Gutter Flowers

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A weed grows between the underground metro tracks, trees roots triumph over boulders, and stubborn pumpkin plants yet bloom in my refuse pile--such underdogs of the natural world give me wonder.   

I believe God infuses the physical things of our world with spiritual truths--not through any kind of pantheistic mumbo-jumbo, but in the same way that the scriptures reference nature to grant us insight into otherwise hard-to-grasp spiritual realities.  Seeds, lilies, wheat, and fig trees....God chose timeless natural references to anchor our fuzzy thinking.

When I saw the brilliant orange flowers of this mostly-dead pumpkin vine blooming valiantly in my gutter, it spoke to me of the highest form of parenting.  Parents bloom in hardest of places to succor the lives of their children.  They place their children's well being above their own, an impulse I believe is hard-wired by our Creator.

I sense the veracity of this truth because I am a very selfish person in many regards--I prefer ease, rest, and peace.  Self-sacrifice comes begrudgingly at best.   But, something in me would give up most anything, if necessary, for the livelihood and health of my children...regardless of whether they "deserved" it and certainly not because I am a "good person"---it's more that I can't help myself.  

Some people would attribute such an impulse to evolutionary eugenics.  It's survival of the fittest and nothing more.  However, I suspect it's the much more intimate hallmark of a Father who loves his Creation no matter what---a Father who builds us up to love our family in this same way.   Parent-love is an imperfect shadow of His perfect love for us--sacrificial, tenacious, boundless. 

It always makes me happy to see a flower or tree thrive--on a much grander scale I delight to see my children--really, after all, His children--flourish.  It is in fact a joy to.

 "do onto others as you would have them do onto you." 

Wandering the graveyards...

My grandfather, Harold Francis Lienert

This month I've been working on my family's genealogy which I find fascinating.  It's not because my ancestors are famous or even particularly virtuous because they are not.  Instead, they were the blue collar industrial muscle of North, laboring as masons, carpenters, working in steel mills, shoving coal, feeding furnaces. And on my husband's side, they were the agricultural backbone of the South where I read "farmer, farmer, laborer, farmer..." going down the occupational column on each US census.  They were common people who lived their common lives largely unnoticed.

Yet, there is a story within each family, a story for each name I document.  Some of their stories scream and others whisper.  As a collective pile, I feel their heft on my soul.  The tragedy part is loud--the regular loss of young life, the infant deaths without names, the sometimes abrupt absence of a key person on a subsequent census when they should be listed.  Sometimes I find an explanation, but most of the time, I am left wondering.  I see the train-wreck from above but not the detailed fleshing out, the collective impact on that generation, those lives....

It also strikes me regularly that the past is littered with tombstones of people, people just like me, who were busy with the immediacy of their lives, running, running, running, and now they sit fixed under a slowly weathering stone.  I will join them someday...sooner or later, only God knows.

My mother, Jane Smith Lienert and my
oldest sister, Kathy, circa 1959

I gain a broader sense of my own life by looking minutely at theirs.  As I document "keeping house" over and over again as an occupation for the women, I'm taken back by how wholly domestic their life was.  Things have changed so significantly, that I am now an odd-ball out, still "keeping house" in the 21st century.  I used to be the rule, now I am the exception.

Some of them faithfully plop themselves down at the same residence or on the same piece of land decade after decade, while others skip around eluding my detection.  Some are wily, others just clueless. There are the carefree types, who jumped from whim to whim, occupation to occupation, residence to residence, and then their are the ones that ring of a darker instability.

And after downloading so many tombstone images to upload them to my Ancestry site, I've become a bit of a connoisseur of tombstones. How do you sum up a life through stonework?  Do you wish to share a stone with your spouse? your children?  Some women have "mother..." as their describing word ---others have "wife of..."  No occupational titles make the stones....we are all mostly reduced to birth and death dates.  All sobering food for thought.

My great-grandmother Frances Norris,
a widow at the age of 28.

I've never been quite sure what I think of cremation, but after working in the genealogy mines, I think I prefer the thought of a physical grave-site, cremation or no cremation. We are physical people and it's nice to have a physical place to go and think about those who have come before us. Cremation and this sprinkling of ashes is too utilitarian and caustic for my tastes.  I think I'd rather rot in the ground like a seed, one of my favorite images from 1 Corinthians. Stones give a person a place to go--if they want to.

Genealogy is trivial, momentous, tedious, humbling, grim work.   It requires that I draw close, pulling out a microscope to focus on seemingly inconsequential details.  It equally requires that I draw back and take an expansive view---toward their lives, my life and the significance or insignificance of it all. Wandering the online graveyards pulls me back to the question of what it means to a wife, a mother, a child, a child of God.

I believe the details are significant, which is why I lovingly labor over them.  In a way, it's a tiny nod to who they were, what they've given me through the gift of their lives. Each person, each generation, has a one-time shot at that.  Each of us enters the grand parade at our ordained time, having our own singular opportunity to shape our life and the lives of our children.

"MooOOm" and other small betrayls

"All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, "Oh, why can't you remain like this for ever!" This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end."  -J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan, Chapter 1

My father once remarked about his teenage daughters, "they all eventually turn on you." I remembering thinking "What a cynical statement!" I was in my 20's, and so much of my father's wisdom seemed like sideways energy at the time. At best, such comments were swept into the attic of my brain to be further neglected or dusted off later.

Mark Twain famously observed “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”  

I feel his father's pain. Unbelievably, our daughter, Grace will be 16 this July, and lately she finds me too critical, uncouth, and even slightly embarrassing.  

Despite my best efforts, how did I end up as one of those embarrassing parents? 

Granted, she has never accused me of such things directly. Because Grace has always been a polite child, she generally expresses even such traitorous thoughts in a thoroughly courteous manner. Now, her tone can go south on bad days and that's another thing.  But most of the time, she has mastered the art of a small teasing smile accompanied by an upward lilt to her "MooOOOM!" The combination renders the word a bit of correction and joke all at once.  In fact, on the surface, a stranger could interpret the scene as mere good-natured ribbing.  But I know better.  

I recognize the lilt for what it is--it's the lilt of a youth who believes herself wiser than the adult, the decided arrogance of an emerging adult.  The lilt of a young lady who has measured her emerging self against her imperfect mother and found the mother wanting... 

Thus, my father's words floated to the top of my thoughts this morning. Is this the betrayal he spoke of so long ago? If so, why do I find myself surprised that my daughter is experiencing the same sense of separation and need for self definition that I did at her age?   

Nagbibinata means a boy growing up... by Toti Cerda

Haplessly, we walk a well trod trail, and despite repeated warnings, find ourselves shocked to discover that we are not the first---nor will we be the last--to navigate this rocky terrain. We hold tight to the hope that the trail will be different for us.

But, indeed, the trail has been bumpy the last bit, and I suspect the trail will not improve for miles to come.  Though we walk together, we stumble often.

We are both transitioning into new seasons of life. On good days, Grace is learning how to be a young lady, and I'm learning how to be gracefully middle aged.  

On her bad days, we are both downright moody about this transition.  She's mad at losing her grip on her warm-fuzzy childhood. On my bad days, I linger too long over the seeming simplicity and wholeness of their childhood.  The image of three young children playing with toys, the growing up all bright and shiny before us seems winsome in rosy retrospect.

On our bad days, Grace wonders how she will shoulder the ever-increasing avalanche of adult responsibilities that loom nearer and nearer. And I, I struggle to look upon the same complex horizon and assure her that we will figure it out calmly, piece-by-piece.  How will we? I envision the miles of hard work ahead...

On our worst days she cries, and I scream. On these darkest of days, I doubt that the time I've invested in their education and rearing has been wisely spent.  Perhaps there was a simpler, better way to go about all this that I missed because I am still growing and learning myself. 

Ah, this is an adult truth too, that we never fully figure itself out ourselves before we have to teach it.

If anything, I'm feeling frailer and humbler in my 40's.  I'm slower moving than I used to be. My energy has definite limits.  I miss a lot more---more and more and more as the years dash on. In fact, I've been wrong last year, last month, last week, yesterday.  I often feel like I am chasing a train I'll never quite catch, and I used to believe I could catch it, if I ran very fast, if I ran very hard...but now. Now I'm pretty sure I won't.

I wince a bit inwardly to type these thoughts---something about writing them makes them more menacing and true.  The teenage years are not for the faint of heart.  Nor is middle-age...  We will just have to walk the trail and imperfectly keep bumping along as best we can.

And, I do understand my father---better than ever. There is a generational fellowship in remembering his comment--his caution.  It sweetens the loss of slowly losing the Grace of her childhood. My father felt the same loss first when I left my own childhood self behind.  I betrayed him before she betrayed me. And she betrayed me before her own child will walk the same path.

Although I find Khalil Gilbran too mystical at times, his poem "On Children" touches on this bittersweet rite of passage:


On Children

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

-Kahlil Gilbran


Too often for my liking, I feel like a too brittle and strained bow.  We stretch and our children go forth, at times painfully breaking the boundaries and perceptions we've faithfully instilled for years. We ache and they spring.  We bend and they sail. They lilt their head and say "MooooOOOM...." as the zing off our bow. 

But the upside is that they come out more authentically themselves for the journey.  The upside is that we get to see them fly differently--hopefully more gracefully--than we ever did.

Thank God! We won't always see life the same as our parents.   At the passing of the torch, there should always be the hope of a bit of forward progress from generation to generation.  It may not be progress in the specific areas we laid stake to, but progress nonetheless.

We share the privilege of gazing at the same horizon together, however daunting, with faith that the Lord will justify and use the work of our hands as imperfect as it may be.

And Grace, she will dust off her own attic of thoughts when the time is ripe, look back, and a bit of the "MoooOOm" may be redeemed.  I may not be around to see the full circle, at least not from this vantage point.  My father wasn't.  

But, I've seen enough of the circle to sense its arch and know who formed it. 

The Value of Coins

Rose has a fascination with coins.  Really this started even before we gave her a US States quarters book for Christmas.  She loves to count them.  She loves to sort them.  She loves to clean them.  And from her unworldly child-centered perspective, she can't understand why anyone would prefer paper money to coins.  Paper doesn't have the same heft, sound or presence in her opinion.

So, we have been hunting quarters, popping into Wachovia branches just for coins.  We've figured out that if we purchase a $10 roll of quarters and ask for wrappers, she can sort through them, re-wrap them and exchange them for a fresh roll. We've found that if we stumble across a kind teller, they will search through their drawer for us.

Here are some things we've learned while searching for coins:

Adult tellers, even staid-looking managers, can revert back to their youth when hunting coins.  The human thirst for a quest, even a simple one, is deeply wired.  Most tellers are surprisingly happy to leave their boring adult world to join our adventure.

In contrast, some tellers (and people) are simply not curious types.   No amount of enthusiastic coin talk will lure them from the dreary basics of their perceived job description.  I get it.  I'm sometimes stuck in the confines of my head agenda too.  We don't begrude them, but instead feel sad for what they are missing.

You can also find change at the car wash vacuums.  Yesterday at Gorilla Car Wash on Patton Avenue, Rose found 41 cents of change by scanning the eight vacuuming bays.   We talked with an attendant and learned that one employee has created a discipline of culling all of the change out of the collective vacuum filter.   Over the course of a year, this man collected $1,500 dollars in coins then used the money to go on vacation.

No doubt, some of you will read this (hurriedly, of course,) and think--"that's nice that they have time to float around car wash parking lots and sort through rolls of coins.  Unfortunately, I have weightier work--x, y, and z--to do."  I get it. And I'll admit that sometimes I doubt my time investment too.  It's intangible, unquantifiable, unlike our solid coins.  Homeschooling is a world-class head game for sure.

But, yesterday as Rose and I held hands crossing the busy bank parking lot, she commented in passing, "I like you." To which, of course, I replied "I like you too."  I know she loves me, but boy am I glad that she happens to like me.

I believe the best educational experiences and most beautiful keepsakes are such "by the way" explorations and comments.  I'll take them a thousand times over scanning yet another book entitled "What Your 4th Grader Needs to Know."

My 4th grader needs to know that education is a journey not a workbook.

That looking closely at coins and people is valuable.

That some people are kinder than others and that the difference is magnificent.

That little things, like coins forgotten while vacuuming the car, can add up to big things, like a free vacation.

And that the things which are important to her 10-year-old heart are also important to her mother's 45-year-old heart.

If I kept attendance diligently, which I don't, I'd check the box for Saturday.