Now Playing: "Master and Commander" soundtrack. Missy, thank goodness, brought it along in Christi's CD case. There's a little CD player in the kitchen, and thanks to the acoustics of the hall, it projects even back into the office, where Missy and I are sitting at the table. Beth, the church secretary, clicks through four hundred and twenty-nine pictures from my camera which she just downloaded, while Missy tries to call her dad.
Anyhow....
Today was B Day: the Big Day. We were going to go into St. Margaret's Catholic High School and present our testimonies to a bunch of jaded, inner city Scottish kids.
We spent the morning doing distribution, handing out copies of the Airdrie RPC news. In the afternoon, Elder Ian Shaw drove us to the highschool. Everyone was really nervous and really noisy. The blue minibus which is our mode of transportation swayed a little as we sang "The Steps of a Good Man" complete with motions (which means that Rachel on purpose fell over on me at the appropriate bits). People hummed portions of various Psalms and songs, joking around, out-of-tune, chuckling nervously. At the school, Mr. Shaw prayed for us, and we headed in.
St. Margaret's is a school with an old main building of about four or five stories and a new sports complex (like most schools--even the University of Tulsa is that way! you can tell where priorities are....). Anyhow, we marched inside. Lucas, our fearless leader, led us to the visitors' desk, where a receptionist told us to wait. After fifteen minutes of standing around, staring aimlessly at the crucifix on the far wall and the plaque of medallists above the doorway. Eventually, a pair of schoolboys in uniforms came downstairs and told us that we were to come upstairs. With slight smirks, they swaggered at the head of the column as they led us to the teachers' lounge.
The teachers' lounge was painted cheerful (note sarcasm) shades of blue, red, and yellow. Jim, the head of the religion department, a nice older man, greeted us warmly and showed us where we could sit down and told us to wait about ten minutes. We sat around on the old blue sofas. Almost everyone was giggling and chattering nervously. The conversation turned to movies, of course--and a hot discussion of "A Beautiful Mind" and old classics such as "It's a Wonderful Life" ensued. I sat and stared out the window and prayed.
At three o'clock (we arrived at about two-thirty), Jim escorted six students into the teachers' lounge. "You'll follow these students to your classrooms," he said. I scanned them over, wondering whether to cower or to swagger myself. The students stared back at us with a sort of desperado attitude. One girl had her hair curled and frizzed, with a black sequined jacket over her school uniform and pointed red boots under grey slacks. She watched us with an open challenge in her face. Toby, Emily, and I went with this particular chick and another boy to their classroom. The teacher in their classroom, a petite older woman with a sweet, motherly air, greeted us and led us into the room. There were about ten students sitting in a circle of chairs in the middle of the room. I stiffened. Pastor Quigley had been right when he'd warned us about these kids.
Emily started off, and she did an excellent job. She conveyed a warm, personable cheerfulness. I went next, and Toby finished. After we had given our testimonies, we opened it up for discussion. "Any questions?" Toby asked. The kids glanced sideways at each other. The chick and her boyfriend who'd escorted us upstairs flashed looks at one another as though they were about to laugh. Two or three of the girls sitting nearest us looked puzzled and a little curious. They asked a couple of superficial questions ("What is theology?"), but not much else. So we started to ask them questions. We asked them if they went to church, and why. They all said they went to church, but when we asked if they read their Bibles, they laughed sarcastically. "I don't have a Bible! Couldn't find it if I did," one girl said scornfully. The teacher tried to support Emily, who'd been asking the questions. She talked to us about how Catholics don't usually have Bibles, but she encouraged the kids to read their missals. "Those have the Bible in them," she said. The kids still stared incredulously at each other. "Well, if you don't have any more questions, I have one for you," I interjected. The kids were still giggling among themselves, but I asked them that EE question that everyone dreads, all-too-familiar to those of us who go door-to-door: "If you died tonight, where would you go? And why would you go there?" They were puzzled for a minute. Someone said, "Disneyworld!" But everyone else, when they understood the question, responded immediately, "Heaven." "And if God asked you why He should let you in, what would you say?" I asked. One of the boys grinned insultingly at me. "He loves and forgives everyone. He'll let me in." "Is that what you think?" I asked. "I'd say that I go to church and pray," a couple of girls offered, "but we know that isn't enough." "That's what we've been telling you. That's why Christ died," I explained. The teacher nodded emphatically.
I left the classroom feeling rather defeated. The kids had obviously been laughing at us. But I didn't mind their laughter at me. They were laughing at Christ. That was what made me tremble.
As we walked down the hall, Emily chatted cheerily with the teacher. We found the rest of the group gathering in the lounge. Jim asked us how it had gone and told us that if we ever wanted to come back, we were more than welcome.
Everyone was celebrating on the drive back to the church. Mr. Shaw told us that we had spoken the truth of the Gospel, and that we should rejoice and leave it in Christ's hands. Back at the church, Pastor Quigley sat down with all of us and asked us how it had gone. "Brilliant. That's very good," he rewarded us. When Lucas told him that we had been invited back, he said, "That's Victory Number One! Excellent." Missy brought out tea and biscuits for everyone. Pastor Quigley asked us what we'd thought. I mentioned my surprise that the kids didn't have Bibles since most people in the States, even non-Christians, at least own Bibles. Everyone discussed the experience for awhile. Pastor Quigley then asked for someone to write an article for the church paper, which goes out internationally. I could immediately feel everyone staring at me. "Would you, Evelyn? You don't have to. We can find someone to help," Lucas said. Everyone instantly burst out with concerned affirmations, as though I was a porcelain doll in need of careful preservation. I laughed at them all, thanked them for their concern, and took the job after Pastor Quigley explained it.
Then Virginia, Matt, Brenda, and I walked to the town centre. I mailed off seven postcards (some of you will be receiving one in a week or so), and the kind lady behind the counter promised to stamp and mail them for me. We stopped into three card shops looking for Father's Day cards for Virginia's father. And we bought a mug for Beth, the church secretary, who's birthday is tomorrow. Brenda bought a chocolate car for her. Virginia and I walked back together, window-shopping. Virginia admired a girl's trousers and jacket in a window--it was emroidered, with beads. She likes to do embroidery and beading on clothes, too. We talked about how weird it was to be in another country. Sometimes I wish I could don a Scottish accent because the broad nasals of the American accent seem almost like an insult at times.
Back at the church, we hung out and fooled around. I chatted with John, and Missy tried to organize a game of Mao, while Rachel fixed shepherd's pie for supper. We ate supper, and then Lucas sent out almost everyone for distribution. He left Missy and me behind to wash dishes. Missy turned on Beethoven's seventh symphony--and I was instantly happy. :o) Scrubbing dirty pots and plates had never been so enjoyable. Missy and I giggled about our siblings, discussed her father's job as an airforce pilot, and laughed at how dirty the team makes our living quarters as we swept up under the tables. Beth loaded pictures from my camera onto the computer.
People have returned from distribution now. In the heat of writing this post (cough cough), I'd whipped out my scrunchie. So Michaela, when she came in, didn't recognize me. But she started to mess with my hair, bringing out Missy's endless supply of clips and barettes. She's done something to my hair.... They're all sitting around in the office now, discussing distrbution, chatting and joking about dogs shredding our magazines and sweet old women. Missy was talking to Christi, her sister, on the phone, and laughing and laughing until Beth asked Missy if someone had proposed to her.
*hem*
John has aptly said that Missy likes to be laughed at, but that I like to be laughed with.
And now Missy is trying to dial more of her friends, but the phones are all busy. And Rachel is reading this and trying to figure out what I'm writing.
Ok, that's enough of this nonsense. I'm so glad to have the highschool over! Can you tell? I was actually a bit ashamed this afternoon: After we came back, Pastor Quigley asked who'd enjoyed it. Earlier in the day, Virginia had said that evangelizing gives her an adrenaline rush. So now everyone raised their hands. Except moi. Go figure....
But God is gracious. As we walked down the stairwell in the school, I glanced out the window and could see the kids walking home across the field behind the school. We were the last class of the day, as Virginia pointed out: those students will have all day to mull over what we've said. It will be kicking around in their heads for the rest of the afternoon, and, hopefully, forever.... By God's grace. By God's grace. We don't bring anyone to Christ, but His Spirit uses the foolishness of our Gospel.
13 June 2006
10 June 2006
Ayr
Long posts are the best, right? *grin* Rachel tells me that I amaze her by how much I write. She wishes she could write more. I wish I could write less. :o)
I was the first girl to wake, at seven thirty this morning. I read bogs, wrote e-mails, did devotions, and cleaned up odds and ends of dishes left over from last night. We ate a late breakfast because Matt had to run to the store to buy milk to go with our cereal. At this meal, John and Brenda discovered that I've never eaten Lucky Charms--they both decided that I've had a deprived childhood, while Lucas told me with a wag of his head that I wasn't missing much. We scrambled to eat, wash dishes, and pack our sandwiches for lunch while people from the congregation arrived for the congregational trip to Ayr. The fellowship hall soon filled. Emily latched onto me, proudly showing off her floppy "Little Mermaid" sunhat. (For those of you who don't know (and I can't remember if I've introduced Emily before), Emily is the five-year-old, blond, freckled daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Robertson.) At ten forty-five, Pastor Quigley addressed everyone. The hall was noisy, but everyone was quiet as he prayed for safe travel. Then Mr. Robertson read off lists of names. As people's names were called, they followed their leader to the buses outside. Emily and I were in the same group. We filed out to one of the two big "luxury" tour buses waiting beside the kerb, and went as far back as we could. The buses soon filled up, and we started off. The buses chugged and swayed, long, ungainly things, as we swung round corners.
Emily sat by me, cheerful and excited, chirping and giggling. She played with Rachel, who sat in the seat in front of us. She showed off her little stuffed lamb, and had a tickling match with Rachel. She and Rachel chanted animal sounds, all mixed up: "What does a cow say?" "Moo." "No, no. A cow says baa. What does a gull say?" "Caw, caw." "No, a gull says mine, mine, mine," Rachel said, and Emily squawked, "Moine, moine, moine," until Rachel shook with uncontrollable laughter. Mr. Shaw, one of the elders, passed out little booklets of Psalm selections. We sang Psalm choruses ("The Lord will light my candle", "The Lord builds up Jerusalem", "The steps of a good man", etc.). Emily joined in enthusiastically, her voice squeaking over everyone else's. Jess Edgar, sitting across the aisle in the bench ahead of us, turned back and laughed in delight. After the singing, Emily chirped and chattered happily. She shouted up to her friend Jessica, a plump, brown little girl with a perpetually worried look. I told Emily a story (in which our friend Eric, the Alien, and our friend Christa figured prominently--don't worry Christa, though, it wasn't nearly as elaborate as the ones I've told her :o).
We drove through Glasgow. Another dirty industrial city, in many ways, though it has some lovely old stone buildings. We drove over the River Clyde, which used to be famous for shipping, then out into the country. Fields in ungainly patches sprawled on the hills. Sheep and cattle grazed in the pastures. Wide open spaces in some places, and forests of fir and hemlock in other places, all gliding by under a warm, pale blue sky.
Ayr is a little town on the western edge of Scotland, by the sea. It's another dirty town, and I can understand why Tolkien complained about seaside towns. Ayr has a feeling of being cobbled together carelessly from various bits and pieces. The elegant old buildings obviously had important purposes at one point, but now they've been converted into little sleazy tourist shops and greasy restaurants, which fit awkwardly. But the town does have a church where Robert the Bruce is said to have rested after the Battle of Bannockburn, and where John Knox is said to have preached.
The buses drove us down to the seashore, in a spot where all the tourist attractions seemed to be concentrated. There was a large playground area with enormous tunnel slides, swings, ziplines, sandpits, etc., and a gawky whitewashed construction that looked like an overgrown sandcastle, labeled "Pirate Pete's Children's Adventure" in flamboyant letters over the front door. We all piled out of the buses and straggled around the various attractions to a broad green field, the Low Green, between the town and the beach. At one end of the green were the tourist attractions. To the south were the tourist shops. To the east, along the long town side, were the trees and fences of back gardens. The turrets of an occasional Victorian home peered over the trees, towers and widow's walks and gable windows staring in weathered stone. To the south, a line of cliffs bordered the green, jutting out into the sea to form a long headland. To the west ran the Esplanade road, supported by a seawall, and below the seawall, the beach. In the distance, I could see the outline of a blue island, which, as Mr. Shaw said, was supposed to be in the shape of a warrior asleep on his side. The sun flashed on the water and on bars of sand running out into the shallow sea. Waves lapped against the beach.
Everyone sat down on the grass, and we ate lunch in a happy sprawl, everyone sitting every-which-way with knapsacks, waterbottles, strollers, bags, frisbees, soccerballs, sandals, and jackets tumbled through the mess. Emily and her little friend Jessica sat with Michaela, Rachel, and me, and Sarah, an American girl who's visiting Scotland before she goes to college in the fall. It was just sandwiches for us RPM kids: strawberry jam and peanut butter for me. Emily shared her garlic potato chips ("crisps", as she insists they're called) with me. Seagulls dropped out of the sky and stalked about impatiently on the edge of our crowd, eyeing us hungrily.
After lunch, Mr. Shaw organized races. Grandpa Jimmy, the oldest man in the church, stood at the finish line to toss candybars to anyone and everyone who had been involved (or even some who hadn't been involved). The races involved everyone: there were straight running races, divided by age so that the littlest children raced one another; there were piggyback races, where the little children grabbed a partner and climbed on (Missy carried Emily, and Jessica took a tumble in this one--"She tried to fly without wings", as her kind aunt said); there was an egg-and-spoon race (with a potato substituted for an egg--Emily and I sat on the sidelines and cheered Missy on); there was a wheelbarrow race (in which Lucas was a wheelbarrow for Rob Edgar--quite a ridiculous sight to see these two brawny chaps scrambling across the grass); there was a three-legged race; and there was a scramble race (in which children grabbed a partner, and the pairs swung across the field like whirligigs, grasping each other by the wrists). I sat and watched with Emily, when Emily wasn't running. Emily cheered for her dad in the men's races, and dashed up to hug him when he'd finished. After all the races, Mr. Shaw tossed handfulls of small coins into the grass, showers of silver flashing in the sun. The little children scrambled like hungry seagulls to snatch them up. Emily proudly displayed her seventy pence to me.
After the races, we somehow got organized for several group pictures. This was a tedious process, since wandering children had to be gathered up from the park, and straggling, reluctant adults had to be persuaded to join the photo. The photographer, Karen, made all of us RPM team lie on our backs in a circle so that she could take our picture. We were all miserable because of the hot sun glaring in our eyes.
Then everyone broke up to their various activities. Mr. Robertson organized a game of "football". A bunch of people went shopping, while others opted to walk along the beach. Emily grabbed my hand, and I skipped with her and Jessica down to the beach. Mrs. Robertson and her sisters followed us, all middle-aged women with young children. They clustered under the seawall, which supported the Esplanade road, in the dry sand. Draping a towel carefully around my waist, I wriggled out of my jeans and into a pair of shorts. Then Emily, Jessica, and I sprinted across the hot sand to the edge of the water. The sand ran from powdery to firm, from scorching to cold under our bare toes. We shouted with delight as we splashed through a little inlet, running parallel to the sea. The sand had been rippled into firm curves by the tide. Seaweed squished under our feet, and Emily wrinkled her nose in disgust.
We settled down at last to digging a hole in the sand. The children (Daniel, Emily's cousin, I think, had joined us--a small, impudent, ruddy boy) decided to dig a dungeon for a castle. Jessica, Daniel, and I scraped sand out of a hole while Emily piled it in walls on the edge of the hole. Every so often, the walls of the hole would cave in (as is the habit of wet sand), and the children would squeal and hurry to patch it up. Water oozed up through the dark sand. We uncovered fragments of shell, like iridescent butterfly feathers, and rough shale pebbles. We found whole clamshells, small and white like fingernails. We scooped and scraped and laughed in delight. Mrs. Robertson took pictures of us with my camera. She offered to relieve me, but I was having so much fun with the kids that it didn't really matter. So, after hovering over us for awhile, she wandered off down the beach.
When we got bored with our hole, we decided to build sandcastles. We found a spot where the sand was dryer but firm enough to congeal, and Emily and Jessica used their purple plastic buckets to make two turrets. Then all of us sprinted out into the water. I shouted with joy and surprise as the water ran up round our legs. It was warm at first, then grew colder and colder as we ventured out farther. But it never got very deep. We walked out a long ways, and the water was only up to my knees. Emily and Jessica were shivering, but delighted. Emily begged that we keep going, but she and Jessica had water nearly above their waists, and I didn't want them to get any wetter than they were. We scuffed up clouds of brown sand with our feet. The little waves lapped over our sandy skin. We stood still and laughed at a seagull that appeared to be standing on the water (I think it was standing on a Coke can that was floating on the water), and we laughed at a jaunty little terrier which paddled out into the waves, courageously chasing a silver ball that its owner tossed. Emily thought this terrier was the best thing in the world, and she stared at it, giggling happily as it bounced like a rubber ball itself through the waves, its ears back, valiantly snapping at the ball.
Our feet splashed through the cold water as we walked along the beach. After the hot sun, the water felt wonderful. I held out my arms like a hawk's wings to the south wind, and felt it whip my hair. Licking my lips, I realized, half-surprised, that they had the salty tang. Emily complained that the water tasted funny when Jessica accidentally splashed some into her face, but I said it was only the salt. We paddled about for awhile, running out, then dashing back in again. Whenever we ran out, Emily and Jessica would grab my hand. Once we got to the place where the water was about knee-deep on me, they would fall to their stomachs, still holding my hands, and I would drag them through the water. "One, two, three!" Emily shouted, this game being her idea. I hauled them along, howling and groaning in mock agony, while they giggled and laughed with glee. They kicked up little trails of spray, their feet splashing. Water flew up in wings round my ankles in the shallows.
We ran out, then ran back in, ran out, then ran back in. On our last run, I spotted something unusual floating in the water: a small grey pebble with a tall strand of seaweed swaying from it. I scooped it up. The girls shrank back, wrinkling their noses. "What's that?" Emily asked. "It's seaweed," I explained. "Did you know that it's in your shampoo? And when you eat ice cream, you're eating seaweed. Touch it. It feels squidgy." The girls put out timid fingers and squeezed the green strands. "Ooh," Emily giggled, "let me hold it." The green strands were wet and squishy, soft, like soaked green hair. We showed it to Mrs. Robertson, who told us that people in Chinese restaurants around here cook and eat this stuff. "How would you like to eat it?" she asked. "Noooo," Emily squealed. Emily gently put it back in again. The rock sank to the bottom, and the seaweed trailed out behind it in the swell of the tide.
Mrs. Robertson called us back up the beach. Emily and Jessica were reluctant, but they came, picking up small shells along the way. "Youse give Evelyn a rest," Mrs. Robertson ordered. "Play in the sand by yourselves." (Yes, the Scots use "youse" the way New York people do. It's rather weird. But then, Emily thought "y'all" was strange....) The girls commenced dolefully scooping at the hot, dry sand by themselves, until Mrs. Robertson suggested brightly that they dig a deep hole and bury themselves in it. Mrs. Robertson, Daniel, and one of Mrs. Robertson's sisters set to, helping the girls, scraping away in the sand. I stretched out on a towel and watched. The dry, powdery sand became dark like brown sugar further down. Emily and Jessica were delighted, and scraped away diligently. Soon they had a broad, shallow hole in which all three kids could lie. They were in the process of covering themselves up again when Emily P. (on the RPM team), Missy, Michaela, and John came up. "We're going to grab our stuff and help set up for supper," they said. "Oh, that's right! Lucas told me to remember!" I jumped up. It was right on time, though. I waved good-bye to Emily. Mrs. Robertson thanked me profusely--which seemed rather odd to me, since I'd just been enjoying myself. I'd nearly shouted myself hoarse, behaving like a little kid.
I quietly pulled on my shoes and followed the other four up the seawall and back into the town, swapping stories of what we'd done during the afternoon. Emily P. was distressed when she'd heard that I'd been alone the whole time. They had been walking up the beach a ways. We walked to the Baptist church mission hall, which was being rented to us for the occasion: a large fellowship hall, with a slanted ceiling and a few big windows, and lots of wooden chairs. Reminded me of a conference center in Oklahoma with all the rough wooden furniture. Mr. Robertson told me to go out to the front door and direct people to the side of the building (the Baptist church is the corner of one of these long rows of shops that are all joined together). I leaned in the doorway of the church and watched for people from the RP church passing by. The sidewalks were crowded with everyone else, it seemed. The impression of Ayr as a dirty city grew on me unpleasantly. Though the cars here are all little, efficient, brand new European cars (I only saw two SUVs, and they were small ones, the whole time I stood there), the people walking the sidewalks are about as dingy as anyone from redneck Oklahoma or Texas. All the men seemed to be tattooed, and all of them seemed to be going about without any shirts. Most of the women wore shirts which could hardly be called such, and trousers or skirts slung down round their hips in a rather disgusting style. Yes, it can be said that this is normal American fare, but the tattoos and the immodest costume seemed to be far more popular here than in the U.S. And almost everyone was raw-red, cherry-baked, sunburned to a crisp--either that or sand-dune-white. The constant reek of cigarette smoke and the endless "THUD thud THUD thud" of European dance music blaring from passing cars and from stereos on the beach. I was fairly well jaded and bored by the time Rachel and Emily P. showed up to make life a bit more cheerful. "Have you been by yourself again? Oh, you poor dear!" Emily P. said and gave me a motherly hug. We watched people go by and shook our heads at the general deshabile of the crowd.
Back in the hall for supper (or "tea"), I found a seat with Emily, Jessica, and Daniel at a table on the far side of the room. Emily was delighted when her dad came and sat with us. Toby sat with us, too, as did the Knodles, an American couple visiting the church. Pastor Quigley prayed. Then Carla (Pastor Quigley's eldest daughter) and her friend Laura called out names from a roster, and as names were called, people went to get their packages of food. I had fish-and-chips in a squishy, greasy brown paper wrapper. Emily and Jessica both had sausage. Sausage, as Mr. Robertson informed us uneducated Americans, is served battered. Looked quite unappetizing to me. I pulled apart the smoking-hot fish with my fingers, and sprinkled salt on the "chips". There was very, very sweet applejuice to drink. The little children giggled and talked aimlessly among themselves, while Mr. Knodle asked Toby and me about ourselves. After supper, Pastor Quigley led everyone in family worship, reading the beginning of 1 Peter and giving a brief Gospel message. We sang Psalm 116--full-throated, rich, joyful, shaking the wooden rafters.
After supper, people gathered up their belongings and their children and streamed out of the hall. On the way out, Jess Edgar and Laura served ice cream to everyone. The RPM team stayed behind. We wiped tables, swept the floor, threw away trash, etc. When everyone had gone, Jess handed us our ice cream cones. The ice cream has a similar consistency and flavor to whipped cream (it's not as firm as U.S. ice cream, and it's sweeter), but it's very good. We helped pick up various odds and ends which had been left behind in the cloakroom downstairs, then marched down to the beach. Carla helped us carry things--a sack full of ropes, ties, and balls from the races earlier (left behind by the Edgars, who always seem to be behind such events), and a carton of fruit juice for the kids on the drive back.
We found the buses already parked beside the kerb at the beach. I snapped photos of the sun as it began to set over the water. A dark bank of grey cloud had rolled in over the west. The sun shone slantwise through it, sending silver light raining down on the grey water. The islands hung hazy behind the sunlight, like Avalon or the Hesperides, hovering on the horizon.
People sat on the grass and waited for everyone to gather. We filed back onto the buses, and drove back to Airdrie. I had a bench to myself since Mrs. Robertson had taken charge of Emily when I'd started to help clean up after supper. I wrote some, and dozed some, and thought a lot. We've been reading a book called Spiritual Disciplines, and in response to a chapter on Bible reading, the team decided to memorize Hebrews 12. So I now have the first two verses memorized. I pondered them over and over on the trip--like holding warm tea in your mouth until all the sweet-bitterness of it soaks in. Golden fields of rape flew past, and pastures bordered with hawthorn. The hawthorn is in bloom: writhen trunks, dwarf-stumpy, thick, dark foliage covered with white flowers, like foam.
Back in Airdrie, I stood by the front gate of the church and chatted with some of the adults. They're very, very friendly and cordial, and asked me questions mingled with much smiling and nodding. People streamed away to their cars. I hugged Emily good-night when she came to find me. Then I promptly scurried off and showered. Some of the girls from the church (Carla, Laura, and a couple of others) hung around with the team, playing Mao. I sat on the steps that lead up to the bedrooms and watched. After awhile, people went outside to play ultimate frisbee. Missy suggested it, but then she didn't want to play--so she took refuge from the boys, and hid in the office. Then she went off to watch.
Rachel drifted into the office, and we discussed the RP church (she's not an RP). She said that the dresscode here is much more liberal than the usual attire at home (usual European get-up: even the good people wear things that make my eyebrows go up; the Europeans have been at it for years--when the French ladies were wearing dresses with necks down their chests, the pioneer women had clapped on sunbonnets and collars up to their throats), but that in general it has a more conservative feel than her church. John's laptop, perched on the table in the office, started to bling and beep, so Rachel sat down to chat on AIM with one of John's friends, a twelve-year-old girl named Anna. Rachel giggles every so often. She has a funny giggle--once it gets started, she can hardly stop it, and she just keeps giggling, shaking and shaking, and making everyone else laugh, too. I just read that last bit off to her. "Hahaha," she said.
The evening is becoming cool, clouded, and windy outside. Missy chuckles out in the fellowship hall. Matt has taken to calling her Avery because she breaks into spontaneous song, just like Avery Mann. :o)
Good-night, my friends. God bless.
I was the first girl to wake, at seven thirty this morning. I read bogs, wrote e-mails, did devotions, and cleaned up odds and ends of dishes left over from last night. We ate a late breakfast because Matt had to run to the store to buy milk to go with our cereal. At this meal, John and Brenda discovered that I've never eaten Lucky Charms--they both decided that I've had a deprived childhood, while Lucas told me with a wag of his head that I wasn't missing much. We scrambled to eat, wash dishes, and pack our sandwiches for lunch while people from the congregation arrived for the congregational trip to Ayr. The fellowship hall soon filled. Emily latched onto me, proudly showing off her floppy "Little Mermaid" sunhat. (For those of you who don't know (and I can't remember if I've introduced Emily before), Emily is the five-year-old, blond, freckled daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Robertson.) At ten forty-five, Pastor Quigley addressed everyone. The hall was noisy, but everyone was quiet as he prayed for safe travel. Then Mr. Robertson read off lists of names. As people's names were called, they followed their leader to the buses outside. Emily and I were in the same group. We filed out to one of the two big "luxury" tour buses waiting beside the kerb, and went as far back as we could. The buses soon filled up, and we started off. The buses chugged and swayed, long, ungainly things, as we swung round corners.
Emily sat by me, cheerful and excited, chirping and giggling. She played with Rachel, who sat in the seat in front of us. She showed off her little stuffed lamb, and had a tickling match with Rachel. She and Rachel chanted animal sounds, all mixed up: "What does a cow say?" "Moo." "No, no. A cow says baa. What does a gull say?" "Caw, caw." "No, a gull says mine, mine, mine," Rachel said, and Emily squawked, "Moine, moine, moine," until Rachel shook with uncontrollable laughter. Mr. Shaw, one of the elders, passed out little booklets of Psalm selections. We sang Psalm choruses ("The Lord will light my candle", "The Lord builds up Jerusalem", "The steps of a good man", etc.). Emily joined in enthusiastically, her voice squeaking over everyone else's. Jess Edgar, sitting across the aisle in the bench ahead of us, turned back and laughed in delight. After the singing, Emily chirped and chattered happily. She shouted up to her friend Jessica, a plump, brown little girl with a perpetually worried look. I told Emily a story (in which our friend Eric, the Alien, and our friend Christa figured prominently--don't worry Christa, though, it wasn't nearly as elaborate as the ones I've told her :o).
We drove through Glasgow. Another dirty industrial city, in many ways, though it has some lovely old stone buildings. We drove over the River Clyde, which used to be famous for shipping, then out into the country. Fields in ungainly patches sprawled on the hills. Sheep and cattle grazed in the pastures. Wide open spaces in some places, and forests of fir and hemlock in other places, all gliding by under a warm, pale blue sky.
Ayr is a little town on the western edge of Scotland, by the sea. It's another dirty town, and I can understand why Tolkien complained about seaside towns. Ayr has a feeling of being cobbled together carelessly from various bits and pieces. The elegant old buildings obviously had important purposes at one point, but now they've been converted into little sleazy tourist shops and greasy restaurants, which fit awkwardly. But the town does have a church where Robert the Bruce is said to have rested after the Battle of Bannockburn, and where John Knox is said to have preached.
The buses drove us down to the seashore, in a spot where all the tourist attractions seemed to be concentrated. There was a large playground area with enormous tunnel slides, swings, ziplines, sandpits, etc., and a gawky whitewashed construction that looked like an overgrown sandcastle, labeled "Pirate Pete's Children's Adventure" in flamboyant letters over the front door. We all piled out of the buses and straggled around the various attractions to a broad green field, the Low Green, between the town and the beach. At one end of the green were the tourist attractions. To the south were the tourist shops. To the east, along the long town side, were the trees and fences of back gardens. The turrets of an occasional Victorian home peered over the trees, towers and widow's walks and gable windows staring in weathered stone. To the south, a line of cliffs bordered the green, jutting out into the sea to form a long headland. To the west ran the Esplanade road, supported by a seawall, and below the seawall, the beach. In the distance, I could see the outline of a blue island, which, as Mr. Shaw said, was supposed to be in the shape of a warrior asleep on his side. The sun flashed on the water and on bars of sand running out into the shallow sea. Waves lapped against the beach.
Everyone sat down on the grass, and we ate lunch in a happy sprawl, everyone sitting every-which-way with knapsacks, waterbottles, strollers, bags, frisbees, soccerballs, sandals, and jackets tumbled through the mess. Emily and her little friend Jessica sat with Michaela, Rachel, and me, and Sarah, an American girl who's visiting Scotland before she goes to college in the fall. It was just sandwiches for us RPM kids: strawberry jam and peanut butter for me. Emily shared her garlic potato chips ("crisps", as she insists they're called) with me. Seagulls dropped out of the sky and stalked about impatiently on the edge of our crowd, eyeing us hungrily.
After lunch, Mr. Shaw organized races. Grandpa Jimmy, the oldest man in the church, stood at the finish line to toss candybars to anyone and everyone who had been involved (or even some who hadn't been involved). The races involved everyone: there were straight running races, divided by age so that the littlest children raced one another; there were piggyback races, where the little children grabbed a partner and climbed on (Missy carried Emily, and Jessica took a tumble in this one--"She tried to fly without wings", as her kind aunt said); there was an egg-and-spoon race (with a potato substituted for an egg--Emily and I sat on the sidelines and cheered Missy on); there was a wheelbarrow race (in which Lucas was a wheelbarrow for Rob Edgar--quite a ridiculous sight to see these two brawny chaps scrambling across the grass); there was a three-legged race; and there was a scramble race (in which children grabbed a partner, and the pairs swung across the field like whirligigs, grasping each other by the wrists). I sat and watched with Emily, when Emily wasn't running. Emily cheered for her dad in the men's races, and dashed up to hug him when he'd finished. After all the races, Mr. Shaw tossed handfulls of small coins into the grass, showers of silver flashing in the sun. The little children scrambled like hungry seagulls to snatch them up. Emily proudly displayed her seventy pence to me.
After the races, we somehow got organized for several group pictures. This was a tedious process, since wandering children had to be gathered up from the park, and straggling, reluctant adults had to be persuaded to join the photo. The photographer, Karen, made all of us RPM team lie on our backs in a circle so that she could take our picture. We were all miserable because of the hot sun glaring in our eyes.
Then everyone broke up to their various activities. Mr. Robertson organized a game of "football". A bunch of people went shopping, while others opted to walk along the beach. Emily grabbed my hand, and I skipped with her and Jessica down to the beach. Mrs. Robertson and her sisters followed us, all middle-aged women with young children. They clustered under the seawall, which supported the Esplanade road, in the dry sand. Draping a towel carefully around my waist, I wriggled out of my jeans and into a pair of shorts. Then Emily, Jessica, and I sprinted across the hot sand to the edge of the water. The sand ran from powdery to firm, from scorching to cold under our bare toes. We shouted with delight as we splashed through a little inlet, running parallel to the sea. The sand had been rippled into firm curves by the tide. Seaweed squished under our feet, and Emily wrinkled her nose in disgust.
We settled down at last to digging a hole in the sand. The children (Daniel, Emily's cousin, I think, had joined us--a small, impudent, ruddy boy) decided to dig a dungeon for a castle. Jessica, Daniel, and I scraped sand out of a hole while Emily piled it in walls on the edge of the hole. Every so often, the walls of the hole would cave in (as is the habit of wet sand), and the children would squeal and hurry to patch it up. Water oozed up through the dark sand. We uncovered fragments of shell, like iridescent butterfly feathers, and rough shale pebbles. We found whole clamshells, small and white like fingernails. We scooped and scraped and laughed in delight. Mrs. Robertson took pictures of us with my camera. She offered to relieve me, but I was having so much fun with the kids that it didn't really matter. So, after hovering over us for awhile, she wandered off down the beach.
When we got bored with our hole, we decided to build sandcastles. We found a spot where the sand was dryer but firm enough to congeal, and Emily and Jessica used their purple plastic buckets to make two turrets. Then all of us sprinted out into the water. I shouted with joy and surprise as the water ran up round our legs. It was warm at first, then grew colder and colder as we ventured out farther. But it never got very deep. We walked out a long ways, and the water was only up to my knees. Emily and Jessica were shivering, but delighted. Emily begged that we keep going, but she and Jessica had water nearly above their waists, and I didn't want them to get any wetter than they were. We scuffed up clouds of brown sand with our feet. The little waves lapped over our sandy skin. We stood still and laughed at a seagull that appeared to be standing on the water (I think it was standing on a Coke can that was floating on the water), and we laughed at a jaunty little terrier which paddled out into the waves, courageously chasing a silver ball that its owner tossed. Emily thought this terrier was the best thing in the world, and she stared at it, giggling happily as it bounced like a rubber ball itself through the waves, its ears back, valiantly snapping at the ball.
Our feet splashed through the cold water as we walked along the beach. After the hot sun, the water felt wonderful. I held out my arms like a hawk's wings to the south wind, and felt it whip my hair. Licking my lips, I realized, half-surprised, that they had the salty tang. Emily complained that the water tasted funny when Jessica accidentally splashed some into her face, but I said it was only the salt. We paddled about for awhile, running out, then dashing back in again. Whenever we ran out, Emily and Jessica would grab my hand. Once we got to the place where the water was about knee-deep on me, they would fall to their stomachs, still holding my hands, and I would drag them through the water. "One, two, three!" Emily shouted, this game being her idea. I hauled them along, howling and groaning in mock agony, while they giggled and laughed with glee. They kicked up little trails of spray, their feet splashing. Water flew up in wings round my ankles in the shallows.
We ran out, then ran back in, ran out, then ran back in. On our last run, I spotted something unusual floating in the water: a small grey pebble with a tall strand of seaweed swaying from it. I scooped it up. The girls shrank back, wrinkling their noses. "What's that?" Emily asked. "It's seaweed," I explained. "Did you know that it's in your shampoo? And when you eat ice cream, you're eating seaweed. Touch it. It feels squidgy." The girls put out timid fingers and squeezed the green strands. "Ooh," Emily giggled, "let me hold it." The green strands were wet and squishy, soft, like soaked green hair. We showed it to Mrs. Robertson, who told us that people in Chinese restaurants around here cook and eat this stuff. "How would you like to eat it?" she asked. "Noooo," Emily squealed. Emily gently put it back in again. The rock sank to the bottom, and the seaweed trailed out behind it in the swell of the tide.
Mrs. Robertson called us back up the beach. Emily and Jessica were reluctant, but they came, picking up small shells along the way. "Youse give Evelyn a rest," Mrs. Robertson ordered. "Play in the sand by yourselves." (Yes, the Scots use "youse" the way New York people do. It's rather weird. But then, Emily thought "y'all" was strange....) The girls commenced dolefully scooping at the hot, dry sand by themselves, until Mrs. Robertson suggested brightly that they dig a deep hole and bury themselves in it. Mrs. Robertson, Daniel, and one of Mrs. Robertson's sisters set to, helping the girls, scraping away in the sand. I stretched out on a towel and watched. The dry, powdery sand became dark like brown sugar further down. Emily and Jessica were delighted, and scraped away diligently. Soon they had a broad, shallow hole in which all three kids could lie. They were in the process of covering themselves up again when Emily P. (on the RPM team), Missy, Michaela, and John came up. "We're going to grab our stuff and help set up for supper," they said. "Oh, that's right! Lucas told me to remember!" I jumped up. It was right on time, though. I waved good-bye to Emily. Mrs. Robertson thanked me profusely--which seemed rather odd to me, since I'd just been enjoying myself. I'd nearly shouted myself hoarse, behaving like a little kid.
I quietly pulled on my shoes and followed the other four up the seawall and back into the town, swapping stories of what we'd done during the afternoon. Emily P. was distressed when she'd heard that I'd been alone the whole time. They had been walking up the beach a ways. We walked to the Baptist church mission hall, which was being rented to us for the occasion: a large fellowship hall, with a slanted ceiling and a few big windows, and lots of wooden chairs. Reminded me of a conference center in Oklahoma with all the rough wooden furniture. Mr. Robertson told me to go out to the front door and direct people to the side of the building (the Baptist church is the corner of one of these long rows of shops that are all joined together). I leaned in the doorway of the church and watched for people from the RP church passing by. The sidewalks were crowded with everyone else, it seemed. The impression of Ayr as a dirty city grew on me unpleasantly. Though the cars here are all little, efficient, brand new European cars (I only saw two SUVs, and they were small ones, the whole time I stood there), the people walking the sidewalks are about as dingy as anyone from redneck Oklahoma or Texas. All the men seemed to be tattooed, and all of them seemed to be going about without any shirts. Most of the women wore shirts which could hardly be called such, and trousers or skirts slung down round their hips in a rather disgusting style. Yes, it can be said that this is normal American fare, but the tattoos and the immodest costume seemed to be far more popular here than in the U.S. And almost everyone was raw-red, cherry-baked, sunburned to a crisp--either that or sand-dune-white. The constant reek of cigarette smoke and the endless "THUD thud THUD thud" of European dance music blaring from passing cars and from stereos on the beach. I was fairly well jaded and bored by the time Rachel and Emily P. showed up to make life a bit more cheerful. "Have you been by yourself again? Oh, you poor dear!" Emily P. said and gave me a motherly hug. We watched people go by and shook our heads at the general deshabile of the crowd.
Back in the hall for supper (or "tea"), I found a seat with Emily, Jessica, and Daniel at a table on the far side of the room. Emily was delighted when her dad came and sat with us. Toby sat with us, too, as did the Knodles, an American couple visiting the church. Pastor Quigley prayed. Then Carla (Pastor Quigley's eldest daughter) and her friend Laura called out names from a roster, and as names were called, people went to get their packages of food. I had fish-and-chips in a squishy, greasy brown paper wrapper. Emily and Jessica both had sausage. Sausage, as Mr. Robertson informed us uneducated Americans, is served battered. Looked quite unappetizing to me. I pulled apart the smoking-hot fish with my fingers, and sprinkled salt on the "chips". There was very, very sweet applejuice to drink. The little children giggled and talked aimlessly among themselves, while Mr. Knodle asked Toby and me about ourselves. After supper, Pastor Quigley led everyone in family worship, reading the beginning of 1 Peter and giving a brief Gospel message. We sang Psalm 116--full-throated, rich, joyful, shaking the wooden rafters.
After supper, people gathered up their belongings and their children and streamed out of the hall. On the way out, Jess Edgar and Laura served ice cream to everyone. The RPM team stayed behind. We wiped tables, swept the floor, threw away trash, etc. When everyone had gone, Jess handed us our ice cream cones. The ice cream has a similar consistency and flavor to whipped cream (it's not as firm as U.S. ice cream, and it's sweeter), but it's very good. We helped pick up various odds and ends which had been left behind in the cloakroom downstairs, then marched down to the beach. Carla helped us carry things--a sack full of ropes, ties, and balls from the races earlier (left behind by the Edgars, who always seem to be behind such events), and a carton of fruit juice for the kids on the drive back.
We found the buses already parked beside the kerb at the beach. I snapped photos of the sun as it began to set over the water. A dark bank of grey cloud had rolled in over the west. The sun shone slantwise through it, sending silver light raining down on the grey water. The islands hung hazy behind the sunlight, like Avalon or the Hesperides, hovering on the horizon.
People sat on the grass and waited for everyone to gather. We filed back onto the buses, and drove back to Airdrie. I had a bench to myself since Mrs. Robertson had taken charge of Emily when I'd started to help clean up after supper. I wrote some, and dozed some, and thought a lot. We've been reading a book called Spiritual Disciplines, and in response to a chapter on Bible reading, the team decided to memorize Hebrews 12. So I now have the first two verses memorized. I pondered them over and over on the trip--like holding warm tea in your mouth until all the sweet-bitterness of it soaks in. Golden fields of rape flew past, and pastures bordered with hawthorn. The hawthorn is in bloom: writhen trunks, dwarf-stumpy, thick, dark foliage covered with white flowers, like foam.
Back in Airdrie, I stood by the front gate of the church and chatted with some of the adults. They're very, very friendly and cordial, and asked me questions mingled with much smiling and nodding. People streamed away to their cars. I hugged Emily good-night when she came to find me. Then I promptly scurried off and showered. Some of the girls from the church (Carla, Laura, and a couple of others) hung around with the team, playing Mao. I sat on the steps that lead up to the bedrooms and watched. After awhile, people went outside to play ultimate frisbee. Missy suggested it, but then she didn't want to play--so she took refuge from the boys, and hid in the office. Then she went off to watch.
Rachel drifted into the office, and we discussed the RP church (she's not an RP). She said that the dresscode here is much more liberal than the usual attire at home (usual European get-up: even the good people wear things that make my eyebrows go up; the Europeans have been at it for years--when the French ladies were wearing dresses with necks down their chests, the pioneer women had clapped on sunbonnets and collars up to their throats), but that in general it has a more conservative feel than her church. John's laptop, perched on the table in the office, started to bling and beep, so Rachel sat down to chat on AIM with one of John's friends, a twelve-year-old girl named Anna. Rachel giggles every so often. She has a funny giggle--once it gets started, she can hardly stop it, and she just keeps giggling, shaking and shaking, and making everyone else laugh, too. I just read that last bit off to her. "Hahaha," she said.
The evening is becoming cool, clouded, and windy outside. Missy chuckles out in the fellowship hall. Matt has taken to calling her Avery because she breaks into spontaneous song, just like Avery Mann. :o)
Good-night, my friends. God bless.
07 June 2006
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.
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.
06 June 2006
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.
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.
01 June 2006
"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
29 May 2006
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?
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.
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.
25 May 2006
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!
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!
23 May 2006
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*
22 May 2006
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. :)
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. :)
20 May 2006
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...."
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...."
16 May 2006
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.
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.
15 May 2006
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...."
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...."
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