Janet Benlien Reeves

It’s been six months since my father died. In a way, I am experiencing the grieving process for the first time. Yes. I have grieved for others—grandparents, pets, relationships lost to distance and time. But grieving for my father is different; the pain of his loss cuts deeper. I’ve been writing out this cutting pain through poems, essays, and remembrances. I sometimes feel I’m observing myself from outside of myself, attempting to make sense of what I’m feeling. I’m not yet ready to share most of these thoughts. Just revisiting them in my journal can cause me to close my eyes and shut them out, shut the book, grasp for something, almost anything else. Someday I’ll be ready to face them and to savor their sacred beauty. Encountering them now still takes my breath away. But this most recent observation is ready to be released into the world—or so I believe. If you are experiencing a season of grief, I pray you’ll find some solace here. A few weeks ago, I realized that every death ...

As I enter the Autumn of my life—Autumn, not Winter, Autumn—I’m beginning to realize that a lot of the things I once had the potential for, I no longer have the potential for. For instance, a professor of mine once told me I could be our denomination’s first female professor in one of our denomination’s universities’ religion departments. (This was the same professor who gave a whole lecture with my shoe in his pocket when one of my classmates stole it off my foot before class and slipped it to him by sleight of hand. Being one of only two female religion majors had its perils.) That nonsense aside, my professor’s compliment still means something to me, but teaching wasn’t my calling. The potential was there. Now that potential has passed. Our denomination now has several female religion department professors teaching in its universities. This example shows how our lives are built on choices: some that we make for ourselves, some that others make for us, and some that are determine...

I was just a kid when our country celebrated its bicentennial—a few years older than my oldest grandchildren are now. This means they’ll be almost my current age when our country celebrates its tricentennial. I wonder if they’ll look back on today’s semiquincentennial (half of five hundred years) as something magical in the same way I look back on the bicentennial. I don’t remember how my family celebrated that year. I’m sure there were fireworks, whether we drove twenty minutes to watch them over Disneyland or in the other direction to watch them at the beach. I do remember the bicentennial quarters and two-dollar bills; I still have a few of each, keepsakes more than currency. But our class field trip to Disneyland is my stand-out memory. In honor of the bicentennial, the amusement park invited elementary school students from all over Orange County to spend a school day at Disneyland. This was before Disneyland offered unlimited access to rides with admission. Guests purchased ticket...

Risk Averse Resist the inclination to Invite potential friends over. Stay indoors alone, and Kill the urge to explore. Avoid touching surfaces, even skin, or Vanquish germs with disinfectant. Exercise caution when breathing. Restrain desire for delectable, but deadly dishes. Save yourself until death’s day, Enjoying nothing while you wait. Risk Assessment   Love requires risk, results in rapture or unrequited romance. Let go of the trapeze. No net—only hands to hold or deadly freefall. Come out of the shadows of self-preservation. Introduce your authentic to find those who relate to you. Rejection reveals relations not for you. Risk it to move past it until love comes. * * * Top Photo by Taiyou on Unsplash Bottom Photo by Camden & Hailey George on Unsplash

  Observation While driving home from the grocery store the other day, I saw the most curious drama playing out in the sky just above the road before me. Just below where a seagull was circling, a hawk circled, too. They were turning in sync as if they were participating in a Regency era dance where partners keep each other at arm’s length. Every now and then, though, the gull would dive, the hawk would block its descent, and the gull would rise to circle again, the hawk mirroring its movements just below, an ongoing part of their dance. As they circled, they followed the path of the road before me, so I found myself following them until they reached the open field of an intermediate school near my home, where we parted ways.   Speculation Because our town recently hired a young man with two trained birds of prey to teach the seagulls in our coastal hamlet to stay away from shopping areas, I wondered if the hawk was his. I have been wanting to see this spectacle since ...

I don’t think I understood the assignment. I only wish I could remember the story behind the picture, but I’m guessing my expression is somehow related to the flowery headband. Today’s expression captured in pictures or forced frills will be the same. What’s a girl to do on Father’s Day when she no longer has a living dad? One clear snapshot has impressed itself on my mind today, one that now only exists in my mind. I wonder if Dad carried the memory, too—he and I were the only ones in the foreground of this image, a moment that only belonged to us. I don’t know how old I was—older than three because we lived on Gamma Street. Not so old as five. I suspect events leading up to this moment had something to do with sibling jealousy over my brother’s arrival and the resulting demands on my mother’s time, but that is unclear. I was going through a mommy phase. I wanted Mommy to tuck me in at night. I wanted Mommy to carry me around. I wanted Mommy, just Mommy. I wanted nothing to do wit...