old friends

We're home from hill and sea, this final day of the year. We're on the cusp, tiptoe-gazing toward all that might soon appear. Because I can pause to ponder changes, I kiss Tim goodbye at the door, delay getting dressed and ticking off my list, in order to excavate a little for meaning.

Friday night Tim and I left for Washington state, our main objective to attend Saturday's memorial service for a dear old friend. Old in the sense all our friends from that group are, as in long-time. We first met amid stormish days: learning to drive, cheering school teams, falling in love and out again, moping, singing, dancing, praying, repeatedly viewing Star Wars and Steve Martin.

The friend who died--his heart failed days after Thanksgiving--had been to me like a big brother, fun-loving yet more mature than most of us. He was ever-faithful to his girlfriend, who became his wife three months before Tim and I married (at our wedding, the two of them sang "Evergreen"). His younger sister, Anna, along with her husband, Doug, hosted Tim and me ten years ago in Germany while they were living there.

I knew I'd see friends at the service who have long been in my heart but not in view. All who could rallied together, including our amazing choir director from those years. Differences in appearance gave way after moments of conversation to remembered gestures and phrases. It's a phenomenon social media can't imitate. It's the encounter of the whole. With someone from long ago, from years as intense as those were, memories amazingly overlay and underscore everything.

We were on the cusp, in those old days, of our futures. We assumed, as I do each New Year, that whatever was coming would spring from what had always been. We would make it so--or it would make us--according to what we'd experienced thus far in our brief trajectory. We were right. And we were very wrong. That would prove hard but also wonderful.

Sunday Tim and I stopped at Vashon Island to visit dear Abbot Tryphon and the other monks at All-Merciful Saviour Monastery. During the morning liturgy, old friends' faces filled my heart--not just the humans but also those of waterways in and around the Salish Sea. Intense was my encounter with them years ago. All their memories overlay and underscore the inner workings of my soul. Yet I'm still discovering--even here on the cusp of old age, of being right and very wrong again in the future--that the hard stuff contains the wonderful. For this may I remain grateful.

Now I must go get dressed.

news, wanderings, happy clouds

1. Gold Days

November came in dry, dry, with lovely leaves. I wandered in thought watching them sway and drift. Also I waited for my author's copy of Gold Man Review Issue 8, which arrived as bare branches emerged above the mailbox. My essay "Through Our Soil" gives an overview of James's journey with permaculture in our yard, plus my naive observations of it.

Before Thanksgiving, my parents took turns in the hospital. Mom suffered a small stroke, the kind where words toss themselves into salad--an unpalatable thing for her journalism-based standards. She is thankful the effects were temporary. Dad experienced chest pains and underwent an angiogram. This test's results reassured the doctors and Dad. He's home with Mom again now. They both were fine for turkey dinner, eating in style with us at Tim's dad and sister's new digs while clouds joyfully gathered outside and unloaded a generous helping of wet onto the world. Most of the remaining leaves browned and fell and began their decompositions for all to read.

2. A Reunion

Remember PBS's Bob Ross? His phrase "happy little clouds" came to mind on the recent day when my camera returned from the repair people. They had gotten the stubborn lens to retract, and afterward they were "unable to make it fail." In the rain I drove to pick up my dear old, lightweight, digital/mechanical friend and take pictures. Maybe next time I experience loss I will remember a bit more patience, maybe retain a smattering more trust in the weathers of life.

3. Palooka Deanna

This week to my surprise I was dubbed a "featured Palooka." By scrolling all the way down on Palooka Magazine's home page, you can view the notice of this honor. From the Issue 9 page, you can follow a link to my brief essay "Diminishing Lines," about an afternoon walk with my mom.

4. Fresh Perspectives, Young Love

A young Orthodox man, George, is staying with us in James's old room. How amazing to realize this adult person is years younger than Tim's and my youngest child; how startling to note lives blooming and maturing continually, and to see that for us this is the path to an elderly perspective! Whoa. Anyway, George got a typesetting job at Wipf and Stock Publishers, and his cubicle is upstairs from Windows Booksellers' front desk where I work, when I do. His first weeks there we greeted each other on the stairways, and I showed him where to find free parking.

Now I'm without bookstore work again for a while. This has given me time to get together for tea a couple times with George's girlfriend, Emily, who is a senior at none other than Gutenberg College, who also edits and writes, and who has become an Orthodox catechumen. Emily is a kick. Very sharp and laughs a lot. And again, so young! Getting to know her is enlightening/enlivening. In other news, last week George popped the question and Emily said yes.

5. Fast and Slow

We have begun the Orthodox Nativity fast, a different sort of Advent season than the one I grew up with. Still, it's connected to the idea of anticipation. For me, there's a daily easing off of life's accelerator, a further delving into and examination of what I see as the main thing in the universe, the desire of humankind to connect, to interact, to commune--each one's filigreed root tendrils searching beneath soil and decay to latch on, to intercept a message in reality of enlivened stirrings, of rescue and of home.

Home is what the evidence from scriptures and history point to, in a sort of chanted fresco, this ancient Christian belief. That's how I read it now.

May we all take this season's damp corners at a reasonable clip, remaining rooted while exploring connections. May candles pulse above our darkened labors, spearing our gloom whenever we glance heavenward to notice the happy clouds.