Through a Glass, Darkly

Sometimes I see women my age identify themselves as “the Mrs.” or “the wife” and it always gives me pause. While I work hard to keep our house clean and I take very seriously the vow that I made to make our home my primary ministry, I don’t identify myself primarily as a wife. I don’t even like it when I am given the designation “Mrs.” as it sounds far too old (and a little too much like my mother-in-law). I don’t know what I would choose if I had to pick one word, but it wouldn’t be “wife.” Nor do I think Mike would choose the word “husband” as his primary identity. I don’t mind being identified that way, say, in an introduction (”Hi, I’m Mike’s wife”), but I don’t think my primary identity is in being a wife, and I think there’s a subtle difference there.

Some of that is probably because we don’t necessarily follow the “traditional” gender roles in our house. Mike is a much better cook than I am, and I’m the one who has been working on our broken toilet. There was a weird moment over the weekend when I had climbed in the attic to look at our air conditioner and Mike was on the floor below the attic opening, telling me about the stuffed peppers he was making. It’s good to know we clearly don’t have hangups about that sort of thing.

I think the most important thing is that since I’m working full-time, I see myself in terms of my profession and education as well as my marital status. And I have so many other identifications that are important to me: daughter, sister, Christian, friend, bibliophile. I’m just Kari, really. It’s good to be comfortable enough with myself to be able to say that, to accept myself as a whole rather than feeling that I have to compartmentalize. From time to time, I do wonder if my relationship with God ought to be my primary identification, but that almost seems like declaring the Bible to be my favorite book, which is something I would never do. When it comes down to it, I wouldn’t be a Christian without those other designations, too. Friends, family, books, husband - all those things have shaped my faith, giving me reasons to believe when I am mired in unbelief. I probably wouldn’t be a wife without the other parts, come to think of it. I need all those different “legs” to be able to stand.

I have said before that what I thought I needed in a relationship ended up being very different than what I thought I needed. Mike’s personality and strengths mean that he can give me the space I need to figure out who I am and what my role in our relationship is supposed to look like instead of waiting on him to tell me. Sometimes this means he does the taste testing when I try making my own refried black beans and sometimes this means he gives me a boost into the attic so I can inspect the air conditioner.

But it never ever means he calls me his “little wife.”

This month, my book club is reading Pride and Prejudice. That’s right, I made my book club read my favorite book. I am a terrible person. Except! It’s a truth universally acknowledged that Pride and Prejudice is a pretty freaking awesome book, so I don’t feel so bad. (I might after I hear their responses. I don’t think any of them have ever read it before.)

As I was planning to start rereading it, Mike got a gift certificate from Amazon.com, which he very kindly agreed to share with me. Under the guise of “research,” I ordered The Annotated Pride and Prejudice, which I have had my eye on since it was released in hardcover. In case you aren’t aware of it, things that I love include both Pride and Prejudice and annotations. So much to love in just one volume!

As for the annotations themselves, I thought that they were a little strange in some places. There were things that seemed very obvious that the author insisted on defining every time. And there were times where the annotations stated his opinion as fact, which was okay when I agreed with them, but I didn’t always. I did overall enjoy that commentary aspect, though. The thing that caught me off guard was how much longer it took to read the book when I kept going over to look at the annotations. The first half of the book I really thought I wasn’t getting anywhere at all. The deadline started to loom large.

Was it worth it, having the annotated version? Obviously, as the notes give away some plot points, the annotations are not for first-time readers (and that’s why some of the notes on obvious things seemed so strange – a first-time reader might need some of that clarified, but anyone who is going to buy the annotated version probably isn’t going to need such pedantic definitions). There were things I had a general idea about that were clarified quite a bit, and, for me, it was worth it if only for the ways that it explained the financial situation of the women. I know I could have gotten that information elsewhere, but it was broken down in such a way that I was finally able to really grasp it. The one good thing about the annotations aiming a little bit low in places is that it gave me a good idea what questions the other members of my book club might have, so, in the end, it was useful for my discussion after all.

I would have to say that, at this point, the only real drawback is that I own at least three copies of Pride and Prejudice (it might actually be four), which Mike was quick to point out when I said I wanted to order it. So why don’t you get him to tell you why, exactly, we have seven copies of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s/Sorcerer’s Stone. I think you will enjoy that tale.

This Sunday, our morning service included a wedding. That’s not a normal thing, by any means, and I had been unsure exactly what it was going to look like, but, as our pastor pointed out, a wedding is a worship service, too. And as the groom had proposed during a Sunday morning service a few months ago, the Sunday morning wedding seemed the only thing to do. In fact, it was one of the most meaningful weddings I have ever attended, one that managed to bring together both the rituals of our Sunday morning service and the rituals of a wedding, emphasizing both the importance of love here on earth and Christ’s love for the church. It seemed only right to have it during a Sunday morning service, and several of us mentioned afterwards that it was something we only wished we had thought of when we were getting married. One of our friends said, “How great would it be to have a children’s sermon in the middle of your wedding?” I can’t speak for the couple, but as someone attending the wedding, I thought it was great indeed.

The service also deemphasized the “excess” that seems to characterize the wedding culture in America these days, something that seems to have increased even in the years since my own wedding. There are many reasons I’m thankful to have been married for seven years, and one of them is, without question, that I didn’t know enough about weddings at that point in my life to get caught up in planning some kind of fairy tale ideal. (This also meant I had no idea what I was doing, but I don’t think that’s such a bad thing overall, since we managed to get married without knowing those things.) There were only the regular flowers and candles that we have at the church, and the bride wore a lovely lavender gown rather than a dress with a long train. She looked, I hardly need to say, beautiful just the same.

I have been to wedding services where the congregation had a part to play, affirming our commitment to the couple and their relationship. I always love that - when I choose to attend a wedding, it is because I want to support the bride and groom as they navigate their new relationship, and I enjoy it when the congregation vocalizes that. It seemed especially meaningful on Sunday, as the call to worship had us reading 1 Corinthians 13, the choir sang beautifully on home and family, the prayer reminded those of us who are married to renew our own vows, and the homily spoke of both romantic and divine love. I sat in a strange pew (the couple’s friends and family caused us all to sit in different places), surrounded by people I see every week who have been involved in this couple’s courtship, who know them much better than I do, and who have already taken very seriously the idea that relationships and marriage don’t happen in a vacuum. I have never been to a wedding in which the community was so much a part. It’s easy to think of renewing your own promises in a place where you see relationships so supported.

The big question I had before the service was, “What will the visitors think?” I try, in general, not to worry about that, but . . . this was something fairly unusual. After the service the answer was clear. Visitors would have seen the same thing that I saw when I first started attending the church: a group of people who love and support each other very much. (There was also a goat. So they will see that we are a little bit wacky. It took me more than just the first Sunday to figure that out.)

After church on Sunday I came home to a phone call from one of my oldest friends, telling me that she got engaged last week and asking me to participate in her own marriage ceremony. I will anticipate her wedding with a renewed idea of what it means to stand as part of her community, celebrating their relationship and promising to do everything I can to support the mystery of two become one.

Last night Mike and I decided we wanted s’mores. We have been using the fancy chocolate that Katie sent, because . . . while s’mores are excellent treats by themselves, the level of their greatness is increased when using fancy chocolate. S’mores with raspberry! S’mores with caramel! And, last night’s discovery, in which we took our graham crackers, our marshmallows, and white chocolate, and then added blueberries between the chocolate and marshmallows. Holy Moses was it fantastic. Completely different than a normal s’more, but still completely awesome. It was a good thing we used our last graham crackers to make those two, because if we had had more, I would have been stuffing my face all night. Now I can’t wait to try blueberries and dark chocolate. This is the greatest invention of my entire summer.

I am sure you will say, “Why didn’t you take a picture?” I told you. I was too busy stuffing my face.

Looking for Alaska is the story of Miles “Pudge” Halter and his first year at boarding school in Alabama. Pudge chose to go to boarding school because he’s spent a lot of time thinking about the “Great Perhaps” (more on that in a second) and because he doesn’t want to wait to start looking for meaning in his life. At the school, he and his friends enjoy the freedom of boarding school life: smoking, drinking, pranks, relationships, and, somewhere in there, studying. As the book progresses, you see that it’s counting down to something, and that event does alter the course of the school year, dividing the book into before and after as the students wrestle with the effects of what has happened to them.

I have heard YA authors say that they like to write for teens because they get to write about the big questions of life: suffering, death, God, the purpose of our lives. I will admit that I like to read it for the same reasons. While the teenage years are supposedly the years in which we are figuring ourselves out, I will let you in on a little secret: I am still trying to figure myself out. I certainly didn’t have myself figured out when I was a teenager.

Pudge Halter “collects” last words. The last words of two people are especially important in this book: Simon Bolivar, who is reported to have said, “How will I ever get out of this labyrinth?” and Francois Rabelais, who is reported to have said, “I go to seek a Great Perhaps.” The idea of the labyrinth is important to the characters of this book, who interpret the question as being about suffering: “How will I get out of this labyrinth of suffering?” At the end of the book, in the author’s note, John Green says, “I was born into Bolivar’s labyrinth, and so I must believe in the hope of Rabelais’ Great Perhaps.”

In a lot of ways, that sums up the questions that the book is talking about. At times, the characters in the book interpret the Great Perhaps as giving meaning to your life on earth, and at times they think of it in terms of the afterlife. In the end of the book, Pudge is asked the question, “How will you get out of the labyrinth of suffering?” and his answer has to do with love and forgiveness and belief that we are made of something deeper than just our bodies.

I love John Green’s answer to these questions because it’s how I feel, too. I see the pain around us, and I choose to believe that there is something greater beyond this, and that belief carries me through. And I agree with Pudge that the ways that we get there include love and forgiveness and belief. Those things can make the Great Perhaps seem present here on earth.

I have thought a lot about death and the afterlife over the past year, and nothing I have to say about it is going to be very profound or sound as poetic as, “I must believe in the Great Perhaps,” but what I believe/want to believe is that the Great Perhaps redeems or gives meaning to the suffering we see here. That our questions seem insignificant once we know the whole story. On his blog, John Green talked about the fact that he sees this book, despite the sex, profanity, and underage drinking, as Christian fiction. After reading it, I don’t disagree. Like YA literature, Christianity is about answering those big questions about meaning and purpose and life and death.

I had never lost anyone that close to me before my dad died. This morning as I was brushing my teeth, I was overwhelmed by the thought that he’s not here with us anymore. My dad? The guy who was so . . . full of life? How can he be gone? His exuberance makes me more sure that life doesn’t end here. There’s no way that the essence of my dad is gone even though he isn’t here with us. I think that idea of someone so full of life being completely gone is what brings Pudge to such a similar conclusion.

How do we get out of this labyrinth of suffering? My dad would have answered, without hesitation, through Jesus Christ. That’s what I believe, too, though I have never been able to speak it as boldly as he did. And so, in a way, I am thankful, too, for the labyrinth, because it gives us time to continue to work out those answers as we find our way.

You might not believe it based on my own abysmal failures in the realm of gardening, but I grew up around my grandparents’ garden and cows and spent most of my formative years in a rural community. I forget sometimes the effect that had on me. And then I will want to see the cows at the State Fair or I will talk about picking corn at my grandparents’ house (or I won’t be all that concerned by a worm on the corn) and I will realize that not everyone grew up around farming. I am by no means an expert, but I have been present for a fair amount of canning (and helped a little bit myself, but only a little bit) and remember summer afternoons spent helping with picking/shelling/shucking. Not everyone gets to experience this.

Which, when I remember those afternoons at my grandma’s house, actually seems kind of sad. For a while, I have really wanted to learn to do some of my own canning, even if I have to accept that I may not be canning my own vegetables because it doesn’t seem likely I am going to be able to learn how to grow them (I still have hope . . . after all, when it comes to gardening, there is always next year). I want my kids to know about picking strawberries and corn, about canning, and that there are better options available than just what the grocery stores sell.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is a book about the year that Barbara Kingsolver and her family spent trying to produce their own food. I had heard that it was a little too preachy, and . . . it probably is, but I tend to agree with (or at least respect) a lot of her convictions, so it didn’t bother me all that much. The book moved through the year, beginning with the asparagus in April and moving through the summer harvest with zucchini and tomatoes, then on to canning (and turkey slaughtering) and Thanksgiving, and then finally through the winter, when they enjoy the results of all that hard work in the form of cans in the pantry and fruits and vegetables and meat in the freezer.

Mike and I have, separately, started coming to similar conclusions about the decisions we make about food. A lot of these convictions do come from some of our thoughts about the environment and our desire to make choices that are going to make this world a better place for our children (or at least our friends’ children, since we don’t have any to speak of). He doesn’t have time to read this book at this point, but I read this passage to him because it stuck out to me.

The main barrier standing between ourselves and a local-food culture is not price, but attitude. The most difficult requirements are patience and a pinch of restraint–virtues that are hardly the property of the wealthy. These virtues seem to find precious little shelter, in fact, in any modern quarter of this nation founded by Puritans. Furthermore, we apply them selectively: browbeating our teenagers with the message that they should wait for sex, for example. Only if they wait to experience intercourse under the ideal circumstances (the story goes), will they know its true value. Blah blah blah, hears the teenager: words issuing from a mouth that can’t even wait for the right time to eat tomatoes, but instead consumes tasteless ones all winter to satisfy a craving for everything now. We’re raising our children on the definition of promiscuity if we feed them a casual, indiscriminate mingling of foods from every season plucked from the supermarket, ignoring how our sustenance is cheapened by wholesale desires.

If there’s religion in this book, it’s the worship of Mother Nature or the Harvest, and I’ll be honest, the book rang a little hollow to me there. As a Christian, I think we should care about these things because we should care about the world that God gave us, and because we should enjoy the world he gave us, eating the best that it has to offer and not any cheap substitutes. I don’t agree that vegetable promiscuity is quite the same thing as sexual promiscuity, but I do think that there’s some value to being considerate about what we put in our bodies and the way the seasons can shape that. I have thought quite a bit this year about food and the process of sharing meals with friends and family as a form of worship, and I believe this is a component of that, too — being mindful of the ingredients is just as important as eating more slowly.

Does that mean that we did not shop at Wal-Mart on Sunday for our groceries? Does that mean that we know exactly where all of our food was produced? No, it does not. At this point, it means we’re trying to eat fewer processed foods and make more things from scratch. It means we’re taking steps to buy from the Farmer’s Market and we are going to do a lot of research this fall and winter so we can finally finally get some of our vegetables to grow (I am voting for a container garden, myself). We’re works in progress, but we want to think about these things, and I’m thankful for a husband who always gives me the space to work these things out for myself and does his best to support any convictions I have.

Sometimes I carry a book around and I wonder what it says about me. I liked what this one said: that I am the kind of person who is thinking about the impact of her actions. I don’t have a whole lot of answers, but I am thinking. I haven’t said anything much about this over the past few months because I am always afraid of being considered “crunchy” (and, I mean, really, could there be anyone who seems less crunchy than me . . . except for that whole tote bag thing), but I’m coming out of the closet. Mike and many of my friends can tell you–food is increasingly important to me these days: the process of planning meals and the idea that we are eating well. I think I am still learning, as Anne Lamott said, “to feed myself,” and this, for me, is part of that. I have read several blog posts about this book in which the author said, “This book changed my life.” I think I even said that to Mike at one point while reading it, but I won’t go quite that far here. What I will say is that I hope it changed my life, that I’ll be able to turn the things I have been thinking and the ways that it challenged me into some actual actions.

I will start in the beginning. The week after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came out, before last week’s Harry Potter Crash and Burn Fiasco, I was still, “OMG HARRY POTTER,” and I saw, somewhere, a mention of a song called “Accio Deathly Hallows.” I thought that was clever and smart (see, I stole it for my post here) and so I Googled it and found it on YouTube. So funny! Except he pronounced “accio” wrong. But, still, funny!

“Accio Deathly Hallows” is part of the Brotherhood 2.0 project, in which brothers John Green and Hank Green have agreed to forsake all textual communication this year, communicating by video blog (and occasionally by phone, but they claim not to like the phone very much). When I made my way to the Brotherhood 2.0 site, I found that John Green was an author, and I realized I’d heard of him before. Back when I was looking up information about the controversy about The Higher Power of Lucky, I ran across this post on the Authors Support Intellectual Freedom blog. I had not at that point read Looking for Alaska, which won the Printz award (which is a very important prize for YA literature), so, besides checking to make sure my own library had it (we did), I didn’t really have an opinion. Except that I agreed with the post by Brent Hartinger - something can be the best book for young adults without necessarily being appropriate for all young adults, and it’s not up to libraries to decide what is appropriate for individual families. It’s up to libraries to provide choices and let the families make those decisions themselves. The point is, I realized I already knew a little bit about John Green. And so I checked out his books.

The other thing I figured out after perusing the Brotherhood 2.0 site is that I am, without question, a nerd fighter. There are different kinds of nerd fighters, you see, and we nerd fighters use our powers to fight against the popular people. (There are a lot of us. We win!) Each nerd fighter has a song. Here is the original nerd fighter song. Here is mine.

If we don’t have the answer, we know how to find it
Bring your most obscure questions, we don’t even mind it

We fight for freedom of speech and information
We use Melvil Dewey’s system of organization

The stereotype is that we’re boring and dowdy
Have you been to a library; they can get pretty rowdy

Librarian nerd fighters, we assault with our knowledge
We have an action figure and many years of college

[Thanks to Brian for those last two lines. "Action figure" seemed important to the song, but is hard to rhyme.]

But didn’t I promise a book review? Oh, right.

An Abundance of Katherines is about Colin, a child prodigy who has just graduated from high school. He tends to date a lot of girls named Katherine. In fact, he’s dated 19 in a row, and been dumped by each of them in turn. After being dumped by Katherine number 19 (or K-19, if you prefer), Colin and his best friend, Hassan, take a road trip and end up in Gutshot, TN, where they end up staying with a girl named Lindsey and her mom, Hollis. As they work for Hollis, recording the history of Gutshot as told by its oldest residents, Colin also works on a mathematical formula explaining his relationships with the various Katherines, hoping to use it to lure K-19 back and to predict his future with her.

You guys, I loved this book. It’s nerdy and funny and sarcastic. There’s math and Archduke Ferdinand and hunting and anagrams. I loved Colin and Hassan’s relationship, and I loved the way that the story emphasized the importance of telling stories as Colin himself learned how to tell a story. There are a lot of big ideas in the book about meeting our goals and our importance in the world, and I liked how it was handled and resolved.

As a nerd myself, I do have one question: How did Colin, who was funny and sweet but had very few social skills, manage to score all those chicks? That was certainly not my experience as a nerd, and I did wonder about that several times as his relationships were being discussed. Regardless, this was a very fun book that led me straight into John Green’s first book, Looking for Alaska. And my preview is that, though it was much more sad and serious than An Abundance of Katherines, I thought it was really fantastic. Look for that post in the next day or so.

So, remember last Thursday, when our upstairs air conditioner broke? Boy, am I glad that’s behind us . . . except, wait. When we came home this Thursday, we found that our downstairs air conditioner had broken. And because all the heat moved up the stairs (as heat is prone to do), the upstairs air conditioner could not keep up. It froze over in protest. Thus, we came home to absolutely no air conditioning anywhere. On a day when the high was 102 degrees.

Yay, summer!

The “nice” (do you see how I put “nice” in quotes there? I want you to notice that) air conditioning man who came and fixed our air conditioner on Friday said that he’d fixed fifteen air conditioners with the exact same problem in the past week. I suppose there are some people who would believe that sort of thing. But my brother and I, because we were raised by my father to be distrustful of . . . people . . . and authority . . . but mostly people in general, we know differently. We see very clearly that there is something sketchy going on with the air conditioners. Two air conditioners in the same house break within a week of each other? In exactly the same way? And we still have to pay for diagnosis and labor? Riiiiiiight.

This is very clearly some kind of conspiracy.

What I find interesting is that my brother and I, who were, as I mentioned, raised by my father, were very quick to notice this suspicious activity. Mike, however, said things like, “It’s not suspicious, it’s unusual,” which is a quote from the movie Millions, which we love. But that is not the point. The point is that he is wrong. There is clearly some kind of deal between the air conditioner installing people and the air conditioner fixing people. They are getting a lot of my money, and that is more than “unusual.” It’s shady. My brother, in fact, thought it was akin to a word that rhymes with “bullschmidt.” I cannot disagree.

I have tried, over the past nine years, to teach Mike about the ways of my people. That is, to be distrustful of everyone and to quickly draw conclusions that people are out to get you. Some people call this paranoid, but I prefer the charming term “neurotic.” He used to not believe in any conspiracies, but he has since changed his ways. Slightly. I am still bringing him over to the dark side. He just . . . trusts people. I can’t really understand it.

Don’t worry, good people of the internet. I will not rest until he understands that this very suspicious event needs to be investigated and the correct people are punished. (My brother and I will be in charge of punishments.)

[Spoilers through Deathly Hallows.]

The pile of books beside my bed (and the list stuck to my computer) was threatening to overwhelm me, but I knocked a few out and I feel slightly better about things. This week I read was Looking for God in Harry Potter by John Granger. I am of two minds about it . . . I read (actually, I own) The Hidden Key to Harry Potter a long time ago, before Order of the Phoenix came out, and I enjoyed his theories, though I thought that some of his ideas were a bit of a stretch. This book makes a good companion to Hidden Key, and, again, I think that some places are a bit of a stretch, though I enjoy the examination of the names (some of which I honestly do think are more than JKR intended) and the pairings/doppelgangers in the book, as well as some of the alchemical explanations and the discussions of each book. Whether I completely agree, I can appreciate that he’s looking at the books from a much more academic perspective than, say, the MuggleNet boys. I think the main question for me is whether JKR did, as he claims, put some of this in there on purpose. After reading some of his Deathly Hallows commentary and being reminded that JKR herself did say that she’d studied alchemy pretty extensively when coming up with the magic, I have to think that even if I remain skeptical about some of the ways that he interprets details, he had the overall right idea about some of those alchemical themes.

Without a doubt, my favorite passage was this one [it's kind of long]:

Expecto is an ellision of ek or e (”out from, out for”) and specto (”look, watch”). Expecto, consequently, doesn’t mean “to throw out” (that would have been expello–as in, “I punched the teacher so they expello-ed me from school”). What it does mean is “to look out for, await, long for expectantly.” In the Latin version of the Apostle’s Creed, the “await, look for” conclusion (”I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come”) begins with the word expecto.

Patronus can mean “guardian.” But in the context of Prisoner of Azkaban, it’s good to realize the word comes from the root pater, which . . . means “father.” Patronus means “little father” or “second father,” which is obvious in the English word that is derived from it: “patron,” the person–like Dad–who pays the bills. The word can be used as “godfather,” . . . “guardian,” or “deliverer” (as in “from danger”). In this last sense, “savior” is not a bad or infrequent translation.

Expecto Patronum, consequently, can be interpreted a couple of ways. Because Harry’s Patronus comes in the shape of his dad as animagus, you could say it means, “I look for the figure of my father.”

The way Rowling uses this phrase, however, echoes its use from the Apostles’ Creed–”I long for my savior and deliverer.” The charm is said in joyful expectation and in faith that deliverance is coming . . . [there is lots more in this chapter, but I think this is enough] . . . Muggles, we read in Harry Potter, cannot see dementors, but they can feel them. Certainly I have felt frightened and alone, Muggle that I am, and my only escape from such fears and isolation is faith in Christ. Harry Potter, and especially the Prizoner of Azkaban installment of his annual adventures, is support and encouragement in the faith and in battling the demons of our culture and times.

I have no idea whether she intended that or not, but . . . I never think that truth is dependent on the author’s intentions. I just like it as a good reminder for myself, the power of calling on our Father and how it can help us ward off despair. The Harry Potter series has been full of moments like that for me. We knew next to nothing about JKR as an author (or the controversy surrounding these books) when we read the end of Sorcerer’s Stone, and I was very moved by the discussion of Lily’s protection, that to be loved so deeply by someone leaves its mark forever. I couldn’t help but think of Jesus. I was in a place in my life where I needed very much to be reminded of God’s love, and Harry Potter did that for me there. And, in the same vein, I do feel that Deathly Hallows has some very strong Christian themes (and she did confess that you could see her struggle with belief/struggle to believe in the book), but I don’t know exactly what she was intending when she had Harry struggle with his Hallows/Horcruxes choice. To me, though, when Harry thinks it over, considers his options, and chooses faith/obedience rather than power/impulse, it’s a great picture of what faith in the real world is like. Just as Dumbledore turned out to be quite a complicated man, our understanding of the way the world works is complicated. Good people die, the wicked do seem to prosper, and God can be very distant. In the end, faith and belief are much more about choice than anything else. (I happen to think she did intend that one, but it doesn’t matter much to me whether she did or not.)

I hadn’t really intended this to be a post that was about Looking for God in Harry Potter. I just thought I’d talk about it for a second in passing, but I guess I’ll stop here. To be honest, I’m a bit Pottered out after this past weekend’s concert with The Remus Lupins and The Whomping Willows, but that’s a story that will have to go without being told, I think. Suffice it to say that I am ready for a break from Harry Potter for a while. Earlier this week I started Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver (and then paused to read two other books, but I promise to finish the Kingsolver very soon. It just seems easier to read in small pieces). Prepare yourself for some crunchy, tree-hugging posts.

Over the weekend, Mike helped me navigate a stressful situation that involved theft, blood, and drama. I had warned him that I would need his assistance, but that turned out to be quite the understatement. He was a calming presence throughout the afternoon, handling some things so I could do others, giving me confidence in my decisions, and emphasizing the things that were going well.

It took longer than I thought for us to get used to each other again when he came back from Costa Rica. We’re not used to living so much life without each other (I lived life! It’s just that it mostly involved doing laundry and planning meals), so it was hard to get on the same page again. And that doesn’t even take into account the changes that a trip like that can bring into someone’s life – seeing sea turtle hatchlings, zip lining in the rainforest, white water rafting. Boy does my laundry seem dull in comparison. The chocolate cake I made, however, was not boring at all.

I am not one to believe that (or live like) I need Mike to be my everything. I have great friends and a great family, but when it comes down to it, Mike is my best friend because I spend the most time with him. I love experiencing life with him, and he’s undoubtedly the person with whom I experience the majority of things. I think that it was hard for us to get used to each other again because I hadn’t been able to tell him the little stories of the day - the silly website I visited, the recipe I want to try, the strange encounter at the grocery store. We worked very hard to reconnect over the weekend, spending time with our rabbits, seeing a wonderful movie, and then, with the theft, blood, and drama, sliding back into a bit of normalcy with our familiar teamwork.

This whole thing was quite a learning experience for me. It had been a while since we were apart from each other for quite so long, especially without being able to talk at all, and our relationship is so different these days than it was back then. The last time he went away for over a week, I hadn’t gone from thinking of myself to thinking of us, even though we were married. The past few years, we’ve gone from just being “fun” to encouraging and challenging each other through some difficult times. It’s gotten easier to see us as a team, which made it harder when my partner wasn’t here.

Though I think we are still pretty fun. I was inordinately pleased to be able to call him last night about a bumper sticker, and happy to have him call this morning and report his latest musings on flavored coffee. I laughed during our, “What are we going to have for dinner?” discussion that turned into silliness. More than anything, I love our conversations that are grounded in the holy ordinary.

“In the end, I think the relationships that survive in this world are the ones where two people can finish each other’s sentences. Forget drama and torrid sex and the clash of opposites. Give me banter any day of the week.” -Hey Nostradamus! by Douglas Coupland

Because a man came and fixed our air conditioner.

I was going to say “a nice man,” but . . . we had to pay for diagnosis and labor, even though it was still under warranty and we got the part for free. My brother could have fixed it for free (he knew what was wrong), but that way we would have had to pay for the part. Hardly seems fair. So let me amend. I forgive everyone except the air conditioning/warranty people. They are still on my BAD LIST.

However, the part that was broken was the capacitor, so at least we get to make Back to the Future jokes for a while.

1. Global warming. If you don’t believe in global warming, I will lock you in the attic until you do. It was 92 degrees in our house upstairs last night. It was 105 degrees outside yesterday. I will not listen to any arguments. Do you want to be locked in my attic? I didn’t think so.

2. Big Bunny and Tender Nibbles. Their added presence is too much for the air conditioner. Good thing we don’t have kids yet.

3. Mike. For being so dang hott that no amount of air conditioning could keep up.

4. Al Gore. If he hadn’t been so humorless people would have listened to him sooner (see number 1, but don’t argue or you will find yourself in my attic).

5. Local meteorologists. Maybe they should choose better weather for us. Did you ever think of that, guys (and girl)?!

6. The builders of our house for cutting down all the trees and also apparently putting in a crappy air conditioner. I will hunt them down. I will stuff them in a bag. And I will put them in the attic.

And, finally:

7. George W. Bush. Because he gets the blame for everything else these days. I’m pretty sure this is his fault, too.

Was this what being a parent was going to be like? A life of anxiety, of fretting about little things? Have a child and give a hostage to fortune; yes, but have any human link, any friendship, and a hostage was given . . . A few minutes earlier she had thought of the giving of hostages. Well, she said to herself, I’ve just given another one.

I just don’t want to go on and on anymore about Alexander McCall Smith’s books. I mean, I always read them, I always love them, what else do you want to know? Today I read the newest in the Isabel Dalhousie series, The Careful Use of Compliments. I really enjoyed it. I know you are shocked.

In this book, Isabel, who is in her 40s, has recently had her first child, and, in the quote above, she considers the idea that loving people is a little bit like being held hostage by fate - things are going to matter to you more because of that. You are going to care more and be more affected by things when you love other people.

While I see that perspective, especially from Isabel, who has lived alone for quite a long time, I think I feel quite the opposite. For me, loving people and letting them into my life has been more like the giving up of hostages. Here I let go of my need to be “together” all the time. There goes my need to be right, out of respect and love for my friend. Watch as I say farewell to the walls that keep me from believing people actually care about me.

I wonder if we’ll see Isabel, in later books, change her mind about what it means to open up to people. She has grown quite a lot in that area over four books, choosing to risk her emotions when she could play it safe. It’s been interesting to see her navigate her relationships as she makes those choices.

Or maybe I am wrong about all of this, since I’m not a parent. Maybe parenting really is like being held hostage.

I’m not really an animal person, you know? So when I say that I had no choice but to drag the rabbit cage out into the yard and blast it with the hose, you understand that it was in some seriously bad shape, right? Horrifyingly bad. Those rabbits were living in filth. I have no idea the last time it was cleaned. Poor bunnies, we will do better for you (and probably get you a better cage, while we’re at it).

Oh, by the way, we got rabbits. Two of ‘em. Some of you will appreciate that I have suggested that we call them Big Bunny and Tender Nibbles. (They are a mother/daughter pair, and, no I’m not calling them Lorelai and Rory.) I can’t post pictures, because Mike is in Costa Rica and has the good camera. I got an email from him today. He’s taken 700 pictures so far. I love Mike, but I am not so sure I’m looking forward to that slide show. (Except for the pictures of the baby turtles. I would like to see those.)

Melissa said she thought I’d be blogging a lot this week, since I’m by myself. I guess that was a possibility, but it doesn’t seem to have worked out that way. I’ve been cleaning the house and trying to watch Heathers (I have never seen it, but I still haven’t made it through the whole thing) and having dinner with my mom and other friends instead. It’s kind of been like a mini-vacation.

I had a conversation last night about my book club that was very encouraging. As the group has gelled and we have started digging more into the books, I have started to feel like I am actually changing the world a little bit. By the end of this year, we will have talked about religion, women in Afghanistan, death, adoption and Down Syndrome, women in China, the Crusades, the responsibilities of taking information to untouched communities, heaven . . . and that’s just this year alone. Almost every month, someone says, “I wouldn’t have read this if we weren’t reading it for this group.”

I believe that books can change the world, that reading is a tool against evil. I know that a lot of the Harry Potter bands joke about that (Fight Evil. Read Books) but I think it’s serious, too. Every once in a while, I read a book that actually changes my life. But usually, it’s the process of reading and then reading another book and then reading another book and thinking about them and talking about them that brings about change little by little. That can be a book club, or millions of people reading the newest Harry Potter, or just sharing a great book with a friend.

I love to read. I do it all the time. I forget that it takes me places I’ve never been, that it broadens my horizons. It’s nice to remember that the simple act of turning pages and telling someone about it can make a difference.