Summer Letter Three: The Already-Not Yet Perennial Bloom Geums

This is part of series of summer letters written to my sisters, my mother and two grandmothers. Writing got tough for me. I was tempted to give up, but these women kept me typing. So I decided to type to them for a time.

Dear Sisters, Mother and Grands,

Every morning at 6am this week I woke to another “not yet” morning reminder.

News of broken hips, broken kidneys and ultimately broken hearts pinged our phones— as Grandma’s last days unfolded. My eyes tear up happy, sad when I hear she came to in her last moments with crisp syntax. “I’m ready to go home, son. To see your Daddy and be with Jesus.”

Comfort was put in her veins and in peace she walked into her wish.

“Already, but not yet.” The Son of God has already come, but not yet returned— we live in a slow leak redemption story.

This week’s emphasis was on s l o w.

Again a ping of sadness lit up my screen. Sickness lives in a friend, a neighbor. She’s forced to stare down different evacuation notices for the unwanted guest— picking her poison to save her life. My heart can’t make sense of it. It’s too sunny outside and our kids play together unfazed in the five-buck sprinkler.

I breathe a little heavier, a little slower, a little sadder and then fold a load of laundry. I rise early to cry, read, pray and then fill the Intex pool. I’m sad. I’m happy. I’m living— living in the Land of “Already-not yet.”

And I have new Teva sandals I love.

Have you felt this tension sisters? Throughout your years, your tears and your belly laughs have you noticed that split-personality emotion inside, the feeling of sin riding sidesaddle with the sacred?

Already we live next to orange geum perennials strong enough to lift their heads to heaven in the summer sun, but we’ve not yet gone a year free of the first frost that buries their sunny faces, deep, deep in the ground.

Hold on sisters— hold on self. For the day is coming when those daisies will bloom year round and we’ll cock our heads, and squint our eyes at the mention of those “not yet” years, and wonder…

Did they really even happen?