It's All My Fault

Congratulations! We made it to April.

Some of us wish that today we find out that entire month of March was just a big fat April Fool’s Day joke.

Some of us wonder if this was just a prelude to the Hunger Games reality show in which we are all participants. We just need to figure out which districts and people are essential and which are non-essential.

Some of us are wondering WHY is all this happening, while self-examining types are doing deep soul-searching and beginning to question whether this is really all their fault.

When I was a child and my sister and I would start arguing whose fault it was that this happened or that, my dad would always say,

I did it! It’s my fault.

Growing up this was exceedingly confusing because it was very clear that nothing could be further from the truth.  Whatever caused the raucous, had nothing to do with him.

Now that I am a parent, I am finally beginning to understand why he did that.

So in our current situation, if blame needs to fall on someone, why not it be me. It’s all my fault.

You think I am joking? No. I am not.

Earlier this year I admit I was griping A LOT about how busy this spring and summer were shaping up to be. We have a junior and a senior in high-school. This means graduation and all the accompanying mayhem, college/scholarship searches and applications, testing, pre-college programs, my 98 year old father-in-law’s visit, then keeping him company in Maine, other visitors, travels, back and forth, back and forth, on top of just regular survival stuff, school, rehearsals, after-school activities… Our 25^th wedding anniversary is this year, and we should do something special, maybe book a cruise, but who is going to take care of the cat and….Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhh…. Our lives were moving way too fast for my taste and quickly getting out of control. 

Moreover, it felt like there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop it.

GOD! I CAN’T KEEP UP! THIS NEEDS TO STOP!!

Just. Like. That. 

I didn’t realize it at the time, of course, but as they say, be careful what you pray for… I didn’t mean ‘global pandemic’ when I said, ‘this needs to stop’… I just thought my little craziness, our little circus.

Free Lunch

Restaurant Tokyo in the Publix plaza on Lee Vista is closed for business, I said, but they are providing free lunches for school aged children Monday through Friday. We should go…

What do you mean ‘we should go’? Those free lunches are meant for people who can’t afford to feed their kids through this craziness. We have plenty of food! reacted my Mr. Ever-Responsible, Never-Take-More-Than-Your-Share husband.

I know. But, I want to go there and show support, both to honor their initiative and effort and give a donation. It’s not about free lunch! They are trying to do their part to serve our community and we need to do what we can to support them! They may have a donation box or something…

Our high-schooler looks up from the phone and offers the best compliment any parent can ever dream of receiving from this age group,

Big brain!, than adds, Maybe it’s going to be sushi…. Yummmmm…

Still not fully convinced but outnumbered, Mr. Responsible watches us leave. We arrive at Tokyo just as the 6 feet spaced out line that had formed started moving.  We hop onto the caboose and wait our turn. The young lady wearing gloves, mask hiding her face hands us the bag. We thank her and ask for a donation box.

She shakes her head, an incredulous, No.

Please… we want to help out. We WANT to support you and what you are doing as a small business in these times. 

I can be very persuasive at times but this time I sense something bigger, something far more noble and generous than few crumpled dollar bills inside my hand pushing me back.   She shakes her head one more time, No, softly, quietly but firmly, immovable like a granite rock.

If you want to support us, you can do that when we reopen, she adds.

‘When’, she said, not ‘if’.

We walk away carrying the bag with free lunch in one hand and donation money in the other. Unnerved because it is more blessed to give than to receive. Undone by the grace and dignity witnessed by no one but us and God. 

I know that we won’t be back tomorrow, but we will be back when it reopens, whenever that may be.

The Worst and the Best of Lent

I realize now that, when I said ‘the year of not offering unsolicited advice was the worst’- the ‘worst’ is a rather relative term.

With COVID-19 pandemic, some people may label the Lent 2020 as such.

Some people, however, may see it as the best thing that ever happened to us.

We are still too much in the thick of it to determine whether it’s truly the best or the worst.

But, it makes me think that this crisis, just like everything else in life, is what we - you and I - make of it.

For, it’s in your God-given power and mine, to make it better or to make it worse.

I had this hunch for a long time, substantiated by my experience, that some days the absolutely best choice I can make for myself and everyone around me, including the world at large, is to stay in bed and do nothing.

Some days, it's just better to determine not to accomplish a single thing from my mile-long to-do list. 

Well, now I have not only government mandate but also scientific validation for that hunch.

With the era of self-distancing, isolation and quarantine upon us, the proliferation of absolutely hilarious coronavirus memes has kept us all laughing even in the middle of all the insanity. How can we laugh when such calamity is upon us??!!

As one of the memes says, it's a defense mechanism. 

But, while the scientist are working on the vaccine, perhaps this robust sense of humor, this ability to laugh together might be one of the best medicines if not cures for COVID-19 we right now have on our (thoroughly washed and sanitized) hands. 

The Illegitimate Children of Lent

Today is Ash Wednesday, the official beginning of Lent. 

It’s become a bit of a happy tradition in my life to look forward to this season. It started kind of frivolously, by my giving up Facebook one year. Well, better description would be ‘tried to’ because the experiment was such a failure that by the end of the trial period I couldn’t even pretend I was ‘fasting’. Still, I learned a lot about myself, and what a weak-willed human I am, so I decided I not only needed, but wanted to do this again the following year.  

That year, being the glutton for punishment, I was even more ambitious and decided to give up complaining for full forty days. O course, now I realize that at the time I was  unwilling to admit to myself or anyone else, that the REAL reason why I was GIVING UP COMPLAINING FOR LENT (and so should YOU!) was because I was getting really annoyed by my kids constant complaining. I thought they would get a hint (they didn’t), so once again, my Lent was a fiasco.

But, for some reason I was hooked.  Not enough though to plan ahead for the year after that.  Lent sneaked up on me one day, when I woke up and realized, It’s Ash Wednesday!, and I had NO IDEA what I wanted to give up on Lent. The dilemma was solved expediently the very same morning when on the way to dropping off my son to school I lost my favorite iPod earbuds. They were lima-green and fitted perfectly and I loved them so much, almost as much as my favorite playlist…

I was so mad at God for taking my favorite lima-green earbuds – on Ash Wednesday, of all days! - it took me at least three weeks to get out of my funk and get on speaking terms with the Almighty.  Which was pretty good, because I really needed my ears unplugged and start actually LISTENING.

That was a costly lesson though.

The worst, however, was the year when somehow I thought it would be a good idea to give up offering unsolicited advice for Lent.  If you’ve never tried this, I would highly recommend you don’t start now.

Love Like Valentine

This post was originally published on Valentine's Day in 2014

I learned the following about the origin of Valentine’s Day from This Day in History:

Under the rule of Claudius the Cruel, Rome was involved in many unpopular and bloody campaigns. The emperor had to maintain a strong army, but was having a difficult time getting soldiers to join his military leagues. Claudius believed that Roman men were unwilling to join the army because of their strong attachment to their wives and families.

To get rid of the problem, Claudius banned all marriages and engagements in Rome. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret.
 
When Valentine's actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death. Valentine was arrested and dragged before the Prefect of Rome, who condemned him to be beaten to death with clubs and to have his head cut off. The sentence was carried out on February 14, on or about the year 270. 

...

I find it a bit incredulous that what vicious emperor tried to eradicate, what one man was willing to die for, we surrender and abdicate of our own free will every day.  All around the world, husbands and wives alike get sacrificed along with their children on altars of endless work, mindless entertainment and even  noble-sounding Christian service.


The cruel ruler understood what we so easily overlook – that a man with deep affection and ties to his one wife, to his baby girl and a teenage boy will think twice before he gambles it all away in a senseless war.

Apparently young men of Rome grasped and even fought for something some of us might need to learn or relearn, not just on Valentine’s but also every other ordinary day of the year.

Husbands, go all out in your love for your wives. Ephesians 5:25

…Encourage them to love their husbands, to love their children. Titus 2:4

He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers. Malachi 4:6

The Cake that Crumbled the Berlin Wall

Some events have deep and lasting impact on our memory. The day might have started as just an ordinary, humdrum kind of day, no inkling of what is to come, no premonition. But then something happens, and it is forever seared in the storage rooms of our mind - where you were, what run-of-the-mill thing you were doing that day, that hour when everything changed. 

Most of us have stories of 9/11, that answer, What did you do when the Twin Towers fell? It’s our way of processing and integrating our small, seemingly insignificant personal histories as they intersect with the larger narrative of times and places.

I go back to November of 1989, in the similar way. Back then, while the whole world was transfixed watching the beginning of the fall of Berlin Wall, I was, anticlimactically, spending an extended Thanksgiving holiday break in Tuscaloosa, Alabama enjoying gracious hospitality of my typically Southern hosts.

What has stuck with me through the passage of time from that day was a thought,

In thirty years, when my children ask me, ‘Mom, where were you when the Berlin wall fell?’, I will have to respond, with tinge of despair, ‘In Tuscaloosa, Alabama, watching the whole darn thing on an old analog TV with the rest.’

Some may say that my special superpower is always being at the right time but at the 'wrong' place. The crumbling of the world as I’d always known it that November is not my only example.  
Of course, with 30 year perspective on the tearing down of the Iron Curtain and life in general, it’s rather obvious that the historic event and its subsequent domino effect has solved some problems and created others.

But, my puny existence is too small to speak into such lofty matters.

Instead...

Competing with Horses

If you can't carry the weight of emptiness, 

how are you going to carry the weight of fullness?

If you are not able to descend into failure,

how are you going to be able to ascend into success?

If you cave in under the pressure of loneliness,

how are you going to hold up under the pressures of publicity.

I found these words as I flipped through my old journals this morning.  I hesitate to write them here, as they seem to be too profound to come out of my pen. I realize though, that there is wisdom in us beyond our comprehension at the time it was given. But only the long and arduous climb up to the pinnacles and down into despairs of life itself can chisel those words into the depth of our reality. 

We so easily forget that words, through their deceptive and frivolous use have lost their original power and are not reality anymore. But every once in a while something fresh comes our way, something piercingly true and it is because of this that I write them here, as a reminder to myself, most of all.  And who knows, perhaps someone else may find the humbling blessing and sobering encouragement they carry.


If you have run with footmen and they have tired you out, Then how can you compete with horses? If you fall down in a land of peace, How will you do in the thicket of the Jordan? Jeremiah 12:5

Perfect Storm

Being the hurricane survivor veterans of 15 years and counting, we thought we had it figured out.  From Charlie, Jeanne, Frances, Irma, Michael – each uninvited guest coming our way taught us something new. Over time, we’ve developed a routine that encompasses a variety of preparations we tweak each hurricane season as fresh, tested-in-real-life data becomes available to us under the category of ‘Experience’.

One big item we learned early on became house cleaning. I know it sounds counter intuitive to bother with cleaning the house before the hurricane, but short of a complete disaster and losing your house or at least a roof, this strange ritual of housecleaning makes a huge difference in the days preceding and days that follow the storm.  Sometimes we lose power, and sometimes even water supplies can be limited, so having empty laundry basket keeps us from experiencing a different kind of emergency, like no clean underwear. After being surprised by Charlie, our first real hurricane, this became a must for our family, right along removing or securing projectiles around our house.

This year, with monster hurricane Dorian’s path threatening central Florida, we raised our housecleaning to an unprecedented level by cleaning out our garage.  It seemed crazy keeping all our worthless junk safe under the roof while leaving our only vehicle outside exposed to the mercy (or mercilessness) of Cat 5. 

With the car in, we could sigh a big sigh of relief. We did everything we could, the rest is in God’s hands. There was a huge sense of satisfaction knowing,

We were PREPARED! We are READY! We GOT THIS!

I even remembered how with the disruption of the routine, and easy access to the stockpiles of convenient (read ‘junk’) food,  the biggest hurricane battle tends to be the one with the bulge. 

“Not this time!”  I was determined and stock piled on peaches, pears, apples and bananas, carrots, celery and home-made hummus.

Then, we waited. And waited. And watched and waited. And started nibbling on our healthy foods while binge-watching weather channel.  The storm was intensifying, getting more threatening, bigger and bigger, and slower and SLOWER, until it stalled over the poor Bahamas battering it heartlessly with Cat 5 squalls.

It was supposed to arrive on Sunday here, and it’s Tuesday and it STILL isn’t here.

We actually polished off our healthy hurricane stash while the hurricane was still hundreds of miles away!! Yesterday we made a quick Walmart run to restock but while we were getting peaches, grapes and milk, I noticed that their Bakery Department must have over-baked and had all these amazing goods on clearance – pumpkin and apple pies, apple fritters, plain donuts and Persian cinnamon rolls... for pennies!!! Who can resist that???

As they say, "The road to hell is paved by good intentions"...

We came home loaded, promising ourselves self-control, then making powerful excuses justified by ‘all the stress that hurricane caused us’… and ‘we were doing so well until…”

And the storm is still over three hundred miles away…

Rosy Cheek Cheese Pie

I asked my mom for a recipe for rolled filo dough cheese pie, taking notes while on the phone with her. After  we finished the conversation I looked over the recipe and realized what I’d written didn’t look at all like a recipe my mom would give.

To my credit, I noted all the ingredients correctly – eggs and cheese, oil and yogurt, but their quantities meandered from cups to grams to coffee cups (which are not the same as U.S. measuring cups), sprinkled with, ‘the way you like it’, which eventually merged into the final word of precision wisdom, “you know, not too thick and not too runny’.

Mom, I don’t know. And you sure have more faith in my culinary abilities than I do. I thought to myself and before I hung up, I promised I would let her know how the pie turned out.

I followed the general directions that surprisingly enough gave rather promising results, but just as I was about to slip the pie into the oven, I realized I don’t know either the temperature of the oven or the length of baking time.

I glanced at the Celsius/Fahrenheit chart that's attached with a magnet to the side of our refrigerator, noting that 200 degrees Celsius is approximately 400 degrees Fahrenheit, before I called 'mom-to-the-rescue' hot line again.

Mom, what temperature is the oven supposed to be at?

It was a simple question for which my head allowed only two possible answers – numerical answer one and numerical answer two - representing the same value expressed in either Celsius, or Fahrenheit. What I got wasn't even in the ballpark.

What do you mean 'what temperature'? It’s the same temperature as when you bake a cake…

A cake??? When I bake a cake, which is like never, I set the temperature at what the box…. I stopped before I could make fool of myself any further, and decided to showcase my limited baking knowledge.

So, it’s not super-hot like when you bake bread?

No, no! That’s too hot. You don't want to turn it into charcoal. I told you, just like when you bake a cake…

Alright, I got it, I said, making a mental note to check with Betty Crocker on the cake baking temp. 

For how long?  The time is measured in minutes, hours, days and weeks on both side of the ocean so I thought I was safe.

How long???? As long as it takes! You need to keep checking it while it's in the oven until it gets nice and rosy, like rosy cheeks.

I stand there, the phone in my hand, realizing that between my multitasking English and Serbian,  Celsius, Fahrenheit and timer, I’ve lost something important, and not just in my culinary skills.

I am so grateful I still have my mom, who, without even realizing, not only taught me how to bake a pie, but recovered the precious lost and gave it back to me.

Örs

Used with permission ©Örs Lévay2019

I came across the following post in one of my watercolor on-line groups:

Scrolling through my Amsterdam sketches I found this unfinished and partially smeared pen sketch. Instead of tearing it out of my sketchbook I revitalized it with some watercolor. In real time it took 5 minutes.

Attached to it was a 30 second video showing the process and the result, which, needless to say, was absolutely fabulous.

What caught my attention were the words like 

unfinished, 

partially smeared, 

tearing out and, not surprising, 

REVITALIZED.

I love the way artists express life truths through their work.

When I scroll back through my life ‘sketchbook’, I am more inclined to rip the pages out than allow the great Artist to revitalize the old work and turn it into something beautiful.  Thankfully, there are artists like Örs who remind us that there could be a better way…

Perhaps, it may take a bit more than 5 minutes but whatever it takes it's well worth it. 

Teriyaki Paprikas

I’ll blame it on Buckee’s.   It was in this mega gas station on steroids we came across during our trip that I got inspired to make our own beef jerky. Who wouldn’t after seeing the massive displays of packaged and by-the-pound ‘ mountains of the irresistible deliciousness.

I’ve never made beef jerky before, so it took two half-tries to perfect the product. I thought that was pretty good for a novice. As a result of my second half-try, I had a rather large quantity of home made teriyaki sauce (it was teriyaki flavored beef jerky that I made) left over.  It just so happened that at the time I had some fresh boneless skinless chicken breast that needed a marinade, so I did the obvious, threw the chicken into the marinade, anticipating a making of a chicken teriyaki dish in our near future.

But, today, a need presented itself when I noticed that my potatoes are starting to go bad. Not being of the wasteful kind, I thought,

I need to use these potatoes – I’d better make paprikas.

Being a good Serbian cook, paprikas making ingredients are a staple in our house.  I always have everything I need on hand….everything, I thought, except… I remembered with a shudder, the teriyaki flavored chicken.

Teriyaki paprikas?!!!??? No way! I can hear my mother’s horrified voice of a bona fide culinary purist pronouncing a swift judgment on such unholy union. You can’t put teriyaki flavored chicken into a pot of paprikas!!

I deliberated my options.  I did all the mental gyrations trying to accommodate available ingredients and the time-honored recipes, until I made myself dizzy. The dinner hour was approaching and I had nothing half-edible to put on the table (jerky already long gone).

In a moment of inspired desperation, I closed my eyes and I did the unthinkable. I put teriyaki chicken into a pot of paprikas!

The act of liberation was followed by a rush of excitement and curiosity… Now that the pot is being stirred, what’s going to happen? Will one flavor overpower the other, will they blend together in a fresh culinary symphony…. Or will they end down the garbage disposal along with the carrot and potato peels?

As they say, The proof is in the pudding, so I was keenly observing my favorite food critics, as they were spooning the stew into the bowls.

How is it?, I finally dared to ask. With the mouths full, all I could get were enthusiastic thumbs up.

My big sigh of relief was followed by,

What did you do to it? It taste different – it’s good but definitely different. I grinned, a culinary rebel with a mission accomplished. 

You didn’t put that teriyaki chicken in it, did you? I grinned even more, the ends of my mouth touching the ears.

YOU DID NOT!!! You committed A CULINARY SACRILEGE!!! How could you put teriyaki chicken in paprikas?!!?!! Baba would be mortified.

She doesn’t need to know, does she? I winked,  fishing the extra potatoes into my bowl.  

RE-Center

At the beginning of June we set off. 

First a flight to Miami, then to Heathrow. From there we rented a car, took the Chunnel and drove to Bruges, Belguim.  From Bruges we drove to Flanders Field, then headed to  Falaise, France. While in Normandy we visited Omaha Beach, Mont Saint Michele, Paris then drove back to London, this time by ferry via Dover, cliffs and all.  We disembarked in Dover, drove to London and after a day and a half parted ways at Heathrow. Some of us were flying back to the U.S., others continuing on to Zurich, then Belgrade then Vienna then London again, eventually taking a direct flight from Gatwick back to Orlando. 

Upon return we left again, this time to Satellite Beach then back to Orlando, in order to get ready for our road trip to Fort Collins, Colorado via the shortest Google Maps route - about 1900 miles - which we devoured in three days. That's how long it took us to drive back to Orlando, except we stopped to see friends in Allen, Texas that added another 100 miles, totaling the return to a 2000 miles. Today we are back in Orlando (at least our bodies are) and all I can think is,

We were ALL OVER THE MAP! Literally. 

I am exhausted just writing out our itinerary, not to mention everything else. The activities, events, people, relationships,... It would take me months to narrate the rest and I still couldn't even begin to capture the fullness of emotion, the sights, the afterglow...

There is a feature in our GPS I frequently used while travelling, to find where exactly I am on the map. I can wander off any distance in any direction, but when I touch the RE-CENTER, it automatically zooms me back to where I am, with the path to the chosen destination highlighted right before my feet, so to speak..

Sometimes life takes us way outside our natural borders – geographic, personal, emotional, relational. We are all over the map and the end result of the process can be supremely exhausting and paralyzing. I found myself in that state this morning; I don't know what to do, and it's not for the lack of things needing to be done, mind you! Plenty to do, but where to start?

RE-CENTER seemed to be just the right word for the worn out, overwhelmed, don't-know-which-way-to-turn-anymore moment. It zoomed in to the place where our life starts.  Back to the center. Back to the core. Back to the heart.  


Pay attention to the welfare of your innermost being, for all of life springs from there. Proverbs 4:23

Emmet

We've bumped into Emmet (Emmet, like Emmet Brickowski from LEGO Movie, but I was too scared to clarify) on our morning walk. Ever-cheery, bursting at the seams with health and energy he was loading up the van, when I made a mistake and did a Floridian thing, making small talk by complaining about the weather, already sweltery and it wasn't even 8 AM.

This is NOT hot! Emmet roared.

It isn't?!?!! I was shocked both by the roar and the meaning of it. What is YOUR standard of heat?

He pointed at the van, This doesn't have an A/C and the other day I measured the temperature and it was 114. And guess what, I drank a lot of water and I was just fine.  I am 75 and don't even take an aspirin!  

You look great, I couldn't dispute.

And you would, too, if you do these three things.  Before I knew whether I should be offended, he lifted one finger in the air as if to indicate number one:

Stay active -  as you are .... 

It serves me well to be served an unsolicited sermon of sagely advice for my whining, I kick myself on the spiritual shin, even though I know that kicking is wrong unless you play soccer.

It requires higher reasoning powers inaccessible to my brain so early in the morning to argue with him that my commendable physical activity has left me with less than desirable  health track record. That is, unless one aspires to become a survivor, cancer survivor. 

I don’t have to wait for numero dos long because he has already added another finger to the one already raised. 

Number two - never be in a hurry.

Even though I know he is right (at least in theory) I feel my body temperature raising beyond the already complain-worthy point. More often than not my ‘fast’ has been infinitely slower than other people’s ‘slow’, and yet, such pace didn’t make me an embodiment of health and vitality.

Lastly, he raises the third finger, Never worry about anything! And YOU, women, are particularly susceptible to that!

Having delivered, Emmet feels great for being so helpful, and I feel crappy for being so doomed. Funny thing is, I actually had pretty good morning, as mornings go, before we ran into him.

I am almost to our front door, when it crosses my mind. There is only one more thing Emmet lacks if he wants to be as perfect as he believes himself to be. As he drives by with his windows rolled down, I wave back at him, noticing four fingers lifted,

And number four, Never give an unsolicited advice. 

Linus and Lucy

We came to Satellite Beach to take care of Linus and Lucy our friends’ Dave and Lisa’s dogs. (No, no Charlie Brown or Snoopy, for right now). 

Linus the Daschund and Lucy the Schnoodle represent the unashamed embodiment of the ‘it’s a dog’s life’ expression, but not in it’s original 16^th century meaning.  They live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, on the second floor of a new condo building right on the beach. The dogs are surrounded by incredible creature comforts, afforded to them solely by the virtue of belonging to the T family.   

Everywhere around us, there is a perfect marriage of tradition and technology, nature and nurture. The view is stunning - the azul above and the blue below separated by a extra-fine horizon line where the two kiss each other. Alexa is playing Vivaldi on a loop. iRobot Roomba is vacuuming the floors. The beds are comfy, the climate controlled interior is tastefully decorated by exceptionally talented, genuine artist with classy flair. The dog’s food bowl is never empty, the water bowl never dry.  Five times a day, we take them out to the fire hydrant where they do their doggie business, returning home wagging their little tails.

I scratch my head, wondering what have these dogs done to deserve such fortune? I don't have to think hard to find people I know and love who can only dream about such luxury. 

Life doesn't seem to be fair. 

If you were here with me, however, along with all the magnificence, you would notice that there is more to these dogs’ life story than meets the eye.  You would see Linus hobbling along, barely able to walk, really preferring to be carried around or just left alone to nap most of the day. None of these glories around him matter, as long as the old dog can rest in peace.

This is where Lucy comes in, an adoptee from previously abusive situation.  The way Lucy works out her fears and trauma is by barking at what she perceives as danger, which is almost everything which really is all nothing at all. This disrupts Linus’ peace and makes him bark and growl, their little dog heaven shattered by the residual suffering of Lucy’s old life.

Linus may think that his life would have been perfect if he wasn’t for getting old and weak, and if it wasn’t for Lucy…

Lucy may think that her life would have been perfect if she didn’t have to drag around her past like a chain around her neck, yanking her to awakened flashbacks with every accidentally dropped utensil, every stranger ringing the doorbell to do human things she doesn’t understand, like spraying for bugs, or fixing the A/C.  So she goes into fits of barking – bark, BARK, BARK!, until Linus joins in.

Despite her behavior, in fact, quite counter-intuitive to it, I noticed that talking to Lucy in a calm, reassuring voice, in the midst of her ‘misbehaving’, telling her things like,

You are a good girl, Luci. It’s O.K. The rattling is just the A/C coming on, you don't need to be startled. You don’t understand what’s going on, but everything is just fine… You are such a good dog, Luci…

Lucy LOVES this kind of talk. She perks her ears, tilts her little head and looks at me, her eyes glowing, begging for more. I know she trusts my assessment of the A/C situation, so she can rolls back to sleep.

Linus doesn't say anything but opens one eye, grateful for his peace restored so he can go back prancing around young and healthy, inside his doggie dreamland.

Nera

It was uncharacteristic of my parents to be so late in picking cherries this year. But this year has been uncharacteristic in many ways.

By the time we got to the picking, the season was almost over which meant that among those few good cherries still hanging on - perhaps even sweeter than usual because of the time spent attached to the tree - there would be many that went bad in all the ways cherries go bad – dried out, worm-infested, or just plain rotten.

The important job of separating the good from the bad was assigned to my four year old great niece, Nera, her dad (my nephew) and me.  Nera took the assignment to heart and with each cherry that landed in her hand, she would ask,

Is this a good one? 

We look, noticing a rotten spot, point it out and have her discard it.  Then she picks another and ask,

What about this one? I ask her back,

What do YOU think? How does it look to you? She peers at it with a squinted eye, and upon careful examination notice a worm hole.

It has worms!, with a loud scream only a little four-year-old disgusted girl can produce, she tosses it out.  

The cherries that passed Nera’s fastidious goodness test went into the bucket until it was full.

It may not seem like rocket science, but to Nera, discernment was a hard, hard job that required superior knowledge, focused attention and lots and lots of practice under patient guidance of those of us, a bit more experienced in telling a good cherry from the bad.

Eventually we pronounced the job done, and took a well-deserved break. The two of us opted for a short walk. We headed towards a place where I knew a plum tree was growing right next to the old gravel road.  It was still early in the season for plums, but I thought if we were lucky we may still find a few that were ripe.

The branches were loaded with fruit, mostly various shades of green, indicating we were too early indeed, but here and there I could detect a handful of yellowish-orange ones. I knew those were ready to eat.  I pointed them out and said,

 

Nero, pick the yellow ones. They are good.

She picked the first one, still mostly on the pale-green side of the color wheel, and asked,

Yellow? Is this one yellow?

I’d thought I’d gotten away easy, but she reminded me that the noble duty of practicing discernment never ends...

Julie

On the way to Orlando International Airport in early June my friend Julie, who has never been to Europe, asked if I/we would be willing to send her a photo or two each day of our vacation, so that she, too, albeit vicariously, could enjoy the sights of the old continent.

I took her request as demand (in the noble kind of way) and have placed upon myself, to the best of my ability, to capture with my iPhone 6 camera what my eye could see, so my friend too could get a taste of delicious feast we were partaking in, not just for the eyes, but also for the soul and the spirit.

Little did I know that I was embarking upon truly an impossible endeavor of the most frustrating kind, and this wasn’t for the lack of my exceedingly earnest trying.

Day after day, I was sending the pictures of places, with each ‘send’ my heart growing more and more heavy, keenly aware how woefully inadequate those snippets were to portray what we were both seeing and experiencing.  It felt like I was sending my friend shriveled up potato peels while we were gorging ourselves on cloud-fluffy mashed potatoes doused in pork chop drippings gravy.

Each photo, on Julie’s end, was received with enthusiastic  ‘oooohs’  and ‘aaaaahs’, and genuine gratitude for the privilege of sharing in our experience.

This went on for several days, my frustration at my incapacity growing with each illustrated text.  I felt I was cheating my friend, offering her a poor, pathetic substitute for the real thing we were immersed in every moment of every day. Eventually the pain of this culminated into a revelation of sort.

If it was so difficult for me to describe the diverse glories of poppy fields in French countryside, the curious history of Mont-Saint-Michel, the crunch of the fresh baguette laden with Camembert, the nooks and crannies of old towns like London, Paris and Belgrade, how much more challenging would it be to portray the glories of the infinite God. No wonder our words and our pictures, even those most carefully chosen ones, lead to frustration and keen sense of inadequacy of those who make such attempts.

And yet, like my friend Julie, even a tiny glimpse of His manifest presence is bound to elicit the ‘oooohs’ and the ‘aaaahs’ and a deep sense of gratitude for the privilege of sharing in such delight.

I guess next time, there is nothing else to do but bring my friend along with earnest desire and prayer that she too can enjoy to the full the feast that only 'being there yourself' can procure. 

Recipe for Resurrection

Over the course of next few days I watched my iPod slowly, bit by bit, come back to life. The first day I got the following message,

iPod is disabled

Try again in 365 minutes 

Never have a six hour wait created more jubilation in my life. A wait full of resurrected hope is a magical thing. Plus, 365 is much much better than 25,536,442 minutes which is for how long that toddler disabled his mom's iPad.  I would be 100 years old before I could unlock my device if that was us!

Thankfully, my wait was measly 365 minutes which in no time went down to 308 to 147 to 105 to 96 to 75. By the time 3 minutes came around, my excitement has built up so much I couldn’t let go of the device. The wait was almost over - what will happen next?

Being at Cape Canaveral waiting for SpaceX launch would generate fewer butterflies in my stomach.

The disabled iPod message was replaced with the following screen:

My iPod was alive!!! The fact that it was showing not only wrong time but a wrong date didn't bother me one bit. Considering all the poor thing went through,  I found the handicap negligible and even endearing.

Amazingly, my old pass code worked, and once I entered it, I was greeted with familiar screen.

It took a couple of more days to recover full functionality of the device and all the apps.  But by the end of the third day, it was as good as new, minus the shattered screen and a water discoloration, as if the scars were a reminder of what it’s been… what we’ve been through.

Am I trying to say that this a universal recipe for resurrection?

Absolutely not. 

However the whole incident made me wonder…

Hope Roasted, Hope Resuscitated

Perhaps it would have been easier if I had something or somebody else to blame for it.   Not that ever changed anything for the better.

So, with perpetrator shoe on my right foot and victim on the left, having already affected more damage than I could digest in one sitting, I got ready and went to work. An Eeyor-worthy cloud was hanging over my head while I interacted with my co-workers, the topic of what happened earlier in the morning quickly becoming the main subject of discussion.

A veteran IT person shook her head,

A wash, two spin cycles and a drier? There is no hope for that iPod except for the hand of God.

I wasn't sure if the comment was hopelessly discouraging or inspiring my faith to rise to new heights. 

When I got home I was feeling so defeated I couldn’t summon energy to tell my family what had happened, knowing they would ask questions like, How did it happen? And who did it?

Sometimes I feel my entire family could work for FBI.

On a dark and gloomy day, even if the sun shines outside,  I don’t want to talk about it, is perfectly acceptable.

Seeing my pain, even if it was of unknown origin, they kindly allowed me to lick my wounds by myself.

The next day as soon as I was alone, I went into the pantry, reached into the rice barrel and retrieved the device. It was as banged up as I’d put it in, and my attempt at pushing the power button proved futile still. 

That night, for some inexplicable reason I plugged the power cord into it, as if to charge.... and that’s when it first happened.

It only lasted a split second, but the iPad came to life, ever so briefly, and then went back to being dead again.  I tried pushing the button several times to no avail, but that little flicker was enough to ignite a tiny spark of hope, by this time as good as dead.