both sides now...

It was startling to see the time on my IPhone when I finally sensed I was ready to get up today: 12:11 pm! That was almost twelve hours of sleep. That means today will mostly be hanging out around the back porch with tea and old copies of The Christian Century. I need to cut the grass, too but that's about it. 

Next week will be rich and demanding: the extended Lumsden clan starts to

gather in Massachusetts for the "laying to rest" of the cremains of our mother, father and sister.  It has been nearly 12 years since Mom died, probably five years since Beth let go and almost three years since Dad gave up the ghost. My brother Phil and his wife, Julie, are now back East from their home in San Francisco. For a few more days they will wander the West Village haunts of Julie's youth and then join us on Sunday. Jesse and Louie head back here from Brooklyn on Monday, too. And the whole troupe will gather in Webster, MA on Thursday for stories, feasting and a scattering of their ashes on the lake they all loved so intensely.

I have been dreaming of my mother these past few weeks; it has been more like nightmares, I should say, even as I've been thinking consciously of my father and his broken but real love for us all. She loved her babies as well but it was a complicated and wounding love - at least for me. The two songs our ensemble is playing on Sunday hold significance beyond the obvious. Leonard Cohen reminds me that there "is a crack in everything... that's how the light gets in" while Joni Mitchell keeps gently encouraging us to look at love and life from both sides now. It will be a joy to be together with this motley crew again. We haven't been n the same place at the same time since Dad's memorial service. 

There will also be more than a few tears shared as we consider all the cracks and light that have shaped our curious but life-giving love for one another.