The Salty Notebook

Places Opinion Melange

If We Make It Through December

If we make it through December
Everything’s gonna be all right, I know
It’s the coldest time of winter
And I shiver when I see the falling snow
If we make it through December
Got plans to be in a warmer town come summertime
Maybe even California
If we make it through December, we’ll be fine. – Merle Haggard

“Your dad has other women.”

It was a snowy winter day in Ohio, I was in either 1st or 2nd grade, and I was enjoying one of my favorite winter activities, Christmas caroling with my school. The church school I attended was tiny, usually less than 30 students in grades 1-8, and caroling was one of the few Christmas traditions that we participated in.  Each winter before Christmas we’d spend a few weeks practicing the carols, which had been copied out of a songbook and stapled inside a construction paper cover, decorated with holly, berries, and glitter. Most times, half the students had red ones and half the students had green ones, and I did my best to make sure I had a red one. How could I be expected to sing tidings of comfort and joy if I had to carry one of the green song books? Even as a 6 year old, I knew the supremacy of the color red.

After a few weeks of practice, we’d be ready to take our show on the road and we’d leave school early to spend the afternoon caroling. Mostly we went to elderly neighbors and friends of people from our church, and mostly to the same ones, year after year. We’d all jump out of the vans that were transporting us and crowd around the front door. The teacher would ring the doorbell or knock on the door and then we’d start singing. It was always a joy to see the door slowly open and see the smiles appear on the faces of those we were singing to. It was impossible to not smile back. It was the kind of joy that made me forget my frozen fingers, and the snow that was slowly melting through the tops of my shoes and into my socks.

On this particular day, and at this particular moment, we were crowded on the creaky old porch of an exceptionally crusty old lady, Mrs. Rosie Thomas. I confess I do not remember all the details of her alleged crustiness; perhaps she did not bathe regularly, or maybe she had a tobacco habit, or perhaps we just judged her by the run down condition of her old house. I remember being half afraid of being there for some reason, and I’m not sure she ever opened the door to give us a smile and let us know she appreciated our efforts.

Mrs. Rosie Thomas had an outhouse and since the joy didn’t seem to be flowing on that porch so much, and the miserable cold was starting to soak in, I figured that was as good a time as any to run away for a bit and use the outhouse. As luck would have it, my best friend had the very same need, so away we went, abandoning our fellow carolers and giggling and dashing our way across the back yard to the outhouse. I do not remember what we talked about in there, I just know that in the last few seconds before we left the outhouse my friend uttered those words.

“Your dad has other women.”

Silence. The outhouse became as silent as a tomb buried under a mountain of snow.

I stared at her, blood rushing to my face.

“You’re a liar!” I yelled.

Not waiting for her to refute me, I threw open the outhouse door and ran back through the snow to join the carolers on the porch just in time for the final song. Every caroling session ended with a jolly rendition of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” My stomach was at my toes. No, it was in my throat. No, there was lead in my stomach. I was ill, about to throw up.

Go bring us some figgy pudding Mrs. Rosie Thomas.

We wish you a Merry Christmas Mrs. Rosie Thomas.

There wasn’t a song in the world merry enough to drown out the words that were ringing in my ears. I couldn’t escape them. And Mrs. Rosie Thomas was not bringing us figgy pudding any time soon.

***********************************************************************************

There are moments in life where time stands still, where blood runs cold, and the memories crystallize into hard shapes that no summer sun can melt. The story above is one those moments for me, maybe my first “memory crystal.” Even though I was too young (maybe six or seven) to understand exactly what those words meant, I was not too young to feel their impact. I know now that she was not lying that day, and I’m still learning to live with the impact of that truth.

Thank you for reading!

Flexibility or {What Mami Lydia Taught Me About Life}

 

It was early afternoon and the sweat rolled down my face as I walked away from the girl’s kitchen and back towards the volunteer house at the top of the hill. The lunch menu had been the same as usual that day; if you can call one giant pot of stew a menu. Tia Angelina would get started soon after we finished cleaning up breakfast. Whole chickens, rice, some chopped vegetables, maybe some canned vegetables if we had them, and water would go into the pot and simmer slowly for hours over the fire. At lunch time, 200+ girls would file past the serving table outside the kitchen, collect a plastic bowl with their serving of whatever came out of the pot that day, and make their way to one of the tables that filled the open-air pavilion. On the good days, a warm, homemade, flour tortilla was laid on top of their bowl. There is pretty much no bowl of gruel that is beyond the redemption a homemade flour tortilla can provide.

After the bowls were empty and the bellies full, I would collect the bowls and spoons and cups with the help of a few other girls and stack them in the kitchen for washing. I’ll never forget the feeling of helplessness those first few weeks in the kitchen. I grew up washing dishes for a large family, I knew how to work through a pile of dishes. But Marmey taught me the vital ingredients for clean dishes were hot water and a detergent that cuts grease. Here at Emmanuel, I had lukewarm or cold water. There was no Palmolive or Dawn, but an unrecognizable chunk of bar soap that I didn’t know how to use, and who’s effectiveness was severely diminished by the cold water. And I wasn’t facing a nine-children-family pile of dishes, I was looking at a 200+ children pile of dishes. The smoke from the dissipating cooking fire would burn my eyes and I’d struggle to catch the few words of Spanish I knew from the chattering girls who were helping me. If comfort zones were sweaters, this would have been one itchy, prickly, sweater.

It didn’t take me long to take to that sweater, and fall in love with the smoke and the Spanish and the simple meals and the dust and sweat. I can’t say I ever enjoyed washing greasy dishes in cold water, but the relationships I made around that sink, the way I learned to join those chattering girls in laughing at my Spanish, are memories that I will treasure always. But this post is not about memories or sweaters or learning new languages. This post is about flexibility, or the ability to adapt.

Orphanage Emmanuel was started by David and Lydia Martinez, and while there was plenty about the organization that pained me, I will always credit Mami Lydia with this lesson. She would preach it to us volunteer girls over and over. “You need to be flexible. You must learn to adapt, to let go of whatever you thought was going to happen, and accept what is.” It was 2003-2004. We had no cell phones to call and cry to our families. No texting our friends to complain about how horrible our day had been. Approximately once a week it would be my turn to walk in to town to use the internet café, and to this day, the sound of dial up internet makes my heart leap. During my time in Honduras that sound meant I was a few minutes away from an email from a family member, a friend, or my very long distance boyfriend.

But there were no guarantees. Maybe it was my day to walk to Guaimaca, but I’d be called to help with a certain project and I couldn’t go. Maybe they’d decide it wasn’t safe to go that day. Or maybe I’d get all the way in there, hear that sweet dialup sound, and then the power would go out minutes before I set my eyes on news from home. One day I was handed a baby who was a few months old and told he was my responsibility. After a few weeks of getting attached, I handed him back to his mother who decided she could care for him after all. I was moved from this duty to that duty. I taught a class at school until the needs in the clinic outweighed the need for the class, then I was a “nurse.” I learned to do sutures by practicing on a diaper. I rode in the back of an ambulance with no medical personnel, just myself, a girl from the orphanage who’d torn the top of her finger off, and a woman in labor who lay on a stretcher crying and pleading and clutching my leg for over and hour, “Ay Dios mio…..AYUDAME!”  (Oh my God, HELP ME!)

But the point is not to tell stories about things I had to do. The point is the lesson that it taught me. With Mami Lydia’s “Be FLEXIBLE,” ringing in my ears, I had to learn to just go with it. How could I serve the child in front of me in the moment if I was still hung up on the fact that my plans for a Google chat with my boyfriend didn’t come to fruition? How could I focus to do a proper suture if I was still mad that my plan for a school newspaper had to be dropped because there was no time for it? Flexibility required a switch in perspective. The spotlight had go off of me, and onto whatever the person in front of me needed. Did I really want to put my wants, wishes, or even needs,  ahead of the needs of the orphanage?

Crisis situations may call for a greater measure of flexibility, but I believe it’s a vital ingredient for getting through all of life. It has great importance in marriage, or any relationship. Everything is just not always going to turn out the way I envisioned, or wanted it to, or was even promised it would.

My husband is traveling for work this week and I traveled with him this time,  because I wanted to be close by as he works through a massive project. Tonight is my last night here and when our plans changed from a nice dinner out, to him working late and me doing laundry in a less than stellar laundromat, I had to swallow my disappointment, and adapt to what simply was.  Flexibility is sending me to bed tonight with no dinner, but with a full heart because of the long conversation we had at the end of the day. A conversation we would never have had if I had insisted on going out. He would have been so tired, I would have been cranky because he wasn’t looking rapturously into my eyes, and our last evening together before five days of separation, would been soured with my selfishness.

Be flexible today, and you just may be surprised with what you get, when you let go of what you thought you want.

 

The First Page

 

Why on earth would I start a blog in 2017? Aren’t they so 2008? Isn’t the internet littered with empty ghost towns of dusty blogs, long since abandoned for the micro-fields of other social media platforms? I remember having a long list of bookmarked blogs that I checked and read regularly. Most of those blogs have been deserted. There are few that I check consistently anymore, and even fewer that ever have new content. And that is OK. If the world has moved past blogs, who am I to protest? I have no aspirations of turning the tide, I simply want to write. I want to string together thoughts that are longer than the 140 characters allotted us by Twitter. I want to share and explore ideas without feeling like they must be contained in an Instagram post or a Facebook comment. I want to offer something slow and intentional, like a meal slowly brought together in a collection of pots and pans on the stove top, as opposed to a microwaved TV dinner.

I intend to lean heavily on words, and lightly on images. Our world is brimming, overflowing, drowning in images. And while there’s nothing wrong with posting pictures, surely life cannot be summed up with hashtags and a family photo in front of the garage door? {Someone should start an Instagram account re-posting photos taken in front of garage doors. They’d have never ending content. :)} Nevertheless, at least for me, that is a huge temptation in this social media age; to assume to know someone’s life experience, motives, and beliefs, simply from the concentrate of photo ops and captions.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a niche. Any blogger worth their salt knows they should have a niche. The choice must be made. Photo blogger. Mommy blogger. Foodie blogger. Super specific hobby blogger. Fashion blogger. Lifestyle blogger. (Still looking for a definition on that one.) Make your choice and then white wash all your photos with the same two filters and voila! Blogger bliss. Something within me resists; mentally, I get weary just thinking of trying to nail down a niche. Perhaps my personality is to blame. For those who are interested in Meyer’s Briggs, I’m an ENFP-A.

“Can’t I fly helicopters AND be an oceanographer who writes songs and cooks?”  -16personalities.com

I’ve often considered this a weakness in myself, wanting to be and do and try so many things at once. My focus gets spread pretty thin, and instead of finishing one project, I start 7 different ones and give up half way through because I’m overwhelmed. But perhaps here in this space, I can use all those different interests to hone a particular skill, writing, and accomplish one particular goal, writing consistently for an extended period of time.  I’m interested in many things and plan to write about (almost) whatever is on my mind. Hence the “Mélange” category you see above. You will probably see posts on travel, (near and far), opinions on social issues, politics, Christianity; books and reading, rants, food, products and people I love, and maybe eventually, bits and pieces of my family’s story.

I’m not writing because I think you’ll find my opinions or thoughts particularly interesting or profound or always correct or even enjoyable. I’m writing because it’s within me. I’m writing for the pleasure and the discipline of it. I’m writing for those of you who, for one reason or another, have encouraged me to write and to not be afraid of my own voice. I’m writing to hopefully, honor my Creator, and exercise the faculties bestowed to me. I like to write, I want to write, I can write, and so I shall.

And if along the way, I can inspire you to write, then I shall be very happy indeed.

 

 

Thank you for reading!