a good week

Now Playing: "Thirty-Year Retrospective" by Mark O'Connor. Track 2, "Butterfly's Day Out".

Monday: Horsing around with the cousins, especially flying kites with Peter.

Tuesday: Hobbits' sleepover at my house! Lots of giggles and silly conversations. Watching Superman Returns and taking personality quizzes for each other online. Haven't had that much fun with some of my best friends in a long time. :o)

Wednesday: Another sleepover at the Spitlers' house for all the girls. Watching Lady in the Water and sitting next to a roaring fire in the stove.

Thursday: Going to the National Cowboy and Western Hall of Fame with the Wests. The gorgeous landscapes in the art galleries and Mr. West's spicy venison sausage for lunch.

Friday: Spending practically all afternoon reading, including Matthew Henry's commentary on Ephesians, a "Smithsonian" magazine, G.K. Chesterton's "The Ballad of the White Horse", and C.S. Lewis's The Weight of Glory. Going for a walk with my mother around the lake, seeing a heron and a kingfisher. Rain this evening, soft on the street.

More of "Pearl and Peach" is up on Through A Glass Darkly. It gets weirder and weirder....

Part I

There is now a piece of "creative" writing up on Through a Glass darkly for your reading enjoyment.

http://the-aeolian-harp.blogspot.com/

a bunch of funny-looking people

Now Playing: "Looney Tunes" short.

The cousins and siblings are all parked in front of the TV, which gives me the chance to write. Laura beams at me from the rocking chair, her braces and eyes sparkling, as the two little gophers say, "And think how much better it'll be when we have electricity!"

I woke up this morning to the chatter of little girls. To be precise, it was Annalee bursting into Laura's room, squealing, "We can open our stockings now!" Downstairs, I found Ross, Andrew, Laura, Lillian, and Mary eating breakfast. No one eats breakfast all at once. I drank hot tea and ate apple strudel bread with cranberries in it. Mary hopped around, begging for a grapefruit. My mother was already busy in the kitchen, fixing the ham.

When Grammy arrived, she realized that she'd forgotten her presents. So she gave me her car keys, and I got to drive her new Buick back to her house. That was fun. :o) It's nice to drive a car that doesn't cough when you accelerate, or groan when you go over bumps, or quack when you're quietly minding your own business. A cold north wind scoured the brown fields under a blue sky--a broad horizon, high sky day.

Back inside, I sat around for awhile, reading The Everlasting Man and listening to people talk. Once everyone was ready, it was time to open presents. We gathered in the living room. I handed out the presents: stockings first. Then I handed out Grammy's presents to the Fearings. Mary was delighted with a white plush cat in a green purse. Next were my parents' presents: giftcards for all the kids, and a basket with chocolates in it for Aunt Lisa and Uncle Kirk. Aunt Lisa and Uncle Kirk gave all of us chocolate Hershey's bars, and Peter handed out boxes of cherry cordials to everyone. Lots of sugar!

Lillian, Laura, and Annalee had all trotted off to San Born Lake. Uncle Kirk had mysteriously disappeared. Grammy realized that she'd also forgotten her pills, so she decided to drive back to her house. Aunt Lisa, chafing Ross to go for a run, suggested that he go along, so he reluctantly tied on his shoes and left. I myself was becoming edgy. I bounced into the study and dragged Philip and Stephen out, and managed to pick up Andrew and Peter along the way, to walk around San Born Lake. We all wore hoodies and tied the hoods around our faces.

The area around the lake was cold and windy. Desolate under the scouring wind. The wind howled and rocked in the branches of the trees, ruffling the lake. I saw deer prints in the mud. As we rounded a corner between juniper trees, we bumped into Uncle Kirk, who said that we looked like gnomes going down the path in our pointed hoods. He'd been outside "GPSing" with his new handheld GPS mapping device. We trooped behind him down the path, in quest of "nothing", a point he'd labeled on the map of the area. "We're about thirty-five feet away," Uncle Kirk announced. We crunched off the path, between tall stems of sumac and goldenrod, and into a clump of juniper trees, where the grass was silvery and velvety. "Here's nothing," he said. Andrew and Peter had already discovered the beaver's dam and were clambering along it. The rest of us followed suit. I led us up the steep bank on the far side and onto a flat clearing, where the grass was thick and spongy. Uncle Kirk and Andrew climbed the ridge above the clearing, standing silhouetted against the sky. I scrambled after them. The wind hit my face, sweeping over the field. We could see the pale yellow of the dry grass in the clearing, falling away to the tangle of willow and cottonwood trees along the creekbed.

Uncle Kirk decided that it was time to go home, so we crossed the creek, back to the path. The boys and I continued around the lake. Nary a sight of the little girls did we see, though we walked very quietly on the muddy trail--soundlessly, the rushing of the wind in the trees covering any slight noise we made. As we came out in the meadow on the other side of the lake, we spotted my father, Uncle Kirk, and Mary strolling down the path toward home. We ran to catch up with them. Uncle Kirk followed his GPS's directions home, nearly bumping into a car in the street, to Mary's amusement.

At home, we all had to take off our shoes at the door, thanks to the caked mud. Grandma and Grandpa, my father's parents, had arrived, and were sitting in the dining room, talking with Grammy, while my parents and Aunt Lisa worked on cooking. Mary popped by occasionally to swipe a black olive off the relish tray. I propped my legs up on a chair and kept reading.

Ross and I set the table. My parents had pushed together most of our tables, covered them with bright red tablecloths, and made a centerpiece out of a gold garland and a holly garland and candlesticks. Once the plates and silverware were around, I agonized over where to seat everyone. We sat down to eat at about twelve-thirty. Adults at one end, small ones at the other. The adults talked about real estate and businesses and new restaurants. The girls chattered and giggled. The boys stoically ate their ham and potatoes. Before any of the children could eat dessert, we lined up on the stairs for a group photo. And then we were allowed to eat: chocolate-chip cookies, pecan pie, and pumpkin pie. I had to drink black spice tea to balance out the incredible sweetness of the brown sugar in the pecan pie.

After lunch, Peter and I decided to go kite-flying at Boomer Lake. Somehow, we picked up the rest of the motley crew on the way so that the entire horde of kids, from Uncle Kirk to Mary, decided to come along, except Stephen, who was too engrossed in the computer. (Well, we did ask Uncle Kirk to come, just to make sure nothing disastrous happened with the kites.) And because the other boys were coming, we picked up a football and a soccerball along the way out.

We ran across the big highway to Boomer Lake--the feeling of freedom stolen by danger as we burst through the juniper trees and onto the big open field below the water tower, looking out over the lake. The girls tootled off to play on the playground. Uncle Kirk helped Peter tie his kite securely to its nylon string. Andrew helped me get my kite up. The wind was changing toward the west, blowing very strong. My kite pulled hard. And then, all of a sudden, it plunged nose-down and drove itself into the crown of a big pine tree further down the hill. I groaned. "Sorry, E--!" Uncle Kirk called matter-of-factly. "That's the first time that kite has ever been in a tree," I growled. "Looks like the last time, too," Andrew said, coming up beside me and tugging on the string. "Thanks," I retorted. Ross and Philip ran down the hill and stood under the tree, staring up. "Tug!" Ross yelled, "Tug harder!" as the wind scoured over the top of the tree. Andrew yanked on the string. "Pull! Pull!" the older boys yelled. Andrew tangled the sleeves of his hoodie into the string, and between his yanking, and the wind's blowing, the kite finally slipped free of the bouncing branches.

With Philip's help, I reeled in the kite and took out the supporting plastic bar so that it wouldn't present a surface for the wind. Everyone else, except Peter and Annalee, trailed off downhill. I bundled up my kite and set it down in the lee of a juniper tree. Peter had got his smaller kite up successfully. The nylon fabric flapped in the wind and the thread hummed tensely. Silhouetted against the pale blue sky, the kite was a beautiful thing, bright colors glowing in the sunshine between black seams. The only trouble was that, in the strong wind, the kite kept looping down, swivelling between the two pine trees lower down the hill and the golden rain tree closer to the water tower. Every ten seconds or so, it would loop-de-loop down and bang! Its triangular nose would slam into the ground. Annalee stood faithfully underneath it and picked it up every time, holding it high over her head with both arms. The kite kept buzzing her curly blond hair before it hit the ground. "It's trying to give you a haircut!" Peter and I laughed to her across the field. "Would you like to have a try?" Peter asked. Reluctantly, I took the spool. The familiar tug of the kite on my hands was like the pull of a live thing, the kite itself like a temperamental animal on the other end of a leash. Swerving to and fro, looping down, leaping suddenly up, hovering or yanking. I managed to keep it airborne for five or ten minutes before fluttered gracefully downward for Annalee to pick up again. We finally decided that it was time to reel it in. "I've only reeled in this kite once. Every other time, it's crashed!" Peter chuckled. We untangled the string from the grass and walked down the hill.

Everyone else was inside the soccer court. Like a tennis court: a long rectangle of asphalt, with wooden boards built up probably four feet all the way round, and chain link above that so that playing soccer in the court was like playing indoor soccer. Just as we arrived, Uncle Kirk and Ross were splitting everyone into teams for a game. Peter, Andrew, Ross, and Lillian were on one team, with Philip, Laura, Annalee, Uncle Kirk, and me on the other team. Marry trotted back and forth, kicking the oak leaves drifted in the corners, her wispy hair almost white in the sunshine.

We played a good hard match--at least taking into account the fact that half our players haven't played soccer in at least four or five years. The ball ricocheted off the wooden walls and skipped over the cracks in the concrete, which had been poorly patched with tar. We made a couple of goals, but the other team made three.

Back at home, the grandparents were still sitting around, drinking coffee and tea. After my father's parents left, my mother and Aunt Lisa managed to collect the little girls so that they could finish their baskets. I moved to the corner of the dining room, with my legs stuck out in front of me, Aragorn-style, and went on reading. "I have a feeling that you're like our cats. You like to be near things, but not participating," Aunt Lisa chuckled. "Once when I wanted to gather the cats so that they could go to the vet, I decided that all I needed to do to catch them was to go out in the front yard and start gardening. Not five minutes had gone by before there they were, all three of them, watching me and having a good old time." I grinned, and finished my book. I lounged around and stroked Mandy (who purred reluctantly when I rubbed her stomach) and gave Annalee helpful hints about binding the rim of her basket.

Upstairs, I found Andrew and Peter playing computer games, Ross reading The Gulag Archipelago on the floor amid a scatter of plastic food (courtesy the little girls), and Mary scampering upstairs into Laura's room with Stephen, draped in a maroon velveteen blanket, prowling after her. "He's the tickle monster!" she squealed. Peter and Annalee appeared on the scene, attracted by the promise of rough-and-tumble fun. When Uncle Kirk emerged from the bedroom, where he and Aunt Lisa are staying, Annalee begged him to play with them. So I found them an old blanket, and Annalee proceeded first to drape him in it and then to clamber on top of him while he stood on his four legs on the floor. Mary scrambled on, too. Uncle Kirk, from under the blanket, reached out a long hand and grabbed Peter's ankle. "No, no, no!" Peter squawked as Uncle Kirk dragged him along the carpet and proceeded to tickle him. Somehow, Peter ended up at the bottom of the heap, until Uncle Kirk switched to tickling Annalee instead. He seized her ankle through the blanket. "Hm, what's this doing here?" he said, and proceeded to tickle it mercilessly while she giggled and wheezed on the other end. She has a very funny little giggle, and even when he stopped tickling, she couldn't stop giggling. I lay on the sofa and laughed and laughed. Somehow, Peter ended up on the bottom every time, usually with Annalee sandwiched between Uncle Kirk and Peter while Mary pranced around the edge of the melee.

This kept going for quite awhile--yells, shouts, laughs, squeals, giggles, tangles of disordered hair and rumpled blanket--until someone called upstairs that it was suppertime. My parents had a somewhat difficult time getting everyone settled down enough to eat. We ate roast beef and leftovers for supper. All the kids were very hyper--very hyper. "Oh, my, it's only six o'clock," Aunt Lisa said with a hint of disgust. I suggested a movie to my father, and he immediately approved the idea, so the girls all got marched upstairs to take baths before the movie. The rest of us sat around the dining room table, talking. Every so often, one of the other kids would pop by to swipe a cookie.

It was too hard to get everyone's attention by verbal call, so Stephen and I turned on the TV. As soon as the cheerful, tin-music-box theme of "Looney Tunes" started to play, kids emerged out of cracks and crannies. Philip and Ross from their rooms, Peter and Andrew from the computer, the girls from the shower. Even the adults gathered around to watch, while my father set out chairs. We watched two "Looney Tunes" shorts, and are now watching The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Uncle Kirk sits at the other end of the sofa, with Mary snuggled beside him. Aunt Lisa just finished "Mary's" basket (though almost everyone except Mary has worked on it). When she handed it to Mary, the grin lit up Mary's little face. My father perches on the piano bench, Andrew has been nestled in the armchair, Peter sits in a rocking chair, Lillian, Laura, and Annalee flit about, and Aunt Lisa works on her other baskets. Grammy was sitting on the chair at the end of the sofa, but she's gone now. Ross and Andrew are upstairs playing on the computer now, I think.

To quote Father Christmas, "Long live Aslan--and Merry Christmas!" to all of you.

the picture on my banner

People are asking about the picture on my banner. It was taken by Amy S. in Doubleshot Coffee Company in Tulsa. Thanks to her! She takes "artsy" pictures. :o)

having some fun

check photobucket!

pictures are up on photobucket

I should make this plain: Thank you, Sarah, for a gorgeous dress! I borrowed Sarah's formal gown, which was a birthday present to her from her younger sisters. It's a beautiful piece of work, and I really enjoyed wearing it. It made my evening spectacular. I'm thankful for such a trusting friend.

Go to www.photobucket.com
Password: psalm84
Username: Elfellyn
The file named Colle Christmas Ball.

Enjoy!

Tastes sweet.

Now Playing: "Thirty-Year Retrospective" by Mark O'Connor. Track 3, "Flight Home".

To Kevin and Crystal, if they read this: I was just listening to the radio, and they reviewed Sufjan Stevens's Christmas CD. It made me so happy! Good music. :o)

December 21, 2006: Colle Family Christmas Ball, Marland Mansion, Ponca City, Oklahoma

At six forty-five, I drove Grant V. and Philip to the Marland Mansion for the Colle family Christmas ball. I felt plastic and elegant, my face thick with makeup, my skirts scrunched together under the steering wheel. Then, as I walked beside Philip toward the mansion, delight surged up in me. The grand house, glowing in every window, the bracing cold air, my skirts swaying around my ankles—perfectly lovely. Like a retelling of a fairytale. We stepped through the heavy wooden doors and into the foyer. Josiah, the youngest Colle boy, took our tickets. Philip and I walked down the three grand flights of stairs, on either side of the banister, which was entwined with garlands of greenery, silver lights, and gold ribbon. We were among the first to arrive. Everyone stood around, the mix of stiffness and excitement. Matt took Tara into the ballroom and showed her some swing moves, tipping her back and spinning her while she laughed. Wreaths and little trees decorated the refreshment table, where a bowl of pink punch and trays of cookies were nestled among the greenery.

Slowly, people entered the room, filing down the long staircase. Black suits, bright dresses. David, Spencer, and David wore tweed caps. Matt asked me to be his partner for the Grand March. As we lined up for the procession, I glanced back over my shoulder and gasped. So many couples were lined up behind us! Faces, pressed forward, smiling. And still more people were descending the grand staircase to join, ladies holding up their skirts with gloved hands. The Grand March is one of the best parts of the dance. Elegant and cheerful. “It’s impossible not to smile when you’re doing this sort of thing,” Matt chuckled, “because everyone else is smiling.” Spencer and Syneva led us in a long line—a long snaking line of couples, probably about forty couples. Follow-the-leader, round and round the room, quick stepping in time to the music. Couples following couples, then joining hands in a long weaving line, snaking around, tying an intricate knot of moving bodies, flashing shoes, swishing skirts, then untying itself, couples pairing up again. Keep stepping in time to the music, the rustle of skirts, the click of soles, the murmur of voices over the medieval Christmas carol. Then Syneva and Spencer made a bridge, and the couple behind passed through and made a bridge beside them, and the next, and the next, until a long line of arches had formed. Matt and I stooped down, he leading me by my gloved hand under the arched arms. Light patterned the tiled floor, stripes like branches of a tree, hands growing together, skirts and slacks next to each other. Then we came to the end of the tunnel and made our own arch, to continue the tunnel, and other couples passed through, and stood beside us. The tunnel dissolved into itself. Couples again, following each other. Mr. and Mrs. Colle stood at the foot of the ballroom, and each couple came up to them in turn, bow and courtesy. Then the couples joined into rows of four, bow and courtesy. Then in lines of eight, bow and courtesy. When the music ended, we were all standing in lines of eight, facing the Colles. Mr. Colle welcomed everyone, his genteel voice drawling slightly, echoing over the assembled crowd—faces turned up toward him, gentle light glowing on careful costumes. “Gentlemen, our job is to give the ladies a good time. So unless you are married or engaged, find a new partner for each dance, and make sure no lady is sitting unless she wants to,” he directed.

Then the dancing began in earnest. Since there were so many people, probably about ninety, we had good dances going in both rooms, with a few spectators left over to hover around the dessert table. Syneva and Rachel, her sister, called the dances. We went through each one without music. Then when the music started, we were “on our own”, though often during the harder ones a murmuring undercurrent of whispered counts ran under the music, everyone trying to keep time as they danced. The music was mostly Celtic and medieval, Christmas carols and Christmas songs. Harpsichord, guitar, mandolin, pipe, flute, violins, cellos. We danced the Scottish Wheel, the Fairfield Fancy, the Middleton, the Virginia Reel, the Waves of Tory, the Spanish Waltz, the Mr. Darcy dance, the Emma dance, the Postease, and the Dashing White Sergeant, though not in that order. Last night at the practice Syneva had run through them from easiest to hardest; tonight, they interspersed the dances. We danced the Postease three times, for instance, and the Virginia Reel twice in a row. Between dances, there was the shuffle for partners, gentlemen looking around for ladies, ladies knotting together to chat briefly before whisked off to join another partner.

I danced the Virginia Reel with Andrew. It was glorious fun, sasheing up and down the line. David Moore was my partner for the Emma dance—the main thing I remember was the sudden short twirls, bursts of heady dizziness as my dress spun out to curve properly around my ankles again, back in line. When we reached the top of the line, having progressed down the floor, we had to stand out a turn, so David waltzed me, going in fancy twists and circles. Dance after dance, the patterns repeated from dance to dance. In the inner room, it was very warm, but the outer room was cold, where one of the iron-wrought doors had been propped open. Dancing the Middleton with Philip, I shivered as we passed the door, the cold night air on my bare arms. I stood out during the first round of Postease, to take pictures. Almost as fun to watch as to dance, to see the flying feet, the spinning arms, the faces of the dancers breaking into broad grins. Alisha and Philip were partners in a set that included Matt and Tara, and I took pictures of them, long curls and coattails flying.

It seemed like a very long time later when Mr. Colle announced the “intermission”, a twenty-minute break halfway through the night. I sat down briefly on a bench, and Philip courteously brought me some water. My feet in the golden sandals ached a little, but they were mostly numb enough that I didn’t feel much. Tara had taken off her shoes upon reaching the mansion, and pattered around in her bare feet. During the break, Syneva announced that they would dance a fast polka in the outer room. The outer room filled with couples. To the Cossack dance from the second half of “The Nutcracker”, the couples swirled around the room. Matt and Syneva danced together. Almost impossibly fast, the music pulled the dancers in a torrent of galloping feet. I grinned, watching Syneva’s face as she pursed her lips and flung up her eyebrows, like a wide-eyed doll, her white satin skirts spinning out over her soft black slippers.

After the polka, Mandi somehow managed to pull together all the RUFers on the grand staircase for a group picture. First, all the girls stood on the balcony above the staircase: one flight of stairs runs down, and two other flights curve up from the foyer, to enter the grand ballroom on the upper floor. We stood where these two other flights meet, above the archway. Eight of us, and Alisha’s friend, in our gowns and jewels and upswept hair. Then everyone stood on the grand staircase. Mandi stood below us and took a picture up toward us.

After the intermission, dancing resumed with the Postease. Then came the Broom Waltz: a rather comic dance in which there are one too many gentlemen, and one gentleman has to dance with the broom until he can find a female partner. I sat this one out, watching on the fringe. Colors! Black, grey, silver, brown, blue for the gentlemen. Scarlet, pink, burgundy, blue, white, black for the ladies. The red dresses of the Ponca City basketball girls, and Mandi’s jade green dress with the gold overslip. We danced several more, and then the Gloria dance. I sat that one out, too. Quite a simple dance. Instead of music, everyone sang, and then, on the “Hosanna in excelsis” bit, the girls jumped, the gentlemen guiding them, to the next partner. Skirts flared outward, muscles tensed, an elegant parade, like the petals of a wind-blown flower.

Everyone was becoming tired by this time. We danced the Dashing White Sergeant again, and then the Mr. Darcy dance. The Mr. Darcy dance was to “Silent Night”, so slow and serene that I began to feel sleepy, but with a sort of elegant, crystalline awareness, so tired that it took precise effort to move each muscle for the stately steps. Matt asked me to be his partner. As the dance began, he glanced toward a corner and shook his head. “There’s my brother sitting like a cat next to a girl who could be dancing!” he sighed, seeing Andrew lazing next to Joanna. After the Mr. Darcy dance, we danced the Postease one last time. Matt L. was my partner for this one, in a set with Alisha and several other RUFers. At first the music sounded slow, with a bass beat. Then the instruments came in, and everyone clapped and cheered. Faster and faster we danced, until the gentlemen were sweating, and the ladies’ hair was quite disarrayed. I couldn’t stop laughing. The music kept going and going, fast, the pulsing, impetuous drive of the fiddles and pipes holding us relentlessly in its pattern so that we couldn’t help but laugh and keep dancing. Fast feet, quick hands, quick spins, fast turns into place. Skirts whirling, feet stomping. Like flying, almost. It made me happier than I’ve been in a long time. When the music finally ended, the two rooms erupted with cheers and clapping.

Mr. Colle, standing under the archway between the two rooms, thanked everyone for coming. Then Syneva, in her sweet, pure voice, started to sing the doxology. Her soprano spiraled up, sending echoes beyond the rafters as the rest of the guests joined. Reverently slow, deeply thankful. It ended with clapping and bursts of “Merry Christmas!” all round. Then it was time for good-byes, final pictures, hugs. The mansion emptied quickly, a stream of people stepping up the stairs. Philip lent me his jacket as we crossed over the threshold and into the chilly night. I drove us back to the Colles’ house.

At the Colles’ house, everyone collapsed. We sat around in the living room, laughing and talking, though more subdued than we had been. Andrew and Joanna left to drive back to Tulsa. Alisha was hungry, not having eaten any supper in the rush to dress for the ball, so Syneva, Alisha, and I went scouting into the kitchen. Mrs. Colle had turned on the crock pot with the soup in it. Alisha sipped her soup while I munched a cookie. We talked quietly, everyone relaxing. An undercurrent of laughter beneath the subdued voices. Alisha, Syneva, and I curled up on the sofa together, a sea of satin and tulle, still in our dresses, our skirts poofing out over our knees. Spencer and David Moore left to drive back to Stillwater, so we said our good-byes to them.

I roused myself enough to dive downstairs, change clothes, shower, and then patter back upstairs again in my pajamas, with Philip’s sweater over my clothes to make it modest. I curled up on the living room floor beside Tara. Everyone was still sitting around, talking. Grant and Matt L. had a very technical conversation about mathematics by the fireplace. Syneva and Stefni dozed on the sofa. Alisha, David McMillan, and Philip discussed colleges. Tara curled up like a little mouse on the floor. I sprawled out to write in my journal about the day. “What number is that?” Syneva asked me. “Sixty-three,” I said, checking inside the front cover. Because of a momentary silence, everyone had heard her question. “You’ve written in sixty-three books! What do you do with them all?” someone marveled. That started the usual conversation about journals, everyone else talking about how they either don’t have time/discipline to write, or about how they only write occasionally, to relieve stress—while I, minding my own business, just kept writing.

Finally, a little after two o’clock a.m., common consensus seemed to develop that it was bedtime. Tara and I led the girls downstairs, and I stretched out on my airmattress. There was still a soft bustle of feet and voices, sparse conversation as girls got ready for bed. As I drifted off to sleep, I could hear Alisha and Catharine in the big bed (Tara and I slept on airmattresses on the floor of Rachel Colle’s room, while Alisha and Catharine slept in her double bed) whispering and giggling.

one winter's day

Now Playing: "Thirty-Year Retrospective" by Mark O'Connor. Track 15, "One Winter's Night".

Yes, my blog is under construction. New colors coming soon....

This morning after I woke up I sat in my room for awhile, snuggled in my quilt, writing in my journal and reading the first chapter of Ephesians. It feels so good to be able to wake up in the daylight and to have time to sit and read and write without feeling the pressure to start the day.

My mother took Laura and Stephen to Mrs. H's house for piano lessons at ten-thirty. Philip was at MTC for his last day before Christmas break. I put on "The Nutcracker" ballet and went on an archaeological investigation into the cabinet in the laundry room. My mother had assigned me the task of decorating the house for Christmas. I delved through various old cardboard boxes, loosely held together with flaky packing tape, and discovered the usual concatenation of old ornaments and garlands. I got out the little wooden puzzles that Mr. Spear carved for us out of wood. Each "puzzle" is made of beautifully-crafted shapes cut from one piece of wood--so there's a mother seal, with her baby cut to fit exactly in her center, and the three Wise Men, each one with a present shaped to fit under his individual beard, and a bird, and a couple of bears with interlocked arms.

I scrapbooked some in my room, too. Sarah came over to spend the day at about eleven forty-five, after MTC was done. She and I sat up in my room, talking and listening to Mark O'Connor. Laura joined us when she got back from piano lessons. I tried on Sarah's formal gown, a present to her from her younger sisters. It fits almost perfectly. I love the grey-blue color, and it's luxuriously smooth. Most importantly, my mother approved it. We warmed up leftovers for lunch.

After lunch, my mother drove Laura to the Fishers' house to do therapy with Christa. Sarah and I went shopping. We went to the new strip mall on the highway. In Ross, we looked at dresses and jeans. We looked in a couple of other stores, but Belk was too expensive, of course. For fun, on the way back to the car, we stepped into Petco. They have live pets and all sorts of supplies. We just looked around. A tortoiseshell cat, with a coat like smooth lacquer, peered dolefully at us out of a cage. Parakeets and finches and sparrows fluttered and flitted in small cages. "Ugh! I'm terrified of birds," Sarah gasped when a red-billed sparrow hovered toward her face. I teased her about it. We looked at the tropical fish, admiring cichlids and goldfish and betas. We looked at the ferrets, which were all sprawled, asleep, in their bedding in a warm heap. I laughed at one ferret when it yawned and smacked its sharp teeth at us. There were a couple of sad-looking rabbits in a cage nearby. Sarah and I both shuddered when we saw the rats and mice. The rats, because of their scaly tails, and the mice, because they were all bundled on top of each other, every-which-way. Their bedding was deep, and it seemed to bubble like a boiling pot because of all the mice burrowed down, twitching in their sleep. The guinea pigs made me chuckle, remembering my own guinea pig. They sniffed at us with bright eyes, and nonchalantly nibbled hay. We looked at the reptiles and insects, too. Sarah squealed when she saw a tarantula less than two inches away from her face (on the other side of glass), hidden inside a thick web. An intricately-made lizard, with bright indigo blue on throat and belly, rammed its pointed head against the glass and eyed us aggressively. I admired the anoles, who had wisely turned brown to match their branches.

We went to Wal-Mart next, where Sarah looked for jeans. As we drove back home, rain misted the windshield.

The house was very quiet. We set up shop in the kitchen with "The Nutcracker" and my mother's thick Joy of Cooking book. We decided to double the gingerbread recipe. We dumped things rather haphazardly into the mixing bowl. Sarah and I licked the molasses out of the empty molasses jar, smacking our lips at the sticky bitterness. Of course, at first there was too much flour, so we had to add flour at random until the dough stuck together. And the bowl was too small, so Sarah, stirring the concoction, splashed flour onto the counter. I finally scooped the mix into another bowl, and kept adding water until Sarah declared that it looked alright.

We halved the dough. I rolled it out on the counter so that we could cut out shapes. Hearts, stars-of-David, five-pointed stars, tiny gingerbread men, teddy bears, Christmas trees, and bells lined up on the greased baking sheet, like appliqued patterns on a quilt. We popped one pan into the oven and then produced two more pans. Gingerbread men marched in upright rows beside fat teddy bears and leggy stars. The smell of gingerbread--ginger and cinnamon and cloves--steamed from the oven. Soon we had three trays of deep brown cookies, thick and soft.

When Laura and my mother got home, Sarah and I tried to get Laura to make icing so that we could decorate our cookies. Laura was being silly, though, so Sarah and I decided to brew our own icing. I randomly chose an icing recipe out of Joy of Cooking. Sarah and I proceeded to throw it together with gleeful abandon, especially since Laura marched around, wagging her finger at us and telling us everything we did wrong. We measured nothing, but just tossed the ingredients in, and then, as a crowning insult, we refused to use the electric mixer, but mashed sugar and milk and shortening together with a blunt wooden spoon. It made a very thick, very sweet batch of icing, though none the worse for wear. I spooned it into four bowls, to which we added food coloring: electric blue, fluorescent green, deep pink, and saffron yellow. Laura condescended to help Sarah and me ice the cookies. She gave gingerbread men neat blue coats. Sarah put red buttons down one of the teddy bears. I plastered stars with yellow icing, which oozed down onto the cookie sheet.

Having let the icing set, I scooped some of the cookies into a tin for Sarah to take home to her family. Then I took her home. We drove through dark streets, leaving the gritty city for the bleak countryside. Grey trees, dun fields, dim sky, cold north wind, drab road past weatherbeaten houses. The lights were glowing out of the dining room window of the Spitlers' house, friendly, as the car crunched up the gravel driveway. I walked her to the door, then said good-bye and drove home.

At home, my mother was fixing supper. We had two kinds of noodles tonight: angel-hair noodles with beef, peas, and plum sauce, and thick noodles with cabbage, broccoli, and spicy Thai peanut sauce. I liked both a lot. After supper, we watched a couple of "Looney Tunes" episodes. While my father read Something Fresh, by P.G. Wodehouse, to Laura, Stephen, and me, I sat on the floor and scrapbooked. Mandy, curious, peered intently at Laura's sudoku board as though she didn't quite trust the little cardboard tiles. She finally decided that my scraps were more of a threat, so she sat down on the page I was working on, and ferociously chewed on some of the paper bits during family worship.

After family worship, I stepped into the green attic to put some things away. The sound of rain hushing on the roof was most beautiful, a gentle, rustling, plinking sound, as the rain hit the gutters. The dim fluorescent light flickered in the ceiling so that Stephen's miniatures, ranked on the pool table, seemed ready to spring to life.

I think the rain has stopped now. At any rate, it's time for some sleep.

first day of Christmas break (12-15-06)

Now Playing: "Thirty-Year Retrospective" by Mark O'Connor. Track 2, "Tom and Jerry". Philip's birthday present to me--thank you for some fun music! :o)

The alarm clock went off at six o'clock this morning--so much for sleeping in at home! My room was in shambles from the night before, suitcase, box, dirty clothes, etc. scattered all over. I scrambled out of bed, threw on some clothes, and pattered downstairs. My mother and Laura were both up, too. The rest of the house was absolutely quiet. We pulled on our coats, cold in the early morning, and drove to Panera to eat breakfast with my mother's friends, the Dawn Treaders. (The women in the church here walk at six o'clock in the morning a few times a week, but today they were having mother-daughter breakfast to celebrate Christmas.)

We were a bit early, so we sat in the parking lot, waiting for the restaurant to open at six-thirty. When it did open, we sat down with Mrs. Parnell and Abigail, Mrs. Carroll and Bridget, and Mrs. Brocato and Paige. Laura, Abigail, Bridget, and Paige sat in one booth together, being incredibly silly. I sat with the mothers at a couple of tables next to the booth. The restaurant was warm and smelled slowly of freshly-baked bread and freshly-brewed coffee. Other people, mostly students with intense, frantic looks, toting laptop carriers, raced in, ordered their food, and raced off to booths to work. We ordered, too. I had a wheat bagel, oatmeal flaking off the outside, and a cup of English breakfast tea, sweet and delicate. Paige got hyper on latte and started to bounce up and down while the other girls teased her. I listened to the mothers discuss their families--plans for Christmas vacation, gift-giving, mishaps (Vinny broke his hand last night), etc.

After breakfast, we drove home, and I spent the morning holed up in my room, cleaning briskly. I listened to Prince Caspian on CD while I weeded my bookshelves, rummaged through my drawers, and cleared out my closet, in the process managing to put things away. Stephen and I were the only ones home for lunch: Philip was at MTC, and Laura was baby-sitting for Stephanie. Philip and Laura came home pretty soon, though. My mother, Laura, and I briskly changed into our dance clothes and drove to the TCS gym for dance rehearsal at one-thirty.

In the gym, everything was in confusion. The little ones were frisking about everywhere, playing with basketballs out of a hamper in the corner. Mrs. Carroll and Mrs. Parnell were wrapping gold ribbon around green headbands for the female dancers. All the dancers had on black slacks/skirts and white or black shirts, with ghillies (Irish dance shoes) or soft-soled Jazz shoes. Mrs. Hill had some difficulty organizing everyone. There was an unusually large collection of family members (very young and very old) to watch the rehearsal since families were being discouraged from coming to the nursing home where we were going to perform (the nursing home doesn't have a whole lot of audience room). Mrs. Hill launched courageously into the rehearsal.

After the rehearsal, at two forty-five, everyone caravaned over to the nursing home. I took a carload of Fishers (Elizabeth, Christa, Ben, and Greg). Christa pranced about, asking me, "Don't I look pretty? Aren't I adorable?", and practicing her leaps, while Elizabeth and I laughed at her. When we entered the nursing home, the first people I saw in the lobby where we would be dancing were Alisha and Jenny S. Having been deprived of their company for about twenty-four hours, I dropped Christa's hand and ran over to give them welcome. The lobby was filling with people--mostly the other dancers, though there was a smattering of elderly folk sitting on the pale pink couches at one side of the lobby. I called Christa and Elizabeth over to meet Jenny and Alisha. Christa hugged both of them and decided that they were her best friends.

Mrs. Hill bundled her dancers off to the hall at one end of the lobby, our "backstage" area. We sat against the walls, fidgeting and whispering. The first dance was the four-hand reel. I practiced leaps down a side hall, while one of the Fisher girls whispered a tall tale to the little ones, who were already becoming impatient with having to wait in the hall. Then the little ones marched out, each one escorted by an older "buddy", to sing "This way, that way, forward and back, over the Irish sea". Next we paired up to dance the Waves of Tory. Sarah and I were partners for this one, and "star-buddies" with Bridget and Abigail, who were, as usual, being incorrigibly flighty.

After the Waves of Tory, the little ones went out to dance the Bag Dance. Mrs. Hill played "Jingle Bells" on her accordion, and instead of a bag, the little ones used a round of bells. As Mrs. Hill played, those of us standing in the hall started to sing along, a chorus of children's voices piping blithely to the jouncing accordion, hands clapping to keep time. It was neat to see the impromptu party blossom--dancing, instrumental, and voices perfectly together. Next came an ensemble consisting of a couple of flutes, Mrs. Hill on accordion, Laura on violin, and Anna on viola. They played Christmas carols, slightly out-of-tune. The dance after that was the Bridge of Athlone. My mother was my partner for this one. The dance was fun--back and forth, pairing off, making the bridge, standing on tiptoe to let Bridget cross underneath, the little ones giggling as they tried to make their arches as large as possible for her.

After the Bridge of Athlone came the Walls of Limerick. Everyone danced this one. Ben was my partner, and he did a good job, especially guiding me through the swing at the end of the set, which I never can get right. The jump-sevens parts are the most fun. After the Walls of Limerick came the Fairy Reel. All the little ones crowded at the mouth of the hall to watch. Sarah and Sarah K. managed to piece our set together before we went onstage--Ruth, Dani, Sarah, Sarah K., Paige, and me. The Fairy Reel is one of my favorite dances.

After the Fairy Reel, we danced the two-hand reel. There were three groups since there wasn't enough room for all seven pairs to dance at once. Laura and I were in the third group. We danced into the lobby and went through the reel, lead-around, point, leap, jump sevens, up and down, spin, lead around, and then back into the hallway, where we seamlessly took up our positions in line with the other pairs. Mrs. Hill thought up a neat twist to end the recital: everyone who'd danced the two-hand danced into the lobby together in a line, and, holding hands in a long line, did the point-two-threes, and ended with a leap.

Then all the little ones came out, and we stood in two long lines to sing a very childish "We Wish You a Merry Christmas", pitched high. I was very hot and sweaty, and had some trouble keeping Christa contained since she was high-strung and confused from all the dancing.

After the song ended, and we all bowed politely, everyone went off to the reception to eat cookies. Jenny and Alisha came over to talk with Laura, my mother, and me. Jenny joked about the shopping-cart disco. Alisha talked about coming to visit on Monday for the evening. At four o'clock, my mother had to take Laura to basketball practice. Jenny and Alisha lingered for a little while, then walked with me to my car. It was hard to say good-bye to them. The car parked next to mine was a huge SUV, and just as we came up, a little boy was scrambling into it. "Look at that kid! Wow! Talk about a gas-guzzler!" Jenny said, "But they're making me money." I grinned. "I'll buy an SUV when I'm rich, and think to myself, 'I'm making Jenny money'." We stood in the parking lot for awhile, joking around. But it was time to say good-bye. I honked my horn at them as I drove away, and their laughter was accompanied by a chorus of "Good-bye!" from the younger dancers leaving the building.

I was very happy as I drove to the Fishers' house to do therapy with Christa. At the Fishers' house, I found Sarah, Rachel, and Elizabeth sitting around the dining room table, flipping through cook books and trying to decide what to cook for dessert. The parents were out to supper, so they were assigned to make supper--and the most important part of that was, of course, dessert. I later saw them in the midst of their preparations. Sarah was presiding over a skillet full of fried rice while Elizabeth and Rachel both worked on making peanut-butter-and-jelly cookies--they had more cookies than they had rice! Christa and I disappeared into the guest bedroom to do therapy. She was unusually squirrely this evening, and I had a dreadful time getting her to cooperate. She finally decided that she was going to be in the "serious club", which meant that neither one of us could laugh. Unfortunately, her serious face was so ridiculously overdone that I had a hard time not laughing myself. Through the thin door, I could hear the girls gossiping and giggling in the kitchen.

When we finally finished, at about six-fifteen, Elizabeth handed me a couple of warm cookies, for which I was extremely grateful, and I left. The sky outside was very dark, pricked with stars--more stars than I'd seen for several months. I drove to the TCS gym for Stephen's basketball game, munching the crumbly, sticky cookies on the way. At the gym, I arrived just in time for the fourth quarter. I stood on the sidelines, chatting with Logan and watching the game. Stephen's team almost won. The highschool boys sat at the back of the rows of chairs and kept up a loud ruckus to encourage their younger counterparts, clapping, yelling, and cheering outrageously. After the game, Laura went to the Gages' house for a girls' basketball team sleepover. Philip and I drove home. I ate a late supper (leftover chicken-and-dumplings), and then my father read P.G. Wodehouse to Stephen and me. Family devotions, and bed.

Pictures up on photobucket from the ceilidh!
www.photobucket.com
username: Elfellyn
password: psalm84

last RUF for the semester

Now Playing: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe soundtrack by Harry Gregson-Williams. Track 14, "Can't Take It In".

December 12, 2006

This morning I slept much later than I thought I would. Jenny H. came to our room to hang out for awhile. We sipped tea and ate long, thin cookies (which, as Syneva has informed me, are not called pirouettes but “love-letters”). We compared notes about our semester, shared prayer requests, and prayed. After Jenny H. left, I studied until ten-thirty for music theory. Then Rachel and I went running in the gym. We went to lunch together and sat with a bunch of other RUFers. Eleanor had brewed tea for herself, but it was too hot to drink—so she poured it into a couple of unused plastic gloves (from the servers in the food lines) and dipped the gloves into a cup of cold water so that the tops of the gloves stuck out over the rim of the glass. The cup sure looked weird with its contents of milky tea contained in plastic, like something out of a science lab. In the afternoon, I studied some more and read part of G.K. Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man. Amanda came by to give Rachel her birthday present. She sat in our room and chatted for awhile, After Amanda left, I read some more, until Syneva stopped by. She came to hang out for awhile. While Rachel studied quietly at her desk, Syneva sprawled on my bed, and I sat perched on my desk. I made apple cider for Syneva and tea for myself. We crunched the thin cookies and talked and laughed, trying not to be too uproarious for Rachel’s sake. After Syneva left, the brown-sugar-cinnamon smell of her apple cider lingered behind in the room.

At about four o’clock, Rachel and I decided to go to Borders to buy books. We drove down to 21^st street, the fancy strip of shops which includes Utica Square. Borders was crowded with people, many of them doing Christmas shopping, I imagine. Inside the store, Rachel and I split up to investigate our own interests. I looked at the journals, daydreaming, though I have three lovely ones to keep me occupied for now. Someday I want to get one of the journals with magnetic covers that snap shut, with gold embossed on them in Moroccan designs. I browsed through the literature section and looked at poetry. I found a book of Seamus Heaney’s poetry that looked quite interesting—cold, northern, reminding me very much of Anglo-Saxon poetry. Of course, there were no Complete Poems of Walter de la Mare or Complete Poems of G.K. Chesterton. I glanced through the mystery section and found a thick volume of Dorothy Sayers’s short stories.

But the best part was, of course, the fantasy section because it contained a good selection of Tolkien-related things (though one must always wade through the fantasy section with blinders on because of the ridiculously garish book covers, which contain all sorts of nasty monsters and witches and things). There was a gorgeous collection of four maps, which I’ve often looked at longingly, but never bought: Wilderland, Middle-Earth, Beleriand, and Numenor. And a little paperback volume, The Tolkien Reader. When I found this one, I sat down abruptly on a stool beside the bookshelf to flip through and see if it contained “On Fairy Stories”. It did, to my delight—and “Leaf by Niggle”, which I read straight through, perched on the stool, right in everyone’s way. A young woman sat on the floor in the mystery section nearby, reading. A father and his daughter sidled past, both searching the titles of fantasy books avidly. The daughter wore a short, plaid, schoolgirl skirt and white shirt. She seemed very keen, and so did her father. I heard them mention Erragon and the Star Wars books. I haven’t read “Leaf by Niggle” for a long time, but as I revisited it, all the old poignancy came surging back. When I finished the story, I looked up with a sigh, like someone waking from a dream, surprised to find the bookshelves and people still around me. Clutching Sayers and Tolkien, I ventured upstairs. I looked briefly in the religion section and found a copy of The Weight of Glory, but decided not to buy it this time. I glanced at the CDs, at the calendars, at the art books, and at the children’s section downstairs.

But I was content with my two volumes, and so floated around aimlessly. I found a large book about weaponry, and flipped through glossy pages of swords, crossbows, rapiers, daggers, knives, claymores, longbows, spears, pilums, and the rest. I was back in poetry when I bumped into Rachel. She was trying to find a book by Tolkien with “Farmer Giles of Ham” and “Smith of Wooton Major” in it, so we went to the fantasy section together, and I managed to find it, squeezed between Unfinished Tales and part of The History of Middle-Earth. She already had another book, a math book, so we decided to check out. The checkout line was rather long. Two small girls squatted on the floor, reading a book about princesses and pointing out which dresses they wanted. Their mother had to haul them along by the arms when she had finished buying her books. Rachel and I drove back to campus, happy and contented with our purchases. Evening was hovering in the sky overhead.

Back in our room, I wrote for awhile. At six o’clock, Rachel and I forayed over to John Mabee to see if Logan had arrived yet. He’d e-mailed me earlier in the day to tell me that he was coming to visit the RUF guys and maybe challenge Kevin to a videogame duel. On our way over to John Mabee, Rachel and I met Alex, coming back from an auction. The diner on 11^th street by the stadium is auctioning off all its décor before the building is bulldozed to make room for university apartments, and Alex had bought a poster of Marilyn Monroe. It was so ridiculously overdone that it made Rachel and me laugh. In John Mabee, we found Logan helping Kevin study for a calculus exam. We also found a crowd of other RUFers (Leslie, Hannah, Bob, Eleanor, David, and James) heading to the caf for supper. So Logan, Rachel, and I joined them. On the way over, a couple of guys attacked James and David. They were soon rolling on the lawn, wrestling cheerfully, grunting and shouting. We kept walking, laughing at them. In the caf, they were serving fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and toast for supper. It reminded me of the meals at Braums, except of course that there was no milkshake to wash it down with. We all crowded around a round table—and crowded even more when Amy and Jenny H. joined us.

At seven forty-five, we left campus to drive to the Ks’ house for RUF, a less formal RUF—Mr. K is out-of-town, and it’s finals week, so everyone just went to the Ks’ house to sing hymns, share testimonies, and eat cookies. The Ks’ house was full of people. It seemed as though almost everyone was there. Faces peered out of every corner, all jumbled and jostled together, laughing and smiling. Faces in the hall, in the living room, in the dining room, in the kitchen. A huge Christmas tree occupied one corner by the fireplace, creamy lights winking from its feathery branches. The spicy smell of juniper underlay the smells of cider and cookies and hot bodies crowded together. Asher, presiding over the cheerful chaos, finally decided to call the meeting to order. People scrambled to find places to sit. Rachel ended up on the sofa under the window with Crystal, Leslie, and Kathryn. Jason, Mardel, Micah, and Amanda sat on the chairs and the loveseat around the edge of the living room. James, Eleanor, Logan, Amy, Jenny S., Rachel K., Kali, Charis, and I all sat on the floor. The dining room and hallway were full, too. Syneva and Alisha took up their positions at the front of the room, across from the fireplace. Syneva sat at the piano, and Alisha stood next to her with her violin. David Mo. sat in the entryway with a bongo drum. Spencer stood on Syneva’s other side, with his guitar. Ange and Joanna were in the corner by the hallway behind Spencer, to lead the singing. Jenny H. peered over their shoulders.

We opened with prayer and Scripture reading. Everyone sang and sang and sang. Syneva’s fingers danced over the piano, improvising arpeggios and cascading chords. Spencer’s hands strummed the guitar, and Alisha’s bow pulled surely over the taut strings. Amanda requested Psalm 73, and right after that, Crystal, seeing my delight, requested Psalm 130. I was so happy to get to sing with everyone else! The house bulged with music, music pressing outward against the walls, the windows, the door. Chords and tunes and strong words. They sang a few Christmas carols, and many other hymns. Amanda, Rachel, Bob, and Nicole all got up to share their testimonies, briefly speaking about what God had done for them over the past semester. Amanda and Rachel both talked about trusting God and being humble. Bob mentioned his growth in doctrine and belief. Nicole gave thanks for the amazing love and fellowship of the RUF community. The time of singing ran for about an hour-and-a-half. Asher closed in prayer, and finished by everyone singing “Silent Night”. Amy’s voice wove up through the melody, a shimmering descant on the last cadence.

A rich pause, and then conversation and chaos burst out again. Jenny H. wove through the crowd, saying good-byes before disappearing upstairs to study. People started to leave. Logan and Crystal briefly discussed Psalmody before Logan left. I thanked Crystal for choosing Psalm 130. Charis, prancing around through the crowd, tossed a teddy bear at me. I tossed it back. We made a game of seeing how hard we could hit each other with it. Then I whispered to her, “Throw it at Amanda!” So Charis lobbed the teddy bear at Amanda, who threw it back. They started to throw it back and forth until Charis decided to pick up one of the large, heavy pillows that was lying on the floor. Jason and David got involved, and it became all-out war. Jason adopted a samurai stance, his hands positioned in front of him to deflect pillows. Charis determinedly tossed pillows at him, letting herself get madder and madder. She put on a ferocious face, puckering her lips and glowering fiercely. When Jason retreated, Charis and Josh piled onto David, attacking him and hitting him, tossing aside the pillows and using their hands instead. Charis finally “tied” David’s hands together with a scrunchie, and led him off, with Josh riding on his back.

I talked a bit with Rachel, with Jenny H., with Tara, and with Amanda and Syneva. Jenny and Alisha asked how I was, and I was rather dismal. “Not any better?” Jenny S. asked. I shrugged. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I hope things get going better.” She started to tell gruesome stories from Kill Bill 2, a movie which she and David had watched the night before. Absolutely disgusting, but the way she told them made me laugh and laugh. “E--! Your ride is leaving!” Asher called from the front door. “I’ve got to go, Jenny,” I said. She gave me a big hug—for a moment, I felt completely safe. Then it was time to go. Alisha, Tara, and Rachel were waiting outside. I hurried out after them, and Asher walked us to the car with Kali and Rachel K. Lots of good-byes, and then Alisha drove us back to campus. Back at the room, Rachel and I went to bed.

"Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have spoken to you." Genesis 28:15

ok, ok, explanations....

As far as "Hastings", Rachel S. is dead-on! Bravo, and everyone go read her comment. :o)

"Stonington" is about elves. Well, not exactly. I wrote it more for fun than for anything else, and then when Dr. J commented on it, I decided he had it figured out fairly well. As a side note, it's pretty humorous sometimes to read the professors' comments on my work. I don't mean that disrespectfully. Occasionally they just "don't get it" (like with "Hastings"), but sometimes they find that the poem makes more sense than I ever thought it could. So "Stonington" is based on one of Fanny Howe's "essays" (*hem*). It's written in the voice of a son running to his mother and begging her to leave her writing and come outside to see the Elves. It's meant sort of to be about creativity--how creativity is hard to hold onto (the Elves are leaving quickly) and how it's too easy for creative people to get stuck in a rut (the mother is poised at her desk). So that poem isn't as grand in its meaning as "Hastings", I guess.

"Tulips" is about resurrection--at first, despair, seeking in all the wrong places for hope, and clinging desperately to the wrong kinds of hope. Then realizing that hope isn't in all the things we seek after but in the promises that God has given of rebirth, as portrayed in Creation. Towards the end there's language that I meant to echo the New Testament, about seeds being sown in dishonor and raised in glory.

poems

The Shadow asked for more poetry, and has been patiently waiting all this time. Now that the portfolio has been submitted, I may have a few things worth posting. Here are the three poems I read at the P&P reading on Friday evening, in order of their reading. Enjoy, and as always, tell me what you think....

Hastings: A Protest
Facts from 1066 A.D. combined with phrases from Beowulf and the Bayeux Tapestry

Here King Harold killed shot through the eye
No seeing for truth now, blindly sensing pith,
Words past their parsing, smoke by sky devoured.
Sea-serpents scything through our land until
Roads, hedges, fences, boundary-stones are broken.
Our rooted rhythm, sea-broad, sky-deep beginnings
Ripped up, this history cracked on carrion earth.
One wailing woman at the warrior’s pyre
Cries, “This is beauty’s death!” and slashes hands,
Lament the buried gold, words buried deep
With kings when others stepped onto our land
Claimed gold for own. We heaped the mound ourselves,
Burnt till the fire had broken frame of bones,
Hot at the heart.
Yet one courageous knight cried, Who will stand?
Where Harold pledged himself to Duke William
Here King Edward addresses his faithful ones,
A stump still standing on the buried cache,
A language bearing leaves veined with old gold.
This tapestry has not been unattached,
Bayeux unfinished, battle not concluded.
The land is ours, and we will seize it soon
From ocean’s dragons with Word’s shining swords.

Stonington, Connecticut

“Once upon a time”—no, now, this evening,
I saw them wander through the western field.
“The flight of Elves bends barley in the fall,
And then you know the barley has turned ripe.”
At least that’s what I read last night. (I hide
My flashlight until after you have said
Good-night, and then, between the sheets, I read
And sketch the stories on my pillow. Pencil
Makes Elves, Pinocchio, princes dance where white
Has lent itself to lilting. I watch their feet
Impress the softness, prints like seeds, until
You wash the sheets.) I was sitting now
Under the maple tree, and saw them fly!
White wings, white leaves falling to the ground,
The shine of flags and armor on the breeze.
“Mist creeping from the creek between the furrows.”
A line of them walked westward down the furrows.
I saw eyes shining, heard their piping, felt
The ground shake from their feet. The elves are out
In whirling lines, pencil smeared shimmering past
The moon. Come fast! Quickly, before their road
Has disappeared. (I read the fairies’ road
Evaporates. If you come quick enough,
You’ll see it still.) Your papers flutter, wind
Through window. They are leaving, passing. Come!

Tulips
From the second movement of Beethoven’s seventh symphony

We scraped holes round our mother’s maple tree
And buried secrets there, our last few days—
Days drunk with blue, red, sumac-brown.
This fall has hammered once-green trees to gold,
While we have waited in this quiet house,
Rooms hollow, table bare, the bookshelves cleared,
Last August’s zinnias molted in the garden.
I watched the hawks leave while my stiffened hands
Bleached white from clinging to the windowsill,
Unflinching though splinters slashed through my palms.
Then our last afternoon we spent planting
These tulip bulbs, their skin on our chapped hands,
Each peeling bead interred in its own hole,
Roots like your curls drowned deep in sunburned earth.
We stood, our autumn dead beneath our feet—
Farewells, a pavane in the liquid air.
Then I set out, Jason through golden trees,
To roam in discontent in search of all
I’d lost—these days, our innocence, her hands
On the piano, faces in the lamplight.
Glass ship, I voyaged, beat against the sides—
Chained hands bled shattered bone. Trapped Tantalus
Between light sky and floorless green I hung,
An endless traveler, no threshold crossed.
Each time I grasped for home, myself was turned
Into another summer corpse, whirled down,
Thick pile of frozen veins caught in the grass.
But you stayed here, though peace had peeled away,
Bark snapped by ice. You saw the trees relit—
Promise I should have known, for what is sown
In autumn’s tatters and this paper skin
Reblooms in scarlet, vivid, unabashed—
When we are sown, then we shall bloom again
Unshattered like these tulips in May sun.

parties (12/9/06)

Per Alisha's request....

This morning at 9:00, I ran downstairs to meet Alisha in the Lorton parking lot. She pulled up just as I stepped to the kerb: she had given me, as my birthday present, a morning out together. The morning was chilly, with a brisk south wind, thin white clouds over a crisp blue sky. We drove to Panera on 15^th St. for breakfast. The restaurant was crowded, people standing in line to buy pastries and hot drinks. We ordered at the counter and sat down at a small table near the window. A bunch of people who looked as though they’d just run a marathon occupied the long booth nearby—gleaming sweatpants and tennis shoes, headbands, bulky jackets. They were all jabbering together about Colorado and marathons, sounding very clubby and sophisticated. One man talked rapidly in some Eastern European language. A tall man guided a small girl, carrying a walkman, toward a table. Plump women wearing strange clogs clomped through the door. Alisha and I sat quietly in our corner for an hour or so, talking. The smells of baking bread and coffee swirled around us. We ate sweet, sticky cinnamon bagels with crunchy crusts. I sipped warm Earl Grey tea. It was deliciously relaxed. We talked about our respective evenings yesterday—concert for Alisha, poetry reading for me. Harpsichord and violin music played over the radio. It was comforting, somehow, to be in such a bustling, warm space, and yet to be separated, calm and quiet at our table.

After we finished, we drove down toward the Philbrook. We had to endure something of an adventure in order to get there. Peoria, the north-south street that runs past the museum, was blocked by a small cavalcade of city patrol cars (one was a police car), which was proceeding slowly down the road, followed by a huffing rag-tag band of impatient drivers, who zipped around the patrol cars at the first opportunity. On the back of one of the patrol cars was a contingent of city workers, wearing bright green safety vests and red Santa Claus caps with white tassels. Every few yards, the cars would stop, and they would hop off to pick up some plastic barricades from the side of the road. Whenever they stopped, everyone waiting behind them had to stop as well. Alisha and I sighed impatiently and giggled at the incongruity of the situation. Up ahead, we glimpsed a blocked-off section of Peoria, and it looked as though a crowd of people were gathered there. I conjectured that it had been a parade, or perhaps a marathon. We turned around and managed to find our way through the gorgeous old neighborhoods. Like looking at rows of books, each house representing a different well-known story, so beautiful as to be otherworldly, impossibly serene. Featherings of snow lay on the ground and on steep roofs, on windowsills and under bushes, and around the roots of the gigantic trees.

The Philbrook was open, and today was a free day. In the atrium, the Rodin statue had been removed, and replaced by a Christmas tree. From the atrium, we ventured into the galleries, walking through rooms full of paintings and furniture. We peered through glazed windows at the snowy gardens outside. We admired old chairs, a gorgeous writing desk with luxurious wooden carving and tiny inlaid pictures of saints’ lives, the bronze grating of a fireplace decorated with ships in full sail, and a light fixture that was a globe, continents glowing gold against blue sea. The ceilings were painted with cherubs, flowers, and fruit. Columns supporting the ceiling were carved and painted with figs and vines. Rich brocade curtains hung on the walls, tapestries between the windows, and deep carpets on the floors of the side rooms. We walked down to the terrace, where the nymphs’ dry fountains were full of poinsettias so that they seemed to swim in a frothy red sea. We went up the grand staircase on blue velvet carpet and explored the galleries upstairs, mainly admiring the Moran paintings in what used to be the Egyptian/Greek gallery. A lovely little watercolor of a waterfall—the water seemed actually to be plunging over the rocks. Oil paintings of Venice, a dismal swamp in Virginia, the stormy Atlantic Sea, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, and the Adirondacks. In each painting, light glowed down on nature. Swoops of water and tree and mountain and cloud rose in great swirling symphony up to the dazzling sky, white light pouring down from behind the clouds. God in His glory shining down on Creation. After looking at Moran, we briefly stepped into the other upstairs galleries. We paused for awhile in the room with the Asian screens—cranes, a rooster, a phoenix, and a delicate chickadee with red maple leaves painted in elegantly stylized lines on fine fabric. Each perfect shape—long necks, long wings—was like the stroke of a calligrapher’s brush brought to life. We walked back downstairs, past the huge bronze watchdogs that stand on either side of the top of the stairs. As we descended, we heard organ music swirling from the long open sunroom below. Deep chords thrilled through the old building. We paused on the stairs to listen. “Deck the Halls” ended, and another Christmas carol began—a carol I had never heard before, strangely sweet, oddly familiar, yet new. A man was sitting at the organ at one end of the room—the wooden screens had been rolled back from the alcove where the organ stood. His body swayed slightly as he shifted position to reach the different stops. We stood for a long time, listening as the joyful, bittersweet music chorused from the pipes. I caught our reflections in a dim mirror, surrounded by golden scrolls, as we reluctantly left the building. The music followed us, sighing softly to its end. As we walked out across the parking lot, I glanced back toward the museum, hearing a sound like a shutter flapping. I saw a little black-and-white downy woodpecker hopping up the stucco wall, pecking diligently in its search for bugs. Alisha laughed, “Good luck!” to the silly creature.

We drove back to campus, back to the “real world”. On the way, Alisha’s father called her so that she could listen to her younger sister’s violin recital. I could hear the violin squeaking through the cellphone. Alisha dropped me off at Lottie. At Lottie, I ran into the room, grabbed my flute and music, and walked quickly to Tyrrell for my jury. I spent twenty minutes warming up in the practice room, and then sat upstairs, blowing through my flute, while a saxophone player did his jury. After he played, Mrs. Cowen, my accompanist, and I sat in the entry area outside the recital hall and talked in low voices. “What’s taking so long?” she whispered impatiently. Finally, the band director stepped out—it was my turn. The five woodwind faculty are a jolly, friendly bunch. Mrs. Cowen and I went up to the stage. “Tell us about yourself,” Dr. Rush invited from the audience. “I’m a sophomore, an English major. I’m minoring in music, and I love it,” I giggled shyly. The performance went fairly well. The auditorium is hard to play in because it’s difficult to hear yourself from the stage, but as far as technicalities go, it went smoothly.

Afterward, I packed up and marched back to my room, from which I called Alisha. We went to the caf for lunch together. The caf was fairly quiet. We sat in a booth, poking at our food. Alisha’s family kept calling her, which was rather funny. Jenny joined us awhile later. We joked about Christmas presents and schoolwork. We walked out of the caf together, down the sidewalk past Lottie. I ran up to my room. Everything was packed. I hugged Rachel good-bye, and dragged my suitcase down to the car. As I pulled out of the parking lot, I chatted briefly with my mother on the phone. The drive back to Stillwater was uneventful. I listened to “The Nutcracker” ballet. I watched the hills slide past, snow gleaming on the ground under the trees—snow thawed and refrozen over days of chilly sunshine and nights of cold wind, glinting between slender blue networks of shadows running like veins over the pale skin. Stillwater seemed rough and small as I pulled into town and parked in the driveway.

As I trundled my suitcase up the sidewalk, I met my mother bustling out the back door to throw a mat away, cleaning out the house for the good-bye party for JP and Kacey tonight. I tiptoed upstairs to see how long I could go before Laura noticed that I was home. I finally knocked on her door, and of course she almost knocked me over, despite her sprained ankle. She hovered around, grinning and chattering like a squirrel, while I put things away. Downstairs, I washed laundry, and baked chocolate-and-butterscotch cookies. Philip called my father to beg for help because the Taurus had gotten stuck in the mud at the Spitlers’ house. So my father went out to help. My mother started to warm up leftovers for supper. The house smelled wonderful—cloves and cinnamon simmering on the stove, Laura’s sourdough bread baking in the oven, my cookies cooling on the counter. When I finished baking, I drove over to the Thomas’ house to pick up Stephen. He’d been spending the afternoon with Daniel and the Parnell boys, playing video games. Traffic was quite congested, so I had to worm my way through town, nosing through the lanes. Back at home, we found my father and Philip had returned safely. We ate supper. Then I disappeared upstairs to study, while my parents and Philip put the finishing touches on setting up for the party.

At six-thirty, the Wagners arrived to help set up. Ryan and Katie came upstairs. Ryan made jabbing jokes, which Laura and Stephen countered handily. Stephen showed Katie and Ryan his miniatures—Katie admired them, but Ryan pretended to be silly. I disappeared again, only to emerge when Missy knocked on my bedroom door to give me the box for Rachel M. I went downstairs for her, and we sat in the corner by the piano, talking. We talked with Katie and Beth, too, mostly about the deplorable state of liberal education. At seven o’clock, other people arrived: Jonathan, Jon, Logan, the Parnells, the Fishers, the Spitlers (minus Mr. Spitler and Rachel, who are in Belgium), and our guests of honor, Mr. and Mrs. Knox (otherwise known as JP and Kacey). The house felt as though it were expanding happily, filling full of brightly-colored clothes, laughter, and warm food, like spice being poured into a box. My mother had set up an elegant table in the dining room, covered with red cloth, candles, and sparkling gold wreaths. It soon filled with food—little sausages, crackers, cheese, cookies, cranberry-and-apple punch.

I stayed in my corner and talked with Sarah and Elizabeth. Sarah told me her horror stories from MTC this week. Christa wriggled up to me to show off her plate of sausages. She and Mary scampered upstairs to play with my old plastic horses. Katie organized a game downstairs, the fruit game (in which you have a circle of people, and everyone chooses a fruit name; one person stands in the middle and says his own fruit plus the fruit of someone else; he has to swat the other person with a sock before the other person can say her name and someone else’s name). Since so many people were present, Katie divided everyone into two circles so that two games were going at once. J.D. and I hung on the fringe of one circle, watching Mrs. Spitler, Mrs. Fisher, Katie, Sarah, Rebeka, Dani, Jonathan, Anna, and Jonathan’s friend Troy. It was quite humorous to watch the interaction of the moms with the younger fry, and to watch Anna and Jonathan as they argued with each other. The living room filled with noise, everyone talking and laughing and shouting at once.

Overwhelmed by the noise, I prowled soundlessly upstairs. Mary and Christa were playing happily together. Upstairs it was quiet and cool, though bursts of laughter sometimes vibrated up through the floor. I curled up against the wall and played with the girls, strapping tiny bridles and saddles around plastic muzzles and plastic bellies. Plastic hooves clopped on the carpet. The little girls babbled contentedly, making up stories about their horses which involved all sorts of ridiculous scenarios. Christa made up voices for the different characters in her story—when she dug out a small dinosaur from the toy box, her voice for it made me burst out laughing. Mr. Parnell came upstairs to check on us. He said that they were going to perform a skit downstairs, so I left the schoolroom door partly open and stood on the stairs to watch. It was a humorous skit, making fun of JP, Kacey, and almost everyone else (though the Jons and Mr. Wagner were the main figures to come under fire). My father played Jon, and Mr. Wagner played Jonathan in one scene, which made everyone laugh uproariously. Jonathan played Mr. Wagner, complete with a rapper outfit, which also made everyone laugh. Logan was the narrator—he’d come up with some absolutely comic rhymes for his narration.

After the skit, Katie made a short speech, thanking the Knoxes for their fellowship. Then the Knoxes got up and thanked the congregation for its fellowship. We sang Psalm 98A after that—a triumphant Psalm, fitting for a farewell that is not a farewell, for it’s between Christians, who shall see one another again soon. Then people started to leave, family by family. The Knoxes were the last to go, when the house was quiet and empty, but still full of light, like an echo of the company that was gone. We whisked the house into order, took baths, and went to bed.

Dead Days?

Now Playing: "The Nutcracker" ballet by Tchaikovsky. Act 2, No. 15: "Apotheosis".

I love this music! Thank you, Syneva! :o)

This morning Rachel and I slept in until eight o'clock or so. We went downstairs to visit Mary and Nicole for prayer at about eight-thirty. Mary was still sound asleep, but Nicole was up and cheerful. Rachel brewed tea for herself, and we sat and chatted and shared prayer requests. Though Nicole hissed at Mary, Mary refused to budge from her nest of blankets. So the three of us prayed, and then Rachel and I returned to our room.

At ten o'clock, I went to Tyrrell to practice my flute. I've really enjoyed the Telemann sonata, and I'm kind of sad about setting it aside. My jury is on Saturday. After an hour, I hurried over to the caf for lunch. The caf was almost empty, so I sat in a booth by myself. As I was finishing up, poking idly at my bowl of soup, Andrew shuffled up and asked if he could sit with me. We talked about literature, specifically American literature--Emily Dickinson, etc.

After lunch, I walked briskly to ACAC to meet with Mr. K. In ACAC, I found Spencer working at the little coffee shop. Nicole and Mr. K both happened to be there, so we stood and chatted for a bit. Then Mr. K and I went upstairs into the atrium. We spent a long time talking about serious matters, and ended in prayer.

I walked over to Zink for TURC at two o'clock. Dr. S has been away over the weekend, so she came flying up to her office, looking rather frazzled. "I'm sorry. I haven't read your paper at all yet," she said. So while she sat and skimmed my paper, I scribbled in my notebook. We went over the paper, section by section, together. It's about Milton's use of epic similes in Paradise Lost--how he uses similes, and other epic forms, to demonstrate human limitations (our readiness to side with evil and our inability to draw near to God by ourselves) and to baptize epic form itself (by setting forth a new heroic ideal, Christ, the suffering servant, as opposed to Satan, the proud, selfish Achillean type).

Back in the room, Rachel was gone, and I curled up in bed for a bit, until she returned. She had run to ACAC to pick up a package from her parents. Just as she stepped into the room, the fire alarm went off. The two of us scrambled to grab our keys and our shoes, and we ran downstairs. A trickle of girls poured outside with us, doors slamming and banging in the dorm. Outside, we found Syneva standing, to our surprise. She'd come to meet with Amy. We'd hardly been outside five minutes when the fire alarms were silenced, and we were let back into the building. Syneva came upstairs with us. Rachel dived into her package and produced an aluminum-foil wrapped parcel of oatmeal-and-chocolate cookies, which she shared with us. We stood around, munching the cookies and waiting for Amy to arrive. When Amy came, she ate a cookie, too, and admired our room before she and Syneva left.

I worked on my TURC paper for awhile. Tara called at about four forty-five to say that she was off work. We had agreed to go shopping together. Rachel and I bundled ourselves up and drove over to Tara's apartment. She was standing on the kerb, waiting. She hopped into the back seat. We drove down Delaware to Fifteenth Street, and pulled into a shady little strip of shops at the corner. One of the shops is a used bookstore, The Oak Tree. Rachel held open the door as we stepped up over the threshold. Along the front wall were nice copies of the "classics" in gold-embossed leather, and right by the front door are a couple of glass cases full of antique books, covers so faded that ink has become thin scrawl on brown covers. A girl who had been shelving books the moment before asked if she could help us find anything. "Can we just look?" asked Tara, and the girl smiled and disappeared behind the counter. The three of us dispersed. Immediately we found ourselves in a maze of books. Tall shelves had been cobbled together every which-way, crammed with books. Pictures, posters, and lists were pinned or taped at odd angles on the ends of shelves, or hung on the narrow strip of wall between shelves and ceiling. Brown carpet, brown walls, brown ceiling, brown windows. A stick of incense burning on the counter sent long curling wreaths like fingers through the air, spicy and heavy, mingling with the musty smell of old carpet and old paper and old ink. Lamps were perched in unexpected places on the tops of shelves, shedding cones of light over faded spines. Books everywhere: Sections of childrens' books, where I found familiar old friends--Lloyd Alexander, Susan U. Cooper, Brian Jacques, E. Nesbit, L.M. Montgomery, Louisa May Alcott, C.S. Lewis, Madeleine L'Engle.... A beautifully illustrated copy of The Beauty and the Beast, rich colors like stained-glass windows. There were cookery books, fishing books, gardening books, birders' guides, field guides for plants and trees. There were thick books about northern European history, Tutankhamun, the Etruscans, and the Incas. There were shelves full of books by Oklahoma authors, and books about Native Americans, arranged by tribe. There were shelves and shelves and stacks and stacks of sci fi and fantasy and fiction--Tolkien, Sayers, Peters, Lewis, Rowling, the Brontes, O'Connor, Doyle, Dana all together. Mysteries, Classics, romance. Like looking at endless rows of doors, into any one of which you could step and discover another world. A wood between the worlds. :o) Rachel found a series of A.A. Milne's plays. Tara and I inspected the poetry section. Plenty of Emily Dickinson, Dylan Thomas, T.S. Eliot, and Robert Frost. I finally settled on a couple of battered paperback copies of Over Sea, Under Stone and Greenwitch, two Susan U. Cooper books. I found The Black Cauldron, the only one of the Prydain Chronicles I'm missing, but the cover was very strange, so I decided to hold out for another time.

I sidled up to the counter and bought my books. Then the three of us returned to the cold evening. It was almost dark outside, a chilly blue dim like glazed glass hanging over the slushy streets. I poked my way slowly through traffic to the highway, which we took to Memorial, and then turned off from Memorial to Wal-Mart. We parked way out in the "boondocks", and so had to walk a long way in the cold to the store. Tara and I both had lists of things to buy. I had my mother's recipe for curry, plus a short list of odds and ends of things. Tara had groceries to get for herself. This particular Wal-Mart is probably the largest and seediest Wal-Mart I've ever been in. I'm sure everyone in there spoke Spanish as at least one of their languages--either Spanish or Black slang. "Yep. This is the ghetto Wal-Mart," Tara chuckled uneasily as we jostled past some rather unsavory characters. Rachel and I went off to look for scrapbook paper (for the cover of my P&P portfolio), and got separated from Tara. Rachel, with her usual good common sense, steered us in the right direction. Past aisles partitioned off with yellow tape because the floor was wet from leaks in the roof, past shoppers with carts piled high with Christmas presents, past overweight women in wheelchairs sitting in the middle of the aisles talking. We found Tara in groceries, and managed to piece together the last of the items on our list. We waited in line for a cashier for a long time. With a jump, I realized that the baby seat of the cart in front of us contained a mop of brown fur--a moving mop of brown fur, as a matter of fact. The mop turned around and grinned at Tara, who squealed with surprise. It was a little dog with black eyes and a very pink tongue, panting cheerfully at us. It was dressed in a blue-and-red dress (no, I'm not kidding). The two men who were the owners of the mop of fur were the finest specimens of rednecks I've ever seen--wearing filthy, holey overalls, overweight, with bristling beards, unkempt hair, weatherbeaten faces, and hands the size of hams. But the dolled-up dog belonged to them. As we slid into the car and drove back to campus, Tara, Rachel, and I laughed long and hard.

We stopped at the apartment, and Rachel and I helped Tara carry her groceries up to the apartment. Then Rachel and I drove to Di's house for supper. Di is a friend of the Ks. She's the head of the education department at the university. She lives alone in a house that backs up to the Ks' house, and she invited everyone to her house for supper and a "study break" tonight. Rachel really wanted to go, so I drove both of us over there. Her house is one of the delightful old brick houses that populate the Ks' neighborhood, with unexpected windows and fine wooden trim inside. We found Di busy heating up the grill on her back porch as we arrived. Indoors, we found Bob, Leslie, Andrew, David, Asher, Nicole, Ange, and Crystal hanging out. Crystal, Leslie, and Bob were ensconced in the living room by the fireplace, studying. A fire roared happily on the hearth. Inside, the house was very cozy and elegant, the walls painted tasteful shades of jade green and cream. Wood floors, long bookshelves full of commentaries and Bibles, racks of CDs, and artistic black-and-white photographs on the walls. Rachel and I joked with Andrew, Asher, and David about LOTR, plays, and art in general, while Di bustled in and out with the meat. The smell of grilling meat drifted through the banging back door. The food was ready very quickly. "I have six brats, six hotdogs, and six hamburgers, five with cheese, and one without, in case there's anyone who doesn't like cheese," Di announced. I grinned and rolled my eyes at Rachel. Unfortunately, Andrew (who already has a weird enough idea of me since he caught me reading Schaff while I ran yesterday) saw this gesture. "You don't like cheese?!" he exclaimed. "Umm.... No," I said. He and Asher stared at me for a full five minutes until I couldn't laugh at them any longer. "Do you guys want cookies, or burgers?" Di yelled from the grill, so we obediently filed outside to get our food. With our plates, Rachel and I settled ourselves on the floor by the enormous sofa where Crystal was sitting. Bob, Asher, Andrew, Leslie, and Joanna managed to find space to sit, all of us crowded together on chairs, the hearth, and the floor. Joanna and Bob looked at pictures on Facebook while Crystal and I condoled each other about the P&P portfolio. Rachel and I sipped root beer, and I laughed about Iron Bru (Scottish soft drink--WEIRD!). Spencer, Jenny, and others showed up later, adding their quirky laughter to the house.

At about seven-thirty, Rachel and I left. Andrew stood on the back porch to watch and make sure we arrived at the car safely since I'd parked closer to the Ks' house than to Di's house, and it was somewhat of a walk down the muddy kerb in the dark. Rachel and I went to Jason-and-Mardel's apartment. Mardel had invited everyone in the girls' Bible study over to her house to make Christmas ornaments, watch movies, etc. Rachel led me behind one block of flats to another block, and rapped confidently on the first door. "Come in!" someone shouted from inside. We let ourselves in. Inside, we found a circle of girls crowded together on the floor, hunched around a low table covered with craft materials. Sequins, ribbon, pins, scissors, and foam balls were scattered everywhere. The apartment itself was crowded with furniture, pictures, and odds and ends of things. A radio on the kitchen counter played Christmas music. Sometimes a molasses-voiced DJ named Delilah would come on to spout cheesy Christmas anecdotes, or collect them from callers. Rachel and I joined the other girls. Mardel, Syneva, Amanda, Amy, Jenny H., Alisha, Tara, and Lacee were all there. All of them were busy making ornaments: pinning variously-colored sequins onto styrofoam balls with tiny metallic pins. I curled up between Tara and Amy and just watched for a long time. Apple cider simmered on the stove, and Mardel and Amanda munched popcorn. Alisha opened a bag of oreos. Someone decided to turn on a movie, which turned out to be It's a Wonderful Life (I think). I only watched the first part. When Alisha left, I walked out with her, the two of us traversing the cold, dark parking lot together. I walked back to Lottie very much alone. The moon hung like a squashed face in the dark sky. Wet snow squelched under my feet.

Up in the room, I worked on my portfolio and my TURC paper. Rachel breezed in at about nine-thirty. She asked to see my portfolio when I finished it, so I handed it over to her. And I took some small pleasure in hearing her little sighs of delight as she browsed through the poems. I worked on my TURC paper until I felt as though my eyes were going cross-eyed, and now am trying to finish this quickly.

RUF Christmas Party

Now Playing: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack by Howard Shore. Track 16, "Amon Hen".

December 1, 2006

For Kevin, who requested it.

Beware of ridiculously long post!

Note abbreviations: RCS for Rachel S., JAH for Jenny H.

This morning RCS and I slept in until seven o’clock. I ate bread for breakfast, typed up yesterday’s entry, downloaded yesterday’s pictures, and worked on my TURC paper. School was closed today, all the buildings except the residence halls, the caf, and the gym sleeping under their blanket of snow. At ten o’clock, RCS went to a prayer meeting. A bit later, I went out to return some books to the library. The morning was crisp and clear, the sky a gorgeous high powdery blue, blue as the thin shadows of the trees penciled on the snow. Everything sparkled and dazzled. Snow on the trees, on the roofs, icicles glittering. Someone had cleared a path down the sidewalk until the plaza between the library and the chapel. There, I had to clamber through deep drifts, sinking far above my ankles. My boots crunched satisfyingly in the snow. I marched back to Lottie, drinking the exhilarating air, and worked until the phone rang. It was Syneva. “Has RCS told you about my plans for your life?” she asked. “No,” I laughed. She invited me to come help herself, Amanda, and Alisha decorate Christ Presbyterian Church (the church where the Knorrs and most RUFers go) for the RUF Christmas Formal tonight. I accepted readily. I fiddled with my paper for a bit longer, then ran downstairs.

I waited in the parking lot alone until JAH showed up. She got a call from Syneva on her cellphone, and Syneva said that it was taking them awhile to defrost the car. So JAH and I played in the snow. We scrambled among the drifts, climbed a pile of sand near the construction site, made snowballs, and marveled at the crisp ripples where the wind had scooped the snow into sculpted patterns. We laughed and shouted and gasped. Kathryn showed up a bit later and joined us. Then Amanda pulled up with Syneva and Alisha in her car. JAH, Kathryn, and I squeezed into the back seat with Alisha. We drove south and west to the church. On the way Syneva poked around on the radio stations, stopping on one station that played atrociously sentimental Christmas music. We made fun of the sappy songs while we drove through the sparkling streets. We drove past huge houses set on long white lawns, trees elegantly laced with snow. “Those pine trees look like little men, bent-over,” Alisha chuckled. Stone walls, slate roofs, windowsills, driveways, flowerbeds, bushes, crenellations, crevices were all full of snow, blue and white in the noon sunshine.

At the church, we found Mrs. Knorr and Esther in the fellowship hall at the back of the church, preparing for our descent. The fellowship hall is a long, low rectangular room with a fairly high ceiling. The ceiling seems lower than it is because it’s crossed with heavy dark wooden beams. Mrs. Knorr put Syneva and me to work stapling silver balls hung on white fuzzy bunting to the ceiling. Syneva climbed the ladder, and I handed her the baubles one-by-one. Meanwhile, Amanda and Esther pondered how to string lights along the ceiling beams. Alisha and Kathryn and JAH washed cups and plates in the kitchen. Joanna, Andrew, and Bob arrived. Mrs. Knorr put the boys to work shoveling the parking lot, while Joanna joined the light-hanging team. For awhile, everyone was busy. Laughter and giggles, somewhat subdued as people concentrated on their jobs. When Syneva and I finished our task, we helped Kathryn and JAH move poinsettias from a classroom into the fellowship hall. We lined them on the windowsills, around the fireplace, under a Christmas tree, everywhere. Red spiky leaves unfurling lushly. Jenny, Ange, and Tara came by, and then left to buy food. We all took a break after the poinsettias, and Syneva taught us the post-ease dance and the Fairfax Fancy. After that, I sat glumly on the brick hearth under the fireplace. Amy, Kathryn, JAH, and Eleanor went dress shopping. David, who’d come with Amy and Eleanor, joined the other boys shoveling snow outside.

It was two o’clock, and Alisha and I were hungry, so we drove back to campus with Amanda and Syneva. By this time the streets were slushy. Water ran luxuriously everywhere, through the gutters, in the low places, splashing under the tyres, sparkling, reflecting the blue sky. All the way back, the girls puzzled over dresses and hair and stockings and slips, discussing the process of dressing for the formal tonight. In the apartment parking lot, Amanda nearly got stuck, but we pushed the car into its parking place. I pointed out a couple of short, stubby, silly-looking snowmen which someone had built on top of one of the other cars. Amanda and Syneva invited us up to their apartment to eat lunch, and we accepted. We stomped our shoes on the stairs, banging off the snow. My socks and jeans were soaking wet. Inside the apartment, Amanda set to work making chili, while Syneva baked corn muffins. Alisha and I nibbled strawberry poptarts and talked. The spices from the chili on the stove started to fill the apartment, mixing with the warm smell of cornbread steaming from the oven.

It was after three o’clock when we sat down at the little round table in the corner, each of us with a broad shallow bowl full of a generous helping of chili, and a plate of cornbread in the middle. Syneva gave thanks, and we ate. The foot was hot and hearty—meat, tomatoes, kidney beans, red sauce, sopped up with the sweet crumbly corn muffins. We talked and laughed about serious things and silly things. It was four o’clock when Alisha and I left. We crossed the street together, sloshing through the nasty dirty snow where it had been churned up by passing cars. Then we separated. I ran back to Lottie, leaping and hopping through the snow. Deep snow on the lawn, where it was too much effort to run. The snow on the lawn and intramural field had been churned and broken, ruined by groups of students playing in the snow. Snowmen and snowballs were everywhere, and someone had stomped a huge word into the snow, though I couldn’t read it.

Back in the room, I found RCS busy working on her paper. I flopped down in bed and took a long drowsy nap. When I woke an hour later, the sun was setting. Clear sky fading now: purple shading to blue, to aquamarine, to green, to yellow, to orange, to rusty pink, to mauve on the edge of the western horizon above the far blue hills. The trees stand up dark brown against the sky. The distant skyscrapers are blue, glowing with tiny golden lights, like ceramic decorations with candles shining from inside. The world is more luminous somehow, the colors paler, shading and fading into one another.

I worked on my TURC paper for a little while and then dressed. I wore my long straight black dress with the velvet roses on it: not very elegant, but better than a normal Sunday dress. When I finished dressing, I managed to convince Rachel, who was very concerned about her MAW paper, to come to the formal. She dressed briskly in a maroon dress with a lovely silk scarf around the waist, gold hoop earrings, and a beautiful necklace with a pendant shaped like a golden leaf that looked as though it had come from the horde of a Sumerian princess—though simpler, of course (and in case you should get the wrong idea, I think the jewelry of Sumer and Ur, ancient Mesopotamian cultures, to be quite beautiful).

We ran downstairs to the lobby, where we found a large crowd of people waiting. Nicole, Kathryn, Syneva, Amanda, Jessica, and Jenny H. were all there, plus a knot of freshman girls. Jason and Daniel stepped inside to offer us rides, looking quite dashing in their black formal suits. Rachel went with Jessica and one of her friends. Another girl went with Daniel, and in twos and threes the other girls found rides. Amy, Kathryn, Jenny, and I were the only ones left, so we followed Daniel out to the parking lot. My boots, clunky under the hem of my dress, crunched on the snow. To my surprise and sisterly gratification, there were several young men with cars waiting in the parking lot, including Daniel, Asher, Spencer, Sam, and Dustin. Mr. K was there, too, with his big suburban almost full. We stood and waited in the cold for awhile, until Dustin said, “Well, we could just leave….” So all of us girls piled into his car, Amy in the front seat and the three of us in the back. Jenny leaned her head on Kathryn’s shoulder, exhausted from a headache. As we drove through the snowy streets, the thick layers of snow and ice crunched and crackled under the car, as though we were driving on broken shingles of concrete. Lights glowed and winked from trees, from eaves of houses, from bushes and windows and driveways. Amy, Kathryn, and I were in a holiday mood, heaped together in our warm coats. We kept each other laughing and giggling all the way to the church.

At the church, Dustin pulled up to the door, and we hurried inside, crossing the icy walkway carefully. Amy, Kathryn, and Jenny disappeared to change into their party clothes. I ducked into a corner to yank off my boots and slide in my silver sandals. Then I was ready. The fellowship hall had been transformed. To give you a brief picture: it is a long rectangular room. In one long side are the doors to enter, and opposite the doors is a gigantic fireplace with a raised brick hearth. On one short side is a kitchen, but here curtains had been drawn across and a long table of foodset up. To the other short side were some tables and the sound system. Double and triple strings of little Christmas lights had been woven across the huge, thick rafters, lighting the room. Trees glowed with lights in the corners. A couple of metal screens, wrought in the shape of pointed chapel windows, held little candles behind the refreshment table. Tea lights sparkled on the round tables dotted in the corners of the room. Poinsettias were everywhere, of course. A huge fire roared on the fireplace, sending out a wonderful warmth. Smells—woodsmoke, traces of perfume, candle smitch, cinnamon-and-cloves in the hot apple cider, coffee, warm melted chocolate on the fondue fountain. Everyone was shining themselves, it seemed. Smiles and laughter and more and more faces piling into the room as cars pulled up and girls emerged from the dressing room in their gowns.

Tara and I took pictures of people. For an hour or so everyone just stood around talking. I don’t really know how long it was—time seemed to have stopped short, and I seemed to be in a candlelit picture that would never change or shift, but be timeless, forever. So many faces and different conversations. Lights flickered and sparkled in the silver baubles hanging from the ceiling. I joked with Rachel about the woes of decorating, and described to her the trouble I’d had with the stapler when it was my turn to clamber onto the ladder and staple the baubles to the ceiling. We sipped steaming apple cider from thick cut-glass cups, and nibbled brownies and cookies and strawberries. It was all very elegant and very beautiful.

When Mr. K and Dustin finally coaxed the sound system to work, we had music—and of course when there’s music, there must be dancing. For a little while, it was just sappy Christmas carols sung by someone with a molasses voice and bells in the background. But then Mr. K climbed on a chair (yes, like Bilbo at the party :o) and called everyone’s attention to Syneva and Andrew at the head of the room, near the sound system. Syneva taught us the Virginia Reel first. Her voice carried authoritatively across the excited buzz of the crowd. She directed everyone to find a partner. I eventually ended up dancing the men’s part with Michelle as my partner. We danced to “Ode to a Butterfly” from “Nickel Creek”. It was beautiful to see all the arms raising and lowering, skirts swinging, shoes stomping, hands clapping at the same rhythm. Like a field of grass bowing in the wind, endless graceful movements whirling over and over to the lilting mandolin music. We danced it several times, and then someone turned on swing music.

So I sat off to one side and watched. Some people in RUF are quite good at swing dancing, among them Andrew and Jenny H. and Katie and Grant and Eleanor and James. Charis, the K—s’ youngest daughter, couldn’t sit still, and kept asking older girls to dance with her. I sat by Jenny S. in the corner. We laughed and joked around. She wasn’t feeling well still, but I tried to keep her cheerful. Even when they danced the Virginia Reel again, I stayed seated.

When they started to dance the Broom Waltz, after Syneva explained it, Kevin arrived in the middle. He didn’t have a partner, so he asked me to dance with him. I was glad to have found someone I knew to dance with, so I accepted. We chatted for a bit until Syneva blew the whistle, and then I was whisked from partner to partner—each guy switching to another girl whenever the whistle tooted so that he wouldn’t have to dance with the broom. When the Broom Dance ended, I scurried back to my corner. The swing music came back on, bass and brass rumbling around together. I talked with Tara about philosophy. Kevin joined us. He and Tara compared notes about video games: Super Smash Brothers and Wii, mostly. We were deep in conversation when Katie came to ask Kevin to dance with her, so he left.

Shortly thereafter, David and Spencer asked Tara and me to dance. The swing music was still playing, but Tara was game, so I didn’t want to let David down. He taught me how to dance, and I became more comfortable with it. We practiced all the twisty spinning moves, tangling arms in knots and then untangling them. I heard Tara squealing with laughter as Spencer swung her through the air (she’s lighter than I am). When the music ended, David and I thanked each other. I sat by the fire with Alisha and Syneva. Tired, watching the low flames flicker and fall on the charred logs. Our skirts pooled around our feet. People were dancing on the floor, still, swing dancing. Jenny H. and Andrew were dancing, each step perfect.

After a bit, I got up. Jenny S. was feeling better. She and Tara and Kathryn danced around, being very silly, jamming to the music. They joined Alex and Asher, who were dancing in a corner, so loose that they looked like marionettes, lanky arms and legs being jerked on strings. I stood and laughed at them. Syneva got her second wind then, and she taught us the Fairfax Fancy. Grant G. asked me to be his partner. The Fairfax Fancy starts out in a Sicilian Circle, with pairs of couples facing each other around the room. You move around the circle throughout the dance. It’s a fast dance, and we danced to fast Celtic music. Everyone was laughing and counting aloud, and there were exclamations, eruptions into laughter as people made a misstep or forgot where they were. The circle galloped around the room, feet thumping the floor. After that came more swing dancing, and more sitting curled in a corner for me.

When Mr. K returned from taking a group of people back to campus, he gathered everyone together in a big circle. We prayed, thanking God for the evening and asking His provision for a family in the congregation whose house burned tonight. Then Syneva gathered the eight of us in the middle of the circle, and we demonstrated the Post-ease for everyone. Then Syneva directed everyone to find partners. Kevin asked me to dance, and Syneva and Carl, Amanda and another young man, and Jenny H. and another young man formed our set. There were enough people for four or five sets (so even though it was midnight, there must still have been about thirty people left). We danced the Post-ease to fast Celtic music again, this time music not as traditional as before, but more like the “Lord of the Dance” music, a cross between pop and Celtic. Kevin and I got going fast, spinning around the squares, until I was laughing harder than I had been all evening. I think I agree with Syneva—the Post-ease is my favorite dance. After the music ended, there were shouts and cheers for more, so we danced it two or three more times. Arches and spinning circles, stepping into place.

When the dance ended, Mr. K turned on the fluorescent overhead lights. “Alright, everyone, time to help clean up,” he said. Syneva, Kathryn, Jenny H., the K— girls, and I moved the poinsettas back to the room where they belonged. The guys rolled the round tables down the hall to the storage closet. I knelt in a heap of fuzzy streamers and helped Josh and a couple of other guys untangle the baubles from the streamers and put them back in their cardboard boxes. Someone else was scraping wax out of the candle-holders, while girls washed up in the kitchen. Stepping into the dressing room, I found that the mess of dresses, shoes, bags, and makeup kits had mostly been cleared away. Alisha and Tara were wrapping their dresses in plastic. We stood around for awhile, waiting until it was time to go. Mr. K flicked the lights on and off, and we poured out of the building, the few of us that were left.

Suddenly, almost everyone was gone. Slush and snow in the parking lot had hardened to ice again. Steam puffed out of the exhaust pipes of the cars. Kevin gave rides to William, Jenny S., Alisha, and me. Kevin and William sat in the front seat, and Jenny slouched in the back seat between Alisha and me. She was feeling very sick. She leaned her head on Alisha’s shoulder and coughed sporadically, her long body shaking. “Can I do anything for you?” Alisha asked. “Trade heads with me,” Jenny moaned. “I’d trade heads with you, really I would, if I could,” I said as we rocked out of the parking lot. “Thanks. I appreciate the gesture,” Jenny groaned back. She and Kevin teased each other, pretending to be brutally nasty to one another. Kevin played Bjork on the car stereo, but Jenny groaned, “No! It’s not even in English!”, so Kevin eventually (after much trading of threats and insults) let Jenny choose something from his ipod. Looking over her shoulder, I watched her shuffle past Holst, O’Connor, Shostakovich, Mozart, Beethoven, etc. “He has nothing good on here!” she complained, her voice hoarse. She finally settled on SnowPatrol, which she almost immediately changed to a rap group, and then switched to something else when Kevin objected because of upcoming bad language in the song she’d chosen.

We crunched through the streets. The car bumped and rocked on the hard snow and ice. Jenny shut her eyes, miserable, and Alisha and Ilooked pitifully at each other across the top of her blond head. Kevin drove cautiously and managed to return us to campus in one piece (despite what Jenny said). I was very thankful for the safety and warmth of Lottie. But the hallway seemed unendurably long, so tired was I. It was just after two o’clock. When I stepped into our room, Rachel sat up in bed. “It’s alright. I’ve only just crawled in,” she said. I changed clothes and went to bed.