It has taken me a lot of a slow lifetime to be ok knowing that we must find ourselves inside the fence instead of over it. I have asked myself a dozen times over a month, during which we have mostly lived out (J.’s goal … or was it prophesy? … for this season), how can I be so blissfully happy in a space where imagination and beauty are measured by the inch?
I watched designer/illustrator Frances MacLeod’s Homeworthy.com video this morning and loved it by the second. I remember when we “commissioned” Frances, somewhere around the time of her middle school years, somewhere during our Sunday School teaching times, after asking for her parents’ permission, to design our Christmas card. It was just after 9/11 and we envisioned and asked her, honoring her early and seen talent, to draw something patriotic. I wish I could find it to share with you, but it is most likely in an acid-free, archival storage box in a 10’ x 20’ climate-controlled space 16.1 miles away.
She makes me think of our little ones now and what we must do. We read somewhere during those years of a lot of time spent in the company of mess and mischief that we are wise to tell a child we see them. Wise because what is true and real within them is so easily lost in the correction they need and receive, and the wishes that form too early inside them for who they might rather be.
An aside to this and the idea of living out, we took two little people, 2 and 4, to McDonald’s for happy meals just a few days ago. One sat in my lap, the other to my right. Managing catsup, fries, ranch dressing, chicken nuggets (sauce, a food group) apple slices and a Squishmallow is not easy when your arms are so bendy, and your attention span so brief. I sat like a folded double Shepherd’s hook, one arm stretched out with chocolate milk in hand around one small back to my right, the other in hand to my left, cautioning inside voices, reminding that napkins are for mouths, not sleeves, feeling my heart feel big for how good, in their real time, they were being. J. caught the motion of the elderly man sitting at a high bar a stone’s throw behind me getting up to leave, watching J. watch him, lifting hand and finger to his temple to signal the meanest of thoughts, leaving, stopping outside the window for J.’s attention, lifting hand and finger one more time to cement his displeasure that we brought children into a place where he had chosen to spend time. Yes, it is true that children should sometimes be seen and not heard (and truly that man I will not call a gentleman had no idea how tempered those little voices were), but there must always be happy places in this world where they can learn what they must learn.
They are my garden today.
Back to the point, with two reference points: J. was previewing a week ago on his device the resort destination he would visit to meet and get to know a new client he will come alongside. Study these photos, he said. They are a bird’s-eye view of the beauty you never know is there when you’re playing the hole at ground level, at sightline. His point: we often do not of ourselves have the eyes to see. While he was away, reading Patti Callahan Henry’s “The Story She Left Behind” and remembering how much I loved England’s Lake District and all the beautiful meadows and winding dry stone walls, thinking about my new small space I imagine must be like the NY apartment I always wanted, I envisioned a modern American fence and a neighbor’s beautiful gardens and thought to myself, what unimaginable loss in life comes from wanting what my neighbor has instead of seeing, really seeing the boundary lines of my heart. And so, child’s play this morning, and nod to Henry’s lovely tale, I made a list of words. Words that capture who I am and what I love. Bird’s-eye view words.
And I remembered again, there is a God who sees who we are inside the fence, who put in King David’s heart to say (in Psalm 16), the Lord is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot. The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.
