Make it Beautiful

 The LORD will surely comfort Zion and will look with compassion on all her ruins; he will make her deserts like Eden, her wastelands like the garden of the LORD. Joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the sound of singing

 Isaiah 51:3

The dream felt real to me. The garden grew up around us, scarlet rhododendrons and sunshine yellow daffodils pushing their way through the cracks in the pavement beneath our feet. I breathed in the flowery fragrances of the blooms, marveling at the spring-like abundance so late in the autumn. 

I felt a light touch on my arm and smiled at my husband. His image was wavy, translucent. "You did this," he said and waved his hand at the abundance around us. His silver wedding ring--nestled in my jewelry box for the last 15 months--gleamed in the sun.

"I'm no gardener," I said and shook my head. "Everyone knows I make plants die."

Ron smiled gently. "Yes, you are. You've made beauty for me, for the kids, for your students, for your readers. You've taken what was hard and painful and made something beautiful from it." He stamped a strong foot onto the pavement. "You've done what very few people could do."

I took a deep breath. "I did what I had to do."

Ron took my hand. His hair, fully gray the last time I saw him in his casket, was the blue-black of his twenties. "That's just it. You didn't have to." His voice became a gentle whisper. "I know how awful it was, how exhausting."

"For both of us," I said. I noticed that his form was beginning to fade, the lovely blossoms of my garden clearly visible through his frame. "Stay," I said softly.

"I can't," he said. "If I was here," and he turned his head, taking in the abundance around us, "none of this would have happened. I just wanted to tell you, well, I knew you'd be okay. When I had to leave, I knew you'd make a new and wonderful life for yourself. I knew you'd help the kids to move on." He plucked a single pink rose from a bush thar had sprung up next to him. No thorn pricked his hand. He held it beneath his nose for a moment, his clear lungs breathing in the fragrance. "It's your turn now," he said and handed the rose to me.

I took it and touched its velvety petals. "It's lovely," I said.

"Just as your life will be," Ron said. "Your long life. You have lots to do." He blew a kiss towards me. "I'm so proud of you." He melted into the garden.

And I held onto the rose, breathing in the heady fragrance of my husband's love. 

A Tale of Three Dresses

A note to the reader: This was written on 8/1/13. 

"My heart is beating so fast," she says as she slits open the box. I--and only I--have been invited up to her room to share this moment. She puts her hand on her chest and her lovely face pales, making the freckles that Jared loves stand out clearly. Angel kisses. I sit on the edge of her unmade bed, forcing myself to ignore the piles of clothes strewn about the room, and sink into this moment.

The box pops open, revealing a froth of white. She gasps-oh!- and carefully, almost reverently, lifts out the contents. Yards of white chiffon spill onto the floor, topped by a beaded bodice and frothy sleeves. "This," she says dramatically, "is the dress I will wear when I marry Jared."

Quickly, she sheds her work uniform, anxious to have the miracle of the dress against her skin. Shirt and pants are kicked aside and she steps into the pool of chiffon, carefully pulling it up and slipping her arms into the sleeves.

Perfect. Despite two panicky phone calls necessitated by her inaccurate measurements--done while I was away on business and she too eager to wait--the dress fits her perfectly. "Try on the sandals," I suggest, and she kicks off her clogs and slides her feet into the white rose-trimmed flip flops she will wear because, "I hate dressing up."

But here she is, busily fussing with her hair and describing what she wants:just a simple flower and maybe some netting on the right side. I agree that her hair should be up and loose, the way Jared likes it, the way that makes her look twenty-one instead of thirty-four, the way that makes one forget she has seen more than her share of pain.

"What do you think?" she asks and spins.

I clap my hands together. "Beautiful," I say. "It is just exactly right." She grins and turns back to the mirror.

Just exactly right. And it is, both the dress and the man. Jared has never given me a moment's worry, and I cannot say that about others she has dated. Deeply moral and old-fashioned, Jared puts God before all other things in his life, but Bonnie runs a close second. He will not only spend his life loving my daughter, he will honor her as well.

We begin to talk of practical things. The hem needs to come up and inch or two so she will not trip her way down the aisle, and the bodice is a bit lose and needs a few small tucks. "I have nothing up here," she says regretfully. "Wait until you have kids," I say. She smiles. She possibility of children is once more in her life.

Reluctantly, she peels the dress from her shoulders and we tuck it neatly back into its bag. There is a span of eleven months between now and the wedding day. "I will become Mrs. Jared Widger in this dress," she says and even though she is an independent woman, a strong woman, a woman of the 21st century, there is an old fashioned sentiment to her words. She wants to be a Mrs.

Her room--my once and future office--is woefully short on closet space. The small closet was made into a bookcase for my many volumes on literacy and reading. The books have been relocated to a corner of the dining room--my current office space--and her yarn collection and uniforms fill the shelves. "I'll hang it in the back of my closet," I say. She nods and gives the dress a farewell pat. "Soon," she says to it.

Carefully, I carry the wonderful dress into my own bedroom and shove open my closet doors. I make a space in the book and hang up the dress that will take her into her new life. I will get my office back. I know that this move back home is only temporary. She and Jared want to pay for the wedding themselves and save towards a house. She is here, she points out, with an exit plan. For now, I am blessed to share these moments with her. They will not last.

There are two other wedding dresses hanging in my closet. One is mine, a heavy sateen with long sleeves and an empire waist worn for an October wedding more than thirty years ago. It is "old-fashioned", she has declared, and something she would never wear. But I keep it anyway. My marriage to her father has not been easy. Even now, a variety of maladies keeps him from enjoying his family. From time to time, I expend some energy on trying to move him along, but the effort is mostly wasted. I pray a lot. Right now I pray that he will be strong enough and well enough to walk his daughter down the aisle.

She shrugs and says that she has two brothers to pinch hit, but I know that it is really her Daddy that she wants, the daddy she remembers coaching her softball team and digging sand castles at the beach.

There is yet another wedding dress in this closet, much fancier than the one that just arrived. This one was crafted--there is no other word--from embroidered lace and netting and brushed jersey, trimmed with lavender ribbons and pouf-ed out by many layers of petticoats. It was a combination of three patterns she liked, and sewn together on my mother's old machine. It, too, will never be worn again. I think sometimes of cutting it up into something useful or giving it away, but it is hard to part with something into which my daughter and I infused so much of ourselves. We spent hours and hours on the dress, and it held her hopes for her first marriage. The dress is now stowed away in a plastic box. Up until a year ago, it seemed that she had stowed her dreams there as well.


I brush my hand over the new wedding dress before I shut the door. He dreams have been transferred. After five years of sadness, of declaring she would never marry again, of keeping herself in a very small and safe existence, she is envisioning a future with a husband and a home and a family.

"Ten years ago," she says, and I realize she has followed me into my bedroom, "I married Bill. I am wiser and stronger now. I will wear that dress, and I will marry Jared, and this is the marriage that will last forever." She gives me a hug. "Thank you," she says.

I am not entirely sure what she is thanking me for. Hanging her dress? Providing her with a home? Listening to her plans? All of the above?

"You are always welcome," I say. I think of the three wedding dresses sharing space in the back of my closet. Each has been a journey, often leading onto unexpected roads. Each has led to this angel-kissed daughter.

"Let's get some ice cream," I say. And, arm in arm, we leave the dresses for another day, for June 28 when she will begin a new life.

In a perfect dress.

Twenty Seconds of Insane Courage

Anyone who knows me knows that I love journals. Give me a place to pen my thoughts, and I am a happy camper. Over the years, students and colleagues have given me any number of beautiful journals. Some, like the one made of red leather, I have considered too beautiful to mar with my sometimes erratic thoughts. Most of the time, I use a plain old spiral notebook (although I am getting better at using more elegant journals, so keep giving them!). Today, my daughter gave me a special journal.

The purpose of this little journal--which will slip neatly into my purse--is to remind me that it takes only "twenty seconds of insane courage" to change your life. The quote, in case you don't recognize it, comes from the movie We Bought a Zoo, which we watched on Thursday during another one of the endless snow days winter has given us this year. We liked the line so much that Bonnie and I, with career decisions to make, both posted it on Face Book.

Bonnie's decision will keep her in the same school and is, in that regard, a bit simpler than mine but still important to her. Mine could have far-reaching consequences. I am thinking, quite seriously, of leaving my full time job and spending more time on writing and building a tutoring service for adults.

For me to do such a thing is insane. It is ludicrous. But the idea has nagged at me for several years. In fact, all the way back to the summer I spent with the Pennsylvania Writing and Literature Project, writing for six intense weeks in a modular classroom parked on the lot of West Chester University's Bull Center.

It was the first time I really shared my writing with anyone. I'd always liked to write and thought I was pretty good at it. But it never occurred to me that I had actual talent. There, in that hot trailer back in 1998, I heard colleagues say it again and again: "You are so good! Why aren't you a published writer?"

Why? Why, indeed. Because I am and have always been the good girl. Because, since before 1998, I have had to deal with an unstable husband and three children who needed me. Because I was afraid of failure. Because teaching is an acceptable career path and writing is unreliable. Because--I'll just say it--I lacked the courage.

Yet, since 1998, I have done many things that required a great amount of courage. I have spent fourteen years supporting my chronically ill husband, both financially and emotionally, in his complex recovery from a car accident in 2000. I have waited out 26 surgeries, several of which held his life in the balance. I have raised my three kids, practically alone, and all have graduated from college and none are felons. I have lost my beloved mother to a stroke and seen my daughter through the heart-break of a divorce. I have lost jobs and found jobs and worked far too many jobs. And, along with doing all of that, I have earned my graduate and post-graduate degrees, battled the vision problems caused by kertaconus, and found that along with a genuine love of teaching, I have a passion--a gift--for teaching adult students.

And, almost as a post-script to the above long list, I have written and published two books. Which, I am happy to say, people seem to love.

But I am still trying to find those twenty seconds of insane courage.

For years, I have told my adult students that they can choose, at any point in time, to change their lives and choose a different path. But I have continued to travel the same path, letting only circumstances divert me, but never stepping off.

I plod along, making ends meet but not ever really getting ahead, making a difference but always feeling as if I could do more, wanting more from life and more from myself. But, good girl that I am, I tell myself to just be grateful for what I have.

But today, on our way to Michael's to buy yarn because eight bins of yarn certainly means that we need more, I told Bonnie I was continuing to pray about her decision at work. Then she, daughter of my heart, told me this:

"Mom, you have so much to offer the world. I don't think even you know how special you are, how talented you are. And, yes, you can continue teaching full time and part time and taking on extra classes and you will make a difference in the lives of your students and your faculty. For some people, for most people, that would be enough.

"But you," she continued," are gifted. I see it. Everyone sees it. Take the chance, Mom. Be the writer you know you can be, that I know you can be. Set up your business and write and trust God. For just twenty seconds, be insanely courageous."

Later, at the check-out, she gave me this little journal with its telling message: At any given moment you have the power to say, "This is NOT how the story ends."

"This," she said to me, "is a place for you to keep those insane moments."

Two years ago, a new friend introduced to me Julia Cameron's book, The Artist's Way. A line from the book continues to reverberate with me: Step out and the net will appear.

 So, here is the question: Do I have enough talent, enough pure insanity, to put less of myself into taking on more and more work to provide a few more dollars, or do I put more of myself into what I feel I am called to do? Can I step out and trust in the net?

What is said about insanity is true, I think, You get it from your kids. I am getting mine, those twenty insane seconds, from my daughter.