"It Is Well with My Soul"

Pollen has been turning my tears yellow, little vessels of itchy gold. I carry toilet paper in my backpack wherever I go, stealing it from the campus bathrooms. Even my tongue itches with pollen. I scratch it with my teeth.

Peace tends to enter my eyes, even with the pollen. The gentle drifting of tree leaves caught on the soft lip of a breeze. The long and yellowing 7:45 light. The sunset between the 7:50 and 8:20 light and clouds. The tea-saucer moon like white china.

One of the lesser known lines of this hymn we sing says, "in death as in life, / Thou shalt whisper Thy peace to my soul." In brokenness as in healing, thy peace. In aloneness as in togetherness, thy peace. In weakness as in strength, thy peace.

It is well with my soul, not will be.

In the old languages, a soul is not immaterial. King David wrote his heart and soul as his whole self. My soul gets up in the morning and showers and drinks tea and eats oatmeal. My soul reads a book or writes a poem. My soul ministers to my sister in Christ.

It is well with my soul. A claim to healing, vital signs in a dying world. There's a pulse here. There's movement in these limbs. There's life in the rotting earth. There's a river flowing and a heart pounding and a flower blooming full force. It is well.

There's triumph here--in the wellness, in the goodness of God. The difference between the greatness and the goodness of God is the difference between his power and his essence. God is great because of the power he holds. God is good because it is his nature to be that way. There is nothing we can say about the blessedness of God except that he is good. There are no more words.

It is well. It is well because of the goodness of God in us. This is it! This is the ultimate--God's goodness in us. No wonder it is well! How could it be better?

The whispering peace in our souls makes us well. The peace that enters our eyes makes us well. The peace moving through our bodies and into our hands to bless others makes us well. We're well. It's well. It's this peace in our souls. Peace, finally. Peace at the hand of the Father. Peace beating through our veins with the goodness of a God who strung the earth together with his bare hands, threading her with grace. Peace spoken by a God who pulls up the grass with a fine needle every spring and tie-dyes the sunrise in the east.

Peace, moving.

Buttercream

As a child, I take silky white icing on my spreader and press it onto a yellow round of cake. I dig into the surface, dragging the smooth topping into it, shredding it to granules. The cake crumbles with white, growing milky and dirtier. The spreader's wounds edge deeper as I try to fix the mess.

My mother asks for the spreader and, with strong arms, moves the icing over the crumbs like a foamy sea tide caught in time over the surf, stilled. The crisp white waves of the icing emulate this flowing. They hide the jagged marks and chunks I've carved.

*

It's all about the buttercream. It's the 10x sugar and the whipped butter cut smooth into each other's bodies until they are one flesh, melting on tongues and slipping down throats. Heavy cream bathes them, seeping in like a secret remedy or an old wives' tale. One tablespoon of Mexican vanilla swishes, two times the natural strength. Buttercream is sweet and not too sweet. Creamy and light. Edible in spoonfuls.

*

The Wal-mart cake supplies hide behind the party favors and greeting cards. I'm aching, so it's the first place a stop in the store. I go over the tools in my mind. The piping paper. The mouths of the icing tips, ridged in different designs. They do not have the the flower nail my mother blooms roses on. Its top is smooth and round like a half dollar; the bottom is a thick pin. She grows them from the inside, overlaying pink cream petals. She scrapes them, gently, from the half dollar and places them on the cake.

She acts like God did in Eden, churning up nature's matter, pure and soft, and piping the garden out as icing. He laid buttercream in the fields: sweet and plump, the blooms of spring.

Beekeeping

Shannon and I share a piece of honeycomb in her kitchen. She has received it from a friend, who owns two small hives.

"As you eat it, the comb will clump together in your mouth. This is what they make beeswax candles from," she tells me, as she takes a chunk of comb in hand and places it on her tongue.

I take a piece in my mouth quickly, with sticky hands. As soon as the complex structure of the comb is broken down by saliva, honey spills into my mouth. It is formless and sweet, swilling into my jaw and overlaying the roof of my mouth. The comb moves together as I chew, balling up on its own.

Shannon has sent some of this home with me, and you are welcome to try some. It's sweeter than other honey you've had before.

Beekeeping fascinates me--the delicate and cruel nature of holding something captive and being gentle with it, because you know that, in great quantities, it can hurt you. Bees are given the illusion of freedom. Here, little bee. This is your home. It's a pretend tree where you will make your honey and feed your larvae. Your queen is here, so you must stay.

The bees drift into sleep and haze when the beekeeper lifts the frame from the hive, smoke filtering through their trachea.

Do we hold bees captive, all of us? When I write about my own sorrow, I hold it away from my body. I live with the illusion that I have overcome all the bees in my box. I pump smoke into my writer's hands until I am numb, hoping one day sweetness will come of this.

The taste of honey depends on which flowers a bee flies to. I imagine wild bees' honey tangier and richer, simply because they choose their own nectar. A beekeeper decides if the honey will be of clovers or apple trees. If I let my sorrow take flight on its own, moving through me at its own pace, will this honey be sweeter? A wild bee flies his own way.

Communion

The ornate pillars curl pebble by pebble into a golden archway. Before today, my grandfather's funeral, I have never been in a Catholic church. I'm twelve. The structure is gothic--open, full of light. The sun floods through the stained glass, bathing the pews in red and blue stretches of warmth. I could ball my body up in them like a cat, soaking in the rays.

The priest speaks and allows our row to stand, and we step up to receive communion. I reach for bread in the father's hand, and he moves it away from me. I feel like a dog licking peanut butter off its nose. I snatch at it again. He pulls back and shoves the bread into my mouth, deft as a pterodactyl swooping in to feed its squalling, just-hatched baby.

We must be able to joke about communion, because we must be able to speak about its truth. Christians often treat communion very seriously because it is serious. However, it is more than that. The truth of communion is weighty.

The living and death and body of Christ are heavy, as five smooth stones slung over our shoulders, weapons for battle. They are the stones we rest our heads on as Jacob at Bethel. They are the stone Jesus would not turn into bread, because he needed God more. They are the stones thrust at us for our sins. They are the stones we throw.

The truth of communion is this: every time we eat together, we are to remember who Christ is and the way Christ moves in our lives--in our needs, in other people, and in our joy. The remembrance of Christ must be as common as bread, and as necessary.

"Give us today our daily bread." We know this line. It says "I need; please supply. I trust; give enough."

This past summer, I learned to bake my own bread. No one realizes how beautiful and funny bread is until they get their hands into it. I chuckled or hummed as I made it, smoothing out the dough and preparing it to rise. I wound up with flour on my clothes and sticky hands, and I was pleased with my work. I was proud and thankful every time I ate it, like something had bloomed from the palms of my hands.

I approach communion like I do homemade bread, with a little more repentance. I take the bread and cup with humility and a spirit of learning. I take with a spirit of come, Lord Jesus, come.

Christ, turn our hearts of stone into bread so we can be useful. Let us take your life and body for their truth and significance, remembering you for your beauty as well as your sacrifice.

Tow Trucks and Burgers

"Ever ridden in a tow truck before?" I ask Mike, attempting to grin. I can feel a headache coming on, moving in from the edges of my temples.

We're stranded in a Morgantown parking lot at 8 p.m., car engine dead.  P. W. Auto has been my car's second home for the past half a year--lid up, mechanic tinkering under the hood. The owner is a thin man whose hands are smudged with car grease, except when he cleans up on Sundays--he doubles as a Baptist minister. I think back to the waiting room in my mind; I've spent a good few hours there. The corner table is stacked with gospel tracts and magazines. Pictures of his grandchildren line the opposite wall.

I call Wade's 24 hour tow service and my mother.

"Well," she says, "consider this your first pre-marital trial." I'm standing in the back of a Five Guys on my cell phone, talking over the pop music on the radio. The air is heavy with burger grease and peanut oil. My mouth is watering. (I'd skipped lunch to watch an episode of Downton Abbey. Those British shows get me every time.) They have two of the new-fangled pop machines. The touchscreen advertises its new flavors: "Orange Coke. Sprite with Peach."
I look for Mike's dark hair. He's sitting at the table, holding the grease-stained brown bag. He's grinning, attractive in his glasses, head bobbing to the radio.

I tell my mother I'll call later. I sit down at the table and we eat,  grabbing our burgers and dumping the fries in the bag. We share.

"It's the peanut oil that makes the fries, you know?" He says to me, dipping his fries in ketchup. I nod. It must be--the salty, buttery taste of potato sinking into my tongue.

The tow truck driver calls me. He maneuvers through the parking lot, and I wave him over to my car.  At first I think there are two men in the truck, but then the driver opens the door and I see the car seat. The driver lifts his small son down and waves him over to the side of the road.

He's shivering because it's March, and it's freezing.

"Want me to zipper your coat?" I say to him, kneeling down to his level. He nods, chattering. "How old are you?" I ask.

"Six," he says to me.

"Six!" I exclaim. "I would have thought you were twenty-six, or one-hundred and six!"

He smiles and talks about wanting to be a fireman. His father, the driver, finesses my dead-engined vehicle onto the back of the truck as one would maneuver the body of a beached whale.

We all climb into the tow truck. I sit in the back seat next to the boy, whose name, I've found, is Trenton. Mike sits in the front next to the driver, who wears a name tag stitched with John on his blue coveralls.

"I think you need to stop and get me a drink," Trenton informs his father.

"Oh do you?" John laughs, speaking with a heavy southern drawl. He points as we drive out of the complex. "Up there is the best hibachi place I've ever had in my life, and I've travelled all over the country. This little guy can even catch the shrimps in his mouth. Can't you Trenton? Show 'em how you catch 'em."

Trenton opens his mouth wide and waves his head around, pretending to grab at flying shrimp with his mouth.

"And you leave there full. Everybody at the table gets an equal portion." John nods.

"I think I've been there before," Mike says. "It was really good. I couldn't remember how to get back there though."

Trenton points down another bend in the road. "Go down there."

John nods, "Oh yeah, you can go down that way too. You should see this kid. He might never be a philosopher, but he's a good navigator." He steeps us in a story of how Trenton saw a rodeo when he was two and remembers it now, if he passes by the stretch of pasture. John's eyes gleam with pride.

He pulls the tow truck into Sheetz. "Do ya'll mind if we stop? I gotta get my helper a little something to drink. Want anything? I'll buy it."

We decline, hanging out in the truck while Trenton and John go inside. We both look small, strapped into the seats of this oversized, breathing, quaking beast.

I turn to Mike. "I couldn't have asked for a better date night."

He turns to me. "I was just thinking the same thing."

By the time we arrive home, we have two new friends, a high car bill, and an invitation to see Trenton ride a sheep at the April Mutton Bustin' on the Fairgrounds. What can I say, though? One must make the most of her pre-marital trials.

Safari

I visited Malawi, Africa for three weeks in May of 2011.

 

The twenty-some of us pack into a bus and slide the windows down. We roll down the uneven road, our bodies jolting every few feet. I imagine myself in Jurassic Park and hope, faintly, for a dinosaur sighting. Lush branches poke in the windows. We don't pause to look at the gazelles, but the giraffes we stop to see.

 

The giraffes range in browns and tans. No two are alike; spots vary in color and size. I am more afraid of them than anything. Wide brown eyes and the balanced, majestic bones are held up by more than a bodily strength in between the sun, dry grass, and baobab trees.

 

In America, we set up zoos and put giraffes on televisions where, behind bars or glass frames, they are contained. There are no containers here.

 

We stop for lunch, getting out of the bus. I am wary with nothing between me and the giraffes, their large lungs breathing the same air as mine. The sun bears down the same heat on our bodies. The only thing between us is a patch of African plain, no wire to hold them back.

 

Our group picnics, climbing up wooden stairs to a raised gazebo. I want to eat this lunch daily: fresh picked berries from the mountain side, ripe bananas, juicy oranges. The eggs are fresh, hard boiled. We drink fruit pop: Coca-Pina, Orange, Grape.

I am coming to terms with this: wonder has to do with a common beauty and unknowing. It lies in the bones of giraffes and brown hen eggs.

 

While we were in Malawi, we spent time beneath the peak of Mount Mulanje. My friend would turn to me in the mornings and say, "We are eating porridge in the shadow of a mountain."

 

I would wash my clothes and say, "I am washing my clothes in a bucket in the shadow of a mountain."

 

I am playing tag with twenty African children in the shadow of a mountain.

I am lying beneath an earth-sky of stars in the cool grass in the shadow of a mountain.

 

I added the mountain to the end of sentences in my mind, and the world got bigger while I got smaller. This is the wonder for the daily that keeps things beautiful.

 

I am eating a whole-grain peanut butter sandwich, and I am a living, breathing soul.

I am a Saturday children's librarian in a small town, and I am a living, breathing soul.
 

 

Love and the Best Kind of Pizza

"I thought this was everybody's perfect pizza," Mike says to me, three bites in to a slice of plain.

We are sitting opposite one another in what looked like a hole-in-the-wall pizza joint. The inside holds raw elegance--softly lit tables, clinking wine glasses, and the self-same hardwood of a dance floor.

I smile at him softly, admiring the slight curl of his dark hair. This isn't my kind of pizza, but it's not bad. The crust is a little to thin and cracker-like for me, but the sauce is good. Not too sweet.

I like the fold-up crust better, the kind that flops over--melty cheese and grease spilling together and onto the plate. It's what I was raised with.

"So where is your favorite pizza place then?" he asks me after we finish and pay our bill. He takes my hand as we shuffle to the car, fleeing the cold.

"I don't know if I have one. Mostly, at home, we eat at the same pizza place every time. It's alright." We get in the car. I lean back against the cold leather, shivering. I turn on the heat.

"Well, that's just unacceptable. For our next adventure, we must find you a pizza place!" he declares, putting the car in reverse. "First of all, you're Italian. And second of all, everyone should have a favorite pizza place."

A few weeks ago, I wrote a story narrating Eve's thoughts upon being created. In my story, I write in Adam and Eve with two languages: both can talk to God, but they cannot speak with one another. Thus, God acts as translator until they can build a common tongue.

I have a feeling this is truer than I know, and it is more than an ideal pizza--man and woman learning one another, building togetherness.

I used to think people could not be so complex. They had to be grasp-able, understandable. They are not, and that is why knowing takes so long.

It is a structure: a bridge and its unfinished painting. In Pittsburgh, there are always workmen on the bridges, in the swirling snow and heat. Rust wears off the bridge paint and tears at the architecture, the bolts and screws. The workmen paint to keep the bridges standing, holding cars and people and their weight.

Betty (Another Visit)

Nickel's Wheat Bread, Musselman's Cinnamon Applesauce, and Honey Graham's Honey Graham Crackers: I'm starting to remember her brands.

 

We walk up to the Sara Lee cold cuts and Betty picks out a small box of sliced turkey.

I am pushing her in a wheelchair with a small basket for groceries attached. Walmart is too big for Betty to take with her orthopedic shoes and walker. Her bones ache too persistently. I lean down every once in a while, speaking into her ear in a loud whisper. Her hearing aids pick this up.

Two other people rode the grocery van with us this week: Art and Myrtle. They are walking around Walmart on their own.

Art is eighty-something and legally blind. Gray film glazes his pale blue eyes. His voice and his body shiver constantly, as if constantly chilled to the bone. As he walks, he holds out his white and red segmented cane, feeling out the space between the blurs.

Art always insists we students do not take him around the store. He makes his way to the Customer Service Desk, where they reserve a Walmart employee to walk with him.

I've tried to tell him that I don't mind going with him. "They know where the stuff is anyway, and you don't," he told me once, voice shaking.

All Art buys is tupperware, soil, and plant food. I'd discovered why a year ago as I stepped into his living room with full plastic bags. Not a piece of furniture was in sight. Tall aluminum shelves neatly lined his living room, rows curling with the crisp, young vines of hundreds of tropical plants. Even though the room temperature spiked at 80 degrees, he never stopped shivering. He grooms these plants as if they are part of his large family, all basking in this hothouse together.

Betty can't stand Art. She rolls her eyes at me when he talks about the new African violet he's aquired or how to properly feed a plant.

Betty doesn't seem to like Myrtle very much either, even though this is only the second time she's gone to the grocery store with us. Myrtle is a sweet, wrinkle-faced woman with thin brown hair. Her knees act up in the winter, so she totes a small cane, favoring her right leg.

"I can walk the store myself," Myrtle tells us. "It's just these roads I'm afraid of. After I rolled my car three times, you know, I won't drive in bad weather."

"Did you hear her?" Betty hissed to me later. "She doesn't need help." She shakes her head, sadness flickering through the disdain in her eyes.

Later, I am putting away Betty's groceries. "Where does the bread go, Betty?" I hold up the wheat loaf, showing it to her. Sometimes I don't know if she hears me. Often I see her reading my lips, moving her own after mine, chasing the remnants of my sentences.

"Oh, in the freezer. I have to finish the white bread first." She wrinkles her nose as she says this. "You don't have to put my groceries away," she tells me. I look at her, but she is avoiding my eyes.

"It's okay Betty. That's what friends do for each other. You know?" I smile at her as I line cups of diced peaches next to the applesauce. The fruit juice swishes to the bottoms of the containers as I set them on top of one another, aluminum coverings kissing. I don't know if Betty's body would let her put the groceries away.

She smiles back at me, and then half apologizes. "I'm not very pleasant today," she admits.

"That's okay, Betty," I say. "The good thing about being friends is you can be grumpy sometimes and it's alright." I wink at her and stand, stuffing the plastic bags into their sunflower holder.

She smiles, and a little light sparks in her eyes. I tell her it's time for me to go.

"Okay hon," she responds,"you have a good day." She shuffles her walker to the door, her shoulders hunching. I follow her.

"Goodbye, Betty." I kiss her on the cheek, and her smile widens. I do this every time I say goodbye. "I'll see you next week. You take care, okay?"

She giggles in her way. "Okay. Goodbye." She smiles and waves as I step out into the hallway. I close the door, and she deadbolts it behind me. I sweep my hair behind my ear with one hand and button my camel pea coat, stepping into the elevator.

Billie Holiday

The first time I heard Billie Holiday's voice, I was sitting in a high school history class. That year, I'd taken three elective history classes, but this one was my favorite. We were studying the history of the U.S. from 1945 to present day.

We'd been given an assignment: bring in a song that reflected what was going on in the world during the song's time.

"I know this is from before the fourties," our teacher said, "but I'd like you to watch it."

 

There is a children's book in Eva K. Bowlby library called Becoming Billie Holiday. It is a biography of Billie Holiday's life written all in poems.

 

I found a poignant one on the ninety-fourth page:

 

      "I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)"

      While my heart healed, I

      pinned gardenias in my hair

      to hide the bruises.

 

I met with a friend in a small coffee shop last Tuesday. We sat on stools by the coat rack, talking poems. He told me he saw the beauty in my poems, but he wanted them to bite.

 

In one of my poems, I wrote about baby birds chirping in winter time.

 

"I want to see the baby birds dying," he said to me earnestly, laughing a little.

 

I understand what he means. In so many of Bille Holiday's songs, you have the beauty of an soulful voice tied up with pain. These are not things that can be separated and still be counted as real and truthful. Together they bring a texture they cannot provide solo.

 

Krispy Kreme

Cushy red stools line the counter at the front of the store. Those sitting there can look out the wide panes of glass into the snow-lined parking lot of a Wal-Mart. The cold wind taps at the window, edging into the cozy chain establishment. 

It isn't a quirky, "original" coffee shop. There is a coffee shop in Morgantown that has vibrant moose sponge-painted outside their bathrooms. Pictures and statues of these antlered creatures line the walls and the "specials" board.

I usually like those sorts of places best, the places with lots of "things". My fiance and I play this game every time we go into a new restaurant. It's called "Three Favorite Things in the Room." You can probably guess how to play. We ate at Red Robin last night. My three (from best to "eh"):

1. Photograph with a teapot building
2. Full-sized carousel horses
3. Red Robin canoe hanging from the ceiling

The Krispy Kreme doesn't have anything like that. It's the scent of sugary glaze over hot, fried doughnuts filling the room mixed with the ambiance of the two silent widescreens and the empty pleather couches.

I remember, as a little girl, my father swallowing doughnuts three or four at a time. He climbed beach houses with a bucket and soap for a living, cleansing the glass-lined mansions from sea salt. Those winters washing windows in the brittle wind cracked the skin on his hands, and, even now, with a desk job, his hands get chapped in winter.

As a child, I remember begging my mother to make us doughnuts. She did once, filling a wok with oil on a heated stove and pouring the batter through a funnel. I was disappointed. Where were the filling and icing and sprinkles? Who wants plain doughnuts? (Well, Dad wasn't picky.)

Visiting Betty

        We stand outside the automatic door marked with a handicapped symbol. The ladies in the upholstered living room wave their automatic wands and the door clicks, drifting open toward us. The University students visit the assisted living home a few times a week to play Wii Bowling and take a few of the residents grocery shopping. My last visit was a few months before.

            “Betty, you remember Julia,” Steven says to the wrinkled woman, who at ninety-three looks young for her age. She grips her walker with shaky hands and peers through her rimless glasses at me. Her steady blue eyes gaze at me without recognition. She purses her mouth and briefly reaches up to touch her short silver hair, signaling to mine.

            “Yes, that changed,” I say, smiling. I had dyed my light blonde hair a dark auburn. It’d turned a brassy strawberry when I’d tried to dye it back, the red deposits seeping into the follicles of my hair.

            “Oh yes, I remember,” Betty mumbles. She moves her walker around me, avoiding my eyes.

    

        She used to do this at the grocery store every Friday. A woman, usually the daughter of someone from church, or someone Betty babysat since they were knee-high, would come up to her, gushing, “Betty! How are you?” The woman would go on to talk about her mother or what her little brother had been up to these days. Betty would nod and smile, plastic glazing her eyes. She would turn to me as soon as the woman gave her best wishes and headed to the next aisle.

            She’d tug at my arm and I would lean down to listen. “I have no idea who that was,” she’d whisper into my ear, shaking her head.

            I visited Betty every Wednesday for a year, knocking on her door around one o’clock. She’d lean back in her recliner, using a remote to move up the leg rest and carefully lift her legs up, one at a time. I would sit on the couch perpendicular to the window. Out the window you could see the whole town.

            “Do you see that brown one there? That was the house I grew up in. You know I was born in Wheeling though. And that white house one block away—I moved into it after I got married,” She had said to me, holding onto the window sill with unsteady arms, one with a purple blotch. She’d fallen a week earlier and the doctor had told her there was nothing he could really do.

            “I’m just an old woman,” Betty had said, explaining. She said this to explain a lot of things, mostly when I asked for stories. I had once asked her what it was like living during the Great Depression.

            “It wasn’t like anything,” she scoffed at me. “We just lived. I don’t remember anyway. I’m just an old woman.”

            She had a book of old photographs we looked through sometimes, page by page. There was a picture of Betty as a child, maybe two years old, standing in the grass with some daisies. It would have been 1921. There were also some of her in the sixties—the Coke-bottle glasses and the high-waisted mom-jeans.

            There was one picture with her first husband in it. I don’t recall if she ever told me his name. “He didn’t work, so I had to get a job up at the A&P. Do you know, on High Street?” It’s where the Belko Foods is now. He didn’t look like a bad man. He looked stern with dark, thick eyebrows, a sharp chin, and a mouth with scowl lines.

            Betty was beautiful—full lips, hourglass figure, and unblemished skin. Wide-eyed Betty held her daughter in her arms. This was Rita.

            Betty told me about Rita every Wednesday I visited, pointing her wrinkled fingers at the picture next to her VCR. Rita had committed suicide when she was in her fifties, and Betty talked about her like she was Amelia Earhart, lost in the sky or the ocean. It was as if Rita had been on a journey and never come home, like she was wandering through a forest after forty years, picking berries and burning a fire every night.

            Eventually Betty got tired of Wednesday visits. She looked at me like a wilted flower and said, “Don’t come back anymore. It’s too much for me. I am too old. I am just an old woman.” So I stopped visiting, filling my after-lunch hour with other things.

            One day, before she had asked me to stop coming, I put her groceries away alone. She walked me to the door and I opened it. Her mouth trembled, and she looked into my eyes, tearful.

            “Don’t forget me,” she said. “Tell your friends about me, and your boyfriend. Tell your family.”

            It is so strange to be the keeper of this set of memories. Somewhere in her mind I lost my existence, and I don’t know if that changes me or if it changes her. It is like two people packed a suitcase to go on a journey but one of them forgot they were leaving town at all. 

Bird

Mike and I had been driving back to town in my apple red Hyundai, a few scratches on its doors. I'd gone mudding with some friends freshman year, something I doubt my car was meant for. The mud had dried, and I'd tried to scuff it off with an ice scraper. I don't know why I didn't take it to the car wash. 

The weather peaked at Indian summer with just enough sun and a kiss of autumn chill. The leaves were bouquets of red and yellow crumbling from the trees. I'd pulled out the county map that morning and pointed to the furthest corner. We'd been planning on driving a few hours north to Lake Erie for an afternoon, but it was supposed to rain. The last time I'd visited the lake there had been mayflies--in our hair, on our clothes, making their way between the cracks in the windows of the car. Mike had never been.

I'm glad we hiked instead. We threw on sweatshirts, got in the car, and stopped at Giant Eagle. Grocery List: Chex Mix, Cheez-Its, Baked Lays, Nesquick. These were brunch. We spent the afternoon hiking through the woods, sitting in the shade of trees older and maybe wiser than my mother and grandmother.

I'd hit a bird on the way back home. It smacked the center of the windshield, and flew off the side of the car, nearly grazing one of the mirrors. I'd been driving a few miles over the speed limit, sunroof open and music off, barely listening to the wind. We'd been talking about craftsmanship, and how people are losing it these days. Thinking back now, we sounded so old. "Kids these days don't know how to work." "This or that confounded technology!" 

I braked a little when the bird hit, taking in a breath sharply. My heart sank into my stomach.

"I just hit a bird."

"You what?"

"Nope."

"What?"

"Shh. Don't talk about it. Talk about something else."

Months later, I'd forgotten.

"Do you remember that time when you hit the bird?"

"I hit a bird?" It was a question. "When?"

"Don't you remember? We were driving back from..."

It came back, piece by piece. He hadn't talked about it for a few months, just to be safe. It was winter now. We were on our third or fourth snow, and no one wore short sleeves anymore. 

"What color was the bird? Was it big?" I interrogated him.

"I don't remember. I just heard a thud and asked you what had happened. And then you wouldn't let me talk about it. Until, like, now." He grinned and shook his head.

I spoke to my mother on the phone this week about how we remember the things we want to and forget the rest. There is a sadness that's been creeping into my daydreams. When I try to catch it and ask it what it is or what it came for, it slips off. I have seen it only three times, and each time I get an image: a small red bike, wheels spinning, laying on its side in the grass. The other two I have forgotten, swept away by other thoughts. One day I will reel in this sadness as it comes and ask, "Who are you, and how did I forget you? Where are you hiding?" and claim it for my own mind.

The Lit Sky and Lifesavers

There were 60 of us standing on the slant of a hill, cracking the Lifesavers in our mouths at nighttime, the stars rolled out above us. The wind pressed sharp against our faces and swished inside our coats, our fingers and ears numbing in gloves and hats and our eyes watering.

"Now, you can't suck on them. You have to bite on them for them to light up," Sarah instructed us as we tore open the candies and put them between our teeth, the mint and frost of wintergreen filling our mouths. Our cheeks were cold inside and out.

The mints glowed on our tongues, green sparks flying between crunches.

"I asked Matt," Sarah said of her husband, a high school biology teacher,"why they do this. He said that scientists don't know. Something to do with the ions splitting."

There were eight of us left. The 52 had wrapped their coats a little closer and huddled together, shuffling back in groups to the three heated cabins. We eight turned to the hill behind us, a lit cross at the top, forty feet high.

The hill was steep, ice embedded in the dirt and grass. It slanted up and came into plains of gravel. A trail wound up to the cross, but we took the incline, burying boot heels in the dirt as we took the climb a few of us by few.

I laid down halfway, deep cold breaths from my belly puffing into the air, dragon smoke. The stars were brighter up here, further from the ground lights. I looked for the Dipper and her son but couldn't find them in the sky pregnant with light and planets. The moon Cheshire Cat half-smiled in the middle of the sky, and I started talking to God. I always find him in the spaces between dark and hillsides.

There is a poem in Genesis 1 in the midst of God pulling all the earth together, out of his hands--green, fragrant, and abundant. It is older than the stories, passed down by mouth from the daughter of the first mother, cradled in her arms:

   "So God created man in his own image,
    in the image of God he created him;
    male and female he created them."

Below my body and the sky, in the city, the buildings peak with imitation stars. They are gold and rust and flickering, built by the images of God, trying to catch the heavens in glass and wires, trying to speak light like the Light-Speaker.

spaghetti [spuh-get-ee]

1

      My father's side of the family comes from northern Italy, so, yes, we speak pasta. We drop the "i's" off the ends of pasta labels. Rotelli is "rotell." Rigatoni is "rigaton." Ditalini, "ditalin."And don't you dare call a good ziti a box of noodles. My father will swear that the shape of a piece of pasta affects its flavor.

     My grandfather, you see, was a butcher. Carmine Paganelli, when I knew him, had a thatch of pepper hair and a thick Jersey accent, and knew damn well how to slice a ham. I would skip into the deli, blonde cowlick tufted on my four year old head, and hug him around his belly.

     I would beg Grandpa to take me to the pasta machine. Take a second: think back to your Play-doh set. You had the cookie cutters and the play knives, maybe a Sesame Street mold of Cookie Monster. Did you have a pasta maker? It looked a little like a cheese grater, rows of holes made to push the dough through, creating long spaghetti-like squiggles.

      This is much like the machine my grandfather used to make pasta, except his had a handle to crank. He pushed the pasta dough through the machine right into my eager hands. I gobbled it up, the warm dough soft and a little sweet to the taste.

2

      It's dinnertime I miss the most when I'm not home. The food? Well, of course. Every college student misses that. But even more, I miss the quirky conversation and the way my father looks at my mother, with I-love-you-to-the-moon-and-back eyes. My mother and sister demonstrate the yoga poses they've learned in between bites of soup. My father shows us the Heimlich maneuver on an imaginary dummy (somehow, that always seems to happen on steak night). We talk sci-fi TV or funny people we know or the way we were as children. We step out of days rife with work and school and busyness. We step into a space where we don't look at the clock, just at our plates and one other, and maybe in the spice cabinet for a little salt or oregano.

Blueberry Muffins and the Truth

Mike and I didn't realize it was raining until after the muffins were in the oven. There are two different colors a sky can turn when it rains--pasty gray or cobalt. It was a cobalt kind of rain. We couldn't find the lemon zester, so we used a potato peeler to cut the lemon skin into the dough. The muffins were just sweet enough, gooey with blueberries and a bite of lemon. If there are any left over tomorrow, I will cut them down the middle, spread the insides with butter, and grill them brown and crispy in a frying pan. They will be more lemony then.*

I've got a nice cup of Lady Grey tea--Earl with a little less bergamot.

I've been thinking about the truth and how I want more of it. Think about how many lies you are told every day, even things you believe on accident. You believe you need a new pair of Old Navy jeans. You believe Domino's new pan pizza will bring you joy (like their Christmas ads told us).**

These seem like harmless lies. Truth? There is no such thing. When you allow lies to sink into your mind, you begin believing them as truth. I visited Journey Church in Limerick, PA on Sunday. One of the things the pastor said was this: if you believe a lie as truth, it will act as truth in your life. 

There are, of course, worse lies than these. I've found, for me, they take root slowly, slipping in my ears and eyes and growing into my actions until I'm living like my money belongs to me instead of God or I'm putting my selfish desires before the needs of people I love. 

It's just this: it is so hard to get away from the lies because we wind up telling them to ourselves. We tell ourselves we're not good enough, or we tell ourselves we're too good to be true. We tell ourselves our sins don't matter or that we can fix everything on our own.

The only way we can dry up these falsehoods in our lives is to live awash in truth. If our lives are full of knowing and living the truth, where will the lies get in? Where will they find the holes? I'm not saying we won't wrestle with gray areas. We may even wrestle more. However, if we do not live in a determinedly truthful way, we will live in lies. The only way to be sure of the truth is to dwell in Christ. 

*Blueberry Muffin Recipe :) It was really good. 

**Seriously--if Domino's pizza is the source of true joy for all creation, I do not want to live on this earth anymore.