Twenty Eight Years in Learning How to Love

This morning first thing, David rolled over in bed and whispered “Happy Anniversary.” I had been awake already and thinking about it. “Thinking about it” conjures up images of accuracy and rationality and that’s not how it is. The thoughts I’m talking about that slog slowly through my head just after waking are half mixed with sleep, and yet there is clarity and trueness that comes then and evaporates like morning mist when I move to a vertical position and walk about. So I prefer to lay still for as long as I can, finding out the most important things in my heart and trying to stiffen them up and put them into a firmer setting that will stick tight when I get up. David was there this morning when this was in process and I’m glad. “What did I say first thing this morning?” I ask him as he takes a shower at noon. In the intervening time we’ve had a morning walk, pancakes from the griddle, and Emily has packed up and left for the summer. Important thoughts are gone, I’ve forgotten again.

It was something about marriage, what I’ve learned, what I’m sorry about, and it was important. He does not remember it all, but in the talking about it, something is jogged. A ha. Yesterday we walked along the bike trail that sidles up beside the Pemigewasset River down to the Basin in the White Mountains to enjoy the light dancing in the clear moving water above a granite river bed. There was a group of us walking at various speeds and along the way in conversation we learned that a couple we know is having trouble in their marriage. It could have been us a few years ago. How well I remember the excruciating and nearly hopeless pain of a failing relationship. But I love David--always have, always will--and thankfully he loves me too, and we were not willing to give up. Together, we prayed and worked and a way opened for us that led up and out.

What I’ve learned has come it bits and pieces that require assembly without a diagram to help out. This morning’s revelation was about how marriage is designed around the pattern of the Godhead – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jesus loves and honors the Father, the Holy Spirit loves and brings honor to Jesus and there is this abundant circle of love and honor, all built around self-giving. Maybe that is what the wedding band is supposed to mean. Love and life bubbles out of these Three unbidden and unborrowed, and They work in a unity of purpose – right now, to rescue humanity. How slowly I have come to self-giving love, and to honoring. How slowly I have come to an acceptance that our marriage needs the focus of one purpose, stubbornly setting in my heels to the idea. I was certain that it would lead to my demise as an individual. But I have found the opposite; I’ve grown more as an individual when I gave up on maintaining my individuality with militancy. And here’s where I come to regrets and apologies, because I can clearly see that as our union has come to resemble this original pattern, there has been rich peace and a harmony of action and love that has grown up thickly and flowed over and into the margins like a happy vine. The blessing has overtaken and filled in the hole made from the ripping out of the old ways. I look back with sorrow on my self-centeredness that dominated and damaged our love and our life.

Yesterday David and Emily and I sang for church. “Here is love, vast as the ocean/Lovingkindness as the flood/when the Prince of Life, our Ransom/Shed for us His precious blood….On the mount of crucifixion/Fountains opened deep and wide/through the floodgates of God’s mercy/Flowed a vast and gracious tide…” I found a book by John Bunyon on the same topic as these word, and first heard this song within about a week. The message was that there is a lot of love out there available. I wanted to tap into it. I wanted it in me. I’ve been on a search for love for years, not following a straight line either. One would think, “You have God, you have your husband, you got it all.” But it’s not so simple as that, even if it is very close to true. It has not been so much about them, as about me – my capacity to receive love, my capacity to believe myself lovable, my capacity to know what love is. And how are these capacities developed if they do not exist innately? Shall I dig a bigger hole in my heart? All I can think to do is ask, and so I ask to understand more and have my capacity enlarged. The answer is not long in coming, demonstrated to me in a person brought closer. My heart is enlarging, my mind is exercised on the lessons to be learned.

So David, twenty eight years into our living lesson on learning to love, we are still on the path and growing stronger, better, and more peaceful as we go. Our children are grown and mostly gone with all of our relationships remaining in tact. You have taught school for 30 years, we have a small house and a small plot of land and are out of debt. These are our accomplishments. We have come full circle again, back to when we met, and we have each other exclusively again. All the things I fell in love with about you, are still active and I am still in love with you. I am happy and content. My only wish is to learn to love you better. We’ve got time, I hope.

Long Goodbyes

I sit here this morning anticipating good-byes. This is the way I seem to do it – try to get through the difficult part of separation ahead of time, before it happens, and privately too so that when the time comes, I can handle the emotion of it and not embarrass myself by crying.
In the family that I grew up in, you said goodbye, shut the door and drove off -all within a minute or less. Emotions were not acknowledged or shared, and there was no weeping, no outward sign of anything but the ordinary. Holding one another in a long embrace was unthinkable. I don’t believe that we were a hard- hearted bunch -- afraid of emotion maybe, certainly unaccustomed to outward expressions of love. I had to find my own path and somewhere along the way I developed this other way - of anticipating the loss, and privately letting my heart do its work ahead of time. But still, when the moment of goodbye arrives, the old habit of shutting down often takes over -my voice disappears and I retreat inside myself shutting the door behind me, peering out my inner windows as they drive away.
Today, June 6, 2008 is one of those days. An empty barn and pasture await us in just a few hours. The fencing will hold in only memories of a long legged girl cantering a flea-bitten gray Arab up the road bare-back; then Sunday our long legged girl herself, drives off and leaves behind a bedroom and home empty of her sunny spirit and helpful hands. And the house will be quiet again.

I generally like quiet, but the empty-quiet left in the wake of separation is painful and it takes a few days to adjust. You would think that I’d be used to it by now. It has been a long series of goodbyes, this business of kids flapping out of the nest. They have come back and gone again, and come and gone, and come and gone. But then, one time everything tells you that they are gone and will be mostly visitors from now on, taking their lives beyond you. The familiarity of living together is over.
When the kids were young and I was home with them, David would sometimes have to leave on a trip. I dreaded the being left behind -the screen door banging on the door jam, then silence, or the car engine noise fading. “What if he never comes back?” was my inner terror. I could imagine no more hideous happening, and was swallowed up by nightmares of car accidents and funerals. Before a trip, I would distance myself from him, hoping to reduce the pain. It didn’t work, and it took a long time to reconnect emotionally when he got back. There was a lot of childish thinking rooted in a big insecurity inside my head. What brought the most relief was to forgive him for leaving me, which sounds silly also. David has stayed, thankfully for twenty eight years now and somewhere along the way, I learned to trust both him and that I would be alright no matter what happened, no matter what loss I would sustain, no matter who left me. I gradually learned to accept feelings as a natural part of my inner being and believe that it’s not the end of the world if others see me cry even though I would prefer that they don’t.




There is more. The learning is not over. My cousin Dennis is teaching me another thing or two. He specializes in long good-byes. It might go something like this. The work or the meal, or the event is over, and we stand and talk, and the conversation comes slower and slower. There is something else on our minds. It is about leaving, separation, the driving away, and it is dreaded. Somehow we want to say something else, something that might not fit. It’s something about “next time” and “soon” and something about the love between us. Intruding into the center is a need to affirm that the bond, the love, will not be broken with the parting.

David’s folks also specialize in long goodbyes, and I believe that all these things are happening within as well, but they are tender heart things, and there is a risk of a tear or a quavering voice, of looking weak, and that might break our image of controlled togetherness. Somehow we just never step over the line. There is the polite hug, the appropriate words that poke at it, but never fully embrace the reality: we love each other, we need each other’s love. And we drift into this semi-painful, stifling and unreal goodbye that stretches out endlessly. Until Dennis, I could never really picture what it would be like to let out what is longing to get out, nor could I imagine how it would turn out or if it would bring relief or not. I’ve had a chance to find out.
Into this unknown zone, Dennis comes, ignoring all the warning signs. To my utter shock he says what’s on his mind. If he needs to get back out of his car to do it, he does. He gives the long embrace, he speaks those powerful words. He does it, and I stand frozen in the moment. He is direct and honest and I think, brave. I am slightly surprised that I do not self destruct. Nor do I melt down to nothing and disappear. When he finally does drive off, the air is clear, and the silence left behind is warm, the emptiness has a slight glow. I find I am his understudy in these matters.

What would my family look like if I would have learned to do this years ago? Why not, for pity’s sake, speak words of love and affection? Why not? I am becoming convinced that love cannot be broken by time and space. Why am I surprised? After all, the scriptures say, “Nothing can separate us from the love of God….” Finally I’m beginning to grasp this, and I am glad it’s not too late. This time Emily will leave and I will stay with it. I will tell her that I love her and that I’ll miss her. I will hug her tightly for as long as she wants. Tears may fall, but so be it. And we will take as long as it takes.

Building a Transition

It is the end of an era. Ten years ago we were the ones preparing a place suitable for a horse. Deconstructing the barn down the road, moving it in pieces, and reconstructing it on our property consumed a chunk of the summer. This past week, the deconstructing and reconstructing process has taken place in someone else's barn, for my daughter's horse, who will inspect his new living arrangements on Friday of this week. We were moving a partition and building a transition in our lives, mine much less then hers, and yet for us both, parenting is over. We worked together as adults, doing what has to be done in order to continue on the path being revealed. For her, Friday will be the day. For me, Sunday will be the day - and our emotions will be in sympathy. Pray for us. We need strength.

A Mother's Day

May 3, 2008 was my mother's day. My mother, Madeline Bryer LaClair turned 80. I was in Berrien Springs, Michigan attending my son's graduation. It was his mother's day, as much because I love this kid and am grateful for God's goodness to him. Jodi, DJ's girlfriend, came back from a year in Honduras and joined us there - another added blessing.

Happy Birthday Mom! Though you were not here, you share in this milestone, nonetheless, having so much influence in all our lives. In 32 years, 5 months, and 15 days, I will turn 80. I hope I will have demonstrated the goodness of your values to the next generation in such a convincing way as you have.

This Old House and the Love In It

We have an old house - 1900's vintage. It has been untouched since the 70's when Louis Barnet, a relative on my mother's side of the family who own the house prior to us, finished his set of fixins' which included among other things, a couple of grounded outlets in the kitchen. Today Dennis Bryer, a cousin from my mother's side of the family helped us wire an overhead light to the upstairs room that will become my mother's room in a little over a month. For a bonus, we wired a light to the small closet. I use "helped us" and "we" loosely.

Dennis brought everything needed in the back of his car, except the light itself, and did the work. David and I were appreciative and admiring gofers. He's good - a head that knows the process and deft hands. He makes things easy. And when something unexpected turns up, a thoughtful pause and then, "Let's try this." We were up and down the ladder, and in and out of the attic with drill, and spade bit, Romex, and tape measure. Gray and pink insulation was moved aside gently and abandoned knob and tube wiring fixtures were pried loose. Plaster and lathe gave way in the ceiling, and on the wall we were surprised by sheet rock.

And the ladder. The ladder we had been using was just tall enough to allow us to peer into attic at shoulder level. It was rickety to boot. Dennis brought us a ladder tall enough to make our gymnastic ability dispensable. He is not all practicality though. The handmade sign is a soft signature of an emotional connection we have.

A long lost cousin. We were nothing to each other in childhood. Seven years older than I, what would we have in common? Years rolled by. David and I move to Vermont. Nothing. My uncle, his father gets sick and is in the hospital with appendicitis. Some family gathers when he does not pull out quickly. I can feel something missing. Through our common connection, our Aunt Alice, I find out that it is Dennis that is missing. We hear each other's voices only. The telephone is as close as we get. Somehow I know I love him. Three months later Aunt Alice has a heart attack. Again we hear each other's voices, this time around Aunt Alice. His father has died. "Will she?" is the unasked question we both have on our minds. Someday I am sure Dennis and I will meet. He only lives a few miles away, yet the distance to his heart seems very far.

Aunt Alice tells me as much as she can about Dennis and his wife, Donna. He can do anything, I'm told. Also, they keep to themselves. There is a strength of attachment between Dennis and Alice and one day she tells me he will be at her house. I stop by after church hoping to catch them still there, but I've missed him. Aunt Alice mentions that he will be back next Saturday she thinks. "Keep him here if you can," I tell her "until I can get here - somewhere around 2pm."

Dennis tells me today that it was February 23rd that we finally met each other. I had lost track. Neither of us can explain the instantaneous bond of affection that happened right then. Perhaps better not to try. Perhaps better just to accept it and rejoice quietly that a missing piece has been found for us; faraway hearts have been brought closer, and the man and his wife that keep to themselves have opened their arms to us. This old house is better for it too.

Just Another Day

When his birthday came around every year, my father would say, “It’s just another day,” and it would pass quietly with no seeming distinction. I wondered about that, as for us kids, our birthdays were marked with a special cake and song at least, and maybe a small gift or two. My mother obviously did not entirely subscribe to my fathers’ Yankee stoicism, and did her part to make our lives welcome in this world.

I have often wondered about what it was like for my father to grow up one of twelve in a itty bitty house on the North Danville Road. As another child came along, the oldest needed to leave to make room for them. My father was a middle child, yet at 14 it was time to go, and he was sent down the road to milk the cows and do the chores for another family in exchange for his room and board. His childhood was behind him, and now it was time to assume the responsibilities of adulthood: “take care of yourself”, to put it bluntly. What were birthdays then? Just another day. The cows needed milking, the manure needed shoveling, and who remembered that today marked the day of his entrance into the world? Whose eyes rested on him with affection and pride? Who was there to bake a special cake? The fields needed haying in July, and who had time to pause for that?

Under the influence of my fathers’ patient acceptance of life, I grew up wondering about birthdays. If my father didn’t celebrate his, why should I mine? I looked around and found that “my day” was just another day. The day after my 10th or 11th or 12th birthday was roughly the same as the day before it. The leaves continued to drop from the trees and the morning was about as crisp and cool. I came to accept my father’s truth, and settled into the view of life that day follows day, and there is work to do in order to live. I forsook my childhood wish to be in the center of the universe and to be special, even if for but one day, and to only a couple people.
And then my daughter was born. I will never forget that day as long as I live, nor the day my son was born, nor the day my third child was born. That day and the hours that surround it are written into my body. I am not just talking about the pain of childbirth, I am talking about love. She was not the most beautiful perhaps, all red and wrinkly and misshapen, but she was ours, and I could not stop myself from looking at her and touching her. I was not prepared for the strength of the attachment that came wrapped up in her. She was special, by God, and it was not just another day.

Who would she become? What would she grow up to be like? It was a wonderful mystery to be unfolded as faithfully as the mornings and evenings. She was the center of our universe for a time, and it was natural to mark the day each year and look back in amazement at how much had happened in just one year. We loved her.

The example set by my father for himself was not lost on me however, and though I felt my children deserved to be remembered on their birthdays, there was awkwardness about my own. Awkwardness turned into uncomfortable ness and outright pain somewhere along the way as I rebelled against the unrelenting work that seemed to be all there was of life. The nice way to say it is that I lacked my father’s grace. The truth was that I was miserable, and spread misery about me around the time of my birthday for years, not being able to accept the expressions of love that were offered. Not loving myself and having poor manners combined for a devastating effect. After a while, those that loved me were uncertain and perplexed. I developed a reputation as being difficult and touchy around October 18. I now realize that the modeling my father had given me, flawed to begin with, was taken a step or two lower in front of the eyes of my family, and many things precious were spoiled. I had reached the bottom of my pit, and there would be steady work for years to find the handholds and footholds to climb up out.

Who am I? and why am I here? were the first questions I needed to answer. I watched my mother carefully for clues and examined the pathway of her life subconsciously. Was she anything but a work horse? After all she had done, where was the reward? Where was the respect and deference and honor due her? I didn’t see much more than a yellow corsage on mother’s day. Where was her husband? He paid her no mind, which is the worst insult of all. Where were her friends? She served them. Where was her family? They did not seem to care about her. What about us, her children? We owed her everyhing, but we often ignored her or laughed at her behind her back. And then she became the object of someone or other’s control needs, as we grew “smarter” than she was. That was all I could see. Was that where my life was leading?

I am filled with grief for my mother, and long to make it up to her somehow. She who loved and worked for us against insurmountable difficulties, we treated despitefully. It took it’s toll on her I know, and she began to face more inwardly, and closed some doors on us. We had proved unreliable. This year she turns 80. Is her birthday just another day? Well, yes. May’s days will unwrap flower blossoms before the 3rd and after it too. The robins will begin building nests and the phoebe will sing their saucy song each day of May. The world will not stop for her. She is not at the center of the universe. But no, it is not just another day. My mother is one unique individual in the swarming sea of humanity. She is someone. She is my mother, I have no other. Her life cannot be duplicated or erased. She is a creation of the God of the universe and He has spoken. The word is, “She will live. She is mine.” And she has done her work, which is almost completed. Her one last job is to come and live with me, and teach me how to live the last days of life in contentedness and peace. Then maybe she will be done and God will let her rest.

I have come to believe in the sanctity of all life. Mine and yours and hers and everyone else’s. Each life is special to someone. Let’s tell each other. The coldness creeps in without any effort. It takes the warmth of love to keep it away. Do not tell me that your birthday or mine is just another day. We are here. We belong to each other. I hope I can remember that and not forget.

Ladders Are For Climbing

I grew up in a big old house. When my mother brought me home from the hospital, it was to this big old house, built like a cracker box, and when I went away to school, I left that big old house behind. But sometime in there, I developed this love for climbing ladders. Inside the house, the rooms were big and there was a long staircase that would get you to the upstairs bedrooms.
My bedroom was the smallest and it was at the top of the stairs. I loved running up the stairs as fast as I could and I loved my east facing room which I shared with my sister until she left home. The sunshine came in all morning and the breeze from outside made the thin white curtains flutter. Often I was in a hurry and I would leave my room, put both hands out to touch the wall and run down the stairs as fast as I could. My father, if he were home, would stop me or catch and remind me firmly that he didn’t want me to run down the stairs because I might fall. He was right, of course, and his instructions stuck in my mind.

A couple of times a year, my father would get out a big long ladder and set in up against the house in preparation for cleaning the chimney. I knew he dreaded this task. He was a man of few words seldom complaining, but when he got the ladder out, he went about his work grimly. He would climb the ladder holding his equipment in one hand, the other hand gripping the side of the ladder so tightly his knuckles would turn white. I would stand at the base of the ladder head all the way back, wishing so very much, I could go up with him. Up, up, he would go so slowly, finally reaching the edge of the eves. Ever so carefully he would maneuver his body and feet so that he could stand up on the roof. I would be down below cheering him on, and waiting the long wait until he would creep back down the ladder with the same carefulness that he had gone up with. He was afraid and I knew it, and he never did let me go up with him. He was right about that though because I was much too careless a child for quite some time.

There was another ladder in the house though, that I also loved, and I did get to climb it. Beside my bedroom was a door that led a closet. On the walls of the closet were two ladders and the ceiling in the closet was actually a hatch door that would open via a pulley, if you pulled on a rope that was attached to the back of it. One had to pull really hard until the door reached the tipping point, then hold back so that it wouldn't slam down too hard. It was a big door, and heavy, but it opened into the attic, which was a large space, full of so many interesting things, as attics often are. My mother went up there every so often to look for something, or to get something that she needed like metal berry buckets, and I longed to follow her up there. I would tag along behind her into the closet and watch her as she tugged on the rope, hoisting the door up and around so that it lay on the floor of the attic, and then she would climb effortlessly up, using a separate ladder for each foot, and disappear from my sight up there. As soon as I could, I learned to climb behind her using only one vertical ladder. At first she had someone stand below me to catch me if I fell. When I got to the last rung she would reach out her hand to help me make the last step without falling backwards. What a victorious sensation – to have climbed high, and now be in this different place with all sorts of trunks and boxes and furniture and books to delight my curiosity.


I found other ladders to climb as well – the barn had a ladder too that went to its’ attic, and that was free game. Once up there, I could swing open a large square door and look out over the yard. There was lumber stored up there and boxes of tiny little wooden furniture made by a family friend that had died long before. I remembered him as a strange fellow, but marveled at the patience and attendance to detail his work revealed. My brothers had tacked small pieces of wood horizontally onto the large trunk of an ancient apple tree in the field, making a ladder of sorts that would take me up to the sprawling crotch. If I could make it up without falling, I could view my kingdom from there and decide which limb I’d like to climb out on, or I could read a book, or listen to the birds or spy on the movements of my family, whatever they happened to be that day.

Well, I did grow up,moved away, got married, and had children of my own. David and I built our own house, and joy of joys, the day came when we were ready to put on the roof and then shingle it. That was the best few days of the whole project. I got to climb ladders all day and be up high. Often, when we were living in that house, the snow would fall deep and build up on the roof, and if the roof needed to be clean off, I was always eager to do it, climbing the ladder joyfully.
I’ve gotten a lot older now, but the love for ladder climbing has not diminished. I still love climbing the spruce pole ladder to the loft at camp. I’ve discovered there are sometimes ladders built to help hikers negotiate difficult mountain trails. Canon Mountain in the White Mountains has one, as does Moosilauke. And in the Adirondacks there are some near Avalanche Lake. Yes, ladders are for climbing. There is a charm about going up, each rung a pleasure not to be skipped over. Up, up, up you go, excited to reach the top. Who know what you will find above you? Who knows what views you will have.

The Bible talks about a ladder stretching from heaven to earth in Genesis 28, referring to Jesus. It's an interesting analogy that holds as much pleasure, charm and excitement as those that captivated me in my childhood.