Water From a Rock

I live in New England, and this time of year it's frustrating because the temperature is gradually climbing but not nearly fast enough to make a tangible difference. There's no green grass, no daffodils, no robins, no sound of lawn mowers waking up from their slumber. In fact, it's worse than that. There are still patches of snow on the ground--dirty blotches on brown grass that serve as a cruel reminder of the winter just endured, and they sit there as if to say, "It's not really over, you know. We're still here. And you know what else? It could snow again. Even in April. Don't for a second think it might not."

There's more. This morning on my drive in to work I passed by a craggy rock formation on the side of the road and there were frozen chunks of ice stuck to the rock wall like gobs of glue or waterfalls frozen in time. The ice seems to flow out of the middle of the rock, and I like to pretend that there are little goblins inside the rocks pushing water out of any tiny opening they can find, and the water then transforms to ice when it hits the chilly air of night.

Yes, such scenes remind me that winter is still very much alive in New England, that any hope of the coming of spring must stay just that--a hope. I drive by my son's Little League field and see snow in the outfield and can't even envision a grounder slipping through the second baseman's legs and causing panic all around.

But the other thing I thought of when I saw the ice on the rock was Moses. Moses the unsure leader of that wandering band in the desert; Moses the one who went to God and said, "What am I to do with these people?" Moses who couldn't speak without stuttering. Moses who time after time dealt with quarrelling people and must have wondered what all this wandering was really for. And he does something remarkable: the people are thirsty and at God's command he takes his walking stick and hits a rock with it, and water comes gushing out.

So I see this water gush frozen in time on my way to work this morning in this desert called New England in March, and I realize that I need to have faith like Moses did. At various times I, too, wander in the desert. I, too, grumble and complain and test God. I, too, want to go back to Egypt where there's no economic downturn and housing is affordable and all the children play nicely with each other.

I need to have faith like Moses that spring is in fact just around the bend, that longer, warmer days are coming, that the lilacs will soon burst forth.

Not long after I saw those ice globs clinging to the rock today, I saw something else by the side of the road: crocuses. Small pinpricks barely visible to the naked eye--white, yellow, purple--peeking out to see if anyone's watching, ready to fight back against those bully patches of dirty snow.

Water from a rock indeed.

It's About Time

Time is a funny thing. You can't really make time, even though we say you can. You can't really save time, even though we all try hard and pretend we do with this technology or that convenience. You can't even really spend time, like it's some kind of bizarre currency from outer space, even though we obsess constantly about how we do so. No, time is finite and set and ever-moving, like a motorized exercise wheel in a mouse's cage where the wheel keeps moving no matter how fast or slow the little creature inside wants to go.

I keep trying to sit down to write for this blog, but time keeps slipping by. And I keep thinking: where did the time go since I left the hospital so many weeks ago? What happened? What have I been doing? Well, work, for one. Being a husband and father, for another. In short, as my cousin likes to spell out in slow, deliberate letters, L-I-F-E. Life has happened since I last wrote, and I look at it and marvel at how quickly time seems to pass. Of course, it hasn't passed any faster than those long interminable days of recovery in the hospital. It's just that when we get busy, we forget about the exercise wheel and then we're surprised, shocked even, when we notice that the wheel keeps moving.

When you live with a disability, even one you've had all your life and you've had lots of practice tackling everyday tasks, you realize that time for you is not like time for other people. I have to build in extra time in the morning because it takes me longer to get ready. I have to plan ahead at least a little bit when I do mundane tasks like packing up my bag at the end of the day or going to another part of the building for a meeting. Sometimes I get jealous of other people, "normal people," who don't need to think about time like I do. When I allow myself, I fantasize sometimes about not thinking about time at all and going about my day as oblivious about time as I am about the air I breathe. Oh, how I wish I didn't need to think so much about it, how I wish I could just be rather than think about being late.

And yet. And yet. If I really think about it, the steadiness of time passing is a gift. There is a rhythm and a pattern and a predictability to time that I don't appreciate as much as I should. Time gives space and shape to our lives that allows us to live in freedom, like a fence around a playground that abuts a busy highway. I need to start thanking God for time, maybe even especially when I don't seem to have enough of it. I need to start being grateful for the extra time it takes me in the morning; I need to appreciate more the freedom that the limits of time afford.

It may seem kind of funny to thank God for being behind on a project or late for a party. But that's the paradox of gifts that seem like burdens. If we can become more grateful for the burdens, then maybe--just maybe--they will wrap themselves in colorful paper and disguise themselves as gifts.

Going Home

First, a caveat: the title here is not, so far as I know, a clever metaphor of any kind suggesting anything about my premature demise. Period. I do like metaphors and write with them a great deal--maybe too much. But this one is as literal as it gets. I'm going home. Tomorrow. After almost five interminable weeks. Five weeks of physical therapy and occupational therapy and 5:30 AM vital-signs checks and enduring the food and my family trekking yet once more for a visit and roommates who can't sleep without the TV on and nurses who make me laugh and doctors who show up when they want and 80-year-old patients who stare off in the distance as they tell you about a time when they were young. And that's not even a fraction of what these five weeks have been.

Five weeks, and tomorrow I'm going home.

Home. What a lovely-sounding word. Cliches abound around that word, like a ball made out of rubber bands or a maypole wrapped up in ribbons in the spring. But sometimes cliches are apt because the word is too slippery and somehow cliches give it traction. Home. It's a whispy word that floats around; it's a warm word that glows a little when you say it just right; it's a word that brings to mind waiting and invitation and welcoming all at once. We wait to go home, or home waits for us. We invite someone home, or we are invited to someone else's. We welcome someone home, or home welcomes us.

But as so many others have already said, home is not so much a physical space. Four walls can't wait or invite or welcome. No, it's the people in it that count. It's the sense of place and belonging and rest. The chance to be just you--no pretending, no airs, no sense, really, of yourself at all. At least that's the way it should be.

No wonder going home is a metaphor for heaven.

Metaphors aside, tomorrow I get to see this hospitally place in the rear view mirror, and it will be nice to see it shrink like that. But it's what lies ahead facing forward that excites me, that marvelous and lovely thing coming into view called home.