On Broken Things

It's been the better part of the past two days but certain things around the house have been fixed. The blinds have been taken down and new ones installed: white, faux-wood ones. Then there's the leaky bathtub faucet which has been plaguing my quiet moments for four months. I finally got the whole thing disassembled thanks to my frustration and a hacksaw. After some running around, I found the replacement part and we're back in business; that means the water's back on in the house.

But as I finished cleaning up the final project tonight, I found myself circling a kind of drain. A steady maelstrom going around and round. I am waiting for what I fixed to be broken again. I'm listening now for the drip that I can feel coming. I'm anticipating Isaac swinging at the blinds and destroying them again. Call it a lack of faith, but it's inevitable. What's fixed will be broken again.

Quite possibly we lose our faith in products and machines and even people when they breakd0wn. For right or for wrong we expect them to maintain their equilibrium. Their status quo of reliability. I for one don't always mind a broken and fixed item. I buy refurbished Apple products (same warranty, 15% cheaper). I buy cars used. I read books from the library. Yet still this feeling lingers. Even my previously broken bones ache thanks to some mind over matter thoughts. These things repaired will break down again. They will have to be fixed again. What it must be like for God...

As I take survey of the thoughts present in my quiet moment tonight, as I come to the realization of things fixed and things broken, I am quieted even more by the importance of not making junk in the first place. There's a whole theology in that. Know things in this life aren't perfect. Love, passion, happiness, joy. It's all flawed somehow. It's all besought with mortal wounds. But it's got built into something that bespeaks the ideas of a Quality. Of Not-Junk. And so if those things must break, let it be so; it will be an easy repair. But may we not lose faith in them.

As for my faucet repair, stay away from the Delta 1700 Monitor series. And from me, the plumber.

The Pacific Northwest

Perhaps it's because the last MFA application I'm waiting on (due any day now) is from a school in the Pacific Northwest. Seattle. Maybe it's because the book I'm currently reading, "Snow Falling on Cedars", is set on an composite island in Puget Sound. Maybe it's because I've been there. Been to Seattle. Visited Mt. Rainer. But I've been enamored all morning with Washington State.

Sitting over breakfast with Isaac I was suddenly warmed by the memory of a picture taken on our honeymoon at the national park at the base of Mt. Rainer. Jen is standing in a red t-shirt and light brown cords. Her then long black hair pulled tight. Sunglasses atop her head. Head tilted, eyes squinting in the sunlight. Small in the foreground set against the backdrop of the mountain. It's a picture of her I love. Loved taking it. Love looking at it. And holding it, I can feel the mountain trembling in my hand at her beauty.

The trees in Washington, especially around Mt. Rainer, are massive and prolific. They stretch high and tall into cloudless blue skies (incidentally, Seattle gets less rainy days per year than New York City). The landscape envisions most accurately what G.K. Chesterton surmised of man's attempt to place himself in relation to the universe, "Man has always been small when compared to the nearest tree". And I have never seen trees that tall anywhere else. Sequoias I think is what they were. Stolid giants stood still over time. Possibly speaking slowly, like Fangorn. Telling us, in the slight swaying of the branches, their names over the millenia. For a moment that that trip through the forest on our honeymoon, I had a moment to listen to them. To stand, small and contrite and in awe of the structures of nature.

What I hear today is that memory of a time some eight years ago. And that I am still small. Small compared to the Sequoia. Small compared to the pine tree teetering next door. Small next to the saplings. But I have a love that is giantesque. A love, I suspect, that has only just got around to speaking to me her name.

Knives and Spoons

Maybe it's a sign of this generation but occasionally phrases arise that spark in me this idea, "Hey, that would make a great blog title!" It's the transference of doing it for band names I suppose (do they even have bands in music these days?). But as I'm doing dishes this afternoon (yes, we do not have a dishwasher. And once Lucy is off the bottle... please let it be soon. No more bottles to hand wash)... Anyway the phrase "Knives and Spoons" popped into my head. This probably had more to do with the inordinate number of knives and spoons I've noticed I wash on a daily basis. So if I were to write a blog about being a post-modern housewife I would call it "Knives and Spoons".

Then it occurred to me that I may be measuring my life in terms of knives and spoons. In terms of the banal work around the house I do daily as a result of me being home with the kids. T.S. Eliot's Prufrock certainly had a similar sense about him, proclaiming "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons". It's been easy to succumb to this entrapment of sorts. Recently I've been bombarded with 4 MFA rejection letters. Part of the staying home and not working idea the Mrs and I had was so that I could work on my writing. And I have (not on the blog though). I've gotten better. Yet here I sit with four rejection letters in front of me- on my inspiration board no less. There's still one school I'm waiting to hear from -- so maybe... Regardless of what transpires I've found myself slipping into the temptation of "Knives and Spoons". Of seeing myself unapart from the daily routines. Perhaps it's the failure of MFA applications -- the embarrassment of failing anyway is certainly palpable. So I've measured my life, I've discovered, my days by the daily tasks. The coffee spoons, the peanut butter knives, the diapers, the bottles, the hours.

But the preceding line in Eliot's poem is transcendent. It's the realization of the best part of why I am staying home. For I "Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons". I have had time with my children. With my son. With my daughter. With my wife. I have had days upon days of books and building blocks and Curious George and bike rides and soccer and crawling contests and standing contests and singing and OREOs while watching LOST. And not only have I had them. But morning, noon and night I have known them. Felt them in the deepest and best parts of the chambers of my soul. And I know that I am lucky and that I am blessed. And I know that I am loved because yesterday Isaac on one of our patented early evening bike rides turned back to look at me and the Mrs and said, "It's my mommy and my daddy. And I love them."

So is it worth it, after all -- Prufrock senses us asking, I sense myself asking as I count the knives and spoons and rejection letters. I will certainly have the knives and spoons tomorrow and the next day. But I will also have the human voices that will wake me. And they are singing, often. And to me.