(Snapshots from Florida, pt I).

I wrinkle my nose as the smell of the hospital hits me.  Hospitals should smell clean and fresh and like hope, but they always seem to smell like stale, imminent death. Bummer.
We’ve been here over an hour. My Grandpa is asleep in the chair by the door, and Alzheimer’s Grandma stands up next to the bed.
“What is that dog on the wall?”
Grandma and I both look high on the wall where Winnie is gesturing.
“Dog? Dog? OH... you mean clock.”
“CLOCK?” she shouts back. “NO, THAT ROUND CIRCLE. THE DOG.”
This time from Grandma: “No, Winnie. CLOCK. CLOOOOOCK.”
“OH.” She blinks once. “WHAT TIME IS IT?”
My Grandma peers at the clock for a minute. “4:40. In the morning,” she answers knowledgably.
I look at the clock. It’s 7:10 PM.

It’s late at night, now. It doesn’t smell so horrid here, it smells of Florida and sunshine and love.  My Grandma squeezes me into a goodnight hug and pretends to sneak by my Grandpa, shrieking with laughter when he grabs her and demands a kiss goodnight. I laugh because it’s a familiar scene, but I know at that moment I could watch it a thousand times more, if the universe would let me. Please. Please. (please).

I cook dinner each night, roasting vegetables and meat and flashing back to my childhood: standing in the kitchen, scooping too much ice cream and nuts and chocolate into a bowl for an elaborate sundae, Grandpa winking at me with promises that we won’t tell Mom and Dad.
I plan meals that have onions in them so I have a reason to cry.

Winnie grabs my hands and locks eyes with me. With her words she takes me to 1932, when she was 19 and in her first year of teaching. She tells me about how she became a nun to escape a stifling Catholic marriage, and how she once snuck out of the convent to buy her students religious presents and herself a 5 cent hamburger. She was caught, and had to lie on the ground during mass for 20 minutes to prove she was sorry. Her eyes sparkle with mischievousness as she tells me she thought it was a stupid, stupid rule and she wasn’t sorry at all. And instead of praying for forgiveness, she laid on the cement plotting her next escape, planning a better route home to avoid Mother Superior.
A cloud passes over her eyes.
“WHO ARE YOU?” she suddenly asks.
“It’s Dave’s niece!” my Grandma exclaims. “Here to visit.”
“Nope, Granddaughter. His GRANDDAUGHTER” I correct.
“That’s right.” My Grandma nods and pats Winnie on the hand. “It’s Dave’s daughter, Winnie.”

I drink 5 cups of coffee a day. I know my teeth will be stained when I come home, but I don’t care.

In the evenings we watch sports or the history channel, and I pretend that I never watch TV because I love hearing my Grandpa describe shows like Modern Family or The Office.  Sometimes we talk about politics. Sometimes we talk about my Grandpa’s childhood. Sometimes we talk about life. We talk until I can’t keep my eyes open, until my tongue feels heavy and swollen, until my lips and teeth will no longer work together to form words.
And then we talk for 15 minutes more. Sleep can wait.

I look up. My Grandpa is out in the hall now, finding out why Winnie has been refusing to take her pills. My Grandma and I slide our arms under Winnie’s frail shoulders, lifting her higher in the bed. My Grandma does this with the ease of a woman who spent years as a nurse, her body remembering what her mind no longer can. I fumble awkwardly, struggling to find the right way. Winnie begins a conversation with a woman named Ruth. When I look up to smile at Ruth, there’s no one there. I realize with a start she’s hallucinating, until I see my Grandmother nodding at me.
“Did you hear that Ruth?” she asks, looking at me.
“NO.” Like my sister as a child, Winnie only has one voice volume. “RUTH IS OVER THERE.” She points at… nothing. The wall, maybe.
I burst out with a surprised laugh, and start to wonder if I’m the crazy one.

Today is a day for writing.

It’s a dark day, the kind where you wake up slowly to the soothing sounds of rain slipping down the glass and snuggle down for just a few more minutes that slide towards an hour, and still (and even now you are still) you remain unmoving . Then you blink twice to clear the bleariness and I wonder if this is the kind of day that my brother David (the King, the Musician, the Man) loved, a day to sit and write songs and poems and praise. I connect with the Psalms today. I connect with You today.

Today is a day for music.

Oh, music. All day I wrap you around me in swirls of jazz and worship and fast and slow and tinny pop and bouncing and smooth and familiar words and comfort. You are my shield from the outside, and it’s not the chilly weather outside that I need protection from: the outside world threatens my calm, my joy, myself. I lift streams of sound into my ears, and I hear a song that calls for freedom and Music, you make me remember two things: He is alive. I am free.

Today is a day for dreaming.

This kind of day makes me ask What Could Be? What will be? What should be? I picture a life with fewer possessions, a life owning only-just-enough to get by, a life that is lived maybeoversomewhereelse with lots of new shiny experiences that can be written down in new shiny journals and remembered, later. And then I picture a different life with friends to grow old with, a man to love forever and ever amen, and my Mother- older now- holding a smaller sense of herself (and me) spelled out in blue and blonde.  I imagine-imagine-imagine until I no longer know what is real.

Today is a day for learning.

There is a question I have been asking myself for several weeks now, once I shook off “Who Am I” and “What Is Next” and found underneath them both “Why Am I A Believer” and when I looked at it with wide eyes I opened my mouth to find stuttering lips and a twisting tongue and jumbled mass thoughts and it’s not a crisis of faith, no, but something sticky and different. My spirit knows the why. It’s the words that get in the way.

Today is a day for quiet.

I like loud. I like jumping up and down and big arm movements and laugher that echoes down the halls and the high screech of excited children and a pulsing bass beat and turn it up, please. I like concerts with speakers as big as my first apartment and the rolling rumbling power of thunder and the high notes at the end of the opera. I like loud. But today, I hear a different kind of loud, and it reaches a still place inside of me that awakens from a long winter to find that the quiet births stillness births rest births calm births silence births restoration.

(Most days are not this day).

All of my life-in every season-You are still God-I have a reason to sing-I have a reason to worship.
I will bring praise.
Hillsong.

There are pictures and other shenanigans to share, but they’ll have to wait till the arrival in LRock- for now… this is something I wrote in my sparkly gold journal flying home on my birthday this year.  If you hate it, don't tell me:), because the words poured out on their own and it felt like the most honest thing I've ever written.

See you in Little Rock, friends.

Birthday, 2009.

It is late (though it feels later) and I sit on a plane the size of a 15 passenger van waiting to lift seamlessly above the blinding lights and bustling workers in their screaming orange vests (is that my undistinguishable black suitcase the slipped from the rolling cart?) and glide into the keep black, alongside the twinkle of stars, slipping in and out of hidden clouds as I head to- somewhere. Anywhere.

I am 26 today.

I am 26 today and the very thought of that sends tears sliding down my face, causing fellow passengers to cough and avert their eyes in embarrassment, because tears -oh, dear-, because a display of emotion is not allowed in this space where we are unintentionally intimate, packed into our own privacy, the rest of all humanity falling away below us.

I am 26 today.

Earlier days have been filled with Friendship and Blessing and Laughing till I know for sure I will be sore and tired for several days, a physical reaction that will make it hard to breathe sometimes and when I sink my exhausted body into bed each evening, will make me grimace and then think fondly of Friendships that have slowly grown and shifted into Old Friendships that are real and consistent and oh so sweet.

I am 26 today.

Well, almost. Perched uncomfortably in a hard airport chair with my legs wrapped and folded underneath me, The Mama is swift to remind me that no, Annie, no, you were not born until oh so late, Daughter, 11:30 PM, and we didn’t know if you would ever come. And I feel a burning lump in my throat because here I am, 26 and all grown up, and each birthday that slips by without The Mama decorating the bathroom in the morning with a wild array of pink crepe paper and shiny balloons, and The Daddy smiling proudly behind his latest beautifully decorated cake, one that could rival any cake in a storefront window, doesn’t seem fair. And I tell myself I will see them this week, and I tell myself I will see them this week, and I tell myself I will see them this week, and it doesn’t matter.

I am 26 today.

And it seems just right that I should be scratching out thoughts from spirit to pen to paper, here, hanging motionless in this vast, unimaginable sky, because I am 26 today and my future stretches around me in a deep, murky cloud and some days I wonder if I will drown because I can’t see the other side. And with a jolt, the plane hits a pocket of air and we dip, just slightly, and I remember that- wait- I’m not motionless at all- oh, yes- that’s right- I am moving, and this time in life is not about what feels but what is true. What is. And what is, is this: I cannot control it. I cannot see the edge of the edge. But there is a pull, there is Drawing Near, and- this I am quite sure of- I. Am. Moving.

I am 26 today.

On the ground I am floundering, and lifted here, where the real meets reality, I decide to let just a little of the sunshine melt away, be replaced by the cool night sky and dull glow of the moon. It isn’t joy I lose, but something else: something plastic that easily slips off as though- could it be?- it has loosened already. And I listen to my heart beat-beat-beat and I know it will be only a few moments until we land and my cowgirl boots click briskly across the smooth marble floor and this time will be lost forever, but for these few suspended moments I nod resolutely and decide: I will be sad.

I am 26 today.

Earlier today (but later than other earlier days) The Sister sat across from my sweating water glass and asked me nonchalantly What Will This Year Mean? and I twisted my fingers around each other while I realized I didn’t know, couldn’t consider time any bigger than just this day, and while I stammered something outside about deciding later, inside I shrank down year to month, month to day, day to hour, and then finally hour to just moment and I asked into the silence- What Will This Moment Mean?

I am 26 today.

The flight attendant pushes down the aisle rapidly fluttering heavily lined eyes as I sip Ginger Ale and stare unblinkingly out the window. I’m biting my nails again- a habit that wasn’t endearing at age 5, much less now- and even in my haze I glance down to see tightly clenched fists that speak loudly of Worry and Frustration and Sadness. I peel back my stubby thumb, and then I see a glimmer- oh, there it is again- my eyes open wider wondering is this what this moment means? Each finger opens now, and then, shining just a little in the milky moonlight that seems less chilly now and more soft and beautiful, the Letting Go.

I am 26 today.

 I breathe the stale air slower now, relived to understand something, anything, even if it’s just a glimpse. I can’t see the stretch of the year, even if I wrinkle my eyes and lean forward, but I can see the blanket of Now and the crevice of 25 years blinking steadily below, memories of beauty and pain intermixed now, somehow better and stronger side by side. I don’t know what the meaning will be of 26, because I can’t see the roundness, the fullness of a year, but for this moment, I choose letting go. And this next moment. And maybe, the next.

I am 26 today.

I switch on the overhead light and a smile twists up my bottom lip as I consider this birth day, eternal day of year-ending. Eternal day of year-beginning. Or maybe not eternal afterall. And into my open palm I trace around and around, finally spelling out swirling letters- L e t t i n g  G o- and then lifting them until my fingertips brush the ceiling. Into the- wait, is it still darkness or is it something else entirely?- I ask my Creator, are You there?

I am 26 today.

and this is my offering.

(hallelujah).