South Africa Blog 1 . . .

Ok, so now I've had my shots (and my arm STILL hurts) and it's finally starting to sink in that I'm flying 20 hours away from home, away from Jay, away from all the pre-school year stuff that will just have to wait until we return home. Although I attempted to accomplish some things at SK today, it was just not happening. Tomorrow it's a full day in Lexington for professional development, work on Thursday and off to Philadelphia for four days on Friday.
Next weekend is Ann Arbor, then more work.

Insanity. How am I ever going to be ready to leave on July 30?

For those of you who have asked and may be interested, here is the itinerary for our trip . . . although I've been told several times that an itinerary just doesn't mean much when you're on "South Africa time."

I'm thinking that is a lot like "Jay time" and I'll fit right in.

July 30 -- Depart @ 2:15 for South Africa from Cincinnati. I think we're changing planes @ Dulles in DC.

July 31 -- Arrive in Johannesburg @ 5:05 to be transported to the location where we will be staying.

August 1 -- Charity and Faith church services, Kids Club teaching, tent church services. Work day.

August 2 - 4 -- Work days on the Charity and Faith campus.

August 5-6 -- Bakubung, Chameleon Village (a safari excursion)

August 7-9 -- Work days on the Charity and Faith campus

August 10 -- Depart for home @ noon

August 11 -- Return home @ 10:12 AM (CVG)

written in about 10 minutes for a kentucky state parks poetry contest when i was trying to prove to a group of students that you really can sit down and write about memories in the form of a poem. if i recall correctly, i was showing them how to break lines. amazing how many good poems came out of that lesson -- and one student even received an honorable mention in the high school division.

after I had made a couple of trips back and forth to breathitt county this summer to deliver books and supplies to a school ravaged by a flood last mother's day, i began to wonder about where my great grandmother (for whom i am named) lived. i think i actually found the house, based on what i think it looked like in my memory. who knows. maybe if i took mom there with me she could confirm. on the first trip jay was with me. we drove along the flood route to view the devastation. the scene still haunts me.

so i "plead poetic license" for a lot of the imagery -- considering I was incredibly young when we used to make trips to jackson, it is surely more fiction than fact. i remember fragments, as do most of us, of family trips to visit relatives. i remember smells and sounds, rooms and configurations of rooms. so strange. anyway, here's the poem:


Along the Mountain Parkway

along the Mountain Parkway
on the way to the Gorge, to the Bridge
faint, distant echoes of ancestral voices
speak to me at each mile marker --
great-grandmother, grandmother
aunts, uncles, cousins
and my Daddy --

to welcome me back to the hills
that birthed my family

each railroad track rippling
against the coal-streaked hillsides
serves as a roadmap back home –
a reminder of wheezy, queasy
childhood backroad trips to Eastern Kentucky
the Clifty Wilderness, the family home
before the four-lane was finished . . .

wandering and winding through the lands of my ancestors,
the trail to Natural Bridge leads my mind
to pathways of memories long-lost –

of downy-soft feather beds in an ancient atti
cchickens and roosters pecking in the front yard
the whoosh of shuffleboard in the side yard
the intoxicating incense of applewood
from a pipe in the company room
mingled with smells of Saturday breakfast
emanating from the kitchen --
sorghum molasses, pungent cured ham and savory sausage
jam from blackberry briars, butter from a churn

Nana’s strong, sinewy fingers
deftly kneaded the buttermilk biscuit dough;
I studied each movement like a critic
clinging to Nana’s apron, dodging flour dust.

strong-willed, sure-footed Nana
who could wring a chicken’s neck in one hand
and gesticulate with the other
while admonishing
keep an eye on the young-uns

mountainous multi-tasking at its finest
our own family natural monument.

And I wonder if that’s where it came from
the emphatically strong work ethic
the serene sense of security
the longsuffering loyalty to family
to friends
to education
to beliefs and values . . .
to my home --
to the natural wonders of Kentucky.

Nana’s blood runs rampant in my veins
like coal that streaks the Appalachian mountainside
predictable as the winding railroad tracks on which
Daddy carried the same coal as an engineer
and that always brought him right back home

as strong as the bridge I stand on now,
surveying what secures the past to the present

along the mountain parkway

In the cage . . .

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When is wing is bruised and his bosom sore
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core.
But a plea, that upward to heaven he flings--
I know why the caged bird sings.
from Sympathy by Paul Laurence Dunbar


Unless you've been hanging out at Crossroads recently for the Free journey, you have no clue why I am writing about a birdcage. Let's just say it's become a profound metaphor for things I don't like to do, namely connect with people on a deep level or get involved. And in many ways I've felt like Dunbar's caged bird over the course of the past weeks as I've struggled to embrace this concept of "free."

Mingo talked about "getting in someone's cage" -- and it's not something I aspire to do with anyone except Jay. And honestly, the way things have been going recently as we've both simultaneously embarked on this journey to be "free," I'm not sure I want to climb in his cage, either. Climbing in the cage takes too much energy; it's much safer to stay here on the outside instead of metaphorically beating one's wings against the bars of a cage in an effort to encounter freedom.

One of the most difficult aspects of the journey over the past couple of weeks is this notion of getting to know people I've never met and allowing those who are my friends to know me on another level. This isn't easy for me. In fact, it's difficult. It's hard. It's painful. It's any number of adjectives that symbolize agony. If you didn't know it already, I'm a closet introvert. I may look extroverted. I may seem outgoing. You might even think you know me . . . but you don't. Very few people know how difficult it is for me to talk to a group of anyone except teenagers in my classroom. Very few people in my life realize that I'd rather stay home than venture into public. I merely muster up motivation to make the trip weekly to our Free group, engaging in positive self-talk the entire trip. I'm determined to finally finish a journey. All six weeks of it.

What I REALLY want to do, though, is stay in my own cage -- alone.
. . .
A consignor asked my mom the other day how much weight I had lost after my surgery. Mom is rather protective of me, believing my journey is MY journey and my story is MY story. Unfortunately I've had someone in my life feel the need to broadcast to total strangers all the details of my gastric banding and it really hurts me that she doesn't understand how inappropriate her gossiping nature is. It hasn't afforded me the opportunity to control who was told and who was not about my decision to have this surgery. Now I've encountered a situation where a person is almost competitive in questioning about my weight loss because she has had the same surgery and apparently wants to "compare notes."

What I'm discovering firsthand is that not all band patients lose weight at the same rate or in the same way. We don't even experience the same problems post-surgery. Strangers feel invited to climb in my cage for various reasons -- usually all related to their own issues and insecurities. I've even encountered women who have said cruel, unkind words to me. And I've smiled sweetly and responded, then climbed into my cage to cry uncontrollably alone.

I don't like intruders in my cage.

So I'm thinking a lot about this cage thing that Mingo introduced. It's one thing to be invited in and another to barge in and then rattle the cage, especially when the songbird inside is beating her wings, desperately desiring freedom . . . true freedom.

What's On the Inside . . . Part 2

Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but, which if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

The picture in yesterday's post is the butterfly that appears on my arm in this photograph. Amazing. I had spent an hour or so photographing butterflies and sat down to watch my niece, Olivia, delighted with a butterfly on her arm. As I sat quietly observing the manic crowds of unsupervised children in the conservatory, the unthinkable happened: this large butterfly landed on me without warning and promptly opened up at full wingspan. It was enormous and elegant at the same time! Those beautiful azure-blue wings were hidden inside the mottled brown spots of the exterior. What dazzled me was that deep, brilliant color, as royal as Princess Diana's sapphire ring and as rare as lapis lazuli on the fingers of Cleopatra.

I was adorned with the elusive, the exquisite, the ethereal.

My mom took the camera from me and began to snap pictures as the noisy groups of children, nosey mothers and grandparents, and inquisitive Krohn Conservatory butterfly watchers surrounded me like paparazzi. I don't like attention; futhermore I was incredibly unhappy that total strangers started snapping photos of me with this magnificent butterfly on my flabby, fleshy appendage.

The thought of ending up in someone else's family scrapbook or digital photo album made me nauseous.

My new friend tickled me with the unfurling and recoiling of its proboscis. It gently fluttered, content to rest on me in the humid heat of the conservatory. . . both of us were equally happy and equally agitated by the growing gallery. Twenty or so minutes into this circus, a small boy began to blow gently against the wings of the butterfly in an attempt to get it to move. Despite my fervent "requests" for the little boy to leave me alone, he kept up his cruel, wicked childish game.

The butterfly grew tired of it and flew away to the tree next to us and instantly closed its wings, becoming almost one with the bark.

We are all so much like this butterfly. On the outside we attempt to blend with our surroundings, constantly flitting and fluttering from one place to the next. It is not until we find someone with whom we feel comfortable -- free -- that we open our wings and expose the beauty inside.

For me, that person is my husband, Jay, who every day encourages me to spread my wings and fly freely.

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarelyadmit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty. ~ Maya Angelou

What's On the Inside . . .

There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly. ~Buckminster Fuller

Caterpillars are awkward, slinky-ish creatures that slugglishly traverse concrete sidewalks in spring and summer. Seldom will one hear them described in ethereal terms like "elusive." No, caterpillars can be detrimental to crops. Pests. Voracious eaters of leaves. Personally, I find them creepy little critters.

When will Hollywood discover this and make a horror movie about man-eating caterpillars?

Yet from those woolly, hairy, larval Lepidoptera emerge beautiful butterflies. Frankly, the only reason that prevents me from squashing a caterpillar in its pathway is the thought that I might be killing a future Monarch butterfly.

Recently I read that there is something known as the "butterfly problem" in linguistics (which oddly enough was being discussed by a group of mathematicians at Santa Clara University). The word for "butterfly" is different in almost every language, even those closely related like Spanish and Portuguese. Papillon. Mariposa. Petalou'da. Schmetterling. Farfala. Parpar. Lupe lupe. Woo deep. Labalaba. From a list of over 50 translations of the term, no two appeared the same. To contrast -- for the term "cat," virtually every language mirrors the next: gato, gatto, chat, kat, katt, kot, chat, katze, gata.

Cats are just so commonplace. Butterflies? Well . . . they're not.

So why the universal uniqueness of the word butterfly?

According to Haj Ross, "The concept/image of the butterfly is a uniquely powerful one in the group minds of the world's cultures with its somewhat unpromising start as a caterpillar followed by its dazzling finish of visual symmetry, coupled with motional unforgettability of the butterfly's flipzagging path through our consciousness."

So it seems logical to me that no two languages could capture the essence of a butterfly with the same word or phrase. Butterflies symbolize transformation. Poetry in motion. Grace. Children chase them. Photographers capture them. And it seems like everyone adores them.

Not bad for something that started out in the body of a caterpillar.

Notes to Self About Snow . . .

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather. ~ John Ruskin

Let me just say this now before someone questions my sanity: I LOVE SNOW.

There's something about the velvety blanket of white that covers the world and creates an illusion of clean sheets on the bed of grass below. I adore the way snowflakes effortlessly dance to their destination; it invigorates me. Watching my cousin's children gleefully race around a barely-snow-covered front yard the first time they ever encountered snow on a trip from Florida to Kentucky at Christmas time made my heart sing and soar. Turning off the alarm and nestling back under a warm comforter next to Jay on the first official snow day of the school year truly makes me happy. Marveling at the glittering, glistening diamond-like brilliance of snow cover on the ground beneath a full moon -- does it get any better?

As a college student I would borrow cross country skis from the girl-next-door and take off across the WKU campus with no destination or purpose except to experience snow and the sound of skis slicing through skim of ice on the surface. I had no clue what I was doing. I possessed no skill, no technique. To any onlooker, I 'm sure I appeared awkward, but determined to cross the open field below Downing and my dorm.

I wasn't going anywhere, but it sure felt free.

These days, I'm much less adventurous. Strap on a set of skis now? No way. Too fearful I'll tear another meniscus or break bones. Scared of what someone might think of me bundled up and bulky, attempting to stand up straight and coordinate arms and legs, poles and skis. Sure, I still love snow -- but from the warm comfort of the kitchen looking out the French doors or behind the lens of a camera. I've relegated myself to the safe vocation of a vicarious observer of snow and not the enthusiastic participant I was in my early 20s when I'd ride down College Street past the SAE house on a "borrowed" cafeteria tray. It's a miracle I'm still alive!

I recently asked Jay if he'd like to go snowboarding. He was less-than-enthusiastic at the suggestion.

"Why don't we go antique shopping instead?"

How adventurous is that?

I think we're just getting old.

Today the sun stole more snow from yard, the driveway, the roadsides -- and it saddened me to see it melt into puddles on the pavement. Not because I'll miss the way people can't drive in it. Not because I realize praying for another snow day is a practice in futility. Not because I enjoy the chilly, icy breeze that often accompanies it. Not because I'll miss salt stains on my jeans or suede shearling boots. I'll miss the snow because it reminds me of a time when I truly felt free to strap on skis and just go. And I'll miss it because this winter I rediscovered the magic of a snow-covered world and the connection I feel to God and nature in the midst of the silence of an unexpected snowfall when the earth becomes blanketed in bliss.

Maybe next time it snows I'll just throw myself into it and create angel wings.

Maybe I'll fashion a snowman or become friends with a cafeteria tray sled again.

I thought about all those things this year; perhaps next time I'll feel free to just do it.

Dying in Exile . . .

Everyone is born a king, and most people die in exile. Oscar Wilde

Of all the pictures taken on our recent trip, this is Jay's favorite. Forget all my majestic masterpieces, artistic Ansel Adams-esque snapshots of snow. Forget some of them were taken as I hung the camera outside the window of a SUV moving 40-50 mph.

Yes, forget all of that. Jay was fixated on a frozen Frisch's statue exiled in Indiana.

If it had not been for ice, snow and the business establishment closed for the inclement weather, I'm certain we would have strapped a hulking Hoosier Big Boy to the luggage rack of the Sante Fe after extricating him from a chainlinked fence exile to his new Kentucky home.

Perhaps perched on the fishing pier as god of the lake as the summer sun shines bright or poised on our deck amid the tomatoes and herbs as king of the gas grill. Jay even fantasized that Big Boy would become an ensconced art installation in a fabulous yet currently unconstructed corner art/music studio in the basement.

A muse for our collective creative passions!

Really? Big Boy?

I'm not so sure Big Boy would love his new exile to our basement any more than his current prison in a nameless Southeastern Indiana town nestled somewhere between I-don't-know and God-knows-where on this grey February day. He'd just be another piece of clutter amidst seven years of collected boxes, files, art supplies, sheet music, DVDs, CDs, books, clothing and other ephemera -- which is just a really nice word to describe all of our accumulated crap.

As much as Jay really wanted to free Big Boy (just to imprison him in our home), Big Boy wasn't doing much to assist in his freedom. He was perfectly satisfied to smile blankly at those who quickly passed him en route to their destinations.

Just a lifeless, inanimate fiberglass shell-of-a-man.

Another lesson learned on the free journey:

it's difficult to free someone who just doesn't want to be free.

Social Obligation . . .

We visit with others as a matter of social obligation. How long has it been since we have visited with ourselves?

~ Morris Adler

Jay and I traveled to French Lick for an overnight trip -- the day before a dramatic, sweeping snowfall. Our journey home was a long one, precarious and treacherous, much like the last year of our life. I'm sure I'll blog about that at some point. Nonetheless, this hotel featured a wraparound porch filled with empty rockers (with the exception of newly-fallen snow); it reminded me of the times I've sat in a porch swing visiting with relatives or in a rocking chair on a sweltering July afternoon sharing stories with friends.

The historic hotel at West Baden is an amazing structure with an exquisite dome that changes character with the time of day. From different vantage points the luminescent lights in the dome's center mesmerized us, captivated us. For an hour we sat fixated on these lights -- not speaking nor uttering a sound -- until lulled into an almost other-worldliness. In silence we discovered that we had nowhere to go, no one to meet and nothing to do. All matters of social obligation were three hours away in Northern Kentucky and we merely just visited with ourselves. Literally. I knew that in Jay's own little world he was "at peace," as he often says when words are not punctuating the air between us. And I was visiting with myself in the quiet of my mind while Jay dozed off next to me.

Reminiscing about the last time I saw the delapidated squalor of this magnificent hotel as it hosted a rowdy high school marching band of which my brother was a member, I marveled at the transformation of this structure. And it suddenly became a metaphor for the transformation that had transpired in my own life this year.

Transported by the everchanging colors of the dome above me, my mind wandered through the winding roads of the past year that had led me on not-so-peaceful journeys to Indiana. And now I sat in silence, holding the hand of the man who holds my heart, staring at this tranquil "sky" above me.

And it became so perfectly clear: sometimes you just have to say "no" to social obligation and make a date with yourself. A lesson I've needed to learn for a long time now.

Take Good Notes . . .

When your heart speaks, take good notes. ~ Judith Campbell

At least once weekly I instruct at least one student in at least one commanding, teacher-ish voice, "Take good notes." Good notes help a student when studying for a test or to clarify questions that might arise later in the week (if s/he decides to review any of the material!) Good notes help us remember the context of a meeting, the instructions the doctor gives us, the details of a trip we plan to scrapbook later. Good notes take us from a point of confusion to a point of clarity.

So that's what this blog is for me. A place to listen to what my heart is saying, to take good notes and to move from confusion to clarity.

Right now I'm in week two of our all-church journey and the topic is "free." If I asked any one of my students to complete the sentence "and the truth shall make you ___________" most of them would respond with "free" even without truly knowing where they've heard it because we've heard it in all contexts of society. I know where I've heard it -- years spent in church. Although I guess I've always just accepted it, it's never occurred to me that I haven't really internalized it.

Tonight while plodding through the exercises in the workbook with my husband Jay, the truth is that we are really struggling with two separate issues that have plagued us for years. Mine is that I never feel accepted. Ever. I feel separated from the continent. An island, if you will. My apologies, John Donne. "No man is an island" may describe you, but for me I feel disconnected, disjointed, separated, broken . . . un-tethered.

So for the next few weeks I'm going to explore that feeling and force myself to write about it.