What I learned from my Dad: human geography and a few other things

I took this photo in the fall of 2012. My Mom would
point out that the picture would be better had my Dad
posed on driver's side of the truck
but at the moment at hand,
the sun favored the passenger side vantage point. 

My Dad is 71 years old and he still criss-crosses the country in his 2001 Freightliner Classic on a regular basis, most recently from Washington to Florida and back. His 18-wheel semi has a 550 Caterpillar engine and 1850 pounds of torque and over a million miles on the odometer. (Over his lifetime, my dad has logged over four million miles. Safely.)

“If you can eat it, live in it, wear it, drive it, I have hauled it," said my dad, when I asked for a few examples of his cargo. In the last couple of years its been mostly windows, watermelons, cardboard, and dried potatoes.

He’s been a truck driver since 1956, starting when he was 14 years old. My mom says he looked like Elvis when they got married in their late teens but these days he wears denim jeans, western shirts, and cowboy boots. In recent years he’s taken to hand crafting bolo-ties with interesting stones and colorful gems, giving an extra flair to his cowboy style which he can pull off better than anyone east of the Mississippi and west of Graceland.

 Even now, as a rugged septatarian, my dad is on the road for three or four weeks at a time. That’s pretty much how I remember it from childhood. When I was a kid my mother got me a toy map, a wooden puzzle cut out in the shape of the United States, each state a puzzle piece. Evidently I must have played with that puzzle a lot because I memorized U.S. geography backwards and forwards. At age five or six my mother used to quiz me orally with such questions as, “Which states surround Kentucky.” (Or Delaware or Wyoming or New Mexico.) I took those questions very seriously and always knew the exact answers, carefully thinking and deliberately listing off each adjacent state without even looking at the puzzle, at least according to my memory. It’s probably a tribute to the value of experiential learning, but I also wonder if it was rooted in the notion that all those places were in a way an extension of my home, or perhaps a connection to my Dad. Every time he called back to the house from the road, over some crackly telephone line (of course there were no cell phones, email, skype, or text), he announced a new state from where he based. I could easily associate his location with a specific puzzle piece which I’m sure was my mother’s plan all along.

This was my idea of fun as a kid: a map puzzle.

As a result, those wooden game pieces seem to have translated to my interest in maps and globes and continents and oceans. I’m curious about people and places and cultures. A self-proclaimed National Geographic nerd, I’m always amazed at those pull out maps focusing on a desert, a mountain range, or a political region. It’s like I can feel the people who live there just by looking at the birds-eye rendering of their locale. I imagine the food they eat, the songs they sing, the friendships they form.

My mother prides the fact that my Dad has managed to be home on each Christmas and for each date my three brothers and I were born. Independent truck drivers generally do not have paid vacation or family leave, plus a commute home is often 1000 miles long and entails finding a paying load to cover expenses. It’s no small task to wrap a rigorous and wildly unpredictable payload schedule around, say, the birth of a baby. But he did four times.

About five years ago my husband, Bob, experienced acute liver failure. I was the one who became distant because my coping mechanism was to turn reclusive as Bob teeter-tottered between life and death, back and forth, in our living room. His illness brought much immediate suffering and I was wholly exhausted from attempting to alleviate Bob’s severe itching, anorexia, and depression. Many people tried to help but I didn’t answer the telephone or the front door, incapacitated by the trauma of it all. I was 45 years old and it was the first time I had received a hand written card from my dad. My adult conversations with him had tended to focus on my car’s oil change frequency or present mileage. The front of the card depicted a steam engine train forging through the mountains in the night, guided by a single strong headlight. The uneven, large cursive words proved to me that my dad wrote the note himself; my mom didn’t do it on his behalf. I had never before imagined my Dad as one to quote from the Bible yet this is what he wrote with a blue pen on the inside of the blank card: 

Though you have made me see troubles, many and bitter;

You will restore my life again; from the depths of the earth you will again bring me up.
Psalm 71:20 And so he will. Dad

This year Father’s Day feels like a two-fer. I give thanks to my dad for teaching me human geography, for showing me what hard work looks like, for writing, and for the awesome collection of bolo ties he has shared with me. And I give thanks to my mom for buying me the simple little puzzle that helped me make sense of distance, time travel, and the world. 

Four million miles and still trucking!

Happy Father’s Day to all, where ever you are, whoever you love.

With love from yours truly,
Natural Born Bleeding Heart

I'm very honored that a portion of this post will appear this weekend on the Father's Day edition of Living Lutheran, with posts from amazing colleague writers. Please check it out! 

It's strange, what unifies us

This photo is from the Des Moines Pride Parade in 2011
We are marching again on Sunday, June 9, 2013.
Let me know if you'd like to join us. 

If it were not for the “God hates fags” signs or the “Fags burn in hell” signs, my kids and I would probably have very different reasons for marching in the annual Des Moines Pride Parade with our church.  But strangely, those hateful signs have been unifying.

The original reason why I marched is because I thought was fun and cool. There weren't many churches marching in pride parade, and we were one of them. 

The original reason why my teenage kids marched is because I bribed them with burgers and fries. 

My church, St. John’s Lutheran Church in Des Moines Iowa, will be marching in the annual Pride Parade in downtown Des Moines on Sunday, June 9, 2013. It will be the Xth time my church (sorry, I don’t know the number) has marched, the third time my kids and I have joined them.

I’m not trying to pass myself off as some kind of a supermom. I’m about as flawed as they get.

I’m also not trying to pass myself off as a badass mom. I’m about as middle class white collar boring as they get.

I am a pastor’s wife, but even that doesn’t make me so distinctive because I know many pastors spouses who believe like I do. In fact I know many pastors who believe like I do. And I know many parishioners who believe like I do. I’m not that unique, in terms of church-lady-marching-in-pride-parade.  

But it was something that happened in the last pride parade that unified my kids and me. No longer was it about being a cool church-goer, appeasing mother, or scoring a burger plate. It was something more.

It was a hot sunny day last year when at the Des Moines Pride Parade. Hot and sunny like 100 degrees hot with high humidity. We were all dripping wet with sweat. As far as parade positioning goes, the beer people were in front of us and the bar people were behind us. They had vehicles and Clydesdale horses, but we were just plain old ragtag people on foot. Everyone was sweating wet as we walked through the East Village of Des Moines, streets lined with people partying and cheering. This is Iowa but our Pride Parades can do g-strings and fish net tights as good as anywhere. There were about 20 people in my church who marched but we mostly wore T-shirts and shorts (darn bland Lutherans we are). My pastor boldly wore her white clergy collar. (The other pastor, the one I’m married to, was out with a pending knee replacement. No parades for him.) We marched with a long banner that bore the name of our church: St. John’s Lutheran Church in rainbow colors.

It was fun and festive and I felt like somehow I was doing something right as a mother, even if my kids were only there for the burgers that would follow. We passed candy out to the children who lined the streets. I happily accepted jello shots that were being offered (not by my church). It was all the hoopla of the parade.

But last year it was different. The crowds cheered for our church group as we processed through. As if walking down a street was something special. A big deal. To be honest, it kind of put a lump in my throat. They saw our banner and they cheered. I heard a couple people from the crowd pointedly yell out, “Thank you.” I thought of a dear friend who wrote a story about the time her mother told her she was going to hell because she was gay. Her mother told her this when she was a child. HER MOTHER.  I wished somehow that my marching would make that better.

When we saw the little group of haters (definitely the minority in that joyful crowd) with the placards that read “God Hates Fags” and “Fags burn in hell.” It felt like a jolt. It was the Westborough Baptist faction of the Pride Parade. My first instinct was to shelter my kids. I hoped they wouldn’t notice the vile words printed on the poster boards. I wanted to shield them from this kind of hate, or at least from that awful language.

You see, we are your average all-American family. Mom, dad, daughter, son, white, suburban, Christian, three cars, two cats, etc, etc. My children haven’t been exposed to overt bigotry (that I know of). My kids are cute, sociable, funny, and have friends. I’d like for them to skate through life unscathed by the smallness of others. I thought the pride parade would be a fun church function, a way to spent a sunny afternoon together. I didn’t envision us walking through signs declaring who’s going to hell, and by implication, who isn’t. 

But those signs provided a clarifying moment. I realized how important it was for my children to see them and to know that such hatred is real. The signs were a reminder of the reason we were marching  and why I was bribing them to participate. Ever the mother who wants to teach a lesson, in a split second I decided they absolutely needed to see those placards. I made sure they noticed them. “That’s why we’re here,” I said, as we passed by the people with the hateful slogans.

That was last year.

When the parade came up this year, I reminded both my kids of the event and the burgers that would come after it. My son is 13-years-old now. He’s a skater boy and I suggested he bring his wheeled board to the parade, trying to keep the tone light and fun. I told my son that the people with the hateful signs would be there and that’s why we needed to go.

“Let’s punch them out,” replied my 13-year-old son, now confident in his third year of marching. I explained that we wouldn’t be punching anyone out, but that marching in the parade is stronger than punching them out. Especially marching as a church group. It’s such a huge opportunity to proclaim love. But I felt gratified that my son had some sense of how horrible those messages were.

If I had a grave stone it would read, “She had many regrets.” I’m not saying that I’ve always known how to stand up for other people, or that I’ve always been on the right side of morality, or that I’ve always know n how to express my faith. I’m not, I haven’t been, I don’t. Maybe I’m trying to make up for previous bad behavior. Maybe I’m trying to be a good person. Most people I know who are G or B or L or T or Q will likely not be marching, for many reasons all unique to each. I don’t blame them. But my daughter and I will be. And we’ll have burgers and fries afterwards. (Have since realized that boy and husband are headed to camp that afternoon.)

And I’ll be glad for this one little opportunity that is more powerful than a hundred confession booths. More fun than a thousand parties. More important than a million anti-bullying lessons.

You are more than welcome to join us.

Thanks so much for coming over to my blog.

With love from yours truly,

Natural Born Bleeding Heart

"Look Mom, you made maxi-pad ears!"

Could it be any better than this?
My cherubic Aidan circa 2003 with his blankee,
his train set, his dairy reminder, and his tiger bed.
(One of the pics we found tonight.)

Most hours of most days I'm working, cooking, driving, sleeping (attempting), lecturing (my kids), shopping (for food), or otherwise thinking of all the things I wish I were accomplishing.

Or I'm sitting at a desk with my head in the computer, researching, writing, researching, editing, researching, researching, researching. All for the sake of funding non-profit programs. (Aka, bleeding heart.)

Lather, rinse, repeat. You get the picture.

Today I found out that a classmate was accepted to teach English on the Peace Boat. The Peace Boat! It's a big ship that floats around the world and teaches about love and understanding. (She's a great writer, you can read about it here.) She writes about her struggle to find her own way while living in Japan due her husband's military job: ". . . a little teaching here, a little editing there. But I was still on the hunt for something more. Then late one night in February, I found it. I don’t even know what search terms I used -- Japan, teaching, NGO – that helped me stumble upon the webpage, but I knew instantly, the way my heart warmed, and everything slowed, that this was it: a humanitarian NGO that runs peace and social justice advocacy voyages around the world looking for volunteer English teachers? Yes, please!"

Yes, while her husband is on a war ship, she'll be on a peace boat. That's how she ends her post. I love it.

I want to go on a peace boat. To be honest I kind of felt jealous -- in the one minute or so that I had today to read her post and consider a vast ocean and a big sky and the whole world ahead. But feeling jealous is silly, I know. I've got kids, for one thing. I've got my life. I'm not floating around the globe, but I've got my little wonders of joy at home.

I forgot about the peace boat and proceeded with my evening -- driving, cooking, etc, etc. Somehow I ended up looking at old family pictures (if you call ten years ago old) that Amanda has collected. As for myself, I'm terrible at organizing family pictures because of all the things mentioned in the first paragraph in this post. However, evidently, my child has been secretly collating pictures into boxes, piles, and photo albums. She wanted me to look at them with her tonight. It was the night I had designated to re-initiate my yoga practise -- but when your 16-year-old daughter wants to relive old family pictures, what choice is there?

The picture that really got to us was the time I created a horrific sheep costume for her for some occasion, maybe it was school or church. It was probably supposed to look like a sweet little lamb, but instead the brown paper sack with black permanent marker eyes and whiskers looks like a serial killer lamb. White cotton balls made up the skull of the mask -- terrifying. I have no idea what I was thinking. Psycho mom. But the thing that made us laugh were the ears.

"Look Mom, you made maxi-pad ears!" exclaimed Amanda. I would not have believed it if I hadn't seen the evidence in a real photograph. I pulled the snapshot close to my bespeckled eyes. Sure enough. There they were -- lambs ears made of Kotex panty liners. I did that for my kid. Usually, I do not laugh. I am sorely short in my laughter. I am far too serious and really need to figure out how to see the funny side of things. But tonight, I forgot about my yearning for the peace boat and laughed like I'd hadn't for years. I laughed at that ridiculous lamb mask I made with the maxi-pad ears. The girl and I both laughed. The girl was in shock that I was laughing. She laughed because I laughed.

As children are lost under the rubbish in Oklahoma, my teenage daughter and I laughed until sound did not come out of our mouths. As a community in Iowa searches for a kidnapped little girl, my teenage daughter and I laughed until our guts rumbled. As parents grieve all over this planet for every reason you can't imagine, my teenage daughter and I laughed until our eyes watered.

"Mom, I don't think I've ever seen you laugh like that," said my teenage daughter. She's right. I haven't laughed like that for a very long time. But I should. I'm not on the peace boat, but I've got my babies and they are charmed and charming and cherubic and here with me. What else could I want? Seriously, what else?

Thanks for coming over to my blog.

With love from yours truly,

Natural Born Bleeding Heart

The church according to dirt

Black gold

Team Garden planted today in our backyard. In their honor, I'm re-posting this reflection about their work to grow food and reap satisfaction.

I know most people think of Iowa as a monolithic cornfield, a state full of dirt. But we live in a mid-size metropolitan area, the capital city of Des Moines. We hardly ever venture into the countryside. Our home is inside the city limits yet it’s an old farm house that survived suburban sprawl. Our yard is one-full-acre in size, a bumpy, horse pasture remnant that perseveres whilst landscaped, chemically treated lawns surround it for miles in each direction. Six years ago when the real estate agent showed us this place, my husband, Bob, and I had different points of view:

Being from the Midwest, I said, “That’s a lot of work.”

Being from New York City, Bob said, “That’s a lot of freedom.”

Freedom won out on this marital difference.

In addition to the large yard came an industrial-sized driveway, which better resembles a parking lot, topped off with two (2) garages that fit in total five (5) vehicles counting the tractor lawn mower. This property was custom-made for Bob, who had been deprived this magnitude of motor storage capacity his whole previous life. >>read more

This was originally posted at Living Lutheran, with thanks to my generous editor, Jan Rizzo, and her talented team. 

Peace, love and road trip

Hello lovely readers and thank you for coming over to my blog, where we are kicking off road trip season with a shameless reposting of my Facebook status update from February 11, 2013. My road trips come hard these days, this one squeezed in-between $15.2 million dollars worth of deadlines (which I'm pleased to say have mostly paid off by now). On February 11, I had an opportunity to spend four hours and 17 miles to discover the highways and byways of this great country. It was awesome. Here goes:
 
Terri Mork Speirs, Facebook Status Update, February 11, 2013 -- You never know what will happen when you indulge in four hours of vacation time. This morning I pre-planned the morning away from work so I could take my daughter to get her driver's license. (Done.) To avoid the long lines we went to a courthouse in a sleepy little town outside of Des Moines, a quaint farm town called Adel. (I can't believe how few times we go into the countryside and we in Iowa for land sakes.)

Anyway, it felt so roadtripping-free to drive westward, even if it was only 17 miles. At the license bureau, a tiny multipurpose room with three clients waiting in line, we were both surprised that the clerk was a distinguished Latino with a whiff of gray hair. He was servicing clients in English while training in another clerk (who looked kind of Irish to me) in Spanish.

This is rural Iowa, friends.

I know some of you may be saying "why should a clerk speak Spanish" but I say why not? It was the most civilized drivers license bureau I've experienced. Anyway, afterwards we found a bookstore cafe a few blocks away and shared a homemade buttermilk biscuit and farm fresh eggs; tasted pretty much out of this world. And then, a book practically leaped off the shelf and into our breakfast table (see pic). To top it off, there was enough change on the bottom of my purse to buy it.

Congratulations to my lovely daughter, light of my life, for getting her license. Now back to work because, whoa boy, do I have deadlines. First, I'll read a poem while the girl drives us back to reality.

Below is the poem I read aloud (but not nearly as well as Alfre Woodard) with Teengirl at the wheel. More road trip posts to come. Where have you gone lately?

With love from yours truly,

Natural Born Bleeding Heart

A loaded mother's day

Me with another one of my winning hair-dos, and the kiddos
circa 2007 in one of our favorite postures, reading in bed.
Please note my slit throat, which provided
a rare instance to feel badass.

The first time I got pregnant I was 33 years old, my husband Bob was 43. We were on the back end of our biological clocks (or at least I was), but we may as well have been teenagers. We were so excited and so naïve. We didn’t know about the caution to keep it quiet for the first trimester due to all the unknowns.

When we went in for our initial appointment, they gave us an ultrasound, which in hindsight was probably not necessary but evidently that’s what they did in the late 90s in downtown Brooklyn. (I would get many more ultrasounds in the next few years.) The six week ultrasound confirmed I was pregnant. It also discovered twins growing in my uterus. Twins! Bob and I were thrilled beyond belief. We had waited so long -- not by choice but more by circumstance, and now we were having twins.

It was worse than keeping a Christmas secret. We were having twins! We told my family, Bob’s family, my workplace, Bob’s colleagues, our church, our neighbors, people at the diner, people on the subway (kidding on the last one). We pretty much told everyone. We would have taken out a billboard had we thought of it.

You know where this is going.

I started bleeding approximately one week later. It was Memorial Day weekend 1995. When I realized the bleeding wasn’t going to stop, I posed a compromise to my body. You dispose of one twin, I’ll keep the other. I’d accept one baby. I’d be grateful for one baby. I begged for one baby. The universe could take the other, just give me one. But no, I kept bleeding. I can’t remember but I’m sure we must have called the doctor. I’m sure the doctor was not surprised and I’m sure the doctor said to just bear it out and come in first thing after the weekend. The doctor knew that up to 20 percent of all pregnancies end in miscarriage during the first weeks of pregnancy. They call it spontaneous abortion and there’s nothing fancy western healthcare can do. After two days of hemorrhaging I conceded that both babies were lost. There were no twins.

It was a sunny day when Bob and went to the follow up appointment. It was pretty routine. My health was fine. The babies were gone. Bob and I held hands as we walked away from the clinic. I would have liked it to be over starting exactly that moment, but dang, we told everyone we were having twins. Which meant we had to tell everyone that I had miscarried the twins. There was no way around it. I had wished so badly that we had kept our mouths shut because I wanted it to be over. 

The next day I went in to the office and I felt funny. I was barren and everyone thought I was carrying twins. I didn’t know what to do so I went straight to my HR director and blurted out to her that I’d miscarried. I cried and told her I didn’t want to repeat the story over and over. That awesome HR director knew exactly what to say, offered her complete sympathy, and said she’d take care of it. (Thank you Ann, if you’re out there.) She discretely informed everyone at the office of the situation. As the day drew on, I couldn’t believe how many people, both men and women, came up to me quietly to confide that the same thing had happened to themselves or their wives.

This kept happening.

I wouldn’t have chosen to tell everyone I had miscarried, but hearing other people’s stories brought much healing.

I’ll never say that “it was God’s plan” or anything like that, because I can’t believe that any kind of divine power would intentionally take twin babies, or even one baby. But still, at this point I can’t imagine it any other way than having my Amanda and my Aidan. My heart goes out to all the mothers who couldn’t have children, who are separated from their children, who lost their children, or who have fallen out of relationship with their children. Same goes the other way. My heart is full for those who have lost their mothers.

Mother’s Day is loaded.

Mom and me 2012.

And so even as I give thanks for my kids, for my beautiful mother, and my dear mother-in-law, I commend these communities of mothers, in case any one of them might be useful for you:

Babies, Infertility, and Mother’s Day, a powerful blog post and resources from a fabulously talented seminary friend, Rev. Jodi Houge.

Motherless Daughters, a website, a book, and a worldwide movement, launched by Hope Edelman, a writer and teacher who I was honored to be mentored by for a year.

Little Seal, a blog turned book (“Still Point of a Turning World”) about the loss of a child, by Emily Rapp, another writing teacher I was privileged to learn from.

Thanks for coming by my blog. I wish you all -- whoever you are, and where ever you are with your motherhood -- a lovely weekend.  

With love from yours truly,

Natural Born Bleeding Heart

See this film

Sokha was a Cambodian child of the dump:
orphaned and forced to pick through garbage to survive.
But, through a series of miracles, Sokha finds her way to school –
and, like a phoenix, she has risen to become a star student on the brink of
a brilliant and once unimaginable future.

Hello friends, 

If you're like me, you feel a mixture of horror and hope about the emerging story of the rescued women and the little girl in Cleveland. If so, may I encourage you to see this film, "Girl Rising." 

Bring the kids, bring your partner, bring a friend, bring your parents, or just go. Check out when it's showing in your community and go. (With thanks to Megan Clausen who introduced it to me. And with thanks to a group of lovely women who I was able to join for the showing.)

I hope to go again, this time with Bob and the kids, if it returns to Des Moines. The website including a movie trailer is here. 

With love from yours truly,

Natural Born Bleeding Heart