Oak Park is a dream. When I close my eyes and try to remember when, I realize the colour of the floorboards is gone. I can't find the smell of the bookshop. We moved away from those tree-lined streets 12 years ago and I find myself still wishing we could go back, sit in the park across from Hemingway's old place, my head in your lap and the church bells ringing.

We would ride our bikes on those streets, looking at these old victorian houses, the craftsman porches. You had your favourites and I had mine, and we envisioned this prairie life in the city, where we'd walk our children to school. Sit on the porch swing. Knock down some walls and plant a lilac bush. Open our own bookshop.

There were all these Frank Lloyd Wright places and we could never decide on one. You know, just in case. You liked the one with steep, sharp angles. I like the one with the rounded front door. These were our Sundays, spent in the shadows of someone's masterpiece.

Oh, we had so much time.



I think about it now, and what we thought growing up looked like, what success looked like. I sit here, today, coffee in hand by the kitchen door. I see the carrots popping up and the hydrangea sprouting new leaves and how our children prayed for a tree. Who'd have thought He'd give us so many trees we'd have to cut down a few just to make room? I watch as the yellow sun on our garden turns to grey and the rain comes in. I smile when I hear it on our skylight, I'm so glad I haven't put out the laundry yet.

It's not Oak Park, not the dream of those houses, not the porch swing, no Chicago skyline. There is no mortgage here, no deed. Frank Lloyd Wright never came to Ireland and I don't think Hemingway wrote from behind these windows.

But we have covered walls with paint swatches. You fret over the lino-wood flooring. The tree out front is in bloom. And we sit in the bay window, in our landlord's two leather chairs, king and queen of our own masterpiece.

Not the house, not the city, not the country, nothing but His design. 

I still cry over Oak Park, that we left and can't go back. I know it's all aglow in wistful unreality. I know we're changed and it's changed. I know these 10-plus moves in 10-plus years can really do a girl in. My homesickness is truly all over the map. But when you first brought me home a week after our wedding, with our quilt on the bed and the chest you built and your grandparents' old dresser, I didn't know I'd only ever want to live there. Frozen in time, forever. I didn't know that a dozen years later when I'd close my eyes, I'd still feel those floorboards beneath my feet.

And now that I can't see the colour, can't smell the books, can't remember what road that one house was on, I realize forever has changed. A dozen years from now, when I close my eyes, this is what I'll see: me at the kitchen table, coffee in hand, looking out on our back garden to the trees our children prayed for. 

Not the house, not the city. I will only see the masterpiece.

May 2013

***

These are a few of my favourite posts from this year, things I've written during this epic phase of resettling in Ireland. If you blog, leave me a comment below with a favourite post of yours from this year. Would love to read how you saw yourself and those around you in 2013.

2012 Favo(u)rites : The Old People

We sit on the hardwood floor, facing eachother, surrounded by half-opened wedding gifts and torn pastel tissue paper. My pen in hand, he reads aloud to me:

"Wine decanter," and who it is from.

I write it down for the thank you list.

We are on the third floor of an old Chicago brownstone. Our first apartment; our first home. The wedding was the week before and we are just now opening and reading and laughing and dreaming. We are married now, and the proof is in the cards and the bows and the matching pillows paired on the bed.

I slit open a small white envelope and take in the image of entwined hands, the typed sentiments, and the tiny signature written in the far right-hand corner of the page: the old people.

"Who are the old people?" I ask him, laughing.

He knows. "My grandparents." The only ones living, who couldn't make the journey, who I'd only met once or twice before. In all honesty, I wasn't sure they knew my name.

"Oh, the old people," I say, and smile. Old people who sign their cards the old people must have a story. And they did. A story of a farm, and a dozen children, and of loss, and of celebration. Of prodigals and companionship and the passing of time.

We give them their first great-grandchild and he meanders along the dirt rows of their farm, chasing barn cats. They meet and hold the girl - "Oh, look at that hair." - before we whisk her across the ocean. But while we are away the old man goes Home and we mourn from afar. The old woman still sees more great-grandchildren, laughing at their names (and we laugh, too, at our earnest originality in naming). And our children remember her and sigh with heavy eyes when she goes Home, too.

But she was ready, we say. She missed him. She is finally where she wants to be: with Jesus and with Grandpa.

A dozen years from the start we reminisce, sift through the wedding box and find the card with entwined hands. Inside hides a crisp $20 bill and it is signed,

the old people.

We laugh and laugh. "How did we miss this?" we ask. Because we know the time is soon, he writes the old woman to thank her and to tell her that we'll do with it what they would've done: go out for coffee, sit side by side, and talk about our story.

***

I'm reposting a few of my favourite bits and pieces from this year. God worked me over hard... I want to remember. Leave a comment with a blog post of your own, a favourite or a new one. Let's remember together.

We did well here :: 31 days of messy parenting {day 19}

This lamp made this our home. The first thing we bought when we came back, the first thing I saw that said, "Here is where you can start again, again." We put the $12 lampshade on an old lamp we left behind, black iron and pull cord. We set it on the abandoned end table (my mother collects many abandoned things). Slowly, a home came into view.

The wall shelf was a gift, a Christmas present made of liptus. My favourite type of wood. We couldn't take it with us before, but it waited for us here, and when we returned it was the first thing nailed in. A photo collage, a winter print of the Hundertwasser neighborhood in Vienna, the Attestation of Pilgrimage to Israel (I was 19 and in love for the second time), the five of us framed in Trim. God bless our family, it says. And our Compassion children peeking out from behind school uniforms. There may even be a stone hippo from Kenya. It is cluttered, but our memories are displayed. When I walk in this room, the first thing I see is our life.

I say it's not a house, not our forever home, not where we'll stay. But I look at this picture and I know we did well here. Are doing well here.

Lisa-Jo Baker invites us to write, every Friday, for five minutes. Today her prompt was Look and beyond all the mess, I saw what was beautiful. You should try it, too.

The only memory

The first thing I did was cry for a baby that never lived.

I got my wisdom teeth out today. Three troublesome teeth, one of which was so severely impacted and quite abnormally large (at least in my tiny, should've-had-braces mouth) that the nurse said, "Wow, that's a doozy!" and the oral surgeon replied, "I'm going to strongly suggest we sedate you." They put a blood pressure cuff on each arm, asked me questions about my children. With each answer, what I really wanted to say was, "I'm a bit frightened." But before I could form the words my mind kept repeating, my eyes opened in a low-lit room and I felt a hand squeeze mine, "Hey."

And I cried.

This is the only memory I have of that baby, at least a memory that can be repeated. Waking up from anesthesia to husband's hand and word in a somber room, confused and scared and my mouth feels horrible and wow that was fast and where exactly am I? It is the same as it was, six years in between. Back then it took the fuzziness fading to remember why I had surgery and what had been lost.

"This feels like the baby," I said to him today, speaking the very first thought in my fuzzy head, without knowing I would.

I cried a bit, and then faded back to sleep.

On distance, in five

It's been good to get time to write this week and here I am on Friday and on time with Gypsy Mama's Five Minute Fridays. Go, write, be cleansed, and don't look back.

On Distance... 

When I think of distance, I usually think of being far from home. First in Ireland, being far from the Midwest and the Kansas tornado season and the smells of warm and humid springs; and now here, back in the Midwest (Missouri, this time), being far from the daily rainbows and the new home we built and reveled in for 25 short months. I count the distance in monthly support and expectations, even though I try to deny it and think that the distance is merely only miles, not in dollars and cents. My heart knows the distance between me and home is really only measured in patience and fruits of the spirit, both of which I wish to plant and grow in.

But I also remember a time, more than a decade ago now, where the distance between me and the Creator seemed too wide, too vast to even recognize His hand or what His peace looked like. There was a crash in the internal systems of my mind and I felt like David cowering in the cave. There was no way to build a bridge over this infernal distance, apart from the waiting and the meds and the daily desire for Spring to once again arrive in my soul. Spring came at last, months later, and the distance disappeared in a matter of seconds.

I wonder now if the One who created my mind and all the brain chemicals of every one who ever lived allowed that distance to show me that no distance is too great for Him. He’ll still be found on the other side.

Kickin' it old school

As we prep for another international move (even a temporary one), I face saying goodbye to some things that I like to keep near. One item(s): family photos. As Matt and I grew into adulthood, film was replaced by digital files. So there's a stack of photo albums of our families, our courtship, and our young married life in Chicago that I'll be leaving behind for awhile.

In an effort to "take" some of them with me, so begin the posts of old-school pics. In this segment: The Man & Me (formerly known as Tico & The Chick), the early years.

2009 Wrap-up

A friend of mine posted this on her blog and I thought it made a good wrap-up of 2009. Enjoy (and post your own if you so desire!).


1. What did you do in 2009 that you’d never done before?
given birth without 1) the aid of any pain medication, and 2) in a foreign country

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
no resolutions means no failure!

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
my best friend Nicole had baby Luke and several friends from college had their 1st babies

4. Did anyone close to you die?
no

5. What countries did you visit?
this year I just stuck to Ireland! Well, and the US

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
more sleep

7. What dates from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
24 August (the birth of Asher) and 25 April (a wedding in the States with our entire family)

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Besides having Asher, running two websites for an Irish organization that I care about. Feels GREAT to do something that you believe in.

9. What was your biggest failure?
I don't believe in this question and therefore will not answer.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Besides being torn apart literally by a newborn? Only of the mental variety.

11. Whose behavior merited celebration?

My husband, who tried to make a truly difficult and painful year for me easier by cooking, cleaning, and being the best dad ever. Really. Also Kim Clujsters, a mom AND a tennis champ. A first.

12. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Tiger Woods seemed to fit that bill nearing the end of 2009.

13. Where did most of your money go?
Gas and rent.

14. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Returning to the States for a family holiday. And seeing some friends get married and have babies.

15. What song will always remind you of 2009?
At first I misread this question. And then I think... song?... hmmm... I listen to music all the time and I'm not sure I can think straight away of a song. But on New Year's Eve I went to Starbucks to write and listened over and over again to Sara Groves' new album, Songs & Fireflies. The title track, the first track, being what spoke to me the most. For some reason the line that says 'now we're standing in the kitchen' leaves me in tears, every time.

16. Compared to this time last year, are you: (a) happier or sadder? (b) thinner or fatter? (c) richer or poorer?
a) happier - no longer pregnant! b) about the same, having gotten really fat and then really skinny in a matter of days. c) there is no richer or poorer in God work. :)

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Praying and sleeping and writing. And spending more one-on-one time with Jack & Ella. I miss them.

18. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Crying and worrying.

19. How did you spend Christmas?
With my wee family in Ireland.

20. Did you fall in love in 2009?
Yes, with the baby, praise God. Believe it or not, with number 3, I was a bit worried about that.

21. What was your favorite TV program?
Lost. Always.

22. What was the best book you read?
The Time Traveller's Wife, and The Truth Commissioner

23. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Bell X1 and Sufjan Stevens

24. What did you want and get?
to live in Ireland another year and do work I believe in

25. What did you want and not get?
A bigger car for my expanding family

26. What was your favorite film of this year?
I don't believe we went out to a single film in all of 2009. But I did enjoy renting State of Play.

27. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 31. And I cried and waited for the baby to be born.

28. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
More time with family and certainty for the future and a place to call home.

29. Who did you miss?
My sisters and friends. 

30. Who was the best new person you met?
Loads of new people were met and loved. Meeting Asher, however, surpasses them all.

Another Top Ten, American style

I've been putting off writing this post because I thought it would depress me. Seeing as I'm already in a funk and would like to just reminisce about the good ole days for awhile, here we go...

Top 10 things I miss about America:

1. My mom's front porch
   
2. Not worrying about who Jackson's playing with, or if he's behaving himself
3. Peanut butter m&ms
   
4. Our first apartment in Oak Park, IL (we haven't lived there in 7 years, and yet when I think of home, I think of that small, beautiful apartment on Humphrey. I think of Oak Park and Chicago in the fall and my old friends at Logos Bookstore... I remember the carefree-ness that being young, and newly married, and without responsibility brings... I remember how God provided that apartment... and I can literally feel my heart hurt a little)
   
5. The hospital where my children were born and the wonderful OB that held my hand through the loss of another...
   
6. Having an over abundance of parents and siblings around
   
7. The Farmers Market in River Market, KC (and the mennonites and their delicious breads, buying fresh flowers in autumn colors, the pumpkin patch, and taking Jackson to the tiny coffee shop for juice and a ginormous cinnamon roll)
   
8. Target
   
9. Our friends, and our friends' friends, and various family members young and old, who gathered in our living room discussing politics, or calvinism, or love, or the latest episode of The Office
10. Feeling normal
    

There you have it.