Colds in the Winter's Springtime

The cold came in a few stages.

First, it was merely encroaching, a friend cancelled because she was sick. 

Then, I visited my Adriane and her three sons, all of whom had suffered the wrath for a week at that point. It was part of life already. Runny noses, and every surface just given up for lost. That was when I knew it wouldn't be long.

Then it became part of my surroundings: both roommates were coughing, sneezing, and looking as though they'd been through a pepper spray incident. Tissues filled the trash cans. I briefly considered buying and using some kind of disinfectant spray on the couch pillows... before falling asleep on said pillows, blissfully reliant upon my own immune system. 

Precisely when everyone else is turning the corner, and my sympathetic, "how are you feeling today?" has become entirely too trite, and replaced with nothing but a sympathetic nod -- precisely then, I began to sneeze. And cough. Then my body, too, produced and immediately expelled nasally, more mucus than is ladylike to even speak of. (Alright, where are my censors? "Mucus" shouldn't make the cut.)

Second box of tissues: gone. 

Eyes: watering. 

Lips: outlined in dry red.

I don't say this for pity. No. Wait. Yes, I do. I desperately wanted someone to tell me to go home and sleep for hours on end. I wish I had told you that, when you were sick.

The Best Dating Advice You'll Ever Get

I promise you, I get a few messages daily on a free dating website which shall not be named, which read, "Hey, how are you?" Ask. Good. Questions.

I can think of several reasons why a  person might be on a dating website: everything from looking for a spouse, to networking, to... other things. I get it. But the point is to nurture a deeper relationship. So ask good questions.

That's why I'm past anger and on to puzzling: why would someone's first contact with you or me be simply, "Hey, how are you?"? In my culture, I walk down the street and get that question, and I'm justified in ignoring it. I may not even look at the asker, depending on the time of day. I mean, we're passing each other and you ask, "How's it goin'?" and I'm still walking in the opposite direction. I may nod. I may not nod. This is not a conversation. You don't know me, and aren't asking to. Ask good questions. Really wonder, and then ask.

When you're on a dating website, you have the chance to look at a lot of information about a person that would usually take an entire first date or more to find out. You get a serious advantage this way! It's like eliminating the risk of a terrible first date! Ask good questions. Read the whole profile, then ask good questions.

I hope we all know how lovely it is to be asked a sincere, open, specific question, then to be listened to. The same guy who messages me, "Hey, how are you?" has a profile that consists of the following Self Summary:

I hate writing these things. Anything you want to know, just ask.

No. NO. No and no. Your readers know intuitively that you're not being fair: you want the reader to do all the work of relationship, based on, what, your profile picture? Your reader doesn't owe you anything. This isn't the space for your nonchalance, even if you are James Dean.

With a summary like that, you've just set yourself apart from people who think at least occasionally, who are respecting their reader, and who have an idea of what their lives are about, or at least a candid self-awareness that they haven't got a clue, but are still willing to put in the time to say so.

Ask good questions. And if you really want to set yourself apart, be ready to listen for the answer.

More Scenes From Single Life

Scene 1, March:
I was washing dishes and singing, "How Deep the Father's Love For Us."

When I got to the line about "the Father turns his face away," Carmen, who had been mopping in the other room, shouted, "That's pretty terrible atonement theology!"

Scene 2, April:
I had plans to stay at home and create a budget, then practice piano, for a job well done. Or, maybe skip the budget bit altogether, actually. Or, maybe go buy some shoes, which was more urgent than it sounds. Then Leah came home and started bringing tissue paper downstairs, and filling up the dining room table with edible things. "Hey, Carolyn! Are you staying for wedding craft night?"

"Sure, but only for a half hour."

Two hours later, I went on a 20-minute shoe mission, loathe to leave a dining room full of wine, good stories, scissors, glue, and bits of paper and wire. (Who am I kidding? I hate crafts. But I love people.) When I returned, Leah was modelling dresses she had purchased for the occasion, and asking for us to pick our top two, so she could return the rest. We convinced her to keep four.

A Texting Conversation, September:
Bethany: Do you know what's on the grocery list?
Carolyn: I think it was just curry powder, which is obviously not a good representation of our actual life situation regarding food.
Bethany: Don't worry! I bought a watermelon!

A Breakfast Conversation, October:
Bethany: Whoa. That's a lot of chocolate chips for 7 am.
Carolyn: grunt
Bethany: Not judging. Just commenting.

Stuck on an Island With Taylor Swift: 7 Days of 1989

Day One: I'm so glad I have this brand new CD for my broke-down car CD player. I love "Wildest Dreams." I think I have told everyone about it. I will listen to it on repeat.

Day Two: crying Still playing "Wildest Dreams."

Day Three: I'm driving to an outdoor wedding, thinking about my hair while it rains hard. "Clean" is on repeat until I pick up two more bridesmaids, and we drive to pictures together: "Wildest Dreams" six more times.

Day Four: Today is Sunday, and I'm reminded that I also love Jesus, along with Taylor. So I turn on the radio, and listen to... is that Michael W. Smith?... Can't do it. Back to Taylor, "This Love." I led small group tonight, and realized that at one point, three T-Swift songs were vying for being the song in my head. It was difficult to explain to small group, but I think they get it.

Day Five: I've begun to feel very emotional. Is it the music? Is it a lack of sleep? "This Love," on repeat.

Day Six: Maybe it's time to diversify my listening throughout the day? I listen to Mumford and Sons at work, but realize that it's their latest album, which, true to critique, sounds like nothing, and I was humming Taylor Swift anyway.

Day Seven: It has finally occurred to me that certain paths of my recent actions may have been influenced by Taylor Swift's catchy lyrics and steady eyeliner. This, of course, has led me to an important decision, in which I take out the CD I've been protecting by locking my car, and I insert a different CD. It doesn't matter which one. None are as good, none as smooth, none as fun, nor well-produced as Taylor. But it may be my last chance to grip reality, and I cannot miss it.

Winter Always Seems to be Looming

Mid-July, a leaf falls:
the card house crumbles;

Lothlorien mourns.

August sighs in green.
September breathes in gold.
October laughs a rusty red.
Obediently, the year grows old.

November throws one last charade
and haze before its grizzled gray
requires of me that I must resolve
to face the fading days.

December dies in drab and black,
friends leave for their cold evening's sleep.

In a firelit flicker, the dawn arrives,

but morning offers no reprieve.

On occasions during the three
months of December,
a sun setting on white snows
helps me to remember

light, with life and inward feeling,
will explicate itself in rays and boughs--

for it does not freeze, 

though the sap runs slow.

---

These were my title ideas:

Summer Never Comes Cheap

Color Wheel of the Living Year

Wait For the Hope in the Last Lines

If Winter Is Going to Be There, I Can't Come to the Party

Writing About Winter, In Hopes It Will Be Satisfied

The Latter Half of the Year in a Temperate Zone 

Resolving to Accept Winter as One Might Accept a Difficult But Rich Houseguest

When A Poet Hates Being Cold, It's Just As You Might Expect

If You Dream of a White Christmas, Please Keep it to Yourself

Piano: What I'm Afraid Of

I've begun to learn something new. Kendra is teaching me piano. Slowly, slowly, I crawl through octaves. I measure my footsteps in fours. Piano is counting. I like counting, when it's fast. But this... I remind myself, it's okay if it doesn't come as quickly as counting.

Most cords are still acquaintances from other countries, with strange customs, who I am afraid to offend.

Then there's the problem of fear in other regards. What if the neighbors hear me playing the same song two dozen times, and wish that they could quickly end their lives?

What if my roommates hear the same song, played wrong in the same places, two dozen times, and in a moment, realize that my intellect is questionable, after all?

I tell you, it's okay. Because Kendra is teaching me piano.

It is easy to laugh together as I play wrong notes, and try and try. Then, I watch in awe as she brings order to the unwieldy thing I've been practicing for a week. Try again. Piano is laughing.

Right hand
left hand
now together.

The best lesson we've had yet didn't involve the piano at all. We were talking about rhythm and jazz. The best thing about rhythm is you can create it out of nothing, anywhere. We grabbed play-doh cans, and pens and a plastic bottle, and made music!

"I Am" poem, fourth grade

I'm looking through a pile of items Mom gave me last weekend, and all of it is from fourth grade so far. Here's a poem with more than a line or two that still rings true. 

I am an easily-annoyed carrot-lover.
I wonder if there could be intelligent life on other planets.
I try to hear birds singing when it's raining outside.
I am an easily-annoyed carrot-lover.

I pretend (when I'm bored) to be a gameshow host.
I feel grouchy when I'm not around people I know.
I can touch the clouds when I'm really happy.
I worry that the world will someday burn up.
I cry when even someone I don't know dies.
I am an easily-annoyed carrot-lover.

I understand where I'm going when I die.
I believe in everyone being equal.
I dream about someday being a professional designer.
I try to put up with people when they get on my nerves.
I hope to help people in a way I don't yet know.
I am an easily-annoyed carrot-lover.

The Importance of Herbs and Turn-of-Phrase

Me: I think we should throw away this old dill weed. It's at least three years old.

Joella: I don't think that's a good idea. Old dill is better than no dill.

Me: I guess we should wait to throw it away 'til we replace it.

Joella: Yeah, 'cause you don't know how important dill is until you have none. Then you're really in a pickle.

What Makes My Body Great

I like how well my body functions, but sometimes I'm annoyed that I don't look ready for a magazine cover. When someone says, "she's got a great body!" I have to assume they're talking purely one aesthetic. Right? We're not talking functioning GI tract, not talking strength of leg or arm, not talking reflexes or grace, just how she looks in one frozen moment. I have to say, I'm not satisfied with being able to look good frozen in time. I want to have a great body in lots of ways!

Don't misunderstand me. I like a lot of my photo-ready aesthetic. I like the shape of my feet, and how dainty my hands are. I like the curve of my waist and the angle of my nose. But what I love most about my body is that I'm not in pain. I can do everything I need to do every day - what a good gift!

The moments when I don't like my body are usually in dressing rooms. I see myself as if I were on the cover of a crude magazine: red arrows each pointing to different sections of me with a mini article on what I should do to improve. I decided to re-write those mini articles by thinking of my body in motion, not stagnant on a magazine cover.

Fat
In the winter, I sit with my feet on radiators, and read, and keep hot drinks close to my lips. In the winter, I don't hurry. I barely move out from under thick covers. I let another layer of fat build up, and look at it with discouragement, because I have no will to work it away.

In the summer, I get faster and stronger. I lose the winter layer, and run for miles starting at high noon, to feel the sun, to make sure it sinks deep into my pores. Then I sit in the evening, perhaps with you.

Hair
I like my hair long because it is like a mysterious curtain. Sometimes after I wash it, I will go two days without brushing it. I like my hair short because it draws back the curtain, revealing something about my personality.

Three months ago, I found my first grey hair. A few weeks ago, I found that the one hair had several friends. I guess this will continue until I die.

Short
I like my height. I can fit into buses in Honduras. I can make my sitting desk into a standing desk by using two textbooks for my keyboard. I can stand on the stairs, and still find people to look in the eye. Sometimes, I can even find jeans that fit me if they are marked "short."

Skin
In my mid-twenties, I have lots of wrinkles when I talk or laugh. In the winter, my translucent skin can look sickly if I don't sleep enough. My eyes will look red-rimmed in their shadowy sockets.

In the summer, the sun covers my face in freckles. Those freckles close in, giving me a Scottish tan.

Strong and Well
I have gone all winter without getting sick. I have walked without growing weary, lifted boxes without strain. I sleep deeply, and dream about what I'm reading. I can breathe slowly and deliberately and find myself at rest.

Bible Quiz Coaching: An Incident

Before I tell you this story, you have to understand a few things about my church. Let's start with my church's floor plan. First, there are two floors: the downstairs used to be a bar, and has an open floor plan you'd expect of such a place. It has two entrances, one can be unlocked from outside, the other must be unlocked from within. The second floor, only reached from the outdoors, used to be a small apartment and includes a bathroom, kitchen, and three rooms we use for Sunday school. It's a warm place you might enjoy holing up in if you're without a home, and you happen to find the door unlocked.

It is also useful for you to know that some people attend my church who are homeless, and homeless for diverse reasons. It has been a matter of course, though somewhat unnerving for me, to leave the Sunday school rooms after Bible Quizzing practice of a winter evening, and find the luggage and detritus of a homeless person, though only once did an owner thereof accompany his few belongings. (It was -20*F with the wind chill, and I fussed at him to go to the shelter to find safety. It briefly occurred to me that it would be nice if he could inhabit the Sunday school rooms, but the plan died right away: way too complicated.)

That one rather simple incident with all its implications made me forever-after hesitant to arrive to Quizzing practice alone. The very next week, though, found me arriving alone, at 6:50 pm. We were going to celebrate our first victory with ice cream that night, so I unlocked the downstairs, which includes the kitchen, though we usually have practice upstairs. I went to unlock the other door, but found it already unlocked. I paused, knowing that I might not be alone in the building. I checked the bathrooms and storage room, turned on more lights, and began to feel that I was alone. But, ah, I had left the Quizzing lights upstairs. Outside, I tried the door handle to the upstairs, and found it already unlocked. Again, a bad sign, what was it with our lackadaisical security? Most of us live in the city, and know that you lock your doors. And if not your own, surely the empty church building's doors!

I turned on the light, fairly certain that I would meet with some desperate person - whether in or out of their right mind was the question. "Hello?" I called.

At the top of the stairs, I opened the door, and saw no lights except for the TV, which displayed only static. "Hellooooo?" I called again, but was arrested at the faint sound of children's voices singing. A kid's worship CD was playing. What the hell was going on here?

Chairs had been strewn about the room, and the other doors in the room were closed. Everything was wrong with this picture. I was suddenly and overwhelmingly certain that this was the scene of a grisly murder, and that if I were to open the door one inch more, it would be caught on a corpse lying just beyond my line of vision. The killer was probably still in the room.

I went downstairs, to the sanctuary, telling myself I could wait until another adult arrived to survey the room. Then I heard it, just above my head, footsteps treading right where I had been not a moment ago. So this is how I die, I thought. I went out to the porch to confront the stranger and warn off the quizzers. I knew I couldn't run away, because the quizzers would be arriving any minute, possibly to encounter a dangerous person. I also knew I couldn't call the police. In the worst case scenario, they might use excessive force; in the best case scenario, they would have far too many questions.  I decided to call Pastor Josef. Someone should know how I died. 

"Hello, Carolyn!"

"Hi, Pastor Josef, how are you?"

"I'm good! How are you?"

"Well... I'm not great..." I quickly explained how I had found the doors unlocked, and the creepiness of the upstairs, and most importantly, that there was still someone up there, and I didn't feel safe.

"Do you want me to come over to the church?" he asked.

"No," I said, "I'm sure someone will get here soon." Whatever was going to happen would be finished long before he could arrive. Right then, the door from the Sunday school rooms opened, and Pastor Josef heard a desperate scream come from the other end of his phone - this was the end, surely!

"Are you okay? Carolyn? Who's there?"

"Pastor, I'm fine. I'm... I'm just fine," I was shaking as I tried to explain, "I am so sorry to scare you... I'm fine. But I am going to have to kill the quiz team. I know it's been a lot of work getting a team together. But I am just going to have to kill them. At least, Tyler and Isaiah. Sorry, Pastor. But I'm going to kill them."

---

Tyler and Isaiah had been dropped off early, and a dad with a church key had let them in to the upstairs, and gone his merry way, incorrectly assuming that they would use the time to study the Holy Word of God. And maybe Tyler and Isaiah thought they would do that, too. Until, after 33 seconds, one of them slowly closed his scripture, and said to the other, "Wouldn't it be funny if ..."

Checking Out at the Grocery Store: My Best Line Yet

Please forgive me. I have re-written this introduction enough times to acknowledge that what I am about to share here is likely to become more fodder for an ever-growing list among my friends and family: Reasons Carolyn Will Never Marry. But those who have ears, let them hear. When it comes to weak game, a girl should take no prisoners.

I had gone to the grocery store late at night for the simple reason that it was my turn to do household grocery shopping, and my day had been full of responsibilities and intense conversation up to the very minute I stepped into the store. I was a ragged, mute specimen of humanity dragging myself down only the necessary aisles. I managed to avoid any gazes and any banter in crowded areas; not even an "excuse me" passed my lips.

The checkout lay ahead, my last obstacle of interaction before the freedom of driving in darkness and falling into bed.

The problem: both the high-school aged cashier and the high-school-aged bag boy seemed eager to talk to me; so eager, in fact, that I wondered if they were in some sort of competition with one another. Their zeal annoyed me. The cashier attempted a thought, to which I responded with silence.

Then the unfortunate bag boy ventured a purposeful observation: "Sunflower seeds. Cool. What did I make recently with sunflower seeds?"

A beat.

"Was it an attempt at conversation with a woman in your checkout line? 'Cause I think I was there for that."

Scenes From Single Life

Setting: Four women live together in a house on the edge of a small city.

Scene I: The Hallway

The office door is open in the upstairs hallway, casting a rectangle of light into the dark hall. Keyboard tapping is audible, as the first young woman walks up the stairs. She stops in front of the open door to exclaim some news of the day to the occupant. In a few moments, the young woman sits down, and in the office doorway, another young woman, the keyboard-tapping one, leans out. A few minutes of animated conversation pass, and a third young woman joins the two. The orchestra's decrescendo leaves traces of a conversation, "...on NPR today," "...no, not next August, this August!" "...he actually did say that, I promise" before swelling again. Lights darken.

Scene II: The Kitchen

A young woman with a messy pony tail, dressed in professional clothing, enters the shared house. She is clearly withered from the day. She hangs up her coat laboriously, takes off her boots laboriously. Beyond, the light of the kitchen is visible, and laughter between two, now three people erupts from there. The messy-pony-tail woman perks up and joins the kitchen to make four. Pans fly on and off the stove, burners are turned on with a click. The sink is filled and emptied, filled and emptied with dishes: clattering into the sink, running water, steam from a hot pan searing parts of primary and secondary conversations. Two chairs are occupied by rotation at the table; one woman stands and moves about, another sits for a moment on the stair, another gets up to continue the heating of foodstuff; for a moment, all are holding dishes of supper, and seated in various comfortable poses. Then, one must go; two, three. The young woman with the messy pony tail is last at the sink, leaving dishes in the drying rack, hanging up the dishcloth, turning out the sink light with a smile.

Scene III: Cleaning House
A black and white cat is chasing an imaginary thing up and down the stairs. In the bathroom, a young woman in a ragged band t-shirt is spraying cleaner and wiping surfaces. The black and white cat bolts downstairs, scared by nothing, or something, perhaps. The cat's reception is met with no fanfare beyond a harsh eyelock from a young woman wielding a broom and dustpan, tending to the corners and frames of the downstairs.  

Onward travels the cat, into the kitchen, to find a third young woman who, rag and bucket in hand, is giggling to a voice on the radio. This woman appears neither to see nor hear the skiddish cat now skirting the edge of the basement door, descending with speed into its dark depths.

Creative Energies Transformed

"Why haven't I been writing?" I ask myself, and one or two of you have asked me, too. One part of not writing has been the fear of it. If you refuse to stop and reflect, you don't have to make any changes to your life. You can just keep going forward until you hit a roadblock.

So I let myself fill up my schedule with visiting. (I've been around. You've seen me.) And while that's mostly been a positive change since this time last year, the lack of quiet for my mind has crippled my ability to compose creatively.

When I do become introspective, cataracts of thought open wide, and out flows something different than before: a desire to sing, to play an instrument, to run, to laugh with you, to do something brave, to call you, to finally get back to watching Lost, to coach a Bible Quiz team, to plan a friend's wedding, to visit my sick grandpa and my outspoken grandma, to see a good friend far away, to plan a baby shower, to read that book... by the way, it was Wuthering Heights this month, and it drew me in like the sea, and rescued me, too.

It occurs to me that time is short; if I want to do any of those things, I had better do at least one right now.

I do still write, though, in my journal a few times a month. I write emails. I write advertising copy. I write quiz questions. All taken together, it is satisfying me for now.