Memories and Old Salem

Sometimes memories come from the strangest of places. Yesterday I stood at the counter of a rented townhouse in central North Carolina cutting green onions for a salad. For a split second, I was transported back to California in the 1980s. I was just a child, in the kitchen or on the back porch of my grandparents' Whittier house -- I wasn't quite sure where, exactly -- and I was watching my grandmother cut green onions... probably for a big family dinner, in the days when my grandparents were both alive and our extended family had a thread, my grandfather, stitching the various parts together. I don't know if it was the smell, the texture, the crunch of the blade through the crisp green stalks or the dull thump of the knife on the cutting board, but the onions awakened a deep memory with surprising force and freshness. This was no cherished memory of a special moment; it was a long-forgotten ordinary moment, but when I lived it again, it became a treasure.

There are places that serve to sort of jog our collective memories, and this part of the South seems full of them. So many houses sag, in various stages of decay, where they proudly stood decades ago. There's a sense of connection to the past here that is missing from the orderly streets of California's gleaming new master-planned communities: a scent reminiscent of another time and place wafted on the winds over the fields once soaked with blood, or the sound of an old grandmother singing as she lays the laundry out to bleach in the sun.

Some of these places leave the memories to the imagination, where memorial plaques are absent and tour books are silent; others bring the past to life so vibrantly that you feel you were somehow there -- that you will leave remembering the faces and places alive with the life of another era when life was simple and hard. Old Salem is one of those places, and I found myself wandering its streets and shops and houses twice in the last week: once with Steve, Jayne, Thomas and Paul, and again with Daniel, Erik and Robyn.

Old Salem -- the birthplace of the latter half of what is now Winston Salem, NC -- was settled in 1766 by the Moravians, a protestant sect with German heritage who came from what is now part of the Czech Republic. They call themselves the first protestants, and they may be one of the earliest groups to break from the Roman Catholic church to have a continuous modern presence. They founded Bethlehem, PA, before moving in 1753 to "Wachovia," the nearly 100,000 acres they would call home in North Carolina.

Salem became the center of the Wachovia settlement, and it's location was settled by drawing lots. When God said "yes" via a piece of parchment (after saying "no" in other spots over several years), ground was broken for the new civic center of Moravian life. The town's buildings have since been lovingly restored and the streets and shops are peopled by costumed historical interpreters who demonstrate the way of life in the town from 1766 to the 1800s.

I'll let pictures do most of the talking from this point. They should tell you that Old Salem is a fascinating look at another era, and the sort of place where we can jog our human memory in individual ways, as it did for Robyn when she stood in a garden burgeoning with flowers and bustling with bees and said, "There's a smell here reminds me of my grandmother," and as a people. Ultimately, almost all of us have grown from foreign roots transplanted in American soil. And in Old Salem, we are reminded that those who came before us are not so far removed from us that we cannot touch and taste and smell their world.

Desayuno Chapin y Cumpleaños Felices

I plan to make a series of posts this week: partly because I am rather unexpectedly in possession of more time than usual for blogging and the like, and partly because this last week has been incredibly full. To recap in brief, Steve, Jayne, Thomas and Paul (Daniel's oldest brother and family) came to visit for much of the week. That was a wonderful time, and I promise to cover it in more detail in future posts. However, I plan to work backwards a bit, starting with some of the most recent events.

This weekend, Erik and Robyn came over to observe two birthdays: Daniel's 39th on Friday and Erik's 32nd, which is today. One feature of the weekend was Guatemalan breakfast. Daniel called Guatemala home for 14 years, and so when we managed to find a Guatemalan brand (Ducal) of refried black beans (volteados) in a local store here, he bought them and introduced me to the wonder that is Guatemalan breakfast. I think it will become a favorite at our house. Our version featured volteados, tortillas de mais (corn), chirmol (a sort of roasted salsa that Dan made from scratch), queso (Mexican cheese, in this case, because Guatemalan cheese still evades us), huevos con cebolla (eggs with onion), Crema Guatemalteca (a mixture of sour cream, cream cheese and heavy cream), fruit and coffee. We would have added fried ripe platano (plantains) had we remembered to buy them.
As for the title of the post, Guatemalans refer to themselves as "chapin" and "desayuno" is, as you have probably guessed, breakfast. The second half of the title, of course, refers to happy birthdays, and so, with that, I proceed to part two of the post.

Robyn and I made birthday cakes this weekend. It was a collaborative effort in the kitchen, but I did most of Daniel's cake, and Robyn did most of Erik's. I, at least, had a lot of fun working on them.

Daniel's cake was a "giant ding dong", complete with devils food cake, cream filling and a chocolate glaze. I prefer, however, to think of it as a giant hockey puck. This puck featured something like the emblem of the team that still, in his heart of hearts, has the most pull for Daniel. I got the team emblem close enough that Dan said he recognized it immediately, which was all I aspired to, given that I was decorating free-hand. However, to Dan's great feigned sorrow, I was unable to put the official NHL logo on the underside of the cake. I'm just not that good.

Erik's cake was vanilla with a sort of chocolate chip crust on the bottom and whipped cream frosting and filling. It was very light and tasty (not death-by-sugar like the puck) and was decorated with the brightly-colored emblem of his favorite Swedish fotboll (soccer!) club: Djurgårdens I. F.; where the D. I. F. would ordinarily have been on the crest, Robyn put his name.
On Sunday, we each had a small slice of each cake, offset in part by some cheese and crackers. Robyn and Erik then returned home and Dan and I collapsed into a sugar coma for a couple of hours. It was a fitting end to a very long week.
So, allow me to end with wishes for a very happy birthday to my beloved husband Daniel, to our good friend Erik, and a very happy belated birthday to our darling niece, Talia, who celebrated her first birthday last weekend. I would invite you to visit her family blog for photos of that joyous event, which we, sadly, could not celebrate in person.

Many years!

Before and After

I don't feel I can really write about what's going on in my life at the moment, and I am not much for writing poetry (at least not of the sort that gets shared), but I found myself up at 4am scribbling these words as I thought about regret and time and opportunity, and in the lack of anything else to say, I offer this jumble of sleepless thoughts.

There is the moment before,
and the moment after.
In between comes the moment of transition, as dying lies breathlessly moaning between the twin moments of dead and alive.
It is that middle waiting place; the moment whose long-anticipated passing makes the possible actual, whose flight leaves after behind, in its crashing, tumbling wake.
After having arrived, drenched and dripping with the waters of change, the mind and heart still clamor for what was. Before.
Disbelieving, yearning to plunge back under the surf and emerge where the waves have yet to pound the shore,
I flirt with the time before...
before the death
before the diagnosis
before the darkness
before the loss
before what is done cannot be undone
and after...
Now. This moment after when once again what is just is. No longer becoming, but become. When the after settles in for a nap on the rug, just there on his well-worn patch before the hearth, impervious to the frigid stone and the gray smoldering remains of my extinguished heart-fire.
There, in the bone-cold and bitter silence, it is hard to remember that after is itself simply the before to another moment...
Before whatever is next.
before the birth
before the cure
before the daybreak
before the gain
before what is yet undone is done.
After is where what is becomes what could be.
The place where the heart aches as it thaws from its arctic freeze,
its nascent smoldering flame exploding into beats of life.
The place where ashes give birth to the blazing Phoenix, and the light of hope bursts anew on the world of before.

If ever...

Six years ago today my beloved and I were "really married" in the sight of 400-odd witnesses seen and untold numbers unseen. It was the moment that my little girl dreams came true, right down to the princess dress!

In retrospect, the most amazing part is that I was given a husband that I can and do truly love and respect. What? That doesn't seem so amazing? Well, I spent several of my formative years thinking -- once I was too practical to continue to think that I would grow up to be a princess or Amy Grant -- that God's plan for me surely meant marrying me to someone I wouldn't love (or possibly even like), since God was a jealous God and I was certain I needed to be taught a lesson. While I dutifully composed lists of godly traits I wanted in a man and prayed for the safety, health and happiness of my yet-unnamed someday husband, wherever he was in the world, from the time I was a young teen, I didn't really have exalted hopes. I think I thought I would be lucky to get someone who would put up with me, let alone care deeply for me, and I entered my 20s still believing that was true. Given that my expectations lowered my standards a bit, and that I probably could have married badly a couple of times over before Daniel and I met, the fact that I was unmarried and not 100% sworn off of men when God brought Daniel into my life seems nothing short of a miracle.

For his part, Daniel once told me that his abiding fear was that God would make him a missionary in India, and later in life he had resigned himself to becoming a monk if the right woman didn't show up, and she didn't seem to be in any hurry to get there. Clearly, Daniel is not a missionary in India nor a monk, and I am not in marital misery or divorced. God knew better, it would seem.

I was right about one thing. I needed to be taught a lesson. I needed to learn that the man God had planned for me was far and away beyond my expectations. More than that, he was what I needed: kind, devoted, talented, intelligent, patient almost beyond measure and a perfect fit in so many ways. I needed to learn something about love. I needed to see that love was neither a fairytale gooey feeling (though I have been blessed with some of that), nor was it the lashes of a taskmaster for my own betterment (though I have needed some of that), nor was it something that I could never experience in a way that enlivened my being (though I despaired of that)... No, love was, as promised, patient, kind, not envious, bot boastful, not proud, not rude, not self-seeking, not easily angered, not keeping record of wrongs... it protects, trusts, hopes, perseveres. It never fails. In my only slightly imperfect husband, I glimpse perfect love, and I am completely overwhelmed.

I may fail to love him as I ought. We have and will face all manner of challenges. There is, however, nobody I would rather face them with.

And so, in awe of God's graciousness and overwhelmed by the gift that is Daniel in my life, I come to the end of my post and I haven't words of my own to say what I wish. And so, what Anne Bradstreet said of her beloved, I quote in honor of mine:

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.

A Mountain and Mayberry

In our temporary home, we're a little over an hour from Pilot Mountain, which we were introduced to this weekend, thanks our friends and weekend guests Erik and Robyn. It's a very lovely place with miles of trails to wander. Sadly, there was a bit more excitement than usual while we were there--EMTs and forest rangers were busy rescuing a 26-year old woman who fell while rock climbing. The good news is that Daniel was told when he asked that she was expected to make a full recovery. The mountain is lovely. Trails lead around its base, and there are gorgeous views in just about every direction.





Nearby is also Mt. Airy, which claims to be "Mayberry" of Andy Griffith show fame, since it is the place where Mr. Griffith grew up. We noticed upon walking around a bit that it seems to be the perfect place to enjoy ice cream and knick-knack shopping. There must be half a dozen little hole-in-the-wall restaurants with ice cream offerings and three times as many stores with Lord-only-knows what in them. We didn't browse much, because, as one might expect, the town had begun to shut down at 5 pm!

Come Fly With Me!

Our cats seem to be hard-wired to want breakfast at 5 or 5:30 a.m. It used to be 6 or 6:30, but then the blasted time-change ruined that. I find this truth about the cats annoying, since they are also very good at disrupting human sleep enough to make their demand quite clear, and the humans in our house have become accustomed to keeping only slightly more reasonable hours than the average college student. We go to bed at midnight or a bit before, and at the appointed too-early hour the cats stomp on us, cry, try to pull the covers off of us, nuzzle us and demand to be petted with the regularity of a snoozed alarm until we submissively sit up and walk to the kitchen. This behavior is annoying at best and disruptive at worst, because I often cannot fall asleep easily again once I have regained enough consciousness to shoo them or groan at Daniel to make them stop by giving them food.

This groaning at Daniel is one of the many mercies of life with him. Dan, who can fall asleep just about anywhere and any time, is able (and gracious enough) to get up, feed them, go back to bed, and sleep. This means that most mornings I am spared having to wake up enough that I can't sleep further. It probably pays off for him in a way, because when I have had insufficient sleep, my charms wear rather thin and he is the first one to feel the brunt of my thundering sleep-deprived unreasonableness.

Dan has been gone several nights this week - off to his new work and the fascinating aromas and lumpy bed of a rather grubby extended-stay hotel. I, on the other hand, have the novelty of the whole bed to myself, which might mean spreading out more if I didn't have a cat on either side of me to pin me down. However enchanting the ability to spread out might be in theory and in practice, it comes at a rather steep price. I will not explore the emotional price now. Instead, I wish to explore the costly now-guess-who-gets-to-get-up-at-5-ish-to-feed-the-cats issue.

I might add that there is no locking them out of the room, both because I can't sleep as well if they aren't curled up near me (oh, the irony), and because locking them out is simply an invitation for them to rip the carpet under the door and whine incessantly trying to get in. That's enough to keep us from sleeping in the first place... so the cats stay. And we, like Pavlov's dog, do what we are conditioned to do.

I tried to outsmart them last night. I gave them an extra meal just before bed in hopes that their tummies would feel comfy enough that they would ignore the tugs of their circadian rhythms and leave off tugging on me, because after a couple of fitful husband-less nights, I was extraordinarily tired. Alas, at 5-ish when MooMoo greeted me with cries in the still-dark house, and walked on me until I knew there was no fighting it, I dragged myself out of bed and, leaving the lights off so as to not jar my sleepy senses further, I felt my way through the kitchen to the cans of food.

I had done everything I could to increase the odds that I could fall back to sleep after the kitchen trek (leaving lights out, moving slowly, trying to stay as unalert as is safe when actually walking around), while the kitties contentedly lapped at their processed meat product, but my brain was uncooperative. I lay there tossing and turning, my mind doing laps at my internal equivalent of the Indy-500, until I just gave up, got up and sat up at the computer.

Ah, but all was not lost...! The more pleasant discovery I have made of late is that sometimes I am able, after getting up and calming my mind a bit and maybe eating a little something, to go back to sleep for a while if I make another attempt at it. This morning, it worked! And did it ever!

I remember the feeling I sometimes had when falling asleep as a kid. I would suddenly start to float out of the bed and up into space, weightless and free. The heaviness of life eventually robbed me of that most charming entrance into the dream world. Most nights I am anchored in my own bed with my own problems. This morning, when it was time for sleep, take two, I found myself in a rather ordinary dream that soon became extraordinary. There I was, in a spot I visit frequently in my nighttime wanderings, outside my parents' house. I'm not sure how it happened, but I suddenly became aware that I could leave the ground. I didn't have wings or a jet pack, but sure as I was dreaming, I could float above the ground. I even had some control over direction and speed and height. So I flew up the street in the general direction of the park. I looked down on treetops and roofs and wondered if I had time or mental powers enough to make it to a more exotic locale.

I decided to aim for Sweden, a spot Dan and I both have added to our "someday when we have money and time" list. I don't think I quite made it, but I did alight on the top of a rather European-style building just on the coast of some unfamiliar land. The feeling of flight was so exhilarating and freeing that I didn't want to stay there on the rooftop long, so I took off again, this time flying over the crystal-clear ocean, teeming with dolphins and killer whales that froliced just below the lustrous surface of the deeps. It was indescribably beautiful, and I had such a feeling of joy and peace in that moment that my eyes are growing red and damp just thinking about it now.

The flight evaporated there over the ocean, but I remained in a lucid state, molding, to some limited extent, the shape of my dreams. When I awoke, MooMoo was curled up next to me again, perhaps in pursuit of her own ever-elusive dream mouse.

I have often felt so overwhelmed of late in my waking hours. To have such a dream now, when I am so tired, earthbound and burdened, was a really amazing thing. I can only hope that someday soon I find my wings again.