“No—no . . . Good timing,” Rachel said. “Guess where I am?” Rachel’s voice faded as she ascended the staircase, her high heel boots clicking on the wood floor.
Meg cleared her throat and pointed to a particular measure. “Let’s try again, Chloe,” she said, her voice sounding artificial to her own ears. “Right here—count with me.”
“All done with the munchkins?” Rachel asked when Meg entered the kitchen shortly after six. Meg nodded and sat down at the table with a weary sigh. Rachel continued opening and shutting cupboards. “Got anything to drink around here?”
By “anything to drink,” Rachel meant something alcoholic. Preferably hard liquor. “No,” Meg said.
“Where’s the stash Mother kept for company?”
“Gone.”
“Gone, like, she drank all of it?”
“Gone, like, I got rid of it.”
Rachel pretended she’d been stabbed in the heart. “You philistine.” She reached for her keys. “C’mon. We’re going out to eat. You’ve got nothing here.”
“Sorry—I’ve been sick.”
If Rachel registered this fact, she didn’t comment. “Or then again, maybe you should drive,” she said with a smirk.
Meg did not feel up to driving. And she certainly couldn’t handle one of Rachel’s favorite spicy Thai restaurants. She slowly massaged her temples. “I can’t, Rache.”
“Why not?”
“I told you, I’ve been sick. I’m still feeling weak. It’s all I can do to manage my lesson schedule right now. I’m sorry. If you want to go pick up food and bring it back, that’s great. Otherwise, we can make grilled cheese or French toast or something.”
Rachel planted her hands on her hips, exactly like Mother had done on the rare occasions when Meg attempted to assert herself. “Okay, fine. I’ll go get take-out, and you can have your grilled cheese.” Rachel reached for her coat. “And by the way,” she said, “what’s the deal with the picture hanging on Mother’s bedroom door?”
Meg had grown so accustomed to seeing it on the closed door, she hardly noticed it: a sketch of the Good Shepherd with scarred hands, nuzzling a little lamb. She had hung it there after the revelation that their father committed suicide in that room—a revelation Rachel still refused to believe. “It’s Jesus and a little lamb,” Meg said.
Rachel rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I got that part. What’s it doing on the door?”
“Just a reminder about the Lord’s care for me, after everything that came to light last fall about—”
“Oh, gawd. Never mind. Becca said you’d gotten all religious. Spare me.” With a dismissive flick of her hand, she left the house.
Inhale, shallow breath. Emmanuel.
Exhale, cough. You are with me.
And then tears. A deluge of tears.
The wheat bread browned in the sizzling skillet, the white cheddar cheese oozing and hardening around the edges.
“I really don’t understand what you’re so worked up about,” Rachel was saying. “So Becca is dating an older man! So what? She’s happy.”
Meg slid the spatula under the sandwich and flipped it over. According to Rachel, she and Becca had been having frequent phone conversations the past few weeks, with Becca confiding in her about how “crazy” and “difficult” and “judgmental” her mother was being over her relationship with Simon.
Rachel scooped more spicy noodles and vegetables onto her plate. “She’s twenty-one. Old enough to make her own decisions about what she wants. And she wants to be with Simon. He sounds like a cool guy.”
“Pffft. You didn’t meet him.” Meg turned the heat down on the burner.
“Becca says you didn’t even give him a chance.”
Give him a chance? For what? To win her over with his intellect? To charm her into being okay with him sleeping with her daughter?
“You’re going to drive her away if you keep being all prudish about it,” Rachel went on. “You’re going to have to accept it, Megs. And it would be nice if you could be happy for her.”
No. She wouldn’t accept it—she’d never accept it—and she wasn’t going to be happy for her. Rachel wasn’t a mother. She didn’t understand. She could be the “cool aunt.” She had always had the luxury of being the cool aunt. And if Becca was getting the support and affirmation she wanted from Rachel, then . . .
Meg’s eyes stung again. She checked the underside—golden—and slid her sandwich onto a plate.
Rachel said, “Becca can’t handle you being such a Debbie Downer about this. She can’t. So here’s the deal: Simon invited Becca to stay with him this summer. He’s working on a novel and will be traveling back and forth to Paris, and Becca wants to go with him.”
Though Meg managed to keep a grip on the plate, the sandwich ended up on the floor. She stooped quickly to pick it up and brushed invisible dirt off in the sink.
“She and I have already worked out the details,” Rachel went on. “I’ve got website content she can help develop for some clients, and I’ll pay her a part-time salary. So you don’t have to worry about any financial implications.”
Financial implications?
How dare she—
How dare they—
Heart racing, Meg turned away from her sister, the heat of hives rising on her neck.
No breath.
No breath.
“She’s planning to come back in the fall to finish up her senior year and—” More words. Rachel spoke many, many more words: So good for her. Finding herself. Spreading her wings. Proud of her for standing up for what she wants. Doesn’t need anyone’s approval.
Unable to listen to any more words, Meg interrupted with a whispered, “I think you’d better go.”
Rachel didn’t hear. She was still spouting off details about how the summer would work, about how excited she was for her niece, about what a golden opportunity Becca had to travel and experience European culture.
Meg found a bigger breath and squeezed it out with more force. “I said, I think you’d better go.”
Rachel stopped midsentence, fork suspended, mouth open. “What did you say?”
“I said, I want you to leave.”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
Meg flattened her lips and shook her head.
Rachel leaned back on the chair legs, a habit which always drew Mother’s rebuke.
Emmanuel.
You are with me.
“And if there are pictures you’ve already pulled out of boxes,” Meg said, staring at Rachel’s collarbone, “give them to me so I can make copies. Then I’ll send you the originals.”
Rachel sneered at her. “They’re my pictures to do with as I please.”
“No,” Meg said, surprised by the firmness of her tone. “Mother left the house—and everything in it—to me.”
After an eternal moment of stunned silence, Rachel rose from the table, kicked her chair with her boot, and unleashed a vulgar tirade of epithets against both Meg and their mother. “Becca was right,” she said after she exhausted every other accusation. She grabbed her purse from the counter. “You’re mental.” Yanking open the zipper, she flung some photos at Meg and stormed up the stairs to retrieve her overnight bag. “You’re gonna lose your daughter!” she shouted over her shoulder. Meg braced herself against the kitchen sink.
She already had.
Part Two
Crossroads and Thresholds
As they pass through the Valley of Baka, they make it a place of springs; the autumn rains also cover it with pools.
Psalm 84:6
five
Hannah
The two-lane highway toward the coast wound through dense forests, frequently becoming a tunnel no sunlight could penetrate. From the back seat of her parents’ Subaru, Hannah recalled road trips when she would devour Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books and Nancy Drew mysteries in contented silence, her mother marveling at her never getting carsick.
“I wonder what the people around here
do for shops, for medical care?” Jane said. “Beautiful, but so remote. I wouldn’t like that.”
A Southern Pacific freight train carrying loads of milled lumber rumbled past. “No pizza delivery out here, I bet,” Hugh replied.
As her parents resumed conversation about people she had never met, Hannah continued reading. Nathan’s daily note contained some verses from Ecclesiastes 3 and a prayer for her to discern “a time to keep silence and a time to speak.” I’m praying for the gift of incarnational presence with your parents, Hannah, that you’ll be empowered to meet them where they are and love them as they are without demanding anything else. May your soul find rest here.
Incarnational presence.
Maybe that’s why she was feeling agitated.
In the midst of their leisure—watching movies, visiting antique shops, playing Yahtzee and Scrabble, and now traveling to the coast for whale-watching—Hannah had been scanning constantly, watching for any openings to engage either or both of them in significant conversation. But while they spoke at length about her present life (Nathan, the sabbatical, her return to Westminster, the upcoming Holy Land pilgrimage), and while they reminisced at length about their family life (trips they had taken, old school friends and neighbors, birthday or holiday celebrations), conversation never transitioned to the realm of the struggles that had shaped them or the secrets they had kept.
A time to keep silence and a time to speak.
She stared at the back of her father’s head, his once dark hair thinning to gray floss. He caught her eye in the rearview mirror. “You remember when we went whale-watching in California?” he asked.
“I remember being out on a boat, but I don’t remember any whales.”
He laughed. “Right, didn’t see any. Should have better luck today. Guy on the phone said it’s right at the peak of their migration down to Baja.” He glanced at Hannah in the rearview mirror again. “Ever tell you about the cab driver I had in Baja?”
“Remind me.”
“I was down there on a sales trip, and this guy picks me up and drives me all over town with a parrot perched on his shoulder. I knew enough Spanish to catch some of the words that bird was saying, and he had quite a colorful vocabulary, let me tell you.”
“Hugh, wasn’t that the trip when you ate something off a food truck and ended up so sick?”
“Yep. Fish tacos. Never been so sick in my life.”
Hannah wondered how many times her mother had heard the story over the years. Still, she listened with rapt attention as her husband told it again with vivid detail, her wrinkled profile creased with concern, as if he were still suffering abdominal distress almost four decades later.
Adoration. That was the look in her mother’s eyes. The stress and trauma they had endured as husband and wife—whether they had addressed it or left it unspoken—had not diminished their affection for one another. Their love was sincere.
Forgive them, the Holy Spirit whispered, the words taking Hannah completely by surprise.
“Oh, Hugh, Hannah—look!”
The coast, rugged, rocky, vast, and wild, had come into view.
By the time the waiter served their lunch at the restaurant atop the bluff, they had already spotted dozens of spouts. “When you see the tails,” Hugh said, “that’s the signal they’re diving deep.”
Hannah was on the verge of commenting about the beauty of that as metaphor when he pointed out the window. “Look! There!” Hannah quickly followed his finger and caught sight of the dark fluke just as it was disappearing. “You game for a boat ride, Hannah?” he asked.
“Sure—if they’re going out.” Some of the morning excursions had been canceled due to rough seas.
He dipped a piece of coconut shrimp into ginger-orange sauce. “How about you, Janie?”
“I think I’ll wait for you two at the observation center.”
“I brought some Dramamine, hon.”
“I know, but I think I’ll be better off watching from inside. You two go and enjoy it. That will make me happy. Very happy.”
Hannah watched her father reach across the table to grasp and kiss her mother’s veined hand.
And the Spirit whispered again. Cancel their debt.
Not minimize. Not deny. Not ignore. Not excuse. Not justify.
Name the debt. And cancel it.
Another tail on the horizon. And another. Deep calls out to deep. Again and again Hannah heard the summoning into the depths. Not for her parents. For herself. She fixed her eyes on the horizon and dove.
Monday, January 12
5 p.m.
Mom, Dad, and I are down on the beach at Depoe Bay. I’ve found a semi-sheltered rock where I can sit and write and watch the sunset. The wind is cold and damp, but I wouldn’t miss this opportunity to watch the Pacific turn gold. The smell of the salt air, the crashing of the surf against the rocks, the gong of a buoy in the distance, the cry of the gulls. So beautiful.
Mom and Dad are walking hand and hand, looking for rocks. He already found one that was heart-shaped and presented it to her. They are happy. Content. A gift for me to watch them simply enjoy one another’s company.
Dad and I went out on an excursion this afternoon and spotted a gray whale—got close enough to see the barnacles on its back, close enough to hear it breathe. We stood side by side on the boat, his arm around me, my head resting on his shoulder as I blinked back tears. I was just so deeply moved by the wonder and beauty and grandeur of everything. Tears spatter the page now as I remember. I can’t take it in, the gift of it all. The tail went up while we watched, and the whale disappeared.
Diving deep.
That’s what the Lord invited me to do today. To let go. To let go of my desire for my parents to dive into depths I don’t think they can navigate. To let go of my need for them to know and understand. Help me let go, Lord.
Here’s what I know: they didn’t intend to cause me harm. They did the best they could. That doesn’t mean I gloss over the pain and call it good. It wasn’t good. Their hiding in shame or fear or pride or whatever motivated them toward secrecy wasn’t good, and it caused damage. It impacted me. Profoundly. It fractured our family in ways I’m only starting to see. But I don’t need them to see that in order for me to forgive.
Today I saw that I wanted them to pay their debt by having a conversation about what happened. Lord, help me release them. They don’t owe me anything. And I will not try to manipulate anything out of them. I can name the debt and trust God to redeem the pain. Whatever that redeeming looks like.
I say it again as I watch them stoop to collect their rocks from the tide pool. Dad, I forgive you. Mom, I forgive you. For the sake of the One who has forgiven me.
And maybe—maybe that’s the work you wanted to accomplish in me while I’m here, Lord. Maybe that’s what I was meant to see. To do. Maybe that was the next step I was meant to take. Letting go.
He holds her in his arms, and together they watch the sun descend. And now he turns and waves to me, beckoning for me to join them.
Meg
First thing Tuesday morning, after a sleepless night, Meg drove to Kingsbury Community Church. The office was open, the copier rhythmically spitting out paper. “Can I help you?” one of the administrators asked.
“Is Pastor Dave here?”
“Yes, but he’s in a meeting right now. Would you like to make an appointment to see him?” She glanced at her computer. “I can pull up his schedule.”
“No, no. That’s okay.” Meg fidgeted with the collar of her turtleneck. “I was just wondering—is it all right if I spend some time praying here?”
The woman looked surprised. “Sure! I don’t think the heat’s on in the sanctuary though.”
“That’s okay. I’ll find a quiet corner. Just wanted somebody to know I’m here.”
“Take your time! The building’s pretty quiet today.”
“Thank you. Thank you so much.” Meg tucked her hands into her coat pocket, descended the stairs to t
he children’s wing, and flipped on a light switch in the hallway, the fluorescent bulbs buzzing to life. Somewhere, in one of these classrooms . . .
She peered into successive rooms until she found it halfway down the corridor, the mural of children clamoring around Jesus, with space for a child on his lap.
My soul is like . . .
Meg glanced around the classroom at miniature red and yellow plastic chairs, at walls painted with Bible verses, at cheerful stick-figured drawings tacked to bulletin boards.
My soul is like . . . a frightened and sad little child who needs to be held for a while.
She removed a carpet square from a pile in the corner and sat down cross-legged in front of the mural until she could see her own reflection nestled against Jesus’ breast, the crow’s-feet and wrinkles creating an incongruous pairing of a middle-aged face with a child’s body. Held in his steadfast, compassionate gaze, Meg offered her tears and rattling breath as prayer.
“Meg!”
Meg released the handle of the exit door to the parking lot and spun around. “Pastor Dave!”
“Sue said someone was looking for me. Did you find a warm place to pray?”
“Oh, I . . . Yes. Thanks. I went downstairs to one of the children’s classrooms, the one with the mural.”
“I love that mural,” he said.
“So did my daughter when she was little.” Meg fiddled with her gloves.
“How is your daughter? I haven’t seen you since your trip.”
“She’s . . .” Breaking my heart, Meg replied silently. “Having a great time in London. Such a beautiful city!”
“It is, isn’t it? Sandy and I were there a few years ago. So much to see.”
“Yes.” Meg avoided looking into her pastor’s eyes.
“I’m glad you were able to go and be with her,” he said. “It’s hard when our kids fly away, isn’t it? People say the empty-nest phase is great. But I miss my boys.”
“Yes,” Meg said. “I miss her terribly.” In every possible way.
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