Coming Up For Air

My mother and my wife were talking over kitchen matters. I'm not ungrateful for what goes on there. I'm certainly not ungrateful for the fact that the two most important women in my life connect so consistently and so easily. Since both my hands and my interests have been impacted by disability, I tend to readily turn my attention from such conversations, toward my books, and, eventually, toward the next meal that will come from that kitchen. The scent of their kitchen conversation wafted into my notice, however. They were talking about oven cleaning, and the sweet scent of faith sanctified the burning chemical odor I would typically associate with that effort. Prompted by talk about her own oven rather than by any desire to draw attention to herself, my mother mentioned nearly climbing in to clean the cavernous communal oven her church uses to serve the homeless. I've already been inspired by my mom's willingness to reach across class, and, typically, color, and ventur...

In the mental shelf space where a Bible verse or someone's birthday could be, there's a picture of a wide-eyed kitten from posters past. Beneath the kitten's memorable gaze was the inscription, "Work fascinates me. I can look at it for hours." I have. I've looked at work for hours, days, years, and decades. My vantage point on vocation has been worth enough for me to make a living helping others find it in roles as a job and college counselor. In recent days, I've looked at work differently. Unemployed at the moment, I had a little epiphany in the most unlikely of places, on an assembly line. As cerebral palsy impacts my muscles significantly, I didn't expect to be here. I didn't expect that repeated movement of my uncooperative muscles would provide much value. My mind, I've been told, is my moneymaker, and I've gotten plenty of gratitude over the years to confirm and perhaps narrow that perception to myopia. Henry David Thoreau's...

Most scenes I would frame in this space as I come up for air to record the week's strongest impressions for myself and you, my faithful reader, are clinically well lit. There is no subtlety or sinistery behind the computer screen telling me whether I'm qualified, or not, for the latest job opening. Electronic entertainment dances across my retina with a deliberately distracting series of exploding colors. Lines of text march beneath my book lamp, inspected for inclusion in my OneNote file that stands in for what my readers or hearers may mistakenly think is a good memory. Scenes can make a vivid impression, though, even in the dark. The combustion between smoldering rage at one end of the room and the projection of a a colorful cartoon character at the other was enlightening enough. Such was the unlikely, and unintended, combination from Tuesday's summons to the unemployment office. When those two components collided, sound stood in for light. The bureaucratic brotherhood ...

Zoey's entire face was surrounded by the teacup she held with both of her diminutive hands. Zoey has been a reality TV star on her adoptive parents show The Little Couple almost all of her life, but she was dividing none of her intensity with an awareness of her audience. This was a tea party. In the UK. She was all in. Zoey's mom, neonatologist Dr. Jennifer Arnold, saw more than kitchenware and ritual. Zoey started life in an orphanage in India. When she arrived in an American home, Dr. Arnold said she didn't play with toys. She didn't know how. Perhaps plates and cups were what she used to fire her imagination at the orphanage. Maybe the same props and prompts kindle the same reaction as she grows. Adults could learn from Zoey's connectedness and intensity. Aware of a wider world, we often lose something of her capacity for gratefully engaging the earthiness of the here and now. Just because our roles are serious, as is my primary one as suddenly unemployed,...