"Eternity: for all its invisibility, we gaze at it."

-Muriel Barbery

twenty five cents

Four or so years ago my little sisters came into my room right before bed and sheepishly dumped handfuls of quarters onto the bedcover. It was pretty much the last night I ever saw them while they were my baby sisters. Being that four years ago makes them 13 and 11 respectively, they were technically still "little." Ever since that night, whenever I see them it hits me all over again that they are not "the little girls" I used to refer to them as. They may still be younger than me, but you wouldn't know it to see them and talk to them. Occasionally I am forced to realize how much they have grown up, and then I have to stop and think - wait, does that mean I've grown up too?

I don't feel like a graduate. But then again, what is a graduate supposed to feel like? So far the only big difference is the fact that Barnes & Noble is no longer a huge basket of forbidden fruit - I now have all the time in the world to read whatever juicy option strikes my fancy in the aisles (Proust this time, I didn't stand a chance). Well, all the time in the world but maybe not all the money in the world- but I'll get cracking on that next week.

Really though, I feel that I am the same me that I was four years ago- but when I witness the mature young women my little sisters have morphed into all of the sudden I think I potentially have grown a bit too, right? It shocks me that that night wasn't 24 hours ago. I can still feel the tears welling up (the first tears of my "being left at school three states away from everything I have ever known" experience) as my sisters' small hands sprinkled hoarded quarters onto my bed. Their offering may seem silly - but those quarters washed many a sock and shirt during my freshman year, and when I slid them into the greedy slots of my hall washer & dryer units I never failed to remember that night. In fact even now, four years later, with all those quarters long gone, I still am often called back to that night whenever I see Washington's silver profile or slam down the lid on our washer.

Isn't it funny the things we recall? I can't think why I am so vividly and emotionally tied to that memory, but I don't think its going anywhere.

Frankly, I prefer it that way.

these are a few of my favorite things

My dad laying on the family room floor tossing a baseball up and down, a game on the TV and my mom's laughter from the kitchen.

Bright sandy beach towels strewn messily over our front porch banisters.

Loud music in the car. Loud music in the kitchen.

Days I don't do my hair.

Books. Reading books, buying books, lending books out, re-reading books, talking about books. Getting so absorbed in a book I don't hear anything going on around me.

Swingsets and hammocks.

The sound of baseball games. On TV, at the park, wherever. (Oh and actually watching them too...)

Brushing my teeth.

Eva Cassidy's voice. Deb Talan's lyrics.

Real silence.

Maneuvering and darting through large crowds in public places.

My purple rain jacket.

Descriptive adjectives.

Folding laundry. Except when there are missing socks.

Hammering things.

Dancing and doing the dishes with my siblings.

When all my hair stays in a pony tail without having to pin bangs or layers or things.

Label makers.

Aunt Bertha's potato salad.

Waking up to anything but an alarm.

Frank Sinatra.

Doing hand stands in the pool.

Being in my bed during thunderstorms. Being on screened in porches during thunderstorms. Being in the car during thunderstorms.

The Cracker Barrel's macaroni and cheese because it reminds me of Granny's.

The sound Otis makes when I scratch his ears.

That scene between Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart in The Philadelphia Story. And every other scene in that movie.

Freshly cleaned pillowcases.

I know that I am in this world and not of it, but these are the things of this world that make me content to be in it until I really go home.

"No man who values originality will ever be original. But try to tell the truth as you see it, try to do any bit of work as well as it can be done for the work's sake, and what men call originality will come unsought."

-CS Lewis, The Weight of Glory

talitha koum.

So I can't get my "religious views" on facebook to be anything but a link to random groups that I have zero association with - and like a true American I find myself irritated at the counterfeit appearance of interconnection that creates. I prefer to stand alone and "special," even when I am trying to affiliate myself with a religious group. The self-contradiction of my conundrum is not lost on me.

I suppose I could just surrender gracefully and change the tagline to something like, "Christian," but the truth is that what I put in that obscure box actually means something to me. I mean I realize that the box, and indeed facebook on the whole, are just technological mechanisms which I have been socialized to use as valid forms of communication and image maintenance - but this box was different. Its not that I spend hours composing riveting fillers for the boxes on my profile - but I'd be fibbing (we all would) If I said I didn't at least think how whatever I put would be read by others. Seriously though, it is a social network, and the whole platform exists as a means to communicate - both directly through conversation and indirectly through posts and pictures and the various little boxes in the "About Me" section. But I digress... Oh yes, "this box was different," or some nonsense like that.

My most favorite story in Matthew comes in chapter 5, when Jesus heals a sick girl. Excuse me did I say heals? I meant raised. From the dead. Anyways, "Jesus saw a commotion, with people crying and wailing loudly. He went in and said to them, 'Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep.' But they all laughed at him. After he put them all out... he went in where the child was. He took her by the hand and said to her, "Talitha Koum!" which means, "Little girl, I say to you, get up!"' Immediately the girl stood up and walked around."

I put those two little words in the box on my profile, because it said: "Religious Views" and then there was a blinking spacebar waiting for me to fill the void. Religious Views? What are my views on religion? Well whatever they are, they're much too cumbersome and involved to fit into that elfin box. I guess what it means, then, is what do I believe? That one's easy. I believe in a Christ who once told a dead little girl to, "get up!" and she did. Immediately. I believe in a Christ who says to me every morning, "Talitha Koum my daughter!" although I confess I don't always get up quite so immediately...

I wonder what else Jesus says to me, only to hear my foolish, self-assured laughter in response. The reality of the dead girls' dead-ness was undeniable to that crowd, but the fact of the matter is that they were wrong wrong wrong about the truth of the matter. My reality is not the truth that Christ lives in. I hope that when the Lord asks me to get up I wake up to the truth, rather than worldly reality.

Now if only I could get the box to stop linking to a non-profit in Waco. (Oh but good work though, guys.)

Life without a callous

I have a mammoth callous on the ring finger of my right hand. Its true, I do. Its been there towering over the rest of my finger for as long as I can recall. Its as much a part of me as the freckle on the bottom of my foot or my horrid widows peak, and yet it is not something I was born with. It is in fact the child of the insane amount of force with which I apply writing utensils to the page. I can remember being made to learn to write in i t a l i c s as a child (pre-everyonehasahomecomputer-era) and ripping through the page with my ball point pen. Miss Kitty, my kindergarten teacher, scolded me for gripping the crayons so fiercely (but I was just so hyper focused on staying inside the lines, I couldn't help it). By the end of a single page in my Little House on the Prairie Diary I would have to shake my hand to get the blood flowing again (year 9 was quite full of an angst that only Laura Ingalls could appreciate). I have grown out of many things in my life: chomping on Bubble Tape, obsessing over seed beads, and finally letting go of overalls at 14 - but to this day when I set down the pen my knuckles are reliably white and smarting. The long term ramification of this habit is, of course, The Callous. I can remember being disgusted by its stubborn existence in high school, rejoicing when July rolled around and the relief of summer vacation had diminished its prominence. For some reason though, I no longer find its presence offensive. This callous is quite literally the product of notes and drafts and blue books and essays and highlighting and highlighting and highlighting, and circling "true" (No, false. No, true, No actually false. No, really, I'm wretched at true/false) and flash cards and outlines and poster boards (when I'm lucky, I do so love attacking things with scissors and a glue stick...) and signing my name on a roll, profoundly declaring my presence and my role. This trifling, ugly little bit of me is the external evidence of how much being a student is who I am - who I have been since Miss Kitty's class when I learned that finishing an assignment doesn't mean you get to go around and show other students how to do it (I believe, quite frankly, that she told me she'd like to hot glue gun my "cheeks to my chair" if she could).

In one week my college career will ostensibly come to a close. I will walk out of my last class into the empty pages of my planner. From there I have a few events written in ink: Graduation with an exclamation point, Laura's wedding with three. A concert here, a birthday there, a movie night in pencil and then... nothing. My planners are not accustomed to empty pages. "Tuition fee due," "First day of class!" "Last day of drop/add," "Test," and "Paper due," typically riddle the pages months and weeks in advance. "Babysitting," "Kudu with so and so," "small group," "Sullys," and "house dinner" constantly reside in the gaps between. And so it has been for the past four years, and much the same for the first two decades of my life. Oh I have no doubt that the pages will fill to the brim, what inspires trepidation is the not knowing just what I will be writing on them. The successful student in me is timorously clinging to my callous. Clinging because it has been so much a part of me; grasping because I don't know what life will be without it.

humidity returns

This whole city bumbles along slowly, despite all our pretenses at hustle and bustle. The heat of summer steadily creeps back, suddenly making the breeze that blows my page away something to be grateful for. My concentration scattered, I behold the scene around me. As things come into focus I realize with a start that the couple sitting near me just got engaged. They goggle at each other, the ring, back at each other, at their iPhones, back at the ring, back at each other - who knows how long this has been going on and all the while I've been oblivious. "Why couldn't you have proposed to me at the battery?" A woman scolds, before she returns to peppering her small child with questions: "What color is this, honey? Blue, good. What color is the grass? What color are your shoes? What color is my hair? No honey: brown. Can you say brown? Can you say that? Tommy? Good, now what color is my hair again?" She turns, "if we can just get him to learn his colors we can get into that preschool," she tells her husband searchingly. He nods. To my left a couple's argument dissolves in laughter. To my right a couple's argument dissolves in tears. Across the sidewalk a family picnics and a small girl sits on a lap, her colossal pink bow brushing against gray whiskers. He pats her knee, she giggles at him, safe in a world of trust. Twin boys no more than three race around a huge tree trunk. One trips, falls. The other, without hesitation, throws himself down to the ground as well. Their raucous laughter fills the air as their anxious mother, who had been expecting tears, settles back down to the grass. A family walks their microscopic dog between me and the water, and there in all their glory are the matching polka dotted mother-daughter Easter duds. The daughter doesn't seem to mind, I wonder if someday she will. Her tiny brother, on the other hand, tugs impatiently at his tiny polka dotted tie. Obvious tourists wander hungrily around the gazebo. One group stops, a bossy man orders them into positions for a picture. "No not there, here. No don't stand like that, put your arm - here let me show you. See, if you just stand like this...Okay now lean, oh crossed arms are a just great way to show we are happy, aren't they? now can you ju- what? What? Oh. Oh no I didn't realize the lens cap was on...nervous laugh, nervous laugh, okay just stand wherever." Even I have to chuckle at that one as I packed up my hefty tome and resolved to be reading a shorter something next time I lugged a book down to the Battery. I paid attention to these people for only five minutes, and that is all of their expansive, involved, eventful lives I will ever know. But that is not all there is, for "we have tomorrow bright before us like a flame." What color is a flame Tommy? Red? Good.