Through a Glass, Darkly

Today has been a day of cleaning, a day of coffee, and a day of finally getting some flooring in the house. The kitchen and upstairs bathroom are done, the front part of the downstairs is almost done, and I’m not sure about whether we’ll get carpet today or Monday. Regardless, the house is already in much better shape. I’m hoping to have a lot of the straightening that the house so desperately needed done by late afternoon so I can spend the evening relaxing in whatever manner I choose (but it’s a safe bet to assume it will involve reading).

I really needed a day like this, even more than I realized. Mike has been great about doing so much of the painting and taking so much responsibility for the great redecorating project caused by the flooding, but I have still found myself pretty exhausted the past few weeks, just from lack of time. Last week I was busy almost every evening, and it just seems like nothing around the house was getting done. Probably because it wasn’t. Plus, I’ve been kind of discouraged at work, and yesterday’s discussion failure didn’t really help. More than just cleaning to help my emotional state, I find that I needed some me time. That’s what I miss the most about student life, especially when I was in grad school – being able to piddle around the house on rainy days like this, refilling up my coffee cup, cooking breakfast around 11, being productive while still being relaxed.

When Mike decided to go to Atlanta this weekend for a weekend of fun at Casa Holland, I was actually really excited, both that he will get that fun experience and that I will get to stay home by myself. I love spending time with him, but I haven’t had any time to myself in a while, and I know he’ll have a great time this weekend while I am improving my mental health here. Sometimes I wonder how the McCartneys were able to spend so much time together . . . I am glad Mike doesn’t have a job that requires him to go away very often, but I think it’s good for both of us to get a day to ourselves every now and then. I know he’ll appreciate both the work I have done on the house and my renewed mental state when he gets back.

There’s a whole genre of books about friendship, and they always seem to leave me slightly unsatisfied. Not because the books aren’t good, because they are good about as often as other genres. No, it’s more because I wonder if that kind of friendship exists outside of books, the kind where you grew up together and your friendship overcomes your differences and you’re more like sisters. You have sleepovers and you borrow each other’s clothes and you can let yourself in her house without knocking . . . I have friendships somewhat like that now, but it’s still kind of a foreign concept to me overall, because I was pretty lonely as I was growing up.

I realized last year that I had always said I wanted a sister, but what I really wanted was a storybook sister. Very few of my friends actually have sisters who get along like girls do in books. Recently I realized that the other thing I want is storybook friendships. Anne and Diana. Benny and Eve. Harry, Ron, and Hermione (no, they’re not perfect, but they are always there for each other). Most recently the friendships I have been pondering are from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: Bridget, Carmen, Lena, and Tibby.

The first time I read The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, it had just come out and I had to wait on a list for it at the library. I remember they called me and I read it that afternoon. I don’t remember what I thought, except that it was enjoyable and that I wished it had been out when I was younger. When I read it earlier this summer, though, it struck me that I was reading it as if everyone else had relationships like this and I was the only one who was on the outside looking in, instead of being able to relate. As I was thinking about it today, though, I realized that even if I didn’t have friendships like that when I was younger, my post-college friendships are more along those lines.

Today’s stellar example of that is my friend Theresa. Theresa and I met when she was a freshman in college and I was a junior. She ended up rooming with a good friend of mine and we were thrown together a lot. People always accused us of being the same, and we loved hanging out, so my senior year I ended up discipling her. We went through Philippians, which was awesome, although sometimes we would play with glitter and sidewalk chalk and watch basketball instead of doing our actual study. We talked a lot about the stars and God’s covenant with us, and I always looked forward to those times with her on Friday afternoons. Because we approach relationships so similarly, I always knew she would understand when I was having trouble with a friend, and I think she felt the same way. But we tried very hard not to leave it there, we tried to learn and grow in those relationships even when it was difficult for us. We prayed a lot, and we ate our favorite snacks, and I count her as one of my closest friends. I don’t get to talk to her as much as I would want, sometimes, but when we see each other, we’re full of chatter about Harry Potter and Star Wars and what books we have read and what we have been learning in relationships lately. We went to a wedding shower together a few weeks ago, and we spent the entire time chatting (which might have been rude, but I just don’t get to see her enough, okay! hehe).

Today I was provided with further evidence that Theresa is one of my best friends, someone I can depend on at all times: She came to my book discussion. Let me back up. First, she bought the book for my book discussion (I knew she would love it because we are the same person), then she read it, and then she drove an hour from Cary to come to the discussion and eat cookies and drink Dr. Pepper with me. The sad truth about the discussion is that no one else came. It was just me, a coworker, and Theresa. The thing is, if Theresa hadn’t been there, I would have felt like a complete failure. But she was there, so all I can think about is how great it is that I have a friend who is willing to drive that far to come and talk with me about a book, to save me from complete and utter humiliation. We talked about how both of us relate to Lena and Carmen, how neither of us relates much to Bridget (we’re not very athletic), and how she was a little more willing than I am to own up to being Tibby-ish. We talked about how friendships change over time, and how there is a very delicate line to walk between holding on too tightly and letting go completely. And then we came upstairs and talked about Harry Potter and she admired the toys in my office. She didn’t seem to care that no one else came.

I have missed her more than I realized. I feel like I could wrap things up neatly here and say, “Our friendship isn’t like one in a book, but maybe that doesn’t matter so much,” but that seems too trite. Theresa - and many of my other friends - are more to me than roles to be filled. They remind me that, as Kathleen Kelly says, books should prompt us to remember life instead of the other way around. What I learned today is that I need to stop wanting my friendships to be like those in books. Girls in books should be so lucky as to have a friend like Theresa (and Kelly and Melissa and Shelby and Emily and Alisa and Rhonda . . .).

Thanks for coming, Theresa. It meant more than I really know how to say.

I tend to like stories that try to fill in the holes on Biblical characters I already know (this is traditionally called a “midrash”). Chicklit.com (the logo and slogan may look familiar to some of you) has an article up today on Biblical fiction and gives some recommendations. I’m planning on checking a few of them out - I thought some of you might be interested as well.

I was walking down the hall and I thought I saw her, and suddenly I was drowning, my throat full, my lungs tight. It wasn’t her, of course. She hasn’t been there in, oh, two years at least. But it looked like her, just for a minute, and I was surprised at how much it threw me off.

I didn’t tell Mike about it right away. Later, though, I pointed out the girl and told him that I thought she was someone else, someone I didn’t particularly want to see. He held my hand and tears welled up in my eyes, tears I wasn’t even aware were there. I don’t know if he knew they were coming. Sometimes he knows stuff like that before I do.

I did actually see her a couple of weeks ago, when I was shopping with my mom. We said our awkward hellos and then retreated to opposite corners of the store. I didn’t tell Mike about that right away, either. I cried that night, too. Maybe that’s how he knew.

Sometimes you try so hard to do the right thing and it’s still not enough. I reached out to her because I thought it was the right thing to do. I don’t know if it was or if it wasn’t. But I know it hurts when I see her. Even when she’s not really there.

The College Girls did a series about the first thing they learned in college. I am not sure what I would say the first thing I learned in college was, but it probably had something to do with Indian food not being for everyone.

To celebrate completing our first week of college, a group of girls from my hall went to the Indian restaurant on Tate Street, which is the UNCG version of Franklin Street. Sort of. I would guess that there were around 10-12 of us, although I can’t remember exactly who was there. I had never really had Indian food before, but some of the girls helped us through it, and the waiter was very nice, and we had some great dishes. I like spicy food, and there was plenty of that, as well as more tame stuff for the girls with less cast-iron stomachs than mine.

(An aside: I tend to think of myself as unfeminine in the area of spicy food, because I love spicy stuff - not hot for the sake of being hot, but hot and flavorful, definitely - but many/most of my friends can’t eat things if they are too spicy.)

Anyway, that night was probably the first time I’d eaten spicy food with people who weren’t my family, and, when many of them were in the bathroom for the rest of the evening, I realized that not everyone can handle the heat. hehe.

That was probably the only time that particular group hung out, and I always wished we’d do it again (although, obviously, there was no way that many of them would agree to go back to that restaurant). So maybe I also learned a few things about friendship, about those “instant bonds” you think are going to last, about making the most of late-night pizza and trips to Ben and Jerry’s because you might not have them again, at least in that particular way.

I’m just putting links to a couple of articles here so I can find them again. They may be of some interest to some of you, as well, if you’re a HP fan. The two articles together pretty much articulate how I see things. In the interest of letting the unspoiled remain that way, you can click below to see the links.

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Something I was reading several weeks ago made me think about sleepovers. Summer is a good sleepover time. I remember one summer when we lived in Charlotte and pretty much every girl in my class had a July birthday (like me!) and there was a party every week. It was awesome. I remember one sleepover in particular - Susie or Susan was her name, I think, and I wasn’t that close to her, but I sat on the back row of the class with her (and the other girls in my reading group) and we were friendly, so I went. I only remember vague things, like her house was really bright, and there was a huge playroom upstairs, and her mom was really nice, and we did some fun things, but I have a really warm memory of that party.

There was another one - my friend Caren - hers was really fun, too, except she had a cat and I wasn’t really over my cat allergies at that point, so I felt like a party pooper when the cat wasn’t allowed anywhere near the party. Except that time that her cat walked on my pillow, and her mom had to give me a different pillowcase so I could sleep. Caren had a really big house and nice parents, too. I liked going over there after school and playing with the playhouse that was for her and her sister. I remember my mom saying, “Her mom drives a Mercedes!” I asked if that was an expensive car. (My mom drove a Pontiac station wagon. With paneling.)

Sleepovers are such a status symbol when you’re growing up. There are plenty more I remember - one year I was invited to a particular girl’s party and it was huge that I was being accepted into that group. But the next year I had fallen out of her good graces, and I was most deliberately not invited. I pretended it didn’t hurt, but it did. I tried to casually ask my friends about the party, whether they had fun, but everyone had been instructed not to tell me anything.

I only had one sleepover - for my 13th birthday. We borrowed my aunt and uncle’s unused farmhouse and I had 10 or so girls over. We made individual pizzas and talked about our crushes and mixed all the sodas together and drank them. I remember it as a good time. Someone gave me mascara, which was very exciting.

It’s funny because until I got married, I was very particular about sleep. I haven’t ever been very good at sleeping when other people were in the room, or on retreats, that kind of thing. (In college, I went on a record number of retreats, and yet I will be the first to tell you that I hate retreats, mostly because I have trouble sleeping when I’m not in my own bed, which means I get grumpy on retreats. It’s gotten slightly better since I got married, but now I have trouble sleeping when Mike’s not around. I guess I am a creature of habit.) But I never said no to a sleepover.

I didn’t love All This Heavenly Glory by Elizabeth Crane until I got close to the end. I still wouldn’t call it one of my favorite books of all time or anything like that, but there were two chapters close to the end that I really enjoyed. The first one was about prayer:

Although she did not belong to any religion, she had heard various interpretations of the eleventh step over the years about what it was okay to pray for (the eleventh step of Alcoholics Anonymous suggests praying only for knowledge of god’s will, but it also suggests meditation, which to Charlotte went as far as turning off the TV), i.e., go ahead and pray for whatever you want, but it might be a better idea to pray only for god’s will. Charlotte tended to struggle with this as she found it difficult to avoid the idea that god’s will for everyone was to give up all material possessions and head for the farthest starving or war-torn country, not considering that maybe god, if he had a mind, and if he were a he and if he were only concerned with this sort of altruism, maybe had some more appropriate type of service in his mind for Charlotte, like maybe making a film that would compel millions of people to go out and do his will, which only muddles things a little more for Charlotte because she’d really rather make a film that would inspire people however it inspired them, but also because she wonders how she’d necessarily even know if she were making a film that inspired anyone at all, whether to do god’s will or whatever else, or if it matters if she knows, which is often the real question she has about god’s will, whether she prays for it or not, does it even matter if she knows, if it’s being done anyway, and what about if god really is punishing, what if she’s completely wrong about god insofar as the one thing she holds to is that god has to want what’s good, even if she might not know what that is above and beyond generally treating people well.

The book is full of delightful run-on sentences like that, so if that drives you crazy, stay away. I found it a little disconcerting at first, especially when I noticed that the whole first chapter is one sentence, but I also got that we were in Charlotte’s mind, and my mind works like that, too, so I recognized a kindred spirit.

The other chapter I enjoyed had to do with 9/11.

Check email again, glance at TV, think, Something has gone horribly wrong at air traffic control. Thirty minutes later, recognize this as one of your last innocent thoughts, which is ironic considering you thought you had your last one twenty years ago (something along the lines of My grandparents lived to be a hundred, therefore my parents will never die).

I read that to Mike, explaining that I felt much the same way: “Oh, what a horrible accident!” And then we all realized it was on purpose. The chapter ends by saying: “Go back to being exactly the same as before, only different.”

The book says the title is taken from a Bruce Lee movie where a character says, “If you gaze too hard at the finger pointing to the moon, you’ll miss all the heavenly glory.” The book, though, is about the small things that make up our lives: what happens when you have a crush on your friend’s boyfriend and staying with your dad for the summer and bad first dates and meeting your boyfriend’s family for the first time and playdates with your best school friend. I happen to think that in those things we can catch glimpses of heavenly glory here on earth, pieces of what life should be like and what we were created for. And yet, I agree with the quote, that we shouldn’t focus completely on the things here, because they are only signs pointing us in the direction of what is to come.

I came home from work today and found that Mike had finished painting the upstairs hallway. That’s everything. That’s all the painting we’re doing at this point. I would post pictures, but I don’t have a digital camera. So, imagine a house that looks really good (except, still no floors) and that’s our house. Looking good.

Up next: Flooring on Thursday and Friday. I hope.

They didn’t post it until late last night, but here’s the third part of the Leaky Cauldron/Mugglenet interview. Spoilers, of course.

Back when I worked at the Christian bookstore, I always had a sense that I didn’t fit in with the customers. No, I hadn’t read the latest Left Behind book, nor was I likely to. Yes, I had read that book that talked about the evil inherent in Harry Potter, but, actually, it made me really angry, but I’m not allowed to tell you why, since the customer is always right. No, I don’t think it’s a great idea to give a KJV Bible to a six-year-old when it’s on a 12th grade reading level. Yes, I will be dressing up for Halloween. I seemed to be some kind of crazy rebel in the sight of many of the customers, even though I didn’t think my views were that radical. Growing up, I often felt that way, too, as there were points in my life where I was the only one in my youth group who wasn’t homeschooled or at Christian school. I was given some grief about it from time to time by the other kids (and, occasionally, their parents) . . . never mind that, of all of them, I was one of the few who wasn’t sleeping around. That wasn’t the point. The point was that I was going to that evil public school. (Actually, I think the point is that my parents were involved with my education and didn’t leave it up to the school regardless of what kind of school it was, but I guess we can agree to disagree.)

It reminds me a little bit of the frustration Kelly has been feeling lately in a study she’s attending through her church. She called this morning and we talked about some of it again, how rigid it all seems, how wrong it seems to think that wives are required to check their personalities at the altar as if being a wife is our only avenue after that point. No, as Kelly said, I’m a follower of Christ before I am anything else, and being a wife is my primary relationship here, but I’m also a friend and a reader and an employee and a daughter and a sister and a coworker (hehe, did you see how I counted my relationship with books as one of my primary relationships?) . . . and without all those things I wouldn’t have much to bring to the relationship I have with my husband. At this point I need all of those things to be the person I am supposed to be. I may not always have the same job, or maybe I’ll stay at home, but I am other things than just wife and homemaker. I say that even as I remember that I vowed to make my home and family my primary ministry, which I believe it should be.

Today I was looking at some blogs and I thought, “People still argue about Harry Potter? That seems so . . . long ago.” I am thankful that in big ways and small ways, Mike and I have retreated from a lot of that subculture, and it was quite a delight to show up to church on Sunday morning and have people ask us if we’d finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince yet (we hadn’t, but when we finished that evening, I called one of my church friends pretty much immediately to dish, and I’ve been exchanging emails with my pastor about it all week long). It feels really freeing to find a place where we can talk about things, where people aren’t afraid, where I’m not told that I’m lesser or that I can’t get to God because I’m a woman.

I think . . . I think it’s hard for me to explain the connection between Harry Potter and a wife’s role, except to say that it’s there in my mind because I see so many people looking at those things and experiencing fear. I am grateful to be experiencing more freedom.

So, after weeks and weeks of putting it off, I finally finished Confessions of a Pagan Nun. July has been a remarkably unproductive reading month for me, because I just couldn’t get through that book. It was 191 pages, and as I kept saying yesterday, I could normally finish that in a day or a day and a half, but I couldn’t ever bring myself to pick it up. Finally, last night, I plowed through the last 80 pages and went to bed. Hallelujah.

This morning I had a choice between several books I had checked out. I narrowed it down to two: The Moviegoer by Walker Percy and All This Heavenly Glory by Elizabeth Crane. I looked on the inside flap of All This Heavenly Glory and it starts: “Here are the events that make up a life: a junior-high-school fashion crisis, a best friend’s betrayal, substance abuse, recovery, finding a satisfying career, dating fiascos, the perfect relationship, the illness and slow death of a parent.” Yeah, that sounds like something I would like, doesn’t it? I decided that Walker Percy can wait a little longer. (I know his book is important and all, but I need something a little bit easier right now.)

Part two is up. And one of my favorite theories (on who the mysterious R.A.B might be), well, she doesn’t say yes, but she does seem to indicate that we’re right. Excellent.

And what message would I have wanted from the stars that night when I wandered motherless for the first time in my life? What message would I want the sky to tell me on any night? That I am loved? That I am protected? That something understands my efforts though they fail? That the sky is a curtain behind which all that we long for waits, all the dreams we mourn that are held in the arms of the dead, who wait and whisper like children in a game of hiding? That if I have faith I will be embraced by an understanding that is complete and blissful? Perhaps if one stops looking up at the stars and looks instead at this world, the messages we need would be there and the gods could tend to larger matters than one tiny person’s sorrow. -Confessions of a Pagan Nun by Kate Horsley

This month, my book club is reading Confessions of a Pagan Nun, and I am not liking the book very much. In fact, I was stuck on page 26 for close to two weeks. But it’s getting to be crunch time, so I read another 40 pages last night and have been enjoying it a little more. While I do think that God cares about each person’s sorrow, something about the above passage caught me like nothing in the book had so far. It’s been true for me that when I stop focusing so much on my own needs and instead turn my thoughts to those around me, things seem better. And when I stop looking for signs in the sky, I can more easily see God working all around me.

So, I’m not going to recommend this book, but I did enjoy that passage. I am about 1/3 of the way through at this point, so I should have no problem getting it done on time.

Last night I spoke to a local book club (not the one I am in) about some of the new books at the library. Before I left, I sent Alisa an email that said I was nervous about it, and on my way home I left her a message that said, “It went well, I don’t know why I was so nervous. Books aren’t scary, and older women aren’t scary. Putting them together shouldn’t be scary.” Actually, it was a lot of fun to tell them about some of the new books we have here and to talk about some of their favorites. A couple of the ladies from my book club are also in that one, and it was fun to see them as well. All in all, good book experiences lately. I’m gearing up for two book discussions next week: The regular one on Confessions of a Pagan Nun and one aimed at teenagers on The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. After getting more read in Confessions of a Pagan Nun, I’m really looking forward to them both.

I promise to have a real post later on today, but for now, entertain yourselves with the pictures from our adventures at Barnes and Noble on Friday night. (Mike isn’t really in them because he was the one holding the camera. I hate it when that happens.)

Well, I like fine eyes as much as the next person, but I have actually been meditating on the very great pleasure of hanging out with a group of girls and watching Pride and Prejudice. You see, earlier this year, my friend Emily asked me for some reading recommendations, and when I found out that she hadn’t read P&P, I talked her into doing so immediately. She finished it a few weeks ago, and we had plans to watch the movie when she got done. On Thursday, we watched disc 1. The audience included me, Emily, Melissa, Emily’s sister-in-law, and another one of Emily’s friends. Emily’s friend and I were the only ones who had read the book and watched the movie (and, yeah, it’s my favorite book and my favorite movie, so I was geeked). Emily, as I said, had read the book, and her sister-in-law had seen the movie. Melissa, however, was going in completely cold.

I can’t tell you how much fun it was to watch with these girls. Mike is the only person I had watched it with, and he was also going in cold. It took him a bit to get used to it, but now he enjoys it. Watching it with girls, however, was a completely different experience. I had fun giving them little tidbits of information (you could say I’m obsessed, and you probably wouldn’t be completely wrong) and watching their faces as important things happened. Melissa likes to talk to and about the characters when we’re watching a movie, and it was fun to hear about her distrust of Wickham. My favorite part, though, was when Elizabeth, Mr. and Mrs. Collins, Darcy, and Col. Fitzwilliam were at Rosings, and Darcy tried to talk to Elizabeth a bit. She shut him down, and Melissa said, “She needs to be nicer to him and give him a little more grace. He’s trying.”

I kept silent.

I kept silent through Col. Fitzwilliam spilling the beans on Darcy breaking up Jane and Bingley. I kept silent through Mr. Darcy’s proposal. I kept silent through Elizabeth’s tirade. But when Mr. Darcy stormed out of the room and the credits started rolling, I turned to her and said, “She should give him more grace? After he broke up her sister’s relationship and insulted her family?”

Of course, he does ardently admire and love her.

Next week: disc 2.

I’m not going to talk about Harry much, because I feel like I’ve already had about 10 conversations about the book where we went through the same points about the things that happened and the things we speculate, and last night Mike and I rehashed a bunch of things while we were painting, so I’m not sure I have anything else to say right now. I have spent my Potter energy elsewhere.

However, I would like to give you a link to a very interesting interview with JKR in which she sidesteps one of the points that has been most discussed regarding book 6, creating, I am sure, even more controversy and speculation. Enjoy. Oh, and, yes, there are spoilers, so don’t read if you haven’t finished. (I’ll link to the later parts when they’re posted, as well.)

Years married: 5

Times I have been sad we didn’t have a wedding video: 0

Times we have listened to the CD of our wedding ceremony: I think 2

Times our vacation was almost ruined by forgetting the plane tickets (luckily one of us remembered them on the way to the airport): Just once. Because one of us is more careful and one of us asks a lot sooner.

Times our vacation was almost ruined by one of us almost leaving the oven on. For a week: Just once. (I actually think it was the same vacation as above, but I’ll have to double-check with Mike about that.)

Times that extensive power outages have forced us to go stay with friends or family: 2 times in one winter. The great ice storms of ‘02 and ‘03.

Times I have ordered lasagne: Mike says I “always” order lasagne, so . . . a lot.

Places we have lived: 3

Times I allowed Mike to move the TV into the bedroom: 3 (once when I had mono and once when I was just really really sick and this week because of all the painting downstairs)

Times Mike has asked me if we can keep a TV in the bedroom: 1,000,000,000

Time we were both working full-time jobs: About 9 months

Former bosses who sound like Smurfs: 1

Current bosses who sound like Smurfs: 0

A’s made while one or the other of us was in school: Too many to count (hehe)

Pets: 0

Plants Kari has killed: 3 or 4

Plants Kari has kept alive: 3

Churches regularly attended: 2

Vehicles owned: 4

Vehicles currently owned: 2

Deer hit: 1

Household members who are afraid of heights: 1

Household members who are afraid of spiders: 1

Hours Kari has spent complaining about the smell of Mike’s beef stroganoff creation (including Hamburger Helper Beef Stroganoff, sour cream, corn, and A1 sauce): At least 17

Times Mike has won at Yahtzee (a game of CHANCE): hundreds

Times Kari has won at Trivial Pursuit (a game of SKILL and KNOWLEDGE): also hundreds

Times Kari has won at Scrabble: 0

Times Mike has won at Book Lover’s Trivial Pursuit: 0

Discussions of whether we should stop playing competitive games: thousands

Times Kari has mowed the grass: 2

Times Mike has mopped our kitchen floor: 2

Years it took for Kari to convince him to mop it even once: 4.5

Counting Crows concerts seen: 4

Caedmons Call concerts seen: 0

Floods in our house: 1

Diet Coke drunk: Average 50 oz/day for 365 days/year times 5 years = 91,250 oz (which we believe is a low estimate) (and that’s just Mike)

Remotes in our house: 13

Reality shows we follow: 3

Hours past midnight we stayed up reading (out loud) a sappy book that made us cry that I shouldn’t mention here: 4

Harry Potter books read together: 2 (that’s since the wedding, mind you)

Sleeps until Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: 0

Number of months after the wedding that Kari’s watch battery died: 1

Number of months that it’s been since Mike said he would replace it: 59 and counting

Scrapbooks filled: 3

Books read, hours spent laughing, tears cried: Too innumerable to count, but I can tell you the laughter outnumbers the tears by a long shot.

Regrets: 0

In between Boy #1 and Boy #2, during my freshman year of college, I dated a guy who was my most serious boyfriend before Mike. He was sweet, but I honestly felt like I needed someone more forceful, someone who could hold his own a little more. What it boils down to is that the cliche is true: Girls really don’t want guys who are too nice. Or at least I didn’t. Anyway, I don’t regret dating him in the least, because I learned a lot about myself and what I need from a relationship.

But I want to tell you a story that never fails to make Mike crack up. I know, now I’ve put a lot of pressure on myself to tell it well, but I hope you at least smile.

Picture it: Valentine’s Day, 1998. It’s a weekend full of celebrations - our six monthiversary (it can’t be an anniversary, can it?), his birthday, and, of course, Valentine’s Day. Unfortunately, I had a rough week at school, so I asked if we could just eat pizza and rent a movie to celebrate Valentine’s Day (I don’t really go for made-up holidays). He said sure and showed up at my house after work with . . . a meat lover’s pizza and The Frighteners. If you’ve been a reader of this blog for any length of time, you probably know that what I like on pizza is vegetables. And that the movies I watch generally do not include The Frighteners. I don’t mean to tease him, because he really is a nice guy. It’s just that we still obviously didn’t know much about each other if he didn’t know those things, you know? And, as much as I don’t go for made-up holidays . . . The Frighteners? Really? We only lasted a couple more months after that. I don’t want to place too much importance on some pizza toppings and a dumb movie, but something about the pizza-and-Frighteners incident made me begin to realize that it wasn’t working out like I had hoped.

It always makes Mike laugh, though, that he brought The Frighteners. On Valentine’s Day.

I have been thinking lately about why Mike and I work, even when it seems like it’s not working. We have the same sense of humor, we like a lot of the same movies (especially smaller films that aren’t mainstream), we see things very similarly. Our religious backgrounds correspond. I didn’t realize until we watched Saved with Scott and Kelly how much of a difference that would make. Mike and I were cracking up at the “raise the roof for Jesus” mentality that we recognized from our own youth group years, while Scott and Kelly, who were raised Episcopalian instead of in non-denominational churches, didn’t think it was as funny as we did, because they didn’t have those same experiences. And we are both used to living out of the city: He moved to the Fort Mill and Tega Cay area when he was 11, while I spent my formative years in Siler City. It means neither of us minds driving a bit if we can have a little bit larger house and a little more room to breathe. I wouldn’t have thought that things like church backgrounds and city vs. country living would have made such a big difference, but they do. We don’t like all the same music, but we grew up listening to a lot of the same stuff, so when we feel nostalgic, we can share memories of the crappy Christian music we used to listen to.

It’s not been easy, because we’ve both had selfishness and fears to overcome, but right now? I’m really happy. I’m happy that Mike knows what I like on pizza, and that he’s willing to watch Bride and Prejudice with me (and even download one of the songs). That he’s not afraid to think about things, and that he calls me out when I have a bad attitude. That we can paint and laugh and take silly pictures and read Harry Potter . . . I didn’t mean for this to turn into a mush-fest, but thinking about those other boys just makes me realize how happy I am. How happy we are. I’m glad we’re finally getting the hang of all this.

The summer after my freshman year of college, I was working at Family Christian Stores and living at home (for the most part - I did some house sitting that summer) and going to two different Bible studies. One was in Greensboro with lots of the IV folk I had met that year, and one was in Chapel Hill at my parents’ church. I was pretty excited to finally be a part of the college group. I always thought the guy who led the group was really nice (in a platonic way), and it felt really grown up to be able to hang out with him and his friends.

I enjoyed both of the studies that summer, but I definitely went to the Chapel Hill one more. I don’t know if that’s because we did more things together or if it was because of P. Who is P, you ask? Well, P wasn’t the leader of the group. He was this big guy who went to Winthrop and was only in town for the summer, staying with his dad and stepmom. I have no idea how he got plugged into the group. I just remember that, the first time I met him, he said, “You look just like my ex-girlfriend!” I am still not sure if that was just a line, but we started talking on the phone a lot and he’d always sit next to me at the meetings and church. I am not proud to admit that I still don’t know how I felt about P, but I sure did like the attention he gave me. I liked having someone pursue me like P was.

We only went on a date once (what I just realized is that I didn’t let him come pick me up, which I said was because our date was going to be in Chapel Hill anyway and there was no reason for him to drive out to see me, but was probably also motivated by the shotgun incident), to dinner (Outback) and a movie (Saving Private Ryan). I had a nice time. We had lots in common, and we talked about The Beatles and Star Wars and IV and college and movies and all kinds of things. I was afraid he was going to try to kiss me at the end of the date, and I had never kissed anyone, so I was a little nervous about that. But we had good discussion after the movie, and we had a nice hug at the end of the evening when I dropped him off.

I forgot to mention that when I met him at his house, his stepmom was like, “Oh, you’re Kari! I’ve heard so much about you!” And yet I still didn’t realize the depths of his affection for me until later that summer. Our whole college group was obsessed with Star Wars (that’s the original trilogy for you youngsters who are reading. Not the prequels), and we decided to have a back-to-back-to-back showing on the big screen in the sanctuary. It was a good time, lots of food and laughing and flirting (that was me and P, if you were wondering) and very little actual watching of Star Wars. At some point Darth Vader was on the screen, and I was talking to a bunch of the boys (did I mention that this college group was mostly boys? That might have been the other reason I liked it so much) and I said, “I wish there was a theme song that played when I entered a room!” We joked about it for a while longer, and then it was promptly forgotten as we moved on to something else.

At our next meeting, a couple of other girls were there, and we were baking cookies or brownies or something for the guys when I got called back into the other room. P said that, per my request, he had written a theme song for me, and he’d like to perform it. He borrowed someone’s guitar, and played the song. I was so embarassed that two of the other guys (the two who laughed almost until they cried when they found out P and I had been on a date) were practically holding me down so I didn’t leave the room. The only lyrics I remember went like this:

K-A-R-I, that’s what I think when you’re away . . .

One of the great regrets of my life is that I don’t have a copy of the song.

Anyway, my smart alec guy friends who were holding me down kept saying things like, “That doesn’t sound like a Kari theme song! That sounds like a P-to-Kari song!” Which, in fact, it was. I was so confused about my feelings about P and embarassed about him playing me a song that I did what any mature person would do: I went back to the kitchen to help with the brownies. (One time Trey and I were exchanging embarassing stories and I told him this one and he said, “What did the other girls say when you went back to the kitchen?” The answer there is: Nothing. Nobody said anything. They took one look at me and we all just kept making our baked goods.) When people ask me what my most embarassing moment is, I usually recount this story.

I tried to thank him nicely for the song, because I knew he had gone to a lot of trouble to write it. I honestly don’t know how I came across, because I was so embarassed and confused. Did this song mean we were a couple? Because he had kind of declared our coupledom in front of a lot of our friends. And I still wasn’t sure if I liked P or just the attention that he was giving me. We continued to talk on the phone and do group stuff, but vacations and things meant we never went on another date. At the end of the summer, we exchanged email addresses and he said we should keep in touch because I was the kind of girl he thought he could end up marrying.

Unfortunately for him, I was already starting to have feelings for Mike. But I still wish I had a copy of the song.

A couple of months ago I read The King’s English by Betsy Burton, which is about an independent bookstore in Salt Lake City, and which I mostly enjoyed. I can’t remember now why I wasn’t completely enamored of it, but I did enjoy it overall. At the very least, it gave me lots of get lots of reading recommendations. In fact, it’s possible that some of my recent interest in poetry comes from the enthusiasm the author showed for some of her favorite poets.

When I was reading it, I lost interest a little bit somewhere in the middle, but I stuck with it because I kept hoping for a chapter on children’s literature. And when I got to it, I was entranced. I wish there had been more chapters on their children’s department. She talked about some of their favorite author appearances and some of their favorite children’s books over the years. And then, of course, she talked about Harry Potter. She told the story of how they hadn’t been told about some of the paperwork they needed to sign, which meant they didn’t get their copies of Goblet of Fire on time, and how they had to resort to buying them from Barnes and Noble and Wal-Mart and Costco and selling them at their own store. (And when I realized just a couple of weeks ago that I hadn’t been told about the proper Harry Potter paperwork and that there was a chance that we might not get them on time here at the library, I got a little panicky, but it appears that all is well on that front for us . . . since some of the books are already in.) As she talked about all the kids lined up and how exciting it was to give each of them their own copy, I got teary-eyed. We’ve been to Barnes and Noble (what can I say, our independents have all closed down) for the past two release parties, and I have gotten emotional each time. There’s just something about seeing those kids so excited about a book - a thick book, at that - that really gets to me. Even writing about it now makes me choke up a little bit. I don’t work in the children’s department here, and I don’t have any kids of my own, so maybe I am overly romanticizing the Harry Potter phenomenon, but it has been a really special thing for me to see. I have always had friends who were readers, but at the same time, I often felt as if no one understood how important reading is to me, that it’s as essential as breathing, that some of the characters I have met in books feel like close personal friends. Some of my books even feel like close personal friends because of the things we’ve been through together. Maybe that sounds strange to you, but those kids who stay up until midnight just to get a copy and then tear through it the next day? They get it. And I love them for it.

So, we’ll be at Barnes and Noble on Friday night, the night of our anniversary. We’re staking out our table as early as we can and bringing supplies (last time we got really thirsty, but the line was way too long for the cafe) and planning on having a grand old time. And, yes, I will probably cry. Not when I get the book in my hands (although, if this is anything like the past two books, I will cry at some point while reading it . . . and besides, I already held it in my hands here at work), but when I see the kid who’s dressed like Harry or the girl who’s dressed like Hermione and I see their faces light up at the games and their excitement when we all finally get to line up and the way they grin when they finally get their hands on their own copy . . . yeah, I’m going to cry then. I’ll try to hide it, and everyone will be too polite to mention it, but I guess, after all, there are worse things to cry over than a book.

When I was fifteen there was a boy at school, and I thought he was so awesome. He was a senior and he was funny and popular and nice and I tried to play it cool, but I really thought he was the greatest. I loved hanging out with him, and he came over to my house . . . the year that he and I hung out in a group with a bunch of other friends was definitely a highlight of my high school experience. And did I mention that I loved him with my whole 15-year-old heart? Then the best thing in the world happened: He and his girlfriend broke up just two weeks before the prom, and he asked me to go with him instead. Since I was just fifteen, I wasn’t allowed to date yet, but after some serious petitioning, my dad agreed to let me go. So my mom and I took one of her dresses and made it over for me and I borrowed jewelry and gloves and bought shoes and I had my hair done and everything was fabulous. I was very excited and nervous. After I got all ready and my mom did my makeup, I went downstairs to find . . .

. . . my dad with a shotgun.

Yeah, you read that right. My dad decided that the occasion of my first date was the perfect time to embarass me and make sure everyone knew that even though he had caved and let me go on this date, he was still the boss. Did he own a shotgun? Oh, no, he did not. So he borrowed one from one of our neighbors. And when the boy I loved with my whole 15-year-old heart showed up, my dad pretended to be cleaning it. You can see in our pictures that he looks terrified and I look . . . well, pretty frightened, too. Not because I thought my dad would shoot him or anything, but I could see my hopes that he would ever like me were not going to come to pass.

Overall, we had a nice night: He borrowed his dad’s old-fashioned yellow pickup truck, and we went to the prom in that. And after the prom we went to a friend’s house and stayed up late watching movies and singing and goofing off. Nothing was said about the shotgun incident. And later on that summer, I did kind of go on a double date with him, and it didn’t go so well. I still don’t know if he was nervous or if he was intentionally being a jerk on that date, but it doesn’t really matter. He graduated, we lost touch, end of story. It’s not as if I wish I was with him now, since I’m not the same girl I was at 15. (Thank goodness.)

Now, sure, this is funny to you, because, well, it’s funny. But think about 15-year-old Kari, who loved this boy with her whole 15-year-old heart, and think how mortified she must have been. The answer there is mortified down to her toes. I don’t remember this, but my dad says it was a while before I spoke to him again. My mom wasn’t very pleased with him either. When my dad told Kelly and Scott this story while we were at the beach, Kelly thought it was funny until I told her it was the prom. Then she understood why I had never brought it up.

So, there’s boy story number one: shotgun edition. How many of you can say your dad actually pulled out a shotgun on your first date? A borrowed one at that?

(Yes, we look slightly more relaxed here, but you should have seen the earlier pictures. No, I won’t let you see them.)

The great flood of aught-five means that things are changing around here. We have suddenly kicked it into gear regarding our interior decorating. Saturday we went and picked out carpet and vinyl and laminate flooring and armchairs and paint. We started painting the bathroom yesterday, and we’ll be starting some of the other rooms tonight or tomorrow. I had thought this would be the summer when we got the yard into shape but it is turning into the summer of interior change instead. I love the colors we have picked out and I can’t wait to see them on the walls. And I can’t wait for our new armchairs.

Yesterday after church I walked up to our minister to asked him to email me a copy of his sermon from last week (he usually writes his sermons in manuscript form, which I appreciate because I have seen ministers be “led by the spirit” when it’s really just a tangent) and he gave me a very appropriate side hug there in the sanctuary as he asked me how I was doing. What was so interesting about it was that I remembered going to talk to him in the fall about some things I was struggling with, and I cried and cried and all he did was give me wise words and Kleenex and a hand shake. Having come from a church that suffered after the minister got caught up in an affair, I think it’s very commendable that he stayed away from physical consolation (even though I could really have used a hug) when I was so vulnerable. It speaks very highly of him.

This week we’ll be counting down not only to Harry Potter, but also to my five-year anniversary. In honor of that, this week’s posts will be about some of the boys I dated before Mike, just to give you an idea of why I’m so glad to be married to him. Apparently I don’t tell these stories very often, because my best friend hadn’t even heard them until recently. Even if you’ve heard them before, well, it will be nice for me to have them all in one place.

When we were at the beach, we played a fair amount of poker. Scott and Kelly brought their chips, and we played a lot of Texas Hold ‘Em (and, strangely enough, War, which has nothing to do with poker or chips, but I’ll mention it anyway since it’s been years since I played War). We also played a few hands of some other games . . . I don’t remember exactly what, but there was one in particular where Mike had five cards in his hand and he was allowed to use two of them in combination with three that were on the table. There was one ace on the table, and when a second ace turned, he made a hampster gasp of joy. Scott and Kelly and I looked at him and Kelly said, “He’s got the other two aces.” Mike, who has the worst poker face in the world, started grinning. “Mike,” Kelly said, “do you have the other two aces?” He giggled, turned red, and nodded. (Joseph somehow didn’t see all this happen, or he didn’t believe me when I said that Mike has the worst poker face in the world, so he played the hand after the rest of us folded, and Mike did in fact have the four aces.)

For the rest of the week (and even now, really), all we had to do was say, “Mike, do you have four aces?” and he would start giggling. Try it sometime. It’s fun.

I was raised to be polite. Yes, sir, no, ma’am polite. Thank-you note polite (although I can’t say I never forgot a thank-you note, but I do try). Eat what was put in front of you (or at least as much as you can) polite. For me, politeness helps me go with the flow: I know what the rules are. I abide by the rules. Everything is good.

There has been a debate raging among my friends about two food-related issues: Whether I am too picky and whether I am overly polite. I vote no on the first but I am willing to concede that there is a possibility of the second being true.

The great politeness debate started just after Christmas. Mike and I went to Scott and Kelly’s to help throw Scott a birthday party (if you ask Kelly’s mom, for some reason she thinks I threw the party, but I see no need to correct her. I am a wonderful person who throws birthday parties for my friends, yes I am). Kelly got an ice cream cake for the four of us in his favorite flavor, mint chocolate chip. Let me tell y’all, I hate mint chocolate chip. But it was all there was, and it’s not very festive to refuse birthday cake when there are only four people, so I was eating it because that’s what I thought (and still think) I should do. Until Mike looked at me and called my bluff. I would have made it just fine, eating just enough for it to be acceptable, but then he had to go and ruin everything by announcing to the entire room that I don’t like mint chocolate chip. Amy Vanderbilt would not be pleased with him, that’s all I’m saying. Kelly was enraged and tried to forcibly take my plate away from me. She still hasn’t forgiven me. Just this weekend, she said that she and our friend Melissa were talking about it, and they feel that our level of friendship demands that I be more honest with them. It’s true that they are two of my very best friends, so if I was going to be honest with anyone, it would be them.

But, y’all, when I do that, they tell me I’m too picky! (I say that with love, and also to give them a hard time because I know that many of them will be reading and defending themselves.) I say that I’m not overly picky because there are only a few things that I absolutely cannot eat when they are placed in front of me: scrambled eggs and peas. Everything else I can eat at least some of (even corn, as long as I can swallow it whole and don’t have to bite into it, so probably not corn on the cob). I don’t care for a lot of things, this is true, but I think being picky is more about making a big deal about things. I don’t make a big deal about things. I am low-key. If there’s really nothing I care to eat, I can always go make myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (but not with grape jelly, because . . . ew). But mostly I go with the flow and I eat what I can and I eat things I don’t even really like because it doesn’t really hurt me to do that. It’s not going to kill me to eat mint chocolate chip ice cream or sweet and sour chicken even though I don’t like sweet meat (which I will tell you if you ask me, but if you don’t, I’m going to eat it). I feel like group eating is often about making sacrifices and I don’t mind making sacrifices for my friends. I will go ahead and say that I have eaten things I don’t like with most of my friends. If you are reading this and we have shared a meal, I’ve probably eaten something I don’t like. Because, yes, I have a long list of dislikes. And some of them are weird. But you didn’t know, did you?! I ate it just fine and it didn’t hurt me! It’s not a big deal to me!

There are a couple of problems with this that I can see. It reminds me of the great pizza topping debate of 2004, where I admitted that it’s hard for me to put forth my preferences in certain situations. Many situations. Okay, a lot of situations. So maybe I am being overly polite. But, again, politeness seems like a good thing to me. I don’t see the harm in it, except that if I were in my friends’ shoes, I would be horribly offended if someone ate food they didn’t like at my house and I didn’t even get the opportunity to offer them something, anything, even just a PBJ instead. So I do see their position. I just don’t know how to speak up without feeling rude.

Let me tell you a story. When I was growing up, my family went to church 45 minutes away. Youth group was on Saturday nights, so often the parents would drop me off at youth group and I would stay that night with a friend. One friend in particular, her mom always Martha Stewart-ed it up the next morning when it came to breakfast. She always made egg casserole (aka breakfast medley for those of you playing along) or pancakes. And other things to go with that. And she would serve them up and hand you the plate piling over. Now, I am not a huge pancake eater, but that’s mostly because I get hungry again so soon and it really messes up my blood sugar and I feel yucky all day. So, if you’re serving pancakes, I can eat ‘em. I would prefer not to feel so bloaty (which is a word), but I can eat ‘em. Eggs, though, are my nemesis. I used to eat them, but they turned on me at one point, and I really hate the smell. But she would serve up the plate (which I do not advocate – I think people should be allowed to get what they want on their own plates), and I didn’t want to be rude, so I would force them down. So, who was wrong here? Her for not asking, or me for not telling? In my house, my mom always asks and makes sure she has something you can eat (even if it’s just the aforementioned PBJ). But maybe I should have just said, without making a big deal about it (which is key! Go with the flow as much as you can, I say!), “Mrs. X, I have very strong feelings about eggs. Negative ones.” I look back on my 13-year-old self, sitting at that table, forcing down those eggs, and I want to cry because the smell of eggs makes me nauseated. And also applaud, because I appreciate politeness.

So, it seems like the issues are: Should you make your preferences known or just eat what’s put in front of you? Is there a certain level of friendship at which you should feel free to make your preferences know, and, if so, how do you know what that is? What constitutes picky? How come some people are picky and others just have discerning tastebuds (I am in the latter, if you were wondering)?

Readers, weigh in.

I purchased a book of poetry today. Ever since Lauren Winner posted “Prayers for Our Daughters” on her blog, I have been wanting to read some Mark Jarman. I hear that Unholy Sonnets is one of his best, but I went ahead and ordered the one that features that poem: To the Green Man. That makes two books of poetry I’ve purchased in recent days. I’m trying, people. I just want you to know that.

I am currently reading Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, the author of Gilead (which I read earlier and mentioned a time or two). Overall, I have to admit that I didn’t love Gilead, and I only finished it because, you know, it won the Pulitzer, so I thought I should. What’s interesting is that, though I’m enjoying Housekeeping a lot more than I did Gilead, I think the writing in Gilead was much more beautiful. I guess you can’t have everything.

Overall, in case you couldn’t tell, I had a very nice birthday. It’s not really over yet, to be honest - we still haven’t hung out with the Shearers and some of my family. So Birthday Week continues. I was thinking yesterday about a birthday I had a few years ago (in doing the math, I’m pretty sure it was the year I turned 23). I remember being profoundly disappointed that birthday . . . for some reason it seemed incredibly not special. Actually, the truth is that I seemed to be not particularly special to anyone (except Mike). My best friend was out of the country and we were already growing apart and I didn’t have anyone to replace her and of course I had friends and they did things for me, but that was when I really started struggling with feeling like my friends all had other people they were closer to, that I needed them more than they needed me. So, in looking back at this weekend, where I was surrounded with love and friendship, I feel like I should say: Look at the things I said just a year and a half ago, and look how much has changed. Look how full my life is compared to how empty it seemed. Look how my prayers have been answered.

I was trying to decide if this should be a blog about Birthday Weekend of Fun: So Much Fun in One Weekend Should Be Illegal or if I should talk about some of the things I have been pondering of late. But I can’t decide, so I’ll just give you one extra long entry. Indecision: More Blog for your Buck.

Between some personal issues that have been hovering on the horizon and the Great Flood of ’05 (read that as aught-five), I believe that I was due some fun. And that fun started on Friday, with morning coffee with a friend, lunch with a gang from church, afternoon coffee with one of my best friends who I never get to see, shopping with my mom (FOUR pairs of shoes) (oh, and I bought Mike a “Vote for Pedro” shirt), and guests for the weekend. That sounds like a lot of fun for one day, but the fun was really just beginning. Saturday was slightly less fun, because I had to work. But after work, there was a cookout with church folk during which many hamburgers were eaten, many books discussed, and much fun had. After the cookout, Mike, Scott, Kelly, and I headed back to the Crap Shack to do . . . something. And we ended up watching the Food Network. First Unwrapped (which was about pie!) and then Iron Chef America. I don’t think I have ever mentioned how much I love Iron Chef. I love the idea that sardines can be a garnish on ice cream. It’s like cooking with Oscar the Grouch. Anyway, I decided that about 15 minutes of Iron Chef was enough fun for one night, so I went to bed.

On Sunday, church was great, and we had lunch with friends (my random lunch was a Juice Shop smoothie and an eggroll) but the first real highlight of the day was Mike’s barbeque. He made it on the grill and it was wonderful. It was Eastern North Carolina style, which means it was a vinegar-based sauce. After eating the barbeque, we headed to Greensboro for fireworks (the second highlight of the day). We heard of a secret spot (which I will not disclose here . . . we made a pact!) and it was great! We brought cookies and brownies, and my friend Melissa brought coffee, and we sat in our chairs and snacked and took pictures and laughed at the dog who was having a coronary next to us (Good Idea: Picnic on the lawn while watching fireworks. Bad Idea: Picnic on the lawn while watching fireworks with your dog) and watched the best fireworks I have seen in a long time. When we got home, we got ready for bed and Alisa and Jason came by. I showed Alisa to her couch, we dished about the wedding, and we all got some sleep.

On Monday, which some people call Independence Day but which I prefer to call Birthday Eve, we had pancakes (but not waffles) for breakfast and sent Scott and Kelly on their way. Alisa and Mike and I got ready for our day of fun. It had a rather disconcerting beginning, with a scary (but hysterical) festival in our town that was slightly redeemed by a nice swingset. Then we took naps and hung out with Jason for the rest of the afternoon. Then it was time for the baseball game (or so we thought). Unfortunately, though, it was rain delayed. We got to hang out with good friends and yell “WAFFLES!” a lot. In fact, I was thinking last night how much fun it was that so many of my favorite people were together in one place. It was fun to have a lot of overlap with my friends this weekend: Scott and Kelly with our church friends and with Alisa, Melissa getting to meet Alisa and Susan, our church friends not asking us how we knew any of those crazy people who were yelling, “WAFFLES!” with us.

It was truly a weekend of fun. That’s not to say it wasn’t stressful, because it was. It was hard coordinating schedules and not having a floor and being so busy and not sleeping as much as I’d like. But it was still fun, and I am thankful to have such great friends. There were presents galore and much eating and celebrating. There was so much fun that it would be impossible to write it all down. I hope your weekend was that much fun.

If I were to say that I have been pondering relationships lately, you would probably roll your eyes and think, “When are you not pondering relationships?” And I would have to give you a point, because it’s true. Lately, my ponderings, both inspired by something Alisa said and by Oswald Chambers, have been focused on how fallen we all are in our relationships. How much I let people down simply because I am a sinner, and how much they let me down for the same reason. We aren’t hurting each other intentionally. We’re just fallen, and we do things wrong. It’s been helpful to remember that when people let me down, to remind myself that we’re all on equal footing, and that I probably let them down just as much as I feel they let me down. That no one says the right thing all the time.

It was interesting to me that after such a fun weekend, last night I couldn’t sleep even though I was exhausted. I found myself sitting in my closet (there’s carpet in the closet) with Oswald, reading about Isaiah and how he asked the Lord to show him his sin. And I thought about all the wrong moves I’ve made in the past couple of weeks (and over the weekend) and I prayed that God would show me where I was hurting people and where I was being too sensitive, and I prayed for the people who have hurt me, that they would grow and mature into the people he created them to be so that we can meet in the middle on some of those issues. And then I turned off the light in my closet and went right to sleep.

Every family has those stories. You know the ones I mean - the stories that get pulled out at family dinners, the stories that you love because they turn your mother into a giggling mess, even when she has heard the stories approximately 800,000 times. Even when she is the one telling the stories.

One of our stories has to do with my dad in a women’s restroom at Lowe’s (or Home Depot - do you think I remember which of those stores it was? You would be mistaken). He was not there on purpose. He just made a mistake. He was the only one there . . . or so he thought. So he did what needed to be done there. And then he and a woman met at the sink and she looked at him and said, “One of us is in the wrong place.”

My mom, laughing almost to the point of tears, told this story yesterday in the middle of the food court at the mall. She told me because we had gone into the bathroom at said food court and had found a man in the women’s room. (Men, here’s a hint: If it ain’t got a urinal, it ain’t your bathroom.) I was heading for the first stall (I hear the first stall is the cleanest since people usually pass it) when my mom started hightailing it out of there. In my confusion I saw the man’s back in the mirror before he turned around and saw me, at which point I rapidly followed my mom. (If she hadn’t been there, I might have stayed. Would that have been the wrong thing to do?) But then my mom just stood there outside the women’s room, and I had to drag her away saying, “He saw me realizing he was a man. We need to NOT be standing outside the door.” Needless to say, we found another bathroom. This one was safely in J.C. Penney. On the way, my mom told the story about my dad, and we laughed. But we also hurried, because we had to pee.

Now that I think about it, many of my family’s favorite stories involve the bathroom. My personal favorite story has to do with a game of hide-and-seek at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. My cousin and I were hiding from my brother, and we decided that he would never find us if we hid in the shower in the master bedroom. So we got in. And we stayed there for a while. The door opened, and we thought for sure we’d be caught. Instead, we heard the unmistakable sounds of Grandpa, going to the bathroom. And by “going to the bathroom,” I mean, “GOING TO THE BATHROOM.” We were children, mind you, so I am not ashamed to say that I giggled. A lot. In fact, I’m giggling now. And Grandpa, who was (needless to say) startled just a bit, made us come out of hiding and leave the bathroom.

The pure genius of this story is that we never told anyone about it for years. It was as if some silent agreement sealed our lips. But later, when we were in middle school or high school, my cousin and I entertained the entire family with a telling of this story. Both our mothers were in tears. They didn’t believe us at first, so we had to get Grandpa to confirm, which he did. It’s still a story that brings down the house.

Family can be hard. I think those are the hardest relationships we have. But then someone pulls out one of those stories, and you laugh together and you realize: Those shared memories are more than just something from the past. They’re tangible reminders of your shared memories, your shared sense of humor, your shared vacations and pets and holidays. All in a nice neat bathroom package.