Life Lately... April 2024

Lately, our living room floor has been the primary surface to sit and intricately fold pieces of paper into swans, lions, and fighter jets. I find paper airplanes nose down in the red oxalis or lost in cavernous spaces between the wall and couch. My six-year-old son spent much of Easter on his own while the rest of us had a nasty stomach bug. (Lately, we have endured so much sickness!) The next day, I found no less than 100 paper airplanes parked in the living room, folded into any model he could find directions for in our origami book. He had spent the entire day folding. 


Lately, I keep a book of poetry or prose next to the area where I brew my morning tea. In these six minutes, I promise myself that I will not unload the dishes or try to straighten the dining room table but instead savor the words of someone else’s perspective. I have been able to read through the poetry of Mary Oliver, Bianca Stone, and Annie Dillard's short book “The Writing Life” in these tiny, sacred moments.


Spring has been cool and stunning. Lately, I design all my running routes around the areas I know are brimming with magnolia trees, bluebells, redbuds, daffodils, or tulips. Because my endorphins are pumping, I am moved by the fact that each of these plant entities waits all year to perform such specific magical blooms for a brief period. All year they wait and then dazzle for a particular moment. These flowers will never be seen again. If I blink, I miss it and will have to wait a whole year to see the next generation! And because my endorphins are still pumping and I am listening to Tim Keller, I start to relate this phenomenon to our brief time here on earth and see our little lives on par with the bloom time of the crabapple tree in her magnificent magenta. In my notes app: God’s design for our little, beloved lives. Maximize bloom potential.


Lately, we spend the cooler, rainy weekends with friends playing the game Wavelength. I love a game that brings laughter-tears, a little confusion, and a lot of group problem-solving. This game brought much joy on those evenings that were still so dark. This particular weekend I get to enjoy the “mind-reading” game with a friend’s new puppy on my lap. Lately, I am in love with a three-pound ball of curls named Bev. 

Something from almost nothing

She had a story about her seven-year-old daughter that I love to think about in spring. It was a tiny snippet of a story- a side conversation really. Her daughter would pick up fallen scraps of foliage on the concrete slab floor of a Lowes Home Garden Center and tuck them in her pockets. You know... the loose vines and leaf stems that are usually swept up at the end of the day and tossed. The flowers and their damaged stems, rolled over by carts and careless sandal feet. Garbage to most people. No one noticed her collecting the rejected scraps. Most people were looking at the full-bodied plants. Days later her mother found sedums and begonias propagating in her bedroom windows. Her daughter propagated a whole garden from damaged discard. Each spring I wonder where she is now and what incredible things she is creating from almost nothing. 

Prehistoric Love

A well preserved skull 

of a prehistoric sea monster

and its phenomenal extraction 

from the Jurassic coast

is a welcome headline over breakfast

The pliosaur skull like a dragon’s head 

so remarkable
reminds me of the stack of library books
curated by my children

sitting at the edge of the dining room:

How to Train a Dragon and
How to Speak Dragon and
Wings of Fire and even
Dragons like Tacos

Over a bowl of cereal, I obsessively scroll 

through pictures of the monster-dinosaur-sea beast-dragon 

with her fascinating narrow nose

terrifying but elegantly sleek in shape

Fragile in appearance but inevitably enduring

This 150 million year old skull

now rests on a lab table
Thin bones arch across the top of her head

pinched and wing-like

Five thick vertebrae of her spinal column 

Exit from the back center of her magnificent head
Like an incomplete stage direction 
Or a vacuum cord cut short

I remember marveling in similar ways

at my daughter's twenty week ultrasound -

the sight of her slender tibia and fibula

bones articulating 

In-utero knitting, 

fearfully and wonderfully made
Bones have a way of making me emotional

A few years ago I created a Book of Centuries for my daughter
As a way to collage and record a historical timeline of events
As a way to build reverence for the passage of time
As a way to recognize that the world was always both awful and beautiful 

The book begins in 4000 BC 

Hundreds of pages later  I added my birthday 

and then hers
The process was astounding-
expressed so eloquently by James:
“You are just a vapor that appears for a little while
And then vanishes away”
Our point in time microscopic 

Like earth in context of the universe

150 million years ago this sea monster swam and hunted
150 millions years later there was you and there was me
We are weaved together 

for a few sacred moments

gifted with sharing space on this beautiful, old earth

curled up in blankets and evening snuggles

reading through our stacks of books 

in the glow and hope of our Christmas tree

Do the Work

As with any relationship that extends over a period of time, you occasionally need to put in the work and reignite the love. I recognized that our love had faded three years ago and, with a little attention and weekly dates, I have been able to fall in love with Chicago all over again. Our friend Brandon once commented: "Nothing can replicate the layers of texture in Chicago." Now I see that extra historic and rugged beauty everywhere and it makes me smile a little extra.