Life in the Shoe

To Doctor Or Not

2012-03-06T10:28:00.005-08:00

When I was growing up, my parents' philosophy about taking their children to the doctor was, "If you're still alive, you don't need a doctor."

Ok, that's exaggerating. A little.

Mom relied on enemas, sliced onions on a hot rag on the chest, and chamomile tea in a little brown pot.

I remember excruciating pain from earaches, a head injury that had me vomiting and incapacitated, a bent fingertip from a sledding mishap, and plenty of run-of-the-mill fevers and flus, none of which involved seeing a doctor.

So I thought that was how it was done, and when I taught school I struggled for weeks with a cough and feeling terrible, but I didn't go to the doctor until the next-door neighbors pretty much commanded me to, because they woke up in the middle of the night and heard me coughing, with their windows and mine all shut.

It was acute bronchitis and I soon recovered, with those magic antibiotics. How cool is that?

One of many nice things about living in Canada was that when the children were sick I didn't have to endlessly dither about Are They Sick Enough To See A Doctor? thanks to the socialized medical care. [Except for the two years when the doctor was 125 miles away, then it was a much bigger deal.] Even in Round Lake, which was even further from a doctor, there was a nursing station, and I got to know some of the nurses well enough to have them over for lunch, and dropping by to have them listen to a child's chest was a simple matter.

But back in Oregon, where just walking through the door of the clinic cost a week of groceries, To Go Or Not To Go again became a matter of huge internal angst.

To go and find that yes, the bone is broken, the spots are strep--that was sweet vindication. But to be told that it's just a virus, calm down, give lots of fluids--that felt humiliating, like I was a wimpy mom who panicked about nothing.

It's worst with my own illnesses. Sometimes, like last December, I drag for weeks, relying on home remedies, until my friends threaten to tie me up and haul me in to the clinic by force. It actually was bronchitis, it turned out, and in three days I was well, on Azithromycin.

This last week I once again caught something, with the familiar sore throat and cough and then the terrible fatigue and the feeling of a boa constrictor around the chest. My temperature went up and the wretched misery of all that can't be described. I was sure it was bronchitis again, so I went to the doctor yesterday, making sure I didn't take Tylenol beforehand, so my temp would be as high as possible, to prove my point.

"Your lungs are clear," she said. "It's your asthma. You should have upped your inhalers as soon as you got sick."

Gaaah.

Would it be so much to ask that just once, when I am that wretchedly miserable and coughing and gasping, and I take on this huge expensive gamble of Going To The Doctor, that he or she takes one look and listen and says, "Ooooh, not good. Pneumonia, severe, both lobes. I'm calling an ambulance to take you in immediately."

But no, it's use your inhalers, drink fluids, take Tylenol, get lots of rest, see ya!

(But she said she liked my purse, my homemade version of Vera Bradley, so that took out just a bit of the sting.)

Quote of the Day:
"Call your doctor."
--the most common advice in all the dumb parenting magazines I used to read. Fever, bumps on the head, rashes, everything. It was always "call your doctor." I always had too much of my mom in me to do that.

March column

2012-03-04T11:00:00.002-08:00

Today's column is about Jamaica of course.

Two resources if you want to do something about orphans/neglected children:

http://www.jamaicarm.org/home.html

http://www.embracingorphans.org/

Posing

2012-03-02T19:20:00.005-08:00

Last night we had a ladies' tea at church, with--I'm guessing--over a hundred ladies present. I was the MC and was losing my voice plus the sound in the fellowship hall is terrible plus the microphone popped and squealed, so I enjoyed myself as much as one can in such a situation.

But the evening has its many good qualities, including tables decorated so beautifully that I think God should get these hostesses to help set up for the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. And the dessert table, goodness, that was MS of the L worthy as well.

Down at the other end of the hall, Emily had a photo booth set up, along with a sampling of her huge collection of props. The little girls had loads of fun with this and I think the moms did too. I hope some of them post their pictures.

Between announcing raffle winners and such, I slipped down to see how it was going with the photos and had a sudden urge to take a crazy picture myself. So I grabbed the granny glasses, a hat, a white filmy scarf, and a Voice of the Martyrs brochure from the shelf, posed briefly, yanked off the stuff, and went back to my duties.

I had left my Facebook account open on my laptop, and after she came home Emily posted the picture on Facebook without asking me first. "I think I might go for a ride on a very large gander tonight," she captioned it.

Oh dear, you know how it is when you see your own face in an unexpected pose, and there are your brother's and dad's mouths, and 4 aunts' noses, and the Millers' chins all blended into one face? And it's worse when you were just trying to look vintagey and instead you look like Mother Goose.

See what I mean? The beak and everything.

This sort of thing is why people never take me seriously, I'm sure of it.

Quote of the Day:
"Mom, you're a great storyteller if no one interrupts you."
--Emily

Consumption and Such

2012-03-02T17:30:00.004-08:00

In the old days, it seems people quite often moved to a whole different area because of their health. In old books it was often consumption. I think it was pleurisy that took the young lady in "Mrs. Mike" to Alberta. I had ancestors with the famous Yoder lungs who moved to Colorado to breathe easier. And recently I spoke to an old friend of my dad's who told me about someone from Oklahoma who had suffered a heat stroke and so they moved to Oregon where it was cooler.

In all the above cases, they traded their old problems for a whole set of new ones. Like Mrs. Mike lost two children to diphtheria, and the one lady in Colorado was widowed but kept farming with her little children, a terribly hard life all around, and one day a neighboring farmer, who was Amish but obviously not Christian, came by with a wagon and a few robust sons and brazenly helped himself to a load of cow chips the kids had worked for days to gather.

Yesterday Steven of the robust health and I of the Yoder lungs came down with the same thing, a bad headache plus a sore throat and fever. Today he is his normal self and I once again feel like there's a boa constrictor around my chest that lets me breathe about 1/3 as much as normal.

When we were in Jamaica, I could breathe all I wanted, and I hardly ever coughed, which leads me to think maybe God is telling me to be like the ancient Yoder forebears and move to a different climate, specifically Jamaica, for my health's sake.

The big question is, what problems would I get in exchange?

Quote of the Day:
"Did you tell Dad you're falling for a Jamaican?"
--Steven, referring of course to little Aldaine at the orphanage

A Meme: Questions, Answers, and Questions

2012-02-28T07:40:00.004-08:00

I got tagged by Rebecca from Chicken Scratchings to be part of a meme. A meme is an idea or theme that spreads like a virus. In this case it's a list of questions you answer.

The meme…

The (bendable) rules:
Post these rules.
Each person must post 11 things about herself on his/her blog.
Answer the questions the “tagger” listed for you in her post, and create 11 new questions for the people you tag to answer.
Choose 11 people to tag and link to them in the post.
Go to each blogger’s page and mention that you have tagged
him/her.

Here are the questions I was asked.

1. How many children are there in your family and where do you fall? (Oldest--youngest)

There are six of us, first three boys, then three girls. I'm #5, the middle daughter. Oddly, I ended up with three boys and three girls as well, but not in the same order.

2. Are you an introvert or an extrovert?

Just took a test on this and scored almost 100% introvert. I enjoy people a lot, but prefer one-on-one to crowds, and need time to recharge, alone, afterwards.

3. What room of your house do you spend the most time in?

Either the office or kitchen.

4. Do you have any pets, and if so how many, and what kind?

Pets come and go at this house, and at the moment we're down to three cats.

5. What time of day do you most often write blog posts?

It varies a lot, but often late at night.

6. Which of these do you enjoy most? Cooking, cleaning, or laundry?

Definitely laundry, although lately Emily has been doing all the laundry and I'm realizing just how much of my time it took.

7. How did you meet your spouse?

I came to Oregon to teach in a Mennonite school. One of my students was little Rosie Smucker who told me about her big brother who was teaching two hours away. Eventually we met. And stuff.

8. What are some hobbies you have other than blogging?

Sewing, crafts, reading, traveling. In film days I enjoyed photography. I like history and old novels and exploring other places and cultures.

9. What is your favorite verse in the Bible?

Romans 8:1 "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. . .through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death."

10. What time do you get up in the morning?
6:30 to 7. Slightly later on weekends, but not much.

11. If you had a choice would you rather go away for vacation, or stay at home and relax?

I'd go back to Jamaica in a heartbeat. Or out to the coast.

Thanks for tagging me, Rebecca!

Ok, here are my questions, for bloggers who I see as authors or potential authors. If you don't want to do the whole "meme" thing, but feel like answering the questions, I'd love to hear from you in a private message. (dorcassmucker@gmail.com)

Also, there are no blog-meme police to send after you, so feel free to post without tagging others.

Ok, my burning questions:

1. How long have you been blogging, and how often do you post?
2. Have you had anything published, and if so, what and when?
3. Who is the author who best speaks your language and who you would most like to be like, in style and message?
4. What do you see as the unique message God has given you to share with the world ?
5. Who or what has made you believe in yourself as a writer?
6. Who or what has done the opposite?
7. Besides blogging, what types of writing have you done? (journaling, poetry, news articles, letters, short stories, etc.)
8. Where would you like to be, writing-wise, in five years?
9. What would need to happen to move you from here to there?
10. Any advice for beginning bloggers/writers?
11. Just for fun: what's a skill you have that almost no one knows about? (example: I know how to develop black and white film in a darkroom.)

I'm tagging:
1. Emily
2. Amy
3. Rhonda
4. Anita
5. Laura
6. Jeanette
7. Luci
8. Margaret
9.Michelle
10.Ruth
11. Justin

(So many good people I'm leaving out. Maybe another day, all of you.)

Quote of the Day:
"Is she kind of the Pat McManus for mommies?"
--a child of Alyson, an amazing and kind woman from First Baptist Church, who reads all my articles to her four children.

Authors' Party

2012-02-26T14:28:00.002-08:00

Why are Jenny and her friend Janane having tea and celebrating?

Because their poem was published in Partners, that's why! Look for it on March 4th.

Quote of the Day:
"I'm afraid people are going to read that and be as judgmental as I am about other people's poems."
--Jenny

(My three daughters are all published authors now. I am one proud mama.)

No Fear

2012-02-25T12:50:00.005-08:00

Back when Paul's sisters, Barb and Rosie, were both young and single, one of the many friends they made said that she was drawn to them because of their fearlessness. They just joyfully plunged in to life and adventures large and small--the sorts of things most of us over-think and hold back from and hesitate about.

My daughters have those genes as well. Granted, one of them has an odd phobia of making phone calls to places like the bank, one is afraid of moths, and one is afraid to go dump the compost after dark. But generally they just plow ahead through life with an abandon that I can only look on and envy.

They help people and go places and strike up conversations and share their faith. "Why not?" they say, and send applications and pick up lizards and learn to play instruments and offer to sing.

They will argue with this, since I'm not afraid to call up the bank. What they don't realize is how many fears I've had to overcome to learn to call places like banks and travel agents, or to navigate downtown Eugene, or to make small talk with store clerks.

Jenny certainly shares her sisters' and aunts' genes.

Our upstairs windows can be washed from the inside except for the outside of the upper pane. On three sides of the house, you can stand on the porch roof to wash that part. On the fourth side, it's a straight plunge down into the camellia bushes, and I usually get one of the boys to help me, with one of us leaning out awkwardly with a squeegee and the other hanging on to keep him from falling.

A few weeks ago Jenny decided to wash her bedroom windows. She hauled the spray and rags upstairs and before long brought them back down. "I'm all done!"

"I suppose you just left that top outside window on the north side?
"No. I did it myself."

She glibly explained that she had opened the window, wiggled out, stood on the windowsill, held onto the center sash, and merrily washed.

Utterly fearless, that child.

And recently she had her cousin Allie over and they went over to play at the warehouse. After they came home, Jenny told me they had climbed up to the top of the warehouse to look out the window.

That window is some 90 feet off the ground. Getting there involves going up stairways and ladders that get steeper and narrower and dangerous-er as we go. At the end you have to walk or crawl along some boards that, Jenny said, they had to dust off so they wouldn't slip and fall down to the floor below.

But they got to the window, and had fun looking out on the world far below.

Frankly, I'm surprised they didn't get the bright idea to try and wash that window on the outside.

Jamaica 12--Photos

2012-02-21T23:21:00.001-08:00

I posted a bunch of pictures on Facebook.

Click here.

Jamaica 11--Church

2012-02-21T23:03:00.002-08:00

On Sunday we went to a little Brethren church in another part of town which seemed peaceful enough but the pastor talked about how they have a hard time scheduling youth activities because of the curfew. And the curfew, I was told, is because the area has had a rash of murders, which of course turn into revenge killings, back and forth, over and over, and no one will tell on anyone else, so the police can't do much.

But you wouldn't have guessed that on a Sunday morning. The doors and windows were open and the breezes blew and the nice young man played the piano and an even younger man, who couldn't have been much older than Jenny, played the drums amazingly well without a hint of showing off.

The lady in front of me nursed her baby until she fell asleep, and about two minutes later the already-loud music was cranked up two notches out of the suitcase-sized speakers, and people in the audience picked up the tambourines that had been left on their seats and joined in.

The baby slept through it all.

It really was a nice service.

However. I managed once again to embarrass Jenny. See, I didn't clap.

You don't know what it's like, you Pentecostals and musical people and Africans, you who can coordinate hands and feet and beat and words.

It's bad enough in an American service when people clap on the obvious beat. But in Jamaica they had some funny twist to this, and there was no possible way I could clap along.

Jenny said,

Quote of the Day:
"If I would have been a little native girl there I would have thought you were a sullen and disconnected white person."

Well, my dear, these were my options:
A. Try to clap along, get completely befuddled and confused and "off," try and fail to follow the person in front of me, and make an idiot of myself.
B. Stand there and smile and try to look interested and pretend to sing even if I don't know the song, but don't clap--and also make an idiot of myself.

You can't sway with the tambourines if you grew up on the Lob Lied, that's what I always say.

Jamaica 10--Projects

2012-02-19T14:06:00.000-08:00

On Amy's days off, we went sightseeing and had fun.

When she had to work, we still had fun. Jenny played with all the children on the compound, and I sewed.

Having hours and hours of uninterrupted time to sew is lots of fun. When I got tired of it, I could go on a walk or go swimming. It was wonderful.

I made:

1. A skirt for Jenny I had started at home and not quite finished.

2. A simple black skirt for Amy.

3, 4, 5. A set of curtains for the foster boys' room, to block the sun so they can take naps, and to replace the makeshift curtains you see there behind the new ones. It was a challenge because there's no curtain rod, only that iron grid. So I attached ties to the top of the curtains and tied them on every other gap.

6,7. Liners for the above curtains. But they're not up yet, since there wasn't enough fabric or time for ties, so Sharon will probably buy some ribbon and make her own ties, or use drapery hooks.

8,9,10. Three little "market skirts" from this tutorial on Dana Made It. If you want to try making one, I have a few tips to make it even more efficient.

11. A blanket for a boy.(Family: do you think Jenny looks like Janet here?)

12. A blanket for a girl.

I wish I could have stayed two more weeks, and sewed a lot more.

Quote of the Day:
"You look less pale than usual!"
--Matt, when I came home

Jamaica 9--Delete

2012-02-18T14:27:00.000-08:00

I was (kindly) asked to pull or edit my posts about the orphanage for fear they'd be read by someone in charge who could make things very tough for anyone who wants to come and help.

Not that I can really imagine someone from Jamaica finding my blog, but I see their point. And I guess this happened to another American organization recently.

As my sister says, we live in a fallen world.

If you want to see those particular posts, email me at dorcassmucker@gmail.com

Jamaica 6--JRM

2012-02-15T15:11:00.000-08:00

Here's the history and purpose of Jamaica Relief Ministries, as I understand it:

In 1989, Hurricane Gilbert devastated the island. Mennonites from the southeastern U.S. periodically went to help and eventually set up a presence near Montego Bay, with the name of Jamaica Relief Ministries.

Over the years they've reached out in various ways but the focus now is on orphans. There's one houseparent/administrator family, Mark and Karen Smucker [no relation] and their four children. Then there are five nannies who take care of five children, all of whom came there from Blossom, the government orphanage that we visited. And then there's Amy, who teaches the Smucker kids, does the bookwork, and helps with the orphans.

Up until now they've been licensed to do foster care. But just recently they've been licensed as a group home, which means they could have up to 20 children, although they don't plan to have more than 8 or 10. So changes are afoot but I'm not sure exactly how it's going to play out.

The mission is located on a mountainside on the outskirts of Montego Bay, in a beautiful set of buildings that once held an Italian restaurant where the likes of Mia Farrow and Johnny Cash ate, in a beautiful compound with big trees and a huge lawn.

(view from the backyard)

Each nanny is in charge of one child, but they all share child-care and housework duties. Sara, for instance, is Kenroy's "auntie," so she gets him ready for church and sits with him at meals and puts him to bed, and so on. But when it's Sara and Renita's day to go to Blossom, then Melinda might do all the cleaning for the day while Erica is in charge of the children.

Sharon, who has been there for 8 years, does the cooking. Sometimes short-termers come as well, like a young man who was there for a few months doing maintenance projects and left the day after we did.

The children are all adorable, but having come from previous emotional neglect, they have various difficulties with communication, screaming fits, frustrated outbursts, and so on--some a lot more than others.

But overall they seem to be doing very well, it is heartwarming to see how they are so very loved and enjoyed now. I mean, they are just very solidly and whole-heartedly loved.

Some of them are in the process of being adopted, and some would be if one parent or the other would sign off on them.

Since, like so many children in Jamaica, they are not true orphans but the products of a culture where so few dads take responsibility for the children they father, and so many mothers keep having babies in spite of it.

If you would like to make a donation to JRM, you can send a check to
Jamaica Relief Ministries, Inc.
2535 Blue Ridge Blvd.
Walhalla, SC 29691

If you'd like to adopt a child, you need to get in touch with the Jamaican Child Development Agency. You won't be able to pre-select a specific child, just so you know. Adopting there is a long, slow process, but it can be done.

Quote of the Day:
"DorcaPucker"
--little Ruth Ann, when Amy tried to get her to say my name, and of course we laughed and thought she was adorable, and I wish every neglected child in the world could be so doted on

Jamaica 5--Home Again

2012-02-15T11:11:00.000-08:00

I'm wearing a flannel shirt this morning and debating about pulling on a wool sweater besides, which is to say, we made it safely home last evening and we are not in Jamaica any more.

This is what I like about flying: the people you meet.

Going there, we went Portland-Seattle-Miami-Montego Bay. On the 6-hour haul from Seattle to Miami I sat by a young woman who clutched two ancient and ravaged stuffed animals. Jenny (of course) asked her about them. She'd had them since she was two, she said, and their names are Dog-dog and Piglet.

She still needs them when she's feeling anxious, and she was feeling anxious because she was spending the next semester in Cuba.

Her family is from Seattle, but she's a Princeton student, majoring in public policy. Hence the trip to Cuba, where I hope she gets a clear picture of which public policies work, and which don't.

My seatmate from Miami to Montego Bay was a young woman with a lovely accent. Jenny said, "Are you British?" and she said, "No, I'm from South Africa." She worked on cruise ships, and was off to join her ship in Montego Bay. She loves her work, as she can go all over the world on cruise ships and get paid for it.

Coming home, Miami to Los Angeles had me beside an Australian girl who was just finishing up her holiday travels, as the equivalent of our summer off school, in Australia, is December to February. Then she goes back to college in Perth, where her family is.

And from LA to Portland it was a businessman from China who deals in auto parts and was pale and talkative and had halitosis, which I probably did too, by that point, so never mind. He said lots of Americans and other westerners are moving to China as it gets more open because you can live well for a lot less money than here. We should move there, he said. Get good job, good salary, good standard of living. Yes, make a lot of money.

He really pushed that point, so I told him we've talked about going to China, but we are Christians and so like to go where we can serve Jesus and others, rather than make money. He thought that was funny.

He also showed me a picture of his wife and daughter. He thinks it's sad that with China's one-child policy, so many children, like his daughter, have no brothers and sisters to play with.

He was amazed that I have six children and said several times, "Six children! You are so fortunate. You must be so happy together!"

Well, yes, most of the time.

Paul got stuck in traffic coming to pick us up, so Jenny and I got our luggage and went up to the main level and Jenny got a Frosty at Wendy's. And we discovered something useful. You know how packed the pick-up area gets at PDX late at night? Well, if you go upstairs to Departures, you can go out to the curb and pretty much have the place to yourself.

What I don't like about flying: the food situation. Really, now. Five and a half hours from Miami to LAX and the only food choices are $10 sandwiches, $3.29 cookies, or the old peanuts at the bottom of your backpack? And in every airport except our own beloved PDX, all the food is priced double or triple the street price.

Paul met me with pink roses for Valentines Day.

It's good to be home.

I'll do more reminiscing in the coming days of course, between unpacking and catching up.

Thanks for all the prayers and good wishes.

Letter from Hburg

2012-02-12T04:36:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago Jenny's friend and second cousin Dolly stayed with us for the weekend. Dolly has disability and health issues, and Jenny is as strong and healthy as a horse, but they are both utterly normal 12-year-olds.

I wrote about this experience for today's Letter from Harrisburg.

Jamaica 4--Tastes of Jamaica and Saving the Day

2012-02-10T19:49:00.000-08:00

Today we went to the beach. Now I may have been Beachy Amish but I was never Beachy in the other sense of the word.

Lying in the sun is for people who can tan. Instead of burning to a crisp and then getting all blotchy looking.

Swimming is for people who don't panic when their face gets wet.

But Jenny loves to swim and splash around. So we went to this pay-to-get-in beach and oh my. This is why people come to the Caribbean. Lovely teal water, lovely rough-sand beach, palm trees to sit under when you're done in the water.

Since this is Jenny's 12 Trip, after all, I indulged her, and we stayed way longer than I would have needed to be happy.

Eventually I tired of swimming and of sitting under the palm tree so I got showered and dressed and went wandering around looking for iced tea. Which is not a Jamaican drink but maybe I'd be lucky. I mean, I just very badly needed some iced tea.

There was a covered area full of tables and chairs that sort of oozed into the bar area. That seemed to be the only place to get anything to drink so I asked if they had iced tea. No they did not. They had something with the word "tea" in it, but it's alcoholic, and he looked at me like, I know you don't want that.

I got a table a safe distance away and asked the waitress if I could have a cup of hot water and another cup of ice.

She said sure.

I fished a bag of Kenya tea out of my purse, brewed it in the hot water, and poured it over the ice.

It was wonderful. Kenyan tea saves the day again.

Partway through this process I ran down to the beach to let the girls know where I was and Amy says I said,

Quote of the Day 1:
"I'll be sitting by the bar, because I got a drink."

After we got back to the house and cleaned up we went out for dinner with all the staff girls at one of those amazing places you find only in warm climes, where the inside sort of flows into the outside, with no clear Mason-Dixon line, and you sit at a table with a linen tablecloth, and the breezes blow around you and the bougainvillea is blooming.

But first, before we left for the lovely dinner, Jenny went to use the bathroom quickly before Amy locked up the house. And then she screamed.

Amy went to investigate. She screamed too.

I went and looked. I screamed too.

This is why.

Amy saved the day, as she always does. But first she said,

Quote of the Day 2:
"You keep watch and don't let him get out of the toilet!"
Jenny obeyed, but this is what she thought of the task.

Jamaica 3--Up the Falls

2012-02-09T16:05:00.000-08:00

Today a guy from the mission here took us to the airport to rent the car Paul had reserved for us. (Thanks, Paul!) Of course this is not allowed to be just a routine procedure, this being us ladies in a foreign country.

We got a ride with the ones taking today's shift to Blossom. On the way, I discovered that Amy, who had sounded so confident that she could drive on the left side, which had made me delighted to get the car in her name, actually never had yet, but she was sure it would be ok.

I had been warned that they would want me to buy insurance and I should say no. The tall Jamaican lady said I had to buy insurance. I said no I do not. She said yes, it's a requirement here, and here are your options.

Argghh. Where's Paul when I need him?

I fussed enough to embarrass Jenny. In fact I tried hard to sound exactly like Paul would, and he always gets his way with that tone of voice, but it did no good. And obviously the lady had all the power because we needed that car.

Ok, FINE.

She took a key off the row of hooks (not the row that said, "dirty keys") and took us out to a neat little gray car. I hopped in, along with my long-handled purse. She took Amy around and showed her the details. Then she asked me to step out so she could show Amy the jack under the seat.

I stepped out and promptly hooked my foot in the purse handle on my way out. I took two panicky hops and was flying nose-first toward the asphalt when the lady, Ms. Dishonest Yes You Must Buy Insurance, reached out, hooked her elbow into mine, and hauled me up with the neatest save you ever saw.

So I forgave her.

I also laughed so hard I embarrassed Jenny.

Then we took off for a day of touristing.

Amy capably drove us along the coast for about two hours, to Dunn's River Falls. It's an amazing place, with the river dropping over 600 feet in maybe a quarter mile, and then it flows right into the ocean. The cool thing, and the real draw of the place, is that you can climb the falls from the beach right up to the top.

When we parked the car we shared the parking lot with three huge tour buses and probably 50 smaller buses, our first clue that this was a big tourist draw.

As we walked inside the gates, we saw hundreds of tourists milling everywhere. We changed into swimwear we could conscientiously wear in public, stowed our things in a locker, and headed down the path toward the beach, surrounded by crowds of people speaking Italian, German, American English, British English, Southern English, and languages I didn't recognize. They were also in swimwear, and if I never again in my whole entire life see such quantities of bare flesh again--tattooed, bulging, shapely,or bouncy, I will be perfectly happy with that, and that is all I will say about that.

It was Cruise Ship Day, it turned out. The ships dock at various places along the coast of Jamaica, and people can sign up for a frolicsome time at this natural attraction.

Amy had been here before and knew how to go about it, so we went barefoot, and didn't use the guides.

It was beautiful. Lush green growth hanging down and growing all around, and this clear just-cool-enough water flowing down over a rippling and tumbling stairway of rocks that settled into pools for landings and then flowed down another flight.

However.

As high as we could see, a long line of shrieking tourists held hands and slowly worked their way up the falls, with agile guides coaching them along and other agile guides leaping over the rocks to take videos, egging people on in imitating crazy whoops and cheers, which I have a hunch were all to make them not think about how terribly slowly they were progressing as they waited for a bottleneck to clear way up ahead.

We slipped behind tourists and in between them and began climbing. It was refreshing and fun, climbing up from this rock to that one, all with this lovely rush of water sloshing over you. It seldom had enough force to make you unsteady on your feet, but just enough to take all the fatigue out of your calf muscles, and I was wondering how a person could replicate that sensation in an exercise video.

Amy and Jenny started a little water fight in a pool, which the cheerful guide caught on his video camera, which will no doubt show up on the overpriced video going home with the cruise passengers.
(Looking downstream at people working their way up, with a tour guide in the yellow shirt.)

Finally after about 100 feet we gave up. We weren't about to join the cruise ship conga line, and it wasn't working to slip past them. The girls clambered back down and I found a way off the side and back to the path. Amy asked a guide and he said it should be better in an hour or two.

So we swam in the lovely warm Caribbean and walked on the beach and did other unbelievable rich-people things, and then after a while things did indeed clear out and up we went.

I wish you could all experience it. Up and up, step by step, left here along the rocks, grab there, step there, down through a pool, on and on. All with that soothing water flowing toward you. I read that the hike takes 3 hours but it took us maybe half an hour. It helps if you're not with 200 other people, in a long line.

I pretty much kept up with my agile girls. That was very cool too.

Afterwards I asked the lady at the desk how many people come through here every day.

"It ranges from 1500 to 7500," she said. "7500 is on the big cruise ship days."

I said, "Was today a cruise ship day?"

She said yes.

Then Amy drove us safely back, and on the way we stopped for Jerk Chicken And Jerk Pork With Rice and Beans, and Festival.

Festival is a deep-fried cornmeal thing. It's good. So is the Jerk stuff.

While we were eating, I suddenly remembered that I was going to be very clever and ask the girls, when we reached the top of the falls, if they didn't feel like they should start spawning*. They didn't think this was funny.

*Since we had just fought our way upstream, like salmon, which you might not know if you're not from the Northwest.

I also had an idea that was even more clever. The cruise ships should offer one more day trip for their adventure-hungry passengers: a trip to Blossom. These wealthy people could hold babies for a few hours and have their eyes opened to how some people really live, and their consciences could be stirred, and they could either come volunteer in Jamaica or send money to JRM for their foster care program, or they could sponsor adoptions so babies like little Aldane could go live with my niece Annette and her husband Jay, or they could come to Jamaica to help people set up micro-businesses and help the economy in general, or they could come find a way to motivate Jamaican men to be real men, since some 85% of babies are born to single moms. Or at the very least they could just hold babies for a few hours and that would be good too.

Jamaica Trip 1: Amos's Genes at PDX

2012-02-06T19:47:00.000-08:00

Jenny is officially her Grandpa Yoder's descendant.

We're at the Alaska Airlines gate in PDX. We got here early because Paul wanted to see about buying a used stretch wrapper, so we did that first and got to the airport well ahead of time.

A while back they announced that there's a flight leaving for Seattle, and there's room for more if any of us are scheduled on a later flight and would like to go now. So Jenny and I went up to the counter and asked if we qualified.

We had checked luggage, so we couldn't. But just as I was turning away, Jenny leaned forward and said to the blonde Alaska lady, "Um, I have a question. Most people, when they have braces, their rubber bands go up and down. But yours go slanty across the front. Why is that?"

Gah. Should I apologize for my nosy daughter or what?

The lady laughed. It's because I have my father's jaw on top and my mother's jaw on the bottom, [she pulled it exaggeratedly to the left] and my teeth in between."

Jenny said, "Thank you. I wondered."

We went back to our seats. Those of you who know Amos Yoder, you know why I thought, yep, she's her grandpa's granddaughter.

Off to Jamaica

2012-02-06T11:27:00.001-08:00

Jenny and I are about to head off to the Caribbean!

As you probably know, Amy is in Jamaica for a year at a home for orphans. She teaches the director's children and also helps with the care of the children and volunteers at a government orphanage, which you can read about here.

Amy was hoping that Paul and I could come visit, but Paul felt like he has too much going on and too many other trips coming up.

And then he said to me, "Hey, you haven't taken Jenny's "12 Trip," yet, have you?

That would be the traditional overnight outing that I do with each of the children, supposedly when they're 12 but sometimes it, um, gets delayed a bit. Like this one. And this one.

Jenny and I both jumped at that opportunity. I mean, if your husband/dad suggests you go to Jamaica, you'd be crazy to say no.

But first I sent an email to all the older kids: "This is way more than I did for any of your 12 Trips, and I don't want this brought up at my funeral, how unfair I was."

They all said it was ok.

We leave this afternoon, the Lord willing.

In the next week, you can all think of us basking in the warm tropical sunshine, sipping iced tea. And, of course, playing with orphans and sewing new curtains for them and hopefully being generally useful.

Quote of the Day:
"I went on vacation and forgot I had a neck!"
--Paul's Aunt Nadine, a summer or two ago. I hope I don't do that.
(I think she had hurt her neck just before that and was supposed to do therapy every day. Or something.)

On Leaving

2012-02-02T17:04:00.000-08:00

Someone who goes by "Life of a plainlady" commented on a recent post, speaking of the Mennonite subculture:
"If there is so much 'coziness', I wonder why so many leave and go elsewhere?"

So I decided to explore that just a bit. These are my observations. Feel free to add your own.

There are at least three types of "leaving" if you're Plain.

1. You leave the community you're in and move to another one that's roughly the same scale of conservative as the original.

2. You leave the church you're in to join one up or down the scale.

3. You leave the Amish/Mennonite church entirely.

Here are some reasons people leave:

1. Practicality. A better job, getting married, living closer to aging parents, that sort of thing.

2. They want to do something with their lives that simply doesn't fit the practical parameters of an Anabaptist community. If you want to work in the space program, be a lobbyist in Washington, DC, or design bridges in California, it's really hard to do that and be a part of a rural, established Mennonite church.

3. They don't agree with the doctrine and interpretations of the church they're in. Surely it isn't necessary to part your hair in the middle and wear only solid colors--that sort of thing.

4. And I really think this is the most common: they have been badly hurt in the setting they're in. It's sad--the elements that make for a close cozy community can also make for opportunities to do some phenomenal damage.

5. I guess I should add the reason that gets the most blame--"Because they are stubborn and rebellious and wicked"--but I really don't think that's the real reason very often.

Often, it's a combination of the above.

I thought some of the Beachy-Amish rules were silly, but I could have stayed Beachy if I felt called to stay where I was (I didn't) or if I had been part of a church that didn't have the painful relationships mine had at the time. Paul was Mennonite--well, sort of--but not a member anywhere and still maybe half Wesleyan Methodist after going to Allegheny WM College. Definitely not Beachy. So we got married and joined a Mennonite church.

And eventually left that one to go on the mission field.

And came back to this Mennonite church because we had family here.

And have felt called to stay here ever since.

It's a different journey for everyone, and it's not for me to tell anyone what theirs ought to look like. However, it's definitely mine to make sure it isn't any cruelty from me that drives them away.

I think most people will stay a part of a congregation where they feel loved and welcomed and useful and nurtured and valuable and helped, and if those ingredients are present, an odd rule or two won't matter very much.

Like I said, feel free to add your observations and experiences.

Quote of the Day:
"It's like with Smucker men, if you keep asking, they dig in their heels. You ask one time and then you be quiet and then after a while you say, "Uh, did you hear me?" and they're like, "I'm THINKING."
--an observant young relative and friend of Jenny's

Help Me Decorate?

2012-01-29T15:58:00.000-08:00

After putting it off way way way too long, I've been painting the living room.

Maybe part of the reason I put it off was because I knew I'd have to "decorate" it then.

Some of you are very artsy and gifted in this area. I am not. So, I put it to you, dear creative readers, what would you put on this empty wall?

Emily said, "Big family pictures in country frames," which I like but I want more ideas to choose from.Here's Jenny on the right and her friend and second cousin Dolly on the left posing like cool teenagers, just for perspective. They are not permanent fixtures. Neither is Dolly's bag of dress-up clothes there toward the left.

Just fyi--the wall is now a light yellow called Lemon Souffle. All the doors and woodwork will soon be the same white as on the lower right. Most of the furniture is a blue plaid. I like red accents.

This is a 100-year-old farmhouse, just so you know, and I am not really into trendy stuff like little pictures of steaming coffee cups. I like wall words, kind of, as long as it's not just one mysterious word like, "PERSPECTIVE." I'd like something that looks at home there and won't be out of style next month. Something cheerful.

I'd be open to a narrow sofa/console table as long as it didn't have terribly fragile/valuable things on top, because it would get crashed into in this household, we know that. The door to the outside is just off the picture, to the right.

Links and pictures would be great, even stuff on Pinterest.

So, what would YOU put there?

Quote of the Day:
"Is it possible to keep a beautiful home and still be a nice person?
--my friend Judy R.

Pretty and Ugly

2012-01-28T09:19:00.000-08:00

Like most young Christians I hoped to do great things for God, and most of all I admired the Christian women I knew who had that magic way of connecting with people, and to whom people poured out their stories and their hearts.

Like my sister Rebecca, for example, who had such an incredible gift that at my grandma's Amish funeral, four different relatives told her, weeping, about their wayward children and asked her to pray for them, this despite the fact that the weepers wore long black cape dresses and white coverings, and Rebecca looked pretty wayward herself, an anomaly in that plain crowd, with a sweater and skirt and short hair.

But it wasn't just that I wanted to keep up with my big sister. Hearing and helping people one on one was what I longed to do, more than, say, medical work or teaching or street evangelism.

It didn't happen for years, though. People just never seemed compelled to tell me their problems. Oh well. I didn't obsess about it, but tried to do what showed up in front of me to do, which is a good strategy for anyone.

It was while we lived in Round Lake that IT started happening. Maybe I was becoming one of those select Christian women at last.

But it didn't take me long to discover something else. People's lives are not pretty. Somehow I had always pictured a certain sort of woman across the table, dripping tears into her tea. The dynamic, slim, popular, smart, manicured type that everyone liked and admired. And I would have just the right wisdom to neatly fix her problems.

Well. The ones who showed up in my life were not the smart and popular type. They were terribly overweight and struggling with diabetes but still they would eat six homemade cookies with their tea. They had addictions. They did phenomenally stupid things. They had messed up their minds with chemicals and didn't make much sense. They abandoned their children. They had no skills. They were not the sort you wanted to sit beside at a picnic or go shopping with.

And generally I had no clue how to help them or fix their problems.

Jesus said, "They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick."

So, if our ministry is going to be Christ-like, it's going to be to the sick, damaged, chaotic, ugly, twisted, unpopular, and embarrassing. And sometimes all we can do is love them and make more tea.

Of course, I found out after a while that the slim and manicured often have their own reasons to cry into their tea; they're just a lot less likely to admit it.

I've re-learned this many times since: People's lives are not pretty. But that's why Jesus came, because all of our lives are hopelessly ugly without Him.

Now you need to go read the post that inspired my cogitations this morning. It's called Ugly Ministry and is written by a young man named Asher who works with his family in Los Angeles, and he puts it way better than I can.

Quote of the Day:
Me: Jenny, Rachel told me she saw a hole in Janane's skirt and Janane said, 'Oh, that happened when Jenny and I were lighting candles and one fell on my skirt.' So. What's with this??
Jenny: [flippantly] Oh, Janane and I were lighting candles and then we'd take them to the bathroom and put them under the faucet to hear that hissing sound and one fell onto her skirt.
Me: Where was I????
Jenny: Oh, you were in Minnesota.
Me: WELL. Just. so. you. know. From now on you ABSOLUTELY. NEVER. play with candles and matches when I'm not there. EVER. You two could have burned the house down and yourselves along with it. Dear me, the stuff you find out after the fact.
Jenny: [sigh]
Ben: Jenny, if you don't like those kinds of lectures, it's a good thing you're going into entomology and not chemistry.

Mennonite Writing Stuff

2012-01-25T07:52:00.000-08:00

I like being Mennonite. Theology aside, I like the coziness of community, of knowing all the stories, of the shared history and culture, and of having people who will be there for me in the tough times.

In this writing class I'm taking, we studied a story about southern California, and that sort of culture, where there are hordes of people but everyone lives only for himself, and people are utterly disconnected and alone, and I found it horrifying.

True, sometimes it's all a bit much, like when I feel like there's more asked of me in helping others than I have the strength to give. And sometimes everyone knowing our stories is a bit much too, like yesterday Emily had breakfast with her grandma who said, "I was talking with my friend 'Gladys Gerig' and she said you were at Fairview Sunday morning, sitting between two young men!"

Wow.

So, the laborious explanation. See, one was a college friend 'Sam' who just recently made the choice to follow Jesus, and Emily wanted to take him to church, and he doesn't have a car, and Fairview was a lot closer to Albany, and then 'Jason' offered to get involved and befriend Sam, to reduce the potential awkwardness for Emily, and so they all showed up there on Sunday.

This will get passed back up the line to "Gladys," we all know that.

So, yes, this writing class I'm taking. After a rough beginning it's going well. They say writing is a process of discovery. Non-writers don't understand this, but it's true. You'd think you write only what you know. Obviously. But when you start actually writing, either fiction or non, you find yourself writing stuff down that you didn't know was in your head.

It's weird.

We have weekly assignments, only 500 words each so you can't write much. I'm focusing on Mennonite stories of course, since my goal is a Mennonite novel.

Somehow I always seem to write about a harassed Mennonite mom (surprise!) but instead of being all useful and cozy in this church community of hers, she comes across as completely smothered.

That's kind of scary.

Quote of the Day:
[setting the table for Sunday dinner]
Emily: It just doesn't GO with the table.
Me: Well, heaven forbid that the TEA COZY doesn't GO with the table!
Emily: I knew you'd understand me, Mom.

Moms, Guilt, etc.

2012-01-22T20:21:00.000-08:00

Jeanette over at Baileyandme recently posted a wonderful piece about guilt and condemnation and Romans 8 that you should go read.

What caught my eye the most was the part about "mom guilt."

As in, moms feeling guilty not your mom making you feel guilty, a worthy subject of its own. I am an expert at mom-guilt, and my sister Rebecca and I used to sit up late and tell guilt stories, which Paul thought was really a waste of our precious time together. But we both needed the sympathy.

Here's an excerpt:

Mom guilt anyone? I am going to be completely honest. Sometimes mom guilt almost completely eats me alive. I still remember before I had children (and was wanting them badly) I heard a Focus on the Family program about that very thing- Mom Guilt. My mouth was just kinda hanging open. I didn`t have children- I had no idea this monster was out there. I thought about that program for DAYS after- and just chewed on it in my head.

And then I had two (thank you, JESUS.) And ever since then, MG has kinda hung out with me.

Here is how it manifests itself for me. It`s Monday- everyone/everything needs me. The house is all piled up with work. My calendar looks full for this week. So MUCH on my mind. . . Well, the girls are going to be knee deep in playdough, movies, and art projects on the table for today. My girls are almost-3 and 4, and they can go “auto- pilot” pretty easily actually. They are happy mostly- it kinda works.

We go this route for 2 maybe 3 days, and I am axing things off my mental “to do” list.

On day 3, once life has slowed down for the week, any of the following could happen: I am inspired/condemned by all the “do it with your kids” pins on Pinterest. Someone in my Facebook feed really goes out of their way and does something amazing with their children. I dwell on the fact that teaching is not my gift. I am horrified by a sad story of a homelife of someone else- fear grips me- I think, what if that happens to us if I don`t Quality Time my girls enough. I read a Bible passage, and it condemns me- not convicts me. I let MomTalk make me feel failing. I feel too tired (I have nothing left to give) to read stories, and dream of being a better me.

Then that night, resting festering in bed- I let MG take over. I feel condemned for my weaknesses and any TINY fault I see in my girls I think.

Have I made them this way with my dysfunctional, human ways?

There's a lot more. You can go read it.

From the comments it was obvious she had struck a nerve. Three examples:

I so resonate with this post – sometimes the things that I know I should be improving in/doing better as a mom are so overwhelming that i feel like I need to bury those thoughts in computer/fun things/etc… just to get away from feeling like such a failure.

I struggle SO BAD with mommy guilt.

Mom guilt and I seem to have a never ending battle…. it’s so hard when I feel like I give give give of everything in me but its somehow never enough and everyday I pray for the wisdom and strength for today and yet at the end of the day it seems to have eluded me.

This is a subject that is dear to my heart. So I summarized my thoughts in a comment of my own:

As an “older” mom I understand every word you say and yet I wish so bad I could make it easier for younger moms.
If I could say one thing to all the young moms out there and myself as a young mom it’s GIVE YOURSELF SOME CREDIT. My stars. It’s the toughest job on earth, and so anonymous, and doesn’t pay a penny, and has no value in our society, and yet there you are, showing up every day, not getting enough sleep, fighting pregnancy problems and sickness, like Carmen up there, and making sure these children are taken care of.
I never “got” this until I saw orphans in Africa. A child with no mom is one of the most heartbreaking sights I’ve ever seen. You look in their eyes and oh my goodness, the empty empty deep deep sadness….and every one of them would give their right hand to have the most flawed, imperfect mom among us.
So yes, pursue Jesus and joy, definitely, but also tell yourself, “I am getting out of bed even though I desperately need sleep. I am feeding my babies once again. They will be fed and safe and loved on my watch. I am not running away. I get up every day and face this. I am doing what I’m called to do. I am a tough and amazing woman.”
If I saw your children’s eyes, they would not look like orphan eyes. They would look like the eyes of children with mommies. I’m sure of it.
My daughter takes care of Jamaican orphans. She came home for Christmas and was amazed at how little kids at church run around TALKING. Little Jamaican kids at the orphanage don’t talk because no one talks to them.
I’ll bet your little kids talk too.
See? You’re their mom. You show up. You’re there. And it shows.

Some time ago I gave a talk on this theme, entitled, "Calm Down; It'll Be Ok." I probably had more of a positive, heart-deep reaction to it than to any talk I've given before or since. Some said it was the first time they'd heard a talk for moms that affirmed them and didn't make them feel like they'll never measure up to the ideal.

So I have made it a goal to affirm young moms in what they're doing.

Well.

Last week Paul and I were in the grocery store and we ran into a neighbor/shirttail-relative and got to chatting. He talked about what a blessing it is to see his children grown up and doing well and living close by, and then he said to me, "I read your articles, and it seems like you worry about your children, and I think you probably don't give yourself enough credit for the job you're doing with them."

Somehow that was just what I needed.

I guess it's not just young moms that need encouragement and need to be told to give themselves credit for showing up and getting the job done.

Quote of the Day:
[from last November]
Me: I have a talk this afternoon.
Jenny: Where at?
Me: A synogogue!
Jenny: A Jewish one??

Thanks and Snow and Floods

2012-01-21T22:39:00.000-08:00

Thanks to everyone who commented on the post about the short story writing class. You all helped give me clarity and a balanced perspective and I am grateful. I also had an email conversation with the teacher and we didn't agree but she was very understanding and ended up asking to forward our conversation to her mother, as the two of them have often discussed that very thing, and I gathered we two moms were of one mind.

+ + +
We've had some wacky weather this last week, first snow and then lots of rain and then flooding. The worst flooding was north of here but we had our share of high water, including a bit of drama at school when the Calapooia River flooded the play shelter and then when Paul sent the kids home early but the roads were blocked. You can read our friend Justin's take on this here.

Steven ran out to the road for the newspaper in his bare feet.

Jenny made a snowman with a proper storybook nose.

Here's Muddy Creek, with the old bridge under all that water somewhere, and our warehouse in the background, thankfully high and dry.

Here's Jenny out paddling in the ryegrass field. She so badly wanted to go boating on all these "lakes" and if you know her, you know how determined she is once she gets an idea in her head.

First it was an air mattress, which buckled in the middle and she got drenched. She tried a round galvanized tub and a green Rubbermaid tote that also dumped and drenched her. She begged Paul to bring the canoe home and talked about paddling it down the creek herself and then hauling it across the road. Muddy Creek is about the size of the Mississippi right now and I said absolutely. not. are you canoeing on Muddy Creek.

Someone suggested an inner tube. Paul said he had one at the warehouse so today he took Jenny over there and pumped the tube up for her and brought it home. Steven helped her haul the inner tube and a half piece of plywood across the road. Jenny brought a canoe paddle, and soon she was off on Lake Ryegrass, as pleased as if she was sailing the Seven Seas, headed for Australia.

Meanwhile, others in Oregon have lost houses and property and even lives. We were spared the worst and are thankful.

Water

2012-01-19T19:05:00.000-08:00

We've had lots of rain here and everything is wet and soggy. Lots of high water but it's still two feet lower than the flood of '96, Paul says. Here are a few pictures.

Long Post About Short Stories

2012-01-15T16:24:00.000-08:00

In the last two weeks I have thought more about stories than in the rest of my life put together.

As you may know I have talked of writing a novel for years. The trouble is that I don't know how. So a while back I decided it was time to take a class and learn.

I looked into community college evening classes but needed something more advanced. I looked into the U of O's writing program. It was just what I wanted but they wouldn't let me take a class here and there; I had to be enrolled in the program.

I posted a question on Facebook: did anyone have an online class to recommend?

And like Pip in Great Expectations and many characters in Lucy Maud Montgomery's books, I got something I wasn't expecting at all: a benefactress. Two of them, in fact.

Two women from a northeastern state have read my writing for some time and decided they wanted to pay for an online class for me. From Stanford.

Such a golden peach hanging right in my face. How could I not pluck and eat it while I had the opportunity?

But goodness, how could I find the time? Well, after Christmas Ben would be in Bible school. Christmas would be over, of course. Emily could teach the writing class I was teaching at Brownsville. And Lisa the niece would be back from Poland and could help me out with housework again.

So I signed up for Short Story Writing. The novel-writing class was too advanced and also I needed prerequisites.

So I have had stories on the brain. Characters and the decisions they make. Point of view and narrative voice. Setting and plot.

And just a lot of thoughts, outside of the curriculum, on stories.

What is a story, really? Why do we tell stories, and what makes a story a story rather than an observation, a news item, a description, a list, a fact, an illustration, or a lecture?

I'm realizing that my concept of stories, particularly GOOD stories, isn't everyone's.

Here's what I consider good stories:
--Children's books such as A Bargain for Frances or The Biggest Bear or the Ramona books
--family yarns, such as Mom's stories of growing up in the Depression or my grandma's story about climbing the "vintboomp" (windmill) to see the "volf" or the Kropf/Knox stories about this house and the 75 cousins within 5 miles.
--novels such as Tom Sawyer and A Tangled Web and Great Expectations and All Creatures Great and Small and Pride and Prejudice and a thousand more.
--true-life stories such as Evidence Not Seen and Schindler's List.
--the Bible and the stories within it

So what is a story? It's characters, and they do something and things happen to them, and something about them or the situation changes, and it all looks pretty dark for a while, usually, and then things are put into place and clarified and resolved, and then the story ends.

Right?

I never thought of myself as a snooty reader until I came to realize that there is a whole universe of literature out there that seems to look at what I consider "good stories," the same way I look at the whole universe of Twilight books and most Amish novels and all those little paperbacks you see at garage sales, with pictures on the front of gasping ladies bent over backwards by hairy men with names like Flint and Torque, not that I'd ever read those books you understand.

And the whole universe that looks down on my beloved stories as just that tacky is the world of Fine Literature, as in highbrow, deep, college-literature course, New Yorker Short Stories.

Which we seem to study a lot in this class I'm taking. Somehow in high school and two years of college I never ran into stuff quite like this.

They come in nice hardbound books with impressive titles like Collected Short Stories of Jon Arbuckle or Great American Short Stories.

I feel a bit like the child saying the emperor has no clothes, because the truth is these "Short Stories" aren't actually stories, at least how you and I think of stories. They are pieces, descriptions, sometimes monologues.

Generally, you have a dreary, dark, depressing person in a dreary, dark, depressing situation. A few vague and dreary dark depressing things happen, or are done to him by other dreary, dark, depressing people, and then everything stops. Or sometimes nothing actually happens. Or maybe someone dies first, or things get a bit worse overall. No one learns anything. Nothing changes for the better. The plot generally involves alcohol, abuse, anger, alienation, infidelity, deception, and despair.

Or sometimes the entire thing is just one person talking, like a mother to her daughter, going on and on for two pages about how to do stuff around the house and occasionally running her daughter down in in a very destructive way, and then she stops talking.

That's it. Nothing works out, nothing makes sense, nothing is clarified.

This apparently qualifies as a "short story."

These writers certainly have something to offer in creating vivid characters in vivid settings with a vivid sense of emotion, enough to keep you awake at night, so there's plenty for me to learn from them in that regard.

But I'm realizing for the first time how important it is to me to have things work out in the end.

I am known for tying things into a neat bow at the end of all the essays I write. Most readers seem to appreciate this, but I've run into a few literary types who gently poked fun at me, like if I could somehow reach their Enlightened Plane of Being, I would realize it's so much better to leave it all dangling and vague and unresolved.

Which brings us back to the questions, "What is a story?" and "Why do we tell stories?"

I think we all live among fragments, sadness, conflict, just hard stuff.

And we long to make sense of it, to know that it has some sort of meaning.

But we don't get to see the end of the story and how it all works out for years and years.

So we love stories. True stories, after the fact, where the people were like us and the situation a lot like ours but it all worked out and the pieces fit together and even the sad things were redeemed in time. And made up stories, again, like our lives, where the writer looks back and sees the thread running through the whole thing and ties it into a bow at the end.

Maybe those of us who grew up on the Bible have a greater expectation for stories like this. There's the thread of redemption running through the whole narrative, even through famine and slavery and captivity and judgment and death, and in the end it all works out, and justice is done, and good rewarded, and secrets made known.

The same thing is true for shorter stories within the Bible--Joseph, Ruth, Esther, Nehemiah, and so on.

The Snooty Short Stories are presented as True Depictions of Real Life. And I'm sure they are, in their way. [Interestingly, though, they never venture into the Just As Real Life of a woman learning to use her computer or a husband apologizing to his wife or a child figuring out his math or a teacher putting in extra time for a student or a housewife finally having the nerve to tell the Jehovah's Witnesses to quit coming.]

Believe me, I get plenty of dark, depressing, dreary real life all the time, especially with all the times people look to me for answers and I have no idea what to tell them. The young man didn't get the job he was counting on, the creepy relative snuck off with the young boy at the family gathering, the person in charge won't listen to anyone, the other student won't stop when he's told to stop that, the in-laws think the parents are destining the kids to Hell....well, that was just in the last week.

The stories for this class feels like way too much of the same. In my limited recreational-reading time, I need true-to-life stories with some kind of redemption, resolution, and answers. Of fragments fitting together and things making sense, where I can close the book and go to sleep.

So, the class is worth it because I now know clearly how I want to write. I know that I will always be somewhere between Alice Munro and Barbara Cartland, very middle-brow, I guess, between the New Yorker and the National Enquirer.

I hope to write fiction that sounds like real life, but looking back, where there really is a thread running through, and you can see how things worked out, and it gives you a bit of hope and courage that someday your life will make sense as well.

Use It Up 3

2012-01-10T20:19:00.000-08:00

This time the find in the pantry was Bisquick. It's been there a long time, and I don't know why I ever bought it, because I don't even like Bisquick. It's just as quick to make your biscuits and things from scratch, and I like to make them with half whole wheat flour.

Yes, it's been around a while.
But what's going to go bad in Bisquick?

I froze lots of blueberries the last two summers. I googled "recipe Bisquick blueberry muffin" and made these for breakfast. Everyone loved them. Unfortunately they didn't use up nearly all the Bisquick, but if it's kept this long, it's good for a few more batches in the next weeks.

Quote of the Day:
[Since we all miss Ben who is now at Bible school. This happened maybe a month ago.]
"Last night Ben was like, 'Where's my flashlight?' Click click, turns on his flashlight, shines it around looking for his flashlight. I was like, 'Ben, isn't it in your hand?' He's like, 'Uh...yeah.'"
--Jenny

Use It Up

2012-01-09T13:07:00.000-08:00

This year, I am determined to Use Things Up.

You tend to accumulate a lot of food items if, like me, you a) cook from scratch b) shop in bulk c) shop at discount stores d) have a big pantry e) have a lot of people to cook for and f) have Depression-era/Amish parents who taught you that throwing out perfectly good food was right up there with cheating in school and parting your hair on the side.

So. I buy ingredients, either for a specific recipe or because they're cheap, and I use maybe half the bagful, and then they ooze to the back end of the pantry shelves and there they stay.

No more.

I'll post my first two successes in this area and if I have any more victories, maybe I'll post those too.

1. I threw out that one...oh dear, I can't even name it, with Christians starving in Yemen. But the expiration date was 2008.

2. I made cookies. This is the recipe that my sis Margaret always makes when she has leftover stuff to use up. She even emptied the pantry into a batch one day and announced that she was going to sell them at her garage sale the next day. Her husband Chad said, "Naaawwwww," in that skeptical way that only guys from the Deep South can say, "Naaawwwww."
"Wait and see," said Margaret, in her quick snappy Yankee way. Of course, she sold them all.

Famous Oatmeal Cookies

Beat together:
3/4 c. shortening or softened margarine
1 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. white sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup water
1 t. vanilla

Sift together and add to creamed mixture:
1 c. flour
1 t. salt
1/2 t. baking soda

Blend well.
Stir in:
3 to 4 cups quick oats

Now stir in pretty much whatever leftover bits of ingredients you want. I made a double batch and added 1 cup wheat bran, 1 cup coconut, 1/2 cup m&m's, 1/2 cup chocolate chips, 2 tablespoons chopped peanuts, and 2 cups peanut butter chips.

Drop on greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 for 12 to 15 minutes.
Enjoy.

Quote of the Day:
Jenny: [leaps off her chair at the breakfast table and engulfs her sleepy brother in a hug]
Steven: Gaaaahhh!!
Me: Jenny, please. The Bible says there is "a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing."
Emily: Wow, you really do have a Bible verse for every situation.

January LFH

2012-01-08T14:33:00.000-08:00

January's column is a casserole I stirred up from ingredients in a few recent blog posts. It's for all of us who try to manipulate things and make them how they ought to be.

Here it is.

Making Change

2012-01-06T20:07:00.000-08:00

How do you make a situation change?

We all say, if we have eyes that work: "Something ought to be done there."

But what can WE actually do?

Ok, here's my situation.

We have a big, dark parking lot at church. And we have lots and lots of children at church. And we have lots of evening services and also social functions involving finger foods and fellowship after a service or program.

While the parents eat and fellowship, the children play. And invariably some of them play in the parking lot even though there are lots of other places to run around, such as the play shelter, ball field, and sidewalks.

Many times, I've gotten in the car as little people went darting here and there, barely visible in the darkness. It happens in broad daylight too, but is obviously worse at night. I've nearly had heart failure a few times and believe me, I back up with extreme caution and sometimes I tell Jenny to get out and make sure the coast is clear.

I've talked to Paul about this but he always acted like it was just one of a long list of things, like Steven's messy room and the weeds by the hedge, that I get worked into a stew about and if he gives me a little sympathy it'll soon pass and he won't actually have to do anything.

Yesterday a friend of mine talked to me about the same problem, as she almost ran over a toddler and later two girls darted out right in front of her from behind a parked car.

You know, ultimately this comes down to parents being responsible for their own children, but if any of us backed over a child, we'd never forgive ourselves. I know some parents are more relaxed and/or oblivious than others, and I am still finding out things I should have known but completely missed when the kids were little. So I know how easily these things can go on unawares.

So.

What are my options?
a) do nothing and pray hard and trust God.
b) go talk to all the parents one by one and re-affirm my reputation as an interfering nag.
c) put something in the church bulletin and hope everyone listens.
d) try to persuade the trustees to bring it up at the next business meeting and tell everyone sternly to keep the kids off the parking lot.
e) try to persuade a minister to give a stern pre-sermon admonition.
f) patrol the parking lot with a pitchfork during every finger-food event.
g) wait for a child to get run over, and then surely no child will play in the parking lot, ever again. Problem solved.
h) post about it and hope everyone in church reads my blog, but I'm sure they don't so that probably won't work.

This applies to a lot more than just kids in the parking lot.

There are just an awful lot of situations in the world that ought to be changed. Generally, people think "someone" ought to do something and if they come to me with that, I say, "If you noticed the problem, it's your sign from God that YOU are supposed to do something."

But it's not always that easy, and I'll bet you could name three situations right now where you would love to change things but don't have a clue how plus you have no authority/power in the situation. And you could name three people who are always out agitating for change and driving everyone crazy.

I can think of a (very) few areas where my action eventually resulted in change. In almost every case, this was how it worked:
1. Mention it to the person in charge
2. Shut up.
3. Pray hard.
4. Wait an awfully long time.

In this case, I'm really not sure that anyone is "in charge" of the parking lot.

How about you? Have you ever changed a situation, and how did you do it?

Quote of the Day:
"41 degrees and drizzling on Christmas Day--that's how it's supposed to be!"
--Byran, Paul's nephew, on the joy of being in Oregon for Christmas

Name, Book, and Cat

2012-01-02T21:18:00.000-08:00

Ever since I posted about my name I've been having these odd conversations about it.

Like the other day I bought cat food at Kmart and handed the my-age-ish cashier my credit card.

She squinted at it and said, "Is this your husband's card?"

"I don't think so. Can I see it?" "No, that's mine."

She said, still squinting, "But, this first name on here..."

I said, "Yes. That's Dorcas. It's my name. It's from the Bible."

She smiled and nodded and said, "Ahh."

+ + + + +

Today was the last day of the children's Christmas break. Jenny sat here reading Upstairs the Peasants are Revolting. It was very gratifying to get her take on it now and then. At one point she made an odd noise.
Me: What?
Jenny: Nothing. I just sighed.
Me: Why?
Jenny: It was a happy sigh.
Me: About what?
Jenny: Never mind. You'll just have to read the book.

+ + + + +

I went shopping at Grocery Depot on Saturday and found a little bottle off by itself of something called CONTENT-EZE. It featured a picture of a nice yellow cat and this description: "A Nutritional Supplement Which Supports Feeling Of Contentment In Your Cats"
and "Contains Amino Acids To Help Your Cat Feel Content."

Oh my! Should I get it for Ebenezer the Yowling Kitty, who was still yowling after a week and about whom I confess I had done a discreet internet search for easy, cheap, painless, humane, clean, do-it-yourself euthanasia methods, since I was convinced it was suffering from stomach cancer.

[Note: there are no such methods, and if you ask such a question on a Yahoo forum, you will get attacked. Viciously. From people who would like to euthanize YOU, in a very painful and unpleasant manner.]

The bottle was marked $2 and I qualified for a 10% discount because of Emily working there.

Feeling like a person who would buy little fleece jackets for her shih tzu, I bought it, knowing it wouldn't do any good.

The directions said, "SHAKE GENTLY BEFORE USE."

I figured the cat would yowl even worse if I shook it, gently or not, so Jenny and I fixed a dish of leftover tetrazini, gently squirted a teaspoon of CONTENT-EZE on top, and fed it to Ebenezer.

Who quit yowling.

I am serious.

We repeat the dosing daily, just in case.

I am wondering if I could discreetly pinch some CONTENT-EZE for myself. I mean, my children have been scattering to the winds after all being home for Christmas, and I have done a bit of yowling myself. 1 teaspoon per 11 pounds of cat. I can do the math.

This is Jenny posting BTW

2012-01-01T22:03:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I'm supposed to write a post about being the youngest in the family.

Being the youngest in the family has its ups and downs. There is the endless receiving of junk (which often pleases the younger members of the family), and the many nights spent alone because all of the older siblings have gone to some exciting party that you can't go to.

Then there is the attention. Youngest children tend to feel upstaged by there older siblings (at least, I felt like that). Because of this we try as hard as we can to get attention. So, how do you get attention? You act silly and/or crazy and/or cute and/or annoying. Problem solved. Everyone either thinks you are super cute or super annoying.

When older siblings get to do cool things like get together with friends and watch a movie, or go to a new years party with the youth group at church, it can be very hard on a younger sibling. I know several other people my age who face the exact same thing. Our sibs run off to do some cool thing, we have to stay home with Mom and Dad. Not that Mom and Dad aren't great, but who wants to stay home when you should be doing something awesome and exciting with your friends?

So I guess what I want to say is that being the youngest can be great. It can also be very tough. I think it kind of depends on how we react to it.

Smucker Christmas Stories

2011-12-26T21:44:00.000-08:00

Matt got a text a week or so before Christmas. From Amy, it said. "Can you get me some temporary tattoos for Christmas?"

He thought this was just a bit odd but maybe she wanted them for a fun project for the kids in Jamaica.

So he turned the town of Corvallis upside down looking unsuccessfully for temporary tattoos.

And just a day or so before Christmas he found out that Steven has been using Amy's phone ever since she went to Jamaica.

++++++

Emily has of course had A Christmas Carol on the brain, since the play dominated her life for the last three months.

Like Bob Cratchit and Martha, she had to work on Christmas Eve but came home in time for supper. In our case, instead of a goose (or, as Emily says, "The goose! The goose! Yeeaahhh, the GOOSE!" [yet another ACC quote] ) we had our annual Kenyan supper in honor of Steven coming home to us seven years ago on Christmas Eve.

But unlike Bob and Martha, Emily stopped at Fred Meyer after work. In front of the store she found someone giving away free kittens. She felt so sorry for them, trying to give away kittens on Christmas Eve, that she took one. Oddly, she felt sorrier for the people than for the cats.

"I knew there was always room at our house for one more kitten," she said dreamily, like we are just such a loving and open and warm family, like the Cratchits.

She named it Ebenezer.

On the way home the kitty turned on the windshield wipers, landed on Emily's head when she hit the brakes, and pooped, but graciously right on a paper napkin.

Since it's been here, the kitten has yowled. That's pretty much it. It yowls and yowls and yowls and tries to climb up the screen door and yowls and yowls and yowls some more. The girls wanted it inside but I said you have no idea if that cat has lice or fleas or worms or who knows what else. So it's outside with the other cats. It has food and water and a warm place to sleep. But it just yowls.

I venture that even the Cratchits would have run out of warm, friendly, always-room-for-one-more feelings by now.

+++++++
Aunt Allene says she has barnacles on her skin. I am serious. She got a bad sunburn when she was a small child. They went to the coast and it was cloudy but she still got a bad burn, and now she has these rough barnacles on her face and back.

I have never heard such things described in such a way before, but Smucker aunts have a way of putting things like you never heard them before.

+++++++
We all went to church together on Christmas morning, and the family obliged my cool-mom-fantasy by all sitting together on one pew. It was wonderful, all these amazing young people all in a row. But of course life never lets itself get too perfect, and the cost of my fulfilled fantasy was that a woman who innocently sat on the west end of the pew before most of us got there kind of got squished.

Steven took notes on the sermon. He does this for his Bible class at school, I hasten to add, lest you get too impressed. He wrote down the preacher's name and the sermon title, then he whispered to Matt, "What's the date today?"

"Dude. What is it?" Matt whispered back.

Steven couldn't remember.

Matt refused to tell him.

Matt says it took 2 minutes and 38 seconds for Steven to figure out what the date was.

The Winner

2011-12-26T19:51:00.001-08:00

Using a random number generator, the winner of the cd was comment number 22.

At 12/20/2011 4:14 AM, Wes said…

We don't live far away. I'm going to try to try to find one of their performances. Thanks, Dorcas.

Congratulations, Wes.

Either email me your mailing address (dorcassmucker@gmail.com) or email the Nolts directly (jewinbunch@dejazzd.com)

Thanks to everyone who participated!

CD Giveaway!

2011-12-19T08:04:00.000-08:00

The Nolt family has a new cd and offered to have a giveaway for Life in the Shoe readers!

Jewel Nolt, mom of this talented family, says, "It has banjo, piano, and guitar as accompaniment on some of the songs, and then we sing several a capella as well. You can listen to three of our songs on the Nolt Family Facebook page."

My evaluation of their music: unusual and beautiful.

Leave a comment if you want to be entered in the drawing, and I'll randomly choose a winner this week and Jewel will mail the cd.

If you'd like to purchase your own copy, they are $14 each. Five or more are $12 each plus shipping. You can message Jewel on their Facebook page or email at jewinbunch@dejazzd.com.

Or ask for it at your local Christian book/music store.

Weird Name And Wise Sons

2011-12-14T10:28:00.000-08:00

Remember my post about my name?

Ok, so a while back Amy subscribed to a sports magazine as a gift for Ben, and used my credit card, with my permission.

In the sneaky way they do things, the magazine automatically renewed the subscription without telling us.

Paul found it on the credit card statement. He called in. It was a bit confusing, I guess, because Amy had ordered it for Ben and Paul was calling, and he didn't realize it had been on my card. And of course they can't just take care of it; they have to verify everything down to your mother's shoe size without giving you any hints.

I guess the guy on the other end, who won't get promoted to P.R. any time soon, decided to give Paul one hint: "It's this really weird first name on this account."

"Uh, yes, I guess that would be my wife, Dorcas."

See what I mean?

Two Quotes of the Day:
[In which Mom learns that her sons have more wisdom than she gives them credit for.]

The day before Steven's baptism, at which he was to give his testimony before all:
Steven: I'm getting nervous.
Me: Oh well, you'll live if you don't die.*
Steven: How is that comforting?
Me: Well, if you live, then you'll live, and if you die, you go to Heaven, so what's to be afraid of?
Steven: The living part.

*which probably qualifies as Dumb Things Adults Say to Children

Our church is going through some Serious Issues, which were on our minds as we headed for a church business meeting the other night.
Me, to Ben and Steven: Ok, guys, whatever happens, I don't want you to get bitter about God and church.
Ben: Actually, Mom, I think there's a lot more danger of YOU getting bitter than us.
Me: Uhhhmmm....actually......you're absolutely right.

Dumb Things Adults Say to Children

2011-12-13T07:44:00.000-08:00

1. "It'll all be mixed up in your stomach anyway."

This is said in a cheerful voice as they scrape together mashed potatoes, jello, gravy, lettuce bits, ham, and ranch dressing--and expect you to eat it just as cheerfully.

2. "This won't hurt a bit!"

or, almost as bad, "Just a tiny little poke..."

This also requires a cheerful voice. As Jenny says, "Most dumb things are said with a cheerful voice."

You've had tetanus boosters and dental work done. They hurt. They didn't kill you, but they hurt. What's wrong with the truth? Like--calm, matter-of-fact voice--"This will hurt but not as much as skinning your knee."

Speaking of skinning your knee:

3. "You're fine! Hop up!"

And its corollaries, "Jump up!" "Don't cry!" "You're all right!" And my mother's favorite, "Hosht's meisly kfongga?" which means "Did you catch the mouse?"

These are spoken by hyper-cheerful adults who look on when children trip and fall flat on their faces.

I don't get it.

One woman in my life was especially big on this when my kids were little. She thought I would teach them to be wimps if I helped them up and kissed the scraped knee.

I always wondered what it would be like if SHE tripped and went sprawling on her face right in front of me, and I kept sipping my coffee and said cheerfully, "Hop up!! You're all right!!"

The idea was tempting.

4. "Life isn't fair."

Emily suggested this entry. Her explanation: "This is when something is legitimately unfair and your parents say, 'Life isn't fair,' and it's like, 'Duh. You could make it fair. Right now. You have that power."

I contend that "Life isn't fair" is justified when it's all out of your control and there simply is nothing else to be said.

5. "The starving children in Somalia would be so happy to eat that."

A Smucker offspring suggested this one, too. I'm guilty as charged.

Parent's perspective: If these picky children only had a CLUE of what the rest of the world endures they would clean their plates with gratitude.

Child's perspective: So, send these peas to Somalia if you're so worried about little Somali kids.

Quote of the Day:
Ben: So when I go to Bible school, how often will I be expected to communicate with you?
Me: Once a week, at least.
Ben: That much?

December column

2011-12-11T14:04:00.001-08:00

December's column is about gifts--those given, those withheld, and those given instead.

Here.

Quote of the Day:
[Amy, this is to make you homesick for Sunday dinner conversations.]

Jenny: It's so gross. Mom coughs in her hand and then she DRIVES. Her steering wheel is like COVERED with viruses!
Emily: So? It's Mom's car.
Jenny: Yes, but if someone else drives it...
Paul: How long do viruses survive on a dry surface?
Me: Half a day I think.
Ben: So is it viruses or bacteria?
Me: I don't know.
[Steven has that one-raised-eyebrow look like he's patiently waiting for rescue.]
Jenny: It's still gross.
Me: Everyone's exposed anyway. I mean, I've been touching doorknobs and coughing and breathing around here for over a week.
Emily: MOM! Breathing??! Seriously??!
Me: Well, I'm trying to quit breathing, because it triggers my asthma.
Jenny: Wouldn't that be cool if you could breathe through your skin?
Ben: That would be annoying, because when it was cold, you could only breathe through a little part of your face. Oh wait. That's how it is normally.

[At which point I laughed so hard I had an asthma attack and spread lots of viruses and bacteria into my hand, which I then washed. After that we talked about when to schedule all our family Christmas activities and ate cheesecake and had coffee and tea like normal people.]

Random Thoughts Between Coughs

2011-12-06T19:29:00.000-08:00

I am sick again, with the Bubonic plague or something like it that began a week ago with a sudden sore throat that felt like an acetylene torch had blasted at my tonsils. It has now morphed into the most wretched cough you can imagine, involving great loss of sleep and throwing up of breakfast and other terrible results.

My only comfort is that about every third person in the valley has the same thing, including a few strong men in this household who seldom succumb to colds.

I reek of garlic and other potions. Jenny walked by and said, "Mom, what do I smell?" I said, "I smell like That Lady That Uses Essential Oils." Jenny said, "Oh yeah. You do."

I like the smells of essential oils, really, especially if they work.

I've spent too much time huddled up in the office chair, clicking around online, because it was easier than anything else.

This was interesting, about Tim Tebow.

NFL quarterback is a position best played by young men who were raised by strong fathers. Quarterback is the ultimate leadership position. You have to be taught how to lead. You have to be taught how to prepare.

Yay for all the men out there who stay with their families through all the tough times.

And No, I don't have a mom-crush on Tim Tebow. Well, not really, that much, beyond thinking wistfully that he is very close in age to Amy and Emily, and he just seems so NICE. And if he married either Amy or Emily and the house were on fire he could pick up his wife and tuck her in his elbow like a football and run outside and save the day. And Amy could discuss football with him over breakfast like she did with that one guy on the plane one time who couldn't believe that this little Mennonite girl knew that much about dual-threat quarterbacks and possession receivers or whatever technical stuff it was.

Ok, never mind.

Saturday I dragged myself to a book signing because I had promised the lady I'd be there. Her name is Amanda Bird and she has a little book shop called The Book Nest (clever) in the antique mall on the south end of the big building just south of WinCo and McDonalds in Springfield, where the Teen Challenge thrift store used to be on the north end.

There were about five other authors there. One of them is named Laurie, with a long Iranian last name, and she wrote a book about her daughter with autism. Laurie's mother is none other than Marcy Tigner, the lady with a little-girl voice and a ventriloquist's dummy named Little Marcy, who produced dozens of "Marcy and Little Marcy" children's records back in the day.

If you are Of A Certain Age and grew up Christian but not too Plain, you know exactly who I'm talking about.

Laurie says a lot of Marcy's success was due to her husband, who loved to promote her, and who would breeze into town and call the radio station, the bookstores, and I don't know who all else to set up appearances for Marcy.

I think she thought our little book-signing venue could have used some of her dad's flashy expertise, but really it was well-attended, considering.

And, if you're interested, Laurie has a stack of old/new Marcy records in her garage that she'd like to sell.

Here's a link for Marcy.

And then we have this story. I have my issues with the UN. Among other things, when they go into a country to do all their good deeds they refuse to collaborate with missionaries, even if they've been there for 20 years and are fluent in the language and know the local culture. No no. Missionaries are evil. So they go in and spread their good deeds in the most culturally offensive way and where least needed, because after all, they know best.

Then there was the time Canada had a general election and the UN sent a representative to the reserve we were on to make sure the First Nations people were well educated and informed regarding this election. Well, was there the slightest chance the crusty old Lazarus Kakegamics and Jowin Quequishes of Weagamow were interested in what this greenhorn had to say? No there was not.

So he spent about three days fishing from the airplane dock, as I recall, and had one evening session at the band hall to inform the ignorant populace about the election.

But worst, far far worst, is the UN's policy on adoption. They feel that country of origin takes precedence over everything. And they put a lot of pressure on third-world countries to quit adopting internationally. Which means that way way too many children get to live in third-world orphanages rather than with moms and dads in a different country. But if they survive to adulthood, we can be assured that these orphans are oh-so-grateful to be culturally intact and whole.

More here.

Now before I get any more political I will share something I found in the archives. I had written it in a form letter to family and friends years ago, and our friend Dave Hertzler reprinted it in Today's Native Father. I think Matt was about 11 years old here, and Amy 9.

Quote of the Day:
Matt and Amy have slept outside in sleeping bags quite often. One night there were supposed to be lots of shooting stars, so they wanted me to come out and watch the sky with them. They settled down in their sleeping bags, and after a while I bundled up in winter wraps and joined them. I have long suspected, and now know for sure, that my children win all the prizes for being competitive.
Me: Ahhh, what an awesome universe. . .
Matt: There's one!
Amy: I saw it too!
Matt: Now I have 21. I'm still ahead of you.
Amy: And I have 19.
Me: (sigh) Why can't you just enjoy these stars without being so competitive?
Amy: We're not comPETTING! We're just keeping track. That's what makes it fun. (pause) There's one! Now I'm only one behind you!
Matt: I saw it too, I think.
Amy: Was it a light one over by the pine tree?
Matt: I think so.
Amy: I don't think you saw it because I saw it AFTER you last said, "There's one."
Me: If you two don't stop this now, I'm going back inside.
Matt: Ok, I guess I can stop.
Amy: (No answer. The sleeping bag is pulled over her head)
Me: Amy, WHAT are you doing??
Amy: If I can't count them I might as well go to sleep.
Me: Amy, God made these shooting stars for you to ENJOY, not for you to figure out a way to be better than Matt. There are a lot of things you can do better than Matt, like thinking before you do stuff. And there are lots of things he can do better than you--
Amy: (interrupts) You can't say seeing shooting stars is one of them because I WAS ahead of him!!

If I Could

2011-12-05T17:08:00.000-08:00

I think the conversation began after a hot lunch I served at school. My friend "Twila" showed up to volunteer in the classroom, but first she helped me serve the food.

"If I could, I would start a coffee shop in Harrisburg," she said. She had it all down--the baked goods, the decor, the clientele.

All she needed was the time, the money, and a few other small details.

I've found that most of us go around with an "If I could" idea in our heads.

Emily has a similar idea for a shop in Harrisburg. She even has the place picked out, an old empty brick building with an arched front, a little courtyard behind a fence, and a tiny attached house. She calls it "Whispering Winds" and went so far as to have a real estate agent give her a tour of the place.

She's a bit vague about what services or products she would actually offer there. Also, she lacks a few small details like time, money, and being able to be in two places at once, since she wants to go on the mission field after college.

I told Twila that I also have an "If I could" for a business in Harrisburg, and that is a fabric/paper/tea shop. In addition to the normal quilting cottons I'd have a stash of fabrics that a person would actually wear. I'd have a comfy chair and coffee and Outdoor Life magazines for waiting husbands. And in the back I'd have a room for my Fabric Exchange, where you could bring in fabric from your stash and get so many points based on yardage and quality, and then you could pick out what you wanted, for similar pointage, from the stash that others had contributed. I wouldn't get anything out of it but I think it would be fun.

Also, with Emily working at Grocery Depot, I've been thinking that there just has to be a whole hidden industry out there of damaged and outdated fabric just like there is for bent-n-dent lotions and canned vegetables. How do I tap into that delightful river, I wonder?

I haven't thought out the paper and tea part as well, especially since I don't see myself baking scones and other dainties to sell. Maybe I'd just brew a pot of tea and sit down with customers and let them sip free tea while we talk.

All that stands in my way is . . . everything.

Someday when Emily is out of college and Twila's and my children are all grown up and I figure out how to be organized, we'll all have to collaborate on the Perfect Business in Harrisburg.

I have an even bigger "if I could" and that is a house at the coast. It would be on the west side of Highway 101 so you could take children to the beach without crossing that busy road. It would have lots of space for big families or groups. Our family could go out for brief retreats from real life, Paul and I could go there for time alone, and Emily and I could go there for a week at a time to work on our novels. We could use it for Bible Memory Camp, Ladies' Retreat, and the annual Youth Coast Trip. We could rent it out for a reasonable price to Mennonite families who always have a hard time finding a place both large and affordable and who could be counted on to clean up after themselves. Most of all, I could offer it free to missionaries on furlough who desperately need rest but could never afford to rent a place.

All that stands in my way is a million unsold books and free weekends to drive out and keep the place up.

Meanwhile, I wonder, what is the "If I could" floating around in everyone else's head?

Quote of the Day:
Jenny: [sitting on her bed one night, solemnly pronouncing] You know, I'm not that interested in bugs any more.
[Pause]
Jenny: I'm not gonna be an entomologist.
Me: You're not?
Jenny: [suddenly noticing picture of butterfly on her pillowcase] Oh my goodness!! It's a swallowtail! An eastern tiger swallowtail!!!

Short Poem And Long Explanation

2011-11-27T21:05:00.000-08:00

When I write something, I always want people to "get" what I'm trying to say.

You might think "duh" but believe me I have been in plenty of critique groups and on plenty of blogs where writers prided themselves on turning out such obscure, foggy, wafting, poetic stuff that only they themselves and an Enlightened Few could understand it.

Not me.

You can't get any more normal-reader than Paul, who is only interested in what a piece says at first rapid read, and if it doesn't tell him anything, then what's the point?

So if I write something and he gets it, I know I'm good to go with the rest of the world as well.

On Thanksgiving morning I woke up feeling heavy in spirit. We've had a lot of difficulties recently, a lot of decisions to make, and a good share of misunderstanding and such, and I'm sorry to make you curious but I can't elaborate.

What if I were thankful for all of THAT, I thought, and recoiled at the very thought, and then reconsidered.

And then I got up and wrote a poem about determining to give thanks for those things we don't normally feel warm and grateful for on Thanksgiving.

I posted it here on the Shoe.

And then I had second thoughts. Who did I think I was, writing poetry?

So I had Paul and Jenny read it. Both were completely mystified at what I was trying to say. Something about whining about all the awful stuff in my life??

Ok, then there was no way anyone else would get it.

So I pulled it off.

Well, today Shelley the nephew's wifelet posted about Thanksgiving. And she referenced my poem, which wasn't there when she went looking for it again, and she had completely understood it, I could tell.

So I'm going to post it again. I've learned three things: A) Maybe going solely on Smucker-by-birth evaluations isn't always the best idea B) A simple word of encouragement from you can make a big difference to someone else. Thanks, Shelley! and C) As long as at least a few people understand you, it doesn't matter so much if the rest don't.

THANKSGIVING

I normally give thanks this day

For all the good and pleasant stuff

Like tea and health and family

And house and clothes and food enough.

-----

A longer list is left unsaid:

The things I don’t appreciate:

Frustration, pain, and endless work

The silence while I pray and wait.

-----

Today I’m stepping out in faith

To see these too as gifts and grace

My thanks a symbol of my trust

Of purpose not of useless waste.

-----

The cat with worms; the hungry teen

Who ate that Starbucks bar I’d hid;

The wind and rain; the gaining weight;

The suddenly-defiant kid.

-----

I thank Him for the blogger moms

with hits a thousand times of mine,

The memories that still return

Of pain and shame when I was nine.

-----

The folks who irritate me so

With grating quirks and talking much,

The ones who don’t appreciate

My friendly intervening touch.

-----

The situations I can’t fix

That drive me to despair and tears.

The quiet suffering that lasts

For days, then weeks, then months and years.

-----

The niece with infertility—

Should I give thanks for good held back?

For loved ones deep in grief and loss?

For Kenyan friends with constant lack?

-----

The words I have to leave unsaid,

And situations I can't share.

The deep regrets of choices past

The list of things that seem unfair.

-----

I come today with hands held out

To trust the Father’s hands to sift

Through all the life that comes my way

And thank Him for His choice of gift.

Thanksgiving N Stuff

2011-11-26T14:01:00.000-08:00

As always the book giveaway has been a ton of fun and I have a stack of brown envelopes here ready to mail on Monday.

And as always the stories that come with the nominations are simply heartbreaking and they all qualified by my rather subjective standards. Well, all those unfortunate people are so blessed to have friends and family like you to care for them.

And I haven't reached my max yet so feel free to send me a few more names. dorcassmucker@gmail.com

I hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving and long weekend.

On Monday the school kids had a Thanksgiving party. Jenny of course wore the outfit in the recent tutorial, and Paul, of the great dignity and lack of drama, agreed to dress up as well.
On Thanksgiving Day we had dinner at the church fellowship hall with a fun combination of people that included Aunt Allene, Uncle Milford and Aunt Susie, Stanley Warfel, Paul's mom, Uncle James and Aunt Orpha, and my brother Phil and his wife and family. This was the first holiday in a long time that Phil and Geneva could just up and go somewhere, as they've been caring for Geneva's dad for six years. He passed away at age 91 two weeks ago and now their lives and routines are completely different.

Yesterday we all went outside and cleaned the yard in one marathon work session. Paul and the children raked leaves while I trimmed and pulled and swept in flower beds.

Steven innocently rakes leaves onto an innocent pile.

Surprise!

I also sewed a quilted purse, something I've wanted to do for a long time. I like the look and feel of Vera Bradley bags, but not the prices, so I made my own and am very happy with it.

Then Jenny got inspired to make a drawstring backpack.

Tomorrow Steven and a bunch of his friends get baptized.

We are very blessed.

Quote of the Day:
[stolen from Emily's Facebook page, so "Me" is her.]

Steven:It's gonna beep!
Fire alarm: Beep, beep, beep!!!
Me: Steven, what did you push??
Steven: There's a fire! Hee hee hee
Me: (very annoyed) Steven, WHAT DID YOU PUSH?
Steven: I pushed your buttons.

On Reading To Children

2011-11-20T21:04:00.000-08:00

My educational philosophy came from
a) how I was raised
b) intuition
c) the situation I was in
d) one random class I took on creativity for pre-schoolers
e) what my children were like.

So there we were, way up north, out of the educational winds that blow through American/Christian/Mennonite society. We had very few electronic devices. But we had books. And time.

We also had phenomenally smart, curious, engaged, creative children. Ok, doesn't every parent say that? No, but they should. I've had people tell me, "Your kids are so clever. They say the most amazing things." True, but I want to say, "LISTEN TO YOUR CHILDREN. You'd figure out how clever they are too."

So, this became my strategy for "educating" my preschoolers:
1. Read to them.
2. Answer their questions.
3. Let them bake and do other work with you.
4. Turn them loose when they play and don't over-manage things.
5. Limit screen time.

Obviously this worked, if you know our children at all.

Later Paul became the school principal and through anguished phone calls from young moms I came to realize how hideously complicated our culture has made the preschool years. My word. These moms would detail to me how they got THIS workbook for their 4-year-old and THAT one when they were five, and how much should they be reading when they come to school, and Ruth likes CLP Learning-to-Read but Tina likes ACE and their cousin likes Sing-Spell-Read-&-Write and oh, dear, what if little Harold can't read nursery rhymes by September?

And always, always, they were sure they hadn't done enough and their child wouldn't be ready for school.

And I would always say Calm down. Read to your children. Answer their questions. Let them do stuff with you. Send them outside to play with sticks and mud. And, especially with boys, I'd say, Ditch the workbooks. Dear me, what punishment, to set these wild little 5-year-old boys down to workbooks when they should be outside playing with the dog and running trucks through the sandbox.

I don't think I convinced any of them, unfortunately. Moms like to make things complicated, I think.

Today Matt, of the 118-why-questions-in-one-day-at-age-3 and the recent engineering degree, linked a Thomas Friedman article on his Facebook page. He also noted, "To Mom and Dad: thank you," which made me weepy.

Anyway, Friedman says:
There’s no question that a great teacher can make a huge difference in a student’s achievement, and we need to recruit, train and reward more such teachers. But here’s what some new studies are also showing: We need better parents.

and

“Fifteen-year-old students whose parents often read books with them during their first year of primary school show markedly higher scores in PISA 2009 than students whose parents read with them infrequently or not at all. The performance advantage among students whose parents read to them in their early school years is evident regardless of the family’s socioeconomic background.

There's a lot more. You can read the whole thing here. And while it doesn't advocate following my ideas step by step, it's still really affirming for parents who want to help their children without obsessing over workbooks for 4-year-olds.

If you don't do anything else, you busy young parents, READ TO YOUR CHILDREN.

Quote of the Day:
"It always had this mysterious ending. Was it really just a hedgehog, or could she really talk and stuff? And she had this thing called a pinney. She heated her irons over the fire, which was interesing. And she starched things. I'd never heard of starching things and there was also this thing, the girl could look down people's chimneys or something. and there was like a robin and Mrs. Tiggywinkle washed his red thing (me: waistcoat) and she washed something for Peter Rabbit which is weird cuz he was in a different story. And all her hairpins were wrong side out and you explained to me that was all her prickles because she was a hedgehog and there was a hen, Henny Penny, who always said the same thing I go barefoot barefoot barefoot, and you always said it the same way."
--Emily, when I asked her what books she remembers me reading to her and she went off about The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle by Beatrix Potter

Easy Pilgrim Costume

2011-11-19T15:25:00.000-08:00

Monday is a dress-up day for the kids at school. They can be either Pilgrims or Indians.

Jenny opted for "Pilgrim" so I got her outfit together today. I thought I'd share the easy-peasy directions for the cap in case there are other moms out there needing a quick Pilgrim-transformation for their daughters.

First you cut a rectangle of white fabric. About 18 inches by 12 inches.

Serge the edges, or turn under and narrow hem. The less in a hurry you are with this, the nicer the result.

On one long edge, fold down about half an inch and iron it. Then sew it along the serged edge.

Turn the fabric over and fold up about 3 inches along the other long edge. Iron it but don't sew it.

When you sew along the narrower fold it makes a neat little casing. Take a foot-long piece of ribbon and thread it through and tie the ends.

If you grew up in my setting, you see white satin ribbon and think "coppa bandel." The rest of you: never mind. So, take two more pieces of ribbon, maybe a foot long each, or less.

Stitch them to the folded edge to tie under the chin.

Here's the finished back.

For the collar, I found a dress pattern with a big collar that lay flat. I took a ruler and pencil and lengthened the front point, then cut out two pieces.
I sewed them together in the back, serged the edges, and sewed on ribbon ties at the front.

Again, less of a hurry, and doing all the edges "right" would make a nicer product.

The apron came from a stash of Great-aunt Berniece's vintage wedding-server aprons.

The dress is one Jenny had on hand.

Quote of the Day:
Jenny: Mother, thou art the best seamstress in all of the New World. Do I look authentic?
Ben: If I were a professor of history, I probably wouldn't say you look authentic. But I guess I'll just say you do.
Jenny: Prithee, Mother, I request permission to kick our brother Ben.

Interview

2011-11-18T18:54:00.000-08:00

Some of us, writer types in particular, take ourselves way too seriously and when someone wants to interview us, we talk so much they almost beg us to be quiet.

So maybe we could learn a bit from a certain 9-year-old boy, son of my friend Arlene, who is staying with us (along with his sister) while his folks are at a wedding. I thought I'd interview him and see what clever observations he comes up with. But he didn't see any compelling need to be either talkative or clever.

What a thought.

Q: What do you like to do at our house?

A: I like to play Legos. I like to play chess.

Q: Chess!? Did you play chess at our house?

A: Not really. I like to play puppets.

Q: You were cold last night, right?

A: Yeah.

Q: But not the nite before?

A: Nuh uh.

Q: What do you think of Ben?

A: I think he is nice.

Q: What about Steven?

A: He's kind.

Q: What else?

A: I like it at your house cuz it's fun.

Q: Did you talk to your mom today?

A: Yes.

Q: What did she say?

A: She said hi and are you being good and stuff.
She said are you being kind to others

Q: Is she a good mom?

A: Yeah. My dad is nice too.

Q: Did you talk to him today?

A: Yeah. He also wants me to do some stuff.

What if we all gave such concise answers whenever someone asked us a question? How much more efficient the world would be. And how much quieter.

Quote of the Day:
"Ben, stop using logic and use common sense!"
--Jenny

Column: tea

2011-11-13T19:56:00.000-08:00

This month's column is about tea.

The Annual Giveaway

2011-11-12T11:06:00.000-08:00

The last two Christmases I've had book giveaways and they were a lot of fun for me but the biggest benefit was hearing all these gut-wrenching stories and realizing how phenomenally blessed we are.

And in giving these people a little bright spot in their holidays, as I got some amazing letters in return that warmed my heart.

So I'm doing it again.

Here's the deal:

You can nominate someone to receive a free book that I've written. Send me an email or Facebook message with their name and address, and tell me why they ought to receive a book. I'm looking for people going through a hard holiday season due to grief, health issues, job loss, etc. If you prefer a specific book, tell me that too. (Ordinary Days, Upstairs the Peasants are Revolting, or Downstairs the Queen is Knitting)

Disclaimers:

Don't nominate yourself. Duh.

Please stick with people with genuine needs rather than "Aunt Sadie is in perfect health and all but she deserves a book because she's so sweet."

Last year two books didn't get out til after the holidays (Sorry!) so this isn't a cast-iron promise that people will get them by Christmas.

I'll limit the number of books I'll give away so it's first come first served.

Drop me your nomination at dorcassmucker@gmail.com

Let the fun begin.

Yes and No

2011-11-11T21:23:00.000-08:00

I have a hard time saying no.

Actually, I have a really terribly hard time saying no. Especially to good spiritual helpful projects. Especially when good kind people ask me. I drown in guilt and second-guess myself.

But yesterday I said no.

My friend "Belinda" is always helping people, and she had offered--well I will just say she had offered to can applesauce for someone who needed it even though that's not exactly what it was.

It turned into a huge project and Belinda called and asked if I had anything going on and could I help her?

It's very hard for me in a situation like this to say, actually I have a lot going on: dishes, laundry, writing to Amy, getting groceries, emailing that one lady back, reminding Steven to scrub the blop of ketchup he left on the carpet, washing my hair, and making supper.

Because that doesn't sound nearly as important as helping to can applesauce for a deserving family.

But for once I knew what I needed to do and I said no.

So I did dishes and laundry and got groceries and did lots of other fiddly stuff.

That was yesterday.

Early this morning my sister-in-law Geneva called and said her dad passed away during the night and they were having a private burial this afternoon that we were invited to. [Phil and Geneva have taken care of him for six years and he's had a long, lingering, slow demise.]

So. Because I said no to Belinda yesterday I could say yes to today. I had a clean outfit to wear and gas in the car and food here for the children after school. I pulled chicken enchiladas and cinnamon rolls out of the freezer to take along. I had piecrusts on hand so I made two apple pies, one for my brother's family and one for us. And I left before noon with no frantic last minute dashing around the house while watching the clock and was able to spend a few hours with Phil and Geneva before the burial, making tea and talking and ironing Phil's shirt and trying to get Geneva to take a nap.

It's not always bad to say no to a good thing.

We'll see if I remember that next time.

Quote of the Day:
"Is there something you should be writing?"
--Paul, when I was mopping the kitchen at 10:30 pm

Analyzing Authors

2011-11-07T21:51:00.000-08:00

Today I was writing about my addiction to tea, and in researching I ran across the best analysis ever of tea, by our old friend Alexander McCall Smith of the #1 Ladies Detective Agency series.

Here it is.

Tea, for me, is one of the great subjects. It is a romantic trade, it does not pollute excessively, it has all sorts of health benefits, it calms and wakes you up at the same time. It promotes conversation. You can give it to the vicar when he calls – if vicars still call – and you can give it to the builders when they come to knock down your wall. Builders still take sugar, but then I'm sure they need it.

Tea can be drunk by everyone. Pilots high in the sky drink tea as they fly across oceans. Captains on the bridge of the humblest vessel drink it as they plough slowly through the waves. Submariners drink it as they sail under those very waves. A person who is troubled in heart can drink tea and for a moment feel happier about life. A person who is happy with his lot can drink it and perhaps think about those who are not quite so happy. Members of Parliament may drink it – at our expense – and not feel too guilty. Policemen drink it – as the Ahlbergs point out in the story of the cops of London town – and so do robbers. I have seen a horse who loved to drink it from a cup. Dogs like it, too.

I must now go and put the kettle on.

He is the first person I've ever run across who acknowledges the horror of mixing the flavors of tea and coffee, and of how American motels err in this regard.

Certainly you will find tea (in the form of tea bags) in your room, but how do you make it? The answer is that they expect you to make it in the coffee maker.

Now the problem with that is that if there are two flavours in this world that cannot – in any circumstances – be combined, it is tea and coffee. To make tea in a container that has been tainted with coffee is to ensure that the resultant tea is undrinkable. The flavour of coffee lingers in a vessel long after the last cup was brewed, and it is impossible to use that vessel for tea-making no matter how much it is washed. Try it. Put coffee in a vacuum flask and then, after washing it out thoroughly, try to use it for tea.

He just GETS the charm of tea. Read it if you like tea also.

Meanwhile we move on to another favorite author of mine--Lucy Maud Montgomery. I have been over-indulging in her stories ever since Emily found me a new and very inexpensive Jetbook (Kindle knockoff) at the bent-n-dent grocery store where she works and Matt helped me download half a dozen free collections of LMM's short stories.

I've also been analyzing her stories to figure out their structure, hoping to emulate their charm someday.

And I've come across some very interesting things that keep coming up which I may or may not emulate.
1. A first sentence that plunges you right into the story. "I had two schools offered me that summer; one at Rocky Valley and one at Bayside." "At sunset the schoolmaster went upstairs to write a letter to her." "Miss Hannah was cutting asters in her garden."

2. A recurring theme of families fragmented by death, and of children being raised by people other than their parents. With all the halfs and steps it reminds me of children today, but the sequence was always marriage-death-remarriage rather than marriage-divorce-shacking up etc.

3. Girls at boarding school having fun. That happened a lot back then.

4. Women who got to stay home and keep house were to be envied. Women who had to be employed were to be pitied. The former got married, or were adopted by rich relatives. The latter were thin, haggard old maids who didn't have any family and had to live in bare boarding houses and either teach school or work in department stores or be maids for wealthy people.

5. Bachelor farmers were quite common, and quite self-sufficient. They usually had housekeepers, grim old aunts who didn't darn the socks and didn't clean corners.

6. Women farmers were surprisingly common too. Most of them were the efficient-manager type who got along just fine with a hired man and a French-Canadian boy to run errands. The exception was the little widow with two little boys whose pigs kept getting into the bachelor farmer's garden, and at first he got all upset but then he fell in love with the widow and married her, and then she was to be envied because she was well taken care of and got to stay home and keep house and do all the cooking she wanted without worrying about the pigs.

7. Unrequited love was a good and noble thing, and if you wrote secret love letters for 20 years and kept them in a box up in your room because you could never marry because you were from two different classes, your love was still a good and noble thing, and somehow you kept up the energy of this high and noble true love and didn't get tired of it after 20 years even if you never talked to each other.

8. Young men who weren't accepted at home or who wanted a new start always went out West, usually to Manitoba. Many came home rich after 20 years away. This sheds an interesting light on Paul's great-great-grandpa Christian Smucker who we are told was the black sheep of the family in Ohio and came out to Oregon many years ago, and who never had much to do with the Ohio Smuckers ever again. So evidently he never went back and snuck down a moonlit road and found his former love out wandering around at night, still unmarried and still thinking about him.

9. Family members kept losing contact with each other and finding each other when a random person did something noble. Like, a man would die leaving a wife and child, and eventually the wife would remarry when the child was in his teens, and they'd have another child, but then the wife would die also, and the younger child would live with another family and the teenager would go out West, and they would totally lose contact. Years later they would meet by accident when the older guy would go to a friend's house for Thanksgiving, and meanwhile the friend's younger sister would after a sleepless night of tormented conscience decide to invite the shy girl in the bare boarding house home for Thanksgiving, and the two guests would take one look at each other and realize they were long-separated half-siblings. And then the brother would take his half sister home with him and she was so lucky that she had a home she could be the mistress of and could leave the awful boarding house and her awful job as a teacher.

10. Abrupt endings. I'd say 75% of LMM's endings are just WHAM. Done. That's it. Before you're quite ready.

Like this.

Quote of the Day:
Jenny: AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!! Look at that spider!!!
Ben: WHOA! That thing's got like a cubic centimeter behind!

Good Morning to You Too

2011-11-04T22:01:00.000-07:00

This sweet scene greeted me in the kitchen this morning.

Quote of the Day:
"Mom! Go long!"
--Jenny
[Gotta say this was the first time I heard this yelled at me in the grocery store. I turned around. Jenny was a ways down the shampoo aisle, all wound up and about to throw me a foam football she had pulled out of a display in the aisle. I don't think I went long, but she threw it, and I caught it and threw it back, and then it went back in the display.]

Names

2011-11-01T15:23:00.000-07:00

When I was young I hated my name. Dorcas Yoder. It was full of R's and O's, and it twisted your mouth, and it was was so WEIRD among all the Lories and Tammies and Vickies. And nobody who wasn't Mennonite had ever heard of it.

I could never buy a cute key chain with my name on it.

And I had a sister who went by Becky, and she was cute and vivacious, and I knew if we switched names I would have a chance at being cute and vivacious too, and she would be awkward and overweight. What was really irritating was that Mom and Dad had "Dorcas" all picked out before Becky was born, and then right before that their good friends had a baby and named her Dorcas, so Mom and Dad switched to Rebecca and saved Dorcas for me, a year later.

THAT close I could have been a Becky. Imagine.

And then my younger sister was named Margaret, a lovely name as well.

I doubt that the Beckies and Suzies of this world ever had to put up with stuff like the lady behind the counter saying, "DORcas??? [Lord's-name-in-vain] WHAT a NAME, eh?"

I used to read Newsweek magazine and gaze in envy at the column by Jane Bryant Quinn. What a perfect name. If I had a name like that, full of N's, I could be a writer too.

Well. If there is a young person reading this who has something in his or her life that seems irritating and unchangeable and beyond redemption, let me just say that you never know. God takes delight in redeeming the very thing that you think stands in the way of you ever doing anything successful and meaningful with your life.

Obviously I got used to "Dorcas" somewhere along the way and had much weightier things to worry about, and it really didn't matter any more.

And then the world kept spinning around and I started writing.

And a very strange thing happened. People thought I had the most wonderful name, that it sounded just like a writer's name ought to sound.

Bizarre, isn't it?

A lovely local woman whom I got to meet one time posted this on her blog--

In this part of Oregon I share my name with several Kathy Davises, and the name Kathleen Davis is just about as common. . .At Adams Elementary School in the 60s it seemed there were Kathys in every classroom. I believe it was in 2nd grade that there were 3 of us. . .At one point, I remember, I wished for a dreamy princess name like Cinderella or something. . .

That’s why I stuck my maiden name in my title for this website. I may still be a little bit envious of people with simple but unique author’s names like Dorcas Smucker, but I’ll get over it. I’m thankful for what I’ve been given.

Interesting, isn't it?

So, you with the celiac disease or "too many" younger siblings or weak ankles or dandruff or strict parents or dyslexia: Hang in there. The Lord loves to redeem these things.

Quote of the Day:

"She strikes me as Godly but unintimidating."

--Jenny. We all like that kind, don't we?

Romance

2011-10-30T21:11:00.000-07:00

29 years ago tonight we had our first date.

That's the statistic for the day.

Now for a story about a romantic Oregon farmer. I spoke at a women's retreat up in the mountains an hour and a half northwest of here on Friday and Saturday. One young woman there is married to a grass-seed-and-clover farmer who heard about the retreat and said, "Oh--Smucker? That's where we send our screenings." That would be Steve the BIL who turns the offscourings of grass seed cleaning into pellets for cattle feed.

Anyway, when this young couple was dating, the guy, who sacked seed for the family warehouse, took the stencil maker for the bags and punched in "I love you Mary" and inked it on duct tape and wrapped the tape around a water bottle and gave it to his girlfriend.

Anyone who has sacked seed will appreciate that romantic gesture, I think.

As for that anniversary, today in church I was thinking, if I would have known what I was in for, would I do it over again?

That's not really a fair question, is it? It wasn't the date or the guy that made things hard or easy since then, although we have certainly had our tough times. Life just finds ways to be hard whether you say yes or no to the nice tall freckled guy.

But I'm glad I said yes.

Quote of the Day, in which Mrs. Smucker thinks it's good she didn't have a premonition of this when she agreed to that first date.
Emily: You put SUGAR on your CEREAL??
Paul: Yes.
[Too-long too-loud discussion/argument on whether or not sugar is bad for you]
Emily: Just don't come running to me when you're sick and dying and on your deathbed!
Paul: Do I tend to do that?
Emily: What? Be sick and die or come running to me?
[etc. etc.]

My Cold

2011-10-26T19:35:00.000-07:00

I have a cold.

When other people have colds I tend to say, Oh that's too bad, and I tend to think, Well, it's just a cold, get on with your life.

If I remember right, I haven't had a real full-blown cold for a long time. I've spent the last couple of winters swallowing vitamins and cod liver oil and echinacea, and when others in the family got sick I sliced raw garlic into my salads despite the family's protests and plowed through like James Bond piloting that plane through the flames in Tomorrow Never Dies, which I once watched on a plane, never fear, I don't watch JB on my own time.

I also haven't had a full-blown flu since that horrible bout with swine flu a few years ago.

Well.

I came home from Minnesota and Emily had a cold that made her look like she was weeping miserably for a couple of days, and it was bad but she said it's not as bad as feeling sick all over.

I took my vitamins and was sure I'd be fine.

But I caught her cold and oh mei zeit I am sorry for ever not feeling sorry enough for you if you ever told me you had a cold.

I feel like someone dumped acid in my eyes, stuffed styrofoam up my nose, pushed me down the stairs, attacked me with the forklift, and ran me through the spin cycle on the washer. I glance at the light and my eye gets all prickly and gushes forth tears that stream down my cheek. My chest is slathered in Vicks but I can't smell it. I cut up pieces of an old flannel sheet for handkerchiefs, since Kleenexes are just too savage for my raw nose.

I spend a lot of time in bed and can't muster up the courage to do a load of laundry.

I can think of only one good result of this and that is that when I'm not lying down I can usually work on the computer, and I did a bunch of work on my next book and also planning for the writing class I'm starting to teach next week.

You're probably thinking, It's just a cold, why don't you get on with your life? I guess colds are much more dramatic and portentious when they're your own and not someone else's.

Quote of the Day:
"I came to the conclusion that if things are difficult, that's not an abnormality. That's just normal."
--Mike G., a friend from church

Old Pictures

2011-10-21T21:50:00.000-07:00

After posting the other day about Matt's surgery in 1991, I dug out some old pictures of the occasion, just for fun.

You can see them here.

The Dakotas

2011-10-21T11:32:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure why I find South Dakota so interesting. Both of the Dakotas, actually. It has always seemed to me that people from there are friendly, tough, practical, and unpretentious in a way that makes people from other parts of the country seem a bit sissified in comparison.

Some of my perception is due to random snapshot experiences. Like the time we were driving to Minnesota and stopped at a cafe in a tiny town for breakfast. I looked over the newspapers for sale at the front counter and asked the cashier if they had any with national news. She paused. "Well," she said, "as national as we get out here."

I loved that line.

Or the time Jenny and I rode the bus home from Minnesota and I talked with a few Dakota grandmas for a couple of hundred miles, and then one of them got off the bus and got picked up by a wholesome, smiling teenage farm boy in a pickup truck with a trailer behind who hugged his grandma and hoisted in her luggage and seemed a world apart from the slouching, miserable-looking, black-clad high school crowd that crosses the street by WinCo in Eugene.

Then of course there was my nephew who died in South Dakota, and his crowd of friends who came to his viewing and hugged the family and freely conversed with this West Coast aunt like they wanted to know how I fit into Leonard's life and like I was worth getting to know.

And then there's the mystique of the South Dakota Farm Boy as the Ideal Man, as discussed by Emily and Hillary way back in early 2006.

So I have a bit of an idealized picture of Dakotans. But I didn't know if I could ever live there.

My nephew had been very good friends with a family in South Dakota--Tim and Katie Faber, I'll call them--and their many young-adult children. When Leonard died, the Fabers were "there" for his family in intensely supportive and ongoing ways.

Some time ago the Fabers moved to a ranch in western South Dakota where they raise hay. I'm not sure if they also have cattle and sheep, but I know others in the area do. [They also put llamas out with the sheep to chase off coyotes which I find intriguing.] While I was at Mom and Dad's last week, my brother Marcus and SIL Anna went to visit Fabers for the weekend.

They came home with lots of stories about life in western South Dakota. It's rugged but not Badlands country exactly, Marcus said, and not all prairie either. Basically ranch country with buttes here and there. There are two public high schools to choose from, he said. One is 30 miles from the ranch and the other 35. The bus from the one school goes as far as 50 miles away to pick up students.

If a part breaks down on a John Deere baler, you have three John Deere dealers to choose from to get the part, but they are all about 85 miles away. So do you spend the day making a 170-mile round trip, or do you order the part and wait for it to be delivered the next day?

Tim and Katie took Marcus and Anna to a Norwegian supper at a small Lutheran church, some 60 miles away. About 200 people showed up, most likely from all directions and distances, and they all seemed to revel in the chance to talk with "neighbors" like this.

"It would take a special person to live in a place like that," I said.

"How so?" Marcus asked.

"You'd have to be ok with not being connected with people," I said. "I mean, driving through Montana and North Dakota, I'd see these houses sitting there alone in miles and miles of countryside and I thought, I don't know if I'd have it in me to live there, so far from other people."

Marcus disagreed with me. "You wouldn't believe how connected those people are with their neighbors, even if the neighbors are five or ten miles away. They really watch out for each other. If someone is making a run to the grocery store, they call each other up to see if they need anything. Someone called up Katie to see if she needed groceries, and she said she needs lettuce, and the next morning there were two heads of lettuce on the front seat of the truck. If someone is having a hard time, the neighbors help them out. People make you feel valuable, and they talk with you. On our way out there we stopped and ate at a little cafe before we went on to the ranch, and there was only one other customer, and she struck up a conversation with us and wanted to know all about us and told us about her work as an EMT."

"In fact," Marcus said, "I really think people are more connected in that part of South Dakota than they are in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania."

Wow. Maybe I could live in South Dakota after all.

20 Years Ago

2011-10-19T22:00:00.000-07:00

Twenty years ago today we almost lost our son.

We were living in the wilds of Northwestern Ontario, on an Indian reserve of some 800 people. Paul taught at the little Christian school. Matt was 5, Amy 3, and Emily 1.

A child on the reserve belongs to everyone and this was especially true of our children who were stared at and gushed over and discussed and kissed everywhere they went. People loved Emily's big blue eyes and Amy's charm, but they seemed especially fascinated by Matt with his red hair and his way of going up to anyone, anywhere, and talking their ears off whether they spoke English or not. "Matchoo," people would murmur with a twinkle in their eyes. "Matchoo, Matchoo," and they would shake their heads. They couldn't understand him, but they loved him.

"Emmity-go-genes," the old people would say as they grinned indulgently at our crew. "Little white kids." And when Matt sat by the aisle in church, old men shuffling up to their seats would reach out and reverently touch his hair as they passed.

They also discussed us on the village radio. It's hard to explain the role of the local station on the reserve, not that there were any non-local stations to choose from. Everything was announced and discussed there. The time Paul took the kids out canoeing when the ice was breaking up--that got discussed on the radio. And when the other teacher's parents came to visit, the neighbor lady went on the radio and said everybody be careful driving down this way, there are two old people visiting. His parents were actually in their 40s.

We had electricity and phones at Round Lake but it still felt very isolated. During most of the year the only way in and out was by plane. The exception was from January to March, when you could bump your way out some 25 miles of bush road pushed over the frozen ground.

There was a nursing station on the reserve, and a small grocery store. The nearest doctor was some 175 miles away in Pickle Lake. The nearest hospital roughly 300 miles away. The nearest big grocery store some 400 miles.

That fall of 1991 Matthew got sick. We seemed to get sick an awful lot, so this wasn't such a big deal. He had a stomach ache for a few days and just didn't feel good. Then one night he vomited off and on all night, so I took him to the nurses in the morning. They said it's just a virus and his stomach hurts from all the vomiting.

He got a bit better but I was still concerned. Then a few nights later he woke up screaming. We took him to bed with us and he was in terrible pain and his abdomen was as hard as a board. What on earth? Finally he fell asleep and as soon as we could I laid him on a big sled and hauled him to the nursing station.

Something was obviously wrong, they said. Something had ruptured inside, but it didn't seem like appendicitis. They started an IV and said he needs to be flown out for surgery. So while they called in the air ambulance from Sioux Lookout, 300 miles away, we made hasty plans, finally deciding that Paul would fly out with him and I would stay home with the girls.

An old van drove us to the airstrip and the big sleek ambulance plane landed. They loaded Matt's stretcher inside and I tearfully told him goodbye, with that ghastly knot in the pit of my stomach that you feel when you don't know if your child will live or die.

They flew off.

Someone took us back home. I tried to do housework, and people came by all day, offering their support. The radio station announced updates whenever I got a call from Paul.

Meanwhile Paul and Matt were taken to the hospital in Sioux Lookout. Matt was evaluated. Yes, he needs surgery, although they still didn't know what for. The lone surgeon was out fishing. The policemen couldn't get their boat motor started to go fetch him.

They called the Dryden hospital. The one surgeon there was out moose hunting.

They would take him to Thunder Bay.

At 9:00 that night he went into surgery. The radio announcer told the whole village to stay awake until they knew if little Matthew Smucker would be ok.

At 10:30 I got the call that Matt was out of surgery and he would be fine. I fell to pieces from sheer relief and gratitude. Our friend Lucy Day was less sentimental. She grabbed the phone and called the radio station. They announced the news and told everyone they can go to bed now.

So we all did.

The trouble had been a Meckel's diverticulum, a little tube or pouch on the small intestine, left over from before he was born, that had a bit of stomach tissue in it. This developed an ulcer and eventually burst through the intestinal wall.

He would probably have died without the surgery, said the doctor. And, he said, looking a bit puzzled, often these cases bleed heavily before surgery but for some reason Matt's didn't.

Two weeks later, we had a blizzard and the planes couldn't fly.

So despite the ordeal we saw God's hand all over it and knew He still had a purpose for Matt's life.

Matt was in the Thunder Bay hospital for a week. The mission pilot flew me and the girls out a few days later. We hung out at the hospital and watched Matt recover.

And 20 years later Matt is all grown up with a scar across his belly button to remind him of the time he got to live and not die.

Quote of the Day:
"It hurts so bad and I'm so hungry but they won't let me eat and I told the doctor I want a hamburger but they won't let me have one."
--Matt's teary words to me when I got to the hospital which of course made me cry as well. We got him a hamburger before we left Thunder Bay a week later. Maybe this deprivation is what makes him so fond of Wendy's Baconators

Minnesota Musings

2011-10-19T08:57:00.000-07:00

We set a new record, Caleb and Grandma and I, door to door from here to my folks' in 26 hours. Let's just say that when you have a determined 19-year-old driver, Montana roads at night, and 3 Monster energy drinks for the driver, you cover a lot of ground in a short time.

Dad at going-on-95 tends his garden, picks apples, milks the goat, cuts wood with the chain saw, and a lot more. He has a few ongoing health issues related to his setback in April, but on my sister's advice I got some apple cider vinegar and he's on a regimen of a few tablespoons a day in a glass of water. Some people might fuss at drinking vinegar but it fits right in with Dad's philosophy that if it tastes terrible, it's probably good for you. Hence the broccoli in his oatmeal, for one minor example.

Dad has the most astonishing memory. He can pull up names and dates like his brain is Google with a high-speed connection. I'm happy to say that he's 14 pages into writing the story of his two years in Paraguay with MCC back when the Mennonite refugees were coming there from Russia. I read his story--so far--one night. He and a few other MCC volunteers took a freighter to Paraguay (actually they landed in Buenos Aires) and Dad was seasick the entire 28-day journey. Another one of the 8 or so passengers was a French guy who was involved in the movie industry, but unfortunately that was one name Dad couldn't recall.

My favorite story was how he was invited to a "tea party," a fancy affair where the MCC guys and two doctors and a few others were brainstorming about possible medical projects. Now Dad, growing up Amish in Oklahoma, was not accustomed to tea parties. They offered the options of sugar, lemon, and milk for your tea, so Dad put in all three. And, he said, it made cheese. He drank it, of course. See that previous paragraph about eating gross foods.

Mom's memory is still good for being 91, but names escape her all the time. It's very frustrating, because she has always loved to recount stories of people she worked for and all the hundreds of friends and relatives she knows, but she starts to tell a story and the name is just gone.

But there was one episode where Mom's memory was better than Dad's and mine. They had missed their grandson Jason's birthday. Oh dear. So Mom told Dad to buy a "grandson" birthday card when he went to town. Unfortunately he got a "granddaughter" card, which will be fine for Janet later this month but won't do for Jason. I was going to go to Paynesville to do my email at the library so I told her I'd pick up a card for her.

After I used the library I put my computer in the car, locked it, and went over to Twice's Nice, the cool second-hand store across from the library. And there was a whole box of cards. Bingo! I found a nice one and paid the very discounted price and went home and triumphantly gave it to Mom. She looked confused instead of pleased. "But," she said, "this one is for a granddaughter too!" She was right. What was I thinking???

On Monday I took Mom to Willmar for groceries and she picked out her own card.

Meanwhile with great effort I had managed to unlock the battleship a.k.a Pontiac doors except for the back door on the driver's side. The little knob simply wouldn't budge. I gathered, and Dad affirmed this, that those doors pretty much never get locked. I don't think the keys get pulled very often either.

You gotta love Minnesota.

Etc.

2011-10-11T16:13:00.000-07:00

I was cleaning off some SD cards and putting the pictures on cd's for storage so I needed to label them. "Spring 2011. Jr. Convention. Kittens. Oklahoma. MN. Etc." Another one: "Summer 2011. Cats. Bible Memory Camp. Etc."

"Etc." can mean a lot of things. A close-up of a pansy in the flower bed. A shot of orange dots on the ceiling. Trish's kids on the trampoline. Jenny and Janane's artfully arranged Converse shoes. A pretty cake. Etc.

* * *
Tomorrow I'm off on another visit to my parents in Minnesota. Caleb the 19-year-old nephew from Wisconsin has been out here working for about 4 months and was going to drive home by himself. So I suggested going along as far as Minnesota so I could help drive. And then Paul's mom decided to go along too.

So we leave early tomorrow morning and drive "straight through." It used to take us 32 hours from here to Minnesota but I think Caleb thinks we can do it in less than that. I have a feeling we will all three have some stories to tell our friends when the trip is over.

* * *
I read a moving post by a blogger named Jessica Derstine, on miscarriage.

Questions

I look around and wonder.
How my mind would feel right now.
How my body would be changed.
How my days would play out.

I look around and wonder.
Why does no one talk about this.
Why does everyone ignore it.
Why does it feel so alone.

I look around and wonder.
How many mama's feel the same.
How many babies are not here.
How many times they are missed.

I look around and wonder.
If I'll ever understand.
If I'll ever be here again.
If I'll ever forget.

And she adds: Why does no one talk about the babies that they lose.

While I am very grateful I've never had a miscarriage, I often feel inadequate in comforting or supporting women who have. This helped me understand what they feel.

* * *
This writing tip was on a recent Willamette Writers email. I thought it was really simple but profound.
Playwright, screenwriter, director David Mamet presents the foundation of storytelling this way:

· Once upon a time -
· And then one day -
· Just when everything was going so well -
· When at the last minute -
· And then everyone -

If you can complete these sentences, you have the outlines of a tight, beginning-middle-end story. Let's work it out for a film you probably are familiar with, E.T.

· Once upon a time -- there was a lonely boy.
· And then one day -- he met a stranded alien.
· Just when everything was going so well -- the alien said, "E.T. go home."
· When at the last minute -- the boy revived E.T., rescued him from scientists, and helped him catch his spaceship.
· And then everyone -- was sadder but wiser, learning that love is letting go.

(by Charles Deemer)
* * *
Quote of the Day:
"Mom? Five minutes with Dorcas and already you're crying?"
--my friend "Jill's" daughter "Alice," after church one Sunday this summer. When "Jill" and I get together we cut to the emotional chase immediately.

October column

2011-10-09T13:36:00.000-07:00

Today's column is about education and learning and wisdom. I'll let you decide whether or not the bribes were worth it.

Here's the story.

Deals

2011-10-04T23:00:00.000-07:00

Today I was working on my column for October, having gotten my deadline extended just a bit by my new editor who has yet to get used to my procrastinating ways. After I finished the column, I posted this on Facebook:

"Writing is expensive. No, not Writers Digest magazine or online classes, but paying Jenny $5 to let me put in that paragraph about her making apple crisp and I think the orange-pop-on-the-ceiling story about Steven will set me back at least $10. Yes, I'm desperate."

A lady named Valerie Martin commented: "Trying to decide if it's free-market capitalism or extortion. :o)"

And Katie Troyer said: You are going to end up in the Poor House.

So I thought maybe I should explain how this works in this household.

I have a policy that I don't write about the children in my newspaper column without their permission, and they have veto power over anything I write about them. This would be much easier if I always worked on the column two weeks ahead of the deadline, or if they never did anything they didn't want the world to know about. [On the other hand, what on earth would I write about if they were that well-behaved??]

But when I'm down to the wire with my deadline and sitting here furiously typing, with everyone else off to school, and with my hair uncombed, and a wild look in my eyes like the ghost of the butcher's first wife in Fiddler On the Roof, well I am way beyond considering the tender feelings of the poor little Smucker darlings. I've just GOT TO GET THIS DONE NOW!!!!!!!!!!!

That's how I was today, with the Looming Deadline at noon.

But then I had a moment of sanity, remembering how wrong things have gone with a recent column or two, and I reconsidered.

See, I had written this very accurate paragraph about how Jenny made apple crisp the other day and fussed almost the entire time.

But oh, the dilemma, because if you have a third of the article pinned on this example, you have to rework the whole stinkin' thing if the child says you can't use that story.

I called her up at school.
Me: Hey, Jenny. I wrote about you in my article and I want to know if it's ok. Here, I'll read it to you. [read read read]
Jenny: No, Mom!
Me: But it's true, isn't it?
Jenny: Well, yeah, but I don't want people to know that about me!
Me: How much will you charge?
Jenny: Five dollars!
Me: Deal!

Now I'll let you decide if that's bribery, extortion, or good old American capitalism.

Another example I used was Steven's exploding can of orange pop. I told him this last night. He said, "Moooooooommmmm...!" I could hear the abacus beads clicking in his head and as mentioned above I thought sure this was going to cost me a good $10. But he settled for $7.

I'm still making a slight profit, and I can probably file these under Expenses when I do my taxes.

I also mentioned Paul's mom in the article, so I emailed her those paragraphs for approval, and she didn't charge me a thing.

Saw it, Liked it, Stole it

2011-10-03T00:29:00.000-07:00

A List of Rainy Thoughts

2011-09-27T10:19:00.000-07:00

1. The rains have begun in Oregon, which sounds like a deep-voiced narration on a National Geographic film. We hope the adult female of the species manages to avoid SAD this season.

2. I love being home alone. Summer is nice, in its way, with people in and out, eating and sleeping and working at odd hours. But this time of year, now that school and community college have started, and I have predictable times alone at home, this is blissful.

2a. To my children: I love you a lot, especially when you're gone all day and I have time to recharge my batteries, and then you come home all beautiful and hungry and talkative.

2b. I'm told there's someone in this community, an adult female mom, who hates being home alone. Really. She has a big family so it doesn't happen often, but when it does, I was told, she calls up a friend to come hang out with her so she doesn't have to be alone.

3. We "did corn" last week. 450 ears in two afternoons and it was amazingly efficient, with everyone helping, and Bonnie the SIL came by and saw us and helped with the cutting for a while.

4. I have been thinking and praying a lot about writing. As in, do I quit or take it seriously? Is it a calling or not? So far I've always been all slap-dash, hurry-up, impulsive, fly by the seat of my skirt, do the least possible work, screech in right under the deadline. And I've never felt like either God or I ought to take this too seriously. I mean, why bother God about a post describing orange pop sprayed on the ceiling? But I feel like I need to either quit writing entirely or take it seriously, as in, plan ahead, write every day, send more stuff out, edit it better, do more marketing. Or in other words quit nibbling on the dinner rolls and either leave the table or dig in and eat the steak and potatoes and spinach.

4a. But how do you take writing seriously without becoming one of those pitiful dreadful earnest desperate writers who think they are sending out almost The Very Words of God and can't understand why they have so much trouble getting published?

4b. I was praying about this the other day and then opened my One Year Bible to the proper page and immediately read this in Isaiah:

2 “Enlarge the place of your tent,
stretch your tent curtains wide,
do not hold back;
lengthen your cords,
strengthen your stakes.
³ For you will spread out to the right and to the left; . . .
⁴ “Do not be afraid; you will not be put to shame.
Do not fear disgrace; you will not be humiliated.
. . .
¹⁴ In righteousness you will be established:
Tyranny will be far from you;
you will have nothing to fear.
Terror will be far removed;
it will not come near you.
¹⁵ If anyone does attack you, it will not be my doing;
whoever attacks you will surrender to you. . . .
¹⁷ no weapon forged against you will prevail,
and you will refute every tongue that accuses you.
This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD,
and this is their vindication from me,” declares the LORD.

Well! That seemed pretty direct, if slightly out of context, and I really liked that part about whoever attacks you will surrender to you, thinking of that horrible phone caller recently. However, I was like Gideon and asked for an additional sign.

5. Someone I know thinks we all have hard lives, some of us just have more obviously hard lives than others. I disagree. I think some people have much easier lives than others.

6. Sometimes life brings its own plateful of suffering that is very personal and private, and it goes on and on, and you can't talk about it, and you think you are stuck in this forever because God has forgotten and no one else knows. And then suddenly the wind shifts and it turns out God knew all along, and others suspected, and you weren't as alone as you thought.

7. I used to not like Agatha Christie books, with that pompous Hercule Poirot and his moustache and his arrogant way of announcing that he knows exactly what happened and if you weren't so slow and unobservant you'd have caught on too.

7b. But then I picked up The Spies Among Us, a collection of three stories, and loved it, but it's a dangerous book to read on the way to John Day in the wilds of eastern Oregon to visit a young friend in jail, because when you stop for gas at Plum Fierce in Redmond, you look at the heavyset gas station attendant and wonder if he's actually spying for an international outfit hiding in the mountains that's about to overthrow civilization as we know it, and you're very careful about using the restroom for fear someone is hiding there, and they're going to whack you over the head with a rolling pin and switch your clothes with someone who looks just like you, and put that person in the car and Paul won't know the difference, and that person will deliver a secret message to another camp out by the John Day Fossil Beds.

9. I am trying not to compare myself with others or do things out of guilt, but these habits are deeply entrenched.

10. It's become a family joke how easily intimidated I am by people. I always thought my children were all like their dad, utterly oblivious and fearless, but then the other day Jenny said, "I don't want to [do certain activity] because [certain person] intimidates me too much." Yikes. No Fun, to have my words echo back like that.

11. When your children grow up, you cannot make their decisions for them. This is terrifying and sometimes it makes you wish you could go back to the days of dictating who sits where in the van and when they go to bed. But those were also the days of one screaming to another, "Mad-maker!!!" and the mad-maker screaming back, "Jealous-maker!!!" and then for good measure they would shriek, "You...you...VERB!!!" and "You ragged wolf!!!"
So, yes, I don't always like their decisions, but they are friends with each other on Facebook, and they like and link each other's statuses, and when Amy posts gorgeous shots of Jamaica sunsets, Matt and Emily never write "JEALOUS-MAKER!!!" in the comments.

12. Quote of the Day:
"In the Sewing Room on a Piece of Pink Fabric the Cat is Giving Birth."
--Jenny's title for my next book

Bible Memory Camp 2011

2011-09-16T11:57:00.000-07:00

Last week we took 11 youngsters to the coast for Bible Memory Camp. Here in the Valley the temps were in the 90's [we finally got July in September--loved it!] but at the beach it was breezy and in the 60s.

This year we decided to rough it a bit more, staying in tents at a campground instead of in a house, and cooking over a fire.

The biggest advantage to this arrangement was that there was plenty of room for everyone and all the stuff. Also, cleanup was very easy and we didn't have to obsess about keeping sand off the floors.

There weren't a lot of disadvantages, but we should have brought lanterns so we could play games after dark.

You can see pictures of the weekend here. Jenny shot most of them.

Quote of the Day:
"Cuz you're his cheeseburg-ER. . ."
--an inspiring song sung around the campfire

Mrs. Smucker Obsesses About Writing

2011-09-13T10:10:00.000-07:00

I have several times given a speech in which I rhapsodize on The Wonder of Words. Think of it: with funny black lines on a page or sounds coming out of my mouth I can take thoughts and impressions in my head and communicate them into yours.

For example, I can use words to say that I'm cold and you understand that and loan me a sweater. I can be worried about a family member and you understand my burden and offer to pray for me or them. I can tell a story and we laugh together.

Amazing.

And God chose words to communicate to us. In fact he valued words so much that Jesus was called the Living Word.

Well that is all very nice.

Until you find out that we live in a broken world and sometimes words are pretty makeshift ways of communicating.

I write, you all know that. Sometimes people ask me why, exactly, and the answer is always a bit uncertain. Well, I like working with words. And I feel like I"m supposed to do this because there's a constant nudging like a fatherly thumb in my backbone pushing me in this direction.

Mostly, I don't like to think or overthink about why I write. That way, I've found, is fraught with peril and paralysis. Better to do and not think.

Usually, writing is a rewarding enterprise. When I get an email and I can tell that someone precisely "got" exactly what I was trying to say in my last column, that is just utterly satisfying.

But, as I said, sometimes the words don't work so well, and instead of words communicating precise ideas, it's more like I'm cobbling together little forms with play-doh, and someone is trying to figure out what on earth I'm trying to say.

I am going to be very vague here even though I much prefer specifics, but several times recently I chose words that I honestly thought communicated THIS and a few people read them and really honestly thought I meant to communicate THAT.

By the time the words filter down through all my thoughts and perceptions and intents and then get printed and then get filtered through all THEIR thoughts and perceptions and intents, things can go very very wrong.

Which, to put it gently, is what happened. It was horrible. One phone call in particular, from a powerful and intimidating person, will go down in history as Pretty Much The Worst Feedback Ever. To make it worse, I really had made some serious errors in my choice of words, so I can't write it off as just a cranky reader rattling his cage.

And at those times I think, this is crazy. I don't even know why I'm writing, and here I am, putting my soul out there, as vulnerable as a kitten in front of a bunch of target-practicing rednecks, and really there are not enough good reasons in the universe to keep doing this.

And yet.

Would you believe the same day as the phone call I got an email with a very opposite response?

She said:

Biblical inspiration, of course, refers to the power of the scriptures, but all writers have a form of the power to raise readers above themselves. By living your life in the way you do, and chronicling the details in a way that is not judgmental, just honest and true, you have provided a compass to the souls lost in the mall, trapped in the world of Netflix and the Nail Niche, living lives without purpose, what Ecclesiastes describes as "striving after the wind." The power of picking green beans, making homemade jam, camping, sewing beautiful dresses, and being a helpmate to a kind, devout and hard-working man is a tonic and an inspiration to those who right now can only wish for something better. They read about your life and long, sometimes vow, to do better.

I have a childcare in downtown "Whoville." In the eleven years of its operation, more than a hundred parents have been clients. Most have been single mothers. . . most have been clerks and waitresses, and there have been two strippers. At least half of my children have had to deal with at least one parent spending time in jail. . .

More than 90% of the parents have discussed the sexual abuse they suffered as children. They continue to create chaos for their lives because they cannot move beyond the mentality of "victims." Their children suffer enormously because their parent has no peace. I spend a lot more effort helping the adults toward self-sufficiency than the children, but many of the parents have been successful at learning to cook, do laundry, clean house, get their kids to school on time, obtain better housing, get into vocational training, get better jobs, or abandon substance abuse. Some have even begun to study the Bible. I read your essays to them because you can make them feel that the "old" way of living is desirable. They want a family dinner, even though it is more work than McDonald's. Some have had to obtain a dining table to make that happen. They know camping is better, but more work, than video games. You inspire them to be better parents because of your commitment. Your words are confirmation that they do not have to live such stressful, empty lives if they are willing to make the effort.

Sometimes we even discuss "What would the lady in Harrisburg do?" if she had to make their decisions.

Well, I have to say that response left me just as speechless as the negative responses. I suppose I ought to be delighted. In both cases, the words went floating out into the universe and had interpretations and results that I never intended.

And that is terrifying.

And I don't know what to do about it.

How do you do it, those of you who preach and teach and write and sing and otherwise fling your words into the ears of the fickle public? How do you survive?

My story on RFE

2011-09-09T10:01:00.000-07:00

My first editor at the Guard now works for Radio Free Europe in Prague. His wife compiled a podcast* about 9/11 and how it affected lives around the world. My story is included, at milepost 22:16.

Here it is.

*I had to ask what that was. It's a recording you can access online rather than a live radio broadcast. Something like that.

With a name like. . .

2011-09-07T20:56:00.000-07:00

I found this on Wikipedia today--a list of past and present Smucker's catchphrases.

"With a name like Smucker's, it has to be good!"
"Smucker will make you pucker!"
"If you find a better jelly, you buy it!"
"Smucker Company, the brand you can trust"
"There ain't no place like Smucker's!"
"The only brand of jams that can make a piece of bread lively!"
"If you're hungry, Smucker's is the way to go!"
"Smucker's may be yummy, your tummy may be too, but your grocer's freezer, is not far from you!"
"Bread, jam and jelly, in your belly, lick your spoon and cut your bread, then you will be Smucker's well fed"

The second one reminds me of the time our friend Dave H. was introducing Paul at a meeting of some sort and with a straight face called him Small Pucker.

September Column

2011-09-04T14:26:00.000-07:00

About a week ago Paul got a gash in his head at work and as it healed up it grew into a column about making choices with your life.

Here.

Drowning in papers

2011-08-30T22:24:00.000-07:00

I am constantly drowning in papers.

I've read FlyLady's suggestions by the boxful and read organizational books by the truckload but still I am forevermore snowed under by bits of paper containing little pieces of my brain that I will lose if it isn't written down.

Sometimes these actually get transferred to a file, or a list in my big notebook/calendar. And as I finish whatever the paper is about I get rid of it. Eventually.

But still. Far too many papers don't fit a magic category and so they sit around to remind me of whatever I need to remember.

Here are some of the papers within arm's reach as we speak:

--a note about the dress code at IGO in Thailand, since we plan to be there for a few weeks next summer

--an appointment on Thursday morning

--a note that Jenny's piano lessons will be on Tuesdays this year

--a paper telling me what to do if the computer keyboard goes all Arabic, a relic of Matt's college Arabic class using this computer

--a list of Jenny's current persona: Warrior Princess Bug Book

--Brittney M.'s email address so I can send her the list of Bible Memory Camp verses

--a request to put on the prayer chain

--a thank you note from Jenny to Letha R. for that cute pencil case

--a phone message Janane D. left for Jenny

--a thank you note from Jenny to Simone, for taking her to the state fair

--a page of notes for my September column

--a prayer request from my prayer sister at church

--a quote of the day

--information about a fiction class at Lane Community College

--the name of a movie on African cats that someone recommended for Steven

--a cute printout of lunch box notes that I hope I remember to actually use

--another quote of the day

--and another one

--a pesto recipe

--a schedule for me after school starts that will enable me to always be caught up with my life and have time to sew

--notes from conversations with people at the fair

--a reminder to tell Lorenda K. that I met a lady who listens to her cd and loves it

--a note to tell Ben that when he leads singing at church he needs to say "three hundred seventy four" and not "three hundred AND seventy four."

--a list of Sunday school kids who were absent on Sunday and need to get their prize next week

--two possible themes for a novel

--yet another prayer request

--the date for the Joyful Noise potluck

--information about a speech on the 19th

Like I said, that's just the papers within reach.

My idea of Heaven on earth: not having to keep track of anything or remember anything for a whole week.

One of those Quotes of the Day:
"I am not related to you!"
--Jenny, the almost-teenager, in her long skirt and flipflops, as we crossed the bridge into Harrisburg on a warm evening with the car windows open, and she reached over and cranked up the music to huge volumes and then slouched way down in her seat, giggling.

Mrs. Smucker Goes To The Fair

2011-08-21T21:52:00.000-07:00

Thursday was my annual Day At The Lane County Fair Oregon Authors' Table.

It was a grand mix of sheer boredom and being interviewed on KVAL, of watching overweight people shuffle by eating ice cream and of seeing the fascinating Frog again, of doing poorly on sales but richly on connecting with readers.

Always before, I parked in the field beside the fairgrounds, and old men on horses waved orange flags to tell me where to go.

This time, that lot was blocked off and I followed the traffic down meandering one-way streets, getting loster by the second, until I found a parking spot.

As I was unloading my stuff, a group of young women walked by. One had a tripod and one had a camera the size of a hav-a-hart skunk trap. I asked them if they know if it's ok to park there. They didn't know. Then one girl said to another, "Hey, maybe that's someone you could interview about parking."

She said she's from KVAL news and would I mind? I said no, if it doesn't take too long.

So she pinned a microphone to my shirt and hoisted the huge camera to her shoulder. She asked my name and had me spell it. "Where are you parked?" she asked me. Well, she had me there. "I don't know," I said. "I think I'm on Jefferson, and I'm just going to head out in that general direction to find the fair." I waved toward the northwest. She wondered if I thought something should be done about parking. I said I'd never had this problem before and if it only happens one or two days a year, there's no sense building a new parking lot.

And soon we were done. She got a shot of me walking off with a backpack and two rolling cases of books. Then one of them hit a crack in the sidewalk and the box flew off the rolling rack.

I don't think any of the footage ever made it on TV.*

Dan Armstrong the ex-mechanical-engineer-turned-fiction-author and I talked about his work to get the grass-seed-growing farmers to start growing more beans and grains. People in the Valley grow lots of fruits and vegetables, but actually only about 5% or less of the food we eat is grown here. He'd like to see that change and I have to say he makes a lot of sense. With the price of fuel, it seems like good insurance to have a good variety of food plants grown close by.

But if everyone switches to quinoa and fava beans, Paul will soon be out of business.

Sales were terrible compared to previous years but lots of people stopped by to say they read my column. The proportion of buyers to column-readers was 1 to 7.

One woman told me that my work is "so needed," that I show people how family is done, that people like her, with an abusive alcoholic mom who literally didn't speak to her for 14 years, want to have a sane, normal family life but don't know how. And I show them how and I give them hope and she thinks that's wonderful. Of course my first thought was, "You've got to be kidding." But when she described her situation I got what she meant. Sort of.

One lady came by with a t-shirt that said, "I am not fat. I'm hiding my fabric stash." I get that.

Another woman said, "My children have benefited from your writing. Some of your columns have stopped me from killing my kids."

Oooookaaaaay.

A young man named Jason was supposed to show up at 7 to sell his memoir but he couldn't make it. It turns out he has that same disease as Stephen Hawking has, and is just as crippled, and communicates by blinking once for yes and twice for no, and actually wrote a good memoir by blowing through a straw at a special computer screen. Imagine.

The famous Frog came for the last two hours. I've written about him before.

Frog smelled nicer than he ever has before at the Fair but he still has lots of bushy hair and his dirty joke books and his odd quirks.

But I have to say I like him. What you see is just what you get. And he isn't jealous if you make more money than he does, and he doesn't care if you wear Christopher and Banks or an old T-shirt, and he is kind and friendly.

Now the truth is he wouldn't be easy to live next door to, with his disdain for city law, and he also would neither judge nor care if I cheated on a final exam or my taxes or my husband.

But something about him always reminds me that there's a lot we Christians can learn from publicans and sinners.

I took a picture of Frog and me and sent it to Emily with the caption, "Me and my friend Frog."

Then at 9:00 I packed up and left, dreading that long walk back to the car in the dark. At the gate were two young men with bike pedicabs or whatever they are, with a little bench in back and a bike handlebars and tire in front. One offered me a ride to my car. Oh, how tempting. How much? Tips--whatever I want to give.

Ok, wonderful. I piled on my books and we set out, together finding our way back to the car. I figured he's a typical pot-smoking hyper-left-wing U of O student. We started talking. He came from a small farm in eastern Oregon and a family of six children. He was happy to live in Eugene because he could grow a garden in his back yard. Ok, I stood rebuked.

I gave him $5.

I still had to get groceries but first I stopped at Taco Bell for my first real food of the day. While there I got a text and photo from Emily. It said, "Me and my friend Frog."

It turns out Jenny had brought home her costume for the VBS program skit in which she was to be the prodigal son's dad.

I don't often laugh out loud in Taco Bell but I sure did then.

Quote of the Day:
"Yes!! You should write a Mennonite murder mystery!!"
--Shirley Tallman, the mystery writer. She and Dan Armstrong and Carola Dunn were trying to persuade me to broaden my repertoire.

*Actually, yes it did, a 3-second blip where I rather nervously say, "I've never had trouble parking before." (Here's the link. I'm at 00:25)

Jenny's Lemonade Stand

2011-08-18T08:37:00.000-07:00

Jenny's had a lemonade and pop stand over at the warehouse this summer. I posted some pictures of her and it on Facebook.

You can see them here if you wish.

Monster Cookies, the Recipe

2011-08-16T22:28:00.001-07:00

Someone asked for this, so apparently I didn't scare her off of ever making them.

MONSTER COOKIES

Mix: 1/2 lb. (2 sticks) butter
2 1/3 c. brown sugar
2 c. white sugar

Add: 2 1/2 cups creamy peanut butter (Jif or other good brand!)
6 eggs
1 1/2 t. vanilla

Mix well.
Add 1 1/2 t. light corn syrup
4 t. baking soda

Stir in 9 c. quick oats
1 1/2 c. M & M's
1 1/2 c. chocolate chips

(Edit: Refrigerate at least 2 hours)
Put them on a greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 for 12 minutes.

Note: no flour in this recipe. Feel free to add your variations/suggestions.

Monster Cookies and The Minister's Wife

2011-08-15T19:27:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I'd just like to Get it Right. Is that so much to ask, from God or me? Just to take on a task, work at it, finish, know I did a good job, go on to something else.

This week is our vacation Bible school, an annual event in which dozens of church and neighborhood kids descend on Brownsville Mennonite every evening for Bible lessons and songs and crafts and homemade cookies.

I was thinking I ought to teach this year, since they're always desperate for teachers. I mean, I'm the minister's wife and my youngest is 12, so surely I could manage. But when they announced the dates it turned out I had two previously scheduled things, book and speech related, that conflicted.

I felt good and guilty, especially when the superintendent personally called me up to ask if I'd teach, but I couldn't very well cancel the other things.

So, if I couldn't teach, maybe I could make supper for another mom who was teaching. Like Rita Baker. I called her up, oozing with righteousness and generosity. Oh, that was sweet of me, she said, but two other people were there ahead of me.

Bonnie called and asked me to put on the church hot line that they really need more cookies for snacks for all the children. So I sent the message on and decided that this, at least, was something I could do.

I would make cookies. Monster cookies. Which I have made many times in my life. And I'd have to make a double batch, since one batch doesn't last long here, and we needed some for us, too, charity beginning at home and hungry teenagers and all.

So I mixed up a double batch which makes a huge vish of dough, as we say in Dutch. I didn't have any trouble mixing in the dozen eggs but by the time I poured in 18 cups of oatmeal I needed a tractor and front-end loader.

I know I got all the amounts right. I double and triple checked.

So why why why did they turn out like this:
and this:

I stirred in the oatmeal better, tried this and that, fiddled and experimented. And got one disastrous pan after another.

Finally I got some help, which was very nice.

He stirred in a bunch of flour, and then at last the cookies looked like this:

Not perfect, but good enough.

Now while this was going on I was thinking a lot about our young friend Esta's latest post which it seems is going viral, judging by how many times I see it linked and referred to on Facebook and such. This is good.

You need to read the whole thing, but among other things she says,

The starting gun was shot a long time ago.

I didn’t know this was a competition. I didn’t know I was loosing until then.

My round angles didn’t fit in square holes, which, instead of showing me how silly the striving was, just made me feel like everyone else had a head start.

But round holes or square, we still race, don’t you see?

Even the old ones do it, this comparing...

She has a bubbly personality and we wish we could make people laugh like that, but hey, at least I don’t come across like a flirt.

She wears clothes like they are art, every movement grace, and we automatically analyze our outfit and decide she must be a show-off.

She travels and witnesses as easy as breathing and we feel like spiritual buffoons.

She talks during Sunday school, people tear up, and we spend the next weeks trying to be more “deep”.

We feel either proud, smug, frantic, insecure, or a nasty mix of all four.

We are not safe places.

I feed my hungry insecurities with your talents and you feed yours with mine.

No one ever wins.

But the more I wrestle to find what it is to truly be a woman, the more I hate the lies and what the lies make us do. And the more I see how many of us don’t stop until suddenly we are comparing our grandchildren and the whiteness of our dentures.

I’m pulling out of the race.

I’m pulling out because last week I actually saw what God kept pounding in me the last three months.

How it doesn’t matter.

How He perfectly places and designs and arranges our hearts to be who we are, and it is HIS doing. Our job—my job—as a woman is only to embrace it and finally move free.

That is all.

Free.

And all the passion can be turned outward and upward, instead of spent on protecting and embellishing and worrying about my identity.

I am not a hidden threat to you—you are not a hidden threat to me.

As I embrace who I am, I am left unencumbered to embrace who you are with passion and abandoned, joy, because you are not a threat, you are a gift.

We are free and only then do we create a safe place to sit and care for each other.

I realize I took her words out of context, kind of, but the reason I thought of them was because if you know me at all you know the messages scrolling across the screen in my brain while I was wrestling with those cookies:

"Really now. Monster cookies. Of all things. What kind of Mennonite mom/housewife/daughter of Sara Yoder/minister's wife cannot manage to make a batch of monster cookies??? And why does this always happen, when I'm trying to do a good deed and do my part for the cause and not look like a total slacker with VBS when everyone else is working their tails off, why does it always have to blow up in my face?"

My mother-in-law sometimes says, in her cheerful way, "Well, as Wilton used to say, 'You can't be good at everything!"

She also says, "Well, the Lord knows all about it!"

Both are true, of course, not that it helps much at the moment.

I had a fleeting thought that maybe the eggs had salmonella in them, and this was God's way of keeping the VBS kids from getting sick, kind of like every time I miss a flight I think, "Oh, I'll bet that flight is going to crash, and for the rest of my life I can give this amazing testimony of how God spared my life," but it never happens that way of course.

So. We now have three Tupperware containers full of delicious but twisted and clumped and flat monster cookies.

I have once again failed to do my part for the cause.

I don't plan to lose sleep over this or obsess over it after I'm done writing about it. But I wonder...is this about comparisons, deep down? About looking for affirmation in all the wrong places? About proving something I was never meant to prove? About embracing who I am and what I can and cannot do well, and finding joy in that, instead of slogging away at what I'm not good at, for all the wrong reasons?

Or am I making it too complicated, and the only problem was that the peanut butter was cheap and oily?

I welcome your input and if you have a story to top mine, I want to hear it.

Quote of the Day:
"Maybe we should call up the people in Paris and see if they can come up with a metric measurement we can call a VISH."
--Ben

Dibs n Dabs on a Sunday Evening

2011-08-14T19:59:00.000-07:00

One of the things I miss about having young children in the family is their observations about life and people that are so honest, so dead-on, and so unexpected.

Well, except for that time we were at Philip and Anna's wedding and little Matthew told a woman that she couldn't possibly be a grandma because she's too fat. I could have done without that one. I guess she was quite a ways plumper than both his grandmas.

Thankfully I still have Jenny who is young and at home and very observant. Today she said, "There's this guy that comes to my lemonade stand with 'Travis' and I don't know who he is, but he has a Mennonite accent."
Emily and me: A WHAT?
Jenny: You know, like, a Harrisburg Mennonite accent.
Emily and me: No we don't know. What do you mean?
Jenny: Well, like, he said he wants lemonade and I said, "Do you want pink or regular?" and he said, "I'll take regga-ler." That's how he said it. I said reg-u-lar and he said regga-ler.

I was laughing too hard to try to figure out who this person was.

But Jenny was spot-on with her observation and you know it.
--------
The other day my former student Sharilyn came by for tea. She brought her adorable little 3-year-old son with her. We talked about writing, adoption, our children, other people, and writing some more.

A former student who is now my sister-in-law once accused me of having Sharilyn as the "teacher's pet." Looking back, she was probably justified in this. I was very young and she was mature enough for her age that we were in some ways equals.

It's nice to relate to both these ladies now as equals without worrying about who is a pet and who isn't.
-------
Today we went to a gospel-music concert in the Brownsville Park. Music is nice but watching people is even nicer. It was a wonderful down-home mix of various Mennonite brands mixed with older ladies in generic white perms and homeschooled young people trying to be cool and gentlemen in baseball caps and little kids running around the bike paths.

One of the singing groups was the Todd Neuschwander family. Todd told the story of how he came to travel and play piano with the Gospel Echoes team at the improbable age of 15. Which took me back to when I was in the youth group and all of us who were trying to experience life beyond Grove City drove four hours north to hear the Gospel Echoes team and there was this young man named Todd playing piano.

When I saw and heard Todd playing piano and singing in that little church in Bemidji, Minnesota, I never dreamt I would someday be married to his second cousin.
-----
Todd is in Oregon because his dad just got married. For some reason people my age tend to look at young love with seriousness and sentimental admiration, and at old love with amusement. Why is that?

Maybe because we've been young but not old.

Today at the concert there was an older couple in front of us. Someone recently informed me that these two are emphatically not dating, they are just keeping each other company.

But then today I saw them leaning in to tell each other something during the concert and I thought, Hmmm, surely it isn't necessary to lean their shoulders THAT close to say something if they're just "keeping each other company." And then I remembered their ages and thought Oh wait, it probably is necessary after all, so they can hear each other.

See, we find old love merely amusing.
------
Today Paul preached to a grand total of 5 people.

We went down to Winston, two hours south, to help out the little Mennonite church there and for some reason almost everyone had plans other than going to church there.

But Jesus promised to be there even if only two or three are gathered, and He was.
_____
Quote of the Day:
Family member: Didn't "Bertha's" mom die recently?
Me: Yes, and her dad is "seeing somebody" already.
Emily the hysterical: SEEING somebody??!! Like, a GHOST??!!

The Scientific Experiment While Mom Was Gone

2011-08-11T21:19:00.000-07:00

This evening I sat at the kitchen counter having hot chocolate with Emily. I looked up and on the ceiling I saw this:

Hmmm. I said some words about this and got this response:

Quote of the Day:
"What's so weird about little orange flecks on the ceiling?"
--the culprit

I was gone all day. A Methodist church in Florence, out on the coast, had invited me a long time ago to come speak today. Paul and I had decided to make a two-day anniversary expedition out of it and I looked forward to this very much.

However. Harvest almost didn't happen, as you know by now, and then it was really late, so there was no way Paul could come to the coast with me. So I took his mom instead and we made a day of it, and while it didn't have the ambiance of a 27th anniversary getaway, it was still fun, and we had a good time catching up on all the MennoValley news and eating at Mo's and talking with friendly Methodist women.

It turns out that while I was gone, someone did a scientific experiment. First he froze a can of orange pop. When it felt good and solid, he decided to peel off the can and have a nice slushy orange treat.

So he stabbed it with a "sharp cutter thing."

This was not such a good idea, we are told.

The culprit and Emily did a lot of scrubbing and spraying and wiping, but after I came home I still kept finding funny little orange dots on the fridge, the bar, the wall, my notebook on the table, and probably lots of other places that I am sure to discover in time.

And then I saw them on the ceiling.

So this happened:
The culprit explained the scientific process of the experiment to his dad, ending with,

2nd Quote of the Day:
"But apparently carbon doesn't freeze very well, and so . . . [shrug] it exploded."

And somewhere in there he sighed and said,
3rd Quote of the Day:
"Life at the Smuckers, where every time a fly flaps a wing it has to go on the blog."

All I can say is, eat your heart out, Esta, my fine young friend who wants a whole houseful of this sort of son.

LFH: The Late Harvest

2011-08-07T16:18:00.000-07:00

Today's Letter from Harrisburg is about the harvest that finally arrived.

You can read it here.

Baling

2011-08-04T12:01:00.000-07:00

Baling straw has changed a lot since I was young.

I'm guessing the terminology hasn't changed in the Midwest since I was a kid, and hay is still baled alfalfa for animals to eat, and straw is still the byproduct of another crop, used primarily for bedding.

Here in Oregon, the two terms are used interchangeably, even though 99% of the baling industry is straw. "Valley Hay," for instance, is one of the big operations around here that bales the straw left over after the grass is harvested and ships it over to places like Japan.

Anyway. Back in my youth in Minnesota you would first take a tractor like our John Deere 720 and mower into the field and cut the alfalfa. The mower was like an oversized electric knife lying flat on the ground.

Then you pulled a rake behind a tractor and piled it all in nice windrows.

There were farmers who combined these steps with a machine that I forget the name of that had two rubber roller things that compressed the plants just enough that they dried better. My dad was not one for anything modern or efficient so we didn't have one.

Then you baled the hay. First the 720 or the Farmall M, then the baler, then the hay wagon. We all took our turn on either the tractor or the wagon. Driving the tractor was way more fun, of course, except for the time Fred found a garter snake in a hay bale and tossed it at Rebecca who was driving.

If you were the person on the wagon you watched as the baler went ca-chunk ca-chunk and a bale came out the chute toward you. You grabbed the twine and hauled the bale to the back of the wagon and put it where it belonged. You had to do each layer just right, two bales this way, two the other way, two this way again, and change them around with the next layer up.

It was hard work. I'm guessing each bale weighed about 40 pounds.

Being Beachy Amish Rebecca and I wore dresses for this task. I don't know why it never crossed our minds to wear the boys old jeans under our dresses or have Mom make us some denim leggings or something. Or maybe we prided ourselves in being tough. When the job was done we'd come in looking like our arms and legs had been attacked by an army of rabid cats.

When the wagon was full we would drive up to the hay shed and unload all these bales onto the elevator that would hoist them up to the top of the very large pile in there, and someone would stack them. Unloading the hay wagon was far easier than loading it, except for that one time when I was about 13 and there was a storm brewing, with thunder and lightning all around, and I was on top of the hay wagon, all exposed, and certain the next bolt of lightning was going to hit me, and I was having issues with my conscience just then and was certain I wasn't saved, and was sure I couldn't be until I had apologized to some unfortunate soul, I forget who or what for, but I certainly remember the fear, and the thunder roaring.

I didn't get hit by lightning except later I got hit by the lightning of God's grace which was very nice.

But yes, as I was saying.

Baling around here, in this era, is much different.

For one thing, it's done by crews of young men who show up for the summer from as far afield as Paraguay. They all seem to share a streak of recklessness, the type that would actually enjoy being on a hay wagon in a thunderstorm and, I've gotta say, a few of them act like they could use a slightly more sensitive conscience.

And the equipment is huge, and there's lots of it, and the job gets done in a very short time.

Last week Kenneth and Lisa harvested the ryegrass field north of our house.

Yesterday a fleet of monstrous tractors came roaring by our place pulling equipment that blocked the whole road. They turned into the ryegrass field and got to work.

Three huge rakes piled the straw into windrows. Three huge balers came behind and coughed out bales that looked about 25 times as big as the bales I used to hoist on the hay wagon.

They flew around that field and in a short time they were done and roaring off to eat up another field.

Next came that glorified forklift thing that picks up the bales, and a series of huge semi trucks with two long trailers, or maybe it was just one that came over and over. It would turn right on Powerline pulling a load that looked the size of a couple of houses.

And then they were done.

As nearly as I could tell, not one person had touched a stalk of actual straw. And I'm sure none of them got a single scratch.

And judging by the way they drove and how much fun they were having, none of them were having a crisis of conscience either.

And there's no danger of a thunderstorm in these parts.

Yes, baling is very different from what it used to be.

Quote of the Day:
"Ummm, I gotta go. I just ran over a bush."
--Steven, on his cell phone, to his friend Trent. Or so I was told, about third hand. Steven has since made some emphatic promises to his parents regarding cell phone usage.

Who I Want To Be Like

2011-07-31T22:36:00.000-07:00

When I grow up I want to be like Josie and Andrew and Dema.

Josie is this lady from the East somewhere, maybe Delaware, and she used to be married to a Baker from this area, until he died of cancer many years ago.

Later she remarried and now she comes to Oregon I'm guessing twice a year.

We have no past or family connections but she is always smiling and she always greets me like she is just so delighted to see me again. You know she does that to everyone but she makes me feel like she's happier to see me than her own relatives, and it's our secret.

I'm easily fooled like that.

Yesterday I heard that Josie was in the hospital with an infection that was turning to sepsis, but she was up and walking around, which the doctor said was impossible or miraculous or something. Josie told him that all her friends were praying for her. The doctor said that's the only possible explanation.

I hope she'll be ok. I want to see her again.

Andrew and Dema are an older couple whom I see several times a year when our church has some meeting or activity with theirs. They come from Amish stock so we always chat in Dutch. The best way to describe them is Christ-like. Andrew often says, "God bless you," in German and it feels weighted, a little like it must have felt for the children to have Jesus lay his hands on them and bless them.

Andrew and Dema are both tiny people but they radiate that same warmth Josie has, like they are just delighted with you and seeing you again, and this is their lucky day, getting to see you! And oh, pooh on the aches and troubles of old age, they want to talk about the important stuff, particularly how you are doing.

I found out today that they lost their oldest son at age 20 in an airplane crash in 1975.

I want to be someone who can move beyond personal loss and get old and just radiate this joy in living and this interest in others.

Quote of the Day:
"You set such high standards! I don't think anyone else's mom makes them pick blueberries before they can go to Dollar Tree!"
--Jenny

Another Mystery to Solve

2011-07-27T22:05:00.000-07:00

This is for all the ladies who were at the women's retreat at Paden, Oklahoma, in April.

I had some of Emily's books along, but not enough, so a few people paid for a book and wrote their addresses down for me.

After I came home, Emily was filling out the orders and was down to the last order when she ran out of books. So she ordered some more books, and by the time they came, she had lost that last address. She thought she had put it in the pocket of her backpack but it's not there any more.

All she can remember about it is that the handwriting was hard to read.

If you were there, would you mind asking around to see if we can locate this person and get her book to her.

Thanks.

Quote of the Day:
"It WAS his fault! He did NOT have to listen to me!"
--a lovely young guest in our home the last few days. I overheard this from the next room. I think she was talking about her brother.

The Odd Harvest

2011-07-22T23:05:00.000-07:00

This is the harvest that everyone will tell their grandchildren about.

Normally, somewhere in June it stops raining. The farmers start cutting toward the end of June. The grass dries in the windrows. The combines roll in sometime between June 28 and July 4. Paul's has the warehouse running 24 hours a day.

Everyone works like crazy and is done combining by the last week in July or maybe a little into August.

Not this year.

June consisted of rain and clouds and chill and damp, interspersed with just enough nice weather to get our hopes up.

Finally, sporadically, people got their fields cut. A lucky field here and there got combined.

But mostly, all this long way into July the grass has been sitting there in windrows, waiting waiting waiting, for the crucial warm, sunny, nice weather that July always brings.

Except this year July just won't bring. It dries for a few days, then rains for a day, dries for one or two more, then more rain.

The danger is that if it's too wet, too long, the seed will sprout in the rows and be worthless.

We still keep looking at the thermometer every day, willing it to please get up to 70--or please pretty please, 75, or will we actually be so fortunate to hit 80!? Here's a calendar with the last month's high temperatures.

So now it's the 22nd of July. Paul has three able-bodied young men all raring to go make some money sacking seed, but there's no place to rare to and no seed coming in. So today they all weeded my garden, just to have some work to do.

So far this year 400,000 pounds has come in. Normally by this time it would be 3 to 5 million pounds.

Meanwhile the rest of the country has been baking in hideous heat. Mom and Dad in Minnesota are doing their best to cope but it wipes them out. In Kansas they're meeting to pray for rain. In Northern Ontario, where we used to live, the northern reserves are threatened by forest fires and they are evacuating the most vulnerable people.

As you can see on that Accuweather calendar, it looks like the lumbering weather ship in Oregon is finally turning. To the very great relief of the farmers.

I hope the ship turns in other places as well.

Quotes of the Day:
"If the farmers lose their crops, I wonder if they're gonna sue God."
--Emily

Tonight we ate supper outside.
Paul: [knocks Jazz off his lap with the back of his hand] If I brush the cat off my lap, is that like what's-his-name kicking the cat toward the fire?"
Me: Ha ha, no.
Me: (thinks) AAAHH, he actually read and somewhat paid attention to that story I wrote!!