Let me tell you why I hate summer.

I hate summer time.
I know, I know, I can hear your gasps.

"How could anyone hate SUMMER? The sun shines all day! The nights are warm and balmy! You get to eat snow cones for dinner!"

My husband is probably the loudest gasper of all, because he can't stand when people wax poetic about the cozy winter season, or their anticipation of cooler fall weather. He works outside, though, and I get it-  it would suck a big one to be climbing a power pole in sub-zero wind chill.
I get it.

But I still don't like summer, for many many reasons.

1. The expectations. It's like, you're supposed to have the time of your life for three months straight. Who can possibly achieve this goal? You can only go swimming and eat corn on the cob for so many days, you know what I'm saying? It gets old. And yeah, the sun doesn't set until 10 p.m. Does this mean I have to be out having FUN until 10 p.m.? What if I want to be in bed at 8? Well, too bad, because the sun is still shining and you should be at a BBQ, or in your swimsuit, or whatever. GO HAVE FUN, we'll meet back here in September.

2. It's really hot. I do not want to be outside when it is 100 degrees. I don't. So instead I am in my house, probably wearing sweats, because that's the another thing I don't like about summer: all of the buildings are freezing cold with air conditioning. So you're either outside sweating your nuts off, or you're inside wearing a sweater. It's so stupid. Sweat gives me bacne, people. Bacne in swimsuit season, for pete's sake.

3. Babies can't be outside very long. The only reason I would ever stay outside longer than 15 minutes would be to get a tan (I can get a great tan) but have you seen my daughter? She's a baby ghost. I can't have that girl in the sun more than 5 minutes without feeling guilty. So, in case you're wondering, my legs haven't been tan since I got back from summer camp.
It's pretty white over here.

4. Everyone is super busy. On vacation. Working long hours to make up for vacations. Camping. Visiting family. Etc, etc, and I am also busy, and I don't like being busy (this is a new thing. I used to love being busy. Now I just want to play with Smooch all day.) So I'm in summer school and directing camps and going on vacations and visiting family and blah blah blah, whatever happened to just watching t.v. every night? What happens at the end of Game of Thrones this season, anyways? We still haven't finished it.

So, a small list of white middle class "problems" that probably earned me a good imaginary slapping from most of you, to which I say:
Bring it on. Maybe your slaps will add a little color to my cheeks, since I refuse to go outside.

love,
Jessie

Bill and Monica grow up.

Sam and I were both sort of a mess when we started dating. We were making bad decisions and living very selfish lives, very "I am in my twenties and have very few responsibilities and it is the world's job to make me happy and fulfilled" kind of lives. It's a wonder our relationship worked at all...oh wait it didn't, he broke up with me six months after we got together (the fool!). So much has changed in these 8 years since we met, but one moment from our early relationship represents what I still love so much about Sam.

Also, we used to wear a lot of costumes.

Yes. Bill and Monica. We won best costume that night!

It was early on a Sunday morning, about a month into dating each other, and we were going to church together. See, when you party on a Saturday night, all is made well by attending some sort of church service the next day...bear with me here, we were idiots. It was early Sunday morning and the house where we'd been drinking the night before was a disaster. I was hustling to finish doing my hair, but I could hear Sam out in the kitchen. I grabbed my bottle of hairspray and snuck through the living room to see what he was doing, and there he was. Broom in hand. Cleaning the kitchen. I asked what he was doing, and he glanced up through the haze of hairspray surrounding me.

"I'm cleaning."
"Yeah, but why? We gotta go in a minute- just leave it for someone else." All the someone else's were still asleep. I decided I would say a prayer for them at church, in payment for them cleaning up. But Sam would have none of it.
"You always leave a place cleaner than how you found it. I'll just do this really quick."

He went back to sweeping, and I decided I would marry him. Right then and there, in the midst of our messy lives, our selfish confusion, and our shaky walks back to the Lord, I knew that I needed to marry Sam Horney. This man who would never dream of leaving a mess for someone else to clean was my gift from God, the anecdote to my chaos. I loved him so much that I needed to spend the rest of my life with him. So I am. And last night he showed me, once again, that incredible part of his heart that still draws me in and startles me.

The last two nights with Clara were hard. During our long trip to the east coast, on midnight plane rides, entire days in her stroller in New York City and Boston, four hour car trips, sleeping in a different place every couple of nights: I gave in to a little bit of guilt parenting. You know what I'm talking about? When you don't want your baby to cry in your brother's one bedroom apartment at night, and you don't want your baby to cry in a taxi, and you don't want your baby to be upset at a memorial service, and your baby threw up earlier in the day because it is hot as hell in this damn city, and your baby is so tired of meeting new people, and so you nurse and nurse and nurse no matter what time it is?

Right. Exactly.

Except then we got home and our sweet girl was still waking up several times a night to eat, despite being night weaned before we left. So we had to start over. Forehead smacks and groans all around, people. We decided to cut her off cold turkey and let her remember how to sleep through the night again, hoping it would just take a little bit of crying. (We're not big into letting her cry. Clearly.)

The first night she cried for two hours straight. Then last night it was about 30 minutes off and on. I did not respond to her cries either time, however. You know why?

Because by the time I blinked open my heavy eyes and stumbled to the nursery to check on her, Sam Horney was already in there. Every time. Rocking her. Applying teething gel. Changing her diaper. Singing a quiet lullabye. He never woke me, he never hesitated in what to do, he just got out of bed and tended to our daughter. And he did it with pleasure.

I love him. He is the calm in my chaos, the broom in my kitchen, the lullaby in my dark. And I am just so thankful to be raising my baby with a man who loves to be a father. GOOD GOLLY that is sexy. Maybe we'll put our spandex bike outfits back on tonight?

Too much, you guys. Take it down a notch.

JUST TO BE CLEAR, if Clara ever asks, her parents met at a Bible study and didn't kiss until they got married. Second base was saved until they decided to have a baby. And we only drink wine for communion.  

Dear Jimmy.

Dear Jimmy, 

Earlier this spring, in my non-fiction writing class, I wrote and recorded a radio piece about aging. In the piece I spoke of you, told your story, shared about the privilege of getting older; a privilege you did not get. On the day my radio story was played in class, another student left abruptly in the middle of my recording. After class she approached my desk with tears in her eyes.

"Jessie, I'm so sorry for leaving in the middle of your presentation. But I have to tell you something- I was sitting there, listening to the story about Jimmy, and something sounded so familiar about him. So I googled his name and there he was. I couldn't believe it- I knew him and his wife."

"Are you serious?" I grabbed her hand. This is when she started sobbing.

"Yes, yes, I just can't believe it. I can't believe he's... I rode home next to him and his wife- Cassidy, right?- this Christmas, on a plane back from Denver. And I have thought about them almost every day since. There was something about them that was so special, you know, and the way they talked with me, and the way Jimmy loved Cassidy...it gave me hope. It changed things for me."

Do you remember who I'm talking about, Jimmy? She's recently been through a nasty divorce that left her defeated, lost, unsure of herself and her value. She wrote about this loss all semester, and I wondered about the pain in her heart. But you know what she told me? She told me that the way you loved Cass changed HER life. She told me how you and Cassidy were so excited about the vacation SHE had just taken, how you both asked questions about her trip to Mexico with her sister, how you kept your hand on Cassidy's leg the entire flight, even while you read, because she is a nervous flyer and you wanted to reassure her. This woman cried and cried in the middle of our classroom, pinned under the weight of your death, bewildered at the depth of Cassidy's heartache.

She knew you for one plane ride.
A few hours in a tin box high in the sky.
And she has never stopped thinking about how you loved your wife.

Sam and I went to New York last week for your memorial service at Columbia, where your Bassett program friends hosted a beautiful time of remembrance. The Dean of Columbia medical school spoke of your qualities as a student and a person. Your advisor laughingly told us about his unorthodox note taking during your interview to be accepted into the program (basically he scrawled across his pages, "We must convince this student to join our program. He's amazing!" And guess what- the other interviewers did the same thing. This happens for exactly no one who applies there, Jimmy.) There was an entire video of students who went to school with you for only 6 months, sharing how you changed their lives as doctors and people. A new tree stands in your honor on the Columbia campus, a constant reminder of the lessons you unwittingly imparted on everyone you met. Your friend Wilson designed a fabulous tribute to your other-wordly powers of love and care, with a pin for people to wear on their white coats, or in my case, their diaper bags.

This was your third memorial service, Jimmy. Third. You died when you were 24 years old and it has taken thousands of people three services to truly begin mourning what they lost when you died.

But in all of this celebration of your life, and in all of the unending grief of your absence, this is the truth that sticks with me:

You changed my classmate's life on that airplane.
You changed her life because you LISTENED. You and Cassidy talked with her about a vacation, you showed an interest in her, you held Cassidy's leg because she gets scared on airplanes, and you changed her life. You gave her hope for a love that is bigger than the pain of her divorce, and you gave her hope for her future. She said it over and over again- "They were so full of love and light. Not just for each other, but for me, too. I have thought about them constantly since that day."

A serviceberry tree grows tall in a grassy square in New York City, a living notice to all who pass that a man came through this world who ascended the muck of life. Beneath that tree lies this plaque with this inscription; a direct quote from your journal; and I just wanted you to know that it has already been proven true.

You, Jimmy Watts, cared not for yourself, not for your own interests; you did not think of how you felt or who hurt your feelings or what people thought of you; you just listened. And you loved. And that changed us, Jimmy. It changed an entire school of doctors. It changed families. It changed churches. It changed me. And it changed my hurting classmate, who needed hope more than anything else on that turbulent flight over the Rocky Mountains. Your work has indeed been made permanent by your Creator. It has been made permanent in the trajectory of our lives without you. It is permanent here, in my own soul: because I want to be that person on an airplane. I want God's love to shine through me effortlessly, simply because I know who I am in Him, simply because I have the freedom to love with abandon. 

When I know who I am, I have the freedom to love with abandon. 
Thank you for (unknowingly) showing me what that looks like. Thank you for ministering like Jesus did: with humility. in the quiet moments. to everyone you met.

Thank you, friend. I love you.

~Jessie

Here we are with your beautiful wife and your beautiful tree.

We will show this picture to Clara one day and explain who you are and why you matter so much.

goodbye, smoochie.

*I just found this post from last week sitting in my queue. Thought I'd post it anyways. 

One time, a few months before Clara was born, I stood in our church sanctuary after the service and chatted with two of my girlfriends. My friend Macey was also big pregnant with her little girl, and our friend Rachael had recently returned from a trip to Mexico. We were talking about vacationing together, and I argued firmly for leaving our children behind (during said hypothetical vacation). Macey and Rachael laughed in disbelief and told me I would feel differently when my baby arrived. I was like, yeah right, fools! I'll be packing that kid off to Grandma's for long weekends and summer breaks before you can say pina colada. 

Ahem. 

Tonight I am packing lunch and dinner and my school books, getting ready to leave for a 12-hour day on campus tomorrow. I have big projects and papers due this weekend and I need some concentrated blocks of time to work- which I find impossible when I'm at home with my sweet little distracting family.

I have never been away from Clara for this long. Ever. And I know people do it all the time. And I know she'll have a wonderful day with Sam, who has been gone a lot lately and is excited for time alone with the baby. And I know I need to finish my school work.

But still-

I don't like it.

I don't want to miss out on a whole day of my daughter's life. I don't want to miss out on one minute, if we're really letting our crazy hang out here. Because this is first child syndrome, this is my privilege as a first time mom, this is Clara's right as our first baby. She may be in line to receive an unfair share of our parenting mistakes, yes. But also: We covet time with her. When choosing between 'leaving the baby' or 'taking the baby,' let's just say Clara Horney doesn't see a lot of baby-sitters and I haven't seen a movie since last summer. She is sort of everything around here right now. 

People tease me about this all the time and tell me I'll get over it; and I know I will. Someday I'll be glad to leave her for a weekend at her grandparents, and she will have a grand time being away from us, and we'll all be better for it. But today is not that day. Today I am still taking twelve pictures of her 'sleepy face' in the morning and packing two extra outfits in her diaper bag just in case. Today I still get to be that mom. 

And- surprise!- I'm pretty happy doing it :)

praying for babies

Tonight I closed my eyes and willed myself to remember these moments.
 Clara is getting her top two teeth and had a fever of 104 most the afternoon. She whimpered and cried and clung to me, her hot skin pasting to mine, her forehead warm on my lips, her voice cracking in pain. I cried with her a few times, sort of sinking beneath the desperate inadequacy of my mothering at that point. I bathed her in lukewarm water, I fed her Popsicles, I comfort nursed (which I absolutely never do), I texted friends and sisters for help and advice; I held my girl close. Eventually she fell asleep in my arms as I swayed to her soft song of moans, and for the first time in months, she let me hold her while she slept.

Our baby is an independent sleeper. She does not fall asleep while she nurses, she does not want us to rock her to sleep, and she shifts in discomfort if we try to hold her after she's drifted off. She wants to be in her own bed by herself, much to our dismay. But tonight she let me rock her. Her glossy fevered eyes closed, her mouth opened slightly, and she laid her limp head on my shoulder as I rocked and rocked and rocked.

And prayed.

I prayed for her to rest. I prayed for her teeth to break through. I prayed in gratitude for her life. I prayed for her future. I prayed for myself, as her mother, as an influence in her spiritual decisions.

Then I realized, as I rocked and prayed by the soft glow of the nursery nightlight, that I mostly pray for babies these days.

I pray for friends whose babies are already here, for the mothers and fathers and the overwhelming wonderful pain of parenthood.
I pray for my friends who are growing babies, for healthy deliveries and for healthy newborns, for fingers and toes and developed lungs.
I pray for my friends who are suffering the cavernous depth of loss.
I pray for my friends, my sisters, who lay awake in the still of night and ache for their own children. Whose wombs serve up empty disappointment month after month. Who still get up each morning and bless us with their yearning hearts, their dreaming. Theirs are the babies that change us, by the way. Theirs are the families that grow our faith, the babies who matter most.

Tonight I closed my eyes and willed myself to remember these moments. When the earth is full of mothers. When Sam and I are making a family. When our friends journey beside us. When all seems possible and yet all is so utterly precarious, one teeny tiny heartbeat away from tragedy. These are the days. These are the summer branches drooping with oranges, the bushes thick with berries, the river rapids deep and thunderous. This is our season.

What a time, you know? What a time to remember.

real talk.

I know that some people have to do life (and marriage) apart. Like my sister, who has a husband in the military, a husband who is an incredibly brilliant engineer and is also gone for months at a time. My husband is not in the military and he only leaves for eight days at a time for his job, but can I just tell you something?

THOSE ARE THE LONGEST MOTHER F-ING 8 DAYS OF MY LIFE SOMETIMES.

The way I feel about my daughter is like the hot air pumping a balloon through the sky: it is fire-hot, it alternates between deafening noise and absolute quiet, and it operates on magic (for people who don't understand science. like me.) But when my little baby is sick with a nasty feverish spring cold and cannot sleep, and claws her way up my torso while crying and coughing at half-hour intervals for entire moon cycles...I get tired. And worn out. And in the morning, as the sun rises again, as my coffee brews and I put on make-up because I need to remember that I am, indeed, human...

WE MISS DADDY.

But hey: Sam Horney got home tonight. He walked through our door with a smile and some left-over pretzels from his lunch box and said,
"Woah, the house looks amazing, babe!" and
"Hi Clara! Daddy missed you so much!" and
"Hi baby, thank you for taking care of things while I was gone, I'm sorry she was sick." and
"Let's all get on our bed and have a snack together. Come 'ere, Smooch, let's give mama a break. "

So anyways, as I get tipsy off a half glass of white wine (breast feeding has made me a real lightweight) and the baby is munching cheerios from her father's hand while chanting his name: We are together again. I slept for two hours last night. I have about a million hours of projects and portfolio work due for finals at school this week, but you know what?

Sam is pretty great.
Clara is a pile of love.
And God is good.

Happy Tuesday, Horney friends. Cheers :)

This is how you grieve.

This is how you grieve.

Start with an empty room.

Open your arms, stretch them out in disbelief, tremble with a fear that cannot be

breached, and gather your things. You’ll need some help, here, if you can find it. The

room may be quite large, but also it could be impossibly

suffocating

shoulder-bending small.

If you find your sad self in this kind of a tiny room, stooped over, nagging kink

in your neck, and fighting an eye spasm, hold someone’s hand and wait.

This room will grow.

Start with an empty room, and gather.

Drag in a table. Line it with dishes, or flowers, or scratched out angry letters, or

bottles of booze, or chewed up plastic straws. Or nothing.

You need this table.

You need a surface.

You need a landing.

This may seem exhausting.

It will be exhausting.

Now find a lamp for your room. Maybe one with a dimmer switch? Because some

days will be darker than others and you want to show the lamp that it is necessary and

yes, lamp, you are appreciated.

You may need more than one lamp.

­

You will find all of this aggravating.

Pull an area rug to your room. Not wall-to-wall coverage, you need some distance

between you and the floor and the walls and the oxygen.

Your rug fibers ought to cushion your knees:

In prayer. In pleading.
In the frenzy of your wild anger. In the quiet of your stuttered breaths.

Make sure it’s thick.

Unfurl the rug, strand by strand, and feel the weight in the room.

Feel the world beneath your feet, ok?

Imperative: couch. bed. chair. instruments of quiet, feather-filled stops.

Your couch will be important.

Trust me on that.

For the sake of your tired body, trust me on that.

For the sake of aching ribs.

For the sake of solemn skin, stretched too far across hungry cheeks and dry lips.

For the sake of empty elbow crooks.

For the sake of wilted eyebrows.

For the sake of drowsy blood flow and cramping fists.

For the new iron casing around your chest and fingers,

the weight in your bone marrow that you cannot lift or shake or lose.

Please wearily accept the gift of respite:

when you sleep without dreams,

when your baby wakens and calls your name,

when the sun shines hot through your car window,

when you remember how to spice your spaghetti, 

when hope pokes a tiny sprig in your direction,

Rest.

Find your couch,

Stretch across your bed,

and rest.

Live in your room.

­

As long as you need, stay in your room.

Welcome in guests, if the room will hold them.

Explore it. Scrape the floor, crawl the corners, examine the bumps in the walls and the cracks in the ceiling. Trace every inch.

Fill a vase or a hundred old bathtubs with your tears.

The dead do not mean well. They come, they go, they leave us behind to tread the deep murky waters of in absentia. Heaven may hold them, but earth holds us, tether bound to the grocery store and decisions for tomorrow, which is terribly unfair when our hearts have recently begun a slow descent into our guts. Who needs grapes and milk at a time like this?

This is how you grieve.

Start with an empty room.
Gather your things.
Settle in.

Move about.
Rest.
Rage.
Wonder.
‘Til you are left with one wooden chair.
Send the rug to the cleaners.

Haul the couch to the curb.

Stack your dishes and tidy your angry letters,

water your flowers and give them away.

Sit in the wooden chair.

Remember the room when it was crowded with sorrow.

And when you are ready,

And you’ll know when you are ready,

leave.

happy birthday andrea :)

Did we make a three-minute movie with 7 wardrobe changes?

Yes.

Did I break several SAG child labor laws?

Probably.

Will this video make anyone, anywhere, feel happier?

Obviously.

Happy Birthday Aunt Andrea! We miss you so much!

Just to be clear, this bizarrely diverse wardrobe was supplied 

by weird aunts, uncles, and friends. 

night weaning.

I'm laying here in my bed, blogging from my phone, because I can't sleep. Why, for the love of all that is tired and holy, why can't I sleep?

1. I have a mystery pain stabbing deep into my left side that, according to webmd, may or may not be liver failure, pancreatic cancer, or hunger.

2. Last night (let the bells ring across the land!) we decided to night-wean the baby. And it worked. Like, SUSPICIOUSLY easily worked. Like, Clara Horney may have been playing us fools for a while now, worked. But I haven't slept more than 3 hours at a time since before acid wash jeans came back (which is a sign of end times, btw) and now my sleep schedule is entirely wacked out from the tick-tock of boobie calls the last 8 months. So I'm laying here in the dark, awake and possibly on the edge of extinction, TRYING not wake up Sam and ask him to go get me a bowl of cereal.

Night weaning. Who knew?