Growing up in a large family with a dad who invited students over, my idea of a holiday meal is a groaning board laden with food, tables jammed up against each other with tablecloths dressing the wound between the two, good plates for company with everyday plates tucked in less conspicuous spots, windows steamed, a procession of mounded bowls, a continuous buzz of conversation, singing Doxology, and hours of clean-up for the poor souls whose names on the calendar rotation indicated dish washer and dish dryer. That was my normal.

Early in our marriage we continued the tradition and gathered friends like you would wildflowers: always room for a few more in the bunch.

As our family grows we have the possibility of expanding to 29, as we did for Thanksgiving, or contracting to a table for four. My preference is for big and boisterous. But—shock!—there are others to consider. 

As silly as it sounds, the first time we had one of our small holiday meals, I had a personal crisis. I was smiling and saying It’ll be great!, but the real me inside was stomping, banging pots, and feeding my misery. All sorts of traitorous thoughts ran through my head, the foremost being “Why go to all this trouble for a meal for five?”

A shaft of light, a tiny thought, was the game-changer. What if Mom could come, if she were your only guest? Would you do all you could to make it a special meal?

Serious? If I could have my mom at my table just once, I would plan for weeks to have the most splendid menu. I get all throat-lumpy just imagining the privilege of serving Mom a meal in my home.

The light shaft widened to a illuminating column: What if the Lord Jesus came to your little dinner? Would you be crabbing about all the work for a small meal? My Lord at my table? I would buy the best ingredients, take pains to make things lovely, be thrilled to my tippie-toes! I’d be nervous choosing the wine, but we’d figure it out.

Oh child, I tell myself, numbers-schnumbers. Cherish each celebration, great or small.

 

When there is trouble, he enters into the situation, ready to help.
When there’s a party, a ring of laughter surrounds him.
When there is failure, he brings clarity and hope.

He preaches with passion.
He lives to tell stories.
He sings from his toes.

He used to be a long-haired surfer dude,
the delinquent son of the math teacher,
a doubtful outcome.

Then God snatched him from the waves,
set him on dry ground,
and redirected his life.

He teaches Logic and other subjects,
but mainly he is a docent of humanity,
explaining how life works.

It’s funny: his recap of a movie
is invariably better
than the movie itself.

If Pastor Terry and Yente the Matchmaker
lived in the same town,
Yente would go out of business.

His kids talk to him. Often.
He finds any excuse to visit them,
constructs play kitchens for his granddaughters.

He can read Greek and Hebrew;
but he’s even better at reading people.
Approachable. Winsome. Accessible.

He pastors pastors,
near and far,
giving a lift with encouraging words.

We know other churches would love to have him.
But right now—and for the last two decades—he belongs to us.
The Shire is his home.

 

 

He likes to talk. He’s very good at it.
Sometimes the stuff comes out funny.
Sometimes it comes out clear.
Sometimes it comes like a freight train.
But it is always good.

 

•Show up to life everyday!

• Get off your attitude.

• Life is so daily.

• God hit me like a plunger between the eyes.

• Does the glove get muddy or the mud get glovey?

• Raising children is like pouring concrete: you only get one shot.

• You never know what can happen in a day.

• Don’t be old and alone.

• A litnis test

• Our goal is generational fruit:
to see our children’s children walking with the Lord.

• Never despise the day of small beginnings.

•We know there is a balance somewhere…
we see it every time we pass by,
swinging from one extreme to the other.

• Idle hands are the devil of a workshop.

• Repent as loudly as you sin.

• Take off the uniform and stop playing church.

• God isn’t up in heaven, wringing His hands,
wondering what to do next.

• Grab him by his circumcision. [He meant to say baptism.]

• Is your marriage dead?
God does dead.
He loves resurrections.

• When God redeemed me, He was pursuing you. [said to his children]

 

 

 • Unity, order, progress.

• If you really love her, you wouldn’t marry her!
[tongue in cheek advice in courtship]

• God’s story includes you.

• If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.

• Don’t boil a kid in its mother’s milk.

•When someone criticizes you and calls you a blockhead,
respond with “You don’t even know the half of it!”

 Thank you, Pastor Terry, for your work and your words on our behalf.

 

There is a renaissance of sound in our home.  Or, she reflects, perhaps a Middle Age. An acoustic Enlightenment.

In an effort to manage my time better, I’ve been disconnecting myself from the computer. And—I won’t lie—it’s been hard. The computer’s tentacles are long and many. It is too too easy to just “check my email” or Google one factoid and end up saying hasta la vista to a sizable chunk of time. 

You know what works best for me? Turn it off at night and don’t turn it back on until x, y, and z are completed.

But, she sputters, I need my music! Yes, dear. [I talk to myself all the time.] I have an iPod and an iHome in my bedroom, but the volume doesn’t make it to the kitchen; the quality of sound doesn’t cut it.

So it’s back to CDs—discs in their cases. I can play them in our brand new BluRay player. One at a time. On good speakers with an amplifier. And my home is filled with warm, soaring, nourishing, luminous music. It’s a glorious thing. Stupendous! I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to hear my home full of good sounds.

It gives me pause. I feel like I have cheated myself for, oh, five or more years. 

There are correlations with the Kindle/real book debate. I love my Kindle for many reasons, but it will nevah [hear Winston Churchill's voice] replace my library of books. I love my digital music for its portability and availability. But oh! the glories of an amplifier and good speakers.  And I know that it reveals my age, but I really prefer to have hard copies of my music.

 

I often do a long post with my favorite Advent/Christmas music, but today I will highlight one CD: Chanticleer’s Our Favorite Carols*. Talk about irony: I discovered this CD from Pandora. On the computer.    It came up on my Liz Story (Holiday) channel and I loved everything I heard. On a whim I purchased this CD in January. It has been in the shrink-wrap until Sunday (beginning of Advent). And I am smitten.  There isn’t a preview available on Amazon, but there is on iTunes.

The tone is mid-to-high brow. A capella vocal ensemble. All guys but it some of them sound like girls. Seventeen resplendent carols. No jangles. Some Billings, Tallis, and Holst, for you music majors. There’s not one track that I want to fast-forward, and that itself makes it a winner.

In the Bleak Midwinter arrangement has some dazzling and unexpected key changes. Gabriel’s Message and Huron Carol are  gems.  For some reason I feel like I own Thomas Tallis’ Third Mode Melody (the tune Vaughn Williams based his Fantasia on, also heard on the movie Master and Commander); it possesses me, however, and when it popped up on this CD there was the flush of recognition. There are two tunes for Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day.

This CD is doing some heavy lifting on keeping my Yuletide sound and serene. Here is Huron Carol:

 

* Be sure you listen to Our Favorite Carols. Chanticleer has several Christmas albums, but this is my favorite.

 

The world is a book, and those who do not travel
read only a page.
— St. Augustine

Where I’ve been: 55 Photographs

Perhaps I should start, meaning no disrespect, with places I have no desire to visit.
Because I usually prefer rustic over production, I don’t want to go to:
Disney Land
Disney World
Hawaii, the main island
Florida during spring break
Arizona in the winter
Dollywood
A cruise to anywhere
Las Vegas
Reno

My dream travel schedule, funds and time mine in abundance,
would be to visit a place and stay for a month.
I prefer off-the-path places, and off-season travel.

The order below is random—out-of-my-head random.

The photos not credited are from Wikimedia Commons.

If you always go where you have always gone
and always do what yo have always done,
you will always be what you are now.
— Tristan Gylberd

 

photo: Christina Jose
1. Albania — because Audrey and Brian live there.
Audrey and I (and Ruth, Barb, Eileen and Nancy) grew up together in Lombard, IL.
If I’m dreaming HUGE, our next girlfriend reunion would be there.

 

2. Istanbul, Turkey
— because Will and Emma (my nephew and niece) live there.
Ever since I’ve read about the Hagia Sophia I’ve wanted to see it with my own eyes.
And there is Lamb Shawarma. (I wrote that *before* I saw The Avengers!)

 

3. Cape Town, South Africa — because my Aunt Betty lived and died there.
I want to meet her adopted son, Jean-Blaise, and his wife, Loret.
And dear Virginia, who—via Skype—talked me through my Aunt’s life and death.

 

4. Monhegan Island, Maine
This is my brother and sister-in-law’s favorite place.
A haven for artists twelve miles off the coast of Maine,
Monhegan is the perfect place to recharge.

 

photo: Katie Boyd
5. Harare, Zimbabwe
Harare is on more than one list of where NOT to go.
But a friend, with whom I used to swap weekly emails, lives there.

 
 

6. Budapest (and the glorious Danube River) —
Did you know this city used to be two cities: Buda and Pest?
I love trying to pronounce Pest the local way: Peshhht.
Norm and Michelle, friends from almost 40 years ago live here.

7. St. Petersburg, Russia —
The Winter Palace is part of The Hermitage, a museum founded in 1764
which holds the largest collection of paintings in the world.
In preparation for the rare chance that I would go to St. P.
I’m *thinking* about reading the great Russian writers.

8. Krakow, Poland —  It was the children’s book,
The Trumpeter of Krakow, that first put this city on my globe.
I would be sure to visit Karen, a fellow bibliophile, who blogs at U Krakovianki.
One of Europe’s oldest cities, Krakow is a gold mine of architectural styles.
The Jewish Quarter is a must see.

 

 

9. Why Wales? — Most castles per capita, for one.
Hay-on-Wye, world renown bookstore town. 30+ secondhand books!!
How Green Was My Valley, Welsh revivals, the tradition of Welsh singing, and Welsh Corgis (my first dog).
And all those charming LL words in Welsh: Lloyd, Llewellyn, Llangollen,
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.

10. Quebec City, Quebec —  I want to go for the sheer romance of the city.
To hear French spoken. Willa Cather’s historical novel,
Shadows on the Rock, piqued my interest, oui?

 

 

11. Jerusalem. All of Israel — from the Negev to the Golan Heights;
from Tel Aviv to Jericho.
My grandpa went to Israel.
My dad went to Israel.
I’d like to go…someday.

 

The perfect journey is circular —
the joy of departure and the joy of return.  
— Dino Basili

 

12. Dublin (home of the Book of Kells) —
A dear friend took a solo trip to Ireland, the land of her fathers.
A young man I know saved his nickels and spent a month hitchhiking Ireland.
Dublin, Belfast, Shannon, Wexford, Cork, Donegal, and the Blasket Islands:
I want to see them all. (And oh! the reading that would precede that trip!)

 

13.  China — where the Terracotta Army is being excavated.

 

14.  The Lake District, England — It is both romantic and literary.

 

photo from East-Coast-Golf-Vacations.com

15. Prince Edward Island — Who has read Anne of Green Gables
and not wanted to visit PEI?

 

 16. London (soundtrack: ♫♪♫ England swings like a pendulum do ♪♫♪) —
Confession: I’ve been in London, but not really. Heathrow doesn’t count.
Nor does a drive through. We planned a day in London which we canceled.
One day to see Westminster Abbey and the British Museum and 84 Charing Cross Road and…?
I promised myself that if I came to see London, I would give myself
at least four days. It’s an expensive destination, but so worth it.
I’ve never seen so many ethnic groups as I did in London.

 

17. New York City — I’ve been threatening to visit NYC for a while.
One week for the museums, one week for shows, one week for
people watching. Some of my favorite Facebook statuses (stati?) are
Rebeccah’s 4:56 a.m. Starbucks/subway updates. She’s got a hilarious book
inside her on commuting protocol.

 

Photo from angelfire.com

18.  Kwajelein — a 1.2  x 2.5 mile atoll (a coral island that encircles a lagoon)
in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. My brother, sister-in-law, and nephew lived
there for a few years. I keep meeting people who lived once on tiny Kwaj.
Since it is a restricted island, I don’t think I could ever visit, but it’d be fun!

 

Photo from Readers Digest rd.com

19.  Florida Keys — These words captured my imagination long ago.
It may have been Key West, President Nixon’s favorite escape.
If you don’t know who President Nixon was, please don’t say it aloud.
Can you imagine *driving* from island to island?
Doesn’t this picture say, “Come, check me out?”

 

20. The Netherlands — my maternal grandmother emigrated from Holland when she was nine.
I would visit Barendrecht, her birthplace. My own grandma’s place of birth!
And look at tulips. And eat cheese.
And visit the Rien Poortvliet Museum.

 

211. Cappadocia — History abounds in central Turkey.
Cliff dwellers, underground cities where early Christians lived.
This video made Cappadocia my cuppa.

 

Not all those who wander are lost.
— J.R.R. Tolkien

 

22. Dubrovnik — a coastal fortress in Croatia
My brother-in-law is the son of Croatian emigrants.
When they came back from a visit, my sister-in-law
gave me a book about Dubrovnik.
It’s a city steeped in history.

 

 

23. The Orkney Islands — Have you heard of the Thules? (pronounced TOOL lees)
They are the northernmost part of the habitable world. The Orkneys qualify.
Leslie Thomas’ book Some Lovely Islands fanned an
already burning fascination with insular culture.
There are thriving communities of folk art and crafts.

 

 

24. The Blasket Islands — Some Lovely Islands introduced me to Greater Blasket Island.
This forsaken island produced authors and books. I’ve read Peig Sayer’s An Old Woman’s Reflections
and Maurice O’Sullivan’s Twenty Years A-Growing.
The last day people lived on this island was November 17, 1953. The Irish government
evacuated the population because it could not maintain their safety.
Some cottages still have furniture, kettles hanging from chains, crockery…all abandoned.

 

 

 

25. Mont Saint-Michel — Blame Henry Adams. An island fortress,
an abbey, that spire pointing upwards. Oh yes, please!

 

26. Venice — I have read so much about the pigeons in the piazza at
St. Mark’s, that I can practically hear the cacophony they make.

 

  27.  Florence — how this missed the top five is a mystery.
Firenze! (Italian name) Tuscany! I can taste you in my mouth.
Michelangelo. Giotto. Donatello. da Vinci. Dante. Galileo.
Ah, Firenze.

 

28.  Parma — A culinary festival.
Parmesan cheese, Proscuitto di Parma, home of Verdi.
Go ahead and laugh: John Grisham’s Playing for Pizza made me salivate.

 

 29. Geneva — Switzerland, in general.
Calvin, clocks and Lake Geneva.

 

30.  Paris — Notre Dame, the Louvre, Eiffel, Tower, Arc de Triomphe,
left bank, right bank, Latin quarter,
cafes, patisseiries, brasseries, chocolat. 
Ooh-la-la!

 

31. Steens Mountain — Harney County, Oregon
Only navigable in the warm season, this mountain is
composed of “basalts, stacked one upon another.”
Steens has been on my husbands wish list for years.
We recently flew over this wilderness area and
renewed our intention to go visit.

Whenever I start pulling out this list of places I’d like to go,
Curt’s comeback remains: I’d just like to see Steens Mountain.

 

32. Victoria — British Columbia
Canada: you have to love a country that is book-ended
by Victoria and Prince Edward Island.
Charming gardens, historical architecture, people from all nations.

There are only two rules.
One is E. M. Forster’s guide to Alexandria: the best way
to know Alexandria is to wander aimlessly.
The second is from the Psalms: grin like a dog
and run about through the city.
—  Jan Morris

 

 
photo: The Minam River Lodge

33. The Minam River Lodge — Minam, Oregon
The only way into this wilderness retreat is by chartering a plane,
horseback and hiking a 8.5 mile trail. I hope to get into shape
for the hike with my husband next summer.

34. Corfu — Greek Island in the Ionian Sea
Reading My Family and Other Animals put this island on my map.

35. Sweet Home, Oregon
If it’s wrong to like a place simply because of the name, then indict me.
When we first contemplated a move to Oregon, we looked at the map.
It’s twee, but I’ve wanted a Sweet Home return address ever since.

36. Cape Mendocino Coast — California
Earlier this year we were talking about the prettiest drives we’d taken.
Since we were just getting acquainted and I was more enamored with my
boyfriend when we drove on Highway 1, I’d like another chance to see it.

 

 

37. Lolo Pass, Idaho-Montana
Highway 12, between Lewiston, ID and Missoula, MT
has some of the most stunning vistas you can imagine.
We’ve traveled through. We need to travel to.

38. Sunnyside, Washington
My great-grandfather immigrated from Holland to Sunnyside.
The town’s history fascinates me: Dunkards started a Christian colony,
and included a “morality clause” (no drinking, dancing, gambling, or horseracing)
in every land deed sold. I’m sure we still have distant relatives living there.
It’d be fun to go exploring with one of my brothers or sisters.
Oh brother (sister), where art thou?

photo: elklakeresortmontana.com

39.  Elk Lake Resort, Montana
When our friends moved to Elk Lake Resort near Yellowstone Park,
we said we’d come visit. We’ve dropped that ball, but there is still time to follow through!

 40. Civil War Battle Sites – (shown is Burnside Bridge at Antietam)
Perhaps I should limit it to the Top 10 Sites. I’ve been to
Gettysburg, PA and Franklin, TN and I will never forget either.
You would need a year to read and prepare, but this kind of
excursion would ignite me.

41. Baseball Park Tour (Wrigley Field)
In the late 1980s two guys in my small town mapped out a summer
tour in their VW Bug to see a game in all 30 major league baseball stadiums.
I wouldn’t want to try the one season gig, but with my penchant
for collecting, a repressed passion for baseball, and a love of
road trips, I am enticed.

Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of everyday,
placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting,
so that the intrinsic qualities are made more clear.
Travel does this with the very stuff that everyday life is made of,
giving to it the sharp contour and meaning of art.
— Freya Stark

 

42. Tallinn, Estonia
The Singing Revolution DVD put this country on my map.
Who wouldn’t want to visit a country who gained
independence from the Soviet Union by singing?

43.  St. Louis, Missouri
One doesn’t have to go to Europe to see cathedrals.
Cathedral Basilica, with its organ, would be a must see for me.

44. Cannon Beach, Oregon
I want to take a picture of Haystack Rock. (It seems all my friends have.)
And hear the surf. And sleep in a yurt.

45. Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, Washington
April 2013. Tulips galore.
Beauty abounds.
This is doable. I just have to make a plan.

46. Coeur d’Alene, Idaho
The best reason to visit is to see our former neighbors—
and my mom’s best friend—who have retired here.
Oh, brother/sister where art thou?

47. Upper Peninsula, Michigan
In my youth I always heard about the U.P. Because it was remote
and beyond, it has remained one of those places I’d like to visit.
Lighthouses, bridges and the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum.
I’m already humming Gordon Lightfoot.

 

48. Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Yes, I would. I’d like to see an Amish community.
But when I Googled Lancaster, the first thing I saw
was their convention center. Yep.

49. Bath, Somerset, England
A Jane Austen literary tour. Lyme, Chawton, Steventon, Winchester.
Be still my heart. Calm. We must be calm.
Of course, preparation would include reading the complete Austen canon,
watching every DVD. What fun, what fun!

50. Napa Valley, California
Beautiful scenery, do a little wine tasting.
I could be persuaded.

 

51. Provence, France
On a whim, I picked up a French Audio course at the library yesterday,
curious how much of my high school French stuck. Not. much.
It would be great to refresh it in Provence, n’est-ce-pas?
We dream about going with college friends.
M.F.K. Fisher’s Two Towns in Provence made me thirsty for France.
Allons-y!

 

52. Door County, Wisconsin
Another destination that I’ve been told about many times.
They have fish boils are legend.

 

53. St. Augustine, Florida
I can’t remember the book that long ago made me want to
see St. Augustine. Give me history and I’m happy.

54. Troy, Oregon
You’ve never heard of Troy,OR (pop 25-30) Not to be confused with Troy, ID (pop 862).
On our way home from church we pass a road with a sign: Troy 38 miles.
And I’ve always wanted to follow that dirt road. At least once.

 55. Charleston, SC
Southern hospitality, Lowcountry cuisine,
cobblestone streets, Huguenot church. Yes!

 

Les Miserables  I’m on page 420/1232. Part of me (about 35%)  says Why, oh why have you not read this before? The greater part thinks it is splendid to have the exquisite joy of reading this for the first time while I’m in my fifties. A friend warned me about Waterloo; she got bogged down. But, you know, I really only know Waterloo by its name. To me it was exciting as reading Shaara on Gettysburg. This sentence describing the cavalry grabbed me for its onomatopoeia and the progression of 3-, 4-, and 5-syllable adverbs:

They rode steadily, menacingly, imperturbably, the thunder of their horses resounding in the intervals of musket and cannon-fire.

The Hobbit  I’m on Disc 3, listening to Rob Inglis’ superb reading of Tolkien’s classic. I laugh at my teenage self who didn’t care for the book after reading three pages. It was all so confusing: hobbits, Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf, seed cakes. I’m trying to wait until Curt is home so we can listen together. To have two such magnificent books going through my head is an embarrassment of riches.

Arrow of God I’ve read several excellent books on Africa, but they since they have all been from a colonial perspective, I read Chinua Achebe’s novel. It took me about 2/3 of the book to get into the story of a Nigerian village. An old priest struggles to keep the old culture in the midst of change.

He found it refreshing to be talking to a man who did not have the besetting sin of smugness, of taking himself too seriously. 103

 

The Invisible Child: On Reading and Writing Books for Children  I expected Katherine Paterson’s book to be a memoir. As in a narrative. Instead, it was a collection of speeches. Once I got over that disappointment, I found many quotes to copy into my journal. Paterson’s books make me uncomfortable; they aren’t nice happy books. Oh, but they are powerful: one made me hiccup-sob 15 minutes.

Books are not TV or, heaven help us, MTV or the Internet. I suppose it would be possible to write a book whose plot jumped around like a frog on pep pills, but that’s not what books are about. If that’s the kind of writing you want to do, I think you should be in a more hectic medium. Books are meant to be read slowly and digested. These days people don’t pray much or go to services of worship, they don’t commune with nature—why, they hardly go to a national park without a TV set, a laptop, and a cell phone. The book is almost the last refuge of reflection—the final outpost of wisdom. I want children to have the gifts that books can give, and I don’t believe they can get them from a book that attempts to imitate the frantic fragmentation of contemporary life. 55

 

Baby Island  I responded to Carol Ryrie Brink’s book here.

 

Trudel’s Siege A little know book by Louisa May Alcott. My review.

 

Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other Back in the 80′s, our telephone used to ring often throughout the day and evening. When we got overwhelmed with calls, we used to joke that it was time to move so our phone would quiet down. Lately, we get one, perhaps two calls a day. (Keep in mind that we only have a land line. Would it be different with a cell phone?)  Does this example resonate with you? It is just one of the things I’ve reflected on since I’ve read Sherry Turkle’s book. I didn’t connect with the first half of the book, an exploration of the role of robots as companions for the elderly and caregivers for the young. 

In the second part of the book, Turkle examines our increasing connectivity with each other online, but how oddly we are more alone than ever. I was struck with Turkle’s use of the word tethered to describe the pull and grip that technology has on us. I highly recommend this second half.

My own study of the networked life has left me thinking about intimacy—about being with people in person, hearing their voices and seeing their faces, trying to know their hearts. And it has left me thinking about solitude—the kind that refreshes and restores. Loneliness is failed solitude. To experience solitude you must be able to summon yourself by yourself; otherwise, you will only know how to be lonely. 288

 

After three bloggers I admire (Mental Multivitamin, Quiet Life, and Semicolon) have posted answers to this meme, I’m eager to join the game.

1. What book (a classic?) do you hate? Gulp. I hesitate to say, because so many, many, many of my friends loved it. But I did not love Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping. It was too dark and I didn’t see the point. I read it to the end, but I just wanted it to be over. I really didn’t like Antigone either.

2. To what extent do you judge people by what they read?  Not as much as people assume I do. But I’ll be honest: I make judgments. When a friend recently told me she plans to read what I call 50 Shades of Grime, I inwardly grimaced. But if my friend apologizes because she only likes to read mysteries or light reading, I truly don’t think any differently about her and don’t need apologies. On the other hand, when I sat across the table from a man who told me that life is too short to read fiction—implying that fiction is unimportant—it was all I could do not to glower.

3. What television series would you recommend as the literariest?  Masterpiece Theater. My non-bookish husband grew to love Dickens, Trollope, Eliot and others through watching Martin Chuzzlewit, Bleak House, Barsetshire Chronicles, and Daniel Deronda.

4. Describe your ideal home library.  Three walls of floor-to-(cathedral)-ceiling books, with the sliding ladder; a fireplace somewhere on one of the walls; a wall of windows to let in the light; overstuffed chairs; a foot rest; a yellow lab who doesn’t emit bad odors at my feet; a pot of tea on the table, a string quartet playing in the corner. I’ve been in this room once (sans dog and strings) at my friend’s house; I wanted to move in. I’m in the midst of a year-long bookshelf crisis, with stacks and boxes of books in our garage after we dissembled our book wall in the bedroom. But a trip to IKEA is on the docket and I hope to install floor-to-ceiling shelves in our living room soon.

5. Books or sex? One after the other, but I won’t say in what order.

6. How do you decide what to read next?  Sometimes I stand in front of a bookcase in my home and think, “There is enough great reading here to keep me occupied for two years.” And I earnestly make a plan. Then I go into a different room in the house and have the same conversation in front of a different bookcase. I vacillate between reading books in order to release them—to make space on the shelves—and reading the best, most glorious books, which I, of course, plan to keep. This spring I re-discovered inter-library loans and read a dozen books that have been on my wish list for years.  Movie release dates push me into certain books: I’m currently listening to Rob Inglis’ masterful reading of The Hobbit and reading Les Miserables.

7. How much do you talk about books in real life (outside of the blogging community)?  All the time. If I have read a great book, my joy is not complete until other people have read it and loved it like I do. People know if they talk to me they will hear, I read a book about that…  My favorite dinner table question is Tell me what you are reading, and going around the table to hear responses. That question doesn’t come out unless I’m confident it would not put people on the spot. It is a gift to have reading friends. It is a gift to have patient friends who act interested when I go on and on. I love being the resident reader to whom people go for a book recommendation.

Mental Multivitamin said it best:

In a perfect world, it is what I do all day long: Read.
Talk about what I’m reading, what others are reading.
Read about what I’m reading, what others are reading.
Write, often about reading.
Read some more.
Sleep.

 

Dear friends recently lost their dad. I remember being surprised after my dad died at how bone tired I was. As one acquainted with grief, I offer this short primer, not as a scientific study, but as an anecdotal narrative of what I’ve experienced, what I’ve observed and what you may expect.

1. Exhaustion   
Emotional work is physically exhausting. You will wake up tired, your sleep patterns will be disrupted, a deep weariness settles in. Make allowances for being tired; avoid extra responsibilities if you can. Take a nap without apologizing for it.

2. Disorientation    
Your brain is overwhelmed with thoughts and feelings. It is hard to focus. You repeat yourself in conversations. You begin a sentence, but can’t finish it. Fog is everywhere. Your ability to think sequentially is diminished. Basic decisions—where to eat, what to do next—are challenging.

3. Absorption
When someone you love dies, you look for clues, for signs, for anything that can help you make sense of his/her life. Or make sense of his/her death. You examine the relationship you shared, reviewing communications, reminding yourself of what is true. The more contradictions there are, the more you ponder. We want to understand, but the understanding doesn’t always come.  

4. Apathy
You couldn’t care less.  You stop eating. Or you can’t stop eating. Personal hygiene slips. You are tempted to veg-out with TV, computer games, mindless occupations. Habits help. Brush your teeth, take a walk. 

5. Isolation
Grief is a lonely thing. After the outpouring of your friends’ comfort and compassion, life for them returns to normal. But your life is unalterably changed. Grief makes people uncomfortable, unsure of their response, so they may avoid you in an effort to protect themselves. You may be reluctant to articulate your grief to yourself, let alone to others. Living in community can propel you into social situations that insulate you from isolation. 

 

There is no getting around the fact that grief is painful. We don’t like pain, so we search for shortcuts that will make the pain go away. I’ve seen folks allot 4-7 days to grieve and then pack up their grief and put it into storage. But grief too quickly stowed will return, ringing the doorbell, insisting on being present. 

How long will this last? Ecclesiastes 3 gives a clue: To everything there is a season, a time to every purpose under heaven. (emphasis mine) Three months is a normal time to experience the deep initial wave of grief. The loss will be with you until the end of your days; you will never be “over it.”

And then there will be the realization that—for a moment—you had forgotten how sad you were. It feels like betrayal to experience a slice of joy.

Another time will come when you feel like you should be sad, but the emotion is just not there. Then you make a decision to either manufacture the sadness or to let that moment pass. There is a ditch on both sides of the road: the ditch of denying grief, pretending you are fine; and the ditch of gripping grief with clenched hands that won’t release it.  When the tears come, let them. But don’t force them.

The summer after my mom died, I remember a scene of social awkwardness and resulting tears at a summer camp. Some girl impatiently demanded to know why I was crying. I was too embarrassed to articulate my awkwardness, so I played my trump card: “Well, wouldn’t you cry if your mom had died?” It was patently dishonest, and my ten-year-old self recognized—and regretted—the manipulation the moment those words left my mouth.

Underneath all of these thoughts is my faith that God is sovereign, that He knows my tears, and that I can trust Him. He doesn’t erase the pain as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, but He does promise to comfort us. And that is enough.

If children can keep their wits about them and are brave,
they can always help in some way, my dear.
We don’t have such dreadful wars now; but the
dear God knows we have troubles enough,
and need all our courage and faith to be patient
in times like these.

In Trudel’s Siege, a book written by Louisa May Alcott when she was sixteen (1848), sickness, poverty and hunger lay siege on Trudel’s family. Her father, a linen weaver, is too sick to work; her mother, a lacemaker, cannot work while she nurses her husband; the old Grootmoeder could only knit stockings to sell. Inspired by the story of the siege of Leiden, Trudel looks for ways she can get food for her family. She gives her precious kitty, Jan, to the baker’s family in exchange for bread, sausage and milk. She goes out looking for odd jobs she can do in exchange for food. 

I can hear modern objections to this story: Why isn’t this girl in school? No child should have the burden of providing for the family! Where were social services?

I actually find the self-reliance, tempered with faith in God’s provision, very refreshing. So it’s a twinge too earnest. Trudel struggles with her sacrifices…for one minute. Such selflessness is usually only found in books. But Trudel’s satisfaction—her compensation—comes as she sees her parents and grandmother’s hunger abated. Alcott improves with age: who can forget Jo March’s satisfaction/sorrow when she sells her hair?

 

Carol Ryrie Brink’s book Baby Island (1937) could be Robinson Crusoe: the Young Mommy Edition. I found the Foreword essential for a modern reader to get this book.

When I was a small girl, it was the fashion in our circle
to borrow the neighbors’ babies. I myself was never a
very accomplished nursemaid, although I had many happy
hours pushing the perambulator of a young cousin; but
some of my friends had a positive genius for taking care
of and amusing babies. They never thought of receiving
pay for this delightful pastime. Minding a baby was its own reward.

When the ocean liner is sinking, twelve year old Mary Wallace’s first thought is to save the babies she has made friends with. She wakes her sister Jean, ten, and they find the twin toddlers and three-month old baby unattended. After scooping them up and getting in a lifeboat, a father gives them another toddler to hold while he returns for his wife. Suddenly they are cast off and adrift on the ocean.  

Mary is certain they will reach a little island.

Why the public library at home is just full of books about
shipwrecked people who landed on tropical islands. And
did you ever see a book written by a person who was
drowned at sea? I never did.

Whenever Jean gives way to tears, Mary rallies the troops:

Remember who you are.
Remember you are a Wallace.
Sing ‘Scots, Wha Hae wi’ Wallace Bled!’
and you’ll be all right.

The supplies, especially the canned milk, in the lifeboat sustain them until they land on a island. They build a shelter, find more food, build a pram and a playpen, while the baby gets a tooth, the toddler learns to walk and the twins start talking. They learn very practical knowledge of tides, “more today than I ever learned in school.” Mr. Peterkin, an old curmudgeon, lives on the other side of the island with his goat and parrot. 

It’s a whimsical book. Diapers—the need for or the stink or the cleaning of—are never mentioned. And yet I find parts of it plausible. When I was twelve, another twelve-year-old and I ran a day care center for the counselors’ kids at a summer camp. I marvel now to think of the responsibility we had, but at the end of the week all was well. 

What I loved about this book was the way Mary Wallace thought of the needs of others and how that kept her occupied and how her occupation kept her form sniffling and whining. Carol Ryrie Brink writes that her grandmother is in every book. Caddie Woodlawn is based on her grandmother’s childhood, but the spunk and resourcefulness of Mary Wallace is another clear reflection.

It strikes me that in both titles the girls are fortified by stories from books.  We must never stop reading good stories to our kids.

 

 

Today is a thrilling day. Right up there with the first real snowfall, the first crocus to rise up from the earth, and the first ripe tomato fresh from the vine.

 

I miss homeschooling my boys more on this day than any other day. For 16 years we sat at our dining room table and tried to be productive. But it was hopeless. Because we all could not keep our eyes from the tree across the street. Days before we watched a single leaf float and swirl down, followed after a long interval by another floatie. 

Then, one morning after a hard frost, the tree disrobes in a frenzy.  And it has all the fascination of a peep show. We could not concentrate on Latin declensions. History didn’t matter. Algebra was out the window. And I didn’t care. I wanted my boys to have a sense of wonder at the glorious display in front of their faces. To see beauty and then shrug in boredom would wither our souls. So we stared.

 

 

Life offers a finite number of first snows, a limited number of days in your life when you can stare at the leaves falling. Look. See. Wonder. Give thanks.

Picadilly Jim  (1917)  P. G. Wodehouse’s descriptions delight: a comfortable stoutness, a face that had been “edited and re-edited” by a boxing career, affected imitation geniuses, the art of raising eyebrows, dazzled by the glamour of incivility. And my favorite from this book: 

…her mouth had the coldly forbidding look of the closed door of a subway express when you have just missed the train. It bade you keep your distance on pain of injury. 

I first met Ogden Ford, “a fourteen-year-old boy of a singularly unloveable type”, in The Little Nugget; the kidnappers are ready at the end of the book to pay the family to take this son of a millionaire back. In Picadilly Jim there is another scheme by family members to get him kidnapped again. The main character pretends to be someone else who is pretending to be himself. Five stars, pure joy.

 

Moby Dick  (1851)  I read my husband to sleep every night with Herman Melville’s classic, in preparation for seeing Jake Heggie’s opera, Moby Dick, in San Francisco. We have officially abandoned Moby as a read aloud together. I plan to continue reading about cetology, or study of whales, and the story of Ahab’s vengeance.   I keep thinking this is a re-read, but I can’t be sure. There are gems, but the pace is slow.

 

Kitchen Sonnets and Lyrics of Domesticity (1931)  Ethel Romig Fuller, poetry editor for The Oregonian and Oregon’s third poet laureate, writes poetry that glorifies the common things of life. She sees cleaning as creating beauty. Fuller sees poetry in hanging the wash on a clothesline, beauty in canning, tidied calm in ironing, and a happy heart in washing windows.  She glorifies the common stuff of life.  A Song of Home speaks of happy hearts and tallying every blessing.  While a few of the poems made my modern head wince, overall I was inspired to devour those dust bunnies in the corners and love the blessing of making a home beautiful.

Are petitions less fervent, if one only asks
As one works, for strength for finishing tasks?

 

Skylines (1952) Ethel Romig Fuller — The poet turns her eye to nature: the rivers, the mountains, the sea, the seasons of life in the Pacific Northwest. Infused with joy and sorrow, she writes of the surgery of grief, a fugutive beauty, of “binning” the summer. 

Sea

Sea is a great hunger pressed
To a full white mother breast,
Where it ravens till the tide
Of appetite is satisfied;
Where it slumbers till the shore
Aches with plenitude once more.

 

Spot the Book Title (2007) Simon Drew — A Collection of Cryptic Nonsense and Pointless Hidden Meanings. A fun puzzle book, so visual that it is hard to describe using only words. Here’s an example under “The Plays of Williams Shakespeare”:  comma + pot of tea + o + carousel + oars.   There is no page at the end of the book with answers. If you must have a puzzle solved, you send a check to Drew’s charity. He explains, “This is not a payment: it is a fine for giving up.” 

My Reading Life (2010) Pat Conroy — He reads, he writes, he journals, he talks, he listens. From the time I could talk I took an immense pleasure in running down words, shagging them like fly balls in some spacious field.  He honors the mother who hungered for art, for illumination, for some path to lead her to a shining way to call her own. She lit signal fires in the hills for her son to feel and follow. 

I think I like Pat Conroy because we share the same writing weaknesses: sentimental, often disastrously so; I was over-dramatic, showy with adjectives, safe with form, weak on verbs, over-reliant on adverbs. I love his love for words, but ache at the estrangement that still exists in his personal life. One side of me would love to read 200 pages a day like he does, but I would have to isolate myself from people—more than I already do— in order to achieve that goal. 

A Chain of Hands (1993, posthumously), Carol Ryrie Brink — Ironic, on the last day of Daylight Savings Time, with the gripes about the change, to read this phrase: day-by-day satisfaction of daylight and dark. This book only makes sense if you have read several other CRB titles first.

 

Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age (2008) Maggie Jackson  The premise of this book is simple. The way we live is eroding our capacity for deep, sustained, perceptive attention — the building block of intimacy, wisdom, and cultural progress. Jackson writes about a culture of skimming, new ways to disconnect from others, attention splicing, the dangers of multitasking, detachment, untethering, outsourcing memory to gadgets. The structure of the book did not make sense to me, but I found much to ponder.

 

The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture (2011)  David Mamet — Conversions fascinate me. “I used to think…” is my favorite dinner party prompt. Mamet, former voice of Liberals, becomes the voice of Conservatives. The chapters don’t appear to build on one another; it feels like reading a collection of essays. Mamet’s Judaism informs his perspective and sits under every page of the book. He is blunt, articulate, and controversial. And he quotes Anthony Trollope.

My interest in politics began when I noticed that I acted differently than I spoke, that I had seen ‘the government’ commit sixty years of fairly unrelieved and catastrophic error nationally and internationally, that I not only hated every wasted hard-earned cent I spent in taxes, but the trauma and misery they produced…