Through a Glass, Darkly

This time of year, I realize that there are two kinds of people. People who are horrified by the idea of a fake Christmas tree, and people (like me) who think that real Christmas trees are just not worth the hassle.

Luckily, Mike and I share a love of fake Christmas trees. We put ours up on Saturday. Nothing about putting up a Christmas tree has really changed since I was a child. We make some hot chocolate (although now I drink it made with Splenda), put the Christmas music on (now it’s on an iPod instead of a record player), take the tree out of the box (yeah, that’s pretty much the same), and put the purple-tipped branches in the purple holes, the pink tipped branches in the pink holes . . . so on and so forth. I have had a real tree just one time in my whole life - the first year after we moved to Siler City, my family walked over to the land my grandparents owned that was next to the land we were living on and we chopped one down. It got dry and brittle before Christmas, and our cat kept knocking it down and drinking the water out of the tree stand. No, I prefer the simplicity of a fake tree.

My parents have not yet relinquished my childhood ornaments - the Miss Piggy ornament my Aunt Barbi gave me, the Rudolph with a “ruby” for its nose (since rubies are my birthstone), the second grade art projects . . . Mom still puts all of them on her tree. Maybe now that I have a house, she’ll let me have mine. Mike doesn’t have old Christmas ornaments, because his got lost in a move when he was in middle school. Currently our tree is decorated with a lot of snowman ornaments, because Mike has let it be known that snowmen are his favorite decoration, and my family has acknowledged that by giving us crazy amounts of snowmen.

While we do agree on the fake Christmas trees, we don’t agree on other decorations. I don’t mind colored lights on a tree, but Mike would have them all chasing each other or blinking frantically. He would also put lights on every square inch of our property if I would let him. He has to satiate his desire for tacky lights by looking at our neighbors’ houses. And we always do a night or two where we drive around and judge tacky Christmas lights. Can I just say: America, blue lights are only a good idea when mixed with red lights and green lights and white lights and purple lights. Blue lights by themselves? Just. Say. No.

I have had people look at me in disgust when I admit my preference for a fake tree. They act as if it’s a spiritual issue, or as if I am just a little slow in the head. I figure, we have enough stress just trying to get the lights on the tree and arguing about whether tinsel is tacky or not. I don’t need the hassle of trying to keep a tree alive on top of that.

Besides, when I sit on my couch with the Christmas tree on and on the other lights in the house turned off . . . well, are you going to tell me a real tree could look prettier than that?

He lets me change the tire on his car so I can prove that I know how to do it, even though he could have done it much faster than I did. He drew me a bath and read to me after a hard day. He kills the bugs in our house when I am too afraid. He held me when I cried after we hit a deer. He always makes too much food when we throw a party. He gets excited about Christmas. He doesn’t notice weird group dynamics that stress me out. He does most of the cooking now that I work full-time. He doesn’t remember all the minutia of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, so things that are old hat to me are new and exciting to him. He falls asleep when he reads in the afternoon. He makes the bed because he knows it’s important to me. He admires my scrapbook pages. He laughs with me, not at me. He gets excited about flannel sheets but won’t let me turn on the heat. He cheers me on when I fit back into a skirt I haven’t worn in years. He can never tell when the floor needs to be swept. He loves his niece and his nephew. He lets me cut his hair. He’s cut back on Diet Coke now that money is tight. He carries the camera around for me even though he hates looking touristy. He puts up with my high-maintenance-ness. He likes Gilmore Girls. He laughs at me when I yell at the Panthers. He takes out the trash. He puts wreaths on our door and flags in our yard for each new season. He makes amazing chicken noodle soup. He has the most beautiful blue eyes.

In my sock drawer there is a blue sock with lighter colored blue stripes on it. I got it at Old Navy a few years ago, and it was part of one of my favorite pairs of socks. When Mike and I lived in our first apartment, its partner went missing somehow. We lived in a one-bedroom apartment that was 600 square feet, so I assumed it just got tucked in a different Rubbermaid than the one in which I kept my socks. Stuff gets tucked in all kinds of wrong places when you are living in a space that small. When Mike and I moved, I kept the lone sock, hoping I would one day find its partner.

We have since moved again, with still no sign of the missing sock. This means that the one sock I can find has survived two moves without a partner. What is wrong with me?

I’ll tell you a secret - deep inside, I believe that my sock’s mate is actually in that drawer (we have real furniture now instead of just Rubbermaids) and that I keep seeing different socks and just thinking it’s the same one. This is, of course, nonsense, because I have cleaned out the drawer a few times since our first apartment - throwing out socks with holes and, more tragically, a fuzzy black sock with snowflakes on it that also lost its mate. Man, I loved those socks. For some reason, I have been able to let other socks go while this one stays.

Anyway, if you are out shopping this season and you see a pair of blue stripey socks, consider making a donation to me so I can finally get rid of this relic in my drawer. I don’t think I’m going to be able to get rid of it until I have a replacement.

Even better, if you are the one who stole my sock . . . could you please just return it? That would make me a very happy girl. My mind has been messed with quite enough.

You know you are turning into an incredibly selfish person when you complain about the same things that the women on Sex and the City do (or did, since the show’s over).

The past few days I have been thinking about what I will wear on Thanksgiving Day. I have an outfit that’s perfect. This awesome brown suede(ish) shirt, my long jeans, and my tall brown (very high heeled) boots. The only problem with this outfit is that we’re going to Mike’s sister’s house. The first thing she makes you do when you get to her house is take off your shoes. I mentioned that these are my long jeans, so it would throw off my entire outfit if I had to take off my shoes. I would either be tripping on the hem of my jeans all afternoon, or I would have to roll them up and it will then look as if I am so short that I can’t find jeans that actually fit. Plus, my shoes are awesome, and I would like to wear them. So, my awesome outfit has been nixed.

But it’s such a great outfit. I am disappointed that I can’t wear it.

Last night I was complaining (in a mostly good-natured way) about this, and I realized that I was channeling Carrie. “This…is…an…outfit.” Hopefully my outfit is better than some of that weird stuff she wore. Regardless, it’s kind of mortifying to think that I am being that selfish, so I decided to shut up about my “outfit” and wear something less dependent on the shoes. But the basic issue remains: Mike’s sister makes us take off our shoes when we enter her house, which I am not a fan of. I mean, if it’s muddy, sure I’ll take off my shoes, but that’s not the issue here. The issue is that they don’t like for people to wear shoes in the house, no matter the weather. Mike always takes his shoes off as soon as he enters our house (and leaves them by the door for days and days), so he is on his sister’s side (and wishes I would come to see the light).

I don’t mind it so much in the summer, because I’m always wearing sandals, but I have to admit that I really hate this rule in the winter. I am colder than your average person, so I need the extra warmth of the shoes. Mike’s sister keeps her house colder than I would want (actually, it’s his brother-in-law who does that), and I get really cold without shoes.

I am seriously considering taking my slippers with me tomorrow. Then I can have it both ways - I can be warm and I can wear an “outfit.” Now if I can just figure out what I have that coordinates with light blue slippers decorated with cherries and strawberries . . .

I see myself on that morning. I wake up, heart full of apprehension and hope, and look out the window. It’s gray, but the important thing is that it’s not raining. Gray is fine. Rain is not fine. I know in my heart of hearts that it’s probably going to rain, but I’ve been praying for so long that it wouldn’t. Surely God will answer those prayers. Right? I don’t want to admit it to myself. If I don’t even allow the rain to take up the smallest corner of my brain, if I can deny its existence, maybe I can somehow prevent it from raining.

I go and get in the shower, focusing only on the fact that it’s not raining. I feel encouraged and slightly hopeful. Surely the fact that it’s not raining means that everything will go as planned. I get out of the shower and put on my fuzzy robe so I can peer out the window. It’s pouring. Not just misting, not even just raining. But a downpour to end all downpours.

My heart sinks - plummets, really. My eyes well over. I have been pushed aside and ignored and humiliated when I deserved praise, and this was supposed to be my reward. This was my payoff for putting up with all of that. This was when it was finally going to be about me.

My dad says if I expected it to be about me, then I got what I deserved. I just . . . I thought it worked like that sometimes. I thought if we survived uncomplainingly, if we sucked it up, we would get what we really wanted. And this was what I really wanted. Admiration instead of being ignored. A chance to shine. This was my moment. Or I thought it was supposed to be.

Not any longer.

I can see myself, standing at the window in that white robe, sobbing. I cried a lot that day.

I didn’t know then that that moment was going to change my life, shake my faith to a point from which I still have not recovered. I didn’t know that moment would be the point on which all stressful situations in the future would turn. “Can I trust God with this? Does he appear to have my best interests at heart, or is he going to pull the rug out from under me? I am not so sure anymore.”

This is something I’m processing right now, but I liked the way it turned out and thought I’d go ahead and post it. Some identifying details have been changed/are deliberately vague, and I’m not allowing comments on it as it is a little too personal.

Who is worn out? I am.

So I mentioned that I was a wee bit concerned about the party. I have never thrown a party like that before, complete with invitations and china and crystal candlesticks and borrowed tablecloths. Heck, my wedding reception wasn’t that fancy. So it was a bit nerve-racking beforehand, especially when a church meeting came up that a lot of our friends had to go to after we had already checked the date and sent out the invitations. At one point it seemed like we were down to two other couples, which was disappointing (but would have meant more turkey, I suppose).

For a lot of years now, I have struggled with feeling that I am not important to God. Last fall I was pretty depressed, and one of the big reasons was my job search and how badly it was going. I got to the point where I quit praying about the job, because I figured God knew I needed one. I started praying that he would just send me some good news, some sign that he was still listening. It was very Rilla of Ingleside of me. “Please send better news tomorrow.” I never really felt like that happened, that he broke through in any encouraging way. And that was hard.

Add to that that I have struggled for a while with feeling valued by my friends. I mean, if God doesn’t value me, my friends certainly won’t. There are a whole lot of issues wrapped up in that, which I have mentioned here before many times. I think parties aren’t really a risk for most people, but they kind of are for me. But Mike really wanted to do this, so I told God that I’d take the risk (because I think he likes us to take risks) but that I would hold him personally responsible if the party was a flop. I bargained. I whined. I told him it wasn’t fair to ask me to take risks in my relationships if he wasn’t going to be there to catch me in some way. Basically, “Please let people come.”

Last week was kind of about all of this - party stress, feeling like God wanted me to take risks but was kind of leaving me hanging, and being worried about friendships. I cried. I stressed. I bought a turkey. We made stuffing using Mike’s childhood recipe. I baked some pies. We bought a can of cranberry sauce (ew).

I gave up on the stressing at some point, trying to just focus on enjoying whoever came. Kelly and Scott were staying with us, and that helped, both emotionally and with the preparations. We set up the tables and unpacked my mother’s Christmas china and Scott opened the wine (something Mike and I still fail to do successfully) and put the bread out to rise. We got dressed in cute brown clothes and kept checking the turkey. (The turkey, by the way, did not progress quite as quickly as we had hoped. Stupid turkey.)

And then, suddenly it was party time. And everyone came, and we drank wine and ate Kelly’s delicious spinach dip. And since the turkey serendipitously took longer than we expected, we could wait for everyone who had to go to that church meeting after all. And we had plenty of food and I loved the way the tables looked with the candles and the china and everything just seemed to go so well. I hope everyone had a good time, because we had a great time. Last night after everyone left and we swept up the last Cheerio, I said, “Were you worried about the carpet at all?” Our friends certainly had been, because they brought their kids and, as we are childless, they kept making sure stuff was okay with us. Mike said, “No, I didn’t really think about it.” “I didn’t either.” I like that about us.

After the last goodbye, I loaded up the china that could go in the dishwasher (some of mine, but even though my mom said hers could go, I was not going to be the one responsible for somehow ruining her china in my dishwasher) and started doing the dishes while Mike took down tables and started moving furniture back to its original places. Everyone offered to help before they left, but we refused. For one thing, we didn’t really have cooking stuff to clean up. And for another, I finally understood why my mother always eschewed help when she had people over. Sometimes it’s just easier to do it yourself. Besides, it’s not as if the dishes were unexpected. We were throwing a party.

After I finished the dishes, I stood there at the sink, admiring the clean china and sparkling crystal spread across the counter to my right, and I felt like it was a sign. Everyone knew it was important to me, and they worked it out so they could come. God had been listening after all. Not because people came - I’m self-centered, but not self-centered enough to feel that way. But because I wasn’t stressed at all on Sunday (except for a few minutes when I thought the turkey wasn’t going to be done until sometime in December) and because that means he had nudged me to the point where he had helped me separate my worth from the party. And because he knew I needed a little encouragement, he tossed in a great party on top of that. The whole point of the party, before I got caught up in whether people would come, was to celebrate the holiday with our friends, because we are so thankful for them. And, in the end, I feel like we got to do that. After I got out of the way and stopped worrying.

Everything we borrowed is in a huge pile by our door - two tables, ten chairs, two boxes of china, a box of wineglasses, a gravyboat, a coffeepot, assorted tablecloths, and probably some things I am forgetting. I put all our stuff away and made sure the kitchen was spotless before I went to bed last night. Before I turned off the light, I looked around one last time, making sure everything was in its place, feeling like the queen of my domain.

It was a good day.

Usually for Advent, Mike and I read The Christmas Mystery, or we alternate with another book. This year I suggested that we read The Chronicles of Narnia in our Advent time. I had been wanting to reread them anyway, and it seems like a fun thing to do with Mike. So, even though it’s not quite Advent time yet, last night we went ahead and started, reading two chapters in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. (I don’t care what C.S. Lewis or C.S. Lewis’s estate says. I like to read them in the order they were published.) This is just a warning - there may be Narnia-related musings on this page for the next few months.

Right now I am reading Chocolat by Joanne Harris. I saw the movie a few years ago and didn’t care for it, but the book was on a list of freebies I could borrow from another library for my book club, so I thought I’d try it to see if it would make a good discussion. I think it would. I’m almost done with it, so I think I’ll save up my thoughts on it until I am quite done. I’m still not sure what I think, but I do like the book better than the movie (so far).

This is my last day of work this week. Tomorrow I have an appointment in the morning, and then I am doing some party planning. We’re having a lot of our friends over for a pot-luck Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday afternoon, and I have to pick up china from my mom’s house (I don’t have quite enough china for all my friends, and my mom has some fun Christmas china that she said I could use) and pick up some extra tables and chairs and make sure the tablecloths are ironed and get out the candlesticks and do the shopping . . . I can’t do those things on Saturday, because three of my friends and I are having a day together. We haven’t all hung out since January, and this weekend worked out for that. The other girls are coming over, and I’m making a big pot of vegetable soup, and we’re just going to catch up. And then in the afternoon we’re going to have tea together.

So, this weekend is a full one. I’m excited about our party - I think it’s nice to have holiday traditions with your friends, too, and we’re hoping that this will become an annual event. I’m also a little nervous. This isn’t the kind of thing I normally do - I can talk confidently about tablecloths and china and crystal candlesticks, but hospitality is a scary thing for me. This party has become a bit of a scary thing, too, because I want it to be important to people, and I guess in some ways I have turned it into a symbol of myself. If I am important to people, they will come to my party. Not a test of who my true friends are. More like, “Where do I rate on your priority scale?” And that attitude has meant that my feelings have been hurt. I think I have hurt some of my friends because of that. So, at this point, I am hoping that we just get through it without incident, and that I won’t focus on the negative, but on spending time with these people who are important to us.

We’re heading up on the holiday season, a time for celebration with friends and family. In many ways, our friends have taken the place of our family, at least on Mike’s side, offering us the support that we don’t get from his parents. I think that’s the other reason we feel like we “need” this party. Our friends are very important to us, and we want to celebrate that.

Over the years, I have had chili at a lot of different friends’ houses. I myself have also prepared chili for quite a few people. I have a fairly easy recipe, but I think it’s quite good (and I’m not the only one who thinks so).

If there is one thing I know about chili, it’s that chili should be spicy. My recipe, which is my mom’s recipe, is spicy. Not overly spicy, but enough to give good flavor. One thing I do not understand is sweet chili. If you make red chili, and I get a bowl of it, I expect it to be spicy. If it is not going to be spicy, it needs to have some kind of warning on it. Because chili? Is spicy. Chili peppers are hot, not sweet. And if you make sweet chili and I unknowingly get a bowl, then I am forced to finish the bowl, no matter how much I dislike it. Because my mama raised me to be polite. So, let’s sum up here: Sweet chili is wrong. Don’t make it. And, if you make it, don’t serve it to me unless you want me to be unhappy.

(How does one make sweet chili, anyway? How much sugar do you have to put in it? Bleh.)

Anyway, it’s interesting to see the different kinds of food that are “normal” for different people. I’m not talking about different cultures, just regular stuff here in America. Things that I would cook longer (or maybe not as long). Combinations I wouldn’t think of as “good” are things other people enjoy.

I imagine it would be hard if Mike and I didn’t eat the same things, or if one of us was a lot more picky than the other. We don’t eat the same vegetables (I don’t care for corn or carrots, and he doesn’t like limas or pintos), but that’s not normally a problem. We just make two different veggies and each eat what we like. I’m probably a little more picky than he is, but he also eats things like Hamburger Helper beef stroganoff mixed with A1, corn, and sour cream. It’s just gross. I had never had Hamburger Helper until I was with him. He had never tried homemade beefaroni. It’s all about the give-and-take.

If he liked sweet chili, though, we’d have a problem. A girl has to draw the line somewhere.

I never write poetry because I don’t consider myself angsty enough. Sure, I get down sometimes, but I don’t think that’s the overarching theme of my life. I also consider myself someone who doesn’t really like poetry. It just doesn’t do anything for me when I sit down and read it. I think about all those stereotypical coffee shop poets, and I don’t feel like I have any way to connect with that at all.

However. A lot of my favorite memories have to do with poetry my mom read to us. She and I still bounce some of those poems off one another as Mike and my dad watch with bemused expressions.

I’m hiding, I’m hiding and no one knows where
For all they can see is my toes and my hair
I just heard my father say to my mother,
“But darling, he must be here somewhere or other!”

How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!

There once was a puffin just the shape of a muffin,
And he lived on an island in the deep blue sea,
He ate little fishes, which were most delicious,
And he ate them for breakfast and he ate them for tea.

And yet, if you were to ask me if I like poetry, I would probably shrug and say no. I think the difference is that I don’t like to read poetry to myself. Heck, I don’t even really like reading the Psalms. I do like reading poetry out loud. And I like hearing it. I just get distracted when I start reading poetry to myself. It goes something like this:

I held it truth, with him who sings
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.

I sit there with the book open. And then I realize that I have read that stanza two times and I have no idea what it means. So I read it again, this time with purpose, and still my mind wanders. So I try one more time and I get distracted by the word “harp,” which makes me think about the harpist at church on Sunday and I start thinking about men in little diver suits playing the harp and somewhere out in the Caribbean I realize that I lost track of the poem again.

In college, I read In Memoriam with a professor who helped us to dig into the nuances and references of it, and I really enjoyed it. So it’s not that I can’t get poetry at all. It’s partly that poetry takes more effort that I generally care for, maybe because I’m not completely wired for it.

I have been thinking about poetry the past few days because I went to a seminar about it last week - poetry programming at the library. A few poems were read aloud, and I really enjoyed them. My favorite was Wage Peace. The seminar last week has got me thinking about ways I can incorporate more poetry in my life.

Maybe there’s a poetry lover in me waiting to come out after all.

Last night I was reading a thread on the Fametracker forums about literary moments that make you cry. Of course there were the usual suspects - To Kill a Mockingbird, Anne of Green Gables (and later books in the series), Harry Potter, Where the Red Fern Grows, The Lord of the Rings, Little Women, Bridge to Terabithia, Charlotte’s Web. A few more recent additions were The Time Traveler’s Wife (which also had me in tears) and The Lovely Bones (which I read last week to see if it would be appropriate for my book club but did not make me cry).

One of mine that wasn’t mentioned is Stone Fox. If you can make it through the end of that book without crying, well, you’re much colder-hearted than I. I made my mom read it, and she took it to the beach and sat in her chair in the sun and bawled her eyes out. It’s one of our favorite sad books.

One that was mentioned fairly frequently was Possession. I admit I have been waiting for a reason to use this quote, so I am jumping at the opportunity.

“There are things which happen and leave no discernable trace, are not spoken of or written of, though it would be very wrong to say that subsequent events go on indifferently, all the same, as though such things had never been.

Two people met, on a hot May day, and never later mentioned their meeting. This is how it was.”

It’s been a while since I read Possession. It’s one of those books that’s better when you really have time to dig into it. I have enjoyed it both times I read it, but I really loved it the second time, because I wasn’t just trying to get through it to be done with it and to see what happens. I reveled in the poetry instead of skimming it. I had done some research and the many literary references were much clearer. (By the way, someone should really do an annotated Possession. That would be fantastic.) It’s the kind of book where you really have to work at it, but it’s definitely worth it.

That last scene, where two people meet and their meeting goes unnoticed by history, always makes me think about those moments in my life. Things that have been said to me that I never told anyone about. Meeting someone in passing, and letting that person touch my life. Not walking away unchanged.

I can’t tell you specifically what those moments are, but that’s part of their charm. They’re best not spoken about. They leave no discernable trace, and yet, something is changed. Something that can’t be defined.

I am sure that this would make more sense if you had read Possession. I can’t say that I encourage everyone to read it. It’s one of those books that is lovely, but not for everyone.

There are dozens more books that make me cry for various reasons. I have noticed that books that didn’t used to affect me now affect me in different ways. Little Women didn’t used to cause me to tear up, but it does now. To Kill a Mockingbird affects me differently than it used to. I am bringing an entirely different set of experiences, an entirely different perspective to these books than I did when I was twelve or thirteen (half my lifetime ago).

Sometimes I feel like all that reading I did was wasted on me when I was so young. I wonder if, in another 20 years, I will feel that way about the books I am reading now.

This will make more sense if you read the earlier parts of the story.

After Kelly’s intern year at Elon, I helped her move to Wilmington. I got my dad’s truck, the one with the lift on the back (because of that move, it’s now affectionately referred to as “the big-ass truck”) and helped her and her parents and her boyfriend (she ‘fessed up eventually) drive her stuff all the way down I-40.

I think her move to Wilmington was the make-it-or-break-it as far as our relationship went. We had just gone through two years of getting closer, and now she was moving away. She moved in June, and I went to visit her in August (bearing a dresser for her boyfriend. In my car. Thirty cubic feet of passenger space. No, Volkswagen did not pay me to say that. But if they wanted to do a series of commercials featuring me, I wouldn’t say no). I tried to go and visit her as often as I could, and we emailed a lot, staying up-to-date with each other’s lives.

Kelly has been one of my hugest supporters as far as grad school and being a librarian. I look at Kelly and I see someone who is fun and outgoing and a snazzy dresser. I look at myself and I see someone who is a lot quieter and more of a homebody. And who doesn’t love shopping as much as most girls. If I think about it, I could let myself feel inadequate. What I love the most about Kelly is that she never makes me feel inadequate. She believes that being a librarian is a cool thing for me to do. She’s one of my only friends who likes to talk about books. She cheers on my book club and my house and makes me feel like I am important. I feel like I fail her so much, because she is such a good friend to me.

Over the summer, Kelly got married, and she asked me to be a bridesmaid. Sometimes I go to weddings and I get a little jealous of the bride and the groom. Maybe their wedding featured unlimited funds, or maybe all the parents are there and it makes my heart twinge. But, at Kelly’s wedding, even though all the parents were there and her wedding was much fancier than mine, I wasn’t jealous at all. I was so happy for her. I think this says a lot more about the kind of friend she is to me than it does about any growth on my part. I had so much fun at all the bridesmaids-y things, and the wedding was beautiful, and the reception was a ton of fun. I left happy (and glad to finally be able to change my shoes). That hardly ever happens (not the shoes part - that usually happens).

When your friends get married, there’s always this weird adjustment period. What will they be like? Will we still be friends? Will we be couple friends? So far this year, we have spent a weekend with them every month since April (except September - a busy time for an IV staffworker). They are quickly becoming our best “couple friends.” Kelly and I can hang out while the boys play Halo, and we all eat dinner together. As outgoing as Kelly is, they are our “homebody” friends - we all cook together and play games and mix up drinks in the blender.

The past few years are the years marked with trips to the beach, going to get donuts in our pajamas, crashing a going away party in our pajamas, weird church experiences, building furniture with Scott while getting to know him (and laughing at his jokes), throwing our joint birthday tea party, margaritas, trying on wedding dresses, switching to Diet Dr Pepper, “23 hours,” Miss Congeniality, and brownies.

I think friendships born of drama can at times have an element of honesty and trust that others don’t have. Kelly and I have worked through our past differences, so there’s not really anything that I don’t feel comfortable sharing with her. We’ve both grown up a lot in the past seven years, and that growing has brought us closer together instead of moving us apart.

I have spent a lot of space on this blog lamenting friendships that haven’t gone the way I hoped, and yet I look at my friendship with Kelly and see an amazing collection of individual moments that pushed us toward the friendship we have today. Moments of honesty, moments of agreement, shared laughter and tears and Friends quotes and baking and (in case you didn’t notice) lots and lots of pajamas. It’s as if I woke up one morning and realized that Kelly is one of my very best friends. It’s nice to pause and think about how that happened.

I wrote these entries for weeks and weeks, and still they feel incomplete. Some things . . . well, as much as I love words, some things can’t be expressed in words. So, I offer this picture instead. Here’s where we are today.

Read the beginning of the story here, here and here.

Senior year was a lot different than junior year had been. We were coming off of a bit of a high, having experienced such a fun (albeit hard) year with those other two girls. The end of junior year was a bit of a downer, what with a hard leadership selection process that put me and Kelly on one side and some of our friends firmly on the other side.

The summer before our senior year, Kelly went to Spain and I got married. When she got back just before my wedding, she and the other two girls from exec threw me a surprise lingerie shower under the guise of all of us going out for a picnic. My picnic-themed shower was wonderful, and one of my favorite memories from the wedding whirlwind.

Senior year was when Kelly and I finally started hanging out, or at least when I can finally say I knew she wanted to hang out with me. I remember heart-to-hearts in Target and running to the dollar store to get supplies for our chapter’s “Lumberjack Ball.”

We made the bus ride to Urbana, watching Adam Sandler movies the entire time. While we were there, I remember hanging out with my [now former] best friend but being sad that I never got to see Kelly. And then Kelly and another friend and I met up during the time we were supposed to be fasting and sat in a hallway and ate Snickers and Skittles and talked about how we were doing. How cold it was, how hard it was to be there, what we were learning, and how much we missed each other. On the ride home, Kelly slept the entire way, but I was really excited about seeing Mike again, so at the first place we stopped (I’m thinking it was a McDonald’s) I brushed my hair and put on makeup. Of course, that meant that I got home and passed out on the couch instead of being able to talk to Mike. I should have followed Kelly’s lead.

There was drama galore that year in our chapter. We had another hard time choosing leaders for the next year . . . and then suddenly our IV careers were over. Well, mine was, anyway - she went on to be an IV staffworker. Her intern year was at Elon, which meant she was just 30 minutes away.

Kelly’s intern year (slash my first year of grad school) was when our friendship finally came into its own. This was when we really started emailing. (In order for me to be able to keep up with you as a friend, it really really really helps if you have email.) I helped Kelly move to Burlington, where she lived with a very strange roommate who wouldn’t eat Hunt’s ketchup (”I only like Heinz.” My response: “I always buy the store brand. I didn’t know there was any difference”) and who didn’t like how I unpacked the kitchen. This was the year when Kelly and I watched lots of Friends together, since we finally didn’t have IV on Thursday nights. This was the year she threw a Valentine’s Day party for a bunch of her single friends (and she let me come). We had tacos and margaritas, and did a rad present swap. We watched the Olympics and I didn’t push her to tell me about this boy that she casually mentioned now and then. I knew she’d talk about it when she was ready.

This was when we started having tea parties - I took Kelly to the O. Henry for her Christmas present, and she has insisted we go back pretty much every time she is in town. I even helped throw her a tea party shower there (but we haven’t gotten to that part of the story yet).

These were also the years when we began a tradition that will hopefully continue for many years. When Kelly went to Spain, she came back telling everyone that she now eats tomatoes. She didn’t used to eat tomatoes, but she does now. The thing was, she probably told me three or four times that she now eats them, not realizing she had told me before, so it got to be a joke with us. “I eat tomatoes now!” “Really?! I had no idea!” One year I was at Barnes and Noble and I found this book and gave it to Kelly as her Christmas present. Since then, she always requests that I give her children’s books as presents. I can’t always find something that perfect, but I do my best.

Sometime in here we started regularly hanging out with two other friends - Melissa and Blair. Melissa was part of our original exec foursome, and Blair is her best friend. The four of us are all friends, and somehow we ended up taking day trips to the mountains, going to visit Kelly in Wilmington, getting together before Melissa’s baby was born, being in one another’s weddings. In fact, we’re having a Saturday together in just a few weeks. I think I was included in this group because three is a hard number of girls to sustain, and my strong friendship with Melissa balances out Kelly’s strong friendship with Blair. But I’ve got no real basis for that assumption, only the knowledge that friendships with women can be hard.

These are the two years that I can’t really put my finger on. I don’t really have the right words for them. They weren’t as dramatic as the preceding year as far as causing great change in my life, but they moved me to a more comfortable place with Kelly. She is the only friend I talked to on September 11. I was one of the only girls who helped her move. I bought her a “cooking with Heinz ketchup” cookbook to give to her roommate. She talked me through some hard times with a mutual friend. There’s no one event (like the vacuum cleaner incident) that symbolizes our relationship during this period. I think we had grown into such an easy companionship that I have forgotten so much about the time we spent together - the extraordinary of the ordinary.

Earlier parts of this story are featured here and here.

Our sophomore year, Kelly lived in the same dorm as my [now former] best friend. I would run into her occasionally, and since we didn’t see each other every day, we would have conversations where we were genuinely interested in how the other was doing. On the IV leadership retreat, we sat together and put potato chips on our sandwiches. I remember seeing her right after I got engaged, and that she seemed really surprised and excited for me. She was honest and supportive as I went through some junk with my best friend. At the end of our sophomore year, we were both put on IV’s “exec” team. It was going to be us, two other girls, and a guy. I was extremely nervous. The guy was one of Kelly’s best friends, I didn’t know any of the girls well, (except for Kelly, and what I knew of her was that we didn’t get along so well) and I wasn’t sure how it would go.

So, we went to Windy Gap for our training week, and it was a little awkward. The worst part was when we did sociograms. You’re supposed to put a wavy line if you have tension with someone, a dotted line if you don’t know them, straight lines if you know them and get along. It’s a very “business school” kind of thing. I think I ended up putting dotted lines with everyone, just to keep the awkwardness low. But I felt like I should put a slightly wavy line for Kelly. (The upside of the sociograms was that it gave us an inside joke for the year. When we were mad at someone, we’d say, “Big jagged lines!” Agreeing was “straight lines.” And we were all in agreement that the sociograms sucked.) She surprised me by saying, “We get along okay now, right? I mean, we need to work on it, but I really want to get to know you better.” And that summer, she did a great job of pursuing me and letting me know that she meant it. She made sure I was included in a Bible study, and that I was invited to cookouts and things. The one thing we still talk about from that summer is the night we had a cookout for Kelly’s birthday and she made the hamburgers. Except, she had never made hamburgers before, so they ended up being more like meatballs than burgers. You had to put two or three on a bun. We still call those “Kelly burgers.”

I already wrote a little about that school year here. I said that that year and that group of women most defined who I am today. Somewhere in the midst of tow trucks and teeny tiny hamburgers, Bible studies and cooking lasagne, matching pajamas, cigars, snow cream, laughing, crying, and being honest, Kelly and I really did put aside our differences. And the next year, when we were the only two assigned to the team again, I was excited to be able to spend more time with her.

The preface to this entry is here.

I met Kelly during freshman move-in. She cranked Jars of Clay really loud in order to meet like-minded people (and we still mock her relentlessly for that, by the way), and I found my way into her room. We liked a lot of the same music, and we were both Christians, so we decided to be friends. Remember when life was that easy?

Kelly was bold about being a Christian, and about inviting people to InterVarsity. I tend to be quieter about my faith, but I admired how she wasn’t afraid to say what she was thinking. She’s one of those people who always seems to be in a whirlwind of activity, pulling people into movie nights and going out to dinner and going to clubs . . . she always had something going on. I was slightly in awe of her.

Our floor was comprised mostly of Christians, and we went everywhere in a huge pack, walking like the Monkees. When I’m on campus now, I see that freshman girls still walk in huge packs, and I have a slight urge to mock them, but the fondness in my heart for doing the Monkees walk overcomes the cynicism. Plus, I think I am the one who encouraged the Monkee-walking. (I had just gotten in my first serious relationship . . . so “I’m a Believer” was on my mind a lot. What can I say?)

Eventually, the inevitable splintering of the group occurred. I ended up in a different group than Kelly. My group was comprised of my best friend and a couple of the non-Christian girls on the hall (one of them was Kelly’s roommate). I felt good about this - Kelly’s group was louder and more boisterous. They were InterVarsity groupies, whereas I attended every week, but no one could remember my name. And they did things like put laundry baskets on their heads and run around bumping into walls. I was more comfortable with my Indigo-Girl-listening friends. (Yes, that does mean that the non-Christian girls in my group started dating each other. Lesson learned: cliches can be true.) When Kelly and her roommate had problems, I was always on the roommate’s side, warranted or not. Somehow or another, Kelly and I stopped being friends and there was palpable tension between us. We didn’t force anyone to choose sides, because the sides had already been drawn.

The tension came to a head in what I like to call “the vacuum cleaner story.” I had a small vacuum cleaner that I let the girls on the hall use when they wanted. I preferred, though, that they ask. One night, Kelly’s roommate was hosting a recruit for the softball team, and Kelly didn’t want to go sleep in a friend’s room. The long and the short of it was that I ended up being the one who gave up her bed . . . I slept on the floor in a friend’s room. I slept fine, but I was very stiff the next morning. And who wants to sleep on the floor of a dorm room? Bleh. When I came down the next morning, slightly irritated after my experience, I saw Kelly going into my room with my vacuum cleaner. Meaning she had used it. Without asking. After “making” me sleep on the floor.

Women can be so petty. (In other words, I let her have it.)

For the rest of the school year, we made wide circles around one another. At the end of the year, a couple of things went down (as they often do in dorm life) that caused us to be slightly reconciled. Or at least to regard each other with civility instead of open hostility. Things got a bit weird when my two friends started dating each other, and although I was still friends with them, my “place” changed. Also, Kelly and I were both put on leadership for InterVarsity. I can’t put my finger on it, exactly, but I remember being in her room talking to her around April. I remember making an effort. I don’t remember why, but I am glad I did.

When we left at the end of our freshman year, I would say that we were still in the “polite acquaintance” stage, a great improvement from earlier in the year.

Just as much as a friendship can be lost in a moment, I have been thinking lately about how it can be formed in a moment. I wrote a long long long (too long, unfortunately) blog about my friend Kelly, and how our friendship moved from acquaintanceship to mutual dislike to cameraderie to the close friendship we have today. I gave it up because it was too long, but I have been working on it and have decided to break it into parts and post it anyway.

Part of the problem with it was that there were so many things to say, so many moments I didn’t want to lose. Things like driving to the exec retreat and getting stuck in the snow. How we all wore the matching pajamas she gave us. How she helped me pack my dishes when I was moving and grumpy (and she called me out on my grumpiness). How I helped her move. Twice. Once with the big-ass truck. The “ketchup” roommate. The time we wore our pajamas to a going away party for someone we didn’t even know. The lingerie shower she and two other girls threw for me. Sitting in a hall eating Snickers at Urbana when we were supposed to be fasting. Eating macaroni and cheese with a spoon from a bowl, the way God intended. Diet Dr Pepper. Margaritas. The time I had to drive her back to Burlington at midnight after she locked her keys in her car. Tea parties galore.

I think of Kelly as one of my very best friends, but I didn’t realize how much we had shared until I started writing it down. So, the next few days will chronicle the story of our friendship. So far.

I grew up going to non-denominational churches. While there were great things about those churches, I think I missed out on tradition. The only time I sang hymns was at Grandma and Grandpa’s church. I relish singing them now, at the Baptist church we attend, because it reminds me of Grandma’s high voice and Grandpa’s bass as I would stand in the pew with them.

Praise to the Lord! the Almighty, the King of creation!
O my soul, praise Him, for He is thy health and salvation!

We sang that last week, and that’s one I especially remember, so it’s been in my head this past week.

This morning I was reminded of another thing I like about our church. It’s small. Some people prefer big churches, but I like the fact that honor roll and winning science fair projects and soccer championships and articles in the Wall Street Journal are put in the bulletin and announced from the pulpit. I like the fact that so many people from the church called me after my dad had a heart attack. It reminds me that we’re a family, and that we experience things together. As a kid, it would have meant so much to me if the church was proud of my name on the honor roll or my brother’s science fair project.

This morning was All Saint’s Sunday, and our church always honors a senior member who has served in some way. Last year it was a woman who had been a Sunday School teacher for 35 years. This year it was a man who had been a member since 1941. In non-denominational churches, the churches are newer, and even if we had older members, there’s just not that kind of legacy. I feel like we miss out by not having older people to be an example.

My church isn’t perfect, not by any means. But there are so many good things about it. Sunday mornings make me feel like I have people to support me, people who are also doing the best they can on this journey. I don’t know what else I could ask for.

Sometimes someone will say something so surprising that I can’t help but let it through my defenses. Like Mary, I treasure it in my heart, taking it out once in a while to make sure it’s still there and to relish the good feeling that it gives me. There are things I remember from years past that still encourage me, although I would wager that the people responsible don’t remember saying them.

(By the way, this is completely different than the Gollum and Frodo way of doing things, which I am also prone to. Someone will say something negative and I will keep it inside, nursing the wound, checking to make sure it still hurts. Hating it but being unable to let it go. That’s not what we’re talking about here. Although it applies, since there are hurtful things that I remember that I am sure the responsible parties have forgotten.)

Anyway, yesterday I got a compliment that really caught me off guard. I’m not very good at taking compliments, I admit. It’s hard to know what to say. I’m pretty sure I didn’t say anything yesterday, because I was so surprised. But it registered with me, and I keep thinking about it, amazed that someone could say such a nice thing about me. Shocked, really.

It’s interesting to think about the things that stay with us, both good and bad. I brush off so many sincere compliments, and yet an offhand remark that someone meant jokingly might hurt me for years. This time, though, I am trying to take it in and bask in the glow of the kind, well-timed words.

I’m a little late for Halloween stories, but I’d rather talk about that than Election Day. Also, I wanted Rhonda to hear this story.

Four years ago, just after we got married, Mike and I went with another couple to stay for the weekend in a log cabin in the mountains. Mike planned a lot of fun things for us to do, including a romantic dinner for the two of us on Saturday evening while the other couple went out to eat. He got flounder from the Fresh Market and made us a wonderful meal. Then our friends came back, and we all carved pumpkins together.

Looking back now, it’s obvious that what happened was that, even though we put it in a cooler, the fish did not enjoy the trip from Greensboro to the mountains. And it responded by going bad. All I knew at the time was that my stomach was very very unhappy, but I thought it was the pumpkin smell. I went out on the porch to get some air, and after a bit I felt good enough to come back inside. When I did so, I found that Mike had gotten the top of our pumpkin off, and that he was scraping out the insides.

“Look,” he said. “Our pumpkin is puking!” He then turned it over and lots of seeds and stringy disgustingness came out.

I think you can guess what happened next. The good news is that I did make it to the bathroom before losing all the fish that Mike had prepared. The bad news is that I threw up three times that night, completely ruining our romantic weekend.

This past weekend, when we stayed with our friends in Wilmington, they wanted to carve pumpkins. Mike and I bought those plastic ones that will last for years to come. Our friends carved a real pumpkin. Even though we were outside, I had a hard time with the smell. I don’t care if I am a sell-out with my plastic pumpkin (that will last for years to come). I just can’t carve real pumpkins anymore. Bleh.

Yesterday afternoon, my friend Kelly and I baked some sugar cookies from scratch and then watched the Panthers game. That reminded her of a conversation she’d had with a friend of hers about contradictions. Her friend, Anna, eats sausage biscuits with her pinkies sticking out, but she also loves The Simpsons. Kelly decided that her contradiction was that she loves baking, but she also likes playing video games and smack talk (just ask Brian).

We decided fairly easily that my contradiction is that I’m a fairly girly girl, or high maintenance or whatever - I do my hair every day, and I always wear a little makeup - and yet I love sports. Not playing them, but during parties where the girls are hanging out with the babies and the guys are watching the game, I’d much rather be with the guys.

On the way home last night, Mike said, “Well, it makes sense that you would like sports so much, since you grew up with a brother, and you would have had to play things on his terms.” The problem with that theory is that, while Joseph and I did play sporty things together, he also played with me when I wanted to play Barbies (sometimes). And, of the two of us, although he is definitely more athletic, I am the sports-watcher. When I talked to him last week, I asked if he was watching any of the World Series, and he kind of snorted. I think the real reason I like sports is because my mom likes sports. She was a tomboy growing up, and I wish I was as athletic as she is. There’s even a story about the time she made the game-winning free throws for her high school basketball team. She and I would be the ones watching every Carolina basketball game, while my dad often fell asleep on the couch. (Sometimes we’d wake him up with our yelling.) I only remember staying up to watch a game with my dad one time - the 1992 NLCS with the Braves vs. the Pirates. And I didn’t get into football until I married Mike, because my dad doesn’t watch it very much. So, in my house, sports were more of a female thing, oddly enough.

Last week I ran across this book called The Meaning of Sports. It’s about why Americans watch sports and what sports mean to people in this country. It’s been slow going, but I have enjoyed it so far. Since my brother and I grew up in the same house and are so different when it comes to sports, it’s been interesting to run some of the different things in the book past him to see what his opinion is.

Since Mike and I are both into sports, it will be interesting to see if we raise sports-crazed children, or if they will be more like my brother - interested in more creative pursuits.