The Narrator Naps

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Hey. Wake up. You know you came highly recommended and you need to do your job (bozo).

N (sleepily). Huh? Did you just call me Bozo?!

Yes. I did (albeit sotto voce). You have decent hearing.

N. Light sleeper.

Whatever, you are on the clock sista. Where did those two knuckleheads go?

Last I saw them, they were headed for Miss Havisham’s.

Miss Havisham’s? I did not write a character named Havisham. That was Dickens. You know, Great Expectations?

N. yeah, I know. That is my nickname for the extenuated older female relative that they are traveling to scam cash from.

Um, how exactly?

Well a basic combo–Honey Bunch will shop her impending delivery of a child, Cowboy will back her up with some well-played humility and yes ma’ams and both will suggest that if Miss H can’t spare the ducats they could sleep on the futon.

She has a futon?

Oh, yeah, it is buried under 20 years of laundry and a bag of high-end dog food.

How can you sleep through all of that trudging/scheming/prevaricating?

N shrugs. I am a professional. Seen it all.

The Narrator Ruminates

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There is nothing more monotonous than watching someone think. Well. One more thing–reading about a person thinking.

As in–the narrator thought. She chewed on her dilemma. She explored scenarios in her head. She plotted, schemed, planned. Ultimately she just sat and thought, just like The Thinker only more clothes, less abs.

She thought about maternity wards. They have a hushed holiness about them. She thought about the nurses who kept such careful watch over the wee babes. Everything feels safe in a maternity ward, except perhaps for mom. Mom can be stressed. Heck, mom can even fear for her life, her child’s life.

As a professionally trained, bonded, and insured narrator she had performed the necessary internships in nursing homes, elementary schools, courts of law and fast food joints, but it was her elective stint in OB that had stuck in her craw.

The babies are so perfect, so new. It is as though their nurses are their angels–washing, swaddling, protecting their little patients. In a world of chaos and violence that frequently spills out over the heads of children, most were given a day, maybe two of safety.

After that all bets were off…

Priorities

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Ten years ago I heard a distractingly handsome doctor give a motivational speech. Ok, he was my husband.

He told a group of squirrelly teens that they needed to prioritize. Well, showed them.

He showed them how to fill a large jar. First he put in rocks, then pebbles, then sand, then water. The jar was not full until the water had been poured in. His point? Put the big things in first.

This morning I was up early contemplating a long list of chores–messy house, yard work, bills, medical appointments and school.

Got my blood pressure up just thinking about all that stuff to do, plan, clean.

Ugh.

I have to put the rocks in first. And for me the central stone is Jesus. I have to be still and know Him. Next is love, I need to minister to the hearts of my family.

After that may the mud fall where it may in the messy metaphorical jar of life.

Matthew 7:24-27 (NIV)
“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. [25] The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. [26] But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. [27] The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”

Do you miss him?

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In the midst of a morning of futility (guarantees are often NOT guaranteed) my young son asks me if I miss my father–a man who died before he was born.

I say yes
Infinite sadness
I tell him yes. I do.

I tell him that he looks a bit like his grandfather and that helps. He asks if his grandfather likes the athletic wear he favors.

He is so good at connecting himself
To the identities of ghosts
This fully living child
I love.

Incidentally it is Christmas

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Honey is big with child and the child in question belongs to her baby daddy whom she calls “hubby” even though their common law arrangement would generally favor boyfriend over husband.

The narrator refers to him as “Cowboy” although he is more of a car or truck boy, no cows in sight.

It is winter which means that Hubby is wearing jeans with his wifebeater T-shirt and Honey is wearing a faux fur hunting cap, flaps pulled down.

They are traipsing through snow and the beagle puppy in Cowboy’s arms whimpers and squirms in the cold.

They have run out of gas and it is dusk. Cowboy is scanning the darker corners of a parking lot for an early model car with easy gas tank entry. They need to “borrow” a couple of gallons to get home.

The fading light, the young impoverished couple trudging toward shelter evoke the memories of a sacred crèche until one is able to discern the nature of their quest and the utter absence of either a donkey or a sacred city.

No. This is a different. One cannot see Joseph in a muscle T siphoning gas from a beat up chevy cavalier.

Petty larceny on the road to Bethlehem? Only if it is Pennsylvania.

Honey B and the narrator

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Honey likes memes with cats, puppies, and rude phrases which stretch the patience of the narrator, who generally perches over her shoulder quietly tsk-ing.

The narrator is concerned about the way caustic emotion seems to erode Honey’s traction on life and grammar.

Honey writes about her predicament:

Tore up? Wat ya mean tore up? I din tore nuthin’!!!!
It was you that tore stuff you bleeping bleep.
Your the one who tares stuff!

Honey, your spelling and grammar are abysmal, chastens the narrator.

Honey looks dumbstruck, not because she doesn’t want to tear into the narrator but because for some reason she can’t .

Weird.

She blinks at the narrator. Why can’t I cuss you out? She asks glumly.

Well, it is my magic powers of narration. A gift from the author, who, incidentally finds your mad swings at communication tragi-comic. Would it kill you to write “you’re for you are?”

Author vs narrator

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Everyone knows an
author is the person or being who writes the book.

A narrator tells the story.

An author exerts considerable control in a story unless…

Unless her creations rebel. Or his.

If that happens all heck can break loose. And by heck I mean hell and by hell I mean it. Burning fire and all.

Narrator is cush. Cush as in cushion. Friendly. Not friendly, third, second, first person. Narrator doesn’t care about perspective. Narrator just says real quiet-like, let’s move this along.

Honey B

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I say all this about shoes and burgers because I wish she had a Clarence.

Don’t get me wrong. The girl ain’t no George Bailey. She is more of a pain in the badunkadunk, but that is the point.

Now, from a safe-ish distance I watch her chew people up and spit them out and I can’t help thinking of the pre-k teacher I never met in person who told me that Honey Bunch seemed to be focused mostly on the snacks, less on playing well with others and eye contact.

Sounds like Honey B.

Clarence, where are you for a girl like Honey? What would you tell her about the missed opportunities? Broken relationships? Bite marks on the hands that fed her?

George Bailey needed to see how important his life was to others. Honey needs to see that all the friends, family and kind strangers she has kicked to the curb were the angels.

Poor Clarence. If Honey’s favorite word for “mom” is b!+ch, what’s she gonna call you?

Today I saw her trash a kind woman who was the victim of abuse.

And I was ashamed. Ashamed, angry distraught.

I thought, honey, I know a piece of you is still that scared angry little girl, lost in your own skin.

But there ain’t no excuse whatsoever for that kinda cruel.

Put your big ol’ pants on
Woman up
And face the cold hard fact
Of you.

Honey Bunch

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Honey Bunch once wailed in the car for the greater part of a 5 hour trip because she was required to stop howling in order to get a burger. Talk about un-happy meals.

Honey Bunch once climbed on the roof yelling obscenities because she did not want to go….to the tennis court.

She actually did that more than once.

She once flipped out at a children’s park over shoes. Shoes are an extremely big deal for Honey Bunch. They are technically more important than mother. More important than love, you could say.

Cool

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Being cool.

It was the first illusion I left behind 14 years ago when I became a foster parent. There is no way to be cool when a small irate child is freaking out in your direction.

Now that she is older my adopted daughter’s preferred term for women is b!t?h. When she was mad at me as a child it was bad mommy.

No way to look cool when a small red-faced human is screaming that atcha.

But the truth is: cool is an illusion. Sure you can look great in skinny jeans. Sure you can own a hot tub. Sure you can buy a car, house, watch that defines you.

But make no mistake. Cool is an illusion.

There are no cool ICU patients. No cool nursing home residents. No cool corpses.

We humans are frail, helpless and bound to our mortal ends.

Cool is an illusion.

So if you love cool, if you crave cool, remember this:

There was a guy once who was cool. He was that Guy, the one who said–

Matthew 5:5-7 (NIV)
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. [6] Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. [7] Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

Nothing cooler than Jesus.

Because let’s face it. It is easy to say,

greater love has no man than he lay down his life for his friend

Easy to say it. But if you can do it? If you did do it? If you did it for me?

Freakin’ cool.
Because it cost Him everything
And He didn’t even blink