Through a Glass, Darkly

I know that it’s the 4th of July and people won’t really be around today, but I promised my mom I would get her some pictures of the final results of what she and I did yesterday.

Exactly six months later (because they were finished yesterday), we have some window treatments going on in here. I guess tacking it up would have been faster, but it is still decidedly not my style, and I didn’t mind waiting until I could do what I actually wanted. This is what I wanted, internet! And Mom! I am so happy with them!

We did not find an L-shaped rod, but my aunt discovered that there are joints that you can use to put two rods together. Unfortunately, it ended up not working in our tiny corner there. We just had to hang two rods, but I think it looks fine. Mike and I had to go through great pains to hang those rods. Specifically I went through great pains when the rod hit my foot and left a mark. I considered taking a picture of my wound to show you, but that seems somewhat gross. Let’s focus on my pretty windows instead.

We actually have some big changes coming up in that corner. Next week, our sunroom is going to be tiled (fare thee well, stupid carpet that still has the imprints of the furniture of the lady who lived here) and we are going to move that table into the sunroom after the tile is finished. I have two chairs like the one that is already in our kitchen (they are surprisingly comfortable as well as being cute) and we are going to find a low table to put between them and have that be a nice sitting corner for chatting and drinking coffee. And my great-grandmother’s begonia. I am going to keep it there because I remember to water it in that corner.

Any suggestions on where I should go to get a low round table (like a bistro table but those would be too tall)? I can’t wait to show you the changes to the sunroom once they are finished. Meanwhile, I am looking for the perfect rug for our about-to-be-tiled floor. (It is hard to do rug shopping on the internet. You never know if the colors are exactly what you are wanting.)

The title quote comes from a poem by Emily Dickinson.

From the back of the book:

Meet Sarah Walters, a Charleston debutante with questionable manners and an inherited weakness for bad ideas. Sarah’s brilliant older sister just dropped out of Yale to run off with an unstable graduate student from Africa. Her beautiful mother lectures her incessantly on the importance of good etiquette but tends to act cold and mysterious after she’s had her nightly gin. Still, Sarah tries to follow the rules set by the Camellia Society, the creators of the debutante code. After all, this is Charleston. Decorum means everything. But it’s not easy to be good, particularly in those summers when she and her friend run into wild Island boys in pickup trucks. When Sarah heads north to college and New York, she finds a world very different from the one promised to her by the Camellias. The girls don’t say “ma’am”; the boys don’t act like gentlemen. And then there’s love, which comes to Sarah in the form of Max, a passionate yet emotionally closed older man who leads Sarah to her dark side and then leaves her alone to find her way back. Events bring Sarah home to Charleston and give her a good, fresh look at her beginnings. The revelation of her mother’s secret – one of many sights now plain to Sarah’s eyes – shows her that the motto of her girlhood, “Once a Camellia, always a Camellia,” has more truth to it than she had ever guessed.

I saw this book on a table at Barnes and Noble and loved the cover, so I put it on hold at the library. It sounds good, right? A few problems with the description.

1. That thing about her mother and the nightly gin? I am not sure it happened in this book. If it did, it was at the very very end.

2. The very very end is basically what the last two sentences are about. The rest of the book is Sarah being miserable and awful and dating terrible men and doing drugs in New York.

3. The book jumps around in that way that literary novels are apparently supposed to do. So it would set things up and then never explain what happened (we knew that the sister was thinking about marrying the unstable graduate student, but we never actually had it confirmed that she dropped out and we never heard about the aftermath until much much later, which was maddening since we’d spent a lot of time setting it up), and we would hear about certain things more than once. It felt like it hadn’t been conceived as a novel but as a bunch of stand-alones, and for that reason it was frustrating to me.

As I was reading it, I kept feeling that, because of the way it was written, this book really wanted to be The Wonder Spot. (See also: Curtis Sittenfeld would like to have written The Wonder Spot.) It wanted to be literary and unhappy and uncertain. And, for me, it wasn’t. The book that’s described up there? That is a book I am interested in. That’s a book I can sink my teeth into – learning to prioritize tradition and being yourself, learning who you are in a strange place, coming home again to find that you have changed while everything stayed the same. The book I got was so unhappy, and Sarah was so unlikable. What Melissa Bank did in Wonder Spot was make the character likable and relatable because of her uncertainty. Sarah didn’t feel relatable to me at all. I just wanted her to stop screwing up.

Girls in Trucks was a fast read, but, for me, it was a disappointment. But that’s okay. It’s the summer. On to the next thing!

June 1 – Everything before we drove to Ultimate Frisbee and got a bad phone call.
June 2 – One of my students said some very positive and uplifting things that made me feel good about my job.
June 3 – The thunderstorm (that I had to chat online during) did not destroy my computer.
June 4 – Mike and Alison made me go out to dinner for Girls’ Night Out.
June 5 – The parents provided pizza for lunch!
June 6 – We ran in a race and also our neighbors’ children had a party with a bouncy castle!
June 7 – Really enjoyed the sermon at church and got a lot of homework done.
June 8 – Was at Mike’s school briefly. His students said I was pretty.
June 9 – Got a massive amount of work done on my portfolio for class.
June 10 – Walked a lot as I administered end-of-year test retakes. Counting steps kept me occupied.
June 11 – Reading incentive for 6th graders went really well (though it was a long day – I didn’t leave work until 9:30).
June 12 – This was not a good day. But some people let me be upset without trying to fix it, for which I am grateful.
June 13 – Went wedding dress shopping with Alisa and ate the world’s largest banana split.
June 14 – The sermon at church was, again, very good. I really like this Dr. Seuss series.
June 15 – The last day of school for students. Enough said.
June 16 – Our only workday this year. I got to wear flip flops and jeans and had my nails done after school.
June 17 – It was a very rainy day. We ran a lot of errands and I made fun of Mike for taking the longest possible route everywhere we went.
June 18 – I got my new driver’s license. I was in and out of the DMV in 15 minutes and won’t need another one for 8 years. We will never move again.
June 19 – Had breakfast and went shopping with my Aunt Nancy. And later we went to Float Night.
June 20 – Went to a friend’s wedding that was lovely and beautiful. That night we went to the pool social and got to meet some people in our neighborhood.
June 21 – I went to church on Father’s Day for the first time in a couple of years and then hung out at the pool all afternoon.
June 22 – Mike and I took a very long walk together without saying much. Sometimes it’s just nice to be with someone who lets you be quiet.
June 23 – I turned in my last assignment for my summer class. And all my Facebook friends rejoiced, because I stopped complaining about that stupid class.
June 24 – Hung out with Melissa. She made me watch So You Think You Can Dance for the first time ever and I made fun of the trashy whoreish costumes.
June 25 – Mike and I went to see Tartuffe at Triad Stage and also he took me to Ben and Jerry’s. I never get to go to Ben and Jerry’s!
June 26 – Went to Smith Mountain Lake with my friends.
June 27 – Spent most of the day floating in inner tubes at Smith Mountain Lake. And ate massive amounts of delicious food. And had a birthday cake with sparklers in it while rednecks on a boat sang Happy Birthday to me.
June 28 – Had the most delicious steak I’ve ever had at a restaurant at an Expensive National Chain Steak Restaurant. (The steak really was good.)
June 29 – I took a swimming lesson and did not die. Even though I was really scared. Also I improved quite a bit. Went to see Away We Go with Mike and Andrea, and I was skeptical going in, but I ended up liking it. I cried.
June 30 – Went for a walk with our neighbor. She makes me walk fast and burn lots of calories.

This is a book about two people who hide their true intellectual talents – one because a concierge is not expected to be smart and the other because she prefers not to stand out as an overly intelligent twelve-year-old. It is a book about the beauty and meaning of life, about paying attention to the people around us, and about redemption. And how it is always right on time.

It’s slow at first, and it’s dense in some places, but the writing is beautiful and the characters are memorable. Here’s my favorite passage. It reminded me of why I enjoy the process of thinking of things to write about, even if I am just putting them here:

Indeed, what constitutes life? Day after day, we put up the brave struggle to play our role in this phantom comedy. We are good primates, so we spend most of our time maintaining and defending our territory, so that it will protect and gratify us; climbing–or trying not to slide down–the tribe’s hierarchical ladder, and fornicating in every manner imaginable–even mere phantasms–as much for the pleasure of it as for the promised offspring. Thus we use up a considerable amount of our energy in intimidation and seduction, and these two strategies alone ensure the quest for territory, hierarchy and sex that gives life to our conatus. But none of this touches our consciousness. We talk about love, about good and evil, philosophy and civilization, and we cling to these respectable icons the way a tick clings to its nice big warm dog.

There are times, however, when life becomes a phantom comedy. As if aroused from a dream, we watch ourselves in action and, shocked to realize how much vitality is required simply to support our primitive requirements, we wonder, bewildered, where Art fits in. All our frenzied nudging and posturing suddenly becomes utterly insignificant; our cozy little nest is reduced to some futile barbarian custom, and our position in society, hard-won and eternally precarious, is but a crude vanity. As for our progeny, we view them now with new eyes, and we are horrified, because without the cloak of altruism, the reproductive act seems extraordinarily out of place. All that is left is sexual pleasure, but if it is relegated to a mere manifestation of primal abjection, it will fail in proportion, because a loveless session of gymnastics is not what we have struggled so hard to master.

Eternity eludes us.

At times like this, all the romantic, political, intellectual, metaphysical and moral beliefs that years of instruction and education have tried to inculcate in us seem to be foundering on the altar of our true nature, and society, a territorial field mined with the powerful charges of hierarchy, is sinking into the nothingness of Meaning. Exeunt rich and poor, thinkers, researchers, decision-makers, slaves, the good and the evil, the creative and the conscientious, trade unionists and individualists, progressives and conservatives; all have become primitive hominoids whose nudging and posturing, mannerisms and finery, language and codes are all located on the genetic map of an average primate, and all add up to no more than this: hold your rank, or die.

At times like this you desperately need Art. You seek to reconnect with your spiritual illusions, and you wish fervently that something might rescue you from your biological destiny, so that all poetry and grandeur will not be cast out from the world.

My book club is discussing this one in the fall. It certainly gave me quite a bit to think about. I don’t give it my highest recommendation, but I did enjoy it. All the reviews I read called it bittersweet, and it was. In the best kind of way.

I have been wanting to go to Expensive National Chain Steak Restaurant for a while, so Mike used some of our credit card points to get a gift card for us to be able to do that. We went on Sunday. And the food was really good, though I have to say that Mike makes a mean steak that is kind of hard to beat. And we have an excellent creamed spinach recipe. And we can steam broccoli with the best of them. I didn’t have the mashed potatoes, but I hear they are excellent, though The Pioneer Woman’s recipe is pretty hard to beat in my opinion. So I am not sure it was worth all that money, even though it was fun and delicious. The only reason I am even mentioning it is that Mike and I experienced a little drama in the dining room of Expensive National Chain Steak Restaurant that I would like to share with you.

When we got to Expensive National Chain Steak Restaurant, we were the only people there, and we were seated in the dining room. About ten minutes later, another couple came in and was seated at the table directly behind me. Because that makes sense. There’s nowhere else to put them, right? Mike and I rolled our eyes at each other about this development and moved on.

The servers were very attentive (what else did they have to do, really?) and the manager did come by and ask how we were doing. Things were fine, we told him. And then, shortly after he left, the lady behind me started complaining loudly about the time they went to Arizona and she never got any southwestern food and she had to eat at P.F. Chang’s for a week. This went on for quite some time. They were apparently going on another trip and she wanted him to know that she wanted a different sort of experience this time. And she was telling him. Repeatedly. To the point that I was considering turning around and telling the guy that, you know what, he really might want to consider breaking up with her. It would be in his best interests.

After listening to her diatriabe for a while, I told Mike that if the manager came back by, I might say something about why they were seated directly next to us when the entire dining room was empty. But, of course, he’d already done his rounds, so there was no need for him to come back by. So I told Mike that I was going to mention it at the hostess stand as we were leaving, just to say, you know, there’s no reason to seat people directly next to each other when the dining room is completely empty. We did spend a good amount of money and we tipped well, and the whole idea of maybe seating people across the dining room from each other is not completely insane, right?

Now, you guys know that I have been, in the past, a little bit overly aggressive in these sorts of situations. So I was trying to be careful. And I don’t like to make a fuss in restaurants, because I don’t like to be That Guy. The woman opened the door for us, and as I was passing her, I kind of said my piece. And, y’all. She looked completely hurt. I thought she might start crying. I almost made the hostess at Expensive National Chain Steak Restaurant cry. It is possible that I am a terrible person. I don’t mean to be, but it is possible.

To the manager’s credit, I think he saw that something was up, and he headed right over and said we should be talking to him instead of her. Which . . . maybe. I was certainly not trying to make her almost cry. And she’s the one who seated us. To the manager’s discredit, when Mike started explaining the situation (I tagged out and made him take over), the manager (who was well over six feet, bald and tough and intimidating) totally blamed us! He said that we should have asked to be moved and went on and on about how we should have said something and we could have been moved to a private booth. We pointed out that it had gotten worse after he came by, but it was clear he thought we were jerks and idiots. Which, maybe we are. You know me and my jerkish ways.

All I really wanted was for someone to say, “You know what, you’re right, and we’ll consider that when we’re seating people in the future.” We were seated there first and it made it kind of hard for us to ask to move. Plus, we were already settled. We didn’t really want to have to move. My whole thing was that they shouldn’t have been seated next to us to begin with. When it was clear that we were getting nowhere with the manager, we just went out to our car. Mike looked at me and said, “He just blamed us! For where we were seated!” We laughed about it for a while. I added my main concern: “Should we have said we wanted to be moved right in front of the other couple? That was the whole problem! They could hear everything we were saying!”

I guess, Expensive National Chain Steak Restaurant, this is the end of our relationship. If we go back, the manager will probably try to beat us up. Which is kind of a shame, since you didn’t seem to have a lot of customers.

This spring, I discovered that I have a special talent. If I am going up a set of stairs with a landing in the middle, I will almost certainly fall up the stairs somewhere on the second half. I don’t fall down stairs. Just up. I can’t figure out if it’s just me getting ahead of myself or losing concentration or poor coordination or some sort of harbinger of doom. One minute I was happily climbing the stairs, thinking of all the calories I was burning. The next minute I was bracing myself for a particularly graceful fall. Or trying to keep my balance in front of a bunch of middle schoolers. It is especially important not to fall in front of middle schoolers. They can see you sweat, but they cannot see you fall.

My tendency to get ahead of myself is not limited to stair climbing. No, in my attempts to be a realist, I like to scout out every possible thing that can go wrong and then worry about all of those things. At once. You can identify people like me by our large purses (besides, I need to be able to fit a book AND a water bottle in my purse as well as any and all tools that could be needed for survival) and our overflowing suitcases. In general, I have stopped apologizing for the overflowing suitcase, because I often find that, even if I don’t need all of those things, someone else might. And I think I’ve gotten better at packing anyway. (Though I did overpack for the weekend I just spent at the lake . . . but not by much. Mostly just the hairdryer. I managed to survive without it. I used pretty much everything else, though. Including my Padme beach towel.)

At the end of the school year, I got some upsetting news about what my year might look like next year. And I spent a couple of days being frustrated and sad. When I talk about it now, I still get a little bit worked up, but mostly I am trying something new. I am trying not to get ahead of myself and trying not to worry about what things will look like next year. (I say “trying” because I really do try and then things happen like me waking up in the middle of the night from a dream in which the worst possible scenario really did play out. Holy cow, talk about a nightmare.) I am trying to be faithful in this struggle, to focus on the present rather than falling up the stairs. Next year will be here soon enough. Until then, I am going to try patience and trust that the triumphant twist will either be that things work out the way I want or that I will miraculously be able to deal with whatever it is that comes. Even if I haven’t spent my entire summer worrying about it.

I use my own bags at the grocery store. We compost. We have a share in a farm and get most of our produce from there. We also buy a whole lot at the Farmer’s Market. From time to time, we shop at Trader Joe’s. (In fact, we have to drive to Chapel Hill to go to Trader Joe’s. Sometimes we catch an independent film while we are there.) In other words, Mike and I can be, well, pretentious. We know this. We don’t love it, but it’s just how things are these days. We would be crunchy except I’m not really the crunchy type. So we’ll just stick to being pretentious.

This school year, one of my favorite games to play with the band and orchestra teacher was to mention something pretentious Mike and I had done and then look at her to watch her roll her eyes.

“When Mike and I were at the Farmer’s Market this weekend . . . ”

“While we were in Chapel Hill to see Slumdog Millionaire, we stopped by Trader Joe’s and picked up some goat cheese. ”

Now, the band and orchestra teacher would want me to tell you that she recycles and she is for saving the planet. She just likes to make fun of me. She loves to give me a hard time about the Farmer’s Market and the lack of summer blockbusters in my life. And I like her so much that I encourage it. During the last week of school, I happened to see her in the hall as I was eating an apple, and I waved the core at her and said, “Just want you to know, I am taking this home to compost it!” She laughed and asked if that was true. “No. I’m taking it home to Big Bunny. But we compost her litter, so it’s kind of true.” (She rolled her eyes.) (Which, unquestionably, I deserved.)

Since it’s summertime, I kind of miss our interactions. I haven’t done very many pretentious things this summer. So far. Before I tell you about my latest and greatest pretentious move, let’s talk about olive oil. My mom went on a Mediterranean cruise and she brought Mike back some olive oil from Greece. This was The Greatest Olive Oil Of All Time and with it he made excellent hummus. After that, he declared that we must use olive oil from Greece. And we spent some time at the Teeter looking at their giant wall of olive oil. Which was, as I remarked upon at the time, incredibly ridiculous. No one needs that many choices when it comes to olive oil. I just want one from Greece.

Now we know it’s cheaper at Fresh Market, so I went there the other day specifically to pick up olive oil (who runs out of olive oil?). While I was standing in front of their slightly smaller shelf of exotic varieties of olive oil, I had a brain fart about whether we wanted Italian olive oil or Grecian olive oil. I considered calling Mike. I imagined the conversation that my fellow shoppers would overhear. “Dear, do we want olive oil from Greece or Italy?” It sort of made me sick. I looked back at the selection of many different olive oils, and I called anyway. He didn’t answer. After a minute, I managed to remember which one we needed, so I bought it – I had my own bag – and headed out to my car. At which time I called the band and orchestra teacher to tell her the tale. She was appropriately horrified. Here is a snippet from the end of our conversation.

KARI: When I was at the checkout, the cashier said, “I buy my olive oil in a big jug at Costco.”

B & O TEACHER: You know you are pretentious when the cashier at Fresh Market thinks you are pretentious.

KARI: I know. There is pretty much no hope for me at this point.

(I might have needed a break from school, but I kind of miss the other teachers.)

“When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in yourself than there was before.” -Clifton Fadiman

I hope Mr. Fadiman will make an exception in this case, because I would hate to think what seeing zombies in Pride and Prejudice might mean for my character.

I have struggled a bit with what to say about this book. I did enjoy it, to a certain extent. I laughed on almost every page in the first half. The idea that zombies are plaguing England is undeniably funny. And the fact that the Bennet sisters have traded being accomplished for being excellent slayers of the undead made me giggle about as much as you would expect. All of them, even Lydia, fight the zombies with great skill and precision. But it did drag in the second half, even with the zombies and Lady Catherine’s ninjas (ninjas and zombies!) and the fact that Charlotte got married because she had been bitten and she was desperate to get married before she died and the idea that Mr. Darcy objected to Jane in part because he thought her severe cold signaled that she was afflicted with the plague of the undead. I laughed and it was amusing, but I had had enough.

I don’t quite agree with Cheryl Klein’s review, because I didn’t necessarily object to the changes. If you are going to add zombies, you probably need to make some changes, and I can understand if those changes include things like vomit and pus and the like. But I do agree with her about it growing a bit tedious at the end. Although my reasons are different, I can’t say that I give it a wholehearted recommendation, despite the fact that I did laugh quite a lot. And stop to read something to Mike on nearly every page whenever I was around him. It just needed some editing, because, really, by the halfway point, I had gotten the general idea, and it either needed to be shorter or it needed more zombie twists to shake the story up a bit to keep my attention. (This could possibly be because I know the story too well.) What I am most curious about is what someone new to Pride and Prejudice (a middle or high school student, for example) might think of it.

I think it boils down to this: If you think you will enjoy a book called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, my guess is that you will probably get enough enjoyment out of it to make it worth reading. If nothing else, flip through it and check out how some of the more famous passages have been altered to include zombie references. It will give you a good laugh. For my own part, I am happy I read it, and would not hesitate to read another in a similar vein. Cheryl Klein had some ideas:

And if someone would like to hire me to turn Sense and Sensibility into a vampire novel (with Willoughby and Lucy Steele as the undead who bleed the sisters Dashwood dry), or Emma into a werewolf book (with Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax as a secretly mated pair) — like Mr. Bennet after his daughters are engaged, “I am quite at leisure.”

I like her Emma, and I think Persuasion could be a good choice for a vampire book. Anne Elliot is older and unmarried because she is the slayer? She turned Captain Wentworth down because Lady Russell persuaded her that marrying a vampire could never make her happy? Something to ponder.

I went through a bit of a hard time at the end of the school year. In order to keep me from being completely pessimistic, the art teacher bought me this:

It says the same thing on both sides. There is no room for pessimism when it comes to our art teacher.

The next day, I was using it and she got so excited. We had the following conversation:

ART TEACHER: You’re using your new bottle! Yay!

KARI: Yes.

ART TEACHER: How is it?

KARI: The water is bitter and tasteless.

ART TEACHER: What? Really?

KARI: No, I was just trying to be pessimistic. It’s great. I like it a lot. Thank you.

ART TEACHER: *laughs*

KARI: Actually, bitter and tasteless doesn’t even make sense. How could it be bitter and tasteless? I am so pessimistic that I am incoherent.

ART TEACHER: *laughs some more* I thought you might make Mike use it.

I think this proves that I actually deserve no friends whatsoever. Good grief.

I will take this opportunity to post one of my favorite Far Side cartoons, one I think of whenever people talk about the glass being half empty or half full. I do, in fact, love cheeseburgers.

An announcement:

“Edward Cullen, please bring Bella her sunglasses.”

Right, like Edward would be at the pool. His sunbathing would be just a little bit too dazzling.

At the pool, I like to watch the kids who run off the high dive and squeal with joy as they fly through the air with abandon. I myself have issues when it comes to swimming, and I haven’t yet managed to attempt a jump off the high dive. I have, however, managed to ask the lady who teaches swimming lessons if she might possibly be willing to show me a few things. This is progress. (In case you are curious: my issues are less about a fear of water and have more to do with the fact that when I was small and taking lessons, I could not see very well, and thus I never felt very successful at swimming. But my new vision and I are maybe ready to try to learn a little better. Maybe. But don’t rush me.)

All the teachers in my family tell me that it takes a week and a half to two weeks to unwind after the end of the school year. This year, the end of the school year was particularly rough for me in several ways and we are not even a week into our official summer break yet, so I have to confess to feeling barely human. I want to spend time with my friends, but it feels like more effort than I can manage. Not to mention the fact that when I get busy and/or overwhelmed, I tend to batten down the hatches. Which makes me feel disconnected, and which can be alienating to people. I feel that I have alienated people in the past month or so, which I didn’t intend but which I also do not know how to fix. So I end up walking across the street with a book . . . yet again. (The book I’m into right now is The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, and it’s really good, but it’s also hard to pick up once you have set it down. And I should really tell you guys what I thought of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies at some point. I will work on that.)

I thought about some of this yesterday during the sermon. This week’s Seuss story was “What Was I Scared Of?” and our pastor challenged us to think of ways in which our fears keep us from following Jesus, the places we could go and serve if our fears – including fear of overcommitment – were not keeping us back.

I have a deep and abiding fear of overcommitment that dates back to my college days. I was involved in a campus ministry, and I overcommitted to the point that I was doing campus ministry and not so much . . . college. Now, we could get into a debate about the purpose of being in college, whether it’s about being there for Jesus or about being there to learn (and whether those two things have to be separate). In fact, I think that was a fundamental disagreement between myself and the leaders of the ministry. Regardless of who was right, I do feel that I missed out on some college fun both because of my overcommitment and because of my fear of what they would think of me if I did other college things instead.

It’s funny, because I fear both being overly involved and I fear rejection. Fear of being overly scheduled causes me to say no to things, which isolates me. Fear of rejection causes me to say yes to things I may or may not be able to do, which stresses me out. I don’t know how to live in the middle, because I don’t always seem to know what it is that I want to do.

I had a bad dream the other night in which I lay on the floor crying because I was not being granted a special favor or reward (I don’t even remember what the reward was) because I was not considered special enough by the person giving the award. Meanwhile, an acquaintance (I remember exactly who it was) was being lauded, right there in front of me. For . . . I don’t know, being charming and important and having a clean, well-decorated house. Or something. This fear of rejection, of not being included and important, it even haunts my dreams.

In the sermon, our pastor questioned why people are afraid of things they have never tried. I find that to be the easiest answer of all – fear of looking stupid. But as I was listening to the sermon, thinking about my ingrained fears, I started to wonder when it is that I get to live. Almost everything I want to do causes me to run up against some fear or another – fear of failure, fear of embarrassment, fear of rejection, fear of overcommitment. What would my life look like if I was less concerned about what other people think? Our pastor concluded the sermon by saying, “Faith wins out over fear every time.” That is an inspiring thing to say, and I liked hearing it. But I don’t know exactly how it works.

My dad spoke plainly, without artifice or subterfuge. I do not think he was into poetry. But this poem describes how I feel about him and the power and influence he had on the people around him. I know it is a little long. If you can’t read it all, please at least read the last four or five stanzas.

my father moved through dooms of love
by E. E. Cummings

my father moved through dooms of love
through sames of am through haves of give,
singing each morning out of each night
my father moved through depths of height

this motionless forgetful where
turned at his glance to shining here;
that if(so timid air is firm)
under his eyes would stir and squirm

newly as from unburied which
floats the first who,his april touch
drove sleeping selves to swarm their fates
woke dreamers to their ghostly roots

and should some why completely weep
my father’s fingers brought her sleep:
vainly no smallest voice might cry
for he could feel the mountains grow.

Lifting the valleys of the sea
my father moved through griefs of joy;
praising a forehead called the moon
singing desire into begin

joy was his song and joy so pure
a heart of star by him could steer
and pure so now and now so yes
the wrists of twilight would rejoice

keen as midsummer’s keen beyond
conceiving mind of sun will stand,
so strictly(over utmost him
so hugely) stood my father’s dream

his flesh was flesh his blood was blood:
no hungry man but wished him food;
no cripple wouldn’t creep one mile
uphill to only see him smile.

Scorning the Pomp of must and shall
my father moved through dooms of feel;
his anger was as right as rain
his pity was as green as grain

septembering arms of year extend
yes humbly wealth to foe and friend
than he to foolish and to wise
offered immeasurable is

proudly and(by octobering flame
beckoned)as earth will downward climb,
so naked for immortal work
his shoulders marched against the dark

his sorrow was as true as bread:
no liar looked him in the head;
if every friend became his foe
he’d laugh and build a world with snow.

My father moved through theys of we,
singing each new leaf out of each tree
(and every child was sure that spring
danced when she heard my father sing)

then let men kill which cannot share,
let blood and flesh be mud and mire,
scheming imagine,passion willed,
freedom a drug that’s bought and sold

giving to steal and cruel kind,
a heart to fear,to doubt a mind,
to differ a disease of same,
conform the pinnacle of am

though dull were all we taste as bright,
bitter all utterly things sweet,
maggoty minus and dumb death
all we inherit,all bequeath

and nothing quite so least as truth
–i say though hate were why men breathe–
because my Father lived his soul
love is the whole and more than all

Happy Father’s Day, Dad. I sure did miss you this week when I saw all those people browsing in the card section.

With apologies to Andy Samberg (that is the edited version so my mom can watch it) and Tara Leigh Cobble.

Tonight was Float Night at our pool. I could not resist taking the camera. I didn’t even know there were floats like this pirate ship. I want one so bad.

Also, I just can’t help myself: This kid was riding on a dolphin, doing flips and stuff. hee hee hee.

Here is one where Mike is actually ON the float, because I know you guys are going to call me out on the other one:

(The pool was empty because it was rest period. No kids allowed. Also, Mike totally stole that from a kid so we could take the picture. That is how childless people roll.)

This week’s sermon was on Yertle the Turtle, not a Seuss story that I am particularly familiar with. As three of our members read some of the pertinent parts, I was struck by the idea that it was a particularly pertinent weekend to hear the story of a turtle building his kingdom on the backs of other turtles. I stayed up much too late on Saturday night reading about the election in Iran. If you haven’t been following the story, Andrew Sullivan’s blog has a lot of great information.

Yertle built his tower of turtles so that he could be the highest and therefore the ruler of everything. The scripture text was from The Sermon on the Mount, and, of course, what our pastor pointed out was that Yertle’s main problem was coveting. He described it as “fondling other people’s things in your mind.” I think that the people closest to me would definitely call me out on my coveting issues. It’s not that I want their bigger houses or their in-laws or their fathers or their jobs. I just wish for the simplicity that other people’s lives have – the in-laws who like them, the fathers who are alive, the jobs that aren’t constantly under some form of budget crunch. I really don’t feel as if I want their particular things. I just want my things to be more. I guess that makes me more like Yertle than I would really want to admit. The title of the post is what Yertle continually said as he built his tower higher. I would love to be able to be the ruler of all that I already have, and for that to be enough.

I don’t have a copy of this week’s sermon in front of me, but I know that this is where the Sermon on the Mount comes in. This is exactly why Jesus came here – not just to give us eternal life, but abundant life here on earth. I am not living in abundance when I am focusing on what I don’t have. The sermon ended with the exhortation that we are to look for those who are lowly and help raise them up rather than to be looking for more for ourselves.

Our church has started a program that has to do with giving money to overseas missions in a more intentional way. There was an article in the paper about it, and in the article, our pastor was quoted as saying, “One of the most basic Christian principles is giving out of your need. That means that if you are lonely, Christ calls us to befriend someone. If you are depressed, find someone to cheer up. Trouble staying sober? Sponsor another. Finding it difficult to not have someone forgive you? Forgive someone that doesn’t deserve it . . . And to this the point of where we are now: needing to make more money to thrive? Then give more of it away to what God is doing in the world.”

I am pretty sure that that is also what the Sermon on the Mount is talking about: contentment, caring for others, giving generously. Not out of our own strength but in response to God’s great gifts to us. And that’s where I get caught up, because I just keep on seeing God’s great gifts for everyone else. So I have decided to follow our pastor’s advice and start thinking of ways to give out of my own needs. I hang back and live out of fear that people (and God) don’t really want to be around me. I am going to try to reach out to people in the same condition so that I can see how much I have been given.

I loved your responses to last week’s sermon. Anybody got any thoughts on choosing contentment or giving out of your own need? I love hearing how people live out some of these principles in practical ways.

This spring I had the very great pleasure of walking our art teacher through the Harry Potter books. Oh, the texts that she sent me as she raced through them. Oh, the conversations we had. Oh, the ways I listened to her predictions and tried to keep my not-very-good poker face. I even gave her a copy of our predictions, just so she would know exactly what levels of craziness we reached in those heady days of 2007.

It is sometimes hard for me to share my favorite things with the people around me (if they don’t like them, it is a barrier between us, but she and I have deep deep agreement about the Twilight series, so I figured she was safe), but she responded in all the ways I could possibly have hoped: extreme enthusiasm, crazy theories to match our own, and an intense desire to read the series again as soon as she had finished. It was one of the things I will remember about this spring, that gleam in her eye as I would hand her the next book, the texts she sent that simply said things like, “NOOOOOOOOOOO!”

The kids, of course, have already read Harry Potter, so I had to be satisfied by their excitement for things like Breaking Dawn and The Last Olympian. Not to mention the fact that I lent one of my Very Special Eighth Graders my own personal copy of The Beekeeper’s Apprentice and when she handed it back to me, her eyes were wide as she said, “That book was amazing.” Which is also, I believe, what she said about Breaking Dawn, but when it comes to middle schoolers, amazing is about as good as it can possibly get. I will take it.

That is one of the things I love the most about my job – handing a kid the book that he has been waiting for, and hearing his reaction in the days to come. There are people who did those things for me, who handed me the right books and who listened to me talk about them, and those things mattered. I try to remember that when the same girl comes in for the fifth time in one week and I absolutely cannot think of one more thing to give her. It matters that I take the time to look. So I turn to the shelves, hoping something, anything will jump out at me.

This year, one of my personal goals was to speak encouragingly and positively to one student every day. Not just a, “Hi, how are you doing,” kind of positivity, but to let that student know that he or she matters to me. Sometimes it was in a rebuke, when I would take a student aside and say, “You are better than this and I know it and you know it,” and sometimes it was to celebrate a success, and sometimes it was just because I wanted to let them know that I like them a whole lot and I am rooting for them. That they should know that someone is in their corner and cares about what happens to them. It changed the shape of my day, as I looked for those things, as I reached out to the kids. And you can tell that they responded, too.

And now it is the summer. The year limped to an ending with all the testing and retesting that the state requires, and I have my own personal disappointments and apprehensions about what next year will bring. But I also have a sneaking suspicion that what I will remember about this year are the victories – the pride on a student’s face when she received her “library class” award, the way he looked me in the eye when I told him I knew he could act better than that . . . and then he did, the 8th grade boys who moved anything and everything I asked them to, all those students who brought me poems, my Battle of the Books kid whose reading score grew over 10 points this year, the way she glowed when I wrote a good note to her mom, the look on his face when he handed me the book he bought for me at the book fair, talking with all those kids about how awesome The Hunger Games is. They are good kids and I am lucky to work with them. My relationship with them is different than that of a classroom teacher, but they are special to me just the same. It’s good for me to know that. I gave up a job I liked and that I was good at to be with them because I thought I could do it. And I am starting to believe that I can.

I had a bad Friday. Inspired by this glorious blog post, I spent some time watching clips of Julia Sugarbaker on YouTube. Julia explaining the details of the night that the lights went out in Georgia. (That one is my all-time favorite.) Julia letting everyone exactly where the world’s problems come from. Julia being a big-mouth broad. Julia standing up for feminism. Julia standing up for feminism again. Julia doing her best Scarlett O’Hara. Um, do you get the picture? It made me feel a whole heck of a lot better.

And, hey, why aren’t there shows like Designing Women on anymore?

I have not been tried by fire. No, it’s the ordinary struggles of life that challenge me and wear me down, the loss and pain that we all eventually face. And I am not sure that I am very faithful, for at the first sign of trouble, I resign myself to second-class citizenship, sure that God is saving his best blessings for others.

This summer, our pastor is doing a series on lessons from Dr. Seuss. The past two summers, he has focused on parables during Ordinary Time, but this year, he says, he wanted to do something different, something to help us encounter the gospel in new ways in the hopes that we would also find new ways to live out what we believe. Plus, children’s books are awesome. Especially Dr. Seuss.

The first sermon was on my mom’s favorite Dr. Seuss, Horton Hatches the Egg. We never had a copy, but my grandma did, and I remember being at her house and my mom reading it to us, especially the famous line, “I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An elephant’s faithful, one hundred percent.” It is a very special book for me – my mom doesn’t have many favorites, so when she points something out, I pay attention. It always seemed like our own special family book, rather than one everybody knows.

The sermon focused on two things: 1 Peter’s encouragement that we remain faithful and the reminder that, like the mini-winged Horton that hatches from the egg, God often surprises our faithfulness with a triumphant twist. He said:

This is the good news: our God acted, our God is acting, and our God will act in times to come. It is the triumphant twist of the continuing revelation of God that there is indeed a reason to live faithfully, trusting not in ourselves but in the great mercy that makes us new.

It seems easier to me to believe in the triumphant twist of the gospel at Easter, when we are dressed up and singing our favorite Easter hymns. It is harder to see it when your job is on the line, when people are sick, when you feel rejected again. I would tell you that I believe in redemption, but I am not always willing to be like Horton and do the difficult work of investing in people, of being the hands and feet who take life’s hardships and help turn them into something good. Horton was sitting, it’s true, but his sitting was work rather than laziness or inaction. I can’t always say the same. And Mike will tell you that I believe a lot of wrong things about how much God cares about my everyday life.

The answers, the redemption we are given aren’t usually as obvious as the Horton/Mayzie hybrid that hatched from the egg. Nor can I claim that I will be 100% faithful to God’s call and the truth of the gospel, but I am going to try to use this summer to think about what it means to be faithful in the ordinary struggles of every day.

I am usually pretty shy about ending entries with a question, especially because it’s so sad and empty if no one answers. But I would love some feedback on these thoughts. What inspires you to persevere when you feel that life has given you a beating? And how do you live it out, whether action or patient inaction?

I keep telling Mike that being at the pool is going to give me plenty of fodder to write my Great American Novel. There are so many things to observe at the pool, so much of humanity (and flesh) on display. It reminds me that there really is nothing new under the sun. (Except possibly my blindingly white skin.)

It is still hard for me to watch those girls that I never was: the confident ones in the tiny bikinis with their perfect tans and their perfect hair and their perfect boyfriends to rub sunscreen on their shoulders (get a room!). I relate more to the ones who are holding back, shy in their bathing suits, aware of their flaws. Of course, they don’t have to be wearing bathing suits to be that shy. I see it at school, too – the girls who, somehow, aren’t awkward at all. And the girls who are profoundly aware of their own awkwardness. I am sometimes overwhelmed with the feeling that I need to take these girls aside, the shy bathing-suit clad, the awkward, and tell them: You might not be like the girls over there, but you are still wonderful. There are things I wouldn’t say, because I know they would not hear them: You will look back and realize you were looking pretty great after all. And: At the same time, you would never go back and relive these days for anything.

But I know, like all the rest of us, they will have to figure those things out for themselves. So I sit in my chair and watch and pray and root for them to find their way.

There has been a lot of dress talk in my house lately. I have seen a lot of magazine pictures that I know I could never live up to, all those tall leggy women who tower over me. I have been very tired and my class has been very frustrating and the economy has everyone worried about their jobs. I have forgotten things I needed to do. I have not lived up to my own expectations. I have not felt beautiful, inside or out. In the midst of that, I ran across this poem.

“Perfect Dress” by Marisa de los Santos

It’s here in a student’s journal, a blue confession
in smudged, erasable ink: “I can’t stop hoping
I’ll wake up, suddenly beautiful,” and isn’t it strange
how we want it, despite all we know? To be at last

the girl in the photography, cobalt-eyed, hair puddling
like cognac, or the one stretched at the ocean’s edge,
curved and light-drenched, more like a beach than
the beach. I confess I have longed to stalk runways,

leggy, otherworldly as a mantis, to balance a head
like a Fabergé egg on the longest, most elegant neck.
Today in the checkout line, I saw a magazine
claiming to know “How to Find the Perfect Dress

for that Perfect Evening,” and I felt the old pull, flare
of the pilgrim’s twin flames, desire and faith. At fifteen,
I spent weeks at the search. Going from store to store,
hands thirsty for shine, I reached for polyester satin,

machine-made lace, petunia- and Easter egg-colored,
brilliant and flammable. Nothing haute about this
couture but my hopes for it, as I tugged it on
and waited for my one, true body to emerge.

(Picture the angel inside uncut marble, articulation
of wings and robes poised in expectation of release.)
What I wanted was ordinary miracle, the falling away
of everything wrong. Silly maybe or maybe

I was right, that there’s no limit to the ways eternity
suggests itself, that one day I’ll slip into it, say
floor-length plum charmeuse. Someone will murmur,
“She is sublime,” will be precisely right, and I will step,

with incandescent shoulders, into my perfect evening.

Sometimes the ordinary miracle comes in charmeuse or a good hair day or the perfect bathing suit, but even better is when it comes from relationships that give you confidence, the hard work of exercise and study, time taken for prayer and reflection. These days, I will put on the ordinary miracles of drinking coffee in my sunroom, a sky so blue you wouldn’t believe it, and pushing a three-year-old “not too high” on a swing. They may not make everything that is wrong fall away, but they are miracles nonetheless.

My friend Nancy is a faster runner than I am. So when I run with her, like I did on Saturday, I always have faster finishing times. Even though I can’t quite keep up with her. I was about a minute behind her on Saturday, but 31:34 is my best finishing time yet, so I am pretty happy with it. Hopefully I will be able to cut it under 31:00 sometime soon. (The last race I was in, I ran the entire thing and had a slower time. This time I walked a bit and had a faster time. I can never figure it out.)

The race was a bit disorganized, but the course was good – not too hilly. The storms we’ve had this week meant that the weather was nice and cool. Overall, it was a good race, except for one thing: THE JUGGLER.

You guys, I know this race was for the Greensboro Children’s Museum. But did that mean that the man who passed me when I was walking needed to be JUGGLING? No, he was not wearing a clown suit. No, he was not dressed as a magician. No, he did not appear to be an employee of the museum. He was just a man. Who was running along. And JUGGLING. (I like juggling. My brother can juggle. But there’s juggling and then there’s JUGGLING. The second is what we were dealing with here.)

I will perhaps need to pray for forgiveness about this issue, because I thought many hateful things about THE JUGGLER during the race. First, I wanted to kick him. For showing off. Like a jerk. At least it took my mind off of the running because I was trying to decide if he thought he was being whimsical (answer: NO) or if he thought he was funny (answer: NO) or if he just had no idea how jerkish it looked on the race (answer: possibly, but I still don’t forgive him). Then he dropped some of his juggling balls and I was secretly pleased. Which is, I know, deeply unkind. Exercise is supposed to give you endorphins, but maybe for me it does just the opposite. As we continued running (I felt the need to run again because THE JUGGLER filled me with anger that gave me energy), I considered asking one of the policemen who was monitoring the race to either take him down or to call ahead and have one of the other policemen be ready to take him down. At one point, there were some policemen who were standing together who made a comment about him being crazy. I was so irritated that I actually tried to catch one of their eyes so that someone would sympathize with my disgust. But none of them would make eye contact with me. Mike did not seem distressed by THE JUGGLER. But I? I needed to take him down. (In fact, THE JUGGLER nearly took himself down when he dropped the balls again close to the finish and one of them started rolling into the lane of traffic that wasn’t actually closed.)

I do not know what happened to THE JUGGLER after we all crossed the finish line. I just know that if he and I meet again on another race, I will be ready. To pelt him with rocks. That I will not be juggling, in case you were wondering.

June has been deeply unkind to me thus far, so you will have to excuse the delay. I didn’t want to think about good things. I wanted to wallow.

May 1 – I made the best cauliflower side dish EVER. (Basically this without the pasta. Make sure you get it very brown and soft.)
May 2 – Mike and I ran an entire 5K together!
May 3 – I did a lot of math so we could hang some tiles correctly, and it worked! Also, Mike grilled rutabaga and it was awesome.
May 4 – Alisa and I took Emily out to eat for her birthday.
May 5 – Mike and I went to dinner and Triad Stage. The play was sad but it was an amazing one-woman performance.
May 6 – I had coffee with our neighbor and we talked about families and it turns out we have some things in common.
May 7 – I grouted my mosaic after school and it looks awesome.
May 8 – I forced Mike to watch Dead Poets Society with me and I loved every minute.
May 9 – We got up early and had strawberry pancakes at the Farmer’s Market. And had a good (early) Mother’s Day dinner with my mom.
May 10 – Really great Youth Sunday at church. And Isaac came over and hung out while his parents saw Star Trek.
May 11 – I wore a shirt I don’t often wear and got a lot of compliments. Yay for ironing!
May 12 – Nice letter from one of my Battle of the Books students calling the competition one of the best days of his life.
May 13 – Mike and I went to Natty’s for dinner.
May 14 – We made an awesome dinner that made everyone jealous of our cooking skills – grilled chicken sandwiches, that awesome cauliflower again, and spicy roasted green beans.
May 15 – At school, the parents provided lunch from Panera.
May 16 – I saw Star Trek and loved every minute.
May 17 – Threw a wedding shower and used my grandma’s china.
May 18 – Made an appointment for an actual physical with an actual doctor. (This has been a long time coming.)
May 19 – Survived the first day of testing and gave a lot of people bathroom breaks.
May 20 – Took a long walk by myself after church.
May 21 – Last day of testing! Went to dinner with Andrea and Alisa to celebrate Andrea’s official doctoral ceremony.
May 22 – Our neighbors took us out to dinner.
May 23 – The pool opened and Mike and I hung out there all day.
May 24 – I bought a new beach towel and floppy hat. Also, I slept for 11 hours.
May 25 – More pool time.
May 26 – Mike made me a delicious hamburger to eat before the chorus concert (and did not eat it himself).
May 27 – I had to have an online chat for my class, which sucked. However, at least I did not accidentally have the microphone on when I was complaining.
May 28 – Good book club discussion about Out Stealing Horses.
May 29 – One of Mike’s students and her parents took us out to dinner to say thanks for a great year.
May 30 – Mike threw an Anne of Green Gables party for some of his students he read the book with this year. They came over and we watched the DVD. I kept thinking I would write an actual entry about how cute this was, but you will just have to deal with the abbreviated version. And then Alisa got engaged! It was a very full day.
May 31 – I had to do a lot of homework, but I watched many episodes of Gilmore Girls while doing so.

Mike and I braved opening day at the pool on Memorial Day weekend. And by “braved” I mean “walked across the street for.” You don’t have to be very brave to go to the pool when it is right across the street. Except for the part where you have to put on a bathing suit and expose your translucent skin to your entire neighborhood. That part is still somewhat frightening.

Having never been a pool person, I was intrigued to see what sorts of things we were lacking. We took delicious tuna sandwiches, but we didn’t have the appropriate pool snacks. We have so many cloth napkins that I have designated a few of them to be pool napkins that we can use and I can wash with the towels. I was particularly proud of that move. We could probably use a different pool bag, one that is more waterproof. We had not taken the time to draw tattoos on ourselves that said things like “Property of Alex Black.” (Actually, most people didn’t do that. Just a few of the teenage girls. Alex Black must be quite a catch himself.) And, most importantly, Mike was emphatic that my towel is wildly uncool.

When Mike and I were engaged, before we had a falling-out with his parents, they gave me some beach towels for my birthday. Mike had told them that I was a Star Wars fan (this was around the time that Episode 1 came out), so they bought me some Star Wars towels. One has Padme on it, and one has C-3PO. I still have them and use them happily, much to Mike’s embarrassment. His students gave him a beach towel for his birthday, knowing that he was planning on joining the pool. So he carried his fancy Nautica towel to the pool, while I busted out the old Padme towel. It’s red. And has Padme’s face on it. (You would think Mike and his deep affection for Natalie Portman would approve of my towel, but no.)

The question was then whether I should cave and buy a new towel or whether I should stand on my principles. I like my Padme towel, and it does not embarrass me in the least. I kind of enjoy being the crazy Star Wars towel lady. However, it is ten years old, and it’s probably okay for me to retire it. We tried to get our neighbors to mediate. They supported me, but they have very nice towels themselves. I was torn. Be an individual? Or keep in mind that Mike and I live in the neighborhood in which he teaches and he does have a reputation to keep up?

Sadly, my need for approval won out. We went to Target and I bought a perfectly nice (read: BORING) towel with blue stripes. To my credit, I did check to see if there were new nerdy towels I could buy. Unfortunately, Target had no Star Trek towels. I would have been so excited to own my own Mr. Spock towel. So would you. Admit it.

Today, we went to the pool after work, and our neighbor said, “Is that your towel?” I said yes, rather dejectedly. He smiled at me and said, “I liked the Star Wars one better.” (Did we win the neighbor lottery or what?)

“Time is important to me now, I tell myself. Not that it should pass quickly or slowly, but be only time, be something I live inside and fill with physical things and activities that I can divide it up by, so that it grows distinct to me and does not vanish when I am not looking.” -Per Petterson, Out Stealing Horses

I know it was on all these top ten lists, but, honestly, I did not enjoy Out Stealing Horses. I did, however, enjoy the discussion my book club had of it tonight. I read the above quote and we talked about how the main character in the book was at a crossroads, that he was being given the opportunity to make something of his time before it vanished completely. That is the sort of sentiment that makes you think of different things at different stages in your life. Right now (much like I said the other day), I think about all the worry and fear and anger I have been caught up in lately, and the choices I have to fill my time with things and activities that are more constructive.

(I don’t recommend the book. But some of the descriptions were quite lovely.)

Sorry for the radio silence. Last week was the Big Bad Testing at school, and there were things that happened, but none of them really germinated into anything that I could phrase in a meaningful way. It was just a long, hard week. On Wednesday, I didn’t even do yoga at church. I was just too tired. Too tired to do something as relaxing as yoga is pretty tired. I took a lot of walks this week instead of runs, and I read a most excellent book. But I don’t necessarily have more to say about it than that.

This is the time of year when it’s hard not to look ahead to what is next. The pool is open and I wish it was summer, but we still have three weeks of school left. The students are as restless as I am. I am taking a summer class that was supposed to be online, except that it’s really not online. (I can’t figure it out, either.) I am so ready for summer vacation. One of the hugest compliments I was ever paid was when someone thanked me for being “very present” in a particular conversation. It has stayed with me, because I think that showing up and being there is one of the best and hardest things you can ever do. This time of year, that is particularly hard. I am showing up, but I am having trouble being there.

As I was thinking about living in the moment, I ran across this poem. I read it at some point last year, but it really resonated with me last week.

Be Drunk by Charles Baudelaire
Translated by Louis Simpson

You have to be always drunk. That’s all there is to it—it’s the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.

But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: “It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish.”

These are all things that are important to me: wonderful food, one word sliding into the next until sentences form into something meaningful, and the love of God that compels us to consider others rather than just ourselves. I encourage you, too, to be drunk on the wonderful blessings that we have been given rather than being broken down by the weight of responsibility and tasks. As the poet says, it’s the only way.

I vividly remember the day that “The Best of Both Worlds, Part II” aired. That was the fourth season premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Wikipedia tells me that it aired in September of 1990. I don’t know when it was, exactly. I just know that we had been anticipating it all. summer. long. Some of my dad’s friends were over, and we made air-popped popcorn, and we waited to see whether Captain Picard was going to survive his encounter with the Borg. Yes, I was a particularly nerdy 11-year-old.

If that entire paragraph is gibberish to you, well, that’s okay. I am married to a man who has no real concept of Captain Picard or the Borg. He’s never seen the show in any of its incarnations, and, before Saturday, he had only seen two of the movies (Khan and the one with the whales). In fact, the other night, I went to see what Wil Wheaton thought about the new movie, and I was watching one of his videos and Mike asked who that was. “Wil Wheaton,” I said. And he looked confused. I am not sure he knows what Tribbles are, either.

But, because he is a loving husband, and because the reviews were very very good, he went to see Star Trek with me on Saturday with the art teacher and her husband. The art teacher and I had concocted a plan in which we would make Mike believe that he was coming to hang out with her husband while the two men tolerated our Star Trek fun. In reality, the art teacher, her husband, and I were all psyched about the movie, and Mike was the only one who had no idea about the characters. But I didn’t even have to try to trick him. He came along willingly.

So here’s the thing. Star Trek was one of my dad’s favorite shows. I remember sometimes I would wake up late at night and get up and he would be watching it. I remember when The Next Generation started and he was unimpressed at first, and I remember how it gradually came to be something that we would all watch as a family on Saturday nights. And then it was one of my deep and abiding passions, the relationships between those characters as they explored the universe together. I had youth group on Saturday nights, so I would tape it (I programmed the VCR, people) and watch it after church on Sundays. I have seen every episode of The Next Generation and I have seen almost all of the original series. (And, uh, somewhere I still have some t-shirts with the Enterprise on them. Did I mention that I was a particularly nerdy kid?) A new Star Trek movie was difficult for me to even consider without my dad. In fact, I didn’t watch the trailer for months. I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to know.

But the reviews were so good and people were so excited and I knew Mike would hold my hand, so we went on Saturday to see the movie. And, oh, it was glorious. I loved every minute of it. I loved new Spock and new McCoy and new Scotty. And new Kirk was pretty good, too. It was funny and touching and hit all the right notes. There were so many delicious cliches and shout-outs that made me grin. When we left, Mike said, “It was funny!” Of course it was funny! The show was always funny and campy and awesome, even while it was putting forth messages about tolerance and diversity and peace.

I thought I might cry a bit during the movie, especially if they used the traditional music during the credits. But I didn’t. I held it all in until the ride home, when I started thinking about my dad and whether he would have liked it. I think he would have. I think he would have hated the time-travel stuff, but I think he would have enjoyed the movie, watching all the characters meet each other and begin to feel out those relationships. I think he would have liked for there to be some new life in one of his favorite series. I would have liked to talk to him about it. But, instead, I wiped my eyes and began to explain some of those references that I know that Mike wouldn’t have understood. So that he, too, could join in the fun.

1. It’s good. Very good, even.

2. But I don’t LIKE Frank and April Wheeler.

3. And I saw the movie and I know how it ends.

4. I don’t know if you have heard this or not, but it was a desperately sad movie.

5. Is there any way to finish the book without getting depressed?

I try to be on the lookout for grace in my life – the beautiful things that come to us that we do not deserve. I have been blessed lately with some small graces – friends cheering me on at the finish line of a race (that I ran in its entirety with my husband), a wonderful time with my family for Mother’s Day, an afternoon spent with a delightful three-year-old, homemade strawberry shortcake.

This year, my school got a new band and orchestra director, and getting to know her has been a pure delight. She is a wonderful person – she is dedicated to the students, she has a great sense of humor, and she takes her faith and her beliefs very seriously. Spending time with her always brightens my day. So even though I have no idea whatsoever about music, I went to the orchestra concert tonight to lend her my support.

I don’t know the last time you went to a school concert, but they aren’t exactly glamorous affairs. Ours are in the gym. I sat under the garish lights (one of them was buzzing) and watched our orchestra director, dressed in her finest, help those students coax music out of their instruments. She was, quite simply, the embodiment of grace. There was no question in my mind that she is doing what she was born to do. To watch her was, for me, a holy moment.

After the concert tonight, after seeing my friend in her element, I could not get “Grace” by U2 out of my head. I have begun to call myself a teacher, but I don’t always know exactly what that means. Tonight it meant bringing beauty to an old gym where you wouldn’t expect to find it. And my friend did that just by being exactly who she is.

When she goes to work
You can hear the strings
Grace finds beauty in everything
Grace finds goodness in everything

“Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota” by James Wright

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year’s horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

When I was little, we gave my dad a hammock. I am guessing it was for Father’s Day. I remember piling into it with him, and my impression has always been that he really liked it. When we moved, we didn’t have a place for it. Although there were plans to get it set up, first at one house and then another, my dad never got around to doing that. There were no trees, and there was no hammock stand, so it spent a great deal of time in the garage. And when Mike made some noise about wanting a hammock last year, my mom let him have my dad’s old one. Which makes me very happy.

Apparently, Mike’s natural habitat is the hammock. He spends every possible minute there. That is not just a thing that a wife would say, either. I have witnesses: The neighbors often ask me how much hammock time Mike is planning on for a weekend. With the implicit assumption that he’ll be spending quite a bit of time there. And, obviously, I have spent some time there myself. I do not deny it. I have no wish to deny it. I do, however, enjoy looking at Mike in the hammock and accusing him of wasting his life. Sometimes I read the entire poem to him. Or . . . AT him. Accusingly.

Today we watched the son of some of our friends, and he and I had some hammock time, too.

If this is wasting my life, well, sign me up.

(P.S. I do know that the poem is about “wasting your life” by not enjoying the beauty around you. It’s just fun to give Mike a hard time.)

A few weeks ago, I called Andrea and complained that I had been so incredibly out of sorts lately. That nothing I did seemed to make any difference: not prayer, not church, not reflection, not exercise. I had struggled and struggled for a couple of weeks, and then one day, pushed to the brink, I picked up one of my favorite books, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, and it was as if all of my tension melted away as I read the first chapter. I wasn’t complaining about the book to Andrea. No, what I was complaining about was that I am such a heathen that what helps me when I am down is to read a novel. A good novel, to be sure, but . . . a novel. Not even a religious text.

A few days later, another librarian emailed me an article from the Telegraph entitled “Reading ‘can help reduce stress.’” Well. You don’t say.

Their stress levels and heart rate were increased through a range of tests and exercises before they were then tested with a variety of traditional methods of relaxation.

Reading worked best, reducing stress levels by 68 per cent, said cognitive neuropsychologist Dr David Lewis . . . [He] said: “Losing yourself in a book is the ultimate relaxation.”

I am not convinced that this makes me less of a heathen, but at least there is SCIENCE on my side. Also, I hope I can use this in my favor at some point, when Mike complains that I am reading instead of folding the laundry. I am not goofing off. I am REDUCING MY STRESS which is a VERY IMPORTANT part of living a LONG AND HEALTHY LIFE. I imagine that this argument would be especially convincing if I started reading novels with shirtless men on the front. I am going to go and buy some just for this purpose.

A Blessing by James Wright

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

Last month, April had a post about homemade gifts and said that the first three people to comment would get a homemade gift from her. I commented, because . . . I guess because I am selfish. I like getting things in the mail. I think these sorts of internet things are nice – April and I really only know each other from reading blogs, but she still sent me a lovely homemade gift. She made me a bookmark because she knows I like to read.

Here is what the outside of the bookmark looks like:

Here it is on display in the book that I am reading (NEW MARY RUSSELL OMG!). Notice how I color-coordinated the bookmark and the cover:

(Just kidding, that was totally a coincidence. I am just not the kind of person who can manage to coordinate a book with a bookmark.)

And here is a full shot of it. It is so delightful.

According to April, the rules are that I have to send out three homemade gifts myself to the first three commenters on this blog entry. I am not so good with the homemade gifts unless they involve baking. However, I do have some ideas that do not involve baking. So I will do my very best. If you would like to win a homemade gift from me, please comment, and I will email you to get your address (and your interests if you are one of my silent readers)!

I kept meaning to mention the Academy of American Poets’ Free Verse Project. They encouraged people to take pictures of poetry “in the wild.” There are some great pictures there – here are a few of my favorites.

“The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams

“Miracles” by Walt Whitman

And, my favorite:

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot

Go to the Free Verse Project page to see more, or check out their Flickr pool.

With all due respect, Mr. Eliot, I think that March was a whole lot more cruel than April this year.

1. Dinner at Lucky 32 for Andrea’s birthday. Also, I spanked both Alisa and Andrea in Uno.
2. Solaris for my friend Ginny’s birthday. Half-price tapas!
3. I went out to dinner for the third night in a row. Practically unheard of.
4. Spring is here! We finally took the flannel sheets off of our bed.
5. Napped in the hammock after church.
6. MY TEAM WON THE NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP!
7. Rydell gave me pizza after my class. And let me watch American Idol with him.
8. Alisa and I went to bed boringly early. (Mike was out of town. This was our big girls’ night.)
9. Went for a long walk with a friend.
10. Some of my 8th graders were amazingly kind to each other during intramurals. It almost made me tear up.
11. Mike and I had a very productive errand run.
12. We had caramel cake at my grandma’s house. And my strawberry tart was awesome. And we had fun at our friends’ house for lunch. A good day.
13. Alisa brought home chocolate cake and we ate it with strawberries.
14. Finished a book in bed while drinking coffee.
15. This was the start of our vacation, so it could be several things, but I thoroughly enjoyed sitting on the floor of the Charlotte airport and reading one of my favorite books.
16. Mike and I had a great four-mile run.
17. Tennis lesson and then shoe shopping.
18. I floated in the pool and read. All day.
19. We got back from vacation early and got lots of things accomplished in the evening.
20. I was a judge at the Elementary Battle of the Books. Also, I got to have lunch out. (This is a big deal for teachers.)
21. I wrote a really good letter of recommendation for our school’s teacher of the year. When she read it, we shared a moment.
22. Some people were very affirming of me at a planning meeting.
23. I spoke at the school board meeting and my hair looked really good. (I saw a replay on TV the next day.) Also, beer with lots of librarians later on. (Librarians gone wild!)
24. I wrote seven pages of my paper so that I could hang out with Scott the rest of the weekend without guilt.
25. Zoo! Steak! Margaritas! Strawberry shortcake!
26. Napped in the hammock. Again.
27. Mike mixed up some cookie dough batter for me so I could finish my paper and still take homemade cookies to class.
28. My last class of the semester! Everyone seemed to appreciate my final project. Also, there were snacks. I love snacks.
29. School Superintendent spoke at church and he recognized me. This might not be good. He might think I am stalking him. Especially since I asked him a question. But it was funny. And will continue to be so until he takes out a restraining order on me.
30. I made a mosaic after school. And 339 people shared poems with me.

Minutes it took to go to the grocery store so I could buy salsa so I can make black bean cakes: 11 (On one hand, not that long. On the other, I am so hungry, they’d better be the best black bean cakes known to man.)

Mosaics that I made that just need to be grouted: 1 (It was a very therapeutic way to spend my time after school. Making art. Or something close to art.)

Minutes I actually sat down and ate lunch: 4 or 5 (Too busy passing out poems!)

Nerves this morning about Poem in Your Pocket Day: Does this thing go to 11? Okay, I’ll say 11.

Number of students, staff, and faculty who brought me poems today: 339 (THREE HUNDRED THIRTY-NINE! Y’ALL!! My secret goal was 300, and there were two classes that were going to come that ended up falling through because the teacher got sick. With them, I would have been close to 400!)

Number of poems written by the person who gave them to me: 150

Times I read selections from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” out loud: 15-20 (The kids were less interested in my poem than I thought they would be, but when I read to them, I usually got good response. Also, I told them I picked that poem because I think disturbing the universe and speaking your truth and asking difficult questions is what poetry is about. And they liked that.)

People who seemed disappointed with the poem/candy prize: maybe 1

And this is not a number, but one of the students who has tested my patience the most this year brought me a poem (The Tiger by William Blake, if you were wondering), and I gave him a laminated Shel Silverstein poem in return. At the end of the day, he came up to me and said, “I read that poem you gave me, and it’s really funny.” That is, honestly, the best interaction we’ve had all year. Thank you, Poem in Your Pocket Day, from the bottom of my heart. I can’t wait for next year.

ETA: I feel guilty not including a poem in this post. So here is a poem for the end of National Poetry Month. It’s by Walt Whitman, and if I had only given out one poem today instead of dozens of different ones, this is what I would have given, if only because of the last line.

As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days by Walt Whitman

As I walk these broad majestic days of peace,
(For the war, the struggle of blood finish’d, wherein, O terrific Ideal,
Against vast odds erewhile having gloriously won,
Now thou stridest on, yet perhaps in time toward denser wars,
Perhaps to engage in time in still more dreadful contests, dangers,
Longer campaigns and crises, labors beyond all others,)
Around me I hear that eclat of the world, politics, produce,
The announcements of recognized things, science,
The approved growth of cities and the spread of inventions.

I see the ships, (they will last a few years,)
The vast factories with their foremen and workmen,
And hear the indorsement of all, and do not object to it.

But I too announce solid things,
Science, ships, politics, cities, factories, are not nothing,
Like a grand procession to music of distant bugles pouring,
triumphantly moving, and grander heaving in sight,
They stand for realities—all is as it should be.

Then my realities;
What else is so real as mine?
Libertad and the divine average, freedom to every slave on the face of the earth,
The rapt promises and luminé of seers, the spiritual world, these centuries-lasting songs,
And our visions, the visions of poets, the most solid announcements of any.

It is time, once again, for me to talk about how wonderful Alexander McCall Smith is and how beautiful his books are. This is from the latest in The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, Tea Time for the Traditionally Built.

She took a sip of her tea. Nothing was forever, not her, not Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, not the house, not even Botswana. She had recently read that scientists could work out exactly when everything would come to an end and the earth would be swallowed up by the sun–or was it by some other planet?–and there would be nothing left of any of us. That had made her think, and she had raised the issue with her friend, Bishop Trevor Mwamba, over tea outside the Anglican Cathedral, one Sunday morning after the seven thirty service in English and just before the nine thirty service in Setswana. “Is it true,” she had asked, “that the sun will swallow up the earth and that will be that?”

Trevor had smiled. “I do not think that this is going to happen in the near future, Mma Ramotswe,” he had replied. Certainly not by next Tuesday, when the Botswana Mothers’ Union meets. And, frankly, I don’t think that we should worry too much about that. Our concern should be what is happening right now. There is plenty of work for love to do, you know.”

There is plenty of work for love to do. That was a wonderful way of putting it, and she had told him that this could be the best possible motto for anybody to have.

She finished her tea and began to walk back into the house. There is plenty of work for love to do. Yes. There was breakfast to be made, and letters to be answered, and the problems in clients’ lives to be sorted out. There was quite enough to do without worrying about the sun consuming the earth.

I read it to Mike, and he said, “Jesus said that.” I started to disagree, that Jesus didn’t specifically say that about love and work, and he added, “Don’t worry about tomorrow, Jesus said that.” That’s true, he did. But, you know, even if Jesus didn’t say that there is plenty of work for love to do, I think that was a huge part of what he wanted to teach us here on earth. I see it at church, when I see people stepping forward to make sure that hungry children have food on the weekends. I see it at school, as teachers and staff love students because of their faith and because they feel called to education. I see it in my friends who have chosen to live in neighborhoods where they feel they can make a difference. I see it in my friends who work with youth, my friends from the public library, and my friends who volunteer at the homeless shelter. There is so much work that can be done. There are so many hurting people. It is so easy to give and give and give and get burned out, but it helps, sometimes, to remember that we don’t have to give out of ourselves. We can give out of that love that has been so freely given to us.

I have to agree with Mma Ramotswe. As mottos go, that is a pretty darn good one.

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume? -From “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot

I got several nice emails on Friday from media assistants who appreciated me standing up for them. I am not going to lie to you – these emails made me cry. I was sitting in my office, and, suddenly, tears were streaming down my face. It was difficult to step forward and say that I would speak, but I didn’t want to let my assistant down. Now that it’s over with, I can see that it was also about these other people, their jobs, their livelihoods. I tried a little bit to make it about me. But now I am relieved that they weren’t disappointed.

I have been thinking lately about disturbing the universe and how difficult it is. This year’s National Poetry Month poster, seen above, really captured my attention, and I ordered a copy for myself. (I want to get a frame for it and hang it in the hall. Mike is not sold on this idea. But he thinks it’s a cool poster just the same.) After I got over the being angry and the despair, speaking to the school board was my small way of disturbing the universe. I wish I could say that it’s been a trend, but there have been some times lately when I went along with the mean girls rather than standing up to them, when I was happy that they weren’t turning on me and used that position to my own advantage. In other words, there are times lately that I have been a middle school girl. It’s pretty much as awful as it was when I was actually 12 years old.

Maybe standing up to bullies isn’t as exciting as speaking to the school board. And there are certainly worse evils in the world than smirking when some people are mean to other people. But it’s not the kind of person I want to be. There’s quite a gap between the me who lets those things happen and the me who is willing to speak out against injustice. And for that, I am more than a little bit ashamed.

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

In the Library by Charles Simic

for Octavio

There’s a book called
“A Dictionary of Angels.”
No one has opened it in fifty years,
I know, because when I did,
The covers creaked, the pages
Crumbled. There I discovered

The angels were once as plentiful
As species of flies.
The sky at dusk
Used to be thick with them.
You had to wave both arms
Just to keep them away.

Now the sun is shining
Through the tall windows.
The library is a quiet place.
Angels and gods huddled
In dark unopened books.
The great secret lies
On some shelf Miss Jones
Passes every day on her rounds.

She’s very tall, so she keeps
Her head tipped as if listening.
The books are whispering.
I hear nothing, but she does.

Last year at a deacon meeting, our pastor mentioned that he is going to be doing an occasional series of sermons on the questions he gets asked most often. Then, of course, he asked us what questions we thought he got asked the most often. As any public librarian worth her salt would know, the most-often asked reference question is, of course, “Where is the bathroom?” I could not resist the opportunity to make a joke, even at a deacon meeting, so I put that forth as my suggestion. He laughed and said, well, you know, he meant more along the lines of spiritual questions. But he does get asked that one, too. My reward was that, when the sermon series started, he mentioned what I had said and that some of the deacons got a little bit smart alec-y with him about the idea of questions. I was only disappointed that he didn’t mention me by name.

Recently someone asked me why I switched from public libraries to school, whether I disliked working in public libraries. I hastened to tell them that, no, by no means did I dislike it. It was a good job doing good work with good people, but the job itself, its physical location, was far from where my life is. If I was given the opportunity to have this schedule at that library, I might have stayed, and if I could have this schedule at a public library close to home, I am not sure what I would do. The jobs are similar, but have very different frustrations and are fulfilling in different ways. I wish I could do both! Pick my favorite parts from both jobs! Someone make this happen.

I try not to talk about the challenges of work in this public forum, but I will say that the economy has affected my school system just as it has been affecting school systems throughout the country. I have been angry about some of the decisions that have been made, and that anger has made me feel flat and uninteresting. My anger, it burns hot and fast, especially when I sense injustice. (Sensing injustice is like my superpower or something.) Sometimes my anger burns so hot and fast that, frankly, I am a little bit embarrassed about it after things calm down. This is my apology for being so flat and uninteresting lately, as well as my apology for being so angry and feeling so helpless that it reduced me to incoherency. Things have worked out at my school, but I am still feeling a bit drained and discouraged.

As part of the apology, I am offering you the words I spoke at the school board meeting this evening. I spoke on behalf of my assistant, who is a kind, generous, hard-working person.

I was excited to see that respectful and responsive service is part of [the school system]’s strategic plan. Many of us who have chosen to work in the school system do so because service is important to us. I have been given the privilege of working with a woman who embodies respectful and responsive service—my school’s media assistant. Earlier this year, our staff read a book about service and accountability and many people commented that our media assistant is the best example of service in our school. She goes out of her way to help students and staff, and they respond to her care and attention with great affection.

In the library, my assistant and I juggle many tasks that range from instruction to recommending books to providing a listening ear. Together, we are able to serve our students, staff, and community, providing them with the materials they need and promoting information skills and the love of reading, things that are proven to help increase our students’ achievement. We take very seriously the idea that that “true educational excellence is possible only in an environment that promotes and delivers service excellence as well,” and we strive to provide that excellent service for every student. Her presence enables me to work with classes, teaching information and technology skills that prepare our students for the future. It would not be possible for a volunteer to know the staff and students and provide for their needs the way that our school’s media assistant does, because her service goes beyond the media center and extends to every part of the school. She works directly with students, taking the time to help a struggling reader gain confidence, which affects more than just test scores—it can affect the way a student sees himself in the world. She draws out some of our more challenging students and takes great care when assisting our EC students as they discover the world through the library’s information, books, and computers. From her, I have learned the truth of the words of Marian Wright Edelman, “I’m doing what I think I was put on this earth to do. And I’m really grateful to have something that I’m passionate about and that I think is profoundly important.” To an outsider, it might seem as if providing students and staff with calculators, laminating, technology, supplies, and books is not important, but without those services, it would be difficult for our school to create such a positive learning environment.

If [the school system] is serious about “focusing . . . time, attention and resources on providing more respectful and responsive service as part of this strategic plan,” then I would ask you to consider that libraries are part of that service, and we need well-staffed, well-funded libraries as we strive for educational excellence. To cut an entire position cripples the possibility of excellent service in the future. As the strategic plan shows, service is something our students, staff, and community deserve. More than that, it is something they cannot afford to be without.

I spoke at the meeting in the hopes that voicing my opinion would give me the peace that has been lacking lately. Standing up at that meeting and speaking was incredibly difficult for me (THERE ARE TELEVISION CAMERAS THERE!!!!!), but I did it because there are people in this world who are worth sticking up for, and my assistant is one of them. And because my faith compels me to stand up to injustice. And because I am my father’s daughter.

While Mike and I were away on vacation, spring apparently decided it would stop with the teasing and stick around for a while. We have been waiting for it, watching the signs. Each week at the Farmer’s Market, there have been more greens and more flowers, but food grows more slowly than the flowers outside, and greens are well and good, but what I really want are tomatoes and zucchini. While I have grown fond of sweet potato fries and can never have too many onions in my life, I am ready for some new vegetables to make an appearance. I think our farmer is, too, because when we went to see him on Holy Saturday and told him we’d be out of town the next weekend (and ultimately decided against purchasing anything, since, duh, we were going out of town), he said, “There will be new stuff when you get back!” It feels a bit like Advent or Lent, this waiting, this preparing my heart for the next season. I hate to miss the Farmer’s Market this time of year, to miss the first appearance of an old favorite returned from winter’s hibernation.

I can’t say that we never eat anything that’s unseasonal (hello, strawberry tart! Also, hello trip to Food Lion I made on Sunday during which I unabashedly bought unseasonable vegetable after unseasonable vegetable for us to eat this week), but we have come a long way in the past year, and it has been enjoyable for us to let the farm’s produce shape our meals. I have tried so many new things (turnips, rutabaga, sweet potatoes, rhubarb) and they weren’t all home runs, but it has been a good sort of adventure, this foray into seasonal eating. I will confess: If I hadn’t promised my grandma that I wouldn’t go canning things at my own house, without her help, I do believe that I would be making the plans to buy everything I need for canning. Just to brighten up February and March of next year, when these longings for something new come around again.

Those sorts of longings are always what do me in, the looking ahead to what is next without also being present for what is here. One of Mike’s students is a runner, and he once asked her what she thinks about during a race. “Finishing,” she told him. “I think about finishing.” When he told me that, I said that all I think about during a race is putting one foot in front of the other, because finishing seems too far away. Which is probably why she’s so much better than I am.

Life, unlike a race, should probably be some combination of the two – anticipation of things to come (tomato season, vacations, our great reward and reunion with those we love and miss) balanced with the pleasures of daily life (the tulips that have appeared in my back yard, the chance to float around in a pool and read some of my favorite books, and, yes, another week of sweet potato fries). In college, some friends and I talked a lot about the abundant life that God has given us. I am learning a thing or two about living in that abundance by showing up at the Farmer’s Market every week.

I linked to this as part of Emily’s Tuesdays Unwrapped series.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

—

It’s much too late for snow here, of course. But, just the same, happy Eastertide, and happy National Poetry Month. Take some time to enjoy the spring, because it will not last forever.

I have mentioned this before, but when I was in high school, my librarian handed me a copy of The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie R. King and told me to read it, that it was one of those rites of passage for girls on the Quiz Bowl team. It was a test of sorts, and I am thankful that I managed to pass it. Even more than that, I am thankful that she gave me the book, one of those books that has stuck with me over the years. It is, without a doubt, one of my favorite books. In the first few pages, Mary Russell meets Sherlock Holmes, and in the course of their conversation, she says that seeing him smile at her intelligence was like coming home. Reading The Beekeeper’s Apprentice is like that for me. I was feeling out of sorts the other day, so I picked it up, and, just like Mary, felt as if I was coming home.

If you have never read it, I encourage you to run (not walk, because the offer ends April 15th) to Laurie King’s website to download a free copy for yourself. I promise you that you will not be disappointed. This is an excellent series, one that keeps getting better and better. I cannot wait for the new book to be out at the end of the month. And now that I’ve read the first one, I’m probably going to have to read the whole series again instead of moving on to something else. They just take hold of me and won’t let go.

For Easter dinner at my grandma’s house, I made a strawberry tart using this Smitten Kitchen recipe and this recipe for the crust. (I wish I had a picture of it out of the pan, but, alas, I do not. It looked very nice, though! If I am allowed to say such a thing.) This is the second time I’ve made that tart, and both times, the plate was wiped clean. It’s not very difficult to make, and the crust worked really well this time overall. I am going to be throwing a bridal shower for a coworker next month, and I will probably make this tart again for that, just because it looks nice, tastes great, and isn’t all that much work. Trifecta!

You shouldn’t be too incredibly impressed with my work, though. We had Easter lunch at a friend’s house, with each of us bringing something to share. Our friend Deb, the one who made Mike’s sea turtle cake, made this delicious chocolate cake for our enjoyment. Obviously, she is the one with actual talent in the baking area.

I hope your Easter was full of the things that bring you joy. Ours had music and flowers and friends and family and, of course, food. It was a lovely day.