::: a million canaries :::

How do you explain to a child,
that seeing is not always believing?
That the stars still exist in the daytime,
even when the sun is out,
but that there are no monsters
under her bed
or
in her closet
or
outside her window
watching her lay scared into sleeplessness?

How do you explain it to a child,
that God loves us,
protects us,
provides for us,
through the reality of nightmares,
the cruelty of friendship,
the unfairness of death?

How do you explain to yourself
that believing is more than seeing?
That yellow birds hang suspended
in the cloud-dotted blue?
That the greatest of these
is that one thing
that doesn't seem to be working?

How do you explain to yourself
that God loves us,
protects us,
provides for us
through the reality of disease,
the cruelty of depression,
the unfairness of economic poverty?

And yet he does,
and he does,
and he does.

When the yellow bird sails
and my fingers bend
and the stars shine,
I know.

Men can take from me
my life,
my Prozac,
my 401K,

But if the yellow bird hanging suspended
in the cloud-dotted blue
spirals to the ground,
he knows it,
and only he holds my soul
and he values me--
he values you--
more than a million canaries.

So I will speak in the daylight
what he tells me when I bolt upright,
in a pool of cold sweat;
What he whispers in my ear,
I will sing in my own voice 
as I stand on the shingles of my roof.

He does!
And he does!
And he does!

::: true story tuesday: the bolyard boys :::

There weren't a whole lot of houses in my rural neighborhood; therefore there weren't many families. Therefore, there weren't many children. Out of all the children that were in those families, none of them was exactly my age, except for Tony Smith and Jamie Nicely. And they were boys. Just like most of the rest of the kids in the neighborhood.

At times, I had female friends who were my age, like Shannon, whose brother was an absolute creep, who never played fair at hide and seek and who would pull down your pants in front of everyone or if he caught you alone in the cornfield. This kind of put a damper on my friendship with Shannon.

And there was Marnie Morris, who was the bestest friend I could ever have had, who spent the night with me and played Barbies with me and had the nicest laugh and the coolest name of anyone I knew. She was so cool that I could handle that she had also had a creepy brother with a bad buzz cut and a nasty temper, but he was younger than Marnie and me. Marnie’s father broke my heart when he took her away. We were very young when her parents divorced, and I hardly ever saw her again—except one time at the drugstore while I was reading Mad Magazine and she came in with her dad.

The thing about Shannon and Marnie, though, was that they lived in The Twinplexes, which was just about as bad as living in The Trailer Park. People who lived in The Twinplexes smoked, did drugs, had divorced parents, and worshipped the devil. According to my parents, it was better to have no friends at all than to have friends from The Twinplexes. They would lead you into a life of drugs and crime because they were always up to No Good.

So, aside from Shannon and Marnie, I didn't really have any friends who were girls. Before I started kindergarten, I'm not sure if I realized that other girls even existed on this planet, other than Shannon and Marnie. I had to settle for the likes of Tony "Booger Hair" Smith. And then later, the Bolyard Boys.

The Bolyard Boys lived across the street from me in the big, white Wise farmhouse. Before they lived there, Charlie Wise had farmed there, but his wife had died of cancer and he'd been left with several little children. I think he had moved back to the home farm with his parents.

The Bolyard Boys had a wonderful, pleasantly plump, feisty mother, also named Marilyn just like the Smiths' mom, who served me the best food in the whole wide world--bologna sandwiches on Wonder Bread with Miracle Whip and yellow mustard with the crusts cut off. And on the side, really thin potato chips, sometimes even salt and vinegar. Once, my mom was standing outside talking to Marilyn Bolyard when I came home from school. Boy, did I have a hankering for a Swanson's chicken pot pie! But there wasn't a single Swanson's chicken pot pie in our freezer, and "running" to the store for anything was simply out of the question. A trip into Hartville for groceries was really a once a week thing, if that, so anything that we didn't have, we'd just live without until the next shopping trip. If we didn’t go to the Hartville IGA because we were out of milk, bread, meat and toilet paper, we certainly weren’t going because we were out of chicken pot pies. I was whining about this injustice to my mother when Marilyn, bless her heart, spoke up in that great big motherly way she had. "Well, I believe I have a chicken pot pie in my freezer. I'll send it over!" From that point on, Marilyn Bolyard became one of my favorite ever people in the whole wide world.

Marilyn and her husband Terry had three sons who were all younger than I. Danny was the oldest, about a year younger than I, slightly plump, unable to understand simple logic and very defensive. There wasn't much you could say that wouldn't send towheaded Danny into a fit of rage. Ricky was next, the only brunette of the three. Ricky was about two years younger than I, and even more defensive than Danny, but more likely to get into a scuffle with his older brother than anyone else. But if you made him mad (which was a pretty easy thing to do) he'd ball up his fists at you pretty good. Danny and Ricky both spoke with lisps and called each other bad names.

And then there was little Scotty. When I met Scotty, he was still in diapers. He was the cutest little towhead, but I suppose he had the same kind of temper the other two had. I always thought they were rough and tumble kids or their parents let them be bad all the time, but I suppose now that they were just boys.

The Bolyard Boys were a good choice to hang out with because they were right across the street, and chances are my mom would let me play with them, because she could watch me from the front window, but most times I’m sure she didn't. I think she was probably glad she didn't have to entertain me or listen to my long-winded stories. As long as The Bolyard Boys and I played in the front yard where she could see me at her own convenience and I was out of her hair for a while, she would let me play for hours.

One day she must not have been watching very closely, because we came up with a pretty cool activity that she would not have thought was all that cool. The first part of the activity was to climb up to one of the highest branches of the great big oak tree in the front yard, which was a pretty common thing for us to do. What we discovered on this particular day, up in that big oak tree, was that there were these little things hanging all over the place in the branches that made really nice propulsion devices. These little beauties were absolutely everywhere up in that tree, and they were just the perfect size to pick off with your free hand and throw at the guy on the branch below you. So we were up in this tree, probably twenty feet off the ground, and we were throwing little hard things at each other--hard things with pointy little tops. It seemed like a good idea at the time. What can I say? We were grade-schoolers and we were bored.

Somebody, and I don't know who it was, but I have a feeling it was me, came up with the idea to see if we could find a good target, other than each other, at which to throw these little propulsive devices. We tried wingin' 'em at windows, little brothers who couldn't climb trees yet, rocks, parked cars--NOT mothers who were bent over working in the garden. But stationery objects just didn't seem like all that much of a challenge. Given that this big oak tree was in the front yard, and the front yard was very close to the road, it wasn't long before one of us (again, probably me, but I couldn't say for sure) came up with the idea of trying to hit a moving target. But it wasn't just cars that we tried to hit. It was the cars that were moving away from us. Specifically cars with mufflers that were moving away from us. Even more specifically, we were just trying to hit the mufflers themselves. Rather, the goal was to get the acorns into the mufflers of the cars that were moving away from us. It was quite a challenge.

None of us was a very good shot. We hit the road. We hit trunks of cars. We hit windows of cars. We hit each other. Rarely, someone would hit the bumper of a car, and I think, occasionally, someone would lie about getting it into the muffler, but no one actually did it. Until the black and white car came by.

All of us up in the tree knew when to quit. And when a black and white care drove by, and one of us (I won't say who, but I can bet it wasn't me) actually hit the target and got the acorn IN the muffler of the nice black and white car, we knew it was time to quit. And it was time to be completely still.

But when Scotty, the little brother who couldn't climb trees yet, saw the black and white car whose driver didn't know there was an acorn in his tailpipe, going past, Scotty picked up a piece of ammo and flung it. Hard. It hit the pretty black and white car square in the rear window, which caused a nice little bright red effect we call brake lights. Scotty thought this was the coolest thing, because, not only did the bright red lights flash, the black and white car actually screeched to a stop and turned around at the next driveway just so he could give Scotty another chance to get his acorn in the tailpipe. This time, as the police car pulled into the driveway and we all peed our pants up in the oak tree, Scotty stood in the yard with a handful of acorns. Good, we thought, he'll take the rap, and the policeman will give him a nice little lecture. As we sat there in the tree with our wet pants on, we heard the policeman give Scotty a lecture about how very bad it was to throw things at cars as they passed, and how he shouldn't be so close to the road anyway, and if he caught him doing this again, he'd have to take him in.

And just when we thought he'd scared Scotty really well and he was ready to go back to his police car, he asked The Question.

"Where did you get this idea, anyway?"

Scotty dropped all of his acorns and pointed.

Up.

Into the oak tree.

At us.

There were no bologna sandwich feasts that day, and I think The Bolyard Boys moved from the big white farmhouse not long after that leaving me only with Tony "Booger Hair" Smith to play with.

::: say cheese...cake! part 2 :::

Fifteen cheesecakes! An incredible band! A wonderful audience! In other words, a great success.

Yes, it was a lot of work, but there were amazing people who came to my rescue, running to the store, washing dishes, giving me hints and tips, offering encouraging words, and, of course, making beautiful and delicious cheesecakes.

Here are a few photos from the cheesecake auction and Honeytown concert. It was so much fun that we're talking about making it an annual event to benefit whatever the need is at the time of the auction.

Thanks, everyone, for all of your hard work, prayers, generosity and thoughtfulness. I'm so blessed!

::: say cheese...cake! :::

Yesterday and today, the Thicket Dweller family has been busy in the kitchen making cheesecakes (photos to follow) for tomorrow's concert and cheesecake auction to benefit Houdin's trip to Africa. We've got some amazing cheesecakes coming in from local people who are donating their time and talents to contribute a very unique selection of cheesecakes, with everything from Savory Herb Cheesecake to German Pumpkin Kaesekuchen to Habanero Lime. There are straightforward (and delicious!) ones, too, like Key Lime, Milk Chocolate, and Pecan Rum cheesecakes. Boy, I hope we get a good turnout, because these cheesecakes sound fabulous! If you're in the area, drop me a line and come for a night of music, fun and cheesecake! Cheese and crackers, veggies, and punch will be served.

::: true story tuesday: keeping up with the smiths :::

It's important to find things to keep you occupied when you live in the country. It's especially important to make friends with your neighbors, and to keep the friends you make. When I was a child in my neighborhood, there weren't many houses, which means there weren't many families, which means there weren't many kids. But there were the Smiths.

The Smiths lived in a really nice two story house three cornfields away to the north. Gene and Marilyn Smith were Catholic and had three kids when I first met them, and then had a fourth child later. Dawn was a two years older than I; Tony was my age, and Steffy was three years younger. Timmy came along when I was about eight or nine.

Gene and Marilyn were loud and colorful, and they always had the best things. Gene was a plumber and must have made a nice chunk of change because he could afford that nice two-story house, a very nice yard with a lot of flowers, an in-ground pool with a big, tall fence around it, and all of the coolest toys.

I remember one summer, Gene bought a moped for Tony and I happened to be there when they were riding it. Tony was riding it all over the yard, being the daredevil that he was. It looked so easy and so fun that I just had to try it, which was probably the best bad idea a person could ever have. Naturally, I got my turn. Naturally, I mistook the gas for the brake, and naturally, I flipped the dumb thing over. I didn't get hurt, but I've had a healthy respect for two-wheeled motorized vehicles ever since. Tony, however, did not have a healthy respect for me, and I was teased about this all the way through our school years together.

I spent many hours swimming in the Smiths' pool, which was a miracle given that, #1, my parents didn't seem to care too much for the Smiths (but my parents never had many good things to say about anyone) and, #2, my parents were so overprotective, I wasn't allowed to associate with anyone that they even suspected of being a shifty character. The fact that they let me splash around in the water with people like The Smiths without even staying to watch is, frankly, a bit hard for me to believe now.

Somehow, though, I was able to spend a lot of time with the Smiths, and I was able to spend a lot of time in their pool. Obviously, I didn't spend as much time in their pool as they did. This was so apparent because of my total inability to make any graceful movements in the water. Tony was always very quick to point that out.

"You call that swimmin'?!?" He would laugh his obnoxious Tony Smith laugh. "You're just splashin' around! Don't you know how to swim?"

We had this conversation every time I tried to swim in their pool. Every time, I would splash ungracefully, and every time, he would laugh at me. To this day, when I try to swim, I remember that I really can't swim because Tony Smith said so.

When the pool got boring, or it was too cold to swim, we would play Engine Engine Number Nine in the front yard:

Engine, Engine Number Nine
Going Down the Chicago Line
If the Train Should Jump the Track
Do you want your money back?

And then, there was:

Bubblegum, Bubblegum in a dish
How many pieces do you wish?

And my very favorite, because of the fantastic mental images it conjured:

My mother and your mother were hanging out clothes.
My mother punched your mother right in the nose.
What color was the blood?

I always chose green.

We would also play freeze tag, or TV tag, or some other kind of tag, or hide and seek, or we'd pretend we were spies (sometimes we really were spies, spying on Dawn who would get mad at us and tell us to grow up).

If totally necessary, Marilyn Smith would let us play inside.

In spite of what my parents said, I thought Gene and Marilyn were really nice. They both laughed and smiled a lot, and Gene always had some kind of joke to tell that I didn't really understand. Marilyn never failed to gently touch one of my springy curls and sweetly tease me that she was going to cut them all of to keep them for herself. She loved my brown ringlets.

But Marilyn Smith had rules, too. For instance, we weren't allowed in their living room because it was to stay clean just for company, and we weren't allowed in their parents' bedroom because...well, because it was simply off-limits. I did sneak in there one time, though, because Tony had told me that they had a sink that was made just to wash his parents butts. I didn't believe him, so I snuck in one time, just to see if it was true. And sure enough, there it was. Right by the toilet. It was a toilet-looking thing made just for washing butts, which I now know was a bidet.

But I would have to say that Tony's biggest claim to fame as far as I was concerned was the booger. Tony was the kind of kid who was obsessed with bodily functions, even more so than most boys his age. Tony was the only kid I ever knew who would try really hard to smell his own farts, admitting with no shame whatsoever that he did it because he liked the way his own farts smelled. He liked to brag about any kind of sound, fluid or goo his body produced, and that, of course, included boogers. If Tony found an exceptionally large or gooey booger, he would not for one second hesitate to show it to the closest person, except for his sister Dawn. Dawn was very mature and only tolerated, with a very low patience level, the antics of her annoying little brother, and, in turn, the antics-by-association of me. So, if there was a choice between showing Dawn the booger and showing me the booger, I would win every time. I think.

The thing that was different about Tony was that he didn't get embarrassed when anyone mentioned bodily functions. In our house, no one EVER said the word "fart," though my mom was the queen of gaseousness. And if I were to be caught in school with a booger hanging from my nose, I would simply have died. But not Tony. No. Tony would just laugh and pull it out, maybe even measure it, and show anyone who was nearby so that they could all appreciate the fineness of his great big boogers.

One day, when I got on the bus, there were no seats anywhere, except for next to Tony. Now, I played with Tony during after-school hours mostly out of sheer boredom, but when we were on school property, I really would rather not have seen or been seen with him. What do you expect? He was embarrassing, for crying in the mud! But I was also a fairly nice kid, so if his was the only seat left on the bus, I wasn't going to make a big deal out of it.

So, I sat down next to Tony and started talking to him when I noticed that he had something stuck in the top of his blonde hair. Being the nice person I was, I reached out for it, this thing that was stuck there, right on the top of his head. I took hold of it and pulled, and it was cold, sticky and rubbery.

It was a booger.

I was so totally grossed out, I could have puked. I shook the disgusting thing off of my hand and stared at Tony with repulsion. He just laughed, as if he had placed it there himself, just so I would find it and pull it out of his hair. And maybe he did.

To this day, when I see something in a person's hair, I either point it out to them, or I let them discover it themselves. I never, ever, ever touch it.

::: the mighty oak :::

Today, I touched the very tip-top of the old oak tree. Leaves and branches that had likely never felt the hand of man were easily within my reach. Who knows how many years it had stood there? The rings were too close, too packed together for me to even begin counting. It was strong and healthy, its trunk showing no signs of rot or weakness. I don't know why they cut it down--to make way for something else, or to make money, or some other reason--but that thing which had lived longer than all of us here, that surely stood before Ohio was a state, and maybe even before these states were united, surely when old Tom Lions roamed these parts, camped out in the creek collecting tongues on a rawhide, threatening the white men and children that theirs might be the next in his collection.

::: guilty either way :::

There are times when I need to just shut my mouth.

During these times, I think it's best to stare out the window silently and feel sorry for myself. The greatest satisfaction comes when I think of something so terribly sad that my eyes cloud up and mist over and all of the sadness spills out, and when I squeeze my eyelids together, it runs down my nose and tickles the outside of my nostril until I have to push it away with my sleeve or the tip of my finger.

There are times when I need to just speak my mind.

During these times, I know it's best to pause until the right words pop into my brain which cooperates with my mouth to bring forth the intended meaning. As the sentiments spill out, I know when they're hitting the mark, just like a basketball player who knows that the ball is headed for nothing but net the moment it leaves his fingertips. It just feels right.

What I should have learned by now, as an adult, as a human being, as an intelligent woman, is which times are which.

When I stare and the sadness spills and the nostril tickles, I feel childish and self-pitying.

When I speak and the words hit and they're nothing but net, I feel hubrish (it's not a word...yet) and bossy.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there is no right time for either. Maybe this is a causal oversimplification. There are likely many reasons why I feel childish, hubrish, self-pitying, bossy.

Either way, I feel like I should apologize.

So I'm sorry. I'm sorry for saying nothing, and I'm sorry for saying everything.

I hope that covers it.

::: fiction friday: untitled :::

Part One

It's been said that the Eskimo people have hundreds of words for "snow." It sounds logical, given that they supposedly live around the frozen precipitation their whole lives, but it's not true. The Eskimo people don't even have a single language. In addition, if you look at all of the Eskimo languages--Siberian Yupik, Qawiarak, Labrador Inuttut, just to name a few--the word for snowflake is pretty much the same. You don't have to speak any of the Eskimo languages to see that.

There are words for "niece" and "nephew," but there's not a generic word for both. There are words for "cousin," but there's not a specific word for a girl cousin or a boy cousin. 

If you're a child who has lost both of your parents, you're an orphan. If you're a person who has lost their spouse, you're a widow or a widower.

But there's no word for me. There's no one single word in the English language for what I am.

The first time I met Liz, she was having a pretty intense conversation with our comparative linguistics professor about the history of the word "agrestic," and I was waiting to talk to him about why my paper on experimental phonetics hadn't earned an A. I'd seen Liz around campus, but we had never talked. She and her friends seemed silly and childish, more interested in social events and boys than their actual education. Admittedly, I found her attractive, but I'd made a serious commitment to my studies and hadn't found much need for a romantic relationship as part of that commitment.

She turned from her conversation and her eyes fell upon me. Gesturing towards me, she asked the professor, "Would you find him agrestic? I mean, doesn't it all depend on your perspective? Someone from, say, New York City or Paris certainly would, don't you agree?"

"But that's only if you're adhering to the original meaning of the word, Liz. The meaning has morphed since then. Calling him 'agrestic' would be insulting to him, really."

"Well, I don't argue that," Liz conceded, "but in this case, maybe he fits all meanings of the word. No offense...um..."

"Larry. It's Larry. And none taken."

I waited a minute longer, but the conversation didn't seem to be slowing down, so I decided to postpone my conversation and headed back to my dorm where I looked up the word "agrestic." Had I been any kind of a real comparative linguistics major, I'd definitely have been offended.

I didn't meet Liz again until the linguistics club hosted a Halloween dance party at The Pizza Loft the Autumn of our junior year. She was Isaac Newton in his younger days, with a prism in one hand and a Bible in the other, when he was more attractive and hadn't yet become a bi-polar jerk. I was Jean Francois Champollion, the French scholar who deciphered the Rosetta Stone. I dressed in Egyptian garb and carried a Styrofoam stele carved with hieroglyphics. A couple of them were real, but mostly it was scribbles that my suitemates had etched into the foam with the end of an ink pen, the ballpoint retracted.

I'm not a dancer. I'll just say that right now. It was completely against my will that I participated in the dancing aspect of the evening, but the numbers were uneven, and some young lady would have ended up without a dance partner, which, in retrospect, may have been for the best. Nevertheless, I approached the circle, reached for a ribbon from the mass of brightly colored strips and held on.  I chose the green one, the one with the frayed edge, a thread hanging from it brushing against my wrist like spider's silk. On the count of three, we all pulled back, and Liz was on the other side of the circle, her eyes rolled ceilingward, holding her own frayed end of the green ribbon.

::: whatsoever things are lovely :::

The landscapes were so inviting tonight, the moody skies meeting the ever optimistic sunbeams. I grabbed my camera and Bo acted as my chauffeur and we ambled our minivan along the back roads of our neighborhood to see what the sun might be kissing.

Think on these things.

::: created :::

The sunbeams were so gorgeous yesterday that they filled me with a strange sense of nostalgia. It helped immensely that one of them made itself at home in my bedroom, that it chose to highlight something I had completed--washing and folding linens. From my desk, the basket of thrift-store embroidered napkins, cotton tablecloths and quilt-pieced aprons just about drove me to distraction. I loved the look of those freshly-laundered things, and all I had done was wash them and place them in a basket. I hadn't even created them, yet they filled me with a sense of accomplishment. That's no small feat these days.

So often, what the sun brings to light, or at least what I see, are my shortcomings. The smudges on the windows, the dust on the bookcase, the handprints on the walls. Is everyone's tendency toward seeing that which is undone? Why can I not focus on those things I've accomplished? Why can I not give thanks for the good things? Why can I not be at peace?

My daughters have been working on a care package for their brother who is going through discipleship training before leaving for Africa the first week of December. I haven't had the patience or taken the time to teach them needlecrafts. I was never interested in learning to sew, though my mother sewed wonderful things for me and for our home. I don't really recall that she ever tried to teach me; the only recollection I have of my experience with the old metal Singer was a duffle bag for Brownies and a broken needle which brought about my mother's wrath. Sweetheart in particular is so drawn towards needlecrafts of all kinds, whether it's sewing, knitting or anything else that involves needle and thread, and I feel guilty for not having the skills or even the interest to teach her.

Thankfully, my mother-in-law spent time showing her how to cross-stitch and that has sent Sweetheart's finger flying. She has even taken to teaching her little sister a few simple stitches.

A few years ago, a friend of mine was sharing how her eldest daughter grew up and left home before she realized that she'd never shared with her daughter her passion for preserving. She'd always been so caught up in the actual process that she 
never taught her daughter how to put up beans or make jam or can applesauce. Her daughter was now in college, living on the other side of the country, and the realization that she'd "failed" her left my friend weepy and grief-filled.

Shortly after the realization, her daughter called home to give a life update. After some chatting about this and that, the daughter shared offhandedly, "Oh, and guess what, Mom! There was a group of grandmothers who got together to can jelly, so guess what I learned to do!" My friend's shoulders lifted from the relief of that weight. Education never ends! Learning comes from everywhere! Teachers are all around us!

For today, I want to focus on our accomplishments. I want to wander through the day and dip our toes into our interests. I want to trust that my gaps will be filled, that should I forget or skip or run out of time to share some passion of mine with my children, that they'll find it along the way, if that's what they need.

For today, I want to see the beautiful things that the sunbeams illuminate, no matter how small or seemingly inconsequential they might be.