The Carpenter's Kid

Dear Mom,

Some nights, like tonight, I catch myself staring at old photos, wondering if ghosts can live inside paper. 

You at my age, radiant in Rio, deciding to follow Jesus. Don and Barb's fearless girl. A missionary herself. A child of God, a carpenter in the making. His disciple. And their Nedra Jan. 

Me at nine, rocking a blinged-out cast filled with autographs of fourth graders, clutching a microphone in The Carpenter's Kids with the ambitious hopes of becoming Miss Morebucks. A fearless understudy. Long before I knew how to break beautiful things. Your Tiffany Dawn.

I think about phone calls. 

How many times you posted bail, your face tight but present, when anyone else would have left me there to learn my lessons the hard way. 

Just like when you came for me before I drew my first breath, choosing a daughter who'd spend years trying to reverse that choice. You breathed life into me twice - once through adoption, and again every time my mind unraveled in the dark and I tried to return that gift. 

When depression wrapped around me like barbed wire, when borderline made me split you into angel and demon, when a broken brain convinced me the world would be lighter without my shadow in it - you still came. You kept choosing life for me until I learned my own weight was worth carrying.

The next phone call is carved in my memory like a mortise waiting for its tenon - fitting perfectly into the void it created. 

Uncle Mark's house in Garland, Quake's gunfire scoring my rebellion. I wondered if you could hear Timbo and Matthew's game through the phone, a trio of digital battles and shit talking while I waged a nuclear war against you over a landline. Via Terry Dwain - the other TDH. 

Who had never looked prouder of his daughter's cruelty. 

There I stood at fifteen, emboldened by generational power, his weapon wielded against you, through me. Accompanied by a grin growing wider as I spat out the words:

"I'm not coming back to California and there's nothing you can do about it."

That memory leaves splinters. How you absorbed each wound, steady as aged timber. Like watching you shape raw lumber into sanctuary with The Carpenter's Kids, you somehow crafted purpose from pain.

I watched you break and rebuild yourself time after time. 

Through failed marriages, through the fading of Rebecca Elizabeth, through my own determined self-destruction. You showered those you loved with blessings and second chances until you were overdrawn, then somehow found more to give...

• To Terry, even after he shattered your trust. Your confidence, your face, your world. 
• To Bob, who twisted mother against daughter. And back and forth again. 
• To Anthony, whose violence spoke louder than words. And whose hands assembled more ruin than shelter. 
• To Becky, whose ultimate battle became your cross to bear. And your victory in Jesus. 
• To me, your modern-day Moses–through every cell, every screaming match, every silence that stretched years wider than the ones before. Wide enough to part the oceans between us. 

And did.

But you never gave yourself those same chances. Each failure became another stone you carried, more proof you weren't enough. Even now, I hear it in your voice - that hesitation, that careful testing of the ground beneath us, like you're waiting for it all to collapse. Again. 

As if love must be measured twice, cut once, and still might not fit.

I see you with Grandmother now, in the cozy home you and her have built in Spokane. How you laugh together over coffee and estate sales while Gracie and Bella beg for treats and corners of laps. 

How you've constructed your new something from the ruins of what was.

The way you and Barb move around each other with such gentle understanding, such easy forgiveness. Love that feels effortless. It gives me hope - that maybe we can find that too as I grow older. Together. That maybe time and truth can restore what grief splintered.

September brought demolition and reconstruction. 

To me. To you. To us.

Sitting in dual recliners, finally speaking truth instead of around it. Finding the foundation we'd been seeking, for decades. 

In Frank's Diner, I saw glimpses of a woman's blueprint. The same woman I witnessed giving thanks with a grateful heart on Ellis Avenue. Letting her little light shine on top of Sunday pews, before Lucifer's messengers forced her to hide it under bushels. 

Before predators masquerading as victims obstructed her view. 

And her winding path. 

Before she was coerced into choosing between her children - before Sophie became a symbol of impossible choices..

Before she learned to measure her own worth against those who tried, but failed to dim her light.

You're turning 70 next July, Nedra. 

I want you to walk into it knowing this: your little light shined brightly. 

And does. 

It was enough, you were enough. 

And always will be. 

Like those children's choir songs you taught me at FSBCS - the ones about potters and clay, about being molded and remade - we're still works in progress. 

You once choreographed life into The Carpenter's Kids, breathing beauty into chaos, teaching us to sing about being shaped. By Him. Those loving hands. 

That's us now - being reformed, step by step, note by note, each day bringing new music, new movement, new chances to get the steps just right. Still learning to harmonize, still finding our way back to grace.

You're the Carpenter's kid now, Mom. 

You always were. 

He shaped you with the same careful hands that built universes. The same hands that worked wood in Joseph's shop, that carried a cross, that reach for us still. Let Him restore what others tried to tear down.

No turning back, no turning back.

Love,

Tiffany