At the risk of sounding like a heartless person, I have to admit that I can’t stand poodles. I know that people think they are cute with their fluffy ‘dos, but I’ve only met one poodle that I could tolerate — a gray/black miniature who was elderly and blind.

My dislike is not without precedent — in elementary school, I was once chased through my neighborhood by a poodle that stood shoulder-to-shoulder with our doberman pincer. In fact, that monster may have even been bigger than our doberman! I pedaled my bike as fast as I could while that beast snapped at my heels. I can still hear the click of its teeth … *shudder*

I remember making it safely home and telling my family about the ordeal. My brother teased me for YEARS about my fear of poodles. Years. Incessantly.

A few nights ago, I woke up feeling confused by a conversation that felt very real, but it didn’t make any sense. It took me a few groggy moments to realize that I had been a dream.

I’ve had straight, fine hair all of my life, and for the last several years, I’ve kept it pretty short. Unfortunately, I did go through a few seasons earlier in life where I thought a perm would be a good idea. I thought that the only way to get “body” in my hair (other than teasing it with a comb) was to perm it. Oh, ’80s, look what you did to me! I can’t recall a specific incident to verify this claim, but I’m pretty sure that I recall my brother also telling me that my hair looked like a poodle when it was permed. This is important, because I was just looking at some of these “big hair” pictures the other day, so it was fresh on my mind.

Anyway, I woke up with the echo of my brother’s laugh in my memory. He was laughing at me, of course, but it was his hearty, I’m-just-joshing-you laugh. The only bit of the dream that I could recall was that I had been standing in front of a mirror with – you guessed it – a horrible perm. I had tried to tame it by pulling it up with a barrette, but that only made the front more poofy.

Nathan was standing behind me, laughing at my terrible hairdo, and he said, “You look like Miffie the poodle!” He kept laughing to the point of tears and wheezing, and I was fighting a chuckle, myself (just too stubborn to give into him). That’s when I woke up.

Miffie the poodle?! I’ve never even heard that name before. What a funny thing to dream. I don’t even care that he was laughing at me — it is so rare to hear his voice in my dreams, so I relished even what little I could remember from the silly scene. I miss his laugh the most.

I had the chance to go to the Texas Renaissance Festival this weekend with a girlfriend, and we had a great time dressing up in costumes pieced together from thrift store finds and hand-me-downs. The festival is not far from my brother’s cemetery, so I wanted to stop by on the way and check to make sure the flowers still looked nice, etc.

As we were getting ready that morning in our hotel, I laughed out loud at a thought that flitted into my head. My friend asked what it was, and I told her that I realized we were going to the cemetery dressed in medieval costumes. At first, I thought it might be disrespectful, but the reason I laughed was because I think my brother would love it! The Ren Fest was one of his favorite annual events, though I haven’t been since I was a teenager.

So, I hiked up my long skirt to keep from getting it dirty, traipsed across the grass and squatted down in the dirt next to his grave. I used a fallen leaf to dust off the headstone as I chuckled to myself. I’m glad no one else was around, because who knows what they would have thought of us. Hey – at least I was dressed as a maiden and not a gypsy! 🙂

The Ren Fest was a lot of fun, and little memories of my brother came back to me throughout the day, especially when we browsed through shops that I know he would like. People in the crowd – costumed and in street clothes – reminded me of him. I saw “him” as a husky middle schooler gnawing on a turkey leg, a too-cool-to-be-walking-around-with-my-parents teenager and a young father carrying his son on his shoulders.

When I was a teenager and he was a tween, we didn’t get along at all. Thankfully, things changed when we grew up, and I think we would have had a lot of fun together this weekend.

Eleven years ago, I went into labor on Labor Day. Today, I took him shoe-shopping in the MEN’S aisle. Despite all of the too-close-to-grown-up reminders, I am so grateful for this young man who isn’t too big to hug me in public and has taught me more about God’s inexhaustible grace than he’ll probably ever know.

We have the standard just-born snapshots and going-home pictures, but there are a few days in between that are purposely missing. Shortly after he was born, the doctors determined that his blood sugar was too low, and despite our efforts to nurse and supplement with formula, it wasn’t doing the trick to raise his sugar levels. They had to run an iv – which, on a newborn, meant putting a needle in his little head. That, my friends, is why we have no pictures from those couple of days. (How long was it, really? Two days? Three? I have no idea; I blocked it out.) I couldn’t bear to have a permanent reminder of that needle and tape stuck to my baby’s head. Praise God, the iv worked, and we were able to go home later in the week.

Then there was the day he walked all by himself down to the speech therapy classroom at the local elementary school. He looked dwarfed by the “big” kids as he bobbed along with his backpack hanging down to his knees.

Then there was his first (and only, praise God!) bleeding trip to the ER. He was standing up and playing in the bathtub when he slipped and landed on his chin on the edge of the tub. Like mother, like son: my first set of stitches was from a bathtub accident, too. (Dancing With The Stars didn’t have nuthin’ on Ang in the 1st grade! lol)  😉  He ended up not needing stitches, just glue. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have wasted four hours and a $50 copay and would have glued him up myself, but I was a frantic, inexperienced parent. What did I know? (Apparently, I still haven’t learned my lesson, since we just took the little one for a fancy superglue fix, too.)

Then there was the summer of his baptism at the lake. It was a family ordeal. What an amazing day!

Then there was the night when he found the courage that I was too numb to seek, and he prayed for my fatally injured brother, sight unseen.

Then there was the day when he took his cousins’ hands and led them through our local zoo, like a big brother duck taking little ducks under his wings.

Then there was the Why-did-God-call-me-to-this?! day when he sat next to me on the couch while I cried, patting my arm and saying, “I know it’s hard.”

There have been too many of these sort of days to recount, but through it all, he has risen to situations beyond his age and handled them with grace and unabashed faith that challenges me even now. Lord, help me fan that fire in him so that he will blaze brightly in his world.

I started this post on Friday with this draft paragraph:

I’ve been planning to write a commemorative post especially for today, which marks one and a half years since my brother died. Oddly enough, the sun rose this morning and the doldrums that often hit me on the 23rd didn’t accompany it. It could have something to do with the flurry of wonderful news that we’ve received this week (hubby is supposed to be en route home!), and it certainly doesn’t mean that I’ve “gotten over” Nathan being gone. I’m learning to cope, yes, but that doesn’t explain it fully. Perhaps living in the moment is a better way to describe it. It doesn’t do my stress level any good to dwell on the past.

—

How ironic that I ended Friday’s draft with a comment about living in the moment. I was stuck on the idea that – for a pleasant change – I wasn’t feeling melancholy on the 23rd. I didn’t have time to write any more before work, so I saved the first paragraph as a draft. Some friends and I were going out to a birthday lunch, so I didn’t expect to have another chance to write until Friday evening. Lunch was nice; celebrating with friends is a good thing, indeed.

Then, something completely amazing and fabulous happened … my phone rang while we were at the restaurant. It was my hubby, using his calling card to tell me that his flight connected in DFW. Cool, I thought – he’s actually in the States! I officially got my hopes up that he wouldn’t be re-deployed to the farthest reaches of the Earth. THEN, he said that it got better … they canceled his connecting flight, so he *had* to stay overnight at a hotel. Say again, over?! I was all smiles and bouncing in my seat, trying to figure out quickly how to arrange care for the boys that evening so that I could skip town while the girls at lunch picked on me for not leaving right then.

Thankfully, my mom and a friend stepped up and worked out the details. I emailed my boss to let him know what was going on, and I ran home to pack a bag and hit the highway. I was already 30 min north of town when hubby called back to tell me which hotel to meet him. What an exciting, whirlwind evening!

It struck me later in the weekend that on a day that could have been depressing and reflective, it ended up being the best Friday in recent memory. What joy to see my hubby on an unexpected layover, and so exciting to realize that he’s actually on the way home – sooner than expected, to boot!

I feel so thankful, grateful and blessed right now. The boys have been wild children all weekend, and it hasn’t been a walk in the park, to say the least. (In fact, I tried taking them to the park earlier to run off their abundant energy, and it rained on us.) All things considered, I have learned to have a clearer perspective on these stressful “moments” in life and reassure myself that this, too, shall pass. All days won’t be as crazy and unruly as this weekend. There are days when the boys actually get along and behave – really, there are! When my own mindset is focused on the blessings rather than the frustrations, I’m better able to deal with the challenges. (That isn’t to say that I’m always successful, but I try.)