Jenta ja

Jenta ja jenta ja
All tobble out da vagon ya
He may matta kensa kata suro
Chempa hemlin
Carp carp!

My great-grandpa Buzz used to sing that to my great-grandma Doris back when they were dating. Doris is from Sweden and Buzz was born in America. When he’d spend days with her family, he mostly sat in a chair in a corner of the room. He couldn’t talk to anyone and no one could talk to him. He observed the way they spoke and made up that song that is nothing but Swedish-sounding gibberish to keep from getting bored.

About the same time he met Doris, he got job at a butchery. This other Swedish woman used to give him a hard time.

“She was a rascal,” my grandpa says.

She taught him to say vill du gifta dig med mig and told him to run home and tell his lady friend that.

So one evening they were sitting side by side on the front porch swing and my grandpa whispered, “Vill du gifta dig med mig?” to his sweetheart.

He was meaning to impress her.

Doris’s sharp blue eyes grew big and she tucked her chin down into her chest so that inky black bangs fell to cover her face.

“Do you have any idea what you just asked me?” she whispered without looking at him.

My grandpa was smug. He didn’t take anything too seriously.

When Doris looked up, her peachy cheeks were flushed scarlet, so my grandpa gave in and shook his head no.

“You just asked me to marry you, Buzz.”

Like I said, he never did take life too seriously and so just like everything else, he laughed his way into marriage.

Sixty years later, and my grandparents youth is long gone. Doris’s hair is a wispy white. Buzz’s chin has given into gravity and sags towards his lap. They’ve retired to wheelchairs and the mercy of people younger than them.

But the memory of their youth lingers: over the fields of their hometown country farm, in my grandma’s eyes, the same luscious bright blue they were when she was 17 and engaged, and in that song that somehow managed to slip through the gates of generations.

Grandpa can’t hear anything anymore but we’re still singin it. It was nonsense then but it has meaning now. It tells me not to take life too seriously.

It will come.

And be gone.

So laugh, I guess.

That’s what Grandpa did.

Whoa love!

God loves me. He loves me yesterday. He loves me tomorrow. He loves me. Loves me. Loves me.

And in the beginning, out of love, He curled my hair around His finger and kissed the freckles onto my cheeks. He sculpted the shape of my breasts and ran His hands over my hips to curve them. He loves me. He loves me. He loves me.

And today I saw Him weaving the late golden sun into my hair and felt it sparkling in my eyes. He showed me a woodpecker and a hawk, gently swooping against the blue sky. The misunderstood yellow moon and the gothic shadows against the pale snow. The dusty twilight of everything beyond. Everything mysterious. Everything dangerous. Everything precious. In everything, He’s trying to show me that He loves me.

Yet it wasn’t enough for me. All of it wasn’t enough for any of us. And so He went to His Son, desperate, crying, hands clenched, shaking and told him,

“You have to leave. You have to go down there and make a way for them."

And so His Son left His Father’s side where He had been forever, even before us, and showed up in a womb, came out in a stable, grew up and told everyone about His Father’s love.

But we killed Him. And God let us. And when I think of how God used all of his wrath and outrage at our sin to whip and beat His beloved, that's when I understand. Because of after that, what else could be done? After putting His perfect child through the worst pain imaginable, how could there be any punishment left?

There must have been a silence everywhere when it was finished. On earth. And in Heaven. And down in the fiery furnace, the devil must've fell to his knees and shrieked a bitter cry of defeat because he should've had us.

But God saved us from damnation because He loves us. So He could put sun in our hair and paint us blue skies.

The Beginning.

I work at Starbucks. A lot because I’m not in college. Because I believe in wee folk and dragons and people who believe in that stuff don’t go to college.

Anyway, I listen to lots of people order mochas and lattes and black coffee. They order right into my eardrum through the headset. Some people like to act like they’re in a hurry. Some people actually are.

Always.

I try to sell donuts and cinnamon rolls and make them sound as low fat as possible.

Mary, my boss, doesn’t understand why I don’t know who Barbara Streisand is. Sometimes I get in her way and she yells, “Why you all up in my world?"

Juan is always "very busy," he'll say sarcastically while chatting in the back room. He’s so sassy and one of the few people who can make me laugh, like have to bend over laugh, like no sounds coming out I can’t breathe laugh, like still funny three hours later laugh.

And Barbara. Oh, Barbie is a lady with bleach blonde hair and pink glasses. She’s had a hard life. She married young and was swept off her feet to live like a princess with everything taken care of for her. She got to pick out the furniture for their massive house and wrap gifts and organize reunions so family could come stay in their massive house and live happily ever after until she found out her husband was cheating on her. And now she’s back here working at Starbucks.

When I think of everything she's been through, "Blessed Be Your Name" comes to mind. The part that says, "He gives and takes away." She went from rags to riches and back again. But because of that everyone tells her their secrets. And she carries them around. They keep her company when she’s falling asleep to the T.V. rumbling full volume as to drown out the neighbors in her condominium complex.

I've learned a lot from working. And not working towards something. Just working. I've learned to take one day at a time and to enjoy each moment. I've become a much calmer, more peaceful person. I've learned to relate with people. Remember names. Sympathize. Even to love enemies.

I've learned to just be.