Repositioned

It's been fun this week, exchanging hilarious stories on Facebook after I've shared the latest ditsy things I've done. Sunday, I  grabbed a bottle of Downey Wrinkle Release from the hall cupboard. I sprayed my oatmeal-colored sweater several times, smoothing over the wrinkles with my hands. It wasn't working as well as usual, I noticed, so doused the sweater again and again. The smell of bleach reached my nose, and I looked at the bottle's label to find I had really been using a foaming bathroom cleanser with bleach! Stories like this must be shared, so I instantly posted a picture of my newly tie-dyed sweater to Facebook, where I enjoyed being laughed with and hearing of other people's foibles. 

This morning, Tuesday, I made myself coffee from my Keurig, like I do most mornings. Unlike most mornings, I placed the mug under the spout, pressed the button, and immediately the mug started overflowing, spilling coffee over the countertop.  Upon closer inspection, I saw I had placed the mug under the spout upside down, as in bottom side up. Another Facebook post, more LOLs, more stories shared.

I've done some funny accidental things in my life, from wearing two different shoes in public, to being affectionate with a man I mistook for my husband in a crowded elevator. He was much more gracious than the ballcap-and-windbreaker-wearing bearded man in the self checkout at Wal-Mart, who after my accidental hug and sincere apology, refused to laugh with me and ran from the store, not looking back.

While on the outside, I am laughing, after this morning's coffee mishap, I keep having this not-funny conversation in my head: If you want to feel, "ept," just hang around me. I'm so inept.

That is harsh, is it not? 

Why am I exceptionally scattered this week? The calendar reminds me that five years ago I saw my mom alive and well for the last time. She walked into my house with a friend, without knocking—again. I stayed in the kitchen, fuming over her violating my well-defined boundaries, while my daughters doted over her near the front door. I hugged Linda, the friend she brought, and withheld a hug from my mom. Before she left, we discussed when we would have time to bake pumpkin bread together, and I pointed out to her a Mother's Day card on the counter I hadn't given to her. "I finally found it," I said, having misplaced it after purchasing it in May. "It's the prettiest one I've ever bought you, but I haven't signed it yet, so I will give it to you after I write something on it."  

Two days later she fell while walking to the church bus during a senior field trip. Her walker got stuck in a crack on hilly pavement, and she flipped, landing on her head. The impact caused a catastrophic brain bleed that within a few minutes led to her being unconscious. She was helicoptered to a hospital and attached to life support, which kept her breathing the next couple days, until family could all arrive to say goodbye. I whispered in her ear before the medical team unplugged her, "I forgive you. I hope you forgive me, too."  I did keep my promise and gave her the pretty Mother's Day card, signed, setting it next to her in her coffin.

This is the week each year I am spacier than normal, less aware of my surroundings, slogging through life in a fog. Grief disorients me, and these anniversaries of loss always sneak up on me unaware. 

"Give yourself grace," people say to me, and I have said it to others. But I'm not the source of grace and can't seem to brew up enough for myself, or for anyone else. Yet I know—how I know—a softer gaze is needed, on myself, and on my mom, who sometimes scooched her way through my front door and over the well-meaning fences I'd built. A nicer rule-breaker you've never met!

The ache feels like a hollow longing in my chest, and my eyes leak off and on throughout the day. But I'm not turning away from letting myself feel the regret of the withheld hug, not this year.

I sit and move through the day with Jesus, this grieving heart facing toward Him, exposed, empty, not upside down, like my coffee mug. Here, His grace pours into me. My cup is being filled, not resisting what Christ is offering. I sense His softer gaze upon me. Repositioned under the fount of grace, I am full to the brim, even overflowing. 

I'm letting my regret usher me into a place where I am re-greeted by grace. There is no room for harshness, here.

Is there an area in your life you need Christ's gaze upon you? Something you've refused to acknowledge before God? Perhaps you, too, see the need to reposition yourself under grace's fount. 

For Zac

I look at you with a blank stare
The young man
Who married my daughter
And fathered my granddaughter

You're asking about my dad
Listening
As we who knew him
Recall
What he was like
(How long do you have?)

I didn't know what to say, except
I wish you could have known him

I can tell you this:
If you've seen a kind man
Who is also strong
A man who can laugh at himself
Who is also proud
A man whose faith grows
With each impossible trial
A man pointing out the pretty in nature
Who recreates it in his art
A man who welcomes others
Yet needs time alone
A man who asks, "Why me?"
Wrought with pain
Who also asks, "Why me?"
Weighted with gratitude and wonder
A man falling more in love with God
To whom sharing Love is everything
An anxious man
Still learning
To trust
With an increasingly grateful heart
For all God has given him

Then you've seen someone like my dad,
Whom, as you've witnessed by our words
Loved Deeply and is
Deeply Loved.

Diane Mann, 2020

Perfectly Wrong

Sometimes I like fake.

Sometimes I prefer the aisles of Hobby Lobby's darling Fall decor over stepping outdoors, into Fall. I adore farmhouse-themed paintings and rustic welcome signs, but I don't like the messiness that comes with real farms. I find myself enjoying the idea of something rather than stepping into the reality of that something itself.

This week my daughters and I, with their children, got together on the four-year anniversary of my mom's death. We explored going to tea like we had done in the past to remember my mom, their grandma, who loved to give tea parties. Yet somehow we landed on the idea to visit a nearby farm to let the kids see animals and pick out pumpkins to bring home.

It was midday, and the sun glared, giving us no chance for cute kids-with-pumpkin photos. The pumpkins themselves were unappealing. Toy tractors set out for children to ride wouldn't roll on the wood chips they were placed on. And my grandchildren were noticeably uninterested in the farm animals (except the one pooping sheep that got their attention for a bit).

I went to the produce room to purchase something to support the farm. I found the produce to be, well, ugly. Grapes sat in a basket, and they were much smaller than grocery store grapes, with no fun packaging announcing, "I am a grape. Buy me!" The signs in front of each bunch of vegetables were not drawn in modern calligraphy but just written with ordinary handwriting. Apples were small and dull, peppers unimpressive in their presentation. I read a sign advertising olive oil. Olive oil I could buy. It would be in a bottle with a pretty label. But the olive oil supply was out.

Finally I saw a freezer containing grass-fed beef, so I purchased a pound of ground beef (with a SKU code on the packaging, which somehow makes it seem a step from it being too real).

I don't know why I was so repulsed by everything I saw at the farm. I give this farm thumbs-up on Facebook and follow it on Instagram, "loving" each picture posted. I've even enjoyed being there in the past. Perhaps I feel safer viewing it from behind the screen—cleaner, no dirt getting into my sandals, no harsh sun beating down on me, no animal smells or bodily functions.

This morning I'm remembering a family road trip from my childhood. I saw beautiful views, sitting in admiration while looking through the windows of our fully packed Volkswagen bus. Am I really seeing this lovely scenery, I wondered to myself, or does it not count because I am seeing it through this glass window? But when we got out of our van and stepped into the real, beautiful and ugly, dusty, windy, cold or hot place, I experienced what was real about all I saw. While I may have both liked and disliked some things about the place I got to enter into and explore, I always appreciated the real.

Our group traveled from the farm to an outdoor mall, where we enjoyed coffee. Karis had baked some of Grandma's cookies she shared with us. I then took the children on a ride in a fake train. My granddaughter stood up quickly, excited to see a water fountain out the window and bumped her head. She cried for her mama, who we could see through the window the entire train ride. My grandson had opted for a seat in the back car, away from us, joined by a fake skeleton. Just before the ride began, he came up to our car, and told me, "I was only a little, tiny bit scared of the skeleton," so he rode in the train car with me, a bit shaken.

Still pumpkinless, we said our parking lot goodbyes. My daughters and I noted that my not-animal-loving mom would have appreciated that we didn't have fun at the farm; not enjoying animals seemed a fitting way to honor her memory! We hugged, and I told them I would send money through a phone app so they could buy their own pumpkins at the grocery store. How "not real" can you get?

I later texted Karis and Megan, "Thank you for today. It was wrong in so many ways, which somehow made it perfect."

Perhaps memories of the day my mom died held enough reality that I necessarily had to reject the nitty-gritty, real stuff of this world for a day.

Sometimes I like fake. And sometimes that's OK.

Diane Mann, 2019

Intended Target

I've been texting a scammer.

It's not like I believe him or anything. But he has been scamming someone close to me. And ticking me off in the process.

He is in love. He cares for her heart. He will never do anything to tear her heart. "I prove to you I am real babe," he writes to me, in sentence patterns screaming this truth:  He is not from San Diego, California.

He is not in the armed forces and on deployment in Afghanistan.

He is not using those iTunes cards sent to him for watching video games because the Army won't allow him access to his money.

The five phones he ordered on his victim's Verizon account are not for an orphanage of 25 children who can't afford phones.

He is not quitting the Army (or is it Navy? It changes.) to come home to marry anyone at a destination wedding in Hawaii.

There is no promised three-carat diamond ring cut in a heart shape.

And the pictures. The obviously cut-and-pasted photographs of his fresh, smiling face, that touch of gray, the exact same in every scene but pasted onto a real soldier's body.

It would be funny if it weren't so awful.

He is a fisherman in a sense, trolling his line out in the sea of women to find vulnerable ones, who are grieving and broken—and just. can't. see.

He is livid that I don't believe he is who he says he is. After going back and forth with him a few times, I have that funny feeling I had when I would engage my two-year-olds in an argument. "Don't get on their same level," the experts warned. "You're sure to lose."

So I remove myself from his level, this person committing crimes right in front of my face, crimes that are hurting someone I love. (I liken what I am experiencing to watching a thug take my grandmother's purse from her hands while I stand a foot away.) I back up a bit and try to disengage. You're not going to win this, I say to myself. So I text scammer-man this truth (after telling him his grammar sucks; the court reporter in me had to defend the English language!), "God sees real you and loves you."

I'm not expecting repentance from him.

But it felt good to speak truth into the situation, truth that is bigger than our lies, light that is brighter than the darkest, most remote places of our hearts.

I don't know whether he heard me. He didn't respond after that. But I heard me.

God sees real me.
God's light reaches into my darkest places, those places where I, too, just. can't. see.
God sees who I pretend to be, who I wish I were versus who I really am.

I don't know whether the words I texted reached Nigeria (or the Navy ship where "Romeo" is serving our country).

But the words reached me. God sees real me.

And loves me.

Part of Me

I dance. It's not that I necessarily ought to run out onto the dance floor at wedding receptions with the 20- and 30-something-year-olds, but I do. And yes, I wake up the next morning thinking maybe I should have sat and talked more with "the people," but I couldn't have not danced. And only Martinelli's is involved, honest.

However, when a deejay plays a song I don't love or that sounds foreign to me (which is mostly everything written after 1980), I am able to sit it out. And those digital-ish new songs that kids jump vertically to give me a chance to sit down as well. My generation dances back and forth, not up and down.

I didn't always dance. Years ago, a family wedding was approaching for my nephew Bryan and his fiance, Karis. "You won't catch me on the dance floor," I explained to Kelley, my son's girlfriend at the time, now his wife. "I'm too self-conscious and am not that great at dancing." She gave me some wise instruction. "Watch everyone who is out there dancing. Almost everybody looks goofy. So just go out there, be goofy with everyone else, and have fun."

My husband still mostly refuses to dance, but when the song "Unforgettable" plays at a reception, he knows wherever he is in the room, that's his signal to join me on the dance floor. He holds me tight, and we sway, and for that three minutes and twelve seconds, all is well in this world.

It was fall in 1974, and my junior high school was throwing a dance. Not a get-invited-by-a boy-and-wear-a-corsage dance, just a lunchtime dance. My friends and I confessed to each other we weren't sure how to dance. So we did what every insecure adolescent girl would do: we asked a popular girl to show us how.

I felt brave approaching Kati in the locker room after gym class, asking her to show me and my friends how to dance. She kindly showed us. First the feet. Step left. Then bring your right foot to a tap towards the left. Step right. Then bring your left foot to a tap towards the right. Add a little swing with the arms, left in front, right behind, then switch, and you've got it. Over and over we practiced until these two steps became a part of us.

That junior high dance step is still a part of me. When I am dancing and run out of moves consisting mostly of choreography (if the singer is singing about living on a prayer and being halfway there, I choreograph accordingly) and of copying anyone around me who seems to have something original going on, I return to my junior high basic steps. And I picture the locker room benches, the lockers, the aisles, and the popular-but-approachable instructor teaching us to sway back and forth.

I woke up with wet eyes this morning. I woke up thinking about dancing. I woke up thinking about dancing when the deejay plays a song you disdain. The song that was never on your playlist. The song that you would never have chosen for yourself. The song that sends you running to the restroom to not have to hear it or has you thinking you must be at the wrong party entirely. The new widow has it playing at her house, as does the family ordering a hospital bed for their loved one to be comfortable living out his last days at home. The young couple leaving the hospital maternity unit to return home with empty arms.

My dad's life ended with a foreign, unpleasant song, living his last year and a half as a ventilator-dependent quadriplegic. "Unbelievable," he would sometimes utter, even just mouthing the word when his ventilator would not allow him to speak. Tears would sometimes run down his cheeks, tears he was unable to wipe away himself. Yes, he said and did many inspiring things in his injured state as well, but there were times he just had to be sad and mad awhile, times he refused to join the dance for a time.

He would have turned 85 this month but died at 66. I've walked through April saying out loud, thinking to myself, praying, I suppose, "There are many 85-year-old men in this world. Why couldn't my dad have been one of them?" The question goes unanswered, but I find myself asking it again anyway, wondering why the song of my life doesn't include having parents who are still alive.

We're having a family party Monday night, of all times, because Tuesday my son Kyle's first book is to be released. Desserts, a photo booth, games, and black and yellow bee-themed decorations are in the works. We won't turn on music and clear a spot to dance, but we'll be dancing just the same, to one of those I-can't-help-but-dance tunes.

I enjoyed breakfast out with my two daughters and two daughters-in-law this week. I want my dad to see the beautiful young ladies his granddaughters have become, to meet the lovely girls my sons chose to marry, who bring even more love into our family. I want to hear him to laugh out loud at my son's writings. I want to see his eyes get wet with happy tears. I want to overhear my mom calling forty of her friends to tell them what's happening in our family.

I want them to be at the party. They won't be at the party.

When I am happy mixed with that bit of sad as we celebrate and I don't know quite how to move, I'll reach way down deep to that first song of love God ever sang over me. I will see him showing me, step left, then right. Now add the arms. And I'll dance.

It's just part of me.

Betrayal

Oh, Fall
You came
You left
Without my usual adoration
Of brilliant color
My I-can't-hold-it-in
Affection upon sensing
The first sign of your appearing
My usual appreciation
For space created
When one by one
Leaves
In their time
Detach and fall
Barren and blank
You leave the trees
Room for new things to happen
I always say
How I love new things to happen

For your arrival
I ached
Like a lover
Awaiting the homecoming
Of her overseas sailor
Be gone, Summer
I growled
I cannot endure you
One more minute
But seasons
I can neither rush
Nor cause to linger
No matter my desire

Oh, Fall
You came
But took with you
One I love
With the first breeze
She fell away
And none can catch her
Or reattach her to life's branch
Bringing her back
To me
My dreams have tried
To make it seem like
She's here
But I open my eyes
To Winter
Empty Winter

Oh, Fall
How dare you?

Diane Mann 2015

Next Time it Rains

I received good news
Really good news
Balloon-releasing
Jump-up-and-down news
I was cured of hepatitis C!
I had told my mom
Of the preliminary results
Months before --
The chances-are-I'm-cured news
She had cried happy tears
Expressing her joy
But this was final
The treatment had worked
The virus was gone
My blood was clean
As though I never was infected

I wanted to call her
But her funeral was just days before
She was no longer here
A friend said
Talk to her anyway
It will seem as though
She hears

I did
I picked up the phone
And dialed her number
Three tones
A woman's voice
The number you have dialed
Is no longer in service
Please check the number
And dial again
Over and over she said
The same words
As though I hadn't heard
Them the first time
Or the second

Above the recording
I spoke
My sobs chopping the words
Into pieces
Hi, Mom.  I just wanted to tell you
Some Very Good News
The final results are in
I have been declared CURED!
I knew you'd be happy about it
So just had to tell you
I'm talking as though
You can hear me
And I hope you can
Thank you for being happy for me
I spoke as though she heard

It was a sunny day
But to myself I said
Next time it rains
It will be as though
She got the news
And is shedding happy tears
From heaven
Next time it rains
It will be as though
She got the news
It will be as though
I'll know

Diane Mann 2015

Temporary Winner

Separation hurts
death stings
and plays the victor
like a big show-off

There is Life
beyond death
the gap is but a veil
one day to be lifted

Silencing the bully
for good.


Diane Mann, 2015