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  • 02.21.2008 Mom, A Leader?
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    We watched a video at Mom’s “Celebration Service,” and in it there was a clip of she and I playing musical chairs with a lot of little Russian women. We were on a mission trip there, and you would think that Mom and I would have tried to enhance international relations by letting one of them win the silly game. But NO! Leave it to a couple of competitive Americans to push their butts (literally) out of the chairs we wanted to claim as our own. It came down to Mom, me and a little wooden chair, and Mom was the one wiggling her feet in the air in victory. It wasn’t this competition that threw me into a sobbing fit at that service, it was the brief moment after the competition ended. I doubt that anyone else would have even noticed, but for a brief moment after Mom popped up out of her victor’s seat, she walked up to me, laughing so hard she was bending over, and I leaned towards her and cupped her face in my hands. That was it. That one little motion summed up the complicated dynamic of our relationship.

    First, it showed our intimate friendship. It’s not just anyone that you feel comfortable enough to hold their face in your hands as you both laugh hysterically. We were both completely comfortable in our skin with each other. Secondly, and much more difficult to define, it showed the blurred line we walked in the relation of mother to daughter. Normally, you would think that it would have been the Mom, holding her little girl’s face in her hands, but that wasn’t always the case with us.

    I think that, of all my sisters, I am probably the most like my Dad. I believe that Mom picked up on this early and in many small ways would turn to me for direction in his absence. Things like, “Abby, I don’t really need this new white shirt that looks just like 4 other ones that I already have, do I?” Or, “Abby, you’re in charge of your sisters while I run do A, B, C, D, AND E, Ok?” I think Dad must have noticed too, because whenever we went shopping, he would always either give me the credit card, or whisper to me that I was in charge of keeping Mom from purchasing the whole store for us. Never was her need for direction more apparent than when we would travel. “Mom, why do you start to get off at every exit we pass?” “I don’t know, Abby, but you just tell me when I’m supposed to get off.” It’s hard to express in words, but the general feeling I had when I was with Mom was–You’re with me. I trust you completely. Now, let’s just go.

    I’ve laughed inside many times over the past few months when people have expressed their condolences by saying, “Your Mom was just such an amazing leader.” I know what they meant, but in the strictest sense of the word Mom was simply not a leader. What Mom was, was a person who radiated joy so strongly that people wanted to be around her. Wherever she was headed, they were ready to go too, and in that sense she was a leader of people. However, the really beautiful part of Mom–the part that made her extraordinary in these last years of her life, was not her “leadership” but her ability to trust. She had a relationship with the Lord that was so real that she could look to Him, just as she did to me, and say, “You’re with me. I trust you completely. Now, let’s just go.” It was this childlike faith that made her a mighty woman of God that people wanted to follow.

    So, that image that I treasure in my heart, of her laughingly resting her face in my hands, speaks all these things to me. It shows her love for me, our hazily defined relationship, but also her uninhibited joy, which ultimately came from the Lord, and made her a leader of men.


  • 02.18.2008 May I Introduce…The V-Day Ghost and her Goblins
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    I love, LOVE Valentine’s Day. With the exception of Christmas, it is my favorite holiday. There is just something about the idea of a day set aside, simply to celebrate love. There is no other day of the year when you can see a boy leading a blindfolded girl through a hotel lobby and think, “Oh, how sweet!” When this day arrives, I feel like I suddenly have license to be as blatant with my affection as I want to be. When you pair my love for the day, with my love for surprises, the product is what I like to call the V-Day Ghost.

    The ghost originated in February of 2003, when I was engaged to a medical student who had HUGE tests on Valentines day. Refusing to allow my only V-Day as an engaged girl to be wasted, I skipped all my classes, drove to Birmingham and left a series of elaborate signs, embarrassing gifts, and baked goods all along this poor, unsuspecting medical student’s trail. On the front porch when he left the house, outside his testing room, on his car….EVERYWHERE he went he was showered with (embarrassing) signs of my ardent affection. I remember Whitney saying, “It’s a good thing you’ve already got that ring, because if this had happened before you caught him, he would definitely be running away as fast as he could!”

    So, every year as the big day approaches, I start to scheme and Jeremiah starts to worry. Every year he warns me of things that really are NOT appropriate, and the biggest area he’s been afraid that the ghost would strike, is the operating room. Guess where I got him this year?!! I talked to an OR nurse that’s a good friend of his, and I gave her a CD of Jeremiah singing a very beautiful, but very lovey love-song that he wrote. He was standing at the table, cutting away when he heard himself come blaring over the speakers. OH, I wish I could have seen his face! The staff wouldn’t turn it off and they listened to a few more songs on his CD, before they finally sucummbed to his pleadings for mercy.


    I also got the help of my little goblins, and we shoe-polished his car and wrapped pink and white streamers around it. I don’t know if you can tell in the picture above, but there is a very strict dress code for a Valentine’s ghost, and the goblins, on V-Day. Only shades of pink, purple and red are allowed, and the crazier the better. My pants are actually purple below that crazy sweater and pink turtle-neck. Pace is wearing a red Valentines jumper, paired with a pink bow, red galoshes, and some fancy beads we bought just for the occasion. Poor Mary Aplin never got out of her pink striped PJs in the craziness of the day, and she is rocking that red shawl if I do say so myself.

    Pace and I baked heart-shaped cream cheese and chocolate brownies to deliver to her friends across the street. Natalie and Caroline were also embracing the Valentines spirit in some very sassy, heart-covered pants. No, Mary Aplin did not fall off the swing, but it was close.

    Finally, Jeremiah had some surprises of his own on our big love day. I got home around midnight on Valentine’s Eve, and I walked in the door to find our dining room table decorated with rosebuds and camelias from our own yard. He had laid a red tablecloth, brought out our crystal, bought pink toile plates with red silverware, placed candles in a sweet circle within the flowers, strapped heart-shaped balloons to our chairs and stocked the refrigerator with everything needed for a steak dinner for two. While he didn’t get home from a long day in the OR until around 8, we were able to sit down to a quiet meal, with both of our little goblins tucked soundly in their beds, and talk about the fun of loving each other.


  • 02.09.2008 The Chasm
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    After you say goodbye to someone who you love as much as your own life, you begin to categorize the memories that come. The memories of their smile, their love, their everyday person, are something like a gentle rolling into a valley of your life. You dip in for a moment, you feel the dull ache, but then you glide back out–looking over your shoulder for a moment to smile wanly at what you miss. However, the memories of what they said at a particular moment, or how excited they were when they gave you a certain gift, or the warmth of their arms around you at a specific moment of sadness–these specific memories that make it seem as though they were by your side only a moment ago–are the ones that feel like a gaping chasm opening up in your life. It rips open before you, re-shaping the foundation of all you’ve assumed was normal, and you plunge in deep. As you hurtle through the air you find yourself grasping desperately around you, wanting to cling, as if for life, to the ones who’ve been left behind.

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