The Post in Which the Author Laments

It is the end of an era.  Saying goodbye to my parents in what we now affectionately call "The Crying Parking Lot" seems like forever ago.

"One Sunday afternoon in June" is very quickly becoming "a Monday morning in May."  That very expensive piece of paper is almost mine.  But I don't want it.

I'm not ready to leave.  I'm not ready to get a big girl job.  I'm not ready to start over.

I love it here.  It's why I prayerfully chose this place.  God has grown me and used me here.

I'm not the same woman I was four years ago when we cried in the parking lot.  All too soon I'll be crying in a different parking lot.  Pulling away from a place that has shaped me, formed me, and made me who I am.

As my peers discuss what dorm they're living in next year, I ponder what state (country?) I'll be in.  As they plan their schedule, I look at the classes I wish I could take.

When my parents, sisters, and I said goodbye, I walked back to my dorm while their van pull away.  I never looked back.

Will I be able to do the same in a month?

Based on how easily the tears filled my eyes tonight, no.

I refuse to count the days until I walk across the stage. Instead, I'm being pulled towards it kicking and screaming. Even my pullers are screaming.

"I'm going to have a hard time when you graduate."
"Are you sure you don't want to add an seventh major and stay a little while longer?"

But, unfortunately, it's time. 

The rites of passage passed and the mile stones crossed.  Those "one day in the future" events have become items to be crossed off the to-do list.

Yet still it hurts.

I'm comfortable here.  Four years will do that.

I cannot walk across campus without stopping to chat.  I know the chain of command for almost every problem and situation.  I'm not afraid to jump to the top of the chain, I know the loop holes, and I call people by their first names.  I keep emergency numbers in my phone, and I have used them.

This is my school.
This is my home.

I understand now why people linger long after graduation.  Part of me hopes I become one of them.

<>< Katie

And to think, this post was supposed to be about my final youth trip this weekend.

Sorry, friends. Thanks for letting me be nostalgic today.

Amber and I purchsed our flights to China on Friday! Now my life doesn't end until August. But I still don't have any idea what I'm doing when I get back.

Just One Shirt

All of the best ideas come from a "What if?" question.

"What if we went dorm to dorm asking people to donate one shirt to homeless shelter?"  Keith asked at dinner.

The idea exploded and on a Saturday afternoon Nikki, Keith, David, Ryan, and Wes wandered around campus with two plastic buckets for their "Just One Shirt" drive.

They walked dorm to dorm knocking on every door encouraging residents to find one item in their wardrobe that they don't wear.

Personally, this was a challenge.  If I don't wear certain clothes, they're at home.  I don't have the space to have superfluous stuff here.  I did find one shirt I don't wear--a yellow coffee shop shirt that makes me feel like I'm in my pajamas all day.

They gathered a car trunk and backseat full of clothes--it's approximately twelve trash bags full of clothing!

It was also part of a school-wide service project campaign where the three best service projects won $100 each.

Another winning project (the most creative project) was a hall of students who went to the nursing home and asked the residents to make Valentines Day cards for the children at the children's home.  Then, they went to the children's home and asked the children to make Valentines Day cards for the nursing home residents.

The Just One Shirt campaign won most spirited.  Get this: their $100 is going to support a Compassion International child for this month and for his birthday.

What if we all gave one shirt?  What if we were all servant-minded?  What if?

<>< Katie

Blue

I don't know if it is like this on all college campuses, but here you cannot spend time on campus without having at least one story about our housekeeping staff. The housekeepers LOVE to talk. Perhaps that's an understatement. They will start up conversation with anyone and everyone. Last year, a trip to the bathroom that should have taken eight steps took forty-five minutes because Miss Jessie caught me and I was without a good exit excuse.

Now that I no longer live in the dorms, I am no longer forced to interact with them as frequently as I once did. However, I still see them around campus. Just yesterday, Miss Anna had no problem interpreting my prayer to tell me about how she working double shift in order to attend the funeral of former housekeeper the next day. I figure God wouldn't mind if I spent five minutes talking to her while she changed the garbage bag in the prayer room.

Except that they're long winded, Miss Jessie and Miss Patty never have bothered me because I can understand them. It's the older women like Miss Rose and Miss Joy that make me nervous because they have the thickest accents I have ever heard. With Miss Rose, my motto has always been smile and nod politely as she tells me all of the gossip for the week.

With Miss Joy, smile and nod doesn't work. In the words of one of my professors, "Miss Joy was a housekeeper for almost a million years, so when she retired they invited her to audit any classes she wants. As I'm sure you've noticed, that means she sleeps through them all."

When she'd speak up in class, all eight of us (including the professor) would listen intently trying to hack through her deep drawl and old age to formulate some comprehensible statement and interpret it for the rest of the class. I could understand maybe three words every fifteen.

Since then, she's gotten older and her health has deteriorated taking some of her verbal skills with it. This means if I could understand one word before I can't understand anything now. That's a problem because like all of our other housekeepers, Miss Joy loves to talk. I knew I was in trouble when I spotted her sitting outside the cafeteria after dinner tonight.

"Good evening, Miss Joy," I said. There was no way around it; I had to acknowledge her presence.

"Hello. Slkjadansdmasd," she responded.

"Excuse me?"

"I like your blue coat."

"Thank you," I said. It's purple, I thought to myself. Everything I own is purple; Wonder Jacket is no exception. Poor Wonder Jacket is often confused to be blue and now she's feeling blue because of it (I just decided that if my coat has a name it should have feelings, too). Instead of correcting Miss Joy, I let it go.

"Yes, I think blue is your color."

"Thank you very much," I said trying to appear flattered as I walked away insulted.

BLUE?! My color? No you didn't! Purple is my color! A quick glance around my room confirms this. From my desk I see the following purple items: two backpacks, two Nalgenes, two blankets, four pens, my watch, post-it notes, tennis shoes, slippers, a purse, a hammock... Today even my sweater and socks are purple! My world is purple.

Blue is not my color.

See the blue? There's not much of it: blue books, blue pen (professors prefer blue to purple; why is that?), blue jump drive, blue tissue box (only because Wal-mart was out of purple), blue jeans, blue hand... No, not mine. Well, yes mine. It's made from paper and hanging on the wall above my desk. It's my reminder to see the blue.

In 2008, Peder Eide released a CD entitled See the Blue. The whole idea is that blue is everywhere around us but if we're not looking for it we don't see it. Likewise, God is everywhere around us but if we're not looking for Him we don't see Him.

Even though she insulted my jacket and me, Miss Joy reminded me to see the blue, to open my eyes and see God. Thank you! Maybe I will hold the door for you again.

View the Blue,
<>< Katie

Chula Schwann's New Do

Have you met my skeleton?

Some people have skeletons IN their closet… I have a skeleton ON my closet. This was not always the case. Last year around Halloween the cleaning woman in our dorm decorated for the holiday. This included putting a life-size green skeleton on the wall right outside my dorm door. Every time I walked around in my room he’d catch my eye, and I always thought there was someone outside my door. This actually creeped me out. I figured I’d just move him down the hall a little bit further, and he wouldn’t bother me anymore. Maybe I’d give him a name, too, because that’s a nice thing to do for a skeleton.

Well, I was telling my friend Laura about him, and she had another idea. At 3am on a Friday night, Laura and I decided this poor green skeleton needed a makeover. I was in a Human Biology core requirement at the time, and we’ just finished learning the bones of the body. What better way to study than to label the bones on the skeleton in the hallway? Well, when we’d finished my skeleton we moved on to the two other skeleton’s in the building, repositioning them to live directly outside of Laura’s dorm and a mutual friend’s dorm.

Of course, these skeletons needed names (as did the mice living in their ribs and feet). I don’t remember were “Chula” came from, but “Schwann” was from the Schwann cells of the Peripheral Nervous System (what we were presently studying in my biology class). We toyed with names like, “Glial”, “Axon”, “Dendrite”, too, but “Schwann” seemed to be the strongest. Yes, Laura and I get mega-nerd points. I'd like to add that Laura waned to label the muscles on the fully-clothed witch, but I felt that was a little over-kill. Either way, our adoptive father is an anatomy professor (but not my prof) and was incredibly proud of us for our hard work.

The cleaning woman wasn’t quite as proud. In fact, she was upset that we moved the skeletons. Lucky for us, we had earned her forgiveness before it was time to de-decorate. I think it had something to do with her perception of us being nursing majors and she thought it was just part of the gig in being a nursing major. Boy did we have her fooled! Laura and I are religion and writing majors… not even close to nursing. Independently of each other, Laura and I both asked her if we could keep the skeletons. The cleaning woman forgave us and gave us the skeletons. Somehow Laura got the purple one while I got the green one. We used Sharpie to re-label the bones on the third skeleton, Jobab Schwann, and mailed it to our friend Natalie who was studying for the MCAT.

For the remainder of the year, Chula Schwann hung on my wall and Toby Schwann (Laura’s purple skeleton) hung on her wall. Well, that is until Toby imploded and then he lay collapsed on top of Laura’s microwave. Like Yossarian in Catch-22, I had a dead man in my room. Unlike Yossarian’s dead man, Mudd, my deadman didn’t have any stuff. In fact, Chula learned to be a pretty good dancer as we’d periodically rearrange his appendages throughout the year.

At the end of the year, I brought Chula home with me (amputating his leg in the process), and I couldn’t figure out what to do with him. I wasn’t quite ready to part with my nerdiness, so I did the only logical thing I could think of to do: I hung him up. Of course, the only space in my room open enough to hang a paper skeleton is on the closet door. This is how I have a skeleton ON my closet rather than IN it.

Today I gave Chula Schwann a new do. No clothes for the skeleton, nor did I remove the notecards differentiating between his mandible and maxilla (which I might have finally learned, thank you).

The newest book I'm reading is called A Novel Idea and each chapter is written by a different published author in the Christian world. The chapter I just read is by Angela Hunt and it's entitled "The Plot Skeleton." Like the title suggests, she talks about plot in terms of a skeleton. Since I'm a visual learner, I figured I should draw this out, and what better specimen than the skeleton on my closet?

I, of course, can't take a picture of Chula in his present condition because that would give away too many details that I don't want to reveal, but I can give you a quick summary of Hunt's chapter.

First the skull, the protagonist. This protagonist has two problems, also known as eye sockets. One is a clearly defined, known problem while the other is more hidden. Head down (pun intended) to the cervical vetebrae, or neck, where the protagonist experiences some sort of problem further introducing the reader to the character and exposing coping mechanisms. This isn't the catastrophe, that's waiting somewhere around the thoracic vertebrae (middle of the back, for those of you who don't have skeletons at your disposal). Throw in at least three ribs of complications and muscle in between as resolution. Chula doesn't have any muscles between his ribs, but he does have a mouse in there, so we had to improvise. Move on to the femur, considered to be the bleakest moment where Hunt forbids miracle fixes to the protagonist's problems. Move past the knee and you hit two helpful parts: the fibula and the tibia. One is an external force that pushes and encourages the protagonist to keep going; the other is an internal decision the protagonist makes thus solving the previously hidden problem and learning a lesson. Hit the foot and it's time to wrap it up. The end.

Here's my problem, this skeleton Hunt has created is a double-arm amputee, but I amputated Chula's leg, remember? Well, just like reconnecting Chula's leg, I'm entertaining the idea of making the arms subplots involving other characters that interact with the protagonist. Not quite sure yet, and I'd love your opinion.

As always, thanks for reading!

<>< Katie