Tag: wyatt and seth

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The Beach That Was Not

I was supposed to be at the beach today, feet buried in the cool sand and nose buried in the first of several good books. Wyatt and Seth riding the wild waves on their boogie boards and digging for hermit crabs. Miska breathing the air that has, for her entire life, provided balm to her soul. However…

Saturday morning, we loaded the car and began our 6 hour trek to the Atlantic Ocean. Though I’m more of a mountain man, I always look forward to the space and the beauty and the laughter — but the rest of the family has a love affair with the beach. Miska has some mystical connection with the waves and sand. I’d attempt to explain it to you, but I don’t  understand it myself. Her heart awakens; her soul quiets. She hears things out on those sun-drenched shorelines. I’ll have to leave it at that. All summer, we’ve been gearing for this week. You can imagine an 8 and 10 year old’s revved up energy, asking at regular intervals how much further?, how much further?, how much further?

We pulled into the driveway of the beach house and folded out of the vehicle, breathing our first salt air. We grabbed a load of gear and stepped into the house. To my horror, luggage and groceries filled the living room and kitchen. Everywhere, I saw all the things you’d expect to see from a family of happy vacationers just unloading into their beach house for the week, all the things we were just beginning to unload ourselves. No one was there. I suspect they were dipping their feet in the water and getting the lay of things.

We quickly exited and stood in front of our car, shell-shocked. I pulled out my phone and searched quickly for old emails. The short of it is that I made a dad-sized snafu. I had us down for the beach on July 28th. However, we are supposed to be there August 4th.

I don’t exactly remember, but Miska tells me I had to walk away from them for a minute in order to “gather my strength for enduring the weight of the family’s crushing disappointment.” If you know us Colliers, you know we never pass on a good existential crisis. If we see the ship sailing toward tragedy, heartache or impending drama, we don’t attempt to outmaneuver. We point straight ahead and raise the sails.

I walked back to the trio-in-mourning and told them I’d made a big, fat hairy mistake and that we were going to have to drive back to Charlottesville. Miska put on a brave face, but she was entirely deflated. Wyatt, true to form, had a barrage of frenzied questions, searching for some other resolution. Seth looked at me as though I’d just drowned his puppy.

We piled back in the car, and though I risk cliché, I can only describe my emotions this way: I wanted to cry. Of course, many have far greater difficulties than our luxury of having the option of a beach vacation to begin with, screwed up or not. But these days are important to my boys. They’re vital to my wife. We’d saved and skimped and held out through a weary season with the joy of this week in sight. Joy is an essential thing. And as we started re-tracing the road back home, there was little joy in our Honda.

Insult to injury is the $150 I blew for a trip that yielded nothing more than miles on the car and a story my boys will one day tell their own family on their own road trip. A royal, epic fail.

The sky grew dark. A rain storm moved in. Gloom settled around, and inside, our vehicle. The wipers fought against water, and my eyes did too. I felt shame over my forgetfulness. I felt foolish for dropping the ball. I have always hated disappointing people, and now I was knee-deep. I knew we would be okay. Life was not over. I don’t want to over-dramatize. But neither do I want to slough this blunder off for less than it was. We were sad, and I made us sad.

A little ways down the road, night now covering the lightning-illumined sky, Miska put her hand on mine. “Grace,” she said. She squeezed my hand, and I knew the words she had no need to speak: be kind to yourself. Some men have women who would use this occasion as arsenal for many a war to come. My wife is not one of those women. At the moment where she could easily castigate me (and with good cause), she squeezed my hand as we drove together through the dark rain.

The boys have learned Miska’s grace. Wyatt said, “Dad, it’s okay. This way, I get to stay up past midnight, and we get to eat out for dinner.” Seth, who needs to suck the marrow out of any tragedy, took a tad longer; but yesterday he walked up behind me to deliver a massive hug — and at various points throughout the day, he repeated: “Dad, thanks for everything you do for us.”

The good news is we’ve rearranged schedules so we will cue the trip again come Saturday. The better news is that grace came to me from the woman and the two boys who have long been, to my soul, God’s truest sacraments.

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Sugar Shack

We dropped the boys off for summer camp, and I half wanted an invite to stay. Just after the entrance, we passed a paintball course and the archery range. Once we parked, I sighted a massive water slide and a 15 foot high platform from which you would jump, drop onto a wide rubber launch pad called “the blob” and then catapult into the water. Rock climbing wall, skate ramp, zip line. Mercy.

Before leaving, I noticed a small hut, painted funky blue, near the lake’s edge. Scribbled across the front, in psychedelic scrawl, was the shanty’s name: The Sugar Shack. I like the whole bohemian motif, but my boys first time away from any part of our family circle would be a week mixing it with young beauties at a place that has a spot, next to the lake no less, dubbed The Sugar Shack. Mercy.

Miska and I were undeterred, however. We were crossing our own threshold – that blessed (and for years now, entirely unfathomable) moment where we get a second taste of what life was like when there were two, not four, in the clan. The week would be all for pleasure: good books, vineyards, local culinary spots we’ve wanted to try, late mornings with premium coffee. I overheard Miska humorously describe our plans to a friend: “We’re going to pull down the shades and descend into hedonistic revelry.” Now those are words that would make any husband perk up. Our own sugar shack. Mercy.

Wyatt and Seth loved camp, everything about it. Yesterday, they regaled me with energetic tales of the Shack. It was amazing, profound, eye-opening. They had no idea what they’d been missing, and they were certain life would never be the same. I braced for the details: Apparently, The Sugar Shack serves snow cones with any variation of the available 50 flavors of syrup, all for 50¢.

Mercy.

Every summer – and every marriage – needs a place called The Sugar Shack.

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The Groove of Love

On a recent return trip from Memphis, a flashing engine light, a front brake grinding to bare steel and a battery calling it quits at a rest area all combined to provide us one heck of a day. As the drive drug mercilessly on, Miska sensed her family's spiraling weariness and, in a truly selfless act, broke out in song. Channeling Tina, she sang, What's love got to do, got to do with it. Miska raised her arms and put her body into it. The confines of the front seat and the restraint of the seatbelt was all that kept her from completely getting her groove on. I loved it. I joined in. The car was rocking. 

Since then, when it seems the family needs a quick pulse of levity, Miska or I will hit the first note, and the other catches up. Neither of us would ever be mistaken for musically gifted, but we let it rip none the less. The boys, let me tell you, are thrilled. They roll their eyes and groan and cover their ears. A time or two, though, I've heard them sing the tune themselves. Protest all you want, a good song snags you whether you like it or not.

A couple days ago, we realized the boys had never heard the actual version. They'd never heard Tina Turner belt her way through this sad tale of second hand emotions. Miska cued the single, and after the closing note, Seth said, "Mom, it's way better when you sing it."

Seth's effusive words tell the truth: Love has everything to do with it.

 

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Sons of Thunder

I'm slow to admit it, but I'll soon cross the line where I can no longer take Wyatt and Seth simultaneously in our Collier Men wrestling scuffles. Up to now, I could easily apportion one arm to each, grip them in a head lock and sing a tune until they cried uncle. 

In addition to growing stronger and larger, they're also smarter. They have learned the power of the alliance. Wyatt likes to stay low to the ground, so he causes a diversion, grappling with me on the floor. I can still manage him, but (especially if I don't want to lose a tooth to one of his roundabout kicks) I have to pay attention. While Wyatt gets me entwined, Seth climbs atop the highest part of the couch and (with a cry lifted from Nacho Libre) hurls himself through the air in a spread-eagle tomahawk dive. A dive that ends with a bony, 8 year old knee slamming into my ribs. 

These boys are relentless. Together, they're downright scary. If I want to postpone my inevitable demise as Wrestling King, then sooner or later, I'll have to go devious and sabotage their federation. I will have to sow discord among the brethren. 

But that won't work for long. Eventually, they'll lock arms again and charge me straight-on. I'll go down in a cloud of sweat and fury. And pinned to the ground, gasping for air, I'll wear the largest grin you've ever seen.

***

Speaking of fathers and sons, I have a piece, a letter to dads, over at the Washington Post.

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Collier Garden

winn_collier_writer_charlottesville_tomato

We've thrown three more tomato plants, all heirlooms, into the planter box. In separate pots, we've added both hot and sweet peppers. I'm not sure how many years we've attempted to grow something edible, but we've yet to taste a bite. Mainly, we've tried tomatoes, but over the summers we've been plagued by fungi, blight, operator error and a two-year old Seth who (we discovered after much bafflement over our uncooperative plants) plucked every newly forming red bud and tossed them.

We have garden visions, with either raised beds cut into our backyard slope or a custom tiered planter attached to our deck. What we've managed is humbler: a small redwood box from Lowe's, two buckets, a bag of soil and much hope. I watch the growth each day, looking for signs of disease or for the groundhog who drops by every so often, sniffing and lurking. I keep the soil moist, and I've sprayed an organic solution a time or two. But let's be honest, I'm at the mercy of forces I neither master nor understand.

We've planted another garden on this same plot of dirt. Miska and I've thrown two boys into the middle of our life. We try to be generous with the love we apply, and we do have our visions of how this family, this future, plays out. But mostly, we're winging it. And watching out the back window, warding off pests best we can. But mainly praying and hoping and watching.

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Fly, Birdie

winn_collier_writer_bird_image

"Let the bird fly free," the old Mohawk proverb says. "If it returns, it is yours. If not, it never was." Wise words, repeated in ballads and poems and somewhere amid every junior high breakup that has ever existed. We tend to cling to this axiom when we're absolutely desparate, when we've tried every other trick in the bag and we hope that this pinnacle act of tough love will finally bring our child or career or lover or friend or blasted book we've been mud-wrestling with home.

Yesterday, as we drove through the rain, Seth pressed his nose to his window and watched. After a few minutes, he said, "Dad, you know what would be sad? If a bird flew into the storm and got pounded to the ground by the rain. Or fried by lightning."

"Yes, Seth. That would be sad."

That's the thing about those birds. Sometimes the birds we set free get chopped up in a squall or run into a line of buckshot or hook up with a revved, wide-eyed flock of party birds flying south to Cancun. And those birds aren't looking back.

If we release something, while clutching a demand for it to return, we haven't released it at all. If releasing a thing really only marks our attempt to trick someone back or to game the system, then we're merely continuing our role as the universe's control freak. To let the bird fly free means we truly let it loose. We send it with a prayer or a blessing. Our heart may stay with it. We may hope against hope that it returns. But we have said farewell. If anything changes, then that will be the first page of a new story.

For the past month, I've had bristling energy for a new book. After four years of book wasteland, I thought I was on to something. I sat back this weekend for the cold hard look. I see flashes here and there, but it's groping too much. It's flat. The words aren't true enough yet. I have to take my hands off the keyboard and let the pages fly into the waste basket and the filing cabinet. And the releasing can not be a mental maneuver to trick the creative gods into getting the juices flowing. I have to say a blessing and bit it adieux.

My fear is that the pages or ideas will never come back. I fear because I carry the misguided belief that there are a limited number of words, only a finite portion of opportunities. I'm greedy with my words, clasping them like a toddler grips his one tootsie roll. This greediness gives the surest sign that I must let it go.

* * * * 

Last month (interestingly, just about the time I hit high gear on my book), a couple birds and I were pitched in a skirmish for control of our balcony. After several vigilant days, I was the victor. However, last week I traveled out of town, and when I returned, Miska pointed out the nest as well as the bird atop looking rather coy.

The bottom line is that whether the birds are coming or going, we have precious little to say about it. We might as well stop fighting against our life. We'd do better to make peace with the birds and the people and the loss and the joy. And get on with the living. There's lots of that to do.

 

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Those Sneaky Poems

Being National Poem in Your Pocket Day, today is the moment for letting words rather than the spare coins jingle in your pants or your purse or wherever you stuff things you want to carry with you for the day's adventure. I once thought poems as merely something that rhymed. However, because I've been given the good grace to have a wife and a couple friends who are poets – and because I've been knocked sideways by more than a few metered lines – I now know poetry to be more than repeating words finished with -ing. Poetry teaches us how to see and how to hear, how to observe and how to speak.

Poetry insists we watch for delicate distinctions, fully aware of how meaning can turn on the difference between a finch and a sparrow. Poetry coaxes us to nurture memory, aware that if we've forgotten old Moses terrified when the desert shrub struck flame, we won't encounter this splendid awesomeness when Whyte speaks of "the man throwing away his shoes / as if to enter heaven." Poetry provides us language that's as much about discovery as it is about stacking up facts. Of course, we'd have chaos if our tax forms were arranged in poetic verse, but wouldn't we have coldness and sorrow if our lovers and friends and our walks in the woods didn't play in things poetic?

Yesterday, Wyatt was discussing the Avengers, which led to a conversation about favorite superheroes. Wyatt ran through the list, outloud as he does. Noticing a pattern, he made an observation: "I don't really like girl superheroes. Well, I do like Cat Woman." 

"Why?" we asked. 

"I like Cat Woman," Wyatt concluded, "because of all the sneakiness."

That's one of the big reasons I love poetry: because of the sneakiness. Poems have a tendency to catch me when I'm dozing. They seem so docile there on the page, short and tidy, all mannered and in neat rows. And then that one line or phrase – a single word sometimes (syllable even) – and my head's buried in my hands or my heart's ripped wide. 

It probably seems plain enough why my writing self would love poetry so. However, does it strike you as odd for me to say that poetry affirms something about why I love the work of pastoring and the study of theology as well? To pastor, as I see it, is to be a resident poet, a poet for the parish. A pastor works his poetry amid the subtleties of babes and grandfathers, treacheries and joys, noting all the while that a sparrow is not the same as a finch. With this, studying theology (a curious attentiveness to God's story) is to ask questions and listen for nuance and to be swept away by beatific themes pregnant with possibilities. As Marilynne Robinson says, "Great theology is always a kind of giant and intricate poetry, like epic or saga." If our Christian teaching doesn't play well with poetry, we have most likely identified a problem. 

If all this is true, then we are desperate for poets, poets of every sort. We need women and men who live attentive to the life about them, their work and their family – which is to say, their art. We need brave and imaginative souls who see and hear and then help us see and hear. "The most regretful people on earth," says Mary Oliver, "are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave it neither power nor time." I think she's right. Give it power and give it time. Please, for all of us.

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Common God

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries
                                                 {Elizabeth Barrett Browning}

 

Last week, Wyatt was exasperated. "Dad, you don't hear lots of things." I protested, but he appealed to Miska for backup. "Mom, dad doesn't hear a lot of things I say, does he?" I'd like to report that Miska, the one to whom I've pledged my life and love, the one who is my very flesh, shut this inquisition down cold. However, Miska is committed to the truth, blast her. My defense – what I wished to say but did not – is this: the reason I might miss miniscule tidbits from Wyatt (here and there, on the rarest of occasions) is because Wyatt says a lot. Wyatt, like his father, is a verbal processor which is to say that words, abundant words, gush from the spigot. Why speak three things when you can speak fifty? 

It's too easy for me to miss Wyatt's voice (which, I'm sad to say, means missing him) because at times it's everywhere. Having grown accustomed to the ubiquitous sound, I tune it out and mentally traipse off to god knows where.

After reading one of the Bible's more electrifying stories (say, the Red Sea opening wide for Israel or Jairus' daughter regaining life), I'm often vexed because I've never experienced anything of the sort. I haven't seen God do this stuff, I worry. So have I ever seen God at all? Hauerwas says that "we [don’t] see reality by just opening our eyes." True enough, but we also won't see reality by keeping our eyes shut. Our vision is off-kilter, and we need to learn how to see clearly. But to see something, we've got to be looking in the first place. 

And if we seek, we shall find. We will find the God who holds the very world together, the one in whom all joy and creative energy and holy silence exist. God's life is pregnant in the delight I encounter with my sons and in the way my imagination expands toward those mysterious mountains I've known so long. God occupies the truths that have grabbed me and refuse to let me go. God rests in the quiet spaces that call me forward and inward. God chuckles in my laughter. God seeps from the pages of my many hardbound companions. God exists in the fierceness that eventually rises against my fears. From one astounding woman, God has spilled copious measures of pleasure and deep knowledge and love, love and more love. 

We miss God, not because God is so hidden but because God is so common. Blackberries are scrumptious — but by God, man, the bush is aflame.

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Puffles and Mercy

The boys and I were trapped in the car. We crept toward the red light that flashed green only for a nanosecond, ruefully congratulating the two or three vehicles that made it past while mocking the rest of us strung-out in the agonizing row. The boys were in the finest of moods, and by the finest of moods I mean the sort where every word (every. single. word.) ignites a small land war. I despise traffic, and the boys' fighting is, to my soul, like that chalkboard thing, the one with the nails and the scratching. The whole setup was lovely.

Given this perfect storm, I lost my cool. I may or may not have uttered the word "bitching" during my fatherly attempt to explain to my boys their delightful behavior. As part of my exemplary dad moment, I rashly decreed that they were banned from the Puffle Party. Certainly you don't know what such a thing as a Puffle Party might be, and I'm not much better informed. It's an online game of some sort and yesterday, March 15th, was the magical day when the entire Puffle world as we know it was set to metamorphose, or so I'm told. "It's a once in a lifetime event, dad," Wyatt cried amid contorted moans befitting the apocalypse or water boarding but surely not a missed Puffle Party.

I let the moment pass, and after finally maneuvering through that blasted red light, we eventually made it home. Everyone was sad and quiet. These are the moments when we parents wonder what it is exactly we're doing, how we got here and how to pull it back together. I played my part, but these boys don't have any halos hovering over their heads. They were awful. Double awful. Do you tow the line and make them pay the piper? Do you veto the judgment and risk bad precedents? Heck if I know.

I do know this, though. I'm a bit of a softy. And I always hope to err toward mercy and crazy love, if it's even possible to err on such things. You should check out a Puffle Party, it's wild in there.

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Lenten Possibilities

Some days
one needs to hide
from possibility
      {Kooser and Harrison}

Recently, Wyatt pronounced a liberating confession. "Dad, I'm going to start watching TV instead of Netflix."

"Why?" I asked.

"Well, Netflix has a 1,000 choices, and I can never choose. But the TV only offers three choices. That's better."

We were not made for vast infinity. We were made to be creatures with limitations. Some resist this axiom and pursue a dogged determination to contravene the fact that our body is sagging, our energy fleeting, our years narrowing. What are midlife crises other than a panicked effort to wrench every conceivable possibility from the past and ride it wildly into the present? I speak as a man who has moved into that mid-life shadowland.

But it is a grace to know our place, to know that we are not defined by our possibilities, whether missed or exploited. We are defined by the one who has loved us – and by the love that, having settled into our heart, eeks out meagerly and lavishly to the ones we are uniquely able to love. To live with perpetual options is to never settle into gritty and particular living, into gritty and particular love. Only God is able to truly love the whole world. And we are not God.

To try to live everywhere is to never truly live anywhere. To try to love, with equal fervor, all things is to never deeply and generously love anything. To attempt to live another person's expectations is to surrender the one true thing you have to give. Let the young have their limitless paths – there's a grace in that too. Yet the hope is not to roam eternally, but to find the place of belonging. And then belong.

Lent is a grace because it strikes at the idol of endless possibility. When, on Ash Wednesday, we are marked with burnt soot, we hear the words from dust you came and to dust you will return. Dust doesn't have numerous options; its trek is pretty much complete. Of course, dust isn't the end. There's Resurrection and new creation and all the truths that kindle our faith. But first: dust.

There are many (in the church as much as anywhere else) pushing endless visions of all we might accomplish, but Lent asks us to take an honest look at all that. Lent asks us (could we please, just for this stretch of 40 days) to be more discriminating, more present. Sometimes to seek your one truth thing, you have to hide from hundreds of others.

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