rain

Hurricane Gustav seems to have spared New Orleans, but I don’t know what the scare might do to the residents there. I spoke to Paul last night; he was at a hotel in Chattanooga. He said it’s becoming increasingly difficult to justify living in a city that he’s had to evacuate eight times in the last ten years.

I saw that Eglin Air Force Base in Florida had some fatalities and damage from tornadoes caused by Gustav. I texted my friend Andrea, who lives there with her husband Erik and son Jonathan, to see if they’re ok, but I haven’t heard anything back yet.

Before I left New Orleans, I called Andrea about coming by to visit, and we were talking about some difficult things that were going on, and she said, “The rain falls on the just and the unjust.” It reminded me of a song I used to (and still) love: “Dinner with Ivan” by Big Head Todd and the Monsters, the chorus of which goes, “Welcome to the wild world, brother, sometimes it’s gonna rain on you. It rains all over the world, brother, sometimes it’s gonna rain on you.”

At the risk of sounding like the voiceover in Grey's Anatomy, a big part of what this summer has been about is learning some things about life, about myself. Lesson #1 was about living in the present instead of the future. Lesson #2 was about finding value and self-worth primarily in relationship with God (sub-lesson: God is not Voodoo.) And Lesson #3 was about letting go of control.

Lesson #4 has had to do with the song, more specifically that bad things happen to everyone, it’s just part of the world. Which is a reminder we need sometimes. But this summer reminders haven't been necessary... there have been so many examples of the fragility of life and the pervasiveness of loss. I’ve been struggling to figure out how to let the shadow make the sunlight more precious… without spending time in the sunlight being fearful of the shadow.

Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on killing the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason. In those days, though, the spring always came finally, but it was frightening that it had nearly failed.

~ from "A Moveable Feast"
by Ernest Hemingway

My friend Tyson from Taylor lost his wife Leslie to cancer in July. (His blogs can be found at forleslie.blogspot.com and tysonaschliman.blogspot.com.) My friends Adam and Chrissy Curry from Raleigh lost a young friend in a drowning accident two weeks ago. Heidi and Josh lost Josh's best friend Joe a week before their wedding in May. (Joe and his girlfriend Rachel's amazing road trip blog can be found at van-down-by-the-river.blogspot.com and a memorial blog for Joe can be found at johnsonsmauiohana.blogspot.com.)

These losses have weighed heavily on my heart. Lately Heidi and I have been talking about how it can be hard to not be afraid of the future when you know the kind of pain that may lie in wait. How can you be ready for it without living in fear of it?

I suppose the only answer to that is found in the first three lessons. But those lessons are difficult to learn.

Last Tuesday, Josh’s youngest sister Emily was hit by a car while crossing the street in Maui. It was so frightening not to know what was happening. Josh and Heidi flew to Maui the next day and have been there ever since. Emily's been in an induced coma all week but today her breathing tube was successfully removed and she's asleep, breathing on her own. Despite multiple skull fractures and swelling in her brain, she's shown incredible progress. Hundreds if not thousands of people are praying for her, but she can always use more. A family friend is keeping a blog with updates at prayingforemily.blogspot.com.

In Tyson's blog, he writes about being grateful for his two-year-old son, and said that "every day is a blessing." This is true for us all of the time, but we don't always see it. I've been so grateful for the blessing of spending time with the friends and family I've seen on this trip, and the ones I have yet to see.

Tomorrow I leave North Carolina and head west, towards home. I’ve been here a month, it’s just taken me this long to catch up on the New Orleans section of the trip.


I left Louisiana on July 31. Andrea and Erik were supposed to be flying home from a trip to Colorado that night, but they ended up being delayed in Atlanta for the night, so I just made a short trip to Mobile and stayed the night. On the way through Biloxi, Mississippi (where I attended my first prom when I was 16,) there was a beautiful sunset.

The next morning I drove to the Reites’ place in Shalimar, Florida. They were nice enough to let me hang out with them even though they had just gotten back themselves. It was so nice catching up with Andrea and meeting their little boy Jonathan for the first time. That evening we went out for Italian and went down to the beach in Destin to walk on the pier:




Despite glimpsing an ENORMOUS number of jellyfish in the water from the pier (which you can sort of see in this picture,) Andrea and I decided to brave the ocean the next day. Jonathan was pretty cute in his SPF suit that looked like a throwback to the 1920s. We swam for a while until we saw a jellyfish and decided that was enough.

That afternoon I said good-bye to Andrea and Jonathan and drove home to Fayetteville. The next week I spent with Mom and my sister Bethany, which was great, although I did have to do more arbitration work than I would have liked. One morning my Taylor friend/Coddagemate Stephanie and her husband Drew were driving from Ocean Isle to Minnesota, so we met off the highway in Lumberton. I was trying to find a unique little southern breakfast place for us to go but we just ended up meeting at Cracker Barrel. Not that there’s not something to be said for Cracker Barrel.

And of course there’s much to be said for the Baileys:


The next week I went to New Bern, where my grandparents (who incidentally just got back from a three week vacation in China) had a timeshare for the week. I had to work too much that week as well, although I did make time for daily games of “Robot” with my seven-year-old brother Sean. “Robot” has been Sean’s favorite game since I made it up on a trip to Uganda several years ago. I keep thinking he’s going to get tired of it… but he doesn’t. He never. Gets. Tired.

A couple of days I took a break and convinced everyone (Grandma, Grandpa, Dad, Micky, and Sean) to come see some of the historic stuff in New Bern, which was North Carolina’s capitol in the 18th century. We went to one house that had belonged to a cabinetmaker, and the guide at that house did that thing where they pretend it’s really the time period they’re in, and they don’t understand why you’re dressed the way you’re dressed, etc. She showed Sean how to shave a table leg (or something) using something called a drawing knife (or something.) She told him he did a good job and invited him to become an apprentice at the house. Later I heard him saying to my dad, “No, I don’t want to work here!”

On the way home we stopped and got Pepsis in a little corner store that was the site of the pharmacy where Pepsi-Cola was invented. The woman asked my grandparents if they remembered the Pepsi jingle, and they pretended they didn’t, but when she started singing it, they joined in: “Pepsi-Cola hits the spot, Twelve full ounces and that’s a lot, Twice as much for a nickel too, Pepsi Cola is good for you!”

Since we got a late start that day and it was raining, we went back down to the historic district the next morning to walk through the gardens. Here were Sean’s feelings about that:


He took my hand and basically told me that we needed to make a break for it at his signal. He kept saying, “Now!” at various points. We did see these very cool spiders one of the first gardens, including one actually spinning a little death cocoon for a kicking beetle. We were enthralled. My dad took this picture, I can’t take credit for it:


Although I did get this little snapshot of nature:


Sean cheered up when Micky lent him her camera and he could take hundreds of pictures of the gardens, his feet, my feet, all of our faces from a very unflattering four-foot-high vantage point, all of our derrieres, worms on the sidewalk, etc.



The high point of the week for me was on the next-to-last day (the very last day I spent in the New Bern library working) when we had a family-wide game of Keep Away.

Sean making a rookie mistake:


My Grandma leaping impressively high to get the ball:


And my Grandpa getting ready to make a line drive:


We weren’t sure that my grandparents were going to be able to come down, so I was very thankful that it worked out, even if I did have to work for most of the week. The next week I spent mostly with Mom and Bethany. I guess we didn’t do anything photogenic because I don’t have any pictures, but I really appreciated the chance to spend so much time with both of them.

Last week I spent at my dad’s house, still working, with breaks for Robot. One day my Dad asked me to help him carry supplies into one of the labs at the VA. I walked in with my arms full of paper towel rolls and realized that he had failed to mention that it was the cadaver lab. I didn’t get any photographs of that, either.

It’s always hard leaving family. Sean came in to hug me good night four separate times the evening before I left Fayetteville, even though I was going to see him again Saturday when they came up to Fayetteville for Ryan’s birthday and we went to the Museum of Natural History. They’re hosting a tour of portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It was really interesting and cool to see, though the fragments were much smaller than I had expected. I think I had Torah-like expectations.

This weekend I’ve been up in Raleigh (technically Morrisville) staying with Fawn. I finally got to meet her boyfriend Bryan, and Saturday night Kyleigh came over and we sat out on Fawn’s porch and watched the thunderstorm and got our legs wet.



In most of the poems or songs I’ve heard, rain represents pain or tragedy. But even when rain is destructive, it’s beautiful, and I’ve missed it so much living in arid Los Angeles.

While I was writing this post, Heidi sent me a text to say that Emily has spoken a few words. We still have many, many prayers to offer up on her behalf, but I have to thank God for what healing has already occurred.

In their wedding invitations, my friend Tim and his wife Katie (who I hope to see on Friday in Indianapolis) included this poem by a writer that I love:

The woods and pastures are joyous

in their abundance now

in a season of warmth and much rain.

We walk amidst foliage, amidst

song. The sheep and cattle graze

like souls in bliss (except for flies)

and lie down satisfied. Who now

can believe in winter? In winter

who could have hoped for this?


~Wendell Berry