Tragedy

A few nights ago my beautiful Aunt Sandy (far right) went to bed, as we all do. Before falling asleep she more than likely, as we all do, replayed in her mind the events of another day - the good, the bad, the finished, and the unfinished. Soon enough she fell asleep, and then after a time she woke up, but not in her bed. My aunt wouldn't wake up again on this earth. She rests now in the warmth of Heaven.

Sandy Post was only 64 years old when a massive stroke took her from us in her sleep, just a few weeks before Thanksgiving in the year 2014. She felt no pain. She felt no worry. Aside from being decades too soon, it was a pleasant way to leave the earth. But pleasant is not how we are feeling.

Tragedy is completely unlike any other facet of the human experience. There is daily life, with its potholes and rain showers, layoffs, weight gain, financial strain, migraines. And then a day comes when my mother's only sister and best friend, Sandy, dies in the night. Out of nowhere Uncle Chris (second from left) becomes a widower, with his health and retirement years ahead of him. My four cousins are left to finish their adult lives without their mother. Grandkids have lost their grandmother. Uncle Randy and my mom have lost their sister. My brothers and cousins and I have lost our aunt. And my grandmother has lost her firstborn child. Tragedy leaves so much brokenness in its wake.

Yesterday I spoke with my grieving grandmother on a video call. She saw my face over the miles, and I hers, and we both began to weep. As a mother, I can't imagine what she must be going through. But even trying to imagine brings me to my knees with sorrow.

"I'm sorry," I said to her. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

She cried. I cried.

"I'm sorry that your daughter died, Grandma."

She cried. I cried. And there was nothing else to say.

When life brings heavy rains

There were no pumpkins this year on account of the rains.

But the Rupp kids are a creative bunch. A glass-half-full bunch, a trait they clearly got from their dad. So it didn't surprise me to find this when I woke up on Halloween morning (the kids had been awake for a while already, using up every last scrap of our orange construction paper from America).

Soon after this picture was taken, the kids "picked" these pumpkins and made them into jack-o-lanterns. I put the jack-o-lanterns on display atop the hutch, in front of Daddy's birthday cards from last month which I'm not yet ready to throw away.

Later that evening, it was time for the padawan, the skeleton, the ninja, and Wylde Style from The Lego Movie to emerge.

Then it was time to join the rest of the troupe.

And go trick-or-treating along the street.

Now it's one piece of candy after every meal until we've worked our way through every last White Rabbit, Ouishi, LeConde, and Sugus in the bag. Our candy stash probably looks a bit different from yours. In fact, do me a favor and eat a box of Nerds for me (and a Bit-O-Honey, a Mounds bar, a Milkyway, a watermelon Jolly Rancher, and one of those little yellow boxes of Milk Duds.)

seven kids

Our besties John and Alisa took off for a long weekend, and we got to keep their kids! With a long summer behind them, a busy fall upon them, and baby #4 due in the spring, they needed some serious R&R.

And we needed a humbling, tumbling weekend with seven children in our care. xoxo

It won't always be like this

He says it all the time. When I've scarcely finished his laundry from his last trip and he's headed out of town again, he says, "It won't always be like this." When I'm wiping splashed milk from the legs of a chair while two kids sit in time-out, one kid hollers from the bathroom that his butt needs wiping, and one sits staring hatefully at his green beans, Daniel says, "It won't always be like this." When I am up on a Saturday morning with four hungry kids while Daniel sleeps, because he was up past 1 a.m. writing critiques for his PhD, I can almost hear him saying, "It won't always be like this."

And the sad thing is, he's right.

Camping in a ten-buck, second-hand tent, at our friend's mountain village, where the pumpkin crop is no good this year on account of the rains. 

Roasting weird pink marshmallows imported from somewhere in Europe, through a hole in the side of a quite ingenious fire pit.

Look who turned 35 last week! Mathematically speaking, he is now closer to 40 than to 30;)

THE Carrot Cake (for breakfast the next day, but it was still his birthday in the States so I say it counts)

Home School elementary represented at the soccer tournament last weekend! We won two games and had a ball (literally).

His first coaching experience, whistle and all.

Stuuuuuds.

For fun, here's look at Zion's Chinese homework. Adorable

The kids built a "snow man" during their morning recess. 

The sound of her love

Feeding my family.

It's more than just filling their empty bellies. I wouldn't need to cook to do that. During the siege of Leningrad in the early 1940s, desperate mothers were boiling their husbands' belts to make a broth for their starving children; ripping off their wallpaper for the scant amount of flour found in its glue. That is filling empty bellies. Feeding my family is less about survival (though we thank G0D for our food at every meal because without it we would starve). Feeding my family is more about...love.

Love comes in many audible forms. For some, love sounds like the buzz of a football game on TV, with a toddler dressed for game day tucked under his arm and a bowl of guacamole on the coffee table. For others, love sounds like the polite hum of a bass-boat motor on a whispering lake, with a wife at home who sent him off that morning with a cold-cut sandwich and a kiss on his cheek. Love can sound like the creak of a saddle or the whirrrr of a circular saw. I know at least one person for whom love sounds like a paint brush knocking about in a cup of water, turning the water gray from color-overload. Love can sound like the croon of a road-trip playlist, the crunch of dried leaves underfoot, a baby making sounds in the back of church, or a child plunking away at his arpeggios, up and down the piano.

For me, the sounds of love come from the kitchen. Of course I remember how my mother's food tasted, and I remember how it looked, and how it felt in my hands and mouth. I remember, too, how it smelled. But most keenly, I think, I remember how it sounded each day when Mom lovingly prepared our food. The springy click of the potato peeler, the falling thud of the blade paring the crisp potato flesh. The hissing of course-chopped onions dashed against hot oil, the snap of a corn cob down the middle, the hollow sound of celery being sliced against the grain. The ding of the timer, the beep-beep of the microwave, the suctioned yawn of the refrigerator opening, closing, opening, closing. The crash of pots and pans when a lid was needed in a hurry, and the rush of running water from the faucet, rinsing the residue away.

And now I am the one making music at the cutting board. I am the one building a soundtrack of love for my family. Like a Bon Jovi song that brings me back to tenth grade - when all I have to do is hear a few notes strung together and suddenly I am there, in living color - so it is when I hear the sound of pudding being whisked over medium heat. Suddenly I am back in 1988 and dinner is at 5 O'clock. Dad comes home from work in his polished shoes and ironed shirt, drops his brief case, and scoops us up in his arms, his breath still smelling like the onions he had in his lunch, and his beard tickling my cheek in the softest, happiest way. The memory is of Dad, but the sound of the oven door thunking closed behind us was all Mom. It was her way of loving us, her way of saying it.

It was the sound of her love.

p.s. Can you tell what book I'm reading, Rach? ;)

cocky little bugger

This was our guest in Chinese class on Monday.

I spotted it crawling between my foot and my book-bag, fat and unfaltering, as if it belonged there. I squealed and recoiled. My teacher giggled. When I kept staring at the cockroach, with my legs pulled to my chest, she acquired a look of concern and asked, "Are you afraid?"

"Not afraid," I said. "Gross." (I speak very simple English with her)

"Oh, I see," she said, and then scurried from the room. A few moments later she returned with a janitors mop, soggy and gray. With the mop she chased the cockroach, giggling at herself, pushing the mop's bulgy top against the bug for a second or two at a time. Every time she released the pressure, however, the roach, unharmed except for its pride, kept walking in the same direction. It wasn't the least bit intimidated by this giggling Chinese woman and her nasty old mop.

"Out the door," I suggested. My teacher nodded, and the next time the mop was in place over the roach, she swooshed it into the hall and closed the door behind it.

Class resumed.

The age she was back then

I had a birthday Monday. I am now 34 years old.

The thing is, I clearly remember my mom at this age. I remember her and her friends, Evonne, Staci, Marybeth, all of them permed, frizzed, and frazzled, carting us around in their minivans, chasing us out of their formal living rooms, browning hamburger for dinner and learning to bake chicken breasts (the new thing in the 80s). There was anti-aging cream in the bathroom drawer, thick golden perfume stagnant in dusty bottles on Mom's dresser, and humongous (it seemed to me) size medium ladies underwear drying in our laundry room. What a mom.

And now that's me. Except I don't feel near as old as Mom and her friends seemed to me then, nor as old as they remain in my memories of them. I'm sure Jubilee looks at me now and rolls her eyes, wondering where my sense of style is, and why my teeth are the color of sand instead of the color of milk, and why I breath coffee air down onto her head when I read her stories in the morning.

But someday she will turn 34, and perhaps she will smile, remembering.

Me on my 34th birthday, which was also Chinese National Day, hence the flags adorning all the tables at the Intercontinental Hotel Buffet where Daniel, Alisa, and John took me to celebrate.