Come Fly the (Not So) Friendly Skies....

-->

 

This year, in a huge last minute miracle, I was able to fly home to where I grew up for the first time in several years. To say that I was looking forward to this journey would be a gross understatement. The night before I was packing...and unpacking....and repacking until my eyelids were as heavy as the carry on I was attempting to jam full of items, determined as I was to not be paying the check-in fee. *Yes dad, I did you proud...Navy rolling and ridding the loot of all "frou frou" girly items....weeding out the wants and only keeping the necessary bare bone basics...I succeeded in squeezing all supplies for the holiday season into one *snug* suitcase. Bam!

1) Packing: check.

Now came the goodbyes....to my new neighbors, my uncles and aunties, my friends and roommate....and nary a fast forward  button in sight. Powering through the emotional gauntlet that is coming and going, leaving behind and heading towards....transition and change in routine (shudder)...I bravely bent my face towards the eastern shores....only slight sniffles sneaking slyly to the surface...at least until the car door was closed and the calmness my melodic Joni Mitchell joined me in my muffled "girl moment." *Sigh*...I'm gonna miss this place...

2) Ripping off the band-aid of bye-byes: check.

Getting to the airport was yet another feat. From frazzled future in-laws, to not so neighborly neighbors, one by one the list of possible chauffeurs was exhausted. The bus began to look like the only option....and enter Orr....crazy, brother Orr. Sardined into the benchseat of his rat-a-tat-truck (that I do love oh so well!), we rolled down the road and headed towards Honolulu...complete with a splendid soundtrack that only Orr and Ari could provide.

3) Arrivin' in Style (or at least with some Swaggah): check.

Flight one to Phoenix....no drama to discuss....a shame to be sure....oh how I love the drama, mama~ Smooth skies and shoulder to shoulder with some sunflower munchin' hippies who were going to be happy no matter what life threw at them that day, I'd say that was a scha-weeet seating assignment for leg one.

4) Fairy to Phoenix: Check.

Now this is where the excitement begins. Arriving to the terminal where I am to change flight towards Charlotte--and then straight into the sugar-spun, sparkly sweetness that is my Southern mama---I head directly to my gate with just a few seconds to spare. Bounding for the boarding tunnel I flash my fair(i)est smile at the stewardess, reach into my pocket and pull out my pass for paradise...HOME...yes, that's right....I am heading home...to....PHILADELPHIA???  Hmmm...the words read Philly but this lil missy means Mecklenburg...as in the county...you know, with CHARLOTTE as its queen? Deep breath...digging in the heels....and making a break for it, I became the ridiculous rendition of every cheesy classic Hollywood movie made...you know, the one with the mad dash for the last minute monumental making of the flight? *Complete with dramatic hand gestures and a few choice words, which honestly may or may not have consisted of a mere four letters, of course.

5) Final Flight Found: Check.

Aboard the aircraft, gratitude didn't begin to describe my giddy heart and spirit. Just three more hours and I am soooooo there. Sweet Southern Simplicity....and such hugs and kisses and love abounding...yes please! I settle into my seat and wait for the wheels to lift off and whisk me away...and wait...and wait....and...what the heck? One hour later--thrilling times chilling on the tarmac....I am still waiting. Most days this would be mildly annoying and slightly frustrating as I am so excited and ready to be home. But today, my seat buddy beside me just so happened to be the most unhappy, woe-is-me-woman I have ever met.

Aaaaaaand...cue the:

*All too audible sighs.

*Exasperated emotional outcries.

*Temper tantrum only tolerable in toddlers (if then!)

and....

wait for it.....

*Alligator Tears (yes...you heard me).

I was actually waiting for the broken pottery chards and self-extracting of hair by the root....I mean, this was some stressful stuff--this departure delay. And on Christmas Day too. *SIGH!!!* *Head shake* *Shoulder Slump* *Fist to the sky in fury and (self) righteous indignation!!!!**

I know woe-is-me-woman...you have made it clear! This is unacceptable! You are displeased! The inner wounded-woman-child has been angered...or at least spanked silly.

As I take in the show....Oscar worthy I assure you...all I can think of is how very much I simultaneously want to run as far the hell away from this broad as I can....and yet also, inexplicably, at the very same time....desire to wrap my arms around her in the biggest bear hug...because DAYUUUUM....her flight is being delayed....but not by the airline....

~A Real Wheelbarrow~

-->

As I sat down this Saturday morning to begin my new writing assignment, I kept gravitating back to BOOKED. Now don't go sending me emails fretting, I very much have ample time to meet my deadline....so just this once, just for today, I revisited and allowed myself some time to ruminate on the words, all over~

One of the passages I kept coming back to related a present that ma mere's husband had given to her one Christmas, and her explanation of why it remains to this date as one of her favorite and best gifts ever received: it was a wheelbarrow.

Yes. A wheelbarrow.

My first thought was one of surprise when I read this...yet when she explains the why behind her love of this present, it makes sense....and brings everything home. Dr. Prior shares that:

"What I loved so much about the wheelbarrow (besides its sheer utility) is that it was something that required a certain amount of knowing me, knowing my daily life and needs, knowing the pleasure that I take in caring for the horses and chickens each day, in order to see its fittingness.....The wheelbarrow was a gift because it was perfect for me."

As I read that, my mind transports back in time to when I lived on her farm with her and that husband she is speaking so warmly of. It is nighttime, and I am inside reading for my class. All is quiet out here in the country, save for the crickets chirping. And then I catch it....a slight, snippet of sound. It is laughter. No, it is....a giggle....escaping from the lips of my brilliant, no-bones-about-it, top-notch Professor. Pretty as you please, peeking its way across the night sky from the back porch, the audible presence of joy joined me at my desk. The source of that simple, small delight was ma mere...rocking on the back porch with her husband (a porch that this husband had built with his own hands, mind you). I realized then and there that THIS is what I wanted...even though I wasn't quite sure what I meant, or didn't yet (maybe still don't) have the exact words to capture what I was having the blessing of witnessing unaware.  

Perhaps Dr Prior can say it best in her own words:

"We had been married many years by this morning. I had come to see that lasting love is less like a dinner with candlelight and red roses and more like a wheelbarrow given on Christmas morning."

This holiday season, as I think of giving gifts....I want the people I love and cherish to feel it. To know that the investment in getting to know them....the time it took...was worth it.  That they are worth everything~

It's Gettin' Real...

-->

Today I finished reading ma mere's book. It is good. Good. Goodness~

I took my time going through it....leafing through the pages slowly, savoring every word...willing it to saturate my heart and mind like a soothing stream of truth. Ma mere does not mince words. She never has. *This is what is simultaneously so amazing and awful (at least to my pride) about our relationship. A relationship I have learned to embrace and encourage...even when it hurts.

Chapter by chapter, her book titled Booked delves into the depths of Literature, and how God's gifting of it gave her insight into, or even moreso, actually formed her self and identity---even her awareness and understanding of a Divine Creator. It is a concept I have never come across from this exact angle--and it is keenly acute in its accuracy. Truth lives and breathes within the bindings of this book, and I am blessed to have been witness to such a work.

As I read I had my highlighter waiting to whisk across the words, coating the ivory with color--an iridescent roadmap there to remind me of what resonated within my heart, so that I can return back to the wisdom again and again. For one specific chapter, the section surrounding Gustav Flaubert's Madame Bovary, I chose green. Little did I know at the time that a more apropos choice could not have been. For Emma, the heroine of the book is plagued throughout the piece by an attitude of awful discontent---dramatic in its dire needs and wants, and a spirit stolen of satisfaction by the criminal clutches of romanticism.

Green goes with the envy that is Emma's as she glances around her world, riddled with routine and mundane daily duties when all she desires is the excitement and glamour she imagines awaits just around the bend out of her reach and belonging only to others. Yes, those others. Even an emerald-hued haze hovers around her kind and loving husband--whom, in comparison to the outer world and the men she makes idols from afar, she now finds disdainfully dull. 

Dr Prior (author of Booked, and ma mere) describes Emma's dilemma (yes, that was a painfully unavoidable rhyme you just witnessed....): 


"She keeps 'waiting in her heart for something to happen,' something of excitement to fulfill her longing, her unbearable heaviness of being." 

As I ruminated over these words, Emma's unmet longings, I saw a mirror of myself. Waiting....looking from afar in awe, at others. Wanting. Aching. Longing. Failing to see what is right before me.  Unable to sit in the stillness and see....how blessed, is  (or can be) my reality~