I’ve walked around the past few days with a big knot in my stomach, almost in tears. On Friday afternoon, after all the stress of getting my dad’s dogs safely home, I found out that construction on my dad’s house had reached a critical point. To manage costs, Sherod and I had decided we’d do some of the last finish work ourselves, and the project moved more quickly than we’d anticipated. So by last Friday evening, Sherod was reviewing what we would need to get done this week. Sharing living space with two sets of dogs proved to be a lot to manage in a matter of hours as well. So, after some quick calculus, I asked to take most of this week off, which is what I have done.

That knot came when I slowed down enough to realize just how radical the change has been, making room for my dad in our life. After all those years in Florida, parenting our girl Maria with all her needs, serving as priests in uncharted territory—heck, just managing Southeast Florida traffic—the move to this small farm in Lowndesboro gave us back our lives. It wasn’t that our life became self-absorbed and turned in on itself, but that there was space—financial space, physical space, emotional space—to breathe again. After years and years of doing well just to get through the week, Sherod and I began to dream and imagine what might be possible. They were pretty modest dreams, but nonetheless, the kind of dreams you have when you can look up for hours and see how big the sky is and how many stars sparkle in the night.

My dad arrived on the 16^th of December and life moved at a vertiginous pace from then on. We’ve taken all but the last step related to the application for him to become a permanent resident here. His household in Panama has been closed down. As I write, we are less than a week away from being able to move him into his new space which he calls “La Casita Blanca” which means The Little White House. The dogs are here. Work has been demanding and rewarding and intense in all this time and our girl Maria continues to show small improvements and still causes me to hold my breath in fear and anxiety when she hits the rough patches of her life.

This is the most time I’ve taken off since I began to work full time on September 1^st of last year, and the days are filled almost to overflowing with the tasks I am trying to get done to further settle my dad into his new life. Along with the work on the house (which has actually been less than I expected) there are endless questions, stops and starts and trials and errors as Sherod and I try to help my dad retain some kind of sense of agency and independence, and make sure this change does not pull out all the oxygen from our own life together.

Dad will not drive again so I thought we’d try out the meal service program Mark Bittman of the NYT has started called The Purple Carrot. It’s a subscription program that delivers a box of all the ingredients to prepare a set of 3 meals for two people on a weekly basis. My dad doesn’t mind left overs and this seemed a good way for him to get healthy, tasty food without relying so much on Sherod and me. The Purple Carrot is a class act and the food is really good. But I found out this week that it requires far more food prep knowledge than my dad has. So it is back to the drawing board to figure out what we can do so he can manage most of his meals himself. He and I will take his dogs to the vet today so they can get on heartworm meds and there are about 7 or 8 other to-do’s on my “dad list”.

When the week started a little more slowly than planned on Monday, I realized that within days of my father’s arrival in December, when we began to put the pieces in place for him to stay and live with us, Sherod and I quit dreaming, had to push all those small and lovely plans we were just beginning to cook up, not just on hold, but in deep freeze. We’ve come to realize that we may end up having to let go of them altogether. We’ve seen too many times when, despite all their best efforts, folks have lived so long that their assets have run out.  We have to make provisions for that possibility with my dad. If it is hard for me, I am profoundly aware of how very much more is being asked of my husband; that is what truly breaks my heart.

So yeah, that stinging behind my eyes and the knot in my stomach? They signal that my life is going through another fundamental redefinition.

AND. The “and” is important. This is what it looks like to live and love and have the kind of enormous privilege Sherod and I know. I can look out the door next to where I am writing and see the flowerbed where the foxglove and daisies and amaryllis and roses are gently swaying in the breeze that hasn’t fled the heat of summer yet. I have a job I simply love. It is messy and stressful right now, but the person I work alongside of has this magnificent sense of the absurd, of humor and mischief, everyone works hard together, the congregation is amazing, and you can hear laughter just pealing down the hallway of our offices most days. When I drive back home in the afternoon, with minimal traffic, I get to see the fields change as spring layers more and more life and color into those open spaces. Some of the sheep at one of the farms I go by seem to be having a lot of babies and my God, those little lambs are delicious to look at. A reminder of what I have learned and re-learned so many times before: I am the recipient of grace, both harsh and beautiful.

 

Small.  Unimportant in the larger scheme of things. A world apart from the horror of a 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Ecuador, the continued violence, fear and anxiety.  Dear God, may so much beauty and goodness strengthen me and build me up to serve…

Today was a longer day than usual. I was at work by 7 to continue with my ‘mini-course’ on parables for the men’s prayer breakfast. Then, my day was pretty packed including a board meeting late this afternoon so when I was able to get in my car to head home, it didn’t bother me that it was drizzly and grey–I was just glad to be going home.

I pulled into the driveway and marveled at the flowerbed in front of the house–rosebuds are opening, the daises and foxgloves are also in bloom and after weeks of waiting, the clump of amaryllis are also opening up so the bed looks magical.

And then…I saw this brown lab, not a spring chicken to judge by all the grey on his paws and muzzle, stroll into the bed, hike his leg and pee on my flowers.  OOOOOh man I got upset. I flew out of my car ready to bawl the heck out of him except he came running up, tail wagging, and dropped a half-eaten pinecone at my feet and looked up at me expectantly.  Throw it lady, throw it.  I couldn’t help myself. I did.  And saw that along with being old, and playful, he was skinny. He had a collar on but no tag and when I went down the sidewalk to go in the house, he followed me and stood looking in after I closed the door behind me.

Sherod and our two dogs, Mo and Daisy, were in the den, all the doors closed, the Mallowman looking like a veritable thundercloud.  It only got worse when I suggested we might have us a new dog.  A little more back and forth and I’d talked him into letting me feed the old boy and then he jumped in his truck to go looking for the dog’s humans.  To feed the dog, I had to let him into our back yard and the next thing I know, I hear some pretty loud clattering and figure out he’s knocked some stuff out of the way to get to the upstairs deck.  Then I heard some even louder noise I couldn’t quite place until Sherod stormed through the front door and asked “How the hell did that dog get up on the roof?”

Yup.  The dog was on the roof and after all the rain of the past couple of days, the roof was slick, the dog was scared and Houston, we have a problem!  Fortunately, our friend Mark, who keeps his horses with us was here and he, Sherod and I were able to get that sweet old dog off the roof and then talk to the neighbors enough to locate his owners.  A short car trip and nap later, the boy is back where he belongs, Sherod is in a better mood and I just keep laughing to myself about how wonderfully bizarre life in the country can be. True, this!

 

I know now that I was a rather priggish kid through most of my years in elementary and high school. I was also really insecure and thin skinned. I was socially awkward; in fact, as I think about it, I was quite a mess. I could not get out of my school fast enough—I’ve written elsewhere that I literally left Colombia within a week after I graduated high school and I have lived more than twice as long in the USA than I did in Colombia.

A few years ago, after swearing just about on my life that I would never, ever go to a class reunion, I ended up going to one in South Florida. I think a little more than half the class of ’78 of Colegio Bolivar gathered over a weekend that was absolutely magical. We’ve all grown up to become some pretty interesting, cool people.

One of the people I got to spend time with that weekend was Maria Bueno, whom we all called Cheche. She was pretty, she was adventurous, and when we were in high school, was one of the people I found really threatening. She and her friends would go to the far back of the girls’ bathroom to smoke and I’d be outraged, I tell you, outraged. She was comfortable in her body in a way I could not be in mine and I realize now how uncomfortable that made me, how I envied the cool girls.

Recently, I read an article about academic tracking—how kids are assessed and put in tracks depending on ‘academic potential’ that become self-fulfilling prophecies. We had that at Bolívar and I was in a different academic track than Cheche, one that certainly gave room to no small amount of smug self-righteousness on my part.

One of the loveliest parts of the class reunion was that I got to spend time with Cheche. I got to know her as a kind, really funny, very accomplished woman. I remember being so thankful that I had gotten more comfortable in my own skin and less insecure so I could see what a beautiful person she was. Even more, I was just thankful for the chance to get to know her, rather than the version of her that had been filtered through so much of my own baggage. She lived in Southeast Florida and we stayed in touch, tried a couple of times to have lunch but things were happening fast and furious in my life with my daughter and my work, and we never did manage to have that lunch.

Last Thursday, Cheche had a massive stroke and she died that night. I found out on Saturday, right after I finished officiating at a wedding that was all about youth and new beginnings and silliness and joy. The news of her death made me very sad—and I am still sad. May she rest in peace, and even more, may her beloved daughters, whom I did not meet but whom I heard so much about during that class reunion, and her husband, be surrouned by the grace and goodness that come from having been loved by such a beautiful, special woman.

The roses are blooming. My work is simply this: I keep an eye out for black spot; following the advice of the rose expert in Alabama, I used some organic fungicide to get ahead of the mites as the roses started coming out of dormancy. We have had regular enough rain this spring so I haven’t needed to water them and only did a light pruning on Valentine’s Day. Mainly, I walk out to the garden every day and see more and more buds  coming out on all the plants, I see how much new growth there is as well, and how healthy the rose bushes all look. I try to do some weeding at least 3 times a week. Really, it’s simply about creating the space for the roses to grow.

Then, I wonder, what in heavens name I was thinking when I decided to try again for the writer’s workshop. Nothing I could write or say is this beautiful. That scares the sweet bejesus out of me…

A few weeks ago, I wrote about scrunching up my ‘turned down self’ and applying again to attend one of the writing workshops at Collegeville Institute.  It was hard to overcome having been turned down before and harder because I had to submit a far more extensive writing sample.  Last week, I got word that I had not been accepted but that they hoped I would consider being an alternate in case one of the selected participants was not able to attend. I said no because the last time I had the same situation and kept my hopes up ‘in vain’ so I felt doubly disappointed.  A while ago, I got a call–though the person knew I had turned down the possibility, she wanted me to know that I had been at the top of the list of alternates and a person had dropped out so she wanted to offer me the slot, just in case I might change my mind.  I’m going.  From July 18-27, I will participate in a workshop led by Lauren Winner, a well-known and respected writer and Episcopal priest. The name of the workshop is Christian Spirituality and the Writing Life.  Those really hard things we do and the ways we draw ourselves up to a stature we don’t quite believe we are capable of attaining? Totally worth doing. AMDG.

On Easter Sunday, I heard again, for the first time, Gerard Manley Hopkins’ wonderful phrase about resurrection: “Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us.” (The Wreck of the Deutschland). Andy Thayer, the Rector at Ascension, the church where I serve, preached about the meaning of Easter as a verb, not an event to be a spectator for, not something that happened a long time ago, to a single person.

I began to “Easter” yesterday, wide hat on my head, old beat-up clothes on and gardening gloves–as I hauled edging rocks, planted, shoveled, watered, cleaned out a chicken coop, pruned and marveled at the first roses blooming in my garden, this after a Holy Week filled to overflowing. Who could ever have imagined this is what the day after Easter Sunday would look like for me!

Holy Week two years ago was about little more than survival. I already had behind me three years marked by much loss. Ahead of me was more loss, in some ways, worse loss. I already knew that my last day in the NRRM/St Ambrose/El Centro ministries was the 14^th of June and we were moving to Alabama. I got through the days, even found a way to preach resurrection, and then continued the work of putting one foot down in front of the other, steeling myself for the goodbyes that lay ahead.

In some respects, last year was the culmination of that process not just of loss but surrender. I was helping out at the small church in Lowndesboro. However, the work there was mainly about staying out of the way of a community that learned to be self-sufficient long ago, that didn’t need an over-eager priest coming in to stir things up and change what had worked well for years and years. I was also working with ECF in a job that simply did not fit. I already knew I was leaving the position at the end of the first phase of the project I’d helped get started. Sherod and I knew we could make it financially if I continued to hold the very part-time position in Lowndesboro and picked up the occasional supply work as well. It’s just that I had to quit thinking there’d be more of a place for me in the Episcopal Church.

But my horizon had narrowed and focused into the days immediately in front of me. I lived in a present with a past too painful to think about, and a future that required me to be at peace with no clear path, no well-defined trajectory, just a gathering of days. There was abundance in that new normal, for sure. I was rediscovering spring. I was planting a my first-ever vegetable garden. My husband and I were tending to each other and to a marriage that had been tattered and torn by the incredible pressure of trying to serve as priests together in a single ministry. All of that was wonderful. But I think one way of understanding death is to see it as an endless present. I did not go willingly into that night.

And then, instead of death being followed by disintegration into nothingness, what followed was a second chance. I find myself back as the parish priest that I could never in my wildest dreams have imagined possible when I went on retreat to Lake Tahoe in the Fall of 2013. With the help of my mentor and friend Joe, during those 30 days of retreat, I sought and found the kind of indifference that allowed me to release my death-grip on the ministry I had started in Fort Lauderdale.  It sounds romantic on this side of the story. The work of surrender, the determination to let go, had to be a stripping down to a very simple version of me. I had to stop planning, projecting or anticipating myself into the next place, the next job, the next possibility. I had to be willing to let go with no safety net and be in free-fall without any clarity about how long that might take or where I would land.

The experience was harrowing. And as harrowing as it was, the reality of what it means to Easter this year is even more powerful, even more filled with goodness and joy than I could have dreamed of. I heard an interview given by my friend Michelle about claiming the joy of Easter,  where she talked about all the ways we observe the season of Lent and how little we do to observe the season of Resurrection. This year, I am Eastering. I am getting to be the parish priest I was called to be. I am proclaiming without shame or hesitation that death did not have the last word and joy and gratitude are a gift to be shared. Exsultet!

I hope I never stop being washed over with wonder as spring comes into its own. I imagine I will be learning about it for the rest of my life. Here’s what I’ve learned this year: that no two springs are alike. This spring, there is an abundance of a vine that climbs on trees in this area and has quantities of bright yellow blooms; I don’t remember seeing it last year.  This spring as well, I held my breath, waiting to see if what I had planted last year, tended to, tried to be patient about, thought about when I’d walk out to feed the chickens and see the flower beds looking so bare and lifeless, would actually bloom. Little by little, I am getting the answers.

So far, just about everything has started to bloom—foxglove spikes are full of buds that are opening. It isn’t just one hyacinth in bloom now—more have bloomed: purple and white and pink, and deeper pink. Daffodil varieties that looked especially beautiful in the Dutch catalog I got last fall and landed in my “shopping cart” turn out to be surprises—some of them tiny, some of them exotic. One single tulip is flowering among the clover we planted last fall as ground cover. I am sort-of in awe of the two varieties of flowering quince. They are beautiful.

I am also surprised by the sense of responsibility that keeps growing inside me. This afternoon, I had to do something that made me sad. I had planted some of my bulbs around a pear tree on the side of the house in the front yard. Tomorrow, the builders will start on my dad’s small cottage and the pear tree is almost exactly in the middle of the construction site. Bulbs that had pushed through, that had flowers about to bloom, would be destroyed if I left them there. So I had to dig them up. There too, there was a small and intriguing lesson to learn—although I planted the bulbs with the root side down, now, I found them lying almost sideways in the ground, the leaves extending out in the ground about an inch before curving up into the sunlight. I found new places for all of them, apologized, and now must wait to see if they are resilient enough, and I smart enough in my replanting, for them to live to flower in another year.

When I was growing up, it was my mom who had the green thumb. And when we got married, it was Sherod who did most of the gardening. In Memphis, I had 3 rose bushes I planted and watched over, but when we got to Southeast Florida, I didn’t even do that. Sherod and I had a good conversation recently about how I watched my mom always have someone help with the harder work—the digging, the heavy lifting, the weeding.

As much as I love each and every one of these little flowers that are now gracing my garden, what I love the most is the effort it takes, especially the harder physical labor. You work, and in 75 degree weather you sweat and my palms are getting callused; now my muscles don’t ache  at the end of the day like they did a couple of weeks back when I got started. My hands though—they do.  The next project, when time permits, is to paint the new gate into our vegetable and wildflower garden. We’ve had to close that space in because Mo the Molicious, our young new dog member of the family, loves nothing more than to roll in the clover, in the turnip patch, in the cabbages and the broccoli, and the carrots. Sherod has installed a rather handsome gate and it will be my job to paint it. Recommendations for a really good, bodacious color are welcomed. Include the brand and any other specifics!

I don’t have nearly as much time as I need for all the gardening I’d like to do—and that too is different since last year, when my work was only part-time—but the bits of time I am given, like this afternoon leave me not just tired, but deeply happy.

More hyacinths have pushed through the ground, the pear trees are beginning to bloom and Gus, one of our horse guests, is losing his thick winter coat.  Late this morning and later in the afternoon, having gotten a windfall of time, I weeded, I got my roses ready for spring, gave them an extra boost to resist aphids and black spot.  I carried a wheel-barrow full of weeds out to the burn pile and filled a large bag with chicken poop and horse manure, fertilizer a friend has asked for.  Already, I have taken some of that same fertilizer, along with the compost I got from the bottom of our compost bin, to fold into the soil where we will have our vegetable and herb garden.

Today, the Spouseman and I got a cubic yard of mulch in Prattville; my job when we got home was to offload it from the back of Sherod’s truck.  At one point, standing in the truck bed, shovel in hand, while the sweat ran down my back. I looked out and saw the garden stretch far in front of me–the furrows Sherod has already plowed, the crimson clover ground cover we will plow under that has enriched the soil during the winter season, all the things that will require lots from us both as spring gains a foothold and then summer does too.  I took it all in and remembered strength.  My body remembered what it is like to be strong and what it takes.  I made myself go a few extra steps, do one more task, get more on the shovel to heave over the truck, just to open spaces beyond remembrance.  Because being strong not just of mind and spirit, but of body as well is, quite simply, magnificent.

In 1963, my parents took a trip to Sweden in the early spring. It had been many years since they had been in Sweden and it was the first time they went as a married couple. Through the years, I heard both of them describe that as a time of great happiness. One of the things my mom brought back to Colombia from that trip was a single hyacinth bulb. She kept it in the refrigerator for a few weeks and then managed to get it to grow and bloom.

One evening, when it had finally bloomed, she invited the Swedes in Cali for dinner at our house. Most of them had emigrated from Sweden in the mid nineteen twenties. These Swedes had moved to Colombia to escape the devastation of the economic depression of the era and, though they all managed to make a living for themselves, it was not easy, travel back to Sweden was expensive and difficult; most them, in their late fifties and sixties already knew they would never get to see Sweden again.

After dinner, my mom cleared away the dishes and left only a couple of lit candles on her dining room table. Then she went into the kitchen, took the hyacinth out and put it in the middle of the table. I can still hear her describe how you could hear a pin drop in the room that had about 12-18 people gathered around one small plant. She looked around and even the men had tears running down their faces.

Last fall, I ordered bulbs for the garden, including hyacinths. I couldn’t even begin to imagine that within a couple of months, we would begin the process of moving my dad in with us.

Last night we had bad storms, though not as bad as they could have been. The wind is still howling and the day is very overcast. I was concerned about my chicken girls and had to spend some extra time cleaning out their water dispenser and putting fresh food out for them. As I was leaning over the water bucket, scrubbing it out, I noticed something pink in one of my flower beds and by the shape, I knew. One of the hyacinths was blooming.

When I finished my work, I came into the house, got my dad to put on his jacket and took him out to show him. We held hands and stood and gazed at that little plant and another one that’s pushing up and about to burst into bloom as well. When I looked at my dad, he had tears in his eyes, like I did.  We both miss my mom, both know how thrilled she would have been to see that hyacinth. And this is a season of gaining so much and losing so much, both of us. There is nothing easy about moving a parent into one’s life. And I wouldn’t change it for the world.