I'm getting back in the swing of things--still not unpacked, but working most days. I'm filling a fair amount of my spare time with a beautiful entertainment industry invention known as screeners--award-nominated recent films sent to members of different trade unions. I've been watching a lot of movies.

And, this afternoon, I was asked to speak at the Friday morning chapel of Pepperdine University, so no movies tonight. I have a talk to prepare.

Unpacking

So I'm still unloading my car and putting things away--perhaps implying that I've been doing it nonstop since my arrival in Los Angeles, but to the contrary. It takes far less time than it feels like it's going to, but I often find other things to do, perhaps avoiding the prospect of getting settled into this new motherless LA life.

As I'm emptying my laundry basket this morning, which I used like a suitcase, I come across a poncho that my mom crocheted for me. The poncho craze was always a little puzzling to me, since my mom wore a poncho when she brought my brother and me home from the hospital in a blanket made from matching yellow yarn. Am I really old enough that a fad that was popular at the time of my birth has been retro-ized? When the poncho came back, my mom offered to make me one, and so I picked out a yarn and she made it. I didn't really like it that much, because the pattern she used had this weird collar on it that looked, to put it nicely, dorky.

But this morning, I pulled the poncho out of the laundry basket and held it in front of me taking a good long look. I pulled it close to me and felt the softness of the yarn, and then I put it on over my pajamas and couldn't help but thinking that this is the closest I'll get to a hug from my mom, and now I wish she'd made me a hundred of these stupid ponchoes, so I could wear one every day. But isn't that the way with gestures of love? We make our attempts to show love, but it doesn't always fit what we're looking for or what we want, or we think we don't need it, so we minimize, we reject, we ignore. But when that love is gone we strive to grasp any memory of whatever attempt was made, no matter how clumsy or how ill-fitting.

I wish I could say that this moment with a poncho in my bedroom would change my life and make me more accepting of the loving gestures that people make toward me or make me more intentional and concentrated in my loving gestures toward others, and it's possible. But perhaps this pain and these tears are as much a part of truly experiencing and receiving love, because the love that I didn't understand or receive was still given. Even if we reject love that is given, that love doesn't disappear into thin air, does it? Maybe it floats around and follows us until we receive it and accept it and then it gloms onto us and doesn't let go. And maybe rather than working on being more loving, it would be more beneficial to work on receiving love, because it seems that the very nature of receiving love doesn't suck it out of the universe and create a vaccuum. Instead, love is more transformational, isn't it? It changes us. It multiplies in us. Receiving love makes us more loving.

So if you ever see me in public wearing a multi-colored handmade poncho long after they're out of fashion, you'll know that I'm walking around draped in my mother's love.

There and back again

My current outgoing voicemail message says: "Just like Bilbo Baggins I've been there and back again, so many times, in fact, that I don't know where 'there' or 'back' is. At any rate, I'm back in Los Angeles."

I stopped in Denver and stayed with a friend from high school, after a more-delightful-than-words lunch in Lawrence, Kansas. After staying up late, we slept in and I got a late start and ended up in Hollbrook, Arizona. I'm so glad that I took a different route this time. Southern Colorado and northern New Mexico are spectacularly beautiful. I was crying as the sun descended through clouds and hid behind mountains, setting the sky ablaze. It was just that pretty. Day 3 was spent getting from Hollbrook to Phoenix, AZ, where I got to see my grandma and great uncle and great aunt. Then yesterday, I arrived in Los Angeles, right as rush hour was getting underway.

I'm tired. I don't know whether I want to be here. The car is half unpacked. But I'm so glad I didn't have to run lickety split across the country, like every other drive I've made. I don't know what to expect out of the next few days, weeks, and months. But here I am, back in the shire....

The Return

Tomorrow I start driving back to LA. It was a good Christmas and New Year's. It's been busy, hence the MIA blogging. There were definitely some hard times ripe with Mom's absence. But some beautiful times with friends and family, too. It is pretty amazing how the beauty can overshadow the pain in those moments, though.

I've gotten used to being here, and I don't know that I'm ready to go back, which I didn't think would be possible. Do I really want to be in St. Louis more than I want to be in Los Angeles? Or is it that I want to be retired and be on permanent vacation, like I have been for the past 3 weeks, regardless of the location? I've watched a lot of cable, played a lot of solitaire, seen a lot of friends. My mind has been ripe with insights too numerous to share when there is laundry to do, a car to pack, and a route to plan.

More to come....