His eyes are the color of a bluebird’s wing. And he feathers our nest so nicely. Making the fire. Making the coffee. Making the bills.
Making a bunch of beautiful little blue-eyed bluebird boys. Five in a row.
He calls them his man-clan.
And yet I told him the other day the man-clan is driving me crazy.
The constant wrestling.
The scratching themselves.
The peeing in the yard.
“I feel like I live with gorillas,” I told him. “And here’s the problem. You’re the worst because you are the silverback. The leader of these gorillas. And you’re such a man!”
There I said it. With tears in my eyes, said it. Accused my husband of being a man.
A man who sometimes wounds his wife.
This past weekend we celebrated 23 years of marriage. Sat on our back porch swing and rocked together. Careful with each other after a fight that surprised us both.
The gist of the battle, not gorillas, but boots on the rug. Boots on my flowers. Boots on my heart.
My prayer garden now a prayer grove.
Long story short: Six years ago, Mom and I sweated for hours. Days. Planting flowers around a bench. A path. A bird bath. The prayer garden large. Needing lots of up keep.
Then the weeds grew. Three more babies, no energy for gardening, and ten foot tall weeds overshadowing the flowers in my prayer garden. Hours of labor. Weed labor. Baby labor. Weed labor. Baby labor.
“We need to get rid of that weed garden and plant trees,” Scott said last month. Every month. After every baby he’s said this to me. After days of labor and weeks of bed rest and months of pregnancy, and years of nursing all those baby bluebird-gorillas while trying to keep up my prayer garden, he says this to me.
And finally, I break. For our anniversary I say, “Let’s do it. Let’s make my prayer garden into your prayer grove. We’ll pull up the flowers and plant trees.”
So we go to buy redwoods on our anniversary. And lose our credit card during the date. And can’t buy trees. And can’t buy back the joy that escapes us.
And patience is lost. Our pleasure with each other lost, too. And finally I say let’s pray over this mess. And he gives me the look. The I’m-the-spiritual-leader-here stare as we sit in the truck in frustration. And I think to myself, if you would lead us in prayer right now, I wouldn’t have to. And he reads me so well I don’t have to say it. I can wound him with my eyes just the same.
And we bleed.
Both of us bleed there in the truck for our anniversary.
A day later, we rock on the porch swing. The credit card found under the truck seat. Flowers and weeds demolished and redwoods planted.
And still the lack of grace swaying with us there on the swing.
He takes my hand. Sunset on the way. The girls watching the boys at Oma and Opa’s house so we can be alone for a few hours. One daughter home from college for just this chore. The other sister taking a break from all her senior activities to allow us to savor the end of our anniversary weekend.
And we’re trying to get there. Past the hurt that can make you hard in a marriage. Past the words whipped carelessly.
“That scar on your hand…” I softly say, staring at our fingers interlaced as we rock, searching for words that heal. “I remember it came from football.”
His gaze swings off the horizon and onto mine. Our eyes lock and I continue. “And that scar on your lip that goes all the way through. The scar I feel when I kiss you. That came from football, too.”
He smiles. And I smile. Right into each others’ soul.
“Is this the scar game?” he asks.
“Yes. We need a new game,” I say, grace unfolding.
He nods. Understanding the unspoken. That sometimes a life together breeds carelessness. Weeds casting shadows over flowers.
“Tell me something I don’t know about you,” I say, feeling my heart unfisting. Feeling his heart tendering too. Feeling God’s touch right there on our marriage on the gently swaying swing. The Parent of the Universe rocking us. His wounded children.
Scott stares at his bare knees. My gorilla man wearing shorts in winter. He finds the ink tattoo near his kneecap. His only tattoo. The one he gave himself.
“I did that in high school. Like a dork, I broke my pencil lead off in my leg in class by accident. Man, that hurt.” He grins at me. “It’s the earth from really far away.”
I return his grin, remembering that line from Friends. A show we enjoyed together years ago. Phoebe’s tattoo.
“I know your ink scar. Show me a scar I don’t know,” I say.
He gives me another look. This one smoldering.
“You know my body. You know my scars, babe.”
He’s called me that forever. Babe.
“Think, babe,” I say. I call him that as well. When he’s my bluebird man. Not my silverback.
I call him babe now, longing for him to share an inner scar with me. Those deep scars so much harder for a wife to touch.
He lifts his shirt, showing me the very faint scar on his belly. “My bike,”he says. “Doing bunny hops, I crashed. Rammed the handlebars into my gut. Twelve years old and I cried.”
We’re getting close now. To inner scars. My man. My bluebird. My silverback. He doesn’t cry. I can count on three fingers the times I’ve seen him cry and I don’t want to go there. It hurts too much.
And I know about the 12 year old belly scar, but didn’t know he cried when it happened.
“Who did you go to for comfort?” I ask.
“My dad.”
 “Really,” I say, surprised. Not surprised that it wasn’t his mom, because by then, after an ugly divorce, his mom was far away. But surprised that he still went to his dad for comfort.
“What did he say?”
“That I shouldn’t have been doing bunny hops on my bike.”
And my heart skips a beat.
I would hug a 12 year old bluebird boy. Kiss the tears off his cheeks. Wipe the blood with my hands.
But this is Scott’s dad.
A man.
“Your turn,” Scott says.
I flip my wrist up. The scar runs along my vein. It’s not what it looks like. No suicide attempt. A four-year-old playing hide and seek in the dark at midnight. An ant stake in the ground where Dad and I crouch behind the house. The blood so warm on my hands. My arms. My pants. I’m screaming.
Screaming.
“Be quiet,” Dad says. “You don’t want the big kids to find us.” Beer on his breath. It’s a party. The blood finally flows onto him, too.
He utters a curse. Scoops me into his arms and runs for the light. Runs to my mom the nurse.
Together my parents doctor me. I need stitches, a lot of them, but instead they do it themselves. Butterfly tape and a cardboard drafting tube that holds my dad’s engineering plans.
Days later, kids tease me about my homemade cast: the drafting tube holds my arm. Years later the scar is there. And grace is there, too. The scar running right beside the blue blood vein it parallels, but never touched.
“I know that scar,” Scott says tenderly.
He knows how deep it goes. Knows my parents, though they didn’t divorce, hurt me sometimes, too.
And my bluebird-silverback knows we’ve done the same to our children. Hurt them together. Our older kids who witnessed ugly fights. The F-bomb thrown in each others’ faces before we found Jesus.
“So I have this other scar on my shoulder,” I say, pushing sadness away from both of us. “A barbed-wire scar where I dove under the fence with a bull chasing me. Ripped my shirt to pieces that day.”
“Well, that puts bunny-hopping on a bike to shame. Have I seen this scar?” Scott asks, flirting with his bluebird eyes.
I tuck my hair behind my ear. Cock my head. Look at him long. With that smile he hopes for as I pull him up off the porch swing. “I’m not sure,” I say. “Let’s go in the house and see.”
My heart softer now toward my silverback man.
Of course he’s seen the shoulder scar.
My bluebird man has mapped my scars.
This man who can make me cry.
This man who can make me sing.

Hope to have the new blog up soon 🙂