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Back in the US, as threatened, for most of the month of March-
March 29, 2008
This Easter weekend will go down as the weekend of the Passing of the Books.
Snow covers the cabin, the rowboat, the lake. We sit under blankets with chai and watch it come down until late at night.
The time for resurrecting is not yet, the Earth is saying. First I will wash the world clean. In order to know the green of spring, you must first know cold. You must know what it is to be under the ground, waiting to burst into the light.
The occasion for the four of us being here together, besides the fact that we are a family, is that they are ready to pass us the Books. The books of our childhoods, the books that trace our being and our becoming. The kinds of books that believers believe God is writing about all of us.
Dear Timothy - begins the first one - This will be your book when you're grown up. Lord willing, that day will come when you say, 'What was I like when I was a little boy?'
They read to us from the books, and we laugh at the boys we almost forget we were.
November 7, '83: almost 2 years old
Mom writing
We were looking out the window looking at the bare trees.
Tim: 'Where'd all the leaves go?'
Mom: 'They fell down.'
Tim: 'Put them back on!'
December 4, '85: 4 years old
Dad writing
Got a phone call from you at work. Your question: 'Do ants have teeth - or only a tongue?'
April 25, '87: 5½ years old
Mom writing
I was wanting to go mow lawn. You'd fallen off the climber out back. I didn't see any traces or marks and brushed you off - yet you were still crying. I guess I didn't think you were too hurt so I was ready to go out to mow. You said, 'But Mommy, isn't a little boy more important than mowing lawn?' Yes, I had to agree, so we sat down and looked at children's magazines for a little.
There are reports of math problems solved in our heads and times we were especially tender or considerate. Once we formed a "We Love Mommy Fan Club" for Mothers' Day. The notes go on like this, in alternating handwriting styles, year after year. As we grow, the entries shift to accomplishments in school and sports, conversations about girls, and thinking about letting us go.
But this story is not only about two little boys who grew up and were inquisitive and occasionally witty or cute.
This story is just as much about two people who kept these books and kept them secret. This is a story about two people who loved their boys - curiously, consistently, and with their whole hearts - for a long time.
Love triumphs in the end, is the Easter promise. Even now, beneath the snow, new shoots shake in the darkness and push upward.
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