Monday, February 26, 2007

That's Biblical

(Note: I am working on putting my mission pics together and that involves writing a rambly poem for each companion to go opposite a few favorite pics, so this is one of them for your viewing pleasure)

And we’ll walk nonchalantly down the driveway, acting natural til we get in the car and start shrieking about how even though he’s only 10 and he has some “big disagreements” Kyle finally finally finally heard an answer because he got 7th in the spelling bee and took it as a sign that maybe he should have second thoughts about not being baptized. And Julie was worried Devin might grow up and go to jail if he keeps lying so we sang songs about obedience and tried to act like we didn’t know he’d made up the story about his droopy finger.

Or how about standing soaked in the rain, me with a gimped foot that kind of felt like a monster bruise and you wearing 5 shirts and we both looked like drowned rats and the old woman shook her head at us through the screen door and said something but we couldn’t hear it so just kept talking til she walked away.

How about when the dog actually ate your hair then gnawed on my knuckles and I really thought they were going to start bleeding but we just kept teaching and even though Dan was smoking and later decided he was too cool, we told him he could learn to be a better dad and he told us once he prayed for nice weather at the lake with his grandma and it worked so no matter what that’s how he knew God was for real.

Or when we sat in the front row with our feet on the piano bench and so many treats it seemed like Halloween but instead it was actually January, which was the same month we walked around and everyone noticed and when we met all those depressed moms with kids that freaked us out and we shook on it that we’d never become them.

And even though we kept striking out and sometimes it felt like a drought but most of the time it felt like a treasure chest, Mert and Shannon promised they’d really show up this time. We’ll laugh at my word vomit and the grumpy man at Family Dollar and we’ll get rage about laundry and milk but really we won’t mean it and plus we make up code names for things important to us anyway so it’s fine.

And we’d make analogies about sports and war and Chuck E. Cheese then laugh about the time you asked Maggie if she’d heard the gospel's been restored, and we felt bad for laughing so hard in the prayer that we turned purple and couldn’t breathe, and we’d break up with Florence and the LaBombards and feel short-term sad but long-term happy.

Then you’d eat one more wheat thin and I’d eat 10 more cookies and we’d smile about 600 calories, your muddy coat and the miracle we knew was just around the corner.

3 comments:

i'm erin. said...

Poetic brilliance...I loved it, and a possible tear could have come to my eye if I was not such a hardened crabby mother...luv erin calabio

Megan said...

i love your poems...i still have the one you sent me after i got home about how we were misunderstood in black sweaters. but i dropped it in soapy dish water so now its crinkly, but i love it.

Nikki said...

I love this poem!