Victoria Primary School and Stirling Castle

Warning: long post

This morning we all ate cold cereal for a quick breakfast. After breakfast, we loaded up the blue minibus that we've been taking everywhere. We loaded a red cardboard box containing scraps of cloth (otherwise known as Israelite headdresses and Egyptian scarves), plastic swords, and aluminum foil headbands. We also loaded an impressive staff for Moses and two long blue wooden boards on wheels, for the Red Sea. The boards were almost as long as the van, so we had to squeeze in around them. We drove up the hill to Victoria PS (elementary school) to give our first school presentation.At the school, we unloaded. The school is a huge brick rectangle with four or five stories, built of blackened stone and standing in the middle of a bleak asphalted playground. A palisade of metal stakes, instead of chain link, fences it around. We marched into the school, up a short flight of stairs, and into the main assembly hall. The hall is a little bit smaller than a basketball court, with a stage at one end. We set up our props, then stood in a row below the stage. In the middle of the stage, the school had set up a projector and a screen so that we could project our Psalm choruses ("This Is The Day", "The Lord Builds Up Jerusalem", and "The Steps of a Good Man") onto the screen.Pretty soon, the children trooped in. We were to perform twice this morning. First for Primaries 1, 2, and 3, with children ranging approximately from six to eight. The children filed in, their shoes clomping on the old wooden floor. They sat down cross-legged in neat rows on the floor, their dark trousers and maroon shirts like the uniforms of tidy toy soldiers. "Good morning children," the assistant headmistress, Mrs. Houston, said. "Good morning, Mrs. Houston," the children replied dutifully. Mrs. Houston introduced us. Then we introduced ourselves, going down the line and giving our first name, home state, and "occupation". There was an excited buzz when Rachel said that she works at a toy store. :o) After introducing ourselves, we started to sing. Virginia, who's a music major, proved herself to be excellent in dealing with the children. We sang each Psalm chorus first, and then the children sang after us, Virginia leading them cheerfully. Angus, one of the older men in the Airdrie congregation, had escorted us to the school as driver, and he helped Virginia out. "That wasn't loud enough, boys and girls! Let's show these Americans how loud we can sing!" he'd tease. When the singing was finished, we launched into the skit. Virginia, Emily, and I collected four volunteers from the crowd of eager children. We dressed two of them up as Israelites with scraps of blue and yellow cloth for armbands, and two of them up as Egyptians with aluminum foil headbands. Then we assigned each of them to a player (Michaela and Rachel or Brenda and Matt), and the play began. It went fairly well. Emily and I managed the blue boards, rolling them across the stage when the Red Sea is before the Israelites, parting them when Moses fells his staff, and crashing them towards the Egyptians when the water falls. Melissa left out a scene by accident, but the Egyptians covered for her. Afterward, Lucas gave his Gospel presentation. We sang some more, to the children's delight. They really liked “This Is The Day”. Then Mrs. Houston handed out awards to the children--regular school stuff. Mrs. Houston proved, like Virginia, to be excellent in dealing with them, turning everything into a game. She got them to compete with each other to see who could be quietest in filing out. Virginia, standing beside me, chuckled softly when she saw one little lass with dark hair, deep blue eyes, and a pointed face tiptoeing cautiously out of the hall.The next class we performed for were Primaries 4, 5, and 6, children from nine to thirteen or thereabouts. The older children sat on benches behind the younger ones. One little boy sitting in the front row, with skinny arms and an impudent freckled face grinned and poked his classmates before Mrs. Houston called everyone to order. "Alright, children. Can any of you tell me what's different today?" "There are a bunch of strange people here," one of the kids replied. "That's right, we have visitors from America," Mrs. Houston said. "Now, you all behave yourselves. Primaries 1, 2, and 3 were stars, and I don't want you to disappoint me." We started the production over again. Virginia dragged out the Psalms as much as possible, milking them for all they were worth, singing the songs louder and faster, getting them to compete. “How many are there of us? Twelve! That’s right! And how many are there of you? A lot more! You should be able to make a lot more noise than us!” she challenged. The children seemed to enjoy singing, warming to their work enthusiastically. Despite the fact that some of older ones, tittering among themselves, obviously thought it was beneath them, even most of the older kids joined in, stomping their feet in time to “The Steps of a Good Man”.

After the play, Lucas gave his Gospel message about how we are like the Israelites, trapped by present and future sin, and about how Christ, like Moses, opens a way of escape for us. When the presentation was over, Mrs. Houston asked the children if they wanted to sing some more. There were emphatic nods. “What do you all want to sing?” Virginia asked. She took a vote, and everyone seemed to want “The Steps of a Good Man”. So we sang that at least twice more, stomping our feet and jumping up and down (“Though he fall, he shall not be cast down…”). The hall rattled as our feet marched, and the mirror on the projector slipped because the floor was shaking. When we had finished singing, Mrs. Houston asked the children, “What was your favourite part?” One of the older girls, after consulting her friends, said, “The Steps of a Good Man.” The other children concurred: they liked either that particular Psalm chorus or the part in the skit where the Egyptians are drowned—thanks to Michaela’s and Rachel’s dramatic screams at that point. The children filed out, Mrs. Houston trying to get them to be as quiet as the first three grades. Just then, the fire alarms went off. So everyone bundled outside. Crowded in the hall, I smelled burned toast. Out on the playground, the children stood in neat lines like marionettes in the sunshine. We clustered together until the alarm went off. As the children marched back to their classes, they waved to us and grinned cheerily. Back inside, we picked up our belongings and headed to the van. Crossing the playground, where one of the middle Primary classes was taking its break, we waved to kids who were smiling at us. “Hello! Good morning!” they called. We packed everything up. Toby and I rode in the van to steady the boards while everyone else walked back to the church.

Back at the church, we held our team devotions: Hebrews 3. Michaela entered a little late. “Nice walk,” she commented. “Yeah, it was,” everyone agreed. We discussed Hebrews, then went into the sanctuary to pray for the unbelievers in the church. Sitting in the varnished pews, we bowed our heads. After we prayed, we sang several Psalms, voices ringing in the high hall. Pastor Quigley joined us. Today an older couple brought lunch for us. As we sat down for lunch, Michaela asked, “Did you all plan for me to be left behind?” Lucas stared. “You were left behind?” he asked. “Well, I stayed talking to the kids. One of them brought out a jumprope, and I showed them how to jump backwards. They offered me potato chips, and I chatted with them. Then I asked where everyone else was, and one little boy said that you all had left. So I walked back on my own,” Michaela explained. Of course, we were all mortified that she’d been left behind.

We ate thick sandwiches for lunch. Since Pastor Quigley joined us, it was a rather funny meal. Pastor Quigley is scary both when he’s serious and when he’s silly (on Monday he poured tea on the table at lunch to show the parting of the Red Sea). Today, he was shocked because Rachel, Michaela, and Brenda, on their grocery shopping trip yesterday, hadn’t bought biscuits. “You must buy biscuits! While everyone else goes to Stirling this afternoon, you’ll take a jaunt down to Cosco and buy biscuits,” he joked, though he sounded quite serious.

After lunch, I washed the dishes while Toby dried. Lucas and Rachel started supper behind us—thick beef stew. Lucas sliced onions while Rachel broke up the ground beef. They talked about curry, and Lucas remembered an Asian friend he’d had who made the most wonderful fruit curry.

When the dishes were finished, I sat outside on the side steps and worked on reading the chapter of Spiritual Disciplines for today. John sat on the ground and read, too. I noticed that there was something carved into the stone wall running round the church grounds. Pushing back a bush, we discovered a tombstone carved into the wall. A whole family had been buried there, it seemed: a son who’d died at sea, a girl fifteen years old, and a three-month-old baby. They had been born and died in the 1800s.

When Pastor Quigley was ready, we piled into the minibus and drove to Stirling. Lucas was going to stay behind at first, but we all raised such an outcry at this that he decided to come along. “That’s good. You love your leader enough to persuade him to come,” Pastor Quigley commented to the bus at large. Everyone was quiet and sleepy on the drive. We drove through Bannockburn and several other small towns. Lovely countryside: horses grazing in rape fields, sheep dotted like seed dandelions on green pastures, lush walls of white-flowering bushes bowing and raising on either side of the road. In one pasture, a tractor was plowing the dark earth.

Stirling is an old town. Old stone houses crowd together like battered leather books on a shelf. Narrow cobbled streets, the cobbles worn green-grey like an angry sea, rattled under the tyres as the van chugged up the steep hills. People thronged the thin sidewalks. Brick chimneypots poked up like disgruntled hawks against the sky. We wove past a couple of lovely churches with windows of delicate stained-glass and stone webbing, surrounded by graveyards, topped by spires. At the top of the hill stood the castle, Stirling Castle. Pastor Quigley let us out in the parking lot just below the castle. He was not coming with us, nor was Lucas. We were all rather confused as we climbed out of the bus, and I stared back dolefully at Lucas, who winked at me from the back of the bus.

When the bus pulled away, I sprinted across the lawn to the edge of the outer ramparts. The castle is surrounded by a broad, flat valley, like an island in a lake. On the edges of the valley rise tall dark hills. They were vague and misty in the afternoon sunlight. Staring out across the valley, I could sea the tower of the Wallace Monument jutting up from a ridge. Yellow, green, and blue like ripples in water ran down the sides of the distant hills. A graveyard lay far below the castle. After awhile, the group trooped in under the massive outer ramparts. We bought tickets in the outermost courtyard, then walked into the castle itself. We scattered into smaller groups of ones and twos to explore the castle.

Stirling Castle as I saw it was a conglomeration of architecture from different eras, all jumbled together with bits of wall. I explored the battlements and the heavy canons which poked out through slits in the wall. I climbed down into the dungeon under Elphinstone Tower, feet slipping on worn stone stairs. Their edges were depressed from centuries of feet, and a musty smell of dank stone rose up from the dark corners. I stooped to duck under the rough uneven doorways. Tiny slits let in light. Back up in the courtyard, I climbed through another courtyard to the inmost close, or courtyard, and from the inmost close to the Great Hall. A gigantic space with a wooden crossbeam roof. Metal panelled windows let in clear light, and stained-glass roundels blazoned the hardwood floor with the emblems of the Scottish noble houses. Thick hangings muffled sound. On the dais stood a table and two chairs under the cloth-of-state. After the Great Hall, I entered the chapel, another restored space with a wooden roof. Speakers played soft Gregorian chant behind the shuffle of feet as people entered the chapel. Twelve windows down the north wall of the castle represented the twelve apostles, and the door represented Christ, who is the Door to God Himself. On the wall hung two tapestries, replicated from the Hunting of the Unicorn tapestries in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. One of them was “The Hunt Begins”, and the other one was of the unicorn himself. Intricate tapestries with correctly detailed flowers embroidered on dark green backgrounds, the unicorn’s tail intertwining with the stems of the flowers, and the red caps on the hunters and the dogs’ red tongues standing out vividly against the dark green. From the chapel, I crossed the courtyard to the palace itself. The palace’s two arms form the north and west sides of the inmost close, with the east side being the Great Hall and the south side being the chapel (if I have my bearings straight). I crawled all through the north side of the palace since the west side is made of museum and offices. The north wing of the palace is in the process of being restored. Slipping through clusters of people, my feet thudded hollowly on plywood flooring. Overhead, steel girders and new wooden beams reinforced the original ceiling planks. Down a long hall to the king’s reception chamber, and from the king’s reception chamber to the king’s bedchamber. From the king’s bedchamber to the queen’s bedchamber, and from that to the queen’s reception hall in which the unicorn tapestries will someday hang. All the rooms had enormous stone fireplaces, their corners carved with gargoyles and thistles. Arched stone windows slit the massive walls. Bare stonework, rough with the passage of years, was cold to the touch. I found a tiny courtyard in the middle of the wing. Many blank windows stared down on this courtyard, where a few plants in pots grew. I tried to imagine it as it would once have looked, but it seemed silly somehow. I’m so used to people making fun of the modern obsession with the Medieval that to try to imagine actual people living as Medievals seems corny. Sunlight slanted over the tiled roofs, slates iridescent green and grey like pigeons’ wings.

Strolling through the cold rooms, I listened to the people around me talking. Spanish women jabbered away, pointing up at the ceiling. A German man slowly translated a sign into his guttural language for a group of women. An Asian girl chirped into her cellphone. A British couple studied the carving on the fireplaces. Scottish workmen rattled on in their burr, like gravel, as I passed them. I briefly joined a tour on which the rest of the group had gone, with a short, stout woman as tour guide. She gave us vivid anecdotes about the Jameses and Stuarts and Scotts which had inhabited the castle—jealousy, tragedy, desperate pride, murder. Then I ventured off on my own again.

I left the palace and the inmost close to the middle courtyard where the canons were. Under the battlements on which stood the canons, I found the kitchen. Peeping in through a doorway, I nearly jumped out of my skin: mannequins dressed in medieval clothes were busy stoking the oven with loaves of bread, while other mannequins turned meat on a spit. In the shadowy, musty darkness, I half expected the mannequins to jump to life. Their painted wooden smiles were almost ready to break into speech, and their braced arms almost ready to relax and turn to the next task. I hurried out.

A long thick tunnel ran under the battlements below the Great Hall, leading to another loop of battlements which had once been pierced by a postern gate. I walked through this tunnel. My footsteps echoed on the chilly masonry. I clambered all over the battlements, staring down at the land below me. Laid out there were red roofs and white walls of another town clustered on the valley, the cemetery on a boss of hill that looked back at the castle, the Wallace Monument, and the distant mountains. The colors were faded and hazy, dappled blue as clouds slipped over the hills. I scrambled along the stone wall, my feet feeling their way over the gigantic, smoothly-squared stone blocks. The webbing of massive stone walls on which the castle is built stood menacing and dark against the vague sunshine. Up here, on the battlements, where the air was quiet and there were hardly any other tourists, my imagination had liberty: I was a messenger, my booted feet quick over the hard stones, my cloak tugging over my shoulders as I hurried past the guards on the parapet. Descending from the battlements, I stepped into a line of huts huddling under the upper castle walls, caught between the walls of the inmost close and the outer battlements on which I’d just climbed. In one of the stone huts, I watched a woman busy weaving one of the unicorn tapestries. She used her spindle to poke down the threads as she wove.

Leaving the tapestry gallery, I climbed through the tunnel into the middle courtyard again, breathless by the time I reached the top of the steep slope. Still imagining, I could feel the jolt and lift of the horse under me, and the clatter of hooves dinning harshly like bells on the sharp, uneven masonry of the tunnel.

Back in the inmost close, I met up with Melissa, Emily, Virginia, Michaela, and Toby. Michaela spotted a narrow doorway between the chapel and the western arm of the palace. Exploring through it, we found ourselves in Douglas’s Garden: a quiet, green space, where tall trees stood serenely over the green lawn and tiny purple flowers bloomed in neat beds. The garden was sun-warmed, self-contained, elegant, tossed like a lost glass bead into the castle walls. We returned to the outer battlements above the tapestry gallery. Bracing herself against the huge walls, Melissa leaned out and picked pink stonecrop from the wind-blackened stones, tucking them into her pink newsboy cap. We climbed over the walls again. I stood staring out over the valley—hazy light and shadow, the whir of a raven’s wings as it winged sedately through the air below me, the bulk of the hill bulging out slightly through stern grey rock giving way to thick grass. Pale blue, green, saffron, and orange lichen starred the dark rocks. The castle was quiet and remote from the valley below, from which I could hear the faint hum of traffic and the clink, quiet as windchimes, of a backhoe breaking concrete on a construction site by the highway.

Stepping into the bookstore, which was nestled in the walls of the middle courtyard, I bought eight postcards for friends at home. A garrulous clerk poured small samples of whiskey for John, Emily, and Michaela to taste. John liked it a lot. The strange malt smell made my nose wrinkle.

Outside in the first courtyard, we met up with the others. Someone had to go back and fetch Virginia, who was exploring the dungeons. We hurried down to the van. Michaela and I sat in the front seat. On the way back to Airdrie, the traffic was thick, with heavy trucks pushing through lines of small, sleek European cars. Michaela and I chatted about the castle. Michaela showed me a little silver ring she’d bought, engraved with hands. I paid small attention to a conversation between Lucas and John behind me about British economics. Both Michaela and I listened to Pastor Quigley, Lucas, and the boys behind us discuss theology: John asked why we pray in Christ’s name. So Pastor Quigley asked if anyone had a Bible, and I pulled my Bible out of my leather backpack, where it’s been riding for the past week. “Good girl,” he said, and opened it to Hebrews while guiding the van around a tight bend (which of course made Michaela nervous). He explained that we come to God in Christ’s name the way the friend of a man’s son would come to that man asking the father a favour that the man’s son had told him to ask. Pastor Quigley and Lucas discussed church politics and seminary exams—an interesting conversation.

Back in Airdrie, everyone hurried inside. Lucas gathered us all around the tables set up in the fellowship hall to talk about preparing our testimonies for St. Margaret’s Catholic Highschool next Tuesday. He had filled a teakettle full of cold water for himself, and while he talked, he poured himself brimming cupfuls, and gulped them down at one breath one after another.

One of the younger women in the church came and ate supper with us. We had a good, solid meal, discussing the logistics of presenting our testimonies next Tuesday. Afterward, while Melissa washed the dishes, she put on her Broadway “Phantom of the Opera” soundtrack. Then everyone went off to play ultimate frisbee except Rachel, who stayed behind to work on her testimony, Lucas, who went to a MET at the Quigleys’ house, and myself. Melissa’s CD is still playing out in the hall. Last I saw Rachel, she was toying with a set of sterling silver figurines she’d bought at the castle.

from scotland

sorry, no time to edit. this is a copy of an e-mail i sent out to my church at home. enjoy.




Greetings, all.
Here's another update (though I've just been informed by John that I *have* to go pay
ultimate frisbee with everyone).
Well, the Scottish accent is officially wearing off on all of us. It drives Missy nuts
because she's ending all her sentences up, as though they're questions. But catching the
accent doesn't make it any easier to understand the people here, especially the very
little children and the older people.
On Sabbath, we joined in the church's regular worship. We had communion Sabbath morning,
then were broken up into groups to go to people's houses for lunch. Lucas, Rachel, John,
Toby, and I went to the flat of an American couple who are visiting the church here. They
were quite hospitable. Sabbath evening, after the worship service, we drove out to the
Robertsons' house. They're a Scottish family who live on the edge of Airdrie. The drive
to their house is lovely: long, swelling hills spotted with yellow furze, the remnants of
an old schoolhouse, a one-lane bridge, and an old gravel quarry.
Monday morning we began work in earnest. Pastor Quigley sat us all down and read off the
schedule to us. Then Lucas assigned some of us to work on the Bible sketch that we're
performing for the primary schools. We're supposed to write up a stageplay based on the
story of the Exodus and the crossing of the Red Sea. In the meantime, the rest of the
team, great scavengers, came up with four plastic swords, cloth, headbands, and a
"crown" for Pharaoh. Lucas himself is our Pharaoh, and quite an imposing one,
too. He split up the rest of the roles among the team. Missy makes an excellent and
animated narrator, while the three Egyptian soldiers (Rachel, Michaela, and Toby) are
positively bloodcurdling, and John as Moses is a prime example of serene trust in God.
On Monday evening, we attended the MET groups in the church. MET stands for Mutual
Encouragement Time, and is similar to an informal Bible study. I went with Lucas, Rachel,
and John to the Robertsons' house for their MET. We discussed Lamentations 3. Emily, the
Robertsons' five-year-old daughter who goes to Gaelic school, proudly recited a poem for
me in Gaelic after the Bible study ended. Then I went outside to help out in the
Robertsons' yard. The Robertsons just moved into a new house, and their yard was made of
"prime Scottish topsoil": gravel that wouldn't even grow a potato (or so Mr.
Robertson said). We spent all evening raking rocks and gravel off the yard and leveling
it in preparation for sowing grass.
We've spent all day working on the Bible presentation for our first performance tomorrow.
Pastor Quigley came in a couple of times and worked us hard, tweaking various parts of
the performance. He did tell us that we'd given him the best first run-through he'd ever
seen from a mission team, which was encouraging. But we were all very hungry this
afternoon by the time he let us go.
Since we hadn't gone shopping since Saturday, we all marched to the fish-and-chips shop at
the top of the hill and bought our suppers, then brought them back to the church. My
first taste of Scottish fish-and-chips was actually quite promising. Very greasy, but
also much fresher than fish and potatoes in the U.S.
Please pray for us as we continue to prepare our presentation for the primary schools.
Especially, please pray for our first presentation tomorrow morning at about nine
o'clock.

"looks like a madhouse, sounds like fun"

CY costume party!

Theme: What do you want to be when you grow up?

Back: Danielle as herself, Elizabeth as an old woman
Next: Philip as a college student, Sam as a mad scientist, Daniel as a businessman, Jessie as an emergency nurse, Betty as a jazz trumpeter, Mr. Y as a hockey player
Next: Mrs. Y as a hairdresser, Raychel as a princess, Anna as a military nurse, Laura as a chef, Ruth as a secretary, Sarah as a surgical nurse, Hannah as a movie star
Front: me as a bard, J.D. as Spiderman, Abigail as a gardener, Catherine (Mrs. Y's youngest sister) as a fingernail-care-girl, Stephen as a pianist

some verse

Now Playing: Wind and thunder outside.

Laura has been complaining that I haven't posted in awhile. I have several things written up, but I need to edit them a little before they can be posted on here. In the meantime, here's a bit of verse. Properly it's for Hannah and Rebekah, Princess's younger sisters: I'm giving them lessons in poetry. For our first lesson, I assigned them to make a poem that was a simile between an animate and an inanimate object. I promised them that I'd write a poem, too. This is what came of it. As always, comments are appreciated. :o) Especially on the fourth verse from last: I tried "bawl", but that sounded like a mad baby. "Moo" sounds like a nursery rhyme, but "groan" sounds like a wounded person. Suggestions?

I lean back on the porch swing. Through the screen
Behind me, bluegrass drifts while Anna washes
The dishes. She’s humming with the mandolin.

Down by the pasture pond, a cardinal chirps,
Joins mandolin. Bullfrogs croak endlessly,
And in the house, the dobro’s duet drips.

Slow creaking swing, sun patterning the backs
Of my shut eyelids, swirled like daylilies
That grow beside the porch, where crickets clack,

Adding their banjos to the harmony.
Breathe deeply—Sarah and Elizabeth
Are baking bread, and dancing noisily.

As Dani and Rebekah climb the hill,
With eggs from banties in the coop, bare heels
Crunch grass. Grasshoppers flee girls’ feet. Wings thrill

Like fiddles mingling with the mandolin
Indoors. As fiddlers double-stop, Anna
And Sarah start to clap. Across the dim

Broad pasture, cattle groan. Elizabeth
Turns up the double-bass. I hear dough thud
Beneath her hands through puffs of floury breath.

I blink. Hot air is rough with sandstone dust,
Red rosin lingering on the sunset. Slowly,
Wind stirs down by the pond. Its shimmering gusts

Hush bullfrogs, crickets, and the twanging banjos.
Then I hear Hannah, shouting for the calves—
Like cows, warm evening plods beneath the oaks,

Gloam green-flanked by the road. As last chords rattle,
Dusk pushes through the gate. The mandolin
Falls silent, calling home the cattle.

Ah, Spring!

Now Playing: "Stealing Second" by Chris Thile. Track 1, "Ah Spring". (CD courtesy of Philip: he traded Chris for Natalie Macamster.) I love this song!

Well, it's been a pleasantly slow week so far. Today is a case in point.

I went running around San Born Lake this morning. Unusually, there were no interesting flora or fauna to be seen, other than a swarm of pesky flies which buzzed endlessly around my head and whirred madly at me when they got tangled in my curls, and a grizzled fisherman staked out on one of the dams. He glared suspiciously at me as I jogged past. My mother assigned chores to us this morning, so after ducking into the shower at home, I worked on chores. Philip spent five hours today at the Ss' house weedwhacking and mowing in preparation for their Memorial Day picnic on Saturday, and Laura spent the morning weeding at our neighbor's house, so Stephen and I had the vacuum cleaners and duster to ourselves.

When chores had been finished, I started work on a basket: to help me pay for car insurance, my mother offered me a job of making three baskets for her, at ten dollars apiece. Now, baskets take just about all day to make; nonetheless, I like making them, so I didn't turn her down. I must've listened to this CD three times between lunch and supper, hunched over the heaps of reed on the dining room table. Flat oval, twining, lashing, three-eighths, quarter-inch, and seagrass curled in golden spirals like nautilus shells or sprawled like twists of sweet clover over the table, which was soaked with water from the squirt bottle (you have to keep basket reed wet, or else it will crack while you're working with it). The first couple of rows and the rim were, as always, the most difficult parts to negotiate. The first rows always look like a bad hair day, with spokes sticking out every which-way, and weavers all cockeyed between the spokes. After those first rows, though, the basket usually settles itself down into some semblance of decency. All baskets have quirks to them, though, and this basket was no different: it never could balance evenly on the table, so while it dried I had to weight it down with cans of chickpeas and creamed corn to straighten out the base.

After lunch, Daniel, one of Stephen's friends, came over. In the late afternoon, J.D. invited Daniel, Stephen, and Laura down to the old armory, which has been converted into a gym, to play basketball. My mother and I drove them down there and dropped them off. Then we drove to Lowes to pick up fifteen bags of cypress mulch for the front garden. Since we faced the task of hauling the mulch home, my mother had driven our Taurus stationwagon, which has no A/C. So the drive was blisteringly hot. I slouched in the front seat, my hair whipping my face, and watched the bleached-blank, tired storefronts roll past as we drove out to the edge of town. At Lowes, a nice (if somewhat ragged) young man helped us load the mulch into the back of the stationwagon. Fifteen soggy, spiky bags of mulch made the trunk sag considerably. We clunked home with the mulch in the trunk. To the southeast and northwest, heavy, pale-blue cumulonimbus clouds had begun to sprout, their canopies like the silvery towers of poplar trees along the horizon. It was so hot that the tar bubbled on the street, and the sun and wind seemed to be peeling the very color off the sky.

Back at home, I finished my basket. My mother fixed mint iced tea for both of us--sweet and cool, with a nip like cold wind behind it. My mother went off to pick up the "three stooges". Then I helped her fix supper. She threw together another of her concoctions, tossing various ingredients into a big pot on the stove: ground beef, stewed tomatoes, canned corn, vegetable soup, four kinds of basil, beans.... In the end, it made a hot, savory meal, which we all enjoyed.

After supper, my mother and I drove Daniel home. Then we went to Panera for the Ladies' Book Club, organized by our pastor's wife. It meets sporadically during the schoolyear, and this was to be their last meeting. Panera was, as always, warm and colorful, like an elegant quilt. My mother ordered lemonade for herself and raspberry iced tea for me, and we sat with Mrs. P at a table. Mrs. K and her daughter Sarah came, as did Mrs. S. Mrs. P led discussion about Dorothy Sayers's book Gaudy Night. I scribbled notes in my journal under the table while they talked about feminism, relationships, female academics, and class consciousness.

After the discussion ended, the women started to talk about other things: mysteries and other books, movies (namely BBC remakes of classic stories, including the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries and Pride and Prejudice), and their children's dental adventures. Mrs. P said that Will had nearly knocked out his two front teeth biking on a skateboard ramp at the park this week, and my mother remembered the time when Graham got his two front teeth knocked out by a swing.

As we drove home, I noticed that the western cumulonimbus cloud had mushroomed, spreading a dark fan over the sky, like the underside of a wave as it spreads out on the beach, thinly streaked and frothed, reaching out from the great deep grey mass to the west. Pulling into the driveway, I noticed fireflies blinking in the deepest shadows under the oak trees, like fishes' eyes glowing in ocean caves. Everything was quiet at home: Sandy staring idly at us from her perch on an old chair, Mandy waiting anxiously on the back porch to be let in, Philip shooing Laura and Stephen off to bed after another game of JazzJackrabbit, my father reading theology in the study.

Leaves Fall (Track 7), and so do I... into bed!

for the fun of it

Here are some funny people.

Stephen dressed up as a musician for our CY costume party.




The great RP elder, Dr. N, spends quality time with his sons Philip and Stephen watching a deeply philosophical show: "The Three Stooges". *koffkoff*

not much

Now Playing: "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" soundtrack by Howard Shore. Track 8, "Flight to the Ford".

This is my 150th post! SWEET! (hahaha, SwanElf and Philip, that was for you :)

For those of you who are interested, there are now two new files up on photobucket: pictures from the ceilidh a couple of weeks ago, and some of my senior pictures. The username is Elfellyn and the password is psalm84.

Jenny H.: We call them door-to-door, too. It would be interesting to add up a number of how many doors we've knocked on in the past five or six years. :)

a trek in the sun

After our usual shopping run this morning, my mother and I went home for lunch. Tara, you will be happy to know that she fixed noodles with peanut sauce for lunch. It made her eyes water, but I relished it. :)

After lunch, my father drove Philip, Laura, Stephen, and I out to the Fs' house. This afternoon, a bunch of people had agreed to drive over to Enid to do door-to-door outreach for the new congregation we're trying to establish there. The Fs' house was the appointed meeting place, being on the edge of town.

As we pulled into the Fs' driveway, I grinned: Ben was driving the riding lawnmower around the Fs' huge back yard, turning it around the maple trees near the house. Dust plumed from the wheels. He had clamped headphones over his ears, and perched laconically on the mower. Meanwhile, SwanElf was ensconced in one of the maple trees, wedged like a bird between the silver branches.

Princess, Marigold, Estella, and Betty all joined us. I tucked deep magenta winecups behind Princess's ear, into her silver-blond hair. Violin sauntered out of the Fs' house while Mr. F, Mr. Y, and my father stood talking on the driveway. We piled into the car, doing a Chinese fire drill so that everyone was arranged next to their friends. Mr. F and Mr. Y sat in the front, with my father, Laura, and Estella in the first bench. Philip and Stephen came next, with Princess, Violin, and I in the next-to-last bench. In the last bench, Betty, Marigold, and SwanElf sat stoically.

We were a merry party as we started the hour-long drive to Enid. All the girls were chattering like a flock of little brown sparrows. Conversations spliced into one another like rope. We discussed possibilities for costumes to wear to the CY costume party in two weeks. Princess, Estella, and SwanElf (nurses-in-training) groaned in disgust when I suggested Florence Nightingale, and when Philip suggested that SwanElf wear white scrubs with blood splattered all over them. Violin asked Princess about the presents her father had brought home from China this week: purses, double-sided embroidery, combs, a jade dodecahedron. In turn, Violin told us about a frictionless ballbearing that Mr. F brought home from an engineering conference. In a lull in the conversation, I asked SwanElf about the book she was reading. She, Mrs. P (our pastor's wife), and I all write in our books: I told them about a note I'd found written in the cover of my new copy of Til We Have Faces. The note said that the book was given as a gift from a man to a woman, "Happy Valentine's Day, February 1994". I wondered dolefully aloud whether she'd dumped him along with the book.

The clamor of topics, words like flocks of starlings bobbing around each other, broke off when the van slowed down. We craned our necks to see over the seats. Violin, sitting on the edge, figured out that there was road work ahead: rollers were resurfacing the one-lane highway. We crawled along, then sat still while cars going the opposite direction were given a turn. Then, piloted in front and back by a couple of trucks, we drove forward. We passed a line of cars waiting to go the opposite direction: Philip laughed at them, "Haha, we're moving and you're not!" Violin giggled, "Wave, everyone!"

At last the van swayed into the Ws' driveway in Enid. Indoors, we crowded into the Ws' living room while Mr. W debriefed us about where we'd be going and how to interact with people. Mr. F broke us up into paired teams. We had nineteen people, and not enough clipboards, so some of the teams consisted of three people. Mrs. W, Violin, and I were a team. After prayer, we piled back into the van and drove to a neighborhood near the south edge of Enid: an older neighborhood, mostly ranch houses built low to the ground, like cats sprawled belly-up in the sun. We split into two larger groups, Mr. W and co. heading north, while Mr. F took the rest of us south. Then the real work began: two teams took one side of the street, and two teams took the other side, and each pair of teams worked down their side, leapfroging house-to-house.

The afternoon was dreadfully hot. Sun beat up off the white concrete. Clouds hung pale blue in the northeastern sky, as though fainting from the heat. A kite leaped and danced above the rooftops, exulting in the wind. Its wings bent and bowed to the wind, thinner than paper, supple as a stream of water on the air.

We walked from house to house. Oak trees rustled like green fountains overhead, but their pools of shade felt pitifully few. Water from my waterbottle, shared with Mrs. W, tasted stale. We knocked on most doors, receiving no answer and leaving only courtesy flyers behind. We spoke to probably ten or twenty people, taking turns. Most of the answers were either gruff "I'm not interested" or sweet-strong "Christ is my Savior". After each person we spoke with, we paused on the kerb of that person's house and prayed for them: for repentance on those who rejected us or seemed confused about spiritual matters, for blessing on those who proclaimed Christ as King, for the work of the Spirit to convict or to teach those about who seemed unsure, and for God's will to be done in every case.

Violin flushed and grew nervous in the heat. Mrs. W's face burned red except around her eyes, where her round sunglasses made little pale flecks under the squinting wrinkles. At one house, a kind, reserved older woman glanced at us when we opened the door. She told us that she went to a Christian Church. Then, "Would you all like some water?" she asked. "Well...." I paused, uncertain. "Yes, please," Mrs. W said with a shrug. We sat down on her front step, in the shade of an enormous oak tree. We bowed our heads and gave thanks while we heard water running from the tap inside the cool house. The woman came out with three glasses of water, which we drank eagerly. "Thank you, thank you," we said profusely. "No, no. I've been given a chance to host angels," the woman said with a quiet smile. "God bless you," Mrs. W called as we left.

After about an hour and forty-five minutes, we met up with the other two teams and sat on the kerb under an oak tree to rest before hiking back to the car. Back at the car, Mr. F turned on the A/C in the van. I doled out cups of water from the cooler, which my father had perched on top of a stool between the two front seats. I handed out cup after cup, water beading on the thin plastic. We sat in the cool for awhile, and when we spotted the other group shuffling down the street toward us, I poured nine more cups. Mr. F, Violin, and Betty carried the water out to them as they came up.

We drove back to the Ws' house, exhausted. At the Ws' house, I stripped off my sandals and sprawled on the cool carpet. People lolled on the sofa and on chairs, talking idly. Ceiling fans whirred against the high slanted rafters, and sleepy blue sunlight sifted through the windows. Sipping sweet mint ice tea, Missy and I discussed packing for our trip to Scotland. I asked Princess if she had any packing tips, since she's been to the U.K. a couple of times. She and Marigold told us about their father's trip to China. Marigold said she was glad she hadn't gone along because she doesn't like Chinese food (I confided that I don't like it either, though just about everyone else in my family, especially my grandparents, seem obsessed with it).

At about five-thirty, Mr. F told us that it was time to go. I felt as though I hadn't sat long enough in the cool, dim living room. But we all loaded back into the van, same seating arrangement as before. Princess, Violin, and I swapped journals. Once the car started to move, everyone sagged back like sleepy toddlers.

Halfway down the north-south leg of the highway that we take to get to Enid, Mr. F stopped at Waukomis, a little town consisting mostly of a gas station and an old hotel. He pulled into the gas station to fill up the car. He and my father stood outside and talked while Mr. Y washed the windshield. I watched a "sterling" character (hemhem) saunter out of the gas station, clad in nothing but ragged denim shorts and a straw hat, rawly tanned skin exposed to the broiling sunshine. A grey moustache trailed down this chap's chin, and I felt that someone of his age should have the decency to dress better. However, all of us made fun of a glaring spelling mistake in a sign posted on the side of the filling station: "If no receit prints, please pay inside." It would appear that in this part of the country there is a paucity of ps, as well as of common politeness.

Continuing down the road, Princess suggested she sing. She won out in the end. Philip balanced one of the Psalters on the back of his bench so that Princess and Violin could see it, while Princess passed another Psalter to the back bench. Pretty soon, everyone from Estella and Laura in the front bench to Marigold and SwanElf (on alto, as usual) in the back bench were singing. Except me. I wrote in Violin's journal, and stared out the window.

I heard SwanElf’s camera whiz behind me. She tapped my shoulder: “Will you smile for me?” “Ugh,” I groaned, “I’ll look awful.” “Turn around as far as you can and smile,” she coaxed, so I did my best. She tried to take a picture of Violin, but Violin, always twitchy, flinched away, resulting in an absurd picture of Violin pushing her glasses up her sweaty nose.

They sang several Psalms, filling up the miles between Enid and Stillwater, "Advancing still from strength to strength" (Psalm 84B) as we pulled into the Fishers' neighborhood. Mrs. S met us there to drive Princess, Marigold, Estella, and Betty home. We waved them good-bye, and said our good-byes ourselves. SwanElf shut the car door firmly for me, singing cheerily, "So I'd best be on my way/ In the early morning rain...."

pictures

Here are pictures from the rose garden.

Rachel, me, and Alisha on a park bench.













Rachel, me, and Tara (yes, that's my "spiffy" (to use a Meri-ism) car in the background :)













Rachel and me


















me (no, Philip, I'm not drinking anything)









Rachel, Tara, and Alisha













Alisha and Tara with the Friendship rose


















Rachel and Tara with the snail on a rose petal
















Rachel

a day outside

Now Playing: "In My Hands" by Natalie MacMaster. Track 7, "Space Ceilidh".

I just received this CD today in the mail. Thanks to selling back textbooks, I managed to scrape together some money for buying CDs and books over the internet. I bought Til We Have Faces, The Four Loves, a copy of The Hobbit illustrated by Alan Lee, Beauty, a couple of Rosemary Sutcliff books (the last two on my list! now I have a warmly satisfying shelf-full of Sutcliff books), and this CD. It's lots of fun: every day I dash out to fetch the mail to see if another bubble-wrapped package has arrived.

This morning after breakfast I baked chocolate-chip-and-peanut butter cookies. I spent an hour not only baking but also washing dishes, emptying the dishwasher of breakfast dishes, etc. For lunch, Laura and I went to my grandmother's house. She lives in an independent living facility, in a little house of her own. The facility is on the southwest edge of town. We went up to lunch in the main building. The elderly folks who live up there greeted us courteously, but Laura and I were rather shy by all the strange people.

After lunch, Laura and I went exploring in the woods and fields behind the facility. My grandmother had invited Laura over for the purpose of fixing supper for the two of them, and Laura wanted to fix chocolate leaves for dessert, so Laura and I set out in search of appropriate leaves. Perhaps I should explain the lay of the land first: Golden Oaks, the facility where my grandmother lives, sits in a broad hollow. To the north and east, the land slopes down, but to the west and south, the land rises up in steep hills. One large hill stands directly behind the facility to the southwest, and it reaches a long slope down across the back of the facility. Behind this slope, the land opens into more and more folds, a progression of blue hills leading back to the southern horizon. On the grounds of Golden Oaks itself are two or three ponds, one behind my grandmother's house, the other two in front of it, all three strung together by creeks.

We sprinted around the grounds of the facility first, picking Bradford pear leaves, then set out across a causeway over another creek and into the thick oak woods. White and red oaks threw round-vowel shadows on an old road, tyre tracks slashing red through green grass. We found a dump back there: an old wheelchair, several rusting refrigerators, corroded water heaters, a broiler oven, heaps of discarded concrete planking. Forging around this, we skirted the edge of the oak wood. Below the wood was a pond in a deep hollow, bordered by thick cattails. As we walked past the pond, a red-winged blackbird leaped out of the cattails and perched in the oak trees, scolding us musically. It flashed its crimson wings at us, and, glancing around, I spotted the cause of its consternation: a cozy, compact little nest nestled in the cattails, quite close to us. Laura and I hurried on, following the tyre tracks. The tyres had left deep ruts. They curved around the side of the tall hill. On our side, the hill sloped down through a pasture of grass and scattered oak and juniper, but the hill was crowned with a thick white oak grove.

We trudged down the tyre tracks. Blackberries growing above us on the hill reached long, thorny trailers down to the road. White flowers starred their rough leaves. The tyre tracks were edged with bubbled, dried mud. The bare earth had cracked, pulling apart in a pattern like leaf-veining. Yarrow, coreopsis, aster, and mustard danced in the wind.

The tyre tracks curved to the west around the hill, and a narrow, deep valley opened before us, triangled like a starling's wings in the green hills. Away below us a broad, deep pond shimmered blue, held on one side by a broad dam. Below the pond, tucked further down the hill in the lea of a thick wood, was a house with many dark green sloping slate roofs. I stood on the curve of the road and stared down at the vale. Laura chattered happily beside me, telling me about the times when she, Lillian, and Annalee had explored out this way. "Should we try to find another deer track to go back?" she asked. I put a finger to my lips. "Ssh. Just listen," I whispered.

Wind surged in behind our voices. I swayed lightly as the gusts hit me, wind tugging the tassel of Laura's braid. Last autumn's auburn grass bent in the pasture below us, blond tufts and silver feathers of seed bowing under the wind. Surge and sigh, sough and sweep sang the wind in the grass, booming in the oak wood above us. Wind rushed in the great trees as though through the sails and rigging of a ship, leaves white as canvas under the backlash of the gusts. Clouds rode through the cool blue sky overhead. Grey shadows slid over the buttress of the green dam below, shadows rippling over green grass and blue water and the distant house's many roofs, then sliding up the far side of the valley. Shadow followed shadow, seeping and slipping through the long grass. Far down the warm meadow, kildeer chirped and cried, and in the oak woods at the foot of the hill along the creek, a cardinal chuckled. A meadowlark bubbled in the buffalo grass seething against the road. We stood on the road through the meadow as though in the wake of a boat cut through a great, gold-and-green lake. Cloud shadows like troughs behind waves rose up, crested, broke on the dam.

The world became like a stained-glass window: deep water, deep woods, and sloping meadow glowing, as though lit from behind. But the wind struck sparks of white in woods and water and cloud-scattered sky, like sun flashing off a sheet of glass.

Laura fidgeted impatiently, and I followed her hesitantly down the hill on a deer trail. We leaped over stumpy sand plum bushes, brushing past sumac and blackberry. Sparse strands of grass taller than I am bent as the wind brushed over them. The trail split off into little winding threads, wandering zigzag around the hill, like spider's webs through the grass. As the trail snaked toward the foot of the hill, junipers and oaks began to grow more thickly. The dry, harsh grass around the road near the top of the hill gave way to lush, green Johnson grass. Our feet splashed wetly through silver tassels, and soon we were up to our waists, as though swimming through a shushing sea. We were less than a hundred feet away from the two ponds that are on the border of Golden Oaks property, and on the other side of them, we could see my grandmother's house. Laura jumped over a deep snake hole and started to clap her hands and stamp her feet, to frighten any members of our local unfenced zoo that might be hanging about. Unfortunately, I was wearing a pair of nice black slacks and my black sandals, having dressed for lunch at Golden Oaks and not for a hike through a meadow. "Let's turn back," I said hesitantly. I glanced down at the legs of my pants, and Laura glanced down at her legs, bare below her basketball shorts. Ticks. Little brown monsters swarming up our legs. "Let's go back!" I commanded, and, disappointed, we scrambled back up the hill.

We worked our way uphill again, skirting the deep grass. I found a beleagured redbud tree, and we picked several leaves from it to add to our collection of sweetgum, white oak, red oak, elm, and pear. Soon, we struck a mowed path which led us between the two ponds, across the broad, mowed lawn below the baseball diamond, and down to my grandmother's house.

I shook myself and clapped my sandals together to rid myself of any lingering ticks. Indoors, Laura immediately began to bake. I sat down at the dining room table across from my grandmother, and we chatted while Laura cheerfully clattered pots in the background.

At one o'clock, I hugged my grandmother good-bye and left Laura to her cooking. At home, I cleared out my e-mail inbox, which had accumulated quite a few messages (thanks to RUFers returned from Summer Conference :).

Then Stephen and I biked around Boomer Lake, on the other side of the highway from our neighborhood. We biked down the south side of the lake, over the causeway that carries a main road across the lake. After all the rain we've had recently, the lake was gratifyingly full. Water lapped on the concrete pillars and slapped against tufts of white aster growing in the cracks of the causeway. Cliff swallows darted under the causeway where it briefly becomes a bridge. Their spear-blue wings flashed in the sunshine. Biking up the east side, the chilly north wind blew straight in our faces. Scissortail flycatchers danced and dove erratically on the wind. Cypress and oak trees, planted and tended carefully along the path, stood stockily against the straight gusts, but along most of the east side, the wind scoured the grass without any interference. In the shelter of a stand of cottonwood trees, I spotted a chap sitting on a lawn chair with a fishing rod and a plastic tub at his feet. As we biked along the north side of the lake, a little green heron flew, startled, from the bank. We rode under the lea of a willow-and-cottonwood grove growing thickly around the edge of an inlet of the lake. The wind crashed in their leaves, but the sun was hot on our faces and hands. Yellow sweet clover smelled like the sunshine itself, warm and roughly sweet. Down the west side of the lake, our backs to the wind, we streaked down a steep hill. I held out my arm and felt the wind sweep over it, as over wings. Swings creaked in the playground. Lazy geese stared at us with beady eyes as we biked past them, swerving to see if we could make them scatter. Ducks plunged in a quiet bay, curled-tails-up. We rode onto the pier, our tyres buzzing on the weathered wooden boards. The grey planks thrummed and creaked above murky water. We turned due west and biked home, crossing the highway and bumping our bikes over the kerb through a stand of purple-and-saffron spiderwort. We rattled down through an empty lot and into our own neighborhood. A mockingbird skimmed over a shadowed lawn, white patches on its grey wings flashing like the stripes on a runner's jacket. Cloying privet and dusty red oak pollen tickled our noses.

At home again, I slouched at my desk and wrote letters to Jenny, Esther, and my Great Aunt Helen, taking a break to argue the relative merits of Bluegrass and Celtic instrumentals with Philip, who was supposed to be doing his physics.

the Guardian's daughter strikes back

Now Playing: "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" soundtrack by Harry Gregson-Williams. Track 3, "The Wardrobe".

Yesterday was a normal Sabbath morning. Since it was Mother's Day, the men of the church provided lunch (fried chicken) instead of the usual potluck.

Here follows part of yesterday's journal entry, for your reading pleasure and amusement.

After my father finished reading this afternoon, Philip, Laura, and I sat around waiting impatiently for Jonathan to arrive to drive us out to the Fs’ house. Though Mr. F is out-of-town this weekend, Mrs. F had courageously offered to take the four of us with her family to Enid for the Bible study this evening. Jonathan screeched up to the kerb in his little blue sports car, ten minutes late. Philip, Laura, and I scrambled in, and we were off. Jonathan told us that he’d been trying to burn a CD for his brother, but the computer wouldn’t cooperate, which resulted in his lateness. In the Fs’ neighborhood, he careened around the corners, making Daisy giggle and Brother1 scold him for burning rubber. The Ps met us at the Fs’ house and graciously took the two boys (Ben and Greg) off our hands--but gave us Sam, J.D., and Abigail (their oldest three) in exchange.

We scrambled into the Fs' fifteen-passenger van. Ruth sat in the front seat, with Dani and Abigail in the bench behind her, and Laura and SwanElf in the bench behind that. Princess had come home with the Fs from church, so Princess, Violin, and I sat in the next-to-last bench, with four boys (Philip, Sam, J.D., and Jonathan) in the last bench.

It was quite a ride. To pass the time, Jonathan started asking random Bible trivia questions. Princess and Philip asked questions, too.
"What four books is 'the just shall live by faith' found in?"
"How are Huz and Buz related to Abraham?"
"What three books is Melchizedek mentioned in?"
And on and on. SwanElf whipped out her Bible, with handy concordance, and frantically leafed through it. We spent most of the time joking around in response to the questions. Jonathan pulled two sheets of sketches from his folder and passed them around. They're sketches of characters in a story he's been telling Frac, the youngest F. Greg is a villain in the tale, and we all made fun of the sketch of Greg as a little rude Metallica dude.

Staring out the window during this chaos, I watched fields of wheat flow past. The wheat is turning ripe. Pale yellow fields, rimmed with bands of oak and elm woods, rippled under pale blue sky, and cool sunshine flowed down over fields and woods.

We teased SwanElf about her age. She declared she wasn't sure how old she was because she'd never seen her birth certificate. "How do you know how old you are? You could be forty! Or fifty!" Philip said. "You would know how old you were if you acted your age," Jonathan put in. Trying to hear him over the seat, though Laura was tickling her mercilessly, SwanElf cried, "Pardon? Pardon?" "Ha! You are acting your age!" someone shouted. "Maybe she's an alien," Sam suggested, and we all started to laugh at her, until she covered her face and hid behind the seat.

The van bumped down the highway. I'm sure anyone looking at us from behind would have seen a constant tumbling confusion of heads popping up and ducking back down.

At the Ws' house in Enid, we all piled out of the van. The Ps had arrived just before us in their new van, and kids piled out of their car, too. The Ws had set up chairs all around their living room, and everyone found a seat. Violin curled up beside her mother on the sofa, while Ben and Greg perched on tall chairs on either side of Mr. W. Mr. W, leading the study, had typed up all his notes on his laptop, which he read from while he taught, and Ben and Greg followed along on the computer screen as Mr. W talked. Mr. W led a study on Hebrews 11, about Abraham, Isaac, and Sarah. He talked about the faith that spans generations, and the true Fatherland in Heaven. Greg started to squirm toward the end of the study, as the house began to fill with the smell of pizza wraps baking for supper in the oven.

After the study, the W girls set up food on the dining room table, and everyone helped themselves. I sat on the back porch steps with Fric and Frac. Fric begged me for a story. "What shall it be about?" I asked, crunching some chips. She grinned. "Tell me a story about the alien and me and you!" she demanded. "Ok. Well. Once upon a time, there was a girl named C--," I began, and proceeded to tell her the most preposterous tale about "her" alien and the alien's rude little siblings (who had a food fight with jello and were sent to bed without any dessert), and flying slugs, and a giant carnivorous mole. (I'd told Fric an earlier part of this tale over lunch at church, and while I was telling it to her, SwanElf had stood behind me and mimicked the whole thing ridiculously.) Fric listened with big eyes, putting in sound effects and snickering whenever the nasty little alien did something naughty. I soon got chilly, sitting in the cool wind, so when the story was finished, I went inside and told the crestfallen Fric that I was out of stories for the day.

Sprawled on the floor, I listened to Violin and SwanElf describe one of their rhetoric classmates, "a born politician", to Beth. I wandered around, and sat in the den with Missy and Princess. The three of us brainstormed about what Missy and I should take as hostess gifts to Scotland. Mary and Fric paraded through the den with Reese, eager to take the dog outside and play. Reese pattered behind them, tail wagging, ears flopping.

Mr. P and Mrs. F tried to gather all the kids so that we could leave. I went outside with Violin to put my things in the car. We dashed around and around the yard, trying to stay warm. I was chilled by the cold wind. The aluminum blades of a windmill on a hill next door turned lazily. Philip, SwanElf, Jonathan, and Violin started to play with Reese, kicking a soccerball across the lawn for her to chase. Reese sprinted tirelessly after the ball, trotting back with it clenched in her mouth.

Finally, Mr. P and Mrs. F managed to get everyone sorted out. This time, it was mostly boys in the F van: Ben in the front seat, then Laura, Greg, and Will, and behind her, Jonathan, SwanElf, and Frac. Behind the third bench were Princess, Violin, and myself, and behind us sat Philip, Sam, and J.D. For awhile, the van was busy with loud conversation. I watched a train click past on the train tracks beside the highway, its headlight glowing through the darkness. The stripes on the road flashed past like railroad spars under the van's tyres.

At last, Jonathan announced that he was ready to tell his story to Frac. Everyone became quiet, listening as Jonathan unwove the most elaborate (and ridiculous) tall tale. We all engaged thoroughly in the story, laughing uproariously as Jonathan introduced new characters. The story is about Calvin, a young man with lots of friends: Logan the Wise (who's always reading books, and who periodically interrupts the story with a falsetto "Woo hoo!" or a studious, "Wow, I didn't know that!"), Ruth and Ben ("the Ancients", though Ben loves to eat moldy cheese, to the delight of the real Ben, who was listening avidly from the front seat), Christa (Calvin's beloved sister, who has been stolen by evil villains and must be rescued), etc. Everyone made fun of Logan the Wise when he woke up the characters by prancing around early in the morning with a stack of books. But one of the funniest parts was when Jonathan introduced the Guardians of the White Castle, the home of Calvin and his buddies. These Guardians were Jonathan's expertly-drawn characterizations of the five elders in our church. Guardian F was the first to appear: Jonathan pitched his voice so that it became a whiskery tenor, and mimicked all Mr. F's phrases and cheerful chuckle. We laughed and laughed as Guardian F stumped around the castle, serving up mountains of food and welcoming everyone with open arms. While the characters were eating breakfast, Guardian C entered the castle dining room, with a typical, "What a dreary day. Oh, I guess I can eat some food." Jonathan made his voice growl dismally, and SwanElf nearly died laughing. The next Guardian drew laughs from Princess, for Guardian S was Jonathan's imitation of Princess's father: Guardian S marched into the room and tossed the carcass of an enormous boar on the table, shouting heartily, "Here, eat that! I killed it with my bare hands!" Philip and I were the next to hear our father suffer under Jonathan's tale-telling: Guardian N was discovered by a messenger to be standing in a locked room with a chalkboard full of mathematical equations, muttering busily to himself. When the messenger (Jonathan himself, inserted into the story by the teller) entered the room, Guardian N burst out, "I found it! The equation for the perfect orange juice!" Jonathan said, "Taken aback, Jonathan tasted it. He'd never seen Guardian N so excited before." Finally, to the delight of Sam and J.D., their father (and our pastor), Guardian P, was discovered to be buried in one of Logan the Wise's stacks of books, reading away enthusiastically. "Oh! So that's why those books were so heavy!" Logan the Wise said, puzzled.

As Jonathan wrapped up (leaving a "to-be-continued"), under protest from everyone else, we pulled in to the Fs' neighborhood. I declared "We are coming back to Enid next week!", shaking hands with Violin and Princess to seal the bargain. We clambered out of the warm car, and I trembled as the wind hit me. I huddled in the shelter of Violin's pillow, and watched a satellite swim like a diatom through the dark sky. Jonathan lingered, talking to Mrs. F. SwanElf wrapped her arms around me and the four of us hurried across the lawn. Clover gleamed in the long, chilly grass under my sandals. Jonathan finally came to unlock the car. Princess, Violin, and SwanElf waved us good-bye.

"It couldn't be anymore beautiful.... It couldn't be anymore beautiful.... I can't take it in...."

pictures!

Now Playing: "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" soundtrack by Harry Gregson-Williams. Track 1, "The Blitz".

Here are a few photos. Yes, they're silly, but they're too good not to share.


These are pictures from the Thursday at the rose garden in Tulsa.

Rachel and me horsing around on a park bench--yes, that's an ice cream cone that I'm trying to finish!








Well, the server is having trouble uploading any other photos, so I'll just leave it at this for now--hopefully a couple more later.

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)