Some quick thoughts as the 50 degree Ohio skies try to melt the entrenched ice and snow around our property.

I grew up loving to watch to these on late nights with my mom in b&w in Akron, OH, so every movie looked like Casablanca. There was no E! or ET! to provide red carpet glamour.

My favorite oscar memory was when the Oscars were programmed against the NCAA Final Four and Elliot Gould came out toward the end to tell the rest of them the score (before ESPN, internet, any kind of mobile device–you just had to change the channel back and forth—but not possible for the audience.). He took great pleasure in tweaking his audience of non-sports fans this Really Important News.

• I don’t necessarily agree with Ebert that Martin and Baldwin were unfunny but do agree that they each would have been a better host than both of them were.
• Always good to see some awkward moments:
  1. Cameron Diaz calls Steve Carrell “Jude,” because of excessive dependence on uncorrected teleprompter.
  2. James Taylor sings over opening of In Memoriam segment so camera stays on him and we miss Patrick Swayze; Farah Fawcett is forgotten altogether
  3. Zimbabwe film win sets up verbal duel between Director and former Producer over what the film is about and who should be celebrated (“Prudence” — eponymous movie title was in the audience in a wheelchair for goodness sake!)
• Glad to see Jeff Bridges win and thank his mom and dad, but after the 1245th “dude abides” comment it’s gnawing not clever.
• Pointless and mindlessly made: “tribute” to horror movies; none of my top ten were there as far as I could tell.
• Surprised by the backlash against James Cameron in the voting; how much was honoring Bigelow and her film, how much was envy?
• I like the way so many presentors went out of their way to say it was their family and children that made it all worth while and possible.
• Glad Tom Hanks came out at the end and basically said, “let’s get this over with.”
• Even with its own category, Fantastic Mr. Fox did not have a chance.
• Was Kathryn Bigelow hyperventilating?
• Glad The Cove won; double-blow to SeaWorld, losing the worker last week and now this film blaming them for creating the culture that makes dolphins and whales unsafe.
• Lose the dancing tribute to top films—hard to distinguish what goes with what!
• I didn’t miss the five spotlighted song nominees (could you bear that many Randy Newman songs?), but did think the 5×5 intros for each actors/actress was excessive and awkward. (“I just met you on the set; you’re as great as Meryl!”).
• Funniest intro to top actor: Tim Robbins for Morgan Freeman.
• Most awkward intro to top actor: Julianne Moore for Colin Ferth
• Favorite winner’s acceptance: Michael Giacchino, score for Up, “my parents never told me this was a waste of time. . .”

I got a glimpse of an image faraway. The faraway place. (Not heaven, per se, though all faraway glimpses of some distant locale that allures and enchants and reunites is really about heaven.)

No, I was remembering a memory, of being alone in Nairobi with Michael, after Joan and Justin had returned to Colorado to see Joan’s mom, Wilma, who was clinging to life, waiting for her family to gather. (This was because I was looking at photos to scan and came across the ones with Joan, Matthew, and Justin, all gathered in Pagosa.)

The faraway place. Longing. The yet-to-be-experienced. The hoped-for-but-feared. The faraway may not only be faraway in space, but also in time.

You might say it’s measured not in miles or minutes, but in the distance between the inception of the longing and when it is fulfilled. (The longing itself, Lewis said, can overtake one, so that he is doesn’t recognize the joy when I comes. So you are surprised by it.)

My custom was to try to fall asleep listening either to a tape or mini-disc (there were no iPods) or to the BBC on my trusty AM-FM-short wave radio. I still have the mini-discs, and found some of them yesterday. Most of them now are important only because they form the soundtrack of our lives and consist almost entirely of Justin and Michael’s incipient music catalogue, primarily Michael’s: songs written and recorded on an original Gateway laptop. One of the heaviest “laptops” ever created.

The BBC World Service broadcast would always lead in those days with the “ongoing tragedy in Zimbabwe,” and I suppose they can still do that. The BBC voice, male or female, calm and composed, has the effect of making even the most extraordinary events seem expected, reliably measured in their horror, prosaic, as if they could manage the end of the world by modulating their voices, yet from a small planet somewhere else, reporting it for a group still further away.

Placeholder for some profound thoughts coming up soon! Hooray for Justin, Em, Tracey, and Matt!

Emery Arrives from Bruce Edwards on Vimeo.

Wish we could eat here today:

From San Diego Breakfast Burrito!

A Day With Em from Bruce Edwards on Vimeo.

Our beautiful new granddaughter, Emery, makes her cinematic debut and thoroughly nails the performance of a newborn hoping to sleep while her parents and grandparents fight for possession of her every moment.

Day 3 and Em is in her first onesie.

We arrived about 3PM. We found parking and headed to the maternity ward. Matt greeted us outside and led us into her room.

And there she was. A bundle. A treasure. A gift. She was offered to Joan, then me. I was a stranger, but she let me in. Maybe she recognized me somehow even though she did not open her eyes. I got to hold her for maybe two hours today. She slept, peacefully, and with security. She nestled. She “burrowed.” She yielded to be held. Tears well up. Tracey hugs. The room is full of love. Full of adoration. Emery remains calm, unperturbed.

She’d had such a long journey. But the trek didn’t just begin nine months ago. She has been coming for a long time, a long time to her true home and God-chosen mommy and daddy. In matters like these, well, there are no accidents and there are no mistakes.

Her birth mom, Liz, contentedly talked about wanting her, Miss Em, The Em, the Sunlight in our Eyes, to belong to such a great, loving family. Liz saw it in them, and through them, this love, before even meeting Tracey and Matt. Liz herself was courageous, caring, diligent, and, finally, resolute. Em would come, and come to this family. Her cousin spoke of Matt and Tracey as the answer to prayer.

And so they are, and their families, The Goods, the Edwardses, their siblings all, each contributed to the miracle that is her life. The desire to share life and promote life and embrace life. Miracle. Do you think I use the word miracle lightly, as a synonym for some sentimental something else I can’t name? No. Miracles aren’t random, they are planned, ordained, accorded life in those who enable them and embody them. Em is here because Liz was here. Her love for life and the life inside her, the desire not to thoughtlessly abandon it—these truly are heroic selfless acts. Miracles.

But understand, before that, Matt and Tracey, and before them, Pat and Patty, Bruce and Joan, and the households, the children they created—sought a world and to foster a worldview that valued family, nurtured hope, craved for companionship through parenting, those are miracles too.

Emery Solana comes to us with a determination to live and to show us again what it means to live, comes at this time in this way to this couple—and to all of us blessed to know her—because she has been prepared to enter our lives and we hers for such a time as this.

No coincidence and no randomness. Emery was not given just to anyone, just as Liz did not bequeath her to just anyone, and Matt and Tracey are not just anyone.

Emery Solana Edwards (ESE), like Sebastian Edwards Sanford (SES), are proof again that God continues at work in this world, without our permission, and always for our good.

Her hand is up: send me, she said. And so here she is.

Welcome Em. Make some more miracles.

Miss Em is here, and we’re on the road to greet her. Rolling down the interstate we send you these images to introduce you to a southern belle whose debut you must attend.

Our new granddaughter’s name is Emery Solana. We are grateful to God for the blessings of her coming and joyfully announce a new addition to Edwards and Good family clans.

She was born at 8:55pm Feb 1st 2010 and was 8lbs 9oz, She had a long journey today, so she is very tired.

We will post some pictures here as soon as we have them.

Liz, our valiant birth mom, is doing well, and we are grateful a caesarian birth went ok for both.
Selah!*

On the way to Memphis, we’ll blog and talk out loud. Check here for reflection and updates of the kind that need more than 140 characters!

Here was the 12 song soundtrack we put together:

1. Walking in Memphis, Marc Cohn
2. Sequestered in Memphis, The Hold Steady
3. Graceland, Paul Simon
4. Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again, Bob Dylan
5. City of New Orleans, Arlo Guthrie
6. Greyhound Bus, Sara Evans
7. Memphis TN, Johnny Rivers
8. Don’t Mention Memphis, Tim McGraw
9. Memphis Streets, Neil Diamond
10. Memphis Skyline, Rufus Wainwright
11. Life is a Highway, Rascal Flatts
12. Highway Song, James Taylor

What do they have in common?—a certain sentimentality, the word “Memphis,” in title or lyrics, and anticipation.

And we will be playing plenty of Edwards Boys music too.

Selah.