Some Good Reasons Times A Bazillion

I'll begin this post with the acknowledgement that, at the time of this writing, one grandson, Harvest, is still outside my own 'social circle' due to living circumstances that need to be honoured.  My Gramma heart is eager for the day my whole family can be together in one space.  Believe me, in our story, that kind of togetherness is not something we take for granted.

Harvest, I miss you and hope we can all be at the cottage together this summer.
Deep sigh.
We'll see.

Harvest age 3, getting ready for the St. Jacob's train ride!

______________

Probably, we all have our own reasons.
To stay 6 feet apart.
To wear a mask.
To stay within our social circle.
To respect the restrictions in the stores.
To wash our hands while we sing Happy Birthday.
And to use hand sanitizer when we can't.
To stay away from a crowded beach.
To refrain from even some of what's now allowed,
just to give that added layer of protection.

We have our reasons.

Here are some of mine.

Abby, long and lanky, still willing to swing a little with Gramma and lay her head on my shoulder while we talk about nail polish colours and plan our spa treatments once we get to the cottage.

Abby, 14, grade 8 graduation

Zachary, tall and talkative, telling me every detail about his newest Lego creation or the wild and wacky dream he had last night, which remarkably can happen in one run on sentence that lasts a full 10 minutes or so.

Zachary, 6, just before Gramma went to Thailand for three months.

Jayden, cute and confident, quick to unlearn the dreadful-but-necessary-rule-for-a-while not to run wildly up to Gramma for a hug, and who competes now to be the first.

Jayden, 3, first time back at Gramma's house

And Harvest, now 9-going-on-10, pictured above, who, by the way, when we're all together and I call out that it's lunch time and we need to wash our hands, is the first to respond, every time!

Of course there's this new one, hoped for and prayed over like perhaps no other baby, due to arrive in August and already fiercely loved.

Baby Boy, can't wait to meet in August

These are my reasons.
Some of the more important ones.

There's nothing I'm so eager to 'get back to' that is worth jeopardizing the delicate, newly-won privilege of wild-running-up hugs, or little moments in the swing, or up close and personal dream-stories, or the hello-Gramma of an unborn baby's kick.  Nothing I want so much that I would risk bringing infection to my daughter at this point in the game (or ever).  Nothing so important that I would risk pushing Harvest's return to our circle any further out.

This is a gift. 
One gift of so many, actually, brought to us, courtesy of Covid-19:
The distillation of what we already knew was precious,
but now is that times a bazillion.

My Pandemic Birthday

My face is cold but only my face.  The rest of me stays snug under cottage-fleece blankets, listening to Ken, already awake, getting his breakfast, and hoping he’ll make a fire, which he does, and my birthday is off to a cozy start.

The water is flat and the sun bright, but I’m not all rushing down to the dock just yet.  We got the kayak out of the boathouse yesterday and it was such a mess.  Somehow - even propped up and on its side – it got filled with brackish sludge that now floods the once-dry, slimy wooden floor in not-in-decades water levels.  We got it out and parked beside the dock, but it will take a good cleaning before a pleasant paddle could be had.  This I’m thinking wrapped in my housecoat sipping tea caught in the tension between by my mad desire for that first of season paddle and my shivery shelf enjoying the fire. 

But the mad desire wins, and I head down with towel-rags to undo the mucky damage.  There.  Not quite pristine but good enough.  And just like that with a silent push, I’m off, suspended now in that space between the ridiculous and sublime, like the morning mist that still caresses the surface of the water, mystically, as if some magic was lifting, leftover from last night.

And oh, this is pouring in and filling up and healing.  Silent gliding on glass flat water, sun happy happy above in a sky silly with blue.  And the heron and the young family of geese don’t mind me.  And in spite of myself I find I am weeping in their welcome.  I am welcomed onto the water with them.  And I didn’t know how badly I need this.  Sounds foolish, I know. 

It’s a water snake, I think, making its way across the partially submerged swimming raft tied to the side of the dock.  A long one, maybe a meter, all brown and shiny and snakishly beautiful, flipping off now into the water on the other side, making good speed along the shoreline.

Lunch down by the water with Ken, unfolds itself to some time in my space on the desk.  The wind has come up just a little.  Enough to keep the mosquitoes at bay. 

The jenny wrens have abandoned the birdhouse and are building a nest under the eves almost above my head.  In this they are welcome, being such good company and cheerful heralds of each new morning, as they have done for many seasons already.  I find comfort in their quick visits close on the rail of the deck, twigs and other building materials in beak, before they flit up to keep on with the project.  It’s nice to be trusted.

And this is how God gifts me this birthday.  I think He started, actually, yesterday.  Yesterday I slept.  Pretty much the entire day.  Still can’t believe it myself.  Up at 5:11 a.m. with a plumbing emergency.  A yikes-get-the-towels-turn-off-the-pump-which-pipe-is-it-this-time kind of emergency.  The kind that has plagued this opening so far.  Even so, we’re both in good spirits, and when it’s all mopped up and there’s warm oatmeal in our bellies, the fire would make a good place to read for a bit.  Or sleep.  Which I did on and off until lunch.  And after lunch I had a nap.  Mostly until supper.  And after supper and a time down at the dock and a game of Scrabble, I still went to bed before sundown.  And slept all night.  How is that possible?  Except maybe I needed it.  Except maybe it was a pre-birthday gift that I was badly in need of and didn’t know.

We waited until they said it was okay, this coming up to the cottage thing.  I tell myself that every time I ask, “why didn’t we do this sooner?”  Oh yeah.  There’s a pandemic thing going on.  Except up here, I can’t tell. 

Today, for my birthday, I’ve been given an extraordinary gift of not knowing.  I don’t know who’s protesting what, either peacefully or violently, what Ontario’s latest Covid numbers are, or our Region’s or Canada’s or the world’s, or how many people died in the last 24 hours by disease or hatred or anything else.  This gift is priceless right now.

Believe me.  The great imbalance of blessing on my life right at this moment is not lost on me.  Not for a moment.  Gratitude and humility and wonder all around.  And I treasure this moment and save it up against anything that’s coming that won’t be like this, when I’ll need to remember that one perfect pandemic birthday when I turned 63.

And friends, dear, dear friends and beloveds, oh I wish I could give you some of this!  We all need so badly to be in ‘not-pandemic’ mode for long enough to breathe deep and long enough; to sleep enough; to just be a human being, instead of a human, being in the midst of such a long duress. 

And I’ll keep preaching that, and practicing what I preach about that.  About it not being about place or circumstance but about frame of mind.  About knowing that the deep peace of Christ that ‘passes understanding’ isn’t explained by the rationale given the stressors.  It’s about having a mind ‘stayed on Thee’ and finding a sweet spot of peace even as everything rages or just simply tediously persists among us.

Sending love and courage and joy and peace and the gift of not-knowing, if you can swing it.

Monday.

The week is just beginning!!

No Idea

Anniversary Song for Highview

Sung to the tune of Philippians 1:3-8

And you!

Look at you all new and true.

Two into one heart.

One fresh start.

And you have no idea!

Big dreams birth big vision

and mission for

Everyone, everyone come!

Church is not boring!

Jesus actually does love you!

And so do we.

So do we.

And we love each other.

We do!

And places called purple

and fairs called stuff

and portables and pig roasts and parking lots and then.

And then change changes things.

Changes change things.

And you have no idea.

When it’s happening

you have no idea

what it means

for then

for later,

especially when

the changes are hard.

You have no idea

what God is doing.

But He’s doing.

And now you’re going

and beloveds are beloved

in places so far away

and so just down the street

all at the same time

that it could only be said

God did it.

And everyone’s welcome

because Church is not what we all thought it was.

And Jesus actually does love you.

And so do we.

And love’s the thing, isn’t it?

And more change.

And change changes things again.

And now.

Look at you all staying true

to not being in one place all through

the winter and spring and now summer.

Because everyone is sick.

The whole world got sick.

And you can’t have a party.

Or can you?

Because Church –

Church isn’t what we thought it was after all.

Again it isn’t.

And isn’t that the way of it.

The love of it.

Because love’s the thing, isn’t it?

Random numbers game:

Added to 1997 is twenty three

and that’s where you’ll be

in 2020.

And 2020…well

You really have no idea. 

No one does.

No one’s done this before.

And it’s hard to know

what it means

for now,

for later.

But God knows.

And He’s doing.

Oh He is so doing!

You’ll see.

And you!

Just look at you!

Happy Twenty-third Anniversary Highview.

You are one of God’s best ideas,

And you will always have my heart.