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Work

It’s the Yankee in me.

I put a lot of value on hard work.

When we were little, Mom and Dad made us work in the yard, around the house, every weekend. I hated it, for the most part. I remember one day – I was probably around seven — it was warm and sunny and all the neighbor kids were running around, laughing, playing tag, I don’t know what.

The four of us were weeding the garden alongside my parents, grumbling the whole time.

I remember my Dad saying, “When you’re through with this row, when everything’s weeded, then you can go play.”

I also remember saying something along the lines of “why do we have to do this when all the other kids don’t have to?”

And, the classic reply: “Someday you’ll thank me for this.”

Well, Dad, I guess that day is here.

We spent yesterday morning putting the garden to rest. The sun was bright, the air was cool, and the work loomed ahead of us, daunting. We pulled up all the woodier plants (broccoli and brussells sprouts get huge!) and threw them out back (Dad’s trying to minimize bugs next year, so we’re getting rid of the old plants). We took out the tomato stakes and piled them up, unknotted and threw out the rags we’d used to tie the plants to their stakes.

I harvested the last of the carrots. It’s hard to get them out of the cold ground without snapping them, but some survived.

Dad and I emptied the compost pile that’d been lying low all season, spread it out over the dirt, and my brother tilled it in.

When we were done, the place looked beautiful. Not nearly as sad as you’d think. Like well-deserved rest.

The girls got the last of the cucumbers.

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Now, let me get this straight: I am not a naturally hard worker.

When I was around ten, I remember thinking, I wish I weren’t so lazy. And then, like a lightbulb, I realized, I don’t have to be lazy. I can choose to work hard.

This was a revelation. I had thought up to this point that some people were born workers, and some people were born lazy.

This might be true. But it goes a lot further than that.

Every day I struggle to use my time wisely. To complete what I should complete – to give it my all.

 

Work hard in the garden.

Take care of my chickens.

Sell honey and eggs in a timely manner.

Sing.

Write.

Clean, do dishes, you know.

Write good lesson plans.

Teach engaging lessons, even when I’m exhausted.

Read my Bible.

Pray.

These are the things I must work hard at.

Work, outside of our workaholic culture, is a good and beautiful thing.

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Reflection

I am alone in the kitchen. All the dishes are done, the brown and white eggs are drying on the counter, the sky is gray/blue and the leaves are red, and I am listening to hymns. Nothing but the blood of Jesus. 

We got back from church and I didn’t know what to do with myself.

Must be productive.

Must work.

Must make something.

But instead, I’ve decided to rest. Rest and think and pray.

Productivity can wait for another day.

This afternoon was made for quiet.

 

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Forgiveness

I was going to save the idea of forgiveness until the end. I was going to write post after post about hope, joy, love, and then finally end with forgiveness. This was my plan, because it’s forgiveness that I’ve been having the hardest time with.

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A woman from church once told me, when I was small and easily wounded, that “Christ has forgiven so much; we have no right not to forgive others.”

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Forgiving in a relationship is not so hard for me (sometimes). A friend from my freshman year of college was adept at the plea for forgiveness: “I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I don’t even know why I did it.” I was trained to forgive, time and time again.

It’s forgiving outside of a relationship that has become impossible. How do you forgive someone who hasn’t even asked for it? Who, if given the choice, would do things exactly the same way again.

This is where mercy and justice get messy.

Even Christ demands repentance – demands to be asked.

That stumped me for awhile.

Until I remembered: I am not Christ.

Jesus had no sins to be forgiven, only infinite forgiveness.

But all this philosophizing of forgiveness doesn’t change the heart overnight. It’s not magic. I prayed again, after months and months of not praying about it. I’d stopped praying because prayer was admitting I hadn’t forgotten, I hadn’t forgiven, and I was the only one who hadn’t moved on.

I prayed that my heart would be changed.

Yesterday, I found a bundle of pictures, taken in the cold spring of 2009, on the streets of Newburyport, the beach of Plum Island, the cliffs of Ocean Lawn. I thought I’d thrown everything out, but here was a bunch of photos, with a younger, softer me smiling back.

Instead of throwing them away immediately, I looked through each and every one. And I even smiled.

I was so different then.

After I’d looked at them, I did throw them out. They’d served their purpose.

And that night, I dreamed we were all in a car together, coming back from a wedding. I was wearing his socks, and he looked at me and said, “Hey, I think you still have my socks.”

And instead of being sad or missing something that wasn’t real, in the dream I laughed.

I laughed and took the socks off, gave them to him over the seat.

Maybe that doesn’t count as full forgiveness, but I’m happy with baby steps.

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The Full Life

Some people assign one word to their year, like it’s easily containable. I thought about doing that in January, thought about affixing the latest Christian buzzword to my twenty-third year and breathing a sigh of relief that now I didn’t have to worry about making my year count – the word did it for me.

And while you may have guessed, since it’s September and I’ve only just mentioned it, I did not end up doing it. Partly because I’m not very good at planning ahead. Partly because I’m bad at judging the passing of time, and in March it still felt like January, and I still had time to choose.

But the crux of it is this: there are too many good things in life to pick just one.

My friends have done this: “This is the year of yes,” “This is the year of trust,” and it’s benefited them greatly. I don’t want to say meditating on one thought or one ambiguous philosophy for one year is a bad thing.

I read Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts. I know what it looks like to have your life transformed by the power of one word. Her experience of gratitude was encouraging, and it opened me up to the possibility of a grateful life, maybe even a grateful life before a penitent one. My journal now has lists of the blessings God has given me.

But I couldn’t stick to it. I tried to count up and up and list a thousand blessings, but I couldn’t do it. Not because God hasn’t seen fit to give me a thousand gifts, but because, I think, it takes more than gratitude to have a full life.

I couldn’t stick to just one fruit of the spirit, just one beautiful thought to meditate on for 365 days. 

Gratitude is a huge part of the Christian life. But so is honesty. So is joy. So is hope.

Over the next few weeks, I hope to explore these things. The beautiful things that make life a glimpse of what is to come.

I join the ranks of many good thinkers and observers and writers. I’d love to hear your thoughts on beauty, joy, honesty, gratitude, all the beautiful.

 

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A Fall Walk

I went for a walk this afternoon because the sun was too beautiful for me to stay inside. I went down to one of the reservations on the way to the beach. It’s short – only about a mile – and it winds through fields, through the marsh, and then loops around Easter Island.

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My parents were out teaching people how to extract honey, my sister was at a friend’s house, one of my brothers was watching football, and my youngest brother was wishing we were apple picking. I snuck out of the house (“I’m just going for a walk,”), and I went alone, even though I knew my youngest brother would’ve come with me. But after a morning at the Farmer’s Market and an hour doing dishes, I knew I needed to be alone.

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I didn’t discover anything deep on my walk. I didn’t have any epiphanies. But I did discover a fort someone had left behind. A boy I dated in college told me about a kind of art people create and leave in the woods or a public place, just leave it there for people to stumble upon. That’s what this fort reminded me of – an earth-toned masterpiece.

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I liked the memory of people in the woods.

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[Cafe Sleep]

I could fall asleep with my head on this table, press

my hot cheek to the cool varnished wood splattered

with other people’s coffee.

 

I still like my idea of beds suspended from the walls,

folded out to catch your tired bones – who

wouldn’t like a comfy mattress for a few

minutes of rest?

 

The busy city wears out your feet and sores

your muscles; the least it can give is a café with beds.

 

But that would be so dirty, they remind me.

The logical ones. The ones who cannot

let go of fact to see perfection.

 

Yes, I admit, it would be hard to keep clean.

But oh how luxurious to sleep

to the muffled voices and toned-down laughs

of a Chicago coffee shop.

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Silly? Maybe.

“Alexander wants to get to know you a little better.”

I am sitting in a small coffee shop (no, not Barnes and Noble this time). The Shins are playing, my coconut mocha is better than I imagined, and I am shocked at how exhausted I am from my first full week of teaching. Five days feel so much longer when they aren’t your own anymore.

And this email has popped up on my computer: “Alexander wants to get to know you a little better.”

Some of you probably don’t quite know what it is.

But, you should know, I have done something silly and irrational.

I joined eHarmony.

There is good, rational thought behind this.

1. I joined when it was free. There is absolutely NO WAY I am paying for this service. I joined when it was free, however, the free weekend is over, and absolutely no communication can happen now. It’s like a black hole of potential love.

What’s the point of “this service,” then, you ask?

2. To prove that there are good, Christian men out there. Oh wait, the clincher: good, interesting, Christian men.

Because it seems that I have a number of great, Christian guys I call friends. But none of them are interested in me. And, even more bizarrely, I am not interested in one of them.

I know, it’s a terrible ego-stroker. I check my email, and every ding – Chris, Matthew, Ramy, and Phillip – sends my little too-cheap-to-pay-for-eHarmony-heart a-pitter-pattering.

I don’t know who any of these men are. And I never want to.

All I want is a silly email when I get out of work, when I’m done teaching, done opening mail, done stamping the seemingly-endless stack of mailings, that says:

Someone, somewhere, thinks that perhaps, maybe, there might be a chance that you’re fun. And interesting. And cool.

That’s all I want. At least for now.

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The End of the Hiatus

So I’ve taken a break.

It was unintentional, but deep down, I know I needed it. A lot has changed since my last post, and I needed some time to think. Even my trusty journal was left untouched for almost a month. Thank goodness it (she/he, I don’t know) is patient.

Part of the reason I took a break from writing is because of the title of this blog: “Broke on my Birthday.” When I chose it, I thought it was humorous, a little stab at myself and all my recent-college-graduate friends who found ourselves, indeed, thrust into life and not entirely prepared.

But something’s changed. For me, at least. I was never actually broke to begin with, and now, through unbelievable blessing and good-timing, I find myself with a job. A JOB. Yes. I am a

bonafide

Latin

teacher.

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Latin teacher by morning, administrator by afternoon

The thing about blessings is, sometimes you don’t know quite what to do with them. When people ask what I do now, I feel this huge grin explode on my face. I’m embarrassed, actually, by my joy. Well, I’m teaching grammar school Latin. Oh, and High School Latin I. Yeah, I know, who would’ve thought?!

But as I told my cousin yesterday, over a cup of coffee at my new teacher-hang-out Barnes and Noble, I go into class every day, and I am excited. All these little faces looking at me, eager to learn. Eager to show me what they already know. All the joys I’ve encountered so far will have to wait for another post, but I can’t tell you how beautiful it is to hear a third-grader read, “Roma in Italia est”, and then tell me with shining eyes, “Rome is in Italy!”

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and thank you for supplying my coffee

So that is how I’ve been spending my days: frantically getting together enough material for seven Latin classes. There is too much information, too much new, and I CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF IT.

So, welcome back to my blog. I’ve missed you.

Oh, and check it out. I may have taken a break from blogging, but I haven’t been entirely lazy…

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Welcome Back to the Farm!

It isn’t a stretch to say that my hometown is small. Very small. Not the smallest, but close to it.

The farmers’ market started up again, and it’s like going back in time. Everyone knows everyone, and if you don’t, you pick up on it really fast. The coordinator is funny – he walks from table to table, chatting it up, and one question can get him going for twenty minutes. I thought I had the gift of gab.

I wouldn’t say we make a killing at this farmers’ market. Dad’s not quitting his day job and neither am I. But this stuff is right up my alley. I hear such interesting stories from all different kinds of people. The old man next to me farms and sells clams. Yes, apparently one can do this. I learned about infusing honey with vanilla and lavender and cinnamon last week from the certified herbalist (yes, apparently one can be a certified herbalist, as well). I can’t wait to try it; can you imagine a little vanilla honey in your tea? Or cinnamon honey on your toast? I smell another blogpost brewing.

So that’s what I’ve been doing with my weekends. It’s not a bad way to live. Spreading love through sweetness and bee talk.

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A Mini-Trip

I’m writing from a brown leather couch in the middle of America.

[Thanks to Southwest Airlines and my incredibly delayed flight back in February, I booked my current trip for a grand total of $99. Who says travel has to cost an arm and a leg? If you’re willing to be inconvenienced for the sake of future reward, it is totally doable.]

Haven’t taken a single picture yet, and that’s likely to remain unchanged…unless my friend takes a couple. I didn’t bring a camera (shame on me), but I did bring a stack of good books (Tim Keller’s Reason for God, Anne Sexton’s poetry [yes, still plugging away/reveling], and a novel called The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake). I read on the plane ride, but there is too much to do here to really sit down and devote myself to a book.

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Here’s a late-addition from my walk around the museum.

So how am I writing right now, you ask? Because my friends are still sleeping. I woke up early to cars and trucks out the window, the sound of sidewalk sweeping, the smell of already-hot-sun-on-brick. It’s 86 degrees here in Chicago, and, while I am proud of my friends for their economy-savvy, I now realize the beauty of air conditioning. It’s good training, though, for when I get my own place; judging from my past budgeting choices, things like air conditioning won’t make the cut.

Little apartments are perhaps the best thing ever. I walked in and immediately felt at home. Wood floors, large kitchen, open windows lining the street. Books and books everywhere because M. was an English major, and we English majors feel the need to remind everyone by the stacks that line our walls. It’s fun to see how people grow up – I’ve know L. since 8th grade when we sang in choir together. Now, I get to see her new life, her adventure into adulthood. The brief trips she’s taken to come back home cannot show you a person’s new life, really.

[They love coffee here, so when I woke up I made a pot of dark roast, and breakfast consisted of a nice mug of that along with a Trader Joe’s wheat-free muffin (good? yes. thick? yes. tough? a little.).]

Today consists of a trip to the Bean. Don’t even know what this is, but everyone back home was like “See the bean,” and even here, my friends, the anti-tourists, claim that yes, it should be seen. Then a delicious solo-trip to the art museum while L. works at the theater for the afternoon. I can’t tell you how excited I am for that. This whole three-day excursion is smelling remarkably like Austria, and I can thank my experience there for allowing me to navigate this new city with less angst than I’ve ever traveled before.

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And proof of the trip to the Bean.