Family Pictures

I finally got a copy of all the wedding pictures. We just bought the disc--copyright and all. Now wouldn't that have been a neat thing to do years ago at our own wedding? I'm remembering that long ago...33 years now. Actually, there are a lot of neat things you can do now with a wedding and most of them involve a computer. You can print your own programs and invitations, make announcements and updates on facebook, thereby receiving instant reactions from friends, make slide shows, post videos. Life is much more simple ...and of course more complicated at the same time. There are more pictures here than I could possible post...let me see...which ones do I put?

Go Read This Poem

I don't do this very often, but I have to recommend a post on my daughter Carina's writing blog-"A Part of the Main." She wrote this poem for two prompts--(Sunday Scribblings was "wait" and One Single Impression was "Choices"). Today we all got the sad news that a friend of ours had been killed in an accident. He left a wife and two young children. In the light of that news, this poem is especially moving. Please read it. It's called Painless.

charm, feast, robust

Their pizzas were truly a “must”--
Meat-lovers with double stuffed crust,
The feast was quite charming
But, rather alarming,
For my figure became too robust!

Wait...

My son and his wife, along with a few of their friends, have chosen to spend Labor Day weekend climbing this mountain in Colorado--a fourteener by all accounts, which means it's well over two miles high. That's a little ambitious for "not used to the altitude" flat-landers. They left excitedly in the wee hours of the morning, after Turtle had spent half the night trying to give them a crash course in survival. Their pile of stuff was formidable: compass, whistle, space blankets, first-aid stuff, sun screen, mole skin, tent, sleeping bags, matches, flint and steel, water purifier, and lightweight sporks in brilliant colors. Even more impressive was all the stuff they didn't have room for: a net to dry the dishes, a handy, dandy little mess kit all shiny, a cook stove with fuel, a Backpacker magazine with an article on "surviving in the wilds".

Although it's just an easy trail they are climbing, with the temperatures and the altitude, I'm a little nervous. My phone is charged and ready to get that text that says: "We're down."

Wait.

And while I wait I remember a similar trek that my sisters and I once took, up the side of Popocateptl Volcano near Mexico City. It was cold in brilliant sunshine. We hiked four and a half hours and reached a spot about half-way up the snow-covered summit. From there, only the professional climbers went on. We practically ran back down. All of us. My parents were along that time. I was only twelve years old. Here's a picture of the mountain we climbed.

I think climbing is easier than waiting.

A Window from Inside the Earth

I was sorting through old pictures today and ran across this one. It was taken from deep inside the earth--Marvel cave at Silver Dollar City to be exact, and my camera was zoomed in to capture it. I was standing on a deck-like platform and this sky was high above--completely inaccessible.
"What would it be like to live down here," I wondered, "damp and quiet and all shaded in brown, dank air without breezes, except for the periodic wing-flutters of bats headed out?"
I could see the green and yellow overhead. From far away I could even hear the strains of a lively music and the excited voices of children playing--or was that only imagined? For now it was gone.

This is our life on earth, I thought. Up there is our whole understanding of Heaven. We see so little, but even that's enough to make us want to look for a ladder.

The Wonders of Algebra

While I was working diligently in my classroom after school today...(well ok, it wasn't altogether diligently. I was finishing a biography of Clara Schumann that I was afraid would spoil if I left it in the room over a three day weekend but was too close to finished to tote it all the way home and back) I heard excited little feet and voices in the hall. My grandchildren had come to pay me a visit. With them were their two little cousins, whose mother was coaching volleyball in the gymnasium. After my usual bribe of candy, they all embarked on an exploratory whirlwind tour of the room, not missing anything.
Zaya wanted me to explain, in great detail, the synthetic copy of the Rosetta stone hanging on the wall to which it was delegated a few years ago to make room in the library for the much more educational "Drink Milk" posters.




Where was I? Oh yes. I explained about Greek and Demotic and Egyptian hieroglyphics and how important the stone was to interpreting the latter. When I paused and said that I couldn't remember why it was called the Rosetta stone, Zaya put in, quite confidently,
"It's because they found it near the Rosetta bank of the Nile River. I read a book about that."
Oh.
And all along I thought I was enlightening him.

Well. Meanwhile, the three little girls had discovered the chess table and were playing busily. I slipped over just in time to hear Mim say as she picked up a piece.
"Hi. I'm a queen and this is my little pawn son. Can we come over for a visit?"
"Sure," replied Jaida
So the black queen and her little bald son took the knight/horse and they all made a procession across the squares over to the white manor. Chess re-invented.

Zaya borrowed my camera and took pictures of items around the room for a while. Then, while Carina and I were visiting, all four children decided to play at the blackboard.

First, they dipped their fingers in the chalk dust and made comet trails as high as they could reach . Then Jaida and Mim began to write words like hat and all the rhymes to it while Zaya did math problems for fun. After he did an addition problem and a simple division, he wrote Y x 4=6 and asked us to solve it. We did, which led to another serious explanation of what a variable was and how you didn't need to put an x to multiply it; you could just put 4Y=6. We showed him a simple equation that he could do: 3X=9.
"Now wasn't that fun?" I asked
He smiled a huge smile and said happily, "The wonders of algebra!"

(If you think that's amusing, you should play a game of pictionary with them.)

Sunrise, Sunset

This morning's sky was all blue, white and pale--an optimistic bursting through the clouds. By noon it was blazes and heat.

When I stepped out into the hot yellow sky this evening in order to contemplate a walk, my skin felt a couple of raindrops--and I almost kept walking. In fact, if I hadn't seen lightening nearby, I would have done it, because the idea of being soaked to the skin with warm rain is a delicious one after so many days of watching dry skies and hurting for the parched grass. If I had, however, I would have missed seeing the sudden formation of a bright rainbow over the church. It was huge--too large for the camera. I took a few random shots of right, middle arc, and left, then Turtle and I jumped into the car and headed to the edge of town so I could get far enough away to capture the entirety. Alas. By the time we got far enough west, the rainbow had faded.














The sun, however, in a radiant spurt of sparks low on the horizon cast flood lighting on an approaching storm of cloud circles. It was truly majestic.

This last month has been an emotional whirlwind for us and for our church. In the space of thirty days I've attended three weddings and three funerals. We have been through loss and disappointment, and our souls are weary of trying so hard. Yet there are still hungry hearts and lonely people who need us. They need the message of hope that Christ offers. So we carry on. . . and God sends a rainbow to cradle his church. Joy and Sorrow.

Break, Negative, Surface

Eyes watch the water
Empty hands break the surface
It's a negative.

Old Pictures

My daughter "Carina" wanted me to post some old pictures of her being a flower girl at my sister's wedding. Unfortunately, I don't have a few hours to sort through the cabinet with all the little albums in it, so she's going to have to help me find those particular individual pictures. I did, however, sort through the cabinet with the big albums in it and found several pictures.









The first one is a group picture of my sister's wedding and Carina is being a shy, little flower child. Notice how tightly my hand is gripping her shoulder to keep her from dancing away from me. I think she is three years old. In the second she is four and, once again, being a flower girl at a cousins wedding. In the third she is five,the same age that her daughter is now.

The bottom two pictures are not of Carina.
They are of my husband and of our son.
Notice any similarities?

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!)