Our garage is about half full of perfectly stacked boxed of stuff. L's stuff. He is systematically disappearing for the entire morning into his study with one of those boxes.  He's scanning notes, pictures, articles, entire books for all I know.  Our oldest son recommended the scanning to digital storage idea and my husband has taken to it as only the truly compulsive can (no disrespect there, it is as the if the kettle is calling the skillet black).  I applaud the effort.  Our huge recycling container sits ready, straining lid cocked open, every pick up day.  We are burning already scanned stuff in our little fire pit. Someday we may be able to park a car in the garage.

This picture turned up.

He came out to find me saying, "Hey, look what I found."  This was taken in July of "81 at the airport in Buffalo.  The night before we had been in what seemed to me was getting ready to be a fatal car wreck.  A speeding car screamed through a red light broadsiding us and spinning the brand new station wagon L was driving round and round and round just like a toy flung during a temper tantrum.  The car was totaled. From my seat on the right I could see more clearly around the blind corner.  I saw it coming.  There's a word for "when time fragments in to tiny fractions of a second and those fraction move forward like box cars on a freight train" ... it's like slow motion ... even one's prayer is stretched like a cassette tape that will never sound right again. 

I've never told anyone this - after my dad died I started thinking, irrationally of course, that everyone I loved would die (because I loved them).  That's some sort of weird messed up.  The earlier death of my best friend/older brother had left a jagged scar, Daddy's death was too much loss to absorb. For a long time I kept my love small because of that ill conceived idea.  

During those splintered seconds before impact my breaking heart reminded God that He promised to never put more than we can bear.  That's what I'd been told.  That's what I believed.  (I now know that is not what the scripture says.)   Please, no, my heart whimpered. My husband and I walked away from the crash.  I miscarried a few days after we got back home.  And I dropped out of graduate school and went to work.  

It surprises me what comes out when I just sit down to write ... . 

I sat down today to talk about how much I am enjoying ALEXA.  Maybe I can tell that story tomorrow because I am out of time today.