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Happy Friday It Was!

Yesterday was a funny day at work.

I think I was just glad it was Friday. I was doing everything too quickly: responding to emails like lightning and then wondering what I’d written; hurrying down the hallway and then slipping (only slightly!) and trying to pass it off like nothing happened; cutting open the stack of boxes from W.B. Mason, throwing scissors around like a six-year-old and slicing a perfect “v” into the ring finger of my right hand.

(I then had to find a bandaid and somehow open it and put it on without using that finger. It’s amazing I can still type as efficiently as I do…)

And the afternoon was topped with something we never would’ve expected.

In the kitchen, sitting on the counter, was a huge heated box filled with fifty Chick-fil-A sandwiches.

Apparently, a guy from Chick-fil-A stopped in and wanted to talk to us about doing a fundraiser. My first thought was: How would this go down? Would we sell Chick-fil-A at sports games? Would we earn points for every time we bought a sandwich? I want details, man.

And before he left, he put a box of hot chicken sandwiches in the kitchen and said, “Help yourself,” as he vanished in his little Chick-fil-A sedan.

An email was sent out immediately to all the staff and faculty, and I sat at the desk, watching as little groups of excited teachers flocked by. Every single one of them looked through the door at me, their eyes a little brighter, their steps a little lighter, and hardly anyone believing our luck.

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(Well, ladies, your friends were delicious. I’d keep laying, if I were you.)

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Knitting Club

A few weeks ago, I was ambushed by a friend at work. She emailed me with a plea to teach something – anything, really – as an after-school activity.

I thought, This could be fun! Maybe a knitting class?

Yes, knitting.

So I signed up to teach a four-week knitting class to five sixth-grade girls.

I think I forgot what it was like to be a sixth-grade girl. 

It became pretty apparent during that first class that these girls had big personalities. One, the ring-leader, is obsessed with “winning,” with being “the best,” and is a self-proclaimed perfectionist. I sat and listened to her talk, and I felt an immediate sense of dislike and understanding. So much of my time was wasted on that same feeling. I wanted to fast-forward to when this little girl would not longer feel like she had to knit perfectly the first time, tell me all the things she was good at, or explain why her grandma had more talent than I did.

Another of the girls is quieter, but just as diligent. She came to class with her wrist in a cast, but she was still determined to learn how to knit. She is by far the least talkative, but her eyes are always lit, always watching, and she’s the one with the quiet witty comments.

One girl is also bent on knitting the perfect scarf. I told them that it would take a long time to get good, that it took me months to make something, and even then there were often spots that weren’t perfect. But this girl asks me every few rows, “Does this look okay?”, and she even emailed me over the weekend for suggestions on what to do if she had too many stitches.

These girls are going to make very detailed leaders someday.

Or, perhaps, type-A moms.

Two of the girls are a little slower at picking it up. They hold their yarn too tightly, straining the fibers until they become untwisted. Their stitches are uneven, they add and subtract stitches at random, until the edges of the scarf are completely misshapen. They look at me with sad eyes, “Miss H, something happened.” (Although sometimes they call me “Magistra” because I’m also their Latin teacher by day.) I tell them to take a deep breath, that it can all be fixed. But they still get upset, still want to be perfect.

I am surprised at how difficult I find this class. They are all good girls. They all want to do well, to please me, to make something beautiful. But it’s hard for me to hear them, constantly trying to tell a better story, to shock the other girls with their own experiences, to show me that they are grown up.

I remember one of my mom’s friends telling me when I was little, “I had to grow up really quickly, Catherine. Don’t rush it. Be a kid as long as you can.”

I look at these girls and I want to say the same thing.

Just enjoy knitting. Enjoy chatting with each other on comfy pillows on the floor. Enjoy the fact that the hardest thing you have to do today is unravel an inch of uneven scarf.

But instead, I just smile and say, “It’s okay, I’ll fix it.”

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A Perfect Day

Five weeks is too long to go without seeing a good friend. Especially when that friend lives only forty-five minutes away. What is it about driving in and out of the city that seems so daunting?

But it was finally remedied this Saturday, with a train ride, a car ride, and a stretched-long day. It was the sort of day where you never stop talking, and then, as dinner gets closer, you’re exhausted by the talk. We looked at each other, and we were speechless. Finally.

What does it take to make the perfect day?

  • Coffee shops – with strong coffee, an array of hipsters and business people and grandmas and grandpas talking about who was making the green bean casserole for Thanksgiving.
  • People watching – this can be done in silence or with conversation, depending on your mood.
  • Long walks – around a slightly unfamiliar city, discovering used bookshops on side streets, down to the harbor, around and around until your feet are sore and you forget for a moment what it feels like to sit
  • Used Bookshops – these are a must. Find a beautiful hardcover about W. H. Auden for $8 and carry it in your purse for days because you hope to find five minutes to read it.

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  • Roast beef and reuben sandwiches – duh.
  • Random parades – run to watch the parade of cars, trucks, police cars and screaming people. Because winning the state championship for your high school football team is pretty awesome, and yelling out your car, blasting your horn, and feeling like you own the world are the best ways to celebrate.
  • Sitting in fake wooden boats – yes, do this, even though it seems odd. It’s best to sit in said wooden boat until it gets dark, laughing so loudly that the people walking by raise their eyebrows. Tell each other they’re jealous of your joy.

Too much can happen in five weeks to be talked about in one day.

But there’s never too much to laugh about.

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Reading the Future

My whole life, I have tried to make sense of things too early. Even before I have time to step away, close my eyes, experience what just happened, I am trying to understand. When I was little, I strived for answers, for connection. I remember when I was around seven or eight. We were learning about Gideon in Sunday School, how he trusted the Lord, but even in that trusting, he laid out things to prove his questioning.

Gideon’s fleece.

And I thought, Maybe I’ll do something like that.

When I was younger, my communication with God was like breathing; I don’t know where my thoughts ended and my prayers began. I said (or prayed or thought): Lord, if You’re there, take this note.

I took a yellow post-it note and wrote carefully in my best second-grade cursive: “I love you, Jesus.” I stuck this note of trust to the wall right by my bed, and all night I felt half awake, wondering if God had come. If God my Friend had reached down and scooped up my love-post-it.

The next morning, I turned over, afraid to open my eyes. When I did, my wall was bare, and I remember jumping out of my bed, ecstatic. I remember running down the stairs to tell my mother what had happened.

God is real!

God loves me!

And now He knows I love Him too!

I don’t remember my mother’s response, or anything else about that day, really.

~     ~      ~

A few months later, when I was cleaning my room, I pulled my bed away from the wall to vacuum.

There, crumpled in the dusty corner, was my post-it.

I picked it up, stared at it. I felt betrayed. My first reaction was: Wow.

~     ~     ~

I didn’t stop believing in God, but I did start questioning myself.

Am I too quick to read into things? Do I try too hard to see things where they aren’t?

It wasn’t until more recently, when I started thinking about that childhood moment, that I thought: Maybe God was showing me something after all.

He didn’t take my post-it, whisk it up to heaven and stick it to some sort of heavenly bulletin board of love-notes. But He didn’t just leave it on my wall, either. He let it drift off the cranberry-colored wall and under my bed. He gave me a moment of ecstasy. He showed me He was listening.

God wasn’t proving Himself, because He doesn’t have to.

He was loving me.

That’s the sense I’m making of most things these days. I may never know why some things happen. I might always be confused by the connections I feel, by the people I’m drawn to, by the many relationships that held so much potential, but that for some reason didn’t play out the way I imagined them. I am learning to let go of people I loved, friendships I cherished. I am letting go and learning not to regret the closeness we once shared.

Sometimes, I have to admit I may never know what drew me to that man on the train. That woman standing in line behind me at the post office. That little boy with the big, sad eyes.

But I’m starting to think it’s not all a loss. Maybe it’s just God loving us.

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Turkey What?

After work yesterday – after a day of 5th and 6th grade Latiners, being interviewed for the 6th grade newspaper (Yes! Finally, celebrity status!), and a couple hours at the desk sorting out parent-teacher conference schedules – I headed straight to an indoor farmer’s market.

My mother was waiting eagerly for me. When she found out she had to run the “honey table” alone for the first hour, she wasn’t too thrilled. (“Wait. I have to answer their questions?”) And when I walked into the community building, it felt like entering a small church: everyone stared at me because, clearly, I was not yet part of their group.

“So,” Mom said, looking at her small pad of paper, “I’ve sold a turkey candle, a large muth jar, and a regular jar.”

Now, you’re probably wondering what a “turkey candle” is.

I was too, when my Dad came joyously into the living room a few weeks ago, a small yellowish thing cupped in his hands.

“Look, Catherine! A turkey candle!”

Dad had gone online and purchased a candle mould – shaped like a turkey.

I looked at it skeptically. Who in the world would buy such a tacky thing?

And I said as much.

Dad was slightly offended, turning on his heel and saying over his shoulder, “You’ll see!”

Yesterday, I did see.

We sold a total of FIVE turkey-shaped candles.

I was shocked. They were flying. Like hotcakes. What I couldn’t believe was that right next to these tacky little gobblers were beautiful wax skeps: classy, smooth, beautiful. Skeps are the rounded hives you’ve probably seen in cartoons.

I just didn’t understand it.

We’re going back next week, and I’m sure Dad’s planning to replenish his flock, because as he said, “After Thanksgiving, all these turkeys are going back into the melting pot.”

It’s their last shot.

That just goes to show you I don’t yet understand the candle and honey market.

Go, Dad.

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Long Weekend Happiness

My four days off stretch before me – an eternity and the blink of an eye at the same time.

I woke up yesterday to the first snow. It had started the night before, and as we drove up out of the city (book club likes to hop all over the place, this week finding residence in a hilly city neighborhood), I watched the white flakes pelt the windows. I felt young, watching it snow, and later slipping along the sidewalk in my boots.

What I want to do with four days off:

  • READ. Like it’s my job. Finish Circling to the Center, make a dent in Tale of Two Cities, digest a little more Rilke, discover the four or five issues of ‘The Sun’ my writer friend lent me, EVERYTHING.
  • WRITE. I wrote my first short story in a long time this week. It flowed out of me, which was lovely, but now I’m thinking, shoot, now I have to edit it. I’m not so good with that part.
  • SING. Warm-up. Play the piano while I sing some hymns. Pretend I know what I’m doing again. Maybe some German art songs, but I may be too ambitious (again).
  • Finish my brother’s sweater. (Yes, I knit. It’s like the icing on the dork-cake. In my defense, he asked me to make him a sweater, so really I’m just being a kind sister…)
  • WALK. I miss the outdoors. I miss the sunshine, the leaves, the color of the sky. I plan on going for a number of walks in the next few days.

What I DON’T want to do, but need to do:

  • CLEAN MY ROOM. Gross.
  • Find the water heater for my chickens. It’s getting colder (or at least, it’s supposed to be getting colder), and the waterer started to ice over the other day. Not cool.
  • CLEAN MY CAR. Yeah, like that’s really gonna happen.
  • LESSON PLANS. I have a lot of planning for the next week or two of Latin. We’re starting Chapter Six in my high school class, and it’s painful. Remember how in your English classes, your teachers always told you not to write in the passive voice? Well, Latiners LOVED using passive verbs. So basically I think I’ll need to give a mini-English lesson before I even introduce the Latin (i.e., “What’s the difference between ‘Marcus hits Iulia’ and ‘Iulia is hit by Marcus’?”). And welcome to: Prepositions that Take the Accusative Case. And welcome to: The Locative Case.

Now on my way to my favorite little bookstore. Stock up on those books I’ll be reading.

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Pride and Prejudice May Be the Answer

I’ve been teaching an ESL class on Tuesday nights. (It’s just one student – is that a class?!) We meet at the library, where no food or drink is allowed, and I think this is the first time I’ve ever tried to learn without a cup of tea or coffee in my hand.

When I first met my Hungarian student, I was scared. I had been told (via email and in the slightly unclear email-way of a harried 60+ year-old), that the student was Low Intermediate.

I had expectations.

My TEFL course did inform us that the categories were not so good. That everyone has a different idea of what it means to be a “Low Intermediate.”

My student (I’ll call her Aniko) could barely tell me why she was taking the class.

She told me her name. She told me she had come from Hungary two months earlier (although she said ‘in two months’ and it took me a while to figure it out). She told me she was in America.

And I was horrified because I thought our lessons were one hour but they were two and this Hungarian woman was staring at me with big brown eyes.

~     ~     ~

Now, seven weeks later, we have only one class left.

We’ve worked on:

  • superlatives
  • past, present, and future time expressions (This one is TOUGH. How do you explain ‘awhile ago,’ or the fact that we use ‘this morning’ to describe something in the past?)
  • letter-writing (because I love it so much…no, because it’s necessary)
  • emailing
  • coffee-ordering
  • adjectives
  • movie-watching

This last one may seem silly, but let me tell you, it is hard.

I have her watch clips from movies and then fill in the blanks to see if she can hear what they say, if she can tell what should be there.

[If actors are any clue to how we Americans usually speak, we speak way too fast, way too jumbly, and way too idiomatically.]

Last night, I had her watch clips from ‘Pride and Prejudice.’ I think I was a little ambitious; the British accents and vocabulary were extremely difficult to follow. We had to watch each one at least three times, and in the end, even after she got every question right, she put her head on the table and said,

“English is hard for me.”

I almost patted her short hair in sympathy.

Yes, English is hard.

I’m sorry.

Let’s watch a little more ‘Pride and Prejudice.’

Perhaps that is my response to too many of life’s problems.

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The Art of Letter-Writing

There are few things that bring light to my day like a good letter. When I was little, I had two pen pals – my cousin who lived in northern Maine and my neighbor’s granddaughter who lived down in Virginia. We were very dedicated little writers; I remember getting envelopes stuffed to the brim with things like stickers, little plastic toys, homemade bookmarks.

I keep all of them in my great-grandfather’s old briefcase, the one with the gold clasps.

The one on the bottom has all my old manuscripts – all the horrible plays and short stories I wrote before I became self-conscious. The middle one is my great-grandfather’s, the leather handle almost broken off.

Almost every letter I’ve ever received (along with birthday cards, letters from my sponsor child in India, little notes I used to pass in class) is stuffed in.

The top one holds my letter-writing things: stationery, cards, my old wax and stamp kit, my address book (yes, I have an address book).

I probably never would’ve stopped writing to them, but middle school does different things to people.

~     ~     ~

Letter-writing is very personal. It’s like a journal, only in some ways, it’s far more vulnerable. You’re opening your thoughts, your life, to someone else, trusting him or her to guard it, to read a part of you without judgment.

It’s personal, and yet there are so many beautiful, meaningful letters to read. My uncle told me about this website (“Catherine, you’d love this.”), Letters of Note, and I’ve poured over it.Steinbeck’s letter to his son about love is one of my favorites – honest, straight-forward, understanding, loving.

And while my letters will most likely never be read by anyone other than the intended recipient, I still like the idea that I join a long line of people before me. Thinkers, lovers, readers, writers, artists, theologians. People who stopped, saw the beauty around them, and then made that beauty palpable for those they loved.

~     ~     ~

This week I got a letter from my world-traveling friend. I read it once, twice, disbelieving of the beauty of my friend’s artistry, both in word and paint.

Switzerland is far away, and even though I miss my friend dearly, letters like this help make up for it.

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Impatience

I write during snapped-up moments between classes.

My high school class was awesome – half of the students were away on college tours, so it was just me and eight students, learning the Ablative Case. You can be so much more productive with smaller classes (and yes, they actually asked me questions when they didn’t understand something!). It was beautiful.

My third grade on the other hand…

I certainly could’ve had a better time.

There’s just something about it when kids choose not to participate. Oh, I don’t know. But I’m cute – doesn’t that count for something?

I’m working on patience. That was honestly why I never wanted to become a teacher. Mr. B. (that’s actually what we called him), looked at me one day when I was in high school, and said, “Catherine, you’re gonna be a teacher.”

I said, “No thank you! I am WAY to impatient to teach.”

And I was right.

But that’s the thing: maybe God doesn’t wait til you’re perfect before He makes you do what you’re supposed to do.

Maybe He sends you out and expects you to trust Him. Expects you to work.

Expects the people and things in your life to both sharpen you and smooth you.

Pretty annoying.

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Priorities

I prepared for Sandy in a funny way.

I locked up the girls in the house, moved their waterer inside, gathered the eggs, and closed the window.

The coop looks weird, empty in the middle of the day.

Did I buy any water for myself? No.

Did I buy canned goods? No.

Did I protect my chickens from the hurricane?

YES.

Gunther and I watched from the cozy indoors.

And Tuesday dawned, sun on dark clouds, and the smell of spring in October.