After work, I ran an errand for Jim at the mall and entered through a department store which took me past the Estee Lauder perfume counter.  As (almost) always, I stopped at the sample section, located the fancy, pleated bottle with the gold bow and sprayed a little on my wrist.  Almost instantly, I am transported in time.  My grown up body recedes, and I can see my little girl hands next to the age spotted wrinkled ones of my Grandmother’s.  Youth Dew was *her* perfume.

Grandmother died when I was 12 after a three year on and off battle with ovarian cancer.  Most of my memories of her are somewhat fuzzy, but one of the more vivid memories I do have are associated with the strong smell of Youth Dew.  The bottle in case you haven’t seen it, is shaped like an elegant evening dress and there is a gold bow around the middle attached with gold elastic.  If I was lucky, Grandmother gave me the bow for a bracelet.

I have some other, stronger memories or ideas associated with my Grandmother.  One is of us sitting in a bed reading the Bible.  The other is that she taught me The Lord’s Prayer (whether she actually did or not, I can’t be sure, but I associate my knowledge of the prayer with her) and I can still her her singing, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”  Grandmother did not sing this song gently, as a lullaby, with gusto and she didn’t care that she was mostly off key.  She believed.  As I grow older, I do sometimes wonder if she really believed or if the gusto with which she sang was more of an effort to convince herself of the words.  I believe the former, but am, sadly, haunted by the latter in my own prayer life.

What a friend we have in Jesus

All our sins and griefs to bear

What a privilege to carry

Everything to God in prayer.

My prayer life is a struggle.  Grandmother, I can never say for sure, except that she overwhelmingly seemed to trust God and expected his goodness in her life.  Almost like when the Deacon says, “It is time for the Lord to act” at the beginning of the liturgy.  Surety. 

Youth Dew is not my perfume.  There is nothing subtle about it and thus, it belongs to my Grandmother, who I don’t think had much subtlety about her, from what I remember and what my Mom has shared with me from her own memories.  I certainly covet an ounce of her faith.

May God bless you and keep you, may He make His face to shine upon you and grant you peace.

My morning walks contain a cast of characters who pass it in out each morning.  Every now and then, a new face appears for a day or two and then I wonder where he or she has gone.  This morning, I think I scared a Hispanic man of about the same age as me.  I was walking rather briskly up a hill in his direction.  He cast several apprehensive glances in my direction as I started to overtake him.  I’m not sure why he may have been worried about my little self, unless he thought I was an INS agent, deep undercover as an approaching middle aged woman out for her morning walk.  As I passed him, he smiled broadly and said, “Good morning.”  He didn’t answer when I said, “How are you.”  I recognized him from last years summer walks, when I would often see him coming from the opposite direction on a different street.  Maybe he’ll be there tomorrow, or perhaps not.

Then, there is the gaggle of high school students waiting for the bus.  Yesterday morning there was a group of girls, one of them vocally saying, “I don’t care if she talks to him of course, but she doesn’t need to talk to him like *I* talk to him, because…” and I didn’t hear anything else.  It’s easy to surmise that she was talking about a boy friend and some other girl trying to hone in on her territory.  I remember seeing some of the same behavior when I was in high school.  It would seem the stakes are always high in teenage romantic relationships.  There is the boy with the longish hair and the black heavy metal themed tee shirt.  Today, it was Megadeth themed.  The metal heads listened to Megadeth when I was in high school.  I suppose some things remain timeless…nothing is new under the sun, I suppose.

Then there is the Hispanic girl I’ve seen for the past two mornings.  She is always dressed perfectly, every hair in place, face made up perfectly with her “daytimer” spilling out of one of her bags.  Her outer veneer exudes confidence, yet there is still something of the little girl I feel in her countenance.  Part of her knows, as we adults know when we dress and accessorize as she does, that we are only playing at grownups.  Many a time I’ve dressed well for others, when I what I really wanted was to wear flip flops and a floppy hat.  Further down the road is an older hispanic woman who greatly resembles this girl.  Her brow is furrowed as she walks briskly in the direction of the bus stop. 

Yesterday, I turned to watch the scene unfold. She simply watched her daughter get on the bus and then turned to walk away.  Her daughter (I assume) did not acknowledge her presence.  It is a moment tender and full of heart break.  The girl wants her independence and her mother wants to know she is safe as she steps away.  I feel the same every time my daughter releases my hand runs ahead of me when we take a walk together.  This is just a rehearsal, I think to myself, just a rehearsal for the time when she lets go for the last time.  We both need to learn how to let go by degrees.

God bless… 

I got out in the garden last night after work.  This is a good thing as I haven’t been getting up to walk this week…just haven’t felt like it.  The last few weeks of Lent and Holy Week were rough for me.  There was not time to just “be.”

The herb garden was my target last night.  I pulled out some of the Egyptian onions and mint to give to a co-worker.  While I was in there, I realized the chives and yarrow could use a little thinning as well.  Then I transferred some herbs from the front porch pots to the back porch garden, but I forgot the chamomile, so I’ll transfer it this morning.  That patch of dirt in front of the back fence is actually starting to look a little like a garden.  It’s only taken 7 1/2 years. 

I now have very minimalist plans for the front porch.  It would be nice to have geranium, a fern and maybe some hibiscus out there.  But that’s it.  I don’t see me having the time or money to invest in much more.  And perhaps I’ll get some begonias for the ugly space in between the bushes that live in front of the porch.  Hopefully, I can keep the kids out of that space.

A few minutes with my fingers in the dirt seemed to clear my head.  It’s encouraging to see everything waking up after a long nap.  The sweet woodruff is even blooming already.  Hope sometimes comes dressed in little white flowers.

God bless…

I was thinking this morning as I was doing my crunches about joy and how it intersects with my life.  My marriage, which, like most marriages, has not always been easy.  Finances have always been an “issue” to say the least.  These last few months with so many changes, not just financial, but in finally learning about Jim’s issues with depression (oft suspected in my mind, but never diagnosed till now) in the midst of his losing his job and attempting to make ends meet with various endeavors have been particularly difficult.  Sometimes, I feel like a great big ball of rubber bands, constantly bunched together at the point of springing open.  It’s a weird sensation.

Through it all, of course, there has been help and support and love from those around us.  But it is very difficult to be honest about all that this struggle has entailed.  There is a fine line between sharing too much with others and not sharing enough.  Often I find myself second guessing what I may have said to someone else, “was I selfish?”  “Did I not take into account the struggles someone else might be having or make my pain seem greater than the other person’s; as if I somehow ‘count’ more?”

It’s hard to experience joy in this state.  Do I even really know what it is?  This is a pressing question as we approach our Pascha, the feast of feasts.  In church, where I should be able to lay aside all earthly cares, I find myself distracted by them instead.  Certainly this reflects my lack of faith.  Will I truly be able to release those internal rubber bands and  experience all the joy that Pascha is?  Elder Porphyrios says in Wounded by Love:

Paradise is for one to see forever the face of God.  It is an experience higher than the sight of flowers and exotic birds, of clear gurgling water and roses and of all the beauties that exist on earth, and higher than all lesser loves.

I know that the joy we feel here on earth is only a reflection of the true joy in paradise.  But I do so want to at least be able to step into that reflection, if only for an instant.  But it seems such a struggle to do so, to lay aside all the earthly cares that bind me. Am I to struggle for this joy?  

I don’t have an answer.

God bless…

My son David, 5 years old, has an imagination that won’t quit. His current obsession is super heroes.  David even came up with his own superhero a few weeks ago, “Show Man.”  Unfortunately, Show Man has not reappeared for a while.  I was hoping for some really cool tricks from the new guy.

Yesterday, one of our friends from church handed David a bag with three new superhero costumes, Batman, Spiderman and a Power Ranger.  We don’t have cable so we know nothing about the Power Rangers.  David doesn’t care.  What he doesn’t know, he’ll make up.

David wanted a mask for the Batman costume.  His first idea was for us to get some plastic and cut it in the shape of a mask and then have Daddy paint it black.  We explained to him that we don’t have plastic laying around waiting to be turned into masks.  Undaunted, David turned to construction paper. Last night, I drew, as best I could, a batman shaped mask for him with silver sharpie on black construction paper.  David cut it out, we added strings so he could attach it to his face and I thought that was the end of the story.

Nope.

This morning he woke up and declared that he had “lost” his mask.  “I’m sorry, Mom.  I lost the mask and we’ll have to make a new one.”  Now, “we” is usually, “me” because David doesn’t quit have the fine motor skills to draw a mask as well as he would like.  I think he does a great job, but the end result rarely fits his “vision.” And not only were we going to replace the first mask (which I later saw on the floor in the hallway upstairs) but this new mask was to have a front *and* a back.

The problem with David and his projects is that he doesn’t think through his vision completely before he enlists his assistants.  So, as his chief assistant, I often go through several drafts before arriving at the real thing.  

“But, but, but Mom: a)it’s too big, b)it’s too small, c)it’s not fat enough, d)the eyes are in the wrong place, e)(insert superhero here) doesn’t have (insert facial feature here), are a few of the usual complaints.”

Needless to say, we should own stock in construction paper companies.  And we should apologies to forests everywhere for robbing them of so many trees.  If only David would channel his dogged determinism into learning his math facts….And, of course, I get frustrated because I like to have a project completed.  I can’t stand things that drag on and on and on, constant revisions, etc. This is probably one of the reasons I have so many unfinished stories laying around.

But this is my David.  He has a vision and he must see it through to the end.  And, while it frustrates me greatly at times, I do love him for it.  And, I suppose, if I keep my eyes and heart open, I might just learn something from David’s attitude.

Sorry this isn’t a meaningful Holy Week reflection.  Motherhood is it’s own asceticism.  Or, so I’ve heard.

God bless!  It’s raining here, and I think I heard the trees whispering that they were glad for it!!