a.rose

My sister is in town visiting.  She goes home early tomorrow, taking her three small children and all the delicious noise and chaos and laughter and sunshine with her.  It has been so great having her here, full of adventures and bodily fluids and games and tears and everything you'd expect when you shove six kids under the age of five together and tell them to have fun.  Five of the children are girls, and her son Daniel is the one lone boy child.  The ages are: Hallie, 5. Jill, 4. Hanna, 3. Daniel, 2. Heather, 1. Alice, 2 months. And so we play and run and jump and squeal and there is so much energy bouncing off the walls of my home these past days that I think it will still be vibrating long after she's gone. And spring is finally starting to rouse herself and put on a show.  I saw my first flower blooms yesterday, as well as a first glimpse of flowering trees.  When she got here it was snowing and raining and so freezing cold that we all huddled inside my house and looke

Yesterday Hanna was singing a song that was originally from Phineas and Ferb.  The line is supposed to say something like "There's a bully shaped hole in my heart." Which, when you think about it, is random enough on its own. But then Hanna went and changed it up a little. "A booty shaped hole in my heart." And then Hallie got my camera again, and took some shots. And then I got to eat some of my sister's delicious guacamole for lunch and it made me very happy. Alright... is that enough pictures of guacamole now?  Good, good. I ran a 5k on Saturday with some of my friends. When I say "with" I mean that we hung out at the starting line together, and then they all took off and I lumbered along behind. When it comes to races I'm really more like the tortoise than the hare, even though I've never caught any hares sleeping.  I did get my best 5k time ever though, so there's that to feel good ab

I have a friend whose life looks so quiet.  She has three children, and still she always seems calm and relaxed.  Her children are well behaved and sweet.  I have never seen her in a hurry, or disorganized, or at a loss, or confused, or realizing that she forgot something again , or frustrated, or out of sorts.  She breathes slowly and evenly and her world revolves peacefully around the sun, each day passing smoothly from morning to night and back again. I see these things in her, and I take what I see and I imagine her life, my imagination painting a vividly beautiful picture of what her life is like when I don't see. There are never dirty clothes in her hampers or dishes in her sink.  There are never crumbs in her carpet or fingerprints on the windows.  There are never tangles in her kids' hair or cavities in their teeth.  She never shouts at them, and in my imagination I am not sure if that is because she has endless patience, or because her children are unfailingly o

Love. Am I right? That one special person. Know what I mean? Yeah, the one person in the whole world who makes you feel as cozy as your favorite sweatshirt from college.  The one who still, after all this time excites you like fireworks on the Fourth of July. Some of you are nodding your head, you know who I'm talking about.  Some of you are staring wistfully off into space because you are still searching for that person. Maybe you'll meet them today.  It could happen!  Or maybe tomorrow, or next week, but sometime you will wake up one morning not knowing that it will be the day you meet him. (or her.) Maybe you daydream about where you'll meet.  At the grocery store?  The library?  At a party for a friend?  You make up the story that you'll tell people someday when they ask how you met.  Sometimes you make it funny, sometimes you make it romantic, sometimes you blow it up big like a romantic comedy starring Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks. And maybe sometimes i

Here's what it looks like, around here, lately. Devin has started riding his bike to work in the morning.  He wakes up even earlier, does his 5 mile run, gets ready for work, takes care of whichever of the girls is awake, and then heads out the door by 7:30 to bike the four miles to work.  Then he works hard all day, thoughts of tenure clinging to him like dandruff, or something, and then he bikes the four miles back home again.  He opens the door, never knowing quite what he is going to find: happy family, dinner on the table, wife smiling, girls smiling, house clean.  Or, the all too often alternative: screaming children, crying children, whining children, no dinner, but plenty of messes to go around, the wife hiding in the bathroom because sometimes I do that when it is chaos and he comes home and I think "ah, backup has arrived.  I'll just lock myself in here for a minute. Or ten."  Then we put all girls in bed, he works some more, or he works out, or he goes ou

Some time ago a person that I have loved and respected and admired my whole life admitted something.  There are things people can tell you that roll off your skin like water on a duck, and there are some things people tell you that puncture your skin and stick deeply into you like a needle searching for your most vulnerable spot. He told me that he no longer believed in God. My belief in God, and my assumption in his shared belief, were so foundational to me that I never even questioned it,  like chocolate and peanut butter.  Why even bother to question it?  But this person did ask me to question my faith.  He wanted me to take a long searching look at what I believed, and why, and to face it head on and see if it held up to all of its promises and expectations. At first I just shrugged my shoulders, I believed what I believed and I knew what I knew and I wasn't going to go on a soul shaking, faith finding mission when I was comfortable with my faith and knew what it was.  A