Carey Pace

I know better. I know better. I know better.

The whole morning was ‘off.’ I slept too late. I took the dogs out too late. I had to wait forever for the puppy to poop. I woke the kids late. I got The Lady in the shower late. I started cooking breakfast late. They started eating breakfast late. Then I spent their entire breakfast time looking for the cup of coffee that I’d poured before putting The Lady in the shower. I couldn’t find it anywhere. 

With my voice dripping of ridicule, I declared, "What an idiot!" 

My Little Lady immediately gasped.  "Momma! You shouldn't say that!"  

"What a foolish, foolish thing to do!" I justified.  What person in their right mind would do something like that!?  

"But Momma, that isn't nice!" 

A little bit later I lay next to her tiny form in her bed, snuggled in close, ready to sing her a song. "My stomach hurts." 

The whole time I didn't know what to say. The whole time I didn't know whether this was happening for HER or for ME. Was I supposed to DO something with this? Or was I just supposed to be there, to be a calm presence, to listen? Was God trying to speak to my own heart through her words and her wounds? I felt almost panicked, not having time to think through all the options and what the one very right thing to do could be. I wish I could say I chose out of wisdom, but that's not true. I chose out of exasperation. I just tried to listen. To affirm her. To tell her I was sorry. So very sorry that it happened to her and she'd had to live through that.

"They say a burned child fears fire. That's the truth." she said.

I saw it the moment she walked in the door that Friday evening.  Something was wrong.  Not her normal 'I didn't get my way' kind of wrong but a deep, consequential wrong.  In a millisecond I had time to think a thousand year's worth of thoughts.  

I had forgotten.

I'm not one to buy flowers very often. It isn't that I don't enjoy them; quite the contrary. But it is hard to justify the expense of something that will wither sooner rather than later, when that money could be put to much better use. Usually I just don't look, so I'm not disappointed at the beauty I can't take home.

But this day, an unusual flower caught my eye. 

I realized while stopped at a traffic light that it had been nearly four months since I had driven somewhere that I knew. Four months since I'd known the roads I traveled. Four months since I knew what turns to make or what restaurant was around the corner. Four months since I was the captain of my ship, confidently leading the way. I felt tears prick my eyes at the surge of emotion.  I hadn't known how much I missed the sense of security the comes with knowing where you are -- that comfortable familiarity and knowing expectation with a sense of place.  My heart ached with longing for it.  

We are going through our mundane lives, full of the drudgery that is part of living, and not noticing that we are always surrounded by Fine China.  

I was standing at the stove, cutting a package of bacon in half. Those lines whooshed over me like the first rays of sunlight coming over the horizon in the morning. 

That! 

I had spent 18 of the last 72 hours in a Sportsplex with four full basketball courts being utilized continuously by some fifty kids from age 7 to 15. Countless balls bouncing, always bouncing, plus the unexpected whistles and buzzers, and incessant squeaks of sneakers on the court barraged my senses for six hours on Monday, then Tuesday, then Wednesday. 

I snapped. 415pm. Wednesday. 

I've spent the last hour and a half listening to the far off rumbling of a thunderstorm, and it has felt so very nice. 

At the old house, the forty-four year old windows had been wrapped in some sort of vinyl covering. I will never forget the first rainstorm we experienced there. It felt like being trapped inside a popcorn popper.

He mentioned something about the new house that he wanted to do differently than how we used to do it. That glorious compromise that is marriage in which nothing is fully all my decision and nothing is fully all his. The evidence of your selfishness bubbles to the surface like protein bubbles on the top of pasta water, that if left unchecked spew over and make a grand mess. 

"You turned out to be so much more sentimental than I ever thought you would be in high school," he said to me on Sunday. 

“But I’m not sentimental about THINGS!” I insist. “I don’t care about things. I’m not attached to things!” I feel the contradiction as I speak it,

It was humid just like any other day in August. They say the mountains are cooler in the summertime and that’s why so many Floridians come to live there each June. I never understood that. It felt oppressively hot to me. That day, the sun beat down in the way that causes the little beads of sweat to bubble up on my nose.

Words have always been tiny sacred vessels to me, from the time I was a young child. Words of sentimentality don't leave my lips flippantly. Love is real and strong and powerful and should not be mentioned casually.

 can still see the sunshine streaming into the left hand side of the bus that morning. Becky sat to my left. I had known Becky since we were very young. She lived near us before we moved when I was newly 5 to the home I'd stay in until I grew up and moved away. Becky was beautiful.

As we were setting up, one of the girls asked "where are your kids?" I don't even know which girl asked. I was busy trying to get everything out and ready to go for cooking class. I explained that The Boy and The Lady wouldn't be there today, because they were spending a few days with their grandparents. 

Whichever girl it was then asked me, "Are you glad?"