Two Humans And A Dog

Early Friday morning, as my husband left for a long day in town, it felt good to hug him just a little bit longer.To linger in that familiar connection, and to remind him to be careful, to drive safely, and to come back home to me. Watching him drive down our road, we waved as he rounded the bend, and then Gracie-the-chocolate labradoodle and I headed out for our morning walk. The one that the three of us, two humans and a dog, usually do together.

On the way out, the sun is always at our backs, casting our shadows down the road ahead of us. That morning, was no different. Except that there were only two shadows. One human and a dog.

Some day it might be like that.

But not yet.

And that is something worth noticing.

Every.

Single.

Day.

BidaWeNestabon

James Stephen Davis was born on August 2, 1942.

Eleven years older than me, I used to kid him that he didn’t even know I existed until I was about 18. He swears it isn’t true, but I wouldn’t blame him if it was. By the time I arrived on the planet he was off to the teenage races, and I was, well, a baby.

Gregarious, good looking, and the life of the party, he played baseball, was a cheerleader, collected friends that are with him to this day, joined the cool dude fraternity on campus, and crammed four years of college into five because there was so much extracurricular learning to be had.

He could get away with things no one else could. Like calling our very proper, very short, very ample grandmother “Shorty”. He convinced our rather sophisticated, rather neat, rather stylish mom to crawl on her hands and knees across a large muddy field to flush a flock of geese on a cold and rainy family hunting trip. Which she did. Geese that turned out to be decoys. One time in Europe with his buddies he talked his way out of a ticket for jay-walking by speaking in pig latin, and probably took the policeman out for a beer afterwards.

After college he took off for California and built what would become a lifetime career in the insurance business. It was work that made perfect sense for this big hearted brother of mine. His priorities have been, are, and always will be people. He has a heart for others, and helping them take care of and protect themselves, their health, cars, homes, and families was a perfect way to do that.

He starts every day with coffee, Jesus, and prayer. It is his faith that orders his days and directs his steps. Life has thrown more than a few health curve balls his way, and his continued presence on the planet is not only a a miracle, but a gift to all who know and love him. Loyal as the day is long, ready to laugh at a moment’s notice, and a spirit that is as tender as it is tenacious, he simply will not let life get him down, and he raises the rest of us up in the process.

Ours was a family in which he only remembers the good. Any other way simply doesn’t make sense to him. Who has time for what could have been easier, better, or different? He is a glass-half-full kinda guy, and his gratitude for the life he has splashes over onto anyone in his presence.

BidaWeNestabon. For as long as I can remember, he has talked about this imaginary neighborhood where we will all live together.

BidaWeNestAbon. There is something about that crazy word that says it all. Can’t you just feel it?

BidaWeNestabon. We will abide together, our hearts held close in a nest woven of the sticks and twigs and bits of this and that which make up and hold a family together, come what may. It is a place that is right here, right now, and a place that awaits us on the other side.

Steve, our world and my heart are better because of you. Many Happy Returns.

BidaWeNestabon, forever and always. Amen.

James Stephen Davis & Andrew James Davis

The Pushback

Well, just when you think you have it all figured out, you find out that you don’t.

If you read my last piece, Here’s My Card, you’ll know that I created a new business card. Not so much as a way to market myself, but to introduce myself. The me, myself, and I that is now 70 years old.

In that blog I make no bones about the fact that I’m not a fan of the camera. It’s the rare photo of myself that I like, which means that every time another photo op comes along, I’m already tense and pretty sure it’ll quickly become another deleted photo. Which it often does. It’s a vicious cycle that’s been hard to break.

In real life, not in front of the camera, I actually think I’m pretty cute. Beautiful, even. I walk through life, into a room, or up onto a stage with confidence. Confidence in who I am, what I bring, and, how I look. But bring in a camera, and all bets are off. It’s like, “Wait, that’s not how I look.”

The blog was waiting for subscribers to my newsletter when they woke up this morning. My eldest daughter texted me about what I had written. She wanted to push back against what she had read. Her text brought me to tears as she talked about how she sees me. In her eyes, I’m beautiful. Always have been, always will be. Even when my hair was permed. (That might be taking it a little too far. If I was meant to have curly hair I would have been born with it.)

After our text exchange, she followed up with a Marco Polo. I learned three things from her beautiful, honest, and insightful message:

Even though she no longer lives in my home, she’s still paying attention.

We are always modeling what it looks like to the generation behind us. More than anything I want them to see what it looks like to age with grace. To embrace the changing face in the mirror with love and respect, wrinkles and all. To fiercely tend to the needs of a body not meant to live forever. To laugh at ourselves because it’s good medicine for whatever ails us at any age. To look through the camera and connect to the people on the other side of the photo.

It’s time to make friends with the camera, because every photo captures an irreplaceable moment in a never-to-be-repeated life.

How we talk about ourself matters.

Our thoughts create our words. Our words create our stories. When we tell our stories, others are listening. What is the story I want others to hear? If, as I profess to believe, that we are all created in the image of God, then every single one of us is beautiful in our own unique way. And that includes me.

It’s time to talk to and about myself as one who reflects the beauty of the One who made her.

Deeply rooted stories require uprooting.

My daughter reminded me that my dad feared old age. He fought it. He denied it. He made some of us a little miserable in our efforts to love and support him well as his time on the planet grew shorter. I wonder if my apple doesn’t fall too far from his tree. There isn’t a ready answer to that question. Maybe yes, maybe no, probably a little bit of both. Regardless, there’s still plenty of time to do something about it.

It’s time to dig in, dig out, and cultivate a better story. A more accurate story. A story that I want my children to be able to tell their children about who I was, how I lived, and, how I left.

Like I said, just when you think you have it all figured out, you don’t. Which is why we need people in our lives who love us enough to push back.

Knock Knock

Some lessons we learn early in life. While cleaning out a file cabinet I came across a folder of old stuff, including a poem I wrote on Thursday, December 6, 1973. In my twenty short years on earth I had apparently already stumbled upon the inconvenient truth that pain and love are partners. They are a package deal, and try as we might, we simply can’t have one without the other. Not if we want the real-meal-deal.

Looking back at that young woman in the midst of her last year of college I’m not exactly sure what prompted the writing of that little verse. It could have been the disappointment that comes when the boy you love doesn’t love you back (or even see you in the first place), the loss of her own voice and with it the vision for an advanced degree and a bigger life, or simply the inevitable angst of growing up. Regardless of their origin, her words still ring true.

Love hurts.

It isn’t in our nature to welcome pain, much less invite it in when it comes knocking on our inner door. But pain is the price of admission to a life of love. It is a messenger sent to get our attention, letting us know that something or someone is in need of tending. We are fallible folk, prone to mistakes that will inevitably hurt those we love, including ourselves. Love’s task is to understand the source of the pain and do what it takes to address the underlying cause. Sometimes it’s a quick fix, sometimes a long haul, but almost always worth the trip.

When pain knocks at the door, love invites it in for a visit.

Love Is Ridiculous

I’m a flipper-outer.

For example, yesterday morning we were about to head out to meet friends at a nearby wildlife refuge for a lovely summer morning meander, and I was running a little late. The sock in one of my shoes didn’t feel quite right so I had to take it off and start over. The dog’s e-collar was giving me fits. The handle on the fridge needed wiping off so that our friends wouldn’t think less of us if they happened to open the door to grab a beer. I couldn’t find my water bottle. I dropped my phone. It was one of those days when every step of trying to get out the door came with some sort of hitch, and I could feel the inner tension growing. The faster I moved, the worse it got.

Putting a cup of coffee into the microwave I knocked the cup against the side of the door, slopping coffee on the counter………….

Fuck!!!!! I hate having to hurry, I yelled at no one.

Dumping my now hot coffee into the travel mug, I slammed the microwave door. For good measure, I slammed the open cupboard door next to it (because along with being a flipper-outer, I’m also a door leaver-opener). Turning around, Tom was simply leaning against the sink with his cup of coffee, a slight smile on his face. He is unmistakably not a flipper-outer because (A) he simply isn’t wired that way, and (B) I do enough flipping out for both of us.

“Thank you for never (well, hardly ever) making this (me flipping out) into a teachable moment. It feels like you are just watching me thinking ‘God, I love that girl’.”

Pretty much, he said.

And the ridiculous thing is, he means it.

It’s quite a thing to be loved not only in spite of my messiness, but because of it too.

God, I love that guy.

A Seismic Shift

On May 18, 1980, at 8:32 in the morning, Mt. St. Helens erupted. It was the deadliest and most destructive volcanic eruption in U.S. history.

On that same day, a 32 year-old geologist was living in New Zealand with his wife, and a 26 year-old buyer for Nordstrom was living in Tigard, Oregon with her husband.

A month later that same geologist was back for a short visit to the U.S. for a family wedding in the state of Washington. Borrowing a car, he drove from Seattle to the Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, WA, where he handed his CV to the scientist in charge of hiring. Returning to New Zealand he began applying for teaching positions. In September of that same year he received a call from that same scientist who offered him a job. He accepted the position, moved to Vancouver, where he worked as a research scientist studying lahars (mudflows), like the one that occurred on Mt. St. Helens. His family grew as he and his wife welcomed two daughters into their home.

The 26 year-old buyer watched the eruption on the news, fascinated by the immense power that only the natural world can wield. She continued her career in the fashion industry, and she and her husband brought two daughters into the world too.

In 1989 both of their marriages ended.

They were each single for 5 years.

In 1993 the then 45 year-old geologist placed a personal ad in a local newspaper favored by urban professionals. The then 40 year-old fashionista wasn’t looking for love, but while building a fire for the pizza-and-a-movie night she and her young daughters had every Friday, the words Romantic Scientist caught her eye as she crumpled up a page of the newspaper. An oxymoron if she’d ever heard one. But there was something about that ad that intrigued her. On a whim she wrote a letter to the romantic nerd, stuck a photo of herself with her daughters in the envelope, and drove it to the nearby postoffice before she lost her nerve.

A few days later she received a phone call from the geologist.

They’ve been married now for 29 years.

If Mt. St. Helens hadn’t erupted the geologist would have taken a professorship at a university somewhere, wouldn’t have adopted his two incredible daughters, or placed an ad in a paper on the West Coast. He wouldn’t have met the love of his life, nor would she have met hers. They wouldn’t have had the chance to love and raise their four shared daughters, welcome sons-in-law and grand littles, and build a crazy good life together.

43 years after the eruption of Mt. St. Helens I am still amazed at the forces that converge to shape the lives we have. At how we are all part of a great worldwide web of connection that can create a seismic shift in our lives in the blink of an eye, or in this case, the explosion of a mountain.

Credit: Krimmel, Robert. Public domain.

(With gratitude to "Loowit" or "Louwala-Clough" as she is known to those who named her long before people who look like me arrived on the scene. Leave it to a woman to shake up the world.)

Climbing A Mountain Part 4: Courage Under Fire

“I don’t think I can do this,” he said.

Back at the trailhead we had each shared our biggest fear about the climb. His was a fear of heights. Not an insignificant thing on or off a mountain. A few hours into it, he hadn’t had to stare that fear in the face. Now he did, as our next steps would include a short but steep climb, a traverse across a narrow trail with steep slopes on either side, and finally, another steep pitch bordered by a crevasse.

“I don’t think I can do this,” he said.

We had stopped at an outcrop to put on our crampons. He turned his face away from the slope and gripped the sides of a boulder. We all silently went about gearing up, sensing that for the moment, all we could do was give him a safe space in which to be afraid. Not try to talk him out of it, or tell him what to do or how to do it. Fear doesn’t need fixing.

“I don’t think I can do this,” he said.

Looking up from my boots, he was sitting on a rock, his wife kneeling at his feet, carefully attaching his crampons to his boots. It was like watching Jesus washing the feet of his disciples, showing them what love does in the face of fear.

“I don’t think I can do this,” he said.

And then he did. He stepped out onto the slope and headed straight up. Like climbing a ladder that is leaning up against the side of a house, but with nothing to hold on to. One step ahead of him, his cousin told him to fix his focus on her feet rather than the steep slope on either side. Behind him another cousin told him to simply take five more steps. The one in front was terrified too, but by focusing on him she momentarily forgot that she was afraid too. The one behind him called upon her experience as a Cross-fit coach to help him simply take the next right step. Step-by-terrifying-step, he made his way to the other side of the thing he thought he couldn’t do. He did it himself, but he didn’t have to do it alone.

When did we decide that being vulnerable is an act of weakness? From what I saw up on that mountain, it is one of the most courageous things we can ever do.

Two days later, we passed that same steep stretch on our way back down.

“I can do that,” he said.

Climbing A Mountain

Do you think you two have another climb up Mt. Adams in you?

Because if you do, we want to do it with you.

Translation: We want to get up there with you while you still can.

That conversation last year with our niece and her husband started it all. Tom and I had to think about it, given that we’re not spring chickens anymore. On our morning walk the next day we decided that while we might not have multiple more climbs in us, we probably had at least one. With that in mind we opened the idea up to the rest of the generation behind us, and in the end, three couples threw their hats and hiking boots into the Mt. Adams 2022 ring.

We’ve been training for it for a year, readying ourselves to be strong enough to make the 12.2 mile trek to the 12,281’ summit. Over the course of that climb we would gain 6600 ft of elevation.

However.

You can train all you want and still not make it to the top.

Different obstacles got in the way for different people. Some of the hardest work we did was internal. Can I do this? What if I can’t. How can it be this hard? What if I slow everyone else down? Will I be able to overcome my fear of heights? What if I get altitude sickness? What if my old injury flairs up? What if I’m the weakest link?

In the end we had to come up against those fears, which is what happens in life on and off the mountain. Eventually we have to face them in order to be free of them.

The first day we hiked for eight hours, most of it on soft snow, with 40+ pound packs on our backs. It was a harder, longer day than any of us had anticipated, and as the sun dropped lower in the sky we began to give out. The altitude was having its way with some of us, and it was clear we needed to make camp soon. Apparently my speech was getting very slow, nausea and serious dehydration arrived on our scene, and I knew we were in trouble when Tom couldn’t seem to figure out how to put up our tent.

We found ourselves on a rocky outcrop with just enough room for four tents. Except for the ground beneath our tents, we had to maneuver over uneven boulders and rocks that were just a sprained ankle, broken leg, or worse waiting to happen. The temperature dropped, the light grew dim, and the wind came up. I was reminded, in the way that only nature can illuminate, that we are always hovering between life and death. We are so much smaller than we like to think in the big scheme of things. It’s good to be reminded of that now and then, lest I take myself and my brief presence on the planet too seriously.

At times like these, the best of who we are shows up. Those of us who could, took over for those of us who couldn’t, because that is what love does. While we had worked to get our bodies strong, in the end it was our hearts and our love and commitment to one another that got us up there.

The summit awaited us in the morning.

For the last year we have imagined ourselves at the top, each of us believing that we could do this hard thing. Together, eight of us were going to summit Mt. Adams on Friday, July 15th, 2022.

In the end four did.

I wasn’t one of them.

Stay tuned.

I’m dedicating the next few posts to what I learned by not summiting a mountain.

A Dream Come True

Start where you are.

Use what you have.

Do what you can.

~ Arthur Ashe

My husband had a dream last night where someone combined dirt and chocolate chips to create a kind of fabric that could be used as a protective covering.

If anything has been constant in our neck of the woods these days, it’s been dirt and chocolate chips.

Our daughter and her family moved in with us for what was supposed to be a two-week layover on their way to Scotland, where they will be living for the next few years as she pursues her Ph.D. We are now going on eight weeks, and everyone is going a little, or a lot depending on the day, crazy as we wait for their approved but yet to be seen travel documents to arrive.

Dirt and chocolate chips create a protective covering helping to hold our lives together. It’s like a dream come true.

Our wee grand boys, ages 5, 3, and 1 1/2, love nothing more than playing in the dirt. Some days it seems like it's what they live for. They pile dirt into small dump trucks, scoop it up by the handful, roll in it, run in it, and when no one is looking, fling it at each other. At the end of another dirt-filled day, their dirt-brown clothes piled on the floor of the mudroom ready for another whirl in the washing machine, the three of them head upstairs for a bath to get the dirt out of every nook and cranny.

Sometimes there’s nothing better than a chocolate chip cookie, so there is always another batch ready to be baked. No need to look up the Smitten Kitchen Crispy-Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe, because we know it by heart. We eat them warm out of the oven after naps, grab one to go with a cup of coffee or tea, sneak one before bed, or forgo the oven and just shovel the dough straight into our mouthes.

This experience together is nothing like we ever imagined, harder than we ever expected, and yet miraculously, more than we ever could have hoped for. One day at a time, one dirt pile at a time, one more load of laundry, bath, and batch of chocolate chip cookies, we are learning in new ways what it means to stay the course, hang together, and love each other well, come what may.

So take heart.

When things are nothing like we ever imagined and harder than we ever expected, sometimes all we need is a little dirt and some chocolate chip cookies to form a protective covering to remind us that somehow, some way, life is miraculously more than we ever could have hoped for.

Love Changes Us

“…love is an invitation to growth, a call to responsibility, and a hope for all that could be.”

(From the Opening Prayer, February 14th, 2021, Zoom Church, Bethel UCC, White Salmon)

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It was May 28th, 1994.

“I have a question for you.” he said.

On a snowy hike into the Indian Heaven Wilderness, and we had just stopped for lunch. I was pretty sure his question wasn’t whether I wanted the turkey or the ham sandwich.

“Will you marry me?” he asked.

“Yes!” I answered.

Hiking back out it hit me. On the trail going in, life had looked one way. Walking back out, life as we had known it had changed.

Because that’s what love does.

It changes us.

Whenever we say yes to love of any kind, we are committing ourselves to something bigger without knowing how it will all turn out. Love isn’t about certainty, but a commitment to continue to show up and say yes even when it’s hard. Especially when it is hard.

Before we say yes to love, our life looks one way. After we say yes, life as we have known it, will change.

Because that’s what love does.

It changes us.

27 years of continuing to show up and saying yes. Here’s to the next 27!