April 2023 Newsletter
My daughters each sent me pictures of bright red cardinals that they saw out in nature this week (and by nature, I mean in Chicago and St. Paul). They knew this would make me happy. I believe it made them happy to see them. My mother, their grandmother, taught us to get excited about birds. She wasn’t a birder/birdwatcher. But she knew enough, we have her bird books on our kitchen table for quick identification. I even have an APP! I can take a picture of a bird with my phone and it will tell me what it is or I can record its song and the APP will identify it for me. It is VERY exciting!
I miss my mom. This happens when my daughters remind me that I am like her. I do things that she would do, i.e., the whole bird thing. Sometimes I smile like her. My Facebook picture is a smile my mom would have smiled. They also tell me I smell like her—we both wear patchouli. My daughter, after she came back from England, said our house smelled like grandma and grandpa’s house. This I found alarming. I did not like the smell of my parents’ house. I think this means our house smells like old people spit. I will need to work on this.
I am aware that I am aging. I am not yet a grandmother, but I certainly could be, we just had our children late. I just reconnected with a friend from college and we realized that last time we had been in contact with each other was more than 34 years ago. College doesn’t seem that long ago, but it is and it is very likely I will not live another 34 years. Certainly, in some ways, this is very sobering.
But as a person of faith, especially around Easter time and Spring time, I am not worried about my mortality—my earthly life ending. I do miss my mom, but then a couple cardinals show up on my phone, gifts from my children and I feel my mother is still delighting in life, my life, her life, the life of my children. There is peacefulness, not a sorrow.
I do not know for sure what the line is like between the eternal and the earthly, but I do describe it as a thin line – one that Jesus was able to cross on Easter morning. It is the promise of Easter morning that both thrills me and brings me deep peace—like that feeling of swinging on a swing—as your swing goes up toward the sky you feel that thrill inside of you and as it swings back low toward the earth, your stomach falls back down into place and you feel that peace. It is like that, Easter is—life is earthly and eternal and it all makes sense. Thanks be to God!