for granny.

Granny,

I’m not sure which words to say first. Should I first tell you that I love you, I’ll miss you, and can’t believe you’re gone? Or should I tell you all the things that I loved about you and what made you so very special to me. I guess I can do both.

First, I love you with my whole heart. You were such a sweet spirit and constant presence of love, gentleness, and good humor. How lucky am I that I got to call you my grandmother? I will miss you immensely and so desperately wish that I’d had the chance to tell you how much I love you one more time or had the chance to tell you goodbye. I really can’t believe that you’re gone and was in no way prepared for a world of mine in which you do not exist. A comfort to me comes in knowing that you most likely were in no pain and that you are most certainly in a place with no pain now. 

You were my granny. You were there, present, consistent, loving, and ever so thoughtful toward your family and your grandkids. What a blessing you were to so many people. There were so many things you did so well, but one of my favorite attributes of yours was your ability to make some incredible food. You know that your meatloaf, banana split cake, and macaroni and cheese have always been favorites of mine. In your honor, I’m going to do my best to make the banana split cake this year at Christmas. It won’t be as good as yours, but then nobody’s would be. 

I loved your Christmas bags that you sewed yourself. It was always so much fun opening gifts at your house out of those. I loved the plastic apple full of jellybeans that was always full and ready to feed us a treat when we were at your house. I loved that you called your freezer an ice box still and the way you giggled when you thought you had been mischievous about something. I love the rolling chairs at your kitchen table and the fact that your trashcan was always a brown paper sack under your sink. I loved our tradition that I would always ring your doorbell over and over again until you answered your door. Looking back, I imagine that was rather annoying, but you never let on. You just answered the door with a big smile every time and always with the greeting, “Hi, hon.” I loved watching the Cowboys and Rangers with you and always being entertained by how invested in the games and players you would get. I love that you have had the same blue couch for literally as long as I can remember and the green astroturf on your front porch. 

I love the smell of rose soap because it always makes me think of you. Some of my earliest memories of spending the night at your house have that smell tied to them. What a wonderful reminder of you that smell will always be. I also love how much you loved Jesus. Thank you for that and for talking about it with me. 

Granny, I love you. I will miss you so much and am so sad that you are gone. I’m sad that you won’t get the chance to see me get married or have my own kids and that those people in my life won’t have had the chance to know you, but I am thankful that these first 28 years of mine had you in them. What a special woman you were.

With great love and affection,

Jessica

come on in.

One of the things I am learning that I find pretty valuable in relationships with people is actually a relatively simple thing. I don’t need people to be super entertaining, make the wittiest comments, or be the smartest. I don’t care one bit who is the coolest, has the most expensive things, or is the most socially connected. There is one quality that seems to stand out above the rest for me: presence. 

When someone is able to be present and consistent, that is a truly valuable quality to me. Some of my very favorite people are those that I know I can trust to do what they say they are going to do. That’s not to say that this is a rigid expectation of others always sticking with some original plan, but more a general reliability factor that can be expected. To use a technical term, I’m referring to what could be called “non-flakiness.”

This quality of presence doesn’t have to look very extravagant either. You don’t need to be present with me at a cool concert, event, or always doing some exciting activity. For me, presence actually means more in the everyday, routine things of life. Contrary to popular belief about single people, I would actually love to run errands with you and your kids. I would love to sit in the same room and read with you. I would love to clean up your kitchen if you let me eat dinner at your house. 

When people open their doors and their hearts and allow you to be a part of their everyday lives, that is the true presence that I feel is the most significant. It is significant because these are the moments that life is woven of, these everyday, routine, patterned times of life. It is significant because these are also the moments that are really easy to just let pass by and not include others in. But I tend to think these times are a gift because the people you can include in these moments of your life are the people you know are “your people.” These are the people that you know are in this thing with you because they’re willing to run to the grocery store with you or to go have your car inspected...just because. 

So for me, some of the best words are not, “Oh yeah, let’s get together soon” from someone that is all about a full social calendar or with people that may be really interesting but I know may cancel at any minute. The best words for me really are these familiar ones: “The door’s open. Come on in when you get here.”

the attempt.

Well, it has been about 6 months since my last blog post and after scanning back over my blog as a whole, I recognize the great sporadic-ness with which I write. This is about to change. 

I had coffee with my wonderful friend Steve this week and he has challenged me to write more and more regularly. I have committed to him to try and write 2 blogs a week, and he the same, and we will help hold one another accountable to this. I’m feeling rather shaky about my ability to hold down my end of this deal, but I’m going to do my very best to make the most concerted effort I can. 

For me, writing has always been a whimsy thing. I am not disciplined, not structured, and am on no real schedule. It has purely been something that I have used as a creative outlet when I needed a place to express myself. But what I’m finding and what I hear from friends who are real writers, like Steve, is that if you are serious about writing it can’t just be on a whim. If that’s how you write, you’ll never get any better and you won’t be able to pursue writing on any sort of grander scale.  

Blogs are great and a wonderful avenue to express our feelings and thoughts in a public way, but I have always had hopes of writing on a bigger scale. I would love to write a book or do some sort of writing that could be published. That is going to take discipline though and so here is my attempt at moving in that direction. This is my effort to see what happens, both internally and in my writing, if I begin to make it a habit of sorts. 

This is my attempt. Feel free to hold me accountable.