(In a time-keeping nod to newcomers) on “Thursdays” the cows are in charge. Always close to the Grown Up Manger Child,
All chew their cud
In the greenest pastures
And amble down to the wide, wide River of Life
To drink whenever we want.
I believe in regrief. I believe you and I will continue to regrieve the death of your mother. Recently we lost all four of our kittens to a fast moving, devastating affliction. In a week we went from joyful to devastated.
And I regrieved, the way I lost them reminding me of the way I lost you. The pain of one overshadowed by the pain of the other–even after 20 years.
Both griefs were characterized by my naive belief in the authorities in each case–the judge, the caseworkers, the lawyers for the lost daughters, the veterinarians for the kittens.
In your case I discovered that the entire system all the way to the state regulators was riddled with greed, prejudice, and corruption. You and your siblings were sold or bartered in exchange for federal subsidies for your care. Your adopted father had not only abandoned his first family, he had placed all of his assets in your adopted mother’s name to dodge child support. At one point he faced a jail sentence for failure to pay child support for his children. Things which should have hindered his ability to adopt you.
And the kittens?
Their veterinary clinic was indifferent, too busy. They were not seen in time. I could not get them any help until I found another vet, and by that time it was too late.
So in the midst of grieving for the lost kittens, I grieve for you as well–you and your siblings, you and your beautiful mother.
She had no chance in the rigged system. She had no chance but me.
And I was not nearly enough.
You do load after load of laundry, grateful for the workhorse machine from a low-tech era and the hot Texas sun–ad hoc laundry assistant
You drag the oriental rug outside, wash it like a corpse before burial, ask if it can be saved
You scrub fabric, bleaching where you can, trying to wash out a virus which will not, does not, abate.
Push aside the agony of why you have to do all this. Walk this road. Pray for the resurrection of the dead and the impossible watercolors of heaven
Our Father
Who art in heaven
Hallowed be thy name
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done
Here in us, as it is in heaven.
Even from a distance of 2000 years and a decent set of personal anecdotes about the constancy of God, not everything Jesus did or did not do makes sense to me.
Which helps when my prayers get different answers than what I want.
Because I do not need a Savior who feels the need to do what I find logical or necessary.
I just need a Savior.
I was born into a traveling family. Growing up I struggled with issues of identity and loss. What was home? What was this nagging sense of displacement?
I remember traveling in Italy as a young child and looking for the face of my grandmother in the crowd–despite my knowledge that she was not there. There was no chance that my middle-aged grandmother had jetted off for a Roman holiday in the spring of 1977
I had family members who I loved who did and said and believed things I did not. I found their beliefs deeply painful. How could I love them but not their way of seeing the world?
I settled on loving them but not the faults in their world views, and uneasy, precarious compromise, and one I have not much improved upon in all the years since.I struggle with disappointment in the collective institution of “family,” just as I have with “church,” “friendship,” “community,” and “club.”
People fail each other in big and little ways all the time, but Jesus never does. He is this extraordinary voice for justice, for love, for honor, for hope. His family resemblance marks the best of us.
Jesus does not look like a white guy in a flowing robe. He does not look like any of the famous pictures we have of him.
What he looks like is Love. Love that protects. Love that shelters. Love that never fails.
And that kind of family resemblance is hard to miss…when we find it among us in this broken world.
Matthew 12:48-50
1 Corinthians 13
Years after I first met M and C a little boy who I love more than the sky read The Cat and the Hat and expressed appropriate alarm over the treatment of Thing One and Thing Two–but they are children! He emoted.
Yes, Darling, there are many things about this story which trouble me also.
The first time I met M and C they burst through the door to the CPS waiting room. M was talking her usual mile-per-minute and both were whirling balls of energy. They went directly to the pastel plastic playhouse in the corner of the room and they reminded me of Thing One and Thing Two.
I wonder if anyone else wonders what happened to Thing One and Thing Two when they were all grown up?
Adopted mom–denizen of the ordinary. Ordinary tea, ordinary clothes, ordinary mulch, overgrown flower beds. Scans the sky for rain. Rattles around in the-used-to-be marveling at how things have not turned out as expected.
Nondescript kitchen window transforms itself into stained glass as I overthink which teacup, settle on porcelain white so different from the non-Euclidean trees green, alive, and fierce in this hot summer wind
I drop
two bags into the single cup, pour water from the kettle, assess how full the tea tin used to be
Last time we were alive
Together.
6 minutes to Ballinger, Texas I missed you. Not possessing the ability to stop all the clocks, I watched windmills instead, recording the flat, hot, windy stretch of road while the Catholic radio station came in so clear with words of uneven comfort. I picture you a Ghibli bride, birdcage veil like Jackie Kennedy, always dainty, smallest, sweetest bouquet of flowers held between your front two paws as you proceed toward our mutual Savior, unswerving in his gaze.
…and he turns loose the South Wind…drenched wings, night-black armor where face should have been…
–Ovid
Saw you once
In the photo booth of grief
Just before the Flood.
Carrying Light 