Whose Will Be Done?

"Mommy, can you set the timer for one minute?"

"Well, sure, dear.  What for?"

"I asked God for a Creature Power Suit with Creature Power Discs, and I told him that one minute from now in the mailbox would be a good time."

"I have no idea what you just said."

"Creature POWER Suits, Mommy, like from Wild Kratts."

"I . . . don't . . . these are . . . can you just explain a little . . ."

"MOM.  I asked GOD . . . for some CREATURE. . . POWER. . . SUITS. . . like in the P . . . B. . . S . . . SHOW.  Where they rescue animals with their CREATURE P - O - W - E - R - S."

"Ohhhhhhh.  Well.  I . . . um . . . Okay.  Well, let me know what happens when the minute is up."

[three minutes later]

"So, Theo, anything in the mailbox?"

"No, just mail.  But I told God that while you were making lunch was an okay time, too.  So maybe it'll come later."

"Okay.  So, what are you going to do if God doesn't give you this Creature . . . thing?"

"Mom.  It says in the Bible that God will give you whatever you ask for."

"Yes, it does.  But it also says that you should ask according to what God wants, not just what you want.  You have to ask in the right way, with the right heart, not just tell God to give you stuff."

"I said please.  I was very polite."

"Oh.  Well, uh, carry on, then.  Let me know what happens."

The Wonders of Germany (Sort Of), Part Whatever

So... this is what I looked like on the Germany trip:

Slightly rebellious, but presentable.

Needless to say, I haven't cut my hair since, so here's how I look now.

They call me Simba in the hood, you know.

Actually I should say "looked." I got a hair cut, because it's 90 degrees outside in [Our Fair City] when it's not raining, and having the equivalent of a giant fluffy cat on my head, while spectacular and good looking, is not fun.

Because unlike my father, my hair still grows.

But wait... (there's more!) what kind of hair cut?

The Mohawk.

I always shoot for memorable first impressions.

Hi! My name's Isaac, and no I am not a punk rocker and no I do not skip school.

Today is the championship meet, and to express my excitement and support for my team, I got a Mohawk. The team color is blue, so...

Walla.

That's me. Someone call the grandparents, make sure their hearts haven't stopped...

Cheers,

Isaac

Before . . .

Well, our new yard is, to be perfectly frank, not what we (I) had wanted.

It's going to take a great deal of work to make it even remotely acceptable.

It doesn't look so bad if you just stand on the back deck and look around, at noon on a bright, sunny day.

Nor even if you just take a peek into the back yard from the edge of the driveway.

Small child added for scale.

But if you start to look closer, you can see years and years of neglect and bad landscaping decisions.

I'm sure this used to be, started to be, or was supposed to be some nicely-laid pathway.

Instead, it's a sand pit with some concrete stepping stones, too small and too widely spaced to be of any use to anyone.

The trees in the back aren't the sort of trees one deliberately plants as a screen.  They're just junk trees, weed trees.  They've grown up in and around the crape myrtles that were probably planted intentionally as a screen and are now so choked out by trees and invasive vines that they may not be salvageable.

But I have a plan.

I also have a man with a chainsaw . . .

. . . and two fascinated spectators.

"Are you sure it's safe to sit here, Mom?"

Just you wait.

Strange Sights

I've finally seen some hummingbirds at the feeder.

I don't have any pictures yet.

But before they started coming around, I did get a few photos of a very strange sight.

Well, it was strange to me, in any case.

A half dozen birds visited the hummingbird feeder, took turns drinking, and then flew away after about fifteen minutes.

None of them were hummingbirds.

They seem to be finches.  I'm inclined to say house finch, but I'm a little shaky on the difference between house finches and purple finches.  I'm a little shaky on bird identification in general, in fact.

I'm pretty sure these are female finches, but, again, I'm a little shaky.  If you told me authoritatively enough that these were immature bald eagles, I might believe you.  ("Astonishing growth rate the first year, you know.  Often travel with other species, of course, for camouflage.  Remarkable birds, old girl, don't you know?")

I haven't seen any other birds do this, and the finches haven't come back.

Weird.

(Of course, maybe they're thinking that about me.  "Okay, she's got sugar-water out.  That's fine for an appetizer, but where's the main course?  Weird.")

On the Just and the Unjust Alike

July is typically one of the wetter months here in [our city], but these daily afternoon thundershowers are a little disconcerting.  (I just finished reading Oryx and Crake.)

It has rained 20 out of 23 days in July so far.  (And this is after a wetter-than-average June.)

We have reached our average monthly rainfall, with a week (and three "50% chance of rain" days) to go.

The City of [our city] has used the reverse 911 thingie to alert us to flash floods twice this week.

It's been, you know, weird.

On the other hand, several good things have come of this unusual weather pattern.

• Our confidence in our new home's ability to handle water is rock-solid.  If the roof hasn't started leaking, if groundwater hasn't started seeping, if windows haven't started weeping this month, they're not going to.
• I haven't had to use the soaker hoses the structural engineer suggested for our soil/foundation problems.
• I haven't had to water the garden.
• We've eliminated "drought" as a possible explanation for the lawn dying.
• We've enjoyed a demonstration of the effectiveness of the emergency alert system.

All in all, a very productive month!  Thanks, weather!

The Wonders of Germany, Part IV

Our first city in Germany was Berlin. At some point in time, we went to the Berlin Wall, which is famous for its deeply philosophical, creative, moving, and beautiful artwork:

(Edited)

Awwwwh thanks Berlin! We appreciate it. 

Much Better

The shout-out to Dark Knight more than makes up for it.

 Okay, I still have no idea who/what/why this is. It's a monarch or rich person of some kind. It's not doing anything except standing there. I promise the crop doesn't cut out anything. But he's wearing glasses, which don't seem to fit the robes and such... anyhow it's great artwork.

I told you there were philosophers

 At least with this one we know the why, but still no info on the who or what.

I saw this great quote on the wall, but something stuck out, apart from all the love notes...

It's not beer...

 Cheers,
 Isaac

Happy First Birthday, Baby J!

When I was living in Paris, my husband was a pastor at an anglophone church with a significant Filipino population.  My experience at the American Church in Paris is still the most important formative spiritual experience of my adult life (save, perhaps, childbearing), and the Filipino Fellowship looms large in my memories of that time.

One of the ways the Filipino Fellowship mentored me in the faith was by introducing me to practices of discipleship and worship that were foreign to me.  Some of them, I'm embarrassed to say, I initially dismissed? tamed? marginalized? by categorizing them, behind my benevolently accepting smile, as the quaint cultural idiosyncrasies of less-educated and slightly superstitious, but clearly devout, brothers and sisters in Christ.

The first time my cultural superiority complex was chastened was on the occasion of a significant First Birthday Party at the church.

The child we were celebrating had been born a little too early, and her mother had had life-threatening complications.  The whole church had prayed for mom and baby, not sure for several weeks whether either would live.  Thanks be to God, they both did, and the church enjoyed a special connection with this sweet child.  When her baptism and first birthday came, everyone was especially touched.

First Birthday Parties were a huge deal, for the Filipino Fellowship.  Undocumented immigrants, people who didn't know where their next meal was coming from, people who were nurses and teachers and bankers in the Philippines but had left to become domestic servants in Paris, people who sent every spare centime they had to their families in the Philippines, people who worked impossible hours to get by--all somehow found the time and money to throw elaborate parties on the occasion of their child's first birthday.

My beatifically superior smile was in place for the first few of these parties I attended.

"Gosh," I often thought.  "I don't think Dave Ramsey would approve of these parties.  I mean, maybe people who can barely pay their rent should, like, just bake a cake and call it a day."

Coupled with these parties was an equally easy-to-dismiss practice of insisting that the church schedule the child's baptism as close to the first birthday as possible.

This was occasionally an inconvenience--imagine a family that insisted that their child be baptized during a church service that was already filled to bursting with holiday rituals, visiting choirs, or special music whose liturgical importance seemed to take precedence over the mere scheduling of a little family photo op.

Besides, I thought--why don't they have it a few weeks after the birth, like normal Christians do?  (Because, you know, the people I went to church with for the first twenty-five years of my life were normal.  Everybody else was, you know, culturally conditioned.)

The Sunday little M was baptized and feted, I finally got it.  And I was ashamed.

Instead of my usual cluck-cluck-clucking behind the smile, I was thinking, "Wow.  She made it.  A year.  That's something to celebrate.  This once, I understand the party.  We weren't sure this one would make it."

And that, of course, was when I understood.

In a country where access to reliable medicine was still imperfectly and unevenly enjoyed, cultural practices reflecting high infant mortality had not yet been abandoned.  For the Filipino Fellowship, every First Birthday Party was a special one.  Every child was one they weren't sure would make it.  Every first birthday occasioned both relief and profound joy.  "Thank you, Lord, that we get to keep this one."

That was the day I stopped seeing those elaborate festivities as the syncretistic holdovers of an imperfectly converted aboriginal population (not that I even knew I was doing that) and started seeing them as moments of Christian discipleship.  These First Birthday Parties discipled the Filipinos in gratitude and thanksgiving.

Because the Filipinos still knew what Western medicine and governmental stability had allowed me to forget (or repress, anyway): that life is so very precarious, and its preciousness stems not from our control over it, our decision to invest it with meaning, our thinly-veiled sense of ownership over those whom we call "ours," but from our lack of control.  God's gracious gift of medical knowledge and power has not overturned the divine prerogative to give and to sustain life.

Each day my children are alive is testament not to my prudence and care, but to the everlasting love of the God who is the author of all life.  Their health and happiness is not my right reward for decent parenting or the inevitable outcome of a life of privilege, but the graciousness of the God who makes rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike.

And although I don't like to think about it, the converse is true as well: their deaths, too, must some day--Lord willing, a day far in the future--be testament to the love and graciousness of the God who calls them to himself.  For all that they were born of my body, they are not mine to keep.  They were entrusted to me to love, and given to me to enjoy, but they are not mine to control.

I've gotten to keep "my" babies for a combined total of 22 birthdays, and I don't think the gratitude I've expressed to God for that gift comes close to what a Filipino family expresses every time they have a First Birthday Party.

Today, a good friend celebrates the first birthday of her precious son, J.  (She has been blogging about their experience here.  I cannot recommend her blog highly enough.)

Like little M, he was born too soon, and like little M, he was upheld in prayer for those hard months (a bit longer than M's few weeks!) when his parents weren't sure how long they would get to keep this one.

Like M, his first birthday seems set apart from other first birthdays.  I don't recall crying over any of my sons' first birthdays, but I've been crying about J's for a week now.

I'm celebrating, of course, that he has made it to today.  I'm grateful that his family will get to keep him, that they will spend the day eating cake and fielding a hundred phone calls and putting cranky, over-sugared kids to bed, that they have as much reason as any of us parents to imagine his first day of kindergarten or which sport he'll play or what kind of girl he'll marry and what color their children's hair will be or how he'll thank them in the acknowledgements page of his dissertation or which Nobel Prize he'll win.

But I'm also celebrating--well, celebrating isn't quite the word.  I'm also remembering, with a solemn kind of gratitude, the impetus to prayer that his first few months of life were.  I grateful for--and Baby J and his mama will surely forgive the self-centeredness of my thoughts here--the stark, soul-searing light that his life has shone in my own, the divine word delivered through him that I am not in charge, not even of "my" children's lives.

Yard Sign FTW?

The second church we visited did not give us pie.

They did not give us anything.  I've decided to see this as evidence that they don't need to bribe people to join them, not as evidence they don't want us.

The youth group, however, dropped something by after Isaac visited.

My opinion: Cute, but not as good as pie.
Isaac's opinion: Way cool!  Totally better than pie!

So, props, at least, for knowing their audience.

Well, That Was Awkward...

It is interesting, at least to me, the sort of assumptions people make in conversation with acquaintances. I say acquaintances because these conversations are usually between people who have met, perhaps once before, but are not good friends.

For example, at the pool party I was at last night, thunder was heard about 5 minutes before everybody's parents showed up. This was no big deal, because everyone was done with swimming anyway, but everyone did have to huddle under the porch or go inside.

During this period of utter and total boredom, the topic of the weekend came up, as it always does with high schoolers, and one girl complained of not being able to finish a swim meet due to storm.  She took the trouble of explaining to me that every time you hear thunder, you have to stay out of the pool for 30 minutes. I informed her that my meet on Tuesday also had been delayed due to thunder and I felt much the same way about that.

She expressed surprise at not knowing that I swam, a familiar occurrence with me. Anyhoo, as swimmers inevitably do, she asked for my times. I casually gave her the usual lineup of events used for comparison between swimmers. After hearing me out, and asking if I was serious, she told me I was "really fast." I said that I had been told that before, but really thought that I needed to work harder in practice and focus more. For me, it was no big deal, because I don't really care if people think I'm great or not. (I'm not.) All I want is to be remembered, and that doesn't take greatness. Which is a good think, because greatness takes work, and I'm lazy. But she was clearly embarrassed at her faulty assumption, so I laughed it off and asked if she was going to the city meet, thus turning the conversation away from myself. 

But that conversation got me thinking. How often do I make assumptions of a similar nature? How often have I looked at somebody and said, "Well they clearly don't do sports," and then later learned that they bat cleanup, or play goalkeeper, or man the point for the basketball team. On the topic of ball, how many times have I assumed that the people I play basketball with at the Y are eating well tonight? Have I ever sat down and thought about what a "gated" community really means -- and what it meant that we were having a church party there?*

Obviously none of these assumptions or ignorances are anywhere near the slight offense I took last night. I have no real misconceptions about my own accomplishments, and I readily admit to my own laziness. But it did annoy a little bit that I had been condescendingly informed of how a swim meet works, when I have swum in over 100 meets in my life.

What assumptions do you make in your daily life that may be annoying somebody --  or worse? How often have you found out?

Cheers,

Isaac

*I am by no means insinuating that everybody in [our town in the Deep South] is racist, or even that anyone at said party is prejudiced, and I applaud the champions of civil rights that [said town] can claim an association with. But inequality is a valid problem even today, and sometimes a question begs asking. 

For The First Time, Again.

One small consolation for the impracticalities of widely-spaced children: getting to read the classics for the "first" time, over and over and over.

We started The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe tonight, in honor of Theo's sixth birthday.  His eyes could not have gotten any wider.

I can still remember starting the Narnia series with Isaac, in Paris.  He's read it on his own, several times, since then.  But this is the first time we've read it aloud in ten years.

We counted through the chapters and discovered that there are seventeen.  Isaac said, "Wait, that means we'll finish it in, like, two weeks.  That's not right.  You can't rush through this book."

I do remember it taking at least a month when we read it with Isaac.  I don't remember why.  Certainly not because his attention span was shorter than Theo's.  Perhaps mine was, back then.  I think I only read parts of chapters.

Two weeks does seem rather quick.

I was looking over at Amos while we were reading, thinking about how little he understood, and how much fun it will be when we do this all again in five or six years.

I can't wait.

If you had the chance to introduce a book to someone precious to you, at just the right age for him or her, what book would that be?

I would have a hard time picking just one book.  Charlotte's Web, Farmer Boy, Pride and Prejudice, the Borrowers, A Wrinkle in Time, the Screwtape Letters--how could you choose?

But the Narnia series is special.

The Wonders of Germany, Part III

So while we in Germany, we went to Oberhausen to check out the new Christo exhibit. Here's the building it was in...

 It was called a gasometer, and was used to store the municipal gas works before it was repurposed by Christo for an art exhibit called Big Air Package. Don't believe me?

That's from the inside.

And that's looking down the outside.

So how tall is this thing? Here's a plaque at the highest level of the building, Level 11.

That's German. But it's tall in any language.

Google tells me that's over 360 feet. Now, there were two ways to travel up and down the exhibit. You can take the glass elevator along the inside of the wall of the gasometer. Or you can take the stairs up the outside. Guess which way Scott, Adam, Gray, and I took?

Yeah. Those are stairs.

The exercise way. Up! Then back down. Then take the glass elevator up... but you gotta walk down. 

That's at the beginning. The last trip was too graphic for the Internet.

So that's three times up 600 stairs. Yes. We counted. That was to occupy our minds on the last trip. You know, as distraction from the burning pains in our legs. 

That's the spirit!

We spent about an hour on the stairs, and two minutes looking at the actual exhibit.

Gang of Three! Plus a photobomb.

Scott wussed out on the last trip. He wanted to sip his tea and look at the art, rather than go up/down more stairs. I don't understand him sometimes. Anyway, he only took two trips so he couldn't pose in the Gang of Three picture.

Cheers,

Isaac

Buckets!

I don't remember when dough rising buckets started being recommended in bread-baking cookbooks.  I'm sure it was about ten minutes after I bought a ridiculously expensive (to a college student, anyway) extra-large pottery bowl that would hold a double batch of dough, fully risen.

The cookbooks started telling me that dough buckets are more helpfully shaped, have markings on the side, are see-through--in short, are totally superior to any mixing bowl.

Dough rising buckets aren't ridiculously expensive (King Arthur Flour has a reasonable one), but I've resisted getting one.  As often as I would use it, my mixing bowls get the job done, and they can do many other jobs besides.

Yesterday, though, I discovered that I had one already.

I haven't found the box with the plastic wrap in it yet, but I keep forgetting this until after I've made something that requires it.

Yesterday, that happened to be pizza dough.  So.  Guess where I put it?

Yup.  In my two-dollar plastic pitcher.

It's see-through.  It has markings on the side.  It's very helpfully shaped.  And it can do more than one job.

I won't say that I'm never going to use my mixing bowls again.  But it did work just as nicely as all the cookbooks said!

The Wonders of Germany, Part II

Welp, it's raining for the 8 millionth day in a row. At least it's cool and wet and not Death Valley and humid. But it rained a bit in Germany too, so maybe today is a good day for another addition to the photoseries. 

My grandparents on my mother's side were here to visit for the holiday. They're big fans of the cop show NCIS. If you don't know what NCIS is, you have been watching all the wrong TV. But anyway this looked like a hit-and-run gone awry sort of thing. 

And walla. That's right on the bank of the Rhine. That kind of parking job should be illegal.
And while we're on the subject of strange parking places...

That's what some of us like to call a winefield. (Get it? Minefield, winefield? Crimes? Eh.) There is no road into that section of the vineyard. So that's another car just chilling. (Get it? Chilling? Chilling wine?) Alright enough bad puns, people will start wineing -- whining in the comments. 

Cheers,

Isaac

What's in a Name?

Friends of ours at [Happy Little] College, where Stephen and I will both be teaching in the fall, tell us that the students are already calling us "Mr. Dr. [Our Last Name]" and "Mrs. Dr. [Our Last Name]."

I took Stephen's last name when we married, and we have the same first initial.  So, on the class sign-up site, there are a whole lot of classes being taught by "S. [Our Last Name]."

And the students--clever kids!--have already figured out that it's going to be a problem.

I'm not sure why this makes me smile as much as it does.

Maybe it's because "Mr." and "Mrs." seem a little more personal to me than "Dr."  And there's an undeniable "cute" factor to "Mr. Dr." and "Mrs. Dr."

Or maybe it's because nicknames, too, are a sign of familiarity (if not always of affection).  And it's nice to feel that the students are already calling us anything at all--and something more personal than "those new guys that are coming."

One thing I'm sure contributes to my happiness: I'm glad to be going as "Mr. Dr. and Mrs. Dr." and not "Dr. and Mrs."  I'm glad to have finished the doctorate so that Stephen and I are going there on equal footing (at least with respect to our professional accomplishments, if not to our standing at the college).

I'm glad that there's no question of the subtle denigration of my qualifications with respect to his by the application of different titles.

I'm glad that I'll not be subject to the domestication of my professional accomplishments by the assumption that they are dependent on Stephen's.  "Oh, so after got his degree, you got one, too?  How cute!"  "Oh, he put you through school?  What a great guy!  Not many husbands would do that!"  "You must have learned so much about theology while Stephen was getting his degree!"  (At least, not by the students, who will always know us both as Dr.)

I'm glad that, even though people we meet at the local churches and community centers ask, "What does your husband do?" and express surprise that "You work, too?" the students, at least, expect me to show up for class every day.

I have to confess that I had gotten accustomed to the rarefied atmosphere of the Ivory Tower, where the idea of my being a "trailing spouse" had not occurred to anyone, or, if it had, it was more often referred to as "the two-body problem."  A "two-body problem," of course, implies that both bodies are, in general or at least potentially, equally weighted.  There was no suggestion that Stephen's dissertation was weightier than mine (even if it was, quite literally, longer and thus heavier).  In fact, almost none of my professors and mentors even mentioned Stephen when they were talking about my work or my job prospects.

And, before that, to the loving and supportive atmosphere of my family, in which I was never "pretty smart, for a girl" or encouraged to "get a useful degree, in case you can't find a husband."  I'd heard of families and businesses and government agencies where having breasts and ovaries was a liability, but I'd never experienced it--not once.  Not ever.

I can't say that I've had genuinely rude or mean-spirited interactions with any Alabamans yet.  But there have been more than a few of those moments of surprise, those quick recoveries, those raised-and-then-hurriedly-relaxed eyebrows.

I must try to remember not to overreact to those moments.

And knowing that the students are calling Stephen "Mr. Dr." means that they are calling me "Mrs. Dr. [last name]" not to mark my doctorate off from all the doctorates of my male colleagues, but simply to distinguish between the two "Dr. [last name]s" on campus.  "Which Dr. is which?" is such a different question than, "Oh, you're a Dr., too?"

It's a good difference.  And that makes me smile.

The Wonders of Germany, Part I

So I went to Germany on a choir trip sometime in early June.  And as expected, it was fun, but busy. Between all the concerts, trips to McDo, and gaming that went on, I had little time to do things like buy souvenirs, write down all the places I've been, or take pictures.  I've got a couple (160) and I'll post a few each day tell the story behind them.  

So let us begin!

This is a castle.  It's on a hill near the Rhine River, which is a river on which the whole choir took a boat tour.  It's a pretty alright castle.  But what this picture doesn't tell you is that there are fourteen flippin' castles on a 26-kilometer stretch of water.  (I know that it is 26 km because I took a picture of each marker. Maybe that can be a subsequent story.)  So anyway, there are lots of castles in Germany, for those who did not know that.

Here's another:

This is a castle.  I think.  Judging by the cars that repeatedly came flying out, that opening you see is part of a tunnel.  So the inventive Germans, needing a road and not wanting a castle, turned the castle into an opening for a road.

And finally, because being on land is too mainstream for castles:

Yeah.  It's just there.  In the middle of a river.  I believe that on the other side of that tree there is a walkway to a dock of sorts, where boats land and people go in and out.

So that's part one of my "The Wonders of Germany" series.  Updates may not be daily, as there are other things in life to talk about, but updates will be regular and will continue for a long time, seeing as I have 157 more photos to get through.

Cheers,
Isaac

And Then There's The Front Yard . . .

Google maps has recently updated its "street level" pics, so you couldn't see it any more (if you knew my address).  But as late as a month ago, it had a very old picture of our house showing.

The house was dark green, and didn't have a window on the front, and it was . . . well, to call it overgrown would be charitable.

It looked like a dump.

But someone else bought it a year ago and put a lot of work into it, and we're getting the benefit of their work.

They put a rather half-hearted effort into the front landscaping.  Perhaps that is uncharitable--they cleared out a lot, and put down some of that dyed red mulch (not really understanding how unattractive the future owner would find it), and bought some very nice bushes (including three very pretty miniature gardenias).

But . . . not my faves.

They cleared away a lot of the overgrowth, but they still left a lot.

The right side of the front yard was annoying me most this morning . . .

. . . so that's what I started with.  Stephen joined in pretty quickly and heartily, and even Isaac did some lugging.

After a good bit of work, it looked better:

Still more to do, but at least people can walk on the sidewalk.

It's nice to be able to look at your work and see that something has been accomplished.  Everybody needs some tangible results to enjoy at least sometimes.

Whew.  That's a lot of yard waste.