papa introduces Jonathan to Seinfeld.

one night last fall.

It was in the fall, probably November.  He called me to come over--it was 10:00 on Sunday night.  I was tired and already in sweat pants and a rugby shirt I'd inherited from my brother.  But of course I'd go.

When I pulled up he came out, saying, "let's go for a drive."  I almost whined, "but I have to get up early..."  but in some attempt to embrace impulse, didn't.  I held my tongue and decided ah hell, one late night won't kill me.

We got in his car and he looked at me and said, "where should we go?"  I shrugged, a bit confused. "Business 40?" I suggested, "Through downtown?"  There is something about city lights at night--any city.  But the center of Winston-Salem at night is majestic in its isolated height and uncanny quiet.  It is heavenly, and the city charm can make anybody feel dazzling.  It's inviting and warm and sparkling with contrast.  Janitors and night watchmen have keys and they turn on the night lights in the city.

We drove down the expressway and got off on Cherry Street.  Weaving around down in toward Fourth and Trade, we got mixed up and turned around on one-way streets and turn-abouts.  Fall had come that day, a swift overhaul of any residual summer warmth.  It was eerie the way all the lights were on. Everyone, like aggravated turtles, was tucked up at home to avoid the cold wind.

With wide open parking, Mark pulled up by an apartment complex.  He looked at me and turned off the engine, smirking.  

"But I'm in sweatpants!"  

He just smiled and got out of the car.  

I opened the door and shuddered when the wind diced right through my cotton coverings.  He grabbed a long sleeve shirt from his golf bag in the trunk and threw it to me.  We ventured into a parking deck and came out to the landing which afforded a view of the skyline.  I'm sure I gaped and he, less concerned with city lights, wrapped his arms around me and lifted me up, stretching his neck to place a kiss my jaw bone as I looked at the light pouring out of the tall domed building that you can see from a thousand points around town.

I smiled, a gesture for the stars, as he spun me around.  And then, setting my feet back on the asphalt, he put his hands on my frozen face and I kissed him.

We walked up the street and turned right on Fifth, toward First Baptist, whose stained glass window glowed with colors.  

"We look like we're homeless," I said, flopping the unfilled sleeves of his large men's shirt that draped off the ends of my hands in his face.  

We stopped in front of a mural wall, holding hands, and craned our necks to see the picture.  It was too close so we crossed the ghost street to get a better scope.  

"Weird," he said of the ambiguous figures.  We both laughed.  "I mean really, what is that supposed to be?" 

The traffic lights switched dutifully from green to yellow to red to green again, though in the whole universe there wasn't a car on the road.

almost three years old.

My niece to be, Hannah, took me to the park for an outing this afternoon.  We didn't get out the door until about 4:45 so the sun was already set and it was getting cold.  

Hannah will be three in February but she talks as if she is a twelve-year-old college student.  She is more articulate than most of my peers.  She walked me down the street, instructing me to "hold hands" and "jump on the grass" when cars drove by.  I am baffled by nice family neighborhoods without sidewalks, as is the condition of our neighborhood.  She stopped and sniffed at every little thing that was out of the ordinary for the side of the street.

"This is somebody's pay," she said, pointing to a renegade grocery receipt that was stuck in the mud.

"Do you see this?" she asked me, pointing her toe into a pile of mud.

"Yes," I replied.

"It's dirt. Don't step there, your shoes will track it in the house."

Ten four.

She told me to watch when she ran and to look at her when she jumped up high.  There are days when this sort of dilly-dallying makes me irritated, but today I enjoyed it.  It's really entirely stupid to let myself become annoyed since the purpose of our time together is for her enjoyment and if all it takes is marveling at a lost receipt, then I should really be counting my blessings.  

When we got to the park, we played house for a while and then hit the swings. She had me put her in the swing that has four leg holes and then gave me instructions.

"Aunt Ginny, I want to go super high."

So I pushed her high.  Usually I'd pretend to give a big push but take it easy so that the kid didn't fly out of the swing and hit the wood chips.  But I didn't do that, I really pushed her as hard as I could, and she just soared. For a hot second I thought, "Too hard?"  But she came down laughing and  sputtering like a little monkey.  Precious, so sweet it made me laugh out loud.  And then she just laughed harder, and I pushed her again.  

"The moon is out already," I said.

"Where?" she asked, craning her head on the down swing to find the elusive moon behind her right shoulder.

"Up there," I pointed and she turned and spotted it.  "Where do you suppose the sun went?"

After a brief pause, she said, "He's up there behind the sun."

 

She asked me to stop her so she could look and really see.  I grabbed her little feet and she came to a halt.  With both hands she wiped her blonde hair, all sticky with static, from her face and stared at the moon.

"There's a man on the moon," I said. "Sometimes you can see his face, when it's totally round." 

She looked at me skeptically.

"He makes sure you're okay when you sleep."

She smiled at the thought and then told me that the sun probably sits up with the moon too.  I laughed, and that made her laugh.

 

high school band at pier 39.

A group of kids played sweet Christmas melodies down by the wharf in San Francisco.  One little boy--the smallest one--played his pipe organ with a hammer and held his floppy booklet of songs with his left hand.  He was the only one in a Santa hat and he hammered his pipes with perfect precision.  Precious Christmas boy!

to applaud december.

A few days ago I overheard a lady say, "the month of December is awful because I want to be able to slow down to take in the meaning of the season, but it's so packed and busy that it always flies by too fast."  And while I can understand her sentiment, I think I'm going to disagree. 

My mother would say I am a glutton for over-commitment and December is most definitely the month of commitments. From Christmas parties to end-of-the-whatever parties, Christmas shopping to making sure you fit in every last tradition (cookie making, "White Christmas" viewing, stringing lights, sending cards, going to various performances, etc.)... there are definitely more than twenty-five things to do.  This means that on top of normal life responsibilities which, in every other month of the year take up every bit of your time each day, you are expected to fit in this whole laundry list of "Christmas things"--and more than one per day! It is indeed a jingle bell marathon.

I've been thinking this week, just about what that lady said.  And that's on top of how often I hear that we've "lost the spirit of Christmas" or that it's "gone commercial."   December-bashing is almost as common as political banter it seems.

But isn't it glorious the way that magic sort of sprinkles down over this month? Isn't there something beautifully comforting about the rich green garlands and ruby red Christmas bows that decorate Nordstrom starting days before Thanksgiving?  I have found myself recently wandering to places like Starbucks and walking around neighborhoods where folks string up gaudy lights and erect blow-up snow men because of what a joy the traditions are for me.

This weekend I ran in a race called the "Mistletoe"--Winston-Salem's half marathon of the last 25 years. I ran beside an older gentleman for a while who informed me that he had run this race every year since it had begun.  he was wearing green tights, stocking shorts and a red t-shirt. He had bells stuffed into his socks that jingled with each step and a ridiculous elf hat.  What fun! And today I bundled up to go to a free performance of Handel's Messiah put on by the local community purely in the spirit of celebration after attending a Young Life Christmas party where there were no less than twenty-seven different casseroles.

I think it comes down to this: Christmas is the season that we celebrate the good news--Jesus has come to be with us!  The words O come, Thou Day Spring, come and cheer our spirits by thine advent here. Disperse the gloomy clouds of night and death's dark shadows put to flight.  Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!  are indeed my portion and perhaps it is the reminder of Christmas--Christ's birth--every December that gives me the strength to make it through one more year.  As Madeleine L'Engle said in her poem Into the Darkest Hour, "the stable is our heart."

Some things are ridiculous, like the inflatable six-foot snow globe with the Nativity scene in the yard on the corner of Lindbergh and Country Club, but it is fun to laugh.  And I am thankful for Bing and Nat and their sweet Advent lullabies, for the peppermint coffee drinks and the Home Alone marathons on cheap TV because at the heart of the joy and merriment is the precious keeping of Jesus born in Bethlehem in a sheep pen.  Sweet sweet December, thank you for hosting my heart in this celebration season.

the corner where they lived.

On the Saturday after Thanksgiving we drove in toward Pittsburgh from Butler--Mark's home town.  We got as far as the city outskirts to a little place called Mount Lebanon.  Pittsburgh is nestled down in a valley where three rivers meet, the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio rivers.  The hills that rise up, including the famed Mount Washington, surround the city as the porcelain walls of a bathtub. They are dotted with simple homes and nondescript structures--old mills and sheds of sorts.  Pittsburgh's history lies in the steel industry and the city people are hard working.  It is an aged and solemn city. 

The street winds around up Mount Lebanon and passes houses that grow by the block.  The oldest houses, found up on top of the hill, are structurally unique, built with mortar and stone and sharp angled roofs.  The yards are small--every house seems like a well postured gentry standing in his square foot guard post.

As we wound through the neighborhoods, I realized we would pass Mark's folks' first house.  They had met working at the city hospital--a nurse and a young doctor--and fallen in love in the courtly city.  Doc had grown up on Mount Lebanon and when he and Joyce were married, they decided to start back at his beginning.  We drove around corners and sucked in our breath as the Honda squeezed between a row of parked cars and a passing Lexus.  The houses were framed with red and white Christmas lights and in the early dark we passed heedless window people cooking dinner and picking toys up off of the ground. 

Doc pulled up in front of a house on a steep hill.  "This is it," he said, crouching down to look up out of the passenger window. "This is the house I grew up in."  We all looked and I was smiling, and nobody had anything to say.   We drove on down the block and made a few turns, pulling up again in front of another house, smaller, with the front door open and the light shining out onto the lawn.  

Joyce put her hand on Doc's shoulder and said,"there's our first house." Turning to her husband she said,"don't you just miss Mount Lebanon?" 

He chuckled and as he pulled away he glanced back out of the window and exclaimed, "those are my steps!"

"Oh yeah!  Mark, your father built those steps down from the porch to the back.  There weren't steps when we moved in."  She looked back at him and said, "That's your carpentry-- holds up a long time."  She sighed and watched out the window as we drove around down the hill.  

We ate dinner in a quaint restaurant in the neighborhood around the corner from where Joyce used to walk the girls when they were babies and she would wait for Doc to get home from work. "One time," she explained, "I had Lisa in the stroller and I tipped it and she fell right into the gutter.  And then Stef started screaming, 'Mommy! The baby!'  I had to tell her to hush because, of course, all of the rich Mount Lebanon mothers are walking through town and here I am, this young mother, throwing my child in a gutter."  She shook her head and laughed at the memory.  It was sweet to watch her delight in memories that poured forth so heedlessly.

Outside it was windy and cold, but inside it was cozy.  The restaurant had once been someone's home; our reserved table was in an upstairs bedroom of sorts, only the walls had been punched out.  We drank wine and laughed about stories that took place long before Mark and I could be found anywhere but God's ledger.  How thankful I was to put a hand on a place which, to me, was merely a place but to them was the backdrop of an era.

father and son.

There are two partners in the bankruptcy law firm where I work, a father and son.  Mr. Lawyer, Sr. lives vicariously through his younger son who, despite Sr.'s beliefs, is quite a bit less interested in law than his father.  I think he'd much rather teach Russian or Spanish in a University somewhere up north, but he is waiting in line to take over his father's law firm. Dad continues to press son to do things that I believe he himself would rather like to do but thinks he can't because his prime time is over.  One of these ventures is a local civil service position. 

Son lawyer recently ran for this position of Environment Overseer in the elections.  His name was buried in the pile of indiscriminates on the back of the ballot that are hardly ever read and less often marked.  The position is one that less than three percent of the population has any care about and, to top it all off, his was the last name on the list.  

Going into the elections he knew that he was unlikely to win based on voting trends and statistics on how locals know almost nothing about their local elected officials.  However his father spent hours creating visually appealing advertisements for the local papers, meticulously editing slogans, making phone calls and collecting a band of voters to back his son.  Lawyer Jr.'s mother made buttons that she distributed to her friends and placed in buckets on the counter at her nail salon and dry cleaner.  This was a family affair which, by some unfair default, I was dragged into.  Apparently the position of "Receptionist" has no clear limitations or boundaries.  Several hours of my time on the clock in the law office were spent stapling signs to metal stakes to be stuck on corners around town.  One morning of sign construction I was even chastised for placing my staples too far apart.  "Do you think those will really hold up?!" Lawyer Sr. asked me exasperated. Good grief.

He took the day off on November 4th to campaign at the polls on the outskirts of town. The two paralegals and I waited with bated breath for the results.

He didn't win.  I came in a few minutes before nine on Wednesday morning and Rene told me he'd come in second out of four with twenty-seven percent.  The other guy got thirty-four.  I was surprised by my own disappointment.  It was raining too, and cold.

At 9:45 he came into the office, a few minutes before his first appointment of the day.  He was red-faced and his short hair was pressed down matted on the left side.  His collar was flipped up on one side revealing the neck of his striped tie.  

"Morning," I said kindly, quietly.  He responded with a somewhat spastic hello and he seemed flustered.  After getting a brief summary from Rene, he retreated to his office.  Nobody had mentioned the election.  Everyone knew he'd lost.  It was bizarre, a big fat orange elephant in a very small parlor that had, over the past thirty-six hours, grown in importance to everyone.  Everyone, that is, except Lawyer Sr., to whom the election had always been of the highest importance.  

His first appointment was a no-show, so he stayed in his office.  At one point I poked my head into his door to ask him about a file.  As I left I said, "hey, sorry about the election."

"Oh! It's okay! Those things happen, you know?  That's just the way it goes sometimes!"  He exclaimed it like a city hot dog hawker selling lunch to passers-by.  I was startled and nodded, eyes wide.  

A gentleman came in not long after that.  He walked through the door regally, though his clothes were worn out with his rumpled white hair.  He walked right up to the window and said, "Is Mr. Lawyer Jr. in today?"  

His confidence took me back, considering most of the people who come to that window are generally beaten down and pretty miserable.  He asked if he could see Lawyer Jr. and I asked if he had an appointment.

"Oh, no appointment necessary! I just wanted to commend him on the election! It was a good race, commendable." 

I went back to the office and pushed the door open.

"Wil," I said, "an old client of yours is here.  Says he wants to commend you on the election."

He did come out of his office to the window and that old bankrupt businessman shook Wil's hand and told him what a fine job he'd done running for the position and what a fine man he was in this community of Winston-Salem.  And all Wil could say was "thanks" and nod his head.  But when the man walked out the door and Wil walked back to his office, it finally felt like the tension had broken.  Wil even made a joke about having fewer meetings to worry about.  Of course, when his father came in I thought he might just break down into tears.  But I guess there are some things that just have to be left alone.  

off of Pine Valley road, autumn explosion!

some night.

After a long evening they drove back to her apartment in the dark.  These nights were fun because they got to help out with the meetings and see their friends, but they didn't really see much of each other.  A couple times during the night he had come up behind her and touched her to tell her, "here, behind you!"  He'd smile at her across the room in between conversations and she would wink back.  They'd stay late afterwards to help clean up.

"My paycheck is late again," she said as they wound around streets on the residential shortcut that gave them a fifteen-minute catch-up window.  The trees, which were so brilliant by day, looked various shades of gray and black in the cloudy evening.  "Maybe if I was making decent money that wouldn't matter, but I'm not.  Four hundred dollars matters!"

"That's obnoxious," he said.  "What's the hold up?  Did the boss tell you when you'd get it?"

"He said late Thursday. Maybe Friday."  She was annoyed.

When they got to her apartment, he turned off the car and they both got out.  She went before him down the walkway and unlocked the door.  They went inside and he stood in the doorjamb as she put her purse and plastic coffee mug on the island.

"Alright, well I hope you have a great day at work tomorrow," she said as she turned around and stood face-to-face with him.  She hugged him and stood there for a minute.

He wrapped his arms around her back and rested his head on her temple.  She looked out the window into the black nighttime and he, looking at the mirror on the wall across the room, said, "I wish I could get an artist's depiction of this, right now."

"Of what?" she asked.

"My big arms wrapped around your little self, and your beautiful hair.  It's just cute."

She laughed pulling her head back to see his face and kissed his cheek.

"Love you."  He walked away from the door and she quickly lost his silhouette with the kitchen light behind her and the moonless night outside.

Patty Griffin.

Patty Griffin sings from her soul.  You would know it even if she sang in Portuguese because of the way you can hear her guts coming through the sound of her voice.  Her music moves my spirit in a way that no other music ever has.  It is full of her deepest appetites and her simplest stories and to listen is to quench some unidentified hope for sweet, sweet music.

Her songs are honey in this fall season; her strumming is the perfect soundtrack for the rustling leaves and her voice sounds the way the rust treetops turn bronze in the five o'clock hour when the light is most scintillating.  She has wrapped her voice around the essence of autumn.  And like fall, when everything is so beautifully dying so that it can spring up later and begin again, Patty narrates the reality of life--all of its death and living and struggling and breathing.

Fall has a bewitching power over me.  The sky is almost the bluest blue that can be found outside of poetry and the way that the afternoon light pushes through the cracks of the leaves that canopy across the streets makes me forget where I am.  I could live with this forever.  And as I have found myself lately at a loss for words, Ms. Patty's folk songs seem to be the solution.