A follow up report on the bottle. Good news: Anders is happily taking a bottle now. Bad news: as children often do, there is no logical reason why he switched teams from haters to takers. Thus, we are thrilled, but anyone desperate for helpful hints or tips must look elsewhere. Thanks still to all who offered help.

Tomorrow is a welcomed occasion at the Mooney house as football season is upon us. We live in the shadow of Razorback stadium, wake up to ESPN Gameday, and bicker constantly about Arkansas vs. Alabama. Ginny dresses the kids in Alabama gear while I teach them to call the Hogs.

However, a season far greater than football has arrived while the weather changes and leaves turn. These are the days of the year that we spent with our son. These moments are always holy to us- a hallowed ground, a window to greater realities.

One of the great reminders that autumn ushers in is the challenge to live in light of the lessons we have learned. There is an unseen pull toward normal. Without a battle, my default settings take over and plot the familiar course toward the province of the pathetic- a home to comfort and safety as well as other mirages that sound alluring but slowly kill us as they choke out all faith, wonder and mystery. God was not where I thought he would be. I have held my miracle son for unpromised moments and walked with him to the end; in doing so, I glimpsed a better way. I saw beauty within the ache, hidden there in the lowly- on display for all who stoop low and behold.

How do I live in light of this today? The me that misses Eliot, that eagerly awaits football season and celebrates the fact that Anders took a bottle?

I am not sure, but I am dead set on figuring it out. For much of life is found away from the mountaintops and valleys, in the Kansas-flat realities of mundane activity. But I think there’s wonder and awe and beauty there too, I’m just trying to find it.

Happy 7 months son!

photo credit: Podknox

I have guest posted here this week dealing with wrestling with God in the aftermath of loss.

There’s also a way to support the organization that we started to help special needs families & their children. So feel free to send your friends on over & let’s see if we can raise some money for 99 Balloons. With rEcess starting back in September, we’ll need some funds for volunteer dinners, supplies, and such.

photo credit: Torley

Upon returning from Michigan, the Mooneys (I know, I know there’s a cult by that name) have entered into a new era of life on a few different frontiers.  First of all, the kids are each in a new phase that is, admittedly, a little easier on mom & dad:

• Anders is sitting up, wanting to crawl, getting teeth, and sleeping much longer at night.  He is off-the-charts gi-normous for his age and elicits laughter when we tell people he is only six months old.  Those who don’t know his age assume he’s a “slow bloomer” since any kid that big should be taking out the trash.  He is of the tender kind and is guaranteed to reciprocate a smile.  He does have a glaring strike against him that still manages to keep us from having a real date night.  The kid will not take a bottle.  I know this admission baits all you moms into paragraphs of unsolicited advice, but bring it on.  Odds are we’ve tried it, and Anders thinks the bottle sucks.

• Hazel perpetually moves from my favorite stage on into my new favorite stage.  She talks incessantly, unless we’re out of the house and around people, at which point she pretty much stares and studies them with the earnest attention of a scholar.  She gives orders on the most menial things:
  “Daddy sit here.”
  “Mommy drive.”
  Everything is “my”, although, this has tapered off a bit after the 100^th time of mommy telling her that, “everything is God’s” & my repeated admonitions that, “nothing is yours, it is all daddy’s- until you get a job.”
  She loves to be read to, and now you know she’s got me.

• They play together.  Anders thinks she hung the moon.  She says, “hi buddy” when he wakes up and “And-uuurrrs night night” when he sleeps.

And so, we have moved a bit out of the forest of a newborn and a baby.  The wild-meter has been notched down just a bit and it is really fun around our house.

Another new frontier lies in my daily activities.  Most people would use the word “job” here, but that’s seems so cliché to one on the outside of the whole career thing.  It has been really fun to see things coming together in this arena.  I’ll remind you of what I have been saying with conviction all along in regard to my employment:  “it’s either faith or stupidity”.  And, truth be told, to onlookers I am not sure there is a distinction at all.  Faith is logically stupid.  With that said, it has been surprising, to me, to see things falling into place.  I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise, but when you have endured the short end of the stick and lived to rejoice, it’s not easy to think that favor is coming your way- and certainly not expected.

First of all, our Board of Directors at 99 Balloons are actively seeking to make it possible to hire me for a newly-formed Executive Director position.  We all agree that to pursue an expanded vision for where we think 99 Balloons needs to go involves shifting gears toward this end.  This turn of events is equal parts exciting and humbling.  Ginny & I are keenly aware that this is not where we would have ever placed ourselves, and therein lies both the excitement & humility.  The requirements of the role would be one that allowed me to continue to pursue some writing as well as continue consulting.

In this new frontier, I have an office now.  White walls, fluorescent lights, nothing special.
I love it.  It is quiet, and it is space and those are things I do not take for granted these days.  The writing is going well.  I have focused on before, during, and after Eliot’s life.  It is a joy to wade through the miracles that we lived.

Thanks for all of the feedback on books.  I haven’t been able to get a new post up, due to my runs to bookstores scouring for the titles you all suggested.  Really looking forward to knocking out the great list that was compiled.  In that vein, if any of you know of great work with special needs kids going on in churches, organizations, international orphanages, etc.  I would love to know about it.  One of my first goals in the role with 99 Balloons is to become more familiar with great works of others.

So…
a.) bottle tips
b.)  special needs organizations, etc.
c.) general banter on my boyish good looks.

Go ahead & comment, it inflates my ego and we all know that is what the world needs.

we took a ton of pictures, so it’s hard to narrow it down but here are a few from our trip.  it was so great to be away & be with family and after 4 weeks away it’s really great being home again too.

I have made my way back to balmy Fayetteville; Ginny and the rascals stayed on in Michigan for another week, so I am busy watching movies, reading books, and sleeping in- as well as trying to appear as unpathetic in public as possible in their absence.

In an effort to tell better stories, I have been reading some memoir/essay style books from folks who are masterful at bringing you into their world through ink on a page.  This assignment, for me, is like asking Ginny to taste test various chocolates; these style books are my favorite.

Here’s a list of some books in this genre that I have enjoyed.  It’s not meant to be exhaustive or a ranking, but rather a look into my man-purse on a given day.

Anne Lamott::  Traveling Mercies

Joan Didion:: The Year of Magical Thinking

David Sedaris::  When We are Engulged in Flames (*warning…all around saucy)

Kelly Corrigan:: The Middle Place

Let me know byway of comments of your own favorite or favorites- or any that I have left off the list.  The genre I am referring to is not an exact science, so feel free to recommend anything close.  For the most part, it’s essay or memoir style books that weave between narrative storytelling and pauses for thoughts on the process.

I’ve left so many great works out…come on add one or five, it won’t hurt a bit to move from lurker to commenter.

just because i’m his mom & every mom oohs & ahhs at pictures of their kids. what a looker, huh?

happy birthday, son.

He would be four tomorrow.

Sounds like a cliché line cut from a country music song, and I desperately wish I could be more poignant, but my mind will not oblige, as I cannot seem to move past these five words.

He would be four tomorrow.

Or rather, is it, he is four tomorrow? Though, with all I am, I believe he’s in a place where time itself is only a memory. Four years wouldn’t be what we would be celebrating anyway.

He would be 1,461 days old tomorrow.

And I am confident that we would be singing out on day 1,461 with all the wonder that day one held- never growing tired of celebrating each day at 4:59 p.m.

I have already been preparing Ginny that this is a day that we will celebrate- somehow hoping that speaking it in advance will make it easier to actually do when the time comes. It’s just too bad that it doesn’t work that way.

In the brief windows of thought that this week has allowed, I’ve been thinking on how I have changed in the last four years. And it would require less paper to list what remains rather than what has been altered.

Here in Michigan, I have been reflecting and writing on our time before, during and after Eliot’s life. This three-part paradigm- before, during and after Eliot- seems to be the way that my life is playing out. I can only recall the man I was prior to holding him as a ghost or someone to laugh at.

Exuberant joy, colossal pain, life and death intertwined to hit me between the eyes and leave this me in the place of what I was. And it’s a good thing- I think, but there’s a mourning that accompanies not only the catalyst but also the process that leaves me a better man. Everyone desires the clarity that comes with where I stand today, but God forbid they walk the road that led me here.

It is hard to thank God for killing you. For doing just what He said He would. It is hard, and I have not yet attained, a posture of praise for the death of me. Yet I am undeniably more of who I want to be, inching closer to my destiny, and oh so thankful for His redemptive work that has exchanged my selfishness for compassion, my death for life.

If I sound a little scattered, I apologize, I am.

He would be four tomorrow.

still heavy on the drugs, rest, and fluids.  but I can feel some life creeping back in.  found this somewhere in my time on the couch and thought it expressed a longing we hope in.

I’ve been in a little bout of pneumonia here in the north, and it’s been winning for the last four days, but now that we found the culprit, I think the tide may be turning.