A Few Notes

Once, in college, I knew a girl who liked a boy who liked me. Then, that girl hated me. One night, as I quietly prepared for bed in my dorm room (my roommate always went to bed so early) I heard voices in the bathroom that linked my room to the next suite.

They were talking about me. More specifically, they were mocking me. I stood in silence and eavesdropped in horror until my roommate bolted from her bed and whacked that bathroom door, bringing that mortifying incident to an end.

I still think about how it felt, though, to hear people making fun of me. It’s odd and even today, on occasion, I stumble into the same strange land.

* * *

With regards to the outrage I hear expressed over occasional mis-spending of the $2,000 FEMA debit cards . . . it sure seems to me that once you give someone something, it’s theirs to do with as they please. So, if people displaced by the hurricane wish to buy something outrageous and expensive, they have that right. Why are people so outraged? Haven’t they ever been behind someone in the grocery store who was buying something with food stamps that seemed to them to be inappropriate? Don’t they know people who spend good money on cigarettes and beer while their children receive free lunches? This is just more of the same thing. People who get “free” money seem to spend it a little carelessly, if you ask me.

* * *

Twenty years ago, I met my husband. My summer roommate pointed him out to me and I pulled aside the curtains just in time to see him spit on the ground. He’d been running in the North Carolina summer heat and he was sweaty. He looked nothing like the Man of My Dreams. A few days later, we met after I made a smart aleck remark during a Bible study. Imagine. Me, being sarcastic.

Well, that wasn’t a big stretch, was it?

And twenty years later, here I am, living happily ever after with a man who has ugly feet and a heart of beauty.

Saturday Night Live

The past two nights, I’ve slept all night without waking to cough up a lung. And yet, I’m still so tired.

That doesn’t matter, though. No rest for the weary. This morning, my husband took our 7-year old to play soccer while I took my daughter and her 12-year old brothers to the photographer’s studio at 9:30 a.m. Every year, I make sure the kids get a professional picture taken and every year, my daughter has cried. She is incredibly shy and has a 10 foot circle of personal space which people continually violate.

This year was no different. The photographer took only seven photographs and did manage to capture one fleeting smile. By the end, though, she was curled on my lap (my daughter, not the photographer), crying. (I’ll post a picture tomorrow when I’m not so weary.)

I realized when we pulled into the parking lot that my daughter thought she would be photographed with Piglet–and not the stuffed Piglet that I brought along, but the Piglet from Disney World. I realized this when she said, “I want to see Winnie-the-Pooh.” I said, “There’s no Winnie-the-Pooh,” and then I thought, oh, oh, wait a second. She thinks when I said Piglet, I meant BIG Piglet.

How disappointing that must have been for her.

I spent a couple of hours at the church this afternoon setting up my classroom where I’ll be teaching preschoolers during Sunday School. My daughter was oh-so-helpful during this effort.

She had a birthday party to attend this afternoon, so we were gone until 5:30 p.m. When she went to bed at 7:30 p.m., I went back to the church to finish up. By the time I returned home, it was 10:00 p.m. and I didn’t sit down because I knew I would not get up again. I washed dishes, then peeled potatoes and set up the bread machine so we’ll have fresh bread for lunch. We’ll have roast (in the crockpot) and mashed potatoes for lunch after church tomorrow.

Too often, I run the kids through McDonald’s drive-in after church on Sundays because it’s very difficult to cook when you are not in your kitchen.

I love to sleep. And yet, I stay up too late. I’ll be sorry in the morning.

Personal Legends

When I was six years old, my dad asked me as we passed in the hallway of our tiny rambler, “What do you want for Christmas?” And I said, “A puppy.” He snorted and said, “Fat chance.” (Or maybe it was something more gentle, but it recorded itself as “fat chance” in my brain.)

At Christmas, a wiggly box was placed upon my lap and I lifted the green-wrapping papered lid to find a black poodle. I named her “Midnight” and she was the star of many of my crayon drawings.

The following October (1972), my mother gave birth to my sister (at home, with no midwife–now, that is quite a story which has nothing to do with this post). Shortly thereafter, I returned home from second grade to find every trace of my puppy gone. No water bowl. No food bowl. No puppy. My parents thought a sudden disappearance would be best.

Recently, I mentioned Midnight to my mother and she has no recollection of that dog whatsoever. None. I began to wonder if I made up that story in my head, if I created some kind of personal myth that became more real the more times I told it.

I know a picture exists of me and that puppy. I know it.

The other day, I passed a television showing coverage of Hurricane Ophelia. The caption said, “Nag’s Head,” and I remembered the time I slept through a hurricane in Nag’s Head, North Carolina in 1986.

Then I started to wonder if this were another legend I made up in my head. So, I stayed up way too late, googling around, searching for evidence that Nag’s Head, North Carolina, was, indeed, hit by a hurricane in 1986.

And it was. Hurricane Charley hit in August 1986, but the winds of 90 miles per hour did little damage.

It’s true, then. I slept through that hurricane. Evacuations were not mandatory, so our drama troupe of college kids hunkered down at the church where we were staying. It was shaped like an ark, that church. I crawled into a bed and collapsed and later discovered I was sharing it with a curly-haired bass-player who was suffering from jock-itch. His name was Dana. Probably still is.

I slept while the storm raged because I had an undiagnosed case of mononucleosis. When the storm passed, my then-boyfriend (now-husband) drove me to a clinic where a doctor asked me to remove my shirt so he could diagnose my sore throat. I still remember the nurse’s raised eyebrows, but I was too sick to object.

When my dad married my stepmother in 1977, she brought into our family her own cache of personal legends. I heard over and over about her handsome, tall, English boyfriend named John and about her job working at Orcas Island during the summers. She’d talk about college and her degree in political science and about orchestras and symphonies and marching bands and how she lost twenty pounds in college by shunning potatoes and bread.

And eventually, all the stories started to repeat, as if they were on a loop. I suppose that happens to all of us. At some point, we run out of stories and pretty soon, we start to accessorieze the stories we tell. How much is truth and how much is embellishment? Will people we love stop us if we tell the same story too many times? Or will they politely listen, much as I listen to the stories my mother and my stepmother tell?

And can I find a picture of the black puppy I am sure I had when I was 6? If I do (when I do), you’ll be the first to know.

Second Day of School-at-Home: A Memoir

I had to resist the urge to stab myself in the temple with my red pen this morning. No, really. I wanted to jab my pen into that soft part that pulses in and out during chewing. The cause of my anguish? Introducing my children to the art of writing a memoir.

They each declared that they couldn’t think of anything to write about. They can’t remember a single, solitary event from the past. I strung together half a dozen ideas out of thin area. None of those suggestions would work for them. Our three-week trip to Houston and Orlando? The night their baby sister was born at home while they swam at the pool? Having fun at the fair the other day with their dad? First day of school? Getting a new pet? Christmas?

No. Nothing would do. But the first step in their instructional book said to come up with three to five topics. Then they were to pick one. The final step for today was to brainstorm ideas. I was to limit their time to ten minutes, allowing more time if necessary.

I did appreciate that little joke. “Limit” their time. As if.

I looked at the clock. The 10-month old would be awake any second. My daughter stood at my elbow demanding sticky tape and scissors. The blue-eyed twin dropped his pencil and banged his head onto the table. The brown-eyed twin wiggled his legs until the floor shook and I shouted, “STOP SHAKING YOUR LEG!” He wailed that he couldn’t think because he was starving.

At those times, I do not get sweet and sympathetic. My voice grows in fury. I begin to beg. I cajole. I threaten. I say unhelpful things like, “Hurry up! Just pick an idea! This is not rocket science! Do not make this harder than it is! Come on! Come on! Come on! Pick one!”

My teeth start to hurt because I had to clench them together to keep bad words from slipping out.

Finally, my blue-eyed twin retreated to a couch where he sat huddled under a blanket, pouting. His brother sat at the table with all ten of his scrawled ideas crossed out. He finally decided to write about the train trip to Texas he took with his dad and his brother seven years ago. But once he started brainstorming, he scribbled down two sentences and then declared, “That’s all I could think of. I’m done.”

I pointed out that perhaps he could write about something he could actually remember, like OUR TRIP LAST SUMMER. I fumed internally. Not only can my children not write, they can’t even think. This is the more disturbing fact.

Half an hour later, my blue-eyed twin said, “Mom, I’m sorry. I just needed some time to recollect.” He had completed his assignment and filled his brainstorming page. His brother stole his idea and decided that he, too, would write about the fair. Although the handwriting was messy, they seemed to have put some thought into their work.

So, I abandoned the whole red-pen-stabbing idea. But just to be safe, hide the stapler.

A Few Notes About My Girl

My daughter has to coil herself into my lap now, she’s so long. She curls her legs up and scrunches her head down to fit.

She has discovered the joy of the small chair. I bought a little kid-sized table for my kitchen and she carries the little chair around so she can reach stuff. Today, while I showered, she brought her orange chair from her room to the bathroom, so she could stand on the counter and brush her teeth. She likes to make faces at herself while she brushes. And she handles the toothpaste tube by herself, proclaiming, “I can do it all . . . by . . . my . . . self!”

She woke up last night at 1:00 a.m. and when I told her it was nighttime, still, she agreed to be rocked. I picked her up and then turned off the bright light. Alarmed that I was going to put her back in her crib, she shouted, “I rock you!” I love how she still says things like, “I hold you” instead of “You hold me.”

She sounds emphatic most of the time because she puts the “not” right in front of the action. For instance, “Today I am going to NOT hit my friend.” Or “I am going to NOT cry when you put me to bed.” “I am going to NOT pee my pants!”

At night, she arranges a collection of seven dollies in her crib on the foot end. She covers the dollies carefully with a crocheted blanket. Then, she settles back on her own little pillow, pulling a tiny napkin-sized crocheted blanket over herself. This miniature blanket is meant for a doll and covers only her belly. She insists on following this routine each night.

I just turned into “Mommy.” For a long time I’ve been “Mom” and “Mama,” but now suddenly and without official notification, she calls me “Mommy.”

She passed gas the other day. She feigned surprise, looked at me and said, “Did you hear that? What was that?” Then she grinned. I wonder where she learned that? (The correct answer to her question is what my dad taught me to say when faced with such a question: “Spiders barking!”)

On Being Cool. Or Not.

I’m reading Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. One of the chapters is called, “Church: How I Go Without Getting Angry,” and in that chapter, he talks about the church he attends in Portland called Imago Dei. He mentions “this friend from Seattle named Mark who was the pastor of a pretty cool church near the University of Washington, in the village.”

And I realized that my church is not cool. I kind of felt the littlest bit wistful, realizing how uncool our church is, too. If churches had flavor, that cool church would be mocha (and more) and our church would be vanilla.

I was cleaning up the kitchen table after dinner (which my long-suffering husband rustled up since I am still trying to not die from coughing). For some reason, I was thinking about what “kids these days” (I always feel like an old-fogey when I use that phrase and it makes me laugh) are wearing. Specifically, which fashions are cool.

And I realized that I couldn’t pick cool clothes out of a well-lit store. I notice what girls wear, but I can’t really tell you what cool boys wear. This would be problematic for my kids, if only they actually cared about their appearances.

I’ve never been trendy, really, except for a time in the eighties when big hair was the rage. My hair just happened to be long, blond and frizzy. I looked like a member of a hair-band. The fashions of the time, leggings and big shirts, worked well for me. There was a time when I could at least recognize the hippest songs on the radio and even hum along.

But my life’s intesections with “cool” have been mostly accidental, I’m afraid. I’m terrifically, overwhelmingly not cool.

I don’t have an iPod, nor any digital music device. And I don’t want one.

I couldn’t care less about enormous, expensive leather bags, nor small cupcake-sized dogs to carry around in them.

I can’t hum even a line of “Hollaback Girl”.

I don’t “get” rap and I can’t stand how everything is misspelled and mispronounced in modern music.

I don’t drink anything stronger that Diet Coke.

I never watched “Sex in the City” and we don’t have HBO. Or TiVo.

I still use Blogger for my blog and I use a plain, old, prefab template. I have no polls, no clocks, no “100 Things About Me.”

I drive a 1993 Mercury Sable.

I live in the land of Starbucks, yet I don’t drink coffee, fancy or plain.

I used to want to be cool, but that was back in 1978. My parents never bought me cool clothes, nor did we go on any cool vacations. I had no cool friends and my hair never feathered in the cool fashion of the day. (Natural curls do not “feather,” especially in a rainy climate.) Of course, when you are thirteen, you want to be cool because you don’t realize how much more to life there is than blending in like a chameleon.

And when you’re forty, you realize it’s hopeless and that you never will be cool and that furthermore, who cares? Now I know why my dad wore those hideous shoes and flannel shirts with holes in the elbows. He’d given up on being cool, too.

Cool, shmool. Who needs it?

A Summary of the Boring Post I Deleted

I wrote a long post, but pretty soon, it sounded like this to me, “and so I . . . and then I . . . and I felt . . . . and blah blah blah blah blah.” I bored even myself.

So, I’m going to just summarize.

All week, I’ve been suffering from a virus which is trying to kill me. My head aches even worse when I cough. I’ve been hot, then cold, feverish, then shivering. Each day seems worse. My daughter has it, too, and really, the only thing worse than being sick is being sick and having a sick whiny 3-year old begging you to hold her when you already are holding her.

What I hate is that when you are a mother and you are sick, the only part that matters is that you are a mother. You have no sick days, no one to stroke your forehead and bring you gingerale and tell you to just stay in bed all day.

I hate that.

I Contradicted Myself and Then I Wrote This

Not even a month ago, I proclaimed
Jennifer Hyatte was stupid. And by “stupid,” I meant “a person who is not very bright.”

Because how bright can you be if your idea of living happily ever after involves helping a felon escape and murdering a prison guard?

Then, a few days ago, I wrote with some sympathy about criminals who look a lot like us. And by “us,” I meant me, of course.

Some time today, in the midst of my illness-induced stupor, I remembered my proclamation about Jennifer Hyatte a few weeks back. I stopped cold. My glaring inconsistencies flashed to neon light and I broke into a cold sweat (although, admittedly, that could have just been the fever). Why, when I read about Jennifer Hyatte shooting a prison guard to free her husband, the prisoner, did I roll my eyes and shake my head at her actions? I easily sorted her into the Stupid Category. And yet, when I read about Judy Brown, who taught at the college I attended, I sat with my mouth agape, stunned. I didn’t think, how stupid is she? in suburban judgment. I felt pity, sorrow that she essentially drove her life off a cliff for love.

I know for a fact that Judy Brown is not stupid. I could not easily slide her into the Stupid Category, which presented a problem for me. Why would someone do something so stupid if one was not stupid? It was so simple to stamp “Stupid” on the forehead of Jennifer Hyatte and move along. That could never be me, I thought, because I am so bright and all.

I didn’t feel any pity whatsover for Jennifer Hyatte and the thing she did for love. I figured if you are stupid and you do stupid things, you ought to pay for it. And none of that has much to do with me.

The truth is that if you do bad things, hoping that good things will result, you are mistaken. Never in the history of the world has it been possible to plant pumpkin seeds and have tomato plants sprout. You get what you plant. (I know all about this, being smarter than the average bear.)

Jennifer Hyatte wanted to live happily ever after with the man of her dreams. So, she did a series of bad things and ended up with . . . bad things.

Sabine Bieber wanted babies in her care to nap peacefully. So, she did a bad thing and ended up with . . . bad things.

Judy Brown wanted someone else’s spouse for herself. So, she did a bad thing and ended up with . . . bad things.

The small bad things ended up sprouting and growing into giant bad things, it seems. And did all the bad stuff start with self-absorption? Some people call self-absorption sin. (Just tonight, I came across that idea in Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. I can’t think of a better description of what sin is, really. I’ve always been told that sin is “missing the mark,” as in missing a target, but why? What’s the motivation? Self-absorption.)

If I line up the pieces of these stories, I find self-absorption central in each one. I find self-absorption in my own life, too, even though the very nature of my life forces me to put other people before me. Isn’t that what Jesus asked us to do? To love our neighbor as ourselves? To serve one another? The farther we get from following His instructions, the more myopic we become, until at some point, we can’t see beyond our grabbing hands.

The more we do bad, hoping for good.

Just like Jennifer, Sabine and Judy. Just like me.