Finished

A local publication, The Lutheran Ambassador, asked me to write a story about the women of Easter, based on the account in the Gospel of Mark. This piece was published in the April 2017 issue (Vol. 55, No. 4). Enjoy!

*****

Jesus shifted on the iron spikes, and his head drooped. From a distance, my friends and I watched—and prayed. That morning, soldiers had shredded my Lord with their whips and strung him up on a cross to die, but now they laughed as if sharing a joke at the market instead of in this place where hell touched earth. My stomach roiled, and I took a deep breath to quell the nausea.  

Salome looped her arm around mine. “But he was going to be king.” Her features twisted, and she searched my face. “He can’t die, Mary. He can’t.”

Another Mary, the mother of James and Joses, peered at me, and her chin wobbled.

“Maybe we didn’t understand,” I said. “Maybe he knew something we didn’t. And it was better.” But my heart clenched like a fist, refusing to let go.

The one who is forgiven much, loves much.

Years earlier, I had loved nothing. My broken body had housed a shattered mind. Illnesses, accidents, and compulsions battered me. Once, I even thrashed into the flames of my cooking fire. Afterward, I writhed in the dirt in blistered skin; my hours melted into blackness.  

But then came Jesus. He rested his hand on me, calling out the seven demons that had tormented me.

“Mary Magdalene,” he said. And for the first time, my name had sounded like beauty. “It is finished.”

And it was.

The crowds at the cross scattered, exposing us women, huddled far from where the masses had jeered or sobbed. Many of Jesus’ followers had vanished too. But my heart anchored me to the soil. How could I leave my Lord to his pain when he had saved me from mine?

Jesus struggled against his nails and scanned the meager gathering. Then his gaze rested on me. Those eyes that had once seen through my affliction still saw me.

“It is finished,” he cried out.

The same words that had made me new.

His muscles twitched; his head slumped. The sky darkened, and although only mid-afternoon, shadows draped the body of my Savior. Jesus was gone.

A rich man named Joseph carried Jesus’ body to a tomb in his garden. Mary and I trailed him and hid behind a tree as we watched the man spread ointment and spices onto fresh linens. And then he wrapped our friend. The burial complete, Joseph heaved a stone into place to seal the entrance to the grave. Dusk was approaching; the Sabbath was near. And I had work to do.

I scurried home and scooped sweet spices into a bowl, my hands trembling. I thumbed away tears as I stirred. The day before, I had prepared the meal for Jesus’ supper in the upper room with his followers. If only I were mixing oil into the flour for bread tonight instead of oil with perfumes to anoint my friend’s body. If only I were roasting the lamb with thyme and rosemary instead of blending my tears with myrrh and aloes. If only I had known then what was to come.

On the first day of the week, I squinted at the early rays of light that sliced through the darkness of my house. The start of a new week without my Jesus. How would I live without him?

A knock at the door. I unlatched it. Mary and Salome stood outside, each holding a bowl. Grief had stripped their faces of color and rimmed their eyes with purple.

“I’m ready,” I said, my own bowl of spices cradled in one arm.

Gravel crunched under our sandals, and dew drenched the hems of our tunics as we trudged to the garden.

“Oh no,” said Salome. “How will we anoint his body? Remember the stone? It’s too big for us.” A sob jostled her words. “Who will move it?”

I inhaled a shaky breath. “I don’t know.”

Mary gripped her bowl in both hands. She stared into the distance, her mouth a straight line.

In the garden, the crocuses exploded in yellow and the hyacinths in pink. White narcissus curled around our path. Where were these flowers two days ago? Or had our sadness hidden them? They bloomed now—the bougainvillea as profuse as forgiveness and the lilies as fragrant as hope. 

We neared the grave. But what was that up ahead?

I gasped. “The stone’s already been moved.”

I hurried into the tomb, and my friends followed. A young man, in a robe whiter than light, sat inside. Salome shrieked. My heart hammered, and my bowl clattered onto the stone floor, spilling the spices. Terror clawed its way up my throat. Mary splayed a hand over her mouth.

“Don’t be afraid,” said the young man. “You’re looking for Jesus who was crucified. But he’s not here. He’s risen.” He stood and gestured toward the door. “Go and tell his disciples.”

My friends and I clambered from the tomb and scrambled back onto the path. We clutched the fabric of our skirts and ran. Blinded by joy, we forgot all about our tear-soaked beds, our morning’s task at the tomb, and the spices we had abandoned somewhere along the way.

Because it didn’t matter anymore.

*Miss an installment of the blog? Or want to catch the story from the beginning? Visit http://www.tamarajorell.com/blog-entries-by-date

More windows

Last week, I asked you what you saw through your windows. Here are some of my readers’ views:

*****

There is a funeral home outside my office window. Most of the time the parking lot is empty, but occasionally it will fill with cars. Sometimes it’s only a few and other times the lot will be full. Invariably, people step out, women typically in dresses and men in suits or sport coats. You can easily tell which of the men aren’t used to wearing such attire by the fuss they make with their ties and their stiff gait walking in. The younger and middle-aged adults try to stall the inevitable: they check to make sure every door is locked, examine their reflection in the car window, look around (maybe for the nearest Menard’s?) and mourn the remainder of the cigarette they have to stamp out. Most of the seniors park in the front spaces as if they were reserved for them ahead of time. They walk in with a sense of duty. Children never seem to know the difference; they race up to the doors of the funeral home as if they were going to Target. I wonder if they know their chances of getting an Icee or a soft pretzel is pretty low...

One of the coolest things I’ve seen is a group of 20 or more Harley Davidson motorcycles pull in and form a ‘color guard’ of sorts around the parking lot. Without a word each of the leather-vested riders left their bikes and holding various flags, stood sentry along the sidewalks leading up to the doors. The flow of how this unfolded made me pretty sure they’ve done this before. Interestingly, a few of the riders did not go in for the service but remained standing, holding their flags. I wonder if that day, they were one biker short.

Jason, Plymouth, Minnesota

*****

My office is in the finished attic of our garage. Windows look out in three directions. From my desk I can look to the south to the road the ambulance came down the morning my forty-eight-year-old neighbor, an enthusiastic weekend visitor to our lake, dropped dead with a heart attack. Two windows look toward the lake—one to the left of my desk, the other over the little table where I refill my tea mug while I ponder the next scene of my work-in-progress. Today there are no leaves, and the water is steel-gray through the bare tree trunks. Soon it will be warm enough to open all four windows and catch the breeze along with the scents and sounds of the Northwoods, but by then my view of the lake will be obscured with leaves. One autumn evening a few years ago, I came out of my office and glimpsed the glow of sunset on the houses across the lake. I shot this with my phone. 

LeAnne, northwestern Wisconsin

*****

I’ll miss my bedroom window view from the homestead of my folks. It is beautiful with rolling hills, perfect for sledding, apple trees where the cows and we kids liked to munch, and the ever mysterious and beckoning woods. The next several weeks will be bittersweet as we clear everything out after the sale. The view in the near future will be a natural gas plant.

Today’s view, from my kitchen sink, is the trees (including a transplanted spruce from the homestead), the trampoline, now set up for summer, and the fort with the door and windows wide open.

Linda, Eben Junction, Michigan

*****

I notice as I look out of my dining room window this March morning that the dust and dirt from 5 long months of winter needs to be cleaned off.  The sun is coming up and promises a beautiful spring day. Because I am concentrating on the beautiful sunrise, I don’t immediately notice all the branches the winter wind has blown all over my yard. The snow is almost all melted except for a few small patches along the north side of the barn.  There was a time as a young wife and mother that I looked forward to the warm spring weather that is promised to me today. The children loved to be outside with me and “clean” the yard.  We would have such fun while we worked and the fresh air promised they would take a long nap that afternoon.  The farm fields I see from my window are now black with ribbons of water in the ditches waiting for the huge road ditches to thaw so all the water can drain to the river two miles away. My husband has lined his tractors, cultivators, and seeder in a row in the yard by the shop.  Each one is ready to be used as the sun and wind dry the many fields he needs to plant.  I watch him out there, with his cup of coffee, walking around each machine checking to see that it is ready to be used this spring. This is the 43rd spring that I have watched this ritual. I am grateful and I am weary.

Barb, Thief River Falls, Minnesota

*****

On the rare March evening when the jungle kingdom of northern Thailand drops below one hundred degrees, I abandon the dim cool netherworld of air conditioning and blackout curtains for the fan-propelled humidity of the city. Around six a.m., the room fills with the brilliant pink-and-mango glow of the sun—that relentless orange beast, friendly and excessive, with which we are so familiar here—and the neighborhood is greeted with the almost-musical cacophony of motorbikes and tropical birds. They wrench off in a blur of noise to start their days, and my eyes creak open. So much for sleeping late.

I sit down to my desk and peer out the front-facing window. Behind the stretch of balconied houses and banana trees rise the mountains in a wall of smoke-dappled violet. The burning has just finished. I think of my friend's parents, among the farmers who have harvested their rice fields and lit the chaff, filling the city with smoke. Most days we only notice for the slight tickling sensation in our noses, and even that, we don't mind much. It is a time of celebration, when skinny students bring back massive bags of their parents' crop and eat freely for months. And now has come the earned reward of long sleep, perfect for lethargic hot season—if you can sleep through the tireless beauty of this place. 

Dori, Chiang Mai, Thailand

*****

Love my big back yard

Two plus hours to beautify

Very worth the wait

Jay, Humble, Texas

*****

*Miss an installment of the blog? Or want to catch the story from the beginning? Visit http://www.tamarajorell.com/blog-entries-by-date

*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.

Windows

Today I want to hear about you.

What do you see from your window?

“All of us, at some point in our daily lives, find ourselves looking out a window. We pause in our work, tune out of a conversation, and turn toward the outside. Our eyes gaze, without seeing, at a landscape whose familiarity becomes the customary ground for distraction: the usual rooftops, familiar trees, a distant crane. The way of life for most of us in the twenty-first century means that we spend most of our time indoors, in an urban environment [or other], and our awareness of the outside world comes via, and thanks to, a framed glass hole in the wall.” Windows on the World: Fifty Writers, Fifty Views by Matteo Pericoli (preface by Lorin Stein.) 

Write a note about your physical view each day (photos are welcome too), and send it to me here (or if you’re a subscriber, simply hit reply to this email.) I will publish your writing (along with your first name and location) in next week’s blog installment.

I’ll get us started…

I shut out the world each night with two simple pieces of fabric. But when I open the curtains in the morning, I open them to the wild unpredictability of the city. I live among aging gingerbread houses; small bungalows dot the street. Like many of its neighbors, my little stucco was conceived at the tail end of World War I and born the next year.

It’s early spring now, and the hose—snaked around my front garden—is still in hibernation mode. Today a lone elementary-age kid inches by on the sidewalk, his backpack, like a turtle’s shell, dwarfs him. He bends down to pluck a long stick from my yard, and I hold my breath. What if he flips onto his shell and can’t right himself? But he manages to straighten up and taps his way down to the corner.

*Miss an installment of the blog? Or want to catch the story from the beginning? Visit http://www.tamarajorell.com/blog-entries-by-date

*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.

The arrest

I had plans for that spring day in 2011. I would root around in the dirt of my gardens, tucking in my seedlings for the season, and I would finally meet the new neighbors. A day of fresh beginnings.

It was also the day I was wanted by the law.

On my drive home from the nursery earlier, tender plants swaying in cardboard boxes in the back seat, I turned the car onto our street and glanced in the rearview mirror. Behind me, a black Suburban turned in the same direction. I drove past our house and turned right again at the end of the block. So did the Suburban. Halfway down the next block, I took another right, this time into our alley. The black SUV crept in behind me.

A vehicle behind me making a turn in the same direction as me onto our street? An everyday event. The vehicle following my second turn too? A common occurrence. But the same vehicle turning into our alley right behind me? Less likely. Was this the new neighbors’ truck?

Emergency lights flashed from the SUV’s grill, then came a quick woop woop of a siren. An unmarked police car? Meant for me?

“Stop your vehicle,” a voice blasted from a PA system.

I pressed my brakes and put the Honda into park. The black truck rolled to a stop twenty feet behind me. My mouth went dry. I couldn’t have been speeding. With neighborhood kids playing basketball in our street, I had even slowed down. But had I forgotten to signal my turn into the alley? Or did my car somehow look suspicious?

My heart did the jitter-bug, and my stomach joined the dance.  

“Ma’am, turn your engine off,” came the command from the PA.

I obeyed. What was happening?

Wait. That voice…

I squinted into the rear view mirror. Husband sat behind the wheel of the Suburban; his mouth curved into a crooked smile. I had forgotten all about the unmarked ride, a perk of his temporary assignment with a special unit at work. If in the neighborhood, why not practice a felony stop on the wife?

“Get out of your vehicle and put your hands over your head,” he said, his amplified voice resonating throughout the alley.

I climbed out of the car, my legs still weak from the scare. I laughed, shaking my head.

“Don’t turn towards me,” he said over the PA. “Walk backwards towards my vehicle.”

A movement behind Husband’s truck snagged my attention. A neighbor poked his head from behind his garage and peered at us. Wonderful. I flicked my gaze in the other direction. Two female neighbors—the ones I hadn’t met yet—peeked out of their yard. My reputation for not being the kind of resident who gets arrested in the alley in broad daylight was evaporating like the puddles from the previous night’s rain.

I sauntered towards Husband. His game was over.

“Hands over your head,” he said into the mic, an impish look still plastered to his face.

Surely by now, Husband’s voice over the loud speaker had reverberated throughout all of north Minneapolis. What if the local police drove by? What then?

I planted my hands on my hips and pulled out the look—the one reserved for squirrely kids in church. “Stop it,” I mouthed to him.

He issued another command, and my face heated. I resisted arrest, pivoting on my heel. On my way back to the Honda, my eyes met those of the neighbors, and I shook my head. Nothin’ to see here, folks. Nothin’ to see here. The onlookers returned to their yards. I started the car and drove into the driveway.

Husband thinks he’s funny. The End.

*Miss an installment of the blog? Or want to catch the story from the beginning? Visit http://www.tamarajorell.com/blog-entries-by-date

*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.

Wednesday's children

Last Wednesday, I handed my driver’s license to a woman in the main office of an elementary school in St. Paul. She looked at it—and me—and handed it back.

“I’ll let her know you’re here,” she said, scooting her chair back from her desk and exiting the room.

Minutes later, the final bell rang, and a teacher emerged from a classroom with seven-year-old Zeva. The girl clasped my hand and left the place with me, a stranger, skipping to my car like I had promised her ice cream instead of a ride back to her host family. I knew the mom of the home where she was going; the woman’s kindness was as irresistible as a frozen treat. And clearly, the girl felt it too.

Zeva was a collector of stories, and she lavished them on me as I drove from eastern St. Paul to a western suburb of Minneapolis.

“She’s white like you,” the girl said about a classmate. “And she’s my BFF forever.”

The storyteller’s eyes sparked with life, and I smiled. Next, she told me about her sister. At a stoplight, I jotted her sibling’s name on a notepad, along with the sister’s nickname, Honey, so I could remember.

“That’s not how you spell it,” Zeva said, tapping her finger on my paper.

“I just wrote Traynesha how it sounded.”

“I mean, her other name, Honey. It’s H-U-N-N-Y.”

“Okay, got it.” I made the correction at the next stop.

Then Zeva pulled me back with her to a winter night two years earlier.

“It was after Christmas, because I had my Elsa doll. And Mama woke me up.”

The girl displayed her story like a child bringing crime scene evidence to Show and Tell, and the truth whispered through her innocent delivery and speared me in the gut. Did she know what she was saying? How long until she pieced together the reality of that night?

“What happened then?” I said, not wanting to know.

“The cops came. They said, ‘What happened? What happened?’ But I said, ‘I don’t know. I was asleep.’” She shrugged, raising upturned palms. “Then they said other stuff, but I said, ‘I don’t wanna be a foster kid!’”

I released a slow breath, my eyes fixed on the freeway. What had I just heard?

Monday’s child is fair of face, Tuesday’s child is full of grace, Wednesday’s child is full of woe…

Mother Goose had intended her pronouncements for birth days—not for a child I had happened to meet on a Wednesday. Only a silly nursery rhyme, I told myself. But still I wondered.

The traffic clipped along, and I let Zeva choose the music on the radio. Like a hummingbird, she flitted from one story to the next, classic hip hop playing in the background.

At last, I dropped off the seven-year-old with her host family. I had transported a ray of sunshine from St. Paul, and she had perked up my day, but the darkness of The Winter Night remained lodged in my chest anyway.

At 11:30 that night, Husband and I heard voices outside on the street. While I stayed in bed, he went to look. A minute later, he was back.

“The police just took some kids from Kaiya’s place.”

“Oh, no.”

Kaiya, a sixth grade girl, waited at the bus stop each day with Dicka and me. Like Zeva, Kaiya had a spark that ignited her stories during those few minutes before the bus hissed to a halt at the corner. Like Zeva, the life in Kaiya’s eyes danced like dappled sunlight on a tree-lined path. And like Zeva, the girl on our street knew about grown-up choices and the police and dark nights.

The next morning, Dicka and I strode to the corner to wait for the bus. There stood Kaiya, her feet shifting from side to side under the weight of a new story.

“Did you see the police car at our house last night?”

“Yeah,” I said. “You okay?”

A hint of a smile. “Two little kids were walking around outside by themselves, so we took them in and called the cops.”

The March night had been cold—temperatures in the teens. I shuddered. “That was nice of you.” More questions pecked at me. “How old were they?”

“Maybe two or three years old?”

The bus came and took the girls away, deserting me with my thoughts. But maybe there were answers. Maybe the word woe didn’t have to bind Wednesday’s children to dark endings. Maybe the adult hands that steered the kids this way or that—toward parents or away from parents—could also hold the burden of their stories for them.

And maybe one day those little ones would find the Light Who could finally guide them home.  

*Miss an installment of the blog? Or want to catch the story from the beginning? Visit http://www.tamarajorell.com/blog-entries-by-date

*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.

Hidden

I opened my living room curtains on almost three-thousand mornings without seeing it. Husband had a knack for identifying makes and models of vehicles, describing clothing down to the types of fabric, and naming obscure colors, but he had missed it too. Not even our girls had noted it, and at the time, they caught everything: the heaves in the sidewalk, the dogs at each house on the block, and the gardener at Ms. G’s who spritzed the soil with fertilizer and the air with his swears.

But one summer day, Husband saw it.

“What—?” he said, squinting out the front window at something across the street.

And for the first time, I saw it too.

He hustled out the door, and I followed. The lot kitty-corner from us was no longer empty. A narrow path led to a tiny blue house withdrawn to the back of the lot, as if too timid to join the other homes up near the sidewalk. A behemoth oak and bushes concealed the small structure. I had noticed the tree and the lawn in the past, but the house? Never.

An older man stood on the lot’s grassy expanse. He whistled to his unleashed golden retriever, and the dog bounded over to him.

Husband introduced himself. “How long have you lived here?”

“Twenty-seven years,” said the man, motioning for the dog to sit.

We chatted with our new-to-us neighbor like it was the most natural thing in the world, as if his house hadn’t materialized—like Brigadoon from the mist—into our consciousness just that morning.

“That was weird,” I said to Husband when we returned home.

“I know. All this time here, and I never saw that house.”

How many other things had we never seen in our neighborhood? Where did I place my attention, my perception, my focus? For years I had strolled by the little blue house but had never seen it—or the man who lived there. So, what about the other people around me?

I had often looked at the man and woman who screamed at each other in the street at the end of the block, but I had never seen them.

A woman—thin like a blade of prairie grass—walked by our house each morning, a backpack-clad child tethering her to the earth. I was aware of her, but I had never seen her.

What if I sharpened my gaze to the life around me instead of simply looking at it? What if my attention followed slim paths back to secret houses and city sidewalks into hidden lives?

What if we all really saw?

*Miss an installment of the blog? Or want to catch the story from the beginning? Visit http://www.tamarajorell.com/blog-entries-by-date

*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.

The smile

The line snaked around inside the coffee shop and ended at the door. Husband and I waited behind a family of four. As we bided our time, I browsed the clearance t-shirts rolled up in a basket. Nearby on a shelf sat mugs for sale. Beautiful, tempting, overpriced.

The father of the family just ahead glanced back at us. Then he did a double-take. I looked at Husband and shrugged. Next, the boy shot us a look, then his sister—a girl of about ten years old. We put in our coffee order and waited on the other side to pick it up. The family waited for their drinks too. The boy whispered something to his mother, and she swiveled to look at us too.

I furrowed my brow. Did we look familiar to them?

“This is weird,” I whispered to Husband. “Why do they keep staring at us?”

“They probably think you’re famous.”

I tilted my head. “Right.”

The girl stood with her drink, facing me—and now gawking. Then she smiled. No flash of teeth—just a serene, kind smile. I smiled back.

We left the coffee shop. The memory of the girl’s expression plucked at my outlook—and heart—and undid the strange behavior of her family.

“Have you ever thought about a smile from a stranger?” I said to Husband when we were back in the vehicle with our lattés.

“Not really.” Husband sipped his drink and started the truck.

“It’s a private exchange between two people,” I said. “What does it mean?”

“Smiles aren’t always a good thing. They can be sinister or leering.”

“But when they’re not, I mean.”

He shrugged. “They’re just nice.”

The girl’s smile in that coffee shop was a tiny gesture. It took a second and cost her nothing. But I mulled it over for a week. And it warmed me.

A simple, silent gift with no cost attached to it. No expectations or hidden messages beyond “We’re both doing life in the same place right now, and I see you.”

A smile for a stranger.

*Miss an installment of the blog? Or want to catch the story from the beginning? Visit http://www.tamarajorell.com/blog-entries-by-date

*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.

Water

My scrolling finger halted at her post.

The woman’s message of water rang out above the rest on the internet, because beauty is louder. I drank in the picture: a waterfall in North Minneapolis. Residents commented on the post; some had never before heard the news of the phenomenon in our neighborhood. And I had forgotten all about it.

I clipped a leash on our dog Lala, and she and I broke away from life to refresh my memory of the crashing water—too alive to only be locked up in a photo circulating Facebook—and strolled to Webber Park on a sixty-degree day in February.

At Shingle Creek Falls, water exploded in freedom over the rocky edge, and its mists passed the handrails, speckling my arms with droplets. A question—more fitting for an elementary school kid than a woman my age—formed in my mind: If I had to, could I navigate this waterfall in an inner tube or raft and live to tell the story?

The question washed me back into my wetsuit and helmet, back to our family rafting trip in Québec in 2015. We had chosen the stimulating Class 4-5 rapids excursion at the Expedition Nouvelle Vague. Even so, our guide, a college-age California surfer type with a French accent, pulled us over to the riverbank at different points on our watery adventure to offer exciting swimming opportunities.

“And why would we want to do that?” I whispered to Husband.

He shrugged. “For fun?”

“When I say ‘go’, dive in and swim upstream toward that rock,” said the guide, pointing to a stone column in the distance. “Then, when I blow the whistle, flip onto your back and put your feet up like this.” He dropped to the ground and put himself into La-Z-Boy recliner position. “And ride the rapids down to that quiet part. Okay?” He jumped back onto his feet. “Who’s first?”

One of my eyes twitched as I watched my three ducklings—wide-eyed and silent—line up on a broad, flat rock on the river’s edge. My stomach did a flip. If I lacked confidence, would I survive the stunt? The guide wouldn’t let me drown, would he? And if my children witnessed my death today, would they ever swim or travel again?

One by one, my ducklings jumped off the rock, swam upstream until the guide blasted his whistle, then pivoted and rode the rapids down into the still patch of river—exactly as instructed. They swam to the side and hopped out of the water.

“Wanna go next?” Husband said to me.

“Not really.” My heart thrashed like the waters around me.

Husband dove in, not swimming as far upstream as the girls had, swiveled at the whistle, and the rapids carried him beyond the girls’ stopping point. If he drifted much farther, would he hit the portion of the river called The Meat Grinder? The guide paddled to him in a kayak and towed Husband back to shore.

The guide sauntered over to me. “Ready?” 

“I don’t think so.” The hammer in my chest nearly pounded a hole through my ribcage.

“C’mon,” he said, all surfer charm. “You’ll love it.”

Did I want to be the adventurous mom, game to try anything with the family? If so, it was now or never. Now or never! I jumped.

The girls had made resurfacing look so easy. I swam hard, fighting for the rock, but it was much farther upstream than I had hoped. FWEET! Was that the whistle already? I rolled onto my back, popped my feet up as instructed, sucked some water, and choked through the churning rapids. Panic clawed its way up my throat. The lashing waves finally spewed me out into the calm, but I flapped around like a baby in a kiddie pool anyway, gasping for air.

“Here,” said the guide, his expression as serene as the water around us. How had he rowed over to me so fast? “Grab on.”

I flopped an arm over the end of his kayak and gagged all the way to the riverbank. Husband and the ducklings shot me pity looks as I dragged myself back onto dry land.

The next out-of-raft diversion was a twenty-foot cliff jump into the Jacques-Cartier River.

“Are you ready?” The guide smiled at me.

“No,” I said, still shaking from the swim.

Husband and the girls scaled the rocky climb, pointed for the top of the cliff.

“Aw, c’mon. Chance in a lifetime,” said the guide.

“This is a hard pass this time,” I said, my open palm patting the air. “A definite ‘no’.”

I had survived my adventurous mom duties minus any spinal cord injuries—or even scrapes. I reclined on a rock and basked in the sun as everyone else plunged into the river.

Lala tugged me back to the secret waterfall of North Minneapolis. Like the river in Québec, this water was a far cry from the staid stream coming daily from my kitchen faucet. This water was an awe-inspiring thing, and I could appreciate its savage beauty from a distance.

No wetsuit required.

Shingle Creek Falls, Webber Park

The family in Quebec, 2015 

*Miss an installment of the blog? Or want to catch the story from the beginning? Visit http://www.tamarajorell.com/blog-entries-by-date

*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.

Good Deal

The sign—“Smile! You’re on camera”—greeted us at the entrance of our neighborhood’s Good Deal Oriental Foods, but I didn’t need the reminder. The memory of crates of produce on the floor just inside the door had me smiling already. Stalks of sugar cane, stacked like firewood, filled a box next to other fruits, like rambutan, a tropical offering I had often passed by. I would try the prickly-looking food one day, I had told myself too many times. But when I finally decided to buy some, it was gone.

“When will you have rambutan again?” I asked an employee.

“I don’t know,” the girl said. “Next week?”

While we waited, Flicka and I bought the canned variety to sample, along with two of its cousins, lychee and longan. When Good Deal carried the fresh fruit again, I snapped up a package.

Back at home, we scrutinized the rambutan like botanists. The tropical treat was fun to peel, the spikes on its reddish-brown skin were rubbery and not sharp like they appeared, and the delicacy vanished like a box of chocolates in a house full of women. 

On another visit to Good Deal, I picked through the produce, plucking a Styrofoam tray of greens—an herb?—swathed in cellophane. Pac Pew, the labeled stated. If it was a kind of basil, I could use some for a recipe. I scanned the area for an employee and spied a woman transferring taro root from a box into a bin.

“Excuse me,” I said, showing her the package of greens. “What is this?”

“Pac Pew,” she said.

“And in English? Is it basil?”

“It’s Pac Pew.” The woman punctuated the words with a bob of her head.

“Hm.” I furrowed my brow. “Thank you.”  

I pulled out my phone and searched the name. Nothing. I moved on to a vegetable that looked like a cross between a cucumber and a zucchini. The sticker called it Moap Moap. But again, Google let me down.

While Flicka perused the merchandise in the candy section, I wandered into the meat department. I had read about the silkie chicken, a small five-toed bird with black skin and flesh, known for its rich flavor, and there it was nestled amid other varieties of chicken. Maybe one day I would buy one—and gather tips from my Hmong or Vietnamese neighbors on the best way to prepare it.

I strolled back to the produce department where Flicka held a young coconut in one hand and a mature one in the other.

“What’s the difference between these two?” she said.

“I suppose we better find out.”

She plunked them into my basket, and I went back for the Pac Pew and Moap Moap. Then I scooped fresh longan into a bag.

At the checkout, a teenage boy—all smiles—rang up our grocery items like it was his favorite game, his dimples playing along.

“The cashier was Handsome,” I said to Flicka when we got back to the car.

She shrugged. “Okay?”

“His name was Handsome, I mean.” I showed her the receipt with the proof.

And Handsome was the perfect conclusion to our otherworldly jaunt within our own neighborhood. Smiles at the beginning of our trip; smiles at the end.

Peeling rambutan*

Pac Pew

Moap Moap

At the entrance

*Photo creds go to Susan Dyrud McDonald.

*Miss an installment of the blog? Or want to catch the story from the beginning? Visit http://www.tamarajorell.com/blog-entries-by-date

*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.

The grocery store

A grocery store arose at the corner of Penn and Lowry in the middle of a federally designated food desert, but it was no mirage. With healthy foods, organic produce, and household items, the new Aldi was my oasis. The costs stayed low through small measures: no fancy displays, no free bags, no piped-in music, and grocery carts that cost a quarter—refundable when returned to their corral.

Instead of putting the carts back into their stall at the end of each visit, though, many of us shoppers handed them off to the next people coming in, accepting the quarters they proffered. Sometimes someone would refuse my quarter and I’d get a cart for free; other times I’d wave away the quarter offered for my cart. Every time, it made me smile.

Aldi’s inventory exploded and improved over time. Sometimes special items—kombucha or goat cheese—appeared on the shelves, making me smile too. The store always delivered interesting surprises.

And so did its parking lot.

“Got some spare change?” a man said one day, walking a little too close to me as I headed to my car.

“Just this.” I handed him the quarter I had gotten back from my cart.

He grunted. “Not enough.”

If you hit up enough people for their cart money, it adds up, I felt like saying. Instead, I shrugged and dropped the quarter into my coat pocket. The man shuffled away.

One day, I hopped out of the car and headed toward Aldi’s doors. A young woman approached me.

“Can I just get a few dollars?” she said, her face contorting. “I’m hungry.”

“I could buy you some groceries,” I said.

Her eyes lit up. “Really?” Then she turned all business. “So, what’s my budget?”

“Hm. Six dollars.”

She nodded and followed me inside the store. First, she snapped up a package of sandwich cookies. Sweets aren’t a good choice on an empty stomach, the mom in me felt like saying, but I sealed my mouth shut. 

“My girl's in private school in Edina,” she said, pulling a gallon of milk from the cooler. “It’s so expensive I can hardly make it.”

I narrowed my eyes. “I can imagine.”

She filled her arms with a box of crackers, a loaf of bread, a bag of chips. We stepped in line to pay. The young woman dropped her items onto the conveyer belt.

“Will you be okay carrying all this home?” I said as the cashier rang up her items.

She nodded. “My house is just a block away.”

An older woman behind me in line tapped my shoulder, then leaned in, her voice low. “Are you buying those groceries for her?”

“Yeah, why?”

“She already asked me to buy these for her.” She indicated eight items on the belt behind our order. She cleared her throat and turned her eyes to slits. “Excuse me,” she said to the young woman. “You just said you live a block away, but you told me you were homeless.”

The young woman raised her shoulders and eyebrows. “By homeless I meant I don’t own the house I live at.”

The older woman let out a bitter snort. “Right.”

The cashier and I exchanged a look. And the young woman scurried away that day with a bag full of food, because no matter what, she needed it.

On another shopping trip, I strode across the parking lot. Icy winds sliced me, so I quickened my pace.

A man’s voice coming from thirty yards behind me cut through the frozen air. Something, something “—black backpack!”

What was he shouting?

The late-afternoon crowd zipped into the store, and I darted for the doors too. After a long day, I would make this one fast. Ciabatta rolls, almonds, avocados, eggs. I could be in and out in ten minutes.

Something, something “—black backpack!” the man yelled again.

Wait. I carried a black backpack purse. Was he hollering at me? I entered the store and encountered the chips section. My interest in Holler Guy’s incoherent communication style disappeared as fast as the Pringles would if I brought some home.

Something, something “—black backpack!” the man bellowed again from just outside the doors.

He entered the store and caught up with me in the trail mix area.

“That was me calling you,” Holler Guy said, his tone cheery. He tilted his head, assessing me. “From back there, you looked much younger.”

I bunched my lips to one side, harrumphed, and returned to my browsing.

Much younger? He appeared to be in his late fifties. Did he make a lot of connections shouting at much younger women in grocery store parking lots? I wrinkled my nose.

“I wanna dance with somebody,” he sang as he poked through the condiments at the end of the aisle. “I wanna feel the heat with somebody.” He plucked a bottle of ketchup from the shelf. “With somebody who loves me.”

I smiled, shaking my head. Only Whitney Houston sang the song better than Holler Guy. Maybe he’d have more success with the ladies if he stopped yelling and serenaded them instead. But I didn’t tell him that. I still had to find the ciabatta rolls.

Over the years, I came to enjoy the adventure that was food shopping in our neighborhood. It called for a roving gaze over the parking lot whenever I climbed from my vehicle. On most trips, someone asked me for money or blurted out unseemly comments for the world to hear. Different grocery stores in other neighborhoods made me yawn, however. While pretty and predictable, they were bland excursions with only one outcome: groceries.

But not our Aldi. With delicious eats and built-in entertainment, we came home each time with so much more than just food.

*Miss an installment of the blog? Or want to catch the story from the beginning? Visit http://www.tamarajorell.com/blog-entries-by-date

*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.

The art museum

Social media dripped muck, and whenever I rolled in it, it soaked into too many of my layers, leaving stains I couldn’t scrub out. So I let it go and drove to the Minneapolis Institute of Art, trading electronic screens for picture frames, negativity for creativity.

I had never visited the art museum alone, and on that weekday at noon I had the place almost all to myself. My attention first settled on a huge oil on canvas, The Union of Love and Friendship by artist Pierre-Paul Prud’hon. Thirteen years earlier on a stroller-laden excursion, four-year-old Flicka had sounded out the words in the painting’s title.

“The Onion of Love and Friendship,” she announced at last.

“It’s Union,” I said.

And we had laughed along with her—and never let her forget it.

Often in the past, I had helped chaperone squirrelly elementary-age students on field trips to the museum. Some had stampeded through the place, threatening to topple precious antiquities with their romping. Others had sidled up to me like mice, flicking their gazes to my face. You’re doing a good job, I had whispered to them.

For the first twenty minutes of my solitary visit, I wore my pragmatism like a pair of comfortable yoga pants. What would I do if I owned all these artifacts? The antelope jade vessel from India’s Mughal dynasty would make a cute soap dish, the beaded moccasins crafted by an A’aninin artist would be cozy on my cold floors, the thirteenth-century earthenware bowl from Iran’s Seljuk period would be perfect for my salad at the next potluck, but the seventeenth-century glass drinking horn from the Netherlands would never survive my dishwasher.  

The works of art whispered to me as I neared them, sending my common sense on its way. And because my distractions were gone, I heard all the stories.

I forgot where I was going when I stepped into Gustaf Edolf Fjaestad’s painting, Winter Landscape. The floating snowflakes muted the sounds of the forest as I meandered through the trees. I found my way to the other side and for a few seconds, tufts of color in Dorothea Tanning’s Tempest in Yellow buffeted me. I swam through it, though, until I reached Edouard Manet’s The Smoker. I nodded at the brushwork, coughed, and moved on.

I joined the men in tempera who stood in line outside the barbershop in Reginald Marsh’s Holy Name Mission, but I squirmed, surveying the group. Would they ask why I, the only woman, had joined them? And would I dare ask them if World War I had smudged the darkness onto their faces—or had it been their own desperate choices?

Young Woman in Undergarments by artist Wilhelm List reminded me of my own list—my Target shopping list—and so I jotted down 'black tights' before I could forget again. Then, a locket, its chain snagged on a tree branch in Henry Koerner’s My Parents II, captured my eye. The elderly man and woman had their backs turned to me, but why did they sit so far apart in the woods? And where were their children, whose Hansel and Gretel-like faces peeked out from the locket? The painting refused to let me out, so I breathed in the shades of brown until I could slip away.

While I was trying to imagine the reason for a woman jumping, nude, from an upstairs window in The Barn by John Wilde, voices interrupted the gallery’s silence. Behind me, two men analyzed Paul Cadmus’ Aspects of Suburban Life: Mainstreet.

“See the dog on the leash out in front of the woman?” said one of them. “See the movement? The length of her stride? She’s going places while the men are watching her.”

I turned to look. The man who spoke wore his remaining gray hair in a ponytail. The other man leaned on a cane and sprinkled his own thoughts into the conversation. Today I had escaped ugly for beauty, but what had driven these gentlemen to the museum? Did they visit often? I approached them and explained who I was and what I did.

“Why did you come here today?” I wrapped my blunt question in a smile.

“Why do you write?” said the man with the ponytail.

“To make sense of the world.” The words had come out faster than I could think them.

“There you go,” he said, a smile flickering over his features.

“Have you seen the silver piece in the next room?” the man with the cane asked me. “It’s truly remarkable.”

“No,” I said. “But I’d like to.”

The three of us strolled into the adjacent gallery to admire the eighteenth-century silver wine cistern.

… whatever is lovely—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

“Have a beautiful day,” I told the men before I left them.

Refreshed, I exited the art museum and walked to the car. I had abandoned my to-do list and halted my hectic schedule that day for a necessary indulgence. In one of the galleries, I had left behind some burdens too.

And next week, maybe I would do it again.

*Miss an installment of the blog? Or want to catch the story from the beginning? Visit http://www.tamarajorell.com/blog-entries-by-date

*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.

The money: Part 2

Like moorings to a boat, I had affixed strings to my money, and as it floated away from me in the offering plates of the past, I had always felt a jerk—and then would come the worries. But no longer.

What now?

Test me… and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing…

Maybe blessings would come in the form of no more home break-ins or packages stolen from our front steps. Maybe they would be new, delightful people we would meet. Or maybe instead of a hectic family calendar, they would come as a streamlined schedule. More security, stronger connections, less frustration.

But God’s ways are not our ways.

After church the next Sunday, our friend Mark caught us before we exited the sanctuary. He handed me an orange envelope.

“This is for you,” he said. “Just something we wanted you to have.”

Too late for Thanksgiving. Too early for Christmas. Months away from my birthday. A card for no reason?

“Thank you,” I said, a question mark lining my voice.

Mark headed off to visit with someone else, and I broke away from our girls and wended my way over to Susanne, Mark’s wife.

“Thank you for this,” I said, raising the envelope. “Should I open it now?”

She smiled. “It’s up to you.”

Inside the envelope in a greeting card was a Visa gift card for $350.00. I started crying.

“Instead of giving our Thanksgiving offering to Safe Families, we wanted your family to have it,” said Susanne, “for all you do for those kids you host.”

I wanted to tell her everything—how I had gripped our finances in the past and how I had recently accepted an ancient challenge—but tears washed away my words.

“This is unbelievable,” I said, hugging her. “Thank you.”

I rejoined my girls.

“Mom?” Flicka said, her eyes soft. “Are you okay?”

“Why were you crying?” said Ricka, leaning in for details.

“I’ll tell you in the car,” I said.

Dicka looped her arm around mine, her eyes searching my face as we strode out to the parking lot.

On the drive home, I told the girls the story of the Divine dare and what had come of it. I had expected good things from our step of faith, but not a financial gift. And not so soon.

“He told the truth,” I said, tears blurring my vision again.

Grins sang out in the silence of the back seat.

“Oh, Mama,” said Dicka.

After church the next Sunday, the girls and I ambled out to our vehicle. Ricka frowned, her gaze dragging along the ground as we went.

“What’s going on?” I asked her after we climbed into the car.

“I have to give all my money away,” she said with a sniffle.

“Why?”

Shaking her head, she shrugged. “I couldn’t stop thinking about it all morning during church.”

Ricka always had shopping goals—$130 shoes, an iPhone, or other—but most recently, she was building her coffers to help pay for an expensive volleyball club she had joined. If she had ever given away money, I hadn’t witnessed it.

“Okay,” I said. “Maybe pray about who it should go to.”

“I already know,” she said.

“Really?”

She stated the name of a woman—the mother of Tabitha and Tia, the girls we had hosted many times through Safe Families for Children.

“That’s perfect,” I said.

The last time the little sisters had stayed with us the friction between fifteen-year-old Ricka and six-year-old Tabitha had worn me down. So, who was this new girl in the back seat? And what had she done with my lover of material things? 

When we got home, Ricka checked her savings account online. Then she rifled through her purse for cash and emptied her change jar. She added up all the amounts on a piece of paper and handed it to me: $350.00.

“I’ll write a check for that amount and send it off tomorrow,” I told her.

“Thanks, Mom,” she said. A smile flickered across her face as she took her empty purse back to her room.

Ten days later in the mail came a small envelope for Ricka. The return address belonged to Tabitha and Tia’s mom. Ricka opened the note, read it, and showed it to me:

I wept again. The money had flowed through numerous hands in a grand adventure far beyond us all. The Keeper of Promises had done it.

And the blessings were better than ever.

*Miss an installment of the blog? Or want to catch the story from the beginning? Visit http://www.tamarajorell.com/blog-entries-by-date

*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.

The money: Part 1

Tithe.

Millennia hadn’t quelled the ancient word, which meant to give ten percent of one’s earnings to the church. Followers of Jesus Christ still bandied the term about, but although I shared their faith, whenever the topic arose, my stomach soured. I had heard too many sermons on the subject. And they all sounded like thinly-veiled fundraising pleas—and as pleasant as sleeping on a broken-down futon.

“Think of it this way,” a speaker once said, “God lets you keep ninety percent.”

“You’re not tied to just the ten percent,” said one teacher. “You can give more.”

“When you don’t tithe, you’re robbing God,” said another pastor.

Other preachers slipped the subject into pretty frames, edged with the promise of blessings, but I still heard the same message amplified by their microphones: Should. Should. Should. Parishioners in discussion groups quibbled over the ins and outs of the discipline: “Do you tithe off the gross or the net?” “Do you have to give to the local church, or is it okay to give to other ministries?” My attitude bristled even more.

“The tithe is an Old Testament concept,” one of my friends said with a wave of her hand. “It’s all about grace now. Whatever you give is the right amount.”

Varied human opinions echoed through my thoughts. But what was true?

As our home’s holder of the purse strings, I thought about money daily. And I clutched our family’s finances to my chest, squeezing our checkbook close. Whenever I paid the bills, the niggling should of the ten percent entered the equation, but it felt like one more obligation. Another payment. And there was never enough money. Guilt seeped in. Maybe next time.

I donated my time and energy to good causes without a second thought. And I loved surprising someone in need with the occasional financial gift. So why did a regular tithe feel like wearing a scratchy wool sweater in July?

I picked up the phone and dialed the most generous person I knew. Maybe she had some answers.

“It’s about a heart that’s willing to give something up. It’s about trust.” I heard a smile in Mom’s voice on the other end of the line. “And when you give away your money, just wait and see what happens.”

Mom’s biggest delight was giving to those in need, and her words infused me with motivation. But the next time I sat down to pay the bills, reality happened, and our needs and “needs” gobbled up our funds.

I took my struggle to the mat and sat in the presence of the One who owned it all. I wanted to give like Mom and live with open hands in every way. What was holding me back?

Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this, says the Lord Almighty, and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.

A picture of a bicycle formed in my mind. Maybe the tithe wasn’t The Ten Percent after all, but instead, a set of training wheels—an invitation to something bigger. Maybe it was a gift to us—a place to get us started on the wildest adventure of our lives.   

Suddenly, freedom blew my hair back, and the winds were nothing like the dictates gusted from pulpits and Sunday school classrooms throughout my life. It was time to take my placid walk of faith off-road. It was time to really ride.

The next Sunday in church, excited nervousness bubbled up inside me. The offertory began and soon the familiar brass plate made its rounds, gliding between worshipers’ hands until it came to me.

I stifled a smile. Joy had replaced duty, and anticipation had kicked out burden.

I dropped a check into the plate. Let's do this, God.

And the training wheels came off for good.

*Miss an installment of the blog? Or want to catch the story from the beginning? Visit http://www.tamarajorell.com/blog-entries-by-date

*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.

Willingness

“She’s so annoying,” Ricka said, dodging Tabitha and making a beeline for her room.

Sisters Tabitha and Tia, ages six and four, were back with us for the weekend. They had been our houseguests through Safe Families at least eight times over four years. And they were smart girls: they knew the rules of the house, the foods I usually bought, the activities we had enjoyed in the past—and how to push all the buttons.

“She just wants a hug,” I said. “She hasn’t seen you in a while.”

Tabitha locked her arms around my fifteen year old’s waist, letting her legs go slack.

“She doesn’t have to be obnoxious about it,” said Ricka, attempting to peel off the seventy-pound dead weight.

“Stop this.” I skewered Ricka with a look. “Just hug her back.”

“Fine.” Gazing at the ceiling, my girl flung loose arms around the kid for a split-second. Tabitha dragged her tongue along Ricka’s sleeve, released her grip, and bunched over in a forced laugh that bounced off the walls.

“That’s disgusting!” Ricka said and stomped off.

I squatted to make eye contact with the six year old. “Listen. You need to be respectful. You can give a hug, but no licking. Got it?”

Tabitha ran into our home office, pounded on the computer keyboard and poked at the printer’s keypad like a woodpecker trying to bore a hole.  

“We’re done in here,” I said, nudging her from the desk chair. “Time to do some drawing. In the dining room.”

I stocked the table with crayons, markers, and paper. I raised my eyebrows at twelve-year-old Dicka. “Could you oversee some art time while I get dinner going?”

She doled out supplies and the little sisters flanked her, snapping up writing utensils. Soon artwork turned the blank pages into beauty—except for Tabitha’s piece.

Ricka is ugly.

A stick figure of a girl with a scribble over her face accompanied the spiteful words.

“Aw, that’s not very nice,” I said, my tone set to breezy.

“She’s not nice,” said Tabitha.

This wasn’t the first time my teen and the first-grader had sparred. I drew in a deep breath and released it, returning to the kitchen.

Only forty-six hours to go.

The next morning over coffee, I formed a plan. While I hoped my bright attitude would banish any stinky behavior in public, I laid down an all-hands-on-deck mandate anyway.

“Everyone’s going to Dicka’s volleyball game.”

The visitors wiggled with excitement. Ricka wrinkled her nose. Flicka’s eyebrows drew together, and she bit her lower lip.

“Oh, I forgot,” I said to my seventeen year old. “I promise you’ll have time later today to get your research paper done. Okay?”

“Yeah,” she said, but her mouth sagged.

At the game, the two little visitors dropped to the floor in the doorway of the gym. The contagious Limp Noodle Syndrome—again. Heat rose up my neck.

“Come on,” I said, reaching for Tia’s hand. Flicka grabbed onto Tabitha’s. “Big girls walk on their own. Let’s go.”

But instead, they writhed on the floor, giggling, and three adults almost tripped over their flailing limbs before I could quash the girls’ fun. 

When Dicka’s games finished, we headed home. The afternoon still held one more volleyball match for me to conquer with our weekend companions. Would we all survive?

After lunch, Tabitha fell asleep.

“I have to go to Ricka’s game now,” I told Flicka. “Stay home and do homework. Dicka will hang out with Tabitha when she wakes up. I’ll take Tia.”

At the game, the four year old whined during the entire first set and into the second.

“This is boring,” she said. “I wanna gooooooo.”

Her fussing cut through the ref’s whistles and the spectators’ cheers. I held her on my lap, and she swung her legs, kicking the man seated next to us. I readjusted her, but she found a way to kick him again. Finally, she whimpered herself to sleep in my arms.

That night after the girls were in bed, Flicka approached me in the kitchen.

“Dicka napped this afternoon and didn’t help with Tabitha. So I had to. I didn’t get anything done.”

“Oh no,” I said. “I’ll have a talk with her, because that’s not—”

“Mom, it’s okay.” Tears spilled from her eyes, but a smile leaked through. She shook her head. “I have so much work to do. But know what I thought of today?”

I reached for her hand. “What?”

“I usually don’t feel like helping you.” She laughed through the tears.

I chuckled. “You don’t?”

“But today I actually wanted to help you with those girls.” Another laugh. Then more tears. “I don’t know why I’m crying. Or laughing. I’m so stressed.”

“We’ll get through this weekend, okay?”

That night when the house was quiet, I remembered the advice I had gotten from one of the social workers. “You have to be stern with those girls. Like their mom is.”

But it was too late now. From the start, I had messed up. In my happiness to see Tabitha and Tia, I had paved the path in feathers instead of pouring concrete.

Only twenty hours to go.

Like the grand finale at a fireworks show, we finished off our weekend with an explosion of sparks that wowed us all.

“You two have to make it right,” I said, one hand on Ricka and one on Tabitha. The bickering had stripped away the last of my energy. “Now.”

Tabitha birthed new artwork with different words scrawled at the top of the paper.

I am sorry. I love you.

Ricka hugged her—and didn’t roll her eyes this time.

“Tabitha,” I said. “I’m keeping this picture on the fridge. That’s how beautiful it is.”

The front door opened. Husband, home from a work trip.

“Hey, who’s this?” he said.

Tabitha and Tia squealed, dashed across the room, and smashed into his legs.

“You know us!” Tabitha laughed, tugging on his jacket.

Tia bobbed in front of Husband, beaming.

An hour to go.

I folded the little girls’ clean laundry and packed it in their bags. Over the weekend, my girls and I had delivered a wobbly service. We had started out with good intentions. But one of us had traded prickles for prickles, one of us had nursed doubts about our calling, and one of us didn’t get her research paper done until Sunday night. But although rumpled, our willingness to do it again was still alive.

And maybe for now, that was all that mattered.

*Miss an installment of the blog? Or want to catch the story from the beginning? Visit http://www.tamarajorell.com/blog-entries-by-date

*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.

Tiana

January 3, 2017. I snapped the lid onto the container of decorations. I would touch those ornaments again in eleven months and they would feel new then, but for now, they were stale. I vacuumed up the scattered pine needles from our tree’s stubborn exit, reclaiming the living room that Christmas had monopolized. Ah, a fresh start in a pristine year bursting with hope and second chances—and still unsullied by death. Or at least that of anyone I knew.

My cell phone pinged, alerting me to a text.

This is Tiana from across the alley. Don’t know if you heard, but the mother of the kids next door died of an overdose yesterday.

The Alley Kids. My stomach flipped.

I had first encountered the three little ones years earlier when their dad had dropped them off in our yard—along with their dog Daisy—for an unexpected visit, then disappeared. They had toddled about our property, exuberant and trusting. I smiled back at them, tucking away my worries so they wouldn’t see. When would he return? Did they have a mother who wondered where they were? Was anyone thinking about them?

Over the years, the kids played basketball at our place. And on our driveway we watched them grow. The boys, ages ten and seven, clumped around in untied high tops. One of them wore adult-sized shorts that reached his ankles. Five-year-old Laya’s too-small shirts always popped up, exposing her belly.  

My neighbor Tiana and I commiserated over the kids. She braided Laya’s hair whenever she could. Husband and I had our talks too that drifted into our pavement classroom out by the garage. Pick up your garbage. Respect other people’s things. You’re good kids. We believe in you. But the lessons didn’t seem to stick, and we said goodbye to the basketball hoop, our only link to The Alley Kids.

I texted Tiana back: I wonder if there’s something I can do…  

As if she knew the secret of how to repair the gouge from losing one’s mother.

Her response: Want to go over together?

The next evening, I headed out the back door at six o’clock. Tiana emerged from her house. Crossing through her dark back yard, she brought Light.

“Hi, honey,” she called out, then wrapped me in a hug in the middle of our alley.   

Gifts in our hands, we inched along the icy path until we reached the sidewalk.

“Two days ago, there were police cars and an ambulance over there,” she said. “I can’t stop thinking about those kids.”

I blew out a breath. “Same here.”

Eight people streamed from the duplex as Tiana and I climbed its steps. Inside hummed life. The smell of cigarette smoke mingled with chatter and laughter. A boy played a video game in the living room. Laya scampered by and Tiana patted the girl’s head, covered in a swirl of braids.

T.J., the kids’ dad, cut through a cluster of well-wishers and ambled over to us. Tiana gave him a plant and a heart-shaped box of chocolates. I handed over my gift, fresh cookies, which suddenly seemed like a strange offering.

“How are the kids doing?” she said.

“When everybody leaves, then it’ll hit ‘em.” T.J. nodded, his mouth wobbling. “It’ll hit ‘em good then.”

“If there’s anything I can do—” She gave him a hug.

Our condolences spent, Tiana and I left for home. We had lived across the alley from T.J. for a decade and a half, but Tiana and her family had been in the neighborhood only a year. And in that time, she had often checked on the kids next door, braided hair, and illuminated her part of the block.

Light, set in a dark place, only knows how to shine.

*Miss an installment of the blog? Or want to catch the story from the beginning? Visit http://www.tamarajorell.com/blog-entries-by-date

*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family, neighbors, and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.