Thoughts on a Sunday Morning

This poem was included in the April, 2011 display "Lenten Expressions" produced by First United Methodist Church of Winter Park  

Frustrated!
By who I am and who I am not.
By what I do and what I don’t.

And then I wonder - is God frustrated, too?
Does He hope for what He hasn’t seen in me?
Is He waiting for me? Patiently. Tryingly.

Yoda says: "Do or do not, there is no try." 
I know "All things are possible to him who believes,"
And to Him who believes in me?
What difference is He calling me to make?
To Pray?  To Do?

Everywhere I go I have an impact -
Never is it neutral.
So use me, God!
I want to be the change -
And I’ll try to be patient with You -
or do - too.

Please

Please don't tease,
but let us freeze
these moments and save them
for later.

Please don't taunt.
Your words will haunt
me when I sleep,
but wake me when you're done
and I will come.

You have to go?
I understand.
I just can't stand around and wait
forever.

You think we're through?
Yeah, maybe I do, too.
But if you leave,
please close the door
and all the windows of my soul.

Teensy

As in the size of this suit I squeeze myself into -
It’s not cute.
I'll need the top just for one breast,
but God gave me two,
And what is a woman with hips supposed to do?

Its matching part - a hairsbreadth wide

is not enough to hide the breadth I’d bear
- with or without a prayer
to those bathing suit gods in the air.

The hair on my head is thinning and gray,
I'll curl it or color it.
I’m proud to display, but the hair on my body
- of a different kind - must be shaved and/or waxed.
These rules are defined.

So, into the shower, my razor in hand,
to prune the hedges of those areas -
not tanned - but my eyes will not focus,
no matter the closeness, and I miss that patch
on the outside of my calf or skip the hairs at my ankles.
And I laugh then I wonder -
how high to go (always the question)
To the knee?
To the thigh?
Or a higher progression?

But, now you want me to shave my - where?
I say "Thanks, but no thanks!
I think I’d rather play solitaire."
and wonder whose idea of a joke is this custom?
(It's at this point I ponder becoming a Muslim.)

I think I'd rather wear shorts,
Or a maybe burka
Or maybe even move somewhere really, really cold.

And that's when I realize - good gosh - I've gotten old!

At the Therapist's

The flowing starts the minute she says his name, as if the dam operator opened the gates.

“I’m so sorry,” she says through her cascading tears. “I thought I’d cried every last one I had, but obviously I still have more.”

“It’s okay,” I tell her. “This is the place for tears. Let them out; they’re good for your skin.”

I don’t know if it is really true that tears are good for your skin, but I remember someone telling me that after  Peter died. They told me my tears would help me look younger. At that point, I didn’t really care how I looked – old or young – but I’d laughed just the way the young widow in my office just did.

“How long has it been for you?” I ask her.

“Six weeks,” she responds. “I thought I’d be better now, but the tears just keep on coming.”

I hand her my Kleenex box. “And they’ll keep on coming for the rest of your life, too. Not as often, no, but here and there – infrequently – they’ll show up. A memory, a smell, a song, the touch of something familiar, even someone else’s tears used to set me off. I’m better now, but I’m nowhere near done crying. ”

She looks at me with longing in her eyes. She wants me to comfort her; they all do. “How long ago did your husband die?” she bravely asks me.

"Oh, I've never been married, dear.” I tell her. “Peter was my rabbit.”

Grandma's Recipe

"Leave out one thing and the whole recipe is caput!"

My mom stands at the counter and shakes her head.  She holds an index card and stares at the recipe for Grandma's fabulous cookies. "I think she must leave out an ingredient or a step on purpose."  Mom turns to look at me, the plate of chocolate chip cookies dividing the space between us.  "Why would she do this to me?  To us?"

I search my brain for a logical solition. "Maybe you forgot a step."

"I didn't."

"Maybe she forgot to write every thing down."

"She didn't forget."

"Maybe she uses different ingredients - like different types of flour, or butter, or something like that - or maybe her oven is better than ours." Except I'm sure I never thought of thoses excuses for my dear sweet Grandmother, the favorite amoung us kids.  Her gentle spirit, her kind words, and her fabulous cookies made her exta special.

But my mother could never quite replicate that treasured cookie recipe.  Where Grandma's turned out crispy, my mother's were soft.  Where Grandma's tasted best coming from the bag in the freezer we'd raid as soon as we arrived at her house, my mother's just tasted frozen. 

Mom tried and tried that year to get the perfect chocolate-chip cookie, but in the end she just gave up.  Maybe it wasn't the cookie we loved so much as the company of the woman who baked them for us, and stored them in her freezer just in case we "just stopped by".

My son was telling me last week about this awesome spaghetti sauce he had at Grandma's house.  I asked my  mother for the recipe, but when I made it tonight, he said it "wasn't quite the right".

On second thought, maybe my mother was right all along.  Maybe Grandma did leave out an ingredient or two in the recipe.

Hum a Few Bars for Me.

"Hum!" he said.  "Hum a few bars for me."

Sara looked at the piece of paper in her hands. "I can't."

"Sure you can.  You just start at the top.  Go ahead.  Hum it for me."

She looked up at her father.  The perspiration slunk its way down the middle of her shoulder blades.  Her hair stuck to the back of her neck.  Her shorts dug in at her waist, and rode up on her legs.  She wanted to pull them down, to adjust her underpants, to lift the hair off of her neck so the ceiling fan could cool her down.  She did none of these things.  She stood still; the only movement came from the paper in her hands oscillating from the fan.

"Quit shaking that paper and hum it for me, Sara." her father demanded once again, his voice rising to meet the tension he created in her.

If only she hadn't walked inside to get a drink.  She should have just done what the rest of the children did and taken her turn at the hose, but the last time she'd tried to drink from Mr. Barker's hose, the water had come out all rusty and gross.  It had splashed onto her school uniform and left a red stain Aunt Belinda struggled to remove.  She'd received quite a scolding for that mishap.  She'd learned her lesson, or so she thought.  How was she to know her father would be here?    

She'd run through the door so quickly - in a hurry to get back to the game of man hunt the children were playing in the woods across the street - that she'd been half way to the kitchen before she heard his gravelly voice.

"Sara Elizabeth, what is your hurry?  Slow down, child."

"Yes, sir," she responded obediently.

"Come tell me why you were running," he summoned her.

And she stopped and turned to face this man, her father, whose aging hand was holding Aunt Belinda's Chinese fan - the one she brought with her when she came home her days as a missionary, the fan Sara was forbidden from touching - and fanning his face.

"I was going to get myself a drink, sir," she said.

"Belinda," he called. "Will you bring me a glass of lemonade, sister? And bring one for Sara Elizabeth, too, please." 

To Sara he tilted his head, "Why don't you come over here and sing for me, child?  I haven't heard  you sing in a long time."  His hand laid down the fan and lifted a piece of paper from the pile beside his thigh.

"Here," he said handing her the paper. "Hum a few bars for me, Sara."

She reached for the page, glanced it over, then said, "I can't."

"Sure you can.  You just start at the top.  Go ahead."

She beseeched her aunt who arrived with their lemonade.

"She can't, John." Aunt Belinda said softly, setting the glasses down carefully on the oriental coasters.  Belinda reached beside her brother, picked up a piece of sheet music, and handed it to her niece.

"You handed her a blank piece of paper, John.  How long did the doctor say your eyes would be dilated, anyway?"