, but for how they birth us into new people. And how, after awhile, we can look back at each place with a certain fondness after the terror of becoming has abated.

So as I string those dear places together—as connected dots on a world map—I’m reminded that there is no space that is too unlovable, too hard, or too unattractive. And, as we anticipate another move this summer, I’m looking forward to another dot on the map that I will weave my story around, and in whose stories I will be woven.

*   *   *   *   *

ashley

“Scarves & High Heels” was written by Ashley Hales. Ashley is passionate about helping others to tell their scary brave stories. When she’s not stealing time to write at Circling the Story, she’s chasing her four kids or helping out with her husband’s college ministry in Salt Lake City, Utah. She also holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Edinburgh. You can read more of Ashley’s work on her blog, or follow her on Twitter or Facebook.

 

The stories of things

Posted on by under Home & Place

One winter Monday, 15 or so years ago, I arrived at work to some devastating news: Over the weekend, a coworker had lost her home to a fire.

We all huddled around the coffee pot in the break room, trying to imagine—although we knew we couldn’t—what it would be like to lose almost all of your earthly possessions. A week later, when our colleague Chris returned to work, we began the slow process of bearing witness to her shock and grief. Then, months later, we were her empathic-yet-fascinated audience as she told stories of the new house rising from the ashes—not just being built, but also being populated with new things.

I was only in my late-20s and had accumulated relatively little, yet I couldn’t fathom what it would mean to start completely over. There would be the lack of pillowcases, cake pans, and familiar sweaters waiting for you as fall settles into winter, but also many harder-to-replace things: No rows of books with penciled notes and cardstock bookmarks identifying the shops where the books were bought. No wedding gifts that, each time you use them, bring to mind the great aunt or college friend who bestowed them. No outdated lamps from your childhood, handed down to you as you entered adulthood with so little.

Chris was in her late 50s, so the home she lost had contained decades of memories and treasures. While her new home was being built, Chris told us about the interior decorator, who specialized in “recreating meaning.” I was utterly fascinated by—and skeptical of—the process, which involved interviewing Chris and her husband to gather meaningful family stories and tales of travel adventures—references she would then bring into the new home through new objects.

I never would have dared to ask Chris, but I always wondered: Did it work? Can a home speak in retrospect of a life lived, or must the life be lived into the home?

*   *   *   *   *

I suppose the question needled me because it touched on an area I had dabbled in myself—but in reverse: I, as a newly married 22 year old, had attempted to use objects in my home to speak into my story. I didn’t know what my life would be like, but I knew what I wanted it to look like. If I built the stage, would the life follow?

Garage sales, thrift shops, and odd pieces of loaned and handed-down furniture created the kind of comfortable, quirky, space-with-a-history that I longed for. My husband was a painter, so the walls were filled with art (indicating that we were “creative” and “interesting,” of course!). A set of handmade pottery dishes, given to us as wedding gifts, conveyed that we were “down-to-earth” and “simple”—no fine china for us! And we rushed to buy books to fill the shelves—more books than we could possibly keep up with. It would take us years to actually read and absorb their stories and ideas, but that wasn’t the point. I wanted to be instantly surrounded by these visual symbols of intellect and depth.

In short, I wanted everything in my home to tell a story about us, but I was too impatient to let the stories emerge on their own.

*   *   *   *   *

Now I know the answer to the question I wanted to ask Chris so many years ago: A life must be lived into the things that fill a home—it can’t be put on, like a costume.

My home today (the eighth of my adulthood homes) is filled with evidence of a life that’s been both beautiful and complex. Yes, the books, art, furniture, and dishes each have stories to tell, but they are not all happy stories. They tell stories of a broken marriage as well as stories of wholeness and healing. They bring to mind the struggles and triumphs of single motherhood, as well as the ongoing tales of blending two families into a new one.

My eyes scan the rooms visible from where I sit at my desk. There’s the dining room table—the same table my ex-husband and I sat at four homes ago, a highchair pulled up so we could spoon food into our daughter’s mouth. Now, during dinners at that table, Jason and I navigate the tumble of tales and ideas shared by our three teenage daughters.

photo 1I can also see the vintage sofa I happily snatched up as a single mom about to move into a rented duplex. It’s the same sofa I sat on to read books to my young daughters, but it has since been reupholstered (following an unspeakable incident with the family dog). Behind the sofa is the piano I grew up hearing my grandmother play; she gave it to me when it was time for her to move into assisted living, and time for my daughters to learn to read music.

And beyond the sofa and piano, just inside the front door, is a gallery wall of small artwork and treasures. An olive-wood cross, carved and painted in Santorini where Jason and I honeymooned, hangs just to the left of a painting my ex-husband made of the house he and I lived in when our daughters were born.

photo (7)Suddenly, I can see my home for what it is: not a collection of aesthetic choices I hope will communicate something appealing about me, but vessels holding the real stories that have emerged in my life. And that gallery wall in particular? It also symbolizes my acceptance of those stories—the intentional, beautiful stories as well as the haphazard and heartbreaking ones. Together, they speak truth: Welcome to my home, welcome to my life.

 

 

The Mourning House

Posted on by under Guest, Out of Place

I currently sleep in the guest room of my house. The other room I used to sleep in—which I have been calling the “hospice room”—is now a more hallowed space. That room was redesigned just prior to death of the woman who had accompanied me through life and parenting for 27 years. We’d only been married for just over six months, due to a five-hour period during which same-sex couples were allowed to marry in Michigan. The death was unanticipated; diagnosis of advanced breast cancer, just one year earlier, had led us to believe we had “years” instead of a year to share our lives together. Once a partner, spouse, and co-parent of two daughters, I must now try on the identity of widow, while existing inside of a house that no longer feels like home.

In the hospice room, the hospital bed is gone, but there are many artifacts put in place for healing purposes. A Buddha statue from Sri Lanka donated by sister for good luck; framed photos of orchids taken by our daughter when we went to the orchid show last year; a print of the magnificent sand hill cranes whose visits to the wetlands of Michigan we witnessed every October.

When I walk through that room I see not the space where my partner and I once slept together, did our nightly roundup of the days events, and watched our favorite television shows. Once I had listened to Nancy whisper “sleep with angels, darlin’” each night before we switched off the lights. Now, I see a kind of vacuous shrine that I don’t wish to disturb.

The hospice room is artful. Our antique mahogany bed is spread with a treasured cover from Nepal, and its geometric purple and green hues are echoed in the pillows and in the lilac paint on the walls. Nancy has left many objects containing memorabilia—cigar boxes, a pewter bowl, an old candy tin. When I am brave enough to look through them, I find weathered photos of her father and grandparents in sepia, small jewelry boxes containing antique rings and pearls, the invitation to her parents’ wedding in 1950, the baby shoes of our daughters. It contains remnants of a life I once was part of.

In the guest room where I sleep, I still feel like a visitor. The room remains the same as when it housed guests, not particularly inviting and disturbingly impersonal. The colors clash: pink curtains, a blue patterned quilt, walls painted a jolting lime green. A large unadorned bed dominates the smallish room. It’s not designed for comfort or charm. But in my current uncomfortable frame of mind, it seems to fit my requirements.

A perennial basket of unfolded laundry resides in the corner of the anonymous space where I now reside. My computer, my refuge, stands ready for my use, although I still can’t find a show I want to watch or a book I want to read. Scanning Facebook, reading through emails, I seek connections to fill the stillness that stretches before me.

The rest of the house is also still alien territory, transformed by the permanent vacancy of one of its occupants. My sprightly teenaged daughter, whose easy laughter hasn’t changed much since toddlerhood, begs me to go upstairs with her at night. She will not go back downstairs again without me, spooked by a house that is devoid of her other mother. She asks me to accompany her to the bathroom at night and in the early dark mornings. She fears that Nancy is somehow here in the house as a ghost, but perhaps not as much as she fears living in a house where Nancy no longer exists.

Nancy’s mother says she cannot bear to visit us in this place, not while the painful memories of her daughter seem to bounce off every surface of the house. But my daughter and I must live in this mourning house, trying to find our way to another kind of home where we can co-exist with what is here and what is not.

 *   *   *   *   *

JuliaGrant“The Mourning House” was written by Julia Grant. Julia lives, writes, and works in higher education in East Lansing, Michigan. She and her partner, Nancy, were one of the 300+ same-sex couples who were married on March 23, 2014, in Michigan.

Mourning

Posted on by under Out of Place

It was the evening of October 18th, 1985. I remember the exact date, because I had accompanied my (then) boyfriend, Tom, and his mother to a Tex-Mex restaurant to celebrate her birthday. Tom’s mom and I had spent little time together during the two years I had been dating her son. I felt as buoyant as the bright, helium balloons hugging the ceiling of the cantina. At the same time, I was nervous and anxious to please. Mrs. Phillips was a “proper” Southern lady.

Later that evening, Tom and I—his mother was not with us—were sitting on his ugly, sturdy couch striped in bachelor-brown colors, when he declared: “Well, I guess we ought to get married.”

There was no kneeling or “prithee,” but a decisive suggestion by this man who had been pegged by his friends and family as “not the marrying kind.”

I don’t remember if I said yes to the question hidden in his declaration, but I do remember sliding from the couch to the floor where my purse was and retrieving a snippet of a newspaper ad hidden in my wallet. It was a picture of an engagement ring. I tossed it into my beloved’s hand.

“How long have you been carrying this around?,” he asked.

“Oh, for about a year,” I replied with exaggerated eyelash flutter.

*****

We were to be married almost ten weeks later on December 21st. The planning was fast and furious. Early on, I took my future mother-in-law to lunch to share the plans with her. In her gracious way, she informed me I had misspelled Tom’s father’s name in our engagement announcement in the local newspaper.

Later that week, I found out that Tom’s father had died on DECEMBER 21st in 1972. Almost blubbering, I approached Mrs. Phillips and apologized for my—for setting the date for the wedding on the calendar day her husband had died.

She tried to console me and said: “Now, we will have something happy to celebrate on that day.”

*****

A longing for my childhood home ambushed my heart when Tom and I were driving home to Memphis after a three day honeymoon spent in the Ozark Mountains. It was Christmas Eve. I felt like a little girl again on a night-time car ride “gone looking at the lights” in the country. As Tom and I passed decorated houses, I exclaimed about the Santas and reindeer on roofs, hundreds of lights strung on double-wide trailers, and the front-yard nativity scenes with plastic Holy Families.

The transition from honeymoon to the first Christmas dinner with my husband’s family felt awkward to me. Tom’s mother was not my mother. I did not feel free to hug her or re-share the details of the wedding with her. I wanted my mother. Mrs. Phillips was kind, but I sensed a welcome cloaked in caution. Since Tom’s father had died, it had always been her and her sons at the Christmas table.

*****

I sat still and silent—a feat for me—as the gift-giving and unwrapping began. We took turns opening our cards and reading the sentiments aloud. Gifts were opened. Quiet thank-yous were said. The wrapping paper was smoothed of its wrinkles, folded and saved to be used again.

I was a naive bride immersed in my own sorrow about leaving the familiar and cleaving to a stranger whose holiday tradition seemed stripped of joy. I was unable to recognize the power of grief to isolate and insulate a family from intrusion.

All I could think about were the festivities taking place at my aunt and uncle’s house three hundred miles away. Torn, crunched wrapping paper would carpet the floor, and ribbon would stick to shoes. The tree would be real and huge. Someone would be banging out “Silent Night” on the out-of-tune piano, and the women in the kitchen would be having simultaneous conversations about new babies, holiday weight gain, and which gospel quartet would sing-in the New Year at church.

I wanted to go home.

What’s possible around a table

Posted on by under Food & Place

My husband Jason is a true amateur chef—at least if you understand amateur as a French word derived from amare: to love. He cooks because he loves to, and he cooks for the purpose of showing love to others.

* * * * *

One of my first significant encounters with Jason’s cooking took place at a birthday dinner he prepared for a friend—a friend who happened to be (and still is) his ex-wife’s partner.

At the time, the birthday dinner plans didn’t strike me as unusual. Jason and I had been dating for about a month, and I knew he was close to his ex and her partner. I had also heard (but hadn’t yet fully experienced) that Jason was a great cook. Why wouldn’t he offer to make the celebration dinner?

That evening, we all chatted as friends arrived, pouring glasses of wine, helping to set the table, and keeping an eye on one-another’s children as amazing scents wafted from the kitchen where Jason was working his magic.

It wasn’t until we sat down around the table to give thanks for the food and for our friend on her birthday that the beautiful peculiarity of the event struck me—with enough weight to trigger a physiological response: goose bumps on my arms and a tingle of emotion rising up behind my eyes.

My boyfriend just prepared a dinner to celebrate his ex-wife’s partner, I thought, with amazement.

The sentence rolled through my mind like a ticker tape all evening, taking on slightly new meanings and more weight each time. My own life had gone through its share of rough waters the past few years, deadening what had once been an optimistic expectation that there was goodness in the world. That birthday dinner made me believe in the possibility of redemption. It suddenly felt like anything that seemed impossible to the world was, in fact, possible. Especially around a table.

 * * * * *

chefjacketAs our relationship developed over the months, Jason continued to surprise me with his capacity for rendering not just delicious flavors, but also soul-feeding grace. I soon realized that for him, the food and the emotional substance go hand in hand.

My first Christmas with Jason’s family (just days after we got engaged) was my introduction to his extended family and their collective love for food. Jason’s aunt is African American, and in her kitchen, Jason and his cousins combined all they had learned from Aunt Gina and all they had taught themselves, creating a truly fusion Christmas dinner. The traditions of the older generations blended with the new, as recipes from the African-American South were served up next to recreated dishes that had recently been tasted in Chicago’s hippest restaurants.

In our own home after we married, “What’s for dinner?” became our young daughters’ most eagerly-posed question. Their very favorite answer was one that rose unmistakably from the kitchen to their noses—roasted cumin, peppercorns, coriander, cardamom, and cinnamon being ground together for Jason’s Tikka Masala. I loved watching our daughters’ tastes and appreciation for delicious and new foods develop. I also loved the subtle yet powerful ways our two families first got to know one another and then blended and bonded over conversations around the table. Dinners that take time and care to create, it seems, demand meal times that mirror that time and care.

Jason’s cooking skills also make our home a favorite destination for friends—those who love to eat as well as those who love to cook. As our circle of food-loving friends began to grow, Jason and I decided to host an annual chili and cornbread cook-off. The event has evolved and grown over the years (eight and counting!), but the heart of the event has stayed the same: It’s an opportunity for us to bring together friends from all parts of our lives—friends we know from church and friends from the local music scene, foodie friends and work friends, family from Chicago and friends we know through our daughters’ schools. The event lets us gather the often-disparate parts of our lives—each with their own cooking styles and secret family recipes—and create a single whole, a representation of who we are and who we love.

* * * * *

I won’t lie—when it comes to Jason’s cooking, the food alone is an amazing thing. But it’s the spaces those meals create that I love most.

Those of us who grew up in the church tend to see The Table as a powerful metaphor, but that doesn’t mean we can always see or articulate how that metaphor plays out in our Monday-through-Saturday lives. I saw it clearly for the first time at that birthday dinner Jason cooked so many years ago. And once I recognized it for what it is, I started to see it everywhere: in the words our now-teenage daughters share with us over dinner, in the collaborative bustle in Aunt Gina’s kitchen, in the beauty of diverse friends gathered together for a co-created meal in our home. It begins to seem that some level of powerful grace and forgiveness—of authenticity and wholeness—is always possible when people sit down together for a meal.

t-givingtable

Where I Am: Twenty Minutes from Alaska

Posted on by under Welcome to You Are Here

“[‘Nature’] always happens in a place, and generally, whatever you see and learn, you do so in a small place…So why not look around and see where you are?”    – Gary Snyder, The Etiquette of Freedom

 

My sons’ mother and I had barely pulled into town in August 2003 when longtime residents informed us, “Alaska is twenty minutes outside Anchorage.” The fact that our newly adopted city wasn’t in league with the Truly Wild and Last Frontier initially struck me as unfortunate and disheartening. I’d held higher hopes for the place in which we’d soon start raising a family.

Still, it was helpful to learn that sage little chestnut. It alleviated some of my bewilderment towards the city we had – albeit, a little impulsively – elected to call home for the next couple years (which has since become ten, though that’s a different story).

Only days earlier, after nearly two weeks spent road tripping from my city of origin, Philadelphia, and through some of the most scenic and jaw-dropping wilderness areas in North America, I pulled into Anchorage feeling just a little duped, appearing to have landed…in South Jersey?

To the new arrival – especially one from a major metropolitan area relocating to Alaska’s largest city – Anchorage looks less like the Metropolis of the North than a complex and intricately woven web of strip-malls, each of which rests couched in the massive, sprawling lots that contain them.

And for the first few years that we lived here, that’s all I could see. It ate at me constantly: Never mind brown bears and wolverines! How have you people survived such garish aesthetics? You’re an architect? Can’t you do something about all this?

So, while we were married, the kids’ mom and I thrilled in every possible opportunity to peel past the city limits, beyond the gaudy shopping centers and stop-and-go traffic, spilling headlong into the jaw dropping landscapes always twenty minutes or more beyond Anchorage. And in that way, yes, we’re very spoiled here. I won’t pretend otherwise: It’s incredible. It is Alaska out there. With camping gear and rations packed, the grand SUV of fat-tired strollers in the trunk, and a Baby Bjorn strapped to one of our chests, we were often wilderness bound, city-free, and soon romping around in a real-life postcard in no time.

However, when I became a single dad to my two boys a couple years ago, those postcard-romps became a little more difficult to achieve. Not impossible, but a whole lot tougher to pull off single-handedly, much less with anything remotely resembling frequency, or urgency, or – more recently – even energy and drive.

Between parenting, domestic duties, juggling a couple jobs, and moonlighting as a musician, nothing seems more adventurous or wild in my mind many nights than a solid, single night’s sleep.

Nowadays, I’m happy to let the John Krakauers reveal their life-altering Into the Wild and Into Thin Air adventures (and misadventures), if only because I’m trying to conquer the Mount McKinley of laundry piles preventing me from freely collapsing to my bed, or couch, or both. By day’s end, a few meals worth of dishes in the sink, and a minefield of the boys’ most sinister, microscopic Legos embedded in the carpet – brilliant for late night, barefoot walks across the living room – the only adventure you stand to sell me features red wine and my guitar.

The Baroness, the apartment complex in which I reside and spend part of each week with my sons, is nothing to look at. In fact, let’s disregard the building. If you visit, I’ll want to turn your attention the other direction. From our second floor balcony, turn your gaze towards the Chugach Mountains strung along the horizon line, the not too distant range resting there, cradling our funky and flawed effort at a ready-made city, oblivious to our mess. We witness the moon’s cycles, sunrises, and sunsets from this same landing, too. In recent years, even despite the nearby city lights, I’ve somehow seen a handful of aurora displays dance across the winter’s night sky from our building’s front yard.

There’s a creek a short walk away from the apartment, running along a trail network that winds the length of the city. These days it strikes me as only regrettable that during all the years we were firing up the Forester and blowing out of town towards postcard-worthy locations, I never acknowledged or considered this minor-miracle trail network for the nearby wonder it today, time and again proves to be for me. Could I have survived my failed marriage without this stretch of winding path, without the creek’s song singing me through any number of the soul’s dark spells all those long nights a couple years ago?

Sure, the creek is frequently littered with empty cigarette cartons, Wal-Mart bags, and spent liquor and beer bottles. But in recent years I’ve come to adore and rely on how the sun’s light hits the water and trees lining its banks a million different ways in every day. The creek, too, runs in every season, even under the ice that will soon cover it. And its song never changes. I’ve only recently begun to hear that song, and it seems a timeless one, moving to some universal heart’s rhythm, a lulling song that – if it used words – might croon,

“Here You Are,

Here You Are…

And Here You Are…”

Chester Creek, AK

 

 

Where I Am: Four Houses, Four Turning Points

Posted on by under Welcome to You Are Here

I live in Urbana, Illinois, a city I didn’t want to move to in the first place. My opinion on the matter was weakly based on the handful of times I had driven by the Champaign-Urbana exit on Interstate 57. From that vantage point it was just another flat, cornfield-edged town with predictable, treeless suburbs and chain restaurants.

But in 2001, when my youngest daughter was still in diapers and I was finally admitting to myself that my marriage was falling apart, it felt like God was urging us to move. More precisely, I thought that moving—and my husband’s new job—would somehow save our marriage.

In the 13 years since moving to Urbana, four houses have been home. I don’t know if it’s by design or coincidence, but it seems that each significant Act in my life here has demanded a new stage, as if the inner transitions couldn’t be complete without the leaving of one tangible place and the arrival at another.

*  *  *  *  *

Our first Urbana house caught my eye because—if you could see beyond the birdhouse and ivy wallpaper—it reminded me of the beloved house we sold in Michigan before moving here. Both were 1920s-era Mission style, with sturdy stucco exteriors, generous wood mouldings inside, and plenty of tall windows paned with thick, wavy, antique glass that creates mottled patterns of light when the sun shines through.

During the three years we lived in that house, our toddler and pre-school-aged daughters were at that kill-you-with-cuteness stage of life, busy choreographing dances, creating elaborate plastic feasts in their play kitchen, and layering on the most unlikely costume combinations.

But in spite of those bright moments, I think of that first house the House of Pain. Yes, I know it’s overly dramatic (and also the name of a nineties hip-hop band), but for me, the house was the scene of much yelling and crying and despair. Ultimately, it was the place where I gave up—not just on marriage, but also on my long-held childhood belief that God had plans to prosper me, not to harm me.

*  *  *  *  *

If I was drawn to my first Urbana house because it reminded me of a house in my past, I was drawn to the second Urbana house for the opposite reason: It was nothing like the House of Pain. It was one-story not two; 1960s not 1920s; brick not stucco; and straight-forward, not “full of charm and character.” Most importantly, I was bound to it only by a 12-month lease, not a mortgage. I signed the lease after my divorce was final—after the House of Pain was sold and our marital collections of books, CDs, artwork, and kitchen appliances had undergone a necessary but unnatural process of division.

This second home can best be described as the House of Rebellion (clearly a perfect name for an angry metal band). Just like music that serves to numb the mind, the House of Rebellion provided an escape hatch from the life my ex-husband and I had shared. It played into my desire to be tied to nothing: not a marriage certificate, a church membership, or a mortgage. I devoted myself to my daughters when they were with me, and on the weekends they weren’t, I did whatever I pleased.

Like many rebellions, however, this one led to rock bottom, not freedom or enlightenment. One day about a year after moving into the rental, I knew it was time to stop feeling sorry for myself and start claiming my place. Maybe if I chose to live here—decided to put down roots on my own, in a house of my own—that whole sob story about “following my husband to save a marriage that couldn’t be saved” would lose its power over me.

*  *  *  *  *

Buying house number three happened amidst a flurry of change: I ended a bad relationship, decided to try church again, went to a new counselor, and generally began figuring out who I really was.

This was my House of Healing (yep, cue the cheesy eighties CCM band). It’s the house where I learned to sit and just be in the moment, and where I learned that God wants me to find myself, not fix myself.

I worked in my garden, pulling out weeds with deep roots and planting perennials, and I invited new friends to sit around my table and share the meals I cooked. My daughters grew in those sunny rooms, writing stories, learning to play my grandmother’s piano, and forging great “wilderness” adventures with friends in our large, tree-filled yard. Along the way, as I mowed, painted, baked, and parented, I recognized this truth: I have more power to shape my place than it has to shape me.

And then I met Jason. We eventually got married, blending our families in that House of Healing, all five of us crowded in, watching and learning in awe (or at least the grownups were in awe) as redemption was worked out in one surprising way after another.

*  *  *  *  *

Finally, last spring, as our three girls (and their groups of friends) grew bigger, Jason and I sold “my” house and bought “our” house: The House of Hope (or Truth)? The House of Second (and Third and Fourth) Chances? The House of New Creations? I’m not quite sure yet, but that’s OK—I don’t feel the need to pin down the life that’s unfolding here or the God who works in so many places, in so many ways.