August 11

Your Birthdate: August 11

Your birth on the 11th day of the month makes you something of a dreamer and an idealist. You work well with people because you know how to use persuasion rather than force. There is a strong spiritual side to your nature, and you may have intuitive qualities inherent in your make up, too. You are very aware and sensitive, though often temperamental. Although you have a good mind and you are very analytical, you may not be comfortable in the business world. You are definitely creative and this influence tends to make you more of a dreamer than a doer.

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

I found this link on Joi's blog. Strikingly accurate, in my opinion. Good. Now I can blame my dysfunction on the stars. ;)

A Sign for Every Season

"What is the one thing that has happened in your life that proves God's existence to you?"

My dad asked this question today at the kitchen table. Dad's always asking leading questions. In fact, I don't think I've ever received a piece of information from dad which wasn't exasperatingly coerced out of me by his bursting enthusiasm. Once I throw him the answer he wants, dad pounces on it like dog with his favorite toy.

It turns out that what dad wanted, in this rare case, was to give an answer, not get it. But before I tell you his answer, I have to tell you a little bit more about dad.

Dad's a little hysterical sometimes, about the most random things. About a month ago, he happened upon a website selling Solar Light Crosses. A week later we got Dad's $50 gizmo in the mail: a 2 ft tall white plastic cross with two rechargable batteries that never quite seem to work right.

A piece of junk, we all thought. All of us except Dad. Everynight he tried it out in a new location, in the planter, in the pool. Tonight I saw it, a glowing guardian, at the foot of my parent's bed.

It's been a month, and Dad's still just as enthusiastic. He wants me to start a business and sell them to my friends. He'd like to see it on every hill in America. What better symbol of Christ? he asks. "This is really going to freak people out. This is really going to proclaim the message of Christianity."

Mom and I exchange glances and shrug. Maybe he's onto something. And maybe he's not. Dad's got an awful lot of corpses in the graveyard of aborted brainstorms.

But today I saw that solar cross in a different light. Not the weird eerie white glow I usually see.

"What proves to you the existence of God?"

Dad grew up in deserty New Mexico. They have a reputation for seeing things in the sky. Some places in the world are like that.

Dad saw something once.

"I was nine. And Lorraine and I were on Grandma Refugio's porch. And all of a sudden we saw a shining white cross in the sky, as bright as the moon!! We called everyone out of the house and they saw it too! I couldn't believe it!!!!"

Dad hasn't had an easy life, to say the least. There are a lot of reasons he could have given up trying to get through one more day. But he doesn't. He knows God is real. He's seen the light of the cross, and it's effect on him is still as powerful today as it was when he was nine. And he wants everyone else to see it to.

I love my dad, and I love his cross, the literal and the figurative. And I'm learning to love the other crosses in my life. I don't know why God put me in the family he did, why he's given, and why he's taken away. But I'm learning to trust him.

"If any man come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. He who desires to save his life will lose it, but he who loses his life for my sake will find it."

It's a season. A season, and a good one.

Onions

"Those will make you cry."

Grandpa didn't know where the refrigerator was today. But Grandpa knows what makes me cry.

I always seem to be saying good night to him while he's eating dinner. He always eats late. I guess all those years of late night gigs have ruined him for regular dining hours.

Grandpa always kisses me with a mouthful of food. Tonight I got onions in my kiss, the ones I was cutting up earlier. Grandpa never liked onions, but he doesn't notice them anymore.

I wonder if I'll ever be like that, if I'll ever stop noticing the things that make me cry.

Silly Questions

My Grandpa Dale is a silly man. Sadly silly, because of the Alzheimer's, but silly nonetheless. I like that twinkle of comprehension that still plays about his green eyes.

In a lot of ways, Grandpa still retains that "sharpness" he's so fond of detecting in other things and people. Not the saavy sort of sharpness, but the kind that comes with an outfit or a car.

You never know what you're going to get with Grandpa. Sometimes he can't remember how to put on his seatbelt. Sometimes he comes out of his room wearing hardly anything. Sometimes he plays the guitar like Joe Pass.

There are only about four topics of conversation Grandpa and I can engage in, and we return to them often throughout the day. I'm told I'm supposed to answer each repeated question as if I were hearing it for the first time.

Usually I don't have to think when I'm around Grandpa. I can answer mechanically if I want to. After all, Grandpa's questions don't really matter that much, and he won't remember the answer I give him.

But Grandpa keeps asking. Maybe deep down he knows I'm just placating him. Maybe deep down he knows I'm just paying lip service.
Maybe.

Those questions Grandpa asks, when I face them honestly, turn out to be the hardest questions anyone could ask. Grandpa can't remember very much, but he remembers things I sometimes wish he didn't.

I can't answer those questions, not today, Grandpa.

I keep tossing Grandpa my prefabricated pacifiers, hoping he'll be satisfied. But I know he won't be. Tomorrow he'll ask me again.

Will I be ready to answer?

It is comforting...

..that even in the midst of human woes
the wind still stirs and speaks
and leaves cannot contain their joy.