A New Moon

It was a new moon, an orange crescent smiling as it settled into an ink black flat lake.  It was the moon and a whisper from Marty that made me stop.  You should have been there.

On most nights at our lake home, after Marty has settled in bed, I go sit outside on our west facing deck to enjoy the night sounds and cool air (in the fall and winter). I almost always take my I Pad with me and let my mind check out as I play Spades or something else equally inane.

When there is not much of a moon and the lights are low in our house it is pitch dark on the porch.  You can see the lights on the docks reflecting off of the flat black water.  You can see the white, blue, orange and red lights shimmering on the bank across the lake, evidence of homes, boat docks, towers and pumps.  

This night the moon caught my eye.  It was a new moon, a crescent shape that looked like a brilliant orange and golden smile.  The moon light was cast across the smooth surface of the lake like an orange spotlight flashing from the far side of the lake to the shore on my side. 

 

Like I said, you really should have seen it.

Too often, much too often I have seen something notable then moved on to the next thing in my brain.  That behavior drove Marty nuts.  She would tell me, stop, look, enjoy, revel in the moment, be in the here and now and feel life at that moment.  She would say it’s okay to stop and feel content for a minute.  Mostly I didn’t listen to her.

This time I listened to my inner Marty voice (yes, it’s there, a lot), this time I put my I Pad down, I walked away from the sitting and the Spades and walked to the middle of the deck and watched the beaming crescent dipping  into the dark flat lake.  I looked up and saw the stars, the stars you can only see when you are away from city lights, the stars so far away the light you see is old.

It was cool, it was clear; it was so quiet all I could hear were the sounds God’s world makes.  An airplane made little noise as it blinked its way with passengers going from Houston to Dallas, oblivious to the moon I was watching.

Even when Marty isn’t right beside me she is still in my head, it’s really spooky sometimes. That night I could feel her saying, “It’s okay to feel content.  It’s okay to feel right with the world.”  

It’s okay to feel good.  In spite of what so many want you to believe this is an amazing world in which we live, there is beauty, light, and life all around us and we truly live in the most amazing, safest, richest time in history.  I know, I know, there are wars, rumors of war, hunger, poverty, and true tragedy all around us and we must confront all of that.  But life, today, in this era, while complicated, is incredible.

 Marty and I know a little about tragedy so I get a lot of the pessimism.  But that moon, that smiling moon the color of which I am at a loss to describe, that moment in time when Marty’s always present spirit told me to look, to feel, to breathe, to forget everything else but that moment.  

For me, moments like that shows me that a God is with us, my Christian God, your Jewish God, your Muslim God, it doesn’t matter.  It matters that in that moment that crescent moon was God smiling at all of us and saying it’s okay to feel good.

And Marty was there whispering in my ear to remember how important it was to see and feel that smile and be nowhere but in that moment.

A Dichotomy (It's a Great Word)

A couple of Sundays ago Marty and I went to Preston Hollow Presbyterian Church in Dallas to watch as our youngest grandchild, Lucy Jean, was baptized.  For me, for us, it is a spiritual thing.  For me, for us, infant baptism represents the best of who we are as human beings.

In our church baptism is a sacrament, a sign of God’s continuing love for God’s people.  Marty often referenced a statement from someone more eloquent than I (I can’t remember the name) that birth is a sign that God has not yet given up on humanity.  I feel that way about baptism.  I can’t think of a better way of showing love than for parents, a family, a church to promise God’s love to a child.

The baptisms of our grand children or any child touch Marty in a way she can’t express.  She doesn’t say much about it, the strokes took outward expressions from her, but I know from years of sitting beside her when other children have been baptized she feels the meaning of the sacrament.  She feels the warmth and love of the community, she always, always, as difficult as it is to make the journey, as self conscious as she feels in large gatherings, she always wants to be there and connect with that part of our life.  

I want that for her.

The following Sunday my family gathered in Fort Worth to belatedly fete my parents for their 65 year anniversary.  65 years is a long, long time to do anything, 65 years of marriage is nothing short of a miracle.  My brother John, in his toast, said that only 1% of married couples make the 65 year mark.   Personally I’ve never known anyone married for 65 years, you have to not only live a long time you have to stay in like and love with someone else for a very long time.  

It was a great celebration where Marty tried to order a beer instead of wine or the more appropriate Diet Coke (she really can’t drink either, she’s loopy enough and has to help me drive), we all paid homage to the miracle of Bettye and Larry Sr., and our entire immediate family was there.  We even got to hear a letter of congratulations to my parents written by our esteemed Senator Ted Cruz from Texas (no, not all of us in Texas like extremism).

More importantly we talked of the miracle of love, the necessity of partnership, the luck of finding your soul mate and what an amazing thing it is to still love your mate through all of the trial, tribulations and victories of 65 years.

In the span of those two weeks, with my bride, my bride of 40 years, my bride in the wheelchair, we made the treks to the Metro mess to see a beginning and a solemn promise, the next week we had the privilege to honor a solemn promise fulfilled for more than six decades.

Getting to Dallas once every now and then pulls hard at Marty’s energy reserves so I always give her a choice, “Do you want to go?”  Of course she says, “Damn straight I want to go.”  In her mind she has to be there for the baptism and my own Mother, who always loved me the most, told me not to come to their shindig without Marty.  

The dichotomy of these two events is really hard to miss.  Think of it as a contrast between a new beginning for little Lucy and a celebration of an old union that began literally decades ago in another century, a union that is ultimately responsible for giving life to little Lucy.

 Lucy was baptized into a faith community in 2016, in a completely different millennia and culture than when my parents were married, yet they are tied together, they are tied together by the miracle of genetics and more importantly they are forever connected by the very same faith and family community.

I love the connection, I love knowing that, my grandparents, my parents, Marty and I, our children and their children are part of a strong community connected through the years to each other and to a common history. 

I love knowing, as different as these celebrations were, as special and emotional as they both were, they ultimately show who we really are.  

I really love knowing Marty is still here to be a part of these acts of love and with Marty; you can’t take that presence for granted.

Gracefully Skiing

Forty years ago Marty and I went skiing in Breckenridge Colorado for our honeymoon.  I had never skied before so you might think that wasn’t the best thing to do on a honeymoon….pish posh.   Marty was a good skier and did end up teaching me a thing or two.  Actually, she ended up having to dig me and my skies out of a four foot snow drift mid way down the beginner slope.  

Forty years later, last week, I went skiing in Deer Valley Utah with our two kids, their spouses and the oldest three grandkids.  I can still ski, I’m better than I was 40 years ago but I'm older, fatter and slower.  I still remember getting rescued from the snow drift so I try really hard to avoid big piles of soft snow because of that lesson.

I’m a bit of a sentimentalist (duh).   I carry a small blue canvas case Marty always had with her when we skied.  Marty always had it tucked into the inside pocket of her ski coat and it always carried gum, chap stick, a lighter and a pack of Doral Menthols.  It’s old, dirty and torn so much that it is no longer functional, but I carry it anyway.  I stick it in my inside jacket pocket, with nothing in it because of the holes, but it’s there and it reminds me of Marty when I am on the mountain.

 

When we ski, when I watch our kid’s ski, I think of Marty, I think of ski trips with friends, with family, but always with Marty.  She brought skiing into my life.  She brought that graceful feeling of gliding along soft snow into my life.  

More importantly, she brought a real feeling of grace into my life and I’m never more aware of that than when I am in the mountains.  I never feel more connected to my faith, my God’s grace than when I’m standing at the top of the world with a brilliant blue sky above and soft white snow below.

Every time I ski I find myself at the top of the mountain looking down remembering going down the slopes in front of Marty as she expertly glided behind me.  I can’t, I don’t want to get away from those very familiar feelings of her laughing at me as we skied and as I fell into piles of snow, over edges into mud or down a steep slope upside down.

As I watched our children ski I was struck, first by Erin, the daughter and then Matt, the son, how much they skied like their mother.  Matt skies fast, Erin skies slow, both ski with the same pace and control of their mother, both ski with their arms and poles out from their body, both ski from an upright position.  They ski like their mother and I absolutely love that.

On the last night at the resort as we sat eating a dinner cobbled together by my resourceful daughter in law Sarah we all got to talking about things we enjoyed on the trip and what we were grateful for, something my children often ask of their children.  We went around the table several times and we were grateful for skiing together, spending time together, our feet, our food, pizza and family.

I took one turn and looked at the three kids four, four and six. I told them I was grateful to their Grandmother’s mother and father who took their Grandmother skiing and taught her how to ski, to find grace on the mountain.  I told them I was grateful for their Grandmother who taught me to ski and find that same grace and how we taught Matt and Erin and how they were teaching them how to ski and enjoy God’s grace.

 

I don’t think, actually I know they didn’t get what I was talking about or how this act of recreation connected our current family to our families history.  They don’t really get it that their Grandma, the one in the chair, is the one who kept this whole thing going.  

They don’t get it yet.  

It’s a skiing lesson I will continue to try and teach until someday they get it, until some day they stand at the top of the mountain and watch their parents ski or watch their own children ski.  I will continue to ski and teach them about the grace of skiing and finding God’s grace in the beauty and magnificence of creation.

It’s what Marty taught me.

January 3....Forty Years and Counting

On January 3^rd 1976 the USA performed a nuclear test in Nevada.  It was called the Muenster test, which is funny because Marty and I lived in Muenster Texas.

On January 3^rd 1976 and Marty and I got married in Dalhart Texas.  It was a perfect blue sky day.  It was cold, clear and we had our first argument as a married couple.  I was driving too fast, she was right.

On January 3^rd 2006, on our 30^th anniversary, after surviving a ruptured brain aneurysm in 2005, after returning from a Christmas trip to Dalhart to see her mother, Marty had a devastating ischemic stroke.  It kind of takes the fun out of anniversary celebrations.

On that day, when she sat in her chair and slumped over, her face slack with no tone I wanted to drive fast, to the hospital.  It was dark and cold as I stood behind the ambulance looking in the back as they secured Marty’s gurney to the floor of the vehicle.  

The thought of it still makes me epically sad.

On January 3^rd 2016 (can you believe its 2016, as my son says, “Where’s my flying car?”) Marty and I celebrated two things, a long marriage and survival from a devastating illness.  I guess when you really get down to it if you do anything for 40 years it’s about survival.  I know for a fact if you make it ten years from a big stroke, it’s about survival. 

Marriage is all about love, caring for one another, self-sacrifice, partnership and acceptance of another person with other opinions in your life all day every day.  It’s about hard work, getting down in the dirt with someone, loving them past the anger and ignorance and accepting them in spite of what they may or may not do.  

Marriage is about relationship survival and it often isn’t easy but having a partner, that other beating heart is worth the fight.

Living through a cataclysmic illness is an endurance contest.  It is about love, it is about self-sacrifice and partnership and acceptance.  To live through strokes you get down in the dirt and find yourself doing things you never thought you would do.  You have to get through the anger, the denial, the resentment and you have to find a way to accept the care giver and the cared for in spite of what they may or may not do.  

Just like marriage, it is about survival and it isn’t easy at all but having your partner continue, having that other amazing beating heart next to you is worth the fight.

In 40 years of marriage I have learned a lot.  I know for certain if I had listened to Marty all of the time, if I had done what Marty had said all of the time, if I had done what Marty said when she said it all of the time….well who knows, that was never going to happen.  I have learned to ask about feelings, I have learned to identify my own feelings, and I have learned to not let “no” be my first reaction to everything.

In the ten years post stroke I have learned a lot and tried my best to make the changes necessary to survive and help Marty survive.  I’ve learned and try to live one day at a time and one issue at a time, I have learned to not over look or procrastinate about care giving stuff, I have learned to listen and to watch and to pay attention, I have learned to be nice to doctors and health care providers and I have learned to touch Marty’s cheek every day and say “I love you”.

Mostly, I have learned I have never loved anyone the way I love my bride, I have learned she is the most amazing person I have ever known, I have learned to understand and admire what real survival is and I have learned she is the person I was destined to be with for the duration.

The strange thing is, I knew most of that, it just really hit home the last ten years.  Walking the fine line between here and not here really focuses what you know.

Here’s to another ten…..