Valediction

So, friends. This is my final post. At least for awhile. Partly, I feel that I've said everything I have to say right now and am beginning to repeat myself. Partly, I'm running low on the energy and time that it takes to maintain a weekly blogging regimen. And partly, 50 posts just seems like a good strong number to end on.

It was Father's Day of last year when I learned that Sonya was coming. (Or little James, as we initially thought.) It is imbecilically inadequate to say that a great deal has happened since then. But, a great deal has happened since then.

Part of being a writer is learning the limits of language. There are things that words can't do. The next part, of course, is trying to do those things anyway; but you remain aware that no matter how many digits you add, you'll never reach a numerical infinite. I can see as many pictures of charging lions as you please, but it won't truly convey the experience. Labor and childbirth—somebody cloned Scar from hyena poop, and he's pissed.

Ellie and I discovered [were smashed over the skull with] depths to our relationship that we'd never suspected. We found out stuff about taking care of each other and trusting each other that simply hadn't been asked of us before. It often makes me think of the old saying that God asks of you what He thinks you can handle, and just how crucially wrong that saying is. He knows exactly what you can handle, and He absolutely always asks more of you. Partly to make you learn; partly to make you lean. As hard as pregnancy was, I know and love Ellie's pride and strength, and I would not have missed the chance to be the one she allowed herself to lean on.

Even Sonya, at an age you could still conveniently count in hours, was asked to do more than she could. Eating, pooping, sleeping—things it no longer occurs to us to consider enterprises—they were all Everest-scalingly difficult for her. Right now she's struggling to sit up, and it's taking every bit of power and determination she can muster. It's easy enough for a grownup to dismiss a child's struggles—oh gee, you have to learn the alphabet, your life is so hard—but watching my daughter grapple with gravity makes me glad adults don't have Seraphim dropping by to scoff at us. "Ooooh, someone fired a fifty-megaton thermonuclear warhead at your nation's capital, poor baby. Pfff, I could stop one of those with my theologically mysterious pinkie."

Okay, so—obvious follow-up—why don't you? Why allow Hiroshima, Nagasaki? Why do I have to give Sonya medicine she hates while she cries and wriggles and looks at me with hurt, betrayed eyes? Why can't I just carry her instead of forcing her to learn how to walk? And there's my answer, right in the question. Which, intellectually, one already knows, but it feels a lot more true now.

I wish I had more to say. Getting to the last post was a relief, but getting to the last paragraph is a little bit sad. I love you guys. Thank you for reading, and please pray for us. May God bless and keep you. May His Face shine upon you and be gracious to you. And when the war's over and we find our seats in the tavern at the end of the world, the first round is on me. So long for now, friends. Keep fighting.

On Roadtripping (or, To Whom Much Is Given)

So last week we took our first road trip with little Sonechka. Saw my folks, caught up with dear friends, went to a wedding. Had the best margaritas in the Western Hemisphere and did some almost halfway decent karaoke. Good times. But, also—yeesh—rough times.

She's four months old now, not counting time served in utero, and can often sleep through the night with only a few wake-ups for feeding and cooing; and so, we mostly drove at night. But on the way home, we got up early and tried to drive through the day in hopes of sleeping in our own bed before returning to work the next morning. Our beloved treasure did not assent to this undertaking.

A good marriage, of course, requires complementarity. My Ellabelle is a highly organized and motivated person, thank God, and part of her job is to poke me when I get scattered or lazy; and part of my job in turn is to soothe her when she gets a skosh or a soupçon too motivated. But a tolerable marriage also wants similarity, and she and I definitely share a rather sensitive temperament. So after listening to Sonya cry for approximately infinity, we were all three of us crying; and we ultimately got a hotel room two hours from home and drove the last stretch at 4 in the morning with Ellie in the back seat consoling our girl and me almost weaving across lanes for fatigue. In short, traveling was quite a bit easier before we became parents.

We love our cat. (Shut up, Dan.) It was awfully nice to come home and find him waiting for us. But it was also nice to stick a cat-door in the window, throw some food in a bowl, and leave him alone for ten days. It turns out you can't do that with an infant.

What manner of infant are you?

The soul-shaking, cosmos-changing gift of offspring comes with a hefty price tag. Which—technically, that's not exactly a gift, is it. I guess it's more like a sacred trust. Which—honestly, not any less intimidating.

Road trips are kind of a parental rite of passage because there's no buffer, no refuge, no veil: it's just you and the kid(s) stuffed together in a tiny space for as many hours at a time as it takes to burn a tank of gas. Then you stretch your legs, buy some Dr. Pepper, and cram right back into the car. Hopefully you all like each other!

Luckily, we like Sonya rather a lot. Much will be expected of us in the way of sacrifice and shared pain; but if she had come with a receipt and a refund policy, we wouldn't have kept them. When she's having an easy day, she's the sweetest thing I've ever seen, and it makes me love her all the more. When she's hard and frustrating, it makes me practice loving all the more. Everything she does deepens our capacity for love and keeps on filling us to capacity.

Mind you, all that being said—next trip, I think we're gonna fly.

On Storytelling (or What's A Heaven For)

Ever see Field of Dreams? If you're a man who ever played baseball and/or fought with his father, you should. Just be prepared to weep openly. It's all about a guy who goes on a sort of quest at the bidding of a mysterious voice in the corn. (The expression "If you build it, they will come" originates with this movie.) At the very end, and this isn't particularly a spoiler so don't worry, one of the characters enters the realm of the Voice, and that's basically the end of the film. Great, great flick. And we all understand: that which lies beyond the edge of the cornfield can't be captured in fiction.

Likewise, the end of Voyage of the Dawn Treader: Reepicheep finally reaches the borders of Aslan's Country, and the story ends. The children go back to Earth, Lucy and Ed pass the torch to Eustace, and we don't see Reep again till the end of The Last Battle. (Which, if you're reading the books in THE CORRECT ORDER, is four volumes away.) Whatever's in there surpasses the limits of literature. Presumably.

But that's exactly where it gets interesting. I want to see what comes after the end. I want to see the thing that would break the story. I want them to show what can't be shown. What's inside of Barad-Dur? What do the aliens look like in 2001?

Dante did it, of course. Milton did it. The exceptions kind of prove the rule here, though: yeah, you can depict the transcendent, if you're one of history's great geniuses and devote an entire massive epic to the depiction. But most stories that try to show Hell or Heaven don't enlarge the reader's mind; they simply take what should be a beautiful or terrible thing and smoosh it into a petty frame, making God a big old white guy with a beard, making Lucifer a horned red jerk. Don't waste my damn time.

Thing is. Many people feel that the Inferno is the most interesting of the three Spheres visited by Dante, and it's easy to see why. I've been known to write some pretty dark shit myself, and it's largely because the Dark is mysterious and powerful, and more immediately evocative than nice stuff. Yoda called it the quick and easy way for a reason. But here's the point, and the question: How dark is too dark?

Every Catholic's go-to example is Flannery O'Connor. Again, for obvious reasons. But it was a rough century; we don't lack for good Christian writers who lavished their powers on showing us Evil. Charles Williams, Walker Percy, T. S. Eliot, Graham "for God's sake, somebody get this man a puppy" Greene. You could build a case that a (morally, as distinct from artistically) good story can show as much darkness as it likes, as long as it's clear that good is good and bad is bad. As long as you can depict evil without glorifying it.

Tricky. There's absolutely nothing easier than tipping that balance. Give the Devil his due, and don't pretend he's not attractive. Make him too attractive and you're suddenly doing his work. (C.S. Lewis argued that Milton fell into that trap.) But make him a clown with a pitchfork and you're making bad art. God creates, and created Man as a creator: to dismiss the importance of Art is a crucial and perilous mistake. But Salvation comes before all. But there are souls who would never find their way without the guidance of art. But woe to the artist who leads such souls astray. But, also, woe to him who hides his light beneath a bushel or buries his talents in the ground.

Short answer: you're probably screwing it up. But God knows you're trying. Schlep, man. Just keep schlepping.