dual personalities

I think so. It feels like all I could manage to post today is:

DN and I are dealing with a number of unforeseen challenges (and opportunities! but challenges nonetheless). It just amazes me how you can feel that you have a lot going on, and then something new pops up. Yikes-a-mighty!

But hey. We still have grocery store flowers!

Here’s to hanging in there.

I’m here in St. Louis with my darling DP! Wonder of wonders, I had an easy trip!

The view out the plane window as we were descending into St. Louis was much more beautiful than my photo would suggest. The moon was up as the sunset turned the clouds pink. Down below it was already dark as you can see from the dark blue peaking through the clouds. The view is the only thing I like about flying (okay, those maple crisps that United passes out help, too).

I’m grateful to have my feet on solid ground again and to be with my DP.

This weekend we attended a very lovely wedding in the hills of Staunton, Virginia. The outdoor wedding at a farm reminded us of our own July nuptials two years ago. Do you prefer a mountain view or a river view?

This wedding had a “summer outdoor cocktail attire – jackets optional.” (Oh, the ways to describe, “We understand that it will be hot, but PLEASE look nice.”) DN carried his jacket throughout the sweltering evening.

I love attending weddings, especially ones that do not treat the ceremony as something to be gotten through. Our friends had written their own ceremony, a secular reflection on their journey and love for one another. It was very them, and I really appreciated how they included the “audience” and managed to get everyone to focus on the present ceremony (read: put their phones away) and focus.

Out of curiosity, I took a look at our wedding program. I remember sitting at the dining room table with my mother and DN, choosing the readings and music. It took some time to figure out which lessons felt appropriate to us, which music felt happy rather than somber, and so on. Would you expect anything less than obsessive consideration from us?

Unless the Lord builds the house,
   those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city,
   the watchman stays awake in vain.
It is in vain that you rise up early
   and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
   for he gives to his beloved sleep.

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord,
   the fruit of the womb a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior
   are the children of one’s youth.
Blessed is the man
   who fills his quiver with them!
He shall not be put to shame
   when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.

(Psalm 127)

I spent the week moving books. On Monday the DH and I rented a UHAUL van so that we could move home three large, heavy, wooden bookshelves that I bought from a retiring colleague. It was a harder job than I anticipated and getting them from the second floor office to the van was a major pain, but with the help of a couple of colleagues and a kind, brawny passerby we managed. At home we did all the hefting ourselves. These shelves are big and extremely heavy!

After we wrestled the shelves into the family room, the rest was up to me. I got busy moving books.

Since, as my mother used to say, “there are only so many hours in a day and so many minutes in an hour, and I tend to get tired,” it was a multi-day process that involved much bending, stretching, bruising and — dare I say it — swearing.  But the results were quite satisfactory. We gained so much shelf space that I have room to grow!

Should I have put the small bookcase between the two big ones?

And I kept one of the old, white bookcases for DVDs and CDs.

Note the new pillow — I picked up two of them in Idaho. The Ikea chair is on its last legs, but it’ll do for now.

For the first time ever we have more shelf space than books — hallelujah! How long do you suppose it will take us to fill the space?

When I wasn’t moving books or grumbling about my aches and pains, I was reading David McCullough’s wonderful Morning on Horseback, his biography of a young Theodore Roosevelt. As I read the Author’s Note at the beginning of the book, I was particularly struck by this comment — pay special attention to the last couple of sentences:

But it was when I discovered the range and richness of surviving Roosevelt family correspondence — the many thousands of letters written not just by TR but by his mother, father, sisters, brother, grandmother, aunts, uncles, and private diaries and journals in the great Theodore Roosevelt Collection at Harvard’s Houghton Library — that I realized what a truly marvelous and very large subject I had. The letters, only a small fraction of which have been published, offered the chance to get inside the life of a well-to-do Victorian American family — a very particular and vanished way of life — to go below the surface of their world, in a way that is seldom possible for a writer, except in fiction. It became the most engrossing work imaginable. The point that one of their number was to “make history” one day seemed almost immaterial. It was a story I would have wanted to tell had their names been something other than Roosevelt or had none of them done anything special later in life.

I felt vindicated reading that! The fact that I have several large plastic tubs full of memorabilia and letters — letters I wrote and those I received from my parents, sister, brother, aunts, cousins, and friends — has excited strange looks and not a few comments from people who think that keeping such things is a waste of space and who assume that I have a morbid fear of being forgotten, which is not the case at all. The point is that the way of life that we enjoyed growing up has vanished, and someday someone might want to know what it was like to live in the second half of the 20th century. Haven’t you ever wished that you had letters your great grandparents wrote? Don’t you wonder what they were like? Well, I do, and my personal identity is very much wrapped up with my family history. Anticipating that some descendant (or perfect stranger) could think similarly, I will keep all my ‘stuff’ to pass along. So, children, please don’t throw it all away!!

Look around! There are memories everywhere. Taped to the side of one of those white bookcases and totally hidden from view, I found this lovely drawing:

I’m not sure which of my children drew it, but I’m going to leave it where it is.  If that makes me a sentimental fool, well, so be it. I’d rather be surrounded by memories than living in a context-free, meaningless present. Remember what Shirley Jackson said about reality: “No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and Katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.” Words to ponder.

Perhaps because it is summer, I have been thinking often about my days as a camp counselor. Sometimes this personal history comes up at work, because I’m surrounded now more than ever by students who obsessively professionalize from day one of college. (Graduating Honors College students have résumés that are twice as long as my own.) I find myself proudly explaining that I was “just” a camp counselor every summer in college — and it was the life! (Cue “three meals a day, for which you didn’t pay…”) I miss being paid to teach 10 year olds how to french braid (an important life skill!), having rest hour built into your daily life, cultivating a deep but natural tan in the Michigan sun, and spending days off on Lake Michigan. And, inevitably, at Walmart.

I recently regaled DN with tales of the 4th of July at camp: we had a parade that consisted almost entirely of the coordinators riding in the bed of a pickup truck, and we got to eat donuts freshly baked on premises. We wore kitschy American gear and, apparently, short shorts. It was a simpler time.

Another category of camp memory consistently pops up when I hear certain songs. Each summer, the counselors chose one song to theme the camp sessions, and eventually, we taught the campers a “flash dance” to this song. My first year, it was Katy Perry’s “Firework,” and another, it was One Direction’s “What Makes You Beautiful.” I was recently in a WaWa gas station bathroom and nearly burst into grapevine steps when the chorus to “Firework” began. I was always terrible at these dances, but I could probably remember the choreography in two minutes if necessary. I can’t help but wonder what this year’s “song of summer” might be!

Finally, I shouldn’t leave out the central message of camp, an “MSRP” way of life that does not refer to manufacturer’s suggested retail price. The acronym refers to four categories: mental, social, religious, and physical. We were encouraged to practice and develop these “folds” in a balanced manner. Is there an area in which you could be standing taller?

From William Danforth’s I Dare You

All in all, a formative experience for sure. I don’t think I would have learned more about myself or about the world in an internship, do you? Now I just have to figure out how to get back there!

Now that I’m home I fully intend to stop posting about the Big Trip. I don’t want to turn into one of those people who inflicts vacation photos on everyone ad nauseum. I may already have entered that realm, but allow me one last hurrah. So far, I have focused on spectacular vistas and outside activities, although we did make a few stops that involved interiors — and what stops they were!

First off was the famous I-80 Truck stop in Walcott, Iowa,

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which also has a very cool truck museum, complete with its own 1930s snow mobile. Really, if you like trucks it worth a stop and it’s free!

Of course, we visited John Wayne’s birthplace and museum in Winterset, Iowa. Winterset is a lovely town and I enjoyed the museum very much.

Though small, it has a great collection of items from JW’s best movies. I’m happy to say the museum seems to be doing a roaring trade.

Next, we visited the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota. The building is covered in corn cob murals that they change every year. This year’s theme salutes the military. The corn palace is Mitchell’s only claim to fame, and judging by the rest of the town, it’s chief source of income.

Here I am in the Corn Palace ‘corn field’.

In the middle of nowhere Idaho, we stopped at the first experimental nuclear reactor, which is now a museum.

It looked exactly like a 1960s sci fi movie set! The DH makes a great mad scientist, don’t you think?

Finally, we stopped at the world famous Idaho Potato Museum in Blackfoot, Idaho. It has collections of potato mashers, peelers, and advertisements, potato processing machinery, and toys, featuring Mr. Potato Head. I learned a great deal about all the different types of potatoes, the history of the potato in Idaho, and how they are grown and distributed. What a great place! After perusing the displays, we went to the café, where the DH had a baked potato and I tried potato ice cream (it was tasty and slightly starchy).

The DH being a good sport.

I can’t remember what connection Marilyn Monroe had with Idaho potatoes, but the photo op was irresistible.

Next time you feel bored, go for a drive and pay attention to funky billboards. Why not stop and explore? You might learn something new, and you will certainly be supporting some local enterprise. Of course, you could end up in a horror movie situation, so be careful how you choose!