Some Poemage.

Today in seminar (a bi-weekly meeting for writing center assistants), Sis. Morgan shared this poem with us, and for some reason, it just really hit home. Roethke seems to name a lot of what I've been feeling the last little while in this beautiful piece. It reminds me 1) to cast my burdens at the Lord's feet and be patient in trials, and 2) to really enjoy life--to enjoy each moment God grants me. I am only given this present moment once. In another minute, it will be gone, and I will have missed it. I have to be awake--really awake--every minute of the day.

"The Waking," by Theodore Roethke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.


Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

Is it normal to not want to go back to a place you love?

The light was still on in the toy room, where I slept this past summer. I just lay on my mattress staring at the side of the shoebox. I was too tired to do anything else. Or maybe I was just comfortable looking at it like that. But finally, I propped myself on one elbow and flipped open the lid. I smiled up at myself. I was in a pink sequined dress, posing in third position with my hands on my hips. The next picture was the one of Kyle and me at the banquet breakfast POPS Choir went to our first morning in Disneyworld. Then a picture of me in my blonde wig and red and white polka-dotted dress, just before the closing night of Anything Goes. The fourth was one of my senior pictures—I am looking at the ground, the trees by the creek burning green behind me.

The day after I got home from Rexburg, I told Mom I needed to go to the bank to make a deposit. I climbed into our little gray Camry and as I drove away, I watched the dust rise up behind me in the rearview mirror. I made my way to the bank eventually, but first, I drove up the red brick main street to my high school. School had been released for summer break a week before, so I knew no one would be there, but I looked around and behind me anyway before parking under the single tree in the Manhattan High’s parking lot. This had been the meeting place before and after our choir concerts and musicals and ACT tests and rehearsals. Kyle walked me out to this Camry parked under this tree one morning after the show choir workshop POPS put on for the resident grade school kids.

I love Manhattan, especially in the summer. I love our family weed-pulling fiestas at 6:30 in the morning, when the air is in-between the coolness of evening and the sticky humidity of day. I love running on dirt roads that are familiar, out past the old stone schoolhouse and the Manuels' red barn. There's a distinct smell there; I don't really know how to describe it, and I don't know exactly where it comes from--maybe it's the pasture grass or the dew or the leftover rain water in the ditches on either side of the road. But it's a sweetish, familiar smell. I love hanging out at City Park or AJ's Pizza at sunset with high school friends. I love going to the 30-person singles branch on Sundays.

Sometimes, though, I don't love memories. They usually make today feel empty. And memories constitute much of my living time when I'm in Manhattan. It's hard to move forward there because the past is so prevalent for me in that town. My mind plays the "remember when" game as I drive to work or walk into Dillons grocery store or listen to bands play during Arts in the Park, and especially when I drive past that red-brick building at the top of the hill on Poyntz Avenue. Manhattan means high school for me, and as a junior in college, I just feel the need to move on from there for good. Someday, I'll need to move on from Rexburg for good too. Places like these cannot be permanent. It's all a part of moving forward, moving forward. They have their time slot, their soliloquy in this Play of Life if you will, but there's no going back. That would screw up the plot.

summer fever.

The Kansas sky is usually yellowish-gray before a summer rainstorm. Even the cumulonimbus towering over the hill beside our house has a yellow hue. Everything seems quieter when the sky looks like that. There’s no wind. The finches stop arguing and watch the sky from their perch on the young tree in our front yard, and the neighbors’ cows wait in a corner of the field, just standing.

I stand too, my bare feet on a warm, flat rock rock on the path in front of our house that connects the porch and the roundabout. The air is humid and sweet in my nose as I breathe in.

It’s days like this when I miss yellow skies and quieting finches.

January 30

It's that time of the semester again. The resolutions I had at the beginning of the semester are starting to bend a little, to take a day off now and again. I don't run as much as I need to, and I still haven't moved yesterday's clothes from their sprawling position on my chair to the laundry hamper. Heck, it's almost 2 in the morning, and here I am writing a blog post. Behold! the evidence. But I went to M. Russell Ballard's devotional this afternoon, and he reminded me what really matters. A firm conviction in the Lord. A firm conviction of His truth. A firm desire to share that conviction. It's a remarkable blessing to be taught at the feet of an Apostle of God.

Just a thought...

I want to go back to Crater Lake. I want to sit on a wide tree branch some summer and just wait there until the first snowfall. I'll watch the first snowfall, and then the second, then the third (or maybe it all just comes in one steady continuation of white that lasts days and days or even weeks), so I can know how the snow lays on the pine needles and th edirt and hugs the edges of cliffs with such graceful, perfect curves. I want to see the transformation from summer to winter sitting on a tree branch overlooking Crater Lake.

Oh, Summertime. Come back to me.

Some summer pictures...

I miss my Kansas.

One Day

I woke up at 6:31 this morning to a knock on my door. Shoot. I had forgotten--Matt and I were going running. I pushed on my glasses and, squinting, opened the door. We were both super tired, so we decided to do just one lap around Porter Park this time. The sky was gray with eager rainclouds and there were cars everywhere--cars of parents and grandparents who had come to help their little college person pack up his or her stuff in preparation for another break. It was noisy for 6:3o-something in the morning, but the park was quiet.

At noon, my aunt and uncle came to haul my boxes into Grandpa's pickup and transfer them to my grandparents' house for the next five months. One contained a pile of Rachael Ray magazines, my dictionary, and my reading lamp, among other things. I watched as my uncle pushed that box to the far end of the pickup bed.

Around 2:26, I walked past the digital clock on the oven and out the garage door. I walked down South Park Street to the post office a couple of blocks away. The road veered to the left a little, but I walked straight. I walked across the grass. The pointed heads of the grass blades peeked over the sides of my flip flops and graced the outlines of my feet.

I arrived at the post office a little tentatively. Confession: I have had a fear of post offices for a long time. I think they started when, as a little girl, I would wait in the car for my mom while she went in "to mail a few things . . . but I'll be back in just a minute, okay?" I would sit between the driver and passenger seats and look at the watch she left with me to count the time. She was always gone for more than a minute. After a minute passed, I would look around for a cop car so I would know where to run if my mom had been abducted or something. Thankfully, such an action was never necessary. Later in life, I matured to the point where I was expected to go into the post office myself while my mom ran another errand. The workers at the post office looked mean. They were either grossly overweight or grossly skinny, they cussed under their breath, and none of them smiled. Except once: Once, this black man was working there (I had never seen him before; he must have been new), and he smiled and asked, "What can I do for you today, Miss?" But other than him, all postal workers have scared me to no end. I was positive they were all thieves or drug dealers or both, in cohorts against the innocent citizens of Manhattan. But I digress. The point is, when I walked into the postal office of Sugar City, Idaho today, I expected to meet an unsmiling swearer, but instead, a nice middle-aged man asked me how he could be of service. He sold me a book of stamps, then he weighed my tax money envelopes and placed 59-cent stamps on them. He thanked me and wished me a good day. I did the same and pushed the swinging door open, walking out.

I walked across the street to Sugar City's food market. I believe it is the only real store in the town. I didn't feel like buying anything--just walking--so I walked up and down every aisle, even the aisle that had nothing in it but dog food and lysol. But I enjoyed it.

Something was different today. Maybe it's because school is out for five months. Maybe it's because Spring is in the air. I used to wonder what that really meant, for Spring to be in the air, but I think I have figured it out. It's still a little chilly outside and even gloomy, but some breath of fresh air has whispered to the tree bark and the robin and the dirt that April is here. And they have listened.