Brooke and I celebrated spring break with a girls' getaway. For a couple of years now she has known just where she'd like to go to college. Now that she has almost completed her junior year, we decided to take SNU up on its invitation to visit the campus, meet some professors, and sit in on some classes.
On Monday we detoured a few miles out of the way to spend a few hours with Samantha, who had just earned privileges to leave base in a bus or a taxi. It was so good to see her looking strong and confident and as beautiful as ever.
It was while we were visiting in the mall that I was first hit with a sense of nostalgia. I remembered this place from thirty years before. It was where I did my "serious" shopping when I took my first teaching job.
On Tuesday morning we drove through the town where I had lived and worked for eight years. Intersections and areas of town I used to know like the back of my hand had changed so much they were barely recognizable. A few buildings had changed hands, some were gone, but most were simply dwarfed by new retail establishments that had crowded around them.
The place closest to my heart was the block that held the Christian school and the church where I spent so much of those years. The school had celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary while I lived there, but has been closed for a number of years. It was sad to see it empty and to remember the life it once held. All the windows were boarded up, closed tightly to the light and to the community. Unless one is looking for it as I was, there's barely a hint that a couple of mobile homes used to sit over in the corner of the campus. That anyone ever lived there once upon a time.
I hadn't made plans to see anyone, but I did run into a couple of people I knew. I found myself studying their faces, trying to recognize features of the people I remembered. In all the ways that matter, they were the same. I told Brooke stories about people and places from my past as we made the final leg of our trip. She even acted interested. (Smile!)
We stopped for lunch at Grandy's across from the SNU campus before heading to our appointment. There was a dear little lady who must have been close to eighty years old refilling glasses of sweet tea in the dining room. I told Brooke she must have been a pastor's wife who didn't save enough for retirement and who sent her children to SNU!
The campus was beautiful, almost idyllic, and Jennifer, the admissions officer, gave us the VIP tour. I loved watching Brooke interact with the faculty and staff. She seemed so poised and grown-up. Still, I can't imagine letting her go off on her own as my parents allowed me to do when I was just a few months older than she is now. More than ever it seems so important to make the most of every day she has left at home.
On Wednesday my old friend Norma was able to break away from her family and join us for some girlfriend time. For four of my eight years in Oklahoma, she and I had been housemates. It had been way too long since we'd been in touch with one another, but she is the kind of friend that you can always pick up the relationship exactly where you left off. It was so good to laugh with her again. We spent the day just catching up. Our conversation was peppered with "What ever happened to...?" and "Do you ever hear from ...?" The belly laughs usually came after "Do you remember..." and were often followed by one of us saying, "I had forgotten all about that!" Between the two of us, we reconstructed enough nonsense to convince Brooke we were totally crazy.
"Doesn't it seem," we asked each other, "that we should still be in our thirties, or maybe even our twenties?"
Where have all the years gone? Who would have known they'd pass so quickly?
"Sunrise, sunset. Sunrise, sunset.
Swifty fly the days.
Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers,
Blossoming even as we gaze.
Sunrise, sunset. Sunrise, sunset.
Swiftly fly the years.
One season following another,
Laden with happiness and tears."
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Sunday, April 12, 2009
A Belated Thank You
It was the night before Easter, 1975. In all the years since then, I have never experienced anything more difficult than what our family was going through on that day. I thought I might never smile again, much less celebrate anything. Not even Easter.
When I reflect on that painful time, one redemptive memory always surfaces. My sister-in-law Carol said to me, “We’ve got to do something for the kids for Easter. We’ve got to go to the store and get something for Easter baskets.”
It seemed surreal to do something as ordinary as getting in the car, driving to the drugstore, and looking through the picked-over merchandise to try to find chocolate bunnies for Deborah, Tom, and Julie. My heart wasn’t in it. Neither was Carol’s, but she was much wiser than I was.
She knew that life goes on in the midst of tragedy. She knew that sometimes you must put your feelings aside and just keep going. She knew that the simple traditions surrounding our holy days can help keep us focused on what is real and true. With her hopeful perspective and her mother's heart, she helped me face the future.
Carol has a gift for celebrating life. She knows "how to keep Christmas well." Also Thanksgiving, Easter, birthdays, and any other occasion that she can turn into a celebration.
She is a homemaker. A true HOME maker. She has always made her home a restful and joyful place for her family and guests. Every meal she serves turns into a time of refreshment, not just because she is an excellent cook, but also because everyone wants to linger around the table to have their souls and spirits nourished.
She is a beautiful and remarkable lady, and I am blessed to call her family.
On this Easter my heart goes out to her as she is fighting the battle of her life against cancer. I remember the courage she has always shown in adversity, and I pray that she will stay strong for this ordeal.
And I want to say thank you. Thanks for all she has taught me, especially for the lessons of that long-ago Easter weekend.
When I reflect on that painful time, one redemptive memory always surfaces. My sister-in-law Carol said to me, “We’ve got to do something for the kids for Easter. We’ve got to go to the store and get something for Easter baskets.”
It seemed surreal to do something as ordinary as getting in the car, driving to the drugstore, and looking through the picked-over merchandise to try to find chocolate bunnies for Deborah, Tom, and Julie. My heart wasn’t in it. Neither was Carol’s, but she was much wiser than I was.
She knew that life goes on in the midst of tragedy. She knew that sometimes you must put your feelings aside and just keep going. She knew that the simple traditions surrounding our holy days can help keep us focused on what is real and true. With her hopeful perspective and her mother's heart, she helped me face the future.
Carol has a gift for celebrating life. She knows "how to keep Christmas well." Also Thanksgiving, Easter, birthdays, and any other occasion that she can turn into a celebration.
She is a homemaker. A true HOME maker. She has always made her home a restful and joyful place for her family and guests. Every meal she serves turns into a time of refreshment, not just because she is an excellent cook, but also because everyone wants to linger around the table to have their souls and spirits nourished.
She is a beautiful and remarkable lady, and I am blessed to call her family.
On this Easter my heart goes out to her as she is fighting the battle of her life against cancer. I remember the courage she has always shown in adversity, and I pray that she will stay strong for this ordeal.
And I want to say thank you. Thanks for all she has taught me, especially for the lessons of that long-ago Easter weekend.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
A Morality Tale in Three Movies
Last week marked the beginning of the LEAP test, our state’s performance assessment. It is a high stakes test that the students I teach must pass to advance to the next grade. The pressure to prepare has been intense, so the administration decided that a school-wide movie would be a great way to relax and boost morale the day before testing began. Nothing heavy, just something fun. The choice was Madagascar 2.
We teachers took shifts to supervise the kids, so I wasn’t in the gym for the entire movie. Maybe if I had been there from beginning to end I may have seen more of a point, but for me it was mostly silly and often crude. The reason I even mention it is because of a disturbing trend I’m noticing in children’s movies. For years now, we’ve tolerated sexual innuendo in kids’ entertainment, but in more recent movies another line is increasingly being crossed into the realm of deviant sexuality. In this movie, for example, a male lemur dresses in drag and suggests that he is attractive to another male, a penguin romances a bobble-head doll, and a giraffe marries a hippopotamus. Their “courageous” outside-the-box relationship is greatly celebrated. Even in the most pointless and un-educational of movies, you have to wonder about a hidden agenda.
In my own classroom as each day’s testing was over we watched bits of A Series of Unfortunate Events. I wanted to lure my students into reading the books which, "dear reader," spoof a literary style of two hundred years ago. When Brooke first brought Lemony Snicket home as a fourth-grader, she was deeply shocked that I found him hilarious. To her, the plight of destitute orphans left to the care of inept adults while being pursued by an evil villain was extremely tragic. My students loved the movie, probably for the same reason that I loved reading fairy tales as a little girl. In these stories the line between good and evil is unmistakably clear, and good triumphs in spite of all odds.
On Friday night the kids and I watched TheBoy in Striped Pajamas, a riveting and disturbing story set in WWII Germany. The horrors of the Nazi regime, as seen through the eyes of two children, seem even more terrible because of their trust and innocence. It is not an easy movie to watch, but one of the most unforgettable I’ve ever seen, rich in symbolism and timeless truth. I highly recommend it.
Today begins Passion week, and I want to mark out some special time to think about all it means. But today I think of what John Eldredge says in Epic: “What if all the great stories that have ever moved you are telling you something about the true Story into which you were born?” And quoting Frederick Buechner: We live in a world “where goodness is pitted against evil, love against hate, order against chaos, in a great struggle where often it is hard to be sure who belongs to which side….Yet…it is a world where the battle goes ultimately to the good…It not only happened once upon a time but has kept on happening ever since and is happening still.” YES!
One of the best places I found for movie reviews is pluggedinonline. If you haven't been using it, you might want to check it out.
We teachers took shifts to supervise the kids, so I wasn’t in the gym for the entire movie. Maybe if I had been there from beginning to end I may have seen more of a point, but for me it was mostly silly and often crude. The reason I even mention it is because of a disturbing trend I’m noticing in children’s movies. For years now, we’ve tolerated sexual innuendo in kids’ entertainment, but in more recent movies another line is increasingly being crossed into the realm of deviant sexuality. In this movie, for example, a male lemur dresses in drag and suggests that he is attractive to another male, a penguin romances a bobble-head doll, and a giraffe marries a hippopotamus. Their “courageous” outside-the-box relationship is greatly celebrated. Even in the most pointless and un-educational of movies, you have to wonder about a hidden agenda.
In my own classroom as each day’s testing was over we watched bits of A Series of Unfortunate Events. I wanted to lure my students into reading the books which, "dear reader," spoof a literary style of two hundred years ago. When Brooke first brought Lemony Snicket home as a fourth-grader, she was deeply shocked that I found him hilarious. To her, the plight of destitute orphans left to the care of inept adults while being pursued by an evil villain was extremely tragic. My students loved the movie, probably for the same reason that I loved reading fairy tales as a little girl. In these stories the line between good and evil is unmistakably clear, and good triumphs in spite of all odds.
On Friday night the kids and I watched TheBoy in Striped Pajamas, a riveting and disturbing story set in WWII Germany. The horrors of the Nazi regime, as seen through the eyes of two children, seem even more terrible because of their trust and innocence. It is not an easy movie to watch, but one of the most unforgettable I’ve ever seen, rich in symbolism and timeless truth. I highly recommend it.
Today begins Passion week, and I want to mark out some special time to think about all it means. But today I think of what John Eldredge says in Epic: “What if all the great stories that have ever moved you are telling you something about the true Story into which you were born?” And quoting Frederick Buechner: We live in a world “where goodness is pitted against evil, love against hate, order against chaos, in a great struggle where often it is hard to be sure who belongs to which side….Yet…it is a world where the battle goes ultimately to the good…It not only happened once upon a time but has kept on happening ever since and is happening still.” YES!
One of the best places I found for movie reviews is pluggedinonline. If you haven't been using it, you might want to check it out.
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