Wanderlust and St. Augustine

A lot of our extended family is traveling right now. I am not jealous at all . . . okay maybe just a little. My brother, just returned from Japan, is now in California taking in the majestic sequoias (did you know that is one of the only words in the English language that contains all five vowels?) with his wife and baby daughter. My folks are with friends basking in the desert beauty surrounding Tuscon. My in-laws are at the ranchero in the gorgeous mountains of Mexico. I am coming off of a homework marathon of three days watching gloomy, cold April rain slide down the windows.

I credit my parents with giving my brother and me the bittersweet gift of wanderlust. We took our first family vacation in 1980 and have been traveling ever since. I'll have to write some other time about that first trip. Even though I was only 7 years old, the details are burned into my brain and memorialized by my Young Author's Conference award winning book Bobcats, Thunderstorms and Me. It's hilarious, and the title hints at just a few of the misadventures we had on that camping trip to the Badlands of South Dakota.

So today, I will enjoy the sweet memories of trips gone by and be thankful for them. And as I scale mountains of laundry and contemplate countertop landscapes of dishes, I will meditate on the words of St. Augustine:

"People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering."

Thought on a Rainy April Day

The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful. -- e.e. cummings

A Moment in the Life

I don't usually write “cute” mommy stories, mostly because my kids are not cute. Oh wait, my kids are the most adorable children since the dawn of humanity, even more darling than yours! Actually, I haven't posted many since I don't want to reveal that saccharin sweet side that every mom has (even if I keep mine well-hidden). I also know that these types of stories are sweet to parents and grandparents while friends and extended family politely nod as they inwardly die of boredom. But just in case you get the wrong idea that I think deep thoughts or read great literature all day long (actually I think Mr. Wonderful-still waiting for a new moniker-used to think it was “watch Oprah and eat bon bons” – but it's really “watch Man vs Wild or Shark and eat peanut butter cups,” but ANYWAY . . .)

While I was locked in the closet, I mean working on homework, I heard the most blood curdling, horror flick shriek coming from the girls' room. I leaped over piles of (clean? dirty?) laundry in an (almost) single bound (actually it was more like scaling Mt. Everest) to go see what the trouble was. Bear was shaking and about to dissolve into a puddle. Bug was on top of the dresser with his footie jammies unzipped and stepped out of. They are green so he looked like a goofy superhero – “It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a frog!” So he's on the dresser half-naked, dancing to the song “My Baby Hippo” with his big white belly hanging out, but this is not why Bear is screaming. “A spy-doo, mommy! A spy-doo!” The “spider” turned out to be an ant of microscopic proportions (yes, I had an ant in my house, so what?!) The ant was smushed. The day was saved. Now I must go. The Frog Man calleth.

Flotsam Jetsam

If I were pressed to say what one activity I find most relaxing, it would be beach combing. Living in the Midwest, I don't often get the opportunity anymore, but when I lived in the Cayman Islands, it was one of my favorite pastimes. It's totally addicting! I would walk the beach with a friend or my dog and my eyes would be constantly scanning the sand for a glint of sea glass, a sea bean from Africa or some other flotsam. I found bottles, pieces of roof tiles used only in Europe, driftwood in unusual shapes and sea glass of all colors including cobalt blue and lavender. Hearing a tropical storm whip the palm trees and pound rain on my windows only excited me because I knew that the next day, the beach would be littered with all kinds of new treasures. And each beach had its own specialty. Old Man Bay on the north side held Caymanite and rare shells, while the eastern shores were where the magnificent finds from afar washed ashore. It was on these stretches of sand that the idea of flotsam and jetsam first penetrated my brain.

Some very astute observers may have noticed the “Flotsam Jetsam” tag on some of my entries. Normally the terms flotsam and jetsam have somewhat negative connotations, a sense that they are debris and detritus left from a storm or shipwreck. But I witnessed that after the storm or the wreck, all kinds of treasures can be found and this is what led to my Flotsam Jetsam Journal.

Believe it or not, as much as I like to write, I have never been one for journals. I have friends who have diaries, prayer journals, gratitude journals and don't get me started on scrapbooks! I have a Flotsam Jetsam Journal. I turned thirty right after going through a pretty crazy eight years that stripped me down to the very core (I'll perhaps share that story some other time.) As I reflected on my life and legacy at that critical juncture of turning thirty, getting married and being a new mom, I happened to read a book by Frances Mayes called Swan. It's a pretty good book, not totally earth-shattering, a mystery novel written by a talented writer no more, no less. One of the main characters, however, kept random journals that were later found by her kids and it sparked my imagination. Here's a part of what I wrote as my first entry:

“I turned 30 two days ago and for a while now have been obsessed with leaving a legacy. Of course the greatest legacy I could ever leave is the one I myself was given which is a knowledge of and relationship with Christ. That is my greatest hope and prayer for my dear Bean and any others yet to come. . . [little did I know!]

This, however, is a legacy of a more mundane sort. I love to collect quotes, clippings, odds & ends, bits & pieces, ideas and “jottings.” For a while these have been collecting in “paper boxes” in grade school, file folders, binders, flotsam & jetsam in drawers, purse bottoms, pockets and crummy notebooks. So this journal is a new attempt at “organizing” all the clutter into a single place. The idea is not to be too organized, though . . .” And so was born the Flotsam Jetsam Journal.

So the entries tagged "Flotsam Jetsam" are just my way of marking the miscellaneous ideas that have come from this source, and in doing so, I guess this blog is an extension of the FJJ and a way of sharing some of the little trinkets I find after the storms on the beaches of life.

National Geographic and the Ambulance Man

I have had a life-long love affair -- with National Geographic. Ever since I was a little kid, I have loved poring over those glossy pictures and imagining the thousands of adventures that hide between the pages. I have also never had a subscription to National Geographic. My ninety-six year old grandfather does, and he passes his copies on to me. When I was younger, this bothered me; I wanted my OWN. But now, I like that connection we have had since I was a little girl. (Back in the 1930's, Grandpa had the opportunity to buy a lifetime subscription for $150. That was a lot of money during the Depression for a farmer/carpenter, so he wasn't able to take the deal. National Geographic sure would have been the losers!)

One of my most favorite recent articles is "Pakistan" from the September 2007 issue. Not only did this article offer a fascinating and succinct history of the country, but it profiled a man from Karachi named Edhi who runs a charity that helps children, women and the extremely poor. He has a crib in the street outside of his office door with a sign that says "Don't Kill Your Baby" where he receives about ninety infants a month. Edhi also scours the streets for the dead and dying so that he can offer a dignified death and burial. Imagine a city where human life is so devalued that dead poor people are just left in the gutters! He refuses to accept donations from organizations or government sources as he wants to be beholden to no one, but his most poignant quote was about not even accepting car rides from anyone. "I travel by ambulance, in case someone needs help along the way."

I thought that this was a beautiful picture of how we should travel through life -- as if in an ambulance looking for people who need help along the way. And it reminded me of what Jesus once said when people were grumbling that he hung around with the "wrong" kind of people, "It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick; I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners." (Mark 2:17)

Meditation on Salad

We've been trying to do a little spring downsizing of ourselves here at Mustard Seed House with varying rates of success. Toward that effort, we have been consuming quite a lot of green leafy things and bits of plants previously known only to bunnies and "hoggers" (Bean-speak for woodchucks). Now I love a good salad, but frankly, all the parts that make it "good" are all the things that make it bad for you! I hate that! As I was contemplating the irony of salads, I recalled one of my favorite quotes from a very odd and intriguing book called The Debt to Pleasure by John Lancaster. Let me preface it by saying that as much as I am Franco-averse, I am even more passionately an Anglophile. British = Better, except in the areas of dental hygiene and some cuisine. In the case of salad, we Americans have inherited the horrid English version as described below:

". . .a few melancholy slices of cucumber, an approximately washed lettuce (iceberg, naturally), which appeared to have been shredded by wild dogs, two entire radish heads (served whole, presumably to avoid the risk of their proving edible in sliced form), a pale and watery quarter of tomato, the whole ensemble accompanied by a salad cream that at least had the virtue of tasting 'like itself' -- that's to say like the by-product of an industrial accident." (page 145, attributed to Captain Ford, 1846).

Go eat your vegetables!

Refiner's Fire

My dear friend A. shared this story with me. I'll share it with you, as it has been a great encouragement to me.

How is silver refined? The silversmith places unpurified silver into a small cauldron and then lowers it into the hottest part of the fire to burn off imperfections and impurities. Knowing that if the silver is burned too long, it will be destroyed, a bystander asked how the silversmith knew when it was time to take the silver out of the fire. He replied, "I stand by the entire time and remove the silver when I can see my reflection."

"He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver . . ." --Malachi 3:3