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Kristen Anne Glover

Five in Tow

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Sorrow and the Beautiful Love

The clouds, heavy with sorrow, bent over the sky, deep and gray and so full of tears they could not cry.  It seemed the weight of their anguish would crush the earth, but the weeping would not come.

It had been such a beautiful thing.  That was the irony: only a beautiful thing could leave such an ugly wound.  Only a beautiful thing could hurt like this.

“It will get better,” they said, as if they knew.  They who did not even believe such beautiful things exist.

But she did not want it to get better.  She wanted the sorrow to roll over her and consume her.  She wanted to feel it breaking her.  It was all she had left, this side of love that felt like drowning, like flesh being torn from flesh.  She couldn’t let it go, even though it hurt to hang on, because it was the closest she could get to what she once had.

“Someday, this is going to hurt,” her brain had once tried to tell her what her heart would not hear.  “There is no easy way out of love.”

But by the time she realized it might be that kind of love, it was too late.  Looking back, she was astonished by how quickly it had happened, and how irrevocably she was changed, so that now, in the darkness of her sorrow, she was unable to remember how to see, how to feel, how to be like before.  It seemed she could only see in shadows.

Frenzied, her mind tried to find a way to put everything back the way it was.  It woke her, desperate to convince her that nothing had changed.  It told her they were wrong, that it hadn’t happened, that soon she would find out that it was all a big mistake, and she could run again to her love and hold on for all eternity.

But this was not the kind of thing that could be undone with wishful thinking or sheer power of will.  This was the kind of thing that could never be put right, not while one piece of her was in time, and the other in eternity.

The morning came, hushed and dimly lit, with little to distinguish it from the fading of the night.  Morning, noon, and evening were nothing but a collection of indistinct hours marked by indistinct rising and falling of darkness.  Always there would be darkness, darkness in the air and in the sky, darkness in the shadows that seemed to be a part of her now.

But this kind of love cannot be darkened by shadows.  This kind of love, this beautiful love, cannot be divided by death.

The tears came, and with them, the clouds began to lighten.  Almost imperceptibly, the light filtered through, pushing the shadows to the edges of the pools where her memories drifted.   The shadows sharpened as the light grew stronger, defining and outlining the very things she couldn’t make out before.

Suddenly, she realized she could see.  With breathless clarity she saw the radiance of that beautiful love, not taken from her, but given back to her in its fullness, cleared of all imperfections.  Indeed, it was more real than ever before.

She ran to it and clung to it, this kind of love, this rare, beautiful love, that had come through the darkness and emerged incorruptible.

*Dedicated to my grandma, who lost her beautiful love one year ago today.  “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face…” 

For more of this kind of love, read the remarkable story of one woman’s grief redeemed in John 20.

Fiction, Uncategorized 5 Comments

A View of Eternity

 

It was the kind of October day that lulls a person into complacency.  The warm Indian summer sun betrayed any sense that winter was coming.  It could be warm like this forever.

The sun on the changing leaves made lacy patterns on the cool dirt path, and brittle bittersweet crackled orange against the bright blue sky.  The sky was endless, like an ocean, cool like waters that go on forever, and as I walked, I stared up into the cloudless vastness and tried to see the bottom.  It was the kind of day that made me think I could see eternity if I just looked hard enough.

The coolness of the trees ended abruptly at the edge of the world where the horizon melted into the waters so you couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.  On stormy days, the water was moody and brooding and grey like sadness.  But today, the waters of the Atlantic were stretched out shamelessly, asleep in the sun.

A sandy sidewalk and a narrow, New England road came between my path and the beach.  I stood there, debating whether or not to bother with crossing.  The kids were going to need dinner soon, and the dog would just chase the seagulls.  I looked down at Sampson, my boss’s shaggy black Newfoundland waiting by the side of the double stroller, and wondered if he was feeling obedient…or not.

But it was the kind of day that begs you to cross the street, the kind of day when simply living isn’t enough.  It was the kind of day that makes you want to soak up the minutes into your skin and breathe them into your lungs and hold them there forever.

I crossed the street.  The edge of the ocean was guarded by sleek condos and multimillion dollar homes which wore BMWs like jewelry on perfectly manicured driveways.  Their glossy windows reflected the day coldly, turning the beautiful shades of blue into something dark and limited, like the great expanse of the ocean had been scaled down and cropped into something that could fit into a realtor’s brochure.  Here, the ocean had a price tag.

Tourists drove by and craned their necks to look at the homes where the somebodies lived, and said things that began with “Who do you suppose…” and “What if…”

But I had not come to stare.  I walked up the street to where the iron gates ended.  There, in between the condos and the mansions, sat a grand old house, three stories high.  The wrap-around porch sunk in places and the grass poked through.  What was left of the white paint flaked off the hand-carved columns, revealing the weathered grey of old wood underneath.  The only thing new was the bright red front door, which looked as brazen and out-of-place as lipstick on a preacher’s wife.

In the front, the wildflowers and beach grass grew uninhibited, and the ocean was allowed into the house, pouring its soul into every room through the wavy glass of the single-paned windows.  You could stand on the sidewalk and look right through the house and into the sea.  Even the sand had blown up around it as if the beach had long ago reconciled itself to this intruder, and now it belonged.

But as much as the house belonged on the beach, it was shockingly out-of-place among the wealthy neighbors that had grown up around it.  I imagined more than one developer had offered a small fortune for that piece of property.  But somebody in the house couldn’t be bought.

On this day, when the ocean beckoned me across the street, I saw an elderly man shuffling out the bright red door and down the overgrown walkway on his way to get the mail.  A glass of iced tea sat by a gold and green striped recliner on the front porch, waiting.

The old man looked at me suspiciously and frowned at the dog.  Sampson had trotted right into his yard and was sniffing around.

“I love your house,” I said by way of apology and gave Sampson’s leash a yank, which the dog ignored.

“It’s not for sale,” he retorted.

“Oh, I don’t want to buy it!” I said.

He thought I was lying.

“I mean, I couldn’t afford to even if I wanted to.  Your house is worth millions, and I’m just a nanny.”

“Hogwash.  The house isn’t worth two cents,” he retorted.  “The view is worth millions.”

“You’re probably right,” I laughed, “but I love it all the same.”

He softened just a little.  Glancing at the babies in the stroller, he asked, “These your twins?”

“No.  They’re not twins.  This one’s my daughter, and this one’s my boss,” I explained.  “I think I’d go crazy if I had twins.”

“Hmpf.”  He got his mail from the box, the only mailbox on the street.  It looked like it would have fallen apart if not for the wire and duct tape holding it together.  “Take this to the porch for me,” he commanded and handed me the mail.

“Oh, okay…,”  I shifted the dog leash to the other hand and grabbed the mail obediently as he turned around and slowly shuffled back up the path to his front steps.  I was thankful he couldn’t see me try to juggle the mail, drag the dog, and push the stroller up the walkway behind him.  But it was worth it for the opportunity to get a closer look at the house.

With painful effort, the old man climbed his front steps and lowered his heavy body into the chair.

“Do you live here by yourself?” I asked, concerned about how he was managing.

“Yes ma’am.  I was born in this house, and I’ll die in this house, and I’m not selling it to anyone!”  He gave me a threatening look.

“I’m not trying to buy your house,” I reminded him, handing over his mail.  “I think you should be able to stay, if you want,” I said, but now I really was lying.  He looked about as sturdy as his mailbox only without the benefit of the duct tape.

“You should tell that to my daughter.  She comes around every week, clucking like a hen.  She put in a new door, saying I shouldn’t be living here with a door that doesn’t lock.”

“That sounds reasonable to me…”

“Too bad this forgetful old man lost the keys already” he smirked impishly.  “What do you think of that?”

“I think you’re a troublemaker,” I said with a laugh.

He grinned.  “Let me tell you something,” he said, leaning forward in his chair.  “I didn’t get this far in life without being a little bit of a troublemaker.”

The old man squinted up at me.  “How old do you think I am?”

I shifted my weight a little and hoped he’d just tell me.  He didn’t.  He looked ancient.  Was that close enough?

“I bet you’re eighty-three,” I said, but that was a lie too.  He looked at least ten years older than that.

“Ha!” he shouted, slapping the arm of his recliner.  “I’ll be ninety-eight in a month!”

I smiled.  “No wonder you’re ornery.”

His eyes held a smirk as he sipped his tea.  “You see those houses there?” he asked, pointing to the string of mansions that bordered his property.  “None of those were here when I was a kid.  That house was nothing but a field where we’d play stick ball after school.

“Sometimes, we’d play hooky so we could watch the ships come in to the harbor.  I used to wait for my father’s ship to come home, so I could be the first to tell my mother that he was back.  But one year, the ship went out, and it never came back.”

He stopped for a second and looked out over the water.

“I’m sorry,” I said.  I paused respectfully before asking, “You lived here your whole life, then?”

“When I wasn’t out at sea.  I spent most of my life on the water.”

“Even though your father died out there?”

“There’s worse things than dying out at sea,” he said.

I wasn’t so sure.

“Besides,” he explained, “the sea was all I knew.  It’s all any of us boys knew.  We were just a poor fishing town back then.  It’s not like it is now.”

“It’s not much of a fishing town anymore, I guess.”

“You ask any kid growing up what time the tide was coming in and they could tell you.  It’s not like that anymore.  They want to knock down my house and put up condos so the rich people can sit out in the sun and say, ‘Oh, what a view!’ and then turn around and complain about how much seagulls poop and dead fish stink.”

“Is that why you stay?” I asked.  “So they can’t build here?”

“Nah.  You want to know why I stay?” he asked in a way that made me think I didn’t.  “Let me show you.”

To my surprise, he stood up.  He turned the doorknob on his brand-new front door.  “See?  Don’t even need a key,” he chuckled.  “Come with me.  I’m not a serial killer.”

“It makes me feel better just hearing you say that,” I said wryly.

“I like you,” he laughed.  “Follow me.”

He pushed the front door wide open and stepped aside.  I gasped.

From his front entry, I could see the entire horizon.  The east side of his house was a jumble of windows, and all of them were full of the ocean.

“It’s the view,” he said.

“It’s amazing,” I breathed.

“Yes.”

“And beautiful.”

“No,” he said sternly.  “It’s terrible.”

I tried to hide my confusion.  “Well…” I began.

“I have spent my whole life on the ocean and I have come to know that it is terrible.  I lost my father to that ocean, and more friends than I can count.  You must know it is terrible first, and beautiful second.  Otherwise, you won’t respect its power and you won’t appreciate its beauty.  And that will kill you.  Or worse.”

“Worse?”

“Worse.  You’ll think the ocean is something you can have, and you’ll put up big, fancy houses and look out at it every day through your sunglasses and never really see it, never really know it.  At least if it kills you, you’ll know something about it before you go.”

I nodded, but I felt insecure.  “I’m afraid I don’t really know the ocean very well,” I confessed.

The old man took my hand in his and pressed it to his lips.  “My dear,” he said, “that’s the most truthful thing you could have said.”

He was quiet for a minute.  The dog whined at a crab and the kids kicked in the stroller.

“I’m just an old fisherman, and I’m afraid I must say the same thing: I don’t really know the ocean very well.”  He shrugged and then added simply, “Some things are too big to know in this life.”

“Then why do you stay?”

He looked out over the water with a longing in his eyes.  “What if you got to the end of your life and realized that all you ever tried to know could be known, just by looking, and you never even thought about anything that couldn’t be seen with your own eyes?  What if all you ever chased was something that could be caught?”

“I’d say that’s the way most people live.”

“Probably.  I guess that’s the troublemaker in me!  I don’t see much difference between living and dying, if you live like that.  I want to live—and die–pursuing something bigger than myself.  I’ve spent my entire life on that water, looking at it, feeling it, tasting it.  Every time I think I know it, I find there is more to know.  And that’s just the way I think it should be.  So I stay here, and I look out there and remind myself that there is something bigger than me, something that’ll take all of eternity to know.”

“It doesn’t sound like you need that reminder,” I said with a smile.

“We all need that reminder,” he countered.  “Otherwise, our eyes will blind us and we’ll forget to look beyond what we can see, and we’ll only get what can be gotten in this world.”

We listened to the gulls and the sound of the tide coming in.  He added softly, “It’s very close now.”

“What is?” I wondered.

“Eternity.  You look out there, and you can almost see it.”

I looked.

The sky had turned into a brilliant opal, reflecting red and orange and green across the cirrus clouds that had formed in the cool of the evening.  It no longer looked like an ocean, but more like a jewel.  He was right.  If I looked hard enough, I could see something of eternity on that warm October day when the ocean begged me to cross the street.

 

Fiction 25 Comments

Dining with Dragons

A dragon who is at all polite

Finds table manners a delight.

He washes up before he eats,

And waits for others to take their seats.

It is evident he knows the rule

Of using a napkin to catch the drool.

He tucks it underneath his chin,

And waits for dinner to begin,

Though he can hardly wait a minute

To eat the stew with three boys in it!

Or bite into the Princess Tart

(Dragon wants a juicy part)!

He does not grab, push, or whine;

That’s not the way good dragons dine.

He waits his turn and takes a little

Of every kind of tasty nibble.

And even if it’s not his fave,

He doesn’t ever misbehave,

And throw his food against the wall

Or refuse to open up at all.

(Mom lets him pick the eyeballs out

So really, there is no need to pout).

If he happens to burp a flame,

And doesn’t apologize, to his shame,

Dad simply says, “What a light!

Save it for a fearsome knight.”

But Dragon’s manners are so refined,

His father rarely must remind.

He never lets his wings stick out

Or blows milk bubbles with his snout.

He chews each and every bite

Quietly, with fangs sealed tight,

So Mom can’t see the food inside,

Partly chewed and liquified.

When he has eaten every crumb,

Dragon doesn’t dash off and run,

But stays until the rest are through,

Gives Mom a kiss and says “Thank you!”

He takes his cup and clears his dishes

Just like any mother wishes.

He is the pride of every dragon cave

Because he eats like a gentleman, not like a knave.

Perhaps you think only Dragon is able,

But even you can eat nicely at the dinner table.

Fiction, Humor, Parenting 13 Comments

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I believe you can find grace for the mother you are and help to become the mother you long to be—a mom who has the freedom to choose the better things and enjoy her kids right now.

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