On Epistles and Sea Change (Epistolary Wednesday),

As much as I’ve loved our themed epistles on Wednesdays, I’m starting to think that every blog post is an epistle. And every novel, every essay, every poem for that matter. After all, if it’s not written in a diary, then it’s written for an audience, from one person to many others, meaning, maybe I won't identify a fictionalized recipient every week. But sometimes I will. So: here’s me giving notice that Wednesdays are epistolary by nature, whether or not I’m writing to you, my husband, daughters, Jesus, Obama, or the Duggar family. Yes?

But about sea changes. I’m not really a water girl, and probably shouldn’t talk like water words come easily to me, but sea change makes me think of sailors and wet rope and a stern watch on the ocean. It’s the phrase that ran through my mind a few months ago in the middle of weeks of restlessness. Have you ever felt change coming like you feel a storm rolling in? Maybe we don’t know how loud or wild the storm will be, but we know it’s coming nonetheless. And we sit on our perches with cold anticipation and a thrill in our stomachs because we know things are about to Get Interesting.

Well that’s where I’m at, and I’ve been here before, watching for sea change. Sometimes the waters rise up and roil so slowly you can’t tell exactly when it begins. Other times, it’s a flash of lightening and a darkening sky in an instant. I’m not a boater, like I said, but what I hear is that we can get farther if we cooperate with the wind and hike our sails to catch it when it blows.

Sunday night, a small group of friends and I met and we asked each other the question about what was next in each other’s lives. Where did we feel God calling us, where did we think we were going? Funny to find out, most of us in the room were feeling a sea change too—facing decisions about babies and moves and jobs and settling or not settling down. And then we prayed that we’d catch the wind of the Spirit wherever it was leading, that we’d have our sails up at the right moment so we could move along with it.

And then we each went out into a wet and icy November night, to chilly cars, and slick streets, to the next morning's alarm clocks and waking children and meetings and phone calls and family chaos and drama. Keeping our sails up takes some diligence in the midst of the everydayness of our jam-packed lives. It means readying ourselves when we're not really ready for change, when we don't know what change looks like, and when we don't know if we really want it. And then, despite our diligence to hoist the sails, there may be the impossible absence of wind. At least for a time. And there we live: ready but not ready, ready but mystified, ready and going nowhere--all while we try to live like responsible, loving human beings--taking out the trash, greeting our neighbors across the snow-covered yards, praying, giving, blending hemp seed and fruit smoothies for our children's breakfast, and, every once in a while, checking on that cold and unmoving winter sky as it's framed by the window.

Dear Husband, (Epistolary Wednesday)

Dear Husband,

We made a deal, you and me, seventeen-and-a-half years ago that we were in it for better and for worse, and oh, there’s been a lot of worse-that-we-hoped-would-get-better. And after seventeen years and three children and two houses and four neighborhoods and too many deaths and too-many-arguments-to-count and a million peaceful moments that we wish we could sink into for the rest of our lives, we learn that sometimes worse doesn’t get better and sometimes it does just enough.

However, I don’t remember signing up specifically for this Surgery Thing you had to have last week.  A perforated eardrum, you told me they told you. Which maybe explains the partial hearing loss (-what?!) and the constant ringing in your ears (-really? Constantly?). You can fall apart and have, like I have over the years, in a million ways, but this physical falling apart sends me to some far distant place from our bodies in the recovery room—me helping you dress--and then while I push your wheelchair through the hospital skywalk while your ear’s packed tight with cotton stuffing and your jaw aches like you’ve been to the dentist for drilling. It’s some place in the future that I go, wondering if this is what it’s gonna be like—one or both of us hardly able to pull our socks on--not because of narcotics but because of age.

And old age reminds me of our mortality, of how close we are, of how this stage we’re set upon could collapse so suddenly. It’s also why I can’t look at the wounds of friends or strangers without wincing and my stomach turning, because wounds speak of such vulnerability and loss--and I’m not ready to lose. This whole list of post-op prohibitions doesn’t help, either—no lifting more than ten pounds, no sneezing or straining or getting excited about anything. All of it, along with the cotton in your ear and the scab where they stole some skin to patch up your eardrum is making me nervous in a rickety-rackety sort of way. I want to shoo that ringing-in-the-ears away and have you wake up the next morning all brand new, but they tell me this is not the way of surgery. With surgery, they rip us into pieces and rearrange. And then we heal. And healing takes time and rest. And sometimes drugs. But drugs and pain make us foggy and disconnected and generally Not Right in the world while our cells are regenerating and our nerves recalibrating. Come to think of it, maybe this is just the way of all recovery, how all of the Worse turns Better--painful, discombobulating, slow, but healing nonetheless.




***Heather Weber is the author of Dear Boy,: An Epistolary Memoir

"Dear Boy, is a brilliant and unusual memoir of distance and absence--the absence of a beloved brother from his sister's life and the absence of healthy mothering that, over the years, drove brother and sister apart. Weber deftly shifts point of view so that, piece by piece, readers gather the sum of confusion and loss. Yet there is so much love and forgiveness in the narrator that, in a way, each character is redeemed. I'm moved by this life, this telling of it." --Fleda Brown, author of Driving with Dvorak.

For the Modern-Day Kittys and Lydias, (Epistolary Wednesday)

For You Modern-Day Kittys and Lydias,

I’m addressing you metaphorically, of course, as Austen’s characters are merely that. But, I find no better way to warn you, Girl, of the downside to obsessively fixating on potential matches and romance all around you in the seventh grade. You remember, don’t you, how Lydia’s obsession with “the officers” and her mother’s relentless matchmaking led to shame and embarrassment for her whole family, how she threw caution to the wind and put undeserved faith in Wickham, who was interested in sex and money and very little in Lydia? In Austen’s days, of course, Lydia was old enough to marry, but hitched and pregnant is not where I want you or any of your friends at sixteen. Need a contemporary warning? Lorelei Gilmore (albeit with the worst parents on earth). Pregnant at 16. Yes, it all turned out all right after she lived in a garden shed with her daughter and was estranged from her family for many years. It’s good now, but might I remind you of the years her romance cost her?

All this is to say, it concerns me that you take so much pleasure in matchmaking your friends at the junior high school dance, that you are “so happy for” the “couple” who has just placed tentative hands on one another’s shoulders and hips for the first time in their lives after only glancing at each other fearfully in the hallway for the first two months of school. You’re happy and squeally for them--as if they’ve just announced an engagement, a wedding, a baby. And this leaves me unsettled and wondering what on earth you think this means—two children swaying together for three minutes in a gymnasium. I hope you know this is not the end of their story. That they will (99.99999% likely) “break up” in the next two weeks, that their hearts will get broken over and over again in the context of this not-quite-real world of global studies tests, bus rides, field trips, hall passes, AP exams, choir concerts and track meets. They might do things they wished they hadn’t.

Sweetheart, some of these kids will take this "romance" in the serious way that you seem to be taking it--up to the next level. You should know: there will be pregnancies you will not see evidence of. There will be diseases you hear nothing about. Some of your friends, too, will end up used and abused by other children who haven't learned anything about real love. There will be appointments and counseling and parents tearing their hair out and crying because these poor parents are strapped with the job of helping these not-quite-or-even-close-to adults navigate adult-like decisions and adult-like hormones and adult-like bodies.

Please accept my kind but urgent rebuke. How about we celebrate romance later? Let’s pull out our dancing shoes when these children understand that romance is as temporary as the cold, solid ice pop you get handed at the Fourth of July parade. What seems so solid and dependable in romance can liquefy in the wrong climates. Let’s laugh and smile when these creatures learn how to own their choices and take responsibility for their lives. Let’s do the Macarena when they learn selflessness, because that's what helps love last; it's what gives romance a fighting chance at re-forming once it's become a puddly mess. Let’s do the Cha Cha Slide and the Chicken when they’ve learned how to suffer long for someone else, when they know how true love hopes and waits and defers and hangs in there and doesn’t give up. Okay, sweetheart? Okay? Okay??

***Heather Weber is the author of Dear Boy,: An Epistolary Memoir

"Dear Boy, is a brilliant and unusual memoir of distance and absence--the absence of a beloved brother from his sister's life and the absence of healthy mothering that, over the years, drove brother and sister apart. Weber deftly shifts point of view so that, piece by piece, readers gather the sum of confusion and loss. Yet there is so much love and forgiveness in the narrator that, in a way, each character is redeemed. I'm moved by this life, this telling of it." --Fleda Brown, author of Driving with Dvorak.

Monday Must-Reads (November 10)

Photo: Linda Nylind for The Guardian

It's Monday and--after surviving a sleepover with 6 10-year-olds this weeken-- I sleepily present to you a few good reads I stumbled into this week:

On pregnancy and the secrecy we keep to deal with potential loss: I'm Pregnant. So Why Can't I Tell You?

A fresh look: School Prayer Doesn't Need a Comeback.

On what God is like: If You Can't Say it about Jesus, then Don't Say it about God.

As usual, a little edgy, but to the point: Jamie the Very Worst Missionary criticizes the use of the word "blessed" in her post #Blessed.

Parenting through our anger: Why Yelling Doesn't Help.

For laughs, if you're a Jane Austen fan: If the characters of Pride and Prejudice Could Text.

***Heather Weber is the author of Dear Boy,: An Epistolary Memoir.

"Dear Boy, is a brilliant and unusual memoir of distance and absence--the absence of a beloved brother from his sister's life and the absence of healthy mothering that, over the years, drove brother and sister apart. Weber deftly shifts point of view so that, piece by piece, readers gather the sum of confusion and loss. Yet there is so much love and forgiveness in the narrator that, in a way, each character is redeemed. I'm moved by this life, this telling of it." --Fleda Brown, author of Driving with Dvorak.

Dear Distracted Girl, (Epistolary Wednesday)

Dear Distracted Girl,

When you were little, I thought only your age was to blame on your restlessness and forgetfulness. I’ve been waiting all these years for you to grow out of “it”—an “it” I’ve had a hard time defining up until now. It’s that thing that happens when I talk to you and you don’t seem to hear me and I repeat myself and you don’t seem to hear me, again, as if you’re lost in your head and daydreaming about video games or beading or the clay sculptures you want to create as soon as you can get through your breakfast. Being inside your head is a good thing. I like to live in mine as well. It’s where I start the beginnings of essays and emails. It’s where I problem-solve financial and relational challenges. So, I wasn’t truly worried back then because you were pretty focused at school; you stayed on task; you told the disruptive kids where they could go be disruptive if they got in your space. Your second-grade teacher told me he wished he could discover the secret to your focus-in-the-classroom combined with your wildness-on-the-playground, put it in a book, and sell it. Imagine my relief.

But then third grade came around and those stupid test scores caught me by surprise. Oh, I know, it was your first year taking standardized tests and third graders shouldn’t be expected to have the hang of those straightaway. But it was other little things too—like your rushing through words without sounding them out and substituting something nonsensical just so you could say you read them. And now, added to language, it is the math—the mere mention or sight of a division sign and you lose yourself, as if fractions and decimals and negative numbers and operational signs are whirring inside the blender that is your head, just to torment you. And we sit at the kitchen table for a good ten minutes some days, before I can even convince you to calm down--before the tears are gone-for-the-moment--and lead you through a path of reasoning that you, inevitably, find crooked and laden with stumbling stones. It’s a big victory when you’re able to surmount those stones and climb the path after me.

I spent so much time feeling frustrated, like maybe you just didn’t want to do your homework or clean your room, like maybe you were just prioritizing fun and friends and creativity over the “first things first” that I’ve taught you since you were three. But I’m realizing now that it’s not mostly laziness or disobedience, but that you likely don’t notice the mess, Sweet Thing. You think, in all honesty, that you did clean your room, that you did empty your lunchbox—at least, it’s what you remember, or think you remember.

I don’t know how long this will go on, but I’m changing how I parent you. No more series of requests presented all at once—because you will remember the last one and forget the first two. On school mornings, I get your breakfast ready for you now so it’s at your place at the table—because it would take you half an hour to collect bread, jam, a knife and plate if you were instructed to do so. And we’re going to see someone in a few weeks—someone who might shed light for us on what’s happening inside that sparkling, thought-full mind of yours.

But let me just say, for the record, that I love your mind. I love your enthusiasm and your quick-to-burn excitement that does, inevitably cause you to focus on what’s-most-important-to-you even when the things-that-are-important-to-me fall by the wayside. Look at how you gather all the kid-piano books in the house and tap out songs you used to play in your lessons. Look how you’re teaching yourself "Ode to Joy" on the recorder, shuffling through the house like a marching-band-of-one. And last night, on your tenth birthday, I watched you in the audience at a choral concert, your eyes almost weepy over the sweetness of the girls’ voices, your phone poised in mid-air so you could record this little bit of auditory heaven for keeps. I could see you up there someday. I know you’ll be up there someday, singing like there’s nothing better than entering that kind of beauty. All in is what you are, Girl, to the things you care about the most. 

***Heather Weber is the author of Dear Boy,: An Epistolary Memoir, on sale now through Thursday for $.99 cents (Kindle Version.)

"Dear Boy, is a brilliant and unusual memoir of distance and absence--the absence of a beloved brother from his sister's life and the absence of healthy mothering that, over the years, drove brother and sister apart. Weber deftly shifts point of view so that, piece by piece, readers gather the sum of confusion and loss. Yet there is so much love and forgiveness in the narrator that, in a way, each character is redeemed. I'm moved by this life, this telling of it." --Fleda Brown, author of Driving with Dvorak.

Monday Must-Reads (November 3, 2014)

Photo: Linda Nylind for The Guardian

Happy Monday. This weekend had me pulling out the down winter coat--the one that looks like a sleeping bag it's so long. But that's okay. I was warm and if I could go back in time I would tell my seventh grader self Who Cares if Coats Make You Look Fat!? Warmth matters more.  Also, other than the sleeping bag-coat, we celebrated Middle's birthday with family tonight. She'll be ten in two days. Double digits. That's something pretty special. Anyhoo, here are a few reads I wanted to share with you this week.

For the introverts. My people. In case you weren't sure: 12 signs you are an introvert.

Girl who escaped Boko Haram talks about captivity...

Just browse Target? Is it even possible to shop ethically on a tight budget without looking like a smelly hippy? from Jamie the Very Worst Missionary.

What I want you to know about having a child with Down Syndrome from Rage Against the Minivan.

For those of us trying to hard: How I do it all (not).

Oh! I almost forgot! The Kindle edition of Dear Boy, is on sale through November 6. Only $.99 on Amazon. Don't forget to snatch one up if you haven't already!

***Heather Weber is the author of Dear Boy,: An Epistolary Memoir.

"Dear Boy, is a brilliant and unusual memoir of distance and absence--the absence of a beloved brother from his sister's life and the absence of healthy mothering that, over the years, drove brother and sister apart. Weber deftly shifts point of view so that, piece by piece, readers gather the sum of confusion and loss. Yet there is so much love and forgiveness in the narrator that, in a way, each character is redeemed. I'm moved by this life, this telling of it." --Fleda Brown, author of Driving with Dvorak.