Beauty – Plumb

Winter Ends (I Promise)

Okay, okay, so this post popped up on my Facebook feed as a memory from 5 years ago. No I didn’t scour my site for a good one to re-post this week, it just fell into my lap and I took it as a sign. That I didn’t have to do anything. 🙂 And also that maybe this was a great time for this reminder.

This year’s a little different, at least here in Kansas. Easter brought snow and sleet and, therefore, an indoor egg hunt. The signs of life and warmth that usually serve as hiding places for eggs in our yard – the tulips, the daffodils, the green stems of day lilies not yet in bloom – were coated in ice rather than sunshine. Boo. Not my idea of the hope that Easter and spring usually provide.

But the sermon I heard at church spoke to this very tension. The waiting. The taut pull of a rope just before it snaps. The hebrew words that we translate to “hope” in English which mean so much more than “Gee, I sure hope we eat spaghetti for dinner.”

So I still wait. For warmer temperatures and the grass seed in my yard of mud to sprout. This essay was a good reminder of what I have to look forward to. The beautiful things to come…

Winter Ends

The Underbelly

Pros: no seat belts, you can get up and pee whenever the need arises, electrical outlets at each seat, wi-fi, giant windows, no one has to drive (i.e. the parents can read or work and even do things with the kids), boarding is quick and easy, you can take lots of luggage without a fee. Cons: it takes a while.

We took the train from Kansas City to St. Louis for spring break this year. It was my kids’ first time on an Amtrak and they loved it. The pros beat the cons by far. But there was one additional positive outcome, which surprised me with it’s goodness. A plane gives you the bird’s eye view; the car gets you on the ground, feeling the distance and experiencing each place you travel through; but the train shows you the underbelly.

Clouds hung low and full over the fields as we sped through the countryside. The comforting rock of the train car, the clickety clack over the rails, the view from the giant windows all brought back memories from when I was a child traveling from Kansas to the east coast. Watching the landscape change as one state melted into another. Playing checkers in the observatory car, ordering apple juice at the snack counter, sleeping in the tiny bunks – these are the recollections that hang on in my mind. But on this trip, as an adult, I noticed something altogether different.

“The other side of the tracks” is a phrase for a reason. Trains live on the outskirts of towns. They run past scrap yards, through tunnels plastered with graffiti, over rivers lined with tangled wilderness rather than tidy vacation rentals. They frequent parts of the country most don’t often visit – the small towns of little value to many sight-seers. Amtraks’ once sleek, silver bodies have dulled to gray, and like an aging old man they carry the weight and wisdom of years spent traveling the byways. Even the lonesome whistle harkens back to the past, fits this forgotten mode of transport. I, for one, enjoyed soaking up the nostalgia.

The scenery was beautiful and ugly in increments: the greening fields of spring, crumbling walls of cement, Cottonwood trees dotted with eagles by the wide Missouri River, a hodgepodge of trailer homes and ramshackle houses around a lake, fields of purple flowering henbit and deadnettle. But it was all the underside of the creature – the hidden or forgotten or uncelebrated bit. The part of the country you don’t see unless you go out of your way to do so, for which there are no billboards to make it an attraction. And though I’m not against attractions, per se, sometimes it’s good to see the rest. To travel though a space as an observer, seeing just what it would look like without the train you’re on. Highways have en entire economic system built around them: Cracker Barrels, gas stations, fast food restaurants, Lion’s Dens (Missouri’s interstate is lined with adult video stores). But the train simply has tracks and a few scattered, mostly forgotten stations. It gets you where you want to go without the fanfare. But with an internet connection.

The people who take the train are the real deal, too. Not a single person was dressed in heels for travel (as I’ve seen plenty of times at LAX). There were families, singles in their twenties, older folks who needed help with their bags. One man had a lively yet vulgar conversation on his phone during one part of our return trip: “I know, they’re all bitches, but this one is the biggest bitch of all…if I divorce her she’ll take my boat!” The young man behind me and I looked at each other and laughed as we listened, then he put on his Beats and I opened my novel. Some of my fellow travelers smelled. I’ll just say it. And by the looks of their clothes they hadn’t washed anything for a while. But like the public pool, or Checkers grocery store where your cashier may or may not have all his teeth, being in the midst of that reality is good for a soul. To see the spectrum of local humanity and remember that not everyone is exactly like me. The world is much more interesting than that. I’m not ready to have the guy on the phone over for coffee, but I can sit on a train with him. I can learn about life from being thrown together with all sorts of folks.

Next month we will drive to Florida for a family beach vacation, and I will partake in the gas stations and McDonald’s rest rooms (but probably not the Cracker Barrels, and definitely not the Lion’s Dens). I love a good road trip. And such a long distance would take a week on a train, which is just silly. But my little jaunt on the Amtrak to St. Louis was a treat. Not a super-sweet sugar rush but a slow melting bit of dark chocolate – actually good for me even days later. I’ll do it again sometime. And I’ll watch for the secret places, both beautiful and not. Because together they equal what’s real. The top, the sides, the front, the back, and the underbelly.

Yes. And Yes.

Sometimes a particular idea will come at me from all directions. As if it’s supposed to. Even a single word can become a theme for a period of time in my life. Remember, gather, and sit have all been recent centerpieces of my thoughts. But the words for this summer that really hit home were both/and, stuck together just like that. I’ve actually thought about them before – wrote a post by the same title a couple years ago (see here), but this summer it was if every podcast I heard, conversation I had and book I read was related to these words. Surely that’s an exaggeration, but when a thought wants to be considered I think it makes itself known. This summer, both/and came crashing through the ether.

Elizabeth Gilbert wrote about it in her book Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. After a couple hundred pages of explaining why creativity is both innate in us as human beings and essential to living life to the fullest, and also often taken too seriously by the creators themselves, she summarizes the dichotomy on the last page:

“Creativity is sacred, and it is not sacred.

What we make matters enormously, and it doesn’t matter at all.

We toil alone, and we are accompanied by spirits.

We are terrified, and we are brave.

Art is a crushing chore and a wonderful privilege.

Only when we are at our most playful can divinity finally get serious with us.”

It makes no sense and it makes total sense. This is the both/and. Both things are true at the same time. Just as I love my children and they make me crazy. It’s even a scientific principle.

I’ve written about this particular genius before, but he’s worth another whole post. His view of the world is that impactful. I heard the nobel prize-winning physicist and author of the book A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature’s Deep Design, Frank Wilczek on the podcast OnBeing speak about both/and from a different vantage point. Using a different name. Complementarity was first coined by the Danish physicist Niels Bohr. It deals with the concept that two contrasted theories may be able to explain a set of phenomena, although each separately only accounts for some aspects. In simpler language: that two things can be possible at once, even if not seen at once, and that a fuller understanding accounts for both. For example, light is both found in wave form and in particle form, and though not observed as both at once, together they present a fuller description than either of the two taken alone.

This can be applied to just about every part of life. Complementarity, both/and are all around us. It’s just another way of taking a new perspective on things, which always, always helps.

Humans are just a collection of particles and light, and they are also thinking, feeling beings.

Parenting depletes all your energy. Parenting fills you with overflowing love.

Faith is about action. Faith is about sitting still.

My husband and I love and support each other. My husband and I are grumpy and selfish.

My grandmother is 90 years old and full of old-age aches and pains. My grandmother is 90 years old and full of stories and giggles.

These are the best of times. These are the worst of times.

Chocolate is bad for you. Chocolate is good for you.

Republicans don’t know everything. Democrats don’t know everything.

Mosquitos spread disease and misery everywhere they go. Mosquitos (supposedly) serve some purpose in the world.

Life is painful. Life is joyful.

Neils Bohr thought physics described humans’ knowledge of the world. Einstein thought physics described God’s.

Yes. And yes.

None of these is mutually exclusive. All of these are true, though usually not at the same time. See? Both/and.

So how will I apply this today? Maybe the lady who is rude in the line at the grocery store is also a loving mother. When I listen to NPR and hear about death and crime and natural disasters, I’ll wait for the next story about a person who helped feed the homeless. When the political circus erupts all around me, I’ll remember that even Trump and Clinton are human beings with beating hearts just like mine. That one’s tougher, but it’s true. It does me good to remember.

Thank goodness for complementarity. For both/and. I’m fine with the dichotomy.

As Frank Wilczek points out, it’s all part of the beauty.

Summer of Symmetry

This was a summer of symmetry.

Let me explain.

I have been in a long-term fight with a certain persistent virus that refuses to take a hint (or a shove) and move along. My old nemesis, Epstein Barr made itself comfortable, particularly in my gut this time around, and made me tired and grumpy and not very summery-feeling at all. Yet there were periods of joy, sunshine and laughter, in between the in-bed-or-wanting-to-be, that felt just as summer should. There were family vacations; days at the pool soaking up the vitamin D (Seriously. Vitamin D is my hero. And Epstein Barr’s worst enemy.); horseback riding; late dinners with friends on the back porch; fireflies; Gin and tonics; and most recently, hours of Olympics-watching. We could win a medal if that in itself were an event. But there was also Moluscum Contagiosum (I’ll tell you about that another time, but just know it was nearly as bad as it’s grotesque name implies. And it threw me down a dark psychological hole for a bit). Between the high highs and the low lows it was like a sped-up time lapse of life in general: a roller coaster of ups and downs smushed into the span of two and a half months. I felt like a wrung out rag a lot of the time.

But I listened to a conversation one day that helped me see things more clearly. And feel a little less upset by this microcosm of general reality. Krista Tippet of the podcast On Being interviewed nobel physicist Frank Wilczek about his belief in “beauty as a compass for truth, discovery and meaning.” In the podcast he explained the idea of symmetry from a mathematical or scientific perspective. He says that symmetry, the way we commonly use it, means balance, harmony, fairness. But those terms are vague. In science they need a more precise concept, so the definition of symmetry within science and mathematics is change without change. For example, Einstein’s theory of relativity says that if were to move past the world at a constant velocity, although things may look different, the same physical laws will apply to the new configuration of the world. So you can make a change in the way everything looks, but you can’t change the laws that make up the object’s reality.

Hello. Symmetry. This summer was both an experience of the common usage of the word and the scientific. It was a balance of good and bad, had a sense of fairness if you will. And though my circumstances changed – the way things looked from the point of view of an outsider passing by would have altered from week to week (sometimes day to day) – the laws of physics stayed the same. The very fact of my existence did not move. My illness and wellness rotated around the axis of me as a human being alive in the world. My circumstances did not alter who I am at the core. Did not alter the realities that keep me living and breathing: spiritual as well as physical.

Somehow this gave me peace. It didn’t make me feel better in my mitochondria, which I’ve now learned Epstein Barr attacks (the jerk), but it did help in my mind and heart. Frank Wilczek’s and Krista Tippet’s soothing voices didn’t hurt either. I could listen to them all day. I’m sure I will again, to remember the vivid and down-to-earth ways he described all manner of scientific principles, and how they demonstrate beauty in the way the world is structured. As if it is the work of a great artist.

I couldn’t agree more. I’ve always loved symmetry it’s it’s general sense – balance in everything is a good way to live. But now it means something greater. I’m trying to make peace with symmetry and let it calm my reaction to the ups and downs.

Seeing life through the lens of Frank Wilczek’s nobel prize-winning mind helps .

What Our Souls Absorb

I recently worked on a timeline for our elementary school’s 100th anniversary celebration, sifting through old photos, searching online for newspaper articles, discovering historic treasures at the university’s research library. It was a lot of work, but fascinating and enlightening and worth the effort, if only to learn about one particular man who has enriched my view of the world – the namesake of our school. He died in 1904, but the impact he had on our community and on countless personal lives is inspiring and incredible. His story is worth sharing. His legacy is worth expanding.

Bear with me, here. A bit of historical background. Just make it through the next paragraph and we’ll get to the good stuff:

Richard Cordley was born in England in 1829 but came to America at the age of four and settled in Michigan. He grew up in a log cabin, went to the school his father started when he was nine, lost an eye at the age of 10 in an accident involving an ox’s horn (pioneers were no wusses). He attended college and seminary and eventually came to Lawrence, Kansas as an abolitionist preacher in 1857, with the distinct purpose of opposing slavery in a territory still undecided on the issue. In fact, he and his wife harbored a fugitive slave escaping to Canada on the underground railroad. In 1863, a man named William Quantrill rode into town with a group of pro-slavery Missourians, killing 20% of the male population and burning the majority of the town. (Hence, Kansas’s deep-seeded grudge against Missouri, particularly in sporting events. No joke.) As an abolitionist, Richard Cordley was marked as a target in Quantrill’s raid but avoided death by escaping across the river. He went on to serve as the school board president, helped found Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas, wrote two books on the history of our state, and served as pastor of Plymouth Congregational Church for nearly 40 years.

Whew. Thanks for sticking with me.

So, Richard Cordley did some stuff while he was alive. He made significant contributions to society. He was a prominent local figure in the community. But in the end, that’s not what struck me; his accomplishments weren’t his greatest feat. Here’s a quote I came across about Cordley’s true impact on the world:

“The greatest thing about Dr. Cordley was himself. The beauty of his character was reflected everywhere…(He)helped all who heard him speak because he spoke from his heart…He believed in men and loved them…”

– Dr. William L. Burdick, former dean of Kansas University Law School and a member of Plymouth Congregational Church

It’s hard to imagine a more lovely description of a person’s years on earth. His life was the greatest thing about his life. His love of people. The way he helped others. The beauty of his character. In reading through his sermons I found him to be a fabulous writer. He should be famous. But, aside from the blessing people would receive by reading his work, I doubt he would care to be well-known outside of our small town. He was humble, he was kind, he was love-in-action personified. I feel as though I discovered a hidden treasure in learning about Richard Cordley. His helpful hand and the beauty of his character have reached all the way through history to me, over a century after he died. I’m so thankful to know him in some small way. And I’m proud to have my children’s school named after such a man.

Now to pass on the treasure I found. Here’s an excerpt from a sermon he wrote about pondering the end of another year (don’t know which, but the book of sermons was published in 1912) titled The Days of our Years. I used pieces of it to highlight the historical timeline I made for the school celebration – it seemed appropriate. It seems equally appropriate in remembering Dr. Cordley’s life itself, and in considering how I want to spend my own…

The “Days of Our Years” have passed very gently. They made no sound as they went by, but they changed the face of all the things they touched. They fell like snowflakes, silent and soft, but like the snowflakes they change the face of all the earth. Every year gives another touch, and before we note what is going on, the whole scene is changed. Time moves on without a sound, building up the limbs of childhood, strengthening the arms of manhood, and fulfilling the counsels of manhood. So quietly have they borne us along that we were hardly aware of the moving, yet here we are looking back over the long line of our journey. As we note the shifting scene it seems almost like a dream…Few as the days of our years have been, what marvelous transformations they have wrought. They seemed trifles to those who looked on, but they meant everything to those involved. The days of our years have flitted by like shadows on the hillside. Joy and sorrow, light and darkness, have chased each other across our sky. We have had reason ‘To bless the favoring gale’ when we have sailed through unruffled seas; and we have waited for light ‘In the midnight of the soul.’ Yet the days of our years have left something with us as they flitted by. They passed

‘Like snowflakes on the river,

A moment white, then gone forever.’

But even the snowflakes increase the volume of the stream. They days of our years are gone before we know they are here, but they add to the volume of our life. They leave with us what our souls absorb, and we shall be in the coming days what our past has made us. We may accumulate wisdom and knowledge and character, and be enriched in life or we may let it all flow by us while we remain paupers in our spirits…Everything is the richer for what it has passed through.

Richard Cordley knew his days mattered. That time passed without notice if one didn’t stop and look sometimes. This sermon was a moment of looking back to look ahead. Of plumbing the depths and noticing what the soul had absorbed. I write for the very same reason and feel connected to this man from so long ago. May the days of my years be half the blessing of his.

A Mental Kick in the Pants

While looking at girls underwear at Target on Wednesday I saw something that stopped me in the aisle. A woman was walking with an older woman. A mother and daughter it appeared. They were doing laps on the perimeter of the store, a favorite pastime for many people of older age: no obstacles for slower reflexes to work around. No issues with temperature and humidity. A seasonless, safe space to get legs moving. I’ve seen this often before, and I must say I’ve never thought it looked fun. But on this day, something was different. The two women were holding hands.

They walked and talked. And held hands all the way around. I watched for them as they lapped me in my hunt for girls soccer shorts, and I thought “That’s just about the sweetest thing I’ve seen all week.” They both seemed calm and content. The younger woman (fifties, maybe) didn’t seem anxious to leave and get on with the good part of her day; the older woman (70s or 80s) seemed glad, but not desperate, for her company. Maybe the younger woman held hands to offer balance to the older, maybe it was just a tangible form of connection, of expressing “I want to be here with you.” In either case, it was lovely. And I stopped and stood and watched for a long moment. It was instant, the smack-in-the-face beauty of the image. I wanted to take a picture, but that seemed weird. So I took one mentally and locked it away for safe keeping.

I happened to watch an AARP video on Facebook today – a friend had linked to it and it sparked my interest. When I clicked and watched, it sparked more: inspiration about living life until it’s gone. About the value of age, the worth of older people in our society, the importance of connection.

I fear old age, to be honest. Of becoming irrelevant to people, of the breakdown of my body and mind, of watching life go by without being able to participate in any meaningful way. But this video reminded me that “old” is more about your mindset. The body and mind might slow, but we can do some things to lessen those effects: eat well, stay limber, learn new things, and most of all, decide to remain in the mix. A 75-year-old man named George in the video summed it up: “When people start stopping, that’s when they start getting old.” I want to keep going. Even if it has to be in the climate controlled, sidewalk-crack-free aisles of Target. And if someone will love me enough to hold my hand while I’m going slowly, so much the better.

So much.

That daughter, in her calm, relaxed “I’m totally here” way was loving the heck out of the older woman.

Oh, that I would do that for someone, and that someone would do that for me someday.

Note-to-self taken. I’m keeping that image close to heart, and I’m putting George’s quote on a sticky note in my kitchen. A reminder to never start stopping; a kick in the pants to keep on going.

I need a kick in the mental pants sometimes.

The AARP video, for your entertainment and inspiration:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYdNjrUs4NM

Bare Bones

As soon as I read the fifth page of All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, I knew I was in for a treat. When I described to my husband my stolen moments of snatching a few pages at a time, I said it was like eating candy. One of those Christopher Elbow chocolates with delicate, golden filigree on top and creamy ganache in the middle. Something sweet that you want to eat slowly – to savor; not the sugar-spike of a Jolly Rancher. It was delicious to consume Doerr’s beautifully crafted words. I even said some aloud, just to enjoy the sound. Let the syllables roll off my tongue and hit the air with a crackle.

“The eggs taste like clouds. Like spun gold… ‘How about peaches, dear?’ murmurs Madame Manec, and Marie-Laure can hear a can opening, juice slopping into a bowl. Seconds later, she’s eating wedges of wet sunlight.”

It left me full-up with the glory of language and it’s ability to convey feeling, but also with an empty longing. I got in the shower one morning, after ingesting a particularly lovely turn of phrase, with a sentence rolling through my head: I want to write something heartbreakingly beautiful. It repeated itself over and over. An ache of creativity hoping to escape. It was a rather selfish desire, I will fully admit, but one with which most writers can relate. When you love words – even the sounds of letters all by themselves – putting them together in new and fascinating ways to describe emotions as old as time, with which every single human can relate, feels like electricity in your veins. Not so much that it kills you, but enough to deliver a jolt and make you feel supremely alive.

When you get down to the bare bones of writing, that’s the joy. Take away the personal therapy it can provide, the (generally tiny amount of) money you can make from it, the blessing it can be to others (where would I be without Anne Lamott and Josh Ritter), and the conveyance of information, and a writer is left with words. The pure pleasure of consonants and vowels, nouns and adjectives, even helping verbs. And the desire from somewhere inside to get them outside. Like a child playing in a sandbox, with the tactile amusement of wet sand and dry – the scooping and pouring and molding of it – is a writer, given ten minutes and a writing prompt.

I never understand writers who say they hate to write. Who say they like the outcome, but not the actual process of writing. I (judmentally) think they aren’t really writers. They might type words onto a screen, make lots of money; their whole lives might revolve around the act of writing. But it’s hard for me to give them that title. It feels wrong.

Sometimes it’s a slog. Sometimes it’s full-on work – not playing in a sandbox at all. But even the work is gratifying. Like piecing together a puzzle. And the frustration of not knowing where the pieces go is part of the beauty of eventually figuring it out. Sometimes my five year old will give an exasperated “Ughhhhhhh” when she’s stuck on her 48 piece butterfly floor puzzle. But she will eventually return to it. Out of love for puzzles. The mixture of challenge and play. The satisfaction of two pieces sliding in next to each other just so. And then she smiles. And says “I did it!” And she did.

So I want to write something heartbreakingly beautiful. I’m sticking to that selfish, word-loving phrase. And when I do, I’ll say “I did it!” And smile. All the words that ever were are my sandbox, and it’s just about time to play.

Happy Regrouping

You might have noticed I’ve been gone a while. There are a plethora of reasons: sick kids, sick me, days off of school, and more of the same, but the deeper reason for the long absence from posting to my blog is I’ve had nothing to say. I’ve tried. The few chances I’ve gotten I’ve sat for my allotted three-hours-minus-travel-time-from-preschool-to-Starbucks-and-back and written crap. Or nothing at all. Which in itself is depressing. But there wasn’t much to be done since I can’t apply the often touted writer’s rule “write every day.” My rules are more like “shower every other day,” and “get some sort of exercise,” and “don’t let the laundry start overflowing out of the laundry room.” I do fairly well at these.

It’s hard to say exactly why the drought in well-formed and interesting thoughts occurred – perhaps February is cursed, maybe I just don’t do winter well, or it could be the fact that my thyroid had decided to take a break from it’s busy schedule. But luckily, the drought has passed and I had a glimmer of an idea today. Thank you March, spring, functioning thyroid.

***

I was recently waiting for several days on some test results that could have been bad news. Thankfully, I received good news instead. But the space between not knowing and knowing gave me a new swath of gray hair. I tried to stay calm, aware that worrying about the unknown accomplishes nothing but stress dreams and intestinal problems, but waiting is not my forte. It is one of my many nemeses (cold feet, hunger and relational conflict being others). I prayed. I breathed deeply. I exercised. But worry crept in and took over a number of welcoming folds in my brain. It found a comfy home next to the concern over finances, unmade summer plans, whether Mae will deal well with all day kindergarten next fall. Fretfulness takes up a lot of the spots in there. This, too, worries me. If my brain is filled with anxiety is there room for anything else? Maybe that’s why I can never remember what it was I needed at the store.

And then there is our current political climate in America. I would describe it as scorching fire and wind swirling from the mouths of those with bitterly cold hearts. I don’t even think that’s being dramatic. All of which gets me riled to the point of heart palpitations and makes it clear that this has got to stop. Worry is getting me nowhere but down.

So I employed a tried and true coping mechanism. I put on my headphones. I found my new musical obsession on Spotify and with the first line came down a notch on the stress scale.

Foy Vance is an anomaly: an Irish guy with a penchant for American blues and soul. He is one of the best songwriters I’ve heard in a long time. And he has a raspy, world-weary voice that sounds like coming home on a cold day and wrapping up in a wool blanket – a little scratchy but warm and cozy and absolutely welcome. I’m soaking up his live album these last few days and I find it calming me, inspiring creativity, and hinting at the beauty that does still exist the world even if our own presidential candidates are making it uglier by the day.

For example. In his song Be, My Daughter I hear the wisdom of the ages, resembling the words of Ecclesiastes, but with a modern, personal take. He wrote it while on tour, after a difficult Skype session with his daughter who was back at home. Another girl was treating her badly at school and he penned a song in response to her worry. An admonition to simply be. It’s just lovely…

There’s a time to talk about it

A time to live it up

A time to sit in silence

A time to cry about it

A time to laugh it up

A time for stillness in the water

Be, my daughter

There’s a time to shout about it

A time to bottle up

A time for all time to be over

A time to think about it

A time to give it up

A time to burn up every altar

Be, my daughter

Tomorrow morning you’ll be slowly waking up

And I”ll be far across the water

But I’ll send reminders against the times it gets too tough

Be, my daughter

There’s a time to want a love

A time to need a friend

A time to put your hurts behind you

A time to chew it over

A time to make amends

You remember that time my baby jumped and daddy caught her

Be, my daughter

As a parent, I hear the kind guidance, the wise direction to be still, the reminders of his love. And as a person of faith I hear God’s voice saying the same to me. This is exactly my view of his love for us. If you think that’s bunk, well alright. Sometimes I simply can’t hold it in. I hope you can see the joy and stillness in the song. I hope it makes you smile, and think, and be.

I’m choosing to think about this for a while instead of all the worries. Trump will still be on every news outlet tomorrow.

There’s a time to enter the fray and a time to retreat. A time to engage in the madness and a time to regroup. Happy regrouping, everyone.

(Here’s the song, so you can come down on the stress scale, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZqh1KvsCSs)

My Old Friend

We haven’t lived in Los Angeles for almost nine years. I only lived there for eight. So really, I should feel less at home there than I do in Lawrence, Kansas where I’ve spent the greater part of my life. And mostly, I do. But on this trip back to the land of my twenties, my young newly-married self, the landscape has felt surprisingly familiar. The landmarks have seemed less like famous places to visit than old friends I haven’t seen in a while. The magnolia trees and neatly trimmed bushes, the tropical flowers, even the bermuda grass bring nostalgia. Not that my twenties were so great – they weren’t (marriage was hard, I felt awful, I didn’t know yet who I was). But this place has clearly carved a place in my heart I didn’t know the depth of until this trip.

We drove north from Calabasas along the coast today. Stopped in Santa Barbara for lunch (hello, sunshine and delicious grilled veggie sandwich), past countless rvs parked on the side of Highway 1, grabbing a slice of ocean view for themselves. Past surfers and surf to the left, parched hills and shrubs to the right. The drought has made the landscape different, like a friend who has gone gray and wrinkled with age, whom it takes a minute to recognize. But as you stare you see that familiar face, beneath the wear and tear, and smile. As we turned inland toward San Luis Obispo, our destination for the night, a rush of “Oh yeah…I know this,” hit me like the waves I had just been watching. I remembered this exact drive from many trips to the Central Coast for wine tasting and fabulous, frivolous wandering. The high hills that rise into mountains in the distance. The curve of their backs lit up by the sun. They welcomed me like a relative coming home for a family reunion. “It’s so good to see you.” Hug. Kiss on the cheek.

“This could be the Flint Hills,” Marc said as we drove north of Morro Bay. Perhaps why this place has always felt so familiar. Like a taller version of my beloved, treeless rolling scape in Eastern Kansas. With an ocean to one side. Enough sameness to be instantly comforting when I first glimpsed the area at twenty-five, but different enough to be new and completely alive. And on this July afternoon in my 40th year, happier in almost every way than when I was twenty-five, the Central Coast of California feels like a worn, nubby blanket from my youth.

The next phase of Highway 1 rises in elevation, craggy and majestic above the Pacific. It’s a bit more foreign to me. Grand and romantic. Flashier and louder in it’s “look at me” popularity. I’ll enjoy the drive along it’s cliffs, taking in the scenic views. But my heart belongs to it’s lowly neighbor to the south. Less dramatic, but dearer to my heart. Quietly beautiful. Full of air and sunlight and space. I’m even more at home in crowded, crazy Los Angeles, where I spent a good chunk of my younger years peeling back it’s layers. Southern California and the Central Coast are my second home, I was surprised to realize on this trip. More a part of me than I knew. Surely willing to welcome me back like an old friend the next time I get to visit.

Vacation Expectation

Our expectations were low, but as per usual on vacation, expectations have little to do with actual outcomes. I suppose if we had been determined to have a bad day, we would have had a bad day. But we only assumed we would. For our second day of travel we braced ourselves for bickering, for one billion potty stops, for three meltdowns, minimum. It was our longest planned travel day – 10 hours without kids, 12+ with. And none of us had slept well, including the one who had already had a massive fit our first night in. We were girding our loins. But we underestimated the power of beauty.

The Flint Hills of Kansas are lovely – one of my favorite places in fact – but they are the normal for us. We’ve seen them a lot. And further west is just hot and flat. Not awe-inspiring, unless there’s a storm brewing or you travel at night and witness the expanse of sky bursting with stars. But mountains? “Ooooh,” and “Wow” aren’t uncommon to hear on a drive through them. Their blue hue and sheer size invite deep thoughts. A good soundtrack. Frequent stops to enjoy the view. And all of this brings down the crabby quotient. At least it did on this day, which was such a pleasant surprise.

Here’s to the plethora of surprises to come on this trip. There will be the opposite kind – the ones that make me sprout another patch of gray hair and curse under my breath. So goes a family road trip. But I’ll take today’s unexpected joy. Road Trip 2015, Day 2, is in the books. And I’m so thankful it didn’t go as planned.

* Update: the only meltdown that occurred was my own. Realizing we still had four hours to go, the unexpected, unplanned part of our day didn’t look so fun anymore. It looked stupid. We rolled in to Flagstaff at 2:00 AM and woke up to little girls making a fort out of the hotel pull-out couch four and a half hours later. I’m leaving my expectations wide open for Day 3.