Pieces of Picasso

Four years in Dallas and we FINALLY visited The Nasher Sculpture Center in downtown Dallas wherein I saw my first Picasso, face-to-face. I confess I was never a fan of the modern master until I stood three feet away from his genius. I was mesmerized and kept returning over and over to the two paintings displayed in the right wing. The Nasher is most famous for its sculpture collection and outdoor garden and I'll get to that in another post. For now I am still absorbing the colors and lines I saw in Picasso. With art, as with people, I become so engrossed in the immediate topic that I forget names so I couldn't tell you the title of the two paintings. But my favorite was the flower on the table. I walked around so happy that day because I saw that painting. (All the works combined probably produced that effect, but the colors of Picasso, even now, make me happy.) For more pictures of Picasso, Rodin, Matisse, and more, click on my flicker album next door.

We are done! .......... Not.

"One out of four marriages do not survive law school." So said the Dean of Dedman School of Law to my husband's first year class at Southern Methodist University four years ago. (He took the four year night school route.) Brad never told me that until a few months ago when a group of guys went out for a beer. All of them, except his Chinese buddies, had divorced while in law school. Sobering.

Three days ago Brad graduated cum laude. I've never been so proud of someone. Fifteen years ago he couldn't speak a word of English. The first person in his family to go to college. The first person in his county to leave the province for college. Now he has a Master's in education (he taught four years of high school English while working on that) and a prestigious and hard-earned law degree - oh and two children born in the middle of it all.

We celebrated with family and friends who have all been a tremendous support during the past four years. We raised a glass of champagne and toasted each other. We took pictures of Brad in his magnificent robe and watched the hooding ceremony. It is over. We are done.

Last night Brad came home lugging a box. "You won't be seeing much of me this summer," he said. The he pulled out ten of the fattest books I've ever seen. "I have to memorize these for the bar exam in two months," he said.

My old pappy used to say that his old pappy used to say: It ain't over til the fat lady sings.

She ruled the house with an Okie twang

I had four months to write the obituary but I held my breath anyway. Every member of our family had their talents and tasks and could do them far better than I could write an obit. Debbie and Fran cooked the meals; Bill administrated; Joanie shopped; Brad wrote the eulogy; Melisa fixed the plumbing; others kept the kids occupied; I stared at the computer.

For one whole Saturday, we all shared one house and one bed - the bed my stepmother died on. Twenty-five family members cooked and ate and joked and sat at her bedside. She rallied for us and laughed and ate her favorite cake. We partied and Marie held court until we all bedded down on couches and pallets. On Sunday she transitioned into a coma and on Monday hospice took over.

I stared at the computer or played sudoku, finally jotting down memories of first impressions until the muse flowed and the obit was complete. She died on Wednesday and the minister wanted anecdotal information so I sent him the obituary I had intended for a small Oklahoma town newspaper near the Texas panhandle.

Brad spoke the eulogy and Bill thanked thanked the visitors. The Methodist minister led us in prayer and then read the obit. I told him he could. But he didn't stop at the list of descendants she'd left behind and my face flushed as I realized he was also reading from my stream-of-consciousness notes which I'd forgotten to delete from the final draft. Guess which part people liked the most.

In memory of Marie, here is the obit, including the notes, excepting the personal information. If you knew her or my dad, go here to post a note.


Peggy Marie was born the second child to Ben and Lennie B. in Vinson, Oklahoma, August 5, 19--. She grew up in Hollis, OK with her two brothers, Edwin and Ben A. B.. Marie loved to tell stories to her children and grandchildren of working at the soda fountain in her father’s pharmacy. She enjoyed laughter and children and family and pulling pranks. Every family member has a tale about the rubber fried egg she’d serve for breakfast; or the holes she cut in her dress so she didn’t have to wear it; or the dead chicken she would serve for dinner. She ruled her home with laughter and an Okie twang.

Marie, as she was known to her family, married Alan David Miedrich on June 4, 19--, at the base chapel in K. I. Sawyer AFB, Michigan. Their union blended two families into one loving unit. She followed Alan, an Air Force pilot and career officer across the country in sixteen moves and was a master at making a house into a home. She earned her realtor license in three states and was a sought after interior designer and decorator. Every living space had to be both beautiful and child-friendly.

Marie’s Christian faith was the bedrock of both her life and her death. Her special talent was encouragement. After a long and debilitating illness, she continued to speak kind and encouraging words to comfort her family. Marie specifically wanted to thank her parents, her brothers and her husband Alan for contributing to a blessed life. When she died on March 4, 2009, she passed peacefully in her home surrounded by all her family, just as she had wanted.

NOTES:
I first met Marie when I was ten, I think. We drove from South Carolina to Michigan in one of those large Chevys that hold a lot of kids in the back seat. There were three of us kids and she had to keep us entertained and introduce herself all at the same time. She taught us how to draw cartoon monkeys and goofy faces. She told us stories about her disobedient childhood: how she cut holes in her dress and plucked out all her eyelashes. When Daddy got impatient, she uttered a gentle, “Al” that had this magical effect on him.

Once home in that bordertown airbase, her arguments with Daddy always landed him in hot water. She tickled him until he cried uncle. Her bathroom towels were bright pink. Her hair was a foot tall. And she ruled the house with an Okie twang.

Mealtimes were a treat: you never knew when you’d be served the fried bacon and rubber egg or told you were having dead chicken for dinner. But boy could she cook. Wilted lettuce, black-eyed peas, fried okra, chicken and dumplings, pepper jelly, chow-chow, and the best Thanksgiving dinner you’ll ever eat.

What Nai Nai Left

The day before Nai Nai left America, she brought to me a handful of seventeen pennies and three dimes, many of them corroded or flattened and crushed around the edges.

"You found these on your creekwalks," I exclaimed.

She laughed and waved her hand. "They are no use to me," she said.

My mother-in-law has a keen eye. Once she found a dollar in the creek and once more in the parking lot at Costco. And once, when she saw the girls playing with a million dollar note of play money, she scolded them and brought the paper to me. She would walk the creek in the afternoons when the winter sun warmed her through the barren trees. Noticing my excitement over a rusty hinge she found on one walk, she began to bring me bits of metal and things she noticed in the dirt. The girls taught her to look for smooth and colorful rocks and embedded fossils. I don't know that she understood why these are important to us but she helped us look.

On one creekwalk, we met a grandmother from Korea. I got lost in translation when the grandmother tried to explain where she was from. My mother-in-law didn't know where Korea is. In Nai Nai's mind there exists China - the homeland, Japan - the old enemy, and America - the dreamland.

Most mornings she spent indoors by the window, reading Chinese poetry or tracts she got from church. I love this image of her most of all. She worked all her life in the fields and had only a second grade education. In our home she could be comfortable and spend her days in leisure.

"She wants to go home," Brad said.

Why?

She says she is bored and has nothing to do.

Sometimes she would mistake my limited Chinese language for fluency and begin to tell me stories of her life back home. I really wanted to hear her stories, but she only did this when my husband wasn't home. At first I tried calling him at work for a translation but that couldn't last long. Then I tried using a Chinese dictionary, but her dialect wasn't in the dictionary. I was stuck with listening for one or two words I could interpret and guessing at her subject. If I said I didn't understand, she talked louder and louder. Then I would nod and pretend to understand to make her feel better. Eventually I learned enough Chinese to become dangerous and we began to miscommunicate. She would get offended by what I said. Finally I began to ignore her attempts at conversation to prevent further disagreements.

"I never want to come back again," she said, the day before she left.

Why?

I am always too confused.

That day, she forgot my husband took the girls with him on an errand. She searched the creek and walked the grounds for two hours, vainly calling out for them. She thought they were lost.

In her suitcase she packed the new shoes and clothes we gave her, the photos from her stay, the jewelry she had asked for to "give her face" with her relatives. She asked her son if she could take some pebbles she found, but he said that the suitcase would be too heavy. She left them in a styrofoam cup on the bookshelf next to her little stack of Chinese books.

On Poetic Justice

"Li Po Chanting a Poem",
ink on paper, by Liang K'ai (13th century)

I glanced up as the plump, middle-aged, Chinese woman rounded the corner and strode through the church coffee bar, passing my husband and daughters, until she stood square in front of my chair holding a stapled essay. My husband looked perplexed. Clearly I had a sign on my forehead visible only to Chinese visitors who wish to have a blonde grammarian check their writing. I'd never met this woman and still don't know who she is for, without an introduction, she shoved the essay titled "The Consequences of Drunk Driving" in my lap and asked me to check the verbs. Her English was halting but with complete confidence that I could help her.

Three double-spaced pages detailed the devastating physical and emotional trauma caused by driving (and getting arrested) while drunk. Prison, guilt, loss of life, financial ruin, she named them all. The essay was chock full of cold facts and figures, but with few grammatical errors. Toward the end, the author referred to a previous blog post that explained details not relevant to her essay.

"Did you write this essay," I asked.

"Oh, yes," she said. "I write this essay."

"Can you tell me about this blog post?"

"What is blog post?"

"Well, I see nothing seriously wrong with this essay except you must be sure to credit all of your sources."

"I write this myself."

"I understand. You did a good job but if you do not tell every place where you found information, your teacher will give you a bad grade."

She nodded and seemed pleased there were no errors. She thanked me and she left. Why try to reinvent the wheel? And certainly, passing the class is far more important than losing face by exposing poor writing skills in a foreign language. Besides, the teacher wants information, not what I think. You see, in her mind, cobbling together a few sentences from esteemed sources constitutes good writing. The Eastern mindset venerates expert opinion and writing.

In Wuhan, China where I lived for three years, I often visited a site near the Number 1 Bridge over the Yangtze River. Built in 223 A.D., the Yellow Crane Tower has been destroyed and rebuilt several times, yet is one of the central landmarks and tourist spots in the city. With a 360 degree hilltop view of the tri-cities below, over the centuries, it has also captured the imagination of scores of poets. The most famous of the poems tells the lore of a man who, while visiting the tower, was carried away to the celestial city by a crane. Written by a renowned poet of the Tang Dynasty, it is considered one of Cui Hao's best poems.

But what captured my imagination during one visit with a translator, was that there was another, equally famous poet during the Tang dynasty who visited the Yellow Crane Tower and read Cui Hao's poem written on the tower wall. Struck by the greatness of the poem, Li Bai (Li Po) vowed he could do no better and would never write again. I was floored until I heard this sentiment repeated again and again during those three years: once greatness is achieved, there is no use going down that road again.

Li Bai does (thankfully) write again and, ironically, in an ensuing series of poems reminiscent of Salieri's frustration with Mozart, his obsessession over that poem on the wall results in some of his most enduring works.

Here is a translation of the poem that inspired so much.

The Yellow Crane Tower
Cui Hào 704-754
The ancient one
flew off on his yellow crane,
Now this place is empty
only Yellow Crane Tower remains.
The Yellow Crane
once gone never returns,
White clouds for a thousand years
empty and remote.
Boats and Hanyang trees
reflect in clear water,
Lush vegetation thrives
on Parrot Shoal.
At dusk I ask for news of home,
These mist shrouded waters
heavy on my heart.

Translator: Dongbo 東波

People who live in glass houses...

... apparently have very large carbon footprints. I smugly thought I was doing pretty good at conservation since I "don't get out much." Yet it appears my footprint is embarrassingly larger than the average consumer in this country. Not sure how except that if I get rid of our Mazda van, I could cut that figure in half. So what's the rest of the country doing that I'm not? Not sure, but at least the calculator gives ways to offset my greedy consumption (Really, I thought I was pretty conservative!!)

I've added a link in my bar so you can calculate your own footprint. Please don't tell me your number since it will only depress me further. Instead, make a resolution to offset some of your own bloat and save some dragonflies and butterflies for the future.

By the way, we found this fossilized print in the creek behind behind our home.

...shouldn't throw stones

"My mother thinks you are planning to build a house with all those rusty things you collect on your walks." There was a hint of a smile in Brad's eyes as he put his hands on my shoulders and I dissolved into laughter. It is hard enough for my husband to understand my love of rusty things. My children can barely grasp what I envision as art. But my mother-in-law. Well, she just thinks I am very thrifty. In her world of "never-enough", found trash is a great way of recycling - for money or for building a home.


In Nai Nai's defense, she comes from rural China which is tantamount to taking Laura Ingalls Wilder out of Kansas and plopping her in front of a computer. In rural China, hi-tech means having a phone line that runs to the village and scarcity is a way of life. The dishwasher, microwave, fridge, and stove aren't luxuries to her, they are alien. I'm just not sure why she thinks I would want to build a house with my found pieces, though I imagine all those rusty bits of re-bar, bolts, wire, and other thingies might surely be useful in constructing a new home. The thing is, how long would it take me to find enough materials? And what does she envision it would look like? Now there is some artful food for thought.

Year of the Ox

Chinese Dolls

It is New Year's Day for over one quarter of the world's population. My mother-in-law just couldn't understand why the girls went to school and her son had to work. There should have been fireworks and food and family from all over China. But this is America. Though we had fish last night and a feast with friends from church the night before, I know she misses the two weeks of festivities and friends. She'll want to burn paper money to honor her deceased mother, give red packets of money to her oldest granddaughter, eat vegetables from her garden, hope for a good planting season.

She is out of her element here in our home and she is not used to sitting indoors. I show her pictures of when I visited her home for Chinese New Year (ten years ago) and wonder if it will only make her sigh more deeply.

During the feast with friends we met a seventy-nine year old woman visiting from China. Her father was a Chinese minister before the revolution yet she went to Nanjing University in the early fifties. I asked her how she was able to survive the red guards during the sixties and her eyes welled up. It was too painful to discuss, she said in halting English. Her mother was a westerner from California, she said, as she hugged me and asked for my address. I hope she writes to me in this year of the ox.

Frozen out of Time

If you haven't noticed, our family is just a little gaga about rocks. The six and seven-year old girls think dirt and pebbles trump divas of pop so when we surprised them with a visit to an auction house in downtown Dallas for a peek at museum quality bones and gems for sale, they were ecstatic. We didn't make the dinosaur bone give-away (though they were promised one would come in the mail) but we got a whole month's worth of eye-candy in one hour. On the first floor were crystals, ores, and gemstones worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Many of them were found in China, including the stunning silver formation called "The Dragon". Many were found on farms in the corn-belt or in the mountains of Utah. We couldn't stop staring and drooling but finally left as the crush of grade-schoolers standing in line for the giveaway began to press in. But several floors above was where the real treasures were kept.


Prehistoric fossils lined the walls and floors. Trilobites swarmed encrusted in silt. A fish nibbled on a tiny dinosaur.
Mastadon hair nestled near an aborted dinosaur egg. Psychodelic images, formed through aeons of pressure and mass, were now table-tops and wall-art. But oh, didn't I covet them for my home decor. There is no art more sublime than what God creates and then frames, frozen out of time.

What if...

The eyes clenched it. Peering up from the grainy Facebook photo of a young college student were my father's eyes. He had my last name, so rare, that a google search only turns up what I've posted on the web and a few odds and ends posts from family members or the cemetery plots of deceased grandparents.

I sent the guy a note and he added me to his list of friends: college girlfriends, drinking buddies, classmates, and me. I listed the names of his paternal ancestors and asked if they were his dad and his grandfather. Stunned, he wrote back, "Yeah, how'd you know??"


A long time ago my grandfather, groomed to be a priest, instead married your great-grandmother and if they'd stayed together, as good catholics should, I wouldn't be here, my children wouldn't be here, my entire family would still be dust.

George had two sons in Pennsylvania and neither knew the other existed until one day, on a baseball field, someone yelled out their last name and both boys yelled back, "What?" They never saw one another again, though years later my dad tried to make contact. And so we knew how the generations grew.

George was a drinking man of German stock. During the war he dropped a vowel in his name to avoid nasty associations with Hitler's Germany. He worked primarily in the tobacco industry and finished his career as a foreman for the Tampa Bay cigar factory. Retiring to a swampy, cypress-shrouded acre in Land-O-Lakes, he and Lois fished for Bass, killed water moccasins, and sat on the picnic table every evening with a six-pack of Budweiser.

I spent the summer of my senior year helping them take care of their one daughter, a mentally retarded adult, as they prepared for the inevitable. George and Lois died within one month of each other - one from bone cancer, the other from lung cancer.

I was at my grandfather's side minutes before he died when he confused me with one of his sisters. And I responded as though I was. Excommunicated from the church for his divorce, and told by the Baptists on his doorstep that Catholics were evil, he eschewed religion. When he learned he was dying of cancer, he gave me his rosary. On his death-bed, I gave it back.

My father had no sons and when he dies, this line of Miedrichs will desist. I look again at the eyes in that grainy photo. The future is now yours.

Eulogy for a Fish

There's not much you can say about a fish. But T-Maxx was our first pet and when I told the girls he had died, Bethany quietly said, "Mom, we were so happy the day we brought him home." True. We all had pet lust so bad last summer that we would go and visit the SPCA and the local pet stores just to hold the animals. We looked at turtles, rabbits, snakes, and birds yet in the end we agreed a fish was best. We bought a vivid red beta.

Theodore Maxwell, or T-Maxx to his family, loved listening to music. He swam in circles in his little round bowl on the bookshelf in the bedroom. Hannah pressed her nose against the glass and He looked her in the eye and flared his fin but he didn't swim away. He also loved the color yellow. The fact that his food came in a bright yellow box only increased his excitement at mealtime.

Pillow, the calico cat, came to live with us a month later and they bonded quickly - a little too quickly. So I changed the wide-mouth bowl to a tall narrow mouthed vase so she wouldn't wash her paws and scare T-Maxx. But he was always a gracious host and allowed the cat to hug him through the glass.




Nai Nai came to visit us in September and she wanted to know why T-Maxx wasn't growing and when he got big enough, would we feed him to the cat? Perhaps she fed him on the sly. Perhaps that is why the water fouled so quickly every week.

T-Maxx got a fungus. He rested on the bottom of the vase and wouldn't eat. I misdiagnosed his symptoms for the Ich and waited too long to treat his illness. He was a patient fish and not easily flustered. He minded his business, but got along well with the rest of the family. When I took him out of the water for his burial, Pillow seemed distressed. She looked for the bowl and nudged my elbow.

The girls have given him a Christian burial. They used masking tape to form a cross with two sticks. They were reverent and solemn.

My husband has forbidden me to get another. Perhaps he doesn't want the trauma of bonding with another fish so quickly after this one passed. Perhaps he thinks I'm silly to like a fish.

Galveston, Oh Galveston

The old year finished in the perfect place - a place in recovery, buffeted by calamity, yet hopeful. Galveston is a favorite retreat of ours, anchored by old friends from Houston. We mourned to see the wreckage of so many homes, the upending of so many boats; we rejoiced that our friends' home survived, though bruised. On the first day of the new year, we walked along the sea wall and I began collecting rusted rebar, flic-flac, and such things that no one else would want: pieces of our memories left on the jetty.





The kids joined in, filled their hands with fishing line and other bits, and a curious Russian stopped us with his thick accent and inquiries. "Why do you do this thing?" he said, standing on the seawall in front of our car. "I make things," I said, doing such injustice to all the times we'd spent there building sandcastles, watching dolphins, catching crabs and fist-sized dragonflies, while all around us the wounds from hurricane Ike lay exposed and in decay. Why do I do this? My Chinese mother-in-law struggles to understand why I pick up rusted trash on our walks at home but give away useful clothes and shoes. Why do I find such beauty in rust, and peeling paint, and heaps of discarded metal? Why does Wayne like cardboard and Allison like broken dolls? Why do my children love rocks and dirt?

Back at the house on Tiki Island, the other guests, a Chinese family attending seminary in St Louis, turns soft floury dough into thin discs for dumplings. They are from Beijing, where the people love to laugh and talk and the conversation is spirited and loud. I settle in the warmth of these friends new and old. Outside, the balmy breeze echoes distant sounds of reconstruction and a new year is born.





What the end of the jetty used to look like (03/07)

Oops we jumped the tracks

That slow train to Christmas turned into the Polar Express, got out of control and derailed. I scheduled minor surgery that turned into ten stitches and then my stepmother went into hospital (she's still there.) Since I work on Sunday nights, the candle and liturgy fell to the wayside and the notes in the advent house kind of, well, stopped. And even though we've managed to do a Christmas "event" every day, the girls are still wailing for the silly rhymes. In between school parties, dinner parties, and watching the Nutcracker Ballet (on television), for posterity, here is more evidence that we salvaged every day with Christmas spirit:

Nai Nai's first Christmas


bead ornaments for the teachers


cookies and chocolate


fuzzy snowman


nutcracker prince


glittery stockings


happy chilluns

The slow train to Christmas

Last night Brad made homemade noodles - from scratch - from flour and water and a rolling pin. This morning he made Wuhan morning Bread: a fried flat bread made with sausage and green onion. I think I smell a new tradition in the making! I prefer the slow approach to Christmas. So.
Today we bought the tree. Tomorrow we decorate - if Pillow doesn't interfere.

FYI

In case you forgot, I alternate posts between my two blogs. Check out Paper Trails.......

December 5, 1990. There was a time when I wouldn't "start Christmas" until after the fifth; it was a day of mourning. Today it is a day of remembrance. The girls got to pull out all the Christmas animals I've collected over the years - starting with Brittany's Christmas Monkey. Each year, a treasured but worn out "family member" is added. They bring back such sweet memories.

Bear Village

The Bears and all their friends finally got to see the light of day though it was well past the girls' bedtime before they put the finishing touches on the village trees. Pillow was enthralled and deep into the night performed her own mischief on the village. So we'll get to do it again tonight... and the next night... and the next....

Cows, corn, and cocoa

Maria invited the girls over for a play-date today. Her daughters are in the same classes as mine. We discovered this several weeks ago at "art night" and then learned we shared the same alma mater - University of Georgia. So over cookies and cocoa, we entered that first, awkward stage of a friendship: Who are you and where do you come from? Upstairs, our daughters squealed and tumbled, chased and hid.

Maria is from Bolivia. She arrived in America on a scholarship to a small midwestern women's college then, again on scholarship, got her Master's at Mizzou. She sought her PhD in Animal Nutrition Science at UGA but never finished. She specialized in Bovines because they smell less than other farm animals. She laughed that she was so used to lab work when her first child was born, she kept the baby on a strict schedule and measured out all the nutrients.

I visited Columbia, Missouri last summer and met a professor of corn sciences. Who knew so much could be distilled from the study of corn - or cows? It's a far trot from my major "Ancient Studies." I wanted to be a biblical archaeologist and so I studied things like Aramaic and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

People are as unique as snowflakes and there is hope in new friendships.

Hope Through a Window

Mittens, snowman, tree and bow; On the window they will go!

We may not have snow, but we can still see Frosty through the window pane. Windows are a great way to share happiness.

Advent One: Week of Hope

It is still November. Yet traditionally (unless you are German Lutheran) Advent begins on the Fourth Sunday out from Christmas. And the candles are violet (or blue if you're Swedish; red if you're Russian Orthodox.) And I chose a white fifth candle for Christmas eve. Once a season of fasting and penitence until the third Sunday (pink candle) of Joy, for our family it had been reduced to paper calendars with chocolate stuffed inside.

I'm kind of shooting from the hip on this. I have a little booklet with child-sized devotions and boxes and boxes of ideas, traditions, and hopes for each Christmas season. Yet I don't come from a liturgical background so I've cobbled together some research to keep us focused. The Sundays are the candle lighting days; the days we prepare for the week to come. The weekdays will focus on activities and traditions as we prepare for the King's birthday.

So tonight, as I stumbled through an explanation of the candles (and I forgot to mention the circle of green), my six year old Bethany leaned over and whispered in my ear, "Mom, I thought this was supposed to be fun." Be thankful we're not fasting, I thought as I wondered how to explain Hope, the first lighted candle. What does a child know of the world's need for Hope?

Outside, the wind blew hard, divesting all the trees of last year's leaves. I can see the blue sky now that the branches are naked, like my soul. How do I explain what I do not clearly understand? We will struggle this week to understand Hope: how to have it, how to give it. Journey with us.

Eat green bean casserole - not turkey!

Each year the kinder kids go on a turkey strike. Two years ago, Hannah wore the feathered basket. This year it was (embarrassed) Bethany's turn to dress up as a gobbler and demand more humane treatment. They sang the turkey tango and marched across the stage in their first public protest.

And no wonder. There's something odd about Woodstock sharing turkey with Snoopy as Charlie Brown, et al. drive off to Grandmother's condominium. I mean, it borders on cannibalism. But Schultz redeemed himself with an unbelievably accurate portrayal of the first Thanksgiving in a rarely seen cartoon that ABC broadcast this year. Imagine a journey to a new land in which half your party dies. Of the 50 who remain, one third are children and only five are women. That first harsh New England winter only five people at a time are well enough to construct a common house that houses the sick and dying.

In the dead of winter there are only five kernels of corn to eat per person, per day. In the spring of that year when an Indian arrives speaking English and promises to introduce you to another native who speaks even better English AND Spanish, you probably faint in disbelief. Together, Samoset and Squanto (with an amazing story of his own) teach the newcomers how to survive. It results in the longest standing American treaty ever made with native Americans (sadly, less than one hundred years.) We all need one another more than we know.



Starting November 30, the first day of the Advent season, I will be posting our daily approach to Christmas. Laughable, since I only posted two or three times in the last year. I'll be using both my blogs interchangeably (see my profile above) as we count down to my favorite day of the year. Until then, Happy Thanksgiving, and remember not to bite the hand that feeds you.

Time warp thingys

Sarayu. If you've read "The Shack" then you understand a little more about colors and fractals and wind. Lodged within the story line of one man's weekend with God, was this undulating, pulsating, windblown energy that moves the clouds and gives birth to creativity. A whisper is all it takes to blast away vestiges of religion - dry and dead - off the branches of my life.

The book, though not a literary gem, is a gift of insight and wisdom. It is less an allegory than Pilgrim's Progress (a case made by Eugene Peterson), and seems to be scaring away a lot of Christians. This makes it more appealing, I think, and so I read it with one eyebrow raised. And each time I thought I could predict the plot, I failed. Wonderfully failed.

These clouds, sliced and cut open by troughs of air that tumbled and flipped the temperature, blew in on the leading edge of a cold front while I was reading the book. Who has seen the wind?

All Saints Day

Funny thing, Hallowe'en. Like Mardi Gras, something in humans craves excess prior to sobriety and, for the life of me, I don't understand our infatuation with the macabre. My Chinese mother-in-law noticed the "dead zone" decorations erupting from manicured lawns a few weeks back as we drove the girls to school each morning. Frankenstein hands reached from the grass; spider webs hung like mosses from the lagustrum; a guillotine hung gleaming over a straw-stuffed old man.

"It's like the Day of the Dead," my husband told her. She doesn't speak English and my limited Chinese could never explain what Hallowe'en is to Americans. I'm not sure I can explain it in English.

"But we don't worship our ancestors," I said to him.

"It's all she understands," he said.

There was a time I eschewed all forms of observing Hallowe'en. A day when we pretend to be demons and ghosts? And laugh when our children dress up like our worst nightmares? For years I ignored it or took my daughters to "Fall Festivals" where they dressed like zoo animals and bible characters.

But then I moved to Dallas and the girls grew older. First they were SMU cheerleaders, then Hannah Montana rock stars. Last night Hannah was the Olympic Medalist, Shawn Johnson, and Bethany was a veterinarian. They were oh, so cute and innocent. The costumes are always their ideas. For the first time, though, we actually trolled the neighborhood "dead zones." My mother-in-law came with us. House hopping from pumpkin bedecked walkways to spider-webbed porches, they filled their pastel colored Easter baskets with Hallowe'en candy.

The last glow of the sunset faded into dusk and up ahead the girls could see smoke and shadows. For the first time, they were scared. We all approached cautiously, gingerly stepping around a maimed Alice-in-Wonderland doll to where a fortune-teller beckoned the girls to get candy - if only they would walk through the archway nailed with bloody baby heads and doll parts.

Bethany got a little teary and backed into the street, but Hannah and another young girl boldly went for the candy. "Alice" quietly got up and did a macabre dance into the yard. A figure silently moved toward the curb and in the darkness, other figures began to rise and walk slowly forward: a court jester, a disemboweled King Kong, a tall corpse. The girls screamed and I laughed at the creativity and passion this family had generated to pay homage to the dead, secretly hoping that nightmares wouldn't torment this night's sleep. There are things about death I still cannot understand.

Last year's pumpkins have mildewed away; this year's leaves still fall.

The texture of my life

My hiatus has not been deliberately imposed. Rather, I found myself full to gagging on technology and my (limited) virtual world. I also became tired of words, and in the ensuing months of my withdrawal gravitated toward color, texture, glossy pictures, paints, paper, and ephemera that excited my tactile senses. I started a sister blog called Paper Trails, but still couldn't bring myself to post much there, either. I stopped visiting other blogs. It's an odd time in which I neither feel depressed nor passionate; yet I am waiting and watching, observing and finding.

Yesterday I took a walk with the girls after a spring rain. It had been a while since we explored the creek together (though they have been happily discovering fossils, footprints and petrified wood among the shale and limestone.) Another year of Derecho winds had toppled my favorite stump yet other trunks sprouted odd butterfly mushrooms and lichen. Once again I was drawn to the texture and uniqueness of my world. The girls gathered last years pine cones, mulberry seeds, found objects, and spring blooms into their baskets. We spotted Mr & Mrs Mallard for the third year in a row, got close enough to touch a pair of disinterested rabbits, and in our quest to spot a snake down in the creek a few yards below, were scared witless when one appeared not six inches from our toes. It was a "baby," three-foot black snake with bright yellow stomach and he was scared as silly as we were. He stuck his head in a hole under the concrete curb where we were standing and couldn't wiggle in. The girls screamed and got as close as they dared while I snapped pictures and prayed he'd show his head. When he did, I startled again and jumped back as he slithered away faster than my camera shutter.

The texture of my life is ever changing and still surprises me but it remains real and focused on the beauty of the mundane.

Promise

A new year, a new leaf, hopefully, new fruit.

The Fallen Lives of Leaves

Every year has a November, but have you seen the leaves that I have seen? That every leaf is veined and numbered and not one falls without notice?

The Law of the Letter

Barnson, Misery. I stared at the back of the student’s windbreaker as he sat in front of me during the field day events and struggled to decipher the butchered English. Next to him sat several guys and gals with the long-eared Playboy logo on their jackets, over their hearts, where friends back home in the States might wear alligators or horses. Did they understand the emblems they wore like badges? I chuckled and then, eureka! Branson, Missouri!

One of the joys of teaching English in China was reading all the butchered English from my students: on signs, in books, anywhere that English was printed. We affectionately called the mistakes “Chinglish.” One day I passed a crew of workers putting up a sign on the Bureau of something or other. They had all the letters but not in the right order. I salvaged the crew leader’s reputation from criticism when I stopped and had them change Bareuu back to its proper spelling. Little did I know I saved him from future legal problems.

Last month, Fox News ran an AP story that caught my attention. In an effort to crack down on irregular English, Chinese authorities have laid down the law and beefed up security surrounding Beijing in anticipation of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. Apparently, private businesses and others who have dealings with foreigners are simply not following the rules.

According to Liu Yang, head of the Beijing Speaks Foreign Languages Program, a language hotline is in the works to encourage the public to report nonsense English. The standard by which each case is judged is to be found in a two-pound stack of regulations detailing proper English usage in advertising.

The problem, however, is not just with advertisers. Evidently the taxi drivers are also failing in English. Liu said Beijing taxi drivers must pass an English test to keep their licenses. But he acknowledged, "The taxi training courses are not working effectively, and there is a problem of taxi drivers missing classes.” Despite the problems, Liu said one-third of Beijing's 15 million residents speak some English, a claim that was challenged by a local reporter from China's state-run CCTV.

"I think 5 million is a big number," the reporter told Liu.

Liu stood by the figure, but conceded the vast majority of the English speakers fell into a category he labeled "low level."
Said Liu, "They can have very simply conversations, like: `Who am I? Where am I going?"'

This blogger wishes she could have simple conversations in English, like: “Who am I? Where am I going?” For more fun, read this then scroll down the link for some more classic “Chinglish.”

Derecho

The morning after the storm, we walked along the creek, hoping for signs of the cleansing rain, marveling at the broken tree limbs, the high water debris along the creek banks, the carpet of leaves torn from their branches and strewn like confetti under our feet. We stopped to examine a dead bird with flies on its belly, most likely fallen from its nest or tossed by the wind against a tree. Only days before, we'd saved a bird ensnared by string and caught in branches of spruce. It limply lay in my cupped hands as I unthreaded the twine, in and out, between bird feathers and a delicate neck. The girls hovered like nervous mothers, gently stroking the head with a fingertip until it sensed the release of string and flew free.

I wondered how many others had been displaced or killed by the strong Derecho winds that toppled their trees and wrenched apart carefully woven homes. The branches, split, cracked, hung in helpless surrender, upside down to the sky. We walked in surreal silence, that morning after the storm, and stopped along the banks of the creek, watching water runnel and pool and rush ahead. Bethany began whimpering: fire ants. I snatched her up and stuck her feet in the cold creek water, my feet now lodged in the mud, feeling the stinging bites between my toes. I tripped over rocks trying to get in the water and set Bethany down, whereupon she lost her footing and sat in the mud. She looked distraught and I had to laugh. "It's an adventure," I said. "I don't want to go home, yet," she said.

Further up the path, our resident cardinal flitted among a broken Live Oak but Bethany's eyes scanned the ground. "A ladybug!" She tried to capture it, with fingertips that had stroked a bird's head, but it scurried behind leaves and we headed for our own home, untouched by winds. Bethany skipped down the path, forgetting the ant bites itching her feet and legs. From the parking lot I heard an argument. A domestic dispute. Angry words, obscene epithets. F words and B words, and Bethany stopped. "Let's go," I commanded, hurrying down the walk, angry at the invasion, angry for the words crowding out our reverie, lost innocence, the fall, strings in trees, Derecho winds.

poets, essayists, and eye candy

Wow. Bret Lott, I love you, man. The Southern Review is publishing my two favorite poets, together, in the same issue. Is this rare? Consider that neither poet has published a volume of work. To catch their poems, you would first have to know when and which journal they might appear and then you ante up for one, maybe two poems. I have in my possession only three of Margo Berdeshevsky’s, xeroxed. I’m luckier with Allison Smythe. She is a longtime friend and critique partner and I am the blessed recipient of many more delicious lines and in the know on all her acceptances. Still. Having them both in one fine journal (and able to say I’ve shaken the hand of the editor) well, that is both rare and fine.

Another friend and nonfiction critique partner, Lisa Ohlen Harris, recently gifted a book to me by a writer of essays that she promised was near as good as reading Annie Dillard. I had my doubts. A slim volume, The Green Heart of the Tree, by A. S. Woudstra, is a compilation of essays written at a bamboo desk on the northwestern coast of Africa. I love these essays. Every word. I hesitate to tell you anything at all about them for fear you might presume familiarity and not buy this book. But these are some of the best essays I’ve read in a very long time. I love an intelligent and sensitive narrator; one who is well-traveled, understanding, a conduit by which I see and taste the red dust of her dirt road. Oh please buy this book. It is deliciously good.

And now for some deliciously good eye candy, revel in what Spring brought to us two weeks ago and only thirty minutes south of Dallas. It beat my beloved Washington-on-the Brazos annual retreat outside of Houston, though I missed meandering those paths with old friends.

Primaries

The world is exploding in color and vibrancy and I cannot possibly keep up. I'm three or four blogs behind, with news and muse vying for attention, pushed to the back burner to stew some more because the immediacy of Spring will not, cannot wait. The birds have my attention these days (you'd think I've never before seen the siren red of a cardinal) but lore says a pair of them brings love into your life. Along with rock doves, black-capped chickadees, bluejays, and mockingbirds, the cardinals' songs serenade and woo us. Rarer stil the pair of shy mallards down the creek and the brief reign of the wisteria, though no sign of the racoon or egret or hawk from last year.



Spring is clarifying: The pollen and dust washed away by the rains; the newly clothed trees rocked by March winds; the world once again able to breathe with new-leaf oxygen. In these moments, the fog lifts from a depressed stupor, my eyes come into focus, and I live in the urgent now. Look to the ant, to the damselfly, the rabbit, the moon.

The Beautiful Ache

My friend Leigh McLeroy has released a new book titled, The Beautiful Ache, published by Revell. I will buy it because I know Leigh, and I will like it because we like so many of the same things. I will recommend it because she is a writer's writer; she studies the masters and thinkers and poets we all admire and I am sure you will appreciate my recommendation.

Or I can point you to this interview by Glenn Lucke, over at Common Grounds, and let you make up your own mind. This is one of the best interviews I have read in years, in part because instead of giving Leigh a prescribed list of questions, Glenn actually responds to Leigh's answers and presses for further thought. I felt as though I was eavesdropping on a heated debate tucked in the corner of Taft Street Cafe.

As Glenn explores some of the topics in Leigh's book such as the Ache for Adventure, the Ache for Worship, and the Ache for Love, he won't be satisfied with sound bytes and convenient answers. Trusting in their longtime friendship, Leigh replies honestly and poignantly and gives the reader a true flavor of her wit and wisdom.

The interview is posted over a three-day period and the best part (for writers) is in the third installment. I wish every interview I read could be this much fun.

i "heart" u

Thank you, Secret Valentine. Your box of truffles turned a terrible, horrible, no-good day into something sweet.

Building a Memory

It started in the carpool line. Rain pelting the windshield with little white balls of sleet shifted. Snowflakes as large as dumplings fell into a child's hair and didn't melt. The boys stopped and looked skyward. The parents giggled. We woke up this morning to world like sifted sugar on chocolate cake. Snow angels, ice balls, holly berries, red-breasted robins, icinged gazebo. We warmed our fingers by a fire and drank hot chocolate. This morning, it's all ours.

Building a Mystery

I've been on a Sarah McLachlan kick since I "discovered" her Christmas cd in Starbuck two months ago. I'm a little late, I know. I wait until Sunday mornings to prepare esl lessons for the UTDallas graduate students from China who visit our church to learn about American culture and practise their English. The editors at Relief hyperventilate as I stall and reread submissions up to the very last possible minute. And two days ago, I dimantled the cone-shaped fire hazard occupying the tv stand. While the girls lay prone on the carpeted floor watching reruns of Curious George, the four foot tree I'd bought on my way home from work late one December night had dried to a crispy version of last summer's drought. So it wouldn't disentegrate into the carpet, I lifted the tree, light as straw, out the back door before removing the lights. The stubble on the concrete, a barren crop circle. A fact of gravity and lack of water.

I have a problem with procrastination. It is a confession I make with no real knowledge of how to change or if I should. Procrastination is a fact in my life and why is the mystery. The when of my memories is as mysterious as the acts themselves. While others work to build a mystery, I follow the winds of change. It's a condition abhorant to proverbial wisdom. I think that wisdom calls it sloth. Which windows of opportunity have I missed while my tree dried and the ornaments collected dust?

mysterium tremendum

Your best guess on the origin of this mystery.

News Buzz

Relief Journal has just posted the author lineup for the Winter 2007 issue due out in February. Take a peek here at the awesome writers who will be messing with your head in just a few days.

mudmen

When building men, the snow seems a purer medium, I suppose. Unless, like the Emperor Qin, you desire an army of terra cotta warriors to command in the netherworld beyond Xi'an. Or, like God, you desire a friend made from terra firma. But a child's need to create transcends having the best materials. It's still three parts snow or mud formed by hand, placed one on top the other until a pyramid of sorts, a stocky, rounded man, appears. Rocks for eyes, sticks for arms, leaves to crown the head, breath to warm and mold the clay into sentinels of art and joy and need.

On Ice

We were on tinterhooks all weekend, waiting. Venturing out for a drive to the mall in the freezing rain, we'd hope the roads wouldn't ice before we got back. On Saturday, the saturated trees began to bead and then freeze, suspended on the branches by a molecule strong enough to resist gravity. The ice storm never really materialized in this part of north Texas, though our neighbors to the west might disagree. The glazed roads mirror the street lights and the cars fish tail on the ice but the world has not stood still. Not like the winter morning in Houston years ago when I awoke from a dead sleep. A hundred miniature windchimes echoed in the stillness, an eerie quiet that seemed louder than the chimes. No cars hummed along the roads, no doors slammed, no dogs barked, no sirens signaled danger. I felt raptured from the dead and followed the sound of the chimes to my window, nearly frosted over with a thousand dendrite flakes. I opened the door and let in the cold stillness, squinting my eyes against the light. The air breathed in chimes, tinkling and shimmering tiny bells of sound. It was the trees. Iced and glazed with tiny daggers they bowed their limbs in the wind, brushed their frozen nakedness against the nearest neighbor, and sang like winter fairies.

Late this morning, the world is melting and drips a slow and steady percussion. A chickadee flits to the Christmas wreath still hanging from the eaves and nestles in the cherry-red bow. I want to wait some more, in hope, to be raptured from the dead. The world has not long enough stood still.

speaking with tongues

Thank you Dave Long (Faith in Fiction) for the link to this article in last Sunday's New York Times. I am taken with the processes by which our minds create and think and expound. We often forget the importance of the tongue - that the spoken word is the power by which God creates. Imagine God typing a memo to Michael: Bring me dirt that I may form man.

And for more on the typeset word, check out my new "button" to Shelfari (scroll down and to the right) which allows me to display my library. I'm still in the process of loading the isbn #'s, but it's way more fun than keeping my list in a suitcase! What's on your shelves?

Hole Empire

I've been listening to the title song from Kemper Crabb's The Vigil (music by Dave Marshall) lately and Bethany has picked up on some of the words like "Holy Empire." She tells me nothing is Holy but God so I had to explain something about God's holy empire which Hannah word-leaped to this Christmas carol she penned. Merry Christmas, and may you sepnhvnlesep.

oh frabjous joy! callou! callay!

I'm holding in my hand the "it" that I've been pining for and I've been savoring every word. Brad (my husband, not to be confused with Brad the poetry editor) laughed at my absorption for I "already know what's in there." But I don't. Kimberly's introduction and Mick Silva's forward (both superbly written touchstones for why Relief exists), the layout and order of the content, the inside graphics and feel of the pages, and the majority of the poetry and fiction are all new to me. I truly am savoring every word and enjoying every minute (and I've only found one typo so far!). For those of you who don't get your copy before Thanksgiving, eat your heart out! And when you do, please post and tell me what you think.

(Title line from The Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll)

relief

I am so proud of everyone that worked on this issue: Kimberly and Ben, Heather, Brad, Mark, all our spouses who gave their blessings, the writers, for they gave us their best work, and for the support of the writing community at large, for they are creating the buzz and then putting their money into subscriptions. Then when I saw the cover that Ars Graphica created for us, I knew it would fly. It is good. What a relief.

Relief Press Release

The Master's Artist is running a series of interviews with the editors of Relief Journal starting Saturday, October 21, 2006. My interview is here, Kimberly and Heather's is here, Mark's is here, and Brad's is here.

Stone Pillows

Hannah went to bed with a rock last night. Bethany told me about it this morning. That’s how it is when you’re 18 months apart. The youngest tells everything. Hannah has been loading up her backpack with schoolyard rocks and lugging them home to show me—every day. This one has sparkles. That one writes in chalk. I toss them out the back door and the next day she raids the playground again.

When Bethany learned to walk, she also headed straight for the rocks. She still does and the smoother and bigger the rock, the greater the value. We can’t take a walk by the creek without stopping for every chunk of concrete strewn by the sidewalk and those black river rocks are more desirable than a teddy bear. The Japanese Gardens adjacent to the Houston Zoo was a favorite picnic spot where we would go to feed the magnificent orange and white Koi but Bethany wouldn’t let go of the smooth, dark stones to throw the bread. They come by it honestly enough, I suppose. I loved rocks, collected rocks, read books about rocks, dreamed of spending my life walking all up and down and over rocks.

I dined with an amethyst when Derek and Jemma had their wedding reception at the Houston Museum of Natural History. We danced around Tyrannosaurus Rex, threw rose petals under Pterosaur, ate cake with diamonds, emeralds, and a 2000-carat topaz in the darkened corridors of the gem display lit only by the fiber optic glow on crystals. But this was a cold and distant affection. I could only stare in awe.


Now I throw my daughter’s granite pieces out the back door and beg her to stop bringing them home. Somewhere along the paved asphalt of my adulthood I forgot what rock-cold smoothness felt like—the weight and heft in my fingers—the pleasure of holding a pebble worn to glass by water. I forgot the way granite glittered in the sun like a thousand minute rainbows and made me feel so rich, so wealthy. I have forgotten how to love a rock so much I’d want to sleep with it underneath my pillow. Or, like Jacob, use it as a pillow.

In Houston, I once had dinner with a NASA engineer and his wife. Their home was a typical, early 60’s architecture desperate for remodeling. I entered their spare living room strewn with a first-grader’s toys, devoid of decoration save one very tall display case with a glass front. Glass shelves sparkled and glowed with rock formations, fossilized Trilobite, asteroids, and jeweled minerals. The man, a geologist, had scoured the world for his collection. Some were Christmas gifts from his wife. One was from somewhere beyond this planet. I held it in my palm for a very long while, mesmerized. The permanence, the history, the physicality of the stone in my hand whispered a name.

If we ever forget what it is to be a child, the rocks and stones will cry out.

The art of finding lost trash

We arrived at the lake in the early afternoon when the sun was high and the air was still. The brackish water, lacking the strength of a wave, niggled bits of trash onto the sand like an old woman pushing a broom.

“It’s down about seven feet,” grunted the teen with a beer in his hand. Shirtless and sweating, his buddies sat on the bed of their rusty Ford. No use.

We unloaded the girls anyway. A change of scenery wouldn’t hurt. I eyed a man under the bridge as he stood in his skiff and threw a net over the side. Shrimp in this lake? The girls ran past me and dug their toes in the orange sand, oblivious to the sad state of an Oklahoma drought. They were squealing and running from one piece of trash to the next.

“Mom!” “Look!” “Treasure!”

So I did look, through the eyes of my child, and saw the treasures the lake coughed up on the sand. It took a few minutes to adjust my perspective since I’m a visionary kind of person; I see things the way they could be, ought to be. Looking for beauty in tarry, orange sand requires blocking out everything you hoped for. I had to focus on one patch at a time. Then I saw the bugs and all their secret holes. If I stood really still they came out like the sand crabs in Galveston. I stamped my feet and they scurried to the nearest tunnel.

The blackened driftwood, soggy string, and rusted metal plate knitted together into an artistic collage as my mind struggled to contain the images. I know artists to take found trash, mix mediums, and create beautiful sculptures and reliefs. But here was art presenting itself to me, if only I could peel away the hope for something better.

I’m learning this in other ways: When I critique an essay what is the basis for my evaluation? Is the glass half-empty or half-full? Can I rejoice in pain? Is God’s grace sufficient for me? Blessed am I who thirsts! For then I shall know the thirst of others.

latter rain

In the month since I’ve written a web-log, I have traveled to Santa Fe for The Glen; Hannah has started Kindergarten; and I have been to Chicago to help steer the first issue of Relief Journal to publication in November. It has been a fruitful month and full of promise. But still, it had not rained.

My eyes have calmed down to a manageable state and I found respite in the summer rains of the high desert of Santa Fe and the lake-misted weekend in Chicago. I shed tears when Hannah left for school (though she did not) and this morning we started back to Brad’s grueling law school routine. I have pondered over God’s pharmacy of spittled clay and bargain-priced eye salve, and readjusted to my fifth-grade phobia of being called “four-eyes” on the playground. Silly, I know, when all of you wear them too, but insecurities die hard.

For over forty days, Dallas had temperatures over 100 degrees. For forty days, and then some, it did not rain. The earth split open like a jigsaw puzzle glued to lycra. But at midnight, when I disembarked from the Chicago flight to Dallas last night, I saw the lightening in the western sky. The air hung heavy and for once I didn’t worry about tornadoes.

This morning, as Bethany and I took Hannah to Kindergarten, they stuck out their tongues to catch the mist. By ten, the sky had darkened, and then it rained. It’s a soft, slow rain that blankets the grass; it will not flood the bayous like a summer storm in Houston. Nor will it stop the sickly yellow leaves from fainting off the trees. But it is enough—enough to pull me out of an air-conditioned stupor and join the voices of a great multitude that sounds like rushing waters and peals of thunder: the Almighty reigns.

I Thirst

Heather, the associate editor at Relief Journal, recently observed that Christian poets really liked rain—a lot. Here in the west, we do too. And while an overused metaphor quickly becomes passé, a Texas cornfield could sure use about five hours worth of that passé metaphor.

Three months ago, I blithely wrote about “floppy-eared cornstalks” and the abundance of wildlife along our creek bed. I reveled in the mild spring and took long walks with the girls. The creek gurgled and my girls had tea parties in the verdant clover. These days, there isn’t enough water even for mosquitoes. The runnels are dry, the wildlife is gone, and the cornstalks across the road are bowing their knees in submission to a hot wind.

Three months ago, I blithely started down a new road as the cnf editor at Relief. I devoured submissions, trolled my favorite blogs, and then began reading the workshop submissions for The Glen, a Christian writing conference I’ll attend in Santa Fe, NM this next week. Thirsting for community and desiring to make a good impression, I stayed up late and read into the morning. One morning I woke up, and my eyes ached. They wouldn’t move. For two days I couldn’t wear my contacts and by the third day, I filled a year-old prescription for glasses. They didn’t help. After an eye exam, I discovered that age, and thirty-five plus years of contact wear, had taken their toll. I had “dry-eye” syndrome and it would never get better. I would have to learn to manage the symptoms of dryness.

Every day, as I put in various drops to lubricate my source of vision, I regret taking advantage of something so precious and valuable. Every day, I have to limit my reading and force my eyes to rest. On Sunday, my sister’s pastor mentioned an old friend in west Texas. He recently asked this third-generation Texan how the drought was affecting her crops. Instead of whining about the weather, this seasoned old soul responded, “Oh, it will rain again. It always has. It always will.”

Let there be rain. Let there be rain. Let there be rain.

The Shadowland of Shibboleth

Xibolai. The seminary student was using it a lot and I felt pleased I could translate my favorite Chinese word. It means "Israelite" and sounded remarkably like my favorite Hebrew word—Shibboleth. You may have heard the word shibboleth. In modern usage, it refers to an entrenched belief or custom that defines a culture. Depending on how you pronounced it in Hebrew three thousand years ago (it meant growth or flow), well, it could have you killed.

The book of Judges tells the complex story of inter-tribal conflict between the outlaw Jepthah of Gilead and the men of Ephraim (all of them Israelites) that led to land grabbing and warfare. When the men of Ephraim tried to cross back into their land, the men of Gilead would force them to say the word Shibboleth. If they said Sibboleth (an ear of corn), there was no mercy.

Unfortunately, Xibolai (希伯来语) was one of only ten words I could translate during the sermon. So, for lack of anything else to do, I began computing. This July 4th weekend marks the sixth anniversary since I returned from a three year teaching stint in China. If I had continued my language studies and learned just one Chinese character per day, I would be literate in Chinese. If I continued learning at that pace for the next three years…. Look at it this way: a scholar knows at least 5,000 of the 10,000+ unique characters in the language and based on my computations, I’d be downright scholarly.

Sunday afternoon, I dusted off my language books and methodically penned the calligraphic strokes of my first word: nü (tone 3), which means woman, girl, daughter. I was so impressed with my ability that I decided to move on to zi (tone 3), which means infant; child; son. My calligraphy looked good to me and I moved on. The next word was hao (tone 3), which means good; right; excellent. Interesting, at least to my eye anyway, was that the composition of this character combined the strokes for woman and son to form the character for “good.” Hmmm. Turning the page, I rediscovered the word for peace, which is: an (tone 1). This character placed the strokes for “woman” under the strokes for “roof.”

Brad walked in about this time and I showed him my resurrected skills. He was my informal language coach in China and he used to shower me with kisses whenever I did well. I’m not sure why we quit our lessons, but I do remember being thoroughly frustrated by the tonality of the language. After a few serious faux pas, such as encouraging people to “eat night soil” instead of “eat more food,” I gave up. Kisses or no kisses, it was easier to communicate in English.

I mentioned my observation of the characters and how they reflected the shibboleths of the culture. If a son with a wife means “good,” and a wife under a roof means “peace,” then what would be two girls and a wife under a roof? My challenge was meant as a rhetorical question, a prompt for cheese that might elicit a witty answer like “love” or “happiness.” He looked at me for a brief moment and in his eyes shone the telling signs that I had made another classic faux pas. My husband exhaled (had he been holding his breath?) “It’s the word for adultery,” he said. “Don’t go trying to make up words in Chinese. It can’t be done. But you’ve done a very good job writing your characters.” And he kissed me.

(calligraphy work by He Zhizhang, Tang Dynasty poet)

In Father's Hands

They put him in the back of a nearby taxi and drove him to the hospital. That must have been the bravest taxi driver in all of China. Bruce with his shirt all bloodied, mumbling words in English; his friends beside him white as ghosts. Any taxi driver in his right mind would refuse service as a temporary ambulance. If the victim died, their spirit would forever haunt his car. But Bruce’s spirit would not remain in a Chinese taxi. He was mumbling words of forgiveness for his attacker, the mentally ill son of a family he knew. And perhaps, as the graying city landscape careened outside his vision, he prayed for his daughters—all five of them. It’s all in Father’s hands, he’d say.

Valorie discovered she was pregnant with their sixth daughter less than a month after Bruce died. She remained firm with the officials who encouraged her to go back to America. American rights were never uttered; she never spoke a word of complaint or asked for revenge. The locals were relieved that the international incident quieted so quickly and they let her stay. In the native dialect, she implored them to allow Bruce to be buried in the city. Even citizens were required to be cremated; there just wasn’t enough room to bury city people. But Valorie won their respect and Bruce was buried a taxi drive away. The girls made cards for the young man in prison. “We forgive you for stabbing our daddy,” they wrote in their little-girl scrawl. And they prayed for the son of their friends.

Valorie and the girls stayed in China. Local women from the state-run church helped her cook and clean their little apartment. She birthed daughter number six in the city hospital where Bruce had caught the last four babies in his hands as they came out. This time she went home alone to nurse and home school the girls and practice her Chinese calligraphy.

Simon began to call over the next several months. Bruce had mentored him for many years and it was the least Simon could do to honor his friend. Over time, the younger girls began to call him Baba. They married and, within a year, had daughter number seven.

I have pictures of Bruce and Valorie and their five towheaded little girls. After the service at the state-run church, the old grandmothers would touch the gold of the girls’ hair. A small man, Bruce would hold the girls on his knees and call them “arrows in his quiver.” He cried one morning, with his daughters in his lap, when the Chinese told him about their abortion laws. How do you tell a man with a pocket full of gold to throw it all away? I never met Simon, can’t even imagine the burden he has taken on to raise so many daughters in a culture that reveres sons.

Valorie sat on my couch in far north Dallas last week, nursing daughter number eight. Somewhere along the way I missed a newsletter, missed the news of this new little arrow. Giggles erupted from my own girls’ bedroom. There were ten little daughters in my apartment! It was Valorie’s first trip back in four years and she was driving north to Iowa. It was also the first trip back for the three youngest girls. Simon stayed in China. The American consulate didn’t believe he would return so they wouldn’t issue him a visa. Imagine that. The Chinese officials showed more grace to a widowed foreigner with six daughters than the American government could muster for a man with eight. But Valorie wouldn’t want me to say that. It’s all in Father’s hands, she’d say.



[Portrait of Wu Fu, Brigadier General of the Gansu Region. Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk. With an attached inscription in Chinese and Manchu, signed Liu Tongxun, Liu Lun, and 'Yu Mingzhong, dated Qianlong geng chen, 1760, inscribed, and with one seal of the Qianlong emperor, Qian Long Yu Lan Zhi Bao. www.wickimedia.org]

On Creative Nonfiction

Kimberly Culbertson, the Editor-in-chief at Relief Journal, has posted my ideas on what defines Creative Nonfiction. Here is a taste to whet your appetite:

Unfortunately, most people, even many writers, are clueless about what this new genre is, what it isn’t, and how to write it. You see, adding that word creative to the generic word nonfiction changes everything. Sifting through the many submissions in this category here at Relief Journal, it is clear that the misconceptions are rampant. I’ll leave the how to write question to others but, for this moment, I’d like to slice away those misconceptions and define the term.

Remember, submissions deadline is August 1 for the November print issue. I hope to see your piece in my editor's box for review.

Princess Pool Party

It was her birthday all day long and she ruled her subjects with a dimpled smile. If she could have anything, we asked, what would she want the most?

Roses. (She's like her mama, through and through.)

And to eat, we asked?

Pig ear. (She's like her baba, too.)

She got her roses - hot pink ones. But we fed the guests chicken wings and corn, grilled out by the pool while the girls built sand castles and swam like mermaids. Happy 5th birthday, Hannah!

The Fifth Day

I was prepared for the suburbs. I was not prepared for far north Dallas. So far north, we have to pay extra money to the phone company for the privilege of dialing into Dallas. I knew there weren’t many trees here. It’s a flat land, good for ranching. The grass turns to straw in the summer for lack of rain. The sky is big, with a blue intensity that reminds me I am small.

The best I hoped for, in our price range for an apartment, was the ground floor with a patio and maybe, just maybe, a grassy area the girls could play in. I never expected trees, or water, or living things, other than fire ants and the neighbor’s dog. Who knew that Dallas had so many creeks and nature preserves? Or that this year’s spring weather would be the longest on record?

Our patio empties into a yard, which backs up to a creek with walking trails, a dense line of trees, and the kind of wildlife I remember as a kid. My girls can already identify the cardinal’s song, the blue jay, the rock dove, and the mockingbird. Last Fall, under a cloud of red and gold leaves, they learned the stutter of the red-headed woodpecker.

One morning after a hard rain, when the creek smelled of pear and wisteria blossoms, we watched a white crane fishing for minnows. His S-shaped neck dipped and he brought up a large gold one. Mr. and Mrs. Mallard prefer the bend of the creek near the pecan trees, though we have yet to see the rest of the family. There was a commotion in the trees last month when a young hawk stole a rabbit from the mouth of his brother hawk. Their wingspans are as long as Hannah. Last week, while the magnolia trees bloomed, we spotted an owl that screeches late at night.

Bandit, the raccoon ambles across our patio and raids the neighbor’s cat food. We’ve seen a ‘possom sleeping on a tree branch, rabbits still as statues while guarding their hole, and squirrels playing tag. Monarchs land on our arms, blue and green damselflies flirt around our feet and we’ve only seen one snake – a large one – in the rill near the myrtle trees. On Memorial Day, the four of us walked to the mossy end, where it runnels into the golf course, and we threw rocks into the shallows. We picked wildflowers: carpet strawberries, buttercups, dandelions, queen-anne’s-lace; and then we brought home chiggers.

They manifested on me the next day, and Brad came home with the angry red bumps last night. Luckily we sprayed the girls before our walk and they are fine, but for me, well, all the questions of the curse are on my mind. Just why are there mosquitoes, and fire ants, and venomous spiders that hide in my closet? Our little patch of Eden no longer feels so special. The weather is getting hot, the corn is wilting in the fields, and until I buy some good insect repellant, I am retreating into air-conditioned suburbia.

My friend Sherry, who raises llamas on the outskirts of Austin and contends with mountain cats raiding her chicken coops, will laugh at me. After all, neither of us really live in the forest. The city is always nipping at our heels, chasing the wildlife farther afield or swallowing it altogether. Who wants to live together with snakes and lions and biting ants? I’m not sure which is the bigger curse.

I Remember

Thank you to all the men and women who have served, who continue to serve, and who are even thinking of serving this country so that Bethany can walk on free ground and Hannah can reach for the stars.

(Bethany's footprints, Hannah's fingerprints)

The Round Table

La conference/Laurent Ferrari

There has been a lot of discussion recently among editors and writers trying to pinpoint just what to look for in a solid, print-worthy work. Ryan McDermott, editor of the online journal New Pantagruel, kind of started it last week when he asked the new editors at Relief Journal just what would float their boat to see in print. Trying to get a handle on the kind of Christian journal we were aiming for, he asked how we compared to Image. I responded with the following answer:

I am very familiar with Image, have attended two of their conferences (ten years apart) and will be attending (hopefully) The Glen this summer. I deeply respect Gregory Wolfe’s vision and leadership at its helm. After years of hard work and attention to excellence, Image has the clout and vitality we all aspire to. Absolutely I believe that their fiction and poetry are good. (I love reading Robert Cording and Thomas Lynch and of course Annie Dillard.) But we are not here to emulate Image, other than in quality of journalism.

As editors, we rely on writers to submit their very best work. But we look for more than just good writing. I look for the author’s ability to pull back the veil and reveal the holy. I hope to see the mundane, everyday occurences of life in fresh ways. I hope to walk away from an essay and not be able to forget it because it altered my thinking, opened a window, recast the way I see things. I look for poetic and creative construction. I look for evidence that God has influenced and informed this writer’s creative sensibilties - not through dogma or even intellectualism - but through tutelage of craftmanship.

Kimberly Culbertson, Founding Editor, and Heather von Doehren, Assistant Editor, are doing a fantastic job of steering the first issue to publication. Kimberly clarifies our goals with these words of guidance: Please understand that we are looking for solid literary fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry over didactic, “inspirational” literature. For those of you who are still being timid, stop pulling your punches. Please feel free to send us your edgier work. I am looking for authors who are able to write well rather than make a sloppy attempt at evangelism via the written word.

Now that Mark Bertrand has joined us on the editorial staff, he too, has weighed in here with his preferences.

Brad Fruhauff, Poetry Editor, is our most recent staff addition. He gives a call for "true" poetry that will both "'instruct and delight.'" Welcome, Brad, to Relief. And for a complete profile of all the hardworking editors at Relief, check us out at the Editor's Page.

How do we then define our preferences when some of us like "edgy," some like "reflective," some like "classical," some like "modern?" While we do strive to enlarge the boundaries for an emerging audience, in short, all of us appreciate well-crafted art. I like the fact that we can bring differing sensibilties to the table where we critique your work. You can rest assured, if you say it with excellence, your voice will be heard.

The Wind Is Passing By

Brad abruptly pulled over to the side of the road, crushing waist-high, purple-headed thistles and a few scraggly Indian Blankets under the wheels of our van.

“Get out and pull it – see for yourself,” he chided.

I’d only asked if the crop we were passing was wheat. A yes or no answer would have satisfied my curiosity until the next time we passed a field growing with mysterious plants in perfect rows. Growing up in the city, I knew my garden plants. Living in Texas, I even knew my roadside wildflowers. But no matter how many car trips I’d taken across the Midwest, I still could only identify corn. Those floppy-eared stalks are hard to confuse. But the grains and low-growing vegetation were still mysteries of nature.

I got out of the car, careful to look for fire-ant mounds, and walked to the edge of the field. Glossy and tan, the stalks stood just past my knees, the long hair surrounding the kernels now visible at close range. They looked like the thin beards of old men, swaying in the wind. I had to yank hard to break one off its stem. Instead, the whole stalk came out of the ground with a clump of earth and my face flushed from the shame of thievery as I hurried to break it from its roots.
Back in the car, the girls squealed with delight. Hannah immediately smelled it, as she does everything, and declared it had no smell. Bethany waved it like a baton. I felt the fatness of the kernels and the rough shells that made my fingers stick and lose their way.

“So this is where bread comes from.”

I squeezed some of the kernels between my fingers and they turned into a pulpy, starchy mash. Brad said he hated harvesting wheat. He would itch like crazy as he walked through the fields in his hometown, the sickle rubbing blisters in his hand. I remembered the threshing floor for his village, just on the outskirts of his hometown. He had pointed it out during a winter visit when the snow dusted the dirt behind the mill.

“So if I dried this and crushed it, it would become flour?”

“It’s not that easy,” he said. He explained that after cutting it, you had to lay it on the dirt and dry it for a day or two, then walk on it to separate the kernels from the stalks. Then the thresher stood in the middle of the pile and threw the mess outward, with a pitchfork. If you did it right, the wind would catch the hulls and hairs and dirt and lay them in a circle around you. The heavier grain, now dried and separated, would travel further, forming an outer circle around the chaff.

The chaff pricked and itched and got in your sweaty clothes, rubbing you as you worked. The dust blew in your hair and eyes. Your shoulders ached from working the tools. Then you gathered up the outer band and pulled out the rocks before storing it in a bag. If you wanted, say, fifty pounds of flour, you removed the grain, picked out the smaller stones and washed off the mud and dirt. The kernels had to dry in the sun before you could take them to the miller. The miller would ask you, do you want it ground fine or coarse? And the miller would grind the kernels between the stones that had been there since the Qing dynasty.

The wind laid down the heads of the bearded ones as Brad steered the van back onto the road. Hannah tickled Bethany with the stalk of wheat as we drove south on the asphalt road in far north Dallas where the field became a suburb and the suburb became a city.

Rock of Gibralter

Great news! J Mark Bertrand will be joining us over at Relief Journal as the new fiction editor. If you haven't seen him in action, check out his weblog or read his weekly posts at Master's Artist every Friday. The consummate "writer's writer," his insights, expertise, wit, and very lucid writing should put him at the top of your "favorites" list - right after me.

When The Trees Bow Down Their Heads

Ni Zan:Trees in Autumn Wind

Hannah is learning to read. Last week, she saw the word MOM on a commercial and read it out loud so I'll just say that was her first word (though she's been sounding things out for several months now.) Hannah is four and she's been able to identify the alphabet since she was two. She taught herself to write the letters and learned the sounds when she was three. Now she's putting it all together. She came to me the other day with paper in hand and asked me to write down a poem for her which began with this provocative line:

I love how the wind whispers.

Could she have started earlier? Yes. But at this stage, I'm more fond of watching things develop organically. I hope she'll approach all learning the same way - with enthusiasm and desire. She'll start Kindergarten in the Fall and face sixteen-plus years of schooling. Hopefully I can teach her good study habits and how to discipline her time so there's space to suck in whatever captures her fancy.

I've struggled some with the issue of home-schooling. I happen to me a strong advocate of it; it's just not for me. If we still lived in our old neighborhood in Houston, I would make the necessary sacrifices. But we don't. We live in a suburb (now a monetary sacrifice) that has the second highest rating in Texas and I am comfortable sending her to school. And glad. I am neither patient nor disciplined enough to tackle such a responsiblity. But I have given it some thought.

I recently read an article sent to me by my friend, Lisa Ohlen Harris. The article is a theological book review by Susan Wise Bauer, a well respected reviewer for "Books and Culture" magazine. She also happens to be writing a history of the world for W. W. Norton. Well. I'm impressed. Susan was home-schooled and co-wrote a book with her mother called The Well Trained Mind. She's a walking billboard for advocates of the movement. So are my friends, Scott and Julie Brister, who live in Austin. They have four daughters and have made home-schooling a priority in their family. They are almost mission-minded about it and it's bearing fruit. Their oldest was studying Latin and comparative philosophy at fifteen - and loving it. Each child plays an instrument, sings, dances, makes their own clothes, ... well, you get the picture.

As I send Hannah off to Kindergarten, I know I'll wonder. Should I have done it differently? Am I being too selfish? Is the world too harsh; are the teachers amoral; are the kids insensitive? Will she be scarred? Held back? Steered in the wrong direction? Maybe yes to all of the above. But if I don't have the passion to teach like Susan's mom or Juie Brister, I imagine worse things for my daughters. For now, we delight in reading stories "together" and picking out words that she can sound out. For now, I can write.

Neither You Nor I

There is an interview with Joan Didion in the current Paris Review. I’ve been reading it during our weekly trip to the bookstore where the girls listen to the sales clerk read stories in a sweet Pooh corner between the stacks. They make a craft at toddler-sized tables and eat miniature cookie wafers. I treat myself to a tall, decaf café mocha and grab books from racks and stacks as we pass by. I haven’t read much of the interview, though. I usually have to stop to cut and glue and ooh and ahh at all the right times, and I can’t afford to buy the journal. (Well, it’s the magazine or the coffee, I suppose.)

But I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Joan Didion has been catching my attention lately, anyway. Her latest book, written after the death of her husband, is titled The Year of Magical Thinking, and has recently won the 2005 National Book Award for Nonfiction. (It is also the next book I intend to read, and yes, I have bought it.) The interview begins with her ruminating about a study she read exploring the link between grammatical structure in our writing and Alzheimer’s disease. I also read about the study a few years back, and, as it did with Didion, it has haunted me ever since. I find myself analyzing my sentences and syntax, not for readability, but for signs of senility.

Having children late in life didn’t help. I had/have the classic “mommy brain” syndrome where I forget words, call my children by the wrong names, and put the milk in the pantry. My sister claims that children suck your brains dry while they’re gestating. Childbirth books blame it on fluctuating hormones. Social observers blame it on too much multi-tasking. I can remember my high school friends laughing behind their mother’s back or teasing them to their face for being “dumb” for just such behavior – proof that the syndrome doesn’t go away.


This is a scary thought. As a writer, I can’t afford to lose even one word, yet daily I struggle to remember words that once careened easily off the tongue. Words, and the ability to communicate, are my life. Floyd Skloot, brain damaged by a virus ten years prior, essays about this phenomenon in Gray Area: Thinking with a Damaged Brain, (In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction, edited by Lee Gutkind, 2005.)

“…I have become enamored of the idea that my brain has been insulted by a virus. I use it as motivation. There is a long tradition of avenging insults through duels or counterinsults, through litigation, through the public humiliation of the original insult. So I write….
“…. I have developed certain habits that enable me to work – a team of seconds…. I must be willing to write slowly, to skip or leave blank spaces where I cannot find words that I seek, compose in fragments and without an overall ordering principle or imposed form. I explore and make discoveries in my writing now, never quite sure where I am going, but willing to let things ride and discover later how they all fit together. Every time I finish an essay or poem or piece of fiction, it feels as though I have faced down the insult.”

The entire essay is a testament to his patience and skill. And he makes whining about “mommy brain” seem absurd. He gives me hope. Skloot is of the mind that his suffering and weaknesses have created a new mind, a new person. His triumph is that his disability changed him and his art. In becoming a “jotter of random thoughts . . . a writer of bursts, …” he slowed down, trained new areas of his brain and switched from writing fiction to writing essays. He appreciates his “off balance.” His tangential research into neurology and cognitive science helped him understand and accept what was happening; his art made it beautiful.

[ Dartmoor – de: Wollsack-Verwitterung; cappucino - Deborah Ripley ]

The Heavens Declare

If you haven't already done so, go to my "Friends" list to your right and click The Master's Artist for Friday's post. My friends Allison and J Mark have both written about an experience they had last Friday and writing about it has given us all a peek into infinity.

Who Has Seen The Wind?

Two nights ago, a tornado blew through my county and left three people dead. I never heard a thing. This is surprising because I wake up at the sound of wind. I monitor the color of the sky, when I can see it. When I can't, running ticker-tape warnings underneath a regularly scheduled program will send chills down my spine. Anyone who knows me well, knows I am terrified of tornadoes.

I grew up in a generation enamored with The Wizard of Oz. The scene with the farmhouse spinning out of control is as vivid now as the first time I watched it and felt Dorothy's horror. I also spent a lot of time in the Midwest while growing up. Springtime brought nightly siren alerts in Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas as my family scrambled into the communal basement shared by eight families on Grant Avenue. I've seen the sky turn that sickening green a dozen times and I still head for the nearest closet or culvert when it appears.

But fear of devastation landing on my head was not just in the physical realm. For fifteen years I was plagued with nightmares of tornadoes chasing me down. Sometimes they overtook me, lifted me up, and deposited me in an unknown place. Sometimes I outran them. Several times I confronted them in my dreams and defied them - I rebuked them. Those dreams were so vivid that twenty years later I can still recall them. More importantly, I began to notice a pattern. I would dream about a tornado and then, within months, my life would drastically change. A new direction. A move. The loss of a loved one. A divorce. An up-ending of my life that was as catastrophic as if my house had been leveled. Soon I began to fear the dreams more than I feared tornadoes.

In the eighties the dreams came fast and furious. By the end of 1990, my only child died. Six months later I divorced an already failing marriage. In that time, I ceased being a mother and a wife. I moved and got a job. I dropped out of grad school. I changed churches and made new friends who knew nothing about my tumultuous and painful past. I entered a desert of doubt and disbelief. Like Jacob, I wrestled and wandered before I returned. The last dream I remember, I did not run, I did not rebuke it, I stood still when the tornado approached and I held out my arms.

I crawled out of the culvert of my fears and accepted my past. I quit the sassy single scene and owned up to my brokenness. I'm sure I didn't seem as hip and cute as I wanted, but my life continued to change and evolve. In fact, it got crazier. I quit my job and spent three years teaching in China and then married a Chinese man. When we returned to the states, I gave birth to two babies. Life is as hard as it has ever been except I do not fear it. The winds still erode what I try to build, but I accept it and I remember, I'm building with rock.

(Thanks to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce for the picture titled: Tornado near the end of its life.)

A Pebble In My Shoe

It seems that changes to my template do not occur unless I publish a post. Perhaps there is a metaphor to life in there somewhere, as well.

Even the Rocks shall Cry Out

Before things were written in stone, there were pillars of stone: cairns, altars, mani stones, monoliths. One by one, the builder found stones and stacked them into a tower. Often the reason was known only to the builder. A meditative marker of time, of place, or experience of the holy. A mound of rough stones. A memory. A prayer.

Then others passing by found their way to a destination. They located themselves in time and space. They too remembered, and the history became shared. A community was born before things were written in stone.

Asleep on a stone, Jacob had a dream. He saw a stairway to heaven, a gate through time and space, a future and a hope. He took the stone pillow and stood it on end, then poured oil on it. As the oil glided down the crevasses and into the dirt, Jacob named the stone, the dirt and the oil, Bethel - House of God.

These posts are my stone pillars. Though I am tutored by the Master Builder, my cairns are still rather wobbly. Still, I like their effect against the barrenness of the land I live in.