Farewell to Summer Break

As summer vacation winds down and I am forced to think upon things more academic and related to my bi-monthly paycheck, I have been thinking about things accomplished and things left undone these last two months. To be honest, I have spent too much time in my pajamas re-watching favorite episodes of The Office and my favorite YouTube channel, React. When I do dress in real-people clothes and venture out into the ridiculously hot summer hell (there just is no other word for it), I hang out with friends over ridiculously long lunches where none of the problems of the world are solved, but we have a lot of fun trading stories about our grown kids.

It's just what moms do.

I look around my house from the seat I have occupied for most of this summer and am thoroughly satisfied. Cats are napping. Fans are humming. Ice from the machine in the freezer pops from time to time. I hear the sound of the motorcycle of the oldest as he makes his way in from work knowing that the other two men in the family will shortly follow. They come in hot (not a one has a/c) and typically with a work story or two to tell. I look forward to this end of the workday routine.

I've not been to the beach or lake and only momentarily dipped my feet into a pool. No great loss there for me. My skin does not handle the sun and my temperament does not handle the heat so we're all good as far as I'm concerned. I've not ridden one roller coaster or visited one museum. I haven't hiked a mountain or bicycled a path or even chased the setting sun riding shotgun next to the husband. I'm telling you, it's just too darn hot and I am just not that motivated.

So this is where I ask myself, what have I done?

Well, lunch, but we already established that.

Mom. I got to spend two wonderful weeks with my mother. We shopped and watched When Calls the Heart and visited the Grand Ole Opry with the youngest.

Papers. I've written quite a few papers. In fact, just yesterday I finished a marvelous piece (sarcasm?) on the State of Illinois Budget for the Fiscal Year 2011. Seriously. I like to party hard around here.

Reading. I've read quite a few books that range from the last (mostly unknown) battles of the Civil War to a fictional work about a horrifying plane crash that left three people stranded on an island for a year and a half. Good stuff.

Netflix. Whether you love it or hate it, I utilize my monthly fee by watching documentary after documentary and again, the aforementioned The Office and When Calls the Heart. If a show makes me smile, I am guaranteed to watch it over and over.

Napping. Well, yeah. Self explanatory.

I could go on, but I am starting to bore myself. Some might look at this and remark at how lazy I really am, but hey, I've never professed to be overly ambitious. I did attend a week-long seminar for my profession and wrote two extremely brutal (as in boring) book reports on the Supreme Court (also necessary for the profession) and have even been planning a lesson or two so I wouldn't say I've been entirely useless.

Just sorta-kinda.

That's my kind of summer vacation.

Grief is an Ocean

This has been a week of me missing my dad. I mean, I always do, but it hit me hard on Monday and has continued throughout the week.

That's what I get for cleaning.

You see, it was the very act of cleaning that triggered the whole thing. My mom had brought me out a set of glasses when she visited during the first two weeks of June and those glasses have sat in the same spot where I set them when we brought in her stuff. Even the white bag they were in was dusty.

Cause that's how I roll.

Apparently something unnatural in the universe sparked a cleaning gene hidden deep within me around noon on Monday. Yes, noon on Monday. I remember it vividly because the husband needed work shirts and other necessities and I gave him my word I would take care of it Monday (promised on Saturday). I didn't want him to come home after work to find me still in my pajamas with nothing accomplished, so around noon on Monday I decided to start laundry.

Oh, the joys of summer break.

It was while I was sorting laundry in the kitchen that I decided maybe I would actually clean the kitchen and as I was putting away glasses from the dishwasher I thought about that bag my mom left me. No time like the present, I thought, and I lifted the bag to the counter to begin unwrapping my mom's serious wrapping job of those glasses.

I knew the glasses were plastic so with the unusual weight of the first one I picked up, I wondered what surprise she had included that I had procrastinated in finding. Even before I uncovered it, though, the realization hit me that it was the very mug that I had asked to keep when I had visited her back in April.

And that's when the wave hit.

Grief is like an ocean. In the beginning, right when my dad's life was ending, the waves were huge, like standing at the edge of the Atlantic on a windy day when the clouds are low and dark and rumbling. There seemed to be no break in the white-capped, rolling waves as they made their way toward land and toward my heart. Time went by and just like the ocean itself, the waves became calmer- always present, but not quite so threatening.

Maybe it was because that blasted Facebook has been reminding me of memories from two years ago:

Dad's first chemo treatment tomorrow. Please pray for a miracle.
Dad's very tired and so is Mom. Thank you for praying for a miracle.
I refuse to believe a report from man. I am expecting a miracle.

You get the idea.

So on Monday just shortly after noon when I was holding a mug in my hand that the youngest had presented to my dad as a gift in more hopeful times, an unexpected wave came crashing in while I wasn't looking and just about knocked me off my feet. I fought through the tears as I put away the glasses and cursed the very thought that had me cleaning in the first place. I thought of my mom and my admiration for her grew even more. The size of the waves she has withstood... and is still standing.

I still don't know what to make of this world without my dad in it. I don't know that it will ever feel the same. Even so,  I hear him in the words of my kids and in their laughter and questionable jokes. Some days it's almost the same as having him nearby. Almost, but not quite.  I suppose that is the consequence of having someone who meant so much no longer breathing the same air.

And, as we have learned, the consequence of my deciding to clean on a Monday at noon.

No wonder I'm such a procrastinator.

The Worry Tree

Years ago, when the husband worked in law enforcement, he planted a tree in our front yard. I'm sure he didn't plan it at the time- after all, we just thought the front yard needed a little something extra; but that tree would come to represent him leaving his worries behind before he came into the house. This past week with all of its drama and heartache and nonsense that have flooded every newsfeed known to mankind has caused my thoughts to wander back to the era of the worry tree.

I am pretty sure he got the idea from something he had read. I seem to recall reading or hearing about a similar tale at some point in my life. It doesn't really matter, though, because as we all know, the best ideas are bound to be repeated. This was a good idea.

After he would step out of his patrol car and before he would come into the house, he would pause for the briefest of moments and mentally hang his worries on that tree. Worries that were images, burdens, and thoughts of despair.

In other words, humanity at its worse.

He would hang the unpleasantness of the job on a limb that certainly would have never been able to bear the true weight of such a thing and would proceed to walk inside the house, weary and hungry, and hug each of us one by one. I could not help but to think this week of the wives and children in Dallas who would not be receiving those same kind of hugs ever again and my heart literally broke.

I can remember one particular night during his career when I paced the floor waiting for that man of mine to come home. I had heard tales of a particular call that involved gunfire and even when he personally called me to assure me all was well, I did not believe it until I physically had him within reach. I can distinctly remember him looking at me ever so seriously and quietly saying, "I will always come home."

But we all know that promise does not always end well.

And so I had those memories swirling through my overactive brain as I was watching the events of Dallas unfold the other night. Lives that were cut short because they went to work that day. Families who would forever be changed because of the delusion of one man. Since that night, every talking head in America seems to have a solution on what we should do and what lives matter and what steps we can take to heal our land.  The truth remains that  regulations and protests and hashtags will do nothing to solve the evil in the heart of man.

The husband works no more in law enforcement (although his ears perk up every time he hears a siren and I know in his mind, he is racing toward another call). We have long since moved from that little house in a little town with a little tree out front. To my knowledge, none of our current trees serve to bear his burdens before he comes inside the house to hug each---- well, just me now. We pray for our country as we pray for those who serve to protect, assist, and defend; and we worry what the future holds for our children's children.

I can only think of one tree that can bear that kind of burden.

And it was made into a cross.