Three O'Clock on a Tuesday

magic

The sky was the softest pewter blue, muted sunshine falling on my skin as I rode my grandpa’s bike through the cemetery down the road from their home on MacArthur Drive. Two tiny American flags perched on each of the handlebars, softly flapping in the passing breeze.

“Take her for a spin,” my grandpa had proudly said. I stopped by for a quick after-school visit to find him shining up his old bike up in the driveway, and I happily took him up on the offer. After a whole day trapped inside, fresh air always had a way of untangling webs of thought.

I recall riding past the headstone of my classmate Sarah’s father, who had recently been senselessly killed in a post office shooting. I glanced at the dates on his memorial, the dash in-between catching the best of my attention. Even as a young girl, I marveled at how one horizontal line could represent ALL of someone’s days. What stories did his tell?

I turned my head, picked up speed and swerved onto the familiar roads I spent all of childhood strolling down with my grandma. We made up stories of the birds flying overhead and named the squirrels prancing through the leaves in people’s yards. I was eager to return to their home, where I knew molasses cookies, lemonade and SHE sat waiting for me.

…The home where we gathered with my cousins just about every Sunday to pop popcorn and huddle under blankets while watching “Murder She Wrote”. The home where the boys of the family played millions of card games at the kitchen table. …The home that perpetually smelled of hot ham sandwiches and pickles. ….The home that held us in its fold on days we didn’t feel well and our parents had to work. …The home that held, up until this point, close to five decades of our family’s history. Sundays and Tuesdays and bedtime stories and dirty dishes and candy jars and laughter and losses and coloring pictures and dancing in the kitchen and laying bored on the couch. Yellow linoleum, brown shag carpet and anthologies of “everyday’s”.

My sister and I in the front yard of grandma and grandpa’s, porch swan keeping watch. Afternoon shadows falling long upon the home that represented stability and care. And it was probably 3:00 on an ordinary Tuesday. Magic.

Lingering long upon old photographs has always been a favorite past-time of mine, and I think it’s because pictures are some sort of wizardry. They’re windows…a time travel made of stillness…a portrait of moments gone by in a blink. Moments we cannot ever get back. I love to imagine the scents, textures, sounds, temperatures - all the feelings that comprise a moment - as I study photographs. And the most mundane seconds captured are among my most favorite.

Probably a Sunday, gathered in the sunshine to enjoy a meal together. We have buried three of us, and the rest have scattered. But for a couple decades, this was a treasured rhythm we could count on together. Magic.

How many times have we allowed “Three o’clock on a Tuesday” moments pass by without realizing it is miraculous we’re even here to experience such phenomenons? What are the chances we were even given a chance at life?

Dirty dishes in the sink, bananas on the counter, a cookie jar goose and a birthday cake about to be devoured. Magic.

Lately I’ve found myself caught in the throes of stress. There’s just SO much to accomplish. The to-do lists are ridiculous. I’ve even been waking up at night only to turn over and add more things I must do to the discombobulated list on my phone.

But I refuse to believe that we were given this opportunity to live only to be stressed out and anxiety-ridden. Or worried. Or caught up in comparisons. Or gorged upon our own selfishness or warped sense of “security” and control. Or depressed.

My mom and aunt Donna, immediate life-long besties because they married into the very interesting Nitschke family. Preparing a dinner that came and went in a blink. Magic. And we miss aunt Donna ever single day.

I reminded myself this morning that if I’m stressed out, I have the wrong vantage point. No matter how much I believe I must accomplish, I get to be here today. I get to hold a coffee cup in my hands and feel piano keys beneath my fingers. I get to look into the eyes of my friends and hear their laughter. I get to kiss my husband and feel our puppy’s fur. I get to have a daughter. I get to fill our sink with dirty dishes and fold the wash and put together another set list for our worship team to play on Sundays. I get to paint and take walks and unload groceries and clip my fingernails and write poetry and scrub toilets and laugh a lot. And sometimes cry. It all means I’m still here. Alive. Living. What the heck are the chances?

My two grandpas, the OG musicians. Playing melodies together on earth, and now they’re in heaven. It goes on and on. Magic.

The truth, I reminded myself this morning, is that I cannot control anything except for my own responses. I don’t call the shots on my safety (or that of my loved ones). I don’t get to hold anything still or keep even a molecule of anything in my hands. I can’t control situations and worry is a useless activity. It only paints ugliness over beauty. It lies and says the uncertainty of outcomes and days is something to be feared.

My great grandmother and her sister. They held each other’s hands in this life. They got to share their days. What a thing! Magic.

The only thing certain in this life is change, and our God, who doesn’t. How will I respond to a heartbreakingly temporary life filled so many “Three o’clock on a Tuesday” moments sprinkled with occasional bursts of fantastic and strokes of pain?

My Oma and three of her sisters after the war with their daughters. They survived the most horrific things. Things that could completely destroy everything that comprises a human spirit. Yet here they are, laughing on a couch in the shade in a new country. Perseverance. Magic.

I must respond with wonder. I fear any other way would lead to a wasting of my life. If I don’t live with my eyes open, completely enamored, selflessly loving and serving and giving and resting and laughing and feeling and creating and worshipping and giving thanks for even the tiniest thing, I am wasting life.

I don’t want to reside in a state of life that is so blinded by worry and stress and selfishness and comparison. I want to respond with wonder, even while daringly staring the devastating parts straight in the eye.

My great-grandparents walking among their front yard blooms. Magic.

I have survived much. I am surviving much. I will survive more. But I’m not simply surviving….I’m living. And goodness, this life is quite a thing. I can’t believe God created me and allowed me to LIVE.

My mom and her cousins. A playdate. I love how the light is resting upon the room. Fleeting every-day magic.

I think back to that dash on my classmate Sarah’s father’s headstone…and all the other dashes we walk past while in cemeteries. Those dashes are all that remains here on this earth to encompass the entirety of so many days. I wonder what fears, dramas, worries and stresses they represent. Such things are all over now. Dust in the wind never meant to be dwelt upon. What was made into large matters and weighty cares didn’t matter all that much because they’re now forgotten.

Perhaps dashes are better spent not in fake happiness, but within the joy of our existence. …Within the wonder we’re even given dashes at all. …Within the art of life.

And this is my declaration: I will spend my days making everything around me more beautiful. I will keep learning how to have a keen eye to cherish the mundane. I will do more than romanticize life - I will cherish it. I will endlessly wonder at it. I will live in gratitude for all of it.

Oma, on an actual Tuesday afternoon. We sat and listened to the chatter of the birds while church bells sounded in the distance. We were together, and it was beautiful. Magic.

I will end with a brief poem from my book Moonflower. May we poke the mundane until it spills magic all over the place....

in the shade of an ancient oak
cooled breeze slips across my face

I watch light dance and drizzle
through clusters of sun-soaked leaves

a sliver of bright drips onto my open palm

I roll it
and poke it
until it spills
all over the place

With Love,

Sarah Beth Gerbers