Exhaustion . . .

While this is actually the city lights along the harbor in San Diego taken from our hotel balcony as I experimented with camera settings, it is more descriptive of how I'm feeling now: exhausted. My brain feels hazy. I can't think clearly. I cried in the car on the way to the Closet from school last week -- just because a U2 song about Bono's father Bob reminded me of my dad: and it's you when I look in the mirror / and it's you when I don't pick up the phone / sometimes you can't make it on your own.I sobbed in the shower at 5:45 a.m. on a recent frosty morning when the memory of my dad starting my car on chilly mornings just so I could drive to school in the comfort of a warm car flashed through my mind like a hummingbird hovering briefly, then disappearing -- and I cried again when I thought of how Jay grabs my keys at 6:45 a.m. without knowing Daddy used to do the same thing. Uncanny.

Things like this sometimes keep me up at night. Dad has been gone seven years and sometimes I briefly forget he's not coming back.

And then I miss him even more.

. . .

What causes our brains to shift into hyperdrive when your head hits the pillow? What triggers a flood of memories to wash over us without warning? What creates sleepless nights? What precipitates tossing and turning? What quiets a tumbling mind?

And will I ever have a day when I don't miss my dad?  I'd really like to know.

Broken . . . and Beautiful

It will not always be summer; build barns. ~ Hesiod

This photo was taken as I hung out a car window with the camera (double-wrapped around my
wrist, of course) at a speed of 40 or so mph.

I couldn't resist.

Most of my life I've traveled state roads like this one in Indiana and viewed barns in various states of ill
repair. What keeps a structure like this upright during the roughest of winters? How could a barn like
this keep standing when it appears so long-abandoned and forgotten?

Why would a landowner allow a barn like this to continue living on his property, almost like a tattered
squatter living in squalid conditions? When is it time to just let the barn go?

It intriques me.

These misshapen, ramshackle structures were once functional, full of life in the form of siloing grain,
sorting sheep, or stabling horses. Maybe the family spent springs and summers tilling, planting, harvesting, threshing and dispersing food into the community from these shelters. Perhaps the barn hosted broken-down vehicles, housed cherished farm machinery, harbored young lovers in the hayloft. A barn has always had a romantic air of mystery to me . . . like the scene in Witness when Book helps with a barn raising and eventually -- almost electrifyingly -- courts Rachel in the barn to "What a Wonderful World This Would Be."

I counted barns like this one from Indiana to Walton. 31 along the roadside, to be exact.

Rustic barns tell us a story. Although they appear battered and broken, deserted and desolate, unloved and untended, barns bear witness to a simpler time when we depended more on the land surrounding them.
A structure full of spirit and strength, that stands resolute through storms, winds, snow -- and time.

Barns exude beauty despite gaping holes, rotting timber, decaying beams.

Like hope?

Happy Birthday, Jay . . .

Poem for Your Birthday

My favorite day is the day you were born . . .

Wrapped in wonder and whimsy
you entered the world
to wait for us, for me

And I cherish this day . . .

Even though I know that
you arrived as a gift from God
to your parents . . .
the gift of you ultimately re-wrapped itself
in a tattered, torn pair of jeans
grungy gray sweatshirt
and tired, worn-out sneakers
in a crowded bookstore
on the East side

Every day since then is like a birth-day
with the expectation and excitement
and unwrapping of a new gift --

you.