My Thanksgiving

Ride the train to see your friends. Let them pick you up.
Have a seat in the living room. Sink into the familiarity.
Do not take it for granted.

Enjoy the trees without their leaves. Meet the gray sky with
steely resolve to be happy no matter what,
As you glide along the highway.

Enter a warm house and start right in.
Don't expect the red carpet,
For it wouldn't be home that way.

Go to the church service in the passenger's seat.
Experience the strangest sensation to be driven by someone you
Used to take to school.

Look at faces so dear, that used to fill your heart
So full that they still do. But it's not the same.
And you don't take them for granted.

Feast.
Laugh.
Walk in the blurry four o'clock, almost snow, almost rain.
And do not take it for granted.

Muppet Christmas

Beginning in last October, when I would think about winter coming, I would have brief flashes from A Muppet Christmas Carol. It has been over ten years since I have seen that movie, but it must have made quite an impression on me! Being opposed to cold in my life, it is perhaps my only happy association with the cold. Plus, the city is so innocent and filled with joy. Very soon, I expect to walk out of my front door in Lancaster, and join in with a line in a song spanning the entire neighborhood.

Wayne will step out of the deli's door, saying something about there being "one more sleep til Christmas."

Jonathan and Lis will have a duet in the street, playing with the other children, keeping time by bouncing their kickball off the side of the theater building.

Justine and Jake will sit out on their porch with their huge dog and sing, "we're always much warmer, this time of the year!"

Linda will stroll toward Harrisburg Avenue, holding a cigarette, whistling in cadence while

Charlotte will hold out two Turkey Hill iced teas, spinning on the corner of Mary and Pine, "we cannot wait til Chriiiiistmaaaas!"

I am almost afraid to see the movie now, for being disappointed.

Reasons to Stay up Late on a Saturday Night

1. waiting for your casserole to bake for the fellowship meal in a few hours
2. getting ready for your Sunday school lesson
3. looking at bridal magazines and wedding websites
4. tuning and re-tuning your guitar
5. waiting for your laundry to finish
6. talking about culture, the prevalence of evil, sources of identity, and lies we've believed
7. rating professors online
8. homework
9. homework
10. homework
11. listening to the neighbor's dog run up and down the hall
12. homework

A Deli Tale: John O'Hurley

Bill was not at work on Saturday. He and his family took a one or two night vacation in Philly. He still called the deli a few times to check up on everything. Around eight on Saturday night, the following conversation took place, to the best of my memory:

Me: Campus Deli, how can I help you?
Bill: Carolyn? Hey, it's Bill. How are things goin'?
Me: Pretty normal.
Bill: Good. Hey, do you ever watch Seinfeld?
Me: Yeah. I used to watch it all the time.
Bill: What was the name of Elaine's boss? The gray-haired guy.
Me: Do you mean his real-life name? Or his character name?
Bill: Either.
Me: ooh, Bill. I really couldn't tell ya. Hey Wayne, Todd, did you guys ever watch Seinfeld? [Wayne and Todd being my co-workers, and who had not seen an episode in recent history]
Bill: Peterman! ...Peterman! J. Peterman, right?
Me: Yes! I think that is right. Nice job. But what was his real name?
Bill: Jacobo, wasn't it? Something like that. [The actor's name is John O'Hurley.]
Me: Why did you ask, exactly?
Bill: We're at a restaurant in this hotel, and he just walked by! Oh man. Oh man! I hope I can get a picture with him and the girls! [Here, Bill asks the waitress if that was the guy from Seinfeld, and if he was a nice customer]
Me: So, is he a nice guy?
Bill: What? Oh, yeah. [Did he forget I was on the phone?] She said he's, like, a really nice guy. I think I'll go ask him if we can get a picture! He's really a handsome man.
Me: Yes. He is a handsome man.

In This Lifetime

1. go whitewater rafting
2. go deep sea fishing
3. watch North and South with Wayne and Todd
4. go skydiving
5. read all of George MacDonald
6. then read it all again
7. write a book (another list will eventually contain ideas)
8. visit every continent (using the seven-continent division theory, this includes Antarctica! (I had better make that visit sooner rather than later.))
9. be extraordinarily courageous
10. make perfect crepes
11. explain Jacques Derrida to a classroom...successfully (ok, that may be going a bit overboard)

this list has the potential to be severely long

Sublime, Second Grade

I burst through the metal doors into the sunlight. There were four or five or six or seven of us, depending on the day of the week, depending on our behavior during lunch, depending... And we were FREE! Free for thirty minutes. Free to run directly to the jungle gym and not look back.

This day there may have been five of us, or just two of us, or just me. I don't remember. Because I climbed to the top of my favorite set of climbing bars, and sat on the top bar, hooking my sneakers beneath the second-to-the-top bar. I swung my head down and SKY.

Sky all around me. I was floating in it. I was only shakily hanging to the earth by my new sneakers. (And you don't know if you can trust new sneakers.) And when sky is on at least three sides of you, maybe all four, gravity itself seems to be only on the verge of loosening its grip ever so slightly. And with the gentlest breeze I was sure I would begin to float away: away, away. Sailing over surprised teachers and friends and Fairview Elementary, and Fairview Avenue, and all of Waynesboro. I would reach just past the YMCA on the other side of town before I would begin to feel very lonely.

So I swung my head upward and lifted myself to the top bar of the jungle gym again.