"Nowhere else I'd rather be..."

"I'm runnin' down that mountain pass at midnight,
Those truckers they all flash their lights at me.
This highway ain't the very best companion,
'cause I know there's somewhere else I'd rather be..."

I love Dan Fogelberg. Over the past few decades, his High Country Snows album has been my companion on many a drive through the winding, narrow roads that criss cross the Rocky Mts.   And it was the first few lines, from his song, "Mountain Pass," that tried to be the soundtrack during one difficult late night drive, a couple of weeks ago.

My girlfriends and I had driven from camp, over Independence Pass, through Aspen, and up in to one of the most beautiful  high valley pastures I've ever seen for a polocrosse match my daughters, one friend's husband, and a handful of our beloved counselors and campers were competing in that weekend. 

The drive up was glorious.  Absolutely perfect...in every way.  Cloud-dappled Colorado blue skies, shimmering mountain lakes, the underflash of aspen leaves scattering light across the loam-rich forest floor.   Tears fell listening to Carrie Underwood's "How Great Thou Art," on Linda's ipod, and the scent of August's promise...cooler September days, aspen golds, sweaters, and hot cocoa were palpable in the air.

Once at the tournament, we were smitten...lost in the day.  Riders from Australia, Alburquerque, Durango, and beyond.  The dance of horse and rider...more intimate than a tango.  Old friendships, new acquaintances that would someday be old friendships.  The laughter of teens who share a love for horses and competition, the whinnying of horses who love "the game," and can't wait to parry on the field.  And the greenest grass I've ever seen inviting us to "relax, lie back, close your eyes and listen, stay...."   So we did. 

By the time we left we'd enjoyed watching our kids (and Lach) scrimmage in more than a dozen chukkas.  The fast-paced, precise, extraordinarily beautiful choreography of horse and rider...spinning, racing, turning on a dime, dipping to retrieve the ball, tearing down the field, cutting in front of an opponent...it took my breath away.  And all this without eating any of the ubiquitous dust that flavored every other polocrosse tournament I've been to.   Heavenly.  Sigh. 

By the time we tore ourselves away...riders still on the field playing as the sun turned the sky a shade of lavender-tinged salmon...we were wondering why we had to go.  oh yes, work...we reminded ourselves.

A quick dinner in Aspen, and we'd be "home" by midnight.  The food was great, and an hour later we hopped into the car under a quilted black sky scattered with a million stars.  It was going to be a lovely, cool ride back down the mountain...

Not.

I was the one I'd designated to do the driving, and it didn't take long before I was so ill I could barely speak.  This highway was not a good companion...at all.  Dancing headlights, shimmering snow reflectors, endless switchbacks....I wasn't doing so well.  A couple of emergency stops along side of the road helped...a bit, but there was a part of me that groaned inside, "I can't go one more mile, what if we just stopped here, and slept until the sun comes up?" 

But it was Linda's sharing of Carrie Underwood's beautiful How Great Thou Art," that afternoon, and her and Maree's clear love for God, and their trust in His love for me, that kept me going.  I knew, with all my being, that they were praying for me...and I could feel it.  I could truly feel their prayers, their love, their willingness to laugh with me.  And I could feel it more viscerally than I could feel the nausea or dizziness.  So I focused that, on actually feeling their love...which I knew, with all my heart, was an expression of God's love...and before we reached home, it was all I could feel. 

And you know what? Right where the highway didn't seem like the very best companion, I was already surrounded by the very best friends I could hope to be loved by.  Their love was all I needed to remember that the day was blessed, and all was well.

Thank you Linda and Maree...and thank you God...how great Thou art! 

There is nowhere else I'd rather have been that night.

It was the best!! 

Kate

"It's all coming back to me now...."

"...Why do I keep on suffering this carpool?
Even when I've had enough
of being the world's fool
'Cuz she knocks me out;
she fills up my heart
She's my everything;
my shining star
Oh yeah, it's all coming back to me now..."
- Tracy Newman

  Tracy Newman is a renaissance woman -- folk singer/songwriter, screenwriter, and sister of 70s Saturday Night Live regular Laraine Newman -- her songs blend funny, with meaningful, in a way that resonates with me. A friend's recent Facebook posting of an article about her career, led me to Tracy's song. "It's All Coming Back to Me Now"  It's the perfect keynote for a follow-up post to last Thursday's "Come with What's in Your Heart" below (scroll down to the September 18th post on this blog).

I love Tracy's music, her courage (can you imagine being a successful screenwriter and then putting yourself out there as a singer?),and her humor (not that I believe in the genetics of humor).  But this song took me on a quick journey through maternal comraderie, head-shaking recall, parental "oh my gosh, that's exactly what it felt like", and right back to maternal tears of joy.

One of my daughter's happiest days...the day she drove off with a new driver's license and her own wheels...was one of the saddest for me.  Don't get me wrong, I actually loved helping her learn to drive...she was a natural from the start, I celebrated when she and her dad walked through the front door -- her new driver's license clutched in her hand, and I loved having her spell me as a second driver on road trips.  But the day she had her own keys and wasn't sitting up front, next to me...either driving or riding...was a relationshift turning point I didn't see coming.  It wasn't that I wanted to keep her dependent on me for transportation or that I wanted to control her activities. 

I missed her.

Pure and simple.  I missed her company, her laughter, her voice, her music...her friends in the backseat.  I missed those nights when we'd almost arrived at our own driveway after vollyball practice and she would urge me to get back on the highway, or "just keep driving" around and around the neighborhood,  until we'd finished talking about something important...or not, or a favorite song on the radio had finished playing. 

My favorite car...ever...was a very old Jeep with a big bench-style front seat. It was a big truck of a car, the paint was sun-damaged and the gas mileage was probably in the single digits, but I loved it because when my daughter and I would drive around town or take short road trips into the mountains, she would move into the center section of the seat, put the seatbelt around her waist and lie down with her head on my lap as I drove with one hand on the wheel and the other smoothing blonde tendrils away from her forehead as she dozed off to whatever was playing on the radio.  Those were the days before passenger airbags and shoulder belts...at least in that car...and I loved our relationship within that old Jeep.

When our daughter started driving herself...from here to there and back again...I thought I'd lost something irreplaceable...forever.  Until one day I came upon a favorite statement by Mary Baker Eddy from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures:

"A mother's affection cannot be weaned from her child, because the mother-love includes purity and constancy, both of which are immortal.  Therefore maternal affection lives on under whatever difficulties."

I'd long loved this statement, especially in light of Eddy's own experience as a mother who'd had her young son taken from her care (because of her frail health and then discovered his caregivers has taken him far away from her) with her husband and father's permission.   My reduced "car time" with my daughter was nothing compared with Eddy's isolation from her beloved son.  And yet she could confidently encourage mothers to claim the immortality of maternal affection under any difficulty through her prose, poems, and spiritual songs.   I realized that I, too, could find other ways to enjoy closeness with my daughter...texting, a shared journal, asking her to take me places, playing Apples to Apples with our friends -- hers and mine -- at a nearby Starbucks over Christmas break. 

These exercises in stretching my heart's ability to embrace her closely, even though she wasn't in the seat next to me, was essential preparation for the day she would fly off to South Africa for a summer visit that would turn into three years of her living 10,000 miles away with only my annual two-week visit to see her face and look in her eyes while she told stories or we laughed together. I learned too learned to pour my prayers out in poems and songs, to write stories of her childhood (like this one), and to send my love through the whatever technology I had at hand.

Love is spirirual, it is not geographical.  It cannot be contained within the cubic square footage of a car, a house, or the borders of a country. 

If you still have children that need a ride here, there, or anywhere...and back again...enjoy it, soak it in, bask in the sweetness of it.  The day will come when you will miss the sound of their laughter from the backseat, their music on the radio, and their questions and stories that you hope will never end....while you drive around and around just to hear their voice over the hum of the engine, above the underscore of a turned down radio, and in the glow of the dashboard lights. 

And when they do get behind the wheel of their own car, on a plane to fly off to a country far, far away, or close the door of their dorm room once you've fluffed the last pillow, hugged them too long, and reminded them to call...often... before leaving campus after dropping them off for the beginning of the new semester, remember, "a mother's affection cannot (not "ought not) be weaned from her child." It will make it easier...not easy, but easier...we promise. 

Thanks Mary...
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

My friend Cliff sent along this song by Trace Atkins, "You're Goona Miss This"  as an addendum to this post...thanks  Cliff...I can always count on you to bring your sweet, gentle heart to everything you see, read, do.  Love you, Kate

"Goodnight you moonlight ladies..."

"Goodnight you moonlight ladies
Rock-a-bye, sweet baby James
Deep greens and blues are the colors I choose
Won't you let me go down in my dreams
And rock-a-bye my sweet baby James..."
-James Taylor
"Sweet Baby James"

It occurred to me as I was driving home from Tulsa, well before dawn on Tuesday, that although lullabies are most generally associated with mommies, it is the voice of a father...a man, that I hear when I listen to the inner songsmith singing me to sleep in the dark. 

This surprised me greatly.  Every single night of my childhood, my own mommy sang us to sleep with a series of lullabies and hymns.  The same songs in the same order...night after night.  I repeat this tradition every night with my own daughters. And yet, when I thought about listening to the comforter within, his voice was, to me, clearly...well..."his."

Because of an earlier commitment I had made to myself, I was listening to no radio/CDs while alone in the car so that I could enjoy more silence each day.  I knew this would give me over 7 hours of quiet listening to examine the character and nature of the voice that speaks to me as consciousness...its tone and timbre, its strength and intonation.  And as I listened, I discovered that it was actually quite genderless.  It was strong, yet gentle.  It was musical, but not sing-songy.  It was soothing, but not hypnotic...in fact, it was rather invigorating while still bringing great comfort.  It was a glorious 7 hours that stretched into 13, as I stopped in rest areas over and over again to climb into the back seat and just close my eyes and listen with more focused attention.

I love the "voice" of God.  It is why, from the time I was a small child even till today, I have often thought that I could be perfectly happy living in a small darkened, silent space (like the cell lived in by Audrey Hepburn in "A Nun's Story") alone with my thoughts.  My family well knows that the opportunity to lie perfectly still for a moment (or hour) of non-sentience is a mini-retreat for me.  The perfect kind of spa. 

It is in these moments of total self-surrender to "the Voice" that the most remarkable insights and ideas occur.  And they don't just come and go,  leaving me with a return to silence.   They come and unite in community,  building on one another...angel upon angel...bringing new gifts to build on the one that has already been shared...morphing into even fresher, every evolving viewpoints, perspective, answers...and even more wonderfully...they result in more questions.   It is almost as if I am watching a team of angel gardeners planting, tending and harvesting a mental time-lapse garden in the space of a divine moment...or two.

My drive home was filled with "the Voice" waking me to "new and glorified views" of Her place in my heart, His presence in the desires of those I love, Their Father-Mother parenting in the lives of children of all ages...everywhere.  

Enjoy JT's video of "Sweet Baby James" a lullaby he sings and tells the story of writing one night as he drove from New England to North Carolina to meet his namesake nephew.  I think he must have been surrounded by a host of angels that night, don't you?  And thankfully, we've all enjoyed the blessing of the garden-song he harvested for over 40 years now.  I'm not thinking he was just driving along, chilling, and listening to the radio that night...he gave space to "the Voice" and what he heard was divine.

with Love,
Kate