The very very crowded Christmas tree

The best fall Saturdays ever were spent across a time when a little version of William and I made almost-weekly home-game pilgrimages from Atlanta to the promised land of The University of Tennessee. Today he can effortlessly point out it all began in 2002 when he was six years old and we went to the Rutgers game, sat in the upper deck, Casey Clausen was quarterback and Vols won 35-14 (but could've played better). So it was for years we had game day traditions that always began with a morning walk up Volunteer Boulevard amidst a rising tide of orange humanity and exhilaration particular to college football. All along the way our conversations took on an assumptive thread that looked forward to the bright Someday when William would grow up and be released onto that very campus as a UT student. This became a perpetual thought that traveled across years and years of calendar pages until somehow we landed squarely in that Someday. 

While everything else in William's world was rearranged through those years, his idea of the perfect collegiate future never moved one tiny bit. But the thing that became apparent over time was this dream's realization looking pretty doubtful. While everybody else applying to UT in the fall received rapid acceptance, William looked online every day for four months to find his application (still) under review. During this time we considered what a doable and happy Plan B looked like since we had not bothered to include these pesky little details in 12 years of Someday dreaming. 

But the amazing thing I saw with my very own eyes is a crazy phenomenon where, in the midst of uncertainty about significant hopes working out at all, the reality that actually unfolds can trump all and go beyond the dream. When we believed the whole UT thing was hopeless, surprising details exceeding what we could have ever expected fell from above and into perfect place. 

In March when an admission decision at long last was available to view, it was for UT's freshman Bridge program, then unfamiliar but one we quickly found perfect for William's learning lifestyle. In a separate program from his cadre of friends, William worried about his unknown assigned roommate but, there again, somehow he got the best one going (and with the loveliest mom). One by one, William's needs, wants and desires at UT and college were checked off in all sorts of surpassing ways--but different from how we had pictured them. It turns out the 12 year dream was a mere starting point for the good things that have come--there was a better dream out there we didn't even know. 

But William and The University of Tennessee are just a piece of this tale. 
My little story is also about Annabelle. 
It's about me. 

It's about our very very crowded Christmas tree that evolves more each year with a kaleidoscope of really beautiful ornaments telling the story of the places we have been, the people we know and love, the road we have traveled with lows and highs, and about moments of time that have been beyond words. It's about good and perfect gifts that come from above when one has big doubts they will ever arrive at all. And finally it is affirmation of the More that God promises in our Somedays, the exceedingly and abundantly that appear, triumphing over the dark and difficult. 

The big version of William now lives on Volunteer Boulevard, and somewhere on a weekday this past fall we again got to walk down that road together. The arrangement was like the one of so many football Saturday mornings, and in my head I could drift back to feel the building excitement of game day and hear familiar Big Orange Saturday sounds. The tall guy beside me looked just like the little boy whose hand I used to hold on that same sidewalk. And he told me two things as we walked along: He does think of the very best fall Saturdays ever when he travels that road as a college student. And Someday is even better than he ever thought it could be.

Christmas, 2003

Someday.

~~~~~

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. 

~~ James 1:17

Things left undone

It's summer on the mountain and I can open my back windows on Sunday morning for the upbeat Episcopalians' early outdoor service on the next street over, the ecumenical endorsement of location location location. On their inaugural outside Sunday this year, I happened to be walking by (as opposed to eavesdropping through my windows while getting ready to join the indoor Presbyterians up the hill) just as the congregation was saying the prayer of confession I like the best. As I cruised by there was a wafting guided missle just for me:  

" . . . we confess that we have sinned against You 

in thought, word and deed, 

by what we have done, 

and by what we have left undone . . . "  

~~~~~

From the time I was in elementary school all the way up through college, every Thursday morning somewhere close to 8:00, Velma came through our door. She alighted the city bus down the street and came to our house for a day spent making sense of everything therein. A woman of a nebulous age I never quite worked out, Velma arrived almost imperceptibly and quietly got busy in the exact same purposeful way every visit. She did busy work all morning and saved ironing for the afternoon so she would be in the perfect spot when “the stories” came on television. Leaving a perfected house behind her, at the end of the day she gathered her things and slipped out the door, walking to the bus stop bench where she waited for the coach to take her home. Velma's comings and goings were magically subdued, just like the plain gray dress and understated wig she always wore.  

Velma and I chatted every Thursday, with our visits working their way into weekly customs that stretched in pleasant sameness across all the weeks of the calendar. We spent years discussing the goings-on in her family, whatever big stories were making news headlines at the time, and we always circled back around to the poor choices made by those crazy people on One Life to Live. She was unassuming and kind with all sorts of practical wisdom; once when I had a sore spot on my finger she pronounced it “a rising” and advised me to sleep with bacon tied around it with string “to draw out the poison”. Sleeping with bacon was an intriguing idea I did not try, and I have often wondered how that might have worked out. 

Velma lived three miles away behind the bread factory in a little home with a grassless yard. I remember some things about visiting her there: the neighborhood smelled really good when bread baking was going on, there always seemed to be an extraordinary number of people in that tiny house, and the focal point of Velma's living room was a wood-burning, pot-bellied stove.    

As I moved up and out to college and work, Velma grew older and somewhere along the way didn't come to our house anymore. I was living in Atlanta so not close to the details, but I did hear she was troubled by diabetes and eventually blind. One day shortly after I began work as a Delta flight attendant and was back in town, I stopped by her place for a visit and found Velma sitting in a chair next to the living room stove, cane in hand and with dim eyes that could not see me. I was 24 years old but I can still go back to that visit now and recall the smell of her house and the heavy feel of the air. I especially remember Velma's parting thought as I was heading to the door: "Ellen, every time I hear an airplane up in the sky, I say a prayer because you might be on it." 

My little story about visiting Velma with her surprising and most humbling words has lingered as a monument to all the things on which I can look back and know I was short of the mark in having done well. I was okay, but I could have been a whole lot better. While pretty much just a child when Velma was an every-week guest in our home, I am aware if I had just spent more time asking other thoughtful questions and being a better listener, I could have learned a great deal more about a kind, hard-working and interesting woman who was always right there in my midst. 

During the work week I always wind up in the neighborhood where the bread factory, the little house behind it, and Velma all once had life. The sweet aroma of baking bread, the pot-bellied stove and Velma all left a long time ago, and I think about how nice it would be to see them back in their familiar places. Their absence is a perpetual reminder of things I left undone long ago. It took some years to figure out, but I now know everyone has a story to tell, and I should be the fortunate one to hear it. And I always say a prayer when an airplane passes overhead because I just might have a loved one on it.  

My ticket to ride

This is how it all went down: William was born, and while I marveled at his amazing highlighted hair at Piedmont Hospital, I thought my chances of being a successful mother were pretty pathetic. I lost a lot of sleep worrying about his soft spot. At two, he went screaming and kicking as a reluctant preschooler through the doors of Northside Methodist, looking splendid in chambray shorts, white tee shirt (with whimsical little trucks in cheerful colors) and red toe-cap Keds. On a beautiful August first day of kindergarten--once again looking sharp--William screamed and climbed me like a tree while parents of children strolling happily into Morris Brandon looked on in horror. William started playing t-ball and sailed through little league ranks to majors, and then suddenly he was in high school baseball.  Along the way he collected two extraordinary baseball nicknames--Pops and Beetle--both of which are perfectly perfect.

I volunteered as much as I could in those easy elementary school days. William and I went to Tennessee home football games, and I held his little hand in the crushing sea of 100,000 Big Orange people. I tried to always be nice to his friends and school lunches were my forever nemesis, while all along I was trying to work out how to be a decent mother of a boy. On a jillion occasions through 18 years, I thought to myself how a better woman would handle this situation with wisdom and aplomb, but I'm not that better woman right now. 

Along the way through all the somewhat mundane-yet-significant days, benefits rained down, right on top of my head, mostly in the form of folks who happened to be in the same place I found myself.  It seems this little William creature was my ticket to ride into places where great people were found in abundant supply. As I look back on this lightning fast time of life, I happily embrace and cherish a particular phenomenon that has provided me the biggest blessings of all--the fellowship that is peculiar to parents who find themselves in the same place at the same time with children doing basically the same things. These were my best people.

For in all the orbits through which I passed--preschool, church, elementary school, Buckhead Baseball, high school baseball, just to cover a few--dwelled for a little or a lot, a myriad of fine people who sat or stood in front of me, behind me or at my side. I look back and see a vast kaleidoscope of faces and places, and I can still recall bits of many assorted conversations across the years.

I clearly recall making a good friend on a noisy yellow school bus full of first graders on the last day of school field trip to the zoo. I remember the fellowship with friends on Vacation Bible School snack patrol (which we had identified as the ultimate VBS cream puff gig). With tremendous fondness I remember days spent at baseball, learning all about the many fascinating intricacies in the lives of others in the stands, which was fine background music to what was going on with the boys and their game in front of us. I have happily discovered this baseball wonder is kind of universal and translates well in stands all over the place wherever two or more are gathered with boys on a field.   

It seems there were only about four or five stops between Piedmont Hospital and the Memorial Auditorium where William will graduate next week. After Morris Brandon kindergarten, he never went screaming and kicking into another school. We did our last just-us Tennessee game in the fall, and next year he will be there completely on his own. I scared the guys in the sports store when I cried as I bought his last pair of cleats this spring, and now the baseball part of his life likely wraps up this week.  I will reluctantly say goodbye to the ubiquitous communion of baseball parents in the stands where I have learned so much for so long.

The soft spot on William's head did whatever it is that soft spots do--and I didn't mess it up.  The blond highlighted hair has long since become decidedly brown.  I never have to make another school lunch, and I think most of his friends liked me okay.  It's funny because that better woman who could have handled most any situation better than I could never showed up.  But a lot of really really amazing people did, and that right there is a wonderment.  

Pops and me.

Beetle and me.

(Either one is fine). 

House(s) Beautiful

Zappos had exactly one pair of black suede kitten heel boots in size 7.5 on clearance, and they were meant to be mine. In a big big hurry, the online deal was closed without much thought, and I smugly looked forward to a stylish future (at a good price). Later that day, e-mail happily proclaimed the boots of my dreams winging their way to me with an ETA of exactly one business day. The message said they would soon be waiting in splendor on the front door step—of our former home in Atlanta. Alas, I had neglected to change my default shipping address. Oh boy.

That metaphoric house sitting at the top of the hill I came down almost five years ago has played my heart and mind with the mastery of a skillful symphony maestro. And I thought I had become newly amazing in February when I finally found the courage to look up at it as I walked by one Sunday evening—a big deal meriting a self-congratulatory moment about moving ever onwards. Now a snappy pair of boots was making me do what I believed I could never do—go back up that hill and see the place that often appears in drifting thoughts of the past.   

The family now making that house their own special place is warm and kind—especially to a former resident with a sentimental attachment to what most everyone else in the whole world recognizes as simply bricks, mortar, and wood. But beyond the array of building materials artfully fashioned together, there are crazy intangibles made of up souls and memories existing only in that spot, my children’s official childhood home, thoughtfully built with bright expectations found in a different time and place. Without a doubt, these reflections are bolder because life took a different direction leading to a leave of the hill in challenging circumstances.

So on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon, I found myself going back up a familiar concrete driveway. I smiled passing my mother’s last little ornamental Christmas tree planted there in 2007, and didn't quite recognize the cedars and crepe myrtles that had somehow stretched way high into the azure sky. When I reached the top, I was standing in intimacy once again with the tall brown brick façade of an old friend. The front door opened and I was standing in the house on the hill. 

There was beauty I had long ago forgotten in every direction. The first thing captivating my attention was a fabulous wrought iron dining room chandelier. With graceful arms of subtly gold-tipped leaves flowing with shimmering crystal droplets, I marveled at its magnificence and was surprised to learn I had selected it in a lifetime long ago. There was gleaming and pristine white woodwork under impossibly high ceilings—smooth and also perfect white—complimented by heavy wood molding everywhere I looked. 

Like a tourist at Versailles, I was a stranger in a strange land marveling at splendor. I was surrounded by what used to be scenery from every day life but is now someone else's tasteful interior design and a special occasion for me. I wanted to touch everything I saw, partly to admire it again (like long lost friends), partly to conjure up memories of the kids being little, and also to inventory where I have been and where I am going since the last defining days in that place. 

My visit continued through spacious rooms with amazing wood windows and across hardwood floors stretching forever. Just beyond tall French doors leading to the backyard, bright but vague apparitions of little Annabelle and her neighborhood BFFs looked back at me from the much-loved swings on the playset. In the family room I could see a small William lying on the sofa watching SportsCenter and, if I squinted my eyes just right, I could see an ethereal (highly) decorated Christmas tree standing in the corner by the bookshelves and windows.

My gracious host was indulgent, letting me admire her exquisite home and enjoy a sojourn into kaleidoscopic yesterdays for just a little while. It was sweet being back in the only place where flashes of days gone by live in perpetuity, vivid and tangible. I was suddenly grateful and glad my boots had landed me in that place. 

Beyond the visages and images found solely in my head, little pieces of our days happily remain and are made better by their now-owners. Precious new children love the playset where Annabelle’s initials are carved in the wood. Pretty hydrangeas I received as gifts from various friends years ago flourish today because there is someone way better at gardening than I to love and pamper them.

But the sweetest holdover for me is in the kitchen. On our last day at that address, the physical and emotional workload of clearing out possessions was overwhelming, and my sainted realtors and I worked with a daunting 5:00 p.m. deadline. Bad decision made on top of bad decision was the rule of the day, and many things—from trash to treasures—found their hurried benediction in a heap of seemingly unwanted belongings at the bottom of the hill. 

Eventually my successor as lady of the house arrived at her new home and spotted a really lovely, fresh picture of a long stemmed, purple flowered plant in an elegant cornflower blue and white container, abandoned on the mountain of remnants. She thoughtfully rescued it from an imminent one-way journey on a garbage truck. And now the memento from the earlier days in the life of that house graces a perfect spot on the kitchen wall, brought back up the the hill by a woman with a heart for special things.  

My life now looks little like the one back in that Atlanta house, and I am good with that. I will concede living in a really beautiful home is an exceptional privilege, but this other way of life is fine, too, and comes with peace. Subtle peace found in a small, slightly dowdy--but somewhat charming—home for the children and me. Peace that is a by-product found in acknowledging and being in the place where you know you are supposed to be. There is beauty to be found in a new life lived from another perspective. While our accommodations are unlike those found on a hill in Georgia, I am ever thankful for having been there and for the wonderful people who populate the scenery--in both places, and points beyond.    

I appreciate kind new friends who graciously allow a sappy, sentimental woman to stop by for a wayward package and let her admire the present and look fondly at the past. And I am grateful to a God who seems to have a great deal of confidence in me and who works in crazy ways to make me go back up a hill to really see and understand where He has taken me in the five years since He brought me down off of it. 

Thank you so much, Whitney.