sometimes nothing's a pretty cool hand

I think it's one of the saddest days in history.























January 26, 1925 - September 26, 2008

the fall of man

Fall is in the air. Can you feel it? I can't. But here's proof:

~ Starbucks has begun to serve pumpkin spice lattes again.
~ Olay is reissuing their Winter Retreat body wash that disappeared during the summer, but makes my arms (and probably feet, too, but I tend to notice it less) smell like vanilla.
~ Shane & Shane sang "Oh Holy Night" off their in-the-works Christmas album at their "free fall concert" in front of the seminary last night. Shane & Shane and Christmas music is an ethereal combination.
~ Game 1 of football season was Thursday night. Tomorrow promises to be a good day.
~ It's not 90 degrees today.

My good friend Sarah taught me a valuable lesson the other day. I merely asked her one lesson God taught her while she served in Africa this summer, and she answered, "God is good." I don't know about you, but I've heard that far too often.
Pastor: God is good--
Congregation: --all the time!
And I think my problem stems from the situations in which I've heard people say it. "God really pulled me through it. He is so good." But what if He hadn't pulled you through it? What if you had died, or been maimed, or lost your house or family or shelves of books? Would God still have been good?

Too often I base the character of God off of what I am going through. I feel alone, so God is far. I feel sad, so God has abandoned me. But just because I am scared doesn't mean God isn't comfort. Just because I am unhappy doesn't mean God isn't joy. "God is good" is a fact that doesn't change with the way I feel. It's like a tree, firmly planted in the soil, whose leaves change every fall and spring. Just because the leaves turn orange and fall off doesn't mean the tree has changed in any way. It's the leaves who change, not the tree. God is good. It's who God is, not the circumstance or situation with which I am dealing.

God loves us, wants to heal us, save us, be near us, and because of this I think I think I deserve those things. Why won't You heal me? Why won't You save me? But I've come to realize, it isn't about me. The people in the Old Testament seem to grasp this concept and that of God's goodness, even before Jesus. In 1 Chronicles 20, Joab is about to attack the Ammonites, and he tells his men in verse 12, "Be strong and let us fight bravely for our people and the cities of our God. The Lord will do what is good in his sight."

That's it! They trust the Lord to do what is good in his sight. They might not understand why. They might die! But it isn't up to them. It's up to the Lord. They accept that. And whatever happens, is good. Like Shane Bernard shared last night, Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego told Nebuchadnezzar, "'If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up'" (Daniel 3:17-18). Even if he does not! It's not about US, they're saying. It's about the true King, about His plans, His reign, worshiping Him.

To me, it seems that we should serve God simply because He is Creator and majestic and a thousand other adjectives. But He is also loving and good and wants to be in relationship with us. But that doesn't mean everything will always go our way. Jesus said in John 16, "'In this world you will have trouble.'" WILL! Not may, or could, or perhaps will, but will. "'In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.'" The verse preceeding that declares that Jesus has told us this so that, in Him, we may have peace. In Him, not in this world. "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28).

I don't know if any of this makes sense. I praise God for who He is, not for what good is going on in my life. I praise God for who He is, not because I'm happy right now. "God is good" doesn't mean "everything in my life is going good right now" (excuse the incorrect grammar). God is good, period. God is good.

I don't feel like doing homework.

invasion of the body snatchers

I've learned a lot about myself this summer that I didn't really know before, or maybe just didn't realize. I've learned that

+ I like the color pink.
+ I have a favorite author. (Three, actually: E.M. Forster's dialog leaves me wanting an entire novel of nothing but, Jerry Spinelli creates prose and characters like God created butterflies (effortlessly, colorfully, and so real), and Louisa May Alcott taps into every emotion my little heart beats.)
+ I don't like bugs. (I've always considered myself a fairly reasonable female, not flighty or fidgety around crawly things, but one night I lay in bed looking at my bookshelves before turning off the light (I often do this), when a spot on the wall caught my eye. "Mommyyyyy," I called in a whiny voice to my mother, who was on the computer down the hall, "there's a spider on my ceiling." She replied, "Your father is going to have to get it." Dad had gone to bed already and his door was closed. I considered this a moment, then called whiningly, "Dadddyyyyy." He didn't stir, so my mom eventually came and got it. I thought my reluctance to get rid of the spider might disclose a hidden dislike for insects, but if that didn't, the invasion last night certainly did. My room was the Hurtgen Forest, with speedy black beetles crawling all over instead of Germans. They kept crawling over my blankets as I lay in bed reading, and I kept calling Mom into my room to dispose of them. Once I leaped out of bed as one raced towards my pillow, and as I stood in the doorway waiting for Mom, one flew - flew! - onto my bedspread. Needless to say, I slept in the guest room feeling like a Polish refugee escaping Hitler's troops. I dreamed I opened my eyes and there were beetles crawling all over the ceiling. I woke up standing in the middle of the room with my heart thumping. Today as I relayed the story to Dad (who should have been my Russian liberators, but instead was slumbering safely in his own room), he asked, "How many were there? Two?" "Uh, two??" I said. "Try six." "Oh," he said, ever wittily, "because there are four right there on the wall." Ha, ha, Dad. John, Paul, George, and Ringo aren't squashable, Beatle though they be.)
+ I love, love, love Chicago. (On State Street, that great street, I just wanna say: They do things that they don't do on Broadway.)
+ I like baseball. It seems to epitomize summer.
+ I miss Ohio.

I've discovered a few things and people this summer, too. My discoveries include

+ A young, swoon-inducing Frank Sinatra.
+ Malted milk powder.
+ Helen Forrest's big band era.
+ 1950s & 60s Jack Lemmon. (He sends me into fits of giggles and sighs.)
+ Jerry Spinelli's other books.
+ John Keats's pathetic fallacy! (The sun kissed away the morning's tears. You don't get much more pathetically fallicilic than that.)
+ A Humphrey Bogart movie I actually like. (I want to join the mob.)

Meanwhile

+ I still love Turner Classic Movies more than...almost anything.
+ I am recognized at the Plymouth Public Library.
+ It's football season again.
+ Summer's over, and to quote Siggy from What About Bob?, "Summer, fall, time to go...."

slice of life, a la mode

My dad handed me an article today about a hand held device where one can access the Internet and buy books online, reading them on the tiny screen. I felt my insides being wrung like a dishcloth. The day books are replaced with computers I will hang myself from the nearest library's roof. Half the enjoyment of reading a book is holding it in your hands, smelling the pages, feeling the cover fluctuate in your hands like a wave in the ocean, noticing accidental ink splotches in the margins. There's something about seeing words on paper that makes me feel as though something has just been created that didn't exist before. One can write, "There once lived a man named Joe," and all of a sudden Joe once lived, where before he didn't. A new character and personality exists, who has likes and dislikes and a family, if you write one for him. It's not just a collection of books I have on my bookshelves. I have a bookshelf of lives between bindings. Computers are the end of life as we know it.

"'What shall I do with all my books?' was the question; and the answer, 'Read them,' sobered the questioner. But if you cannot read them, at any rate handle them and, as it were, fondle them. Peer into them. Let them fall open where they will...If they cannot enter the circle of your life, do not deny them at least a nod of recognition." ~ Winston Churchill

I'm drinking coffee, and it just passed that perfect temperature where it's not hot enough anymore to singe off the flavor, but isn't cool enough to fail to warm your toes. It's reaching the latter stage and I still have half a mug left.

The cat slept with me last night for the first time since September. She jumped up on my bed without so much as a meow of inquiry, then felt around on my blankets as if she had every right, and laid down before I had a chance to protest. "Kitty," I said, lowering my Steve Kluger book (who added a homosexual character to his latest novel and therefore makes it very difficult for me to enjoy), "what are you doing?" She didn't even look at me, but if she were to answer I imagine she would've said something like, "What?" with an attitude.

I've decided to live the life of Jo March, and inherit a large estate from a cranky aunt to fill with raucous boys who give me lots of grist for the writing mill, when I'm not teaching them wise lessons and punishing them for their scrapes by tying them to the bedpost. (Actually it was Nan, a little girl, whom Jo tied to the bedpost. But still.) "I really don't know which I like best, writing or boys" (Little Men, chapter 3).

farewell to you Indian Summer

Yesterday I stepped into the shower with dirty feet from running through the grass barefooted, and I remembered drawing brown designs on the bathtub floor with my toe as a kid when my feet were dirty. The water stung the tiny cuts on my elbows from the grass when I did a somersault to retrieve a Frisbee. My fingers were swollen from the heat and my ball glove, making my hands sweat and smell like leather. It was humid and hot and the sun made my face red and my legs sticky. This was summer.

I'm sorry to see it go. I seem to be having attacks of Christmas anticipation - accidentally hearing the first few bars of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," smelling cinnamon pumpkin spiced candles, observing the clerk in Hobby Lobby string white lights on their faux pine trees - and I find myself wishing the last few weeks of this summer away. How have I spent it? Sick, at a funeral, dodging mosquitoes, avoiding the heat, working over 40 hours a week in a windowless basement. It's easy to wish for football and pumpkin pie season when the windows are closed and the air conditioning is blasting, but I realized I've missed all the beauties of summer. Is this what being an adult means? I'm not willing to give up dirtied feet so I can be grown up. Is adulthood one long winter?

I do look forward to winter. In fact, I prefer December to August. I think it's more of a realization of passing time that bothers me, that unsatisfied feeling I have at the end of the summer that no relationships were strengthened and only a handful of books were read, none of them while lying out in the sun with a sprinkler squirting a droplet or two in my direction. I ate a piece of banana cake today and found it flavorless, so I ate a little more as if quantity would somehow make up for quality. That's how I feel about this summer. It has lacked, and I want to drag it out as if with just a little more of it I'll find what was missing and feel completed.

Summer, you old Indian summer,
You're the tear that comes after June-time laughter
You see so many dreams that don't come true
Dreams we fashioned when summertime was new

They're writing songs of love, but not for me

I glanced at the calendar in the kitchen today to see that my grandparents will celebrate their 73rd wedding anniversary this month. 73 years! How many people even live that long?

Curious, I dug through a box of photos, and found so many that had me smiling, and a few that made my heart sad, to see how youth has turned to old age, to see their faces and know just a little of how their lives were lived and what was in their hearts.

My grandmother, Festna, in 1942. She wrote everything on the backs of her pictures, and on this one she wrote: "Festna Lawrence, taken at the 2nd turn in the road from the house going toward Diamond Springs Elizabeth, Ark. Age 24. Taken in Baxter Co." I wonder what she found so fascinating about the rocks.

"Homer Lawrence, Pfc. Jewell L. Lawrence 37257154. Camp Shelby, Miss, just home on a furlough, from Alaska. Taken in June 1945 at Arthur Green's place at Beedeville Ark." My grandpa's the one on the left. The "L" stands for Lee, which is what he goes by. He would've been 32 in this picture.

Left: "Mrs. Festna Lawrence. Taken in 1945. I sent this to Lee while serving in the US Army in Germany." She's a large part Native American. Can you tell?

Right: My grandfather holding my mother, my uncle Curt on the left and my uncle Jerry on the right, in 1956.

My grandma married my grandpa when she was 17 to escape her abusive father, and my grandpa, at 22 and growing up with a hobo father who taught him how to jump trains, simply wanted someone to take care of his home. They were married 10 years before having any children, and while in France during WWII, my grandfather wanted to divorce my grandma for a woman he met in Paris. He didn't; I figured it out one summer sleeping in my mother's old room at my grandparents' house, and my uncle Jerry was born 9 months exactly after my grandpa returned home from the war.

I used to sit next to my grandpa on the couch and watch Wheel of Fortune with him, work on crossword puzzles, ride with him into town for a newspaper in his white pickup truck. I used to sit on the edge of his bed, his room smelling of mothballs and dust, as he finger picked "Silent Night" on his guitar. Now my grandpa, at 95 this August, doesn't remember who my mother is, or that he was ever in a war. I hate the time that passes.

Hymn to the Fallen

This morning feels very, very long ago indeed. I went to bed at 12:30 last night, waking 3 hours later to take my parents and brother to the Milwaukee airport, where they flew to Idaho to visit my oldest brother, whom I have seen once for a few hours in the past 3 years. It's been a day to romanticize about, starting with a sunrise through the van windows that I described in my journal as making me feel "touched by God's fingertips just as the clouds were with rays of light. To be such dusky blue and filled with pink and peach and glorious white is a transformation of sheer brilliance, and I marveled at it, both in myself and the sky....God somehow seems nearer in that peaceful transition, the calm before the day begins. I love His nearness."

After leaving my family at the airport, I drove to Bayshore Town Center and parked behind the Cheesecake Factory in anticipation of its opening at 11 a.m. Five hours was a long time to wait, but Milwaukee is almost an hour away and I wanted to take advantage of my being there, for "I shall not pass this way again." (If this blog were a Barnes & Noble Classic, it would have a little asterisk next to that quote and a footnote explaining that it derives from a poem I don't even remember reading, save for that one line. Only B&N would go into more detail than that. Once in Persuasion they defined the word "graceful." Uh, if the reader doesn't know the definition of graceful, he probably shouldn't be reading Jane Austen.)

Speaking of Barnes & Noble, it was about 20 steps down from the Cheesecake Factory, and opened 2 hours earlier! So only to wait from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m., I read my Bible (the boys in Acts amaze me to no end), took a nap in the back of the van with my pillow and blanket (you'd think after 3 hours of sleep I would've slept longer than a half an hour, but I think the radiance from the Factory flowed through my veins), journaled, and emerged from the van at 8:30 to meander around the town center. I browsed Kohl's (it being the only thing open), telling the cashier, "I wasn't going to buy anything, but then I saw how bored you were and thought I better," then turned the corner at 9:03 to enter Barnes & Noble. I wish I could explain the joy that fills my heart upon beholding B&N. My breath caught in my throat when I realized it was two stories. The utter joy.

I sat with my knees and back resting against opposite arms of a cushy chair by a second story window, the morning light streaming onto the floor. A lady sat down next to me, a man a few chairs away, and a pre-teen boy and teenage girl across from me. I could only read a chapter before the high-pitched chatter of the girl on her cell phone drove me to distraction, and I abandoned my relaxation to purchase my items and retreat. (Didn't I sound like Jane Austen just then? What does "relaxation" mean??) I walked out with Barnes & Noble Classics of Howards End (I think E.M. Forster is vast becoming a favorite of mine), Wives and Daughters (I had no intentions of buying Elizabeth Gaskell's unfinished novel [she died before she could finish it], but it was so luscious and pink that I couldn't put it back on the shelf), and Northanger Abbey (Jane Austen, to me, is like those chocolate chip cookies that you don't really like, but you keep eating them anyway, and you never find out why. What does "cookies" mean??). I love "buy 2 get the 3rd free" days at Barnes & Noble.

Trader Joe's was next on my list, where I resisted organic fruit and spinach lasagna and grabbed a bag of whole grain pretzels I first sampled at Annie's apartment in May. I decided to pass on the chocolate covered soybeans, though. Sorry, Annie.

Upon passing Bath & Body Works, from somewhere in the deep cavernous recesses of my mind I pulled the memory of Mrs. Jespersen's hand soap, which I remember loving the smell of over spring break. So I entered the store, not remembering what it was and smelling every bottle I came across until I recognized the scent of Japanese Cherry Blossom. Rubbing it on my hands brought back chocolate cake and singing by the piano and Enchanted and overflowing toilets and tired feet after hours of walking around big, cold, and windy cities. Of course, on the path of finding Cherry Blossom, I also found Plumeria, which was sweet and feminine and summery, and made me think of pink parasols and canoes, for some reason. I couldn't choose between the scent of memories made and the scent of memories to be made, so I resolved to shell out the cabbage for both bottles. Turns out they were on sale (wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles) and I saved a whopping $11. Golly gee whiz Pete cow Sam Hill.

So with my Connecticut in a Bottle and Scent of 1910 (which I affectionately nicknamed them) in tow, I finally entered the Cheesecake Factory. I took my piece of heaven and carefully tucked it into my pre-prepared cooler in the van with the care of buckling a little child into a car seat, and headed for home. I thought about my day, and remembered the tragic sight at 4:15 this morning when we'd pulled out: my dad had stuffed our old G.I. Joe case we've stored our plastic toys in since the womb into the green garbage can at the end of the driveway. I had fretted over its demise, wishing I would've known it was there earlier so I could've saved it to store journals or letters or simply save a box of memories from being tossed into a landfill. So when I remembered it on my drive home, I suddenly became anxious to return home before the garbage men had their way with it. I wondered how the police officer would take it when I explained the reason I was speeding was to dig a wooden case with a G.I. Joe decal on it out of our trash. "Ah," he'd respond, "American heroes." Of course he'd understand. Policemen themselves are American heroes.

Still a ways from my house, I saw that trash cans and bags were still piled at the end of peoples' driveways. I've never been so happy to see garbage before. I wasn't soothed until I had pulled into my driveway and plucked the dusty, worn, half-falling-apart case from its plastic green coffin. I opened it for nostalgia's sake, releasing the scent of Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Spider-Men and G.I. Joes, though it was empty now of all but a few dust balls and cobwebs. I'll clean it off and find something to put in it, and I'll remember the sound and feel of our childhood hands rustling over their plastic action figure bodies with loose joints at the knees and worn paint on their feet and hands, as we searched for the right sword or torch or mask to equip our men. I'm not a pack rat, by any means, but there are some things that should just not be gotten rid of.

However romantic my day has been, I sit here now in an empty house pitying my loneliness. My cheesecake was eaten to a Jimmy Stewart movie, and the cat won't answer my conversation starters. ("Wouldn't it stink if I fell down the stairs? No one would know I was here." "I'm going downstairs. The DVD player won't work." "I will not feed you tuna fish, so don't bother asking.") I guess listening to war movie themes (We Were Soldiers is probably the most depressing) and songs like "Alone Again, Naturally" and "Mr. Lonely" doesn't help my mood much. I don't think I was meant to be alone. And this is only day 1 of 11.

My hands smell like spring break.