A few days ago, I learned of the death of Mr. Peter David, the Washington editor of The Economist.  I didn’t post about it here because it was Mother’s Day Weekend, my mother-in-law and I were here celebrating my first Mother’s Day with our darling daughter and granddaughter – and I just thought the weekend could stand as it was meant to be:  a happy time.

Now that I head back to work, however – it seems appropriate to recognize Mr. David.  He was a wonderful example in my profession.

I met Peter David many years ago, when he came to our U.S. European Headquarters for a meeting with our deputy commander – at the time, a four-star Air Force general.  He was hosted very well, and I remember him being a bit bemused by the “rock star” treatment.  He took a lot of notes, asked a lot of very intelligent questions, and didn’t do a lot of small talk.  I was singularly impressed.

After that meeting, John and I became subscribers to The Economist.  (Did you know that it is actually a “newspaper” as opposed to a magazine?  Yep, it’s true.  For historical reasons, despite being published on glossy magazine paper, the publication is technically a newspaper.)  We have been loyal readers since, and I refer to it as the gold-standard in journalism.  There are no by-lines, you can count on its sources and the photo captions are wickedly funny.  I credit Mr. David as the reason I have a weekly appointment with “The Week Ahead” – a newscast devoted to the biggest stories coming up and The Economist‘s editors’ predictions for their strategic meaning.  I also read the publication cover-to-cover…it’s a never-fail source of (sometimes) opposing viewpoints and arguments – always good to read.

Mr. David was only 60.  He left behind a wife and children, and his wife was in the car accident that claimed his life (he was the only casualty of the four in the car).

He’s gone too soon, and I will miss his weekly column and insight.  His talent as a newsman was expressed very well here, by the newspaper’s media editor in New York, Mr. Gideon Lichfield:

“Peter was a great journalist in the best British tradition. Utterly self-effacing, he liked to wander the corridors pretending he had nothing to do and didn’t really understand anything anyway; but he could take the murkiest issue, see clear through to the other side of it, and write a withering but never vicious critique in prose of wonderful balance and wit. His legacy is a lesson too often forgotten: that it is possible to take the world seriously without taking oneself too seriously in the process.”

I really love Lichfield’s last line – an excellent maxim for a life spent at this profession.  It’s always a useful thing to recognize that no matter how “good” you think you are, it is never (and should never be) about you.  In these days of celebrity-style media correspondents who really only seem to listen to each other, his character and professionalism stood firm as an example of true and thoughtful reporting, a type of journalism that is fast disappearing.

I’m not a regular reader of poetry.

In fact, I tend to believe that it is an archaic art form.  I would rather read the lyrics to a song than poetry.

But, having said that, every now and then, a poem really resonates and I want to share it.
This is from “The Writer’s Almanac” – which you can listen to if you happen to catch it on PRI, or if you want to download the daily podcasts, as I do.

Read on, and hopefully, enjoy.

Finding a Box of Family Letters
~ Dana Gioia

The dead say little in their letters
they haven’t said before.
We find no secrets, and yet
how different every sentence sounds
heard across the years.

My father breaks my heart
simply by being so young and handsome.
He’s half my age, with jet-black hair.
Look at him in his navy uniform
grinning beside his dive-bomber.

Come back, Dad! I want to shout.
He says he misses all of us
(though I haven’t yet been born).
He writes from places I never knew he saw,
and everyone he mentions now is dead.

There is a large, long photograph
curled like a diploma—a banquet sixty years ago.
My parents sit uncomfortably
among tables of dark-suited strangers.
The mildewed paper reeks of regret.

I wonder what song the band was playing,
just out of frame, as the photographer
arranged your smiles. A waltz? A foxtrot?
Get out there on the floor and dance!
You don’t have forever.

What does it cost to send a postcard
to the underworld? I’ll buy
a penny stamp from World War II
and mail it downtown at the old post office
just as the courthouse clock strikes twelve.

Surely the ghost of some postal worker
still makes his nightly rounds, his routine
too tedious for him to notice when it ended.
He works so slowly he moves back in time
carrying our dead letters to their lost addresses.

It’s silly to get sentimental.
The dead have moved on. So should we.
But isn’t it equally simpleminded to miss
the special expertise of the departed
in clarifying our long-term plans?

They never let us forget that the line
between them and us is only temporary.
Get out there and dance! the letters shout
adding, Love always. Can’t wait to get home!
And soon we will be. See you there.

“Finding a Box of Family Letters” by Dana Gioia, from Pity the Beautiful. © Graywolf Press, 2012

Today is the day most of us head back to work (a great many among my friends actually started back yesterday – but we had the benefit of one last, long weekend), and with the old routine comes the old habits. Gotta get up, get going, and rush through life.

No more for me.

I did a lot of thinking over the holiday, and realized a few things – some were jarring and sudden, and some things? Well, they just crept in gently, over and over, until I finally had to perform the mental equivalent of “Oh, all right, already! I’ll do it!”

The jarring realization was that I now have the responsibility not just for this little new person’s physical care (even I didn’t have to be hit over the head for that one) but that it’s for life – mine, anyway. That was the impetus behind my New Year’s post. I just want to be the kind of mother she can look back on when she’s my age and think, “Wow, I’m really glad she was the one God chose for me.” When you adopt, it’s a heavy responsibility to earn not just the right to that new role of parent you’ve been given – but also to earn the sacrifice of the birthmother’s trust and confidence.  I take both responsiblities very, very seriously.

The silent and persistent messages were ones we all know, really. They’re ones that I feel a bit silly posting because they can seem trite and a bit stuffy, so I thought I’d put the explanation behind my version:

1. People who get up early are more productive. {Sigh}. We all know this, don’t we? To put it in a post-modern flavor: “I am sooooooo not a morning person.”  But.  Skye is.   So, to get a jump on the day, I’ve got to get up earlier.  It’s time to read, reflect, write a bit in my journal and prepare our day.

2. Alcohol truly should be a “special occasion” drink for some (like me).  I’ve explained that I quit drinking back in August 2010 for a lot of reasons, but they were mostly spiritual.  As I looked back over my journal for that year, I realized that the morning I decided to finally follow what I believed to be God’s leading was August 18th, 2010. Folks, that was a year, exactly, before our daughter entered the world. She was born in early morning, too. It kind of gives me chill-bumps when I think about it.  There were a few times over this vacation when I drank – it was a holiday full of special days like my brother’s birthday, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day – and each morning the next day I felt fuzzy and cloudy.  It’s fine for me to have that feeling every now and then, but I definitely am happy with my choice to refrain, especially now that Skye’s around and needs a clear-headed mama.

3. Discipline is good for you.  I like the idea that blogging, if I were to do it every day, is an exercise in “creative discipline.”  I borrow that term from one of my favorite bloggers, Anna, who is fantastic about daily updates. She’s an artist with fabric and I’m not, but I like the challenge of finding the beauty in the mundane, as John puts it.  We’ve got that around here, so I just need to find it.  I tinkered with the idea of joining Max’s Positivity Pledge, but that’s only available to FaceBook users.  I would like to use the more personal platform of my blog because I’ve (sort of) kept it going for awhile, and would like to continue.  Besides, if I post every day, it’s a way for me to look back on the last year and see it as a record of Skye’s earliest days, which are so fleeting.

4. Shower the people you love with love.*  On New Year’s Day, I took this picture -

- and it was almost just an “Aw, that’s a sweet moment” fire-and-forget snapshot. But as I looked back through my photos of the holiday last night, this one stands out to me as the most meaningful.  They are my two favorite people, after all, and this picture speaks to me of complete dependence, on the one hand, and complete devotion, on the other.  I woke up this morning with the thought in my head that even if there are only a few folks who read this, it doesn’t matter.  I write this for our little family – and our little family means everything to me.

Take Care Friends.  My wish for you in 2012: That beauty will find you, every day.

*James Taylor

Indeed. I shy away from resolutions – I call them goals. I’ve decided that this year, I want to be a woman my husband can be proud of and a woman our *daughter* (PINCHING MYSELF!!!!) can look up to…I call it the Year of Refinement. Let it begin.

And for those who might have been curious about what our dessert was for our New Year’s Day supper? We kept it very, very casual this year. We just cooked off a few of these little delicious darlings.

Have a wonderful New Year, everyone.

Love,

Skye’s Mama

Two messages. Two, within the last 24 hours from women I admire and who each astound me with their personal strength.  Both messages also made me think, and discover again the significance of 40 days, a recurring number in Christian heritage and belief – and the importance of trusting in the plan for your life – whatever that is.

The first was a note from a member of our family.  She told me that she had been struck with what I have exhibited the last eight years, waiting on God to open the door for the chance to parent a child.  She termed her realization as an “overwhelming awareness of Patience, the first word God chose to describe Love.”  Her beautiful, sensitive reference to the Apostle Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 13:4) brought me to tears.  Anyone who knows me knows that I am not a paragon of patience…but it’s funny:  in this capacity, I see now that I was.  I always was.

In June of this year, though, I said to John that I was tiring of waiting.  I told him that I was content to wait only until I turned 42.

“If I turn 42 and we have no leads – and no options for a little one,” I said, “then I think we need to content ourselves with being the best uncle and auntie ever.”   He took me in his arms, fresh from a year away from me.  He kissed my hair while I cried, and said he understood.

We got a phone call the next month.  We met Skye’s beautiful mother just a week after that conversation; we were enchanted with her.  I think all of us were moved by the overwhelming sense of peace that seemed to settle over the room as we talked about this little life.

I hoped.

In mid-August, one day shy of 40 days after that phone call, our girl was born.

And one day shy of 40 days after that, I turned 42.

Many nights since, I have thanked God for laughing in the face of my “timeline” and for teaching me to wait on His.

Message number two was from a close friend, who posted this comment to a picture on Facebook of Skye and me today, Skye’s little hand wedged under my chin – both of us sleeping peacefully:

“Look at my friend…she had dodged bullets, worked 18 hour days, and fought for our country , nothing slowed her down….looks like u hv met ur match holly…lol u were born to be a great mother…..just like ur mother…..thank u god for blessing my friend..xxoo.”

I have no words.  So insightful.  So unbelievably kind and open-hearted.  And I love the reference to my own, awesome mom.

These days, my favorite song to sing for Skye is “Lullaby” by the Dixie Chicks.  The languid, easy-to-play guitar rhythm, the hushed-voice style, and most of all, the words – they just get me and say exactly what I’m feeling:

Melissa, you’re right. I have met my match.  He has blessed me for sure, beyond all I could have ever imagined.

Today’s my birthday. I’m still in my “early forties” and so far, this decade has been my best, ever.

As I snapped these pictures this morning – favorite flowers sent from My Beloved, our Little One sleeping peacefully and, finally – her snuggle-time with our Big Black Dog – I thought…

“I am happier than I have ever been.”

Moments like this when you  really know you’ve been blessed?

They surely are the best gifts of all.

“It is only rarely that one can see in a little boy the promise of a man, but one can almost always see in a little girl the threat of a woman.” ~Alexandre Dumas

In just a few years, this young girl is going to take the world by storm.

I’ve had the following poem written in my journals over the years (a classmate shared it with me when we were cadets) – and it’s never far from my thoughts in these years of war.

We wear two bracelets – KIA bracelets – one is for a colleague and friend of John’s and one is for a colleague and friend of mine.

Their names and lives and lost hopes and dreams are part of our routine, every morning when we wear our uniforms (and often, even when we do not.)

Besides the clank of the stark metal bracelets on our wrists, there are more reminders:  every time we see a chess board, we think of Cody.  And everytime somebody asks us, when handing us a beverage in a bottle – “Do you want a glass?” We inevitably answer the way Kip always did: “It’s already in a glass!”

These two patriots are our heroes on this Patriot Day, and today I thought it was high time I posted their pictures and stories here, as well as the Requiem” (of sorts) written by a veteran of yet another war – the one that has been in my journals since I became a lieutenant.

“If you are able, save for them a place inside of you

and save one backward glance when you are leaving

for the places they can no longer go.

Be not ashamed to say you loved them,

though you may or may not have always.

Take what they have taught you with their dying and keep it with your own.

And in that time when men decide and feel safe to call the war insane,

take one moment to embrace those gentle heroes you left behind.”*

*Major Michael Davis O’Donnell
1 January 1970
Dak To, Vietnam
Listed as KIA February 7, 1978

This was the view tonight as I rocked Skye to sleep – and below the picture…?

Tonight’s playlist.

You are very much missed, Husband.

Tarrega’s “Recuerdos de la Alhambra” (I imagined her, after a late-night supper in Mallorca, taking her husband by the hand, and walking the beach as the darkness descended…)

Debussy’s “Clair de Lune”, (I imagined her, in Paris, in the early morning light – in a wool skirt and fur-trimmed jacket, eating a chocolate croissant and sipping her *strong* coffee as she looked out over the Seine from the Pont Neuf, her hair blowing in her eyes and the day spread out before her…)

Bach’s “Air for the G String”, (she was in Austria, this time – walking among the treasures at the Kunsthistorisches Museum…remembering our stories from the midnight performance of the Lipizzaners, and our wonderful time there with our best friends – her “family”…)

Meyer’s “Short Trip Home” (and for this last song, she was in your home state, sitting on a wide wraparound porch, her old collie at her feet…her horses grazing in the pasture down the hill.  There was a quilt on her lap, and she was sipping her hot cider as she remembered, with pleasure, her very, very long life.)

Such plans I have for our girl…it makes my heart burst.

“I’d rather be a Comma, than a Full Stop.” *

* Courtesy of the great band “Coldplay.” The photo?  From the adventure John planned for me amidst The Cedars of Lebanon, March 2011. A very, very happy respite during a year that wasn’t.