by jphilo | Apr 15, 2009 | Daily Life
This morning dawned bright, clear, and chilly. During the first two hours of daylight, the sun chased the cold away and ushered in perfect spring weather.
Since Wednesday is laundry day around, I quickly stripped the beds and gave the washing machine a work out. Then I pegged everything, including the handmade quilts (lining side out so the pieced side won’t fade), on the clothesline. Between the light breeze and the sun, they’ll be dry by mid-afternoon.
Hanging the laundry outside is a lot of work – trips down to the laundry room and carrying up baskets of heavy, wet linens, and wrestling the wind while pegging them to the line. All that happens before, what is for me, the drudgery of all drudgeries, making beds. Only my desire for a foretaste of heaven motivates my lazy soul to go to so much trouble.
The air in heaven, I think, will carry the fragrance of clean sheets dancing with the breeze beneath a springtime sun. And tonight, when I crawl between the air-sweetened sheets my lungs with fill gratitude. I’ll fall asleep bathed in the simple pleasure of a most fragrant aroma. Heaven can’t smell better than that.
by jphilo | Apr 10, 2009 | Daily Life
Compared to the suffering of Christ on the first Good Friday, my personal sadness this day seems small and insignificant. I should be joyful, not melancholy, with the completion of Mom’s house sale this afternoon.
But when I walked this morning and thought about the decline in my mother’s health from Alzheimer’s, I was sad. She has always been an independent woman, determined, highly intelligent and resourceful. She deserved many more years in her house, I thought, more rewards for the sacrifices she made for Dad, my siblings, and me. The finality of the house sale made her illness real, immediate, depressing.
Though the day was sunny and hinted at spring, I grew gloomier and gloomier. But a spot of color close to the ground caught my eye when I passed my neigbor’s yard. The crocuses, encouraged by the sun and undaunted by the melting snow, bloomed cheerfully. Nearby, red peony shoots reached boldly toward the promise of spring and laughed at April’s chilly fingers.
The plants know the sun waits above the cold, black ground. I know the empty tomb waits in the shadow of the cross. Can I believe that goodness waits beyond Mom’s declining health?
The breeze touched the crocus blossoms. “Yes,” they nodded and whispered in the wind. “You can.”
by jphilo | Apr 9, 2009 | Daily Life
I’ve just returned from Munchkinland. It’s a wonky, little place I’ve been visiting every day for about a month. The visits won’t end anytime soon since only 25 of the 64 devotions I’ve been contracted to write are completed.
They’re for a book to be published by Tyndale House late this year, a 365 day kids’ devotional. Hence the daily visits to Munchkinland as I invent ways to make the Bible come alive for youngsters. Doing so involves thinking like a kid, finding topics important to them, and describing situations relevant to their lives in a multi-cultural, trendy-but-timeless way, while selecting trendy-but-timeless names for the characters.
You’d think that after 18 years as a kid, 25 years as an elementary teacher, and almost 27 years as a parent I’d know my way around Munchkinland. But getting there is a lot like being swallowed by an F-5 tornado and plunked down beside a yellow brick road. My empathy for Dorothy increases by the hour.
My bag of kid-scenarios is emptying fast. In record time I have burned through my personal childhood crises and half of my teaching career’s playground dramas. I have maybe a week’s worth of school tales and a handful of anecdotes about my two kids to write into the book before writers’ block high centers me.
So please, if any of you live in Munchkinland, fill your email ruby slippers with suggestions and double-click them my way. Otherwise, be prepared for the resurrection of the wicked witch. If that happens, stay out of her way. And pray for Hiram’s patience. He’s going to need it.
by jphilo | Apr 2, 2009 | Daily Life
It’s almost spring, the calendar says, but the weather’s cold again today. Through the garden debris, the columbine are almost ready to unfurl their leaves. The peony tips are visible, almost pushing through the black dirt.
My life is a reflection of my flower garden. Mom’s house is almost sold, we’ve cleared out almost all it’s contents, and I’ve almost figured out her finances. I’m almost done going through the editor’s suggestions for A Different Dream, the mystery manuscript is almost done, and I’m almost ready for a speaking engagement. My house is almost in order, the bathrooms are almost clean, and I almost have the weekend menu planned.
The problem is, just like spring, I’m stuck at almost. As soon as I almost finish something, something more serious arises and I have abandon what’s almost done to address the other. Almost finished projects are piling up so fast they’re almost drowning me.
All I can do until April 10, when we close on Mom’s house, is make peace with the almosts. My friend came up with a perfect way to do it. We’re going to hear the author Bill Bryson speak at Drake University tonight. He’s a Des Moines native who lives in England and almost never gets back to Iowa. The talk will be an almost perfect ending to an almost winter day in what claims to be spring. And to think, I almost missed the opportunity.
Thanks for inviting me, Cindy.
by jphilo | Mar 25, 2009 | Daily Life
Last Friday, our son gave us a tour of his workplace south of the Twin Cities. The weather was as cold and windy as the picture suggests. The whole experience confirmed Garrison Keillor’s description of early spring in Minnesota. He said if winter had a hangover, it would be March.
The last few days in central Iowa haven’t been much better. We’ve more rain than we can handle and more wind than we want. It’s been cold enough to force people back into the winter coats they gleefully stuffed in the closet when the weather grew teasingly warm for a few days. The forecast for the weekend sounds grim – rain with a little snow mixed in, which is too much snow when April’s on the horizon.
The best thing about March weather in Iowa and Minnesota is that it’s not as bad as Dakota weather. Those states have been slammed with enough rain and snow to make a non-native quit and move away. But Dakota ranchers are tough even though their weather hangover often stretches from March through May.
Why people stay there, I’ll never know. But they do, and I’m glad because thinking of their circumstances move me to gratitude for Iowa’s early spring. No matter how bad things get here, it’s worse on windblown, snowy Dakota pasture where some rancher is herding some belligerent heifer into a sheltered draw so he can stick his arm into her womb and pull a calf.
Digging out my winter coat looks pretty good compared to that.
by jphilo | Mar 19, 2009 | Daily Life
My latest technological leap forward has me wishing for simpler days, for some “old-timey radio music” performed by the Soggy Bottom Boys long before computers, laser printers, drivers and wireless routers made my life so much easier.
The leap began with the switch from an ink jet to laser printer, a good move my more technologically advanced friends said, considering how much printing of rough drafts I do these days. One look at the installation manuel, and I knew the double leap to a wireless laser printer was too much for me.
I spent most of last night confirming what I suspected: the quick and easy installation process was not what it claimed to be. Much of the morning was spent on the phone with a rather snippy, androgynous-sounding member of the Brother support system. By the end of the call, he/she had me feeling like a first grader on the way to the principal’s office (though he/she told me to have a great day), and the printer was still not hooked up.
At that point, I gave up on the wireless installation and followed the quick and easy directions for a USB cable hook-up instead. Those directions lived up to their name, and within seconds I was printing off the crisp, clear copies promised in the promotional literature.
So my leap forward has a happy ending, though the effort exhausted me. I want to take the afternoon off and watch one of my all time favorite movies Oh, Brother Where Art Thou?. But I can’t, because we only have the movie on VHS. At this particular moment, our VCR is disconnected because Hiram ran out of time to put things back together yesterday after he tore everything apart while trying to improve the reception on our TV. The reception’s been horrible since we installed our converter box to keep up with the HD technological leap forward.
Suddenly, I am very, very tired. Dapper Dan, where are you?
