The Late Arrival

The premise of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas is simple enough: furry, green man-beast has a heart that’s two sizes too small. The lack of room therein leaves no room for it/him to love Christmas. So much so that he hates the holiday and steals an entire town’s Christmas presents and decorations, lies about his identity to a toddler all in an effort to ruin an entire town’s Christmas celebration. Photo credit: emmytvlegends.com However, once he has a spirit of Christmas Aha Moment , he realizes the season isn't about all the packages, ribbons and bows. He repents and is forgiven of all aforesaid badness, and ends up loving Christmas and carving the Roast Beast himself in celebration. Photo credit: magazine.uc.edu I love that story. I think a lot of us do. Here's the thing: after honest soul searching, I think I love it because it affords me the high road, especially this year. This year has been The Year of Being an Adult with Adult Challenges. I can easily id...

“... and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” Acts 2:17 Did you get the blood transfusion? I ask. He incredulously responds. WHAT? The blood. Did you get it? My husband condescendingly laughs and says Um…yeah. Frustrated by his condescension, I roll over, resume sleeping and dreaming the blood transfusion dream. It’s 4:30am. I’m not an old man, but...

The more I think about it, the more I think we’re all on that plane with William Shatner flying through the Twilight Zone, seeing a monster on the wing that no one else does. It’s one of the creepiest Twilight Zone episodes, not because the special effects were extraordinary, but because the episode tapped into our most primal fear and our most basic need: to be heard -- or at the very least acknowledged -- and the fear we won’t. Shatner’s character sees a creature on the plane's wing . At first he tries to convince himself it’s only a manifestation of nerves, and his fellow passenger and flight attendant assure him that’s the case. And he desperately wants it to be the case. Because he’d rather think he’s crazy then deal with the reality of the monster on the wing. The events playing out in Ferguson, Missouri on the heels of an unarmed black teen’s killing by a police officer convince me that in some way, all of us are riding along with Shatner on his Twilight Zone bo...

Hey, I know it’s summer and everything, but it’s getting late. Bedtime, kiddo. Georgia and I were watching Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs . She had seen it before, so it wasn’t like she was missing out. We said bedtime prayers, and I kissed her goodnight. The movie had sucked me in by that time and I wanted to know how everything would get sewed up in a tidy bow, so I went back to watching. It didn’t disappoint. I was entertained and nearly clapped as the credits rolled. The next morning, I told Georgia what a clever movie it was. You watched the rest of it? Seriously, mom? Now I felt stupid. Well, yeah. I got hooked and wanted to see how it ended. She and Jamie exchanged looks. Um, mom...you saw that movie already. At the movie theater. Don’t you remember? Listen, my brain’s memory chip has been deleting a ton of low-priority information lately. But an entire movie? Like, a swath of time and place that I completely blanked out on? Between you and me, I still contend ...

Call it a case of the Meandering Mondays or just go ahead and say I'm trying to kick a case of Writer's Block. Whatever you wanna call it, somehow I got stuck on banks. If you're old enough, you remember there was a time when people actually visited the lobby and talked to tellers. It usually happened Saturdays since banks closed at 5:00 weekdays, and most people were working and couldn't make it to the bank by that time. The banks were open on Saturdays, but only until noon; so everyone had to make it there before closing...and heaven forbid you had a kid in tow: Through tall glass double doors and into the lobby, traffic’s noise gives way to The Most Beautiful Girl or some other muzak. Everything there soaks up sunshine – from the navy blue carpet, to personal banker desks flanking each wall, to the velvet ropes and signs that instruct Wait Here for the next available teller. An intimidatingly tall oblongish table dominates the lobby’s center. On it are slips o...

Sometimes I think about it. Sometimes it's a fleeting thought in the seconds before I drift off to sleep and glance at his arm around my middle and my brown hand resting on his not so brown arm. It always looks like a painting to me. Simple and beautiful. Sometimes it's the rare occasion when all three of us are captured in a candid picture. Our daughter between the two of us, making the picture look as if we're posing in graduating skin colors, from lightest (his), to medium (hers), to darkest (mine). Her face, her skin a blend of both his and mine. Sometimes he thinks about it when I'm oblivious. Like when I give him a little extra room at a checkout counter, but am still within his personal space, and the clerk helping him asks if she can help me. He lets her know that "uh...that's my wife " in a stern, sharp voice before I can answer. He's my protector, a sensitive set of second eyes. But most of the time, I don't t...

Percy . I only called him “Dad” selectively, usually when I needed something. My friends marveled that I had the balls to call my dad by his first name. But it wasn’t an act of rebellion, my mom called him Percy and we just parroted what she said. He never seemed to mind. It’s taken years to piece together who Percy really was – and how that same Percy intersected with Dad -- a title I instinctively started using only after the picture of who he was as a man, as a father, became clearer as I grew older. *** “Shell- LEE !” I hear the smile in his voice as he bellows his pet name for me up the stairs on my birthday morning. I race from my bedroom to the top of the stairs.  He’s standing at the base, a shadow pitched against sunlight behind him and balancing a faded blue Huffy 3-speed that was my ninth birthday present – a surprise. It’s easy to hear his smile and see his broad white grin, a sharp contrast to his dark chocolate skin because Percy didn’t smile a lot. ...

Troops. Numbers. Percentiles. The more I consider the units of weights and measures, the more I'm convinced, it must be related to the counting. The "It" being the shootings, injuries by firearms and deaths. That "It." There's been yet another mass shooting , and a few days before that, a shooting that's left a little girl who's around Georgia's age clinging onto life by a thread. Both are tragic, as are other incidents around the country which didn't make national or local headlines. But this isn't a rant about gun regulation or about video games' influence or a culture of violence or services for the mentally ill or unemployment or any of the usual suspects. This isn't about beating our swords into plowshares , or the NRA or even gun regulation or communities taking back their communities. Maybe that's all part of It. But a big part of the It is in the Counting. The way we count ourselves . The way we count li...

Mothers are the Creators of Normal. It’s a heady, intimidating responsibility, but it’s what moms are and do by simply living, breathing, walking and talking. The Creators of Normal shape protocol for phone call behavior. Whatever your urgent news is, if Mom is on the phone you do not interrupt her conversation. Instead, you wait – wait I say – for her to say in this order : “Mmm, hmmm. (one beat) Alright…(one beat, two beats) Uh-uh…(one beat, two beats, three beats)” You’re almost home free now, don’t interrupt. “Alright (one beat)…BYE-BYE!” Click. She might roll her eyes and impatiently ask what you need. Go ahead and tell her. Tell her! This is important stuff. “I hafta potty.” The Creators of Normal dictate color. Which is fine, if the Creator isn’t one of the rare cases of a color blind woman. But if the Creator is color blind, then she may ask you to fetch her brown purse on any given Sunday as she’s prepping you and herself for church. Obediently, ...