for the father, on the occasion of his 69th birthday

That's Kevin, top left. What a cutie.

Time is weird. Maybe it's the passing of time, rather, the way it shifts and colors your perspective. When I was a kid the span of years between my father and I seemed enormous. Now, at 38, with three kids of my own, the gap between our ages and life experiences is a fraction of what it once was.

Today is my father's birthday. 

The mater and paterfamilias,
on the occasion of their wedding

I don't think I was ever what you'd call a daddy's girl. I wasn't really a mama's girl, either, if you ask me.  My Facebook relationship status with both of my parents is probably best summed up with "it's complicated" but I'm not sure that's a bad thing. I'm not sure there's anything more mixed up and turned around than the love between a parent and their kid. I love them both. I am exceedingly fond of both of them.  I am lucky in all these things.

This marks the 69th year my father has circled the sun. 

Los Angeles, 1982.  My big head is hiding
my sister Megan, hanging out in utero.

During the 38 years my orbit has been intertwined with his we've had lots of adventures together.  Our memories are not of father/daughter dances, at least not the foofy kind that involve sparkly dresses and corsages.  Our father/daughter dances were self-choreographed numbers to Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me Al," cardancing to Phil Collins' "Take Me Home."  

Motorcycle rides across Wisconsin and three am viewings of Halley's Comet, winter camping at Devil's Lake and pitching a tent at Road America.  Dirt track racing in Sun Prairie.  On family trips he drove and I navigated from the passenger seat.  

My dad's so cool he got
Tina Turner on vinyl
as a birthday present.

When I got interested in mythology in second grade, he gave me Edith Hamilton and Homer. He was maybe a little optimistic about my attention span.  When MC Hammer came to Marcus Ampitheatre he chaperoned, and bought us Hammertime shirts.  

I love to write because I learned it from him. Politics and dry humor, a sharp tongue and a compulsive desire to correct mispronunciation, nature or nurture they're all his fault.

Kevin and Aidan,
best friends forever.

Almost four decades worth of inside jokes and bickering over grammar and political rants, good memories and things that ache. A lot of Guinness.

Almost four decades and I feel like I've only scratched the surface of what makes the man tick.  Inasmuch as we can never really know anyone, even the ones we are closest to, maybe it makes sense that our parents are a mystery.

These guys, though. 

It was my dad who introduced me to Norman Maclean, who wrote in A River Runs Through It, "We can love completely what we cannot completely understand."

I guess that's what keeps things interesting, yeah?

Happy Birthday, Dad.

when they ring those golden bells for you and me

It was in the shadow of Katrina that I started working in funeral service, stumbled my way into a position because I had a skill set that filled a need and I was available yesterday. In those days and weeks that followed, I witnessed incredible acts of kindness and caring from death care professionals who stepped into crisis and did what they do best: tending to the living while caring for the dead.

I saw the the caliber of men and women they are, time and again. In ways large and small, I watched them do extraordinary things for the communities they served.

See, when the waters receded in New Orleans, they left behind the dead. Some of those dead were never claimed, took up space in a warehouse-turned-halfway-house between this world and the next. It was funeral service that said oh no, this cannot be. It was funeral directors in New Orleans, along the Gulf Coast, throughout the country who pushed for a place for those dead to rest. They organized and fundraised and pressed and pushed, made plans for a memorial that reflected the same swirling lines of the hurricane that brought them all together.

In August 2008, just weeks into a new role, I watched funeral directors step up to the plate again. In the shadow of Gustav they gathered at the end of Canal Street, dark suits and white gloves, pristine despite the bright sun and heat that shimmered off the paths leading into the old Charity Hospital Cemetery.

It was supposed to be a full jazz funeral, but with the threat of another big storm the service was scaled back. At one point there was talk of canceling altogether, but these souls had waited long enough. From the warehouse that held them to the memorial where they'd rest, a solemn procession. At the gates of Charity Hospital Cemetery, funeral directors and first responders, priests and politicians, a jazz trumpeter and a few curious onlookers gathered together to lay to rest the remains of 86 of Katrina’s dead who had nowhere else to call home.

When the last casket had been placed, the politicians spoke. I don't remember what they said.

At 9:28 a.m. the bells of the city rang out, call-response, marking the moment when the levees failed. A man-made tragedy that only seemed to spiral in the days and weeks and months ahead.

August 2008, three years after the waters receded, and the wounds left behind were still angry and raw. Ken Ferdinand played “Amazing Grace,” a lone trumpeter's song carried off in the wind. We held our breath, how sweet the sound, and hung on to hope and prayed for healing for the city and her people. Hope and heartache so often go hand in hand, it seems, and the city knows both too well. But you can't keep New Orleans down.

When I think of the horror and devastation of 10 years ago, I can't help but also think of the power and beauty of that service now seven years past. A chance for closure, a healing, grace manifested because the men and women who worked with death on an intimate basis understood how important it was for those souls to have a place to rest. How important it was for the rest of us to have a means, an outlet, for our grief.

For who and what we lost, in the storm and in the days after, for the men and women who created a communal space to give voice to that loss, for ten years of healing and so much work left to be done - for all this, I pray.

I remember.

don't stop 'til you get enough

 Generally speaking, I think advice is worth the paper it's printed on. Most of the people giving it are entirely unqualified, and most of the people who need to hear it have deaf ears.

Come Sunday, it's seven years. It's not a remarkable amount of time, but it feels like forever and a moment. Sometimes I amuse myself by reading all the columns that tell you what to look for in a partner, all the secrets to being happily married, to surviving kids. 

The thing is, no two marriages are alike. No two anythings are.  Even identical twins, mirror genetic images, are their own people from the moment they draw their first breath. Hell, probably before. So trying to pretend that there are a set of rules easily followed that lead to happily-ever-afters seems disingenuous at best.

The truth is, I ignored all the advice I give to other people.  He met my kid too soon, we got engaged too soon, we got married before we'd asked all the difficult questions.  Don't stay together for the kids, they say, and yet honestly? I'm not sure if we hadn't gotten pregnant practically on our wedding night that we would have survived a really tumultuous and hard first year.  

We are both stubborn and headstrong and difficult in our own ways, and we gritted our teeth through that year and the next, and the next.  Truth be told, I'm not sure we hit our stride til we did the unthinkable: abandoning everything and everyone we knew, the entirety of our support system, to take a leap of faith and move in search of a better life. 

We've fought hard for it, and each other, and in between all the hard moments and desperate moments I found this man who is my partner, who is my straight man, who is my best friend, who I love a million times more than the day I pledged to spend the rest of this life with, and whatever’s after.  I am whole on my own.  I was never in search of another half.  But the pieces of me that were stretched thin and worn in places, the parts that were broken and bruised - they are whole today because he's next to me.

I am many things, but mostly I am grateful.  For today, and the day before it, the hard days and the plain days and the beautiful days and the best days.  I don't believe anyone enters into a union believing it's going to end, that it's a passing thing, that this person they have pledged their life and love to is not the one they will grow old with. It happens, though. 

I don't know what tomorrow holds. I am not in a position to predict the future and the adventure is in the unraveling so I'd just as soon not.  So I hold on tightly to today, and the series of todays that led us to this one, that wrote our shared history in blood and sweat and tears and smiles and a whole lot of baby crap. Literally.  Today is another day that is ours, together.  That's a great day.

The one piece of advice I ever held onto has been repeated to me more than once by a good friend of ours, the priest who married us. Reflecting on the unique challenges that come to being partners and parents, especially of young children, he said that sometimes the only thing to do is put your head down and keep going, keep plowing through, until you get to the other side.  And on those days when it all feels like too much, that's what I do. It's worked, so far. 

Seven years.  Gratitude for every moment that brought us to this one, for the family we've built and the love we have for each other.  We are so lucky.  Tomorrow may be another story.  So thank you for today, and todays past. For super seven.  

Here’s looking at you, eight.

What's in a bracelet?

They're ubiquitous these days, I know. Yellow and red and green and pink, all the colors of the rainbow, heartache and hope in a rubber band.

I worked in funeral service for six years. The men and women who are called to this profession understand better than most how fleeting this life is, how quickly death can come calling. Maybe that's why they hug so much, learn as much about you as they can, ask after your kids and pray for your parents.

I met Bob and Chris early on in my career at NFDA.  Bob was the incoming president, Chris his amazing wife. It wasn't until we started traveling together to hospice conventions that I really got to know Chris, though, her big smiles and throaty laugh.  The last time I traveled with them was to New Orleans, nine years ago. I was struck by how in love they were, two crazy kids wandering the Quarter.

Chris's story is amazing. It's one of resiliency, time and time again, strength and faith and love.  I have been awed, time and again, at her warrior heart.  

She's still fighting the cancer that has tried time and again to best her.  I have to imagine there are days she doesn't want to get out of bed and yet day in and day out her light radiates from thousands of miles away on my computer screen, in words of support left for her, in the love she shares with others.  The life she and Bob have made, the family they raised, it's powerful testimony to their faith and the love they have for each other.

I don't wear a lot of jewelry, but I wear that pink bracelet. Chris Biggins strong, it says, and invariably someone asks me what the story behind it is.

"Let me tell you about my friend Chris," I smile, and by the time I'm done she's gained another cheerleader, another person inspired, another person praying.

I don't think you can possibly know how many lives you've touched, Chris.  We're rooting for you, and holding you up in prayer and wrapping you up in love and light. 

Marry the man today.

Six years. Feels like longer, because sometimes it's hard to remember life before us.

Marriage is hard. In some ways it feels harder than parenting because there's not even really the benefit of biological instinct to help your way through some of the hard stuff.  In six years there's been plenty of that, plenty of moments when it felt like the ground was going to open up and swallow us whole but every time we've been able to claw and scratch and work our way through it to sturdier ground. The foundation under our feet has never felt stronger, and the view from here is pretty great.

This was a big and crazy year, and he was the rock through all of it. Job changes and stress

and craziness and through it all he was always right there to hold me, make me laugh, leave some little silly token of affection to brighten up my day and my workspace. This is the man who taught himself to cross-stitch on Youtube so he could recreate the Hawkblock as a Christmas present. I'm still not sure how he's ever going to top that one.

I've said before he makes me believe in better endings. He makes me want to be a better person not because he's ever tried to change me but because he loves me where I am.

I took my wedding vows very seriously, and I'm grateful for every better and I'm even more grateful for every worse - and there'll be more of both to come no doubt - because they're

the mile markers on the journey that's brought us here.

Six years and I love him more today than I could possibly have imagined then, because of everything that's happened in the space between.  Happy Anniversary, M.

Bringing home the dead

If you don't think ritual matters in how we process death and loss, I'd urge you to take a close look at the coverage today from the Netherlands, where the first bodies from the MH17 crash were received at Eindhoven Air Base.

Ritual gives us process in the midst of chaos and despair, it gives us context and community with which to experience our grief and loss, and, ultimately, find the space to begin to heal.

Forty hearses left the base, each carrying a single coffin. They traveled to the town of Hilversum, an hour and a half's drive away, where formal identification will occur.  The overpasses were lined with people by the hundreds, tossing flowers, shedding tears.

Ritual provides us with an outlet for our personal grief, the grief we share.  It gives us community to cry with, it gives us arms to lift us when our knees give out, hands to hold ours when we feel close to shaking apart.

At Eindhoven today, a lone trumpeter played The Last Post, a military song for those lost in war. A nation stood still. Church bells tolled, and the world mourned.

Ritual matters.

a lie we don't believe anymore

I am old enough that I was on the tail-end of “duck and cover” drills in elementary school, a practice that felt as terrifying to me then as it does ridiculous now. I remember the Cold War, could work my second-grade self into all kinds of anxiety over the possibility of nuclear annihilation, the big dark THEM that was the Soviet Republic obliterating us all. Terrified, despite the fact that the threat was largely theoretical.

Sting released “Russians” in 1985.  I was seven or eight at the time, and I remember one of our teachers playing it for us and while it is perhaps a little overly trite in its messaging the lyrics have stuck with me over the years.  There’s no such thing as a winnable war, Sting sings, it’s a lie we don’t believe anymore.

I was lucky enough to be in the room when the Wye River Memorandum was signed in 1998, pressed against a back wall watching history unfold before me.  (It was maybe the first time I really fangirled Joe Biden.)  Arafat and Netanyahu and King Hussein, President Clinton and Vice President Gore. There was a palpable sense of accomplishment in the room, measured hope. 

Or maybe I was just a young, idealistic kid who wanted to believe, desperately, in resolution. Because sixteen years later it’s hard to remember what that hope felt like. There are no easy answers, there is an abundance of armchair quarterbacking, and image after relentless image of parents mourning their children. My heart aches, from this place I live where that kind of violence is still largely theoretical.

For whatever it’s worth, this is maybe the smartest thing I’ve seen written about what’s happening - what’s happened for years - in a long time: [What to do when an Israeli-Palestinian ‘peace is out of reach.]

It’s hard to pray for peace anymore. Maybe the change in vocabulary will help.