My Dogs Are Tired

I haven’t been writing lately.
Haven’t felt too interesting.
Or maybe I’ve just been too exhausted.


I have six puppies in my house right now. It wasn’t my idea to have them (thank you, whore dog) and as they’ve aged they’ve become more work than I had even imagined. The heaviest is currently around 12lbs, or the same weight as a newborn baby. Multiply the waste of a newborn baby by six, and you have what I am cleaning up every day. I pray you never have to deal with that much poo. They scream like they are being beaten whenever they want anything. And they try to escape. This morning I decided that as a group I shall call them, “The Screaming Houdinis” and now think it’s a good band name.

These puppies have consumed my life.
And I love them so much it is distracting.

I don’t have much that is ‘mine’—don’t have a boyfriend and haven’t had one in quite a long time. The people and living loves in my life I share. I share them with their significant others or children, or their parents, or their ‘real’ owners. I love in the collective. Patsy Cline is the first thing I’ve ever had that was mine. She’s mine to love, mine to care for, mine to worry about and mine to throw money at all her problems. Having her has opened up parts of my heart I didn’t know I didn’t know. Strange to say it about a dog, but it is nonetheless true.

If the world doesn’t end on Saturday then next week holds my 30th birthday. I’m wholly engrossed in the unmet expectations that such a milestone brings. I’m not where I thought I’d be when I was 16, or 20, or even 25 and in that I’m melancholy. But on the whole I’m happy. I drink less than I did, because I go out less. And I feel good about myself. I’m starting to like the way I look. I’m good at my job. I’m healing from the losses of the past year. Slowly.

There is a subtle little mustard seed of restlessness that has taken root. I’m quietly considering leaving Asheville, but don’t know where I’d go instead. It feels like my time here is coming to a close, but the great What’s Next has never been more murky. Maybe I stay.

Valentines

Love doesn't look the way we planned it.

May the Mind

May the mind of Christ, my Savior,
Live in me from day to day,
By His love and power controlling
All I do and say.

Natalie’s memorial service was lovely. Michelle and Dave did a great job organizing it, and, in deference to Natalie’s ever-present faith, the service was God-filled. No one there was surprised that it was a service about her faith. The second song sung was a hymn I didn’t know, but its words captured so well the life and prayer of such a dear woman.

May the Word of God dwell richly
In my heart from hour to hour,
So that all may see I triumph
Only through His power.

The words spoken about her were true and imperfect, stories of cancer and remission and cancer again. There had to be 300 people there on a mild and bright Saturday afternoon. I sat between Erin and Megan, two friends who have loved me wisely and well throughout the years. I know Erin because of Natalie; I was so thankful for their hands and hearts. We all needed to touch each other, to keep moored. Grief was pounding.

May the peace of God my Father
Rule my life in everything,
That I may be calm to comfort
Sick and sorrowing.

I was the last to speak. I didn’t know what I wanted to say except that she taught me irrational and unconditional love, that she was my hero and mentor, and that I am who I am because of what she gave. Her investment in me is my daily breath. I don’t remember what I said. I hope that my thoughts came out. Words can't capture the biggest gratitudes.

May the love of Jesus fill me
As the waters fill the sea;
Him exalting, self abasing,
This is victory.

I cried. Lord did I cry. I haven’t stopped crying. I have no strength or energy to care about much else. I want so badly to be a good representation of who she was, to honor her, but thinking of her is suffocating. I am bone tired from carrying weight. She would tell me that I was loved far beyond her own capacity to love, and that that love endures. Her steadfast reminders I will miss.

May His beauty rest upon me,
As I seek the lost to win,
And may they forget the channel,
Seeing only Him.

"The Compass Rests"

My friend Kari wrote a lovely blog post about those who act as compasses in our life, an entry based on our conversations about the illness and loss of Natalie (here). I am so thankful to have had such a compass through the hurricane of my youth.

Thanks, lovely friend, for the thoughts and words. I'm learning grief isn't a bullet, rather it is buckshot. There isn't one big hole, there are thousands of them. I feel like I find a new fragment almost every moment.

"Love and friendship carry with them great pain sometimes but it is such a comfort to know that the Lord is with us in the midst of our suffering." --Natalie in a email to me, 2007.

Own Tales to Tell

I've had the same email address since 1998, and have saved a file of the email correspondence I shared with Natalie over these 12 years. I started going through them today.

This is an email Natalie sent me in January, 2001. We had gone out for her birthday the night before, and I had sent her an email essentially telling her I was lying about who I was: I was pretending to be the same person I was in high school when I was home but in college I wasn’t like that at all. I was afraid to tell her, because I thought she’d reject me, or tell me I’d let her down, or judge me. Instead, this is the email I got.

Sarah,

As I said earlier, your friendship is a privilege and I am so grateful that you trusted me enough to send that e-mail. You were right, it didn't shock me...I've sensed a lot of what you said but it doesn't change how I feel about you. There are some advantages to "old age", one being that I REALLY know that we are people in process and sometimes the process ain't pretty. I have my own tales to tell--truly. And I trust you enough to share them with you sometime. From where I stand today I am at peace with the knowledge that nothing I've done has shocked God or made Him stop loving or forgiving me, ever. As for you, what matters to me is that you know I love you and will always be here for you. Much of what you are thinking, feeling, living is SO normal for folks your age--Christian or not. Believe me, I was part of the Christian college environment but I think our stories would parallel one another.

You and I have so much in common despite our places in time...I lived for many years trying to reconcile my emotional needs with how I wanted but was unable to live consistently. I don't wish the pain and isolation I experienced on anyone yet God has redeemed those years as only He can. That is just one of my stories.

We deceive ourselves in thinking that we are closer to God than we really are...it is He who stays close to us. You are His child and always will be--with or without your anger, questions and self-doubt.

I treasure your friendship Sarah...I don't know why I've been so blessed but I will never take this gift for granted. Anyone who crosses paths with you is privileged. It is such a joy for me to be part of your life, your adventures, your heartaches...whatever.

I really hope that picture we took at the restaurant turns out well...last night will remain amidst my very special memories.

I'll talk to you soon,
love always,
Nat

Long Have I Known A Glory In It All

Camping brings gusto to life.
I feel most at home in the woods, setting a camp, tending fire. To do lists fade to become the essentials, of food, of water, of warmth and light, of shelter and company. Abstraction abates. This weekend was time away, a few days spent an hour and 2200’ vertically from home.
I organized the trip, not because it was near my birthday (though it was), but because it seemed a good weekend to get away. I’m not big on self-promoting birthdays. I’m ok either having them be small or having others think of something. I believe it is a time for others to love on you should they want to, not a time for you to demand attention from them.
And so it was we found ourselves at the top of Max Patch on Saturday evening. The sky was mottled with hiccups of summer storms that divinely passed us by. Max Patch is a place where it seems as if the divine breathes; where earth and sky are more intimate with each other. The grass was tall and damp and we spent the afternoon barefoot. I feel that being barefoot like that allows some magic from the earth to seep up through me, some ancient affirmation to creep in and whisper.
Ian and Tammy had graciously brought an obscenely large bottle of champagne for a mountain top toast. I love giving toasts; I love public speaking so this should be no surprise. But I was bested.
My dear friends, who love me for reasons I don’t quite understand, gave toasts to me.
They told me they loved me, they affirmed me in ways I so needed but couldn’t express. I am still humbled and shocked by it. I know I am a liked person, but I often forget to realize that those I love also love me. It was the best gift I could have been given, that elusive present of light, life, love, community, sky, joy, grace, breath, food, touch and future, found in the damp grass atop a mountain.
Thank you thank you thank you, dear friends.

[My birthday was amazing—thank you for all the calls and notes and emails!!! And thanks to my dear roommate Katie for the volume 1 soundtrack to Glee and to my dad for my new fly rod and reel. Something very funny about re-spooling a fly reel while listening to the soundtrack to a sugary show about a high school glee club. Then I went out to Thirsty Monk for drinks with Katherine, Robin, Caroline, Tara and Margarita. What gracious and audacious and impressive ladies.]

The Whats

I have always had an overactive imagination in the sleep realm. I have fantastically entertaining and vivid dreams (one this weekend involved trying to travel with a narcoleptic pet piglet named Kevin. He kept passing out in strange places and I’d yell, “Dammit! Where the hell is Kevin!?” I can’t even make that up).

I promise this whole post isn’t about a dream; it is about an idea from a dream. I don’t want to hear other people’s dreams either, unless they are hilarious.

One dream I had this weekend involved an arcade video game that I was playing with 8 to 10 people. I made a choice for the game and it said, “RESET." With that choice, all those playing were allowed to see four “resets” in their life: we were allowed to pick four watershed moments in our past that we could relive with a different choice. We were able to live each reset for a half-hour.

How fascinating!

I remember three of the resets I chose—what if I hadn’t moved to Asheville? What if I’d gone to a different college? What if I’d stayed with my first love?

These aren’t questions that I think about in my daily life, they aren’t choices that particularly haunt me. I feel I made the right choice in every one of those instances, and in my dream I had the same conclusion after seeing those other versions of me.

But I am young, and I have many more choices ahead of me, each one greater than the last.

What if that was the case—what if when we turned 25, we were given four resets for our entire life and we could use them when we wanted? Would you want to see those resets? What would you reset? Would you want to see those paths knowing you couldn’t choose that life?

In the dream I had several people who came into my life regardless of the reset path.
I found comfort in that tiny tidbit. I like to think that some bonds transcend choices.

There Came A Whisper

Friday night I retreated to my own mountain with three friends. We got to the summit of Max Patch just as the sun was setting and we sat in the grass and watched as the sunset took on the hues that only come from done days. It was quiet.
As the light faded we lay on our backs; the stars appeared when they were ready.

The mountain breeze blew sweetly across the summit and we bundled together in the elevated chill. I felt God on my face.

There is a lovely passage in 1 Kings where Elijah is running from the law; he’s a hunted man and it seems everyone wants to kill him. He flees, hides in a cave in a mountain and gives up on life, asking God to kill him and put him out of his misery. God seems to ignore him and says, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by."
So Elijah does. He’s not doing anything else except waiting to die. A great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart around him and shattered rocks. But, it says, the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind came an earthquake; the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake there came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire there came a gentle whisper.

That was God.

I’ve joked previously that sometimes when I pray I feel like I’m talking to God while he’s snacking, and he doesn’t hear certain things because maybe he’s eating loud Fritos or something.

But in this season where grief is surrounding me, I thirst so mightily for that whisper. There is this closeness, an intimacy and a little bit of secrecy to a whisper—it is a conversation between me and God, for no one else but us. He is the breeze that kisses my face. I feel in those moments that I am heard, I am loved, and I am held.

Perpetual Spring

For my friend Leslie’s 32nd birthday a few weeks ago she had a few of us join her in a desperate housewives takeover of a local tattoo parlor. She was getting her nose pierced, others were actually getting tattoos.
I don’t have any tattoos; I went to get one back in 2001 and thankfully the shop was closed or I may have gotten something I later regretted. However this recent trip planted the idea in my head of getting some ink. My reasoning goes back to my previous post: “Sweetness Follows”: I know that this season in my life is so beautiful and delicious but also extremely fleeting and wholly temporary. It will end, and end sooner than I’d hope. I see these little seasons passing and some I handle better than others.
Some end because of distance. Some end because the changes that happen are too great to overcome. Some end because expectations diverge. Some end because hearts can’t agree. Some end because of death.
Whatever the reason, the feeling is the same. There is a sense of loss right now but I am reminded of two plants in this instance: the American chestnut and the resurrection fern.
When the chestnut succumbs to the blight, the stem/trunk is killed off, but the roots remain. Those roots will continue to send up new stalks of growth with the constant hope that a few will survive. Often you’ll observe a large, dead stump, sometimes 75 years gone, with dozens of tiny chestnut shoots surrounding it. The roots don’t know when to give up and as long as they stay firmly planted, those new growths will continue.
The resurrection fern shrivels up and appears dead when resources wane and droughts appear, but at the first sign of rain it unfurls in a fit of lush green optimism. It is as if it lives in this perpetual spring of new beginnings. It is proof that life, promises and blessings are new every morning if we choose to let them be.

Of Light and Color

Last year I changed my religious views on Facebook to say “kaleidoscopic”. I’ve only been asked about this twice and thought I’d explain it, because as I’ve let it sit and simmer, it’s made more sense.

Sir David Brewster, the inventor of the kaleidoscope, called it “the observer of beautiful forms”. The word kaleidoscope comes from the Greek kalos, meaning “beautiful” and eidos, meaning “shapes”. A kaleidoscope is made up of three essential parts: a tube, a few mirrors and small colored beads or objects.

These three things, when left alone, aren’t much. And put together they aren’t much, until light is presented. Then the whole becomes beautiful.

I think of my heart, in terms of spiritual/relational views, like this. God is my light. Without him, the pieces are boring, lifeless and useless. Love is the mirrors. The mirrors turn an arbitrary and banal strewing of pieces into a beautifully symmetric wonderment. They turn what is a mess into loving art. No matter how those pieces fall and swirl and change, those mirrors keep them beautiful, that light keeps it worth anything. It is only when I see my life with the mirrors of love and an eye toward God that I see beauty in my pieces. I don’t see my changes and falls as setbacks but as changes in my understanding of God, of light. I am my pieces, but with God I am new every morning, every moment.

Those patterns of light and color take me to a place of reverence. I think of stained glass and church walls; seeing the falling of dust through the cascade of colors that stream through the windows. When I had the opportunity to sit in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, I was blown away how that place rendered my heart. The north window contains a rosette that is as if one is looking at the world through a kaleidoscope. It was then I knew.

(I do not own the above image)

A Weekend of Mirrors

The year is winding down. How has time sped up with age? Years go by like breaths; I cannot comprehend this passage of time so flippantly.
Friday we were to get our first snowfall of the season, and as usual all of Asheville was electric with excitement and fear. Why does even the suggestion of snow turn adults into dancing kids? I woke Friday to a slight snow cover with much more falling. Neither roommate was home so I had the place to myself and snuggled in for a winter’s quiet.

Around 2:30 Justin and Doug came to the house to get snowed in with me; what great friends. We watched movies, made drinks, ate lots of snacks and watched the snow fall. A snowman was successfully undertaken and just as we came inside, a large tree came down in our neighbor’s yard, blocking the road and taking out the power lines. There went our heat, our lights and our movie-marathon agenda. Justin, Doug and I spent the rest of the night playing Trivial Pursuit by candlelight. It was as fun/more fun than it sounds.

The rest of the weekend was filled with sledding, hot toddies, “My Cousin Vinny” and the rare opportunity to use my snowshoes in Asheville. Since my house had no heat, Saturday night was spent playing the infamous karaoke PS3 game at Nathan’s before finally passing out on the couch at 4am with Justin. Sunday found a slow-food solstice party with friends in West Asheville in a home full of kids, dogs, friends and really ridiculously good food/beer.

Sunday night my little sister and I had a text conversation about accountability that I loved. I believe with my whole body that it is imperative that we (as people) live in community; that is, we surround ourselves with people who love us well enough to tell us the truth and that we love and respect enough to listen. I have been innumerably and inexplicably blessed in this regard and I wanted her to know how important it is. Growing up neither of my parents had social circles to speak of and I wonder how much of that imposed solitude impacted them negatively. It is something about them that I haven’t thought about before. If we aren’t loved in community, I fear we tend toward emotional and societal entropy. I know I do. I can talk myself into and out of anything; if I don’t have mirrors then the only person checking me is me, and often I am not wise or good to myself. But those people who love me wisely and well are, in their own way, the voice of God, steadfastly affirming while lovingly desiring the very best, even when it isn’t what I want to hear. And during this holiday season, it is them that I am most blessed to love.

Like a Miracle

A miracle:
“an effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause.”

There is much that looks impossible. Whether those impossibilities are longstanding or recent, they contain the stuff of futility. I look at them and I know I am powerless. And so I do the only thing I can do: I pray. Prayer, to whoever it is, is hope projected.

I pray for miracles and when I do, part of me expects a big event, my very own parting of the sea. I expect noise and action, an epiphany or a grand gesture, a watershed moment where nothing before looks like what is after.
I’m beginning to learn that miracles are miraculous not because of their size but because of their specificity. They aren’t these big events; they are, like my understanding of who God is, quiet. Miracles, when they do come, are more of a breath than a shout.

That isn’t to say they aren’t life-altering, merely that they are only recognizable to those who were looking for them. In that way, they are much like love.

This Bitter Heart

Usually when my life is in turmoil and tragedy has struck and I don’t know what to do or where to turn, I go to Natalie. When good things happen, she is my first call. Default, no question. I call her, I stop by, I sit on that couch with tea and we talk and things are ok. I talk to her at least once a week. She has loved me so well. It’s been this way for 14 years. She attended my high school graduation, my college graduation.We were discussing a trip to Asheville.

So what do I do now that she is the tragedy?

Walking to my car this morning, that was my shock. I thought, “I’m so heartbroken; I really need to be loved and comforted; I need to call Nat” only to literally stop in my tracks and realize I couldn’t. I won’t hear her voice again. Nothing like showing up to work after sobbing for ten minutes.

Driving away from her house yesterday after dropping off my goodbye letter (she hasn’t the strength for a visit) I wondered if it was the last time I’d be in that driveway, in that kitchen. The word shattered doesn’t begin to describe my selfish little heart.

I don’t know how to grieve without it seeming selfish. Is there a way to do it? The person I’d normally ask that question to is Natalie.

I’m lost.

Truth and Everything Else

Hello…you may remember me as someone who used to blog all the time. Remember those days? Those were good days.

I discovered that the times when I am happiest I don’t write much, because writing is the method I use to scratch the itchy places in my life. It puts my fears, frustrations, hopes and heartaches into words; map them into something I can process; organize them into the stacks of Truth and Everything Else. When I am happy, when I am not itchy in those deep places only I know, my words evaporate into a trickle. Thoughts don’t stay with me long; they alight before words can catch them.

This spring and summer I have been busy. Not hectic; busy. As in full. As in constant. As if I live life like the outline of the soft Blue Ridge and not the harsh extremes of the Rockies. And it has been good.

I’ve been canoeing on the French Broad with Emily, floating gently by the back side of the Biltmore House on a Sunday beatific in its summer uncomplicatedness.

I did a random road trip to south Georgia with Leslie and her gaggle of kids (and aging wiener dog) to sit on a back deck with her parents, drink gin & tonics, eat boiled peanuts and kayak through a cypress grove.

After a particularly rainy week I ended up in a whitewater raft with Doug, his father and Nathan on section IX of the French Broad, guiding those silly guys down Class III-IV rapids with 24oz cans of Modela shoved in our PFDs.

I had a birthday.

I’ve had some damn good kisses.

I took off my flip flops, rolled up my jeans and splashed in puddles in the street after finishing wine at Bouchon while the sky threw the sort of tantrum it only throws in the summer.

I’ve laughed with my whole body.

I discovered that I really, really don’t like sea urchin.

I've tried acupuncture.

When I was in Georgia, Leslie’s mom showed me a green plant climbing the trunk of a massive live oak tree. She said, “That is called a resurrection fern. When there is no rain it withers up and appears dead. It shrinks to nothing. But when the rains come again, it unfurls and greens. It resurrects over and over again.”

I haven’t stopped thinking about that resurrection fern.
Or whether it falls into Truth, into Everything Else, or both at the very same time.

Sunshine Patriot

It was Thomas Paine who famously wrote,
"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."

After the lofty and somewhat unrealistic ideals of this election and subsequent inauguration it is time to come back down to the scorched earth that is This Country and figure out who she is under all of this. It feels like a reintroduction of sorts.

I recently made a remark about how, in the throws of this major social change, I was once again proud of my country. This is virtually the same statement that got Michelle Obama into so much trouble in the primaries and a statement I made knowing full well I’d be questioned by a few people for it (and rightly so).

I admit it: I am a sunshine Patriot.

Because I believe wholeheartedly that there is a vast chasm between love and pride, a chasm that is often bridged but a canyon that exists nonetheless, and when I don't recognize my country I am not proud of her and that canyon seems endless.

I love my country. By which I mean our relationship is not entirely neat, by which I mean I am indebted to her and our mutual forefathers for this life that I live, by which I mean there is much I would do in her name should she ask me. I love the way our government is set up; how through soaring economic prosperity and terrifying depressions it has survived, through Presidents that span from capable to corrupt to inept it has stayed intact, even through a Civil War that killed 3% of the population it didn’t falter past that core. I love the sweeping landscapes of this country: from red sand mesas in the Southwest to the rugged shore of Maine to the freedom to sit on the levies of the Mississippi and drink hurricanes from that drive-thru daiquiri stand in New Orleans to the smell of the sea and palmettos that is Charleston, SC. I love our great experiment.
Yet as much as my heart is filled with love for this Nation, most of the past twelve years I have not been proud of her and those who represented her. I have not been proud to be an American. I have looked at my passport and wondered aloud just what was my relationship with the country on its cover. I missed her. That Nation stamped in gold did not represent me; she was a stranger. She made cheap symbols of herself be all that there was to hold to, flag pins and all. That Nation in her jingoistic bravado, clandestine power plays and almost cult-like disdain for dissent was not how I knew her. She was too proud of herself, bold in her intent and selfish in her methods. She was acting like a petulant teenager.

So no, I was not proud of her.

And so when a chance came along to see someone in office who could represent me I jumped at it. I needed to see nine kinds of nerd back in the seat of power, needed to believe that the person who was the face of my nation could be the smartest one in the room, needed to know that the whole world was relieved by the outcome, because though they aren’t our country they are our family. Listening to NPR on Tuesday morning I got proud again. Seeing images of the largest gathering in DC history who turned out to simply be in the space where history was made: I was proud. Just the knowledge that my country can change made me proud. My father graduated from a segregated public high school in the shadow of the CIA headquarters and this year he cried in joy as he voted in the first African-American President. I’m proud of my country that we are resilient; that even in these times we prosper. I'm proud to see that she is slowly coming home.

Yes there is a large chasm between pride and love and this week I’m happy to note that when it comes to my country, the bridge is open again.

Ghosts

I finally got up the nerve to ask to whom my dad was referring when he used that vicious pronoun "us" and I was correct, it is my former step-mom. What broke my heart was the other guest my father mentioned that was coming along, "the ghosts of [their] relationship."
Great way to word it but it has crushed me today.
One of my good guy friends just broke up with his long-term girlfriend because of her infidelity and he has his own kind of crushing weight to carry, his own ghosts that haunt. Yesterday he said, "I love her and I'm terrified about what she may do to herself," fueling a conversation about rescuing and being rescued.
I don't believe that we can rescue those we love, we can't save them from themselves. We can love them, we can encourage, we can support but we cannot carry.
Sorry it's such a downer of a post; I blame the rain.

All Creatures Here Below

My grandfather's memorial service was this past weekend, a chance to memorialize 92 years in a scant 45 minutes. Family gathered, huddled, mumbled, and stared, hoping for cues from no one in particular. Yet the most powerful part of the whole service didn't come from aunts or uncles, it came from my brother.
As most of you know, I suffer from something called hyperhydrosis, a condition that randomly makes my hands and feet sweat uncontrollably (if you didn't know this, surprise. I do. There is no cure, but apparently botox shots every six months can mostly stop it, if I got a couple grand I need to burn). When I have an episode, the very last thing in the world I want to do is touch another person's hand. I am frighteningly self-conscious about this, and I think for good reason. Like I would rather be naked in front of a large crowd than have to hold hands with people for more than 10 seconds. (So please, don't ever make me hold your hand. I'm not kidding. I once dumped a boyfriend because he insisted on holding my hand when I didn't want to.) Toward the end of my grandfather's memorial, my Uncle David got up and said, “As per family tradition, we'd like to end the service singing The Doxology and holding hands.” I froze. I was standing between my brother and my Aunt Penny, whom I've met a total of twice in my life. I looked at him with panic in my eyes.
“I can't hold hands! Look at my hands! I can't do it!” Elliott locked eyes with me and said steadily, “Switch places with me. Stand between me and Katie (our little sister) and we'll take care of you.”

And you know what? He did. When the time came he looked right at me and grabbed my hand, the one I was trying to hide, and held it firmly through the song, giving me a little squeeze when we both broke down into tears.

All this time I've been wondering how to love my brother well, what boundaries to enforce, the amount of contact I should have with him, I've been condemning him and judging him. And then he goes and, if only for a moment, loves me so deeply and precisely that I am struck dumb. It wasn't the lesson I was expecting to learn in that moment, but I praised the God from whom all blessings flow.

Three Girls and Their Buddy

Robin and I, in a fit of fiscal irresponsibility and passion, decided to purchase tickets to the “Three Girls and Their Buddy” show last night at Thomas Wolfe Auditorium in our little Ashe-vegas. We got cheap tickets but fabulous seats: first row, balcony closest to the stage. We had an unobstructed view of the magic that was Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin and Buddy Miller (hence the name of the show).

There are simply no words.

I got emotionally shaken; overwhelmed, filled, awe-struck and rapturous.

Hearing Emmylou sing “Red Dirt Girl” live, experiencing “Trapeze” with the Patty/Emmylou combo like on the studio recording, finally getting to see Shawn's cover of Steve Earle's “Someday” in person—just bowled over really. And then they did “Up to the Mountain (MLK Song)” and I got tears in my eyes.

The first encore was the four of them doing John Lennon's “Imagine” and then Patty's own “Mary”.
The second encore was “Didn't Leave Nobody But the Baby” and whoa what an encore that was.
I my throat is still raw from screaming. If the tour comes anywhere near where you are, you'd do well to go see it.

“I was so wary then
The ugly American
Thinner than oxygen, tough as a whore
I said, You can lie to me
I own what's inside of me
And nothing surprises me anymore.”

True Love at Last

This one's for you, Liz. Mini-Colin said to say hello. But ever since he discovered his presence on my computer desktop, he's been smitten with me (even if it was you who put him there) so you'll just have to lay off my man. I think we're cute together.

Aged, Old, Classic, Bold

My father got a cool little gadget that scans old slides and can make them into .jpegs, which is one of the better little gadgets I've seen in quite a while. Being on holiday here, I hooked the gizmo up to my lappy 9000 and scanned in a few...from 1981 to 1983. Thought I'd share 'em. The problem is for Christmas I took a bunch of old slides and had them printed and framed for both my parents, then I get home and discover my father can basically do it himself. Oh well.
The first photo is my mom with my older sister, and she's about 7 months pregnant with me at the time. I love it. She was so hippie-tastic.
This is my Boppa and my namesake on our annual Canadian camping trip in 1983. I've always thought he very much looked the part of a grandfather, pipe and all.

My sister and I brushing our teeth during a rainy day in Canada. My sister's hair is so short she looks like a boy. And if you look closely, you'll see my yellow raincoat's hood is duct-taped smaller to fit my head. Thanks parents. I love this shot.Same rainy day, Bubby and I sitting next to the kitchen tent, cold metal mugs in hand. Also a funny shot. I guess my dad was having fun with the camera that day. I only vaguely remember parts of the trip. Like what my bathing suit looked like (navy blue with a giant red crab on it), and that little blue hoodie I'm wearing, and that I was sick and on antibiotics and it was very cold.
Napping in the tent. That rabbit that's sitting on top of me? That's Hop-Hop. My oldest sister gave him to me on my 1st birthday. As I write this that very same rabbit is sitting on my bed in my house in Asheville, as I still sleep with him somewhere near me. And I think I still sleep like this. Guess my sleep pattern peaked at age 3.

My two older sisters and me and my Boppa relax on a bench my dad had built and my Uncle Pete had covered in sheep skins from Chile. When we go to Canada we go for weeks at a time, so the family sorta moves into the place. Build shelves, furniture, etc. All out of dead wood of course.

Seriously, I was a cute kid. Who liked rocks and fire. Some things never change. And there in the background is my Boppa, whom I miss terribly. He died five years ago.