Faith, Family, & Focaccia

A faith and culture Mommy blog, because real life gets all mixed together like that.


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Love in Photographs: Reconnecting to Joy

Moving can be tough on relationships.

This is not shocking news. The oft-cited Holmes-Rahe Stress Inventory lists “major changes in living conditions (.i.e. new house…)” among the 30 most stress-inducing life events. If you remove from this inventory those events that are expressly negative (like death or divorce), moving house makes it into the top 15. And even a momentary reflection on the whole moving process gives ample explanation for this categorization. Disruption of daily routines, living out of suitcases and boxes, large and unusual expenses, not to mention the imposition into already full lives of the obligation to miraculously accomplish manifold frustrating tasks (like registering cars with the DMV and reassembling IKEA furniture without the instructions)… all of this comes along with the experience of moving. Add to that mix the reality of sharing all this stress with another adult who feels equally responsible for addressing the long list of tasks, but who might have different instincts as to how to prioritize and accomplish them and… well… let’s just say that the passion and fireworks produced might not be the kind usually associated with Valentine’s Day.

I knew all of this 2 months ago when I was watching the contents of our Milan apartment get packed into boxes and loaded onto a sea container to make the slow journey across the water to New Jersey. Tyler and I have been through enough moves together in the last 15 years that I knew essentially what to expect. I knew that he would be really focused on the “repair-type-jobs” (like painting and replacing door hardware), while I would be most concerned with organizing the kitchen, the kids’ schools and the transfer of medical records. I knew that we would both desperately want healthy, balanced meals at the end of long, physically exhausting days but that we would also both be too tired to cook so we would eat the frozen, American excuse for pizza more often than I am prepared to admit to all my Italian friends. I knew that I would want to take the lead on (a.k.a. assert strict control over) the unpacking of every room except the garage, and would then irrationally complain about how tired I was after 12 hours a day on my feet for a solid week.  I knew that Tyler would get frustrated when my organizational obsessiveness utterly distracted me when he called to talk over an item on his to-do-list while I was elbow-deep in a box full of kitchen utensils. I knew that we would both have less energy for the kids and for each other and that this would inevitably devolve into short tempers and tantrums at bed time (I’ll let you guess about the author(s) of said tantrums).

I knew all this, and it didn’t really worry me.

It didn’t worry me because I knew it would be temporary and the light at the end of the tunnel makes such a difference to how heavy the darkness feels. It didn’t worry me because stress is what you make of it and forgiveness covers a multitude of sins. It didn’t worry me because the end destination would be worth the bumps in the road. It didn’t worry me because Tyler and I have been through much worse than this and made it through all the stronger.

So, I wasn’t worried, but I still kept my expectations at a low. We would survive the inevitable rubbing of egos and stress-triggers, and probably learn a few lessons in the process, but most of all we would get through it. That was the important thing. Just get through it.

I wasn’t expecting the magical, TV-commercial-moment listening to the rain on our roof for our “first night in our new place.” I wasn’t expecting easy family dinners where a healthy meal manages to materialize on the table despite the boxes piled beside it and everyone is so excited to talk about/listen to “what happened at school today.” I certainly wasn’t expecting a romantic Valentine’s Day, complete with sentimental expressions of love directed across a candle-lit table while Tyler and I gaze adoringly into each other’s eyes. That’s just not realistic.

But I have to say, for all my low expectations, I’m incredibly grateful that this particular move had a little more to offer than what I was expecting. That “more” was something small, silly even. In unpacking box after box of possessions we had sent into storage for our European sojourn, I ran across a lot of pictures.

I didn’t really mean to pause in my organizational rampage to look at them, but I have always had a weakness for photographs. Photographs capture moments in history, and for over 15 years now my history has been linked to Tyler’s. So, as the colorful paper envelopes called to my fingers to open them and beckoned my eyes to peruse their glossy images, I was drawn back into that history.

The most striking things in the pictures were our smiles. I looked at photo after photo of me and Tyler as a young couple, and there was one consistent theme: our smiles were electric. Just being together, holding hands, or arms wrapped around each other, we were beaming from the pure joy of being together.

It was a wonderful reminder. Joy is an important part of marriage – the kind of joy that comes not from a specific experience or accomplishment but from the simple fact of togetherness; the kind of joy that requires nothing to fulfill it other than the presence of the one we love, in our lives, at our sides, showing in their smile that we are the one with whom they find joy.

Of course, joy isn’t the deepest element of marriage, or even the most important. If a divine messenger suddenly appeared before me with the option to live forever in one of two moments: my current life situation or the bliss captured in those fading photographs, I would pick today. I understand love so much more deeply now than I did then. I know Tyler (and myself) so much better. Beautiful as our smiles are in those old pictures, they are smiles that only float on the surface of love, dipping their toes with delight at how the ripples sparkle, rather than plumbing the depths of knowledge and commitment and a life lived in partnership.

Still, I’m glad for the reminder of that joy on this Valentine’s Day. It is a reminder that I am unspeakably lucky to be living through life, with all its distractions and stressors, side by side with a wonderful partner, a man who can still make my smile glow. Maybe there is time for a little besotted eye-gazing in our Valentine’s Day after all… Happy Valentine’s Day, My Love.


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Baby, It’s Cold Inside – My Winter of Apathy

I joked yesterday about the wonderfully “warm” welcome New Jersey is offering us, because yesterday the thermometer actually reached above 30 degrees Fahrenheit. Considering that most days this month the sun has struggled to warm this little corner of the planet to the miserable benchmark of 20 degrees, and the moon has supervised nightly dips into the single digits, this was progress! Today, unfortunately, we were back in familiar territory.

In other words. IT IS COLD!

For a California girl, born and bred, this kind of weather is nothing short of miserable. I am wearing my snow boots days after the sidewalks are clear just for the warmth. I am shoving my hands into thick, unwieldy ski gloves for the 20-odd steps from my front door to my car. I am surrendering my habitual air dry for the hot, soothing breath of my hairdryer on my towel-dried locks. Anything to stop the creeping chill from taking advantage of an incautious opening to lock its icy fingers on my bones and make me resent the 14 years of rich life experience that have held me captive away from the warm Golden State of my youth.

What has me up late this night, however, is not the cold. At least, it is not the frigid outdoor temperatures. Rather, it is the realization that all my precautions have come too late. Somehow, insidiously, when I wasn’t looking, the cold has wormed its way into a much more dangerous place.

It was a conversation with Princess Imagination several days ago that first began to thaw the lock on my awareness. We had just completed the shuffling hustle from front door to car. I had wrestled the seat belts over layers of sweaters and scarves and winter coats to buckle us all safely into our minivan for the ride to school. I had waited impatiently for the car’s engine to heat up sufficiently to begin pumping heated air through the vents to dissipate the steam from our exhaling breath. I might have said a little after-thought prayer of thankfulness for the blessing of a functioning heater, although if I did I’m not sure that I engaged the thought sufficiently to really direct it to the personal God I claim as the center of my life. I was still too cold to really think about anyone other than the woman whose sensory perceptions register with my consciousness. Then came the question.

“Mommy, when it snows, what do the people without homes do?”

It’s a complicated question, really. There are so many ways to define the homeless, and so many ways to parse the quicksand system of safety net programs, charitable services, informal networks, and personal ingenuity on which the most desperate members of our society depend for shelter. As an “issue” homelessness is something I have studied and professed concern about since college, if not before. For probably close to 20 years I have ranked this at or near the top of the social policy topics that I care about. There was a time when I could have identified exactly where to go to find the nearest shelter or EA hotel*, and could have delivered an impromptu testimony for a state committee about the tragic gaps in the system. I’m a bit rusty after three years out of the country, but I still probably know more than 95 percent of the residents of New Jersey, and I am definitely more knowledgeable than 99 percent of the portion of the state’s residents who have never had to find out for personal reasons.

But none of that knowledge was what my daughter was interested in. She wanted to know about the people. Her six-year old brain had processed the sensations of bitter cold on her skin, and the images of white-blanketed fields and bushes, and she knew something was wrong. No one could possible sleep outside in this kind of weather, so she wanted to know what happened to the people who don’t have homes.

I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t really engage her question. Not the way I should have. I talked a little about shelters, but my answers weren’t terribly satisfying so she dropped the subject. And I let it drop. Maybe because a 15 minute drive to school, battling traffic and snow glare, is not really the time to sensitively talk to my 1st grader about a pervasive social evil. Maybe because I just didn’t know what to say. Her question was so real and devastating, and I didn’t have the emotional empathy to respond to it the way it deserved.

I haven’t brought it up again. To be honest, I haven’t even thought about it much until this night. There have certainly been chances. Her class discussions of Dr. King’s legacy in the days surrounding the holiday have captured her imagination. She has spent significant free time reading about his work, watching the library video “Martin’s Big Words”, and engaging me in dialogue on the whole range of issues he fought for, including economic justice. This week her school is collecting canned goods for the local food panty, so we went shopping together on Sunday to pick out our donations, which she is taking in small 2-3 pound batches to class each day (she has a big heart, but scrawny arms). Even the Gigglemonster piped up today on the way home from school, reminding me that some children don’t have enough money to buy clothes, so maybe Mommy should go back to the store where I bought his new monster shirt (his latest pride and joy) and buy monster shirts for all of those children too.

All of this sweet, naïve, wonderful compassion that my children express for the less fortunate makes my heart glow. I must be doing something right as a parent for my relatively sheltered, privileged children to be so empathic about poverty-related deprivations. It’s all very heart-warming.

Until I realize just how cold my heart has grown. The realization came just before we turned off the TV to go to bed tonight. I wasn’t even watching but my ears caught the plug for the instant-win prize pool in the New Jersey Lottery. And my imagination was off. There are 10, count them 10 $1 million cash prizes just a scratch away. What if I bought a lottery ticket for the first time in 18 years? What If I won the million? Imagine what that would mean! We could make a really significant contribution to the kids’ college savings accounts. I wouldn’t have to start looking for a job right away. I could finish my book, maybe write another. Maybe I could do some volunteering.

It took until that step in my internal soliloquy before I realized just how self-absorbed I have become. There was a time, a young, idealistic time, when fantasies of coming into a sudden windfall automatically triggered internal debates about which charities I would prioritize in using my new wealth to do good. Now, I look at money as an escape from the obligation of returning to work in a field that at least tries to make a difference in the war on poverty.

It’s not that I don’t care anymore. I know that. The part of my heart that hasn’t frozen over to concerns beyond my doorstep still cares deeply about poverty, and homelessness, and the intense injustice of systems that give me and my family the opportunity for so much when so many are struggling just to survive. I do care. But I’ve lost faith in the solutions.

The research and policy work I did before we left New Jersey was important, and gripping, and I poured my soul into it … and it didn’t seem to make that much difference.

I stepped away from it for a few years and started listening to the rest of the culture (both America’s and the world’s) that couldn’t care less. I started feeling like nothing will ever change until people’s hearts change. Part of me wants desperately to be a voice that can change those hearts, but then I see how easily their apathy seeps into my own heart, and my hands drop listlessly to my side, unable to pen the words that will kindle the fire.

Is America’s heart really warm enough to care about what happens to people without homes when it snows?  To really care, rather than looking around for the nearest shelter or welfare program that is supposed to deal with that problem for us? If my advocate’s heart can’t ignite at that question from the lips of my own daughter, how can I expect anyone else to shrug off the icy blanket of apathy and start to change?

Part of me wants to stop trying, to relax into the deceptive warmth of hypothermia and gently drift away into my personal American Dream. After all, I don’t HAVE to care. My family is among the privileged, shrinking few.

But my daughter’s warmth is stinging me. My son’s innocent generosity is shaming me. If it’s cold outside it is all the more important that I reignite the flames in my own heart. Or rather, that I seek the spark to ignite them. I can’t do it on my own.

In part that spark comes from my faith, which is always my eternal source: the God who shrugged off the form of godhead to take on “the form of a slave… even human likeness” and suffered every pain to breathe life back into my heart, such a God is the only flame that can thaw an iceberg the size of affluent apathy.

But I also wonder if you wouldn’t mind throwing a stick on the fire. Would you take a minute to inspire me? Recount a story about America’s compassion. Tell me what you are doing to keep out the cold. Give me your reasons for fighting against apathy. Say a prayer for me. Or maybe, by some miracle, tell me that my words made a difference in helping to speed the thaw in your own heart.

I could use some company.

*EA is the shorthand name for Emergency Assistance – a temporary payment for housing costs available (with multiple restrictions and eligibility requirements) to recipients of cash assistance, better known as welfare.