Month: February 2014

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Growing Up Seventh-Day Adventist: Going Home

“There is no past. Only present. And future.” -Theodicus

There’s a saying that you can never go home again, and I believe wholeheartedly in it. Not that you can’t go back to the physical place, but that you can’t go back to how you used to fit into that space. That’s important for a world of reasons, but the biggest one is that there is something to be said for nostalgia, once that distance has been forged, that connects us back to that time period, and to who we were at the time.

So many people have memories of their childhoods, be they good or bad, that they come back to in one way or another. For me that childhood was a solid mix of the good and the bad. But whichever sentiment clouds my memories, it’s safe to say that every single one of those thoughts involves my religious upbringing. In fact, just today I was singing “Jesus Loves Me” while at work, and I didn’t even realize I was doing it until I was on the second verse.

My mother used to always ask me to go to church with her every single time I went back to Philadelphia for a visit. I could hear it in her voice, too, that emotion that said I was doing a horrible thing saying no, but there was also that feeling of sadness. And I knew that she wasn’t just asking me to go to church. She was wondering where she went wrong, that I would so fully abandon the church that pretty much raised me nearly as much as she herself did.

But what I wanted to tell her was that it was never her, that she hadn’t done anything wrong. Continue reading “Growing Up Seventh-Day Adventist: Going Home”

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Still

358966The old farmhouse shudders against the oncoming wind, frightened of even more damage that would settle a score it hadn’t known it owed. A whistling sound screams against its sides and squeezes through the cracks under the doors, more eerie than a little bit, precursor to the squall that will come after midnight, when the house is all tucked in and snoring comfortably. An old cocker spaniel lies on the mat by the kitchen door, ears cocked, ready to defend his family against whatever is making the horrible keening noise. Of course that noise is him, but he listens nonetheless, oblivious.

A fire crackles in the stone fireplace, warming the thick rug in the den as the sparks get perilously close. The young man of the house stoked it quite full before he turned in for the night, as is his nightly habit, meant to ward off the need to get up in the middle of the night to re-fill the behemoth. A patter on the roof would remind him of little feet running pell mell across its surface if he were awake to hear its drumming. It is night rain coming down slowly but surely, and it will soon multiply in frequency and in pressure, but for now it runs across like the lost child they have tried so hard to forget.

A solitary human soul is tortured in the face of the nearby onslaught. The years have not been kind to her. Her lined face and the deep creases around her eyes are testament to that, that and long nights without sleep. She fights against herself harder than the elements pound on the house she has called home for longer than she would care to admit. Her back is ramrod straight against the wall as she sits up in the bed she shares with a corpse. Continue reading “Still”

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Checked Out: Week 4

Well, what a difference a week makes! Remember when I said I was deep into The Tyrant’s Law. As it turns out, the most recent time I read that book, or any other for that matter, was last Tuesday right after I wrote the latest entry of Checked Out. That’s for two major reasons. I … Continue reading Checked Out: Week 4

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Disturbance at the Heron House: Volume 3

tumblr_lbajisxTfT1qc4y1yo1_500_large…and we were still waiting.

My wife heard back from the doctor a week after the testing was done to see whether or not Alexa had Cystic Fibrosis, and the word back was that the test was inconclusive. They would have to do genetic testing to see whether or not she tested positive, and in the meantime we would have to keep waiting. Over a month later and we were still in that holding pattern, completing the treatments twice a day, and dealing with the weight of knowing we were one step closer to our child possibly having CF, something we were supposed to be “simply ruling out” with the initial test.

And during that time period we worried. What you need to know about my wife is that in our relationship she’s the worrier on the outside, and me, I’m the worrier on the inside. I might look like I’m doing just fine, but underneath the facade I’m freaking out. In fact, sometimes I just sit still and shake because I’m so worried. It happened when I was so worried that Madeline might have DS, but then when she tested positive for it it was okay. I was able to deal with it, and I figured that would be the same way with Alexa and the possibility of CF. The possibility worried me a lot more than the actual diagnosis, because if the diagnosis came back that she had it then I could make a plan, then I could deal with it.

But Heidi, she worries from the start, and it shows on her face and in her demeanor. Reading about all the issues that children with CF have, she had driven herself into the cycle of “what if.” And don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying her way of dealing with it is wrong. It’s just different how we approach things, but we eventually get to the same place. If that place is acceptance, then we work on it, and if it’s a sigh of relief then we sigh at the same time. We were both preparing ourselves for the possibilities during that month, just in our different ways. Continue reading “Disturbance at the Heron House: Volume 3”