JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

So wrote Chip Gibbons in a piece inspired by Lenn’s story that I linked, a piece describing his own experiences of love, loss and pets. I am grateful for his insight.

If big, strong grown men cried more often, perhaps they wouldn’t live on average seven years less than women or committ suicide at four times the rate of women.

Yes, sometimes our love surprises us. I hadn’t seen life that way before.
Thanks, Chip, for that truth.

I was thinking of this post (and this one) on Sunday myself while watching Ted working outside – and I guess Wink was too. He did some research and discovered that his wife, Tree, doesn’t agree with me. And he doesn’t either.

A while back, both Julie and Tania mentioned that they find it incredibly sexy when their husbands do the dishes. Seeing as many (most?) days Tree only touches dirty dishes while in the process of making them dirty, I figure I should be seeing a lot more action than I’m actually getting. What’s going wrong here? So I asked Tree “Do you think it’s sexy when I do the dishes?”

Wink hasn’t believed in the appeal of dish-washing ever since reading a Redbook article about it when they were dating. I don’t think it’s “manipulation” if it’s a genuine reaction. It might be manipulation if you read it in Redbook and think it is a magic recipe for “getting more action”. But every woman is entitled to her own opinions and turn-ons..;) Guess Wink will have to find something else to do now besides wearing dishwashing gloves: I don’t really know that I’m happy to have been proven right.. Given my track record with Tree, I won’t make any suggestions….

After I drafted this note, I saw that Enoch, Tania’s husband, has also written a response to Wink’s post. I think I’m wiser if I refrain from commenting on why Dishwashing may be sexy, but it’s still no fun…;)

Friday we made a discovery while at the recycling center. Earlier this spring, I had bought a number of plants for the yard and I stacked the emptied containers inside our garage until I had time to take them to be recycled. Friday morning I put some cardboard and the containers inside the van and drove down the island.

When I arrived at the center though, as I looked inside the containers, I saw we had a refugee. A frog friend who had been hiding inside the plastic cylinders. It must have hopped inside the garage and then found a home in the dirt and darkness of the planters.

The best way to care for the amphibian stowaway, I realized, was to take it back home. I could have let it hop about at the dump, but that would be a quick and certain end. Better to try to bring it home and let it go in the garden.

So I inverted one container over another and created a small temporary cage of sorts for the critter. I asked Abigail to hold it in the van as I drove so the frog wouldn’t get loose. Then we headed home.

From the back seat, as I drove, the girls exclaimed how they could see the frog through the holes in the planters. How the frog was hopping and jumping.

It reminded me of a time when I was a girl and our cat caught a bird but he had only injured it on one wing. It was still alive, hopping around, and so my mom decided we would take it to the Humane Society. I sat in the back seat holding the shoe box with the bird inside as she drove.

I remember that feeling, holding the box and sensing the bird hopping around inside. It was both fragile and frightening, amazing and strange, that fact that I had contained something living and could hold it in a box in my lap. The vibrations and flutters through the cardboard walls that communicated there is something alive inside.

There’s life inside this box. And I want to let it out.

the girls saying goodbye to the frog released in our garden

Though one may be overpowered,
two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.

Ecclesiastes 4:12

The Redhead had trouble sleeping last night and so did I. After Ted fell asleep I was awake for a while longer. The day’s images of sudden loss lay heavy on my mind. How ephemeral it all seemed. I lay there, enjoying my husband’s embrace but wondering “What about tomorrow?”

I tried to sleep. I tried to pray. Somehow I made it to morning.