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Good Things #18: Rolling Out of Bed

There’s nothing better than coming home after a long day at work and realizing: I have nothing else I need to do. All I’m responsible for now is eating dinner, reading a good book, making sure my next day is fully planned, putting the chickens in for the night, and heading to bed sometime before 8:30. I’m kidding. Kind of.

Fall’s always had a melancholyness to it. I go from a sunny summer high to this immediate need for hibernation, and it often includes a good dose of “woe is me” and a tiny bit of anxiety. It doesn’t seem to matter that fall is one of the most beautiful seasons, and even as I walk through the crunchy red leaves in the afternoon sun, I feel a weight of the darkness coming earlier and earlier every day.

This past Monday, as I looked out the window and realized it was almost pitch black already, I forced myself to get back in my car and drive to small group.

It was 6:30 and I wasn’t sure if I would last till after 9:00. I told myself that somehow I’d find the energy, that somehow 6:15AM wouldn’t come as quickly as it seemed and it would all be worth it. There’s something about deep cushy couches after a certain hour that beg me to fall asleep. And warm beverages. And a cozy light against a warm living room wall. Even when roughly ten people surround me talking theology and life and purpose, I still manage to drift off quietly in a corner somewhere.

But I went and I sat and I did not fall asleep. I even engaged in the conversation, offering up my paltry musings and observations. We ended in prayer and I prayed aloud for two friends who sat by me, something I never would’ve done a few years ago.

That’s the thing. My bed is extremely comfortable. My beeswax candles smell like summer and the book I am reading about an uppity twenty-something in the 1940s is quite engaging.

But they aren’t people. They don’t breathe or think or speak. They don’t ask how I’m doing and actually care, and they certainly don’t pray for me.

I have to be careful as the months get colder and the sun gets further away. I have to fight my natural tendency to curl up and shut out the world. There’s a balance between “Oh my gosh I’ve had too much people time and I just need to be alone!” and “I’d be okay with never speaking to another human being again.” I hardly ever consider myself an introvert, but in the months between October and March, it’s hard to see me as anything else.

I wouldn’t say anything earth-shattering happened at small group Monday night. Community happened. Thought happened. Prayer happened.

And none of that would’ve been possible if I hadn’t rolled out of bed.

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Good Time Saturday Night

I am sitting in a darkened home. Three children are asleep upstairs and the refrigerator hums as I type.

[I felt my body being jostled and there she was, all seven-years of her, shaking me. I’d fallen asleep watching Master Chef Jr. at 8:30. That does not fly when you haven’t seen each other in months and there is still so much to talk about.]

What did we talk about?

She told me about school and how “first grade is so boring.” (“Boring” seems to be the new word.) I asked her why.

“All we do is sit at desks and do math.”

“That sounds pretty boring,” I said.

“I miss kindergarten.”

Don’t we all.

“I wish I were your teacher. Then we could have fun and learn at the same time.”

But I shouldn’t have said it because I saw her eyes dart for a moment with the thought of it.

We watched the oldest brother play flag football, losing terribly. They played tag because let’s face it, I wasn’t feeling it. We sang Lorde’s “Royals” and Avicii’s “Wake Me Up” and a thousand other songs. Catherine, everyone is looking at us ’cause you’re singing.

And?

They got over it pretty quickly and joined in. Don’t worry. We weren’t too obnoxious.

He threw his body and contorted himself in all different shapes until finally I said,

“You watch it. No hospital runs until after I eat my dinner.”

They thought that was the funniest thing. Oh, Catherine said she won’t take us to the hospital until after she eats. Better be careful! 

We laughed in the pizza place waiting for our order. The middle boy shook my soda till all the bubbles filled the bottle. We almost took the wrong food. I forgot to order the mozzarella sticks. We licked our fingers.

They told me about their new babysitter, who sounded nice.

But she, as though concerned for my feelings, leaned over and whispered in my ear,

“You’re funner.”

I read Angelina Ballerina, did not give in to the half-hearted request for more, smoothed hair, turned out lights.

The 10, 9, and 5-year-old are now 11, 10, and 7. They still guess that I’m in my thirties, wonder where my children are, and ask if I can have sleepovers.

Not bad for a Saturday night.

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Diner Talk

My mom used to tell me stories of her diner-waitressing days. She started working at 15, a young, “apple-cheeked” smiler who (of course) began her first shift by spilling all over a policeman. She worked there all through high school and even into college. She talks about the man who came in every day, three meals a day, ever since his wife died.

“He used to make his tattoo dance for us,” she says, and I picture a wrinkly old arm tattoo shaking and jiving on the diner counter.

I thought, growing up, that I would work at a diner, too. I guess I thought I’d do most things my mother had done, and in the same order. But the little diner in my town would have none of it. [“Do you have experience waitressing?” “No, but I’m a fast learner.” “Sorry, no thanks.” And I was out on the streets.]

A second chance came, however, after college graduation. [I know! You’re not supposed to work at diners when you have a college degree! Well, guess what? Life doesn’t always end up the way you expect it to.]

I walked in on a rainy day in October looking for a part-time job to supplement my wonderful job at the tea shop. It was spur-of-the-moment, prompted by my love of this particular diner’s grilled cheese on homemade bread.

I sat down with Nick, the owner, and he asked me about three questions:

“Do you have experience waitressing?”

“No, but I’m a fast learner.”

“Are you good with people?”

“Yes!”

“Can you start Monday?”

“Definitely.”

You know what landed me that job, the one that no college-grad is supposed to want, but the one that I couldn’t wait to start?

I smiled.

No joke.

Nick leaned back in his chair and said, “I really like that smile.”

And I laughed awkwardly because what do you say to something like that?

“No, seriously,” he said. “I just fired a girl yesterday because she walked around like a dead person. None of the customers liked her. It was terrible. Keep that up and you’ll be great.”

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What is it about smiles that gets people?

I am totally victim to a good smile. After height (over six feet? thank you very much!), smiles are the first thing I notice about men. But women, too, really. Think right now about the people you know – which ones do you picture smiling? They’re probably the same ones you enjoy spending time with.

Babies mimic faces, but they’re not the only ones: look at a person smiling, and you’ll find it hard not to smile, too. It’s contagious. And beautiful. And who doesn’t want to be with someone who’s joyful?

Did I smile every day I was at the diner?

Yeah, but I didn’t always feel like it.

That’s another thing, though – the act of smiling produces the feeling of happiness.

And as I start this month of September, my second year teaching, I remind myself of this. Happiness and joy can be contagious things, and smiling is a way to spread them. I’ve been growing out of my melancholy stage, and the light at the end of it is beautiful.

Try it on. It looks good.

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Can’t Put My Finger On It

Walking downhill forces you to tip-toe and the body that usually finds it so difficult to be graceful looks like a dancer just for a moment. Spending a week in the mountains, you walk downhill quite a bit.

The mountains have a way of shocking. Waking up after a night of airplanes and trains and miscommunication and three hours alone in the dark is transformed when you look out the window.

What could keep you away a whole year? Then another?

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Oh, this.

Homes called “chalets” and dark wood-filled kitchens. Mint tea shared by a small community that will most likely never see each other again. Nights in the lounge playing fish bowl; conversation that drifts from American Girl Dolls to the point of prayer to the public transportation system in America.

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How did I become so blessed?

And one of the best parts is the absence of this very thing: no internet, limited phones, no demands from the world.

I know I can’t live like this always, but for a week it is lovely.

Did you know it is possible to play pingpong in the dark in bare feet and not care that the pavement is freezing?

And you can sing harmonies to hymns with people you barely know, but you all know the music.

You can learn the laughs of eighteen different people and name the laugher a half-a-house away.

You can play volleyball and not be kicked out for your terrible serving abilities.

You can weed a garden you will not enjoy, take recycling to the village whose name you can’t pronounce, deep-clean a kitchen that will serve you only one more meal.

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Then you will wake up bleary-eyed and pack your bag. You will try to pretend it isn’t real as your friend pours you coffee – a cup of coffee you inhale because the bus is coming.

You will walk to the end of the driveway with a group of new friends and one old. You will hug them and wonder Where will God bring you? as you wave from the seat through the window.

You will not be the same when you land in Boston, but you try not to name the ways.

That’s something you learned during your days in Switzerland:

You don’t always have to put a name to things because sometimes that’s all you end up seeing. The unnamed goes overlooked and invisible, hidden by what you can label, but it’s no less valuable.

[All this you overheard at dinner because you don’t always have to be in a conversation to gather its truth.]

You’re different but not sure how. And you’re becoming okay with not knowing.

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A London Update

The best sleeps are the stolen ones. I’ve had a lot of those since getting to London. The best, though, was in a tiny graveyard in Oxford. I thought it was secluded (“I just need a place where no one can see me. I’ve had enough of people.”), and I laid down in the grass and leaves and branches and fell asleep. It was safe – my friend sat beside me writing a short story – but it wasn’t nearly as secluded as I’d imagined. People walked by, talking and laughing, and the sounds of the small city lulled me to sleep. It’s been far too easy for me to drift off lately.

Not everything about this trip has been so easy.

For example: I am currently sitting in an airport again, roughly 6.5 hours early, because we had to check out of the hostel at 10:00, and who wants to drag this luggage all across London? S is off on his way to Scotland, so I paid the 5.50 pounds it costs for a one-way ticket and came to Heathrow early.

Decent plan.

Until they tell me I actually have to check this bag (“I carried it from Boston.” “Doesn’t matter.” Ah, joy.), but when I went through the queue to check it, it was way too early.

“You’ll have to come back at 16:50.”

“Are there any coffee shops I can sit at?”

“Well, most things are through security…”

And I find myself at a Krispy Kreme (Yes, you heard that right, a Krispy Kreme in London. I’ve never set foot in a Krispy Kreme at home.) I’m writing this in Word because I only get 45 minutes of internet.

My vision of an afternoon spent sipping strong coffee, reading, and writing, is looking very different.

~     ~     ~

“Catherine, what should I do when I go to London?”

Well, first off, buy a London pass. It goes against every bone in my body to fork over 60 pounds in the blink of an eye, but it is so worth it. We toured the Globe (If only we could’ve seen a show there! An actor was warming up on stage while we were touring, and she sounded like us music majors, all trills and blubberings and over-dramatizations.). We walked through the whole Tower of London and saw the crown settings of Georges and Henrys, Victoria, and Alexandra.

We did the London Bridge Experience (an underground historical/horror show) and my eyes were closed for most of it. The butcher took a liking to me and kept asking me questions, but he was a crazy murderer and I was freaking out.

We climbed a monument (ah! I forget the name!) and saw the city from the sky.

We did all the free stuff at the Tate Museum of Modern Art. It was awesome. But there are whiney artists everywhere, I guess, and they’re always wanting to stick it to the man.

And, probably the best part aside from the Tower:

Westminster Abbey.

There it was. The real thing. So many names I wasn’t even expecting. So much history behind that stone.

Kings and Queens, Dukes and Earls.

And Poets’ Corner shocked me with its concentration of literary history.

Then there was Oxford, with its more intimate streets and academic walls and surprise exhibit of Magical Books. Illuminated manuscripts peered out at us, with the imaginings of J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and countless others. The best part was that it was unexpected: we just wandered in and there it was, golden and colorful and fantastical.

~     ~     ~

“What should I not do when I get to London?”

DO NOT not buy an Oyster card. Your feet will destroy you.

DO NOT assume they will take your card everywhere. (“Do you have a chip?” “What?” “A chip?” “What?” “We don’t accept cards without chips.”)

DO NOT assume that the coffee will be strong. It probably won’t be.

DO NOT assume that trying new beer will always pay off. It often won’t. But at least you were adventurous, right?

DO NOT think you can fit everything in. You can’t. Just accept it and tell yourself, “If I really want to, I can always come back.” You might never return, but it’ll placate you long enough to get you back home.

~     ~     ~

Now, Switzerland waits on the other side of that plane ride. A friend I haven’t seen in over a year (the same friend who writes me beautiful letters of her new life) and a chance to think and read and talk about things that matter to me. Such a different vibe, I think, than London.

We shall see!

 

[P.S. I am so technologically challenged that I cannot figure out how to get my pictures from the iPhone my mother forced upon me for this trip and my computer. I guess they will have to wait. Know that they exist and that the photo in this post is unrelated but at least pretty.]

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London Awaits

This very moment I am awaiting my plane to London, England.

I am sitting at the terminal, surrounded by people, but I am alone. This is my favorite way to travel.

“Catherine, is anyone going with you?”

“Yeah, S is meeting me in London, but I still get to fly alone.”

My grandmother does not understand my phrasing – “get to” – and most people don’t. There’s something about the separation – the ability to exist without the confirmation of anyone else – that reminds me who I am.

C. S. Lewis wrote that it is only when we look at the other that our Self is able to be. I agree with him…mostly.

There is another Self that materializes at the Gate, and this Self is just a little different from the others. She doesn’t need to do anything. She doesn’t need to be anything for anyone else. All she has to do is be. Oh, and do what she’d like, of course. Which is write this, at the moment.

My bag is filled too full with books (check out the What I’m Reading to see what I brought), and as you can tell, I decided to bring my laptop after weeks of internal debate. Of course I could just write in my notebook, but the moments flit by so fast, I know I’d lose them.

I sit, eager and calm, ready and not ready, because I’ve learned that after each trip, I come back just a little different than before. Not in big ways – I don’t dye my hair or pierce body parts or change my name – but the landscape of my mind shifts. It grows. It changes. And the places my mind wanders in down moments now includes the place I’ve just come from, with all its colors and shapes and sounds.

Here I come, London.

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I Write Life

When I was a little girl, I was certain I would love only one man. In fact, I was pretty sure that we would grow up together, that he’d be a boy down the street and that suddenly one glorious summer evening we would both realize we’d loved each other all along. He’d touch my cheek (ala, Gilbert Blythe) and whisper some friendly tease as we began to imagine our future.

I thought this way for years, really, as a young girl reading Little House on the Prairie, Anne of Green Gables, and Betsy, Tacy, and Tib. It’s possible I even wrote an 83-page novella (by hand) about a girl name Willa realizing the same thing about her friend Peter as they splashed each other in the secret pond in the woods. (If that isn’t some not-so-secret sexual tension in my 12-year-old writing, I don’t know what would be.)

And then one day, it occurred to me:

If I say I want to grow up with the boy I marry, that means I have to KNOW HIM NOW.

And I looked around at the boys I knew, and though I loved them dearly, I quickly revised my dream.

Never mind. I think it’s much better to meet later, in college, to be more grown up. Never mind. I’ll wait.

So I grew up, still thinking I would love one man and one man forever.

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The summer after my junior year, I interned at a publishing house in Boston. One of my tasks was to edit the text in their new database. I was responsible for fixing bizarre spaces in the mid dle of w ord s and checking line breaks, and in the process of doing this, I read some strange and awful and thought-provoking books. One was a memoir by a woman whose name I don’t remember. It had a light blue cover and it was mostly filled with a string of lovers, each one daring and handsome, social and introverted, crazy and calm. The image I have most strongly from her book is a story of her and one of her lovers (she was in her late fifties by now, I think) and they are in one of their apartments. It’s been a day of lounging around, eating and love making, and I don’t know what happened exactly, but I remember distinctly feeling a sense of her happiness. That she viewed this doomed relationship with love and tenderness. She still thought of this man fondly, despite their different paths and the pain they both felt.

I was twenty-one years old.

So I sat in my gray cubicle and in my self-righteousness, I thought: I don’t know how this is possible. She writes about these men – these men she didn’t stay with who broke her heart or who had their hearts broken by her – and she is smiling. I can feel it in her words. She is smiling at the memories with them, even as she realizes the relationships are dead.

I couldn’t understand her ability to find joy in something that was broken, and I couldn’t understand that she had loved more than one man.

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It’s three years later, and I can say with full honesty that I have loved more than one man. I might even say I’ve loved a small handful, none of them perfectly, some of them with false-starts of returned love, some of them even unwittingly requested by the receiver. If it’s taught me anything – this loving – it’s that each time is different and each time is imperfect and each time

I didn’t know how to end that sentence. Mostly because I’m not entirely sure what loving has taught me. I’d like to think that each time I get a little better at it, at both feeling it and showing it. At both being myself and enjoying someone else.

I’m glad, at twenty-four, that I can say I’ve loved more than one man. Not because it isn’t beautiful to be given that gift, but because I needed to break out of the idea of myself. I needed to see what it meant to live life instead of write it. I like to think that when I’m sixty-five, I will be telling my stories of love and un-love with a smile on my face. Because even though these men were not meant for me nor I for them, there is a reason one of us was drawn to the other, and that reason is worth telling.

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Outside My Window

Every morning this week I’ve woken up to the sound of construction. It’s not down the beach or across the street, it is Right. Outside. My. Window. The radio is blaring classic rock and the men are shouting measurements and demanding tools and singing along. I like their backwards hats, their tattoos, and the easy way they work together.

What’s fascinating to me as I watch them through the window over the kitchen sink is this:

I have absolutely no idea what they’re doing.

Now, I’m a smart girl. I can write a decent sentence, grow a (fairly) plentiful garden, knit a cozy sweater, sing a pretty song. But put a tool in my hand, and I’m going to need you to hold my other hand the entire time.

I helped my Dad and brothers build the new chicken house a few years ago. I used a drill and a saw and a hammer, but I still don’t know how to remove screws without stripping them. My youngest brother (who isn’t so young anymore), took the electric screw driver from me in exasperation, saying, “Catherine, I really don’t understand why you can’t figure this out,” and he proceeded to remove every screw with ease.

So I watch these men out my window while I wash the dishes, make breakfast, put the coffee on, and I think how amazing it is that they know what they’re doing. They’re not reading a manual. They’re not listening to a podcast. And the house is being built day-by-day, a foundation and frame where there was nothing.

Sometimes I wonder what skill I wish I had. It changes, depending on my mood. Most often I answer: “Art. I wish I were a good artist. I wish I could depict beauty with drawing or painting or sculpting.”

But right now? This morning? As the saws blast through wood and Elton John sings “Levon”?

I wish I could build a house. Maybe then I’d get that tattoo.

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Small Town Summer

What do you do when you realize old-fashioned doughnuts are the best?

You eat them.

It is the first week of summer vacation, and I’ve begun a terrible and beautiful habit. This past winter, a little cafe opened downtown. It’s so little that there are only three tables inside and two tables outside. They serve sandwiches and other things, but I go for the doughnuts. I’ve tried a few kinds: old-fashioned plain, maple-bacon (wow, sugar blast!), and a sort of puff-doughnut. But the one I keep coming back to is the old-fashioned cinnamon-sugar.

Yesterday morning, I walked down Main Street in the sun. I was alone, so I carried my journal, and I thought about all the times I’ve walked down that street growing up. I looked down the brand new development that’s engulfed my old woods, and I took a deep breath. Things change, I told myself, and who knows? Maybe those houses will be filled with children who discover life like I did, even if their woods will be a different shape.

I passed the street where dear family friends live, with memories of Man Hunt and swimming and screaming in fun. I passed the Richdale, notorious for its ugliness in our sweet town (and where I routinely purchased Snickers and Coke growing up). Past the graveyard and the old church I used to go to. Past the white house whose kids I still think of as tiny but who graduated this past spring. I hit the cafe faster than I thought and was a little dismayed to find one of the tables outside surrounded by three boisterous women (one of whom I used to know) – how was I supposed to write?!

Doughnut and iced coffee in hand, I sat down and took out my journal. I broke off pieces of doughnut, the kind with crispy edges and fluffy insides, and I thought about how a stranger had said to me recently, “Your hometown’s all backroads – no offense!” and I had looked at her quizzically and said, “Why would I take offense? That’s what I like.”, and it was uncomfortable, but only for me because she wasn’t aware enough to know what I thought of her.

I sipped my coffee and listened to the women pronounce “Elaina” like “Elainer,” “Linda” like “Linder,” and even though a part of me cringes at this botching of a beautiful sound, I secretly enjoy hearing it. I wondered if I would run into Eric of the white beard and full laugh and David of the middle-aged sweet arrogance and too-many-margaritas again. The week before they’d been sitting at the table next to me, their National Grid vans parked on the street, and we had been far too close to each other not to say hello. “Hello” turned into a twenty minute conversation.

[“We’re here every day!” they said. “We’ll be seeing you this summer!”]

I wrote and watched for about an hour, and I packed up only when I begrudgingly admitted I had ESL lesson plans to write. As I threw out my trash and headed to the sidewalk, a National Grid van drove by, and Eric’s white beard shown in the sun. He waved a big wave and said, “Catherine!”, and I smiled.

There is an ease to small-town living that I don’t know if I could live without.

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Good Things #7 An Invitation

I feel like my head has been spinning for two weeks – not demonically, per se, just with so much stuff. Some of it is an inevitable part of the end of the school-year: baccalaureate, graduation, writing test after test (and subsequently grading those tests…). But part of it I bring on myself: Yes, I’ll come! Yes, I’ve been wanting to see that movie! I haven’t been to a Red Sox game in ages. 

I don’t regret for a minute any of the things I’ve said yes to.

Star Trek 2, from a sincerely un-knowledgebale non-Trekkie, was quite enjoyable. It was loud and action-packed, but the movie’s 3-D was a little painful for me. My eyes kept focusing in and out and I hadn’t thought to wear contacts so those huge 3-D glasses were competing with my regular glasses. The moment Benedict Cumberbatch started speaking, though, it was more than worth it.

The Red Sox lost, but we laughed and told stories and people-watched and I reveled in the history of that place.

Then Baccalaureate and graduation came, faster than I thought and far more emotional. I was surprised at my own internal involvement with this event, with the speakers, the students. Our headmaster spoke at the graduation, and it was a speech that will stay with me (not something I’ve ever said before, I don’t think).

Three questions: 1. What will you do? 2. How will you do it? 3. And with whose power?

It hit me because even though I don’t for a moment regret the way I’ve spent my time these past two weeks, I do regret the things I have let slip to the wayside.

One-on-one time with good friends I need to catch up with.

Chunks of time to do something – anything – like running, or yoga, or even walking.

 

I’ve prayed, but only surface-level prayers.

 

Thank you, God, this sun is beautiful.

Help me.

Hey there.

And those aren’t bad. In fact, I think the regularity with which words to the Lord formed in my mind – even when I was on the run – is a good thing.

What I’ve been thinking about, though, is that I’ve lost the deep communion that is so vital. Vital to my relationship with the Lord, vital to my relationships with my family and dear friends, and vital to my own sense of wholeness.

1. What are you doing? Good and beautiful and helpful things.

2. How are you doing it? Pretty well, with minimal grumbling… 😉

3. With whose strength? Ummmm…

It catches me in the moments right before I fall asleep. You have not communed with your God. He is here, waiting, but you have rushed past him, laughing and happy, but missing that element of reverence.

God isn’t calling me to be less happy. He just wants to share in that happiness.

To have me pause long enough to be wrapped in His strength so I can continue rejoicing.

Now, as I prepare for church, I wonder how to hold these fun, laughing, blessed times with open hands. How to say Thank you and simultaneously invite the Lord to enter into this with me. How to do the good, helpful things I am called to do, do them well, and do them with the only strength that’s worth its salt.