Another Birthday

Dave turns forty today.

I think the first thing one has to say about Dave is that he’s someone who is deeply principled. That was the first thing that attracted me to him, and it hasn’t changed. He went through a harder time growing up and more wanderings as a young adult, yet those things have made him more thoughtful about life decisions and mature about how to relate with people. He knew himself, and what mattered to him in life, better than any guy who had been interested in me; he was the first guy I felt like I wanted to follow.

One thing important to Dave is integrity: having outward and inward consistency. For a while I just thought that meant he purposely dressed down to avoid overly impressing anyone—now I realize that’s just a California thing—but he cares as much about how he acts at home as how he acts in public, about his outward life reflecting his inward values. To a consummate performer and image-projector, that was challenging and appealing.

Dave is also the most mood-stable and optimistic person I know. I’ve never seen him get really down—I think I’m pretty non-moody for a girl, but he makes me look positively mercurial. I gave him a pretty tough time at the start, never being sure if I still “liked” him, making him meet my parents on his own (I’ll never live that down), but he just persisted through it all, and the same through every subsequent potential destabilizer in our lives: seven moves in ten years; four kids in five years.

The last thing that must be mentioned is that he is an unusually effective communicator—he’s smart enough to catch on to things quickly; he thinks deeply; he expresses himself well verbally; he’s a talented writer. I always had this feeling that we could talk easily and endlessly, about anything—perhaps as a result too of his having the same shared principles, valuing vulnerability because of integrity, and never being too moody to talk—regardless, it gives me a sense that we can talk through, and go through, anything in life together. Being married was like an extension of being best friends, which I think was the best part of it all.

This year is special because we moved to Dave’s place, and living near his family, living in his area of the world, living among his friends, has helped me see why and how he is who he is. He is finally able to bring that whiff of adventure and being outside all the time to our kids; he is finally able to share with us the friends who are like family to him, and laugh in a way I haven’t gotten to see much. And I can’t help but feel like this is how God meant it to be: to take what I may bring, and where we’ve come with our life experiences, and come here, to the place Dave loves, among the people he loves, but with the purpose and values (and kids) we have both grown into together. My prayer for this year is that he would have a sense of rest and enjoyment here, that he would feel more fully delighted in by God in a way that too increases his enjoyment of Him, and that he would be used powerfully, and walk with integrity, through this time.

Birthday

I turn thirty-seven today.

I remember thinking once, if I could stay one age forever, it would be twenty-seven: old enough to know who I am and what I’m doing in life, young enough to be, well, still in my twenties. But my thirties have turned into a better decade than my twenties. I always felt happier married than single, but I know and love Dave more in our tenth year than our first. I’m somewhat less self-absorbed, probably as a consequence of being compelled into daily service. Other than a proliferation of facial nevi and the way nursing four babies has changed my chest, my body doesn’t feel that much older. I definitely couldn’t stay thirty-seven forever—I may have changed eight poopy diapers the other day—but overall I’d say it’s better than twenty-seven.

If anything, this is the year I’ve arrived. Growing up, I always felt like I was looking forward to the next thing to make me happy: passing the next test or step of training, getting married, having kids, owning a house, getting a job. Somewhere during the last six years, I realized I had gotten there: I’d passed the last test I had to take for a while; I was having the kids I wanted to have—but I wasn’t necessarily happier or a better person. That took me on a journey that eventually turned in the last year or two into my falling in love with Jesus in a fresh way.

And now, here I am, having actually arrived—moved for the last time; own our forever-house; more settled in career; finished having kids (and soon to get a pet). I suppose this is typically when a mid-life crisis would hit—I’d feel meaningless without the next thing to strive for, or trapped by my responsibilities—but instead I feel content and glad, in the way that you do when you realize none of this is your due, or even essential for your primary happiness, but extraordinary gifts from a God who loves you.

Maybe it’s more of a mid-life perspective: I’m nearing the point where my life may be half over. It’s clearer than ever that none of this lasts forever: I’m a steward of my children (in ten more years Ellie will move out!), of this house (which will probably be overtaken by the redwoods outside in a century), even of Dave (who will not be married to me in eternity). I think more about what it means to take care of those things for what matters, and to not lose out on being present in the process.

Those are two goals I’d like to set for my thirty-seventh year: one, to establish our lives in this new home and place in a way that reflects what really matters to us. And two, to enjoy it. To enjoy the way Ellie’s whole face lights up and she jumps up and down when she’s excited; the way Eric wraps me in spontaneous hugs and kisses; the way Elijah says “wot?” with big round eyes and sings “a whole new world” at the top of his lungs; the way Esme stumbles out of naps with unreasonable cheerfulness, declaring “I wake up!” (and the way her thighs are still super chubby). The way Dave reaches for my hand in the car. The redwood boughs rustling outside, the cool breezes, friends who bring over board games and yummy noodles, the mountains in the horizon.

I’m guessing this day will pass without much fanfare (and with four school runs). But this was always the best part: looking back, looking forward, thinking about my life, and this year, feeling particularly grateful. 

Longing For Home

What makes a place home? This house is amazing—after a year of extensive remodeling, it has lived up to our hopes and more. I love seeing redwoods through the many windows, the skylights in the cathedral ceilings, the cozy window seat, the concrete countertops and big island, the dark warm wood floors, and I could go on—but it’s not really home-home yet. A friend told me it usually takes eighteen months before a place feels like home.

For most of my life, home was the house I grew up in: the small 80’s ranch with dark wood walls, patterned wallpaper, and worn carpet. I remember intense periods of homesickness during college and medical school: I think what I missed then was a place where I could be myself, be taken care of, know I was unconditionally loved. I missed having someone cook for me, my old memorabilia. After moving back to live nearby for the past six years, I don’t miss that house the same way—I think I see I could never really live there again, and I see that one day, my parents will move on and sell everything and it will be gone.

Our last house, the first one we owned, was never one I fell in love with, but it was home because of the memories we made in it. We had three babies there, and it was the first place I learned how to take care of a house, and what life was like staying at home with the kids.

But now that house is gone too. I suppose there is an unavoidable period of time when one feels displaced with any major move: you’ve left the familiar behind, but the new place is not really home yet. We’ve settled in well here, but something will happen that throws me off: I meet up with a new friend at a coffeehouse but just feel sad missing my old friends, the way they would hug me and the way we could talk. I get lost again going somewhere. I think of something my parents would have loved to see or eat and realize they aren’t here.

I think for me, home is a place where I can be myself, a place where I deeply belong. I like the word “dwell”—it’s not a place where I’ve just made a living, or passed through, but a place where I have abided and lingered in long enough to know the place and people deeply, and to be known myself deeply.

This period, when I’m feeling the loss of a home, makes me read Revelation 21 and 22. One pastor at our church here pointed out that the story doesn’t end with the same garden it started with: it ends with a city, a place where we work and live together. I love that the word picture Jesus gives of heaven reminds me of coming home, to my own room. And when I feel lonely, I love that the story ends with, “He will dwell with them,” and in 22:4 with “they will see his face.” And that will be enough. All of this—my husband, each of my kids, this house with the redwoods—all of it is on loan to me, and as much as I love it, will be gone or changed one day. But I have this promise: this longing to belong is not in vain. One day, I will see his face, and I will live in a place that is home in every way, and that is a kind of comfort now.

Weather

So Bay Area weather is essentially all it’s touted to be. But my favorite thing about the weather here isn’t the perennially cloudless, sunny days, or better yet, the transformative lack of humidity and mosquitos—it’s the evenings. Every evening, the weather magically gets cooler and crisper. It makes me want to breathe deep and wander long. It reminds me of that first thrill of fall on the east coast, when months of oppressively muggy, hot days finally give way to a brisk coolness that makes you want to open windows and slip on long sleeves. Nearly every night here is like that. Dave used to go on and on about how he loved as a child to open his bedroom windows and sleep to a cool breeze, and I have to admit there is something to that.

One of the strangest things here is the lack of rain over the summer. It rained and thunderstormed aplenty in Virginia: we got used to radar-tracking storms to see how long thunder claps would keep the kids up from their naps or sleeping at night; a small tornado uprooted one of our trees a few months before we moved; we checked the weather app every day to figure out how to dress, or whether to bring rain jackets to school. Plenty of times, I’d forget to check in the rush to get the kids out the door, then groan when it starts to pour and I’m not wearing my wellies or raincoat. I haven’t checked my weather app once since moving here. Our chalk drawings stay on the sidewalk for months. We leave toys out on the deck. It’s all rather bizarre.

The first novel I’m reading since the move is The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, a strange amalgam of science fiction, Chinese history, theoretical mathematics and astrophysics, philosophical treatise, and epic quest. My favorite part of it (spoiler alert) is considering what life would be like if a planet existed in a stellar system with three suns. Because of the mathematically unpredictable movement of the three suns, at times the planet can be drawn into the orbit of one of the suns (at which time the planet has regular day-night cycles and mild weather), and at other times it cycles irregularly between them (resulting in completely unpredictable cycles where nights can last for weeks, and deadly temperature extremes). The planet can be far from all three suns (extremely cold conditions where it snows water, then dry ice, then the atmosphere sort of congeals), can be exposed to all three together (every living thing erupts into flames and the surface of the entire planet becomes a lake of lava), can be affected by the gravitational pull of all three suns in one line (all things and the atmosphere itself gets sucked up into a vortex and pulled to the closest sun), or can collide with some or all of the suns (splitting the planet in half and forming various rings that later collapse, destroying all life).

The inhabitants have no control over these events or how long various periods last, and the extreme weather often wipes out a civilization with millions of years passing before another develops. Civilizations devote their energies to trying to predict the motions of the suns, before realizing it is impossible and deciding to leave their world altogether.

I don’t understand the mechanics behind why the weather in the bay area is always so mild and dry—why there are rarely ever clouds during the day, or why the evenings are always perfectly cool—but it’s interesting to mull on how completely it is all out of our control. One day I am going to stop remarking on how nice the weather is here; it will just seem normal, much less the fact that, well, I don’t have to worry about suddenly erupting into flames when my planet gets too close to a few suns. But for now, I’m going to sit in the mystery of it all a little bit, that of all places in the entire universe and galaxy, I have landed upon a place where I can open my windows every night to a cool breeze.