Looking Up
Looking Up: 15 September 2022
Well, here it is 8:30 p.m. and I’m finally able to sit down to consider this month’s blog. You’d think I’d learn by now to plan ahead, and sometimes I do. Sometimes, like this month, it’s a minor miracle that I post anything at all. In the blog preview I wrote about looking up, and I have looked up all month.
The clouds have been gorgeous towers of cumulus and vast cirrus bunting. It’s helped me to look up, to change my field of view, because work is really crazy right now and at home we’re living in the midst of a major renovation. Outside looking up helps me with both time and space perspective. Bonus: no drywall dust. Downside: clouds of mosquitoes. They hunt me with an infuriatingly particular passion.
There were remarkably few mosquitoes in Montreat this summer, which we later determined was because of the colony of bats living in an attic space. We employed an ingenious one-way trap that allowed them to leave the attic but not return, but I wish I could have relocated that colony to a perfect Greenville backyard tree.
Instead, the mosquitoes chase me inside and invariably I bark my shin on some piece of furniture taking up temporary residence in an unfamiliar place. The rustling swags of plastic sheeting distribute the drywall dust over every surface and into every crevice, despite Mark’s heroic daily cleaning efforts. The dust and construction noise drives me back to the mosquitoes.
One lovely, cool morning this week I jogged past a line of neighborhood Magnolias and noticed a single creamy blossom gleaming from the top of one tree. The rest of that tree, and all the other trees, were busy setting the beautiful red seeds for next year. I keep thinking about that blossom.
Is it a fool’s errand, a foolish virgin burning through all her oil instead of saving some for when the long-awaited master arrives? (Matthew 25) Or had Jesus recently wandered by and commanded the tree to flower out of season, and the faithful Magnolia grandiflora delivered, unlike the fig tree in Matthew 24? Maybe it’s a grandiflora middle-finger to those who would dictate her flowering by the atomic clock. Maybe she just can’t keep from singing her praises in the ways she knows how to sing.
Looking up prompts these mental meanderings that entertain and soothe my overloaded brain.
Among the thoughts crowding my brain like temporary furniture are plans for Emma’s birthday. I often feel like I need to fasten a seatbelt before asking Emma questions.
She’s almost 10 and takes birthdays very seriously. We do not share this trait. It is always with trepidation that I ask her, as I did last week, “what do you want for your birthday?” She did not disappoint. “Well,” she said, settling in for a good, long chat, “first off I want to paint the galaxy on my ceiling, ‘cause you know I’m really into the galaxy.” She is, but in more of a Pinterest way than, say, a Neil deGrasse Tyson way. Much to my chagrin.
“And then,” she continued, “there are the lights.”
“So…” I wedged myself into the dreamscape, “first off….just, no. You’re not going to paint the galaxy on your ceiling. But maybe we can do something. Tell me about the lights.”
We spent a fair chunk of Sunday afternoon perusing the multitudinous aisles of Amazon. I slipped in some advanced math as we calculated supply lists (let me show you this video about the Pythagorean theorem).
Our purchases arrived yesterday and tonight we commenced, stopping only when I needed a drink and could no longer put off writing this essay. Galaxy tapestry double-sided-taped above the bed. Multicolor LED lights with remote control affixed to the perimeter walls. Hypotenuse fairy-lights yet to be installed. I told her it was okay that the galaxy tapestry was a little wrinkled because the fabric of space time is warped by gravity as per Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. She might have heard me but was more interested in using the remote to make the LED lights change color in an almost seizure-inducing pattern.
The best part was having some time with her. Well, the best best part was not having to do the day’s dishes. Mark took one for the team on that chore. I’m so sick of doing (and breaking) dishes in the bathtub. This, too, shall pass.
And when things feel a little overwhelming, we can look up. Maybe there’s a defiant Magnolia blazing her faith from the treetop. Maybe there’s a cloudscape reminiscent of your childhood. Maybe there’s the gravitational pull, or just the starry reminder, of a parent’s love.
