Life Goals

In a junior high Family and Consumer Science class, we were each given a piece of paper with questions dealing with what we would like to do when we grew up. We were supposed to think about what we saw ourselves doing in the future.

I sat there and sat there, and I couldn't see myself doing anything. Well, other than watering the flowers outside of my cottage as I walked around in sandals and a sundress. That's what I saw in my head. So I wrote that down. I don't remember the teacher's comments when she saw that my life goal was to own an English-style cottage with sloping roofs and ivy up the side and to water my plants and sit and read in the sunshine. Doctor? Teacher? No, it didn't llamarme la atención.

Currently I am not doing that. I'm pursuing a graduate degree and working as a research assistant. And often I feel a little lost, like I'm a little minnow trying to swim upstream with a bunch of muscled salmon. That sounds a lot lost. Okay, maybe like a little kid trying to use the big words and use the same gestures as the big kids, trying to fake my way through until hopefully I actually do start to get it, do understand, can make my own sociological analyses and feel confident about them. Right now I think I'm just pretending.

Recently I took a personality test through the Enneagram Institute, and I turned out a 9, a peacemaker. Several of the graduate students I've talked to are 4s and 5s - Individualists and Investigators. I haven't met anyone else who identifies as a Peacemaker; easy-going, receptive, complacent. These make me wonder if maybe I am lost; maybe my personality doesn't prepare me to be a world-class sociological researcher.

Then why am I here?

When I took my first sociology class as an undergraduate student, it opened my eyes. I learned so much. I started thinking about my assumptions and prejudices. It changed me. I think it made me a better person. I continued with sociology, planning on doing social work. After an internship where I realized that it was mostly paperwork and a lot of redtape and dealing with unhappy children and unhappy parents, I thought maybe I could try something else. A lot of my professors, and friends, had been mentioning graduate school for a while. I started to take them seriously. I'm smart. I'm doing well as an undergraduate. Maybe I could be a professor and help students view the world in a different way as I had been helped. I read Mark Noll's The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind and felt excited by his encouragement in the value and validity of Christians working in higher education. I wanted to be part of that.

So here I am, halfway through my first semester. I have research projects that I keep sludging along with. I have three papers staring at me like a mountain in the Black Hills and I have my little MacBook of a pickaxe as I try to create Crazy Horse. But I'm also working as a teacher's assistant in an introductory sociology class, and I like that a lot. I was able to lecture on a couple of topics. I've had one-on-one interactions with some of the students, explaining on a personal level the nuances of a particular sociological concept. I like that.

We'll see where I end up. For the time being I will continue chiseling away at my future publishable papers, thinking about how my life experiences and my individual personality meet up.

Colder than it ought to be in March

My mother has started posting family stories and memories, which has started me thinking about my childhood. So I think that I might start to post my own personal stories every once in a while.

I'm going to start with an essay I wrote my freshman year of college for a required writing course. It's the story of getting stuck with my brother and sister during a blizzard once and what happened afterwards.

I was having a bad evening. It had been a long Saturday at a high school speech meet, and my mind was simply exhausted. I just wanted to be home, but my speech coach was telling me to stay in town. She didn’t want Kathryn, David, and I trying to drive the seven miles to our home on the rural North Dakota gravel. The last time I had stayed in town because of the weather I didn’t have a toothbrush or any clean clothes. I stayed with a friend whose mother wasn’t very pleased that she had to put up me and my sister on such short notice. I didn’t want to impose myself and my siblings on them like that again. The only thing I desired was a mug of hot chocolate, one of my big warm sweaters, and my house. So, against the wishes of my coach, I got in my dad’s “Toreador Red” Ford pickup with my brother David and sister Kathryn and started to drive home in the late March twilight.

I remember being able to see a few stars as we started silently driving home, but it wasn’t long before the north wind picked up, and the snow began to fall harder. It was an Alberta Clipper, which can come fast and cause a lot of problems for those on the road. After a couple of miles we had veered slightly off the road several times, but were still headed home at about fifteen miles per hour. We were all looking out of the windows, trying to see glimpses of the tan gravel underneath the blowing snow. There was a lot of tension in the pickup, heightened by Kathryn’s continual reminders that I was driving off the road. All three of us were in high school and could drive, but I was the oldest and felt it was my responsibility to get us home safe. I didn’t think Kathryn would feel comfortable driving in such strenuous conditions, and David, well, David was a freshman in high school and I didn’t trust him with much of anything.

All at once the wind blew so much snow in front of us that I could see nothing. I turned too sharply, and we hit the ditch. However, I wasn’t very worried. Dad’s pickup has pulled itself through mud and snow many times before. We began working to get unstuck, but I had really pulled a good one that time, and apparently we weren’t about to go anywhere. I was thankful we were on the right side of the narrow road; if by any slim chance another vehicle was driving by, we wouldn’t be much in the way. We didn’t have a cell phone with us, but my dad did have a farm radio in the pickup. We tried using that to get a hold of someone at home, but no one was there. I figured we would probably be spending the night in the pickup, so I started thinking and planning that way.

I actually felt kind of excited to spend the night in the pickup cab, stranded in the middle of a blizzard. I wasn’t alone and we had food. My brother had brought to the speech meet three tuna fish sandwiches, a family favorite, and only eaten one. I figured they would be sufficient to keep us from getting too hungry. We all had winter clothes along, but in truth not much more than coats and gloves. In the morning the weather had been very nice, promising spring would be coming soon. We hadn’t planned on being marooned on the side of the road overnight. The three of us cuddled together to keep each warm with our body heat. We prayed that we would be safe through the evening and that our parents wouldn’t worry too much. We began to lighten the mood by joking and laughing. Kathryn, I think, was the most upset about our little mishap. I don’t think she was feeling very adventurous that evening and wasn’t looking forward to spending the night in the pickup.

Before long, though, it got pretty cold, and we decided we would turn the engine on for a little while in order to heat the cab up again. I had been loath to do this earlier because I remembered hearing stories of people who suffocated themselves by turning the engine on when the exhaust pipe was clogged up with snow. Carbon monoxide filled the cab instead of venting outside. David said he would check the pipe, but getting outside proved to be a bit of a challenge. We were stuck at a good slant, and while it was possible to get out through the driver’s side door, it was very awkward. The passenger side door wasn’t about to be opened in the least; it was jammed right up against the snow. So David climbed out through the back window and checked the pipe, which was free. We turned the engine on and listened to the radio while hot air blew through the vents.

A little while later I sensed that my bladder was full and that I probably wouldn’t last too much longer without relieving myself. David and Kathryn made fun of me, but I was determined to take care of it. I climbed out the window and went to the leeward side of the pickup. The wind was very strong, pushing me as I walked into a run. I went to the bathroom in the middle of a blizzard and hurriedly climbed back into the relatively warm pickup.

While I had been out taking care of business, David had come up with an idea for getting us unstuck. He vaguely remembered from someone that if you build a snow ridge perpendicular to the tire, it will give the wheel some traction and allow it to pull itself out of the snow. David tried it once, and it didn’t work. I wasn’t as optimistic as he that it would work and told him to get back in the truck before he froze. He wouldn’t listen to me, and I began to get very frustrated with him. I had reconciled myself to staying in the pickup all night, and didn’t want to let go of that safe situation. If David spent too much time outside, I thought he would freeze. The idea had taken hold of him, though, and he wouldn’t stop trying to build a ridge for the tire. There were a couple times where the wheel almost made it, and David would shout for joy; however, every time we came fell back in the rut I lost a little more hope and tried again to tell David to get back in the cab. He wouldn’t listen: “One more time, Karen. We can do it, I know it. Just trust me.” David said that over and over again. “Just trust me. You never trust me with anything. We can do this.”

And he was right. The pickup, roaring like a mad bull, charged the snow ridge and pulled itself out of the ditch. David was ecstatic, “I was right! We did it! Yes! Thank you, Jesus!” He climbed back in the pickup and we set off again. I was amazed and ashamed at my lack of faith, both in my heavenly Father and in my younger brother. I was content to stay there, stuck in a rut, when the possibility of freedom only required determination and work.

It took a long time, since we still had about halfway to go, and the wind hadn’t let up at all. We kept at it and continued driving, making it safely home. I couldn’t remember how long we had been on the road. There were quite a few worried messages on the answering machine from our speech coach, whom we called and pacified. We called our father, who was at a meeting, and David told our story. He was so proud of what he had accomplished. That night my respect for him rose quite a bit. He wasn’t just my little brother, constant and annoying. He was growing up, and would someday be able to take care of himself and his family the way he had taken care of me and my sister that night. Even though the drive home began as something mundane, it ended up marking a transition in my relationship with David. It was a journey we began separately and ended together.

I've made it.

A friend just used a picture that I had taken of her as a facebook profile. I think that this has never happened to me. I feel that I have arrived as a photographer.

But the feeling is fleeting. I'm just an amateur. I know that. And there are some moments that you really can't capture anyway.

Such as the light today, filtering through the opalescent peach-colored leaves.
Or when we were sitting in the patio at a cell group on Tuesday night in Mexico, singing a hymn and the light all around us turned pink. Even though we couldn't see the sunset, it was reflected on every face, with calm.
Or at camp, walking back up the hill to retrieve a forgotten item and the sunlight illuminates the mosquitos and flying mites and outlines the trunks of the trees. And it's a secret place because no one goes up there at that time of day to see what I see.

I could have taken a picture of each one of those moments, but it wouldn't have been the moment itself. And I don't think that the best photographer in the world can really capture those moments, anyway. They just have to be experienced.

Gesundheit

I was in class during my undergrad when somebody three aisles over sneezed. The student on the other side of me said softly, under her breath, like an automatic habit, "bless you." It wouldn't have been heard by anyone farther away than me. I wondered if she felt compelled to say bless you after somebody, anybody sneezes; a compulsion that forced the words out at a whisper during class.

Then began an increasing awareness of how people responded to sneezes, how the responses to sneezing were different than those for coughing. I noticed how people would say "bless you" or God bless you" or "Gesundheit" or "salud." I noticed how common these remarks were, and how people seemed to take a personal interest in your sneezes, asking if you have allergies.

All of this was different for me, but I wasn't sure if it was a general North Dakota thing, or just my family. We always ignored other people's sneezes; just pretended it wasn't happening. Sometimes we'd even apologize for sneezing, like my mother saying "oh, excuse me!" after a particularly loud sneeze or a series.

I have a tendency to stop my sneezes before they happen and, until I actually tried to "open up" and "let the sneezes out" I continually received comments like "was that a laugh or are you crying?" "are you okay?" "You need to open up when you sneeze. It's not good for you to sneeze like that!"

So other people bless you with health or God's protection, wondering if you're okay. I always thought you should smother your sneezes or at least apologize for inconveniencing other people for the noise.

Counting heartbeats.

Sometimes I am sitting reading an article or a book, and I am sitting so still that I can see my hair vibrate from my heartbeat. So I slowly move one hand to check my pulse, and sure enough - the vibrations are from my heartbeat. So I sit even stiller and try to notice other vibrations. Maybe my scarf will shake, maybe I can feel the pulse in my hands or legs or hear it in my ears. I become aware of my breathing. I think "I need to exercise more."

I like being aware of my heart as it just keeps pumping pumping pumping. It's steady and faithful. My fingertips are pink and my toes aren't cold. When we studied the circulatory system in biology I would imagine my arteries breaking off into smaller and smaller vessels, ending in tiny capillaries so small that only one red blood cell could pass through at a time. I would close my eyes and feel my heart beat and think about being alive and how my body takes care of me; my heart pumping without me ever asking it to; my lungs working with air pressure to move oxygen in and out of my body.

So sometimes I get really distracted when I'm reading articles or books for class. It's more fun to count my heartbeats.

my neighbor

My little neighbor's name is William, but his hair is longish and combed nicely; sweeping across his forehead. I assumed that he was a little girl and was confused when he said that his name was William. Walking into the house I asked Amy "Is that little girl's name really William?" Instead of switching my gender assumption - oh, a little boy with long hair - I thought "that's odd that a little girl would have William as a name."

Calvin and Hobbes

One year for Christmas my siblings and I decided to get a Calvin & Hobbes book for my father. But instead of wrapping it and putting it under the tree we secretly read it in bed - throwing it under the pillow when he came in to say goodnight. When he finally received it, it was already well-worn and chuckled over, having made the rounds among his loving children.

Another year for Christmas my dad put a big, heavy present on my lap. I opened it up and didn't know what to say; I was astonished at seeing the "Complete Calvin & Hobbes" sitting there. My dream had come true! What had I done to merit such a wonderful gift? And how can I take care of this with so many siblings - oh wait? It's a family gift? For all of us? ahhh. well I am sure that we will all truly enjoy it...

Today I received my own Calvin & Hobbes book - "It's a Magical World" - which contains the latter years of the strip. And it's my own, my very own. Given to me by Natasha for no other reason than that she loves me.