Scarlet and Silver

Tonight was a party to kick off the season with Bing, Rosemary, Danny, and Vera Ellen - i.e. White Christmas. But, my favorite color of the season is the reds - from the deep rubies to the dark crimsons. So, here, shades of scarlet:

Not Quite Winter Yet

I sometimes have a hard time believing that winter will really come here, to Philadelphia. Already, the sticky heat of summer has pushed the memory of snow piles up to my elbows deep into the recesses of my mind - I have to force myself to realize that I made those snow piles less than a year ago.

A reliable weatherman, a coworker, has predicted that there will be a snowstorm within the next two weeks, and, based upon his track record, I'm inclined to trust him. But for now, I look out at the sunny early mornings and late afternoons, at the brown leaves clinging to the trees, at the rakes still standing in front of the hardware store, and I think, "Not quite winter yet."

The view out my office window, late afternoon

Newtown Hardware, ready for anything

The single tree across the street, whose leaves alone have filled my driveway

December - and Photos

I haven't done much photography of my own in the past couple of years. I sort of overdosed in AK, and then had to recover for a while. But this fall I've been taking more and more shots for work, and trying to get my artistic eye back in gear.

When I saw this referenced on my friend's blog, I decided it would be a challenge, and would force me to write more, too, and I should take part. So here I am, posting my first series in The December Photo Project.

After a chilly, drab, day marked by torrential downpours of rain - very November-ish - I decided I needed to get back into the Christmas spirit with some shots of the tree:

Then I saw the olive wood nativity, and the ornaments, and found I needed to get a little closer.

On a quiet road in Maryland

Written 28 November 2010

Dear Aimee -

I went to your grave today. You weren't there. I didn't expect you to be; you left your earthsuit almost a year ago.

I stood quietly for a moment. It was cold, but not nearly so cold as the day we buried you. February's chill hasn't yet come. Then I read a part of First Corinthians 15 - one of the best parts, the part about earthly bodies and heavenly ones. The part that says we bear the image of the Second Man in our heavenly bodies. I wonder what you look like now.

I didn't have anything to leave at your grave - it was sort of a whim to come by today. There were flowers there, though. Someone else came this week. I just read Scripture and then whispered to God.

I asked Him to hold your family tightly. To comfort them particularly in the next few months. I saw them a week ago, and we missed you. You were with us in our shared memory, but we missed the particular lilt to your voice, which didn't enter the conversation, the particular turn to your smile which didn't take part in the merriment, the particular tune of your laugh which didn't ring at the jokes.

We talked of you some, we thought of you more, and when we parted, we prayed for one another. And I thanked God He's protected them all this year. I thanked Him for holding your dad, for comforting your mom, for strengthening and encouraging your brothers, for caring for your sister. Some people might not think, knowing everything your family's been through this year, that thanking God for what He's done in their lives is the right attitude. But those people haven't met your family - and they haven't met their God.

I went to your grave today, Aimee, and as always, you pointed me to God.

Lamentations

He has filled me with bitterness,
He has made me drunk with wormwood.

He has broken my teeth with gravel;
He has made me cower in the dust.
My soul has been rejected from peace;
I have forgotten happiness.
So I say, "My strength has perished,
And so has my hope from the LORD."

Remember my affliction and my wandering, the wormwood and bitterness.
Surely my soul remembers
And is bowed down within me.
This I recall to my mind,
Therefore I have hope.
The LORD'S lovingkindnesses indeed never cease,
For His compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.
"The LORD is my portion," says my soul,
"Therefore I have hope in Him."
The LORD is good to those who wait for Him,
To the person who seeks Him.
It is good that he waits silently
For the salvation of the LORD.
It is good for a man that he should bear
The yoke in his youth.
Let him sit alone and be silent
Since He has laid it on him.
Let him put his mouth in the dust,
Perhaps there is hope.
Let him give his cheek to the smiter,
Let him be filled with reproach.
For the Lord will not reject forever,
For if He causes grief,
Then He will have compassion
According to His abundant lovingkindness.

Spaghetti in the Pensieve

In one of the Harry Potter books, when Harry and Dumbledore are examining memories in the Pensieve, there’s one memory that Dumbledore has trouble getting out of its little bottle into the Pensieve. It clings to the glass, and stretches into strings as he forces it out…I think all memories are like that, in a way. They all cling, typically one to another, like strands of spaghetti that haven’t been tossed in olive oil.

It’s strange, really, the way things connect in the mind. One item references another, which triggers a third, and then, before you know it, you’re years away from where you started, deep in the reaches of memory or facing an unknown future.

It was editing an article that did it for me this time around. The author quoted Tobias Wolff, a contemporary fiction writer. At the moment, all I thought was, Tobias Wolff. I was in a writing workshop with him once. But hours later, in the quiet before sleep, strands began to cling, and my mind was off.

I remembered the writing workshop. It was in a richly paneled room in the back of a mansion – a chilly day, grey out the windows. Mr. Wolff presented briefly, then dug right into our work. When he got to mine he said he bet that I wondered what people would think of one of my characters, the Imp. I hadn’t wondered anything of the sort; in my mind, my Imp was the centerpiece of my story. Without her, I had no tale. But I found it interesting that he was considering whether the Imp worked. I suppose, if she didn’t, then the entire piece would be a flop. She must have worked, though. Tobias Wolff liked my story.

To the workshop clung the story, the conversation I recorded between myself and my Imp. And to the story clung the event that spurred it: an afternoon, a few months after Keren died, when I watched a video about a Trisomy-18 boy who lived for just three months. To that afternoon clung grief. The loss of my little niece, the impact it had on me.

And then, like that memory in the Pensieve, reluctantly pulled to the fore, came a thought: my new baby niece has to have heart surgery. Up until that moment I had not allowed the thought sway. A routine surgery. Something that they do a lot. But in that moment, intertwined with my grief, I saw the unknown future – Emily on an operating table. And it terrifies me.

The tears come – the ones I’ve held back for the past few weeks, the ones I’ve heard in my sister’s voice on the phone – and they wash over the strands of thought and memory, dissolving them together into the basin of my mind where they bubble now, just below the edge, in danger of splashing out at any moment.

School Spirit

Late in the fall of my senior year of high school, my friends discovered that I'd never been to a football game. They informed me that this situation had to be rectified before I graduated.

I resisted them. I'd made it through nearly four seasons without attending a football game and had not yet felt the lack. Generally, I am not a football fan - and I knew even less of the game in high school than I do today.

But my friends insisted. It was a high school experience I should have.

I still disputed them. My high school experience was not particularly normal in any sense. I felt no need to pretend it was.

They informed me that there was only one game left in the season, and I needed to support my school.

I said I had no school spirit. My school was actually two schools sharing a campus; we had classes in both with people from both and were only separate for administrative things and sports teams. So my attachment to Canton, my own school, was not particularly strong. Salem had better pep rallies (which I attended because I got out of class), and better sports teams overall (but I'd never seen them play). The final game of each football season was the Canton v. Salem game, and Salem had won for 17 consecutive years.

My friends ignored my protests. They informed me that I was going to attend the final game of the season. They informed me I was going to support Canton.

I tried to plead that one of my good buddies since Kindergarten played for Salem, but my friends would not allow me to root for the "other" team. They dragged me to the game, and I determined I would be neutral.

I really can't remember much of the actual game. I remember the cold. I remember walking up into the stands. I remember looking down at the field from above and seeing the teams stretched out in formation below me. However, understanding none of the rules of the sport at that point in my life, all I saw was a line of blue and a line of red running into each other at regular intervals. But slowly, as the temperature dropped, the numbers on the Canton side of the scoreboard rose.

And, as the moments of the game ticked away, I found myself growing agitated, interested, and even, dare I say it, excited that Canton was winning. I looked down at the blue Salem bench and spotted my friend's number on a jersey. I had a moment of divided loyalties, but as the crowd grew noisier, I discovered something: I had school spirit.

When the final whistle blew, I cheered and yelled and smiled and laughed with the Canton fans as I watched my friend fall to his knees as his team lost the game for the first time in 18 years.

Yesterday, I didn't get to watch the whole US game. I had to go to lunch with friends who are coming as students next year. As I stood in line for the cafeteria, one of PBU's soccer players was checking people in. A small crowd had formed around her - some with responsibilities, others just hanging. I came up to the table to scan my card, and one of the crowd was giving commentary: "They're still down 2-1." She glanced at her phone. "No! Wait! They tied!"

The soccer player cheered, and nearly lost count of the people in line. And I, scanning my card and turning in, felt that strange stirring within my heart once again. I missed the controversial recall of the 3rd US goal, but when I looked it up later I felt a little outrage deep inside.

These feelings make little sense to my brain. After all, I'm rooting for England, right? But, if the US continues to do well, I might just discover that deeply hidden "school" spirit once again.