We baptized my second daughter last Saturday.

Baptism is kind of a funny thing, huh? We dip ourselves into tap water, say a few words invoking an invisible God and with water streaming from our eyes proclaim ourselves clean. We just want to be clean. Clean of what? Clean of sin is usually the answer. 

Sin, that three letter word. 

Sin, that thing some think must have been created by God. If it’s part of the programming, is sin a feature or a bug? And if it’s the former, why God, why? And if it’s the latter, is baptism the patch and God the frantic developer? 

Sin, that thing some people think is simply inherent in Creation. And so, a God who creates must deal in oppositions and where there is life, there must be death, where there is joy, there must be sorrow, where there is purity, there must be also be pollution. I used to think this, I used to see the world in binary oppositions. But it’s not quite the whole picture, is it? 

Life leads to death, but death also yields life - on forest floors and in our hearts. And not to get all Inside Out on us, but Joy is held together by threads of sorrow. Sorrow doesn’t compete with joy, it completes it. Joy without sorrow is just happiness. Happiness is the stuff of Disney, Joy is the stuff of eternity. And purity? Well, nothing is really pure is it? Everything is made of something else.  Each little and big object appearing solid while really composed of millions just barely touching, bouncing atoms and then topped as many reaching, breaching microbes. A table is like this, we are too. 

So what then of sin? If it is not merely utilitarian opposition, then what does it complete? Where does it lead us? I think there are many answers to that question, but today we’re talking of baptism and I think baptism is one of those many answers.  The baptism waters require sin. Sin leads us to baptism. And once there does baptism clean us of sin? Maybe. But only if sin is so much less than we’ve made it out to be. Something that can be wiped off our surfaces, rather than something embedded in mortality. Despite our obsession with cleanliness, it’s not a scouring we’re after here, it’s liberation. Does baptism liberate us from sin? I think so. But only if sin is so much more than we’ve made it out to be. Something that co-exists with us and God and Christ and requires intervention from us all. 

Is sin as a burden the thing I want my daughter, or any of us, to know when our, eyes are still dripping with the baptism water? No. Not really. 

So what do I want my daughter to know when she looks back to her father pressing her under the baptism waters? 

I want her to know that creation is made of a thousand million trillion different bouncing parts barely touching, topped with microbes and only giving a sense of solidity. I want her to know she is part of this Creation and God is too. I want her to know that when she dips every part of her under that water, that God accepts every part of her. I want her to know that every part of her is made to accept every part of God. I want her to know that Christ died for her, not so her sins could be scrubbed from her skin till she’s raw, but so that sin - that thing which is so much more than doing wrong, that thing that is not Spirit - can be transmuted and transformed into something holy. I want her to know that she hasn’t joined a church, she’s joined the Body of Christ. And that the Body of Christ is not meant to just transform her, it’s meant to help her remember to transform the lives of others. That she is obligated to feed the hungry, mourn with those that mourn, keep families together, seek God and spread hope.

And what of this church, this imperfect institution that housed the waters we covered her in? What do I want her to know about it? I want her to know that it, like her, like God, like a table, is made of a hundred million different buzzing parts, barely touching, topped with microbes and only offering a sense of solidity. And as long as she can find Christ in the better portion of those bouncing bits? As long as they are stable enough to bear her as she presses her hands and feet and heart against them as she scrambles to eternity? This can be the place she seeks Him. 

And if ever she feels herself falling through our church, if the atoms that compose this place no longer work together to hold her up? I want her to know that while these walls of our faith can contain Christ, they do not restrain Him. That He is anywhere her faith can carry Him. That her baptism belongs - not to me, but to her, not to a church, but to Christ, not to this world, but the next. 

And I want her to know that if someday these living waters don’t give her life? If Christ and God and eternity don’t have a place in her head or heart? That my love for her is as powerful as the God I’ve given her. That I am the kind of parent I’ve taught her God is. And that I will always walk with her even if she chooses to walk apart from Them. (Of course, I’m quite sure God will do the same for all of us...and that we’ll all...every faith, every people, walk together when the day is done. But I’ll not bother her with my certainty, I’ll only rejoice in it. Sometimes I wonder if this is like God too.)

The world changed after Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg Castle Church. Popes shook, kings cracked, governments broke open and were built up again. Sometimes I can imagine the entire earth seizing up and then releasing and then seizing up again in the centuries that followed. 

 In Lutheran countries, their understanding of man's relationship with God changed, their understanding of God's relationship with man changed, and many women rubbed their hands together and thought, “Okay. It’s our turn! We’re ready.” 

 It’s funny how much the world can shift while the worlds of women remains essentially the same. 

 The men looked at them and gasped, “Without the nunneries, what do we do with the single ones?" So they maintained the endowments for the nunneries and declared them secular convents for middle and upper-class single white women. (No one at that time, or any other, has been particularly concerned about accommodating other classes or colors of women.) These were called Damenstift. Damen means ladies. Stift means donation, generally the estate the secular convent stood on had been donated. When I read about Damenstifts I wonder if we could reclaim the word. So many of the women who were put away donated so much to the world that kept changing without them. 

 One of those women was Catharina Amalia Dorothea von Schlegel. We know she was born on Oct 22, 1697. We know she died sometime after 1768. We know she lived in a Damenstift. And we know she wrote Be Still, My Soul in 1750. Except she wrote it in German, it was called, "Stille meine Wille, dein Jesus hilft siegen." It was very beloved and very German until Jane Laurie Borthwick, another single sister in another place and time unkind to women - especially single women - began a great translation of pietic German hymns.

 With help from her sister, Jane translated 122 hymns and published them in a book called, Hymns from the Land of Luther. Catharina’s great work was in the collection. Translation isn’t transcription, it’s transformation. In giving us Catharina's Be Still, My Soul - Jane was giving us hers also. In 1850, Be Still, My Soul was carried from the German tongue into English hearts. It has remained there ever since. 

 I often think of these women. Giving us this hymn about upheaval and change and a steady God. They lived in a time, in a world, that must have felt very much out of their control. I imagine their hopes were many and their objects few. If I close my eyes, I can sit with them each in their rooms, one hundred years apart. I can watch the candle dimming as they work over these words, I can feel their courage as they face the dark while naming the light. 

 We’re not so different from these sisters. Time passes but the scene - for all of us - remains the same. We're each in dimly lit a room. Sometimes writing something new, mostly trying to translate the words that have come before into something we can understand now. As we do so, we'll not just transcribe, we'll transform. We'll change them and make them our words too. We'll do our best to face the dark while naming the light. As we work, the candle will falter, the world will change and the hour will hasten on.

Be still, my soul: The Lord is on thy side;

With patience bear thy cross of grief or pain.

Leave to thy God to order and provide;

In ev'ry change he faithful will remain.

Be still, my soul: Thy best, thy heav'nly Friend

Thru thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

Be still, my soul: Thy God doth undertake

To guide the future as he has the past.

Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake;

All now mysterious shall be bright at last.

Be still, my soul: The waves and winds still know

His voice who ruled them while he dwelt below.

Be still, my soul: The hour is hast'ning on

When we shall be forever with the Lord,

When disappointment, grief, and fear are gone,

Sorrow forgot, love's purest joys restored.

Be still, my soul: When change and tears are past,

All safe and blessed we shall meet at last.

Katharina von Schlegel, b. 1697;

trans. by Jane Borthwick, 1813-1897

In 2014, I went on a human trafficking raid with Operation Underground Railroad to the Dominican Republic. In the years since, my feelings about the organization have become complicated. I’ve never written about this because, frankly, I didn’t know if my white middle class discomfort should have any negative impact on an organization that could take even one child out of the world of trafficked children. I didn’t know if my qualms with method and motivation had a place. I still feel this way.

But.

Last week Operation Underground Railroad posted a quote across social media from its founder, Tim Ballard, in support of building the wall. It was a quote pulled from a Fox News article where Ballard argued for the construction of the border wall to help stop human trafficking. After being published to the hundreds of thousands of people that follow OUR, the quote was featured on The White House’s official FB account. Last week, I spent hours - days - writing a rebuttal. Someday, I might post it. Right now, all I’ll say is that there is no expert consensus that a wall will help do anything meaningful to stem the bloody tide of trafficked sisters and brothers. Some argue it will make it worse. But honestly, that’s just not the point. Reasonable minds can differ on the best way to address this scourge. I believe OUR is full of reasonable minds.

Rather today, I want to post a letter written by a hurting Mexican American sister. She saw the OUR post the first time because she follows the organization on Instagram. She saw the post dozens of times afterwards when church leader after church leader, friend after friend shared it on their facebook pages and instagram stories. She wrote to me because she was afraid to say anything on any of those facebook pages, instagram stories because whenever she requests or suggests nuance when discussing immigration she has been met with racism both subtle and sinister. She was also afraid to offer public constructive criticism of OUR when they are so venerated in her part of the country. Can we just sit and weep over that for a moment? I can’t imagine that is an outcome that OUR would support or wishes to sustain.

Sisters and Brothers. I would suggest that we are doing something wrong if our neighbors are afraid to express their pain to us. I would suggest we are doing something wrong if we are more intent on defending soundbites than on extending the circle of our protection. I would suggest we are doing something wrong if we’ve made anyone feel like it is better, SAFER, to be silent and sorrowful than spoken and supported.

And finally, before we move on to this good sister’s good letter, can I just say? If you are a leader in your church, odds are you have one or two OR MORE undocumented families living under your stewardship. Please decide (and help the leaders around you decide) that those families come before any political conviction or border security idea you hold, no matter how dear.

When you are called to be one of the Lord's shepherds, you are asked to put away many things. Sharing posts supporting building the wall is one of them. If you feel passionately about creating safe places by building walls? Great. You can get back to the secular work of wall-building when you are no longer claimed by the call of God. Return to it only AFTER you're released from the spiritual work of making sure everyone feels they have found a sanctuary in your care - no matter how they came to be in your congregation. That is the safe place you are in charge of right now. Please protect that place, those people within it, even more fiercely than you think a wall will protect our border.

The letter writer has chosen to remain anonymous because she is tired and afraid. This letter is about a post about the wall, but it is also about what her neighbors believe the wall will hold back. Are you her neighbor? She might live down the street from you. You don’t need to agree with her on everything, you do need to become someone she can approach without fear. How can you help her lift her burden, so she is not as weary? How can you help make her less afraid? How can you…help?

Dear O.U.R.,

I have little hope that this letter will be read but I still feel compelled to ask for your help.   I have great respect for you organization and have donated money, shared on social media, and watched all of your online courses.  You bring so much hope and goodness to many people inside and outside the United States.

I write to you today because of your recent Instagram post about building the wall.  I totally trust that Mr. Ballard is one of the most educated people on the subject of border safety and human trafficking.  I too believe in securing our border from threats and drastically changing the way we deal with matters of immigration.

I believe that Mr. Ballard is rightfully very respected and has a lot of power to change the minds and hearts of many people. It is because of his power to influence, that I ask he clarify his statement about the border wall.  He only expressed his views on the bad people that are trying permeate our borders. He is, of course, not wrong. People with ill-intent do cross our borders. I know this because I lived in Brownsville, Texas. I understand the dynamics of border towns. But he did not mention anything, not even a word of solidarity, about the good people trying to come the United States.  

By failing to mention the good people on the other side of the border, he is perpetuating the stereotype that “all Mexicans are drug dealers and rapists.”  He is feeding the fear that all immigrants - illegal or legal - want to come and ruin the United states. As a Mexican American living in Utah, I hear these comments everyday.  Many people in my community and in my church who support of the wall also casually and consistently express racist sentiments about Mexicans.

If Mr. Ballard supports the wall, many people might assume he also carries racist sentiments against immigrants, and in turn feel justified to feel that way also because he is very respected. I truly believe that Mr. Ballard, and the O.U.R. organization, cares deeply about all people of color.  Their actions prove this. I know we’ve all been taught that actions speak louder than words, but in the social media world, that is simply not the case. In the social media world, words without nuance produce actions without love.

I ask that Mr. Ballard clarify his beliefs and professional opinions about the well-intentioned people who seek help at the border. Wall or no wall, our immigration system is not set up to help those in need. Coming to the United States legally is only possible through having money and/or connections.  It should not be so, there are many good, impoverished people that are coming to the U.S. in seek of help and want to work hard to build this country Mr. Ballard loves so much. I know many good families that have nothing to do with human trafficking or drugs that are desperate to give their children a better life. I ask that you please acknowledge them also.  I feel despair when I think of leaving them on the other side of the wall with all the “coyotes” and wolves.

If Mr. Ballard sees a need for fortifying our border, I believe him.  I also believe it is his responsibility to speak about a complicated subject with nuance.  My own father came to the United States legally with a student visa and then obtained a doctorate degree.  He has returned to Mexico to better serve his countrymen there. We stay here. Because we want to serve our countrymen here. And still, my 6-year-old son is being bullied at school because many white Americans think all Mexican people are dirty and evil. These are people who respect Mr. Ballard and believe what he says. Mr. Ballard has great power to change this way of thinking and I respectful ask for his help in doing so on social media.

Kind Regards,

A Sister

For the most informative, engrossing, disheartened listen on the US Border? I recommend this trilogy with my whole broken heart.

For further reading on how mothers have always crossed boundaries to save their kids may I suggest this?

A few weeks ago Riley opened a book. Two pieces of paper fell out. Slick and fading, they were tickets from a roundtrip flight my dad took in 2006. A year when there were still paper tickets to leave in between paper pages. I was two months away from being married when he took that flight. He was eight years away from being dead. And those tickets were twelve years away from falling onto my kitchen counter in Oakland.

I held them by their corners, one taking him from his home, one returning him to it. It seemed like if I could get memory and moment to play together, if I could keep the ink from continuing to slip from age-shined surface, if I could tell one force what I hope and one force what I know, if I could close my eyes until they could see the thing waiting to be seen, if I could do all this in a quiet space with a quiet heart, then I’d hear it. His boots on the wood floor. Just around the corner until a moment came, one too certain for a sigh,

“Dad.”

It seemed so real, it still does. A recipe nearly read right. I can’t really explain it. Well, maybe I can. Too many viewings of Interstellar in my adulthood and too many viewings of Somewhere in Time in my childhood. It’s silly. I know.

I put the tickets on a shelf where I won’t lose them.

This article on children being separated from their parents at the border. I wrote it. I think it's important. I'd really appreciate it if you read it. 

My story on our untenable immigration situation was quoted in The Atlantic in an article written by a conservative writer. She is outraged about the separations and thinks her fellow conservatives should be, too.

I have a bit of prose on display at Columbia University this weekend in the Mormon Arts Center Festival. The project is called Handed Down and Altered, "a meditation on canonized scripture as collaborative art." My gold plate appears in Book One. 

And finally, I have an essay in Bravery's beautiful magazine dedicated to Frida Kahlo. You can find the Frida edition HERE. 

Hey guys. Let's keep on keeping on. I'll check back in soon. (Too soon for some of you, I'm sure. Laughing face emoji)

Some days are particularly revealing.

Take today.

I went to my workout class. You know, the one where you shake and nearly puke but leave feeling cleansed of all physical wrongs? At least until you eat that entire package of ramen for lunch? With a fried egg on top? Yeah. That one. Anyways, I’m there and it’s this advanced barre ballbusters class. (Well, not really because there weren’t any balls to bust in this particular class. But maybe we’re all there to get strong enough to bust balls? Anyways. It’s a hard class.)

When I walk in, there are heavy black straps hanging from the barre along the wall. It looks like a scene from some kind of 50 Shades of Gray knock-off. Which I know only from my imagination, not from seeing 50 Shades of Gray or any knock-offs of any shade. Not that I spend a lot of time imagining either of those things. I swear. We’re getting off track here.

The straps worry me a little but the women in the class worry me a lot. Everyone is stretching really, really strenuously. In my usual just-short-of-hell class, the minutes before it starts are spent gently smiling at one another while casually kind of bending. But this class, this speeding-through-the-gates-of-hell class? The waiting women are reaching and writhing and stretching and tightening and clamping and bending. One woman has her head on her ass and her legs in the air. I go sit on the opposite side of the room.

I know what you’re thinking. Comparison is the thief of joy. Sure! Agreed! But Teddy wasn’t comparing himself to Downward Dog Donna when he wrote that, I’ll tell you that much right now. You know what’s the thief of joy? Grunting as you try to touch your toes while the girl next to you folds herself into the human equivalent of a towel swan.

The class starts. We’re doing floor work first and I’m more or less keeping up. I definitely snort while planking but I decide not to be embarrassed. Snorting is stretching for the nose. By the time I take my spot at the barre I’m feeling damn near competent. Everything that I’m doing looks like it takes work and is kind of the drunk version of what the instructor is demonstrating. So what? It DOES take work and the drunk version is STILL A VERSION. I’m about ready to pat myself of the back (a stretch I can do) when it hits me.

The smell.

A heady mix of body odor and maple syrup with a little hot zinc thrown in. It’s not coming from the woman to the right of me, she was next to me on the floor and I didn’t smell a dingdong thing. That leaves the lady on the left. Hello, lady on the left. She’s dressed in an outfit that perfectly coordinates with her multi-colored Nikes. She kind of looks like a bustier Natalie Portman. Which must be really difficult for her. Is it her? It’s got to be her, right? What the hell has she been doing to develop this pungency? Oh my gosh, it’s like an onion patch and the Original House of Pancakes are making babies in my nostrils. It is an aggressive and oddly thick odor. Like, so thick it’s nearly embodied. It deserves a name. It demands a name. I name it Frank.

A quick sniff to make sure it’s not me. I notice the woman to my right noticing me smell myself and I try to turn it into some kind of neck stretch. She’s not convinced. But I am, at least of what matters. I am not the source of the stench. Of course, she doesn’t know that. Man, she just wrinkled her nose. She must be able to smell it, too. This is just great. I bet she thinks it’s me. Can I move? I’d like to move. How can I move? I scan the length of the barre. There’s a spot, at the very end next to the window. I could pretend I need the fresh air. Not in an “it smells like Canadian Hades has a stomachache” kind of way. More like a “I’m weak and could use a cool breeze” kind of way. I could even say something like, “Oh, the heat is making me so dizzy.” That would be convincing. I’m pretty much convinced.

I look at Natalie Portman with boobs again. She doesn’t look like she’d smell. And yet, here we are. Her, the Frank and me. I mean, don’t judge a book by its cover, don’t judge a woman by her Lululemon tights. She doesn’t HAVE to smell like Goop products. She CAN smell like Frank, dammit. That’s her right. As I’m attempting a slide split (but achieving something closer to a crouched wobble), I realize that any one of us can be beset by a Frank. And you know, not all Franks smell. Some look like insecurity or sound like a broken heart or feel like that one time I promised to drop dinner by your house at 5:30 pm but then forgot about it until 1am...three weeks later. And I hope, hope, hope that when I walk into a room accompanied by a Frank, women greet me first and kindly acknowledge Frank second. That they wrap their arms around me and my Frank. That they accept my Frank. Take my Frank upon their shoulders and into their hearts.

With one last heroic, giving glance at my smelly sister, I throw myself into the work out. I will not move down the barre. I’ve got you, girl. And let’s be, well frank, if one of us looks like we'd smell like hot death stopped for brunch, it’s me, not you. Let them wrinkle their noses, I’ll never tell. Je Suis Girl with the Frank.

The rest of the work out went pretty well. I only got tangled in the straps once. Buxom Natalie Portman was one of the first people out the room. I was still feeling pretty impressed with my sisterly solidarity when the woman who’d been to my right - the nose wrinkler - came up to me.

“Oh my gosh, I hate when I get that spot at the barre. The carpet over there always smells so bad. I don’t know what happened there, but it’s always like musty and sweet smelling.”

Ah. The carpet.

“What? A smell? Really? I didn’t notice. My nose is all messed up. Must be my allergies.”

Je suis stinky carpet.

(what the HELL happened to that carpet?)

It’s morning.

Make the breakfast, feed the baby, ask the kids to get dressed, load the dishwasher, remind the kids that getting dressed includes wearing a shirt, calm the baby, calm the nine year old who can't find the right shirt, it's right there, right there on your bed, clear the table, ask the six year old if she thinks part of getting dressed includes the socks she's wearing on her hand (she does), rock the baby, tell your still half-naked children they are driving you mad, when they’re confused tell them you mean mad like crazy, but then maybe also mad like mad, ask them to get dressed again, not dressed again, rather dressed for once, for once when I ask you again to get dressed just get dressed, drink caffeine quietly behind the open fridge door, if you stay calm, they'll stay calm, immediately lose your ever loving mind when the nine year old rounds the corner dressed again...in her pajamas, pajamas she had to put back on using the same amount of effort she would have used to put on regular clothes, more really because you know she tossed her pajama top behind her bed, which means she shimmied under her bed to retrieve the pajama top instead of just reaching for the shirt and leggings you had neatly folded on top of the bed, remember you forgot where you set the baby (her swing, she's happy), for some reason (they're not without reasons just without reason) the children have decided finally to dress themselves with socks on feet and shirts over chests and pants over legs, okay, now. get your shoes on, help them get their shoes on (no one ever tells the happily expectant mother how many hours of her life she will spend whisper cursing while pulling tennis shoes onto tiny floppy feet), remember to pack up the baby, the baby who doesn’t wear shoes yet but someday will, her diaper feels a little wet but not too wet, not seeping through onesie wet, decide the diaper will hold, get down the stairs, remember you don’t have the keys, look for the keys while the baby cries and the girls yell about the baby crying, cry a little - the quiet cheek biting kind - until you find the keys in the car seat next to the baby’s now definitely too wet bum, the diaper didn’t hold, it’s not seeping, it’s sopped, everyone out! out the front door! first the middle and then the oldest and then you, keys in one hand, car seat in the other, the car seat bounces off the door jam and into your thigh, shit. mom, what did you say? nothing, nothing, get in the car, I'm coming, I'm coming, lock the door, turn

And then

It’s morning, still. And you’ve pushed them out into the day. And they’ve dragged you out into the day. And that’s really pretty beautiful, if you think about it.

And soon

they will be at school until the afternoon.  And that is beautiful, too. 

I’m throwing everything I can at this bout of PPD. Unfortunately for my sleep and Netflix habit, "everything I can" includes a membership to Bar Method. It’s like a church for supple people. Or people who want to be supple. SUPPLE. I’m not feeling intimidated by this. I’m a church going person and am used to sitting in pews aspiring to be something I’ll never attain. At least not in this life. There’s something to be said for aspiration, I think.

Plus.

During one of the sessions this week?

There was a Keira Knightley doppelgänger. At one point when I was standing next to her I kind of just whispered, “Keira” to see if she’d respond? She didn’t. Which either means she wasn’t Keira and just thought I was lost in an exercise induced reverie about a dearly departed person named Keira

OR

she WAS Keira and was keen to my scheme and used those Pirate of the Caribbean acting chops to indifferent her way out of the situation.

EITHER WAY.

Ms. (Not So) Knightley could hardly bend at the bar. Just like me, decidedly UN-KEIRA LOOKALIKE MEG! I didn’t feel gleeful about this. I just felt like, “Solidarity, Sister. We are all equal before the barre.”

Which brings me to another little thing. The first half hour of my first class, I was mortified by how violently my body was shaking. I did not know that the flesh that covers my bones could move so...haphazardly. My arms jerked, my legs quaked, my ass cheeks bounced outward and inward and up and down, occasionally crashing into one another. I was rippling like the sea during a storm, a tower of jello mid-flight from table top to floor, I felt completely out of control. At one point, I’m standing there on the balls of my feet, gasping and body quaking, trying not to cry thinking, “How did I get here? Betrayed by my entire composition, RIGHT HERE IN FRONT OF POSSIBLE KEIRA BLEEPING KNIGHTLEY.”

I started slowing down, making smaller moves, lifting lower, anything ANYTHING to contain the visible evidence of my effort. And then, and then, and then,

The very blonde, very toned, very unshaken teacher walked by a woman in front of me and said,

“Good shaking, Sara! That’s what we like to see!”

What the bleep? Good shaking? Wait. This is allowed to look like it hurts? Like it takes work? Like it’s more than we are currently conditioned for? I am not here because I CAN do? I am here to TRY to do? WE ARE ALLOWED TO BE VISIBLE ABOUT OUR TRYING?

This, sisters, blew my bouncing mind.

Work is allowed to look like it takes work. I can shake and quake and quiver in front of you and it doesn’t make me any less strong, any less likely, any less valuable. It just means I’m trying. It’s okay to let people see me try. (And quite frankly between me and you, it’s quite an assumption, this thinking anyone is watching the trembling of my try. They’re focused on their own shivering starts and stops. They don’t care about mine.)

The implications of the whole life application of this concept is pretty damn exciting. 

EMBRACE THE TREMBLE IN YOUR TRY.

So. A pact. If I ever look up from my own wobbling work long enough to notice the wobble in your works, I promise I’ll just smile and shout,

“GOOD SHAKING, SISTER!”

I certainly wouldn’t mind if you thought to do the same.

We are equal before the barre (of life).

AMEN.
 

Nobody told me that you try to find God alongside your children.

I thought by the time they arrived, you basically had your relationship with the Divine figured out. That once the children came, it was all about gathering them and then guiding them to an already cleared place at God’s feet.

“Here babies, here is the place I’ve made soft with the pressure of my knees as I prayed. Here is the place I’ve made green with my tears as I wept. Here is the place where I have found sanctuary. And once I’ve helped you find this place, here is the place we’ll be whole together.”

I’ve got three daughters now and while I gather and guide, it’s through a wilderness in which I’ve carved out no clearings. Increasingly, it seems the work of my mortality is to teach them to let God gather them up, to let God guide them, to let God clear the spaces at their feet, to let God make hard things soft, to let God make withered things green. That maybe the only work any of us must do here is simply let God.

Loving our neighbor is letting God. Feeding the hungry is letting God. Welcoming the unwelcome is letting God. Seeking is letting God. Doubting is letting God. Holding a sorrow in one hand and a hope in the other is letting God. Sitting with discomfort is letting God. Opening our eyes is letting God. Not needing to know, know, know is letting God.

Sometimes letting God is a wound that bleeds until it seems you’ll be emptied. Only something Divine could fill the hollow places and keep you from being blown away.  Sometimes letting God is the fullness of a thousand voices singing Alleluia. And as you sing out too, it occurs to you that if Heaven didn’t already exist, then surely this harmony - this one right now - would force it into three dimensional color.

We blessed Brontë yesterday. She joins us years after her sisters, years that were filled with more wilderness wandering and more letting God. Sometimes I feel like she’ll be shortchanged compared to her sisters - fewer years with us, so many memories she’ll never have. Other times I think it’s her sisters that have been dealt an unfair hand. Brontë came to parents made, if not more polished, then at least more understanding by the years that came before her. We’ve got more patience, less certainty.

When we blessed our first two daughters, we dressed them in long white gowns. Yesterday morning, we put Brontë in a dress that looked like everything I see for her - for each of my daughters - in mortality. It was simply cut. The print was colorful, bold, and messy.  My hands still felt full of her now and her tomorrow as I gave Brontë to Riley, trusting him to give her our blessing. I can trust Riley and he can trust me.

He blessed her to lead, he blessed her to have wonder and curiosity, he blessed her with the patience to grapple in the gray areas, he blessed her with faith and intellectual discovery, he blessed her with an acute ability to feel the love of Heavenly Parents, he blessed her with a closeness to Christ, he blessed her to be opinionated, he blessed her to be steadfast in her philosophies and beliefs - especially those fortified by the Spirit, he blessed her to be a role model to the men and women she meets, he blessed her with the love of her parents and her sisters.

As he blessed her, I felt that mix of the bitter and the sweet, that feeling I can only call Joy. This little girl has come to an imperfect people and we are members of an imperfect church. But as Riley held her and laid our blessings upon her head, it occurred to me that Christ has not ever asked for perfection, He has only asked that we let Him perfect. That we let Him let God.

Yesterday, the congregation sang All Creatures of Our God and King.  

All creatures of our God and King

Lift up your voice and with us sing

As I bounced Brontë and sang along, I felt so filled with the hope and hurt of my fellow seekers, so ready to work alongside them and let God, that it seemed for just the briefest instant that I could sense the shapes and hues of heaven.

Alleluia, Alleluia.

It’s 3 am and I can’t sleep. Something woke me up. Something I ate or something I thought or something I hoped when my breath was deep and my eyes were closed or something I lost as my breath became shallow and my eyes flickered. I am either peaceful or discontent or just racked with heartburn.

It can be all three.

That’s allowed.

The baby kicked and I remembered she was there, somewhere inside of me, rolling and sucking and flailing and curling and cushioned and so I am somewhere inside of me, too. If I can sustain her, I suppose I can sustain me.

Nobody tells you that gestation, 40 weeks in the wilderness, is a time of mourning as well as expectation. I am a vessel of birth and so I am a vessel of death. My death. But her death, too.

The early writers knew this. They had to love it, you always love what creates you. And they had to hate it, you always hate what destroys you. And so they kept Eve alive in parchment and scroll and on rolling tongue. But they marked her flesh with shame and her womb with weakness. You’ve brought me here, Mother and so I love you. You’ve brought me here, Mother and so I hate you.

I love her. But I cannot hate her.

I cannot hate me.

The early writers didn't know much.

Hello, my sweet. I love you. I loved you and so I had you and I had you so I could leave you and so you could leave the ones you love, too. I do not hate you.

Do not hate, you.

Is the leave-taking a symptom of the lovemaking

Or the lovemaking a symptom of the leave-taking

A child comes and we tell her she is made for life but also for death and both are created in her image and she is beautiful.

I am beautiful.

I’ve created something beautiful.

My daughters, you are beautiful.

And there, the reason we reach for God and the heavens and the places we feel but cannot see? We reach for them because we cannot always bear the weight of our own selfless selfishness. Or our selfish selflessness. This creation of something that must be destroyed. But only after its held our hands, stood as witness, through our own destruction. If we are lucky. If they are lucky.

I have been lucky.

It doesn’t feel lucky.

I witness you. I am sometimes sorry I’ve forced you to witness me.

And still, despite my betrayal, she turns in me and my stomach moves with limbs and spirit.

Too fast that one, love? Everything alright, love? Knock once for yes. Not at all for no.

I bless her. Bless her with a power I hold and a vision beyond mine. Not to leave me but to find me. Or let me find her. When this is done. When the Will is done or at least begun. When she’s straining for the echo of my voice or I wish she was.

I bless her with the place I cannot see, the one that wakes me up and puts me back to sleep, because it’s the only blessing I can light in my dendrite hands. It burns but I strike again when it falters and hold it up higher. Follow me. Or know where I’ve gone.

This fire is not mine and so I cannot pour it into your hands. See how it sticks. The places it has gone into my flesh? How I begin to glow like wood that breaks into ash? Crack your hands together until they spark and sputter and flame into blues and oranges and yellows and the stars like they are, not like we’ve drawn them. Can you do it, girl? I know it hurts.

No? Not yet, maybe tomorrow.

Here, I can hold the warmth to your face, our face, and keep the smoke from your eyes.

Don’t cry.  

Somewhere something whispers.

Your life is small and you do not understand. I’ve created your life and I’ve created your death. But I’ve also created the Life that gave you life and I’ve created the Death that will give you death.

And from life comes death and from death comes Death and from Death comes Life and Life once born will not die.

And I roll and suck and flail and kick and curl and am cushioned because I hear the voice of My Mother and if she can sustain my life, I suppose she can sustain Her Life.

Can you hear me?

I knock once for yes.

Because I am in Her and She is in me.

And my life and death bear witness of her Life and Death.

She sets herself alight, and when she goes where I cannot follow, I am left with a blazing negative of her image in a dark space.

I strike my hands together once more.

I love the daughter of the mother. I love the daughter of the Mother.

I love the Mother of the Daughter.

Writing in the kind of coffee shop that is all windows and foam.

Listening to Johnny Cash and Kendrick Lamar while I hit at the keyboard.

Voices calling, voices crying

Some are born and some are dying

Writing about a girl I’ve decided to make out of haze and then grow up into a woman. She’s being raised by some words that don’t capture what I mean and a plot that explains everything I’ve meant for years.

Or maybe that’s reversed.

A quiet moment, when the fingers slow because the world I’m creating has diminished and I can’t feel it anymore. I take a break and turn the music up, maybe the beat in my ears will renew the beat of my heart.

All my grandma’s dead

So ain’t nobody prayin’ for me

And for just a moment that doesn't deserve belief, but still feels more real than the world I’m building or the one I’m being built in, it seems I haven’t been prayed for since my dad died.

And I wonder if I miss him or being prayed for more.

A friend of mine once described a faith crisis as being stuck inside a wall of live wires, suffocating in a seemingly random tangle of energy. I imagined her in there. No idea what each wire leads to, unsure of what will happen if she cuts through just one meandering coil, let alone all of them, to make way for passage or breath.

This description remains.

The girl trapped in a wall, surrounded by streams of current. Wires passing through to a place she cannot see, giving power to good or ill or neither. Even as they hang around her head and close in on her heart, she cannot quite bring herself to sever them because she does not know what will go dark once she does.  

I’ve been waking up inside that space lately, not - this time - because of a faith crisis. Although, heaven knows (literally), that those are always happy to circle back around.

This time, I guess, I’m confident I can chalk it up to, among other things, being thirty-two. Pregnant for the last time, going back to mothering in the particularly physical, emotional way babies and toddlers seem to require. Marriage roles that have become more traditional as our family, Riley’s career and the needs of those around us have grown. Chalk it up to, among other things, that the needs of those around us have grown. That I started writing a book in the spring but a summer with morning sickness and two children did not let it breathe. That what I want - what I feel called to - doesn’t seem to exist in any system or -ism and I wonder if that is a call for general revolution or just personal psychiatric evaluation. That I thought knowing myself would make this well-worn transition different, but really the knowledge is just making my edges sharper and my soft spots bruised.

Even as I find myself bewildered and breathless, I know I’ve placed many of these wires. There are a few twining about my legs, pressing into my arms I cannot name, but most of them bear labels written in my own hand. Some scrawled hastily, others deliberately. I remember writing them, but as I hold the fraying lines up to my eyes it’s too dark for me to read what I once saw. Funny this. So much power and so little radiance.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I cut just one sparking wire and pressed one end into the skin that stretches across my head and one into the skin that stretches across my heart.

Would I light up this space? Or just burn?

(I don’t spend all my days in the wall.)

Either way.

She talks about death all the time.

When will I die, Mom?

Does it hurt to die?

What is Heaven like?

Who will be there when I am there? Will there be anyone to take care of me?

Do dead people forget?

How will I find you when I die? What if you haven’t died first?

What if heaven isn’t there but we don’t know it because dead people can’t tell us?

All of this piped from the backseat of our car, between chicken nugget stops and Beauty and the Beast sing-a-longs.

It’s hard, mostly because all of her voiced fears are my constant quiet anxieties. But I play it cool. Reassure her. I don’t promise her perfect outcomes, I do promise her peace. Mostly, it works and we move on to other subjects.

Today, she came home with a letter from her principal about a girl one classroom over that died of cancer over the weekend. Viola knew all about it and, even though she had only played with the girl once, was understandably devastated.

“Mom, can you tell me I’ll never get cancer?”

“I cannot. I can tell you that you don’t have it right now and that being alive is always about rightnow.”

“So I am going to die just like this girl died but maybe not till I’m older?”

“Pretty much. Yes. We all die. And that's okay. We go to heaven and then we'll never die again.”

“What is heaven like? Is she okay? Is she scared there? Why can’t we know what is there?”

And here’s where I really thought I was brilliant.

“Okay, Viola! You know how at Disneyland, you have to wait in really cool lines to get on a ride? And the line is so, so fun you don’t even think about the ride that much? Even though you got in line to get on the ride???

I mean, think about the Star Tours line! We LOVE that line and all it’s space stuff and funny robots! And when we first got in that line we didn’t know what the ride was like, right? But we knew it was there, even though we couldn’t see it and even though it seemed far away? And then after the line was over and we got on the ride we thought, “WOAH! That ride was amazing!” even though we were nervous to get on it? And it’s almost great you couldn’t see it because, well it was a great surprise and also because the line was so fun and you wouldn’t want to miss out on those funny robots?

Well, heaven is like that ride. Life is the line. Focus on the line, check out the goofy cool stuff, hang out with family, play games and have a blast!  And then, heaven, even though we can’t see it from life line, even though we are a little worried about what will happen once we get on the heaven ride, all that worry will go away once you get there. Because you’ll be able to see what you’ve been in line for and you’ll realize it’s so fun and so amazing and you’ll be so glad you get to be there.”

I thought I nailed it. Maybe not theologically, but at least five year old logically. However. At this point, Viola was gently weeping.

“Ummm. Vi-pie. What’s wrong?”

“Moooommmmmm. I went on Star Tours AND IT WAS TERRIFYING!!! IS HEAVEN TERRIFYING?”

Eventually, after much backtracking, I made things right.

She’d just stopped hiccup crying when her little voice piped up from the backseat one more time.

“Okay, mom. Well. If I have to die, I hope it’s like Yoda. He was a thousand years old and just got to get tired and go to sleep and then DEAD! And then he was a spirit so fast anyways. I could die like that.”

Me too, baby. Me too.

Prompt: A line from the Bible. 25 minute free-write and 10 minute clean-up. (Wrote for thirty, cleaned up for five.)

I see through a glass, darkly.

Glass is just sand, you know. Sand and a little soda and a touch of lyme. And human hands, of course. Mostly, glass doesn’t occur in nature and when it does, it’s pretty much useless. There, I said it. Useless nature that only gives us the material for useful glass. When you learn about glass, you learn about the failings of organization. Glass is disarray. Molecules shaken up and cooled down too quickly to find their place. Your place is where you stand. Molecule and me. You can only get transparency with disorder. Order gives you crystals and crystals give you obscurity. Glass is a product of heat and cold, not cold and heat and this matters because it takes the matter out of our hands. We’re not shaping it and setting it. We’re melting it and catching it. Glass was the first transformation that made us pray for alchemy and the final scientific tool that helps dispel every myth. Transmutation that puts us in our place. Ancient Romans loved glass because it stored their wine well and allowed them to see the its color. I think there’s something earthbound and skybound there. You can determine the structure of glass but you can never predict it and so our vision is perfected by a process we put in motion but can never completely control. Newton understood glass. He took a prism and showed that it could bend and separate light into a spectrum. We’re now given that spectrum as picture in textbooks we never open. Not everyone believed what they saw. The color and clarity you see is from the glass, they said, not the light passing through it. We’ve made the glass and so we’ve made the color. Newton bowed in simple disagreement and then bent light back into a second prism - the colors rejoined and white light emerged from the other side. A second witness. A third, if we count the man himself. I do. Newton understood the power of light. The speed of light is consistent. And it is fast. ThreeTimesTenToThePowerOfTenCentimetersPerSecond. Want to slow light down? Make it meet a solid, force it to move electrons to make its way to the other side. A solid like glass. Glass isn’t really a solid. It’s solid liquid that has never properly transitioned. Proper transitions are the domain of the categorized. Why would anyone want to slow light? You can’t catch it, don’t you know? I know. But you can use it. Light that crawls makes lenses that sharpen. The best lenses are impure. You must add metal to your sand, crowd the electrons, make the light work for its passage. And then you’ll be able to see things too big and things too small for the eyes God and Evolution gave you. The big and small are connected you know, and so is the light and lens that lets you see them. Glass is a secret. Science still doesn’t understand it even at it wields it. But wielding is a form of knowing and the ancient Egyptians knew this and so do the the laboratories we’ll never enter. It’s hard to cut glass but easy to break it. Unless you prepare as it cools. Chill the outside while you allow the inside its warmth. External tension, internal compression. What’s happening on the outside can be different than what is happening on the inside. The difference is a source of strength. Electricians used to rub wool on glass to capture electricity. The surface crackled until the electrician caught the sparks with glass spikes. They bottled that electricity. A message in a bottle. Or magic in a bottle. Bottle shock. Current eventually broke the bottles but sometimes I wonder if there is one forgotten in a dusty closet, collected energy from a disconnected past. No matter. I care little for the spark and unendingly for the illumination. I can’t make light, but I can sure as hell let it pass through me.

Because.

Disorder bestows the vision. Impurity sharpens the transmission. Refraction distills the color. And the material is fucking man made.

I see through a glass, darkly.

Thank God.

Thirst one in class again, Sarah walked quickly to her desk. It was messy again. Out of the whole sixth grade class, her desk was the only one that threatened to spew and spill all over the unraveling carpet. Well, Sam’s was a wreck, too. Really, Sam's was worse because of the dandruff that scaled his desktop and the floor around his chair. But you wouldn’t expect Sam’s desk to be clean, and so he hardly counted. She thought maybe, you’d expect hers to be clean, and she hoped she counted.

The other kids came in. They wandered around the perimeter of the class like sheep avoiding a stock dog. No one said hello to Sarah. Scooting her chair in until her tummy pressed against the desk, she worked her left hand into its open front in search of her pencil box. It was in the back left corner. She knew this.

But she also knew that to avoid death by mortification - the sure side effect of anything spilling out of her desk and onto the floor - she would need to navigate a dried river of glue (from when she’d left the Elmer’s on it’s side) that meandered between and under pencil shavings, rubber worms left after fits of erasing, worksheets craggled into themselves, pink felt scraps from last month’s Valentine’s craft, and the curling, darkening rind of an orange her teacher had given her when she’d been too tired to go out to recess again. These were just the things she could remember. She hadn’t had the nerve to look directly into the maw of her desk for weeks.

She had to pull a few papers out in order to get to the box. They balanced on her lap except for one rumpled piece of blue construction paper that fell down next to her shoe. She took out her pencil and eraser, shoved the pencil box back into its corner and crammed the contents of her lap in after it. She kept her head above the desk and faced forward while her hand darted down to pick up the rogue blue paper and poke it back into place. This head-forward/stretch-down move seemed like the least obtrusive position to take while squirreling away her shame.  

20 Minute Free Write. What are your tastes in music, in literature, art, sports, cars, foods, beverages, movies, plants, furniture, houses, politicians, magazines, appliances, friends, television shows? How have your tastes changed as you grow

I realized that you could be judged for and by your taste sometime in sixth grade. At least that’s when I started lying about it, which I think is proof I knew it mattered. Generally the lies were about music. That’s what we talked about around the lunch table. Blink 182? So good! Smashing Pumpkins? THE BEST. Alanis Morissette? My parents TOTALLY let me listen to her. Of course,  I didn’t know who the first two were and had only sneaky listened to the last one at a neighbor’s house. The door closed and Jagged Little Pill playing quietly. That and the soundtrack to Dangerous Minds. What did I actually listen to? What did I like? Patty Loveless and Shania Twain and Johnny Cash and Faith Hill and Trisha Yearwood and George Strait and the soundtrack to the Secret Garden musical. You know. Parent music.

I’d been pretending to be interested in my friend’s music for most of the year and I just figured pretending was what you contributed to successful relationships. I also thought my pretending was believable.

I can’t remember whether I was eating hot lunch or home lunch that day. My gut tells me it was one of those water hot dogs that had turned faintly green at the seam. But it could have also been a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a side of those dunkaroo cookies - you know the ones you dipped into frosting? Vanilla cookies with confetti frosting, if you were very lucky. Anyways, it’s lunch and the girls are talking about music again and I am trying to be very enthusiastic.

“Hey, Megan. We’ve been meaning to ask you! Do you like the band Rock Skipping?”

“Oh my gosh, I love that band! They’re probably, like, my fifth favorite right now.”

“Really? Because they’re not real. We made them up. We know you’ve been lying.”

SLAM. BAM. SIXTH GRADE, MA’AM. (Also...that was a pretty damn fine fake band name.)

And then, you know, cue the two girls dumping their lunch and walking away laughing while the frizzy haired girl follows - trying to look like she was in on the joke. That was one of the bad lunches. So I am going to assume it was a green hot dog day, not a dunkaroos day.

If I’m being honest here (honesty is something I decided to take up in my late twenties, kind of like smoking), I spent years lying about the books I’d read, the music I liked, the friends I needed, you know...all the little details that give a day and a life and a person dimension. I didn’t lie all the time. It wasn’t pathological. But when I was nervous or wanted to fit in or could feel a conversation drifting away from me, I’d lie so that whoever I was with at the time didn’t feel like walking away. Sixth grade was the only time anyone ever called me out on it...but I don’t think the other people in my life were any less perceptive than those two girls. I just think maybe the people that came later were kinder...or less invested in me...or both.

And then. I don’t know really know why...resignation, maybe? I stopped pretending.

It’s a liberating thing to finally love yourself enough to be honest about what you like. I know it sounds crazy to those that are far more well-adjusted than me (or is it I? I love myself enough to be honest about the fact that I don’t know which one to use here), but being unabashed about your preferences is some radical self-acceptance shit that used to make me marvel. To be able to say, What I like doesn’t define who I am, but even if it did, so the f--- what? It’s like magic...and not the kind that wears off at midnight.

So.

I LIKE the only eight episodes they ever made of Selfie. I LIKE bologna. I LIKE Jane Austen and not just because of her social commentary. Her books make me tingly. I LIKE being tingly. I LIKE bluegrass and early nineties country and Fiona Apple and folk music and blues rock and sometimes show tunes and always Lauryn Hill and on occasion I’ve jammed to Demi Lovato, SO WHAT. I’ve read all those books I used to pretend I’d read and I LIKE some of them and could leave others. I’m not going to pretend anymore...Faulkner doesn’t do it for me and that makes me ashamed and then I remember that every day gets to be a dunkaroo day and I don’t worry about it one little bit. I LIKE white walls and nubby pillows and warm wood. I LIKE folk art and fine art and art so kitschy no one calls it art. I LIKE God and religion and earth-cults and sky-cults and pagan women and scientific men and scientific women and pagan men and dirt covered light and light filled dirt. I LIKE a gas stove, the whoosh sound of a flame under a whistling kettle and eggs frying in butter and an oven with speckled enamel on the inside and children’s fingerprints on the outside. I LIKE lights that dim and dried noodles stored in old olive oil canisters even though I’ve never stored noodles in anything but the box they came in. I LIKE weeds that look like flowers and I LIKE flowers that look like weeds. I’ve left behind politics because I don’t LIKE them but have turned towards people because I do LIKE them. People. I guess I turn away from them, too. I LIKE being alone. I LIKE friends that are smarter than I am, demand that I stretch but not that I save, that let me leave them be and do the same for me. I LIKE friends but know I am not always a good one. I’ve learned that you can have good taste and not LIKE me. I LIKE marriage and men and feeling protected. I LIKE protecting, too. I LIKE room temperature water.  I LIKE sad movies and happy tv. I LIKE the rain and the sun and hate the snow, even on a Christmas day with hot tea and high hopes in my hand. I LIKE driving quickly in straight lines and do not LIKE left hand turns. I LIKE text messages and emails and sometimes have to bite on the left side of my cheek to make it through voicemails and phone calls. I LIKE reading to my children, taking them to museums and parks and forests and beaches and city streets and coffee shops with mini slightly warmed hot chocolates. I do not LIKE cooking with them. I LIKE mysteries set in New Orleans and do not LIKE  beignets. I have come to LIKE not knowing, because there is room for me there. I LIKE cursing and I LIKE prayer and I LIKE pictures hung all the way to the floor. I LIKE sitting under trees and I LIKE houses that creak. I LIKE wood floors with scratches and doors with dents and door knobs that unlatch in a breeze. I LIKE the idea of a dog and do not LIKE the IDEA of a third child. I LIKE yogurt topped with honey and cut bananas and toasted pecans even though I never remember to toast the pecans. I LIKE talking to people one on one and I’ve decided to LIKE that when I do I can never look them in the eyes. I LIKE speaking to groups because they can’t tell I can’t look at them. I LIKE my toes and my knees and my thighs and the softness of my stomach and the way my arms round and my breasts hang and nipples bloom and my teeth crook and my eyes crinkle and my hair waves and my cheeks curve and my nose points and my ears hear and my head holds and my heart feels. I LIKE myself and I don’t question whether I should anymore because what I LIKE doesn’t define me but then I think, maybe it does and I’m beginning to LIKE that, too.

I’m a loser.

Well. I mean. I lose things. Technically, that makes me a loser.

Although if you were to Google “can I call someone who always loses things a loser”, the universal answer to this question (or at least the answer found in the top five results, which might as well be universal) is no. I know this, because I Googled it. All five results tell you to use the terms “absent-minded” or “forgetful” when describing someone who always loses everything. Because “Loser will never be taken to mean someone who loses things. Instead, people will think you mean 1. A person that loses or has lost something, especially a game or contest. 2. A person who accepts defeat with bad grace 3. A person that is put at a disadvantage by a particular situation or course of action.

But, of course, I mean all that, too. They seemed to be pretty much wrapped up in the “person who loses things” thing. “Absent-minded” and “forgetful” just don’t quite cover it.

Loser does.

I’m a loser.

The first thing I can remember losing - and really hating myself over the losing - was a jean jacket. I was in the third grade. It was one of those oversized jean jackets that the teenagers on 90210 made look so cool in the nineties. I would have known this if I had been any older than eight and/or been allowed to watch 90210. I didn’t know this. But I knew the jacket made me feel cool - which is perhaps a testament to the power of jean jackets rather than the starlets that flounce around in them. Maybe the jean jacket made 90210 and not the other way around. Anyways, I felt like the jacket made me. The cuffs rolled up just once so you saw the back of the button, that stainless steel grommet on the outside of my wrists. I liked to wear it to church over a dark blue dress dotted with small daisies. The dress was long and skimmed the top of my tie up boots - brown leather and reaching mid-calf - they made me feel like a cross between American Girl’s Felicity, Anne of Green Gables and TV’s Blossom. This seemed like the ideal combination. (I wasn’t allowed to watch Blossom, either.)

I realized the jacket was missing on a Tuesday and stared into the dark every night about it until the following Monday. When the anxiety had mounted to the point of panic, I called my dad into my bedroom. It was late and Mom had already gone to bed. I gave him the speech I’d been rehearsing to my pillow for an hour.

“Dad,” I started to cry. I always cried when I said his name before I was about to reveal a problem, maybe because of relief, maybe because of shame, “Dad, I haven’t been able to find my jean jacket. I am so sorry and I know it was wrong of me to lose it. I know it cost so much money. I loved that jacket but you don’t have to buy me a new one. I can wear sweaters until we get a new jacket next year.”

I thought my speech was very grown up and self-sacrificing. Everything a meaningful confessional ought to be. Never mind that the southern california winter rarely required a long sleeve shirt, let alone a sweater. And never mind, that somewhere in my truly penitent brain, I knew he would buy me another jacket if I really, truly needed one.

He looked serious. At the time I thought it was because of my infraction, but as a parent now, I think he was worried about my level of distress.

“Megs, I just saw your jean jacket in the back of the car yesterday. It’s under a few bags. I’ll bring it in the morning.”

Some things aren’t lost, I just don’t always know how to find them.

Memory is a funny thing. I’m actually not sure if he called me “Meggi” or “Megs”. And now that I think of it, I’m not sure which he called me every other time, either.

Of course, I’ve lost lots of other things that were never recovered. Books and assignments and clothing and the hours, days, years I should have spent in classes in college. College. I guess there I lost things I never had. I don’t regret the time I didn’t spend in classroom. But I suppose I regret the books I didn’t read, the conversations I didn’t have, the tests I didn’t fail and the classes I didn’t just barely pass. I can feel gaps in my mind that maybe would have been filled during those years. Maybe not. I’ve lost the right to know one way or the other.

I’m pretty sure he called me “Megs”.

Riley had to get used to all my losing when we got married. I am still trying to get used to his keeping. Or at least trying to feel like I deserve it. I’m not sure you should ever get used to someone like Riley.

I’ve lost jewelry he’s given me and notes written on the inside of books and backs of lists. I’ve lost things that matter and things that don’t. I lost his trust once...but he didn’t wait long to return it to me. He’s lost mine, too. I waited a little while to give it back, but not because I could not find it. It was one thing I hadn’t misplaced. It felt heavy and hot in my hand.

I lose things the children hand me and things they leave upturned outside. Homework and love notes and three leafed clovers they pretend are four. The kids in their classes know me - or at least the top half of me - because I am always leaning in through their classroom doors with lost lunches or homework or sharing time toys. I think they think I am “forgetful” or “absentminded” in those moments - they don’t know the achievement I feel over something found. I’m not a loser then. I’m a finder.

I know I’ll lose the girls someday. In a few different ways. I’ve lost their babyhood, their toddlerhood, their unquestioning eyes peering over the plastic of a bottle as they suck, suck, suck. Soon I’ll lose their childhood, and teenagehood and voices across the hallhood. I tell myself each loss is followed by a gain. But I’ve lost enough to know this is sometimes true and then again always isn’t.

They’ll lose me, too. We don’t dance in the kitchen as often anymore. Sometimes I think it’s because they’re getting older. Other times I know it’s because I’ve lost that piece of myself. Which means they’ve lost it, too.

Maybe it’s in the back of the car, under a few bags.

Right now, I’m looking for a piece of paper with a name on it. I was supposed to add the name to a list of women in my church. It’s my job to keep the names up to date so we can email them and call them and keep them close to God and woman and man and child. I can’t find the name and I can’t remember it and I want to say, “I can’t be my sister’s keeper because I can’t even keep myself.” But I won’t say that because I hope it’s not true.

I think maybe he called me “Meggi”.