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Snakes and Stones

A new song brushes by on Pandora this week, and the first line wrecks me, a perfect mirror of the pain and frustration marking the past month.

Tired and I am angry at the nature of it all
Fighting just to find myself a breath

After scrapping all year to heal from last summer’s injury, I was ready to try again to perhaps be the first woman to hike the 115 tallest mountains in the Northeast in one continuous footpath. At least give it a try.

I was feeling pretty good, actually, most of the year.

I’m able to get back on the trails that I love, covertly start a second Grid (shh).

I spend time with the littles, joy at my son’s engagement, teach the sweetest bunch of middle school boys on the planet.

All along, in the back of my mind, is The Hike. A metaphor for overcoming: injury and age and the steady drip of the world.

Then.

It starts as an ache in my shoulder, travels down the muscles of my back. A nagging there-ness that begins to shout the moment I put on a pack.

Sparing no attention to rehab my wretched hip, I had neglected other places that were bent on rebellion. The pain is constant, a reminder that the time to leave is short and I can’t leave, I won’t, until it does.

Not this time, I tell myself, and try everything available to excise the growing knot hellbent on shipwrecking my plans. Chiro, deep tissue massage, reps with rubber bands, a tennis ball.

I go back to the stories that have always brought me hope.

Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! (Matthew 7:9-11)

How. Much. More.

And yet – though I know it can’t be true – it seems that all I get are snakes and stones.

I love the forest. It is a place where I can be, silent, away. Away from other weighty pains, where it’s okay to be alone.

Can I trust, at home, my own tired soul? Not good with empty time, I fear I could be a danger to myself.

And then, just when it seems my shoulder starts to calm – bread! fish! – I cannot even. Attention drawn away from its constant demands, my hip reverts back to its old treacherous ways. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t just so darn sad.

Can these dry bones live?

I wonder and worry. Will these compound setbacks be a dark night of the soul, leading me to oceans of deeper trust – or will they send me spiraling?

I realize I have a say in the matter, and who wants to willingly spiral when it’s surrender that is necessary?

So I try. Remember all the fish, all the bread from seasons past.

Number present blessings. Pray and cry and pray some more. Banish those doubts and disappointments to the empty tomb and roll back the stone.

God’s plans are rarely linear.

I do wish He were predictable. So much of the last decade has been anything but.

But what I can count on, what is as unmistakably as granite solid as the mountains I crave, is Himself. His presence, provision, and care.

So I wait here in limbo, knowing that his howmuchmoreness will one day win.

What will this summer hold?

Ah, Sovereign Lord, you alone know.

A Better List

It’s been a while since I’ve had the time or inclination to write, but today, as a wintery mix falls and my car sits idle in the driveway with its check engine light on, again, it feels like a need.

The haste with which Christmas came and went felt cruel. Though it happens every year, it seemed particularly thus this time.

The hopes and fears of all the years: they are a weight I can’t shake, a long list of assaults that sap my faith.

Frequent injuries that linger long. Brain fog. Mice in the walls. A Judas car. Loneliness. The pounds that creep back on.

The very socks I pull on this morning. His socks, the one who left too soon, who loved this season, his family, life itself.

The elastic crackles as I pull, and I realize there are some things that just go, no matter how hard you want to hold them tight.

Maybe I need to look up, not down.

There was another list I started to keep this season, inspired by something I read on the Bible app earlier this month. Apparently, there are more than 700 different names for Christ in the Bible, and author Robert Morgan writes that “each one meets the various needs in our own lives… (and) discloses the many layers of his relationship with us.”

I start to count.

Compassionate One. Fuller’s Soap. Redeemer.

Every morning, as I sit at desk, I journal names.

Promise Keeper. My Delight. Lord of Power.

I circle the number, every day.

My Shepherd, 29. The Lord My Banner, 51. Commander of the Angel Armies, 105.

As I count, two birthdays arrive, my own and the newest little.

Everlasting Father. Bridegroom. Master. King.

In less than a month, when Christmas finally arrives, I’ve hit 383.

Alpha. Omega. Lion. Lamb.

Look up!

Do you not know? Have you not heard?

That hip, those mice, your son.

Why do you complain, O daughter? Why do you say, “My way is hidden from the Lord; my cause is disregarded by my God”?

The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. (Isaiah 40:27-28)

He is your Strength, your Champion, your Great Reward.

Faithful One. Rock. Abba Daddy.

Always close, always listening, my very breath. Immanuel. God with Us. Never Leaver or Forsaker. Life itself.

I can’t stop counting, and neither will You, Meeter of My Every Need.

Thank you for all the ways that You are You.

Hope of the Ends of the Earth.

Good Girl

I didn’t want to write this post.

In fact, I’ve been waiting the last few weeks, hoping, praying that I wouldn’t have to, wouldn’t feel that I must.

But no amount of walking the neighborhood, no matter how loudly I call her name or how many times I look at the door, scour the woods, despite the signs I tacked to telephone poles or the pictures I posted on Facebook, the chasing down of false leads or speaking to strangers, I have to finally admit: she’s gone.

My sweet, constant, loud, fuzzy sidekick has disappeared.

Yes, I know – she’s just a cat, a pet and not a child. That is a truth I wish I didn’t know as well as I do.

And yet…

I got my good girl the summer of another disappearance, the summer the one I had trusted with my heart broke covenant and walked away.

Though I didn’t know it at the time, the tiny kitten we invited into our home would become a timekeeper for whenever I thought back to that awful summer.

How old is she?

How long have I been alone?

Children aged and flew; I sold our too-big house, got a job, came to terms, felt the wounds slowly scab.

Through it all, at the end of the day, there was always one face waiting for me when I opened the door.

She moused the house and chased chipmunks in the yard. Hid under the bed when the grands came to visit, destroyed more couches than I care to admit, woke me up when I wanted to sleep. She insisted I brush her by falling underfoot, endured the scissors when her long fur clumped. Her favorite perch was atop the couch, eye-level with me as I watched or read, absent-mindedly scratching her ears as she purred. She was a sucker for an empty box.

She was a good girl.

I try not to think about the scratch marks I find on the porch stairs, the lone tuft of fur.

What took you? You must have been so scared.

I try not to look at her silly toys.

The treats she no longer needs.

Yes, I know.

I know she was just a pet.

But she was my pet, the one live thing that has kept company with me all these years.

She was a love. My good good girl.

The Divine Conductor

I’ve been thinking a lot about turtles lately.

Actually, for some reason, they seem to be thinking a lot about me.

Ever since I got home from the hike I had planned for this summer – an attempt that ended in a catastrophic injury (okay, perhaps hyperbolic, but it’s been a real bummer) – turtles have been showing up everywhere.

My biggest little gives me a picture of one she made out of stickers. She had a whole zoo to choose from, but this is the one she picked:

Multiple turtles have been using my yard as a cut through to the marsh behind my house. Big and small, they galump across the grass, seemingly oblivious to the mosquito cloud engulfing their head, until they eventually hit the woods.

I’ve had to rescue turtles who freeze crossing the road, caught glimpses of ones who made it over without intervention, others who flatly did not.

The largest one was the snapper I argued with the day before my hike ended. He appeared unreasonably determined to turn into traffic and unwilling to accept that my trekking pole was sent to save his life, biting and scratching at it until he at last complied.

I’ve had a lot of time on my hands. Too much time, in my opinion, trying to figure out where I am and how I got here, a prisoner of my own recovery. From under this heavy carapace, I look out into a world that has become too expansive for my broken frame.

How easy it would be to turn on God. To blame Him for this injury, these thwarted plans, this wretched “wasted” summer, this limping around an empty house looking for something meaningful to do.

But that is not His way.

As His children, we need His Father-ship. We need, I need, His comfort, compassion, wisdom, and hope.

Holding on by my fingernails, I search His word for anything that will get me through the day.

To a hungry soul, every bitter thing is sweet. (Proverbs 27:7)

Yearning to walk, even a short, painful trip to the mailbox is a delight.

Lord, to whom else would we go? You have the words of eternal life. (John 6:68)

Icing, stretching, visits to the chiro: I do my best to steward my recovery. Even so, when and if I am healed on earth, my body still remains in a constant state of decay. This (glory!) will not be true in my forever home.

Blessed are they whose strength is in You…As they pass through the Valley of Baca, they make it a spring…they go from strength to strength. (Psalm 84:5-6)

The Valley of Baca was a place of drought, hardship and tears that pilgrims needed to pass through on the way to Jerusalem. I, too, can traverse this valley, taking courage from Him, building my resolve, until even the driest of sands becomes a pool.

And my all time, go-to favorite:

I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord In the land of the living. (Psalm 27:13)

Though we are never assured a suffer-free life, He does promise nuggets of goodness along the way.

Ease is not our lot.

Difficult forges the fight in us. Who needs to overcome green meadows when it’s a battlefield that lies ahead? Muscles are molded in the gym, not on the couch, even when the only muscles I seem able to mold at this moment are metaphorical.

For now, if I can’t go out to the beauty, I’ll bring beauty inside.

There are grands to play with, friends to visit, meals to plan and distribute.

If I can’t move my body, I will work on my brain. Reading, writing, prayer, puzzles: there is still so much rich I am able to do.

Slowly, slowly, slowly, I drag this shell across the yard.

We must trust the hand of the Divine Conductor, who orchestrates our circumstance, the rests as well as the notes. We cannot see what He sees, so it does no good to beat at his baton.

He knows everything about the when and how and where. (Isaiah 28:29)

I didn’t choose this wilderness, but I’m okay knowing He is with me in it, cheering me on, until, one day, it ends.

Press on.

The Child Within

The other day, in a colleague’s English class, we read one of my favorite poems by one of my favorite poets. Robert Frost – his very name evokes the natural – has a way of hooking my heart with profound confessions wrapped in the simplest of scripts.

Listen.

Desert Places

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it – it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less –
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars – on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

Frost was only 59 when he wrote Desert Places. There was a time in my life that I considered that age to be ancient; no more.

Lately, I find myself moving things that previously occupied some cupboard space down low – the cat food under the sink, charging cords, frequently used kitchen utensils – to places up high, more easily accessible, places that require no stooping or bending on my part.

I have begun to forget words, names. Sleep poorly. Find more strands in my hairbrush that I care to admit.

I age and age and age, in one direction only, fast, oh, fast, fighting those lonely places within myself that stick like stubble out of the soil of my soul.

Some days it’s even a struggle to work up the energy to ask for help – for Him to undull my heart, offer peace, or even acceptance. Perhaps it is enough to ask Him to simply sit with me, for I know that there is no place where His love isn’t.

I learned recently that the cells of a child live on in the mother long after the child is born. There is an exchange, and it has a name.

Fetal microchimerism “refers to the transfer of the baby’s genetic material into the mother’s body long after the birth of the child” (cradlewise.org).

Whoa.

I think of my boy, the one I lost. He’d be 31 soon.

I often wondered where life went when it was all lived up. Heaven, yes, eventually, when He returns. But where is he now, my son?

To know that a part of him lives on, in me – an ever-beaming glow that never ages, coming to my rescue even though I could not rescue him – this is a gift.

Because here’s the thing: I also learn that those cells, those tiny baby cells, have the capacity to embed themselves in their mother’s tissue and actually repair harm.

Baby cells, like stem cells, can grow next to liver cells or bone cells, differentiate themselves, heal whatever’s around them.

The brain that remembers so slowly now, that jumps and skips and pauses unbidden; the heart that tears, remembering too well – bid my son’s, bid all my children’s cells, to draw near and help.

Do cells sing?

Mine must, united, now, as they are.

There is no need to scare myself with my own desert places.

I know someday all will be made well – my son’s mangled body, my own mangled heart.

Until then, there’s plenty of company, inside.

Today, on my son’s would-be 30th birthday, I pull out the photo albums and invite in the grief.

It doesn’t sting as it once did, nearly eight years after he’s been gone, though the ache is still sharp.

Not kitchen-shears sharp, capable of precise severing, leaving edges crisp and clean; no, perhaps more like a pair of training scissors in the hand of a toddler, tearing and catching indiscriminately as it kidnaps the day.

I gaze at the years gone by and lament all the photos we will never take.

There is a limited number of pictures to sit with, and the inventory will never change.

Of course, our lives go on, as they must. Baby showers, new employment, holidays, and mountains climbed.

All the while, he’s still stuck, smiling out from the old gloss and reminding us of the power of a heart given over to love.

There’s housekeeping to be done here, stewarding those things he’s left behind.

I was reminded earlier this week, walking back from study hall under a misty moon, of the power of home. The air held little bite, but it was dark as I approached my empty house. I had been gone all day, busy with my fleet of middle school boys, and had not left on any lights. Body and mind were tired, ready to shift from duty to ease.

Home. I just wanted to get home.

And then, I remembered, again, for the thousandth time.

That’s where he is.

Privileged to live every moment in his Father’s house.

Awe-filled, beholding beauty more marvelous than here (Psalm 27: 4).

Heart held in a perfect embrace.

Go

Moving is brutal.

This is not a new revelation for me, as over the last 3 decades, I have switched locales more than the Bedouins.

As an adult, I twice moved from Connecticut to Providence and, once in Rhode Island, moved apartments twice more before finally settling into my first married home. Maine and Michigan were next, and, while in Michigan, I moved from a rental home to a split level, all the while accumulating children and belongings.

Following that came New Hampshire: 2 moves in Henniker, from a cramped dorm space surrounded by hostile party-ers, I mean, college students (they resented the loss of their common room, now occupied by toddlers and pre-schoolers, whose schedules were wildly incompatible with their own), then to a Cape my family and I occupied for only 8 months. I lost the shade to a favorite lamp there and, unwilling to give up the lamp or buy a new shade, I boxed up the lamp and ultimately reunited it with its shade – 2 moves later.

From Henniker, the fam moved into a 5-bedroom in Durham with a deck, a yard, and a pool; a year later, a fire forced us across town to a rental (it had a skating pond! and bears!) while wrangling with our insurance company to repair our gutted original home. When they finally complied, it had been beautifully restored, but had somehow lost a bedroom.

Post-divorce, I was forced to sell this wonderful place – my best friend lived two doors down – and split my time between a tiny 2-bedroom in Raymond and my work/dorm apartment in Canaan.

In the midst of all that, I also chose to live for six months in a tent with a squirmy 10-year-old, a different place every night between Georgia and Maine.

Let’s just say I’ve moved a lot.

And while I realize there are people who do this routinely their whole lives – Coasties, for example, or serial killers – let’s just say I’m ready to stay put for a while.

This past week, I moved yet again, across campus, this time into the first floor of a spacious farm house that my school owns. It looks out across a wide expanse of field and is bordered by woods on one side and a clear mountain stream on the other. There’s storage for my bikes and gear, lots of tall windows, a screened-in porch.

My personal Promised Land.

This last move, however, was the one that almost broke me.

Nothing really prepares you – not even multiple previous moves – for the chaos of switching spaces.

I enlisted the help of many for the big day: my son and son-in-law, handsome Samsons who can throw couches around like confetti; my brother Rick, the one with the truck; my daughter who, despite being half-way through her first pregnancy, lifted and dragged like a champ; my son-in-law’s two sisters, 11 and 16, sturdy Georgian girls not intimidated by a box of books; my colleague from across the quad; and two of my students and their mom, who were kind enough to show up during their summer vacation in the pouring rain. *

I’d like to say I managed this eclectic group with grace and kindness, but the ugly truth is, I was impatient and snippy and completely overwhelmed.

Furniture arrived, rain-drenched, before I could decide upon a final resting place. Unlabeled boxes had to be dug through to know where they belonged. The newly-installed rug was christened by traffic, and not in a good way.

Despite being barked at by me, my helpers remained optimistic and energetic, hauling things back and forth and up and down, until at last all that remained in the old apartment were the cats and the litter box.

Cat, actually. We lost one for a while.

I am comforted in remembering that the story of God’s people is one of constant movement.

Abraham, faithful father of nations, was told by God: “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.” (Genesis 12:1)

So he went, not knowing where he was going or what he would find there. But he knew God, knew His heart.

Abraham trusted that God had a purpose in uprooting him, and that the magnitude of the blessing that awaited him would far outweigh any inconvenience.

And so, too, must we trust. We never know where God might move us, but His placement is always secure.

My pastor reminded us this Sunday of the profound goodness of having a roof over our head. 150 million people on planet earth do not have a home, and 1.6 billion live in subpar housing.

What can one person do in the face of such crisis?

A lot, actually.

Sponsor a child.

Help build a home.

Feed the poor.

If all of us do something, even just one thing, we can raise roofs for the needy across the street or across the globe. Be their neighbor.

I’m happy to be settled into my new place. I’m guessing it will take the rest of the summer to unpack and get things in order, the way I like them.

I’m hopeful that this long season of moving is over, and I can rest for a while, secure in His placement but willing to go, should He need.

Therefore, behold, I will allure her,
Will bring her into the wilderness,
And speak comfort to her.
I will give her her vineyards from there,
And the Valley of Achor as a door of hope;
She shall sing there,
As in the days of her youth,
As in the day when she came up from the land of Egypt. (Hosea 2:14,15)

*To Rick, Caleb, Maddy, Hannah, Eden, Trish, Caden, Spencer, Pat, and Owen: thank you and I’m sorry.

On Glory

I’m always caught by surprise by the sudden arrival of fall.

The falling temps and rising colors signal the end to the brutal heat and humidity I could easily live without. But still.

Still, I find myself most days, in this beautiful state, spinning and gazing in wonder at the Creator’s endless resourcefulness in awe-ing his children into open-mouthed astonishment.

Change: I think that might be it.

We are restless creatures, and crave change even when things seem to have smoothed and the wounds of the past recede like fading summer.

So, outside!

I can’t get enough.

Drunk and reeling on the firmament, I try to gather it all in before it’s too late, before the next change, before it’s gone for good.

Why is it so hard to just be in the season we’re in?

There is glory enough, I think, if we are willing to accept its temporal nature.

Because we are temporal creatures, here on earth.

One day we will drink of His glory, and it will never end.

I almost can’t wait.

We the Sheep

It is no small thing to be touched by the love of Jesus.

There are always things in our past (or present), big uglies, that we somehow feel can never be forgiven us.

It is, however, miraculous to see the seed of of earnest prayer finally fruit as we began to see ourselves or our loved ones as sheep of the Good Shepherd.

Wholly, recklessly, perfectly loved.

Washed clean.

New men.

Free.

As His sheep, we are buoyed by this promise:

The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice (John 10: 2-4).

They know His voice.

I had the opportunity the other day to visit some friends who had just bought a farm.

Corralled in a back pasture were 80 or so sheep, lazing under the shade of some distant trees. My farmer-friend, wanting to both check on their welfare and show us the animals up close, knew the way into the pen was by stepping over the electric fence, and this is what he did.

Curious, the sheep turned their soft eyes toward him.

Kindly, he called to them, “Hey sheep,” and, one by wooly one, they stood up and began to munch their way over to him.

They came to him with such trust and unworried-hurried expectation it broke my heart.

They knew his voice.

I want to be like that.

As we watched, my farmer-friend petted and fussed over each one, calling them by name and telling us of all their needs.

Little lambs that needed to be weaned, to have their childish ways put behind them.

Exhausted ewes that needed rest and nourishment.

Bossy rams that needed to learn some manners.

The sheep trust my friend with a relaxing ease. He, in turn, is forever vigilant, scanning their pasture for nettles, filling their water trough, trimming their coats, checking for parasites, chasing the coyotes away.

They delight in him, as he delights in them. They can rest in his presence, because he is trust-worthy.

Trust rests .

Sadly, there is a villain to every story, and the one in this tale is called the enemy of our souls. Jesus calls him a thief.

Once Jesus was teaching, and he told the Pharisees, “Very truly I say to you, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber… The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; [but] I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:1,10).

So often, we allow the thief to rob us of all that the Shepherd came to protect us from. We take our eyes off of Him and think somehow that the grass over there is somehow better – tastier, sweeter, richer than the grass we have been given. We even think that the Shepherd Himself is responsible for withholding that good good grass from us.

But that currented fence in between is not so much a barrier to keep us in, but a fortified wall to keep the evil out.

How many times do we open the gate ourselves, invite the destroyer in, through our own stubbornness, pride, or dissatisfaction? Too late, we discover that the enemy is not our friend at all, but a vicious wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Sometimes, we are unrecognizable as the sheep we are. I am saddened by this, but forever hopeful, as well.

Watching the farmer interact with his sheep, I was encouraged by Jesus’s promise to lay down His life for the sheep (v.15).

We should not worry, because He declares that His sheep will follow Him, that He gives them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of His hand (v. 28).

He is the Shepherd who will leave the 99 to go after the one. Matthew 18

I want to delight, to be a good sheep, to think contented fuzzy-sheep thoughts, graze good grass, and follow the Shepherd wherever He leads. To restfully trust and trustfully rest. To have life to the full.

I confess that this is a daily fail.

There are many wolves out there.

Our side of the fence is sometimes desperately hard, but it’s a pasture safe.

We are only truly free if we remain inside.

On Remembering Well

Today, you would have been 23 earth years old.

There is so much I want to remember about you, so today I pull out old snapshots and try to place myself back in each scene, willing the weather, words, wisdom, and wonder to bring me back to that time when you were here and whole.

Baby-you and college-you, silly-you and sober-you, you in tubs and ties and T’s and teams, in costumes and cowboy hats, surrounded and alone.

It’s an ache-y pursuit.

I’ve been trying to throw away your old dorm fridge, the one with the Holderness stickers and the magnet that says life-is-not-measured-by-the-number-of-breaths-we-take-but-by-the-moments-that-take-our-breath-away.

Charley used it last year, and you know your brother. It came back dented and done, but still I cannot will myself to drive it to the dumpster and bid it adieu. So it rides around with me, round and round and round, until we end up where we began.

It’s crazy, I know that. It’s just a fridge, and a broken one at that.

But still.

I’ve just read C. S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed, and the great man has me a bit unsettled.

Granted, I only understand about half of his words, but some of the things he confesses are darker than I thought him capable of.

Listen.

Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any new bend may reveal a totally new landscape….sometimes the surprise is the opposite one; you are presented with exactly the same sort of country you thought you had left behind miles ago. That is when you wonder whether the valley is a circular trench.

Or a fridge that follows you around.

But it isn’t, Lewis writes. There are partial recurrences, but the sequence doesn’t repeat.

The sequence doesn’t repeat.

That I understand.

Some days I gaze at a picture of your face and I can manage. I can pick up my bag and my mug of coffee and march into that rowdy room of middle school boys and smile and laugh and almost forget that tenuous place in my heart.

Other days, though – like today – like when Coach Sink reaches out to give me a hug in the dining hall and I choke it all back, chokechokechoke back the grief, hold it in until I can scurry to the closed-door-behind-me of my apartment and give that grief my full attention until it almost breaks me.

People are nice to us, Love, since you left. They are just so, so nice.

What good is it then to think of your cold hand?

What good to remember the phone calls from police or the sound of your brother collapsed on the floor, your sister’s sobs?

Grief could so easily become the dry that wastes me, but I am not interested in its insistent, vice-y grip.

I want to remember well.

So I gather myself, meet our friends for dinner – Aggie, Zach, Ralph, Sue – and talk about heaven, of constellations and Jesus and an eternity of guilt-free gluten.

We remember you, son.

You were lovely and kind and courageous and strong, and you propped me up when I couldn’t do much more than slump through the day. You’d be so proud, now, of your brothers and sister and momma and friends.

We are remembering.

Thank you for the feather that blew across my path on the way to class this morning. The lone widening contrail pinking the sky when I woke. That fat robin singing on a dew sparkled branch.

It’s your birthday and I remember you.

How could I ever forget?

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