Such a Fine Sight to See

No. This is not a posed picture. They really do work this hard...and most of the time too!

Western Oklahoma

School was out today so that all the teachers could attend the funeral of a dear lady--one who had faithfully attended all our concerts for many years--the choir director's own mother.

Her name was Ruby, and, like her name, she sparkled as she lived her life. The wife of a pastor, the mother of three sons, the grandmother and great-grandmother of many, she shared with them her gift for music and her love of great songs. The service reflected this. It was a celebration, replete with all the old hymns we have come to cherish as outward proclamations of our inward hope and comfort.




We drove north in the early morning and saw sunlight glitter on windmills in the dawning.Passing through several small towns, we saw elevators with wheat painted on the sides.

Coming home we took a different route, so the afternoon found us in northwestern Oklahoma with little traffic and steppe-like terrain. The day was hot; the skies were blue, and the clouds were just poofy little fluffs.

Walking in the Rain

Swiftly to the edge of town
We walked to watch the sun go down

We saw the moon behind the cloud
And heard the crickets trill aloud

Somewhere West we saw it rain
On dusty fields and dry terrain

Saw the cloud bank pink and gray
Saw the lightning skip and play
We hurried home and the clouds gave chase
And we were soaked; we lost the race
But the rain felt wondrous on my face

The Fairy Princess Geek

Yesterday we celebrated my granddaughter Mim's fifth birthday. She has turned into a real "girly" girl whose favorite color is pink and who loves tiaras and necklaces. At the same time, she can't deny her father's engineering genes and instruction, and she often asks her mom if she can play "Think Geek" on the computer. What that means, of course, is can she peruse the website catalog and add desirable items to her "wish list". So after the excitement of the Edwardian dollhouse book, the strawberry princess cake and fairy costume with a real wand, she and her brother settled down to play with the gear machine.

Some Things are Providential

I never go to water parks with my students, and I certainly never don a swimming suit and get into the water with them. It's undignified.

However, knowing that it was going to be 104 degrees on Friday, and not being able to effectively come up with an excuse not to go to the Student Council back-to-school party, I had decided to wear a suit with long shorts over it and a tank top to protect my lily white shoulders. If I needed to drive students down and supervise them the entire day, I was determined not to die of sunstroke within sight of the water.

"I'll sit in the water up to my eyeballs and poke my nose out like a hippo" was the phrase I used.

However, it turned out to be very providential that our school had decided to go to that park, and that I had decided to get in the water, and even that I chose to bounce buoyant in the wave pool instead of tumble twisting down the water slide again.

Here's my official report of what happened yesterday, August 13, 2010:



Realizing that details become clouded in ones memory over the passage of time, I feel like I need to write a thorough report about an incident that happened yesterday at the Comanche Nation Water Park in Lawton, Oklahoma, where I was present in the role of supervising teacher for a back-to-school party.

After lunch, I was standing in the wave pool, in fairly shallow water. Quite a few of our students were in the water, enjoying each others' company and bouncing on the waves. There were two life guards posted, one on either side of the pool in elevated chairs overlooking the water: a girl was on my side and a guy on the other.

Presently, the waves stopped and the waters calmed. Many of the students began to make their way out of the pool and back to other attractions. I waded into deeper water so I could swim a little. Suddenly, ahead of me and to my right, I caught sight of a little girl, floating on her back. Assuming she was a child I had seen in this pool earlier, I thought little of it, but I had a strange impression and looked again. She seemed to be floating too deep in the water to be comfortable. A splash of water over her face didn’t bring any reaction that I could see. Alarmed, I looked for a parent or grandparent in the vicinity. There was a lady standing in the water nearby so I addressed her.

“Hey, is she alright?”
She glanced toward the child and I did too. Now the little girl was floating on her stomach with her head in the water.

“She’s fine,” she said quickly, “She’s just playing.”

“She doesn’t look right to me,” I countered and began wading toward the child. The water was shallow enough for my feet to be solidly on the bottom of the pool, but deep enough to make movement slow.

The lady was brusque: “She’s fine. She does this all the time. Just a minute ago she was floating on her back.”

Still, I didn’t feel good about the child. There was no movement of head or torso that I could see and the limbs were hanging limply. I kept moving toward her.

“She’s alright.”

“I don’t think so.”

“She’s ok,” continued the woman adamantly, “she grew up on the ocean.” However, she did begin to wade toward me as I waded toward the child.

“I don’t think so.” I repeated, as I reached the child and stared at her.

“Go ahead, then. Turn her over,” said the lady, with just a bit of hesitancy in her voice. What we were both noticing was how long the child had been in the same position.

I grabbed her and pulled up. She didn’t move at all, just hung--a dead weight. I turned her over. Her eyes were closed and her face was completely blue, especially around the mouth. There was a frothy spume coming from her parted lips and some of this was smeared on her face as well. She made no reaction whatsoever and her little body seemed very heavy.

I think I said something obvious like, "She's not. She's not alright."

The woman reacted quickly, wading over and taking the child and heading for the edge of the pool. I don’t remember much about everything around us…just a terrible feeling of grief and shock. We yelled for the lifeguard who jumped off his chair and met us at the edge of the pool. Someone began to blow a whistle and everyone started wading out of the pools. I remember looking back and seeing a man running with the child toward the first aid pagoda in the middle of the park. Some of my students, wading near me as we exited the pool asked me what happened. I remember saying:

“Don’t look. She’s dead. Someone is dead.”

And when another student asked me why we were all getting out of the pool, I said
“A little girl just drowned.”

At that point I didn’t even consider that she might be revived. I did not go rushing forward to see if there was anything I could do. I just stood and shivered in the 100 degree sunshine. People were rushing into the pagoda. I stood there. It seemed like a long time.

Suddenly, at the edge of my cloudiness, a familiar face came into focus. It was the face of our health teacher, Mr. Smith. He was talking to the students huddled around and saying the welcome words: "She's ok. She’s crying.”
“She’s breathing?” I asked, still doubting. “I could not imagine that anyone who had looked like the child had looked when I pulled her out of the water could possibly breathe again.”

“Yes. They had her on the table, waiting for someone to arrive. I just gave a couple of thumps on the back and she started coughing. They're in there now with oxygen.”

Feeling weak, I grabbed my shirt, put it on over my swimming suit and shorts, and walked over to sit in the shade of a nearby tree. I remember noticing four lifeguards standing in a little clump, their eyes fixed on the pagoda. Two of them were crying openly—the girl and the guy who had been on duty at the wave pool.

A fellow teacher asked me if I had seen anything. I told them I was the one who found her in the water. “They are looking for you over there,” she said. “They want you to tell them what happened.”

We walked over. A lady was sitting in a chair with the little girl on her lap,speaking gently to the child and trying to keep her from going to sleep. The child was wearing an oxygen mask and occasionally opened her eyes. Her legs were trembling and still looked a little grayish. I could see her belly, which seemed swollen, but it might have been because she was scrunched into the lady’s arms.

Someone in a uniform asked me if I would stay and fill out an incident report. The woman I had spoken with in the pool, who was being addressed as the child’s “caregiver”, stood there crying, and another woman, the little girl’s mother, they told me, was filling out papers. She turned, crying, and told me thank you. There were several men standing around. I don’t know if they were employees or family members. As I waited to fill out the report I heard someone say: “She was found in the kiddie pool, floating, face down.” Then I heard the caregiver say that the child had run from the kiddie pool over to the big pool, and that she had been looking everywhere for her. I turned to the park official, the one holding the incident reports and said: that’s not how it happened. She was in the wave pool. They both were.

“Write it down,” she said quietly, and handed me a pencil and clipboard. As I was writing, trying to cram as much as I could into the small space on the form, the ambulance arrived and two men came into the pagoda and began asking questions. One man asked if the child had ever stopped breathing. Someone else answered, “No. she was breathing fine when we found her.”
I spoke aloud: “No. She was not breathing when we pulled her out of the pool. In fact she didn’t start breathing until Mr. Smith thumped her back.”
Someone then told the questioner: “a man just tapped her back lightly. She started coughing and crying.”
I wrote all I could fit into the space. Meanwhile, someone told the mother that the child would have to go to the hospital because although her oxygen saturation level looked good, she had taken in quite a bit of water. I turned in my report, and watched the ambulance pull out of the parking lot.
A large group of our students were standing in a circle, holding hands and praying for the child, the mother, and the ambulance crew. I walked over and joined them. We looked up to see a subdued park around us. Then people began making their way back into the lazy river and up the water slide staircase. Life was back to normal.
After a few more minutes of observing this burst of oddly ordinary activity, we teachers began to collect our students and call it a day.
When I got home I noticed that my shirt was on wrong-side out.

I’m glad our school was at the water park yesterday.

Some things are providential.

P.S. Since then I’ve asked myself a lot of questions. What if the child had already released too much oxygen from her lungs and sunk to the bottom of the pool? What if the waves had lasted another five minutes? What if the life guards are never told the true story and spend the rest of their lives wondering why they didn’t notice a five-year-old child, all alone, entering the wave pool? Why was the caregiver lying about where she was when it all happened? Who would have taken a five year old into a wave pool anyway? The waves at that end of the pool were strong enough to knock me down. Why wasn’t someone holding her? Anyway, I don’t know any names, or if this report will ever be needed, but I wanted to record what happened.

Peach Products

Last night we cut up peaches and canned eight pints of peach stuff. I'm not sure whether to call it jam, preserves,cobbler filling, pie filling or waffle syrup. That will have to be decided when we open it and see how well it set up. All I know is that it tastes scrumptious. It took Turtle and me a couple of hours to peel and slice the fruit...and I wish I could say the job was finished. However, under the red checkered tablecloth, ripening quietly and steadily on the cool kitchen bar there is more fruit--demanding attention. Sigh. Why does making jam/syrup/filling/yummy peach stuff take so much work?



Ah well, school enrollment is today and students will be following bells all day tomorrow. I've papers to run off, books to find, a bulletin to revise, and a room to clean. Hopefully, by next week all the students will be sitting quietly in their desks, looking as different as my peaches on the bar. Yep, there will probably be a couple of pears in there and maybe a plum or two. They will ripen nicely...but I think the analogy had better stop there. I've philosophized myself into a corner.

Decorating the Classroom

School begins next week, and with "open house" fast approaching, Elijah asked Claye for some help in decorating his elementary music classroom. He had one poster of musical instruments that she had drawn for him last year, but with four bulletin boards and a blackboard to fill with something interesting, he was a little short on time.

Last week, Claye drew a ninja figure for him--It represents classroom hall behavior. Each class earns different colored belts for how well they follow the ninja code: I will move quickly; I will move quietly; I will not be separated from the other ninja. He still has to post the code and hang the ribbon belts on the other side of the front chalkboard.





Yesterday, we left the house early so Claye could have the entire day in Elijah's classroom, creating a musical scene for the blackboard. It was supposed to be a normal, light, music filled landscape, but, since the blackboard was black, the colors were difficult to achieve, and a light sky nearly impossible. We turned it into a moonlit extravaganza and it began to look surreal. Claye worked on the original gazebo and all the characters, while I tried to help by coloring the background, and cleaning the classroom. Elijah and Marie were in and out, sorting, organizing, vacuuming and destroying spider webs.





I don't know why the spiders enjoy hanging out in that room, since there are as many as 60 children in there at one time--singing or playing on simple instruments. Elijah teaches, using the accordion, trumpet, trombone, violin, various guitars, drums, and even a set of harmonicas. It's a noisy place--right across the hall from the library, oddly enough.

Anyway, the room looked great--well almost great. That huge bulletin board above the piano could have used a few more drawings, and the map of the world needed to be hung yet, but we all called it a day around 8:30 in the evening. Elijah and Marie took us out to the little local cafe for a very good pizza supper. Bearing chalk smudges on our faces like commandos, we visited quietly, ate quickly, and and drove home towards a pile of lightning in the Northern sky.

Elijah and Marie

I keep stalling on my post about the wedding,hoping the pictures will come in. Meanwhile time is passing; the newlyweds have returned and settled cosily into their house in Lawton; we have another wedding coming up this Saturday, and school starts on Monday, the 9th...so here are a couple of pictures I stole from various people on facebook. I love the joy on the couple's faces when the formal shots(posing for pictures with lots of people watching you) are all over and they are finally ready to leave all the stress as they drive away in a new car, borrowed from Marie's dad. (Both their cars are travel-worn and unreliable, so all the parents breathed a little easier to see them drive away in the new one--well, all but Marie's dad. He held his breath until they--and the new car--returned safe and sound!)

One Amazing Storm

As we drove north through the golden fields at sunset, we could see storm clouds ahead and to the east of the road we would be driving. In the West the sun was brilliant, so we turned in that direction for about nine miles, then veered North again, skirting the worst of the storm, but pulling over several times to take pictures. Do you blame us?


Claye took most of these out her window when we slowed or stopped. Occasionally she handed me the camera so I could get pictures out of mine. Turtle patiently bore with us. The variety of scenes in such a short distance was hard to believe, and the pictures also varied in intensity--from soft evening light to silhouette dark.











The difference was also notable from West to East. As we faced the sun, the background appeared darker. Later, safe at home, we smiled when we uploaded them and saw how beautiful they turned out. Isn't God amazing?

Our day has been rather like that too. We began the day with a drive to the city for a funeral, spent time visiting with my sister, then headed south on a new highway with great scenery (no stopping for pictures there, however. It was a toll road with no space for gawkers)

We arrived in Lawton, met Marie's family, and were all in time to welcome Elijah and Marie into their newly-rented home and watch them open wedding gifts. We celebrated by eating pizza and drinking diet coke with lime.  Life is great! It's so full of variety and shades of beauty--darks and pinks and black silhouettes outlined with heaven's light.

The Red Umbrella

Another funeral today.
I'm wearing black. . . with a red jacket.
That is, if the funeral protocol police don't eject me at the door.

My daughter and her husband will be there, shepherding my grandchildren through the solemn family line, explaining to them that their great uncle Bennet has joined their great-grandfathers on the path that forges ahead and out of sight.

It brings me back to another day...another funeral. On a cold February in the gloom of southern Arkansas, we huddled, shocked and silent in the gray cemetery among the pines as friends and family joined us for the burial of Turtle's mother--as kind and cheerful a woman as ever I had known. Then, as if in a torrent of sympathy for our tear-streaked faces, rain fell.
From my shielded position inside the canopy, I watched as umbrellas appeared all around, gray-black and properly somber. Then, through bleary eyes I saw a marvel--a bright red umbrella in the crowd--bobbing a little, hesitant, not so sure that it belonged.
It was carried by a frumpy little lady, a close friend whose loyalty was stronger than her sense of appropriate.
I smiled--even chuckled quietly inside-- and that secret joy brought comfort.
That was twenty six years ago, but I still smile when I remember it.

So today, I'm wearing a bright red jacket.
I'll be the frumpy little lady.
Maybe, someone will smile.

Elijah

My son (whose blog-alias is Elijah) and my new daughter-in-law (whose blog-alias is going to be Marie) are blissfully far away on their honeymoon, unable to access computers to read blogs and such.
Therefore, I'm going to take this opportunity to tell a couple of funny stories about Elijah.

When he was a sophomore in high school, we all piled into the van on Sunday morning to make the fifteen-mile drive to church. He was in his socks, because he knew that surely there was a huge selection of his shoes under the back seat of the van where he was prone to leave them. As we neared the church parking lot, he began to search for shoes. He found one.

"Alright, who cleaned the van?"
"I did. Why?"
"What did you do with my other shoe? Is it up there?"
"Probably not. I carrying a whole pile into your room and dumped them into your closet."
"Mom!"
"Well!"
"Well I only have one shoe now to wear to church..."

So we all looked, but, sure enough. There was only one.
Elijah wasn't one to let something like that inhibit him, however. Boldly he walked into church and even sang in the choir. (Fortunately from the back row.)
After church we decided to go out for Pizza. Elijah limped a little as we walked into the restaurant and placed the socked foot carefully under the table. Whenever anyone asked him what happened to his foot, he smiled gingerly, and said,
"I think I misplaced something."
They commiserated; we all smiled.

A couple of years later Elijah dove over our backyard chain link fence to do a front flip and keep running--the way he always did. This time, however, he didn't jump quite high enough. The top of the fence left an impressive gash down the entire front of his stomach.
That fall at football practice, when he pulled off his shirt, the guys in the locker room caught sight of the lengthy scar.
"Wow! How did you get that one?"
Elijah didn't miss a beat.
"Fencing," he replied.

He Was a Carpenter

He was a carpenter--a humble master, with sure, strong hands.
He was a teacher--patient, persuasive.
He was a father, and a grandfather--gentle and generous.

When Wayman and his wife Adalou moved into our town several years ago, we little knew the impact they would have on us and on our church, but from the first we loved them. They were the kind of folk that jump into life and share it and help it happen. That first summer Adalou, an accomplished seamstress, made over fifty little costumes for VBS. Wayman designed and built a village set. Five summers later, we are still using these, and over two hundred children have marveled as they learned.

How do I describe Wayman? a doctor? college professor of industrial arts? fascinating friend whose bank of amusing stories reflected many travels and adventures? He was a deacon on the church board, and the school board, a Sunday School teacher, and director of Team U Serve, which repaired roofs and interiors of churches damaged by storms. He was his family's devoted fan, attending hours of grandchildren's games and school events.

And he was a carpenter. He built furniture, amazing and unique. When my husband--his pastor--asked if he could build a stand for the advent candles, Wayman gave a little smile and said he thought he could. A couple of weeks later, he came back with a marvel in woodwork--an artifact so beautiful we hated to endanger it with candle wax. Excellence, we discovered, was his trademark.

A little over a month ago, as we were all excitedly preparing for VBS--Wayman for his regular position in the carpenter's shop, Ada Lou for helping in the bakery--the report came in that he had pancreatic cancer. Plans came to a slow, stunned, stop. Of course we told him we were getting other crafts, not to worry. We'd be ok...but he had committed to build a craft for the children, so he stayed up one night and made the pieces for sixty cedar candlesticks--a sweet-smelling project that brought smiles to the faces of those too young to understand at what cost he had made them, or why he cared for others when he was facing the ordeal of chemotherapy.

Today, Adalou called for help in getting Wayman to the hospital, and I watched him half-walking in Pastor's arms, half being carried out to the van. His wife and his daughter followed closely behind--all of us moved with our arms and hands opened as if we could catch him should he fall--I wanted to help. How I wanted to help! But my hands were too weak--we all were too weak to hold him.

This afternoon he died quietly in the hospital surrounded by the family he loved. . . and the news is going out. People sit quietly and don't know what to say...

...about a man whose life gave witness to the hours he had spent in his shop, creating intricate and excellent projects, and conversing with another carpenter--One who visited the earth briefly long ago, One whose hands are not too weak to hold our beloved friend Wayman.

Old Farm Houses

My favorite photo subjects just sit there and let the sunlight play all over them: Old farm houses--especially old farm houses with a windmill. I really can't resist taking pictures of them. Here's one I discovered Saturday not too far from home. It was sitting so quietly on the corner that I actually missed it the first time I drove by, but the cotton crop caught my eye on the way back and...voila!

My International Traveler Returns

He's actually using the garment bag for a pillow.
I think he has got a little jet-lag. What do you think?

It Helps That I'm a little Obsessive

Honestly, I don't think I could keep doing my morning hike and exercise if I didn't have little obsessive tricks to keep me going.

Every morning--well at least five days a week--I follow this routine. It gives me a certain sense of accomplishment--or maybe just smugness.

1. I start early. It's essential if I don't want to collapse in the heat and puddle into a little pool of melted ambition. Besides, if I start early I can see doves and hear them--cooing high on steel gray lines against the pinkish sky.




2. I walk to the courthouse--about a mile away. listening to music, and occasionally--by certain houses--slowing down to pray.















3. I always admire the courthouse--especially the clock tower. If you look closely you can see a spiral stairway inside. One day I want to climb it...just to be able to say I've been inside the clock, rather like the Mt. Everest experience of a small town, sedentary soul.








4. I climb these stairs--10 times. Evens are diagonal, odds straight up and down, threes and sevens I climb backward--
using a whole new set of muscles I assure you.

















5. When I get to the gym, I head for that circle of dragons
and exercise on each one--usually fifty times--
sixty if I'm ambitious, forty if I'm exhausted already.
Then I weigh, drink a glass of water and leave.
(yes, in that order. Why jeopardize my hopes and dreams by weighing that extra glass of water?)

















6. If I have gained weight, I punish myself
by climbing these ghetto-looking stairs.
















7. If I have lost weight, I reward myself by
strolling around this fountain.
(Every little psychological trick helps, ok?)
















8. As I pass by the other side of the courthouse,
I run stairs again. Of course there had to be a
matching set on the East side. These are sunnier.
Lively music helps.














9. I walk home quickly. Sometimes Carina calls
and we talk on the phone.
It's the next best thing to walking with someone.

10. Slapping mosquitoes: There are several deadly passages through mosquito ambush points like this one. I've found that while speaking softly doesn't do anything to remedy the situation, carrying a stick helps. Originally, I started carrying one to ward off annoying dogs, but it works well as a swisher.




11. Saying hi to Melvin and his dog, Pistol Pete.
Melvin is 84 years old, and has lived in this
county all his life, so, really, he's a fixture,
like the courthouse. I encounter him at the
end of the walk just as I return home to
drink a cup of coffee and catch up on facebook.

Wedding Frenzy

In nine days, my son, Elijah, is getting married here in our church to Marie, who lives in the city, two hours away. Fourteen days after that, his cousin, my niece, Cordelia, is getting married in that same city. I'm trying to calmly get done what needs to be done and make lists for Elijah of things he has to do: Car in the shop, electricity switched to your name, deposits paid, gifts bought for the groomsmen, brides bouquet.
Claye is the maid of honor for Cordelia, so there are fittings. Zay and Mim are the ringbearer and flowergirl for both weddings. My sister, my daughter and I are singing in Cordelia's. There is rehearsal dinner planning, apartment/moving helping, cake recipe finding, lodging locating, insurance switching, lawn mower lending, etc. etc. etc. I filled the car with gas three times this week. It's insane. It's a beautiful fuss, though, and if I'm going to be going crazy for my children, this is a great reason.

All that to say: I haven't been blogging much lately. There'll be time for this later.