more normal than not

Oh, my gosh!! Click on this picture!! It gets even huger!! HUGE!!

I wrote about the moon yesterday….and my friend John told me that today’s moon was going to be one of the rare “blue moons”.

I told Jenny what John said….and asked her what a “blue moon” was….and she told me it was a second full moon in the same month.

“You remember? Like the song?”

Then she did her best high voiced imitation of the monologue that Nanci Griffith gives in the live recording.

Then I remembered.

Here’s the song:

“once in a very blue moon” Nanci Griffith

The moon was not quite this dramatic…..dramatic like the picture….this morning…but…it was huge….resting on a fluffy dark cloud like a Fabergé egg on a bed of black cotton.

That’s why I shuffle around in the dark….it’s so quiet….still….and I get to see things like a big moon that’s not supposed to happen again until 2018.

The thing about realizing that is that, until John told me what the big moon was and that it was special, I would have thought, “Hmmmmm…..what a big moon. That’s really pretty…” and left it at that.

Knowing that it’s a blue moon makes it even “cooler” somehow.

Here’s something cool about this day, too, that my friend Beth H. posted on Facebook: today is the 240th anniversary of the Post Office.

It feels like I’ve been there that long.

That’s the beauty of the Post Office….if you work there, it kind of extends your life….sort of.

It makes a lot of moments feel like an eternity.

At this rate, I should live forever.

Nah…I’m kidding. Driving the mail….listening to reggae…..is probably the coolest job a person could have.

Cool as a blue moon.

A bat dive-bombed my head twice this morning.

I think it was the same bat….in the darkness, it looked like the same bat.

He came down fast and did a fly-by…..and then I didn’t see him again after the second time.

It’s pretty dark in the morning when I run.

I’m sure that it must have been kind of confusing for him….seeing/hearing/sonoring me out there, plodding along.

I think that he must have been thinking something like, “What is that? It’s too fast for walking….too slow for anything else. What is that?!”

I don’t really know what a bat thinks.

I don’t know what my kids are thinking, most of the time.

I ran out and back this morning….kind of a change after only walking the hills on the way back for a week.

I noticed that the hills seem to get shorter every day.

Maybe they don’t get shorter…..maybe I’m just getting more used to them.

That’s the way it goes….something is pretty uncomfortable…like running up a hill….and then it either gets easier as you live with it for a while….or you just get used to being uncomfortable.

Maybe it’s all just callous building up?

I don’t really know.

It is kind of interesting how hard things make us stronger.

We could have been designed with a finite limit to the amount of “wear and tear” we could take.

We might go to the doctor early on and he’d tell us, “What were you doing? Outside playing again?! Well….it looks like you’re pretty close to being used up….worn away….you’re in the red zone. You better take it pretty easy the rest of your life….you won’t get a chance to make it right….you better WATCH OUT. No stress….no play….no hard work or conflict or it’s going to be all over for you. You should have planned ahead a little better. I’m sorry to have to tell you that.”

Those are harsh words for a five-year old to have to hear.

But instead, the conflict makes us stronger….if it doesn’t break us in two.

Resistance.

In weight training, what makes you stronger is the tearing and healing, tearing and healing…over and over.

You work a muscle, you tear the muscle a little, the muscle heals (hopefully)….and you get stronger.

That’s a crazy process….you have to tear it all down to build it back stronger.

Now….”too much” isn’t a good thing.

You can overtrain and spoil the whole process.

There has to be some balance….rest and work, repeat, rest and work, repeat…..etc.

But….we need something to push against to make us stronger.

That’s an amazing thing….that we have a store of resiliency that builds on itself….whether we’re aware of it or not.

We’re stronger than we think.

These hills that I’m running are getting shorter.

The reason they’re getting shorter is because I’m running them again.

I guess that I should learn to be thankful for the tearing…..AND the healing.

It’s a two-part process….thank goodness for both of them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHmiZ_OMMkI

Nate starts school today.

He’s going to a school that goes year round this year, so today is his first day even though it seems kind of early.

When I take him to school, we listen to the radio and tune it to a “kid’s channel”…..so this song is the kind of stuff that we hear.

It’s lucky for me that so much of it is really funny.

I crank this song up when it comes on.

It’s pretty hilarious…..to me.

It feels kind of weird to be going to school this early….but I guess that he gets some long breaks at different times, so I suppose that we’ll get used to it.

It’ll give me a chance to start listening to songs like this again when I’m driving to work.

That’s not so bad if all of them are as good as this one……

It hit me this morning that if all you do is wax semi-eloquently about how important it is to “notice” what’s happening as your children grow up, you are probably missing most of it.

Of course, I’m “in it”.

We are a unit and I am the HUB, man.

I’m the hub…..I’m in it… full on.

(That’s the ego talking, of course. I know who the “hub” is when Sparrow yells for “Mommy”.)

I think that if you talk about something a lot, then people think that you really feel deeply about the subject.

Spirituality….civic pride….the fairness of the monetary system….or, maybe, even family…..the more you talk about it, the more committed to the idea you seem.

That’s goofy.

What’s that called? “Lip service”?

You live your life, you take care of your family, and you let them know that they are loved….without question or condition…..they are loved.

What could be confusing or hard about that?

In our situation….in our family….we have a pretty big spread between the first two children and these little guys.

Because of that spread, I can speak from some sort of experience when I talk about “paying attention” or missing a moment.

The children grow up fast.

The thing about paying close attention when the children are little (or big, actually…..I should pay close attention to everyone in my family) is that, whether or not I notice everything doesn’t necessarily mean that I remember everything.

I guess that’s OK, though.

You remember what you can.

Maybe that’s why there’s two parents in most cases….so that the other can fill in the memory holes.

You can write about everything and paint a picture of patience and understanding….but it’s only the day in and day out “real behavior” that makes things any good.

All we have are our actions in the end.

All these words may as well be clouds evaporating in the heat of a long summer day.

It’s just the actions that really matter.

I heard this song the other day and really like it….by Canadian singer/songwriter Chris Luedecke, who records under the name “Old Man Luedecke”.  It says what I’m waxing around pretty clearly….

“the early days” Old Man Luedecke

I don’t know about what I can’t see.

It’s dark when I run in the morning.

It’s a faith-run.

I suppose that the universe, with all its potential and promise, is not set up to harm me….and I run into what I can’t know.

I do this in spite of the smashed copperheads that I see on the blacktop in the daylight.

What I don’t know is out there can’t hurt me.

Now…..this video.

Maybe there’s a giant pitbull sleeping under one of the shadowed trees?

I don’t know.

But….I can’t add it to some paranoid catalog of potential disasters that I carry in my mental Rolodex.

I can’t do it.

I’d be frozen with fear if I remembered everything that’s ever harmed anyone….and took it all a little too personally.

I would be immobilized.

So…..I run in the night….the early morning night….when only a few cars pass me and, in their headlights, I know that it’s really all just “more of the same” around the black corners that I can see for a moment.

I don’t think that there are giant dogs waiting for me out there.

(Did you ever notice that, at first glance, a bear looks just like a weird overfed black chow? A bear might be out there….but a bear is not a dog. No matter how dark it gets…..a bear is never a dog.)