Girl with dog and torch

A wedding today–  So good and strange to see classmates and friends; we were all dressed up, in our finery.  I wore red lipstick, and thought about it too much, until I wiped it off so I could talk and think only of the people I was with.

The bride was luminous; the bride and groom joyful and brave.  There were babies, and pregnancies, and professors.  Open windows to deep green and sudden rain.  Unorchestrated piano and hundreds of paper hearts.

Weddings make me feel hopeful.  The last wedding I was at was my father’s, last October.  Seeing him marry, exchange vows and rings, made me cry.  But I was also so suddenly filled with hope: look at where life can take us.  Look at how we are given gifts we never expected, decades later than other beginnings.  It was a weird serendipitous feeling, a reminder to let go a little bit, and cease attempts to control all of my future.

Remember how, in _Mere Christianity_ (I think), Lewis is describing what we humans think we want, compared to what God has in store for us?  He describes us in a dank alley-way, happily playing with muck.  We love the muck, we delight in it, if we could ask for anything it would be for more mud in which to play. 

But God intends for us…oh–what God intends–God has for us a seaside holiday, clear water and blue skies, endless sun and sweetness.  In our muck, we can’t even imagine it: we’ve never heard of such a thing.  It wouldn’t enter our minds.  And that’s the beauty of God’s gift, and the futures God gifts us with–they are beyond our imaginings, more than we could know to hope for.

Seeing Jeremy and Sara Jane bravely enter a world they can partially imagine, but wholly trust–it is inspiring.  And I wish for them all the bright seashores of this life and the next.

With summer, I’ve been able to finally catch my breath and do some…puttering.

Puttering is aimlessness, little projects that please no one else but me, time to write letters or dust, wandering morning walks.  Puttering can include cooking or shopping, but with no time frame.  Puttering certainly involves perusing used books, re-potting plants, re-framing photographs, daydreaming, watching a movie in the middle of the day with no guilt.  (The no guilt part is huge and breath-giving for me.)

In the last week or so, I’ve watched _China Syndrome_ and _Elephant_ in the middle of the day.  I’ve found new routes to walk in the morning, wild-green places that don’t feel like New York City.  I’ve studied at my own pace, and gotten books one at a time from the library to devour on the train.

I am so grateful for this kind of time, and I hope that I never take it for granted.  This morning, we woke up and went to the farmers’ market first thing–we got fresh bread and eggs (and red ripe tomatoes!) and came home to immediately make french toast.

Later today, I’ll make cookies and lemon cupcakes for a friend’s party, and study some Greek, and maybe compose a letter to someone.  That’s all.

I have two classmates for whom “she” would once have been appropriate, for for whom “he” is now correct–in all ways correct, preferred, and proper.

For one, I struggle when speaking about him, and frequently use the wrong pronoun, even in thought.  For the second, I have always considered him “him,” and have never thought of him (since I’ve known him) as female or feminine.

Tonight, on the elevator, in a conversation with him and a floor-mate, I mistakenly referred to him as “her.”  He corrected me immediately and gently (as he should have), and I echoed, “…yes, him,” but felt so stupid and wrong.  I’ve never thought of him as “her,” so what was up with the mistake coming out of my mouth?

I wish there was a shorthand way of conveying, “I totally understand how horrible that mistake is, and I don’t identify you at all as female, and I’m so sorry.”  Unfortunately, the best shorthand way of doing that is to use the correct pronoun, and I messed that up.

Ironically, we were coming from Greek, where I’ve been dealing with pronouns, number, gender, and case for hours.

It’s been a long week.  The stone came loose in my engagement ring, so I haven’t been wearing it–how strange that now I feel very odd without it, after only wearing it four months.  My laptop is broken as well.  Many of my normal routines–my morning pattern, for example–have been disrupted by this.  Finally, I’m moving at the end of this month, and I dread it.

Just thinking about the move–the feel of cardboard in my hands, tape, and sound of tape coming off cardboard, endless carrying and mess.  Oh, I dread it.  I’ve been trying not to think of it, because it’s overwhelming.

Today, I spilled something on my bed, and it went through both layers of sheets onto the mattress cover that’s supposed to keep remaining bedbugs in the mattress out of  my room.  So I had the panic of taking off the cover, because I need to wash it.  But what about keeping the mattress covered?

I just wanted my morning–the routine, leaving my bed unmade, puttering around with my laptop, coffee.  None of it was going to work, so I had an intense crying moment.  Awful.

And now I feel bad about that–it seems like a small thing, it’s all small things.  But they just stack up, and then I’m overwhelmed.  How to keep the small things small?

Some things I’m loving

1. Farmers’ market popcorn. I get to meet the people who grow it, it comes in a glass jar, and it pops up amazing. I like to make popcorn in a pan, with oil, shaking it occasionally over the stove top. I put salt on the unpopped kernels before I start, and then it’s just the right amount of salty when it’s done. This organic farm corn is the best I’ve popped–it pops really quickly, and all white and fluffy, and nearly every single kernel pops.

2. The public library. Okay–maybe because I was already working in the school library when I moved to NY, or maybe because I have unlimited access to all of CU’s libraries…I don’t know, I just never checked out the NYC public libraries. Well, given how fast I read novels, it was about time. I went in last week, got my card (free! easy! fast!) and within ten minutes had checked out three books of fiction. Which have lasted a week. Sometimes I finish a really good, 120-200 page novel in two to three days, and then feel bad for having paid twenty dollars for it. No longer. Now I can read for free all summer.

3. Top Chef. It’s another show that we often watch, because on a dorm floor, a particular kind of show is easier/more fun to watch as a group. But lately, I’ve been trying to watch less Law&Order, because I think it adds to my anxiety. Top Chef has been fitting the bill–it has a kind of routine to it, same “schedule” in every episode, and I really like seeing what they make. I don’t think the in-fighting, but usually that only happens in the last four-five minutes. I think they cook too fancy, though. Why don’t they just make a delicious, flaky, buttery biscuit sometime? I think the judges would gobble that up.

4. The Crafty Crow.  I love this blog. I’m often looking for little projects to do with my Sunday school charge, but sometimes “modern” crafts get too…mass-produced? Like you have to buy a kit or special play-doh accessories to do them. Crafty Crow is very old-school, but in a beautiful way. Old-fashioned crafts that are cheap, or involve recycling–they remind me of things we did in Girl Scouts or 4-H. And the photographs and commentary are very sweet and pretty.

In Flanders Fields (1915)

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

— John McCrae

My laptop was in the shop for a week.  At first, I missed it terribly.  I needed to check Facebook a few times a day, and keep up with all the blogs I read, and read Salon as I get ready for work, instead of stealing glances at it while actually at work.  Let alone e-mailing, and Flickr, and blogging. 

But then, I found that I often could get my Internet fix at work, and not really care about it in the evening.  It was interesting to actually watch television without my laptop in my lap, to actually pay attention to what was happening.  I also can check e-mail on my zippy phone, and I noticed that I actually don’t get that many e-mails between leaving work and getting there again the next morning.  So.  It wasn’t so bad.  I should get on the Internet less, I think.

And then, yesterday, we went to see _Prince Caspian_, which was amazing and beautiful and true.  I thought about how Peter and Susan spend less time thinking about/believing in/looking for Aslan, when he is constantly on Lucy’s mind.  I began to feel guilty about the lack of time I spend in prayer, as well as realizing (again) that it’s a true relationship, and I must make time for it.

So now I’m thinking that I should give up some of my morning computer time (incessant searches, news reading, e-mail checking) and spend it in prayer.  Or at least, be a little quieter and more reflective, and open to God’s presence.

Last Sunday, when I was teaching Sunday school, the discussion was about Zacchaeus–the disliked, short, tax collector who climbed up in the tree to see Jesus as he passed by.  One of the points of the story is that Zacchaeus was a cheater, and a liar, but had a complete change of heart after dining with Christ.  He was totally different, can gave his money away afterwards.

To begin the discussion with the kids (ages five to eight or nine), I asked about examples of cheating.  I was thinking of cheating in games, or maybe in school.  But these kids are pretty young to really be as concerned about cheating on tests or homeworks–that’s what I was thinking.

One of the boys, who is eight, began to talk about how he cheats in school.  He was gloating about it, proud, and enjoying the fact that I and a few other of the students were shocked.  He talked about how easy it is, and how his teacher doesn’t know.

I have to admit–I didn’t know what to do.  I was surprised, first of all.  And I tried to brush away the implication of what he was saying, “Oh, you don’t really cheat.  Your teacher probably knows what you’re doing.” 

To make it worse, another little girl (who is perceived as less popular) chimed in that she would _never_ cheat.  This sentiment egged the boy on to smirk and say that he did it every day.

I know that I didn’t handle the situation well.  I indicated that it was wrong, but I didn’t have just the right thing to say about it.  I’ve been thinking about it all week, wondering what I might have said.  The boy’s mother is, in fact, a schoolteacher.  But I get the feeling that she would be angry at him for _saying in Sunday school_ that he cheats, more than angry that he cheats.  And that would make it worse, I think.  That would just tell him that he has to be craftier.  I still haven’t figured out what the best thing would have been to do.

Okay, an admission: My hair is naturally curly to wavy.  Curly on the ends, wavy in the middle.  Every other day, I wash and blow-dry it straight, and then put it briefly in hot-rollers, to both smooth out any excessive curl, and coax what’s left into tamer waves.  On the off days, it gets a rest from the heat of the blow-dryer, and it’s much faster to get ready.

Yesterday, I wanted to sleep in an extra thirty minutes.  It occurred to me, that if I let my hair go, I could shave at least forty minutes off of my getting ready time.  I could at least tie it back in a bun, and it wouldn’t be too out of control.  So that’s what I did, pretty happily.  I bundled most of it back into a loose bun, and put on a skinny headband to keep the short curls out of my face.

It looked pretty good.  Throughout the day, I wondered why I do that, why I go through this routine every day of coaxing my hair into something it is not.  I guess I like to predict, or control, and know what my hair will look like, on any given day.  If I let it dry naturally, it will be curly-wavy, and it might look okay, or it might look kind of out-of-control and crazy.  And once it dries like that, I can’t exactly get it back.  If I blow it dry and hot roll it, I can predict and know exactly what it will look like, all day long.

I guess I’m riffing off of the whole Lenten bare-faced experiment, but I’m thinking of letting my hair go, once in a while.  We shall see.

I was a little hesitant to schedule engagement photos–I’d never done it before, and it seemed like it might be a little cheesy.  How could we spend two hours…doing what?…posing?  Kissing?  Showing off my ring?

As it turned out, it went wonderfully.  We had to do it at eight o’clock in the morning, because I have a big conference this week at work, at four museums, for which I’ve been planning for months.  Had to get right to work Monday morning.

So M. and I met our photographer and rode the bus up to a park near the GW Bridge; the park has a miniature version of the bridge in it.  It was pretty cold, and not exactly sunny, but it was great fun running around the park.  And yes, we kissed a lot.  After a while there, we rode up to the Cloisters.  The whole area was almost empty, but the flowers and flowering trees were in full bloom, so we got lots of great photos around them.  For one, we laid on our bellies in front of a yellow flowering bush, and the photographer took a picture through the branches at us. 

She asked us to talk about our wedding plans, and how we met.  It was so much fun to just focus on _us_, on our love for each other and how much joy we feel when we’re together.  And the photographer took 700 photos!  Which is exciting, because I’m sure that means there will be a few good ones.