What I Want for Christmas

There are several intangible, cliched (yet truthful!) things I would love for Christmas. I would love it if my brothers, sister-in-law, and niece could all be with me and my parents this Christmas. I would love it if no sadness hung over the season, but instead the purest joy, contentment, and maybe - yes, definitely - even happiness. But none of these things are really in my control, and even if I pray for them, God is not a Santa Claus who delivers our desires wrapped in red paper, but a Father who recognizes our needs in light of the big picture that we can't see.

So. What I want for Christmas.

1. A Pilot Dr. Grip gel pen. They're $10, and the one I have used to write in my journal for seven years (that my father gave me for Christmas with the explicit instructions to "use it to write") was stolen by a homeless person over the summer. I guess even little commodities make a big difference in someone's life who owns nothing. Had I known he/she would steal my pen that day, per Jesus' instruction I would have given him/her my two gel ink refills, too. (They're not doing me any good right now.)
2. New shoes. I've only had the ones I usually wear less than two years, but the top layer is peeling off and I can feel a breeze in my foot whenever I take a step forward. I would like to not have to plan what socks I wear depending on whether I care if they get wet from the holes in the bottom of my shoes. (Did I mention the rubber on the bottoms is also worn through?)
3. Axis & Allies. Yes, it's a Risk-like board game where each player participates in World War II. "Control the fate of the world in this incredible game of military strategy, courage, and cunning!" My only hesitancy in owning this game is that no one will want to play it with me.
4. A hand-held mixer. I could really go all-out and tell you I want the green, "country pear"-colored upright Kitchen Aide mixer from Bed, Bath, & Beyond, but it's $400, and that's almost 3-months' salary for a persecuted pastor in China. All I need is a hand-held mixer so that my butter doesn't clump with my brown sugar.
5. A new loofah, Olay vanilla-scented body wash, toothpaste, a new toothbrush, dental floss, and one of those super nice Venus razors. This is the Christmas list of a college student.

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.

Adventures in Laundering

Funny thing is, I have no adventures in laundering. Not even a funny anecdote. I go to work at 12, I work for 8 1/2 hours until my feet hurt so bad I can hardly stand, and I come home and go to bed. I pass my time at work while folding towels (whose rough exteriors are scraping the fingerprints off my thumbs) by singing songs and imagining novel characters and making up a new set of 7 dwarfs with my coworkers (because I have those now). (If you see a new Disney movie out starring Baldy, Drippy, Sniffly, Blingy, Krispy, and a few others, you know someone famous.)

I spend my time before work watching the Food Network (and shows I recorded off of Food Network the night before), watching movies (Frank Sinatra and Jimmy Stewart seem to be common threads in the movie-themed bedspread of my life), reading books (out of the four Jane Austen books I've read, Persuasion was the only one I didn't find boring, so that's the one I'm reading again), and being off my feet as much as possible. On my days off, I bake (bran muffins and an Alton Brown-inspired cheesecake that turned out terribly wrong) and watch more movies and read more books.

But I can now fold a fitted sheet like nobody's business. King size is my favorite, because I'm king size, if you know what I'm sayin'. (I don't.)

Back to Jimmy Stewart: his birthday was a few weeks ago. He would've been 100. I remember when he died, we were in a hotel on our way to Florida for vacation. Dad had bought mango ice cream and Mom was upset because why did he always have to try unusual things? She's a vanilla kind of gal. We were watching the news and I thought how unfortunate it was that he had died. But I was only 10, so the sadness didn't linger long. I liked the mango ice cream.

I have Born to Dance recorded off of TCM from sometime last summer, and I watch this scene over and over, because it just thrills me. (My favorite part is: "The way they chase after me, babe, it's a crime, and the way I make love is an art. So let's find a corner and start. What'd'ya say?")
I watched Destry Rides Again the other day for the first time since probably 10th grade. Herr showed it to us in German class, though I'm not sure why. The only thing German about it is Marlene Dietrich, who sings absolutely atrociously. Have a listen, and cringe. The movie's fantastic, though.

I'm also in love with Frank Sinatra. But I think I've already mentioned that a few times. The library is fast becoming a place of worship with dozens of classic movies at the tip of my library card. And when I can't make it, I simply worship at home with TCM. (My, aren't I being sacrilegious this morning?)

I've been reading quite a few books that are either about or take place during WWII. In Steve Kluger's Yank, he includes actual letters from soldiers to the magazine Yank. This one is my personal favorite thus far:

I don't know who started this idea if pinups, but they say that it is supposed to help keep up the morale of the servicemen, or something like that. Here is my idea of the help it is. In the first place, I would say that 24 out of 25 of the men in the service are either married or have a girl at home whom they respect and intend to marry as soon as this war is over....How many of you GIs would like to go home and find the room of your wife or girlfriend covered with pictures of a guy stepping out of a bathtub, draped only in a skimpy little towel, or see the walls covered with the pictures of a shorts advertisement or such pictures? None of you would. Then why keep a lot of junk hanging around and kid yourself about keeping up morale?...I would much rather wake up in the morning and see a picture of a P-51 or 39 hanging above my bed or over the picture of my wife, whom I think is the best-looking girl in the world, than of some dame who has been kidded into or highly paid for posing for these pictures.
-Pfc. Joseph H. Saling
Myrtle Beach AAF, South Carolina

back in the salad again

Have you ever been singing a song in your head while you're thinking about, writing, talking about, watching, or doing something else, and you realize you're singing the wrong words? Today as I searched for my Microeconomics class in Reasoner 319 (you'd think after a year and a half I'd know which building is which) I sang "Back in the Saddle Again" in my head, only I realized, since I wasn't really paying attention, I was singing, "Back in the salad again." I've never been in the salad, but I think I'd rather be there than in the saddle.

Coming to college reminds me of going off to war, only I can't shoot myself in the foot to be taken off the front-line. "First day of classes" carries the same ring to it as "England declared war on Germany." Papers, books, and tests all mean the same to me as tanks, grenades, and rifles. I think it's funny how I always bring back books from home to school with me, thinking I'll have time to read them. And they always sit on my shelf, with a thin layer of dust on their tops by the time I pack them up to take back home with me. I wonder if, when I signed that "I will not drink, smoke, curse, or dance" contract at the beginning of my college career, the words "or have a life" were at the bottom of the page.

I shouldn't be so pessimistic and depressed. After all, there are so many people who have it worse than I - cross-cultural students who can't go home all year, students who can only go home once a year, and students who can't even come to college. What a privilege, honor, and blessing it is for me to be sitting in these classes and my chapel seat. I'll try to see it that way from now on.

Meanwhile football season is practically over...and...I wonder how many times I've mentioned "football" and "war" in the past few entries. I'll make an effort to mention more things about happiness in the future.

last full measure

I breathed heavily, my lungs stinging as I took in a breath and released it in a moist fog. The wind whipped wildly and violently tossed the innocent, light feathery flakes of snow. It was really the only beauty I could see. The ground was brown with upturned earth, and the peaceful snow turned to slush by the constant tread of feet. I blinked to clear my eyelashes from the snowflakes as my buddy next to me cleared his sinuses. His pants were smeared with blood and I wondered if it was his or somebody else's.
Screaming and yelling rose and fell around my ears. I'd grown expectant of the constant noise but not immune. It shattered the quiet of the falling snow and unfailing wind and the occasional whistle called me out of the dream-like trance I could've so easily fallen into.
We were lining up. Good God, not again. I wanted to pray, but did God listen to prayers for such things? Last time we'd been hit so hard, and I couldn't feel my hands anymore. I looked down at them to see them bleeding. I hoped I had all my fingers and purposely counted to make sure. Was there any purpose? Why were we here? My ears burned with the last bit of warm blood before going numb. Then I heard the calls, voices cracking with the strain, and we got into position. I crouched down and saw my enemy opposite me. There he was, just like all the times before. Same watery eyes in the wind, same red face from the cold, same shaking knees from the persistent running, dodging, diving. We were all of us tired. Couldn't we stop? Couldn't we take a break and pick up where we left off?
No, I remembered. We were there for a reason. He wasn't just like me: he was wearing different colors, speaking a different language, calling out different names. He hit us hard, but we hit back. We were there to win, to beat him, to come out victorious in what seemed like a draining, fruitless battle. We were there for home, who listened for reports on the radio and waited to hear from us. They needed this as much as we did. Maybe we did it for them. It hurt, but the pain made the rest afterward more defined. I couldn't imagine the rest, but soon I wouldn't have to. Just get through this night, and I could rest.
More shouts from behind. It was coming. The moment to charge, to push, to try until my hands fell off or my knees broke. I dug my hands into the mud. I waited.
"Blue! 42! Hike!"
Clashing of helmets, deep-chested grunts of men being pounded, the sound of cleats sticking in the cold ground. I sprinted forward, cut to the right, and looked up just in time to see the spiraling ball appear out of a cloud of white snowflakes. I reached out, pulled it close to my chest, and ran. I don't remember sidestepping, stiff-arming, or juking. I don't remember crossing the line or feeling the slaps and pats and punches of victory from my teammates. I remember the feeling of the warm sheets on my aching legs and the sight of the snow falling outside. Outside, where it belonged. And never had a sleep seemed so deserved, saved for those who worked hardest to get it. I knew that it was over, that my hands would heal, that my soreness tomorrow would prove as a pleasantly-aching reminder that we had accomplished and survived and won. It was over. Until next week.