medial // caesura

" In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength . . ." (Is 30:15) This week, I had to appear in court to declare my 18-year-old son incompetent--I had filed a three page document answering questions as to his ability to feed and dress himself, understand things like language and money and danger.  I had been dreading this moment for awhile. His geneticist persuaded me to petition the court a few weeks prior to his 18th birthday, so for the past couple of years it has been in the back of my mind, always a reminder of what his special birthday will mean. I guess similar to the way a child's high school graduation settles in the back of the minds of parents of seniors. But the past few months, the thought has been heavy.  It's like my emotional center has been shut down.  I haven't been able to contemplate, to meditate.   I've just been in motion. I've felt a little like the woman whom Oliver Saks in his book, The Man W...

A person can only hold in so much until the bottom drops.  My mom taught me that thing that moms teach, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."  As a generally polite person, my default mode is to hold my tongue, and as a pastor's wife, I hold my tongue often.   Well, yesterday, I did not.  Yesterday, I stood up and said out loud to a room filled with parents, grandparents and siblings of special needs children, "I can't listen to this anymore." The waiting room at my son's therapy center is small, overcrowded.  If you wear your winter coat indoors, your sleeve touches the person next to you.  There aren't enough chairs for siblings, so small children litter the floor with toys, books, themselves.  It's an obstacle course to get my son with his unsteady gait through the waiting area and into the hallway leading to therapy rooms. I usually wait in the car because this is one of the few hours during ...

My favorite gift from Stanley:  my unimug tea infuser "In this way, Papa constructs himself, every day.  I say 'constructs himself' because I think that each time it's a new construction, as if everything has been reduced to ashes during the night, and he has to start from scratch."                                   --Muriel Barbery In The Elegance of the Hedgehog , Paloma, a 12 year old, shares her rich interiority with its timeless wisdom and sharp analysis of those whose lives are entwined with hers.  In her "Profound Thoughts," or journal entries, we recognize her kindred spirit with the building's concierge, the story's "hedgehog" and heroine.  Both are intelligent women who use masks of mediocrity in order to cultivate their extraordinary spirits behind shields of introversion. Another simi...

This year when decorating the house for Christmas, the boys assured me they were much older and could handle the fragile ornaments usually relegated to adults.  So I let my seven- and eight-year-old take the delicate beauties from Mawmaw, who had retrieved them from the boxes, and hang them on the tree.  The result was a Bermuda triangle front and center where we had a parade of antique wooden ornaments, angels clumped with angels, and snowman families happily hanging together.  Individual beauty was lost, but the arrangement told a story of their imaginations and accomplishment at being able to hang the eggs handblown by my mother when I was their age.  The problem was the tree leaned forward, tilting toward their eager hands and busy minds. So once they went to sleep, I did what my mother always did and redecorated the tree.  They were dismayed (when I read this to the older one, he corrected me by saying they were actually appalled) upon awaking the next m...

"Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless." Thomas Edison In yesterday's daily phone conversation, my mom was disappointed because I had not posted pictures of Knox and Ben in costume from Friday night trunk-or-treating.  Let me preface the photos by explaining that Knox made his costume.  He was Yoda, and he colored a sheet of yellow construction paper for his mask, making jagged holes by hand for eyes and mouth.  He used curling ribbon to secure it to his head.  He even picked out clothes that looked like something that Yoda would really wear-- under his Jedi robe.  He did it all himself without instruction or help, AND he hated it. "It doesn't look at all like I wanted it to!" was his lament and then the question, "Why don't things turn out the way you planned?" That, my son, is the million-dollar question. I saved the mask before he scrapped it in the trash, and with the hel...

  Every act of perception, is to some degree an act of creation, and every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination.  Oliver Sacks "Boys, tell you father what you did today," I offered casually over the dinner table, hoping to hear descriptions of nature that resonated with my recollection: sunlight shivering the yellow of the elm and sugar maple, the wind shaking out the leaves to compete with the waterfall's melody.  "We climbed a broken wall and jumped over a brick wall that had fallen into the water." And that is how they will remember today's field trip.  What I'll remember though are their expressions, their laughter, the way Ben said, "I love homeschooling.  This is so much fun."  and Knox, "We've had three side trips and we've barely started the trail.  This is great!"  I'll remember the picture Ben took (below right) of the trees and his "ladder vine" and how Knox described the trees...

"In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good.  Light is sweet, and it is pleasant for eyes to see the sun."  Ecclesiastes 11:6-7 I'm sure you've seen the Hampton Inn commercial advertising the breakfast buffet--the staff member watches a guest make a waffle with the flipping waffle iron:  "You did a good job.  That looks great."  Just one of those feel-good moments one experiences at the Hampton Inn. We had the occasion to stay at the Hampton Inn twice this summer.  And one morning I attempted to use the waffle iron (I had not yet seen the commercial and didn't know that it must be rotated for the timer to work).  The staff member came over and cajoled me.  "You didn't know to flip it.  Oh, no.  I bet your young child here could make a better waffle than you.  Here out of the way.  I will cook it for ...