HELLO, 2107!

THIS IS MALACHI WITH HIS ELDEST BROTHER JORDAN.  His expression speaks volumes, especially if you know Malachi well.  He has never spent twenty-four hours with his brother.  I was never declared unfit; no TPR exists--not a real one, anyway.  I might not live to see it, but GOD HAS GOT THE RECORD.  Justice will come--it always does.

My boys have grown to men.  Both of them top six feet tall.  William is getting a mustache; Malachi's got a full-fledged beard and a broken heart to get over.  College is going well for him--though he has hit a few frosh bumps in the road.  He has lived and learned--the hard way.  I wasn't there to mop up behind him, and he survived.

Family is still fam.  My mom passed away, and my sister died so long ago, but these two, Bryant and Kari, are still my brother and sister.  They proved it after a thirty year break, too.

So this is me today.  I have made a change.  FOR ME.  There is more to come.

"AND NOW FOR OUR NEXT ACT..."

SO NOW IT'S TIME FOR REAL COLLEGE.  Gotta get through this summer first.  Malachi made the Sunday paper above the fold, and they must really think his face can sell papers, because there is no Monday edition.

He called me from his grandparents' house to tell me he'd made the front page, and he sounded--well, humbled.  I was pretty shocked too.  I had thought the news photographer was taking his picture. I saw this expression from my vantage point, heard his deep bullfrog bellow of joy above all the others, too. We have a joke about his baritone making it impossible for him to whisper, and it's pretty much true. Sounded just like it looks in this picture, for sure! 

The day was surreal.  Of course, it rained, and now I have some terrible hair pictures for posterity, but I'll be okay.

I cannot believe it's over and done.  Turned out to be fifty-one college credits, not fifty-nine, but I'm not complaining.  Still will cut his college debt by two-thirds.  He's gotten a couple of scholarships, but he could have gotten more...procrastination is deadly, but now he is grown, and I'm done taking the important things out of his hands and giving them back completed.

Mom wore the same outfit to her sister's funeral--maybe her thoughts of making me out to be an incompetent mom were finally laid to rest.  I helped her through spinal fusion surgery, and she's just as grateful and happy about it all as she appears.  Poor Pop Pop.  Should have taken my advice....

This is Jerome.  That's his mom seated at the left.  Malachi's brother Ashton went out of his way for JJ, and I'm just as proud of him as I am of Mali.  See, JJ has been through even more stuff than we have; he's been on his own for about six months now, and his siblings, still in foster care, were not permitted to attend the young man's graduation.  We filled in, and I am so glad to know I have caring kids.

So now, on to the next chapter.  We slept in on Monday, but now it's back to business.

Thanks for taking the time to read this blog.

"I'M SO GLAD WE HAD THIS TIME TOGETHER...."

"JUST TO HAVE A LAUGH AND SING A SONNNGG."

I love that Carol Burnett theme, and I've always had a sneaking suspicion that it is Betty Wright's "The CleanUp Woman's" blonde, blue-eyed first cousin.  I would sing it loudly around closing time in the Gifts Department at SteinMart when I worked there many moons ago.

Well, now it applies to Malachi, and his Early College High School days.  Tomorrow is graduation.  He made it out with 58 out of 60 college credits, so no Associate's, but I'm not complaining.  He did not go on that People To People trip, and I'm not sure I will ever stop regretting it.  Lily's been dead nearly three years.  I think he misses her as badly as I do.  She slept beside him every night of her life.

Malachi is a hardworking kid.  There really isn't too much more a mom could ask for in a son.  He hasn't done any serious housework like ever, but that's pretty much my only complaint.  He has managed to avoid most of the pitfalls available to a young person, though I'm certain he has taken a test-drive through a few of them.

Still, as a young black man, he has done well.  His barber told me that when his peers get tired of looking unsavory, they check out what Malachi is wearing.  Today when we were there getting haircuts in advance of tomorrow's graduation ceremony, I noticed that nearly every man under thirty and all the kids are sporting some version of his hairstyle (except his brother--he chose a "first day at Parris Island"-type cut).  I told him he could have a Mohawk, but no.

People stop me in the street to tell me they are proud of Malachi.  A young lady named Ashley said, "He doesn't know who I am," rather wistfully, I thought.  "Yes he does," I told her with confidence.  She's his classmate.  It was weeks later when I thought to mention it.  "Oh yeah, Ashley," he confirmed.  "She's kinda shy.  Why wouldn't I know her?"  

That's what I like about my kid.  He's willing to know everybody.

It's been fun raising Malachi.  He did his homework unsupervised and brought back good grades.  He is respectful.  He's talented.  Relatively self-contained, there were few meltdowns, and very little sass from him.  I can recall Sunday afternoons playing Monopoly with Mali and William, and later in the evening, the sound of music emanating from their cramped bedroom, soothing me that everything was gonna be okay.  

We have been through a lot since those sun-dusted days in the fishing cottage, some of it really, really bad, but we made it.

 My sons will tell you, "We had a real childhood!" They mean it.  I've always been the type of mom who would get outdoors with her children.  I had sons, and I did not want to cause them to be athletically inept because I wouldn't get off the couch.  It's paid off in an extra measure of good health, and sons who are pretty accomplished at sports.  This is as close to baseball as Malachi will ever get, though.

My children have known suffering.  They've had experience with lack, loss, and disappointment.  I believe it has strengthened them immensely.  They know who God is, and they know that "He may not come when you want Him, but He is always right on time!"  They have prayed beside me when there was nothing left to do, and they have seen the LORD come through for us in supernatural ways.

There was the stormy time when they called me into the bedroom at Johnnie Evans.  "Look mom," said William and Malachi, their voices just a bit uncertain.  The two tall pines outside their window were bent low in a howling wind.  Their very tops were touching the ground.  

"What's gonna happen when the wind lets them up?" asked Malachi.  He was about nine.

"Let's just pray."

"Thy will be done," was all we had time for.

LORD, whatever happens, make it quick , I thought, as visions of them whipping back from their prone position and splitting our 720 square foot fishin' cottage in half filled my mind.  We stood watching, me in the middle with a hand on each of their shoulders, for ten or fifteen eternal seconds.

The wind stopped.

If you ever meet my sons, ask them and they will confirm: those two trees rose from the ground like two prostrate human beings bending upward from the waist, and did not touch our house.

I remember the boys looking at me, two pairs of enormous brown and blue eyes stretched wide in bewildered faces.  I shrugged.  They shrugged.

"God is good," they called out in unison, their backs to me.  They sat down on their beds to look out of the window at the two trees, now gently swaying and flinging raindrops onto the panes.  I staggered away to fling myself down beside my bed and thank Him, oh, how I thanked Him.

They're not very churchy, but my sons have real faith.

Recently, someone told me that my worldview was eloquently displayed in the demeanor of my children.  I was mystified.

"You can tell what a person believes by the way their children act," said my friend.

I never thought of it like that.

Thanks for taking the time to read this blog.

HOW YOU LIVING?

MALACHI WENT TO SEE MY MOM before he went to prom last weekend.

She was overjoyed, and I was truly pleased with him, because he had a real desire to do it.  Her appearance shocks him every time he sees her. 

Her appearance in pictures is what I find so shocking.  

It has been a long road.  I have raised my sons as a single parent, with no child support of any kind.  I abandoned bitterness and rage a couple years ago (shoulda done it sooo much sooner) and just put my head down and committed to being available for my two youngest sons.

That's how I've been living, and it has borne the fruit in the suit you see there.

Now, when my mom became ill, my best friend from high school called to tell me.  She thought I would be hardhearted and stiffnecked, but I chose otherwise.  The MRI which showed the herniated disc that was about to paralyze her completely, I took her.  It was supposed to last 45 minutes, but 20 minutes in, it was over.  "Either she's perfectly healthy, or the tech found something serious."  Four days later, she was undergoing cervical fusion.  They could not find any vein to draw blood.  Dr. Kantor, the anesthesiologist threw up her hands.  

"I vill naht geev upp!" she cried, and proceeded to perform a technique they don't do here.  The entire surgical team stayed beyond their shift.  They rearranged the OR schedule.  Every team in the hospital had tried to draw my mom's blood, and they threw protocol to the winds and saved her life.  

She'd (purposely) eaten before the procedure and thrown everything into chaos.  

Mom turned accusing eyes to me.  "You didn't tell me."  

"Yes she did," said her husband.

"You didn't come in my room and stop me," she rejoined, as if she had not heard.

"Okay mom. I'm not sure I knew you were eating a croissant behind your closed bedroom door."

"Well, you should have known, and came in there and stopped me."

That is how she is living.  Been blaming me since the day I was born, like I came to the world on purpose to prove she was sleeping with that woman's husband.

I had to walk away from that toxicity.  But now she has no one except me, her husband with his untreated diabetic issues, and my children.  The one who is becoming rich off the income of my eldest son pops in now and then, to ask where I've been, mostly.

I am living in a season of penitence.  I'm not bitter, I'm better.  If it were not for faith, I'd have done something besides wait on the LORD, yew betcha.  Apostle John Eckhardt gave a word on recompense, which is justice and vindication after times of injustice and unfairness patiently endured, that I am embracing today.

  

I had a dream in which I met a giant farm combine in the middle of the road.  I had to go around it.  The farmer tipped his battered straw hat as I maneuvered around him.  It could have been Eckhardt, 'cause he really looks like a white guy.  I visited old men and families in whitewashed houses.  There were times of fog and storm.  Just before I woke, the sun came out.  I looked over and away, and there was that green and yellow Deere harvester, reaping.  The tiny figure in the cab threw up his plaid-shirted arm in salute to me.  My harvest.  It's coming.

That is how I'm living.

Thanks for taking time to read this blog.

WE ARE STILL FRIENDS!

https://soundcloud.com/mill_trill/city-of-hope

SO MY KID IS NOW ALL GROWN UP.

There are so many things that I wish he'd done that he chose not (failed) to do.  Yet, he has been successful.  His worldview is his own, but I can see the hand I have had in it.  My desire to assist him has not waned.  Not at all.

The question is, how???  

The answer is simple:  You have to let your children make their own mistakes.  You have to let go and let them walk out into the world.  Stay in their corner, but stay in their corner.  Don't go chasing behind them.  Malachi's prom date--her mother actually went to the Prom!  She said, "Are you going?"  I was like, "Nooooo."  What in the world??? I know my kid is a good kid.  I know if them two wanna roll around somewhere, I can do nothing to stop it, LIKE CRASH THEIR PROM.  

He made it back.  She left her flip-flops, though.

So this "City of Hope" track.  I like it.  I found it on my own, while  I was revisiting "World Traveler" from 2014.  I love technology.  Soundcloud redirected me to Malachi's new stuff, and it has got real potential.

So I decided to come on back to the blog.

Thanks for taking the time to read it.  No matter how long I neglect it, it is always there waiting, just like an old friend.

"IT'S ME AGAIN, AND I'M BACK."

I THOUGHT I LOOKED BAD IN THIS PICTURE.  Didn't like my skin, my hair; thought I was wrinkled.

Well.

I look a lot more tired and stressed out now, I think.  I was talking to a new friend of mine about starting an online magazine.  Then I remembered blogspot.  Then I remembered #friendsofmalachimaxwellglass.

I have to say, the previous post is a gut-wrenching read.  No wonder I'm looking sadder.  I'm feeling wiser, without a doubt.  As much as I'd been through when I took that selphy with my brand new phone, there was plenty more to come.  More heartache, more disappointment, more persevering.

I really grieved the loss of my dog.  It was raining, and I'd made her stay outside, to please someone who was never there.  The toll it took is clear to me in this picture.  You never know when a decision is really a bad one when you are making it.  Everyone has to get older, but the unhappiness that has settled into my countenance is unacceptable to me.  The dogs I have now are deeply loved, but I never will stop missing my Lily.  I don't think of her every day anymore, just most days.

And then there is what happens when you are forced to realize that you are doing all the heavy lifting in a relationship.  You're in love all by yourself!  It was the biggest heartbreak I've ever experienced, including finally getting that not only does Mom not love me all that much, also she'd laid careful plans to prevent my success at all costs.  She still doesn't like me, but she officially needs me more than I need her.  Grandma said it would happen.  My goal is to repay evil with good, and I'm getting there, a little closer every day.

I've always been a resilient sort.  I'm also kinda cute when I'm seething.  Even if you don't really love me, I enjoy Italian.  Even come dressed to match the tableware.

HAD I KNOWN ALL THE HAIR IN FRONT WOULD BREAK TO HALF AN INCH, I'd have looked even angrier, certainly.  I thought the stylist had done me a solid.  Today I have bangs.  I did not ask for bangs.  But, flax seeds will grow it back, and in a year or two, all my hair will be the same length again. So I get sympathy from no one.  See, I have no desire to go natural, say what you please.  Frizzy, crazy hair was NOT IN STYLE when I had it, so pardon me if I prefer the sodium hydroxide.  I'd dyed my hair purple, trying to feel better, but the previous time, I had not bleached it first.  I was seriously in a tizzy.  Nothing in my life was to my liking. (Not much has changed--just my attitude toward things, yo.)

Nothing like a night job to rob you of your cute.  My baby son always takes pictures that make me look loved, and I really appreciate that.  My sleep cycles will be out of whack for a long, long time.  I am grateful to have gotten back into the work world, but a $76 paycheck...makes you look limp and lifeless.

I haven't lost my ability to smile.  I've always been willing to smile, even with the misalignment I've been saddled with for a lifetime.  I won't ever stop searching for something to smile about, no matter what is going on at any given moment.  I have not stopped believing in me.  I've learned to have more faith in myself.  I am grateful to be in good health, and I won't let circumstances rob me of that.  Sometimes its tough to stay upbeat; even harder to stay focused, but I will never give up striving for a better life.  My counselor asked me what I wanted most from life, and my response genuinely shocked him:

"Peace of mind."

"No one's ever told me that," he said.  "I've heard all kinds of stuff, but never anything just that simple."

"Well," I asked him, "Doesn't peace of mind encompass all the things people think they want--comfort, stability, financial security, solid relationships?"

"Yes, of course," he responded.  "But most people come to me because they don't get that."

I get it.  I want it.  I'll have it.

Thanks for taking the time to read this blog.

A Brand-New Bittersweet Season

Things change.  People change. Seasons change.  

That's an old Wilson-Phillips lyric, and it haunts me as I write this.

(actually, a one-hit wonder by Expose', but it may as well be Wilson-Phillips.)


Malachi did not go with +People to People Student Travel .  They are still holding a place for him.

So much has changed, and no matter how hard I try, I cannot help but feel a failure because he did not fulfill the commitment he made.  I'm looking hard for the lesson, and when I think about it too much, I become impotent with frustration and resentment.

I don't spend too much time with those two emotions, and it is preventing me from taking the lessons I need from this spectacular disappointment.


My beloved Lily is gone.  Gone forever, and I was silent on this platform, bereft and mute with grief and loss.  I've lost many people and circumstances in my life, but this one ranks right up there.

I still dig being me, and even I have to give me credit for a special kind of resilience.

 I still have dreams, plans, and goals for the future, and you all still want to hear what I've got to say.

It's hard to believe people still come by to read this blog, after I left it to languish for so long.  I'm grateful.  Better yet, I'm hopeful.

 Seasons change, leaving nothing but memories.

If we are wise, we learn from the bitter, and retain the taste of sweetness as much as we can.

Malachi has changed.  He works.  He dates.

He grew a mustache.

I'm still there for him, but things are not the same.  I saw an audience of women respond to the question,

"Do you put yourself first or last in relation to your family?"

I was shocked to discover that I now inhabit a minority.

Moms, wives, daughters, and women in general now think it's normal to put themselves first.

I need time to think about that.  Stay tuned for what it means for Malachi.


Thanks for taking the time to read this blog.  I think I'll keep it for Malachi's future.