Confessions of a News Junkie

I am an obsessive consumer of news. I cannot help it. And so, you can imagine that this is reaching epic proportions lately. In addiction parlance, I think I’m about to hit bottom. I watch the news in the morning; I feel disoriented without it. When my brain is desperate for an editing break, I read the news online. CNN. The New York Times. The Washington Post. NPR. BBC. I can’t get enough of it. I have to force myself to stop. When I’m driving, I listen to NPR. The boys beg for music; after the election, I say. I’m fairly certain most college journalism majors suffer from this condition. Some people even have it worse than I do.

Last night, we watched the debate. Had to. Truth be told, I was desperately hoping to see McCain put the nail in his own coffin so I can sleep easier each night before the election. Because this election is eating away at me, and I can’t wait for it to be over. I’d like to know now whether we’ll need to move to Canada so our sons won’t have to die in some unnecessary conflict because our elected leaders are so far from understanding diplomacy that they have us mired in conflicts around the globe. And that debate made it very clear: there is one candidate who truly understands the value of diplomatic efforts and the need to restore America’s standing around the globe. It was not just clear in what he said but in the way he conducted himself. And for that reason, among many, many others, I will be voting for Barack Obama this November. And frankly, I hope you will be too.

Back in the Saddle

I always appreciate it when God helps me out with the basics. I've been nothing short of overwhelmed lately. With work. With the kids. With laundry. With the need to feed people. What? You need to eat? Again? The basics. Now that summer is over and we've settled back into a routine — albeit a rather chaotic one — I've been wracked with guilt about not writing. And overwhelmed at the thought of when I could possibly squeeze that in. I mean, please.

At the same time I've been frustrated with the morning's increasing darkness. Bear and I walk each morning, and I had been doing it before the boys got up for school. That meant walking at 6 a.m. It's a great time to walk, so peaceful. But suddenly it became a little too dark for walking alone. Well, walking alone with the dog, who I know would protect me if called upon...but I do try not to be stupid.

Back to the guilt and the not writing and my inability to find even a sliver of time when I would not feel like I had to be doing something else. I just sort of presented all the overwhelming demands on my time to God and said, "Help!" And miraculously, my thoughts finally fell into place. Now don't be deceived...it's not like I've got the God hotline or anything. For weeks I've been trying to put this together. How to make the mornings work with everything that's required: Getting two boys off to school (in particular, helping them find their socks, which never seem to be in their drawers), starting another on his schoolwork, answering clients' e-mails, getting started on my work, walking the dog, spending time with God...and my big stumbling block: writing. Suddenly I saw the opportunity the darkness was giving me. I'm now writing at six o'clock each morning and walking the dog later. The truth is that if I don't write before everything starts to get crazy and people start needing things, then it's just never going to happen. So, I'm pretty happy about this. Wow...this is a really long post just to say that I started writing again.

Not Quite the Brady Bunch

I loved the Brady Bunch when I was a kid, and my kids love it now. They record it early each morning and watch it almost every afternoon. Do you remember the episode where Marcia draws a picture in school and is busted for it because a nasty comment about a teacher is written above the drawing?

Well, last week I got a call from the elementary school principal. Let's just say it's not the first call I've ever received from her. She said, "I just wanted to let you know that I had your son in the office today with a classmate because a student told us that they were drawing inappropriate pictures of teachers."

Of course, the word inappropriate set alarm bells off in my head. What?! But in my calm voice, I said, "What exactly did he draw?" She said, "A cyclops." I'm still not sure how I contained my laughter.

That night I asked Son3 who he'd drawn as a cyclops. The headmaster of the school, of course (who also happens to be teaching one class -- fifth grade math). "Who told on you?" I asked. I had to know. Son3 named the classmate (we'll call him John) and then did his best nerd imitation (something he and his brother have perfected over the past few months) and said: "John said, 'I talked to the Lord about it and I felt that you and Jordan were drawing disrespectful pictures.'" This time I didn't bother to contain my laughter. That's Christian school for you.

Of course, in the Brady Bunch episode, Marcia drew the picture but it was a classmate who wrote the problematic comment. Far be it from Marcia to actually do something worthy of punishment.

An Anniversary...of sorts

Seven years ago today my mom died. I don't think I have any words for this. In many ways it is heartbreaking to me that we learn to go on. I remember how lost I was, how completely bereft after she died. For the longest time I felt the loss acutely. She was simply not there. It was shocking. Yet somehow over time I absorbed that loss, and it's as if the vacuum that she left has become a part of me, just as surely as she is a part of me.

I was going to post a poem that I wrote before she died. It's called The Diagnosis. I cannot. It's such a short poem, and in so few words it's just...devastating. Too much truth or something. So I'll post this one instead. I wrote it on Thanksgiving Day, two months after she died. Seven years later I still think it captures those days perfectly.


Thanksgiving

your veins ran to crimson
your bruises to mulberry
your skin to honey
before autumn even arrived

my eyes I could not lift
suspended
I was transfixed
upon the unexpected
passage of your seasons

so I drank your honey skin
warmed myself
at the bedside of your illumination
tenderly held
your stained and thinning hands
in September, thanksgiving was upon me

now winter is nearly here
but your autumn haunts me still
the hushed morning
a Saturday
when your last leaves blew away

A Poem

I thought that poems had left me. It's been years since one has come to me, which is how it works for me. I've contemplated this lately...whether I could sit down and write one without a dose of inspiration. Poems arrived almost unbidden for years, and they practically hunted me down after my mother died, begging to be written. But for a few years now, there's been...nothing. Until the other evening when a butterfly flitted through the yard while we were all outside playing wiffle ball. The butterfly was a lovely pale lemon color, and it seemed so out of place, in an evening that seemed to herald fall.

Here it is, without a title:

The leaves yellowing at their fringes
The incessant chorus of crickets
And the evening’s brisk breeze
Remind me that summer is
Waning toward darker evenings
And November’s biting wind

The falling leaves, the relinquishing
A memory struggling to surface
Interrupted by you, butterfly,
Your flight a dance of dappled light
Cinderella
Waltzing through my yard


I'm not completely satisfied with this. It's awkward or something...and perhaps doesn't say all that I'd like it to. But that little lemony butterfly has been nagging me for a poem, and I had to write something to get started.

Oreos and Microchips

Yesterday afternoon, sometime after I'd consumed my millionth Oreo, I realized I might be a tad depressed. Not really sure why; my life doesn't leave me much time for self-reflection. Perhaps I'm depressed because I'm avoiding writing, though the overwhelming nature of life right now means it doesn't feel like avoidance at all. It feels like survival, and I don't see that changing. I keep waiting for some extreme sense of drivenness to take over. Regardless, yesterday I began thinking that perhaps I could be implanted with a microchip and when I go into the store to buy Oreos, I would be unable to complete the transaction. Perhaps they'd scan my hand and the check-out person would say with disdain, "Sorry, you're not allowed to buy Oreos," and she'd quicky snatch them away. Not much of a plan, but when depression is setting in and self-control is lacking, it seems potentially helpful.

The Problem of Pain — When You're Eleven

The other night I had one of the most difficult conversations I've ever had with one of my boys. Son2, in addition to the migraines, has been having a lot of trouble sleeping lately. On Monday night he was...near despair. He's not the most optimistic fellow...and why would he be? But he'd had a terrible night's sleep on Sunday, and he was convinced he was in for more of the same. When he is like this, there is no reasoning with him. So this conversation about sleep led into one that was much more intense, and, frankly, disconcerting. Son2 wanted to know why he is the only one in our family who suffers. Hmmm. I tried to point out the things that his brothers deal with, and at the same time acknowledge his pain and the fact that he does seem to have more to handle than his brothers do. I know he feels like their lives are so much easier, so much more...blessed. Both are athletic, and popular. Both are sort of quintessential...boys. Son2's gifts are different, and amazing. But that's not what we're talking about. He agreed with me that he would not want someone else to have to deal with the pain that he does, but I could also tell that, honestly, part of him felt like it would be a-okay if his brothers were living his life and he was living theirs. I understand.

But still he wanted to know, why me? I admitted I do not know, that I only know that God is the only one who can take our pain and losses and bring good. That this is a miracle, and God can do that miracle for him. Then, of course, he wanted to know what good could possibly come from his pain, his trials. I said it would likely be a long time before we would know that answer. I said that great art most often springs from those broken places in our hearts, and that any art he makes in the future -- writing, music, sculpture, film -- would all be richer and deeper because of this. I also explained that only people who have suffered can truly comfort those who are suffering. That comfort is a work that Jesus does and that we can work with Jesus to comfort those who need it, to be with them in their pain. But still...he wanted to know, why me? Why am I the only one?

And so I had no choice but to let him know that he doesn't know ways that his dad and I may have suffered in our own lives as children. I said I could not tell him the things that I had been through as a child, that it wasn't right for him to know that now, that it is too sad, but to trust me that I had known deep pain at his age but that, unlike him, I was very alone, with no one to talk with about it, but that it is okay now and that somehow God saw me through those years. As soon as I started to explain this to him, my voice broke and I began to cry, and he jumped up and said, "Oh mom..." with such...compassion and understanding...and then he began to sob, and he put his arms around me.

I explained that all that pain I experienced and more pain and losses since have made me able to be with people who are suffering. And then I said, "Do you see? You're eleven, and you already can do this. You just did it." And he saw it, though he has no idea how rare it is.

That night, fortunately, he slept. And I did too, though that conversation left me drained and a bit worried about what adolescence may hold.