Some of us are visiting stately homes…
Some of us are deciding which jaunty beret to wear today…
Some of us are wandering around in beech hedge mazes:
Some of us are in Wales visiting Castle Conwy…
and picturesque waterfalls:
Some of us are taking a leisurely tour of the Lake District:
And the rest of us?
Well, the rest of us are up to our usual no good…
Even I, dogged chronicler that I am, have to admit that some moments are impossible to capture in words or on film. This weekend was full of those moments…
Friday
My fifteen year old came back from his pilgrimage with his youth group to Arizona. I picked him up late at night in the church parking lot. I drove him home with a smile on my face as I listened to him talk about the adventures he’d had.
“The Grand Canyon is amazing. Even more amazing than you can imagine. Pictures don’t do it justice.”
As we pulled off the interstate we slowed down so that I could show him another of the world’s wonders in our own backyard. There is a scrubby, weedy tree to the left as you exit the highway onto the dark country road which leads to my house. I believe it’s called a Tree of Heaven. In the daytime you wouldn’t look twice at it. For the past few nights, the whole canopy has been full of twinkling fireflies. The effect is indescribably beautiful.
Saturday
My very dear friendy Wendy, whom I’ve known since high school, came to visit me this weekend to say goodbye. After teaching elementary school kids in Arlington for almost twenty years, she is moving on to a new chapter of her life. Sadly for me, that chapter takes place all the way on the other side of this great big country.
There would have been more photos, but for the fact that we spent the afternoon, evening, night, and the next day doing nothing but talking, talking, talking. (OK, and maybe we ate a little, too)!
As we drove back home late on Saturday night, I was glad to be able to show her the firefly tree.
Sunday
The next day as my friend prepared to drive back, I tried to express the ineffable sense of joy I felt for the new direction her life is taking mingled with my sorrow that she will be so far away.
“It’s NOT goodbye, Ada,” she said, using my old childhood nickname, “We’ll see each other soon, I promise!”
Later that night, I met up with my friend Katherine to go to the Charlottesville Free Clinic’s annual benefit concert at the Pavilion on the Downtown Mall. I was dismayed to see all of the signs forbidding any photography or recording. But as I sat with my friend in the sultry summer air and listened to the Indigo Girls and Mary Chapin Carpenter without once picking up my camera, I felt like I could swim in the music. For the final song – in gorgeous three-part harmony, some of it without any accompaniment at all – all three women sang The Water is Wide. I was spellbound.
On my drive home, I decided that I had to record an image of the firefly tree. I exited the highway, and pulled off to the side of the road where I tried and tried to capture the picture. No matter what setting or camera I tried, all I could get was a black frame. I finally gave up and drove the rest of the way home. My son was still up when I got back. We chatted about the music I had heard, and I looked up some of my favorite songs and played them for him on youtube. It just wasn’t the same. I kept finding myself saying apologetically, “It sounded much more amazing live…”
The truth is, sometimes the most beautiful moments can’t be pinned down. You just have to show up and be there.
Related Posts:
The Torpedo Factory with my Friendy Wendy
My boy is 13 today…
Related Posts:
We laughed about this yesterday
I am alone in my house now. It’s quiet. It’s impeccably tidy. I can do whatever I want, whenever I want without interruption. I don’t have to rush around, ferrying kids from point A to point B. I don’t have to worry about feeding anyone else. I can eat popcorn and ice cream for dinner if I want.
I don’t like it one bit.
Thank goodness for the photo and video updates I’ve been getting on Facebook and through phone texts since my family left for their travels to Arizona and England.
I held my breath as I watched a video of my son and his fellow youth group members leaping off a high cliff into the water below, somewhere far away in Sedona. I smiled as I caught a glimpse of my lanky boy, looking very serious as he helped out at a food bank. And it made my day when I got these photos, sent by my husband from England:
An entire day went by without any photo texts, so today I sent a plaintive request for more:
My son is turning 13 tomorrow, and I’m sad that I won’t be with him on his birthday…
I was mollified when he told me that he had actually gotten my son a part for the computer he’s building and that they’ve baked him a birthday cake and are going to take him out for a birthday lunch tomorrow…
I found these old photos of our year in Carrboro, North Carolina…
There was a beautiful grand piano in the house we rented.
One day our son, a 1st grader at the time, emerged from the bedroom he was sharing with his brother, dressed in a suit and tie for no reason at all…
On second thought, it was a special occasion. What better reason is there to dress up, if not to hang out with the people you love?
I’ll be seeing my little band of musicians off this weekend as they leave for England (my husband and two younger children) and Arizona (my oldest child). Can’t wait to make music with them again in a couple of weeks!
Was it because I dispatched my husband at the 11th hour to buy a peach pie rather than making a fancy casserole for the church’s potluck lunch? Was it because – if truth be told – I never had any intention of breaking a sweat over any kind of casserole – fancy or plain? I’m not sure for which of my many sins I was being punished, but this Sunday I learned that Jonathan Edwards was absolutely right:
We find it easy to tread on and crush a Worm that we see crawling on the Earth; so ’tis easy for us to cut or singe a slender Thread that any Thing hangs by; thus easy is it for God when he pleases to cast his Enemies down to Hell.
It was “Worship in the Courtyard” Sunday. After the service, there was a bounce house, a potluck picnic, and even a magician. We marveled at the bountiful feast spread out by the hospitality committee. A long table was groaning under the weight of all the elaborate salads and casseroles that people had lovingly prepared with their own hands. My daughter was especially impressed by the watermelon cut out to look like a frog whose mouth contained a beautiful medley of fresh fruits, and she took pains to point it out to me. I nodded nonchalantly, trying not to betray the guilt I felt as I thought of the “store-boughten” pie I had furtively snuck onto the dessert table. I gorged myself on the feast others had brought, heedless of “the arrows of death” which “fly unseen at Noon-Day.”
It was time for the magician’s act. Like any true introvert would, I picked a seat in the very back row, right on the end of the aisle. About half way through the show, the magician’s wife and assistant asked for a volunteer. I gazed benignly around at the many hands shooting up all around me. Obviously, my own hands stayed firmly in my lap.
Almost every natural Man that hears of Hell, flatters himself that he shall escape it; he depends upon himself for his own Security; he flatters himself in what he has done, in what he is now doing, or what he intends to do; every one lays out Matters in his own Mind how he shall avoid Damnation, and flatters himself that he contrives well for himself, and that his Schemes won’t fail…He don’t intend to come to that Place of Torment…
“The woman in the back row with sunglasses on her head.”
I swiveled around in my seat to see which poor sucker had volunteered.
There was no woman in the back row with sunglasses on her head. Except for me. The magician’s assistant skewered me with her gaze and nodded vigorously as I pointed weakly to myself with a questioning, hangdog, really-can’t-you-see-that-I-am-dying-a-thousand-deaths-look.
Oh! then what will be the Consequence! What will become of the poor Worm that shall suffer it!…To what a dreadful, inexpressible, inconceivable Depth of Misery must the poor Creature be sunk, who shall be the Subject of this!…when God beholds the ineffable Extremity of your Case, and see your Torment to be so vastly disproportion’d to your Strength, and sees how your poor Soul is crushed and sinks down, as it were into an infinite Gloom, he will have no Compassion upon you, he will not forbear the Executions of his Wrath, or in the least lighten his Hand; there shall be no Moderation of Mercy, nor will God then at all stay his rough Wind…
I slunk up to the front and then this happened:
This is but a mere snippet of the “exquisite horrible Misery” I endured.
When you look forward, you shall see a long Forever, a boundless Duration before you, which will swallow up your Thoughts, and amaze your Soul; and you will absolutely despair of ever having any Deliverance, any End, any Mitigation, any Rest at all; you will know certainly that you must wear out long Ages, Millions of Millions of ages, in wrestling and conflicting with this almighty merciless Vengeance; and then when you have so done, when so many Ages have actually been spent by you in this Manner, you will know that all is but a Point to what remains…
I sought comfort in the gaze of my husband who sat in the audience. What I found was my very own phone held aloft, recording every moment for posterity. My husband was holding my phone, grinning maniacally from ear to ear as he witnessed my torment.
How awful is it to be left behind at such a Day! To see so many others feasting, while you are pining and perishing! To see so many rejoycing and singing for Joy of Heart, while you have Cause to mourn for Sorrow Heart, and howl for Vexation of Spirit!
There was one person who pitied me. Later, as my son and fellow introvert watched the video my husband had recorded so gleefully, he literally averted his gaze and said, “I can’t watch! I feel so sorry for you! I’m so sorry that happened to you.”
At least one person in our family is not going to roast in hell for all of eternity.
*You can read the full text of Jonathan Edwards’ Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God here.
I sent an email to my mother the other day, asking her to ask my dad for clarification of our lineage for my Last Day in Seoul post. You may be wondering why I would be emailing my mom, when it’s my dad who had the answer I was looking for. My dad is a brilliant man, but is completely flummoxed by anything more technologically advanced than his beloved yellow legal pads and fountain pens. He has never typed a single word of his gazillion books by himself. He has never once had his own email account…Oh hang on, I totally take that back. The man is a freaking genius!
Getting no response, I ended up writing a very generic description of the facts as I remembered them in my post. Yesterday, my dad used my mother’s account to finally send a message back to me. I’m guessing she probably typed it up for him as he dictated it to her. In it, he outlined our ancestry in painstaking detail going as far back as, no joke, 247 AD. It was all dryly factual, perhaps with the exception of his recounting of the well-known legend of our ancestor Alji, who “as a baby came out of a Golden Box, which was found in a tree.”
Here’s an excerpt to give you a general idea:
King Kyung Soon, the last king of the Silla dynasty had three sons. The first was called Prince Ma Eui, who…became a Buddhist monk and left no children. The second son was Prince Kye Rim and he was named Grand Duke of Kum Seung and is the first forefather of our branch of Kims. My father was the 36th generation of Prince Kye Rim…My mother was the 17th generation of Admiral Soon Shin Lee of the Lee Dynasty, the well-known admiral who defeated the Japanese Navy of 350 warships with 13 fishing boats at the Noryang Battle…
At the end of my dad’s very long message was this editorial comment:
Adrienne, what is most important to us and to your children is the fact that we could all become like Kings and Queens. If we live and behave as decent human beings, we will be recognized as Kings and Queens.
Love,
Dad
Happy weekend to all you Kings and Queens out there.
From two years ago…
Soccer season is coming to a close. I got to watch my daughter play one of her last games of the season this past Saturday.
She’s got a powerful boot:
which she likes to deploy on goal kicks:
Here she is realizing that she just scored a goal from her goalie box with her signature move:
That’s my girl.
What happens when a dog-lover marries a dog-tolerator? This:
On the way home from Tennessee last week we stopped for lunch and spotted a little pen set up on the grass with a litter of Jack Russell Terrier pups for sale. Obviously, we had to go over to admire the puppies. We were just going to look at the puppies, and maybe just pet them a little. But then I picked up this sweet little girl with two perfectly round spots on her back, and I fell madly in love. How could I not? She rolled over onto her back and fell asleep in my arms as I petted her soft little belly. I really, really wanted to take her home, and I’m pretty sure she really, really wanted to come home with me. I knew my dog-tolerating husband would be less than thrilled if I came home with a third dog, (to the say the very least). I imagined the shock and horror on his face as I walked in the door with my new puppy. Could I do this to the man I love, my husband of eighteen years, the father of my three children? I sent him a text:
Nah. But I could just mess with him a little.
o wonderful, wonderful 