love – my ft.notes

Dear Senior:

Hey, bud. I’ve been putting this off, as I do. You’re still a senior…for a few more days. But you’ll be a college freshman soon. Maybe I couldn’t wrap this up because I still can’t believe we’re here. Because I well up when I try to write this out. Because I think we’re all underestimating just how much your little brother is going to miss you. You understand this procrastination. We’re both always too optimistic that there’s plenty of time to say and do and experience all of the things.
But we are here. Now.

You have always had an epic presence. You’re a walking miracle. You were a ginormous baby with these gargantuan feet. Your rivers of wisdom and proclivity for giggles demand more space. You’re brimming with this self-proclaimed main-character energy, without an ounce of ego.

Now, we’re at that intersection of place and time where I heard we’d be shadows passing in hallways. I see you in the mornings, before 7am, to give you to-go breakfast and a hug on your way out of the door. After school, there’s work and the gym and you have to see about a girl, so I see you 14 hours later when you come in. We’ve boomeranged. When you walk through the door, I see glimpses of the way you used to come at me full speed when you were little and I had to brace myself to catch you. You always stop (Hey, Momma!) and give me the fiercest squeeze. I believe you’re actually pumped to see me. That’s your way. You’re never breezing through. There’s a hug and intention in your every coming and going. There aren’t enough moments though. (Is this a kindness from the universe, gently, progressively preparing me for the quiet chasm to come?)

You’re going to leave a muffled hush because there’s nothing still about you. From your loud outfits, those goofy-awesome sweaters from the Tik Tok shop and baggy pants and the way you own it all without apology, to your Ozzie voice-overs and wild hair and kitchen choreography and declarations of You have to hear this song right this second at max volume.

You fill a room, but you always leave space for everyone’s feelings. You ask: how was your day? You mean it. You want and expect an answer. And you know–without anyone speaking a word–when someone’s scale is tipped in the way they’d rather it didn’t. This sixth-sense is rare air. But the way you use it is even more beautiful. Your intuition is ready with a hug or a prayer or a song or a story that sets the scale straight…straightaway.

The way you encourage the chef at hibachi, the way you accept anything anyone is passing out…a flyer, an invitation, stickers, the way you validate any soul in your sphere. Just to say I see you. I acknowledge you. Your presence matters. And you’re easy with your I love yous, whether you holler it downstairs, flash it in sign language or share the crispiest bits of a casserole. You, in true Tucker fashion, take your brother everywhere–to the movies, to anime events, to thrift vinyl. You’re his counsel on clothes, girls and mom & dad. You’re his favorite human.

Your art is honest and raw and unapologetic, my favorite things about you. I like to keep a clean house; we all know it. But you took over the room over, converting it to your studio. And I was content to let your corner of chaos stay messy and vulnerable and precious. The pencil shavings, color scrambles and half-finished canvases, this miss-matched mayhem where you painted through your own identity.

You despise snakes (nope-ropes, fear-spears, danger-noodles), you loathe bad drivers. But, most of all, you’re really not keen on small talk. Your teacher gave you the Inquisitive Intellect award this year. I know why. You ask us pointed questions at dinner: If you could only do one job every day for the rest of your life, what would make you the happiest? What’s the soundtrack of your life? What place on the earth is the most you? You push and you ask and you interrogate, yet your faith keeps you anchored. Your clarity can be alarming, unsettling. When I needed to make one of the biggest decisions of my career, you asked me: do you ever go back and read the notes you take in church? I took your advice, my kid, my teenager, and found the answer in black and white. Simply take the next best step. Just do the ordinary in faith.

It gut-punched me last night when I was reading through your final AP art portfolio (that you would not let me read until after you had submitted it)…how big you think and wonder and dream. How much you know. How, in a million ways, you don’t need me the same anymore. And, an avalanche of aches was swallowed up in an ocean of pride without measure. Exactly as it should be.

It’s an alien familiarity, an ambivalent dance. I wonder at you, your brain, your questions, your humor. I thank God that he let us keep you for a little minute. Bless. What a little, fleeting, miraculous minute. I worry nonstop. Yet…I’m not anxious. Because I know you. I know your heart. And I’ll keep praying for the Light to guide your feet. Follow the truth, stay in the Way, and chase what fills you up.

Thank you for always keeping us laughing, talking, thinking, dancing, listening to new music, trying different things. We love how you see the world and how you show up in it, all in with a full heart and open mind.

Even though I gave you all I had, I promise, I know you wish you were taller–like your dad.

But—to me—you are a giant.

Dear Applecross Lane:

Love grows best in little houses, with fewer walls to separate.
Where you eat & sleep so close together, you can’t help but communicate.
And if we had more room between us, think of all we’d miss.
Love grows best in little houses just like this.
Anon

(I just found this post, years later, stuck in my drafts. It made me feel things, so I’m sharing it with you now…)

Seventeen mailboxes into my life, I put my roots in people, not places. But we just sold you, little house on Applecross Lane, and I’m teeter tottering on the edge of my feelings. You, sweet 3/2, you have been a circus ring, a school, a church, an office, a concert hall, a house of healing.

If your walls could talk, they’d be fluent in Hamilton, Wicked, Poison, old country, new country, talking back, talking up and more than a few talking to’s. 80s favorites, the Titanic sound track (#notsorry), Rocky Top, Dad jokes, Come, Lord Jesus, Be Our Guest, Spades scores and shrieks of B.S. Your walls held us up, held us together. Your floors grounded us. Dancing—from waltzes to tik toks to our own custom choreography. Your paint absorbed rehearsals of tough conversations and too many eulogies reverberated in echoes of pain and peace.

This is where I started knocking on the boys’ doors as fair warning. I know the corner window where Case would watch for my car coming down the street when I came home from a work trip. The smack middle of the kitchen where I braced myself against the island for a political joust with Tucker, where I learned the best thing I could give him was space for us to trade mistakes. The rack in the laundry room where we hung the too-small jerseys that Jeff couldn’t part with. The just-right spot on the patio where I took my coffee with a cannonball of cream, my kisses in threes. The exact stone Jeff would stand on where he could keep an eye on the football score and his egg. Where Tucker walked less than two steps in the door and betrayed himself with a grin. He’d been smooching. First day of school pictures were snapped by the birds of paradise out front.

A doorframe holds the history of smudged lead lines where the boys overtook my height. From their bedrooms, these new, tall kids would emerge in the morning. And I never had a chance to say goodbye to the ones from the day before, the ones who loved white tshirts, “who here’s trying to start a riot”. The ones who reached for my hand in public.

I don’t remember the last time I tucked them in with a prayer, but I know it was here, in this house. They have grown as wild, as unconfined, as the confetti lantana out front—a resting space for monarchs mid migration, bees as long and thick as my (un-green) thumb, hummingbirds that slowed just a smidge, mesmerized by the red, yellow and pink blossoms cohabiting in a single cluster.

This is where the boys learned that hugs are my love language and spoiled me with squeezes. But we also learned that you can’t hug away all hurts. Doors slammed. Moods unhinged. Sweetness was eclipsed by first-class sass.

The carpet swallowed tears. The roof opened to give my screams a pathway to heaven. Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision.

Simple as a crossstich, complex as the final piece. Where we surrendered to the busy because that kind of hard is easier.

Repose gray walls that, like our days, our prayers, our existence, are warm and cool and chameleon. The dang chameleon! I’ll never forget where I sat when Case shared his 21-page power point to convince us he needed one–why you have to gut load the live crickets before you feed them to the veiled chameleon–in a habitat warmed with the right lamp, spritzed with sterile water in a semi-circle twice a day.

A chameleon, a Frenchie puppy.

The backyard deer, the front yard bunnies.

Roots deep and strong.

I know the cracks, the loose pavers, the spot on the window sil that coaxes green leaves toward the sun, the window where you can watch the birds and the bats switch shifts, the time of night the owl calls my name.

I know where to knock on the wall to nudge Case out of bed. How many steps from the kitchen to Tucker’s room. I know where the reception is best and where—ooops—I will likely lose the call.

There are things we’ll take with us. Our little dining table with the swivel seats where we ask over dinner, most days, what made us laugh, what we learned and how we helped today. There are things that won’t change.

Every kitchen floor we call our own is made for dancing.

But I wish the new owners, your new family, every ounce of light and happiness you can hold.

Love grows best in little houses, just like this.

Thursday Thanks. Helping #22.

I haven’t snuggled up in my Thanksgiving Chair in way too long. A new year is a good time to be grateful out loud, right?

Today, I’m thankful for words of wisdom from my Dad. He is full of choice nuggets. Things like: Excuses are like butt holes. Everyone has one and they all stink. (His version is a teense more colorful than mine). Or: I only expect your best. But I know what your best is. (Can’t tell you how fun it’s been to share that gem with my own children). My favorite, though, has always been: words are powerful.

Words have been my livelihood, my love and my lifeline, so this one sticks to my ribs like a proper biscuit. Words are powerful. Words can wound you or save you. They are bridges and fences. A wee word spark can roast an entire forest. They are expressions of the core of our hearts. Words are powerful. So, when I saw a sweet friend review 2017 by her word of the year, I wanted to jump on the trendy train and embrace one word to live by for all of 2018. But, of the gazillion gorgeous words in the universe, which one would I choose to measure a year?

HOPEFUL. My word this year is hopeful.

I’m hopeful that, this year, the boys will choose Legos over screens, outside over Legos and time with us over everything else. I’m hopeful Tucker will keep group-texting Jeff and me when he gets good news, uncovers something new or has a silly thought. I’m hopeful Case will keep hugging me with all the squeeze he’s got.

I’m hopeful that 15 pounds of wrinkles and a foot of tongue will keep bringing us together in ways I haven’t imagined yet.

I’m hopeful that the Volunteers have a good season. God is still in the miracle business. I’m hopeful this year is filled with Disney Digressions: meet ups, dress-ups and Dole Whips.

Disney Digression

I’m hopeful that this year means more corn hole victories, JENGA towers and firepit chats. I’m hopeful for less late nights and more date nights. A girl can dream. I’m hopeful that this work we do, this advertising stuff, will move business, sure. And, hopefully, move a few moods, minds and hearts along the way.

I’m hopeful that last year’s razor-edged grief, with its macho pushy points, will be worn down to a meeker, smoother, manageable mass. I’m hopeful that I’ll stop counting holidays as the first-without or the last-with and, instead, revel in the hope that, on the other side of earth’s horizon, there’s a celebration that will never end.

I’m hopeful that I’ll be more cautious with my words, more careful with my decisions and more reckless with my love.

I’m hopeful for this year that brings new family, new adventures and, God willing, new life.

I have this hope.

Shift Into First

It first happened in our upstairs hall last summer while I sorted school supplies into two piles. One for the big one and one for the little one.

I had given Tucker, capable, soon-to-be fifth grader, a Sharpie to label all of his notebooks and folders. But I wrote Case Adams in the other folders myself, in perfect Momma script. I was four deep before he stopped me.

Can I write my name?

Of course you can, I said, even though I really, really wanted to finish. Why? Labeling your child’s things is so parental. It means you’re in control. It means they need you.

I’ve never written with a Sharpie before, he said, giddy and sliding onto his belly to form each letter in permanent black.

He was ready and I missed it.

I missed it because I was all consumed in Tucker’s lasts. His last year of elementary school. Their last year together for years. The last bit of little. I’d been devouring blogs, wallowing in other mothers’ weepiness. Stories about moms who couldn’t remember the last time they’d washed their kid’s hair for them. And, alarmed, I realized that I couldn’t either.

Lost in the middle of the rewind, I was fast-forwarding through the now.

I used to be aware of their heaviness when I carried them upstairs to bed. I don’t carry them anymore. I don’t help them get dressed.

I do still help with the hair. Y’all. I have to.

And, though it’s been country miles from perfect, I’m aware of a shift to first.

Shifting to first. Just as there’s only one last, there’s only one first. They’re easier to miss because you don’t see them coming. Instead of mourning what you had, it’s a shift into relishing what you have. We have fragile, incomparable life springing up, always. And it’s so sweet to catch.

Like the first time a gnarly man stink smacks you in the face; it’s coming from your boy and that sweet swing-set sweat is long gone.

The first time he asks for Axe instead of that unscented organic stuff you bought for him. Wait. What?

A pimply nose pops up in place of a stuffy one.

Baseball cups replace sippie cups. There one sits, on your kitchen counter! The horror! The ew! And you want to scold, because this is certainly not the place to leave it, but you stop, awestruck. No way this type of cup is really necessary?!

Then there’s the first time they defy a life-long fear and ride a thrill, seemingly on whim. And you wonder: how long have they been tinkering with that in their brain?

Screen Shot 2013-09-24 at 7.36.52 AM — Disney Digression: Case is tackling the Magic Kingdom mountains, one at a time. This one’s next.

The first time they peck at keys, typing a report. And the project is their vision, not yours.

keyboard Case

The first time they realize I don’t know everything. The first time they challenge me with their eyes, then their anger, then their words.

The first time they come to your rescue. You mess up, they cup your cheek with their growing hand and they tell you it’s okay.

The first time the little one prays for his big brother, out loud, through a toothless lisp, “on our journey to goodness.”

The first time you hear them chatting after midnight, serious conversations about God, girls and Clash Royale between bunks, and you realize that, though they’re made to share a room, they’re choosing to be friends.

Choosing.

A few weeks ago, we drove up to South Carolina to see Jeff’s dad, host to a legion of cancer. Though I never dared let my worry speak out loud, it was a farewell trip.

I know the exact minute it hit me that this could be the last time we’d see him. The truth flickered across my murky brain and seized my gut.

And the moment felt empty. Inadequate. There we sat, in quiet panic, blinking, dumb, circled up in the living room. We didn’t know what to say.

In the middle of that too-still last was the first time I saw my child’s full heart. Tucker climbed up on the couch next to his Gamps and laced his 10-year-old fingers between the cool 67-year-old hand.

In the Venn diagram of fear and the unknown, our boy laced them together with hope.

Days before he died, he gave our sons, his grandsons, a copy of THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN. He wrote this note, in a permanent black:

“I hope you enjoy this book. It is about a couple of boys that made the best of life, living their dream. Enjoy it. Love, Gamps.”

This from a soul who was a conductor of adventure, vitality and faith, a living example of being ever-present: in his last message, he was encouraging them to shift into first.

The smell of love

Do you have a favorite lotion?

Mine comes from the Hotel on Rivington. It’s fun-sized in its squat little sample container, clear, so you can see the baby-pink goodness inside. It’s the perfect weight for lotion lovers, velvety thick, and my skin drinks it quick like.

But the best part is its fragrance. It’s not too flowery, musky or sweet. It’s made from Indian fig extract. I’ve never met an Indian fig, but I love the way it smells—a full, exotic, jammy bloom.

The lotion is called LOVE. And I kind of love that. Because it does smell like what love can feel like. You know when it’s fresh and new and wakes you up to life? But the scent and softness linger, too, like a familiar comfort.

And it made me think. What does love smell like?

It smells like my mom’s from-scratch sketti sauce—the legit business that starts with minced onion and buttery garlic cloves, sautéing in gold oil. Ingredients are stirred in as it simmers on. And, like most things, the hours improve it.

Love’s smell is Vanilla Oatmeal suds in fine, blonde hair. The boys’ shampoo is one of my favorite smells. But when they’re in my lap, we’re reading a book and their brains are whirring, I swear that thoughts heat their heads and intensify that scent.

Or, in the early morning, when I sneak in to wake them up. Their warm heads, sweet-sweaty with sleep, smell like everything I feel.

It’s also my sissy’s car—years later, it’s still some parts new-car smell, some parts lawyerly, orderly and fun. It’s a best-buds road trip, a miles-of-music box.

It’s the musty (and is it chlorine?) smell of the Tampa airport after a late-night flight. I know. Ew. It’s not a great smell, but it’s distinct. It means I’m home.

Of course, it’s the warm whoosh of just-baked waffle cones that wafts onto Main Street USA from the Ice Cream Parlour. There have been reports of trickery—that they use smell-a-vents, pushing out a puff of heaven to lure you in. But I have intel that promises those valves have been closed for years. ‘Cause the real deal can call you to the mothership all on its own.

But love, my love, smells like the pillow on Jeff’s side of the bed. It’s not his cologne or deodorant. He’s been through a lot of flavors in the last 13 years. It’s the smell of his person, his skin. I inhale a chemical reaction. The smell of him calms my core.

What do you think? Am I wacko or does love have a smell?