flying feet (and the return of the spider, which seems to haunt this blog)

My grandmother requested a post this morning, so here goes.

This morning, my parents went with Brother1 to an awards ceremony at MTC, the votech school where he's been studying this past year. He received a National Honors Society award and a Most Outstanding Student award, so brava to him. Princess received recognition for winning third place in the HOSA essay contest, as well as another honor (Brother1 told me about it later, so I'm afraid I don't know the exact name). I spent the morning at home with Daisy and Brother2. Late in the morning, my father left for a church meeting in Kansas.

At ten-thirty, I drove downtown to pick up Brioni from her father's office. Her father works for a computer company. We drove back to my house together, chatting about our families' small doings. At my house, we curled up on my bed. We looked through my scrapbook, remembering the times we'd spent. The two of us ate an early lunch, foraging for scraps in the refrigerator: leftover spaghetti-and-meatballs from Tuesday's supper. Daisy banged away at Beethoven on the piano, and a tufted titmouse pecked at the birdfeeder near the back porch.

After lunch, we drove out to the Fs' house. Mr. and Mrs. F are spending a couple of nights vacationing together, leaving Melissa at their house to keep order. Mrs. F requested that I go out to their house to help Melissa straighten out the "rabble" in preparation for the Irish dance performance this afternoon. This is the last performance of the Celtic Knots, the homeschool group's Irish dance troupe, until next school year. As we drove out to the Fs' house, Brioni told me about her mother's work, and we listened happily to Beethoven's seventh symphony.

At the Fs' house, we found the "rabble" mostly under control, thanks to Melissa, Violin, and SwanElfs' supervision. Frac was still trundling around in soccer shorts and a T-shirt, though, while Fric was missing her socks, and Greg had had to borrow a pair of his father's black socks, which he'd cuffed about four inches under his trousers. Pippin and Ben sprawled on the sofa and laughed and talked with me, while Fric showed Brioni a stuffed Tigger. "Time to take Tigger off for a nap on your bed," I commanded as we got ready to go. "Ok! C'mon, Tigger!" Fric ordered, and proceeded to engage in a dialogue with her stuffed animal all the way down the hall, pretending to haul it along and making her voice whine whenever it was the Tigger's turn to talk.

Outside in the warm afternoon, Violin, Ben, Dani, and Frac climbed into Melissa's car, while Brioni, Fric, SwanElf, Greg, and Ruth ensconced themselves in my car. Fric perched pertly between Brioni and me in the front seat. "May I push buttons? May I help you drive?" she begged. She toyed with the map light, the airconditioning vents, and the volume on the stereo, jumping and clapping her hands over her ears when a chord leaped out at her. I asked SwanElf about her speech (on political activism) and Ruth about the book she was avidly reading in the back seat. Greg stared in amazement as a semi whooshed past us.

At Hillcrest Baptist Church, which hosts the troupe's practices and performances, we unloaded the cars. Indoors, everyone was busy folding down tables in the fellowship hall, setting up chairs, and clearing the floor for the dance recital. After making sure that Brioni had an eye on the two littlest squirrels, Fric and Frac, I hurried home to pick up my camera: SwanElf had been unable to find batteries for her camera in the last frantic scramble to leave the Fs' house. So I'd promised her that I'd fetch mine instead. Back at the church, I sat next to Brioni and snapped pictures of the troupe while they practiced. Mrs. Hill, the instructor and commander-in-chief, set up her little CD player in the back of the room. It blared out music: Solas, Altan, Michael Flatley. She let the dancers rehearse each dance, stopping them if one dance became particularly tangled, and making them rerun it. The little ones were rather uncertain, and there was some confusion as to whose partner was whose. On the Waves of Tory, one set somehow had an uneven number of couples, so SwanElf and her partner volunteered to stand out. The group practiced the four-handed reel, the Lazy Robin, the Bridge of Athlone, the Siege of Ennis, the Waves of Tory, the two-handed reel, and a jig at the end, as well as singing a song before the two-handed reel.

When they'd finished running through their program, Mrs. Hill dismissed the dancers for a break. The little ones scampered away, while the older ones flocked to a water fountain. Violin and Princess flopped down on the chairs beside Brioni and me. People began to fill the seats behind us. Mrs. Y came with Ray-ray and JoeBob, her two little ones. The Ps came, and so did Daniel. Brother2 sat with Daniel. The fifty-odd seats that had been set up were soon full. Mrs. C and Mrs. Hill shooed the dancers behind the curtains (normally used to divide the fellowship hall into smaller cubicles), which were half-pulled out to form wings. Fric kept poking her head around the dividing curtain at one end of the room to see if Mary, the Ps' youngest girl, had arrived. Every so often, Frac or one of the littlest ones fidgeted, bumping the curtain, making it sway. At last the performance began. Mrs. C, the second-in-command and Chief Drill Sergeant and Seamstress, came out and thanked Mrs. Hill for her work.

The performance went quite well. Four-pointed stars swirled and interlocked as the four-handed reel spun away, skirts flaring like pinwheels. Violin led the little folk out for the Lazy Robin. Emily, the Cs' new adopted daughter, held hands with Susie and Fric. Ben pounded boredly on a cardboard box, providing percussion while Mrs. Hill tooted away on a little green recorder. Small feet shuffled, pointed, tipped the floor and the square of green stickers which Mrs. Hill had laid down to show them where to center their circle. The Bridge of Athlone, the Siege of Ennis, and the Waves of Tory moved with quick, happy rhythm. Soft shoes swished on polished linoleum. Violin's hair bounced as she jumped energetically. Princess pursed her lips, counting. Susie giggled, and the small boys grunted as they tried to hold their arms high enough on the Bridge of Athlone for the taller couples (such as my mother and Violin) to cross under. Backs bent, arms raised, couples weaving through the Waves of Tory.

In the middle of the performance, Mrs. Hill and her daughter, Lydia, performed a step-dancing set. Their hard shoes clattered on the polished floor, clicking in time to the music, their feet matching the percussion. Then the group lined up, tallest in back, shortest in front, and sang a little Irish counting song, complete with hand gestures. Brioni sat and laughed at the faces Emily and Fric made, standing in the front row. Both little girls participated in the singing, but their hands sometimes wandered vaguely. "They have short attention spans! The audience is much more interesting to watch," Brioni chuckled quietly.

The two-handed reel was most impressive to watch, and my favorite of the dances. Three couples came out first and stood like wooden Nutcrackers until the music brought them to life. Daisy and Marigold danced seriously. The couples danced together, then one member of each pair danced forward, to be joined by her partner. Their hands were synchronized, as though each girl were dancing with her mirror image. As these three couples finished their set, four more couples danced on, and performed the dance themselves, the music changing as they crossed the floor for the first time. Princess counted, frowning with concentration as her hands flared up and down. When this set of four finished, the music changed again, shifting seamlessly, and another set of three danced on: Hannah and Dani, Violin and Dana, and my mother and SwanElf. Violin and SwanElf leaped forward, long legs kicking out, hair swinging. Hands up and down, circling to the music, then skipping off.

Finally came the jig. First, a row of older dancers came on and did their own step, then stood still, while another row of shorter dancers skipped on, dancing a variation. This was followed by a line of short, stocky boys (Will, Ben, Greg, etc.), who danced with grim concentration, and these were followed by the littlest ones, dancing the rise-and-grind while the older dancers joined in. When the music ended, they bowed, and we applauded appreciatively.

"Now we'd like you all to join in a simple dance," Mrs. Hope announced. She shooed the dancers into the audience. Princess grabbed Brioni, and Fric pulled Dana from the wings. Hope took my hand shyly and asked me to dance with her. Pretty soon Mrs. Hill had arranged two lines, facing each other, running the length of the fellowship hall. The dance was simple enough: one person started at the top, between the two lines, holding a bag. That person passed the bag to one of the two people in the top couple and danced down between the lines with the other person. The member of the top couple that had been left holding the bag passed the bag on, taking a partner, and the dance continued. The line was constantly shifting.

After the performance, everyone hung around, munching cookies and drinking pop. I sat between Brioni and Hope, and encouraged Hope to tell me about the stories her mother has been teaching her to read, and to tell me about her mother's friend, who owns a farm with horses and chickens. She proudly showed me the riding boots she'd slipped on over her little dance shoes. SwanElf stood and laughed with Melissa and Princess and Violin about Disney movies, balancing JoeBob on her hip. Mrs. Y sat in a half-circle with my mother and grandmothers, laughing with them while Ray-ray sprinkled cookie crumbs around her feet.

Most of the dancers were full of excess adrenaline. For awhile, they stood around and talked politely with the audience. But when Mrs. Hill turned on some of the fast music, playing clips for an inquiring college student, the girls couldn't suppress their urge to dance any longer. Bridget and Abigail galloped around the floor with Daisy, Bridget, and Hannah. Dani stood off to one side and twirled gracefully, her hair bobbing as her long legs kicked and flared. Princess and Violin grabbed Melissa's hands and tried to teach her the reel step.

Finally, people began to trickle out. Violin flopped down on the floor and dragged off her dance shoes, shoving her feet into her tennis shoes. Marigold carefully unlaced her dance shoes and put on tennis shoes, too. We said good-byes. Once again I marched four F children into my car. I dropped them off at their house, then drove Brioni to her father's office.

At home, I downloaded pictures from the performance. Daisy and I walked around San Born Lake. As we crossed the dam above the marsh, knuckle-rubbers chuckled from their hiding places under rotting willow trees. Frogs croaked laconically. In the meadow, bees buzzed through masses of thick honeysuckle.

My mother went to a booksale this evening, delegating the task of fixing supper to me. After our walk around the lake, I marched into the kitchen and mustered a line of leftovers. Brother1 graciously came downstairs and offered his help.

Brother1 and I managed to boss Brother2 and Daisy into washing their dishes after dessert. Brother1 and I cleared the table and washed empty glass pots. After supper, I sat down at the computer to burn some sermon CDs for my father, while the other three went upstairs to play Jazz Jackrabbit on the computer. Brother1 discovered (thanks to The Shadow) a website where old pirated computer games are available for download. He hunted down Commander Keen, Alleycat, and Jazz Jackrabbit on this site, to the delight of Daisy and Brother2. I heard them shouting and egging each other on, all three of them whacking buttons on the keyboard to control the game. The ruckus went something like this:
"L--! What ARE you doing? Stop that!"
"Who just shot that gun?"
"Jump! JUMP!!"
"Run. No, no, the other way!"
"Hey! You just killed it!"

Now, Daisy is curled up on the sofa beside me, wet hair draped over her shoulder. She peels her toenails and complains listlessly, "I wish Mommy would get back so we could watch 'Singin' in the Rain'.... There's a spider on the carpet! Good-bye."

overnight

Now Playing: Antonin Dvorak's Symphony No. 9, fourth movement.

Yesterday was fairly uneventful until the afternoon. Mr. and Mrs. S, Princess's parents, had decided to go down to Oklahoma City for the evening, and they had asked me to come over in the afternoon to look after the girls while they were gone.

As I pulled into the Ss' driveway, a medium-sized dog bounded out of the ditch across the road and jogged alongside the car, tail lolling happily. I watched with some amusement as the dog bounced up to one of the Ss' cats, which was sleeping on their porch. The dog nudged and nosed the cat until the cat woke up and swatted the dog. Having collected my things from the back seat, I sauntered up to the front door and knocked. The dog stood beside me, its tail waving.

Rebekah, Sis, and Hannah, the youngest three, opened the door. Mrs. S was close behind. Sis stayed close to the house for fear that the dog would jump on her. The dog was quite happy to see everyone. It only pranced on its hind legs when Sis came near, but for the rest of us, it just stood placidly, waving its tail amiably. The dog allowed Mrs. S to inspect its muzzle, half-flopped ears, and glossy flanks. It was orange with black stripes--not so much stripes as a marbled pattern, like marbled paper. When we went inside, we had to push the dog away because it was eager to follow us indoors.

Inside, I found the house dark and cool. Rebekah and Hannah were in the midst of cleaning the room they share with Sis. Sis, however, was not in the mood for housework. While Princess and I sprawled on the sofas in the living room, Sis galloped around us, pretending to practice her Irish dance steps and chattering as cheerfully as a mockingbird. She brought out a notebook and made us take turns drawing in it. Princess and I chatted idly about our small doings. Marigold, curled up in an armchair with her geometry textbook, graphing calculator, and notebook, begged us to be quiet.

After Mr. and Mrs. S left, we held a pow-wow in the living room to try to decide what to do for supper. Technically, it was Hannah's night to cook a meal, but she, of course, had no inclination to do so since Mrs. S had left us with eighty dollars for food. In the end, Princess and I decided to drive out and buy pizza: cheese and pepperoni.

Back at the Ss' house, Sis fed the dogs and the cats, and we all sat down to our supper around the table. I was surprised at how quickly we polished off the pizza. Princess brought out baby carrots, canned apricots, and a fruit cocktail (grapes, peaches, pears, cherries) to supplement the pizza. It was quite a jolly meal.

After supper, I declared that we should all go outside and play hide-and-go-seek, to the delight of the smaller girls. Princess persuaded Marigold to join us. Rebekah chose to be the first to count. She stationed herself on the front porch and began to count while the rest of us scattered. I sprinted toward the orchard, and the dog which had been hanging around earlier bounded after me. It leaped alongside me through the tall grass. I dodged between a pear tree and an apple tree, and finally ducked down behind a young oak tree in the farthest corner of the orchard. The grey stump of one of the old lombardy poplars poked raggedly through the green and silver grass. The dog nosed through the virginia creeper twining up the oak tree. Long threads of grass tickled my arms. From where I knelt, I could see the sweep of the pasture falling downhill, misty grey in the evening dim, the pond caught in the crook of its dam near the foot of the hill. Two vultures veered lazily down the wind, and I watched with delight as a pair of Mississippi kites fluttered and danced overhead, their silver wings nearly matching the silver sky. The dog butted my knees with its head, and I rubbed the warm, silky hollows behind its ears. Occasionally, I could hear Rebekah's or Sis's shrill voices behind the band of oak trees that borders the orchard, but they never came close to my hiding place. Finally, I heard Princess shouting, "We give up!" So I bounded out of the tall grass with the dog leaping beside me.

While we paused to regroup before we started the next round, we noticed that the woman who lives across the street was standing on her porch, shouting a name. "Is she calling the dog?" Rebekah asked. The dog had pranced up to Midnight, who was proudly fending off the happy-go-lucky intruder with bared fangs, arched back, and extended claws. Princess sent Sis racing for a leash, while Marigold gathered up the cat and bundled it away to the safety of the back porch. Princess snapped the leash on the dog, and all of us except Marigold trooped down to the road. Princess and I raced across the street with the dog. Our feet clomped on the porch of the house, and as we knocked on the door, three dogs inside began to yap and bark clamorously. A woman shoved them back and opened the door. "Oh, thank you! We've been searching for her all day!" she cried when she saw the dog. She knelt down and fondled the dog's ears. "My son and my husband are out right now looking for her in the car. I'll have to tell them you found her. Where was she?" We explained that she'd been playing with us all afternoon. The woman didn't seem to mind too much.

Princess and I dashed back across the street, and the game started again. Sis and I hid behind the barn, but Marigold, climbing over the old cow paddock, spotted us.

When it was Hannah's turn, Sis and I hid behind the metal building. Sis stood in the corner of the garage door, and you could hardly see her, except for her round little stomach in its peach shirt, and the tips of her wispy, mouse-brown ponytails. Frogs creaked in the trees along the road. My shirt stuck to my sweaty arms. Sis shifted and whispered impatiently. Finally, poking my head around the corner of the building, I spotted Hannah. Sis and I had to peep around the building several times before Hannah glimpsed us.

Since everyone had taken a turn, we decided to go inside and fix dessert. Though it was Hannah's night to cook, she couldn't think of anything to make. Sis begged to be allowed to watch the end of "The Great Muppet Caper", so she curled up in the living room with an army of stuffed animals and Marigold and Rebekah. Princess and Hannah helped me collect the ingredients for baking chocolate chip cookies, and Princess stood in the kitchen, chatting with Mrs. S on the phone about winter coats and munching chocolate chips.

The cookies took a long time to bake. Sis finished her movie, then watched the end of "The Black Stallion". Just before she had to parade off to bed, I declared the cookies to be done. Princess produced a stack of plates, and she helped me serve the cookies out to everyone. We sat in the living room and watched the beginning of "Zathura". I sipped milk from a plastic cup between bites of hot, gooey cookie. We had to scrape the cookies off the plates with spoons because the chocolate was melted.

When Hannah and Rebekah went to bed, Princess, Marigold, and I put on our pajamas, too. Marigold decided to go to bed early. She went back to her parents' bedroom to sleep on their bed so that Princess and I could have the double bed in Princess's room to ourselves.

Princess turned out all the lights, and we curled up together on the living room sofa to finish "Zathura". A whip-or-will sang throatily outside, its call haunting in the dark, humid night. The movie was just fun to watch.

After the movie ended, Princess and I played tag down the hall, turning on one light, then off the next, until we reached the purple room and jumped into bed. Princess soon fell asleep. I slept fitfully, watching the glowing crack in the door where the nightlight in the hall shone through. The house creaked wearily. Once during the night I woke to hear the sound of wind galloping outside the window at the head of the bed. The house groaned, and the wind rode by, galloping and galloping.

At six-thirty in the morning, Marigold came in and called Princess to wake up. We lay still for fifteen or twenty minutes before actually crawling out of bed. Mrs. S was already back: Mr. S's flight had left at five o'clock, so she'd left the City fairly early.

All of us girls gathered around the dining room table. Mrs. S brought out the things she'd bought: two winter coats, one for Hannah and one for Rebekah, and a stack of books. The girls eyed the books excitedly while Mrs. S turned the pages of the cookbooks, to show them glossy pictures of gingersnaps and raspberry fools.

We sat down with Krispy Kreme donuts for breakfast. Marigold, ever the mathematician, carefully dissected the specialty donuts in one of the boxes, splitting them into four or six pieces, so that everyone could sample a bite. There was a cheesecake donut with crumbly brown sugar on top, an apple-filled donut with cinnamon, two donuts that oozed strawberry and raspberry, and a donut topped with chocolate icing which, when cut into, burst with white cream. There were also the plain, glazed, melt-in-your-mouth donuts.

Right after breakfast, Princess, in butterfly scrubs, had to dash off to MTC with Meri, who pulled up in the driveway with a mug of coffee. I prowled back to the bedroom to change into proper clothes. Marigold disappeared into the metal building to work on chemistry, but the younger girls and Mrs. S stayed behind, and we sat around and chatted happily. Mrs. S proposed that I prepare a short course for Hannah and Rebekah on poetry for the summer, an idea which sounds quite fun to me. I laughed and joked with the younger girls, then said good-bye to them all. They waved me off from the front porch.

"weird nice people": "like something from a story"

Surprised, I opened the blinds this morning and found grey rain slanting down onto the slick street outside. Remembering last night’s resolution to enjoy each moment fully, taking pleasure in its spirit, I splashed to the caf for breakfast happily. I met Rachel for breakfast, and we chatted about her plans for the play this summer. After breakfast, we skipped from puddle to puddle through the rain, our shoulders jostling against each other under Rachel’s umbrella. We said our good-byes in the rain in the little corner between Zink and Oliphant.

I squeaked up to the third floor of Zink, where I settled down to take the MBW final exam. When Dr. F handed out the exam, I immediately scribbled down my outlines on the exam paper, as a "memory dump", then began to write. During the exam time, Dr. F marked the passing hours with funny notation: she'd write 1 hr., 4 mins. remaining, and grin at us. I grinned back. I was the second to leave.

After the exam, I marched back to my room, not allowing myself to think about school. For awhile, I just sat in my room, checking my e-mail and writing up yesterday's journal entry. At ten forty-five, I sauntered downstairs to meet Syneva, who had offered to help me move out. She told me that she, too, is moving out, and has spent all morning washing windows and vaccuming floors. We went up to my room, where Syneva bustled into action while I stood slightly bewildered at the mess. We stripped the sheets and blankets from my mussed bed. She folded them efficiently, while I pulled the remaining "National Geographic" maps from the walls.
I was in the midst of shutting down my laptop and disentangling the mass of cords around it when Tara and Asher unexpectedly stepped in through the open door. "Hi! Do you need any help?" Tara asked brightly. Too confused to be much surprised, I immediately asked Asher to help me set up the second bed. When I moved in last August, my father dismantled it and we stored it under the bed I slept on this past year. Now, it had to be reassembled. We shoved suitcases and a small chest-of-drawers out of the way. Tara and Syneva held the head and footboards, while Asher and I lifted mattress and frame together. We clumsily slid the frame into the sockets on the head and footboards. Asher had to sit down heavily on the contraption in order for all the latches to click. Tara and I blew on the dusty mattres pad to clear away some of the flecks of lint and hair.

When all the suitcases were zipped up, we each took one. Asher managed to fit all four suitcases into the trunk of the car, plus my pillow and comforter, which Tara and Syneva hadn't been able to squash into the largest suitcase.

"Is that all?" Asher asked after everything had been stowed neatly in the car. "Yep," I said, "thanks for your help." I said good-bye to Syneva outside Lottie. Then, until check-out time, I joined Tara and Asher in Tara's room. At eleven-forty, I checked out of my room. A nice young Black woman, an RA, led me upstairs, gave my room a cursory glance, and informed me that "Everything looks fine." I turned in my key and sprinted down to Alisha's room.

Last week, Alisha and I had planned to go to lunch together this afternoon. We decided that we'd just walk over to ACAC. She gathered up her keys and her jacket, and we stepped outside. It had begun to rain again, a fine, gentle, pattering rain that flecked my blue T-shirt as though it had been a robin's egg and caught in my curls. Alisha and I commiserated about being exhausted after finals.

ACAC was warm and bustling. People Alisha knew kept stopping her to say good-bye. Like watching sand trickle through one's fingers. Alisha bought a cup of soup, insisting that she was full from having gone out to coffee earlier. I bought a chicken quesadilla, and we sat down at a little table together. We spent the next two hours talking and eating. People passed in and out. Gradually, people left the eating area. Professors and administrators in business suits returned to their offices. Parents reuniting with their children went out to pack up rooms. Two girls with plastic sacks full of animal crackers went to return their books. A constant stream of athletes, their arms loaded with thick textbooks, kept marching past us, on the way to the bookstore to sell them back. A young man came out of the food court with half-a-dozen plastic sacks full of Gatorade. "Looks like he's trying to use up dining dollars," Alisha said. I chuckled. ACAC staff in blue shirts and khaki trousers sat at nearby tables, sipping black coffee and laughing uproariously in the break between shifts.

We talked about almost everything: Alisha's "unique" theory of government (according to her Liberal professors), and final exams. She asked me for recommendations for reading and listening over the summer, and we discussed books: Lewis, Tolkien, Cooper, Alexander, Barron, Chesterton, Sayers. She told me about a group that she, Tara, and Katie like, "Mediaeval Baebes", and asked me for suggestions, so I told her about Loreena McKennitt, Altan, Cathie Ryan, Kate Rusby, Solas, and Chris Thile. We talked about movies, too, trying to think of good ones (and failing!). This discussion about books, music, and movies led to philosophical ponderings about art. Alisha told me that she's very grateful for people like Matt and Tara, English majors who are "redeeming" the field. "God never leaves anything alone. He has a way of worming into everything," she chuckled, "and I love it."

In the midst of our conversation, Asher stopped by. "Hi, girls. I've got eleven dollars left on my card. Do either of you want anything?" Still full from lunch, we both declined politely. "Fine!" he said, rolling his eyes and grinning at us. He marched into the food court and returned five minutes later with a bottle of water for himself--and two purple lighters, which he tossed onto the table between the two of us. Alisha and I laughed at him. He poked my hand and Alisha's hand with the handle of his red umbrella, then stumped off. "I've decided that all the weird, nice people on campus are in RUF," I laughed.

At two forty-five, we reluctantly walked back to Lottie. I flopped down on the floor in Alisha's room between a stack of textbooks and a dresser plastered with photographs. Alisha checked her e-mail and called Tara to tell her that we were ready to go out. Tara skipped down to Alisha's room. She got her hair cut this week, clipped just above the nape of her neck. It makes her look older and prettier--her eyes seem to sparkle more, somehow. Rachel came along, too.

We were all very jolly.

Turning a corner, we pulled past the Albertsons, the Walgreens, and the Blockbuster into the Braums parking lot. "Hmm, looks like a seedy place," Alisha muttered as we climbed out of the car. A couple of rather suspicious looking-characters walked past us in baggy shirts and ratty jeans. We timidly stepped inside. Two saggy women sat at a table near the door. Four paunchy men were lined up at the ice cream counter. They all had goatees with some sort of strange white goo in them. Alisha thought they must be trying to dye their beards. One of the men flirted with the freckled waitress as she served up his malt, while another man ordered two cheeseburgers. "Brandon!" the waitress shouted sharply. "Sounds like Brandon had better come out," one of the men said snidely. In a few moments, said character did appear, and a most sleazy looking person he was: a long, pale young man with washed-out, blank blue eyes and a lackadaisical air. He slouched over to the grill and proceeded to make the cheeseburgers. "Glad we're not ordering meals," I whispered to Alisha.

Once we'd all purchased our ice cream, we decided to venture elsewhere rather than to stay in the seedy restaurant. "Wow, that was a weird place," Alisha sighed with relief as we left. I suggested we drive to Woodward Park, so we did so. The town changed as soon as we crossed twenty-first street: from little run-down houses and greasy fast food joints to grand business complexes and elegant restaurants. We drove through the park, the green shadiness of it beckoning us in. I parked near the fountain where my mother, Rachel, and I had eaten supper last fall before going to the Philbrook.

First, we sat down on the bench by the fountain to finish our ice cream. We argued as to whether the fountain was level or not: by a trick of the slope of the hill, the fountain appeared to be at an angle with the bench and with the hillside, though Alisha insisted that the fountain was level because the water was at the same depth all the way across. The fountain burbled placidly. Hot poker stalks, daisies, and little blue flowers poked cheerfully around the fountain through a canopy of dew. I slurped down the last of my ice cream, the cone shattering in my hands and splattering my fingers and my jeans with sticky drops of peanut butter and cream.

Alisha and Tara pulled out their cameras and started to take pictures. Tara was fascinated by the monumental trees: oaks, elms, pecans, pine, and spruce rising up and up in mighty tiers above the level lawn. We seemed to be in a great hall, its ceiling low and grey, supported by green tapered pillars, its floor velveted with green carpet.

We set out into the park with delight.

Passing through a line of evergreens on a little muddy path, we entered the rose garden. Level by level, we explored the garden, moving "further up and further in". Beds of roses stretched before us, patterned oblongs and squares and ovals of red, pink, maroon, crimson, cream, and yellow. An enormous, delicately-petalled rose opened near the path, its petals glowing with a color between deep orange and magenta. I stooped to sniff it with sheer joy.

Terrace by terrace, we strolled through the garden. Our feet sank into the deep, wet grass. Puddles spread serenely on the paths between the bushes, whose roots were bedded deep in pine needles. I smelled a rose called Dainty Bess, a tea rose, whose smell was strong, sweet, and pure, tinged with that faint aftertaste of English Breakfast tea. Each flower had four simple petals which cupped upward, and in the hollow of each cup was a mass of saffron pollen tendrils, damp with rain. Nearby, the four of us stopped in front of a mass of vibrant roses--vivid orange-red glowed in the green-and-grey gloom like fireworks. "Roman holiday", as they were appropriately named. Just then, two elderly ladies in business suits stopped by. "Here, let me take your picture!" one of them offered jocularly (I had just made up my mind a few moments before to find someone to take a photo of all of us together, even if I had to ask them myself). The four of us sat on the edge of the path in front of the roses, and the woman took our picture together. Her companion, glancing about her, noticed just after the picture was taken that the roses across the path were Friendship roses. "Oh, you should take a picture in front of these," she cried. However, her companion did not seem so inclined. After they moved off, Alisha and Tara photographed Rachel and me with the pale pink, fleshy Friendship roses, and then I photographed Alisha and Tara.

We explored the whole rose garden. The delicate, faint scent of roses, mixed with the smells of wet earth and rain and crushed grass, hung always on the air. On either side of us ran lines of tall, dark trees. We were caught in a rain-wet hollow, a dab of color on the watery earth, as though someone had swiped a streak of crimson across a green watercolor. Or as though silk French knots had been tied on green-and-grey canvas. Everything was cool, wet, serene, still: the stylized rose petals, the interweaving patterns of thorn, leaf, and branch, the familiar-but-novel sprinkle of rain over trees and grass. A great blue heron soared majestically overhead, painted on the sky with sure strokes as though from a calligrapher's brush.

As we drove back to campus, we passed the northwestern corner of Woodward Park, the "front" of the park, where the great bronze statue of the Indian on horseback with open arms stands to welcome guests. "Oh, look at the statue!" "Did you see the bridge? What a lovely stream!" "Oh, there's a cave! Oh, we must go back!" everyone exclaimed as we drove by the park. "Yes, yes, I'll write on my calendar 'tulips' at the beginning of April, and 'roses' at the beginning of May, so that we can come when they're in full bloom, and we must come here in the fall for a picnic--think of how lovely it will be!" I laughed.

Back on campus, I hugged Tara, Alisha, and Rachel good-bye for the last time.

I set out on the drive home, trying resolutely not to be sad. I said good-bye in my mind, murmuring the names of people and buildings aloud as I drove through campus, then out, onto the highway, and home.

At home, Sandy was in the workroom window and everyone was eating supper. Brother1 and my father helped carry all the suitcases in. Brother1 showed off by carrying the two largest suitcases himself, one in each hand. After supper, my father went to a church session meeting, while Brother1 and Daisy went to robotics. "Wear something warm," my mother advised as they left. "Hey, I'm allowed bare arms," Brother1 quipped, "it's in the Constitution." I groaned, and my mother shouted jokingly, "Get out!" (Pun: Bare arms (arms as in part of the body) and bear arms (arms as in guns)).

Between washing the dishes, my mother watched the first half of LWW with Brother2 and me. Brother2 sprawled on the sofa while I sat cross-legged on the floor with my laptop, surfing Amazon and looking for used volumes of Browning, Tennyson, de la Mare, and Hopkins. Brother2 and I chuckled at the jokes together, and he shared with me bits of trivia gleaned from the internet and the DVD extras about the "making of the movie". Halfway through watching (just after all four Pevensies had blundered into Narnia), my mother shooed Brother2 off for a bath and a poison ivy treatment. After his bath, we watched to the point where the Pevensies reach Aslan's camp. Then my mother decreed that we turn it off and go to bed.

It's either short or it's not... and this is definitely not!

Now Playing: "Paint the Sky with Stars", by Enya. Track 2, "Caribbean Blue". (Now, people, don't choke too loudly. Enya is pleasant to listen to at the end of a long day when one is emotionally and mentally exhausted. And I've made up for this apparent temporary vapidness by a fairly decent, "eclectic" mix today: Beethoven's 5th and 6th, the "Fellowship of the Ring" soundtrack, the "Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" soundtrack, and Loreena McKennitt.)

Having stayed up late last night chatting with Tara, I got up late today. At breakfast, I indulged in two thick, syrupy pieces of French toast, eaten with the pleasurable seasoning of Rachel's company. We laughed about twins, of which there are at least two sets here: Dipti and Divya (RUFers, Malaysians, seniors, and a great deal of fun to be with) and two boys who play ultimate frisbee with us occasionally on Monday evenings. There's also a set of triplets, but they're rather weird: two of the triplets look like twins, and the third triplet doesn't look anything like her sisters.

After breakfast, I spent the morning trying to study archaeology--mostly an ineffective struggle against distractions (i.e., e-mail, C.S. Lewis, and watching the softball team practice--not interesting in itself, but an excuse for not studying). Around noon, I wandered downstairs to see if Alisha wanted to go to lunch with me. She happened to have her door open, so I poked my head in, and she said she'd like to come along. We ate lunch with Dipti, Divya, Matt, and one of the twins' friends. Matt seemed rather depressed: he'd just said good-bye to the professor who'd been his senior project mentor. But he did tell me that he'd talked to the professor: "I told him that there was at least one undergraduate I knew of who was dying to take Anglo-Saxon studies," he said with a smile, "but that really isn't his specialty, and he hasn't taught it in awhile. So your best bet...." "Yeah, I know, I'm going to have to study abroad," I said with a grin. That's what I get for such obscure tastes! Matt also asked me what I thought of the past semester. "Will you miss it?" he asked. I shrugged my shoulders.

Alisha and I went to Tara's violin jury at twelve forty-five. We sat on the "dunce's bench" at the back of the concert hall, while the members of the string faculty sat in the actual chairs. Tara's performance surprised me: she's a petite, quiet, gentle girl, but when she played the violin, her vibrating sound filled the auditorium. Her professor, the violin teacher, asked her to play a B flat scale. I couldn't hear very well what the professor had said from the back of the room, so when Tara started to play her scale, I thought it was the beginning of the piece--the vibrato and phrasing were impeccable, even on a humble scale. For her actual jury, Tara played a fiery, temperamental Spanish piece, her fingers scurrying elegantly up and down the runs.

The three of us walked back to the dorm together afterward. I spent the afternoon alone, alternating hours of studying archaeology and reading C.S. Lewis. Yesterday I finished The Weight of Glory and The Problem of Pain, and by the end of the afternoon, I'd read halfway through Surprised by Joy. To be honest (though I know SwanElf and Mrs. P, if she reads this, would probably take issue), I didn't much like The Problem of Pain (though I did like parts of it). Lewis doesn't have a very high opinion of total depravity, predestination, election, and the complete inspiration of Scripture, all Calvinist doctrines deeply ingrained in my being. He tells a really weird "creation" myth to try to explain pain, attempting to combine Creation and Evolution--making Neolithic apes into Paradisial Man or something along those lines. I liked The Weight of Glory a lot. A couple of years ago, my father read the first essay in that book to me at Quartz Mountain (an arts camp) on a Sabbath afternoon: I'd been banished to Quartz Mountain, but he was allowed to come down on Sabbath and take me to church. After church in the morning, we spent the afternoon together. I'll never forget sitting on the porch outside the cafeteria, listening to him read: the green-and-gold scurries of wind ruffling the huge face of Lake Altus-Lugert, the afternoon sun glowing on the rose granite mountains, the little striped lizard sneaking out from behind a low wall onto the hot concrete, the rough edge of the table on my elbows and forehead, and the homesick longing which Lewis's sermon stirred in me.

At six-twenty, Syneva and I picked up some girls (Rachel, Anne, Kathryn) in the parking lot and drove in our separate cars to Jenna's house for supper for our Bible study. Jenna had made sticky spaghetti with delicious meat-and-mushroom sauce to go with it, and a large salad with lettuce, strawberries, and almonds, and French bread. We sat around the oval table in the small dining room and chatted (though I must admit I paid more attention to the food than the conversation). When we'd finished eating, Jenna eagerly took us upstairs to show us the room that she and her husband, Mr. B, have created for their one-year-old daughter, Anna. They've walled off the end of the long, low room under the roof, which serves as Mr. B's study. They've made a bedroom out of this little room, opening onto the study. They painted the room pale purple (a shade pinker than the purple on Princess's bedroom walls). The bedroom has a little high window and a ceiling fan--it's small, with a low, sloping roof, but very snug and cozy. Downstairs again, Syneva dished up generous portions of chocolate brownies and butter pecan (or vanilla) ice cream for everyone. Jenna woke Anna from her nap, and the seven of us sat in the little screened-in porch off the dining room. I perched on the threshold and slowly ate the creamy, gooey sweetness. Jenna spooned leftover spaghetti into Anna's mouth, with bites of ice cream. I chuckled when I saw Anna's eyebrows go up when Jenna gave her her first mouthful of ice cream. Anna begged for more. :)

We were comfortably quiet, listening to the creaks of the little old house, and the tap of a neighbor's hammer across the street, and the clatter of sparrows in the eaves. The house still tingled comfortably with Italian smells: garlic, tomato, basil, thyme. The open louvres of the screened windows, and the thick-bladed St. Augustine grass outside, reminded me of my grandparents' house in San Antonio. I shut my eyes and half-expected to see Grampy's skein of thick silk ribbons tied against the wall, and the old panoramic-view photographs of balloon races and harbors, and the tall, black stools standing on either side of the raised fireplace. In the middle of the screened porch there used to be a black wooden table, and over the table hung a low lamp on a chain. My mother told me once that when Grammy left the room during supper, Grampy used to push the lamp to start it swinging, and then he and my uncle and my mother would all sway in rhythm with the lamp, as though they were on shipboard. That would startle Grammy when she came into the room, and make her scold them.

Mr. B came home as we sat on the porch, and he joined us with a big plate of spaghetti: he joked he was glad that we weren't boys, because if we were, we'd have eaten all the food and left none for him. At eight o'clock, Syneva left with Rachel to go to a hymn-sing at the Ks' house. I took Anne and Kathryn back to campus. As I walked back to my room, I stopped by the study lounge in my dorm where Alisha was working on her second twenty-page paper. She had finished ten pages, but the paper is due tomorrow. I flopped down in a chair, and we chatted for forty-five minutes. We talked about various things: papers and finals, of course (these topics form the bread-and-butter of every college conversation, as I've discovered). We discussed her missions trip with Tara to South Africa this summer. She puzzled over the "cocktail" of shots she'll have to take in order to go, immunizations for all sorts of peculiar tropical diseases.

I showered, and then sat down here with determination to write down this long monologue. I realized as I folded away my clothes after my shower that I am going to miss this after all--realized with a sort of wide-eyed, Father Brown surprise. I'll miss Honors classes (but none of the other classes! :), and, most of all, I'll miss my friends: Alisha, Syneva, the Jennys, Tara, Rachel. I'll miss seeing someone I know every day, and being able to sit down and talk about things we both know intimately. I hate this: I wish the two worlds could be together, and all the wires could cross. But that's impossible. I have to live two different lives. At home I can talk all about abstract fun times or nasty classes, but when it comes to the philosophical theories about Love and Beauty and Art, which I discuss with Rachel, or the sideways jokes about music with Syneva, or the serious discussions about being lonely and missions trips with Alisha--none of this seems to cross over.

"Off in the distance is my wish under moonlight/On my way home, I remember/Only new days/On my way home, I remember/All the best days"....

“Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.” (C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 103)

"Listen, O daughter, consider, and incline your ear; forget your own people also, and your father's house; so the King will greatly desire your beauty; because He is your Lord, worship Him." (Psalm 45:10-11)

slow day....

Now Playing: "The Phantom of the Opera" soundtrack by Andrew Lloyd-Weber. Track 14, "Learn to be Lonely".

This morning I ate breakfast in my room: the Ls' doughy bread and orange spice tea. I wrote in my journal and wrote e-mails, studied archaeology, and studied RBL. Just as I was looking over the midterm exam from RBL, Tara knocked on my door and asked me if I wanted to go to lunch with her. We went downstairs to collect Alisha, and as the three of us were walking out the door, we bumped into Jenny, who joined us. After lunch, I spent the afternoon studying: first RBL, for an hour, then archaeology, for an hour. Then I slept for an hour-and-a-half, and then studied MBW for half-an-hour. At five-thirty, I walked downstairs to meetMatt, Sam, Asher, Daniel, Tara, Rachel, and Jenny to drive over to Bartlesville for supper at the house of the Ds, Jenny’s friends and members of the church the Ks go to, I think.

We finally left. I led for awhile because Jenny gave me directions, and Matt didn’t have directions, but once we were on the highway for the forty-five minute drive, Matt zoomed ahead. He tried to get me to race, by pulling alongside close, then zipping ahead, but I just plugged along steadily, despite the hoots and laughter of Jenny and Asher, who tried to goad me into racing. Jenny finally decided that we should go around the car, and everyone should list the characteristics of their ideal spouse. *cough*

We finally found the Ds' house: a little brown house, comfortable and plain. The Ds are an older couple—their children are grown, but they’re still working. Mr. D is tall and rather heavyset, with crew-cut grey hair and thick-rimmed glasses. He’s from Boston and his accent confused me occasionally. Mrs. D is shorter, slender, with blond hair and a pretty face. Everything about her was youthfully elegant. She’s from Mississippi, and spoke with a slight drawl. They welcomed us warmly. They have a huge dog, a Great Dane named Elsa. She’s cream-colored, and her head comes above my waist. When everyone went outside onto the back porch, Elsa galloped around like a horse, being very friendly and very excited. She could easily have bowled Tara or me over, so Mrs. D banished her indoors. The dog obediently stood in the laundry room, kept back only by a plastic baby gate leaning against the laundry room doorway. She could easily have knocked it over or leaped over it, but she just stood there, tail wagging slowly, watching us disappointedly.

Outside, Mr. D set up the grill and cooked the meat, while Asher, Tara, Mrs. D, Rachel, and Jenny played croquet on the lawn. Daniel, Sam, Matt, and I watched. Jenny and Mrs. D teased each other constantly: both were pretty competitive. Jenny only laughed at everyone, and won. I spotted a robin nesting in the little pear tree behind the back porch, and I pointed her out to Tara and Rachel. You could just see the robin’s black-and-white flecked head poking above the edge of the sturdy little nest, which was wedged carefully between two thick branches. I lay in the grass and listened to the hum of conversation. The sky above was aquamarine, vibrating behind the shimmer of smoke from the grill. Above the wooden privacy fence, I could see another row of houses behind the Ds’, and then nothing but an open meadow—harsh golden-brown grass, rippling young green on the trees, leaves catching saffron light like water on their palms as the sun set. When the meat had finished grilling, we gathered on the back porch, and Mr. D prayed, thanking God for “this day, which is a manifestation of You”, and for the food.

Everyone gathered around two tables on the back porch, and we ate our smoky meal with good fellowship. The conversation finally settled on movies, specifically thriller/horror movies. Mrs. D laughed about a time when she had just watched a horror movie with an incredibly spooky main character. Her husband had dressed up as the main character, lurking in the dark hallway, and had nearly frightened her to hysterics. “It was pretty funny,” he laughed as she told the story. “It’s funny now, but it wasn’t then!” she protested. I curled up in my chair, shivering in the cold south wind that was blowing over the porch. When everyone had finished eating, we cleared away the paper plates and cups, and went indoors. Mr. D brewed coffee and tea, while Mrs. D passed around a platter of soft cookies. Elsa eyed the proceedings from behind her baby gate. We stood or sat around the small dining room and kitchen, attracted like moths to the warm light. Matt and Jenny told funny stories about their crazy cats. Veterinarians told Matt's family that one of their cats needed to be put on antidepressants because she would spend all day staring out the window, terrified that she would be attacked. Jenny laughed about her psycho cat: “Yeah, if you’re standing and looking out the door, the cat will leap at you, dig its back claws into your knee, and bite you, to make you let it out,” Jenny laughed.

At about nine-thirty, Jenny said, “Well, sorry guys, but I need to do some studying when I get back. I think it’s time to go.” Mr. and Mrs. D gave us a hearty, friendly farewell. They invited us all to come back, and were deep in conversation with Matt about playing Risk the next time he visited as we walked out the door.

On the way to Tulsa, Jenny said, “I’m going to have to listen to some more peppy music. Do you mind?” “No,” I said, with a little sigh. We’d been listening to Loreena McKennitt on the way there, but I think I was the only one who enjoyed it. Daniel and Tara, sitting in the back seat, kept up a friendly, brother-sister conversation the whole way back to Tulsa, while Jenny surfed the radio, looking for a good station. She found country, and classical (“Ew!” Tara squealed from the back seat), and a Latino rap group (“Ugh!” I groaned from the front seat), and finally a Christian rock station, which she settled on. She sang along to the songs as the dark miles rolled by. I asked her questions about going home and about summer conference—we talked about cooking (she and her brother like to cook together) and catamarans.

I relaxed when I saw the familiar skyscrapers poking unexpectedly above the black hills, star-staircases against the blank sky. Trying to weave my way through the maze of highways, I took the wrong turn. So we ended up driving the “scenic” route through Tulsa, past factories, bars, and pawn shops. The car bumped and thudded over the rutted road. Again, I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw lights—this time, the string of white lights that line the eastern boundary of campus along the sidewalk past the fraternity houses and the basketball gym.

Back in Lottie, Tara, Jenny, and I marched down to see Alisha. “Hi, Alisha! I’m going to go check my mail, then meet me in the study lounge, and we’ll study,” Jenny said brusquely. “She said she’d be really stressed tonight,” Alisha chuckled as she turned off her laptop to move it down to the study lounge. “How many pages do you have?” Tara asked, looking at the draft of Alisha’s twenty-page paper for her liberalism class. “Fourteen point one,” Alisha said, tallying the pages up on a scrap of paper. She and Tara discussed plans for shopping at resale stores. I finally went upstairs to bed, though the rest of them planned to study for another couple of hours (it was ten-thirty).

In my room, I saw the light flicking on the answering machine. To my delight, I found a message from Violin—it was just a pleasure to hear her voice. Then I checked my e-mail. Dr. T had sent me an e-mail concerning my revision of a poem I'd written for our extra credit assignment. He wrote, “You, my dear, need extra credit for a grade like a hole in the head...:-) but I must admit I did read it and I like it.” It made me smile. I must be such a stinker of a student to have! Always bothering my professors to read drafts and extra credits and such. I showered, read Luke, and went to bed.

dead days... really?

Now Playing: "The Book of Secrets" by Loreena McKennitt. Track 5, "The Highwayman".

Well, well, look at this.... I've actually been on here for a year-and-a-day. Yesterday was the year anniversary of this blog. But don't go back and read those posts, because I was still figuring out how it worked.

My thanks to those who suffered through that last post. I admit, it was dreadfully long. This one may be somewhat shorter and thus more manageable.

Today was the first dead day. No classes and not much happening on campus. I woke early and drove out to the Ls’ house to give Karis a lesson. Karis opened the front door with a smile. Everyone was still eating breakfast, except Karis. The house smelled warmly of freshly baked bread. “I just baked them,” Mrs. L said, pointing to racks of honey-brown loaves on the counter, “and I’d like to give you one when you leave.” Karis and I had a good lesson in the little cluttered schoolroom: meter, rhyme, and pun.

At ten o'clock, I met with Dr. A about my Honors paper. I found her in a cheerful mood. We laughed about interruptions: she told me that being a religion professor has its drawbacks because she’s constantly getting calls or e-mails from people who want to know things that they could just as easily find out by looking at the Bible. “I had a news reporter call me over Easter and ask me if the resurrection had really happened!” she laughed. “I told him to go look at the Bible.” We talked about my paper, straightening things out somewhat. She encouraged me in a couple of spots that I had been unsure about. When there was nothing else to say, and neither one of us could stretch the time any longer, I left. “Salve!” she murmured after me as I went down the narrow hall. I returned to my room with a bittersweet feeling.

For the rest of the morning, I worked on my Honors paper. Tara knocked on my door at about twelve-thirty. “Hi, Evelyn! Ready to watch a movie?” she asked. We went down to the Lottie lobby together to watch “Whisper of the Heart”, an Anime film that Matt had lent me and had recommended to both Tara and me. We curled up in the lobby on the floor in front of the big TV. The lobby was dim and empty, the tall windows only showing strips of cold, grey sky outside. Using the overstuffed footstool as a table, I sliced chunks off the warm, doughy loaf that the Ls had given me, spread them with butter and jam, and ate that as we watched. I shared the bread with Tara, too. The movie was sweet, if a little corny in places--about a girl who writes fairytales. The animation was impressive: some of the scenes of the sky were so detailed as to look real.

After the movie, I spent the afternoon trying to study, though I was so sleepy that my attempts weren’t very successful. In the evening, I walked over to Kendall Hall for a staged reading of “Everyman” by one of the other Honors sections, Dr. C’s section. The theatre they used was Theatre II, smaller than the main theatre and used mostly for classes. I stepped through a narrow entry area into the theatre itself, which was basically a big, black box. No windows, but a ceiling that shot up to a dusty roof. Props, cords, and chairs were tossed untidily in the corners. Red sheets covered a bank of mirrors across the room. I glanced about uneasily as I took my seat in one of the few rows of chairs that had been set up. There was no stage, but the center of the floor had been cleared and set with props for the play. Students from the Honors section, the actors, horsed around. As the play began, the seats around me filled up: most of the audience was late, including Rachel, who winked at me as she came in. The class performed “Everyman” in its entirety. Each actor wore a black T-shirt with the name of his or her character printed across the chest. The stage was set up with twelve stations, and at each station was an actor embodying some characteristic: Good Deeds, Wealth, Fellowship, Beauty, Strength, Knowledge, etc. Each actor had a prop to clue the audience as to his or her characteristic. Danielle, playing Five Wits, scribbled busily in a notebook, while the boy who played Wealth had on a big shiny belt buckle and strings of plastic Mardi Gras beads strung around his neck, and Fellowship drank constantly from a plastic tankard. A small girl sitting beside me giggled at the most religious parts and made fun of the actors. The actors themselves were rather irreverent: Whitney, a girl, played God. On a philosophical level, I found the good-works-will-save-you message disappointing (to put it mildly).

After the play ended,I spent the hour until RUF studying. During RUF, the group sung many hymns, with readings from Isaiah interspersed. After the time of worship, Mr. K asked the seniors to come up and give testimonies. Then Mr. K turned off the lights, Jason turned on his laptop, and we watched a slideshow of pictures from the past year set to various songs. (If you want to see a few pictures from the slideshow, go to Jenny S.’s Xanga.) I began to realize just what a blessing this semester has been, in some ways. After the slideshow, Mr. K asked his wife to pray for the seniors, and she did, solidly and faithfully mentioning each one of them. He closed, pronouncing the benediction on our bowed heads.

After RUF, I stood and talked with Syneva about our plans to go to the Philbrook. Alisha stopped by to tell us that she probably won’t be able to go (we were hoping to go together as a threesome) because she has two twenty-page papers due, and she spent most of the afternoon today on the phone trying to straighten out complications with airplane tickets: she and Tara are going to South Africa on a mission trip this summer, and somehow her tickets were messed up. Mandi came by to work out details for the barbecue/game night this Friday. Then she looked at me. “Hey, am I going to see you again?” I shook my head with a smile. “Well, I guess I’d better say good-bye then.” She hugged me. “You’d better hug her twice,” Syneva said snidely, watching us with an impish grin, “You know she’s going on an airplane, and you may never see her again. She might die.” “Oh, dear! Will I be invited to the funeral?” Mandi asked. “Yeah, sure. I’ll be there. Sort of. But I won’t be able to hug you,” I laughed.

After awhile, Syneva and I decided to leave. We walked to Lottie, where I went up to my room to grab Esther’s amaryllis plant, which had been donated by my mother and Brother2 for me to give her. Syneva came along to see my room. We scurried over to the apartment, bracing ourselves against the cold north wind that raced down the street. Syneva opened the door to the apartment, and we stepped into the warmth thankfully. The living room was dim with lamplight. Esther lay on the sofa, wrapped in blankets, her neck still in its brace. Flowers in vases stood everywhere—on the counter, on the TV table, on the dining table. “Smells like a greenhouse in here,” I commented, sniffing the polleny chlorophyll smell. I sat on a chair by the TV, while Syneva sprawled on the floor. The three of us carried on a good conversation, Syneva contributing snide jabs whenever there was an opportunity. Esther was quite pleased to see the amaryllis, though it’s only budding now, and eagerly requested that I ask my mother for directions about keeping it over the winter. Esther’s mother, sitting elegantly in an armchair by the sofa, said that one of Esther’s great-uncles used to keep a greenhouse full of amaryllises.

I told Esther that the neighbors across the balcony from the apartment were moving out. “Good!” she said. “Too bad there isn’t much time left to enjoy it.” “They were the noisiest people here,” Syneva explained, “their parties would spill out onto the balcony.” “And whenever you went over there,” Esther added, “it reeked of beer. I went over there a couple of times to ask them to be quiet, and they would quiet down, at least long enough for me to go to sleep.” I told them the story from our old house: When it was on the market, of course, there was a “For Sale” sign in the front yard. One night, when the house was dark, a group of students from one of the rental houses down the street decided to have a party. The party spilled over into our yard. M woke up in the middle of the night to discover two people smooching outside her bedroom window! Not best pleased with the situation, she marched outside in her nightgown, her hair all frizzled, brandishing a broom. All she had to do was turn on the porch light, and her fearsome appearance frightened off the intruders immediately. Esther laughed and laughed.

Syneva walked with me back to Lottie because she had to pick up her car from the parking lot. When I tried to take a shower, there was no hot water, and as a result, I lay in bed and shivered uncontrollably for an hour before I fell asleep.

It never rains but it pours--literally!

Warning: This post is a whopper. It should hold you guys over for awhile. :)

It's been quite an exciting day. I woke up grumpy this morning, not looking forward to having to spend two more weeks in school. But somehow, things conspired to make the afternoon and evening quite exciting....

We begin the saga with this afternoon at one-thirty, when I was innocently working on my Honors paper in my room. Glancing out the window, I noticed that the sky was starting to get dark and the wind was kicking up. The more time went on, the darker the sky became and the stronger the wind grew. So I decided to walk over to Chapman Hall for Honors class before the storm hit. Bundling my books into my knapsack, I started off. When I opened the door into the outside, the wind hit my face. My skirt kited around my knees. I was thankful, for once, for the warm, heavy load of books on my back, a good ballast against the wind.

I curled up in the entry area in Chapman with my books on a bench, but the storm outside distracted me. The three-story windows soared up, expanse of glass like a clear waterfall, showing the turmoil outside: clouds whirling overhead, foaming like waves, seething like live things. The elm and goldenrain trees outside Chapman kicked into a white froth. Leaves, plastic bags, debris flailing through the air, whipped high over the buildings. Power crackled from cloud to cloud. Occasionally, a petite Asian girl would poke her head out of the writing center and stare, worried, at the sky. People banged into the entry area, the glass doors slamming behind them. Some laughed, some exclaimed, some cursed. Two women came in, giggling and breathless. One of them called her husband “on the farm” to tell him to “cover the greenhouse”. Water streaked glasses and beaded damp skin. At two fifty, I walked upstairs, just ahead of Dr. A. Nicole entered, too. We were just getting settled down, marveling at the strength of the storm, when a sound like a gunnery in full fire splintered the silence. Rain, mixed with hail, battered the windows, hard barrage of ice and water. As though the sky were a big ship-of-the-line attacking a little sloop. Nicole and I pressed our faces to the glass. All over the building we could hear squeals of surprise and dismay. Every one of the huge plateglass windows was under attack: I wondered if they would all shatter, the storm having battered in our portals, leaving the building to sink under ice cold water and wind. Jessica and Lewis blustered in. “Ow, ow, ow!” Jessica was complaining, “See! Look! That’s from the hail!” she gestured to several red welts on her bare legs. “We don’t have storms like this in Kentucky!” she moaned. “I’m just wondering about my car,” Dr. A said, “While I was visiting my mother in Minnesota over the break, they had baseball-size hail that damaged my car. I just had it repaired. One of the other professors took my keys and said he’d put it into shelter, but I hope he was in time!” I wondered uncomfortably about my own car. Rachel entered, soaked to the skin, her hair dark and wet as though she’d just been washing it.

Dr. A finally managed to establish order, and class commenced. She wrapped up our survey of the Middle Ages by discussing other eras’ attitudes toward the Middle Ages. She also described to us the main characteristic of the Middle Ages: “If you run across any piece of art or literature that presumes a center, a focus point, then it’s medieval. If it presumes an orderly cosmos and a certain ‘fitness’ to things, then it’s medieval.” My mind leaped to the Calvinist doctrine of vocation, and C.S. Lewis’s theories about all human beings being made to glorify some specific aspect of God, either by beatitude or by judgment, for both these systems presume a “fitness”, an aptitude, to the world. Russ came in for the last fifteen minutes of class, just as Dr. A reached this climax. He, Nicole, and Rachel carried on the discussion about whether Christ’s physical body had to be physically handsome as a manifestation of His divinity. The rest of us listened. After class, Rachel and I walked outside into a fairly tranquil world. The wind still soughed intermittently through the trees, sprinkling thick drops, like silver seeds, on the sidewalk. But in the west the sky was a-dazzle with pale yellow. Rachel went to put on some dry clothes. I hurried to the parking lot to inspect my car, which was undamaged, then spent the afternoon working on the Honors paper.

As the afternoon progressed, the sky began to darken again. A huge, branched canopy of cloud blossomed overhead, as though a tall, dark tree were unfolding above the campus. Wind returned to stir the trees. I went running. The wind yanked my hair loose, as it had yanked leaves loose. My new shoes squelched through mud and slithered on drifts of fallen leaves, pressed like hands to the damp sidewalk. As I ran past Twin South, I passed Andrew, who greeted me courteously. Back in my room, I showered, then walked over to the cafeteria for supper. Andrew, Katie, and Crystal were sitting at the usual table together: the long table on the west side of the cafeteria. As I strolled up, Andrew said, “I saw Evelyn running today. It made me feel lazy.” “You are lazy,” Katie teased. She and Crystal insulted him for awhile. Jenny joined us, and Rachel. We sat and laughed and talked. Asher came, too. Asher asked if Rachel and I were going to the orchestra concert tonight: it’s at the PAC downtown. Asher called Kevin’s parents, and we managed to work it out, in the end, so that Kevin’s parents would take both Rachel and me. After supper, we parted: I returned to my room, where I tweaked my paper some more and yanked on a blue sweater over my lime green Systematic Theology Class T-shirt.

At seven o’clock, I skipped downstairs to meet Kevin’s parents on the southeast corner of Twin South. Rachel hurried up, while Asher, JAH [Jenny H.], Matt L., and Jason emerged from various locations. JAH was dressed in crisp black-and-white. “I felt like dressing up tonight,” she explained, flouncing her loose white skirt. We stood on the kerb for awhile, waiting. A couple of dudes in a rip-roaring green pickup truck howled by. “They’re going out to chase the storm,” JAH said noncommittally. Staring west, I saw that they indeed had a storm to chase: a line of angry blue clouds strung across the horizon. Already its vanguard had begun to ride over the university, and the main body of the force was swallowing up the skyscrapers downtown. A nervous RA from Twin Towers, in baggy pants and carrying an oversized flashlight, watched jumpily with us. The air was dead still, heavy. Everyone jumped then: the tornado sirens went off. Adrenaline licked through my body, lacing every vein. We scurried inside, while the eerie sirens screamed like aliens in the background. Inside Twin South, the RA strode up and down the halls, thudding on the doors with the butt of his flashlight. People crowded out of their rooms into the narrow hallway. We (Jason, Matt L., Rachel, JAH, and I) went down to the end of the west hallway, where we found James and Eleanor, together as usual. David and Spencer joined us later.

For awhile, people were pretty rowdy. We were on the boys’ hall, and the crowd was made up mostly of boys, who sat down the hall from us, shouting and guffawing, stirring about impatiently. We occupied the sliver of hall across from the room that James and Asher share. James let JAH, Rachel, and me inside. We poked our heads up to the window, and JAH gasped in awe. “Look, you guys!” The blank darkness that had enveloped downtown was surging toward us, though the air at our level was dead still. “That’s bad,” I said, “if it was raining or windy, then we’d be safe. But that’s bad.” The trees were still as becalmed ships. We crowded back into the noisy hallway. JAH called Kevin, urgently telling him to call his parents and tell them to get to shelter. Rachel and I followed JAH into another boy’s room, where someone showed us radar pictures: an angry red blot, like a brushfire, boiling toward us. We tried to settle down in the hall. JAH brought a box of food from James’s room, and she and Rachel munched goldfish and fig newtons. I whispered snide remarks in Rachel’s ear about asking to be saved from the zoo in Twin South. “I’d rather brave the tornado than this mob in here!” Rachel paraphrased with a chuckle. The boys were scattered up and down the hall, like pieces of their own messy belongings that were strewn about their rooms. A boy and his girlfriend were playing computer games on their laptops, side-by-side.

But us RUFers congregated together, around Jason and James and the guitar. I reminisced to Rachel and JAH, remembering all the funny stories I could about tornado alerts at home: how my father had to shake Brother1 awake one night when a tornado really was coming because Brother1 had slept through the sirens; how we dragged all our pets (guinea pig, rabbit, and cats) into my parents' closet to wait out the storm—how the cats had been terrified of the rabbit, and the rabbit terrified of the guinea pig (sharing the cat carrier with him), and the guinea pig had quietly munched his hay in the cat carrier, and how the cats had paced nervously until we penned them in my parents' bathroom. Jason sang dead love songs about cowboys, with a rakish grin (he knew he was being silly). Occasionally, he would interrupt himself to advise Matt L. about what chords to play next. Matt L., who’s very proficient at the guitar, strummed away imperturbably. Then he passed the guitar to James, and opened his Bible—for the rest of our forty-five minute imprisonment, he read studiously, an impassive smile on his face. Meanwhile, Jason, who’s always onstage, flipped out his umbrella in perfect timing to “Just A Spoonful of Sugar” from “Mary Poppins”: JAH, Rachel, and I sang along to the chorus. He sang a song from “Willy Wonka”, and JAH followed his voice. We were interrupted by the strict RD, who told us in no uncertain terms not to open the bedroom doors, to stay in the hall, and to be quiet and still if the power went out. After her announcement, the rowdiness resumed, storm surging back over its own eye. JAH sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”, her husky voice twining itself with a lovely, unexpected twang through the tune, while Jason sang bass. Jason, JAH, and Rachel sang rounds. Then Jason and JAH sang something about a lion coming out tonight. JAH’s voice ululated up through trilling African animal calls, while Jason burred away below her. I sat and scribbled prayers in my journal. Spencer grinned rakishly at me from behind a corner.

Finally, at seven forty-five, they announced that we could leave. “The storm will be back in about an hour-and-a-half. There’s another one coming up I-35. So you all can go out and get whatever you need to, but be ready to come back.” Jason, David, JAH, Matt L., JAH, and Asher decided that they were going to go to the concert, though JAH changed into jeans and a T-shirt. “I’m not getting caught in a tornado in this!” she said, waving a hand at her finery. Rachel decisively marched back to the Honors House. I hesitated: I wanted to go to the concert, to listen to the orchestra perform, but my mind lingered on my laptop and my unsaved paper sitting up in my room. So, wishing aloud that I had more courage, I hugged JAH good-bye and ran back to Lottie.

I spent the evening working on my paper, which is almost finished, except for the conclusion. It has a wonderful, rousing bit toward the end: God was gracious to give me some epiphanies today in the realm of Anglo-Saxon poetry. Between writing, I listened to NPR on my computer and watched out the window. Big storms were moving through Oklahoma City and Stillwater, so I sat and prayed, and wondered what was happening in Tulsa. At nine o’clock, I strolled down to the study lounge for the hall meeting. I curled up on the sofa to write in my journal. Tara bounced in, wearing blue plush pajama pants. “Hi, E--!” she cried, “I haven’t seen you all day!” We discussed plans for watching a movie tomorrow, and wagged our heads over the storm, as everyone else was doing. When most of the girls had arrived, Julie, our RA, came in and talked to us about proper tornado procedures and the process for checking out. We listened attentively: a rim of girls around the room, all eyes. Not a silence of mere respect: Julie had brought ice cream, which kept everyone quiet. J I slowly slurped my vanilla-and-chocolate until the meeting was over. Julie begged us to finish the ice cream, so Tara and I both helped ourselves to seconds.

I asked Tara if I could come down to her room to write in my journal. “Sure,” Tarasaid cheerily. I padded after her to the room down the hall, which she and Jenny share. She perched on her bed, and I sprawled on the floor, and we ate our ice cream flavored with companionable conversation. Outside, the storm had returned: lightning danced devilishly across the sky, like blue witch-fire. Then came thunder, low and ominous like beating drums, then louder, until I half expected to see pieces of the sky crumbling off. Rain spattered the windows, then fell harder and harder, until the window was covered by another window of rippling water. Rain blew in sheets across the parking lot outside, driven from the north. I settled down to write in my journal. The room was fairly quiet: hiss of rain on the window, growl of thunder, and the buzz of Jenny’s weather bug. The bug perches on Jenny’s shelf and chirps like a loud cricket whenever the weather is changing: it’s been singing a real solo tonight. Tara asked about how tornados form, and I tried to explain about hot and cold air and fronts and things. At ten o’clock, Tara left to study with Nicole, but she said that I could stay in her room as long as I wanted. Too lazy to move, I accepted her offer. I’m crouched on the floor like just another stack of books, amid flip-flops, knapsacks, socks, papers, and empty styrofoam ice cream bowls. The storm has quieted outside. I’m tired myself.

high time for a "real" post

Now Playing: Focus on the Family Radio Theatre, "The Voyage of the 'Dawn Treader'" by C.S. Lewis. Track 3, "On Board the 'Dawn Treader'".

Well, I'm sorry that I haven't posted on here in so long. But this week has gone fairly well. Three papers are done, with one to go, due at the end of finals week. Today I'm playing my flute jury (for which I'd appreciate prayer), and after that, there's finals.

Another piece of good news: Esther came back to Tulsa yesterday. She's in the apartment she's been living in this semester with Syneva and one of their other friends, Rachael.

Yesterday was a fairly normal day, but since it's been awhile, I guess I'll just tell you all about what happened then.

Classes are starting to draw to a close. In MBW today, Dr. F brought in two recordings: one of "Beowulf" read in Old English, and one of the same poem read in modern English by Seamus Heaney, an Irishman who recently made a famous translation of "Beowulf". She played excerpts from both readings for us, the Old English first. I shut my eyes and listened in delight to the hard, bright syllables, the sharp, warlike rhythm. I could catch some of the phrases. Then she played "Beowulf" in modern English. Heaney read mellowly, soothing, turning the battle poem into a lullaby. When the excerpts were over, Dr. F asked us what the differences were between the two. She asked, "Would you all like it if I put on the Anglo-Saxon reading for the rest of the class period?" She expected, and got, an enthusiastic "No!" from everyone--except me, of course, who sat and smouldered quietly at the back of the room. "You could fall asleep to Heaney's reading," someone said happily. I wrinkled my nose. I could've listened to the Anglo-Saxon indefinitely: harsh in its loveliness, like sunshine streaking through clouds, clashing on wet grass. I must say that Dr. F always gets the response she wants from the class. She may claim, and the students may boast, that they're thinking for themselves and being truthful and innovative, but they're all sitting smugly on the same bandwagon together.

In archaeology, Dr. O lectured more about the Maya, the last civilization we've studied this semester. Like Dr. F, Dr. O always draws in the most abrasive political criticism--he usually isn't openly angry about it, but he snidely mocks Christianity and Conservatives. Like Dr. F, who harps endlessly on the fact that Heaney, an Irishman, definitively translated the English "Beowulf". Dr. O is always wagging his head about overpopulation and the like, which seems ironic, considering that the population of the world could comfortably fit into the state of Texas! Either their conclusions are warped, or they make an enormous mountain out of a molehill. Both of them also adopt the confident position, "We used to think.... Now we know....", as though modern man is now omniscient. Darwinism at work: progress is assumed. *cough* "I've seen it all in an egg. In Narnia, we call that going bad."

After class, I practiced my flute. As I swabbed out my flute in my room, A.C. knocked on my door. I was pleased and surprised: she moved out of the dorm last week, and I didn't think I'd see her again. The two of us ate lunch with Tara and Alisha. I spent the afternoon working on my Honors paper, typing up a study guide for archaeology, and sleeping. The Honors paper has been enjoyable to write: poking through dusty old books about Anglo-Saxon poetry, reading scraps on their history and looking at glossy pictures of intricate jewelry and crumbling walls. One book I found is a wonderful anthology of the different genres of Anglo-Saxon literature, with a nice, concise history of the people in the front, and photographs of artifacts and architecture sprinkled throughout.

There were very few people in the cafeteria during supper this evening. Most of the other RUFers, including Rachel, went to spend the weekend at a vacation house on Grand Lake. A family in the church that most of the RUFers go to owns the vacation house, and occasionally invites everyone down there for a weekend. After supper, I walked around campus, studied, then went to a performance of a student string quartet in Tyrrell Hall. Syneva was playing cello. They performed Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" string quartet, the quartet in D minor. They played very well: an intense, delightful performance of a very difficult piece of music. Syneva frowned angrily at the low, growly bits, or raised her eyebrows at the plucking, and grinned at the first violinist as each movement began. I heard someone say afterward, "That cellist is crazy!", which made me smile.

After the concert, there was a reception in the hallway outside the performance hall. Mrs. C, Syneva's mother, brought a small chocolate fountain, and fruit to dip in the melted chocolate. One of the other girls brought cookies, and the second violinist's mother, who's Greek, made baklava. I stood and chatted with Mrs. C and Mandi. Mrs. C watched in consternation as people accidentally dribbled melted chocolate in her new white brocade tablecloth. A plump woman served fluffy pink punch, and everyone crowded in the hall and talked. I ate a piece of the baklava--gooey and crunchy, and so honey-sweet as to be almost bitter.

I ran back to my dorm, for the sheer joy of it, and showered, and tried to go to sleep. Of course, the girl who lives next door to me, as usual, had friends over, and they were (also as usual) watching a noisy movie. So it took a long while before I finally drifted off.

update

Now Playing: "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" soundtrack by Howard Shore. Track 6, "At the Sign of the Prancing Pony".

From what I've heard, Esther is doing better. Her injuries were mostly to the head, but the doctors say that she will recover. She's quite conscious, though on heavy pain medications, but she's able to talk and to remember. She's physically well enough to stand up and walk about, but because of the nature of her injuries, she gets dizzy easily. Hopefully, she'll be back in Tulsa by this weekend (she's been at the hospital in Oklahoma City these past days). Thursday evening, one of the other RUF girls is driving down to see Esther, and Rachel and I are planning to go with her.

Thank you all for your prayers.

a prayer request

I just learned that Esther, one of the seniors in RUF, was in a bad car accident last night. The doctors say that she's in "serious but stable" condition. Please pray for her, and for wisdom for the doctors, and for comfort for her family.

briefly....

First, two notes of thanks: One to SwanElf, who made a batch of delicious ginger cookies two weekends ago. They kept me awake through several rounds of studying for the Major British Writers paper, and kept me company last Saturday afternoon as I read through a book (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy--don't ask why, and don't read it unless you want to skim a lot and laugh mildly). And one to Marigold, Princess, and Daisy, who made a batch of bloom buns on Saturday. Marigold was thoughtful enough to send three back with me, one of which I ate for breakfast this morning--delicious cinnamon-and-sugar, though sticky, washed down with a cup of orange spice tea.

Second, a link. Go to www.photobucket.com . Type in "Elfellyn" for the username, and "psalm84" for the password, and you'll have a link to some of the pictures from last Friday. Most of you won't know any of the people, but I did write out a few captions, and at least you'll get a sense of what the goings-on looked like.

yesterday afternoon/evening (an edited journal entry)

Note: My apologies to all of you who go into Information Oveload Mode. :) This post is rather long (that being an understatement). But I still value your comments, even if it's only "hi" to let me know that you stopped by.

This afternoon I spent a little time studying before I collected my belongings and hurried outside to meet Jenny H. and Kathryn at four-fifteen. We were going to drive to Jenna’s house and make supper for ourselves, Jenna, Kevin, Crystal, Asher, and Andrew. As I went outside, I realized that the sky was totally dark. Rain had begun to spit down, in cold flakes. When I turned the corner of the building and stepped out onto the street, the wind hit me so that I almost fell over backwards. It swirled around the corner of the building, turning in on itself so that my body was yanked in all directions at once. I forced my way across the street to my car, and hastily took shelter, shivering, in the driver’s seat. Jenny H. joined me, and we both sat, shivering and waiting for Kathryn. Jenny H. outlined to us her plans for the evening’s cooking, and we listened like obedient servants of an elite chef. It began to rain properly as we drove to Jenna’s house. I tried to wipe my windshield, but it was so dirty from the dust storm last night that the windshield blades created a morass through which I could hardly see. At Jenna’s house, Jeremy, her husband, was cooking pancakes, which he shared with Anna while the four of us started to cook. Jenna put a country CD onto the CD player—a drawling woman, her voice rollicking over the clanking piano. Jenna put on the rice to steam, while I ripped up cabbage leaves, and Kathryn sliced carrots. I sat at the little high table in the kitchen, across from Jeremy, with Anna between us. Through forkfuls of pancake, Anna would turn to stare at me. The wet cabbage leaves reeked. Rice sizzled on the stove as Jenna sliced fat from half-a-dozen chicken breasts. Jenny H. needed the blender to puree onions, garlic, carrots, cabbage, and chicken, and this sent Jenna and Jeremy on a hunt to find the parts of the blender, which were scattered through the cabinet. Jenny H. made do with what they could find. She dumped the sliced onions into a bowl, gasping at the stench. The two of us jammed cabbage leaves into the blender and whirled them into slivers. Then the carrots, and, finally, the chicken. Jeremy brought in a big bowl full of rain-wet cilantro from the garden outside.

Jenna brewed tea for us: lemon for Jenny H., apple for Kathryn, raspberry for me. Mine was deep red in an enormous blue ceramic mug. It had an earthy taste to it—a blurry, pulpy edge, like the taste of grass. Jenna left to drive Jeremy to the airport: he’s going on a business trip to Chicago this weekend. Kathryn, Jenny H., and I pressed on. Jenny H. stirred up the sliced ingredients in a large bowl. Then she filled a smaller bowl with two or three beaten eggs. She spread out the spring roll “papers”, thin, flat sheets made mostly of flour and water, and she showed us how to roll a small amount of the filling into each sheet, folding and sealing the roll, like an envelope, with egg whites. We talked about our class schedules for next semester. The house was gently warm—the satisfying crackling of the gas stove, the patter of rain on the small windows.

Then Andrew and Asher arrived. They took Jenna’s guitars and walked around, strumming them. Then they put rock music onto Jenna’s stereo and sat in the dining room, listening to it. Kathryn and I, perched on either side of the small kitchen table, busily rolled spring rolls. We made fifty of them, stacking them on a plate by the stove. Our fingers grew sticky from the egg and the raw chicken. Jenny H., in turn, heated water and oil in the smaller of the two woks. The wok began to pop and click, like beads swinging together. It fizzed as Jenny H. popped half-a-dozen spring rolls into the water. They bobbed and jostled against each other as she turned them, rolling them over with a pair of wooden chopsticks. She stacked the golden-brown spring rolls on another plate. She sliced one in half and let Kathryn and me “taste-test” it. It was still hot, so it scorched my tongue, but it was also very good—heavy, warm, delicious. Jenna came back, with Anna, her one-year-old daughter. The boys laughed with delight over Anna’s antics. She scooted across the floor on her seat, alternately grinning and being coy. Jenna began to fry the rice, pouring half the white rice into the other wok with oil. The deep mounds of sticky rice sizzled softly. I chopped ham, and slid the cubes into the rice. Andrew added soy sauce. Jenny H. and Jenna were both worried because the rice wasn’t turning brown, showing that it had fried properly. Andrew suggested that they put all of it in a separate bowl, then return it, bit by bit, to the wok, with more oil. He put half-a-cup of rice into the walk with a tablespoon of oil, and proceeded to fry it: but this experiment disgusted Jenny H., who teased him endlessly about it. Jenna, Andrew, and Asher each ate a forkful and pronounced it delicious, but Jenny H. would have none of it. “That much oil is gross!” she squealed. We waited for Crystal and Kevin to arrive. They called Andrew to say that they were bringing David, too—but the three of them never showed up. Jenna showed Asher how to make egg drop soup on the stove. When it was done, she dished it into deep bowls, which Kathryn set on the table in the dining room.

We sat down at six forty-five to a delicious meal. Jenna prayed, and we ate: piping hot spring rolls with gooey peanut sauce; sweet, sticky rice; egg drop soup with swirls of egg and rings of green onion floating in the chicken broth. The Asian spices burst in my mouth—peanut, pepper, onion, soy. Everyone complimented the meal, and we ate with contentment and good fellowship. Jenny H., bubbling with energy, finished her food in a hurry and began grating carrots to fix vegetarian spring rolls to take to Katie, who’d wanted to come but couldn’t. I poked my head into the kitchen to see what she was doing, and was rather ashamed by the mess we’d made. As Jenny H. told Katie later, “We used up just about every dish in the house!” The two woks sat like fat cats on the stove, beside the cauldron of egg drop soup and the empty, grimy rice container. One of the woks had burned, and there was a nasty black scorched spot on the bronze surface. In the sink, ceramic mugs, bowls, and plates were stacked, with a wooden spoon and fragments of carrot and cabbage. The colander I’d used for the cabbage straddled the edge of the sink. The little table still held the remains of the spring roll operation: empty packets of wraps and the neglected bowl of egg.

However, the meal had to be cut short: Syneva’s junior cello recital was at seven-thirty. So Andrew, Asher, Jenny H., Kathryn, and I piled into our cars, with apologies for leaving Jenna with all the dirty dishes, and hurried off to the recital. As we left the car in the parking lot, the cold wind cut into our arms. Kathryn, Jenny H., and I scurried down the sidewalk toward Tyrrell. Jenny H. was carrying a bottle of chili sauce and a Tupperware container of spring rolls for Syneva, who’d also wanted to come. Its sides misted in the cold, and the warm scent of the Asian spices seeped into the foyer of Tyrrell as we stepped indoors. The three of us sat in a long row with Jenny, Tara, Rachel, Alisha, etc. Alisha had brought her visitors: her sister and one of her friends from home. I sat and laughed at Jenny, who scribbled in my journal before the concert started. Syneva played quite well. She performed Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations, Bach’s third cello suite, and a short, modern piece called “Prayer”. As we clapped after the concert, Alisha brought her a bouquet of flowers. When they hugged, the applause swelled, and Syneva smiled. Onstage, she is so serene as to be impassive.

After the recital was over, everyone just sat for awhile. Jenny had almost fallen asleep. I crept out, feeling exhausted. Syneva and I chatted for awhile, surrounded by other RUF people who also joined the conversation. Then Syneva graciously excused herself and went off to talk to her other guests. Rachel hurried off to retrieve her jacket and her book from the Honors House: she, Jenny, and Tara wanted to come back to Jenna’s house with Jenny H. and me. Kathryn had to stay on campus to study. Jenna had invited us to come over after the recital for ice cream and a movie. Jenny H. was deep in conversation (and a piece of moist carrot cake) with Syneva’s mother, so we left her to come later with Jenny, Tara, and Ange. Rachel and I drove to Jenna’s house ourselves. Rain flecked the windshield. I asked Rachel how her day had gone. “Oh, it was wonderful!” she said enthusiastically. She told me that Calculus class had been wonderful (at which I smiled, knowing how I would feel in Calculus class), and that she’d been working at the Battle of the Bands with Tara, and that it had actually been fun. The Battle of the Bands is a TU event at which various local bands perform for prizes. Students come out to listen, eat food, have fun. At Jenna’s house while we were eating supper, I could hear strains of rock music drifting through the open window, and I guessed that it was the Battle of the Bands. Syneva told me after her recital that they had been setting it up on the library lawn, but that Syneva’s cello teacher had been very worried by this (Tyrrell is on the lawn), so she’d persuaded the dean to get the concert moved to behind ACAC (which is a good distance away, on the other side of the library).

At Jenna’s house, we found Jenna spooning applesauce into Anna’s open mouth and listening to country music. She had washed all the dishes, and the kitchen was spotless. We sat with her at the dining room table, chatting and laughing at Anna’s antics. I pulled hideous faces at Anna, but that made her smile. She clapped her hands at Rachel, who grinned and clapped back. She loved looking at Rachel’s flushed, happy face. Shortly after we arrived, Jenny, Tara, Ange, and Jenny H. came, shaking the rain from their clothes. “We brought a boy with us!” Jenny announced with a big laugh, and David trailed in, smiling sheepishly. When Anna was finished with her meal, Jenny took her out of her high chair and played with her. David played with Anna too, pushing a pillow gently into her face. She pushed it back at him, smiling and blinking happily. Jenny and I served ourselves peanut butter cup ice cream from the refrigerator while Tara brewed tea in a red-bellied pot on the stove. I licked the creamy ice cream, crunching the peanut butter and chocolate, savoring the thick peanut butter on my tongue. Jenny borrowed Jenna’s computer and showed David and Jenny H. pictures of her siblings on their spring break. Jenny’s siblings look like herself—they’re a handsome bunch, as wildly exuberant as she is.

Eventually, Jenna made Jenny pipe down, and we all settled in the living room to watch the movie Jenny had brought: “In Good Company”. Syneva and her mother arrived and joined us. Rachel sequestered herself in a corner by the fire place, reading a book about economics. The movie was sad: about the struggles of people trying to keep their jobs in the corporate world, trying to be honest and moral. It was a parody in some ways. One of the main characters was so focused on climbing the corporate ladder that he got himself divorced, and after his divorce he threw himself into his work. “If I ever get that way, somebody shoot me,” Jenny groaned. The language was awfully profane, and there.

After the movie, we all left. I drove Rachel to the Honors House—on the way, we talked about the emptiness of life without Christ, eating the orange peel without the fruit. I staggered up to my room, rain freckling my face. I locked the door and checked my e-mail. My mother had sent me a message about the doings at home: the basketball banquet, the CY movie night. I read it, and tears welled up in my eyes. “I want to go home,” I sobbed softly. Oh, I was tired. I undressed. My heart fluttered and my stomach contracted at the thought of all the work I had to do. Kathryn had told me that Dr. T has assigned two papers, not just the leaf paper, due on Tuesday in the First Seminar class (Kathryn is in that class with Rachel and me). That makes five papers, plus the archaeology project, which makes six. I was exhausted, driven to the point of despair by the work. “He gives His loved ones sleep,” I remembered. So I went to bed, but the girl next door was hosting a bunch of friends. They were watching a movie, laughing, talking. I woke up once and rolled over grumpily to look at the clock: the red numbers glowed one fifty-four. I could still hear the music pounding through the wall. It sounded as though they were dancing. I yanked the blankets over my head and nestled down, worming my way back to sleep.

a quick update

Now Playing: "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" soundtrack by Howard Shore. Track 15, "The Hornburg".

Some of you may be wondering (though probably most of you are not) whatever happened to the poems I submitted to the university magazine last semester. I was wondering, too. Today the editor sent out a list of things accepted, and of the works that won the magazine's competition. Here are the results (as far as they concern this author):

"Purgatorio" won third place. Why? I'll never know. That has got to be one of the weirdest, most overblown poems I've ever written.

"Fire" and "Daddy O's" were also accepted for publication.

It's happened again.

Now Playing: "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" soundtrack by Howard Shore. Track 2, "Concerning Hobbits".

First of all, thanks to my aunt who recieved a scatterbrained prank call Saturday night. The call was intended for someone else (namely, the zoo from home, which was down at my aunt's house visiting). My aunt was gracious about the whole matter, but I felt pretty foolish afterwards.

And now, my disclaimer: It's happened again. Thanks to the fact that three or four professors apparently got together and schemed before the semester started, I have three research papers due by the end of this month (not to mention the other papers/projects that are due for other classes). Yes, you all have heard far too much about them by now. But it is because of these papers that I'm hanging another "Gone Paper-Writing" sign on this blog.

In short: I will certainly post on here again, but probably not for awhile.