My suitcase wasn’t even unpacked from my maternal grandmother’s funeral when I got the call about my dad’s mom: “Grandma has been in bed all week. We’re driving down tomorrow to say goodbye.”
I do realize the extravagance of this gift I’ve been given, having grandparents I’ve known into adulthood. I feel almost guilty grieving these losses, like someone in Hawaii complaining about the winter.
And yet grief is so rarely a rational animal. There is little comfort in comparing wounds, no balm in “at-leasting” them.At least I had her so long. At least she went peacefully. At least she’s no longer suffering. It may be true, but it does little to erase the loss.
Grandma celebrated her 102nd birthday this summer, but her mind remained as bright as ever. Whenever I visited, I perused the books on her end table: mysteries, historical fiction, chunky nonfiction titles. As I listened to her delineate the tactical strategies from her recent World War II read, I found myself shaking my head, hoping to be as well read when I grow up.
Books are, after all, how she and I became friends. I knew her as my grandma my whole life, of course, but with twelve children and a gaggle of grandchildren, she always had a lot of voices clamoring for her attention.
One summer when I was in junior high, we went to her and Grandpa’s condo to swim, and she noticed the copy of Anne of Green Gables under my arm. I told her about Anne, the book’s spunky red-haired heroine. Before long, I was passing along the entire series to her (and eventually to Grandpa too) when I finished each one. As we had our own informal book club over the course of eight books, I realized how much of Anne I saw in my grandma: both were gingers who had lost parents young and had come out resilient (and a little fiery) on the other side. Both were lovers of literature who got an education at a time when not many women did. Both took a legacy of loss and wrote a redemptive story for the generations after them.
Grandma’s story could have been a book itself. I think about the vignettes I’ve heard over the years—how she met Grandpa in college just before the war, how she waited and prayed for his return after he enlisted, how he mailed her a parachute so she could use the silk for her wedding dress, how they got married on a Tuesday right before Lent (so they wouldn’t have to wait until after Easter), how she and Grandpa had a dozen kids in 14 years, how she lived independently (and read independently) until past the century mark.
She didn’t see herself as a heroine, but then again, aren’t all the real heroes the ones who don’t realize it? “Oh, honey,” she’d tell me, “I just did what I had to do.” On every page, her life was marked by humility and grit.
But perhaps more than anything, she didn’t see herself as heroic because she knew she was part of a larger story. And she knew the Author who was writing it:
You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Psalm 139:16
Grandma, your final chapter is over here on earth. But your story on the other side is just beginning. Only this time you get to read the book before I do.
You were never one to spoil an ending, but I’m pretty sure the story you’re living now in is the grandest one of all. In this story, there’s a happily ever after, but no “the end.”
I don’t know exactly what the literary scene looks like in heaven. But I’m putting in a special request to be in your book club just in case.
Hope . . . makes possible our ability to recognize that the world in which we find ourselves has a story; and if there’s a story, there’s a storyteller. Stanley Hauerwas
What I remember most about Grandma’s house is the way it smelled.
It smelled like pie and cookies and Christmas and memories and love.
Long before my family would begin the 2,000-mile trip across the country to Grandma and Grandpa’s house, Grandma would start preparing for us to come. Most of that work was done in a flour-dusted apron, with rolling pin in hand.
For weeks before we arrived, she rolled out pie crusts, baked bars, and stocked her five(!) freezers with all manner of chocolatey desserts, Scandinavian cookies, and cinnamon rolls (each tray wrapped with a rumpled sheet of thrice-used foil).
As soon as we stepped into her house, the number-one priority (after a round of hugs) was pie. No matter what time we arrived, even if we were bleary eyed, even if it was egad-o’clock in the morning, we would eat a slice of pie. Huckleberry pie, rhubarb pie, French apple pie—every bite made from scratch.
The next morning at Grandma’s house, my nose would wake up before the rest of me did. From my sleeping quarters with the cousins in the basement, I’d be welcomed into consciousness by the scent of homemade donuts.
Grandma wasn’t one to sit down for heart-to-heart conversations, and she didn’t have much time for lofty words or emotive speeches. She loved with her hands instead of her words.
I love you, she said with every mixer stroke. I love you, she said with every roll of her pie crust (including the leftover bits, which she’d sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon and give to us grandkids). I love you, she said as she preserved another jar of jam made from Grandpa’s fresh-grown raspberries. I love you, she said with every knead of cinnamon roll dough (which she unapologetically served with dinner and were not dessert).
***
I got the call about Grandma’s death on a sunny September morning. She was 96, and she hadn’t made cookies for some years now, so this wasn’t a surprise. But in that moment, decades of memories came flooding over me.
“What was your grandma like?” my boys ask me.
There are so many ways to answer that question. Do I tell them about the tenacious farm girl who loved to ride her horse, Dewey, instead of sew like her sister? Do I tell them about the brave young woman who left her parents’ farm in North Dakota to get a college degree in business at a time when most women were homemakers? Do I tell them about the young teacher who set off for a job in Montana, having never visited, because the people she’d met from there were nice? Do I tell them about the handsome chemistry teacher who saw her picture in the paper and volunteered to pick her up at the train station and how they were married for 66 years?
I open my mouth to respond, but none of the words taste right on my tongue.
“Come into the kitchen,” I say instead. “Let’s make a pie.”
We slice and mix and sprinkle and make a sugary mess before putting the pie in the oven. As the aroma of warm apples and cinnamon filters through the house, I whisper in their ears, “This is what Grandma’s love smells like.” And as we take a bite of buttery apples with strudel, I tell them, “This is what Grandma’s love tastes like.”
***
Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am. John 14:1-3
As I wash the pie tin (the one Grandma gave me), it occurs to me that Grandma is on the other side of the preparations now. The woman who prepared endlessly for meals and holidays and parties and visits from out-of-town grandchildren is now going to a place that has been prepared just for her. Her Savior has been at work, getting his home ready for her, stocking the heavenly freezer for her arrival.
I wouldn’t necessarily bank on this theology, but who knows? Maybe, just maybe, a slice of pie will be waiting for her when she gets there.
It was the best of days; it was the hottest of days…
To have a three-year-old is to be thrust into a yearlong summer—the kind with record-breaking heat waves and furious squalls.
You sweat and you play. You love it and you long for a reprieve. You’re convinced you’ll melt, and you don’t want it to end. You duck for cover when tornadic winds touch down. You eat too many popsicles on the front porch.
In this season of parenting a child with a hankering for autonomy and bursting with so. many. opinions., I feel the heat and intensity of these days.
The words of a Van Morrison song have been echoing through my mind the last couple of months:
These are the days of the endless summer…
These are the days indeed.
These are the days of sloppy whispers in my ear: “I wuv you, Mama.” And these are the days of “Me not like you anymore!” when I limit his daily banana quota.
These are the days of “revenge peeing” in the corner (the term so aptly coined by Daniel). And these are the days of being met by squeals and full-body hugs when we walk in the door.
These are the days of brothers sneaking into bed to read together in the morning. And these are the days when Duplos also function as tiny plastic missiles.
These are the days of cute phrases like “croco-gator” (crocodile + alligator) and “mus-beard” (mustache + beard). And these are the days of meltdowns over the wrong color cereal bowl.
Endless summer. Isn’t that the pinky promise summer makes with us? You realize it’s not true—you know it can’t last forever—but as you wipe ice cream from sticky faces, as mosquitoes feast on bare ankles and fireflies blink languidly in the dusk, you can almost be lulled into believing the calendar page will never turn.
But in these long days of August, I catch a whiff of the changing of seasons.
Will this be the last time I buy a box of overpriced diaper genie refill bags? Will this be the last time our boy dashes into our bed during a thunderstorm, thinking it’s bad guys? Will this be the last time I do an emergency potty cleanup in the grocery store? Will this be the last time I carry a sleep-heavy boy to his bed after a playground date?
“It goes by so fast,” they say. They’re right, of course. But I have no more power to slow down these years than I do to pause the sun in its descent or to delay the approach of autumn.
It seems so obvious, but it hit me like a gut punch today: This is the youngest my kids will ever be.
So what can I do, time-bound creature that I am? I suppose my only recourse is to savor the moments as I can and try to make a truce with the calendar. I’ll resist the longing to fast-forward or rewind or press pause. I’ll do my best to remember as many sweet things as I can, and just enough of the spicy bits to empathize with moms of other threenagers one day.
And maybe this afternoon, when the sun is beating down on us, we’ll sit on the porch and eat another popsicle.
I don’t think it’s a fluke that the superhero Elastigirl (she of Incredibles fame) is a mother. The longer I’ve lived with small humans in my care, the more I find myself in need of superhuman elasticity and flexibility, not to mention arms that stretch to the faraway (and, dare I say, dangerous) places my children fly off to.
***
It was the second day of summer. I was in possession of color-coded calendars and grand visions detailing how we’d strike a balance between structure and play, how we’d avoid the summer slump by filling out reading charts and doing math practice (disguised as fun games, of course!). We’d conquer potty-training and go on adventures and spend quality family time together (and yes, I’d get my work done somewhere in there too).
By day 2, the lists and charts had melted like yesterday’s ice cream on the sidewalk.
“Can we go outside and play?” my boys begged.
I agreed, on the condition that they play in the front yard while I worked on the stoop. “Make sure you stay where I can see you,” I instructed. What I didn’t say: Within the reach of my Elastigirl arms.
It wasn’t long before they rustled up some bungee cords from the garage and rigged the Burley to Graham’s bike. Pretty ingenious, I thought. This wasn’t on the Official Summer Plans list, but there were probably some STEM-adjacent benefits, right?
Seconds later, I looked up. To my horror, the Burley, now disconnected from Graham’s bike, was careening down the driveway . . . with Milo in it.
I threw my laptop across the porch and sprinted like my flip-flops were on fire.
By now the Burley was at the end of the driveway and heading into the road, racing downhill and picking up speed by the second.
As my legs churned, so did my mind, conjuring up every worst-case scenario, from the Burley toppling and my three-year-old spilling onto the asphalt to an untimely collision with an Amazon truck.
At last, my arms reached the handle of the Burley. My chest was heaving so hard I could barely speak, but I blubbered some incoherencies while kissing my son. He just grinned up at me, eyes sparkling with the thrill of his at-home Six Flags adventure.
After making the trek back to the house (and offering abashed nods to the gawking neighbors), I collapsed onto the stoop.
“Let’s do it again!” my six-year-old exclaimed.
When I shot down that idea, he stated emphatically that he was going to live somewhere else—preferably a house with fewer rules.
“Is that right? Where would you want to live?”
“I don’t know,” he sulked. “Probably Australia!”
***
If only for those elastic arms that would allow my body to here and my arms to be there.
How often I wish I could be in more than one place at once—at work and at home, playing with my kids and making dinner, being productive and resting. But these limits we’ve been given—our limited bodies, our limited time, our limited capacity—they’re an essential part of what makes us human.
And as much as I strain against these boundaries, they really are a form of grace. They remind me that I can’t do everything, that I can’t be everywhere at once, that my arms don’t hold the world together. This is at once disappointing and freeing.
Knowing I can only do so much invites me to trust the one who can do everything and be everywhere. The one whose arms are strong and everlasting. Not to mention super-stretchy.
And so I’m trying to accept my ordinary arms, along with the limits I’ve been given. May I see them not as restrictive, but as pleasant—delightful, even.
The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.
Psalm 16:6
When my arms are too short and not as elastic as I would like, when my grand summer plans melt away, may I find the sweetness in these boundary lines. May I accept the gift of not being responsible for holding the earth on its axis. And may I entrust my children to the one who created them and can catch them when I can’t.
A Benediction for Summer
There is no one like the God of Israel. He rides across the heavens* to help you, across the skies in majestic splendor. The eternal God is your refuge, and his everlasting arms are under you.
I hear it again today, in the produce aisle this time. “Savor every moment,” she says, the smell of nostalgia mingling with summer strawberries.
I know what she means. But on this day The overripeness stings my nose and I can’t stop the sweat from beading on all my fleshy parts.
This grocery list of All The Things required to keep small people alive— it’s like being served a giant chocolate cake every single day. Decadent, delicious . . . even enviable.
But how do you savor something when there are five mouthfuls stuffed in your cheeks at once?
How do you savor something when you must consume every last bit, even when you’re overfull?
My friend Sarah says, she with the wise words and two steps ahead: Savor one bite. This bite. The one on your fork right now. You don’t have to savor them all at once.
So I grab a pint of strawberries and reach deep for a smile.
Maybe we’ll make strawberry shortcake together. And if some of the juicy ones end up in the compost pile, amen and so be it. I will trust that even there, they are not wasted.
I once prayed in a circle of quiet— closed door, closed eyes, ink-scratch the only sound.
Now all I have to offer is prayer in the margins— nestled between dirty dishes, laundered socks, toddler stampedes.
No time for eloquence, No energy either. I’m blunter now, I suppose, going for the divine jugular.
Please. Thank you. Help me. Protect them. What now? Thank you anyway. Have mercy. Bless them. Thank you still.
So I breathe blessings over sleep-tousled hair, put hands on heads as we race to school, exhale benedictions when I hear sirens (for surely that’s someone’s son, if not my own).
I let prayers come in what form they may, amid the tornadic wildness of these days.
I let the prayers come— as breaths, as teardrops, as kisses. As the beats of my own heart.
Alas, I am writing this message to you several weeks after the dust has settled on your birthday gifts. With your birthday the day after Christmas, December can feel like drinking celebration-concentrate, the way you might put a straw straight into the orange juice can, undiluted. Rich and sweet—and maybe tummyache-inducing after a while.
This year we celebrated Christmas, with your birthday right on its heels, followed by a family celebration that ended with a three-generational stomach bug, with a chaser of strep throat that coincided with a blizzard and then –20 degree weather. I keep waiting for elusive aspirations like “a normal week” or “getting into a routine” or “finding our rhythm,” and I’ve decided that’s not a realistic New Year’s resolution at this stage of our life.
In a way, it seems appropriate that your birthday was marked by a flurry of intensity—full-on joy, interspersed with every other extreme. One thing we’ve learned about you in these three years is that you don’t do anything halfway. When you eat pancakes, you EAT PANCAKES—often five in a sitting. You run at only one speed: full throttle. You love your brother fiercely—anytime you get a treat, you ask for two so you can share with him. You are a bucket of joy 90 percent of the time, full of expressive gestures and impish antics, making everyone around you (including strangers at the grocery store) grin. That other 10 percent of you, the sheer grit part, results in some stubborn faceplants in the carpet now but will get you far in life one day.
You had two requests for your birthday this year: pancakes and lions. I tried to temper your expectations about the zoo, knowing that cats of any size don’t exactly have a reputation for doing what you ask. But you were adamant that you would see the lions.
Sure enough, one of the male lions was pacing right next to the viewing window, face to face with you. You were mesmerized, not at all fazed by the three-inch-long teeth or the cold rain drizzling down on us. I tried to move us along so other people could have a turn, but your nose was pressed to the glass. “More times! More times!”
As I looked at the wonder in your eyes, I admired the way you were fully present in the moment. You weren’t thinking about what happened yesterday or what will happen tomorrow. You weren’t worried about germs or schedules or to-lists or what anyone else was thinking.
I have a lot to learn from you, my full-of-life boy. You are teaching me that today is a gift—one that will never come again exactly this way. Time, I am learning, is as awe-inspiring and ferocious as a lion. It can’t be tamed, only respected. So I want to embrace all that this season has to offer—the good parts and the hard parts. Fever, and also snuggles. E-learning, and also snowmen. Exhaustion, and also joy. Antibiotics, and also unexpected time at home.
I want to embrace this year of you being three and me being the mom of a three-year-old.
So happy birthday, little man. Your dad and I love you. We’re so glad God picked us to be the ones in the front row to watch you grow up.
They say it is coincidence, The way the sun bursts through the clouds, The rainbow after the storm, The check in the mail, like so much manna, The hope that beats unmerited in your chest.
They say it is random, Simple happenstance, The way the right words come at the right time, The answer to a prayer you’ve barely whispered. They call it a happy accident, The shift of the universe, Atoms in entropy.
But I am a mother now, I have peeked behind this part of the curtain. Tiny notes are tucked into lunchboxes, Scraped knees are tended, Groceries appear in the pantry, Feverish brows are tended, The right gift appears for the occasion, Lullabies are sung deep into the night.
“It’s my lucky day!” the child exclaims. And the mother nods, smiles, winks.
Perhaps it is only chance For the one receiving it. Maybe coincidence is really A divine love note, A kiss breaking through the barrier of heaven.
Maybe it’s just another way to say I love you.
There is no chance thing through which God cannot speak . . . even the moments when you cannot believe there is a God who speaks at all anywhere.
This summer we went on a family vacation to the Sleeping Bear Dunes—that veritable mountain range of sand. We squinted our eyes against the electric-blue sky, taking in the towering hills above us. Can we make it to the top? I wondered. It would be a steep enough climb even if we weren’t schlepping water bottles, snacks, and diapers, not to mention two small humans.
Your dad and I listened studiously as the park ranger went over safety guidelines with our group. He told us how sometimes people start the climb but aren’t able to finish, and what to do if you get tired or hot or stuck somewhere between the base and the summit.
We were nodding along, taking in all the tips, when in a surge of panic, I realized you were gone. We scanned the parking lot for your trademark green ball cap. Where could you be? Then I spotted you climbing—no, sprinting—up the dune. Somehow, in the span of minutes, you’d made it two-thirds of the way up, all by your barefooted self.
I tried to call out to you, but the lump in my throat silenced me—a lump that was one part pride, one part fear, and one part I’m not ready yet.
***
You started kindergarten last week. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise—five comes after four, six comes after five, kindergarten comes after preschool. These are linear steps, predictable chronologies. And yet I find myself standing at the bottom of this sand dune, looking up at you with a mixture of pride and fear and I’m-not-ready-yet.
When you were a baby, I heard so many times that the days are long and the years are short. I tried to soak in this advice, but I don’t know if it’s possible to be prepared for the inevitable time-slip of watching you grow up. I am no likelier to freeze-frame you at this stage than I am to preserve a dandelion puff or capture a sunset in my pocket.
You are adamant that I am Mom now, not Mama or Mommy. It’s strange how quickly you are changing while I stay the same. I look at pictures of us together, how you once fit in my arms and how your arms now wrap all the way around me. I remain the same height while you keep inching higher.
As soon as your dad and I think we’ve found a rhythm in a new season with you and your brother, things change. Your brain is growing, your heart is growing, and your soul is growing. Your questions are getting bigger along with your shoe size, and the problems you’re up against are increasing in complexity along with your math problems. And I find myself ever a step behind, racing to catch up.
But maybe I’m growing too, just less obviously than you. At the very least, my rib cage must be expanding, because how else could my heart contain all this without bursting?
And so, as you turn six and climb the mountains God has put before you, know that your dad and I love you. And when you face mountains that you have to climb all on your own, know that Jesus is with you, running to the top beside you.
We’ll be cheering you on, whether we’re ready or not.
“The tulip field,” he said, Eyes puppy-wide, Though I almost missed them on account of my screen. Not today, I thought, The inbox as full as the sink as the laundry basket as my List of Very Important Things.
It was the pants that caught my eye. An inch higher than last week, I swear. His brother’s too. Everyone warned me this would happen, of course. The way they shoot up, faster than a field of dandelions, without my assent.
By the time spring comes again, I wonder, Will you be driving a car, getting a job, calling to check in on a Sunday evening?
So I trade deadlines for hastily slathered peanut butter sandwiches And we picnic with the tulips.
For tulips bloom bright and brilliant, But the season is short— Like morning fog. Like blinking. Like last year’s pants.
