Gauntlet (n.)-a double file of men facing each other and armed with clubs or other weapons with which to strike at an individual who is made to pass between them.

Recently I read about a Baptist minister in Missouri who preached a sermon and in so doing sailed right off the cliff of his evangelical, male privilege, without ever realizing there was a cliff’s edge. He now lies stunned and battered below on the rocks of “on leave and seeking counseling”. A metaphor about a barn door and a horse and timing comes to mind.

I won’t link it here because I don’t want to give his words any more attention than they have already gotten, but a simple google search should summon more than you want to know for the interested. The substance of the message was to instruct the women of his congregation on the importance of maintaining attractiveness and sexual availability to husbands as these are things God has decreed that men are entitled to and what they agreed to when they married. That though you may not ever be able to achieve Trophy Wife status, with effort you might at least be a Participation Trophy. Yeah. I know.

Apparently neither he nor any other staff member saw a problem with his words and the sermon was posted to the church’s website. From there it was picked up and taken to the World Wide Web via Social Media, and the rest is history. Enter the digital mob, with their torches and pitchforks and their outrage and he has been well and thoroughly dragged. The general theme of said dragging being that his own appearance was somewhat lacking. And while it’s true that in taking such a stand on appearance one should be a near perfect physical specimen oneself (think young Brad Pitt in Thelma and Louise), it’s hardly the point.

I thought about the women of his congregation there that day (61% of most churches if statistics are to be believed) and wondered how they felt. Did they sit there feeling stunned and exposed, eyes straight ahead, tight smiles at the “funny” parts, his words falling like drops of blood on their heads? Had they thought that they were sitting in the one place where they might not be judged, listening to the one person that might look on them with love? Agape love. And it made me sad, sad.

You see it starts with us at puberty, maybe earlier now, and there is hardly a day of a woman’s life where she is not evaluated, judged, dissected, approved or dismissed, based on how she looks. The constant measuring and sifting, sometimes from forces without and often forces within.

The first I realized that I wouldn’t do was in the early days of 7th grade. In halls teeming with hormones and the sociopathy of youth I received a quick education on the very narrow ideal for beauty and that that was all that matters. Not that you were smart, or funny or kind. Just how you looked.

Every day I rode to school on the bus. I waited with my friends and we were the last stop. The seats were full of boys, the alpha boys, and the only seats left were toward the back. We would walk down the center aisle, a gauntlet, and pass through the Greek chorus of body shaming, raked by eyes. Each body minutely and openly evaluated, commenting on the merits or lacks thereof. Their words fistfuls of glass to the tender flesh of adolescence, as we fell into our seats, bleeding from 1000 tiny cuts. Each coped in her own way, some with tears, some lashed out, and I, stone faced, chin up, shoulders back, pretended not to hear, pretended not to care. Indifference my costume for my teens and 20’s.

And so it has been for me almost every day since. In some form or fashion it comes, the evaluation, the valuation, the devaluation, for every woman I know. I’m of an age now where I largely go unnoticed, and it’s fine with me. An Invisibility Cloak the costume of my 50’s.

But for my younger friends it’s louder than ever. The impossible expectations, the cacophony of social media, swipe left, swipe right. Every day, every woman will walk the gauntlet, be it long or short, in her school, on her job, on the street, in her own mirror, and apparently even to her seat in church.

One blessing of this present madness is all the time I have spent out in nature. I’ve watched Spring unfold in the minutest detail. Snowdrops became Daffodils became Azaleas, became Wisteria, became Honeysuckle. The nest carefully built in my carport, filled first with moss, then eggs, z lolr red e now downy little creatures with beaks open to the sky. Their parents SS C zerx.r. Zzz sd:.:.2their business unconcerned about human beings andd D as sex erd;5:..:ie all their shenanigans. Comfortingd really. I’ve watched it all from my patio, unfolding zzzd.,4….44zd;;;.7. like a slow motion movie of the creation of the world.

And so every Saturday and Sunday I sit out there and “go” to my church online, in what has become my quarantine uniform, desperately saggy yoga pants and one of 3 tee shirts although I have dozens. I trail coffee, phone and earbuds, so thankful for technology. I am all in with hands raised and sing at the topic my voice, blessing everyone in the cul-de-sac with my Worship stylings. (You’re welcome.)

Today as we sang I opened my eyes, and saw all SS me a green Cathedral. All of nature cooperating as thoughszzdssszzzssszz ask. it knew the playlist. The words of the songs being proclaimed in front of me as .we sang, like we were ./:/: a Divine zeph zz zero mere as E’s Score.

“Holy, all creation cries Holy…”

I saw the trees, swaying, their arms ever lifted in worship, their leaves shimmering with His praise in the breeze.

I saw the birds calling to each other and one lone hawk doing lazy circles above me. A Cardinal flew by me with a flash of red, all like Cherubim in the Throne Room, their whole being crying out,

“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty…”

The last prayers for our world were said, the last notes of our last song were sung, and at that moment the sun came out from behind the clouds and shone down, turning everything to gold.

“The Lord bless you and keep you, make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn His face toward and give you peace.”

Selah.

Before (prep.)- during the period of time preceding.

Heritage House Coffeeshop, medium latte with Pam.

Jim&Nick’s BBQ, dinner with Betsey.

Burch Formalwear, tux fitting for son’s senior prom.

Hair Cutters Inc., wash, cut, blowout.

Barnes&Noble, Books and coffee with Janet.

All things done the week before the first case of Covid-19 diagnosed in Alabama. Two weeks before the mandatory curfew. Three weeks before schools closed for the rest of the year, and before the first deaths in Alabama. Four weeks before the number of cases broke 1000, before Shelter-in-Place. Another life. Before.

Before life as we knew changed on a dime, for now and possibly for good. Before people went all Lord of the Flies in Dollar General and we discovered the lengths people would go to be sure they had toilet paper. Before it was normal to step way around others on the street, and to wear masks and gloves in the Grocery Store. Before Zoom. Before the best way to love your elderly relatives was to stay away. Before.

Did I enjoy myself that week, going about life, without realizing how much it was going to change? That everything I was doing would not even be on the table in a month? I did, but not the way I would have if I’d known there would never be another week like it. And though I think of myself as a person who lives in the day, I’ve been amazed to realize how much time and energy and planning I’ve put into things that aren’t even going to happen now.

I hear myself and others making reference to “when this will all be over”, but really, will it? Can we ever go back and be people that didn’t believe this could happen? Should we? When life gets back to normal, will it be that frantic merry-go-round of things that as it turns out don’t really matter that much? Do we want it to be?

Or will we have learned something in the quiet? Will we take up our lives recalibrated in ways large and small? Will it be a destroying fire or a refining one? Will we emerge scarred or better? Or both?

I think of my Depression era grandparents, how they never forgot what it was to be in want. They never wasted food and they never threw anything away, even aluminum foil and butter containers. But they worked hard, were easily satisfied, never failed to be grateful and never fooled with self-pity.

What will my version of that be? That I never again took up idle and worthless pursuits, that when I can hug my family again, that I will make sure I let them quit hugging first, that I never forget the goodness of people, the solace of nature and the joys of family, and simple pleasures? All of that I hope. And that I will never again touch a doorknob with my bare hand.

Full Circle (adv.)-through a series of developments that lead back to the original source, position or situation.

We stepped out onto the sidewalk into a light rain. Lifting our umbrellas, we set out and made our way to the coffee shop around the corner. He had just been fitted for a tuxedo for his Senior Prom. Great care was taken to make sure that his bow tie would perfectly match the dress of his chosen lady. He was full of plans and his eyes shone with excitement.

We ordered and then looked around for a seat. We passed a shelf with all manner of games. He said:

“Oh look, they have Battleship. Let’s play!”

And so we did, and I was reminded of another day, now a long time ago. A day when I started my day with a change of plans that I documented on Facebook. It was September 11, 2008

“Staying home with Jackson who is sick. I will take him to the doctor and then spend the day letting him beat me at Battleship.”

Oh if it had only been that simple. But life has a way of dealing you a blow when you least expect it, and when I stepped out into the blue sky of a fall day I could never have imagined where the day would lead me. By that night we would be at Children’s Hospital, and that 6 year-old boy would spend his first night away from home in the I.C.U., with a diagnosis of Leukemia. It would be 3 1/2 years of treatment before the Specter was removed from our lives.

And now I gazed across the table at him, brow furrowed as he considered his move. Six feet tall, with a first attempt at a mustache, honors student, football player. He is headed to college in the fall to be a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner and wants to work at Children’s Hospital with kids with cancer. Full circle.

This year has been full of the sweetest of bittersweet moments. He’s my last so there’s that, a season, a role, almost completed. All the milestones the more poignant for that and for the fact that we did not know if he would be here to mark them.

This fall we stood at the edge of the football field ready to walk him out for the Senior Night football game. As we made our way across the field, it seemed a short walk considering all the miles we’d come to be there in that moment.

And so I spent an hour with him, my last born, the one that almost got away, and I could feel the time pouring through my fingers like water. An exquisite moment in time, everything behind him and everything before him. A moment routine to him and precious to me. No words could capture a moment of such sweetness or the mercy of a God that made it possible. Full circle.

He sank my Battleship and I didn’t even have to let him win. And then we finished our coffee, picked up our umbrellas and stepped back out into the rain.

Dying, like being born, is hard work. Even when all hope is gone of continuing in this earthly shell, the body refuses to believe it. Bravely it goes on trying to do what it has always done, to breathe, to continue, to remain.

And we keep watch, talking until there is no more talking, no more goodbyes to say, no more unfinished business. Then we sit in whispers, offering sips of water, bites of food, our eyes pleading to be able to offer something that is wanted, when nothing is wanted but release.

Then we sit in silence, sitting Shiva in advance, a vigil for what was. The last service we can ever provide. Sorrow and love moving in the room like a vapor.

By his last bed is a picture of a bridge into woods, in the fall, strewn with golden leaves. The path at the end leads into the woods. As the days go on, I picture him coming ever closer to that bridge. Closer to putting on his familiar red, fleece jacket and picking up his old, trusty Nikon camera. Closer to going over the bridge to capture what is next.

And I picture our old wonderful German Shepherd Waylon, our beloved dog emeritus, standing at the other end, tail waving, faster and faster as he approaches. Until they continue on together to where the path turns out of sight.

When I was in college I lived in an apartment in a series of red brick buildings, built just after WWII. They are gone now, swept away as though they were never there at all, in the Tornado of 2011, but that’s another story for another day.

There was an elderly couple that lived just across the way, their names lost to me now in the mist of time. They were alone in the world but for each other, and kind, and I would go and sit with them from time to time. Just inside the door, in their entryway, was a picture on the wall. I passed it every time I went in. It’s golden frame held the photograph of a beautiful little girl, with blue eyes and blond hair. Forever frozen at 3, swept away by a tornado of another kind, Leukemia.

I would sit with them in the stillness, surrounded by old things, listening to their stories and the ticking of the clock. I would glance at the picture of their little daughter as I left and think it was sad, knowing nothing yet of sorrow. And then one day, without either of us knowing it, it was the last time I came and went, and I consigned them to the drawer of memory.

I would remember them again many years later as I sat by the bed of another tiny patient, a boy this time, and 6 not 3, but the same mortal enemy. But for 3 years I would hold my boy, ghostly pale and limp, and wipe away vomit, and hope and pray and claw and fight our way to the cure she never had the chance to have.

One night after a long day at the Clinic my son fell asleep in my bed although he wasn’t supposed to. I was reading Siddhartha Mukherjee’s masterful biography of cancer, The Emperor of All Maladies. I came to the chapter on VAMP, the first Clinical Trial that tested many of the drugs now used to treat childhood cancer. The name an acronym for the combination of drugs used. The year was 1961, and the regimen so toxic that many children died outright, and many died after a brief remission because they didn’t yet have the final piece of the puzzle, that you had to give radiation to the spinal fluid or it would come back. But for the first time there were remissions and for the first time there were survivors and it was the beginning of Leukemia becoming a curable childhood cancer.

I read, the words falling like drops of blood on my eyes, and I thought of those long ago nameless children, the hell they went through, and their desperate and courageous parents, and the incredible debt I owed them. And as I read, my hand kept slipping over to touch my beautiful boy, and be reassured by his warm flesh under my fingers.

And as it turned out, mine would live, and grow his hair back, and have birthdays and go to DisneyWorld, and hold his baby cousin on the day he was born, and play in the ocean, and go to camp, and kick a football and kiss a girl for the first time, and have it all before him.

And I thought of my long ago neighbors, and their long ago girl, who died years before the VAMP trial was ever thought of, when all there was of treatment was to take them home and make them comfortable as they faced their certain and miserable death. Guilty of nothing but being born in the wrong time. Consigned to be only a golden girl in a golden frame, in a room full of old things and the ticking of a clock.

“More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered prayers.”-Truman Capote

The route to my son’s school goes down a road with a now closed factory. The fence is lined with Bradford Pear trees that snow blossoms on my windshield in the spring, and lay a ruby carpet in the fall. The factory once made those relics of a bygone era, cassette tapes. (Children of the ’80s remove your caps for a moment of silence, and then be grateful that you will never again have to re-spool one with a ballpoint pen.)

One morning on the trip to school I saw a police officer lying in wait for the speeding unsuspecting, hidden beside the old guard shack at the entrance; no doubt hoping to nab one of the late to schoolers flying by. As luck would have it I was going the speed limit (or at least I was by the time I got even with him), and drove by without incident.

On the way back, I remembered that he was there and carefully maintained the correct speed as I approached that stretch of road. Behind me, a car began to follow very closely, the driver growing more and more agitated. I could almost see the veins bulging out on his forehead. He veered over slightly to assess his chances of passing me on the double yellow lines. My eye caught his in the rear view mirror and he threw up his hand in the universal gesture of frustration. I held up one finger (no, not that finger) and shook my head. He gave me a disgusted look and stayed on my bumper.

Just at that moment we came around a curve and there was Mr. Officer, parked beside the guard shack. We passed him uneventfully, and parted ways at the traffic light, him to go left, me to continue on straight. As he passed me, he gave me a wave and a sheepish grin, realizing that I’d probably saved him from getting a ticket. I gave him a smile and a thumbs up.

And it got me to thinking, how many times I am impatient, riding life’s bumper, looking for a way to pass any frustration on the double yellow lines. Heaving sighs of frustration as I look for a shortcut to get where I’ve decided I need to go.

And all the time, it’s God in the car ahead of me, fully aware of the danger ahead that I don’t yet see. Not trying to slow me down, trying to spare me avoidable pain and suffering.

Sometimes, when I get past the guard shack and see what I was spared, I flash my maker a wave and a sheepish grin. I go my way and vow to remember it next time. And sometimes, I’m so full of self will and pride, or plain old spiritual blindness, that I just won’t be spared. I blow past the warnings and right into the speed trap. And when I do, He patiently walks with me to pay my ticket, and I vow to remember it and never try to pass Him on the double yellow lines again. With mixed success.

And either way, He gives me a smile and a thumbs up.

“In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.”-Romans 8:26

The year was 2002. I had a 5 year old, a 3 year old and a new baby. I was the kind of tired that only a new baby brings. The kind where your skin hurts, and you can barely put a sentence together. I’d been meeting the needs of my baby, but the other two had had a lot of time on autopilot, in front of Thomas the Tank Engine videos.

So, in a moment of caffeinated bravado, infused with guilt, I decided to try and be “good Mom”. You know her, she is able to meet emotional needs and the requirements of early childhood development instead of just preventing death by misadventure. And so in pursuit of her, I made the greatest sacrificial offering in the Mothering world. I decided to let them paint.

So we dragged out the art box, blew off the dust and began to set up. They were excited to have some of my time and attention. Even the baby was a part, sitting on the table in his bouncy seat. (I know he shouldn’t have been on the table, hush.) Finally, little smocks in place, paper and brushes out, I began to set out the paint. Since it had been awhile I had to shake it up before pouring. Blue, then green, then yellow, then red.

As it turned out the lid on the red paint was not on very securely. I gave it one good shake, said lid flew off, and red paint went everywhere. Everywhere. On me, the table, the chairs, the walls, the upholstery, the rug. Everywhere. My “good Mom” impulse had just turned into an hour long clean up in addition to everything else that needed to be done. If a car had pulled up the the door and honked the horn at that moment, I like to think I wouldn’t have gotten in and driven away from my life, but I can’t be sure.

For a long moment it was as though time stopped. Everyone froze, even the baby, and turned to look at me. If I’ve ever sent up a Mayday prayer it was at that moment. I knew I didn’t have it in me to have the right response and that I was about to blow it. I was dangling by a tattered fiber from the end of my rope.

And in the silence of that moment, I felt the Lord whisper a word to me. One word.

“Laugh.”

There was nothing in me that wanted to laugh at that moment. I wanted to scream and throw things and cry my eyes out. But I looked around that table, at those little faces looking at me, waiting to see what I would do. And I saw the one thing on them that I never hoped to see, fear.

And so, I laughed. I didn’t mean it, but I did it. As an act of love. I saw the relief shoot across their faces and then they laughed too, and they did mean it. The moment passed and they began to paint and I began to clean up.

I doubt they even remember that day, but I count it as one of my parenting “wins”. There have been many more times I’ve blown it and maybe I’ll blog about them too one day.

All these years later there is still a little red paint in the woodwork of one of my dining room chairs. I decided to leave it there. To remind me of the day the God of the Universe heard an S.O.S. prayer and reached down into my dining room and saved the day. To remind me that at least once in a while I got it right, that sometimes in life, no matter how careful we are, red paint goes everywhere, and when it does we clean it up. And we laugh.

Exchange of the Day: (re. Shopping for new apartment)

Me: “Nick do I even need to buy you a mop, will you use it?”

Nick: “Yes…but not for months. We’ve got plenty of time.”

So, my 21 and 19 year olds are moving into their own apartments next week. I offered to take them to Walmart to help them get the things they will need. They both managed to look very affronted that I thought my presence would be required, they are after all, legal adults. I may or may not have seen surreptitious eye-rolling. They liked the idea of of it being on my credit card however, so in the end I went.

I was very glad I did because as we cruised the aisles I began to suggest that they avail themselves of items such as dishes, utensils, pots and pans, towels, mats. This was met with looks of wonder as though it had not crossed their minds that one might need to purchase such items. Apparently, they had come to the conclusion that since all of those items were present in MY house that they must be standard to all places of living. That one merely opened drawers and forks appeared, that shower curtains rose from the drain and hung themselves on rods that came down from Heaven. I was happy to be able to share with them the information that if you don’t bring these things with you, you won’t have them. Who knew?

Once they grasped that concept the idea of this Walmart visit began to make more sense and they threw themselves into selecting all kinds of things, including some trippy looking flatware, that looked like it came from the Jerry Garcia Collection. I do wonder a bit what they had thought we were there to buy? What essentials of apartment living they would’ve bought? Posters? Pizza rolls? The Camo Black Bear soap dispenser that I made them put back?

After this success we moved on to advanced concepts such as dry goods, dish drainers and trash cans. But just as it appeared we we’re making progress I came upon them on aisle 7 using their carts to joust with their new brooms.

This is what I’m unleashing on an unsuspecting world next week, incomplete frontal lobe development and all. World, brace yourself.

Memorial (n.)-created or done to honor a person who has died.

I have a friend whose Father was killed in Vietnam when she was a little girl. Forty eight years later she can still tell you everything about that day, about that moment, when the soldier came to the door with the envelope in his hand.

She can tell you what the weather was like, what she was wearing, the way her baby brother’s foot looked hanging from her Mother’s hip, about the strangled sound her Mother made and then the wailing.

She wonders what she was doing at the exact moment her big, strong Daddy laid down his life in a rice Paddy far away.

She tells me all of it, with tears in her eyes. Her tears are frozen at her eyelids as that moment is frozen in time. Her shoulders drawn in as though to ward off blows on a place still tender. After all these years.

Today, maybe even at this moment, somewhere in the world, someone’s child, someone’s parent, someone’s friend, someone’s someone will die for our country. It will probably be in a desert rather than a jungle, but still, alone, afraid, miles away from anything that feels like home. We will be eating BBQ when this happens, or lounging by the pool, or binging Netflix.

May we all stop for a moment and remember that somewhere in this country, a soldier is coming to the door with an envelope in his hand and drawing a line of demarcation down the middle of a life, across which all events will now be placed in time as either “before” or “after”.

And in a moment, I will send my friend a text, as I always do on Memorial Day, to let her know that I am thinking of her…and that I remember.