The Echo of Time

If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. – Dr. Maya Angelou

I opened the garage door and the place was empty. Except for a few naked cabinets lined up against the far wall and beneath the window to my right, the garage was empty from the floor to the rafters. Aside from a couple of stray spider webs, there was nothing to see except a few old water stains from before the roof had been redone.

I’ve never seen the garage or home this way. My folks moved into the house in Federal Way when I was away to college, and so I had never seen it bereft of furnishings, possessions, or the bric-a-brac of life. I expected to hear the echo of footsteps as I stepped into the house from the garage, but it was solidly built, and the carpet absorbed the sound of my sneakers quite well.

My eyes scanned the family room – the “blue room” as we called it – like Doppler radar. There was nothing to see. The television was gone, as were the tables, chairs, doilies, speakers, and everything else that made the room unique to its owner before he’d died.

The ugliest speaker cable you could imagine – the one that snaked its way from the entertainment center, up and over the casements of both the door to the garage and the utility closet, and down again to the back of the room – was gone. It had looked like an anorexic python in both color and form, and now it had slithered away to feed on discarded computer mice at the local landfill.

It’s funny. I had a strange sense of being at home, and yet not being there at the same time. You see, I had never lived in the house in Federal Way, and so it never quite had the feel of home. My childhood memories weren’t there. When people ask where I’m from, I tell them Seattle. If they know the city, I specify Ballard or, more specifically, Crown Hill. That’s where I grew up; that’s where you’d look to find my heart.

It’s in the little Cracker Jack box of a house (about 600 square feet of living space) where I and the rest of our family of six shared life (and one bathroom). It’s where I played stick-ball on the corner with Mark and Roger from across the street, and Jimmy from around the corner. It’s where a kindly neighbor suggested I choke up on the bat as it was a bit too heavy for those noodles I had for arms. Ignoring his advice, I struck out, because I couldn’t admit to myself that perhaps he was right.

Home is where the heart is. Today, my heart is in Mount Vernon. To be honest, I’ve never struggled with heart transplants. I feel at home wherever I go. To put it another way, I’ve always been a sojourner. I’ve never settled down for any great length of time. I’m not exactly a nomad, but I’ve picked up and moved along regularly enough to know that it is best to take one’s heart wherever one goes, so I’ve learned to be at home wherever I am.

So I wandered through the house in Federal Way, now empty of all its stuff. Our family pulled out as much as any of us could, what with each of us having our own households, and we fingered our way through the treasures and mementoes as we came across them. Some we kept. Some we boxed up for storage. Some we delivered to charities and second hand shops. And when we had done what we could, we hired a crew to come in and, out of our sight, dispose of everything else as faithfully and lovingly as only strangers would be able to. They did for us what we could not, or dared not try to do for ourselves.

“In my father’s house are many rooms,” says Jesus. I suspect they will echo until we fill them with the furniture of love, joy, and peace – the same as what God expects us to fill the rooms of our lives with here in this life.

Wait! I do hear an echo; it is the echo of God’s heart beating in this, our valley – our home.

Stumped

“Daydreaming gently of brisk autumn days, of fire colored leaves and fading sun rays.” A.R. (October, Come Soon)

I’ve been spending the past couple of weeks cutting down a birch tree out back in the corner of our yard. It stands about twenty five feet tall, I would guess, and is mostly dead. At least it looks sick to my eye and seems to be negatively impacting another birch that stands next to it. My guess is the people who planted them so many years ago thought they each had plenty of room to branch out, but it was not to be.

I don’t like cutting down trees, to be honest. I like plants, and I like nature (as long as it stays outside – nature I mean. I like nature to stay outside; it’s too dirty to let into the house). In any case, I like to let nature take its course and fill in blank spaces the way God intended. However, this birch drops branches every times there is any breeze, so we’ve got to go out daily and police the grounds. So it seemed the time had come to cut down this tree to make more room for its neighbor to spread its wings.

The job has been pretty easy. One benefit of being retired is I’m in no hurry; as we pay for weekly green-waste bin disposal anyway, I’ve been able to de-limb the tree week by week, working my way up until now I have mostly the main trunk and a few outriggers left to tend to. As I stand back and look, I have a good sense of what needs to be done.

Interestingly, when I get up into the tree (or alongside it on a ladder) I find myself overcome by a sudden case of vertigo, and the task looks more overwhelming than what I can handle. From afar, I am the Little Train that Could. Up close, I find myself just a bit punier than what I’d like to admit to anyone.

And so the tree and I find ourselves in a bit of a standoff. While I like to think of myself as a mostly competent human being, I also know I have what it takes to win the Darwin Award every time I tackle a job for which I am not equipped physically, psychologically, or intellectually. I would love to think I can outwit an inanimate object, but experience suggests otherwise.

Every time I take a shower, I find cuts and bruises about which I have no recollection of acquiring. It is like the world is assailing me from every quarter, and all I’ve got to show for it are dime and penny sized gashes. It seems my skin is getting thinner, while what it contains isn’t. How ironic!

I know the best way to tackle what remains of my recalcitrant birch tree is to simply fell it so I can finish hacking it down to size with my trusty little electric chainsaw (which is, more honestly, a butter-knife with a cord).

The trick is getting it to land where I want it to, as it stands alongside the new fence our neighbor put up, as well as some yard decorations that are immobile, but fragile. I need to think it through before taking that next step.

That is something else I have learned to do in retirement. I’ve learned to take time to think. I know I am capable of over-thinking things, for that’s what I do. Sometimes it leads to the paralysis of analysis, but in reality it saves time in the long run, and that’s what counts.

I can remember being asked by my grandmother to run around the corner from her house to pick up a loaf of bread or quart of milk (back in the days when there were corner groceries owned by locals). I bolted out the door on a mission and was halfway there before realizing I hadn’t waited for my grandmother to give me any money.

My grandmother had an adage for everything. Her response? “Haste makes waste.” She never chastised me or scolded me. Patiently, she would allow me to live and learn, make mistakes and fix them.

I’ll go out on a limb today and suggest that’s good advice for all of us here in this, our valley.