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All Gussied Up

I almost lost my teeth last Friday. Provoked by the cruel taunts of friends, I'd been considering giving my car a wash. It had been at least three (maybe seven) years since I'd last sprayed the thing. The grimy build-up, the tumble of seedy carcasses, and the paint from a thousand bird ploppings had become a badge of honor for my 13-year-old Toyota Corolla.

The decision did not come easily. I had enjoyed watching the sooty creep of my exhaust spray as it expanded along the right rear of my bumper. Diagnosed over a year ago as "burning oil", the car looked, according to one giggly colleague, "like it had been through a fire." So why wash it at all? Perhaps it comes in knowing this is my last chance to appreciate the car I have owned since before I married, and before any of my children's lives began. My wife labeled it "a junker" years before I could embrace such a moniker, but once I agreed with her on this, all bets were off and it seemed to amuse me to watch its decline.

The vinyl border around the windows started peeling, I've torn down what I could. The windshield is cracked from a stone that flew up in 2004. My front seat passenger must wait for a valet to open their door as it does not open from the inside. The driver's side door doesn't open from the outside, but now that I've pried off the inner handle, you can grip the mechanical rod through the exposed hole in the door, and pulling it toward the window, release the door. If it doesn't look like rain, I can keep my window down and reach in to open it. And probably worst of all, is the muckety-muck that covers the area between the seats, under the cuprack, and the carpets--no doubt from years of toppled soda cups and coffee splatters.

Its most recent diagnosis was a broken coolant senser (or something like that)--a device that helps the car identify the internal and external temperature. Without it, my engine thinks it's always 30 below zero. Somehow I found a way to pass my Georgia emissions exam this month, and it felt like reason to celebrate with a washing. I wholly expect this to be my car's last year with me, and as we take this victory lap together, I think she should be clean.

Waiting on the Trumpet Blast

Christmas Eve services were absent from my childhood. It's the New Year's Eve service I remember.

Magic dangled over the precipice between today and tomorrow, history about to unfold, with the promise that nothing would never be the same again. I never really cared for change, but I liked staying up late.

The service would have been short, designed so that we'd be on our knees at the stroke of midnight. Though there was no stroke, the hands of the clock ticked silently and far away on the back wall of the sanctuary. I would sneak-a-peek (okay, many peeks), mesmerized by the distant future and determined to see it click alive with my own eyes. I understood being bathed in God's presence as a new year began, but I felt cheated that a year disappear without fanfare, the believers' eyes opening somewhere after 12:05 with a reverent amen.

Fear trapped me there on my knees. I believed God would choose the most obvious time to send His Son back to earth with a trumpet blast. Afraid I wasn't quite ready, I'd worry over my sins, watching and praying. It's silly to think the God who promised an end when we least expected it, would use the nonsynchronized hands of a church clock in Minnesota as his countdown trigger. For goodness sake, we weren't even on eastern standard time.

After a closing song, the faithful watchers were released to the basement for all kinds of sweet goodies. My friends were there, and we filled our bottomless stomachs for a king-of-the-hill match on top of a 15-foot high mound of snow pushed together by city trucks in the parking lot.

All reverance forgotten, we pushed and scraped for supremacy, our mothers calling us to the car before we could ascend the throne. 

Last Sips of an Old Romance

 
Today I missed my last huzzah at the neighborhood Starbucks, a location that let its lease expire. For three years my Corolla’s tires crunched over the gravel lot belonging to this respite on the side of the highway. Perched on top of a music studio, its floors were bare linoleum and existed in three planes—entry floor space, order area, and lakeside view. Often there were artworks or framed photographs from local artists displayed on the walls for purchase. I came here to write my first great novel—sparingly and randomly at first, before finally settling into a three or four days per week morning ritual. Along the way the first great novel was shelved, giving way to book two, the dream adjusted downward from “a million dollar advance” to “let’s just get published.”

My favorite spot was along the lake, back to the front wall, plugged in and facing the customers and serving bar. Sometimes another writer or worker (I didn’t know which) would sit nearby and share an electric outlet. Usually what counted for company were an infrequent pair of early morning Bible study dudes or a lonely young cop who read his Bible along the other wall.

Each day like clockwork, a gaggle of seniors would scoot in for their 7:30 breakfast chat. At times it was comforting, listening to the group read headlines from their morning paper, knowing they had nowhere urgent to be. When I got up to pack my bag somewhere between their arrival and 8:00, I would feel a pang of jealousy at their freedom. Chuck, a soft grump who liked to talk up the Starbucks crew, and his smiling sidekick wife the central players, holding court on the topics of the day.

Living History

When I read history, with the little I know of the subject, I find myself calling silently to the players, warning them of their impending demise. From my comfortable chair, I can usually spot their folly and know when things aren't going to end well.

Usually my wisdom is a cheat--I'm in the future afterall, and their story has only been written because something significant evolved from the mundane. You don't get a cup of coffee knowing the refrigerator's going to fall on you, anymore than a historian would write about it unless it was the instrument of your death, or the impetus for your salvation.

This is why I prefer history to current events. With history I know what's coming, or at the very least, that something significant will form from the described event. But living through history gives no such advantage, offers no absolute warnings, and the mundane can't be diagnosed as significant until much later.

But then enters God. Or more accurately, there God is--with His clear prescience and perfect will. For Him there are no surprises, no miscalculations, no adjustments required. He knows the story, He owns the story, and by trusting Him, He will carry me through the story--safely, purposefully, and lovingly.

Part of me wishes I could sit comfortably as my life unfolds, but then no one gets to read the last page before the book is written.

Worship Well

I've never done worship well.

Like most of my contemporaries, worship means to sing with others of like mind and heart. But my heart rarely connects the way it should. I find myself straining to get the music right, to hit the notes, to not bleed the ears of the person in front of me. I watch the hand-motions of those leading the music. Sometimes they wave, conducting the voices in the hall (I have no idea what to do with these gestures), sometimes they clack at percussions or hang limply at their side, tapping the thigh on the beat. I'm easily distracted, forgetting the power of the words, the Scripture I'm singing back to God.

I know there's much more to worship. I know this because I have lept from the couch and raised my hands at a 50-yard touchdown pass and because I have leaked tears over my daughter's smile, and went to a far-off place when I smelled the pages of a new book. But in this I worship only the creature, not the Creator who is to be ever praised Amen.

My Favorite Facebook Status Updates (of late)

There's no good way to archive my best Facebook moments, so why not do it here?

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September 15, 8:46 am via Mobile Web: If I don't think about the Braves, and don't follow their games, they can't hurt me. Right?   --> It's been a BAD month for the Braves

September 12, 10:03 pm via Mobile Web: Dan Patrick is beginning to look alot like Regis. --> Seriously, have you LOOKED at him lately?

September 12, 2:27 pm: I need a "man-cave" ... but I'd settle for an underground tunnel to Starbucks. --> Sunday was a very long day cooped up with kids. The trip to the park helped a lot. They came too ;-)

September 10, 4:18 pm via Mobile Web: I'm not looking forward to sleeping on the earth tonight, with only waterproofing as my cushion. But I am looking forward to a good time with friends and my 5 little rascals. --> It was a beautiful thing on a perfect evening.

September 5, 8:43 pm via Mobile Web: Who will be the next Lard Butt? In about 15 mins I'll begin drafting the 2010 edition of my historic franchise. --> The Butts are 1-0 and since the draft I've added Fred Taylor and Austin Collie to the team.

grape juice

I'm staring at a thimble's worth of grape juice, contemplating the lingering, chalky taste of a bread Chiclet. I pray, trying to make sense of this centuries-old ritual. Then, in visualizing threads of thorns, pressed into his head, cutting him and making him bleed, I begin to see the import of what I hold in my hand. 

I dwell on the pain, the excruciating, senseless pain of one who was born perfect, who lived perfectly, whose life was formed in this world so that I could be made perfect.

Blood splashes on the walls of my mind, from the snickering guards who whipped my Savior, weakening him for the sacrifice, to the blood of countless sheep shed for acts of contrition long forgotten.

I take this plastic cup, it's dark red fruit, and I drink in remembrance.

Happy Sick People

 I was dismayed to find myself the lone sick guy when I arrived for my 3:45 doctor's appointment this afternoon. Is it not December flu season? Is the world not racked with an H1N1 frenzy? 

Today I spoke like Scooby Doo, an improvement over my eerie silence on Sunday. My doctor and I chattered away, he like a jolly Christmas elf, as he rose to the challenge--getting me to talk professionally for my taped interview in the morning. I gave him 16 hours to get me in shape and so I endured a shot, and a double-dose of mixed drugs. 

While I waited for a nurse to prick me in both the butt (throat super solider serum) and arm (cholesterol screening), I looked across the room at the racks of informational brochures on all that ails the middle-aged patient: Acid reflux, frequent bladder urges, heart disease, diabetes, H1N1, restless leg syndrome--you name it, they had a smiling face on the front cover. Each diagnosed condition warranted a delighted model, but I was unsure if these indicated joyfully recovered individuals, or hopeful soldiers ready to endure with joy in their hearts.  

In the end, the doctor told me not to talk until just before interview time, so I've nodded gamely at question upon question from my five kids, sat quietly in the corner during my son's Cub Scout meeting, and comforted my wife with listening eyes and a hug. I've just finished a chaser of lemons upon lemons with honey, it must be doing something--my throat reacted with ferocious gagging. T-minus 10 hours now.

I Know What She Did

I know what she did. Maybe she didn't intend to leave me in the dark, but that's where I was--nestled in my glorious bliss. She calls me a packrat. But are memories only to be imagined? Or can we hold them in our hands and smell their faded glory?

It may seem like nothing, but it was my boy's wallet. More like a coin purse, but do you think I'd tell him that? He inherited it from his brother, the mesh-sacked Zebra with the zipper down the back, and he carried it with his pennies and nickels--all of them quarters to him.

He has a new wallet now, one that folds into velcro, but this was his first and it embodies him. Tonight it toppled out of my trunk, an unsold offering at the community consignment sale. She had tried to pawn our memory for a dollar. My tears for this memory are worth more than that.

You Don't Want Me as Your Neighbor

I'm one of those terrible neighbors. We have no grass in our front yard. Well, that's not quite true--there's crab grass here and there, mostly by the sloping curb, and it makes my chest swell. It's long and reed-like and needs to be mowed, but sadly, it's the best part of our yard.

The rest of the yard is a dusty chalk of mud, but it's not even good mud, because there are no mounds or texture, only a smooth surface that looks like the work of a paint roller. The worst of it sits at the top of our upward climbing yard, so that this eyesore is all the more visible.

In April I planted a weeping willow in the middle of this square of a yard, with the hope that--in a year or two--it would cover at least some of my sins, with pinestraw or mulch and a little rounded wall lying beneath the tree in its shadow.

The bushes on the perimeter of the yard would look better if I could keep them from their Amazonian sprawl. But this impossible as I keep cutting through the power cord with my hedge trimmer each time I started in on them. It gets expensive when you pay $36 for a 10-minute, incomplete session.

When we moved in seven years ago, there was grass, but as we hit our first spring I realized that the shoots were merely dusty grafts clinging to netting. I tried to improve the situation, but in my eventual frustration I tore everything out to start fresh. Then nothing grew. We've sodded, scattered, and raked in seedlings, but our success is very modest and quickly dies. We've cut down trees to give ourselves more sun, then wished we'd left them up so the yard didn't get so dry. I've destroyed bushes to plant flower beds, only to discover robust gardens of grass where the bushes once sat.

Our meager shoots and burgeoning crabgrass have grown long and scraggly, and are sorely in need of trimming. The lawnmower I bought for the house stopped working after one season, and rather than hunt down a mechanic or buy a new one, we've been weed-wacking the grasslings and dragging a spinning, chopping machine at the grass. It doesn't work, and now the handle is coming off.

It's hard to believe I'm descended from a mechanical family--my paternal grandfather the proud owner of a small engine repair shop where I whiled away the hours as a young boy, sitting on lawnmowers, listening to my grandfather's belly laughs.