The weather forecast is calling for wind chills between MINUS FORTY AND MINUS FIFTY this weekend.

Dear God, Thank you for the gas stove in the basement, my warm bodied husband to snuggle me, and for a sewing project! Amen.

We received a jigsaw puzzle for Christmas this year. (Thanks Sam and Allison!) I’m not much of a puzzle do-er, my spatial awareness is lacking on good days, but since it was there, we decided to give it a go. And it was tough going. Firstly, this puzzle is laser cut on wood, and the thick pieces are oddly shaped and unexpected. Next, the picture provided with the puzzle was very small and not very detailed, so as we progressed, we had to guess sometimes, especially when the same colors swirled at random spots throughout the whole. Then, there was a bit of a curveball since the edge pieces afforded us no comfort and very little help. Only the two side edges were straight, the top is arched and the bottom scalloped. 

Sheesh.

But we soldiered on through the difficulties. And finished it!

I was admiring our work on New Year’s Day, feeling pretty cocky that we’d done it. Then it hit me: Facing a new year is akin to slowly completing a jigsaw puzzle. The expectations we have may be nebulous and undetailed, giving us little guidance about choices and connections. We’ve not a clue about where the edges will reach or what boundaries will show up. Slowly though, with some perseverance, a lot of patience, and holding tight to the trust that the Maker has indeed supplied us with all the pieces we need to achieve a finished product, we can walk through a year, or a moment, or a relationship, or a life with purpose and hope.

May your 2024 be filled with the wonder of discovery, with finding new ways to fit it all together, and with joy at what is revealed.

                August is a glorious month filled with picnics and sunshine. Except. For a few, August is wrenching and painful.  I’m thinking about moms today.  Moms who have spent the last nineteen or so years of their lives devoted mainly to one thing: raising their babies.  Moms who are this month caught up in the pride and excitement and joy of outfitting their youngest child with comforters and towel sets, a great wardrobe, books, and lessons on budgeting while fighting the silent pain of saying goodbye.

                You can tell yourself over and over how happy you are for your daughter, whose eyes are filled with the future and the college of her aspirations, but when she finally drives away, or walks through security without you, there are absolutely no words to describe the desolation a mom is left with. And yes, if a mom has been through this with her older children, she understands a bit of that pain, but no mom, no matter how prepared she thinks she is, is quite ready for what she feels when the youngest leaves.

My heart remembers the emptiness of rooms, the quiet of evenings, the grievous sanity of mornings without chaos or last minute lost homework, the blankness of the family calendar. Budget hours for laundry only to find it is done without a blink. Buy your usual amount of cookies, or chips, or those certain cheese sticks she loves, then watch them pile up, uneaten in the fridge. Quiet reigns – becomes your nemesis. There’s no PTA meeting to rush to, no bleacher or theater seat waiting for you. Now you have time to bewail the fact that she is gone, and that all your babies have flown, and the hole in your heart and your days becomes a vast universe of emptiness.  You ask yourself: Who am I now, after I’ve given everything to be the best mom I can be and now when that’s no longer who I am?

To the mom out there who will watch her last fledgling fly this month, please know I am praying for you, thinking often of you.  It will get easier. The pain will ease.  As Gramma would say, “This, too, shall pass.”

I grew up standing up on the front seat of our Studebaker with only my mom’s arm to protect me when she hit the brakes.  When my children were babies, I held them while we drove (sometimes when I drove!) Later, they had booster seats so they could see out the window.  From the time they could sit up, I did insist they use a seat belt, it was a non-negotiable. Note: everyone survived.

Now, you have my personal background story and you will be able to understand better the complete bafflement Karl and I encountered yesterday while trying to install a ‘rear-facing child safety restraint system’ in my car in anticipation of my lovely bonus daughter and grandson’s visit this week.  It very quickly became clear we were in over our heads.  Just figuring out how to loosen the straps that will hold Jamie in the seat took us a good fifteen minutes, and we will only really know if I truly got the concept later today when we pick them up from the airport.

The car seat book, which had well over 200 pages, devoted lots of space to cautions and warnings and for diagrams and pictures and accompanying explanations about installation and use that did absolutely nothing at all in regards to helping us figure out what to do. I’m certain that the complete how to explanation is included within the pages, but just not in a linear, step by step format that was accessible to laymen with our talents and expertises.

We worked for about an hour. I read aloud while Karl attempted to decipher the instructions, then we’d trade places. We checked the car’s owner’s manual as suggested, which added a whole new dimension of befuddlement.   Then, in a spark of what I think was probably Divine Mercy, we decided we needed help.  Off to the fire department we drove. Thank God for the Cheyenne Fire Department and a fireman named Chris who has been schooled on car seat installation. Filled with grace and best practices, in about half an hour the seat was properly installed and we were educated in car seat safety.  In reality, it wasn’t that hard, not nearly as complicated as the book made it out to be. 

So yay!  I’m off to the airport.

For most of last week our temperature didn’t get above freezing. No surprise, I hate the cold, especially when accompanied by Wyoming’s vicious wind. Despite this, once I ignore the fact that I can’t feel my toes, and I ignore the discomfort of needing to go to the bathroom but deciding that it just isn’t worth expending the energy and time to remove THAT many clothes in order to use the grocery store restroom, the fact remains that winter’s cold does have a kind of brutal beauty.

For example, I love the way brand new snow glitters.  Tiny points of light wink and sparkle on bare branches and sleeping lawns. At times, when it’s far below zero, the air itself shimmers magically.  For just a minute at least, sharp edges are softened and my world is clean and fresh and somehow simple.

I admire the physics and science involved in icicles. Water captured in mid drip, often in labored positions and gnarled, anguished shapes, testaments of powerful wind and commanding cold.

Though frightening and disorienting, I am intrigued with the way dust-fine snow snakes across the road in ever changing patterns during a ground blizzard.  It’s a mesmerizing dance that polishes the road to a shiny slickness and gives me the illusion that I’m not moving though my speedometer assures me I am. My fascination increases when the sky above is pure, hopeful blue while anything more than a mere few feet in front of me is only a guess.  Somehow in those moments the storm and I merge into one being, both of us pumped with adrenaline and relying on something beyond ourselves for redemption.

While I’m not fond of ‘snowflakes that stay on my nose and my lashes’, I do enjoy watching from my living room window as large, downy flakes fall on a calm afternoon, or even when a witchy wind whines and screeches around my eves, pelting windows and walls with a formidable onslaught.  I appreciate a rampaging winter storm most while I am inside with those I love. I am safe. I am warm. I am reminded of my blessings and of the Hand who delivers me from trouble and peril. 

There’s something sublime about snorkeling. Contacts in, face mask seated tight, snorkel in my mouth- check.  Wade out to thigh-deep water and slip on the fins.  Bend at the waist, push off and lift my feet.  Instantly weightless, immediately transported to a whole new realm: surrounded, embraced, and welcomed.  The dominant sound is of my own breathing, fast and excited at first until my brain begins to trust the snorkel then slow, rhythmic, calm. Even in the shallows, fish of all colors dart around me.  I look beneath me to find what the sea is offering today.  Star fish, urchins, sea fans, brain coral, sand dollars. Part of the delight is discovery. I glance up and notice a needle nose fish, silver and white, swimming close by just at the surface.  He seems as interested in me as I am in him.

Today a turtle shares my joy.  I envy his ability to maneuver, to gain the bottom and explore.  My heart quickens when I see him begin to rise to breathe.  He surfaces close by, indifferent to my watchful presence. Nonchalant compared to the thrill I feel.

I recognize him as a Green Turtle, though he is mottled, vivid brown. At home where I am a visitor. He dives again to forage among the waving grasses and I, reticently, move off to see what else I will be prized with.

I understand very little in this world, and all is a gift, a blessing.  My body relaxed, supported by an unseen force that allows me to float, I listen to my own breaths and I pray without words, my heart to God’s.   

When we landed in Miami on our way home last week, we had just about half an hour to make our next flight.  We were both a bit nervous about making that connection, especially when I checked and found that we were arriving at D-9 and needed to depart from D-33.  From past experience in Miami we knew that between 9 and 33 is a long, congested shopping mall and food court area.  We crossed our fingers and prepared for a long, quick journey.   

Being proactive, we decided to try to expedite our exit from the plane when we landed in Miami. We both were only carrying backpacks that fit under the seat in front of us, and we had them gathered and ready.  When the seat belt sign blinked off, we got up quickly and scooted past our seat mate (Karl had already talked with him).  I went first.  I calmly explained to the people in the next two rows that we had a short connection and asked their permission to jump in front of them.  Everyone was kind and didn’t hesitate to help, one man wished us luck.  At the third row, a man in a blue shirt was standing in the aisle.  I repeated my request. In response, he faced away from me (toward the front of the plane), put his left arm up on the left bulkhead and pointedly moved his roll-aboard suitcase by his right foot, effectively blocking any chance of us slipping by him.  Other than that, he didn’t acknowledge me. When it came time for his row to exit, he motioned and waited for everyone to get in front of him before he moved, and Karl and I were able to then fall in behind him.

Alrighty then.  After we were on the jet-way, I ended up right beside that blue-shirted man for a few paces.  I glanced over at him and smiled.  I told him I hoped he had a good evening. A bit surprised perhaps, he thanked me. I meant it.

The incident perplexes me. I keep thinking about him. I wasn’t ever angry, though I admit his display of unnecessary meanness shocked me.  Allowing us to get ahead of him would have cost him nothing, not in significant time, or in any material or emotional way I can discern.  

But. It seems to me that his unwillingness to do a tiny kindness may have cost him a great deal.  Here’s what I mean:  when I avail myself an opportunity to do a good thing, I benefit. Hold a door for someone, smile at a stranger, let the guy with a dozen eggs and a can of Ajax check out ahead of me and the two weeks’ worth of groceries heaped into my basket. I hope that my act is unselfish, but at the same time, it’s fun to spread a bit of goodness. I smile to myself.  My heart feels lighter. Knowing I helped someone’s day lifts me up, encourages me.  Deliberately choosing the opposite – to leave a situation a bit darker than it was, to be an instrument of angst, to spread disunity or even indifference – those choices have internal consequences as well. I don’t know anything about this man, his life or his story, but I feel sorry for him.  He had an opportunity to make a little difference in someone’s life and he chose not to. That feels bleak and dour, and I hope, for his sake, that it isn’t a choice he often makes.

PS: we made our connecting flight with about five minutes to spare!

The adage is “You can’t go home again.”  Wiktionary explains this means “Past times which are fondly remembered are irrecoverably in the past and cannot be relived.”  I’m pretty sure this isn’t universally true since in my life I have left Wyoming three separate times, eventually returning here to feel perfectly comfortable and at peace.  Certainly, the returns brought differences and adjustments, but I don’t believe they demanded more accommodation than would have occurred just by simply living here and embracing the changes life brings.

Tomorrow, Karl and I are testing the adage once more.  We are on our way to St. Croix on a vacation. Our bags are nearly packed – the first thing in were the snorkels –  reservations are made.  We’ve contacted our friends there and are looking forward to being with them, we know what time church starts.  I have a list of where our favorite musicians are appearing so that we can go and listen.

We’re going back to a place we embraced completely and called home for six years.  I’m excited and anxious, even if the trip includes a red-eye flight.  So why is that negative old adage rattling around in my brain today?  Maybe the answer is this: of all the places I have moved to and then eventually left, St. Croix stands alone. It’s the only former home that my new home has been unable to completely overshadow and replace. I’ve truly missed St. Croix. At times, I’ve hurt for it. Somewhere, I suppose, there lurks an urchin of fear. Fear that being on island won’t be as welcoming and comfortable as I hope.  Or, fear that it will hurt just as bad to leave it this time as it did the last.  Huh.  Stay tuned.