King for Today

^“1And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.” Revelation 21:1

This verse has always been a source of comfort for many Christians, the idea that this earth will be replaced by a new, better version is always encouraging. Yet, when I read about the lack of water, I always felt my eyebrow raise. What does God have against the sea, that He wouldn’t include it in the blueprint for Earth 2.0?

I remember having a pastor explain it in a sermon once as the sea was the ultimate separator, and that without the sea we could be united. United with all the ones we’ve been so far away from. United with one another. United in Christ.

My heart is so full right now of so many things. Sometimes, it’s that image of ultimate togetherness that makes anything worthwhile. A very dear friend of mine is in the middle of a custody battle and hasn’t seen her two children in two years. Even as I try to console her, I can’t imagine that loneliness. It makes me yearn so desperately for that oceanless world.

If I were king for a day
Ruler of the world
I’d freeze the entire ocean
A team of sled dogs would drive all night
Just to bring you closer to me

If I were king for a day
Ruler of the world
I’d release a million balloons
A million yellow ribbons around a million trees
Just to let you know
I need you

I know someday that distance will be shorter
I know someday the distance will be over.

Dad

Turning into you parents is a harsh reality that sneaks up on your like your first gray hair. It’s a disgusting sign of age. You don’t even realize what you’ve said until the words escape your lips.

“This room is a pigsty.”

A beat.

Dear God, I sound like my mother.

I channeled my father the other day, and when I realized what was going on, I felt I’d been thrust into a cold, slimy pond.

When my dad explains things, he sticks his hands out and shakes them, as if to say, “Slow down! Let me finish.”
I was sitting in the cafe in Barnes and Noble, drinking coffee and people watching in between the pages of a David Sedaris book. A woman toting an infant and dragging a gigantic stroller entered, her younger son and daughter trailing like ducks. I watched her order a cupcake, apple juice, and coffee as she shifted Baby from one arm to the next. Boy and Girl sat at a table across from me and discussed in earnest tones what alcoholic beverage they would pretend the apple juice was.

I watched the four of them like my dad would. He is a baby ogler. He stares with a silly grin on his face, sort of chuckle to himself and pretend to go back to what he’s doing. Later, if curiosity gets the better of him (and it always does) he’ll approach and talk with Mama. Any church event or family gathering where babies have been present, my dad ends up holding them. The church nursery used to enlist his help in a classroom full of infants. All he did for the entire duration of the service was sit in a rocking chair and hold babies….And people acted like this was some great feat, like it was a talent!

So Mama kept glancing around nervously, like she’s been kicked out of stores due to rowdy kids before. Satisfied with the lack of stink eye, she forgets the world for a minute and takes a sip of coffee.

She and the kids passed me on the way out. I scooted my chair to make way for the gargantuan stroller, and she murmured a hurried apology for disturbing me.

Then, I did it.

“No, no, it’s okay,” my hands shake in front of me, like I’m calming her down. I tell her I have a huge family and know that it’s like a parade of chaos no matter where you go. I told her it’s like being home. But I wasn’t looking her in the eyes. I was watching my hands out in front of me. They may as well have morphed into octopus tentacles.

Holy crap, I’m turning into Dad.

Nevertheless, Mama looks relieved and herds her children out of Barnes and Noble. I spent the rest of the night thinking about Dad and his mannerisms. The way he stutters, mumbles, shakes his hands, laughs when something really tickles him. The way he pushes his chair to the side at dinner and leans back to signal he’s done eating….At least, until he grabs a post-dinner peanut butter sandwich, that is more peanut butter than anything. He’ll eat this while he leans against the door frame of the TV room. If he sits down, it means he’s committed to watching what’s on. Otherwise, he’ll go play Free Cell on the computer.

I thought about the way he ogles babies and pregnant women. The way he looks at the dog, like he loathes her very existence. “She’s not my dog.” Secretly, he enjoys having a dog. I just know it. Society has taught him he is more of a man because he owns a dog, and just thank goodness she’s not a chihuahua or a poodle. At least you have a heeler to lay at your feet.

It’s weird that I miss watching him watch things. At dinnertime, he’ll survey the table and all those seated there. Sometimes, he has a triumphant look on his face, like he’s the master of all he surveys…the lord of his castle, with that damn dog at his feet.

But man, does he look comfortable there at the head of the table…or in the driver’s seat of his truck, telling whoever’s in the backseat to repeat the phrase, “accelerate to cruise velocity” or “turbines to speed.”

He’s so at home at “his spot” on the couch. It’s weird how dad’s have that….that one Lay-Z Boy or couch cushion with the outline of their jeans’ back pockets worn into the material. We had this ancient red couch, the far left cushion with a huge Dad-sized indentation. If he was home, you didn’t sit there. Period. Everyone understood this unspoken rule.

I have a picture of his sleeping on that couch. I love this picture so much, although there’s really nothing superficially special about it…in fact, it’s kind of a crappy picture. I love it because I captured him in his element…in his house…in his couch….snoozing.

 

Tamandiversary

Hey. It’s been awhile. How are things?

Things has been on the busier side of relaxed this week, as Tanner has launched into Operation: Apartment Cleanse in preparation for the arrival of his family, my brother, and our friend Trevor this week.

I’ve been super tired, but for some reason, my brain wouldn’t let me sleep today. I suppose one of the perks of being a pedestrian is that walking is really conducive to clearing your mind; resolving things; pondering. Maybe that’s why I woke half an hour early, just to begin the walk to work.

Today, our deli catered the funeral of a little girl who drowned in a swimming pool this week in El Paso. All I did was make sandwiches for her bereaved family, but I can’t stop thinking about her, the situation. My coworker, Scott, went to the church next door to deliver the food, and came back crying. He saw the tiny casket, and her weeping family. He started again as he told me, I could tell he was thinking about his own daughter.

I have to wonder about God’s plan when it comes to children dying. Not doubt, but wonder. My perspective is so sheltered, so blinded, so tainted by what the world tells me, or really just how limited my brain power is. Putting all notions of the “Age of Innocence”  and predestination to this or that, I have to believe that God knows each heart, no matter how small, and that His judgement and mercy and grace are perfect. He knows what to do, and thats really all I can tell myself.

It’s just the funny thing about perspective and the farther you get in life. The more I learn, the less I know.

On the note of getting farther in life, Tuesday was my parents’ 30th wedding anniversary. Tomorrow is Tanner’s and my first. Again, with my sheltered viewpoint, when I look at our past year, learning to cooperatively coexist and think of someone other than yourself every second of every day, and multiply it by thirty years…well, kudos to you, Mom and Dad. I’m beginning to understand the struggle to pledge oneself to another, in a world that tells you to only think of you. I also understand the overwhelming rewards. I’m so grateful to the example, and the inspiration, they are to Tanner and I. Here’s to many, many more years of marital shenanigans!

The Curse of Convenience

I have a grudge against those pre-made pizza crusts. You know those shells, all you have to do is throw on some sauce and cheese and shove it in the oven. Darn their convenience.

I developed this hatred at an early age, around the time I was trusted with the oven. I felt accomplished, making lunch for all my siblings. The pizza was complete, I took a pot holder from the nearest drawer and grabbed the searing hot pan.

The pot holder I rummaged for was one of those lacy ones, designed less for holding pots and more for protecting surfaces, so I burned my fingers pretty good.

I guess I have my grudge priorities mixed up. All this time, I really should be hating lacy potholders.
Nevertheless, I still can’t stand those pizza crusts. Nothing should be THAT easy.

Mind Your Manners.

To the two middle aged men who came in to the deli today:

I apologize, I wasn’t aware you were my long lost uncles. You didn’t have deep southern accents, so why else would you feel the need to call me sweetie?
Clearly, because I am a female twenty-something who waitresses as a living, I must be too much of a bimbo to become uncomfortable when you call me unnecessary pet names, shout above each other, and make sexual innuendos when I am I simply trying to take your order.

Yes, I am married. I did not ask your opinion on whether or not that was a good or bad decision, it is none of your business whether or not our wedding was a “shotgun” wedding.

I treated you with courtesey. I even referred to you both as sir, though neither of you acted the part. Do me a favor, will you? Mind your manners. And eat at Metropolitan next time.

Sincerely,
Amanda

Paulanka….

…is what Caroline has affectionately renamed our dog.

In the nearly two months we’ve had Nana, she’s made tremendous progress. When she first came to live with us, she slept on the couch all day, and wouldn’t eat, drink, pee or poo until we went to bed. While we asleep, she tore apart our blinds covering the windows in the living room, so we had a crazy dog for all the world to see. We couldn’t get her to walk on a leash, and had to carry her outside where she woud sit (read: save peeing for our carpet!) and stare at us with terrified eyes. Everything was a struggle.

 

Bit by bit, we’ve gotten her to walk on a leash outside. Outside, actually, is where she transforms from the cowardly lion into a real dog. She’ll chase us up and down the courtyard outside, run after birds and tennis balls, and return when we tell her to come. She’s come to trust us more through lots of play outside, and is now better about her indoor habits (she’ll eat and drink in front of us, only “go” when we take her out, etc). Lately, I’ve gotten her to accompany me to Milagro, although the automatic doors at Toucan’s freak her out.

 

 

Not to say that we still don’t have some problems, but Tanner and I are quickly learning not to leave things we value on the floor after we go to bed. She is the Midnight Chewer Who Chews at Midnight!

 

What’s in a Name?

Aren’t baby name books fun to read? Shannon and I used to pour through them when my mom was pregnant with Russ, Craig, and Ty. Just for shiggles.

Not that we’re trying, but Tanner and I have always loved the name “Sidney” for a girl (“Sidney Lynn”, to carry on his family’s three generation tradition of giving  the middles names of Lee, Lane, and Lynn. Don’t even think of copying us either).  So while burning time on the internet today, I looked up the meaning. It means, “A city in Australia.”

No duh.

Tanner means, “a man who tans hides.” His middle name, Lee, comes from Old English “leah“, meaning “meadow”. I like to think his name means “Man Who Tans Hides in Meadow.”

Concieted person that I am, of course I researched my name in depth. According to behindthename.com,

AMANDA

Gender: Feminine

Usage: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Finnish

Pronounced: ə-MAN-də (English), ah-MAHN-dah (Spanish, Italian)  [key] 
Created in the 17th century by the playwright Colley Cibber, who based it on Latin amanda meaning “lovable, worthy of love”. It came into regular use during the 19th century.

Apparently Cibber wasn’t terribly successful, or popular, within his lifetime.

 

He wrote some plays for performance by his own company at Drury Lane, and adapted many more…receiving frequent criticism for his “miserable mutilation” (Robert Lowe) of “hapless Shakespeare, and crucify’d Molière” (Alexander Pope). He regarded himself as first and foremost an actor and had great popular success in comical fop parts, while as a tragic actor he was persistent but much ridiculed….he was frequently accused of tasteless theatrical productions, social and political opportunism…and shady business methods. He rose to herostratic fame when he became the chief target, the head Dunce, of Alexander Pope’s satirical poem The Dunciad. Cibber’s poetical work was ridiculed in his time, and has been remembered only for being bad.

 

His invention, my name, Amanda, first appears in his play, Love’s Last Shift.

The central action of Love’s Last Shift is a celebration of the power of a good woman, Amanda, to reform a rakish husband, Loveless, by means of sweet patience and a daring bed-trick. She masquerades as a prostitue….and seduces Loveless without being recognized by him, and then confronts him with logical argument. Since he did enjoy the night with her while taking her for a stranger, it has been proved that a wife can be as good in bed as an illicit mistress. Loveless is convinced…The play was a great box-office success and was for a time the talk of the town, in both a positive and a negative sense. Some contemporaries regarded it as moving and amusing, others as a sentimental tear-jerker, incongruously interspersed with sexually explicit  restoration comedy jokes and semi-nude bedroom scenes.

In short, my name was invented for a wife who plays a hooker to dispell the Feminine Virtue myth.
I wonder how much of this my parents knew before settling on my monkier….

Access Panels for the Rich and Famous

Tanner says that when and if we ever build our own house that there will be access panels to everything. Pipes. Electric. Air conditioner. Everything.

This statement was prompted by an episode on HGTV, featuring luxurious bathrooms across the country. One showcased a beachy bathroom with an in ground Infinity bathtub. Tanner cringed. “How is anyone supposed to fix a leak on that thing?” he cried in outrage. “Every home should have access panels. Someone could make millions putting access panels into homes like that…I should do it. I’ll make millions.”

The Glove That Never Made An Error

The past week has been a sort of surreal, contemplative adventure. I especially have a bad habit of letting my days all run together in a monotonous drone. It was all interrupted last Thursday.
Tanner’s mom, Jo, called us that morning to inform us that Granddad Howard had taken another “turn for the worst.” Tanner and I went to work that evening and gave our employers the heads up that we might have to take a time off on short notice to travel to Portales. “It could be tomorrow, it could be six months from now,” I told my boss, Eric.

After work that night, I received a phone call from my sister. “I just thought you should know,” she prefaces, “Dennis Lihte died this morning.”

I suppose my reaction probably wasn’t that different from anyone else who loved Dennis, altough I’d like to think it was. I imagine that everyone had a flood of emotion rush to their tear ducts, a flash of a million memories in their brains. I returned to the couch and tried to exlain to Tanner who Dennis was, where he might know him from, what he meant to me. I was just  incredibly dumbstruck.

The next morning, the phone rang.
Jo.

“Who is it?” Tanner grumbled.
“It’s your mom, babe.”

He rolled over. We both knew what the call was about. I harassed him about it for a few more hours, but I understood why he didn’t want to get up, why he didn’t want to call back. Just like if I don’t open my phone bill, I don’t owe money. If he didn’t call back, Granddad Howard was fine.

He eventually did call. Granddad Howard had died that morning in a totally painless and peaceful way, as far as anyone can tell. The funeral was that Saturday. Immediatley, Tanner started telling his mom we would figure out some way to get there. We’d walk if we had to. Jo said it wasn’t necessary, Tanner’s dad was paying for our rental car.

I had a long drive ahead of me, which is nice when you have a lot of thoughts to sort out. How were the Lihte’s? How were the Powers? Why had everyone picked this week to die?

As we drove through the mountains in Ruidoso, the scattered thunderstorms nmroads.org had warned me about turned into a full blown hailstorm. Sheets and sheets of rain and hail fell around us as we crept along at 15 mph. In a situation that normally would’ve scared me out of my mind behind the wheel of a car, I felt strangely at ease. It was beautiful.

We arrived in Portales around 9pm and met up with Tanner’s family at Grandma Betty’s house (Tanner’s great-grandmother), where everyone was eating and telling stories about Howard. The stories continued over the weekend as more relatives and more food arrived. People weren’t talking just to talk. They wanted to share how they were going to remember Howard. No one felt the frail frame of a man weakened from chemotherapy was an appropriate way to commit him to memory. Obviously in comparison to everyone else, I knew little about Howard. My favorite memories of him were silly ones. Once, shortly after Tanner and I got engaged, we travled to Mulehsoe to spend Christmas with his family. When we arrived, no one was home but Granddad Howard. He sat us on the couch opposite the fireplace and told us he would build us a nice romantic fire…which constituted squirting lots and lots of lighter fluid onto newspaper. Another time I overheard him telling his great grandson Baylor how he was going to slice off his ears with his pocket knife and make ear soup.

All weekend long, everyone kept on saying over and over how much Howard adored his wife Marjorie, Tanner’s grandma. Tanner told me once about Granddad Howard’s nightly habit of smoking cigars and drinking huge glasses of Sangria out of the back porch. One night he’d had too much Sangria, wandered into the living room and started dancing in front of Marjorie. “I love you! I love you ! I love you!” he sang. “Get away from me, you ol’ drunk!” she laughed.

Jo, of course, had a way that she wanted to remember her dad. “He would always give-give you whatever he had. Everyone always had new clothes, new cars, before he even thought of himself, “she said, “Remember, Tanner? He always drove that old truck while everyone else had a new car.” She shook her head, “Anyway, I don’t remember what is was now, I just remember I was really sad, like, really, really depressed. I was in my room, and I was crying, and he came in with his old baseball glove. ‘JoLynn, this is my most prized possession. The only material thing I love in this world. I want you to have it.’ He said, ‘That glove never made an error.”

The night after the funeral, Tanner, Tabor and I made our way out to the back porch while everyone else slept. We passed around a bottle of Sangria and talked more. Comics. History. Stephen King. Family scandal. Everything eventually came back to Granddad Howard. Some of these stories were the best, because they didn’t deify the man. They were stories about his temper, crude humor, mistakes as well as triumphs. More Sangria. Tanner looked thoughtful as his thoughts turned to heaven.

“Granddad and I were looking over the corn harvest this one time, and he told me that he believed that maybe God saved a slice of heaven just for you. A space designed for you. A space He knew you would love and that you could share with Him. ‘This is my heaven,’ he said, ‘to watch things grow. To plant and hope and watch the harvest.”

¹ “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. ² In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. ³ And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.” -John 14:1-3

Withering into Eternity.

There is a family of four that eats at the deli every Sunday morning, they are favorites of all of us that work there. Recently, the mother died after several years of battling cancer. Eric catered her funeral for free in exchange for all those years of loyal patronage. Her husband, “Sam,” clearly loved his wife. The most vivid memory I have of her was in her last months, being gently led by her elbow to her seat opposite her and Sam’s children.

In keeping with their tradition, Sam and the kids still eat Sunday lunch at DG’s. Today, I made chit chat with Sam as I took their order. “I have a strange question for you,” he said, “you’re what, early-mid twenties, right?”
“Yes,” I reply, “I’m twenty-one.”

He proceeds to tell me that there’s a girl in his office that’d he’d like to ask out, but he’s afraid she’ll turn him down because of their difference in age. What do I think? I tell him that maybe I’m not the best person to ask, since my husband is eight years older than me. I tell him age shouldn’t be as much of an issue as personality, beliefs, goals, etc. Not that it doesn’t have its place. A twenty something will have different priorities than a thiry something, a forty something, a fifty something.
I wanted to tell him what I really thought.
I think, Sam, that your wife just died. I think you have two kids who are approaching young adulthood and need your example. I think you should find a hobby. I think I ought to get back to work. The more I think about it, the more I think this is none of my business.

But I keep those thoughts silent. “I’m not looking to get married tomorrow,” Sam says, “I just really want to go out. I have had a rough month.” In the end, I tell him he shouldn’t agonize over the age difference. Keep it simple. The worst she can say is no.

I talked about it later with Caroline and Tanner. Caroline felt this was totally natural. Sam’s wife’s death didn’t come as a surprise at all, and that he had time to get closure with the notion of her death. Tanner understands the loneliness factor but was taken aback at how soon Sam was looking to date.

I keep running the conversation around in my head. I have this vague idea of mortality to begin with, but even trying to imagine a day where eventually Tanner, as I know him in this fleshy light, will be gone. This body will be gone. Everything I know will eventually wither and fade. That ticking crocodile called Time is after us all. Yet in the midst of all this death, I have to try and understand a word like eternity, a perspective I am training to see. I am withering into eternity. Dimming into light.