Amusingly Painful Idea

I’m attempting to write something. Be it a short story or a novel or a convoluted mess, I can’t say. I’m basing it on the time I spent living with my Papa before he died. The story may or may not have some supernatural twists about aging and death. It may or may not get finished. It may or may not suck. I’m hoping it will be amusing and painful, because it was an amusing and painful time for me, and because it was an amusing and painful time for my Nan and Papa. They were two of the greatest characters I’ve ever known and, though I don’t know if either would appreciate being immortalized in this way, I’m going to take a shot at it. Wish me luck.

Prayers for Jackie-Boy

God bless Jack and his bone marrow test today. Please guide the doctor's mind and hands, give the doctors and nurses compassion, heap your calming strength on Jack and the whole Winger crew so they can rest assured that Jack is firmly in your hands, and let the results come back with something wholly manageable. Thank you for giving us a family so tight-knit and loving. Thank you for loving Jack and the rest of us, too. Amen.

Catching Up

Below are some pictures of the Cole family happenings for February.

Making pizza with cousin Grant. I had to tell them there was a bird outside the window to get them to get them to look at the camera.

Baby girl sucking on her toes. I don't know why that's so precious, but I love it.


Playdoughing with Daddy. Rich loves being crafty with Sam - it's so sweet. Look at their matching bare feet. Neither of them can stand having socks on.

Sam practicing his reading, showing Lena his toot toot book with the horn that works. She loves her brother, leaning against his shoulder...I love that shot.


Proof that Momma exists...and I had to ask Rich to take this one. Without the few shots of me with them, Sam and Lena are going to look back at all of their pictures some day and wonder where the hell I was.

Lena nestled in the stuffed animal basket. It actually works quite well to keep her propped up and busy at the same time. She sat in there forever.

COSI for Valentine's Day! Sam was playing with a ball suspended in air here.

The kids loved the water area. And, amazingly, both stayed fairly dry.


Rich and Sam in front of the Snot, Snot, Snot exhibit in the Grossology area. It kind of freaked Sam out a little - and grossed us out a lot.


It's been a fun month so far, to be bookended by Lena's baptism this Sunday. Can't believe that's here already...where does the time go?

Feed Me

I recently read an author’s blog about books that feed her soul. Her imagination is stirred by the books on her list, and she reads them throughout her own writing process for inspiration.

That got me thinking about mediums that feed me as a wannabe writer and as just plain old me. Countless books nourish me, most currently Stephen King’s “On Writing”, which I’m reading now. This memoir/textbook is scary good on both counts. Among many, some others are “This Present Darkness”, “It”, “The Secret Life of Bees”, feeding my hunger for spiritual imagery, character development, and strong eccentric southern women respectively.

Almost more so than books, movies are the other medium that truly feeds me. Maybe it’s because movies are a more tangible, direct route to my emotions and imagination. Maybe I just like seeing massive, 20’ tall heads of beautiful people. Maybe it’s the acting. Whatever the case, I’m in the midst of watching one of my favorites, “Finding Neverland”, when I find a few spare moments. This morning while on the treadmill, two of my favorite scenes, two that feed me to my core:

In the first, JM Barrie pretends that his dog, Porthos, is a bear he is taming for the audience (four boys and their mother). Peter, the young boy who inspired Barrie's “Peter Pan”, says the whole thing is silly, that it is just a dog, to which Barrie answers:

“Porthos dreams of being a bear, and you want to shatter those dreams by saying he's *just* a dog? What a horrible candle-snuffing word, *just*. That's like saying, "He can't climb that mountain, he's just a man", or "That's not a diamond, it's just a rock." *Just*…”

Another favorite scene is when his sad wife, Mary, who is a listless, insipid social ladder climber and Barrie, who is a colorful rainbow shining through his wife’s gray cloud, each retreat to their separate bedrooms for the night. As Mary opens her bedroom door, inside it’s just a bedroom. When Barrie opens his bedroom door, it’s a bright green forest with birds singing and a blue sky and spring all around him.

Scenes like that feed me.

Guess Who Peed!

I’m a terrible mother. I have yet to attempt to put my Sam on the potty, as the mere thought of potty training exhausts me. But, could it be, that’s he’s the one telling me he’s ready?

Last night before bed, after Sam had stripped off his own clothes (a new trick he’s mastered – dressing and undressing himself), and during a naked jag around the living room, he exclaimed “Pee?” I was nursing Lena at the time, but I jumped so fast out of that chair and put her into her saucer that she didn’t even have time to protest. In a flash naked-Sam and I were in the bathroom: Sam hovering above the potty doubled in half so he could watch himself go; me with one hand holding his little body up so he wouldn’t fall into the depths of the toilet and, with the other hand, holding his winker southward so he wouldn’t squirt me in my elated face. Just when we both looked at each other, eye-to-eye, grinning, quietly wondering if anything would happen, our wonders were interrupted by the soft tinkle of a few drops of, you guessed it, pee! I cried out, “You PEED, you PEED!” and he just proudly nodded like, “Yeah, I did, didn’t I”. Then, naked-Sam and I danced around the living room in celebration of a new milestone he’s marked, Lena heartily laughing at us all the while.

I tell you, when I heard that tiny tinkle, I started to cry a little. How stupid, right? But behind my jubilation, all I could think was, “It’s going too fast”…

I’m Baking…I Bake…I’m a Baker

In the vein of What About Bob’s exclamation that ‘he sails, he’s a sailor’; I join him in my own declaration: I BAKE. I’M A BAKER!

I’m a good cook. I can follow a recipe, and I have a good grasp of how to mingle savory ingredients to create good food. And I enjoy cooking. But I’ve never baked. Until now, that is.

After many years of professing my non-baker status to the world, and a few more years of shamefully baking only pre-made cookie dough, I am proud to announce that I’ve tapped out my first bottle of vanilla from actual baking as opposed to expiration. So far I’ve only made cookies from scratch - peanut butter chocolate chip, regular chocolate chip, sugar cookies – no muffins or brownies or anything fancy like that. But the fact that my cookies are turning out this well is giving me confidence that I could possibly venture farther into the realm of from-scratch baked goods such as cakes or, dare I say, pies. I mean, I made icing today. And it was good. I’m tooting my own horn here but, whatever – I should have my own show already. TOOT TOOT!

Jesus and Bacon

Ash Wednesday to me is the beginning of Lent; the first day of a forty-day fast in a grossly insufficient attempt to honor Jesus’ sacrifice; a time to recognize my sinfulness, my repentance, my saving grace; a time to contemplate God’s unabashed love for me and pray about what that means for me and my family; a time of hope that ushers in Easter and the awareness that God is forgiving and good and committed to me; and, truthfully, a time of confusion as I wrestle with the necessity of the excruciating pain Jesus endured because of me.

In theology class, I learned that scholars throughout time have argued the requirement of the crucifixion as the means by which we are saved. It is in God’s power to forgive us without Jesus’ blood, without sacrificing his son/himself for us. So why the crucifixion? The reason that stuck with me is this: it was not the only way God could forgive us (he’s God, he can do anything); it was the only way we would receive the message.

Think about it. Humans are beyond imperfect creatures, two sides of a crazy coin. We hate/love, destroy/create, judge/accept. We're vain/humble, ignorant/wise, angry/joyful, numb/alive, stubborn/soft, prideful/meek, evil/good, cowardly/courageous. In a collection of people who can produce Hitler and Mother Teresa in the same breath, how the hell else would we get the message other than the shock of the crucifixion?

I hate it. I don’t understand it. It shames me. But I believe it. Its truthfulness permeates me. Because I know the truth isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, although they’re in there. The truth can be visceral and sharp-edged and hard to swallow. But once you get it down, brother, that’s when the sunshine and rainbows are revealed. That’s when the joy sets in. Because once we accept what God was willing to endure as a man in Jesus and as a father (who among us wouldn’t sacrifice ourselves to save our children) to save us, then we truly feel his love and the peace and forgiveness and grace that it brings.

So in honoring that love, that sacrifice, I’m giving up bacon for Lent. Yes, you read correctly. BACON. “No, Nicole, that’s too much”, you might caution. “It’s dangerous to set the bar so high”, you might plead. But I refuse to heed your warnings as I march into Lent with this sacrificial surrender of the best cured meat ever created. Will God be pleased with my choice? Maybe, because he knows all too well my torrid love affair with bacon and how difficult it will be for me to fast from it for forty days. Maybe he will be ashamed of me because it is so little in honor of so much (but wouldn’t anything I choose be too little)? Maybe he will laugh and say “Well, it’s something”. I like the last option the best. I like to think of God laughing. I’m sure he does plenty of it. Because, seriously, if you could see all and hear all and know all, once you got past the people who made you say, “What in the hell is wrong with that guy”, you would have to laugh at the rest of us.

Blessed Lent to all…have a BLT for me.