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.