nothing to say

home coming

The last evening of our stay in Kansas, we were at the farm. The place that my grandparent's spent most of their married life together, the place where Mom grew up, the place where my Uncle M now lives.


We listened to the piano music of one of my brilliantly talented cousins and as the darkness began to settle, I wandered off to take pictures in the fast fading light. I wandered back and K's music was still playing. And unconsciously I put my arms around my Uncle's neck and said it was good to be home and for a few moments I was myself. I was M fully in the moment, fully at home in Kansas. It was a beautiful moment - it brought tears to my eyes and then it passed that quickly. I am M of the Northern lands a Mom and Wife struggling to make sense of it all.


I received many family objects when I was home. Hankies are among the great treasures, however, as I intend to use them in projects, I will save showing them until they are used and then you can see them at my craft blog.

Of grandma's piece work and crochet, I received a simple polyester-squares-tied throw, a huge granny squares lap afghan, a leaf wall-hanging, and this quilt. One thing about grandma is that it is almost impossible to find anything of hers that didn't have pink or purple in it. :)

I have shared many pictures of the quilt, far more than I ought, but it was difficult to limit shots of cool fabric pieces to just this many!!





Note the orange striped piece of fabric. I recognize many of the pieces in this quilt but this one in particular is interesting to me. It reminds me of the house dresses that Grandma wore all the time. This was an everyday dress and while I am sure she wore other dresses for the purpose too, I always remember her as wearing one made of this fabric when we butchered chickens.



Among the many, many pieces of jewelry I received are two broaches which are now on my jean jacket. The posy broach is one I got from my Mom several years back the other two are from Grandma. The flower one is probably an inexpensive enamel thing but it pleases me for its retro feel. My favorite by far is the beaded and jeweled fancy. It is something that someone put together out of bits and pieces of old jewelry and wired onto an older broach. My Mom thinks perhaps it came to Grandma from Dorothy B.


One of the treasures I brought home with me is this embroidered "Home Sweet Home" hanging. My Mom thinks it was done my Great Aunt M. I remember her vaguely, as a bent and crooked woman always in a simple house dress styled dress with a white cardigan with knee high nylons instead of the then popular panty hose. I do know that she was a fabulous embroiderer, as a result when I embroider, I think of her and of my Mom's painstaking efforts (because I was a rebellious and difficult student) to teach embroidery to me.


The first day of spring arrived unnoticed by me while I was in Kansas. For us in this great northern land - the last chance of frost is about a week before Memorial weekend. So we relish each little sign as it arrives. One favorite omen of spring is that little pleasure known as pussy willows - we pick them and carry them home, however, they are not permitted in the house as they cause my hubby's lungs to close completely. These are actually big fuzzy birch buds and they remind me of a fanciful drawing of pussy willows with furry kittens for the buds - which remind me of the wonderful Margaret Wise Brown Book - "Pussy Willow."


As I sit here, I can hear the results of one of our happy spring rituals. Eight windchimes hang in various locations around the house. On the front porch is on of the beautiful tuned chimes - the rest of our chimes are thrift store finds.

My husband teases me by saying that I must be trying to drive away evil spirits. All I know is that it is a spring ritual that I love. And my girls love.





Do you remember when I talked of feeling as if the language I spoke growing up is understood by no one? In one respect that is true, as children grow they learn more about their parent's childhood and they realize how different and alien it is from their own. And so their accent will always be different than our own. Yet, those who speak our language best are the ones who live with us and in the end that is home. Home is life with those who journey with us on our road to the cross.

home coming

would you like something a bit less introspective?

I miss the old playground equipment that allowed play as exciting as a ride on the midway. Yes it was dangerous but today's playgrounds have no adventure. These photos are from the church's playground.

My favorite was this old merry-go-round. The design was such that big kids could push from the middle easily as a result the merry-go-round would go at tremendous speeds. Then all you had to do is jump on the bar for a ride.


The last time I saw this merry-go-round it was falling apart. Someone has fixed it!


Do you remember be dropped from the highest point of these old long tall see-saws?


I would guess this plank is the same one I used to stand on to pump up to the highest level of swinging this incredibly tall swingset would allow.


The tremendously scandalous statue that has lived for as long as I know outside the Mark V, the hotel we stayed at. Turns out it is an actual hand-carved replica of the orginal.


This is the limestone house. It seems that little is known about it - I've tried a bit of research and found nothing. But, everyone who has passed along the stretch of road where it stands knows it. It is a landmark of beauty and familiarity. Photos probably in the hundreds have been taken of it and paintings made. I've never been close to it. Now I have. I didn't walk into the pasture it stands in because of a huge sign that read "No Trespassing - Danger Falling Rock" but the fence of the adjacent pasture ran close to it so that is where I walked.


I lamented the wary nature of Western Meadowlarks while on my visit. They are flighty birds and won't sit around for you to walk up to them. I wished to take my own photograph of one sitting awkwardly on an osage orange fence-post head thrown back as he gave voice to his inverted trill of a song. As I walked the house I heard one quite close but never saw him; until I was working on my photos. There he sits a black speck on the top of the windmill.


I saw some dates and names that were from distant places and times. I didn't photograph those though.


I was surprised to discover how large and beautifully made the hosue was. From a distance it simply doesn't look that large. Close to the wreck one can see that at one time it was a gorgeous house with wonderful clean lines and detail.



I am afraid my attachment to tonal scale means that these aren't easy to see - but even the roof supports (the name escapes me) were beautiful.

home coming

I wait while she writes a check

her driveway is black, smooth again
the cracks filled, pits gone
we stand in the grass
her feet bare
my boots splattered with tar

I notice that her shorts
are embarrassingly threadbare
and smeared with paint

her t-shirt is shapeless
clinging to breasts that droop
as wearily as the seams at her neckline

the wind chimes tinkle
while I watch her
the sound doesn’t disappear
but keeps jangling inside my head

she hands over the check.

I pause, then choose to visit

the conversation twists in the breeze
like the clapper of the chimes
hanging just behind her head

the aura of suntan lotion hangs about her
but she is dried and shriveled
a sun-parched garden.

we talk a bit longer

I turn to leave

as I go, I think I hear her say
“I know where the wind lives”



I apologize for not posting this where it belongs - but it seems more part of my home coming thoughts than something that belongs elsewhere.

home coming

I have mixed feelings about memory. Not the kind of memory that recognizes we put the keys on the ledge and files it away for easy retrieval later. - I am concerned with memory and how it defines us as individuals. I believe memory is vital. God often had the Israelites build altars at points of significance so that they would remember and not forget.

Yet there is a danger in altars. If we aren't careful we worship the altar and translate it into an idol. Sometimes I feel like that is what is happening in today's society. We worship at the altar of memory - we tithe to the gods of scrapbooks and journals of self. We lose track of why we are remembering and only focus on how well we are doing it.

Your memory is a monster; you forget - it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you - and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you! John Irving


And yet you can't go home without traveling the halls of memory. Revisiting your childhood means addressing memories. Memories that you never forget - but somehow never think about either. And here is the wierd thing about memory. Once you open the door and walk in - you can travel indefinitely, finding many things that you hadn't abought about in years. In fact, it is rather like getting lost. The present becomes the untouchable place and you wander around in a world that seems almost more tangible than reality because it is the world your mind made as it recorded your life. And another odd thing, sometimes it isn't the obvious things you remember. You know what I mean, certain memories pop up in the everyday landscape unbidden and regularly. The events of a date replay themselves surprisingly regularly, coming unbidden when the person seated across from you moves a certain way, or when you eat pizza, or...They are such a fixture, that you would imagine that the place where you sat in the car and talked one night would arouse a multitude of memories.


But no such thing happens, you park the car and gaze across the expansive landscape and remember when you were younger and you stopped there with your mom and stroked forget-me-nots and watch their leaves fold like half a dozen little prayers. And you wonder, can I grow forget-me-nots where I live so my daughters can stroke their leaves and watch them close?

When I think of Junior High, I don't see my classmates so much as I see weird moments. Like calling out to the janitor Rodger who I thought was a nice guy. Or the time we walked out to the football field and my best friend Trish suddenly sank to her waist into the earth. There was an abandoned well that the school was not aware of. I remember Trish's dad from before I ever knew Trish. He sold us our first ewe Sugar which we kept at my great-grandpa P's. I could tell you memories of that place...that are more fragrant and real than my memories of college. Perhaps it is because our senses are more aware when we are young.


There were Wednesday nights sitting in front of the school waiting for Mom to take me to Bible Study. The fat boy Robert would ask me to go out with him and I would say no. The conversation was on loop with an occasional pause when he asked "Why not?" and I would respond "You're fat." I dated him later after he moved away. He was still a big guy...but he had the virtue of not being from my school.

So here I ramble boring you with random memories and I don't care. It seems they need speaking as if perhaps writing them down will make that mark permanent. Ah, see there goes the idol of memory. Record it make it permanent without understanding why we were meant to remember.

The monster of memory has my grandma firmly in his grasp. She is in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's disease. He holds her memories in places she can't reach and hands them out piece meal so her language comes out like that of an infant and we are all strangers mis-mashed like Picasso's paintings. He must work strangeness to men's faces as she stares intensely and with definite dislike at all men except her brother who was the last person that she recognized frequently.


It is often at funerals that we are gathered to remember the life of the one who passed on. And people often remark at funerals that the will never forget the deceased. No one explains why. Is it a salve for the loneliness of missing a person who was part of our life? I think we often focus incorrectly at funerals. My grandfather was far from a saint but he had that right. He asked that there be no eulogy, he declined an honor guard and flag, he requested only the reading of scripture and a sermon on that scripture and no mention of his life. He had us focus on the one reason we ought to remember anything, Christ.


I suppose one of the reasons the call to build altars has passed is because the full testimony has been recorded in the Bible. What God has called us to remember and know has been written down for us and we pass it one to another. Altars eventually fail. Stones fall down and turn to dust. God's Word is infallible and will last in spite of our attempts to mark it with our own will because He lives forever and so He will protect it always. Perhaps that is why it is so hard to spend time in the Word. We want to believe that what we think matters more. We want our paltry scribblings to last.


Have you ever noticed the golden light in the happiest memories? It is the warm color of the setting sun and it has dust motes glinting in it.


Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit and simply never leave. Our lives are measured by these Susan B Anthony

more to come...

home coming

I wonder if going home is simpler for non-Christians? They don’t have the duality of layers and places of home coming that Christians do. Do they? Part of going home was returning to the church of my youth. A small, mostly Dutch congregation in the middle of the Kansas prairie. A place that my maternal family helped to build. A place where my paternal grandfather was once the pastor.


Where do I start? When I was young, my grandfather was still the pastor. I remember imitating him throughout the sermon including standing on the pew and facing those behind me, hands raised in benediction at the end of the service. After he left, I cried when other people stepped into the pulpit. My grandfather was the only person who belonged there.

When I was very young the pews did not have cushions as they did later. There was no air conditioning but we had wonderful illustrated cardboard fans on sticks that resembled tongue depressors. But those are externals.

I do not recall much about the subsequent ministers until I was in high school. What I do remember about my early years there was things like Vacation Bible School. I remember sitting on the cement lighting matches and blowing them out so we could make match stick crosses. I remember gathering in the sanctuary and being led in Ken Medema songs by my Uncle D.


I am sorry to say that faith did not really touch me in those years. At least not until I was in Junior High when my older cousin L became a staff member for Teens For Christ. We began attending the weekly meetings and when I was in eighth grade, I went on my first mission trip. But you know – I am, as I have said before, a rebellious person. While these experiences were good and places for growth, I was still a wildly sinful young woman – not in the quiet habitual way that we all sin daily but in that rebellious burn that wants to leave as many marks as possible. I sinned in the most knowing and hurtful way possible.


I went to college – one affiliated with the denomination of my church. And there I learned – I learned something about the theology of our church or at least what it was said to be. It was surprising and mind opening – I thought maybe I had the answers. I didn’t.

The years since college have been long and difficult spiritually. Do I need to detail that here? Probably not. I need only to say that where we ended is an ecumenical non-denominational church where I feel like I am growing. Am I growing more than before? No – growth happens when you listen to God – if He works in your life you will grow. But I am now in a church where the growth feels supported – as if there is a trellis that sustains me as I try to climb where God leads me. A place where I feel slightly less alone.


Was I alone before? No. As I sat in that old church for my grandfather’s funeral. I saw faces that filled me with the same emotions I have when sitting in my new church. I saw connections and relationships. Some of the lines are twisted and frayed by bad experience and some were strengthened by shared love and trust and faith. But all lines were covered by God’s grace. We are all connected because we are all of the same body. I listened to the same men’s quartet that sang when I was young. They were older. One was heavier. Another was more stooped. One had a hearing aid. But they sang in a way that seemed more mellow and embracing than before. I imagine the passage of years will do that.


I saw relatives I had not seen in years. I visited with them. I reaffirmed that we are family. It matters little what they have done. An insult twenty years ago – well it is history and we are still related and that can’t change.


What I see more clearly when I sit in a pew than when I sit or stand anywhere else is how we are all so terribly broken. Somehow, God softens my heart. I look at those around me and I wonder that we all stand broken before God. What a powerful bond to draw us together to stand broken under God’s grace and forgiveness. To know that we are all weak. So weak that not a single one of us could take one step towards God on our own. Thank God for that.


more to come...

home coming

There is no simple way to write about the past three days. If one said 'I went home' and left it at that it might be simple. But it is more complicated than that. Going home can't be simple because one left for a reason and when you return, you return changed. The past and present collide. The life you live discovers that the language you speak is not born of the present but of the past. But you speak it with an accent now. You are no longer native and while you think in that language - you don't speak it the same and something as simple as a conversation changes.

Once upon a time, I grew up in a dilapidated house on a farm where there stood a barn, a garage, several chicken coops, a garden, a tin shed for the pigs, there was a light pole to show a home was there in the middle of an empty section. There were tall trees with two ropes from which hung tires. There were sheep, goats, cats, a variety of other animals and a dog named Bonnie. Four of us children lived there with our parents. We grew up and everyone left. And now everything is gone.

(where the story started)

You can stop in the past and drink the water but you cannot stay. Weeds have grown where productive life was. Life never stops in those by-ways and roadsides, it moves on along a road where we all must walk or lose sight of our hope.

(the water tanks maintained for our landlord instead of paying rent money)


I came from a land that is much wilder than I remember - there is little about it that is tame. I would guess that when settlers first homesteaded it anything they brought in soon look dried out and frayed. There is something about the land here that denies anything new but that which can be fed by rain and wind. And now the civilization in this country is passing on - the wind and rain have won and are at the business of returning the land to itself.


The schools shrink until they must consolidate and those new schools shrink and people move away. And churches can no longer sustain a pastor and so they share a man with another church. And people grow tired and pass away.



But there are those who stay - and they are beautiful. There is the temptation to romanticize their life - to suggest that they somehow have achieved a level of goodness and purity that those of us who live in the corruption of the city can't achieve. There is the desire to say - it is better.




It isn't. I wasn't the only one to leave. All of my siblings left as did my parents. And it wasn't because they had always dreamed to leave. There are ways that isolated communities are difficult in ways that aren't nice.

There is part of me that wonders, what if? For it was good to connect to the roots of my language the place that speaks deepest. The well=spring that God gave me to use in viewing this world - where my poetry, photography, words, and craft come from. Because I am sure my photography would look different if I grew up somewhere else. My metaphors would shift. My inspiration certainly would not sit in the odd places it does.

more to come...