on the road again

After spending a fun long weekend catching up with friends from high school and their loved ones, I spent an evening with my brother and mom celebrating his birthday. We were at his house in the afternoon when a neighbor knocked on his door to tell him that his demon dog Addie (short for Adolph, no lie) was in the backyard with a snake. But when he went back to check, it was not only not a snake, it was the opposite of a snake. (The opposite of a snake is two baby squirrels. You can write that down.) They immediately started following us around everywhere, in this adorable "pick me up, I want to be loved" sort of way. Ryan wouldn't let us, he had this weird theory about bacteria. But we were trying to get them to go up a tree or something, and so we were calling them and they would just run over, like puppies! It was one of the cutest things I've ever seen in my life.

Tuesday morning (okay, afternoon) I left for Nashville. My friends Sara and Kenny were arriving from a Labor Day trip of their own that night, so I was kind and allowed them about ten minutes to get back and freshen up before I intruded. The next day Kenny and I had lunch with Sara, who is the event manager at the Grand Ole Opry. We walked through the hotel there (maybe the Grand Opryland Hotel) which is a ridiculously huge, with shopping areas (including a section designed to look like New Orleans) and ponds and gardens all under a giant atrium. After lunch Sara gave me a tour of the Opry. This is the studio where they shot "Hee Haw":


Sara in one of the Opry dressing rooms:


And me onstage at the Grand Ole Opry (the wooden circle is cut out from the stage floor of the Ryman Auditorium, where the Opry began):


That night Sara, Kenny, and I met their friend Cameron out for dinner. Randomly, I had read one of Cameron's books a year or two ago. We had delicious fattening food and went back to Sara's place and watched random internet clips, including one about The Mighty Boosh and the Legend of Old Gregg, which was easily the weirdest thing I've ever seen from the BBC.

The next day I worked during the day while Sara was at the Opry, and that night we hung out and caught up on things. We also stopped by to see Kenny's band doing a photo shoot. In case you were wondering what a rock band photo shoot looks like, it looks like this:


The next morning I met my Aunt Cindy and Uncle Bob at Red Lobster in Franklin, Tennessee, which was nice. (Tip: get the lobster macaroni and cheese.) I was late because I somehow managed to lose Sara's spare house key. And yes, I do wear this shirt a lot.

That afternoon I left Nashville and drove north, watching the pines give way to cornfields. I was hoping for a dramatic Indiana sunset because I’ve been missing them since college, but it was a gray, overcast day.

I drove up to my friend Tim’s house in Indianapolis, where I met his lovely wife Katie. They made me a wonderful home-cooked vegan meal and were generally very cute, cooking together in the kitchen.

Despereaux has been following my blog and seemed to think I would be unhappy if I didn’t have mice with me wherever I went, so he sent some family along ahead of time to meet me at Tim’s house. Tim and Katie had been trying to catch Floppy (so named because he seemed a little uncoordinated and tended to crash into walls) for a month before I got there. This is them on a hunting expedition. You notice the humane mouse trap set up in the bottom of this picture.

At one point we heard Floppy in a basket on of their shelves, and I tried pulling the basket onto the floor while Tim dropped a big Rubbermaid-type container over it, but before it fell all the way to the floor, Floppy shot out of the basket, through Tim’s legs, and into the gap between the dishwasher and the cabinet, knocking into the cabinet on the way. So that was a near miss, but apparently just my lucky mouse-catching presence made a difference, because that night was of their traps went off and Uncle Floppy was captured. (The Dorseys believe Floppy himself is still at large.)

The next morning I drove up to the Chicago area. The third memorial for Tyson’s wife Leslie was held Saturday afternoon in Bolingbrook, which is only about twenty minutes from Wheaton. The service was beautiful. Tyson had designed a structure for three memorial services around the folk story that Leslie had liked, in which three trees dream about their future. One wants to be a treasure chest and becomes Jesus's manger. One wants to be a great sailing ship and becomes the fishing boat that Jesus is on when He quiets the storm. One wants to remind others of God, and becomes the cross. Tyson and Leslie's pastor said that Leslie wanted others to see God in her, and in her life and death that has been true. Tyson told us that when Leslie was very sick, in bed with oxygen tubes and unable to walk, he sometimes would look in on her and find her in bed, with a worship song playing on her ipod, her eyes shut tight, and her hands lifted in the air in praise of God. Tyson is a member of the worship team at his church, and he stood up on stage and sang and played the guitar with a few others. They sang, "Blessed Be Your Name," the lyrics of which are, "Every blessing You pour out I turn back to praise. When the darkness closes in, still I will say blessed be the name of the Lord, blessed be Your name... You give and take away, You give and take away. My heart will choose to say, Lord, blessed be Your Name."

The problem of pain and evil is so difficult for us as we search for meaning in the universe and wonder if we can possibly believe in a God who would allow horrible things to happen. But in that moment, watching a man with such sorrow pour out his heart in praise of God, it seemed entirely evident that God is there with him, that He was and is with Leslie, and that our suffering and loss in no way signifies God's apathy or absence. I'm writing this down in the hopes that I will remember it.