A City, Stopped

Fifteen years ago, my wife Maile and I drove the straight stretch of 95 North where it races through New Jersey, slowing to a stand still as we waited to drive into New York City. The traffic converges there, just outside the Lincoln Tunnel, then slowly submerges, everyone holding their breath for the passage under.

But what I remember most is the way the smoke still billowed from the ground on the other side of the river, a cloud of it reaching out over the Hudson. We were moving to England, one month after 9/11, and the whole world was tipping off its axis.

* * * * *

Our move to England required visas, and those pieces of paper were tied up at the British consulate in NYC, so we hit the road that day in hopes of retrieving the visas personally and in time for our flight to London the following week.

I had been to New York City many times before that, and I looked forward to returning. There was something about the chaos of the city, the constant horns and maddening flow of people, that made it feel like anything might be possible. But when we drove up out of the Lincoln Tunnel and turned to enter the parking garage in the heart of the city, we were met not with the promise of adventure, but by guards with machine guns.

There had never been guards outside the parking garage, but there they were, carrying machine guns, staring straight ahead. They wore what looked like police riot gear. Their faces were emotionless landscapes. They asked for my driver’s licence. They searched the car. They reluctantly took down our license plate number and waved us through.

Still shaking, we climbed out of the car and then out of the underground garage, out into the light. It was then the silence hit us.  New York was quiet. I couldn’t believe it. A hush hovered in the alleys and drifted through the streets, like fog, and everything was muffled by it. Barely any of the cars blew their horns. People scurried from here to there, looking over their shoulders.

And there was the cloud. Always the cloud. Rising up like a smoke signal.

* * * * *

We sat for a few hours in the office. We presented our passports. We got the small pieces of paper we needed to start this new life on the other side of the Atlantic.

We walked the quiet streets back to the parking garage and we found our car. The same guards waved us off, and I stared at them in my rearview mirror. They were the new reality.

Back down through the tunnel, up and out again, then south on I-95, all the way. But I kept glancing in my rearview for as long as I could see the column of smoke, and it was deep, and it was foreboding. In those days we wondered what might be next.

6134916499_1a449b9b9d_o

* * * * *

A few weeks later, visas and passports freshly stamped,  we walked the streets of London, our new home. Black cabs sifted through the traffic, gliding past pubs and red telephone booths. A low, slate-gray sky was barely held up by the buildings.

And on that day, everything stopped. Everything. Cars. Pedestrians. Businesses stopped serving people. A minute of silence for the United States and all that we had lost in 9/11, and a minute is a very long time in a city.

I’ve never experienced anything like it before or since. A city, stopped.

* * * * *

Shawn is a writer living in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. 9/11 photo by Kristen on Creative Commons.

Love in the Time of Baseball

I was a spindly-limbed, nine-year-old boy who enjoyed spending afternoons on the farmhouse porch reading Madeleine L’Engle and C.S. Lewis. I’d sit there for hours in the summer, moving my lawn chair so that I stayed in the shade, waving away the flies. Two huge oak trees stood like sweating sentries, their backs towards me, their faces looking at the small country church across the street, the one flanked by an enormous graveyard. The sky was vast and blue.

But I was also a first-baseman and pitcher for my local little-league team, Lengacher’s Cheese. We wore orange with the name of our sponsor emblazoned on the front in white. Our oversized baseball caps were made of mesh with the tab-and-hole size adjusters in the back. The pants were scratchy, some devilish form of polyester.

Two evenings a week and sometimes Saturdays I’d don my Lengacher’s Cheese baseball jersey and my parents would drive me to the ball field. Our home field was behind the local VFW, but on one particular summer evening an away game took us to the field of our arch rivals: Weiler’s Garage. Their uniforms were mostly green with a bit of yellow. Their players were all humongous, having been born and bred in a rough area we called The Welsh Mountain. They were legendary, a team to fear.

There was one player in particular who I felt anxious about playing against that night. Her name was Anne (obviously names have been changed here to protect the innocent). She had black hair and brown eyes. She was the only girl on the Weiler’s Garage team. I had a crush on her.

On that particular day fate would have it that my coach put me on the pitcher’s mound. The Weiler’s Garage field was at the back of a remote, overgrown park in the middle of The Welsh Mountain. It was lined on one side by a junkyard and the other side by a deep, impenetrable forest. Even with summer sunshine stretching late into the evening, the park felt dark and shadowy.

I took the mound. I felt the baseball in my hand, the red, raised seams rough on my fingertips. Their hitters were all strong, and I fought my way through the lineup. I looked up and realized Anne was making her way to the plate. She stood there confident and ready. I suddenly realized the predicament I was in.

downloadWhat if I struck her out? I didn’t want to make her feel bad – I had a crush on her! In my little nine-year-old way, I wanted her to know that I liked her without actually having to say that. Striking her out didn’t seem like the first step on a path towards a budding, elementary school romance.

On the other hand, she was a girl, and if she got a hit off of me, I would be humiliated. There it is, the plain and simple truth. Girls weren’t supposed to be as good as boys at sports (though she was a good baseball player). If I didn’t go up against her and win, I knew my friends would make fun of me for it. I would never hear the end of it.

I took a deep breath. She stepped into the batter’s box. The ancient trees leaned in closer, casting their shadows on the old ball field. The sun dropped down behind them. The fans in the small bleachers, normally loud and chattering, went silent. I felt the seams again. I reached back and threw a fastball as hard as I could.

I don’t know if what happened was intentional – I can’t remember the exact thought processes of my mind from 30 years ago. More than likely it was due to the fact that I was nine years old and only a marginally decent pitcher. But was it more than? Was my subconscious working overtime to avoid losing to a girl while at the same time somehow keep from embarrassing her? Whatever the case, the ball flew through the heavy, summer air. The red seams spun. The catcher reached for the ball with his oversized mitt. But the ball never reached him.

Because I hit her.

I hit her with the pitch, and she fell to the ground.

* * *

shawn bio YAH

To Paris and Back

We drive the long, dark distance from the countryside, deep into the heart of the city. It is 4:00am, and the roads are empty. Even the London streets are deserted, the shadow of our car revolving around us as we approach and pass the street lights, circling the roundabouts. We park our car, find our train, and fall asleep even before it pulls away from the platform.

We wake and sleep and wake and sleep while the train leaves the station and clatters over and under the London streets, into the English countryside. It ducks under the channel, sweeping faster and faster, emerging into France like a bullet. Telephone poles flash by in a blur. Condensation forms outside the windows, the drops swept away as quickly as they form.

The rails curve towards Paris, first the suburbs, and then the ancient city itself. Domes and spires rise to greet us. When we get off the train, we are overcome by the smells of the city: coffee and urine and baking bread and another train leaving. And another. Black smoke churns and follows us out into the early morning streets.

There is no quiet place and not a word of English. Following the trail laid before us by the magazine you read, we go from place to place, from patisserie to patisserie. Flaky croissants and bichon au citron line up inside bright displays alongside macarons and Mille-feuille. We cannot take a bite without moaning and rolling our eyes. We walk the cobblestones down vacant alleys, the sugar coursing through our veins. The sun is barely up.

We stroll into the square and along the river and disappear down into the Louvre. The Mona Lisa stares quietly, at us of all people, her gaze skimming the top of the crowd. This place is like another culture, an ancient civilization, and when we come back up from that land of oils and sculpture I’m surprised to see we still have cars. We still have airplanes. I had expected the world to revert back a thousand years.

downloadIn the heat of the afternoon we sit on a bench drinking bottled water, pulling apart a fresh baguette, watching people from all over the world. It is like Babel: the languages, the laughing, the confusion. People talk with their hands, pointing here and there, asking questions that go unanswered. It is a beautiful chaos.

The afternoon crawls onto our backs, slows us, weighs us down. We meander. We lie down in the grass across from Notre Dame and you fall asleep. I watch, your eyes closed, eyelids fluttering. The sky is blue. People wait in a line to enter the cathedral. Then, suddenly, it’s time, and we’re back on the sidewalk hailing a cab to La Gare du Nord with its sweeping face, it’s glaring glass. We’re back on the train, the countryside vanishing into night. We are under the channel once again, rising up into the London skyline, then under the streets.

We drive the long drive home, the highways emptying, the sky a splash of stars. Trees bend down to touch our car as we pull in the long lane. The high hedges whisper, “They are back. They are back. They are back.”

shawn bio YAH

The Sound of Breath, Hard to Come By

There is the sound of a child who is not breathing well, the sound of inflamed airways, the sound of air-gulping. She comes into our room in the middle of the night, and my wife and I both sit up in bed.

“Abra, are you okay?” I ask, and she nods, because everything is always okay in Abra-land, even when things are not okay. But her eyes are open too-wide, and there is a little panic there, hidden in the blue.

“My breathing,” she says, opening her mouth and pulling in air, and we scramble for medicine, for the inhaler, and for the calming oils. There is the sound of her coughing, and the sound of her swallowing her medicine. There is the popping sound her inhaler makes, the misting psht, the ten long breaths.

We have been down this road before. There is a new bed on the floor beside ours. There is the sound of quiet breathing, then the sound of sleep.

* * * * *

We decide to flee the city for a few days, and we pack up the truck with food and a tent and sleeping bags. We drive south and get to the cabin that used to be our house, and we remember those quiet days in the forest. We take trip after trip into the woods, carrying our things like mountain climbers attending to base camp. Lucy helps me set up the tent while the boys make a few more treks and Maile and Abra collect firewood.

IMG_1414It is cold and the wind rushes through the trees like a giant shushing us, reminding us this is holy ground. It was the house where we found our footing again after a long trip, the house where Maile miscarried a baby. It is the place where we were snowed in for three days, where Maile and I shoveled two feet of snow off the deck to keep it from collapsing.

We sit around the fire and my parents and two of my sisters surprise us by showing up and we laugh and eat s’mores and shift around the fire like the hands on a clock, avoiding the smoke. I remember the sounds of this place: dogs barking; a four-wheeler racing through the woods; a chainsaw starting up. But all of these sounds are muffled by distance, and if you’re not careful, you’ll miss them. They are, each of them, little messages from a different isolation.

My parents and sisters leave us as the sun is setting, as the cold rushes in over the hills. We quickly clean up the campsite and retreat to our warm sleeping bags in the tent, hoods up, eyes peeking out. Our son Leo crawls all over us, and our daughter Lucy reads Harry Potter to us. Her voice is like the voice of the last storyteller, clear and clean. When she reads, the faraway voices fade to almost nothing.

When we turn off the light, we can hear the wind, always the wind, rustling the soft spring leaves.

* * * * *

The sound of a cough wakes me up, and I hear labored breathing in the tent.

“Abra,” I hiss. “Abra.”

She rolls over and looks at me, and in the dim lantern light I can see her eyes are watery and tired.

“My breathing,” she says in a quiet, sleepy voice. I exit my sleeping bag, enter the cold air of the tent. I search through the bag, throwing out clothes, flashlights, a box of matches. I find the plastic bag that holds her medicine, her inhaler.

She holds the mask up to her face and !pop! goes the inhaler and then she takes in a deep breath, two deep breaths, three deep breaths, all the way up to ten, and (she knows the rhythm now, knows it without being reminded) !Pop! again, and again breathing up to ten. She takes a small dose of medicine. She crawls back into her sleeping bag, and I do the same.

I lie there for quite some time, staring up at the silhouette of leaves on the tent roof, placed there by the moon. Everything is still and Abra’s breathing calms and then the wind rushes through the trees again, thrashing the leaves around, reminding me to be still again, to listen.

We Could Do Anything For Indian Food

During those four years that we lived in England, we specialized in the overnight flight from Newark to London, the flight I slept on but never really slept on. The flight attendants moved silently up and down the aisles while passengers murmured to themselves in their sleep and children cried out randomly. A cup of tea. An extra blanket. The person in front shifts in their seat and jams my knees. For 6 hours, 200 of us soared through the sky, racing through the night.

When we finally caught the sunlight, it slanted in through the oval windows, crept in under the small cracks where people had not pulled their blind down all the way. Our eyes were not ready for morning. Our brains told us we should still be sleeping. More tea. Hastily filled out customs forms. Stretching limbs. Out into the jet-fueled air of Heathrow Airport.

b3ed8fdfOn our first return to England from the U.S., we made the mistake of giving in to jetlag. On that particular trip, we arrived at our Wendover home and slept all day, a gorgeous, indulgent, heavy sleep that felt more like drowning. We slept from 10am until 4pm in the afternoon.

But that day of sleep had disastrous consequences. For the next three weeks, we could not turn the clock around. We were awake all night, groggy all day. I almost fell asleep in meetings. I watched 2am turn to 3am turn to 4am. We vowed to never do it again. We could be disciplined. We could stay awake until bedtime.

Then we arrived home from the US on the next trip, exhausted and blurry-eyed.

“Just a little nap,” I begged Maile.

“No, don’t do it,” she said, her head drifting back on to the couch cushions, some invisible weight pulling down on her eyelids. “Remember what happened last time?”

But by then her voice had a smoky quality, ephemeral and fading. It was like we had taken some enchanted potion. I could picture the witch waiting just outside our window, rubbing her hands together and cackling.

“We can’t do this,” I said. “C’mon. Get up. We have to stay awake.”

“What are we going to do?” Maile mumbled from some far off dream world.

“First, we’re taking a walk. And if we can stay awake until The New Akash opens, then we’ll reward ourselves with Indian food.”

She sat straight up, shaking her head to clear the haze.

“Indian food,” she said. “Deal.”

We managed to put on our hiking boots and wander up the hill from our small cottage to where a main footpath went from west to east. It was part of the old Canterbury Trail, and so many people had walked it that the path itself was pressed three feet deep into the ground. You had to climb down into that path. You almost needed help getting out.

We walked to Wendover, the closest village. The mist clung to the trees and the fields. Lonely cars traveled slowly down the narrow roads, off in the distance from where we walked. We could have been the only two people in the world. This is how the afternoon passed.

Finally, early evening. We showered. We drove to town. We walked into the garish gold and red decorations of The New Akash, smothered ourselves in the irregular Indian music, and smiled through our delirious exhaustion as the waiter brought us lamb tikka bhuna and shrimp vindaloo, so spicy it made my eyes water before I even tasted it.

It became our new tradition, our new reward. Stay awake for the Indian food.

Pretending that Nothing has Changed

I married a beautiful woman and we moved away, across state lines and  dark oceans and into new skin. Ten years passed—ten years of having children and getting lost and finding ourselves over and over again. After those ten years passed, we moved back. We moved home.

I was introduced to home when I was six years old and my family moved from the scorching, dusty heat of Laredo, Texas, back to the cold, wintry farmland of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where my ancestors had farmed and lived for hundreds of years before me. It was December, and the sky was low. The slate grayness of it scraped the tops of the rounded silos and tugged on the rooster weather vane standing watch at the peak of the tallest barn.

That was the year I learned what a cousin was, and how to tie my skates together so that I could hike through deep snow all the way to the frozen pond. That was the year my father taught me how to ride a bike by letting me drift over the steep bank in the front yard, where two tall oak trees watched over my shoulder. That was the year I learned how to put a wriggling worm on a small hook and cast it into the creek without snagging the low branches.

That was where I learned a place can feel as familiar as the wrinkled hand of your first child the moment they’re born. You can know a place before you even live there.IMG_1034

I’ve wondered for years now how that can happen.

* * * * *

Not long after returning to these familiar back roads and broken road signs, still not fixed or set straight, I decided I wanted to take my children to the creek that runs behind the old church, the one across the street from the farm where I grew up. It was a small, brick, steepled church with a parking lot full of fool’s gold that I had, once upon a time, pried from the macadam with an old dime.

So we drove there, and as we drove, I told them all the old stories about what made the loud breathing sounds in the deep shadows of the barns, and what flashed just out of sight in the empty other half of the farmhouse, and how the cemetery beside the church where we played hide-and-seek shifted and sighed, and how we always ran home scared of ourselves.

Some things had changed. The two old oak trees were gone. The church parking lot was newly paved and painted with fresh white lines, and other trees had been taken away. We slid down the steep bank behind the church and I realized the field along the creek, the one that used to be full of grazing cattle, now stood tall with late-summer corn, seven feet high and staring at us. The creek moved slower, as if old age had mellowed it.

But other things were there waiting to be reclaimed. The old tree, for one—the same one that used to steal our fish hooks—stood with its hands outstretched. The smell of the mud. The snagging tug of a small fish on the line, and the way it gasped for breath while we carefully removed the hook, the way it paused in the shallows, elated at this chance at new life. The way the time passed, slow and heavy in the heat.

It is a relief to me, and it is a sorrow, the way these places wait for us to come back, the way they welcome us as if nothing important has been lost. And we go about our business, trying not to look directly at the empty space that once held a crucial thing: an old oak tree, or a fishing buddy.

I tell my children to cast in the line one last time. I fix my stare on the small plastic bobber, and I pretend that nothing has changed.

shawn bio YAH

You Have An Important Story to Tell

After years of immediate rejection, queries, more rejection, more writing, and more rejection, I had finally received one shining ray of hope. I received some overwhelmingly good news in an email from my agent. She had sent my novel proposal to a bunch of different publishing houses, and the initial interest level was high.

Immediately a question flared up in my mind: Should I share this news? On one hand, it was really good news! I couldn’t wait to tell my friends! On the other hand, if I told people, and then every publishing house decided against it, I’d have even more failure explaining to do.

I wanted to bring people into my story, but I also didn’t want to drag them on a roller coaster ride, especially not one that ended in disappointment.

* * * * *

photo-1455081758579-1acd370b695aWhile we tend to define our lives by the highs and lows, the victories and the tragedies, those moments actually make up a very small percentage of our years. Most of our time here on earth is lived in the messy middle – the waiting, the uncertainty, the long spans of time when we’re trying to decide between this and that.

Yet, for so many reasons, we don’t want to share in the midst of the mess. Maybe we’re afraid to hope that this particular story will turn out well. Maybe we’re worried that by sharing too soon, we’ll drag others down when it all falls apart. Maybe we secretly believe that even this latest effort will crash and burn, and we’re already trying to forget about it.

But the messy middle is where we connect with each other as human beings. When we only share our triumphs after they have occurred, we risk alienating those around us who are still waiting for their ship to come in. When we wait to share our stories until we can give “The 10 Ways to Succeed” spiel, we’ve missed a crucial opportunity to pull another human being alongside us, in the mess, and walk that path together.

* * * * *

A few months ago my wife peeked her head around the corner and asked me one of the last questions I expected her to ask.

“So, are you ready for baby number six?” she asked, her unblinking eyes wide open.

“Really?” I asked.

She nodded. I took a deep breath.

“Really?” I asked again. “Are you sure?”

The question then became, “When do we tell the kids?” We knew our other children would be ecstatic to learn there was another baby on the way, but Maile had miscarried twice. Should we try to spare them the potential heartache? Or should we tell them and involve them in the unfolding story?

In the end we opted to tell them. We explained the potential for disappointment as well as the hope we held to. Now we’re living that particular story together, as a family, and it feels like the right way to live.

* * * * *

Share your story now, where you are. Don’t wait for the revelation or the success or the culmination. You may have no idea how things are going to turn out, but that’s okay. We need to hear what it’s like while you’re on the journey, in the messy middle.

shawn bio YAH

For When People Feel Like an Inconvenience

There is a man named Jim I see from time to time, shuffling down the sidewalk outside of our house on James Street, always carrying his laundry bag over his shoulder. He’s very soft around the middle, with gray hair and a few missing teeth. I don’t know if it’s his severe underbite or the simpleness in his eyes, but he has the smile of a child.

I always say hello and ask him where he’s going. He always has the same reply.

“It’s good to see you…now what was yo’ name? Shawn, that’s wight. I’m on my way to do my lawn-dwee. Wemembah? I just finished school last week and now I have a deg-wee in Psychowogy.”

We stand out in the cold and chat for a bit, then he swings his laundry bag over his shoulder and heads down the road, shuffling side to side.

* * * * *

A few weeks ago, at around 8pm, our doorbell rang. This is normal, not because we get a lot of nighttime visitors, but because our doorbell rings randomly, even when no one is there. Our next door neighbor passed away about a year ago, so when the doorbell rings at night I usually shout, “Paul’s ghost would like to come in.”

Even so, I still check to see if anyone is actually there.

And on that cold January night a few weeks ago, someone was there. It was Jim. He was bundled up and his eyes were watering from the freezing cold wind and he had his laundry bag over his shoulder.

“Hey, Jim,” I said. “How are you?”

“I’m good, I’m good,” he said. “Do you have a compootah I can use?”

* * * * *

IMG_1161I should interrupt this story to let you know I am not naturally a friendly person, especially when someone attempts to interrupt my normal routine. I’m not saying this to dissuade you from saying hello – I am cordial, after all. And I’m not mean, but I’d rather not be bothered. I try not to impose on people and I have an expectation that others not impose on me.

I’m working hard to overcome this.

I should also say that 8pm is the witching hour here at the house. We have five children, and it’s about that time when my wife and I are reminding them to get a bedtime snack, brush teeth, take showers, put on pajamas, DID YOU REMEMBER TO BRUSH YOUR TEETH?, and go to bed.

When I saw Jim standing there, I had the same feeling I had when a neighbor I hadn’t met asked me to take her two pitbulls for a walk. I knew I should say yes, I knew I should welcome him in, but I just didn’t feel like it.

* * * * *

I sighed.

“Sure, come on in, Jim.”

He walked in behind me and we went into the dining room. My computer was already there at the table where I had been trying to get some work done earlier in the day.

“What do you need?” I asked him.

“I’m fiwing out an appwication to work at Weis Mawkets,” he said. “But I don’t have a compootah. I always use the cowege compootahs.”

“Can’t you just go to the store and fill out an application?”

He shrugged. We called the supermarket. The only way to apply for a job is to fill out an online application. So we began. We didn’t get far.

“What’s your email address?” I asked Jim.

“I don’t have one.”

“You don’t have an email address?” I asked. I could hear my wife upstairs trying to get the kids in bed, something that is usually my job. She’s spends all day with them, and I know she appreciates when I can take over at night. This entire process was becoming more and more of an inconvenience.

“I do when I’m at school, but I can’t use those compootahs right now.”

We sat there staring blankly at the screen for a minute. He sighed.

“Just skip that part,” he said.

“You can’t skip it,” I said, kind of annoyed. “That’s how they’re going to get in touch with you to tell you whether or not you got the job.”

We sat there for a few more minutes.

“Can you put your email address in?” he asked me.

“Yeah, okay,” I said.

We spent the next hour filling out the application, trying to remember the address of where he worked two jobs ago, trying to think up various people he could use as referrals. We filled out the online job profile, answering a hundred questions about how he viewed theft, authority, and honesty.

Finally, we finished.

“Thank you, thank you,” he said over and over again, and I walked him to the door.

He’s a nice man. I know he’d be a hard worker, and I know he needs the money. His current, part-time job at $8.50 an hour makes it pretty much impossible for him to live a self-sufficient life. I really hoped he would get the job.

I watched him vanish into the cold night, and I knew I had done the right thing. I just wish it came easier. I wish I had a better attitude about it. I wish my initial response wasn’t to label people as “inconvenience.”

* * * * *

A few weeks later, I received the following email:

Dear Jim,

Thank you for taking the time to apply with Weis Markets for the position of Cashier.  At this time, we have chosen to pursue other candidates that more closely fit the position. We wish you the best in your employment search and future endeavors.

Respectfully,

Weis Markets Human Resources  

*****

shawn bio YAH

In Which the People are the Place

It’s been going on for six years. The ten of us, five married couples, congregate from all over Lancaster County and gather at one of our houses for dinner. Or we meet at a restaurant. Or, like we did last Christmas, we all find our way to some underground concert venue in Center City, Philadelphia to hear Over the Rhine. I can’t remember whose idea that was, but it will certainly go down as one of the best dinner clubs ever. It doesn’t seem to matter where we go, because it’s always the same crew, and I’m learning that sometimes the people become the place.

It’s been going on for six years, almost every month, and there’s a kind of depth that time bestows on relationships, a kind of depth that can’t be microwaved. In the consistency of our gathering, seed after seed has been planted. We began in the awkward mask-wearing phase, only allowing others to see what we put forward. But then, suddenly, we were celebrating together. And grieving together. Layer after layer and before you know it, six years later, when I enter the place we are meeting and everyone is there, I feel an immense sigh of relief.

I can relax. These are my people.

Photo by Sanderson Images

Photo by Sanderson Images

* * * * *

Another thing that comes with time is laughter, loud laughter, the kind that has you waking up the next morning with sore abdominal muscles. The problem with choosing to conduct this dinner club in public is that our laughter, it can be rather…shall we say…boisterous.

* * * * *

We all stop talking and pay attention. It’s time for a story.

One of our friends tells us of his groundhog problem. They’re destroying his yard, leaving huge gaping wounds in his fields. So he wandered into a local Amish hardware store in search of a good groundhog trap.

That will work, he thought to himself.

My friend arrived home and realized he didn’t know how to set the trap, so he turned to the fount of all wisdom.

Youtube.

Soon he’s intently watching a hillbilly video (complete with banjo strumming in the background) in which a long-bearded, barefoot man illustrates the proper way to set that very same kind of groundhog trap. My friend’s kids gather around, drawn by the intrigue of the trap and the volume of the banjo picking.

Step one, step two, step three…my friend follows the man through the process of constructing the trap. This is good. This will work. Soon he has the trap opened into a cube shape. The man tells him to make sure the safety pin is in. My friend searches the inside of the trap for a safety pin.

That Amish guy didn’t give me the safety pin, he mumbles to himself, prying around inside the trap. Suddenly, the metal slams closed, down on his hands, trapping him in the trap. His kids stare at him, their eyes wide open. Excruciating pain shoots from his smashed fingers and all the way up his arms. He tries to hold in the obscenities. His children stare at him, not sure how to respond.

He trapped himself.

Groundhog, 1. My friend, 0.

* * * * *

Maybe some friends would exhibit a greater amount of sympathy – after all, he could have lost a finger in that trap. I’m sure the pain was unbearable. But what did the nine of us do?

We absolutely lost it with laughter. I cry when I laugh hard, and tears streamed down my face. We hooted and hollered and clapped him on the back at his misfortune. And in that laughter, that story, another fine layer added depth to the friendships around the table. Another shared piece of history. Another moment.

* * * * *

The place where we meet always changes, but the people are the same. I guess a lot of times the people are the place, probably more often than not. It’s something I’m learning, as life takes me and my family from here to there.

The people are the place.

shawn bio YAH

Finding Hope in the Depths of a Woodpile

After “The Move,” we found our way to a small doublewide trailer in the shallow hills of central Pennsylvania, only a few miles from where I had grown up. When we moved in, small patches of ice and snow still resided in the shadows. The forest that stretched up the hill away from the house was bone-bare and brown. The birds were just beginning to find their way through the thaw.

It was the opposite of the neighborhood we had left. It was not glitzy or fashionable. We were not surrounded by cars and people. When we drove down the gravel driveway, slowing for the deeper potholes, we were not in awe of the material success of those around us.IMG_0078

But it was beautiful. And peaceful. We found healing there on quiet afternoons as Maile made supper and the kids’ voices ricocheted back at us through the valley. Lines of geese stretched across the sky and slipped through the dusk, circling, then dropping into neighboring fields.

Everyone, everything, it seemed, was returning home.

* * * * *

The first spring there, we decided we were farmers. We planted a massive garden in the back yard, turning over the deep green grass, exposing rich, brown earth. Anything could grow in that soil. Even hope.

The second spring, having conquered the gardening aspect of life, we turned to raising chickens. We bought them at a local feed store and took them home in a cardboard box with perforated holes in it. So they could breathe. We promptly settled them in large plastic container in the kitchen, and, with the help of a heat lamp and a small feeding system, managed to get them alive through spring.

I don’t know exactly when it was that the chickens started laying eggs, but they did, and we enjoyed them. The kids brought back four brown eggs a day to the house, holding each like a small miracle. By the time fall arrived, they were free range chickens and we lost track of where they were laying their eggs.

We searched the bushes, the woods, the underside of our doublewide. No luck. Leaves blew in sporadic gusts down the hill. We wondered if they had stopped laying because of the cold. We wondered if animals were getting to the eggs before we could. We kept looking.

* * * * *

When we had to leave our home in Virginia, it felt like all the good things had gone missing. Our church, our friends, our future: all of it up and evaporated in the time it took to drive 200 miles north. And for a little while we stopped believing good things could last. We stopped looking for them.

A quick internet search had taken us to that doublewide. My father happened to know the owner. We didn’t recognize it at the time, but being able to move into that quiet space was the first hint of goodness returning.

* * * * *

One day my daughter Abra, three or four years old at the time, came running inside, shouting to anyone who would listen. She hopped up and down and in each of her hands she held an egg.

“Where did you find those?” I asked.IMG_0068

We followed her outside and through the yard to a woodpile the landlord had made from the branches of a fallen tree. Abra climbed back behind the wood and pointed.

There, in a small bowl-shaped space in the depths of the woodpile, lay at least two dozen eggs. It was cold, so they hadn’t gone bad. We used a tongs to reach in and take out each little miracle, one by one.

* * * * *

As the months passed, I found work. We settled into a routine and made new friends. We found a church to call home. The things we had lost in Virginia would not be replaced, but there were good things to be found, even in that new place.

It can sometimes be hard to believe there is still good in the world. It can be so hard to find, especially after The Move or The Diagnosis or The Divorce. But it’s still there. We might not be ready to discover it right away, but the world will thaw, and the good will appear in the most unlikely of places.

We only lived in the doublewide for two years. If you ask any of our children which of our many locations has been their favorite house, each one will tell you that one was it. It’s where we landed in our hurt. It’s where we healed as a family. It’s where we started to find goodness in what had at first seemed a terrible gift.

* * *

shawn bio YAH