Coming Up for Air

Forgive me for the long silence. Shortly after the last post, my brother Daniel, who had been suffering from pancreatic cancer, took a turn for the worse. Through the kindness of a friend I was able to visit him once more, in California (I live in Ohio), and on April 29, he reposed. We went to Massachusetts for the funeral and came home and were ungodly sick from all the pollen from the gorgeous trees in bloom around Boston.

I had planned to write about Danny, and then I planned never to write about him, and then I thought of posting a photo of him, with just

“Daniel Norbert McLellan.

1966 – 2026.

IYK,YN”

underneath. None of that seemed right. The words are still simmering. I will share them when they are done. It’s not soup yet.

Back in February I had donned my heavy winter coat and a face mask when we flew to California, and in our haste I left the coat in the hotel room. Danny, still alive and driving then, got it from me and brought it to his house. He sent me a photo of him wearing it and one of the dogs looking jealous. I suspect that later the dog also had a turn wearing it. My sister-in-law mailed the coat to me after the funeral, and I was going to write then, but I couldn’t even bring myself to get the dog hairs cleaned off the coat. It remains in the front hall closet, a decent distant from my husband’s robes. Some day I will do it, but today is not yet that day.

I am working hard at becoming myself again, after losing two siblings in two years, but like losing weight or cleaning the linen closet, it’s taking longer than I thought, and I realize that the self I become next will not be the same as the one who had so many sibling in so many time zones. I still have a brother and a sister left, for whom I am grateful. It just feels a little naked for there to be only three of us.

Meanwhile, life continues around me. God has ways of making me join in.

I was going to wear black for forty says after Danny’s repose, and I had forty days worth of church clothes, but just before Danny’s fortieth day what some of our young parishioners call “the BEST week of the year!” took place, Vacation Church School, I was doing crafts with the children, and I ran out of clean, black play clothes by Thursday. I chose life, and decided that I should be dressed for the job. My heart could be draped in black, but the rest of me had better be machine washable.

Time refused to stop for me, so I tried very hard to get with the program. I volunteered to help at St. Seraphim Camp again, in the kitchen run by pious, talented, and funny adults, some of whom had been the best of the campers, back in the day. I got brave and swam with them once in the rock lined river at night, being swept but not entirely swept away by the current. I saw a bear through my cabin window, which I think is the best way to see one. I was able to connect and pray with friends, and feed people we love. It was heartbalm, and exhausting.

I went to Boston and visited relatives, came home, and Sunday School started up. Our parish’s annual festival is Saturday. and then comes more life. I am working on reading books my friends have written, and throughly enjoyed this one, and am passing it around at church. My doctor and I are wrangling with my blood sugar and I am trying to clean up the house. Work can be healing.

Meanwhile, I wanted to share a moment of serendipity, which is the secular word for flashes of grace.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My sister Suzannah had been worried about me, at one point, and for no occasion at all gave me a very pretty ring for my left hand. She said my right hand has the wedding ring but the left hand needs something, too, and she told me how much it had cost and told me it was okay also if I sold it, if we ever needed money,

Some time around the time she died (two weeks shy of two years ago) I was doing something mucky and I took the ring off and put it someplace so safe that I couldn’t find it again.

Today I was sorting out my medicines and digging throug my desk and I saw it, and I put it back on, and it was transformational. Yes, it made me sad, but also, it shines, and is light, and pretty, and it makes my elderly freckled hand look elegant.

Mind you, she was twenty-four years my junior. But she was concerned, so she did something beautiful about it, to set her heart at east and to make me feel loved.

The feeling loved part remains, as does the ring.

I pray that you have someone who makes you feel loved, and that you can be that person for someone else.

May God bless all our endeavors.

Clean Week

During Lent, we look behind the pleasant facade of order and address what lies behind it.

Oy.

Great Lent has begun. In the Orthodox Church, the first week of the fast is called “Clean Week” as we begin by abstaining from meat, dairy, eggs, and even fish, and we “clean” our lives from the secular distractions which encumber us. However, I didn’t know until I was an adult that some families also have the custom of cleaning everything in the house this week.

This is the week to remove wax from your favorite black dress, to mend the sofa cushions to address blatant and latent messes, and to set aright all that is in disorder. (Um, see above.)

My husband is a clergyman and I sing, so the linen closet will not be set aright this week. The services are more important. But just as we root out the sins that have stained our souls for so long that they feel like decor, we pick away at the things that defile and distract. I recently visited family in California, and I wore the woolen jumper with wax stains because I knew the hotel would have an iron and I would have the time to work on it. When I came home it was wicked cold and I accidentally left my coat at the hotel, so I was glad to have brought the dress and was glad to have had the chance to fix it.

Just are our homes have the stalagmites of things we had hoped to put in order, our lives have similar “drop and dash” places — the friend we need to call, the visit we need to make, the unwritten thank you notes. There are offenses we need to lay aside and things that we have done wrong and need to try to address and, if God grants, remedy. The Forgiveness Sunday vespers are only a beginning.

So. I made peace with a friend, my husband and I brought the boxed Christmas ornaments down to the cellar. I swept and mopped the stairs, and we skipped “Tasting History” and “Jeopardy” till next week and we spent the time together. I started re-reading spiritual books I had abandoned and made arrangements to fill all my prescriptions and set my medicines in order. These are the little things that turn out to be big.

Also, I prepared the kitchen for Lent following the rules of the church and now am preparing it for Pascha. Before Lent stars, we eat everything the week of the Publican and Pharisee to remember not to be proud of our fasting  but to reach out to God in repentance for our sins. The next week is the last normal week for two months. Then we have a week where we can have everything but meat, all week long, to use up all the eggs and dairy. Then Lent begins in earnest. But during the weeks of preparation for Great Lent, I also prepared the pantry, buying less or no meat, and purchasing pantry staples and vegan treats for Lent a little each grocery trip. I comparison shopped for lentils and beans, made sure we had guacamole and Vegenaise, and bought potatoes to boil for the first day for my husband, since when he was in seminary all they had the first few days of the fast were boiled potatoes and black tea.

But now while we are keeping vegan, we’re also getting ready for the Feast. So tomorrow’s grocery order will contain sugar free beef jerky for our Easter baskets and a pound of butter, both on sale. I made sure to buy onions so I will have onion skins to dye my eggs. The mesh bag held to the refrigerator by magnets will fill gradually over the next six weeks.

This is the time to notice what we have overlooked. It is a time to brave the mildew in the dishwasher and the disorder of the towels. It is time to sort out our thoughts, discarding those that are unworthy and unkind. It’s time to clear the counters and throw out the expired sauces and foods.

But it is also time to anticipate the feast of feasts. Mothers quietly look at their children’s clothes to figure out what to buy for Pascha. Talented people embroider basket covers, while those of us who can’t do that are content to go look for and dust off the baskets.

In our lives, things accumulate. Things we meant to do. Things we meant to fix. Things of which we had hoped to rid ourselves. Great Lent is our chance to do this.

More important, of course, is to be in church and participate in the cycle of services that repeats each year. At the beginning of the fast, it is cold and dark. We trudge to church and stand even though everything hurts from Sunday’s forgiveness vespers, with people bowing and asking and granting forgiveness to their neighbors.

As the fast continues, the earth warms, the flowers appear, and our bodies adjust both to the change in diet and to the physical exertions. We hope to approach our Lord’s Resurrection leaner and cleaner, relieved of the burden of the resentments and judgements we had carried around with us.

But, it’s like we’re butterflies. A butterfly cannot see its back, doesn’t know that those itchy things it cannot scratch are emergent wings. The caterpillar is in a stinky dark place that seems like it will always be home.

If we do this right, we will be free. We might not know it, but we will be able to give joy to others through our lightness and beauty. And we will be able to soar, at least in our hearts, taking in the sweetness of flowers and flitting to kiss each other sand say, “Christ is Risen!”

But today is cold and bleak and church will take place after dark. We wear black. I am getting old, my legs get cold, and I have been wearing leggings and even sweatpants under my black skirts and dresses so I don’t shout, “Leg cramp! Leg cramp!” during the service. It looks like I’m praying in goth Salwar suit. But that’s okay.

I am convinced (and this took years) that God loves me anyway.

As the we near Pascha, the fabrics will become lighter, I will lose layers, and on the Feast itself, all the colors that have been suppressed will be freed, as we have been also.

Come to church, as you can, when you can, as often as you can.

Be part of the trek.

Make yourself a joyous space in mind, soul, and body, for the joy of Christ’s victory over death. The individual steps are not exactly fun. But they produce joy in the long run.

What a joy it will be, to behold the resurrection of the Lord!

Back Down the Rabbit Hole, or No One Gets to Narnia the Same Way Twice

This is a prayer request of sorts.

Glory be to God for all things.

My beloved dermatologist no longer takes my insurance, and at my March check-up she informed me that I had to see someone who was in our plan about what I had thought was a skin tag on my back.

There are not enough dematologists on my insurance, and the only way I could get an appointment this year was by signing on with the younger sister for a dermatology practice. The sister would be joining the practice in the fall and they could fit me in on November 10.

She was very young, very blond, and asked if it was okay if she had an even younger medical student observe also. It was fine. Someone has to break in the next generation. Both of them agreed that the skin tag was actually basal cell carcinoma, and what was that thing on my face?

The thing on my face was new, and I assumed it was from my CPAP machine. The doctor and the student agreed that it probably wasn’t, and asked her older sister to come in and verify.

The sister, also very young and blond and enthusastic, agreed that it also was probably basal cell and they biopsied both places and without so much as a “by your leave” took out something that looked (and felt!) like a small blowtorch for making, say, creme brulee, and froze what she said was a pre-cancerous spot on my arm.

I asked how hard it would be to treat these. About the thing on my back, she said, “Oh, that’s easy. We’ll scrape it and burn it three times and it will be gone!”

Um, okay. And the face?

“For the face, you will need another MOHs procedure, but it’s a much smaller spot and you might not need a skin graft. We can just pinch it shut and stitch it.”

Easy peasy lemon squeasy, if it isn’t your body.

The biopsies both confirmed that the doctor was right and on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving they will do the thing to my back. This could have been a disaster, but one son and daughter-in-law are coming to drive us to the home of another son and daughter-in-law for a multi-family feast. I will not have to do anything but be there, and while I probably won’t be able to lift for a while, there will be many people who can drape the grandbabies over me as I sit and observe meal prep.

I find out about the face next week. I’ve asked to work with the same doctor as before, because she was thorough.

As cancers go, this is probably the easiest. It’s in places that I can discuss, the treatment is swiftly forthcoming, and I trust this doctor and the ones I had before. As I have said so often about other matters, worse things have happened to better people.

I feel like I had to explain because I’ve been walking around with a bandage on my face and my clothing options post-procedure might be, um, liberating. Frankly, I had noticed that, now that I am sixty-two and a half, the skin on my face hangs looser than I would like. So, a subsidized partial face lift that also rids me of cancer sounds like a Very Good Idea, indeed.

I am grateful that it was found, I am grateful that there is something that they can do about it, and I am and ever will be grateful for your prayers. Good thing there is so much of me that they can cut!

Awakening (Rude?)

Please swallow your beverage and put the cup down before reading.

Thank you.

(For those who don’t know, my husband is Fr. George. In the Orthodox Church a man should be either married or a monastic prior to ordination. When I went to see my brother his first year in seminary, I met his friend George. My brother, before his repose, became a monk. And my now husband joined the ranks of the married clergy. He wears hearing aids. I use a CPAP machine so I can breathe at night. Usually, this is a good thing. We have adult children and adorable grandchildren but they live in their own homes, and our house is quiet until I am awake and have had coffee. At one point I had been a choir director, and I still sing. You are all caught up.)

Well, glory be to God for all things. I survived waking up this morning. I had been up late working on something and needed to sleep some more after morning prayers. Fr. George came to wake me at the time I had requested, but I was having a really beautiful dream in which we owned a dog and I was drinking tea on the beach while the dog was doing dog frolicking things, and I fell back asleep again. On the third attempt, Fr. George spoke a little bit louder (not shouting) and I startled so badly that I sat bolt upright, knocking the CPAP machine to the floor. The mask and hose hung from my face. Not my first rodeo (yes, I have done this before, sometimes while singing “Do, la, fa” for an invisible choir), and so I knew what was going to happen next.

My husband does not wear his hearing aids when I am not nearby, as it is more comfortable to function without him. So when I said, “Oh, no, water is getting into the hose! I’m going to have to take it off and shake it over the tub so the water doesn’t go into my nose,” he heard, “Please help me and pick the machine up high.”

Which thing he did.

Water from the chamber went up my nose (I was looking up in horror, so the water was running down but my nose was turned up. My parents were right. Never turn up your nose at people!). There was a sort of lavage effect. Frankly, I had been a little congested from the leaf meal and pollen outside and the dust we are fighting inside. So, when I whipped off the mask and poured the water from it onto the floor, I also had to empty the water from my nostrils Handy box of tissues to the rescue.

My husband was frozen in silent horror at all this until I began laughing and he began apologizing.

It was time, really, to clean the machine, and boy howdy am I awake now. And I am no longer in any way congested.

I don’t recommend this treatment to everyone (always check with your doctor first), but my late brother was an advocate of the neti pot, and now, all these years of skepticism later, I have to admit that he may have been on to something after all.

Good morning, dear world full of beautiful leaves and people.

I am alive.

I am joining your day, already in progress.

Dulce Est Desipere in Loco

“A little nonsense, now and then,
Is relished by the wisest men!”

Horace. Carmina. Bk. iv. Ode 12, 1. 27

“Annie,” my husband said, “if you don’t mind me asking, why did you order thirty rubber flying dinosaurs?” I had been very excited about my discovery, and showed him the web page from which I had ordered.

“The question,” I told my him, “is not why I ordered thirty flying rubber dinosaurs. The question is why I did not order sixty.” And so I changed my order.

My husband had been perplexed by both my choice and my enthusiasm. But, life has been challenging (and beautiful) with deaths and illnesses and problems (and miracles and trips to see people we love and beautiful gifts from unexpected places), and I just needed a reset.

Adding to this need was that between church feasts and school vacations, we had gone several weeks without Sunday School. Further, my husband and I were both sick for the annual Yolka, a Christmas pageant cum celebration for all the youth of the parish with songs, dances, and gifts. Watching the Facebook videos from home was both a comfort and a sorrow. On the upcoming Sunday, we would be back at church again, all healthy, and there would still be no Sunday School, because of school vacations, and it was going to be too cold to go outside, even for our Russian kids, who dress for the weather, and our American kids, whom we have to remind to wear shoes and a coat.

Test Run

My order arrived and I was rather excited to open the pouch and try the new toy. My husband came into my office to see what I was laughing about and I handed him one and showed him how to use it. He shot one up to the textured ceiling, where it stuck, briefly, and then landed on my head. He was utterly delighted and understood my pleasure but asked, “What are you going to do with that many of them?

I have many relatives, and many godchildren, and many grandchildren, so surely I will send some to them. But the most obvious answer was to bring them to church to share with the children, which is where the bulk of them went.

“BBNB”

In this latter portion of my life I have developed an acroymn which saves me from some (but surely not all) trouble — BBNB. It stands for “bez blagoslovenia nje budu,” meaning, “without a blessing I won’t do it.” Also, you can’t slip sixty flying rubber dinosaurs into church without somebody noticing. So I asked our rector for a blessing to bring the dinosaurs to church and share them with the children. I had planned to get them for the Yolka, but we had been sick that week, and besides, that was joyous and rauccous enough without this. Each day deserves its own blessings. Fr. D. may have been perplexed but he blessed me to bring them to church the following Sunday.

It was the perfect day for this. Most of the local young adults who had started college were still home for the break, and most of the big families that were temporary reunited were in church. After the Liturgy we have trapeza, a family style meal, and usually we have Sunday School and even adult Sunday School after. One of the things that I love about our parish is that the children are loved and have many things to do. There was a playground on the blueprints for the church. Our children stay in church for as long as they can and when they need a break their parents can take them to the hall, where the service is livestreamed. After church, many of them help with cleaning the wax off the floor. We have Sunday School once the teachers have had lunch, and after, the children are free to play. In good weather, the cbildren can go out to the playground and the older children can walk to the larger park behind the church property, where there are several playgrounds and a zip line. That allows the adults to talk, either in peace at the table or while watching their collective children. We often have Adult Sunday School in both Russian and English after the children’s lessons are launched.

But this week it was bitterly cold. The young adults went up to the choir, where the littles are forbidden as they have been known to eat all the cough drops. The youngest children played with toys and the oldest of the young boys were huddled in a corner discussing Guy Stuff. I took two of them aside to show them what I’d brought and how to use it. The older kids in our parish sometimes come volunteer to help my class, and I love having them. Two of the boys came to see what I had. I taught them how to launch the dinosaurs, and soon we had a crowd.

The Rules

“Okay,” I said, “we aren’t going to point these at each other and we aren’t going to point them at the icons. But they should stick to the door, and they should stick to the walls.”

About half a dozen children ages two to twenty. still in their church clothes, launched their dinosaurs, some of which stuck to their targets and others of which did not. Then someone launched theirs into the ceiling, where it stuck and hung. Soon all the dinosaruces were stuck to the ceiling, and some of the youngest children cried, because they were not falling fast enough.

One of my helpers got the broom and dustpan and tried to reach and scrape the dinos down that way, but we all agreed that it would get the ceiling dirty. Another boy got the spaghetti tongs, and tried those, but he was too short. They tried boosting each other, but no one was tall enough to reach the dangling dinos. One or two fell to our feet, but the others were still hanging.

Then a group of the older brothers home from college for winter break came bursting into the connector. The younger siblings revere their older siblings, for the most part, and the young men were asked to help. They are all fairly athletic, and many have done Russian dancing. So they gleefuly lifted each other and flung each other in an arc toward the ceiling. The dinosaurs were being rescued and so far no one was hurt.

Two of the families have a large gap between the older children and the youngest, and both of the youngest sisters asked to stand on their siblings shoulders so they could help. They looked like angels at the top of a Christmas tree, but also like a chicken fight waiting to happen. They got down the rest of the dinosaurs and the child among us with the most sense pointed out to me that these toys now were embedded with dirt, and were no longer good for the children to play with. I quietly snuck back into the hall where the adults were still talking, the way adults do.

But one of the adults tried launching a dinosaur, and it stuck to the ceiling.

Fr. D. asked me to get one of his sons to bring the broom to knock it back down. “That won’t work,” I explained. “The ceiling here is too high to reach, and the broom will get the ceiling dirty. But I promise, it WILL fall on its own.”

He gave me the side eye but agreed to wait, and I was relieved not to see it on the ceiling the next Saturday.

But, there is an epilogue.

One hears the strangest things….

A priest from Russia who visited our parish in Texas in the nineties and arrived in civilian clothes was astonished when I told him that we didn’t realize he was Orthodox, as he had come with ministers from a local Protestant parish. “I have learned that in the Church, one hears the strangest things about oneself,” he said.

And now it was my turn to learn something new.

This is the time of year when we have the priest come bless our house with holy water. My husband is an Orthodox priest, semi-retired, so he shares in the task o blessing all the houses in the parish. He coordinates with the families, settles on a good time to come, and sometimes he goes on his own, other times I am also invited and generally there is a festive meal after. It’s really a nice way to get to know people better and to spend time with them. This year we went first to a friend’s house. She has a teenaged daughter, and so I brought both an appropriate hostess gift, a cross that attaches to the window with a suction cup so you can see it when you look outside, and something else. On a whim, I also put a dinosaur or two into the gift bag.

After the house was blessed, after supper, after dessert, our hostess opened the bag and when she saw the dinosaurs she was amused. I taught her how to shoot them and was going to tell her the story of shooting dinosaurs at the connector ceiling, but she said, “My daughter has these in the car and she told me the whole story! She said that the teenagers said that you and Batiushka like to lie in bed and shoot these at the ceiling and laugh!”

Um, we had not tried that yet, although now I most certainly do want to give it a shot.

A legend is born?

Great Lent begins very soon, and it will be time to be serious about our salvation and examine our lives and put away foolish things. Lent starts when it’s dark and cold and ends when Spring has arrived and flowers are blooming everywhere, and it seems the same with our souls, we start dark and learn to seek out the Light.

But for a little bit, it was just the season, just the weather, just the time, for a little foolishness, to be not just like the children, but among them.