Project 365: Day 29 Story Time

It's the most wonderful time of the day.

He gets so excited when we ask if he wants to read a book.

Fabulous music you might just love

When I was a teenager, I introduced my mom to one of my favorite groups at the time, Coldplay. I loved (and still love) the cool melodies and distant feel they infused into their music, and I knew my mom would love it, too. Thirty seconds into the first song, she looked at me and asked, "So when is it going to pick up?" I frowned. Pick up? This is it! This is Coldplay! "How do you dance to this?" She continued. I was flabbergasted. It hadn't ever occurred to me to dance to Coldplay.

"Mom, this is listening music. Not dance music. Who dances to Coldplay?" [insert long-suffering teenage eyebrows here] And I was crushed. Not only did she not enjoy my music, my people, she thought it was less than her Marvin Gaye, her Beach Boys, and whatever else she "shook it" to in college.

Since then, I have only fallen more in love with listening music. The dance music of my generation is a little bump-and-grind-y for my taste, so I am left with cool, chill tones like Agnes Obel (whom I just discovered and I love dearly):

The Foolish Man Built His House Upon the Sand

I've always loved the song about the foolish man and the wise man. It's a common song throughout contemporary Christianity, has fun hand signs, and boasts a rockin' melody just perfect for head-sticking. During Sunday School this past week, the song came up, and I visualized the song in a whole new way.

As a child, I imagined a guy going down to the beach and slapping together 2x4s and a roof, which would crumple into the waves at the first big swell. Conversely, the wise man found a big rock at the beach and slapped his 2x4s down and it was fine. But people don't actually build houses like that. I grew up on the beach, and, while there are beach houses, they work a little differently.

On the southern Oregon coast, the mountainous land frequently ends in cliffs at the water's edge. Much of the land bordering the ocean is sandstone, a soft, easily crumbled, rock-like substance that grows ugly crabgrass, salal, and shore pines. When Californians retire, they see these picturesque cliffs and immediately go about slapping their houses on them. Sometimes they hit a rock/dirt composition; sometimes they don't.

In high school, I babysat for a family from Florida who's summer home was on one such sandy cliff. It was a gorgeous view, and the entire west side of the two story home was one giant bank of windows. This beautiful home had front row seats to one of God's most beautiful masterpieces: the Pacific Ocean and its coastal geography. They also had a fantastic view of the cliff's edge, which was crumbly sandstone. That edge crept, year by year, foot by foot, closer to the house. Some years it only lost a few inches; some years it lost three feet in one storm. But that edge still creeps on.

Eventually, the house will start slipping. It'll take years, but that's the fact of life on the coast: much of it falls into the ocean, some with startling regularity (there are spots along Highway 101 that slide completely every especially rainy year).

Men don't go down to the beach and slap some 2x4s together. They pick a spot on the cliff and build their dream home with granite and maple and double ovens and a gate, then watch, stuck, while the earth and the elements try to eat away at their paradise. Sometimes they get lucky and build on rock. Sometimes they get a geologic survey before they buy, and make an informed decision to stay away.

But after that house is built, you can't get out of a crumbling situation without losing a lot.

How to Be Happy

The thing about feeling down is that is goes away when you work at it. I'm not talking about actual depression. That stuff takes actual counseling, sometimes medication. But doldrums? Work. Work for someone else, preferably. But you've got to be able to overcome the down to make yourself get back up again. Very tricky!

My darling son is sometimes a trigger for unhappy thoughts (will you please, please just stop wiggling, stop needing to be rocked,stop wanting attention and let me sleep?!) but more often he is a big source of joy and laughter. Mr. Distractable has recently become enamored of me (more than he already was, if that's possible) and has taken to staring lovingly at me while he eats instead of eating. He latches on, sucks enough to get the milk really strongly flowing, then looks up at me suddenly, making sure I'm still there. Those big, black eyes peer up, all innocent-like. And milk sprays all over his cheek, his eye, his ear, and my front. Thank you.

I would like to explain to him, "Kid, your food and I? We're well attached. As long as you're eating, I'm not going anywhere." But still he stares.

Then goes down to latch on agai--PSYCH! Hi, Mommy!

Now it's time to tuck in--Gotcha! You still there?

...Until I give up and hand him over to the less-mammarily-gifted adult to deal with, because I am done.

But you can only stay mad at this face for so long.