Expectations

    Funny place for an earth-shaking discussion it was, but there the forlorn seventeen-year-old sat on the cold bathroom tiles. Her mother leaned against the toilet bowl, her head tipped forward and her mind already dreading what she suspected. She had come running up the stairs in answer to a weak but anguished-sounding “Mo-o-o m.” Nora glanced at her watch; it was getting pretty close to when Ellie should leave for school. But with the exception of it being morning, the hour faded in significance. Morning – and Ellie clearly had thrown up. The evidence, that thin greenish appearance, gave it all away.
    With a despondency in her voice, Nora asked, “Ellie, are you pregnant? That looks a lot like morning sickness.” She paused, a lump in her throat making the words difficult. “But – but -- you can’t be!”
    “No. . . no, ma, I’m not.”
    “Ellie? What’s the truth?” It was starting to hit Nora with a thud, the agony, the awful realization that things would never be the same again.
    “umm, no, I said.”
    “El? Please tell me. I – I won’t get mad at you.”
    “ahh…..yeah, I guess I am” she whispered. Tears spilled over her eyelids and down her cheeks. “I’m sorry . . I’m so sorry.”
    “Oh Ellie, you can’t be!” she cried. A feeling of unbelief and utter sadness filled her being. “Whose baby is it? You’re not going steady with anyone.” She didn’t add, “and we’re Christians. This just doesn’t happen…”
    “But mom, you should know whose baby it is.” Long pause. “It’s Brad’s.” Her voice dropped in a tone of despair. Nora looked at her sorrowfully for a long moment, but Ellie was still not able to raise her eyes to her mother’s face. Finally the widowed mother reached out and embraced her youngest, her own baby. With tears in her eyes and a croak in her throat, she cried “Oh, no-o-o. There go all the expectations I had for you.”
    The words hung heavy in the air. Neither of them had gotten up from the bathroom floor, and the one-inch square white ceramic tiles were making indents on their legs. “Mom! What do you mean by that?”
    Nora’s tongue stumbled as she admitted, “Oh, you know,” her voice breaking, “senior year things like homecoming, and prom, and graduation. And then college, and all the doors that would open. .and now, . .now what? You’re a smart girl. .so many things you could have done in your future. Oh Ellie, what are we going to do?”
    Bleakness cloaked the girl’s face as the tears kept flowing. Her mother just shook her head sadly. Then she brightened just a little. “Let’s go to Walgreens and get a test kit. Then we can go for coffee downtown. You don’t need to go to school today. Okay?”
    Ellie nodded numbly, but she did rise off the floor and her shoulders imperceptibly squared as she headed for her bedroom and grabbed a sweater. By the time the two of them were sitting at a window table in the local café, they were able to relax a little and laugh, and they talked about what comes next. Back at home the test was positive – of course. There would be a baby born before June graduation.
    Expectations. The mother mulled on the mindless comment she had made on that bathroom floor, wondering what in the world made her blurt that out. It wasn’t even something she had ever consciously considered. Her only daughter after three sons, but the main heart-to-heart communication between them usually occurred driving to shopping excursions. No solid dream castles were ever constructed between them. Besides, good mothers didn’t lay that on their daughters anyway. Expectations? Hopes, maybe. But it was in the “landed gentry” that children’s futures were formed by their parents’ expectations. And that never did seem right. Should any person create expectations forming the future for any other person? What kind of “expectations” were legitimate expressions of hope for an offspring? Yet there it was between them. Nora couldn’t forget her impulsive comment.
    Nora Johnson watched the week unfold. Hurried, stuttering phone calls took place between Ellie and Brad. Ellie would turn away from her mother busying herself in the kitchen, and tuck the phone under her chin. “Mom is wondering if we are going to get married,” she heard Ellie say nervously.
    Ellie made an appointment with her high school counselor and explained her predicament. Both mother and daughter breathed sighs of relief for his understanding. He managed to work it out so that Ellie could finish her classes in January. She would still be able to graduate in June!
    A few weeks later Ellie came home from school more pensive than usual. “Mom,” she said. “We were talking about abortion in our sociology class today.” She hesitated. “I was the only one to speak against it. But I still spoke up.”
    “How did that make you feel, Ellie?”
    “Like I was standing alone against the world, I guess. But I knew I spoke from first-hand experience. I might even have said something like that. . I can’t remember exactly how it went.”
    “Good for you! Ah. . . have you thought about abortion, or – adoption?”
    “No, I couldn’t do that, Mom. It’s Brad’s baby too. What if we got together some day down the future?”
    Some day down the future came not so long after. It was a Saturday night, and Brad’s parents called from their far-south suburb, asking for a “family” confab. As Nora and Ellie and one of her brothers entered their living room, tension hung thick and silent in the air. The world was turning upside down for another seventeen-year-old too. Brad’s goals had been applauded by his parents. College, naturally, sports, probably more than one degree, a fast rise for a high-honors student. And now, what? Brad’s mother looked at her only son and blurted out, “Brad, what were you thinking?”
    There is not an adequate answer for that one, and he gave none. The teenagers went off to another room in the house to discuss their options. When they returned Brad looked down at the floor, and in more of a mumble than plain English announced “We’re going to get married.”
    And they did, but not right away. Ellie wanted to finish high school first. There went that “expectation”! The picture of a slender young lady floating down the aisle of their church in filmy white evaporated. But there is no real way to camouflage a six and a half month gestation. They planned their wedding with Brad’s gentle, understanding pastor. Lots of music, sixty guests at the ceremony and dinner following. Ellie moved in with Brad’s family, as Brad scrambled to finish high school. Just two kids, they were, facing a huge adult world all too soon.
    Right on time the baby was born. Brad and Ellie were a team as they went through labor and natural childbirth. With Katie’s arrival, the young parents never seemed to look back. College? They managed their class schedules so that one was always home to care for their daughter. Five years after her high school graduation, Ellie walked across the stage and received her bachelor’s degree in comparative literature. Again she walked down the aisle heavy with child, this one planned and anticipated with delight. The same day, Brad received his first master’s degree. Faith remained important to them, and they were not hesitant to give thanks to God for all that happened.
    As she looked back Nora would not have imagined Ellie’s life unfolding the way it did. Still regretting that crazy line about expectations that she pronounced on the bathroom floor that day sixteen years ago, she realized that Ellie had, in her own way, grown into a godly, beautiful woman.
    Best of all, her life was beyond any expectations her mother Nora could possibly have pictured.

Neu

Scant seconds old

the Schrödinger cat is

out of the bag and little c

squared a wist of its

flash-in-pan self

CERN lurked about

the inert world, goading

neutrinos to make for the gate

bidding the naysayers:

watch us and whirl!

Einstein meanwhile

may roll in his grave, if

rolling is what his inertia has

been. His theory rings

true: time hearkens

back to the abacus

counting the points of his

theory as true: that time heark-

ens back to … well, let

that and Al rest.

The point is what’s

new, what never once

was, what forces us lazies to

look high and low &

see but a blur,

write to the world,

symposium up to the

wonderful spectra, the ‘we

are such stuff’—the

gifts of our God.

Call for Submissions

I have updated my Walking Song, can’t seem to leave it alone, but our pastor’s sermon in church today helped me see why: This is, after all, a poem about praying ceaselessly. It is not the same prayer all day, but it’s been a good starter when you have ninety minutes in the early morning with a fairly consistent tempo and a captive and private audience (who incidentally seems to appreciate the poem, too). I’m not reposting it, just editing (actually doubling the length of) what’s already there, so feel free to go back to see. As for my pastor’s sermon, it was all about taking cues to keep the prayer going, from This is the day as the alarm rings, to Create in me a clean heart, to Come Lord Jesus, and so on, ending with Love you, Dad as your head hits the pillow.

Meanwhile, I’d like to make a call for submissions. I have more specific calls for the rest of the Symposians, but Dan, this blog is your inspiration, so I’ll start generally with you. When do we see the next Stavra Europa installment?

Dick, we’re still waiting to see you post your water poem. I liked it, and you said that Anne liked it, too, but apart from that, it kind of belongs on this blog, just like your earlier photo submission. And Mom says you have more photos to post - please do!

Anne, I’m told you are now published - congrats! - and Mom has encouraged me to go to your blogsite to read your last several entries. Which I am meaning to do, hopefully even before you have a chance to post a link on this site. Wherever I see it first, I do look forward to the read.

Mom, I forgot to ask you how your reading went. And will we get to see your award winning story on this blog? With Anne’s screening and permission, of course. But I must say again, it is an excellent story, and one on my mind a little more as I become aware of my daughter’s recent friendship-relationship dilemmas. She’s still strongly preferring the former, and I’m still intending to keep the same rule Josh had for Lena anyway, but I’m almost wondering if I should be reading this story to her someday.

Josh, I did say I liked having the chance to hear your last sermon a few weeks back, and it was a good message, too - much better, in fact, that my impromptu telephone sermonette based on the Book of Mormon last week, which was probably poor advice to give you in the face of things. Please, help me get the taste of that one out of my mouth, and submit something more appropriate! (For the rest of you, that’s the Broadway, South Park styled Book of Mormon, which probably has little in common with what Mitt Romney has on his nightstand).

Finally, back to you Dan.  Should we see the music, too, to your Pushkin song?  You may be interested to hear that I've found myself (yes, with the help of a piano) assigning chords to some of my walking song.  E.g., first lines of parts 2 and 4, with melody of EDCD,ACCC, gets chords C, Gmin, F, C.  What do you think?

Humbled

Glad to hear Pushkin is okay, and with this, it occurs: are we unwittingly commencing upon the next symposium subject? In honor of T.S. Eliot, who had his cats, Dan, you get hamsters, I’ll be the dog poet. Anne, Josh, Mom, pick your species.

Actually, I might let someone else continue with dogs, because after yesterday I think I am as “humbled in the end” as I care to be. We’re keeping Yoshi, no question there, but I’ve decided to stop writing walking poems, or at least those that compare my dogwalking skills to God’s.

You’ve read my two poems. I will be first to admit I stretched that prayer-leash metaphor about as thin as it can get, and yet yesterday morning I found myself starting to come up with poem number three, compelled to explain that I am NOT the dog, and that I know full well the dog does not look at me like I’m God. All this with that same walking cadence - maybe not Johnny Cash anymore, but it was just as deep and bluesy and I think there was still a guitar in the background. (By the way, Dan, I don’t know how one can play, or hear, a piano while walking.)

It went something like this:

     I am just a man. I’m hardly God,
     And this is just a dog who doesn’t talk
     And it is for his bowels that we walk
     And for the pounds I need to lose. My bod-    (yes, break)
     y aches after an hour’s exercise
     It’s not so much the distance as the drag
     Of being stuck behind someone whose bag
     I’ve been obliged to carry. Who’s surprised
     If I don’t feel so godly in the end?

And that’s as far as I’m going with it now.

When we first brought Yoshi home from the pet store, we were advised that we should be prepared for a high-activity breed. I have heard that Shiba Inus are hikers, even marathoners. I’m personally not up for 26 miles of anything, but I do like to hike, and I didn’t think I’d mind a dog who would push me a little farther than I might go otherwise. Right away we started with a mile, and when he was 14 weeks and 14 pounds that seemed to be enough for him, and me, but gradually we built ourselves up to 3.5 or 4 miles a walk, twice a day. I’ve been walking him every morning, usually around 5:30 am Yoshi time (just try to sit down and put your shoes on slowly). When school was out, the kids would walk him midday, and we’ve been trading off in the evenings. I’m sure the kids don’t go four miles on their walks, but when its our turn together Yoshi and I have been working our way up to getting to the North Chicago naval station. As of yesterday we’ve made it about half way there.

I’m still walking more than running, but Yoshi has persuaded me to jog a stretch or two each day. And in July and August, with temperatures consistently in the nineties, I had the added bonus of letting the heat take a few more pounds off of me. Through all of this, the dog would still get excited every time the leash came out. Granted, we were only up to two miles by mid July, but this was encouraging. And then on the weekends, after sweating through the walk, I’d come home and start working on Yoshi’s fence. You all haven’t seen me in a couple of months, but I’ve lost thirty pounds! At least it feels like it ought to be thirty, anyway. Actually, it’s more like five, but I suppose that’s due in part to the other tradition Yoshi and I have had, now that the fence is up, of sitting on the back porch every night and enjoying a beer.

Yesterday was another sweltering one, except this time it was the first of September. I thought we were getting past those dog days of summer. Nevertheless, as soon as I got home, around 5 in the afternoon, I got the leash out, and Yoshi was all for it. We started out on our usual path, and right away I could feel the humidity. Yoshi kept pulling me along, but after about a mile his tongue was wagging out of the side of his mouth. A half a mile later, he started to slow down, and I started remembering Duncan, our cocker spaniel with an enlarged heart. In his last breaths it hurt too much for him to lie down, and he just dropped. 

Dan once expressed his concern that maybe his track workouts contributed to Duncan’s demise. I have had my own residual guilt, but it has had more to do with being dogsitter while the family was on vacation, and failing at the job. There’s nothing more sorrowful than the task of burying a dog and then having to tell a family about it afterwards. On the drive back from the airport, coming home from Hawaii.

Don’t worry, I’ve already told you that Yoshi is a keeper, but these were the thoughts that crossed my mind yesterday. We were a mile and a half from home, and I knew I had to do something, so I detoured into the heart of Lake Bluff and found a water fountain. I had no bowl, but I had Yoshi’s unused poop bag, a blue newspaper sleeve, and it worked surprisingly well. I filled it with about as much water as his dog dish usually holds, and not only did it not leak but the sides folded down in a way that gave it some standing structure. (One for your column, Anne?) Yoshi lapped it up. I refilled it, but he had had enough, so I dumped the second dishful on top of his head. He shook it off immediately but seemed to appreciate the gesture.

All is well, I thought, but I decided we’d better skip the last half mile of our usual route. But when I got back on the trail and started heading homeward, Yoshi immediately sat down, then lied down. Not a chance, he said. I pulled a little, but he was hugging the pavement. Then I had my second brilliant moment: I bet he had his north and south mixed up. Sure enough, when I pulled the other way he got up and started walking. I nonchalantly looped around the first big tree we came to and headed back south again, and it actually worked. But before long he was walking slowly, and panting pretty heavily, and a quarter of a mile later he stopped again. All right, Yosh, I said, we’ll rest. I knew we would have to get home, though, and get this walk over with, so after a good five minutes I prodded him up and we started walking again. I think we made it another half mile this time.

And this time, he found a shaded patch of grass and sprawled on it. Okay, buddy, I said, I get it. And I picked him up and started walking. Part of me was grateful that the paths were deserted on this hot afternoon, so no one could see me with my 23 pound lapdog. But mostly I just wanted to get him home. We continued this way for at least another quarter mile, until finally Yoshi decided that, all kindness aside and the heat notwithstanding, he preferred to walk. I think he sensed we were getting close to home.

I suppose I could make a poem out of all of this, too, thinking of other times when Jesus figuratively picked me up along the way, or maybe considering how complex our master and friend roles can be, but I think I’d just like to keep this prosaic for now. Maybe I’ll stick with bird poems.

We’re still walking, though, and today we made it to the naval base. Okay, we did it by driving to Lake Bluff and walking north, but it was an achievement all the same. This time, just to be safe, we started about an hour later, when the evening was a little cooler, and I brought a bottle of water and an extra newspaper sleeve.  And we took it nice and slow.

Pushkin's Home

Please don’t forget your faithful

friend—he’s running away again

from home and all he’s known and

been to everything he cannot

be kind of mild to beasts like

him—his mind and his eye are dim

from all the stars he’s taken in

imagination now defiled:

he’s really running wild,

he’s nothing that he wants to be,

(but he’s free)

and what’s wild, wild, wild

and what’s free?

Pushkin tell me, tell me true before you die

Rush and show me, are you freely being wild

Non-stop I beg the star spots to

shine the straying path home

but I know God knows I’m fooling myself

and faith has nowhere to go

Bring back the fooling myself

Push me home

Bring back the fooling myself

Push me home

See everything I try to

find—this Pushkin is wasting time

a guinea pig we named for him, a

kind of playful ploy by

me, who brought the rodent home one

day—I thought that he’d want to stay

the creature comforts were in place

they never mattered anyway

[repeat all boldface]

turn trim days and toss thin

nights—hardly had a plan of flight

the next door lady with dubious

sight stopped her tracks just to stare at a burrowing

blur at the base of her clustered

trees—and suddenly we're on our knees

we catch the blame rat with relative

ease and justify the face of things

Bring back the fooling myself

Push me home