wordless wedensday

stuck on bandaids

this week's soundtrack.

if cora had her way she would spend her life covered in bandaids. an injury is not required for a bandaid request, mind you. to cora, bandaids are not only a means to cover a cut or a bug bite, but also a distraction from whatever was causing her tears in the first place, as well as a fashion statement. and once a bandaid goes on, heaven forbid we should suggest she take it off at bath time or, even worse, it should fall off on its own.

unfortunately for cora, because she prefers to wear bandaids recreationally and goes through boxes of them so quickly, her frugal (okay, we are just plain cheap on this one) parents often opt for lower priced bandages which means a decrease in quality as well. often cora can hang on to a bandaid long enough for a rash to develop from the adhesive, not to mention the sticky residue that only comes off with heavy scrubbing. this is especially ironic when she has been wearing the bandaid for no real medical purpose. then she ends up with a rash in a place where there was really nothing wrong to begin with.

we've been home for three weeks. I can't help but think about cora and her bandaids as I putter around my life. life at home has all these tinges of familiarity, but so much is so very different. I'm not working now, but I was when we left. a dear friend has moved just far enough to really be "away." I am homeschooling our kids, but most days I am really not even sure what that means. so I find myself applying bandaids willy-nilly, trying to feel better, to feel healed, to feel something. some of my bandaid choices are good ones, like bikram yoga. I have no idea what I'm doing with my life so I drive down the mountain to the yoga studio and spend an hour and a half staring ay my half-naked self in the mirror while I sweat it all out. if I can do yoga in 105-degree heat I can do the rest of my life, I tell myself. and I could write for days about all I am learning in that hot room. it is my prayer time, my alone time, my workout, and my community all rolled into one. it is a pretty good bandaid. sure beats feeling sorry for myself, another one of my bandaids. or excuse making. or sarcasm. all bandaids I use to tell myself that I deserve to feel crummy for a while and that I might as well wallow in it and let other people know how rotten I feel, too. and reading, how did reading become just another bandaid for me? the more I read the more I know I should just be writing it all down myself, that reading has become an excuse for not writing, an escape into someone else's story instead of capturing my own. and I am working extra hard to avoid the bandaid of busy-ness, being busy out of habit or to avoid dealing with anything meaningful. that is the hardest one of all for me because I want to be in constant motion, even though I know I am being called to something very different right now.
















but, just like cora, eventually I have to figure out what my bandaids (even the good ones) are covering up and how the healing process is really going. so I go into the garden and dig up potatoes eric planted for us last spring. I take the long way home so we can pass connestee falls and walk out on the overlook, just because it's on the way. I go to church even though it sometimes makes me feel even lonelier, so I can walk up front and have someone look me in the eye to remind me "this is his body, broken for you." we bake things, the kids and I, and use up more glue sticks than I ever thought possible because creating is part of healing, part of living, even when it makes big messes. these are the balms and salves that seem to serve me best. I don't even know what it is I am healing from, why I need all these bandaids in the first place, but not knowing seems to be part of the journey right now.

I want life to be big and loud and vibrant all the time, but this season seems to be focused on the quiet and still and gentle parts. the trick is learning how to tell the difference between still and boring, how to savor the quiet without needing to fill it. and I know to get the benefits from this gentler season of life I am going to have to learn to be gentle with myself, even if it means ripping off a few bandaids first.

like butter on hot biscuits

I made biscuits today for the first time in more than four months. turning on the oven made our little cottage so hot this summer, not to mention the lack of counterspace and time. so we made do with the dining hall biscuits all summer. but it does a gal's heart good to have her children say, "these aren't as good as mama's" every time they were served.

today is also the first time I've made biscuits since my aunt denise died. denise taught me to make biscuits in my grandmother's kitchen when I was about cora's age. she'd pull one of the kitchen chairs (that my grandfather made) over to the counter and let me stick my hands right into the bag of white lily self-rising flour. she would cut the shortening into the flour while I dusted a big circle on the counter top. when the dough was rolled out, we'd press circles together using those smurf glasses mcdonald's sold back so long ago. we never made less than two dozen biscuits. only when they were in the oven was I allowed to tiptoe in to wake up my daddy. the promise of hot biscuits was a sure way to rouse even the latest sleeper.

I loved watching my dad eat biscuits. the rest of us ate the with butter or a slice of cheddar cheese in the middle, but my dad would eat at least four, every one of the with different fixings. eggs and bacon, peanut butter, sausage gravy, jelly and butter, corned beef hash: whatever else was being served for breakfast went right inside. and iced sweet tea. all the grown-ups has a big glass of tea with breakfast when we stayed at my grandma's house. I think of her whenever I hear someone crunching ice.

of course the way I made biscuits today would make denise raise her eyebrows and shake her head. I put the flour and the shortening (vegan, organic, of course) in the food processor because I can't seem to avoid big lumps when I try to cut it in with a fork. and I don't use self-rising flour, let alone white lily. today we used almond milk instead of whole milk because that's what we had. but as soon as I had dusted that circle of flour onto the kitchen table, kids came running to make shapes out of dough using cookie cutters (no smurf glasses here). cora always eats at least two biscuits-worth of raw dough, and there's flour on the floor and dough rubbed into jamin's sweatshirt.







we were at my parents' house last weekend. I spent some time with my mom and sister going through scrapbooks my dad had brought up from his trip down to clean out denise's house. we found my grandmother's wedding rings and a cast iron corn gem pan. there were pictures of my dad as a toddler and my grandmother in a bathing suit (her dream was to be a rockette). my dad told stories of his mother dragging him and denise under her bed in a thunderstorm because one of the cows had gotten loose and was banging on the kitchen window. there were old pictures of my parents (which look strangely like eric and I) and baby pictures of me and my sister. a whole life, generations of life even, in cardboard boxes.



we've been home now for five days. we are easing back into life here: seeing friends, going on hikes in our neighborhood, finding books and toys we'd forgotten we owned. there is still some settling in to do. I still have some soul-searching to do on what this next season of life might look like. I'm still coming to grips with the idea that god is calling me to be right here, to just be still for a while. fall is a tricky time for me anyway because I don't like to wear socks and I know winter is coming, but there is beauty to help us ease into the change. and here is a good place to be. here is standing in a kitchen full of furniture my dad made for us and using recipes that are just as full of good stories as they are good flavors. we are living a life someone will try to make sense of from the remnants in a cardboard box some day. we are telling the stories our children will tell. and now is the time to write the stories of peaceful familiarity and ritual and routine to match the stories they'll have of adventure and wandering. and if they think of me every time they eat hot biscuits, that's not too shabby either.

postcards from the edge

life is not a postcard. nothing ever looks as good in person as the picture on the back. and real stories don't fit into that little square, no matter how small you write. nobody sends postcards of the back parking lot of a chinese restaurant with two children playing in a drainage ditch and two adults sitting in front of the dumpsters, one crying hard enough to make her shoulders shake. there aren't postcards that say: "be glad you're not here, because here isn't what I thought it'd be like. here is just like everywhere else, only farther away." nobody sends postcards to say: "when I shrug and laugh that we don't know what we're doing with our lives, I forget about days like today. the days when it is hard to find a decent place to eat and the directions include unmarked roads we can't ever seem to find. days when we're all sick of each other and this whole crazy plan seems like a huge mistake. I forget that waiting for the next adventure often includes huge chunks of actual waiting." nobody sends postcards like that because it is too much like real life. and maybe that is the real lesson: life on the road is just as real. my children can be just as whiny. I can feel just as bogged down or just as overwhelmed as I would at home. who I am doesn't fundamentally change based on geographic location. if I don't like chinese food in north carolina, I still won't like it in maine. and I can be just as miserable about things that hardly even matter in our car as I can in our kitchen. and for now, this IS our real life. I kept telling the camp staff that this summer: "stop waiting for real life to start after college. this IS your real life!" and this is mine. on the road, in the car, in a state of flux I'm not sure I want to be in: all of this is just as real as the rest of it. even the fall-aparts in the middle of nowhere.

but there are reasons to be glad life is not a postcard. real stories can never fit in that square, no matter how small you write because real stories are big and need hand motions and funny voices and interruptions and digressions. and if folks don't send postcards of the back parking lots of chinese restaurants, they'll miss out on some pretty amazing moments. moments that need to be recorded, filed away, because those are the real stories of the journey.